#anyway. i find so much more love and compassion in these places than anywhere else

[horror-vampire]

you'll always find more love and acceptance in your local punk scene

[foxx-queen]

the more I think about it the less sense solas' plans / half of what he says about himself / the old world makes any sense? and I can't figure out if I'm missing something, the writers left stuff out, or if it's deliberate because he's lying or somehow confused about what happened ? so heres a list :

he says he wants to bring the veil down to restore his people. we already know that means the destruction of pretty much the whole world / everyone including elves, and that to him that's worth it because they're not 'his' people / people at all. but he also trapped the evanuris, who were apparently so awful and powerful they were going to destroy the world, and the forgotten ones, who are probably the tevinter old gods, behind that veil, and the moment that comes down they'll be free. we already know that bringing down the veil requires immense power, so once hes done that, how does he expect to deal with both groups? he can't have had enough power back in the day or he would've just killed them then, so how could he possibly have enough power now? we know that both groups were extremely powerful, that's why the evanuris were considered gods, and they're going to be free, angry, and full of new power? does he just not care, because the world will be destroyed anyway? is he just gonna sit back and let the groups fight it out and then remake the world?

the writers apparently always planned the twist for the evanuris. they were apparently always supposed to be evil, except aside from what solas says / what we learn in trespasser, there's very little evidence of that? the way the dalish portray the gods isnt like the way the chantry portrays the maker - they're not perfect, they're not saints, they're almost mortal in the way they behave, capable of great kindness and compassion and loving their people, and also flawed. and yes I know the dalish are supposed to be 'wrong' because of how much they've lost, but it stands to reason they mustve got their beliefs and stories from somewhere. they pieced together their history and culture from what remained after the veil went up, and again and again each time they suffered at human hands. presumably the original knowledge they worked with was either from word of mouth right after the veil, or physical documents that ended up in the real world instead of the fade / crossroads. so there must have been some truth there, even if solas says / implies they got nothing right. (the fact that the culture the dalish have built now is valid whether is not they were 'right' is a given and a separate thing from this)

kind of on the same vein, why is there nothing to support what solas says aside from what's in trespasser? everything about the evanuris being mortal and having slaves / fen'harel freeing them comes from the fortress / temple he built. why is there nothing else anywhere in thedas about that? yeah maybe it was lost, or the evanuris destoryed all evidence of it, but some of that knowledge should have survived. in the same way that the dalish got their knowledge from what's been passed down and pieced together from the elves left behind after the veil went up, why didn't the elves solas freed ever pass that knowledge down? why didn't they build more murals or w/e about what he did? like yeah maybe theres stuff out there that we haven't seen, but there should be something that survived his deeds other than his fortress / temple.

solas says that he was never one of the evanuris / was always an enemy to them except for mythal. except we find statues of the 'dread wolf' all over thedas, along with the other evanuris. and yeah some of them / maybe even the majority were built after the empire fell / by the survivors, except there are some in places that must've been built around his time. for example there's a golden statue of him in the crossroads. maybe there are parts of the crossroads out of time or something, okay, but there's a statue of him in the library too, and you can do a whole puzzle thing to get a reward. why would the evanuris allow a statue of him in their library that also involves a ritual if they were enemies? if he wasn't at one point one of them?

codexs we find in trespasser in the deep roads / the library tell us that the evanuris often fought, and there's that one about elgar'nan having servants and building a giant statue to him, and mythal also leading a fight against the titans. that seems to support that they weren't completely benevolent (which the dalish have never said) except there are also codexs that describe peace, and a place that seemed beautiful ans prosperous. this seems to indicate that it was at least more complex than what solas tells us.

solas seems to have had no idea what would happen to the world when he created the veil, which makes sense since nothing like that had ever been done before. but then how did he create it? how did he completely split the physical from the fade? did he really have no idea that it would cause some destruction? did he think it was just. going to be fine?? listening to the last words of the elves from the archivist paints a very vivid image of what it was like for the elves he left behind, and why they called him the betrayer.

also how did the elves know he was responsible? again this is the thing about the dalish not being completely wrong, because they do say he's the one who imprisoned the evanuris / the forgotten ones. that part is true. is that purely the reason why hes often such a shadowy figure in their stories / is painted as a trickster? merrill tells a story about how fen'harel could visit elves in their dreams, and steal something from them, and we know solas can kill people in their sleep from the fade. the dalish also say he was kin to the evanuris and the forgotten ones. there has to be some reason for that.

solas says hes not an evanuris, except everything hes doing paints him exactly as the people he apparently hated. he's arrogant in thinking he knows best, openly mocks the dalish for not listening to him, doesnt see the current races of thedas as people, disapproves if you question him on something he doesn't want to reveal, because he only wants your knowledge to come from him / specifically what he wants you to know, is amassing great power by stealing it, using red lyrium, and has a following that's basically a cult. he's lying to all his followers, because we know that restoring what was doesn't actually mean the current elves will benefit, and is probably going to kill a bunch of them in a blood ceremony to open the fade. he takes by force when he can't convince someone to give it to him (brialas eluvians) and kills anyone that gets in his way. he's also obsessed with painting himself (literally) in a good light, and is extremely prideful. he even kills the possible last of his 'actual' people , the best of them, which was to him a terrible crime, for her power. how is that any different from the evanuris? how does any of what he's done / doing fit with a rebel god who was a hero of the oppressed? he hated thr evanuris for using people, and yet that's precisely what he's doing now.

like really is he just hypcrotical?? is he lying?? is he stupid??? is this bad writing or is it deliberate? is he confused from spending so long in the fade where dreams can seem like reality (ie did he dream that the evanuris were terrible and was idk actually seeing the forgotten ones / tevinter, and thought the dreams were reality / needed them to be when he woke up?) is he a spirit corrupted so that he doesn't realise he's wrong? is he being manipulated by the forgotten ones? or is he just. much darker than he wants us to believe?

the fact that the game expects us to take everything he says / is presented by him as truth just from his word, when he spent the whole of dai lying to us, is basically excatly why I don't trust him lol

[stressedoutcanary]

Hold On - Jason Todd x Batgirl!Reader [PART 2]

WORD COUNT :- 2.3k

Warnings ⚠️: I don't even know if there are any...Swearing maybe?, mentions of kidnappings, actual kidnapping oh and also violence and angst :)

A/N 😋: I got lost while writing this so judge accordingly people. Also forgive me for any mistakes. I TRIED.

