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reminiscingtonight · 2 years ago

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Half A World Away (Pt. 2)

Lucy Bronze x Reader

Word Count: 2.4k

A/N: Bet y’all thought I forgot about this, didn’t you?

Part One

[WOSO Masterlist]

“You left.”

The last thing you thought after accepting the party invite was that you’d run into your ex.

Okay that’s a bit of a lie, given the fact that you know how close Jordan and Lucy are. Or the fact that this was clearly a Lionesses party. They were celebrating their World Cup win so it would’ve been weird not to expect one of the newly crowned winners to be at the party.

But the last thing you thought was that Lucy would actually seek you out and corner you in the bathroom minutes after you and the rest of your entourage entered the bar. Like you have to go when you have to go, but something about how the door slams open not even a minute after you enter tells you that Lucy definitely did not need to pee.

Lucy sounds accusatory. Angry. But all you can see is the hurt deep within her eyes.

You knew it was a gamble, leaving England without telling Lucy. But the two of you shared many friends. She was bound to hear about it eventually. Plus, it’s not like you had any obligations to tell her. She threw away any rights she had to know about your life when she broke up with you.

Still, you can’t help but snap back. “You left first.”

“I came back and you were gone.” Something about Lucy’s tone has you narrowing your eyes at her. “When Jordan told me you left Arsenal I didn’t believe her. But I came back and you weren’t here.”

“Are you serious right now?” you scoff. “You left first, Lucy. You. Not me. Don’t try to make me out as the villain when we both know it’s not true.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“Then what are you doing?”

Lucy’s silent for a moment as she ponders your words. You’re expecting slouched shoulders, a despondent sigh, a mumbled excuse. Instead, Lucy squares her shoulders, and then what she says feels like a suckerpunch straight to the gut.

“I love you.”

You don’t allow yourself the luxury to bask in her declaration. So what if she loves you? Those words used to make your heart sing, they still do, but they also come with the sharp reminder that she threw it all away. And for what?

“Why now?”

“What?” Lucy looks taken off guard, not expecting such a short response to her admittance of love.

“Why now?” you repeat, ire growing with every second. “What’s changed, Lucy? Because from my point of view, nothing has. The only difference is while you’re still in Spain, I’m in the United States now.”

Lucy goes to interrupt you but you don’t let her.

“Distance is something you didn’t want to do,” you remind her. Lucy’s face falls at your words. “Seattle’s much further than London is, so as far as I’m aware, nothing has changed.”

Sighing, you lean against the sink. Lucy looks properly chastised by now, and as much as you hated kicking a girl when she was down, there was still one burning question on the tip of your tongue.

“You know, Jordan told me about your plans to propose.”

If possible, Lucy’s face pales even more.

“I spent weeks wondering why you never did, why you broke up with me instead of trying to make the distance work. God knows you loved me enough to ask me to marry you, you should’ve loved me enough to want to make this work.”

You wipe angrily at your face, catching a few tears of frustration before they could slip down your cheeks.

Lucy’s hand comes forward, instinctive in her attempts to soothe you. You jerk away before she can make contact. As much as you crave her touch, you know you can’t let your heart rule your actions.

The hurt in her eyes instantly makes you regret your actions, but neither of you have a chance to do or say anything else before the door is slamming open.

Jill pauses, eyes darting between the two of you.

“Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt.” The tension in the room is clear enough that Jill knows something’s going on.

“Don’t worry about it, we were just finishing up.”

Before Lucy can stop you, you’re pushing right past her and back into the bar. You pretend you can’t feel Lucy’s gaze following you through the crowd.

---

It’s the pounding that wakes you up.

Shooting up in bed, your legs tangle in the sheets before you can get your bearings. You hit the floor with a thump, letting out an annoyed groan.

You don’t remember what time you got back from the party.

Everything after you left the bathroom is a blur. The shots you took. The dancing. The partying.

Really, all of it helped to serve a dual purpose. On one hand, you had to battle the disappointment of not winning the World Cup. It was crushing, being so close but not making it out of the semi-finals. But on the other, the partying was especially helpful in masking the big Lucy-sized hole in your life.

The last thing you remember is Rose shoving you into your bed, muttering something about how you owe her fifty cups of coffee when you get back home.

You yank open the door, ready to tell off the person on the other side. You’re left blinking blearily through the bright hallway lights when you realize who it is.

“I miss the way you used to smile at me.”

Lucy looks like she came straight from the afterparty. She’s still dressed in the same clothes she was wearing when she cornered you in the bathroom earlier.

You didn’t have a chance to admire it before. She looks dashing. Hot. She always does. You were too busy trying not to cry earlier that you didn’t really get a good look at her.

But in your still half-asleep daze, you can’t help but appreciate the way she looks right now.

“I miss waking up to you lying on top of me.”

You’re actively aware of how underdressed you are. There’s a slight draft coming in from the hotel hallway and you have to fight the urge to burrow yourself back into your blankets.

“I miss everything about you, and I don’t think I ever told you how much I loved you when I still had the chance to.”

It’s that sentence that jolts you back into the present. You suddenly remember where you are, who is in front of you, and the words she’s saying.

“Lucy--”

“I love you.” This time when she interrupts you, there’s a look of determination in her eyes. “There isn’t a moment I stopped. And you’re right. I wanted to ask you to marry me. I still do. But the truth was, I-- I was scared. I was scared that if we did long distance, if we tried to make things work, you’d learn that you didn’t want this. Us. That the distance wasn’t worth it. So I… I ended things before you could.”

Lucy lets out a quiet sigh and you don’t miss the way her fingers seem to itch to reach out for you.

“I know now that none of this is worth it if I don’t have you waiting for me to come home to. I don’t want to be playing on the other side of the world if it means not having you. Not being with you. I’m so sorry for everything. I love you.”

A loaded silence follows her confession. Lucy’s looking at you with the biggest eyes, and it takes everything in your power not to just forgive her right there.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you sigh instead, not sure if you even have the mental capacity to have this conversation right now.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” Her response is instant.

As much as you’d love to just slam the door in Lucy’s face, there’s also the part of you that knows you’ll just end up regretting it if you do.

Stepping back, you let Lucy slip into your room before you’re closing the door. This is definitely a conversation you’re sure your hotel neighbors wouldn’t want to hear.

You have to brace yourself before you turn to face Lucy again.

“Luce, I meant what I said earlier. Nothing’s changed.”

Your words were spoken with anger earlier. Now though, now there’s a quiet resignation behind them.

You both knew the truth. Long distance relationships are hard to work with. Rebuilding a relationship while doing long distance? Well that’s even harder.

“What if I told you I’d be willing to leave Barca? That I’d be willing to come play in Seattle?”

Lucy’s words take you by surprise. You know how hard she worked to get to play for Barcelona. That team’s always been a dream of hers.

You’re instantly frowning. “Then I’d tell you not to.”

Lucy’s eyes widen when you round on her, jabbing a finger against her chest.

“What the hell are you thinking, Lucy? I’m not letting you leave Barcelona just to fucking be with me. I turned down offers to go to City for the same reason you turned down offers to go to Arsenal. We were never willing to sacrifice our careers, the relationships we’ve made with our teammates, for each other. We didn’t do it then, and I’ll be damned if we started now.”

“Then what do you want me to do? I love you, and this is me getting down on my knees,” Lucy drops to her knees just to prove her point, “begging you to take me back. Let me make up for breaking both of our hearts.”

You’re mad. Madder than you’ve ever been. To think Lucy thought you’d want her to give up everything she’s worked so hard for? Maybe she didn’t know you as well as you thought she did.

There’s really only one thing left for you to do. One thing you know will get your point across.

You kiss her.

It’s obvious Lucy’s not expecting it. She gasps out quietly against your lips before she’s kissing you back with fervor, standing when you tug her back up to her feet.

You let her back you up until you hit the wall, sighing against her mouth.

Oh how much you’ve missed this.

Her hands drop from yours, loosely grabbing hold of your hips as you drape your arms around the back of her neck. It’s almost as if you just can’t get your body close enough to Lucy’s. Her body against yours is a familiar and comforting feeling, but no matter how hard you pull her towards you or how tight you press yourself against her, you just can’t get close enough.

You’re not sure how long it is before you’re turning your head, trying to catch your breath. It’s a bit cute how Lucy chases after you, not wanting her lips to leave yours so soon.

It isn’t until your hands push gently at her shoulders that Lucy stops with a start.

Her face twists into one of alarm when she notices the tears on your face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

You shake your head, laughing wetly into the side of her neck.

“God, you’re an asshole, you know that?”

She falls silent, nervously looking back at you.

You lean in again, slower this time, pressing a quick and soft kiss upon her lips.

Lucy all but melts against you.

When you pull away, you watch as she hazily blinks, eyes a little out of focus.

“You’re not coming to Seattle.”

There’s a crinkle between her brows, but Lucy slowly shakes head. “I won’t.”

“You’re staying at Barcelona.”

“If that’s what you want.”

You have to shut your eyes then. Lucy’s looking at you as if you hung the stars up in the sky, adoration shining in her dark eyes. It hurts to have her looking at you like that and you’re just so goddamn tired of this. Of fighting what you know is a losing battle. “What I want is for you to just love me.”

You don’t make it easy for her.

A couple years pass and you’ve long retired from the national team when she finally makes the move overseas to join you. Despite your love for England and your time with the gunners, you never make a move to return to the place you now fondly think of as the ‘place where everything started.’ You argue with Lucy when she tells you she’s leaving her club team in England, knowing her national team days are limited now as well, but she just brushes off your concerns and plants a kiss against your forehead.

By the time Lucy joins you for your last couple years in Seattle, the two of you have long gotten married, a simple affair done in her hometown, with only your families and closest friends in attendance.

It’s not easy getting to where you’ve gotten, countless screaming matches and tearful make-ups littering the bumpy road to recovery, but you guys somehow make it. Lucy somehow gets you to fall even deeper in love with her, and you somehow get her to do the same with you, all of your friends gagging whenever they catch you still being disgustingly in love with each other.

Your story began and ended when Lucy charmed and then broke your heart in Manchester, the plane that took her away only making things worse until she could try to make it better again. Your story ended and began again with closure and acceptance on the other side of the world, closure for the things you couldn’t fix and the acceptance that maybe the two of you had to break before you could truly start again anew, painting over the cracks before you could see the beauty in the way you loved each other.

It’s a soft story riddled with bumps in the road and detours every here and there, but there’s no other type of love the two of you would want, because this is the one the two of you share. And sharing that love is enough for the two of you. It always has been. And always will be.

#lucy bronze x reader #lucy bronze imagine #uswnt x reader #uswnt imagine #woso x reader #woso imagine #Ace writes

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queerweewoo · 2 months ago

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my hand slipped and i wrote 2K of About To Be Cheating Cheaters buddie (sorry tommy!). here's one half of what i've gotten down so far.