Part 1 , Part 3

•°•°•°•°

“JASON STOP!!!!!”, your voice echoed in the silent warehouse.

Jason stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard your voice, his mind was brimming with thoughts, questions and worst of all, emotions.

“Well, well, well, look who crawled out of her little cave”, He said smugly as he finally turned around to face you. The voice was his, you’d recognize that voice anywhere but it felt cold, devoid of emotions, hearing him like that sent a shiver up your spine. You could feel your determination slipping.

Even though you had your cowl on, Jason could still see how much his rampage was hurting you but he couldn’t stop now, not when all he had left to do was to capture Joker, beat the living shit out of that asshole and show Bruce how much of a failure Batman’s moral compass really is.

“Well? Got nothing to say now?... Why am I not surprised?”, Jason scoffed.

You took a deep breath, you were breaking down inside but you sure as hell weren’t going to let that stop you. You spoke, voice barely above a whisper,  “Jason...Jay...Stop all this...Please, come home, come back to the--”

“Manor? Home? Did you hit your head (Y/N)? Why in the hell would I ever go back to a place where NOBODY GAVE A DAMN ABOUT ME, WHERE HE REPLACED ME AS IF I MEANT NOTHING?!”, Jason didn’t want to lose control of himself, not in front of you. So with visible effort he calmed himself down, took a step forward and gave you a deadpan look.

“You all left me”

Your blood boiled at that statement.

“How dare you?! We lost you! We mourned for you! I mourned for you!”

Tears welled up in your eyes, listening to him you wondered whether he truly believed the words actually coming out of his own mouth.

“The Jason I knew was a roughed up street boy who still cared when many didn't, who called Bruce out every step of the way, who had this ridiculous favoritism for bread, who had the guts to take out a tire from the fricking Batmobile”, despite the dreadful situation you smiled remembering those sweet memories.

You looked him in the eye, pleading in a way, and you spoke softly, “The Jason I knew was The Robin to my Batgirl. This-this is just not who you are Jay, not really...So can you just stop?”

He looked unfazed by your words and cocked his head to the side.

“Princess, the only way you can stop me is if you fight me, knock me down real hard, make sure that I won't get back up again. Tell me Batgirl, can you do it? Do you actually have what it takes?”, he waited for an answer he knew wasn’t coming. As expected, all he was met with was silence.

Long, Painful Silence.

With that Jason knew what he had to do, he put on his red helmet and swung out of the nearest window, you couldn't stop him, for all your big talk, you just couldn't. He was right you failed him.

•°•°

You jumped awake with a start, bolting upright and immediately regretting your subconscious decision, the throbbing pain made you clutch the back of your head with your palm and you closed your eyes again to achieve some semblance of reality as a way of grounding yourself.

‘It was just a dream (Y/N)…just...a...dream’

You tried to lie to yourself knowing deep down that it was a memory, something you have already lived through, something you regret everyday. You swallowed the lump in your throat. It felt dry and your whole body was sore. You really should've called in early and then maybe Dick would've been the one stuck in this crapy situation and not you.

Pushing past your perplexed state you got up and took in your surroundings, there were vines hanging from the open roof, a LOT of flowers and some Venus flytraps by the corner. It wouldn’t even take being a detective to figure out where you were; The Botanical Gardens.

“How the hell did I end up here”, you muttered under your breath. This was getting out of hands.

“See Pammy I told ya Girl-Bat would rise and shine by now”

“I can see that Harls”

‘Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, just great, is nobody in Arkham these days’

The duo descended down from the open roof through one of the vines and stood in front of you. Harley looked as happy as a 10 year old about to get their favorite toy and Ivy seemed to be interested in anything and everything that did not concern you. Classic.

“Why the hell did you both kidnap me?”

You jumped forward and grabbed Harley by the collar of her dress, in retrospect it wasn't the best move but it's not like you were thinking straight at the time anyway.

A vine wrapped itself around your waist and you were tugged back by such force that you were sure there was gonna be a big bruise there tomorrow. You skidded across the floor and finally stopped when your back connected with a bench. You were just too drained to fight back so instead you just crawled up and sat on the bench with a grunt.

‘Not fighting my way out of this one so for once let’s try talking’

“Whoa, should ya really be this obnoxious when ya got a concussion?”, Harley burst your thought bubble as she looked you over.

“Wait, Did you just call me obnoxious?!”

“But don'tcha worry I am a doctor and I got a PhD”

“In psychology!”

“I will fix ya in no time”

“Are you even listening to me?”

Just like that you saw Harley leave the room to go get some medical supplies, or well at least you thought that that's what she was going to do, you turned your face towards Ivy hoping that she can fill in the blanks.

“So you both finally done babbling? And here I thought it was never going to end.”, She looked at you from where she was petting her plant, and made her way over to you, something about her seemed genuine. You got the feeling that whatever she had to say, it won't be a lie.

“Try and not mind what Harley does, she's just happy to make new friends for girls night.” She sighed before continuing, “As for your question, last night we were near the Gotham Central Park when we saw a masked man dragging your unconscious body out of a building and into a van parked in the alley, so we kil-- we took care of him and brought you here”, She shrugged as if that explains why the Poison Ivy just saved your life.

"Wait that means Red isn't here", you whispered more to yourself than to others.

“Pam is Red!”, Harley said cheerfully as she came back out nowhere with a bunch of boxes which would've made you very uneasy if your mind wasn't already preoccupied.

“What Harley means to say is that if you are trying to ask about that gun loving leather jacket vigilante who wears a red helmet, then no we don't know where he is”

Her words sunk in and yesterday's memories flashed in your mind, your eyes widened under your mask as the realization hit you like a bus.

The missing people, the creepy mannequins, the medical journals regarding surgeries, the weirdo in the white mask instead of a face, the poster of some Pretty Dolls parlor; Now it all makes sense!

“Pyg!”

"Huh?", the women in front of you almost jumped at your sudden revelation.

“Lazlo Valentin aka Professor Pyg that's the son of a bitch who is behind all this mess, he's the one who has got Red Hood And it's all my fault! Now, He might be dead already! I should've known, I-I should've figured it out quicker, I should've done something, DAMN IT!!”, you buried you face in your hands due to the building frustration within you.

“Don't be like that”, you heard Harley's voice as a hand was placed on your shoulder, she sat down on the bench next to you, you turned your head and eyed her warily, seeing nothing but concern.

“Don't give up. Clearly this Hoodie person means a lot to ya so you get off your ass and go get him, don't you Bat People always find a way”, you looked at her for a moment, then jumped up on your feet.

“Can't believe I am saying this but you are right Harley, I need go and I will find a way to save him, but before leaving I wanna know something”, you looked Ivy in the eyes as you worded your next sentence, “Why save me?”

“It was just my way of replaying you for saving Harls from that clown once”, instead of elaborating Ivy just crossed her hands over her chest waiting for you to leave. You gave her a warm smile, something they are not used to seeing, from a bat of all people.

“Thank you Pamela”

With that you were out of that detour and onto finding the path leading up to Jason.

•°•°

Somehow you reached the safe house without running into some kind of trouble, with how your day has been going, you were completely expecting something else to go wrong. Thankfully it didn't. You took out a spare comms unit, keys for your bike and some aspirin to dull the headache.

Soon you were whizzing past vehicles at full speed triying to contact anyone available at the moment.

“Come on pick up, pick up, pick up! What's the meaning of giving us an emergency button when no one picks the damn thing up”, you spoke into a dead line, wishing you could just bang your head against a wall, on second thought not a good idea.

Two minutes later the call was finally picked up and a screen appeared on the dash of your bike, it was from the batcave and you could see Dick, Damian and Bruce in sitting in front of the computer, Tim was connected from what you assumed to be the titans tower. However Dick was the first one to pop the question.

“(Y/N) what's the emergency? Are you okay? We haven't heard from you since last night”

“Look no time to explain. Jason's been taken by Pyg and I need you guys to give me a location. Now”, you said gritting your teeth as you narrowly missed a truck for the second time this evening.

“Todd's captured? *tt* his incompetence precedes that of Drake”, Damian's snarky remark made Tim snap his head up.

“Hey!”

“Boys”, Bruce's stern voice made them quiet enough for the time being, “Batgirl you are injured and your emotions can compromise the whole rescue, go back to the safe house and let us handle this”, Bruce ended the transmission and it made you angry.

'He said that they are going to handle it, that means they know where he is, so now all I have to do is to get Dick to spill it out'

You dialed Dick back, hoping he would understand what you are trying to do.

“I know why you specifically choose to call me back and No I am not letting you go head first into danger without any of us with you especially when you are compromised”, Dick's tone was stern but laced with concern.

“Dick the last time Bruce said he will handle it, Jason died, look I know what he is trying to say, I get him, I can't blame him for wanting to look after me but you have to understand I have to be the one to get him back”

“Why?!”

“Because I can't lose him again! The last thing that I said to him was that I might never forgive him! Never forgive him for something that's not even his fault! You are my only hope at getting him back, please don't take that away from me, please”, you pleaded with him as you slowed down the bike to a stop.

The line was silent for a while, the thought about saying more to him crossed your mind; what you are feeling about Jason, how much he matters to you, how you've failed him more than once, but ultimately decided against it and instead you just waited for his reply.

You deflated as soon as you realized that the line was cut but the ping of a notification caught your attention; The map to the possible location of Jason.

“Dick Grayson, you big softie”, you smirked, your bike roared as you made your way on to the free way heading fast towards the Gotham outskirts.

Meanwhile at Professor Pyg's 'supervillain headquarters' :

Jason slowly woke up, assessing the situation he quickly came to the conclusion that he messed up and now he is tied up to what seems like dentist's chair.

“Great, there has got to be a new record I've set in this family for messing up and getting kidnapped”, Jason muttered under his breath, he tried to tug at his restraints to get free but it turned out to be fruitless. A blinding light was switch on above him and he grunted due to the intensity.

“Man, what is up with you people and light?! Turn it off already!”, Jason said as he tried to adjust his eyes accordingly, when he came to, he was met with his captor himself.

Jason just stared at the man in front, moving towards him, wearing a pig mask and holding a butcher knife. He has seen enough crazy but this guy might just rival the Joker himself.

“Pyg know you broken. Pyg make you perfect”

“WHAT THE F--”

°•°•°•°•

(I like to think I am funny)

Cute little extra note: Yes it is the second time I'm leaving you guys hanging and NOPE I do not regret my decision.

Tagging: @ladyperceval

[gffa]