“That's why I'm here, hermano. To make your drunk ass drink lots of water, and to stop all that spiralling shit in its detrimental tracks. If you haven't figured it out by now, I don't much like things that hurt my family.”

Eddie's head is still spinning.

“Hermano? Really Buck? I've only ever been a brother, never had one. But I'm pretty sure any brother of mine wouldn't look a lick like you.”

Dios, Eddie is so, so drunk, and such a horrible person for being so, so glad that Buck is here, with Eddie, instead of someplace with his boyfriend that Eddie definitely does not want to be thinking about.

Eddie needs Buck like oxygen right now because Eddie is a pathetic mess. What the fuck would some perfect pilot that's built like a brick shithouse know about being a pathetic mess? Screw you, Iceman—Buck and Eddie are the Maverick and Goose of this movie, fuck you very much. Always have been. Always will be.

Buck's eyebrows are trying to migrate and join up with his hairline. “Oh, really? What, I'm not good-looking enough to be a Diaz? Is that it?”

That is very much not it.

Eddie teases, “Aw, guapo, you worried you're not pretty enough for me?” because he clearly left his last bit of sanity in the hook and ladder down on Main. He feels like he's having an out of body experience, looking down on himself from up on the ceiling and can practically see his blood fizzing beneath his skin like someone injected popping candy into his veins while he wasn't looking.

What the fuck is he doing?

Buck isn't as drunk as Eddie, but he suddenly looks stone cold sober, blinking furiously through whatever emotions are gripping him right now. Eddie can usually tell what Buck is feeling without having to so much as look at him, but there's currently so much candied rum in his system that it's numbing his higher brain function.

“Uh, that's, uh—it's—that's not exactly what I was getting at, Eddie,” Buck stumbles, trying to right himself from the suckerpunch.

“So what exactly are you getting at, Evan.”

Eddie never uses that name. Not once before telling Buck about changing his will, and never since. He'd only opted back in that hospital room to call Buck by what is printed on his birth certificate to get his full attention, so he understood that what Eddie was telling him was really fucking important. Back when Eddie had very almost told Buck how he feels about him, before bailing on the notion at the last millisecond like the chicken-shit he is and always has been.

Tommy calls Buck Evan. Only ever calls him Evan. As if he knows the first fucking thing about Eddie's best friend! Eddie thinks that at this exact moment in time, regardless of how the guy is supposed to be his shiny new pal, he might just despise Tommy Kinard with every fibre of his being. Who the hell does he think he is, flying in on his helicopter like every day is leg day, with his stupid, funny fake-mouth-static and those stupid, handsome cheekbones, pissing all over Eddie's territory with his probably Incredible Hulk sized dick and trying to take Eddie's Buck away from him?

You're mine, he thinks. Almost says it, too. And he might say it yet, if Buck keeps on squirming as beautifully as he is right now, the raging heat of his twitchy body searing into Eddie's side like a branding iron that states If Lost Return To Evan Buckley.

And I'm yours, he thinks, and knows it to be true. Knows he could make it true, that it could maybe be everything, potentially, if only Eddie stopped being such a yellow-belly.

Fuck Kinard. Fuck all of them that have come before and after Eddie. None of them have loved, or love Buck the way he does. None of them. Eddie knows this because he loves Buck so much it somehow fortifies his heart to make it able to force its way through the spaces between his cracked rib cage and break free to beat wildly in double-time, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

Eddie, feeling drunker by the second, hasn't looked away from Buck in a hot minute—Buck who now looks like he might be having a minor stroke. Stretching across to plop his glass clumsily onto the coffee table and missing the coaster by a Texas mile, Eddie then dries any possibility of lingering water droplets from his moustache with a clunky swipe of his thumb and forefinger, before turning to face Buck with a lot more cock-surety than sense.

Buck is Eddie's best friend. His partner. The man who loves his kid. The man who Eddie gave his kid to because they both love his kid that much. He's the lunatic who has unofficially moved in with Eddie—because Eddie has driven their kid away with his epic levels of bullshit—even though he currently has a boyfriend.

Buck, Buck, Buck, who Eddie is now positive should be his boyfriend.

Licking his lips, he feels like he's forgetting something. Like maybe all of the reasons he's steered himself clear of this iceberg for so long—only he's far too drunk, and far too selfish, to try to remember that or care.

Buck swallows, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, and Eddie wants fervently to get his teeth and tongue around it. Then he's muttering, “Eddie, I just meant—”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, begs, demands.

His fingertips have found the soft fabric of Buck's deep blue waffle-weave shirt, where it's covering the expanse of his chest. He's trying to get to his heart, he realises, feeling blindly for any sign of double-time, wanting to taste the blood in its chambers the way Buck has tasted Eddie's.

“Yeah,” Buck breathes, mirroring Eddie which doesn't make a lick of sense apart from the fact that it makes perfect sense, to Eddie.

Eddie's cheeks are burning but he thinks fuck it, throwing the both the extinguisher and life ring overboard and going full steam ahead.

#buddie #buddie wip #eddie pov #possesive eddie #tw cheating #cheating fic #hoping to finish it tomorrow!#wish me luck

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n7punk · 3 months ago

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“Slipstream” Fic Notes

Slipstream is done after growing far beyond the “simple hacker fic” concept and honestly Mara’s so cute I can’t even be mad. Fic notes below.

Playlist:

I’ve got the playlist here, but other honorable mentions I listeded to on repeat during this just because I wanted to: The Sex Was Good Until It Wasn’t album by XANA (it dropped in May and that shit is still on repeat), SUCKERPUNCH album by chloe moriondo (for chapter 6), PVRIS’s entire discography (I was going through something).

The Kicker — XANA

Good Luck, Babe! — Chappell Roan

Diet Heartbreak — chloe moriondo

TRAUMA BOND — poutyface

Albi — XANA

Rly Don’t Care — chloe moriondo

Chaos Is Love — K.Flay

Teenage Nightmare [unreleased demo]

What’s My Age Again? — Emilia Ali

Late Bloomer — Allison Ponthier

Holy Revival — Maisie Peters (ignore the verses)

Femininomenon — Chappell Roan

Mercury In Retrograde — Avril Lavigne

NIGHT IN JAIL — Rachel Bochner

my best friend’s ex — emlyn

Even If It Kills Me [unreleased demo]

Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl — Chappell Roan

Sirens (feat. Sophie Powers) — MOTHICA

Homewrecking Era — XANA

Obsessed (feat. Ashley Sienna) — Sophie Powers

Obsessed — Astrid S

Look At Her Now — Selena Gomez

Pretty Girls — Renee Rapp

Cruel Summer — Taylor Swift

Picture You — Chappell Roan

Epilogue Life:

It takes a few months for Catra to feel like she has any handle on “parenting” or any right to even think that term about herself when she’s still a newcomer to Mara’s life, but Mara has accepted her at that point, it’s Catra and her own lack of a parental figure that is stopping her. She never would have accepted someone trying to come in and parent her after being so jaded from the first few years of her life (see her relationship with Adora’s parents in high school), so she’s expecting Mara to be a lot more hesitant and take “convincing”. She wants to give her the time she needs, but Mara had a loving parent growing up and doesn’t see adding Catra to that role as a bad thing.

Mara also has a little kid understanding of the world, so to her the instant Catra and Adora are dating she’s her stepmom, not because it’s that easy, but because obviously dating = will get married, so there is no point “fighting” something that is inevitable. Even though her parents don’t talk to each other, it doesn’t occur to her that people break up under normal circumstances. Her dad has hurt her mom and her a lot, he’s a bad guy, and Catra isn’t that, so why would she ever leave. They’re both girls and gay, they have no need to breakup. Life isn’t that simple, but it does make their relationship transition pretty smooth from Mara’s perspective.

Catra still insists on the stepdad thing and it becomes a family joke. Catra tells Mara it’s because it would be too confusing if they were both mom and Mara accepts that without question, because she is actually right. The reasons for stepdad are multi-layered, like this addition which helps Mara accept it: Mara wants someone good to replace the force of rejection and imbalance her bio dad was, so she’s more than happy to have Catra take that mantle instead. Catra wants to replace him as well, for many reasons including her own selfish hatred of him, but also her own insecurity. She knows she can be a better parent than Falcon, but she doesn’t think she can ever be equal to Adora and thus an equal mom. Adora’s parents weren’t 100% wrong when they mentioned the butch thing either because it is my headcanon Catra is a little GNC at times. Not really anything deep or strong enough for her to identify any particular way, just something that means she wouldn’t mind stepdad or “sir” even without all those other layers. Eventually a lot of those factors stop seeming like such a big deal but at that point it is just a family joke that never really dies. Occasionally once she’s in high school Mara calls her mom, but mostly Catra is “Dad” or “my stepdad” when being referred to singularly, and then when Mara is referring to both her parents she calls them “my moms”. Which does confuse people and Catra finds that funny.

When Mara is in high school and the age Adora and Falcon were when they started dating, Falcon finally tries reaching out again. That was a phone call Adora never wanted to get, but he’s not coming back to the country — he does still have those debts waiting for him, after all, and unable to pay them back, the stress would take him right back to that mental state he fled — and he’s not trying to rejoin their lives, he just kind of wants to know what happened after he left. Adora is angry and tells him he doesn’t have the right to know that after what he did — and she’s right — but later she still regrets it and, after talking to Catra (who also tells her she was right and she shouldn’t call him back and open that door back into their lives for him, but sits by her side when she’s on the phone to support her when she insists on going through with it), she calls him back. She only gives him the very high level stuff: she started dating someone right around when he disappeared, and they’re married now and happy, and she has become Mara’s new stepdad — something Falcon thinks she says as a pointed jab not knowing that’s really what Mara calls her — and Mara is doing well despite Falcon messing up her sense of trust and safety as a little kid, and definitely doesn’t need him fucking with her again by trying to contact her now. Adora makes it clear this is a courtesy she is giving him with the understanding that, now she has volunteered the information, he isn’t going to seek any more out or bother them.

That holds kind of true. He checks in with Adora around high school graduation just to make sure Mara made through it okay — he can’t help but remember around this time he was ruining both their lives — and to see if she plans to go to college, which she does, and then he calls again three years later just to see if she’s still on that track, which she is. He never calls again and Adora never knows if that’s because he moved on, or got closure, or lost their number, or died. Mara knows he called to check in on her once or twice but Adora didn’t tell her until she was an adult because she worried about reintroducing all that old uncertainty and fear back into her life, and at least now no one can force her to see Falcon if she doesn’t want to.