I swore for about ten entire minutes that I wasn’t going to do a set of recs for THE OLD GUARD, I was just going to watch the movie, indulge in a bit of fanart, and then I would be done. But then I was like HOW ABOUT I HAVE SOME FEELINGS INSTEAD? and here we are. So HAVE SOME FEELINGS ABOUT ANCIENT IMMORTALS AND REASONABLY ANCIENT IMMORTALS AND BABY IMMORTALS.  COME YELL ABOUT FEELINGS WITH ME, FANDOM. THE OLD GUARD RECS: ✦ An Unrecorded History by xpityx, joe/nicky, 1.1k    Joe closed the book and dropped it none too carefully on the table. He would have liked to have thrown it away—to prevent anyone else from reading it—but it was far too easy to make copies of books in these times, so he knew it would be no use. He also could not quite bring himself to discard something as precious as a book, no matter how poorly written it was. ✦ keep yourself alive for me by retts, joe/nicky, NSFW, 1.7k    Nicky grabbed Joe’s hand and pulled him towards the stairs, not that there was any resistance from Joe. ‘If I remember correctly, this one has two bathrooms, doesn’t it?’ ✦ let’s give them something to talk about by lacecat, joe/nicky & andy/nile, nsfw, 4.8k    In which Nicky and Joe take liberties with recounting history, because it’s fun. ✦ Family Dinner by dadvans, joe/nicky & nile, 2.4k    The only time Nile ever sleeps a full night and feels remotely part of herself is when she stays with Nicky and Joe, who shampoo brains out of each other’s hair in the shower and clean their guns on the couch watching Chopped reruns. ✦ one burning candle, one wind-whipped flame by Dialux, joe/nicky & andy, 5.1k    Yusuf dies, and dies, and dies, and lives, as well, for a thousand years. Nicolo’s by his side for all of them, and it’s not quite the love story of eternity, but it’s theirs: and that’s enough for them both ✦ Future Days by maroon, joe/nicky & andy/noriko, 2.1k    “Then why untie me?” The man grins, terribly amused, and awfully affectionate. Andromache wants to look away, but for some reason, can’t. Maybe because the look in his eye reminds her of herself, a lifetime ago. “Because my beloved is soft, and kind, and will flay me alive if he’d known I tied up a woman.” ✦ Islands of Hours by RC_McLachlan, joe/nicky, 1.5k    There eventually comes a lull, and so they go to Malta. ✦ take out by j_gabrielle, joe/nicky & nile, ~1k    It probably should bother her when Joe kicks the door to the flat open and promptly marches in to deposit their takeout on the living room table. All while he is tracking half-dried blood and mud on the shiny tile floors. “You, ah,” Nile says even as she hurries to pick through the night’s offerings. “They let you on the subway like that?” ✦ all a smooth plain, and the soil deep by inlovewithnight, andy & nile & joe & nicky, 2.1k    After London, they all need to rest. ✦ we are golden by retts, joe/nicky, ~1k    Joe lowers his gaze to the open page on his lap. The sketch is of a man on a charging horse, hair and beard whipping in the wind, sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The eyes in the drawing are the same eyes watching him now. His Nicolo. 'You were a hard fucker to kill back then, Nicky.’ ✦ An eagle’s old age, a sparrow’s youth by BakedAppleSauce, joe/nicky, 2.2k    Joe comes shuffling back into the room, heavy footsteps that mean he’s either tired, or not really trying, or both. Familiar as breathing. Nicky’d recognize him anywhere, walking among a million of strangers. In which some people are laying low for a while, in more ways than one. ✦ A Most Forgetful Death by RC_McLachlan, joe/nicky, 1.2k    “You’re an incurable romantic,” Nicky says, and though his expression doesn’t so much as twitch, Joe can hear the laughter languishing between the words, can feel it on his tongue and rubbing up against his teeth when Nicky meets him halfway to smear a kiss against his mouth. ✦ Luce e ombre by sheafrotherdon, andy & nile, 1.2k    The discomfort is so new that it startles her, and she searches her memory to remember a time before she was immortal: a time when a cut, a scrape, a bruise hurt for longer than a moment, long enough to interrupt sleep. The memories don’t come ✦ When I Am with You by takethisnight_wrapitaroundme, joe/nicky, NSFW, 5.4k    “You… would like to waste a thousand euros’ worth of champagne by pouring it all over me?” Nicky has to repeat it aloud to make sure he’s heard right. While spending some quality time together on vacation in France, Nicky has a surprise for Joe. And Joe, as it turns out, has a surprise for Nicky. ✦ the common tongue of your loving me by spokenitalics, joe/nicky, NSFW, 1.4k    “It’s just— Do you ever wonder how much we’ve forgotten?” Nicky asks, eventually. “How many names and faces and places have just… faded away from our memory?” ✦ i have loved you for a thousand years by owilde, ~1k    It’s him. Again. Yusuf shields his eyes from the blinding desert sunlight, staring into the near distance where a man is stood, alone, a harsh silhouette cut against the bright blue sky and peach-coloured sand. ✦ this is why by retts, joe/nicky, 1.2k    Small as it was, they had their own room in the London safe house, which was a good thing because Joe was prying open Nicky’s mouth with his fingers. Not with his tongue, much as Nicky would prefer it, but with three calloused fingers sneaking inside his lips as if Nicky wouldn’t wake up from the intrusion. He was on his back, Joe pressed closer to him than his own shadow. The slant of moonlight from the window illuminated Joe’s dark eyes as he bent over Nicky. Joe sucked in the corner of his mouth, a tell that he’d never shaken off all these long centuries. ✦ I Found Peace in Your Violence by j_gabrielle, joe/nicky, 1.5k    5 Times Joe and Nicky kill each other + 1 (of many) times they killed someone together ✦ life is very long by kaydeefalls, joe/nicky & andy & nile & booker & quynh & copley, 7.1k    Andromache tells him: “The Greeks used to have seven different words for love. Well. More, probably. But I remember seven.” She shrugs. “There are many ways to love one another, and life is long. We’ve time enough for them all. It’s the only thing that makes it worthwhile.” Nicky and his immortal family, over the centuries. ✦ take a breath by BeStillMySlashyHeart, joe/nicky & andy & nile & booker, 1k    Once they are safe, Nicky and Joe take a moment together. ✦ Between the Hour and the Age by hauntedjaeger (saellys), andy & nile & joe & nicky, 2.5k    “To the Art Institute of Chicago,” Andy echoes, “so that my breasts may be culturally appreciated in perpetuity.” She tips the bottle and lets out three drops. As they fall to the stone floor, Joe and Nicky rap their knuckles on the nearest pieces of metal: the other lantern for Nicky, the oxidized helmet for Joe. One rap for each drop. In another time, they might have struck their swords on shields. ✦ how we live by retts, joe/nicky, ~1k    Life, though, brings pain. Goddamn pain. Bullets that struck his cranium and pelvis – the big bones in the body – are forced out. The rest went through him, carrying organ tissue and muscle with them. Those lost bits have to be regrown. Bones realign and the ribs in his lungs retract so they can breathe again. So Nicky can breathe again. And when he breathes, he thinks, Yusuf. ✦ Paradeisos by Enneara, joe/nicky, 2.9k    Traveling through Greece with Yusuf after fleeing the Holy Land, Nicolò suffers a crisis of faith. ✦ The Language of Love by 1derspark, joe/nicky & andy/quynh & booker & nile, 4.5k    Or five times Nicky hears Joe speak his language and one time Nicky returns the favor. ✦ Le Vite by ScribeofArda, joe/nicky & andy & nile & booker, 8k    Nicky breathes out. “What did I miss?” he asks, staring out at the hills. “Why didn’t I see this coming?” After everything, after finding Nile and losing Booker and Andy’s new mortality, Joe is pissed off. Nicky is just tired. ✦ The god of my idolatry by Petra, andy/nile, NSFW, 3.4k    “You said you were worshipped as a god.” “I was.” Nile steels herself and asks, “Would you like to do it again?” Andy laughs and throws back the contents of her glass. “They don’t teach you pick-up lines in the Marines, do they.” ✦ love is not over by retts, joe/nicky & andy & nile, 1.3k    'Babe, do you know what this reminds me of?’ asked Nicky. Joe licked his lips and tilted his head to the side, gaze intent on the mole on Nicky’s cheek. 'What?’ 'The first time you drew me.’ ✦ Case Analysis by skeeno, joe/nicky & andy & booker & copley, 3.4k    It’s not totally out of the ordinary for the people Copley meets in his line of work to be extraordinary. But he’s intrigued by these four. ✦ compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience by Jack_R, joe/nicky & andy & quynh, 11.9k    ‘You are a shame to your countrymen and the lowest of the low,’ Yusuf said, ‘and your mother copulated with a dog.’ ✦ Everything in moderation (even moderation) by BakedAppleSauce, joe/nicky, NSFW, 6.1k    The novelty has worn off, of course, but it’s not the novelty that keeps anybody coming back, anyway. Novelty never sustains anything. ✦ What the Water Takes by xpityx, andy & nile & quynh, 1k    Here is a secret she will never write down. ✦ Stracciatella by ScribeofArda, joe/nicky & andy & nile, 4.8k    “None of us have any evidence of the ways we have died,” Nicky continues. “But you remember the fall, don’t you? You remember the first time you died, the way your blood spilled out as your throat was slashed. I remember the first time I died, when the love of my life drew his sword across my neck as I drove mine into his chest and we both fell to the sand.”

[nocapesdahling]

As the World Falls Down - Chapter 2

Helmut Zemo x Gender Neutral Reader

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Chapter Summary: In which we hear a little from Helmut Zemo, the city is flying, and you find a baby. Not necessarily in that order.

Rating: Mature (17+)

Chapter Warnings/Tags: Slow Burn; Here there be angst; Accidental Child acquisition; Mentioned child neglect by others

A/N: I made myself sad while writing this chapter, knowing that certain things mentioned will never happen. Here begins the forewarned angst. Maybe once I finish this story, I’ll write a fluffy AU.

Chapter 2: Beneath a Fallen Sky (Age of Ultron) - Part 1

Word Count: 2.1k

Colonel Helmut Zemo repositioned his earpiece. He was not a man prone to fidgeting and never had been, especially on the job, but he had counted his squad after they had gotten clear of the city and they were one short.

You were missing.

His family was safe, his squad was safe, but you were not. While he kept his expression neutral, inside was a different story. You had to be here somewhere. You just had to be. He would not accept any other outcome. Once they arrived at their base outside the city, he searched room after room and asked person after person and could not find you. You were not in the Mission Control Room or in your workshop fiddling with your gadgets. You did not seem to be anywhere, which meant that he had to consider the idea of you still being in the city.

“Q, come in Q. Where are you? Branko is in need of you. He broke his new infrared glasses and Ana tore her body armor. Don’t ask me how she did it, darling. We thought it was indestructible, but you know Ana. She took that as a challenge.” He let a hint of his desperation show in his voice. “Q, please come in.”

All Zemo heard was static before a voice, your voice, answered and he breathed out in relief. “Hey, Boss.” you started haltingly. You sounded tired and out of breath. “Well, I’m still in the city.” Here, you paused and Helmut’s hand clenched into a fist. “We’re in the air, Helmut... I don’t know if I’m going to make it. You’ll have to give Carl his birthday gift from me. I think he’ll like it.”

His smile was filled with clenched teeth and looked more like a grimace. “Even now, you joke, my Q. Even now.”

__________________

You held back a sob at the pain you could hear in his voice.

You had been meant to rendezvous with the rest of your squad at the checkpoint, but had stopped as you passed an orphanage. You thought you had heard a baby crying, but that couldn’t be right. The orphanage looked to be and should be empty. You strained your ears, knowing you couldn’t leave a baby or a child there to die. There it was again, a baby’s cry. You knew your squad was long gone, but you reassured yourself with the thought that you could easily catch up with them after you saved the baby.

You searched through the rooms on the lower floor before finding one with cribs. No baby was in sight. You paused, hearing fighting and chaos outside. Knowing that you had to move quickly, you hoped for another cry. Just as you were about to dig out your infrared glasses from your pack, there it was again. There was a cry coming from behind some hospital style curtains. You pushed them aside and found what looked like a newborn baby or close to it, abandoned before their life could even start.

You didn’t have much experience with kids, but hoped your time as a babysitter would help somewhat. You had been the babysitter for the family with twins that lived in the apartment complex a few blocks over. They had been cute kids, a boy and a girl, but they weren’t babies. You had been on the job when their apartment was bombed and heard the news afterwards. Even with your connections, you had no luck in finding out what happened to them. You assumed they died alongside their parents and mourned them accordingly. You were never able to bring yourself to watch The Dick Van Dyke Show anymore. It brought back too many memories.