Catra seriously considers hunting him down after he goes dark, but she has done what she can to close the illegal chapter of her life and she knows Adora wouldn’t be happy with her reopening it — especially when she’s a little rusty — for their own closure with him. Catra didn’t exactly succeed in turning over a new leaf overnight, but she did greatly reduced her law-breaking, leaving only little slip-ups that happened every few months until she managed to stretch a gap long enough for it to become permanent, the impulse no longer second nature and her episodes of feeling untouchable either more rare or focused on something other than being unafraid of the government. She does stay in the cybersecurity sector professionally for a long time and works alongside Entrapta several times throughout the years.

I’ve kind of talked about this before and even included it in the concert scene, but Catra and Entrapta do kind of keep referring to each other as partner occasionally and honestly neither of them are really sure how they mean it. They never formally said “QPR over”, they said “no more physical affection (sex)” and they remained very close, though it felt like it did end more definitively when Catra eventually moved in with Adora. That took her longer to do than it usually does in AUs due to both her happiness/comfort with Entrapta, trying not to “upset” Mara by forcing the change on her, and Catra still needing the ability to get distance from them for the night sometimes while dealing with her own demons, but those slowly disappear as Mara lets her heal her own childhood and she sees she can be a good parental figure with experience.

Chapter 1:

⦁ “Slipstream” was once again a temporary placeholder name that became permanent. It’s a reference to the hacker Slipstream, one of the names behind the Nintendo gigaleak.

⦁ Entrapta’s daily energy drink limit is by no means her daily average, but any day drinking seven energy drinks is a bad one. She doesn’t actually drink Monster every day… Just like 95% of them. And she is a lot more likely to drink 1-3 than 5.

⦁ Okay I’m like half bullshitting the tech speak in this fic. The 20 minute decryption Waffle House thing? Yeah that’s actually optimistic. The kid who hacked the CIA did that exact thing and took 30 minutes to log on and he still eventually got caught.

⦁ Close followers of my Tumblr will already know Adora Maria is reference to some terrible “wrong” trivia answers to a question about She-ra’s names.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Steps (loosely): 1) Identify absolutely necessary files and save them, 2) Paste contents of other important word/text files into empty cloud documents she can download later (cleaning metadata), 3) Create a new encrypted email on a totally different machine (in this case, Catra’s clean laptop she had with her), 4) Forward absolutely necessary emails to new address (being very selective), 5) Delete what accounts it’s reasonable to just nuke, 6) Completely wipe computer and reset it, 7) Change first the associated email and then the password of all other accounts in a closed environment (Catra’s laptop) and turn on two-factor for absolutely everything that has the option, 8) When all information has been reset, delete old email in closed environment as insurance.

⦁ Adora’s scent changed some with pregnancy and then the rest with lifestyle changes.

⦁ Mara comes out to check on them because Adora told her an old friend from high school was coming over and she wasn’t making the happy sounds she makes with her friends. When she realized Adora was stressed she got worried, doubly so when she said it was grown-up stuff, because that grown-up stuff could be Mara-related — especially since she knows Falcon is causing problems with child support even if Adora tries to keep her from hearing about it too much — which is why Adora invited her out to see it’s really okay.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Originally when I wrote the group chat there was nothing differentiating who was speaking, but I had the idea to use emojis like profile pictures to make it more clear. The scorpio icon was originally head-in-the-clouds (high af emote), the star was originally just a sassy emote, and the dragon changed the same. I ended up changing them because a reader sent an ask letting me know that the emotes wouldn’t translate to epub format and the Scorpio and star “emote” are part of the standard unicode colored symbals, so I’m hoping they’re included, but I also don’t have any way of checking without just uploading the thing so this was my best effort. I kept the dragon even though it’s not included because I was too attached and only one person missing an icon would at least differentiate it from the others still.

⦁ Adora named Mara after her old teacher Mara because she was the only out lesbian she (knew) she had ever met. She was pretty quiet about it to not get harassed by parents, but she wasn’t about to lie about it, and she would talk about Hope when prompted. Adora admired that back in high school thinking she just Respected Her Ideals™️ and later realized it was more than that.

⦁ Catra’s conflicting feelings looking at Mara hugging Adora’s hip are actually less because she’s remembering her father and more remembering she was doing that to feel safe and she doesn’t like to think she’s making a kid feel unsafe too.

⦁ Adora’s habit of rubbing at her tattoo (versus something like the back of her neck) started when it itched a lot while healing. She has terrible tattoo discipline and really shouldn’t get another one because she couldn’t leave it alone.

⦁ You might be able to tell here, but originally Mara was intended to be older (8-ish or something) but I didn’t want them to separate that long. The timeline is already kind of screwy because even with Adora a year older Mara should actually be four with pregnancy time, but shhhhhh.

⦁ Oh my god I wish more people knew the difference between the deep web and the dark web. People act like they’re interchangable when Facebook qualifies as the deep web. Catra is a deep web miscreant, not the dark web.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Perfuma doesn’t know they’re cyber criminals but given the jokes about felonies she can guess that’s the only thing that makes sense, and then she elects not to think any more about it because they’re really important to Scorpia and she wants plausible deniability.

⦁ Obviously Catra hadn’t said Adora’s name yet, but Adora is such an Entity in her mind it feels like everybody should think about her as much as Catra does.

⦁ Perfuma would have to be totally oblivious to not pick up from the conversation that Catra had a crush on Adora in high school, and knowing what she does about Adora’s comphet she just kind of assumes it was the classic “crush on a straight girl” that went nowhere until Catra left school. She’s not about to embarrass Catra by bringing that up to Adora, but if she knew how serious it was and had a hunch how Adora felt she might interfere.

⦁ Table break lore. I wouldn’t say this is a reference so much as a shared headcanon that previously came up allllllllllll the way back in Drawn Into The Music, where Scorpia breaks a table trying to lean on it while drunk because Biceps.

⦁ Mara’s set up is basically what I had as a kid. When we were little we had the “kid computer” which belonged to someone back in the day when it was actually considered a good machine. It didn’t have internet and was just for playing games (which were all offline at that point in time). When we got old enough for the internet we had a software that only let us browse for like 30 minutes each day and I think had an automatic filter of inappropriate sites? If it did, the site list was very minimal and I never ran into any issues personally, but a software that blocks pornhub isn’t a bad thing for a five year old to have even if I’m generally against online surveillance lmao. It’s not making a list of sites she visited for spying purposes or anything, and generally Adora tries to be in the room with her when she’s online (in-game or not) because you know. Super young. She’s really busy though and sometimes has to rely on the idea that the parents of Mara’s friends are doing the same thing and monitoring them so they can keep safe. That is not always true.

⦁ Adora tousles Mara’s hair and pets her so much because that became one of the ways she knew how to express affection with Catra and now it’s just ingrained as a part of her.

⦁ Semi-related, she and Catra didn’t actually meet until middle school in this ‘verse and had about five years together before Catra’s breakdown.

⦁ Adora’s tattoo is the season one sword in a deep maroon and then the gem in the center of the hilt is the sunset ombre from the lesbian flag. Catra just thought the lines were black because she couldn’t see that shade of red.

⦁ “The breakup” here is code for “uncomfortable sex experience”.

Chapter 5:

⦁ Catra was about to say she doesn’t get on her knees unless a pretty girl asks nicely before her brain caught up with her mouth.

⦁ Adora was absolutely not going to interrupt because she was smitten watching them interact. She never in her wildest dreams thought Catra would do more than tolerate her child at best, but she forgot the factor of her kind of outweighed the factor of child.

⦁ Uhhhh. So. Alright fuck it. Catra was in a mania fit when she broke into the mall. That can come from a couple things and I’ve experienced it once I think, but yeah she really should be on mood stablizers and just refuses to see a professional about it. Once her life stabilized and she essentially had Entrapta as a safety net, knowing she wasn’t going to kick her out if her work lapsed, it made things a lot easier, but her constant vigilance against authorities could just as easily be seen as appropriate vigilance as it is paranoia (primarily socially-unacceptable anxiety).

⦁ Catra doesn’t know how to categorize her emotions outside of bad criteria so any strong emotion gets categorized as “breakdownable” or not but that’s definitely not what she’s feeling here, having emotions just feels like she’s dying.

⦁ Bella Sara supremacy !! 🗣️🗣️I don’t think it was available on the Vita lol but it was in THIS universe.

Chapter 6:

⦁ Catra was, subconsciously, still trying to delay the inevitable of Adora and Entrapta meeting by meeting with Adora and Scorpia downstairs. When they finally came home and it was time, Catra basically tried to get everyone settled in the living room and her own bedroom without “bothering” Entrapta, but she did vaguely greet them when they got home. Their first real conversation was the one in the bed, though.

⦁ Adora is the type of drunk to try to perpetuate her own existence. If you look away from drunk Adora for a second she’s doing another round of shots and trying to get herself hospitalized.

⦁ “Adora shouldn’t be worrying about this” yeah this reaction has nothing to do with cheating, Catra, that’s just all she can do with her jealousy reasonably.

⦁ The Scene (1)

⦁ Belgian Boys mini pancakes my beloved

⦁ Okay so “cheating” per se isn’t so much a thing in their relationship, but by the idea that there are rules and they have an understanding which involves not messing around with other people without notification/permission, then yes cheating is a thing. It would be shitty for Catra to do anything without letting Entrapta know she intends to, which is the entire point of the fun pass.

Chapter 7:

⦁ Catra didn’t really have a sex addiction or anything she was just really, really lonely, knew people found her hot, and needed reasons to stay at other people’s places, so it ended up as a perfect storm.

⦁ “Put the kid on and let me talk to her” from Catra “I’m just tolerating the kid” Meow Meow.

⦁ Yes I know that “bludgeoning weapon” was not at all correct. But it sounded good, and that’s what writing is sometimes.

⦁ “She tells herself Mara would miss her gifts and then immediately questions why she needs to tell herself anything at all.” Idk Catra I think Mara might miss you as a little more than a gift-giving source. She might be really broken up by you not coming around. (You would also miss her but I’m not even going to pretend you’re open to that idea)

⦁ IDK CATRA MAYBE THE KID WANTED TO BE AROUND AND TRUSTED BY YOU. IDIOT

⦁ The Scene (2)

Chapter 8:

⦁ Turnabout’s fair play and we’ve gone from Adora thinking she can’t stay over to Catra thinking it. These two lesbians just need to accept they’re equally needy.

⦁ “Hoodwinked” agenda !! In all seriousness I haven’t watched it in years so I’m not sure if it holds up, but I loved that movie as a kid and so did my mom. I watched it so many times.

⦁ “Tax-free” is in reference to the final line of the chapter, where Catra has some (minor) dues to pay for how she has lived her life, but it’s nothing more serious than what she has already done, because as awful as she often thinks herself, most of what she did was just surviving under hard circumstances.

Chapter 9:

⦁ Adora has it right with Falcon. To him, he and his girlfriend had sex bad enough for her to realize she was gay (he was not being a good partner for that because he didn’t notice she was uncomfortable, he was just thinking three years together made it about time), he suddenly has a kid at only 19, and his now-ex he was planning to marry can’t even look at him. He already had gambling tendencies and really fell on it with the stress of college and navigating the kid situation, and then everything snowballed because the debt got bad enough he couldn’t make tuition and his stress went even further through the roof when he was forced to just get a job to pay what child support he could, and then he starts getting these threats and at that point completely starting over is looking pretty attractive. Whether or not he was in the right has no effect on how his brain was able to handle it and Mara’s inception turned out mildly traumatic for everyone involved.

⦁ “The fact that Adora is right to have her suspicions is annoying.” That’s a little thing called guilt, kitten.

⦁ I don’t know what my thing with Albuquerque is but whenever I think of someone going into hiding/leaving the country I think of them doing it there. I’m sure it was used in some piece of media I consumed when I was young and that’s where it came from because to my knowledge it’s not an international flights hub.

⦁ Glimmer is one of those people who will drop in the group chat like hey who wants to see a show in two weeks and then just buy tickets for everyone. This was actually arranged months ago, hence the Star siblings not thinking about the timing and having a conflict, and it was before Perfuma and Scorpia even started dating.

⦁ Melendy Britt was a voice actress on the OG cartoon and like a third of the female characters, playing Adora amongst others. She was recently at the MOTU SDCC panel.

⦁ In most ‘verses I think Catra loves music, she just has a specific history in this AU that makes it a weird thing for her because she knows it was robbed of her but can’t try to get into it now because that’s acknowledging everything she has lost.

⦁ The brain development thing is actually a myth and it varies wildly between people, but Adora’s parents are also the kind to sincerely believe you’re only using 10% of your brain at any given time.

Chapter 10:

⦁ When I was initially figuring out what to do with Falcon, I wasn’t really sure what to do with him. I wanted to get him involved in criminal stuff Catra could uncover so he couldn’t be around Mara anymore, but I was also hesitant to do that because Adora’s life is in a precarious place without the child support. I also didn’t want to make him into this caricature of awfulness when he was once Adora’s longterm boyfriend and thus at least seemed decent. Then I remembered Catra has a tech sector paycheck and I could easily just run him off at that point.

⦁ Honestly, now is probably the time to admit that every third time I went to write Falcon’s name I almost wrote Sea Hawk just because they’re so similar, which makes sense since Falcon was invented to be Sea Hawk’s ex, but it was a struggle the whole fic lol.

⦁ Okay, but what did happen with Falcon and the money/threats? Well, Catra had it pretty right: they were sketchy people, and criminals sure, scammers definitely, but they weren’t actually going to send hitmen after him or anything. He was never in any danger. Leaving the country did actually give him a new leaf though and he was a better person with it, managing to build something even though he was still struggling with his gambling addiction. He wasn’t able to keep any kind of savings going as a result but he at least learned not to spend money he didn’t actually have and get in debt. He managed to find a small pension job and get help for his anxiety, which let him at least a small modest life.

⦁ Mrs. Bee is Sweet Bee.

⦁ I meant to have a conversation about swearing they never ended up having. Basically, Adora vaguely tries to censor herself, but things like “oh stars” come naturally to her from her parents, “fuck” just also comes naturally from everyone else in her life lol. Mara knows kind of what swear words are and that they’re “adult words” you need to be older to understand the impact of, so when Catra (or Adora) does inevitably swear in front of the kid, it’s not much of a big deal. Catra ends up making it out to be a bigger thing in her head and putting more effort into censoring herself (read: any effort) than Adora does or cares. Eventually they do talk about it when Catra takes a bit more of a parental role in Mara’s life and is trying to figure out what that entails.

⦁ There’s this tendency for people talking to kids to refer to their parents as “your mom” rather than like, their name which you would be using in any other context. Catra has had a secret rule — secret even to herself — that she’s going to keep Adora’s name and not do that “your mom” shit. Well, here she is doing that shit, and it’s because she feels a lot less like she needs to distance herself from Mara — and thus the concept of Adora having kids — than she did at first when Mara quite frankly terrified her.

⦁ “I didn’t remember your phone number-” a straight up lie, “-and I wasn’t about to go back home under any conditions to ask your parents what you were up to,” will turn out to be a lie.

Chapter 11:

⦁ “It’ll even look bad on Mara by the time of their next zoo visit.” Oh? Are you planning to be part of that visit, Catra?

⦁ (I am not personally a big fan of bucket hats but there are times when they look really cute — yes even on adults — Catra’s just a hater)

⦁ Catra’s description of how the magicat crowns work is actually how her mask works on her official doll. In the case of the magicat queens, though, the hooks were more like a fallback because the mask was made to be so perfect against their face its weight was distributed over the entire thing and the small hooks just kept it from getting out of place.

⦁ Catra’s freakout is very funny to me because kids will play with literally anyone they like but Catra has so little experience she thinks this is what fatherhood is. Not that she isn’t a Trusted Adult to Mara but most of her “signs” would be there whether or not they were dating.

⦁ “It’s also partially that she isn’t ever going to be a father to anyone, and thus using it has more joking distance that feels marginally more acceptable.” She’s a dad within six months lmao.

⦁ Being a parent doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, and Catra is one of those, so for most of the fic you don’t really get to see her in “parent mode”, and I do worry where it leaves off some people will see her as not a good step-parent for Mara, but that’s a slow process for her to reach. The fic would have to drag out a lot longer before it could reach the point where it’s natural for her. For most of the first year she feels like she’s horribly flailing during every interaction with Mara, and that doesn’t change with this chapter, but she does internally accept that this is a role she’s going to have and wants to take up, so while she still jokes and occasionally slips up, she does love the kid and is doing her best.

Chapter 12:

⦁ I’m basically picturing the Home Alone house for Adora’s parents but I don’t remember it from the movie, I remember it from the LEGO set. So do with that what you will.

⦁ Marlena knows what she’s doing and she’s just trying to feel Catra out because she never would have pictured her becoming a parent in high school, but she also knows, both logically and from her phone calls with Adora, that Catra has grown a lot.

Original Outline:

I actually have my original idea for the fic still written down from a Discord conversation with a friend so here it is in its entirety:

vague idea is catra + entrapta are a hacker duo and they’re a thing. adora's organization is data compromised, forcing catra to get back in contact with her to help her fix it (vaguer idea is adora works for a nonprofit or something. dont hold me to that) like catra independently finds out there's a security vulnerability and is like fuck i have to be a good guy about this Maybe Catra tries to hack them to spy on adora because she misses her and then she gets way too much way too easily.

So yeah obviously a lot changed. Another idea was that Catra had to protect Adora from people trying to get her for… IDK, something Catra uncovered that Adora didn’t even know she knew (or at least didn’t realized was incriminating enough for people to want to cover it up), but I don’t really like writing action lol.

Everything changed because I had been wanting to write a single mom Adora fic too, just didn’t have anything written for it. In the initial version of Slipstream, I had no background for how they drifted apart, and the comphet backstory for the single mom Adora fic slotted nicely into Slipstream’s empty past, so I combined them so I could write both at once, especially because (as evidenced by how little was in the outline) I didn’t have any kind of ongoing plot after they reconnected that I actually wanted to write (again, action ideas are fun, but not for me to write). The new story gave me a lot more avenues to explore relationship dynamics as a big element for all the characters, and thus gave the QPR more relevance and let me portray something I think is kind of rare. Entrapta’s relationship with relationships in this fic is really personal to me and it kind of stuck out as a little out of place in the old idea, but in this version of the fic it works into the overall themes of relationships, self-denial, and accepting that what satisfies you isn’t necessarily the thing that will make you happiest and that’s worth whatever risks are associated with it.

I want back and forth on the club chapter and the following revolving around a few points: should they actually kiss in the club or just come close, should they kiss in the kitchen, and should they get evolved enough in that kiss for Adora’s hand to reach Catra’s tail. I kind of knew the latter would be too far, but ultimately decided the first two were permissible within their rules.

Meta:

Adora’s floorplan

Upcoming:

Next up will be an OotW oneshot. I’m also working on the Lightbeam sequel fic, and lowkey another AU I’ve been teasing, but I don’t think I'll have time for them before Sapphic September starts and I chip away at some of those prompts, so we'll see what’s going to shove to the forefront first, so stay tuned IG lol

#slipstream #fic notes #ficmeta

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weebsinstash · 1 year ago

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Atsv Spoilers (not really or kinda depends on opinion I guess? Better safe then sorry) Just thinking about Spider Reader with the destroyed universe getting fucked over by YouTwo and snapping back with "Then just send me home!" and then the Go Home Machine failing cause there is no universe to send them back to. Miguel being horrified that he's made such a terrible mistake, Reader staring at Miguel with absolute hatred in their eyes so caught up in the euphoria of justified rage they don't realize that they've effectively trapped themselves in a neat container for safe keeping.

No but deadass I spent my entire overnight shift last night just like, literally brainstorming different and horrible ways Reader could be "kicked out" and one idea I thought of was, Reader gets confronted and accused of being YouTwo, and YT themself is there to help pour on the tears and treat you like such a nasty awful bully and make up all kinds of accusations and also just different little ideas on things the SS does to make Reader spiral into WANTING to leave (like for example what if Reader and Miguel have a big argument because you were there during like the second movie and you're like "O'Hara what you said to that kid was genuinely so fucked up" and start avoiding him which drives him crazy, more so than you usually make him by just existing anyways

Imagine if instead of using the machine to send you home, YouTwo just strides up and basically suckerpunches you and steals your bracelet right off your wrist, saying you can just glitch out and go home that way (because YT is literally trying to fucking kill you at this point)

You're just glitching and you're crying and SCREAMING in terror, because even if you've been so depressed you were contemplating suicide, ideation is different than HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, and NOW you don't have a choice, and you're getting hysterical BEGGING "I'll go somewhere else and never come back! Don't do this! Don't take my bracelet! I'll die!! I'll die!!" And most of them don't believe you because they're convinced this is another manipulation attempt by the person they THINK you are and they don't want to give you the bracelet because they don't want "fake you" to come back

Some of them, though, realize you're just a bit TOO upset, and that maybe something really IS wrong. You start looking at people and calling them out by name, trying to recall specific events and memories, but many are convinced that "you" were so devoted on spying and copying "the real you" that you must have had them bugged or stalking them and just overheard these moments. They're all so tricked that maybe YouTwo even claims they had a diary that you stole, and that's how you know everything

These are people you've spent months and months if not a few YEARS with, being their friend, training with them, fighting alongside them, helping them through grief and loss, and suddenly you realize, oh my fucking god if you weren't a Spider and they didn't think you still had a home universe to protect, still had a home universe that would collapse without you, would they actually fucking kill you? Like imagine the horror at realizing the unspoken threat and knowing they WANT to kill you or significantly harm you, that they WOULD kill over something like this, over what is essentially just... personal beefing? Idk but, I was also thinking, what if YouTwo had actually sabotaged the elevator project from the other idea I had, so, maybe they've been up to all kinds of dangerous shit