You picked the baby up and cradled her to your chest as she blinked her eyes up at you. Well then, maybe not as newborn as you had supposed. Her eyes had already settled on a color that was close to your own. It was a bit uncanny. You smiled at her, tickling heir stomach as you checked her diaper. You crinkled your nose at the smell. “I see that’s why you’re crying, little one. Let me fix that for you.”

You laid the baby down to change her when her eyes scrunched up and she let out an almighty wail. “Oh my, little one. What strong lungs you have. What about a song? How does that sound, hmm?”

The baby continued to cry and squirm, and you knew this needed to be done quickly as the sounds of fighting had escalated outside and you didn’t want the robots to be alerted to your presence.

You began to sing, “We have been waiting for you. Now you are here. More perfect than I imagined. Our house is now a home. No matter where you go. Sunlight shines on you.” You sang the lullaby again as the baby stopped crying and blinked sleepily.

“There. All done. I’m glad you liked it, though I don’t know if I’m much of a singer. My mother used to sing it to me. You should hear my friend sing. He has such a lovely deep voice and my godson loves it when he sings ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’. I’m sure they’ll both be excited to meet you.”

You smiled down at her and searched the room, finding a baby carrier hidden behind some blankets and formula in the fridge in the next room over. You lifted the baby and put her in the carrier, strapping it to your chest and chatting idly all the while. You noted that she must be around 4 to 5 months old as she supported her own head just fine. You fed her the formula, mopping up her chin, and prepared yourself to go outside. You positioned yourself by the window, gun in hand and infrared glasses in place. There didn’t seem to be any robots in the vicinity at the moment, which meant that it was time to leave and catch up with your squad. You checked the baby one last time and were glad to see that she was still asleep.

You were ready. You stepped outside the orphanage and started to jog in the same direction you were going earlier, doing your best not to jostle the baby. Maybe, you could get through this and get both you and your little charge to safety. Maybe, you would see Helmut again. Then, the street behind you began to splinter and crumble and the ground gave a great lurch. The city had begun to rise from the ground.

__________________

You debated what to do and came up with some semblance of a plan that had at least a 65% success rate. That was not in the least bit promising, but it was better than the 0% chance you had if you stayed here. You needed to get you and your new passenger off the city somehow, and this was the only plan you had thought of so it would have to do.

You had ducked down in an alley that you recognized as not too far from one of your favorite cafes when your phone began to ring. Quickly, you picked it up and answered it with a brief glance at the caller ID. It was Helmut. __________________

“... Even now, you joke, my Q. Even now.”

“Well, Helmut, you know me. Always look on the bright side of life, even when the city is flying and you’re carrying an orphaned baby.”

“A baby, Q?” His tone was disbelieving and you could picture what he would have said if he were here in front of you. “Only you, Q, could get yourself into this mess. For someone so intelligent, you can be kind to the point of stupidity. I admire it as I admire you, but you must not let your compassion come before your safety.”

“Yes, Helmut. A baby. I think I’ll call her Alena. Maybe give her Heike as a middle name. What do you think? Oh, and you’ll be the godparents of course?”

You could hear Helmut let out a heavy breath and the slight hitch in his voice when he answered. “We’d be honored, Q. Heike will be thrilled and Carl will love having a new playmate. They’ll be like brother and sister I’m certain, eating Turkish Delights even when I’ve specifically told them not to.”

You laughed a bit wetly. “That’ll be nice. If we can get out of the city. We have something to look forward to. Cavities galore.”

He laughed and when he spoke his voice was softer than normal. “You’ve always had a soft heart, darling Q. My friend, I told you that your compassion might get you killed one day.” There it was. You knew he wouldn’t be able to resist commenting on what he sometimes thought of as a weakness of yours. You also knew that he wouldn’t have you any other way. He sounded composed over the line, but you knew him well enough to know that he was suppressing everything and trying to hold it back for you to keep your focus on your current situation.

On the other side of the phone, Zemo was glad that he was alone so no one could see their leader fighting to keep his emotions contained. Now was not the time to be showing weakness in front of his squad. They needed him controlled and composed.

You were the only member of his squad that he could be soft with anyway.

“I guess you were right, Boss. I guess you were right. But I’m going to do my best to make sure that today’s not that day.” You paused, holding in a sob. If you weren’t careful and if your plan didn’t succeed, then today would be that day.

Over the course of the conversation, you had been walking as fast as you could, without jostling Alena too much, in the direction of your apartment that was luckily in the center of the city. You dodged more robots, and had the brief thought that whoever had made these things had to be compensating for something.

Why else would they have made so many?

You continued, mustering your nerve as you finally came in sight of your apartment. “I love you, Helmut. You know that, right?”

“I love you too, my Q.” He responded without hesitation.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Helmut. The absolute best. Give my love to Carl and Heike.”

You had reached your apartment as the robots all began to fly towards the bridge side of the city, leaving the way clear for you. “Goodbye, Helmut Zemo. Use that exploding pen at least once for me, won’t you?”

With that, you ended the call and turned off your earpiece. You wanted to spare him what could be your final moments and selfishly did not want to hear a goodbye from him. It might be cruel of you to not give him the closure you now had, but a goodbye from him felt too final. It meant you would never see him or the little smiles he gave you, when he didn’t think it would be professional to laugh at your little asides during mission briefings, again.

Just the thought of never seeing Helmut smile or hearing him laugh again made your tears fall, which you quickly wiped away before they could hit Alena. You brushed your fingers through her baby fine hair and checked on her. “Still asleep, little one? It’s been a hard day for us and it’s about to get harder, but that’s okay because I have a plan.” Your eyes filled with determination as you walked towards your apartment’s makeshift workshop. You had just the project in mind for this.

__________________

You were unaware that in your squad’s base, Zemo was staring at his phone in horrified disbelief. You had hung up on him, and he was unable to help you from here. He was a powerful man, and this feeling of powerlessness both stunned and devastated him.

He could not save you.

Zemo threw the phone, smashing it against the wall, and screamed your name. Not Q, but your full name, the name he hadn’t called you in years. He received only silence in return. He trashed the room until his hands were bloody and as he fell to the ground, he finally allowed his anguish to break free and sobbed. He had not cried like this in years. The destruction of the room and his tears weren’t enough.