(As a side bar, imagine Miguel investigating the accident bc he thinks the whole like suddenly falling apart thing was very sus and maybe there had been an explosion and upon investigating he learns "you" planted bombs and he like. Gently confronts you about it like "I know you've been stressed and feeling like you need to prove yourself but you can't do things like this" and you're just like. Goddamn that hurts for him to just not even, doubt it was you, maybe YT has created some sort of alibi. He doesn't like, punish you or anything, but, you just kind of blow up at the accusation and I think it'd be pretty entertaining if you're like, "ok you know what, fuck you actually, I'm going to go live in the normal part of the city" and he doesn't even, take that seriously, he just sort of acts like you're throwing a tantrum but he's like, clearly not wanting to punish you even though he's obviously disappointed in you, for something you didn't even do, ouch)

But anyways, so, I've thought about how Reader would get the bracelet back, and it's ranged from "Reader saying something only the true you would know, something that was private or no one else would know about but you and certain witnesses" to "Reader has a food allergy certain people know about but YouTwo doesn't so you just say 'ok bitch watch me prove this shit and also fuck you' and you deliberately eat the thing and go into straight anaphylactic shock out of spite"

YouTwo fakes an allergy attack and says you poisoned them and you're just like "oh you wanna see a REAL allergic reaction bitch" *starts seizing after licking an almond joy*

But no anyways back to more serious ideas, you're just, starting to glitch out more and more, screaming and begging "don't kill me!" and Miguel is starting to wonder if maybe he should just give the bracelet back, he's got an, uncomfortable feeling, and A Lot of Spidey Senses start going off and you're freaking out because you literally think you're about to die (although for closure I like to think you just, bounce somewhere else, and you'll maybe keep bouncing before you find another sort of anchor, and also for spite of course i like to think of that anchor being another Miguel, like either you naturally "settle" there or he gets you a dimensional watch)

And my preferred preference of routes here varies. "YouTwo exposes themself on accident by saying some dumb shit" to "you say something only you would know, something like extremely personal, like maybe you even stalk up to Miguel and bring up something he said to you about losing his family and like, how you respected him for going through all that and how you were glad he was the society's/your leader and he barely gets that bracelet on before you vanish" to "asking YouTwo to prove theyre you by answering certain questions" to "they realize youre telling the truth but literally JUST as theyre about to put the watch back on, you vanish" to, finally, "you cant prove your innocence fast enough and they genuinely do just let you fucking disappear on purpose but instead of dying you just go somewhere else until you meet a different Miguel who rescues you and now you're like hardcore trauma bonded to that man because you were just bouncing around terrified until you found him and he's just like insanely protective of you and you're just kind of, glued to his side bc you only feel safe when he's there to protect you, because you're scared of, everyone at this point, like totally traumatized by what happened and also if you're with him 24/7 you can't be swapped out and he won't think you're a fake and try to kill you right?? Ha ha you aren't traumatized at all :) and it just makes your hero all the more, attached to hear all that you went through, from the beginning, and see what it did to you, and it 'definitely' isnt feeding into any extremely intense feeling of his that you WANT to be with him 24/7"

Ok actually that concept is about to highjack this post, I need to swing back to that later bc there's some real potential in, like, Reader being like so extremely fucked up over what happened that it immediately thrusts you into the arms of another terrible situation. Like you just got straight betrayed and "murdered" by all of your friends, like basically your entire social community, and Miguel2 is now the only one you can trust, and meanwhile he feels genuine empathy for you and is angry at the people who hurt you and he just kind of vows to protect you, and, I like to think, maybe Reader has time before they glitch between worlds (unless you just, magically settle again like you did in the other Nueva York, maybe you're a mutant or your destiny is tied to Nueva York or at least staying alive.) so maybe he literally develops the tech to anchor you down within like, the days you have there, maybe it's a 3 day time limit. So, now you've got just him and you, no Spider Society, no original Miguel, and maybe you just kind of totally fall in love with this dude, but of course Miguel 1 is obviously horrified by what he did to you when he somehow finds out you're still alive. Like an anomaly villain breaks into your new home and, oh great here are some of your old friends and your ex, um, boss showing up and he's just, speechless when it becomes obvious youre the same one. Like imagine you tried to not even speak to them and avoid them to try and keep your new life but youre so obviously scared of them and you accidentally look in your original Miguel's eyes and he knows immediately it's you. Bruh his PAIN AND REGRET when he steps forward to try and embrace you in relief and joy bc oh my god you aren't dead, and you just flinch away from him, maybe you even cling to the new Miguel, and the original just. He's ready to fucking fight. He wants you back, he wants to apologize, he wants to be able to make things up to you and go back to how things used to be, especially if he has feelings he had wanted to act on, whether being more romantic or just more platonically affectionate in general, more open and vulnerable with you, but never got to before the YouTwo wrecking ball came swinging through

But yeah I'm just. Thinking of dramatic painful ideas and grinding them up and snorting them like crack. I think it's the whole "you burned me and now you're groveling for my forgiveness" that does it for me 🤌

#atsv #yandere spiderverse #yandere miguel o'hara #yandere x reader #yandere stuff #sinprompts

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daes0 · 3 months ago

Text

Chapter 11: "Sing for me again."

Rafayel and all the ways he says he l̶̯̞̱̬̘̜̗̏͒̂̐̈͋̍̓ô̶̡͙̤̻̐̓͑̚͝v̴͕͖̙̦̩͚͓̠̌̄͂͒͜ȇ̵̪̆͐̒̈́͠s̶̬̬̼͆͛̚ you.

Pairing: {Rafayel x Reader}

Rating: {Mature} {Violent Content}

Word Count: {1.3k words, 18.5k for entire work}

liar liar lover

In the morning after, you wake up early to go to work. Rafayel feels you shift and traps you in his arms.

"Want you to stay," he mumbles against your shoulder.

You laugh softly. "I have work, Rafy."

"Nooo…"

You laugh at his antics. "Is there really no way to convince you?"

Rafayel thinks for a moment. "Sing for me again."

Bang!

Your shoulder swings backwards, slamming against the wall, as flesh and muscle separate. Your knees meet the ground before you realize it. You look down at the impact, bits of blood and meat jutting out. You scream, or at least you think you do, but you don't hear yourself over the sound of-

Bang!

You watch in confused shock as another hunter falls.

The unknown assailant lifts her gun up, turning it towards you. You see recognition flash on her eyes, a literal yellow energy passing through. She tries to shoot again, but the gun is out of bullets.

She drops the gun and puts her fists up. "Get up."

A feminine voice, you realize. And she has a gun instead of an evolver. She's likely from the N109 Zone based on her general appearance. She's wearing thick clothing and a respirator that covers her full face. You can see her eyes and the bridge of her nose, but not much else is identifiable. Even her hands are gloved.

You stare at her, holding onto your bleeding shoulder. You know you should move, should act, but you're too shocked to do so.

So, she kicks you. The tip of her shoe slams against your stomach, steel, sending you back to the wall. You lurch at the feeling, gasping for air. If she'd hit you closer to your chest, she probably would've broken one of your ribs.

"Get up and fight me," she tells you as she takes a step back.

She waits for you to recover from the kick, and you stand up, almost out of fear that she'll hit you again while you're down.

You lift one fist up. Your other hand hangs uselessly on your side. You try to lift it up, but the pain in your shoulder doesn't let you.

You fight. She is quick to dodge your attacks, each punch and each kick landing on air. She practically dances around you, and you feel mocked.

Mocked. Your blurry eyes catch a flicker in the light. Of course you feel mocked. It's an illusion ability.

You manage to predict where she's moving using the flicker, kicking her chest and sending her backwards. It's the first hit that's landed, and you're almost happy that it did so well until she recovers.

The fight after that point is much more tense. She attacks, slamming into you with bruising punches, but you do as well. She dodges and you see the flicker, so you suckerpunch her face.

She falls back, the hit dizzying her vision. It's enough for you to take her down, arm pressed against her back, legs pinned down by your own. You use your arm with the shot shoulder to grab at a tranquilizer on your side. It takes every bit of you to not scream and let go because of the pain, but you manage to push the tranquilizer into her side.

She struggles as she tries to speak up, but you slam her face back down, breaking her mask. You see a flash of energy on her face, the edges of her skin morphing and changing, but before you can think to lift her face up, it changes back.

You question if you should slam her face again, just to reveal who she is, but your stomach turns at the thought. Is this who you are now? A cruel monster who just wants to hurt others for their own selfish purpose?

Breathe in. Out. You're losing blood rapidly. You're pretty sure she managed to shoot through an artery. You need help fast.

Your grip loosens, but you try to use your body to prevent her from getting up.

"Who are you?" you ask. Your hands are shaking against the assailant. You try to will them to still.

"A killer," she replies, spitting.

You watch as a piece of a broken and bloodied tooth comes out of her mouth. Did you really do that? You try to remind yourself that it's probably part of the illusion ability, so you watch the broken tooth and try to wait for its energy to move. It doesn't. A lump forms in your throat.

She tries to lift herself up and you have to maneuver her face back to the ground. "Do you really think I'll let you get up?"

" 's a waiting game," she spits again. "Will backup arrive in time? Or will you kill me in the meantime."

For a moment, you consider it. You can say that you had to, that it was self-defense. You'd be applauded for your bravery. Then you're disgusted with yourself again. Why are you entertaining the thought? Why are your thoughts fighting with yourself?

Then you realize it.

The killer's evol isn't illusion.

You're on the ground and she's hovering right over you.

It's delusion.

You don't move, pressing your body down so she can't get up.

"Fuck off," you say, your voice a raspy sound.

"Was worth a try," the killer laughs, low and broken.

The delusion shimmers before it leaves, like a fog making way. The killer is no longer over you but safely detained underneath you.

"You're _____," the killer says all of a sudden, before coughing up more blood.

"How do you know who I am?" you can't help but ask.

The killer is quiet for a moment. "I just do," she eventually says. "That's how I survive."

You two just breathe for a moment. By the time backup arrives, there's so much blood coating both her and your clothes that it almost seems like you were drowning in it.

You wonder if Rafayel is okay. Was she targeting him next?

A hunter manages to put her hands in handcuffs. He's talking, but you can't make out what he's saying.

You stumble back on your knees, but before you can even think to get up, you're falling back down on your side. Your body smashes into the ground, and your shoulder hurts, hurts, hurts. But you can't move. You can't move.

The hunters try to check in on you. You try to shout, to yell at them for their stupidity, but it's too late. Their eyes left the killer.

The killer manages to get up. There's still a hand around her bicep. She tries to break out of it, but the hunter looks back at her and pushes her down. Both hunters try to bring her to the ground, and she sways as if she's drunk off the tranquilizer.

Then she's not there anymore. She's running, gone.

Your comrades give chase, shouting. You can see them shouting, but you can't hear them.

You wonder what is happening to you. To your body. Are you going to die here? This isn't the brave moment of martyrdom that you had anticipated.

Your vision is fading.

Get up, you try to will yourself. Get up, you fucking piece of shit.

You want to help. Want to run after the killer and make sure that she's captured, that all the deaths stop. That Rafayel is safe.

You're pathetic.

This isn't martyrdom.

A black expanse of a void spreads underneath you. First it takes your blood, then it's seeping through the floor, growing. It unfurls around your surroundings, until it hits the walls and suddenly it's eating up the concrete, opening up it's vicious mouth to consume everything.

You lay there in the darkness.

There is nothing left for you.

END OF CHAPTER 11

#rafayel x you #rafayel x reader #love and deepspace #fanfiction #lads rafayel #lnds rafayel #l&ds rafayel #l&ds #lnds #tw blood #tw violence

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ericas-spop-blog · 1 year ago

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What do you think about Catra as demisexual lesbian?

The dance floor sequence in Princess Prom is great, don't get me wrong, but this incredibly gay moment really doesn't get enough love. Not just because Catra's being a Tiny Butch, or because Scorpia is Feeling Oh So Pretty, but because, like...

This is the moment it really hits Catra that Scorpia is everything she should want; she's interested, she's personable, and she's drop dead gorgeous. She is, objectively, a catch.

And Catra feels absolutely nothing. This expression isn't disinterest, it's the suckerpunch sensation of "What is wrong with me?", realizing that there is an unbridgeable gulf between what the world says you should desire and what you actually want.

Scorpia is everything that Catra should want, but she's not Adora. And, in this moment, Catra is afraid that she is so broken that Adora is all that she will ever be able to want. That she is permanently chained to her first love, the woman who abandoned her.

========

But she isn't. Heck, it's not even that Scorpia is a bad match, per-se. Given time - and a willingness to actually see Catra, instead of imposing an ill-fitting fantasy on her - Scorpia and Catra legitimately become friends.

And in that moment? Yeah, they could have been happy together.

=========

tl;dr: I personally usually go with "gay" to describe Catra - a not-man who is sexually/romantically interested in other not-men, since I read her relationship with DT as at least a little romantic - but yeah, she can absolutely be read as a demisexual lesbian; on-screen she really does only crush on people she's some flavour of friends with.

#spop #asks #catra #scorpia #i got back to the original question in the end!

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persepinas · 1 year ago

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Sunday snippet: suckerpunch chapter 10.

I am truly sorry for how long it is taking. I deleted most of my chapter because I didn’t like it. Here is a preview of cute, flirty coffee boys.

Chapter 10 moment:

“Lestat,” Louis laughs, trying to dodge the kisses being placed all over his face. “Lestat, give me a second to breathe!”

“Mon cher,” Lestat purrs, grinding himself down onto Louis’ pelvis. The contact makes Louis’ thighs tense. “Amore mio,” he goes on, stroking his newly filed nails along Louis’ pectorals. It’s getting to Louis and getting to him quickly too. Lestat knows him well, too well, and knows exactly how to move and what to say to get Louis going. Louis finds himself so close to shoving Lestat over and having his way with him.

“Honey, please,” Louis practically pleads at this point. He has two choices here: prevent Lestat from grinding on him or prevent Lestat from touching him.

Louis chooses to reach back and grip at Lestat’s ass, preventing his lover’s enthusiastic hips from doing any further damage to his already diminishing psyche.

Louis cannot think clearly when Lestat is being this way and he is aware that Lestat knows this too. The devil! ��If you just give me a moment I’ll give you an answer,” Louis says rather too breathlessly for his own taste. The way he sounds at this moment is not something he likes. He doesn’t but Louis tries to concentrate on the matter at hand instead.

“Louis,” Lestat says, cupping his face. Their eyes meet and Louis sighs, feeling calmer when he catches the sincerity and love in Lestat’s expression. His lover may be flirtatious and extravagant at times, but he is also caring, funny, and meaningful. Lestat loves him and Louis is sure of that now more than he has ever been.

It is partially why Louis is having such a difficult time showing his more vulnerable side. He’s exposed in his own love for Lestat and he’s never been this way with anyone else before. It’s still a learning experience.

“Tell me then, my darling,” Lestat gently urges, stroking his thumbs over the apples of Louis’ cheeks. “Go on. I won’t be upset. I promise I will not. Disappointed? Yes. But not upset.”

Louis takes in a deep breath—

And quickly exhales. It’s now or never!

“I want to do it,” Louis says so fast the words all mingle together into a mess rather than a clear sentence. Louis’ face burns up and his eyes snap shut. “I want to do it,” he says once again, slowly and clearly now. He will not say it a third time!

Lestat makes an excited sound and then Louis is being kissed and kissed well. He easily forgets about anything else and hums into Lestat’s mouth the moment he feels the grinding resume and Louis lifts his hips, reciprocating the rocking.

#loustat #interview with the vampire #Loustat fic #suckerpunch loustat #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac

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oathkeeperoxas · 1 year ago

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So @frostbitebakery tagged me in a last line meme, but in the spirit of six sentence sunday I am instead posting the last six paragraphs I wrote because I think they're chewy and tasty and deserve to be seen and likely otherwise won't be. Thanks Frost!

And Ice in turn looks undeniably, deeply sad. Not grieving or mauldin or hopeless or another dozen emotions that Maverick has seen of him that are shades of that feeling, but simply, obviously, incredibly unhappy. Ice carries an dissatisfaction inside him – different to the one that Maverick has, the one that has him burning like a star coming through the stratosphere, but there all the same – and there’s an underlying sorrow that accompanies that, always, but that’s not what this is. Now, he’s just sad, and Maverick has done that to him. “We tried, didn’t we?” Ice asks, and somehow, even through that sadness, he smiles. Maverick wants to claw through the suddenly huge chasm of distance between them and cup his face in his hands, turn that smile into a true laugh, to make everything right again. To do anything to make Ice happy again. It’s intolerable that anyone hurt Ice. Even him. Maybe especially him. “Yeah,” Maverick says through a thick throat, voice catching. “We gave it a red hot go.” “I still would do it,” Ice says, eyes deep, seeing, knowing. Not moving from Maverick’s face. Like he wants to savour every second left they have together. “I’d still want to try, even if I knew we couldn’t make it work. I’d still want to know what I know of you, Mav.” And it hurts like a bitch. Like Ice has stood up and suckerpunched the air out of him, except that would only be a physical pain, and this one instead scours itself deep onto Maverick’s heart. “You can’t say shit like that,” Maverick says, breathless, almost choking on his grief, and Ice closes his eyes, that shade of a smile disappearing from his face. Now, he just looks tired. “It’s the truth,” he insists. “I don’t usually get to tell the truth, but I’m not going to avoid it here. Even if it was only for a summer – I’d want you to be mine.”

#icemav #still interrogating these characters. this is a bit of an exploration piece instead of part of a fic but still so delicious #anyway. breaking up due to circumstances out of your control. wanting so so bad for things to be different. but they can't be.#how do you act and how do you feel and what do you say...#mine #my writing #I think Ice has the itch of never being good enough despite what anyone says - he has to prove it to himself but never quite manages #which is what drives a lot of his behaviour in so aggressively following the rules and being at the top #chasing a career as a form of finally trying to be happy with who he is and what he's done with his life and then oops #turns out that letting someone / something (the navy) dictate your life path isn't the way to being happy. sucks man.#go and kiss the man you've been pining for for 30 years about it #anyway that's not totally relevant to this snippet but thinking about character motivations and i think that ice is just. depressed.#lowkey about it. but it's there. and it's never going to entirely go away

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novelistash · 2 months ago

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Meriel's auburn hair is lush and rounded and every little tilt of her head sends out this infuriating floral scent that I can't identify. I associate the smell with miserable pining. Roi's pokeball in my pocket feels familiar. Roi and Meriel were a big part of my life in Kalos and I gave all of that up running away to Alola. 100,000 pen will break my account, but I can cover it. Walking away from Meriel might be worth it, but the cowardice wouldn't. I need to face my fear so I can face the future.

Standing, I do my best to appear composed, even while I'm terrified and dirty. "I need to get pokemon out of storage."

Meriel holds up one of those rotom-phones. They make me feel sick. Her teasing smile makes me wanna chuckle and settle down beside her. "You really don't have one?"

I hold out a PokeTech X. "I'll return on my honor as a Duke."

She giggles. Her red cheeks gives a her vibrant glow.

I get out of there quick, having no idea what pokemon she's planning to use.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

There's an arena out back. Pedestrians from the street level can view the battle from a railing and guests can turn and watch while they enjoy their meal. It's not a Pokemon League Stadium, but it's the biggest audience I've had in almost seven years. Not since Spiral killed Fission have I had a full audience to witness my defeat.

Meriel readies her first ultraball and the sight of it confirms my fears, she isn't using her Audinos. This could be anything. The black and yellow pattern spins under her fingers. A sanded down skyblue ball enlarges in my hand. She sends out the ball like a dealt card. I toss my greatball high and out by releasing my grip as my hand arcs up.

On her side is a navy blue Meowstic, a spry looking male. An Alola tested Gengar comes out on my side. Not a mismatch by any means but we're committing to a shoot out. Super effective attacks can kill.

Expecting me to attack, she calls out, "Sucker punch."

"Taunt."

Sorrowfell the Gengar pulls down her face, showing off her teeth and infuriating the Meowstic into losing her composure. Sorrowfell outspeeds the Meowstic and turns his white fur gray from the blast of her shadowball. A psybeam comes out a tears a line through Sorrowfell's cheek. The nasty monster uses her claws to extend the opening, showing off the wound with pride. Meowstic shakes as he gets back on his paws.

I want to Meriel to call him back, but it's obvious she won't. Another attack is going to come and if Sorr survives the suckerpunch, that Meowstic is gonna end up gray, shriveled, and lifeless. The Meowstic rushes forward to perform a suckerpunch and finds a body of energy in my Gengar's place. The recall might be bad tactics, but I don't want to risk the Meowstic's life. Instead I throw out my Shiinotic and everything feels distant. My grass attack finishes the Meowstic, but an Aurorus follows. A quick blizzard Aurorus, the supposed counterpart to Tyrantrum. Meriel knows it's a bad matchup because I've ranted about ice's weakness at length.

I worry about his super effective Head Smash breaking the Aurorus's bones, but there's no hesitation in me or Roi. I'm shouting "Head Smash" and he's shattering ice crystals. It's a familiar rhythm that takes me back to my earliest days of fighting in Kalos.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

I'd won. Roi had smashed his way through eight opponents and I was firmly in the rank of Duke. Pride eluded me. When I looked inside all I felt was fear. Finding the Battle Chateau had been a blessing. I'd found this surefire way to pick up big pay outs so that I could advance faster than Spiral and take the seat of Champion, but my heads were shaking. I went outside to puke and only found tears.