Nothing would ever be enough again.

He did the only thing he could do as he recalled your last words. “I will, my Q. I promise.”

Tag List: @rumblelibrary​

A/N: I couldn’t help myself with the reference to the Maximoffs. The Sokovian lullaby is the translated version of the one Wanda sings in WandaVision. Please let me know if you would like to be added to the tag list for this series.

[7-wonders]

Hardships Unnumbered

Summary: The quest to save Julia begins, but not everything is as it seems in this mystical land.

Word Count: 1969

A/N: Hi friends! This is the second chapter of my Labyrinth King!Michael AU fic, "It's Only Forever." I'll link the first chapter down below. I hope that you enjoy and, as always, likes, comments, and reblogs make my world go round.

(also there's a couple of little easter eggs/one big one and I'm really excited to see who figures them out)

Chapter One

Though you put your hands out in front of you to brace yourself, it doesn’t help you to discern which way is up and which way is down until you finally stop rolling. With a groan, you shove yourself up to your feet. Your palms are scraped and slightly bleeding, your jeans are torn at the knees, and leaves and twigs now adorn your hair. All in all, this is not the way you had hoped to start this mission to get Julia back.

Now that you’re already at the bottom of the hill, it’s easier to decide how to start this jaunt through the Labyrinth. After all, you certainly can’t go back up, and the solid ground beneath your feet only leads one way. The shining spires of Michael's castle at the center of the maze, closer than you had thought, rise high above you and act as a compass. All factors considered, you can definitely run this in a couple of hours. Then, once you’re both safely out of here, your first order of business is to call the cops.

Your confidence begins to fade the longer that you walk along with the wall separating you from the inside of the maze. There’s no door, or arch, or opening anywhere to be seen. Turning around, you look back to see if you’ve missed the entrance. Instead of finding one, movement catches your eye. A man, tall and willowy, cries out victoriously at something trapped under his foot. He seems to be your best bet, and you decide to approach him.

“Excuse me?” you say.

The man startles, obviously not expecting to see anybody here. “Oh!” he cries in surprise, looking at you as if you’re the first person to ever cross his path. His hair is bleached to look almost white, and he has a pair of oddly-shaped sunglasses with purple lenses covering his eyes. The checkered jumpsuit, complete with ruffles on the shoulders, both does and doesn’t go with the sunglasses. You’re not quite sure why the people that live here dress so funny, but it’s making you feel underdressed.

“Which way do I go to get into the Labyrinth?”

“Now, why would I tell you that?”

“Because you must have come from there,” you pause, looking down at the man’s foot when you hear a squeaking, “oh! Is that a fairy?”

“Mhm.” Your childlike wonder is abruptly swept out from under you when he kicks the small, blue creature into the forest.

“Why did you do that? That wasn’t very nice!”

“Go ahead and pick one up,” the man says, “you’ll see how nice they are when you’re missing a finger.” As if to prove his point, a fairy flies up to you and hisses in your face, showing off two rows of razor sharp teeth. “What is it that you wanted, again?”

You huff. “To know which way to go to get into the Labyrinth.”

“Did you try asking it?”

“I’m sorry, what?” You roll your eyes in disbelief before mocking him. “‘Labyrinth, please let me in!’ Is that what I should say?”

He doesn’t have to respond, for a sudden rumbling has you turning around. To your shock, there’s suddenly an open space in the wall that hadn’t been there just a second ago.

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m Gallant.” You want to tell him that you weren’t guessing his name, you don’t even want to know his name, but he continues. “Who are you?”

“(Y/N).”

“Ah, that’s right.” So this is one of Michael’s ‘subjects?’ After all, if your dreams have been right (and you’re still half-convinced this is just the elaborate scheme of some unhinged weirdo and not magic, despite what you just saw), then that means that Michael is also the ruler of the Underworld. With that logic, Gallant must be some sort of a demon. If that’s the case, you certainly don’t want anything to do with him.

“Well,” you say awkwardly, “I’m going to go now. Running on limited time, and all that.”

“You’re just going to go in there? Alone?”

“Yep.”

“But--but the Labyrinth leads to the Labyrinth King!”

“That’s kind of the whole reason why I’m here.”

“You’re going to get hurt in there.” Gallant gasps. “You could even die in there!”

You set your shoulders, walking to the hole in the wall and glancing back. “I won’t, but thanks for the concern.”

“Wait!” Even if you did want to listen to what he had to say, you couldn’t, for the wall closes back up on itself the moment you step through it. Mildly jarred though you may be, there’s not much you can do to change this, so you turn around and try to figure out whether to go right or left. Both directions look exactly the same, so with the flip of a mental coin, you go right.

After both walking and jogging for what must have been over a mile, you’re no closer to any sort of landmark that would tell you where you are or how close you are to the castle. There haven’t even been any corners to turn past, just one long, unending aisle. You’re starting to feel a little claustrophobic as you finally come to a stop, needing to take a break for a minute. Sinking down against the wall into a sitting position, you find yourself looking back and forth down the path. Both directions look exactly the same, for as far as you can see. You groan dejectedly and put your head in your hands, allowing yourself a moment of pity before getting up and trying again.

“Hey there!”

You jump at the sudden Southern-sounding voice. “Who’s there?”

“Me, of course!”

Looking around, you see a small door just to your left, and a small woman, probably less than a foot tall, standing next to you. Her curly blonde hair is pulled up into a ponytail, showing off her pointy ears. “And you’re...talking to me?”

“There’s nobody else around, is there?” The woman glances inside the open door. “‘Cept the missus, of course.”

Another woman, also blonde, pokes her head outside and smiles up at you. “Hello!”

“Why don’t ya come inside for a while? ‘Delia makes a killer gumbo.”

“Uh...no thanks. I’m just taking a break for a moment before I find a way to the castle.”

The woman’s face turns severe, and she holds her shawl tighter around herself. “You must be awfully brave if you’re so determined to go up there.”