Fission was dead because of me. He'd been using self destruct for over a year and I never thought about the toll it took on his body. Spiral exploited that weakness and Fission wasn't the only one to die. League fights were serious business. Trainers and pokemon pushed each other to their limits, but it was always the pokemon who suffered.

Meriel found me keening. She outside on a smoke break. It was an odd thing to see a woman so refined and beautiful smoking, but I found it welcoming and honest. She listened to me tell my story through my tears and I admitted to her that I was scared to become the champion.

"My reign as Elite four ended with four deaths. Four! That should've been enough to make me quit, but I didn't. I kept fighting, kept grinding, kept breeding--breeding until I dreamed about eggs and bikes and I hated every minute of it, but I wouldn't stop. I had to win and my Garchomp suffered for it! He's dead because of that damn Sylveon! I have to be strong enough to get my revenge. I have to! This Tyrantrum isn't going to be enough. None of this is going to be enough to make me Champion."

Meriel stayed close enough for me to feel her warmth and wisps of her cigarette wafted into my nose. My rage was selfish as it was disturbing, but she wasn't scared. If anything she looked contemplative.

"So what if you're not Champion?"

"Then all of this was for nothing! Then all of my training, all of the months of breeding was for nothing!"

"And?"

"And? AND???"

"So you're not Champion, who cares?"

"Who cares? If I'm not Champion then I'm nothing!"

"Those are your only options, be champion or disappear into obscurity?"

"What other option is there? I spend my life stuck in the Battle Chateau smacking around Audinos?!" I said with contempt because I forgot that Meriel was one of the Audino users I had trounced. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I know that my Audinos aren't going to win me any tournaments or ribbons."

"Then why do you do it? How can you be happy training weak pokemon?"

"I imagine that it's probably the same reason that you've been using that Tyrantrum. I like them. Audinos are nice. They're warm and personable and they help me clean up my apartment. I never have to worry about them being irresponsible or wreckless. When I come home too drunk they can take care of me and put themselves in a pokeball. How many Elite Four pokemon can do the same thing?"

"Maybe an Alakazem," I said postulating the effort needed to train them.

Meriel arched an annoyed brow, but she was also smiling. "You like being difficult don't you?"

"I don't try to be difficult. I want to be thorough. Maybe that's why being champion is so important to me."

"I don't think it is," she said gently. "You've spent the past two weeks doing nothing but accumulating wins at the battle chateau and sleeping alone at some hotel an hour's fly away. If being the champion is so important why are you still here? What if you let go of all of that and stayed?"

"Why so I can be a stepping stone for Spiral and Cynthia and all of the other Champions?"

"My pokemon don't die here. My life is stable. I don't worry about tomorrow. I might be a stepping stone in the career of great trainers, but I'm happy. When was the last time you were happy?"

"Never," I confessed.

Smiling, she waited for me to come to a perfectly reasonable conclusion. It was time for me to leave that hotel and find more permanent living conditions.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Meriel's Audino drops. She's battered and bruised, but Spice the Audino is gonna be okay. She knows how to take a Head Smash without getting seriously hurt. Spice had fought Roi for years. They were practically friends at one point. Meriel recalls the pokemon and thanks Spice with a kiss on the ball.

I approach to talk to her, but her boyfriend walks up to rub her shoulders. She thanks him with a kiss too. I' knew I'd've always lacked something that Meriel needs out a relationship and for some reason seeing them kiss gives me a glimpse of that. It isn't that he's handsome or fit, but it's that's he's patient and supportive. He's there for her without offering suggestions about how to improve because Meriel is content with her life. I still can't find that peace.

"Thanks for the match," I tell Meriel. With a swipe of my trainer ID over her rotom-phone, she pays me for a victory that feels like a loss.

"You've changed," she says with a smile.

It makes me blush with shame and hide my eyes. "Yeah, my fighting has gotten less creative."

"Maybe but it's more compassionate. Why don't you stay with us and have drinks?"

"I wouldn't mind," says her boyfriend.

"No, I uh," I swallow back the threat of tears. "I need to fly over to Slateport. I'm looking for a psychic entertainer named Esther Flowne. Do you know her?"

She shakes her head. "No, sorry. All of my psychic knowhow I picked up from Olympia. We're only here until the league finalizes things in Paldea."

"It's gonna be great! I heard they're working on a new evolution!"

First mega, then dynamax and now something worse. The possibility should've made me nauseous, but I was too focused on every microscopic change in Meriel's expression. Another group of guests were approaching the stadium and so we walked back over to the dinning area inside.

Meriel and her boyfriend went to sit and I steeled myself to make a respectable goodbye. My always processing brain wouldn't allow my thoughts to move on.

"I know I've said this before," I mumbled. "But I really am sorry for making things awkward at the Battle Chateau."

"You didn't, ASH. I knew that you liked me."

"Then why were so nice to me?"

"Because it never bothered me and I knew you weren't the kind of guy who would try to hurt me. You're not a Raticate from Fuschia City. You need to stop punishing yourself for what you had to do in order to survive."

I'm able to nod, bow, and wave goodbye, but I can't find any words after that. Meriel knows me too well. By repeating a single metaphor I'd once used to represent myself, she's cut to the heart of my pain. I make it outside and cry. @trainerspiral #closedRP #pokemonOC

#closed rp #closed roleplay #pokemon oc

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theclaravoyant · 1 year ago

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AN ~ Version 1 of about 16 trillion WIPS I have of Ed and Izzy finally facing each other again. Did I write 1500wd and technically not use the prompt phrase? Yes I did, but in my defense I'm haunted by It's not your fault you're broken, you were just trying to do your job.

For @fictober-event’s Fictober 2023 prompt: “It's not your fault." Spoilers up to Ep 6, in which it's theoretically based.

Masterpost of my Fictober OFMD fics

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death Characters/Relationships: Ed Teach, Izzy Hands. Tags: Canon Typical Violence, References to Suicidal Ideation and associated mutually-destructive stuff that went down in the early eps. Angst with a Hopeful Ending and hopefully healing vibes.

Try

Ed recognises the voice before he turns the corner. It’s so familiar and beautiful and missed, his heart clenches. Because Izzy doesn’t sing. Not the Izzy he knows. Not anymore. And yet.

His feet carry him forward like they haven’t caught on that this is a stupid idea.

The bell around his neck announces him and he can hardly stand to hear the song strangle itself in Izzy’s throat. If there was a dance in his step it’s gone now. Izzy stops and stares at him for a long, miserable, terrifying moment.

“Edward,” he croaks.

In the silence, one can hear the other shoe drop.

“Izzy. I think we need to talk.”

Stede has the good sense, and the sense of drama, to usher the rest of the crew below deck. The abandoned party makes for a fittingly morbid setting; its rainbow lanterns bobbing in the breeze, beautiful food and rich aromas doing little to drown out the rotting wound they’re about to rip open. Neither of them speak for a long time. There’s too much to say.

Eventually, Izzy steps down off the little dias they’ve been calling a stage. He ignores Ed as much as possible, and sets about cleaning up instead. He marches to the nearest table and begins scraping all the food scraps onto one plate. Now that they’ve gone and ruined the mood, he might as well. But he feels Ed’s eyes on him, knows that stupid bell is swaying in the breeze a micron away from tinkling as he only moves just enough to watch Izzy. The heat pricks the back of his neck until he can’t stand it anymore.

“You’re the one who wants to talk, Edward. I’m fine.”

“Sure. You look fine.”

“I was, ‘til you got here.”

It hurts, but Ed swallows. He did walk right into that one. But it’s not the uncharacteristically camp make-up or the… golden… unicorn leg apparently? … that’s got Ed worried. It’s the tension in his shoulders, his gaunt face. The way that he carries himself around Ed - even though he’s well out of arms’ reach - with an air of hesitation, like he’s terrified he’ll be suckerpunched at any given moment and is trying desperately not to show it.

I wasn’t laughing, it reminds him. I was screaming.

He remembers the sound of the bullet too. He remembers thinking Izzy was dead and gone. He’d hardly felt a thing at the time, but looking back he knew it would destroy him. It should destroy him. That’s what it should feel like, to have somebody so close to you for so long and in so many ways that losing them feels like -

Well, like losing a limb. Isn’t that how the saying goes?

But his traitorous fucking tongue refuses to form fucking words, at least not ones that mean anything, so all he can do is dare step a little closer. He reaches out his arm - slowly, hesitantly, - and he watches Izzy equally slowly close a fist around the handle of one of the butter knives he’s packing away. So he stops. Izzy’s fingers uncurl, but Ed’s pretty sure he’d rather have been stabbed. It hurts, everything hurts.

“It’s getting late,” Izzy says at last. “Think I’ll call it a night, actually.”

“Izzy. Please.” The words barely make it past the lump in his throat. If they don’t push through it now, they might never, and that’s just- well, that’s just not an option.

“Are you going to order me to stay?”

“No. I’m not your Captain anymore.”

Ed wishes he could be offended at the implication that he’d ever use his position in such a way, but he definitely would. He definitely has. And maybe, just maybe, he’s finally come close enough to admitting that for one of the worst people on God’s Green Earth at apologies, because Izzy finally stops doing busywork and looks at him. Really looks at him, like he’s trying to figure out the answer to his own question. What am I, to you?

“Still on probation, then?” he asks instead.

“Oh. Yeah.” Ed flicks the bell at his neck. “Crew says the vote has to be unanimous. So.”

“So you need me to tick the last box on your little form.”

“Oh fuck off, you brought it up, not me.” Ed bites his tongue. All this is going to do is get them riled up until they strangle each other. He tries to channel his crash course in healthy emotional expression and drag himself back on track. He takes a deep breath. “What I mean is. You’ve got a lot of them going to bat for you, Iz. They really care about how you feel about- about all this. You should be proud. I know I am.”

Izzy blinks. “What?”

Ed plays back what he just said. Is he finally making the words go?

“I am… proud of you,” he repeats. Tears spring to his eyes and he feels a bit sick and overwhelmed but there it is, he said it. “And grateful. I really am. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d really- I mean if you hadn’t-”

He swallows. And maybe it’s because he’s still trying to spare Ed or maybe it’s because Izzy is allergic to the full spectrum of human emotion or maybe it’s because the memory is swirling around them like the storm did and they can both taste the salt water in the air but Izzy cuts him off.

“I was just doing my job.”

“Your boss fucking sucks then.”

He gets a tearful snort out of Izzy for that one.

“Yeah, well. Pretty sure I started it.”

And maybe it’s good they’ve been making a point of avoiding each other since they got back on board the Revenge. Maybe they’re… ready for something. (Please. Please let them be ready.)

Ed waits with bated breath as Izzy looks away, touches his finger to his eyes in case he’s been crying, and deliberates. Ed watches, wishing, pleading, contemplating falling to the deck and fucking praying that a whip crack of vicious vengeance isn’t going to come for him. Once upon a time - hell, even this morning - he would have offered the man his pistol to shoot him back. It’s the pirate way of doing things, an eye for an eye, and maybe it’s not the healthiest or whatever but he’ll take it if it means making things square with Izzy. He's already got a bad knee, what’s a little more metal crunching around in there?

The silence lasts so long it itches under his skin. It burns the tip of his tongue and he’s on the verge of opening his mouth to suggest that the man fucking shoots him (again) after all, when Izzy finally speaks.

“Well,” he announces. “If we’re doing this, I’m going to need a drink.”

Speaking of knees, they almost give way beneath him.

“Amen to that.”

There’s a lot to untangle; so much that if they had the time-bending powers of the gravy basket they might still have not got through it all. But it’s progress, and the two of them end up lying close on the deck with their hair and limbs tossed every which way and a red glow to their cheeks that betrays how much they’ve imbibed. They’ve cried. They’ve laughed, frankly a surprising amount. They’ve almost called it quits and stormed out a half a dozen times each. Yet they’ve both stayed, and they’ve both let those walls down further than they have in years. The wound they’ve been letting fester isn’t healed. It’s a long way from that. But it’s been cleaned and wrapped in new bandages and as the morning light starts to make its way across their faces, there’s a gentleness to the ache in their chests.

Ed sighs.

“Be honest, Iz,” he prompts. “Do you think there’s a version of us where we don’t wind up killing each other?”

Izzy frowns, struggling to turn his fuzzy mind to the subject without getting bogged down again in I had a dream where you killed me and Edward better watch his fucking step and the Spanish and the English and the way their downward spirals have been happening harder and faster lately. Rising sun be damned, it’s hard to have hope in the face of that.

“I don’t know,” he confesses.

Ed swallows. It’s hard to take. But he said to be honest, and they’re being honest in a new way now. In a new old way that reminds him of the way things were before, somehow. It’s like a light at the end of the tunnel, shining into the dark sea. Like the morning breaking over them. The sun is warm, and it reminds him of the things that are worth holding onto.

“Do you think-” he asks, “d’you think we could try?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Like Izzy Hands stone-cold-sober letting someone put glitter on his face?”

With a cheeky, if hesitant, hopeful smile, Ed glances over at Izzy the best he can at this angle. Izzy, best he can too, angles his chin to meet Ed’s eyes, and smiles back.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Like that.”

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd fanfic #fictober23 #clara's fic tag

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wingedquill · 1 year ago

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soulscream

whumptober day 1 | alternative prompt: "broken" | word count: 1572

fandom: Stranger Things | characters: Steve and Robin | cw: daemon-related torture, major character death (ish) | tags: daemon au, unhappy ending (for now)

Robin will hate herself forever for it, but part of her sees the whole “getting kidnapped and slapped around by Russian guards” thing as a big fucking adventure, a wild story that she’ll be able to tell people when they ask her how she spent her summer, right up until they start beating Steve’s daemon.

And then everything gets really real, really fast.

Her ears start ringing after the first hit, like it’s her they’ve just suckerpunched instead of Steve’s fucking soul, and all of her clever plans of a glorious escape turn to static in her brain. Steve screams, short and agonized, and she can feel his whole body spasming against her.

They’re tied back to back. She can see Estella but he can’t, he couldn’t even see the blow coming.

This isn’t happening. This isn’t—this isn’t something that happens.

The guard draws back his arm again. The baton comes back down. Steve screams again, somehow louder.

“Who do you work for?” the guard asks, swinging the baton back and forth like a batter getting ready to hit a home run. He sounds almost bored. Like this is something he does every day. Like this is normal.

“I—I don’t—” Steve gasps. “I don’t—please—please no—”

Another whistle of air, another crack. Estella whines, high and animal-like, like she’s a real dog. The general laughs from somewhere behind her.

“They start leaking Dust, after a while,” he says. “I’ve always found it a pretty sight. Most disagree. I will not have my men stop when you start to dissolve, Butterscotch. Who. Do you. Work. For?”

“No one,” Steve sobs. “No one, please—”

Another swing. Another. Another, another, another, too fast for Robin to track, too fast for her to distinguish them.

“Stop!” she hollers. “Stop, we don’t know anything, we’re just kids, he doesn’t…he didn’t do anything to you, stop!”

“Would you rather we ask your hummingbird?” the general snorts. The guard lifts his foot, lets it hover over Estella’s paw. “You did spit at me, after all. You did something.”

Achilles curls up against her chest, whole body vibrating like a tiny heart. God if they started…if they started hitting him…one strike of that baton would be enough to kill him, to kill her.

The guard crushes his foot down. Gold starts to seep out from underneath it, pooling over the floor like dry ice smoke. Steve’s whole body contracts, jolting so hard that for a moment Robin thinks he’ll knock them both over.

“Please,” Robin whispers, watching helplessly as Steve’s soul bleeds all over the cold tile floor. “Please.”

It’s all either of them can say for the next—hour she thinks? Longer? Steve stops screaming at some point, stops struggling against her. If it weren’t for the feeling of his breaths, and Estella’s long, continuous whimpers, she’d think he was dead.

“Stop,” the general says eventually, when there’s a veritable pool of Dust around Estella, bright and gleaming as a firework. Fuck, they were supposed to be watching the fireworks today, they were supposed to steal a gallon of ice cream out of the freezer and lug it up the big hill behind the mall, they were supposed to be goddamn children about it—

“You are very good at keeping quiet,” he says, and there’s rustling behind her. Steve’s warmth disappears from her back, and then she’s being hauled upwards, hands gripping her arms. She doesn’t fight them. She doesn’t want to give them any more excuses to—god there were knives on the fucking table, and pliers, and a fucking bonesaw, and she doesn’t know if the Russians are planning on using them on her, or Steve, or Estella, and—

“Most men would have spilled everything by now,” the general continues as his men bully Robin forward, and she can finally, finally make eye contact with Steve.

He’s conscious. Standing. But there’s something horribly, horribly wrong with his eyes.

They’re shuttered. Or empty. Or gone, or—

“Steve,” she croaks, trying to reach for him. One of the men yanks her arms back, hissing a command in Russian in her ear.

“But you’d let us break you without answering the most basic question. So either you are a better spy than any man I’ve ever trained, or you truly are just a know-nothing child.”

He tuts, almost sympathetically. Behind Robin, there’s a rattling of chains, a loud whine, the sound of a body being dragged over the floor. Steve twitches, tears slipping from his empty eyes as he’s finally able to see what they’ve done to him. Estella makes a noise like a sob, legs twitching as she tries to gather them underneath her.

She fails. They keep dragging her like a sack of meat, smearing gold across the tiles. Bile sloshes in Robin’s stomach.

“For what it’s worth,” the general says, shoving Steve towards the door. He stumbles over his own feet, whole body hunched over in pain. “I do hope it’s the former. I truly do. But either way…either way we are out of time to ask you things. But worry not. We will learn something from you nonetheless.”

“What are you gonna do to me?” Steve croaks.

Me. Not us. Robin wonders if the thought of them hurting her is so unthinkable Steve hasn’t even considered it, or if he’s trying to keep them from realizing it's a possibility.

“You have seen our accomplishments, yes?” the general says. He parades them out of the cell, one hand on Steve’s shoulder like he might try to run. Like he wouldn’t get a bullet in the soul for trying. “You have seen the rift. We believe there is another world on the other side, and we would like very much for our scientists to explore that world. But there are many possible dangers that we do not yet know how to prepare for.”

“So you wanna throw me in?”

Steve doesn’t sound like he’s discussing the concept of being thrown into a fucking hellworld with his torturer. He sounds like he’s asking his fucking basketball coach if he really wants him to play the second half.

“No,” the general laughs. “No. We do not want to see what you might get up to unmonitored. But there is a test you may help us with.”

If she were a hero, Robin would tell them to do it to her. She would tell them that Steve had had enough. She would tell them that they’d already broken him.

But she’s not a hero. She’s not a hero, and she’s watching a daemon bleed on the ground, and this doesn’t fucking happen. So her vocal cords stay frozen shut, and Achilles stays safe against her heart, and she does nothing to stop whatever’s about to happen to Steve.

They push through another set of doors and there’s the rift. Most of it looks just as it had before, a violent mess of red and black spreading over the wall like a disgusting fungus, but there’s an opening right in the middle. Not quite big enough for a person.

“I’m told we finally broke through while we were having our…discussion,” the general says. He inclines his head, and the two men holding Estella start dragging her over to a massive cage on the end of a chain. “And so you get to assist us with our first, and most important test. To make sure the daemonic bond can survive unscathed between dimensions.”

“No,” Steve whispers, glancing between the cage and the rift. “No, you—what’s that gonna do?”

“We don’t know,” the general says. “Hopefully nothing.”

Steve looks at her wildly as the guards bundle Estella into the cage. Help me. Do something. She can read that as clear as if he said it.

But she can’t move. She can’t speak. Her feet are frozen to the floor and her tongue is glued to her mouth. She’s a bug encased in amber, and she can do nothing but watch as the two guards hoist Estella’s cage between them.

“Steve,” the daemon groans, Dust spilling from her mouth like vomit. “I love—”

The guards hurl the cage forward, right through the opening in the rift.

Robin stands there.

Steve’s knees buckle.

“Get her out,” he gasps. “Get her out, get her—get her out, get her out, fucking get her out of there!”

The general barks an order and the two guards scramble for the chain. Steve collapses entirely, limbs jerking and thrashing against his binds.

“Get her out!” he wails. “Please, dear God, get her—”

And he just…stops.

All at once, like the power’s been cut to his brain. His limbs stop jerking, his eyes stop rolling. He goes completely and utterly still.

Robin stands there.

The general leans down, presses his fingers against Steve’s jugular. Frowns.

“Playing dead will not work with me, Butterscotch,” he says.

Robin stands there.

The two guards haul the cage back out of the void. It’s empty.

Everything freezes for a minute. The general stares at the cage, and for the first time in this entire fucked-up ordeal, Robin thinks she catches a flash of guilt in her eyes.

He murmurs something under his breath.

Robin will spend the next week pouring over Russian dictionaries and anthropological texts to learn both the phrase and the meaning behind it. When she does, it won’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know.

Living broken.

Severed.

Steve is severed. His soul is dead. He'll be an empty shell for the rest of his life.

And Robin just stands there.

#whumptober2023 #no.1 #Broken #altprompt #stranger things #fic #torture #major character death #my writing #st daemon au #sorry guys this is a sad one #i have a whole-ass au for it in my head (shocker) that ends happily though

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