Brave? You wouldn’t call yourself brave. Stupid, maybe, for bowing to the whims of the guy who’s kidnapped your charge, but not brave.

“But anyways, just go through the wall across from us and you’ll be on your way.”

You look in front of you to see the solid wall. “Through there?”

She nods.

Logic is telling you that this is obviously false, but, considering the same thing happened with Gallant, it can’t hurt to try. Standing up, you cautiously put your hand up to the wall, expecting to meet, well, a wall. Instead, you almost fall through a doorway that leads to another passage in the Labyrinth. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You will be if you keep going.”

You choose to ignore this, at this point knowing that everybody who lives here is terrified of their ruler. “Thanks for the help.”

The elf stares at your back as you walk through the new corridor, figure becoming smaller and smaller. “If she would have stuck around, I would have been able to get her on the right track back home, not towards that horrible man.”

From inside the house, a timer beeps. “Misty, supper’s ready!”

///

In the stone chamber of the King of the Underworld’s throne room, a three year old girl is currently winning a staring contest against a demon. Michael watches as the demon’s eyes begin to water (with blood, of course), before he eventually gives in and blinks. The little girl cheers before looking at Michael.

“My daddy’s gonna kick your butt, you know. He saved mama from aliens once.”

“Silence, child,” Michael commands, but he can’t help the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. It’s difficult to hide his amusement when this child is the most lively thing to grace his castle since...well, he can’t quite remember since when.

Being surrounded by demons of all shapes and sizes, with a variety of horns or extra eyes or tails, gets old after a while. Demons, quite frankly, are a bore. All they want to do is scare people and cause mayhem, yet continue to use the same methods that have been in place for thousands of years. If Michael’s being honest with himself, everything’s a bore to him here. In the early years, this job had been quite fun. Lots of naive humans to terrify and endless souls to torture.

Michael himself had been prone to naivety, then. It was easy to deal with the buffoons that called themselves demons when it seemed that, soon enough, he would find somebody to share this burden with him. After all, it was the guy upstairs who believed that emotions were for the humans. Michael, however, found it to be one of the most carnal pleasures. To love, and to be loved, seemed like the greatest sin. As the years passed, and the whole routine of ruling the Underworld became stale, Michael began to embrace the feelings of dejection, while simultaneously dreading the thought of an eternity alone.

That’s why, no matter the outcome of tonight, Michael would at least have something to add a little color to his black-and-white world. At the very least, the child would provide much-needed entertainment in the Underworld. She seems quite creative, which could potentially lend itself to some new and innovative torture methods. But, that would almost be a non-starter, considering the whole reason that she’s here, the whole reason Michael implemented this plan in the first place, is to get to you.

You, who managed to somehow win over demons disguised as beggars that loitered outside of the bookstore you worked for. You, who was constantly coming up with your own ideas for stories, creating and erasing entire worlds within your mind (a power far more powerful than any regular magic, Michael believes). You, who had somehow managed to vex and enchant him, without ever having spoken a word to him. He had seen you on one of his visits up Above, talking to a beggar demon as if they were your equal, offering food and shelter to their grotesque form. From then on, he knew that he had to have you, and from that, a plan was born. The Labyrinth, which he had subtly placed in every single one of your dreams for months now, was impossible to run through. You would inevitably lose. And when that happens, he’s prepared to accept your frantic offer where you exchange yourself for the child. He is, after all, a benevolent ruler.

“Mr. Michael?” Julia questions, breaking Michael out of his pondering.

Michael hums, deciding that he won’t lecture her on the importance of referring to rulers by their titles. “Yes, little one?”

“Do you have juice here? ‘M thirsty.”

“Abaddon!” Michael calls, the demon appearing in a puff of smoke. “Get our guest some refreshments.”

The demon turns to do Michael’s bidding, shocked when Julia grabs their clawed hand and skips along with them. “I really like your spiky horns,” she says.

Michael looks up at the clock on the wall, noting that only nine hours remain for you to reach the center of the Labyrinth and rescue the child. Perfect. He’s not one to get too cocky (yes he is), but these are odds he’s willing to take.

//

Tag List (send me a message if you want to be on this!): @sojournmichael @dark-mei-rose @blakescoven @xavierplympton @michaellangdon @trelaney @ajokeformur-ray @babyloutattoo89 @bloodcoatedeclipse @threeminutesoflife @annikathebananana @wth-trippy @thatonehumanbeing05 @dumybitch

[peachy-panic]

Only Temporary: Sebastian Tate

Hello. I was completely blown away by the positive response I got on the first piece of Jaime’s story (title under construction). Thank you to everyone who had a kind word to say about it! You made me really happy I made the mildly frightening choice to post.

In the interest of acclimating to the no-rules, freedom-to-post-out-of-order structure of this community, I wanted to introduce a new piece of the puzzle this time, with a new character that will come into play later.

Also, this piece goes into a little bit of the details, but for frame of reference on the BBU-adjacent thing: this story takes place in a not-so-distant future of the BBU, where WRU has undergone some changes. I look forward to exploring this world building more as I go.

Anyway, I’m rambling again. Thanks for reading. Here it is:

WARNINGS: General BBU warnings, talk of institutionalized slavery, classism, and general terribleness of large corporations. Referenced past homophobia and rough parental relationships, briefly implied/referenced non-con.

When Sebastian reflects on the day he graduated from med school, a sort of emptiness is the memory that first bobs to the surface. Among the cheers and camera flashes in the crowd, white coats and proud smiles, what Sebastian recalls most vividly from that day is looking out into the sea of parents and families and people there to support their loved ones on one of the biggest days of their lives, and not seeing a single person that had come for him.

What should have been one of the happiest moments of his life had been quickly overshadowed by the sinking feeling that none of it mattered as much as it would have if he had someone to share it with. Like there was something so fundamentally wrong with his life, that even something as objectively good and right and decent as becoming a doctor could be dulled over into a feeling of nothingness.

Perhaps, he thinks in hindsight, that moment had been foreshadowing for the following months ahead of him.

Watching rejection after rejection pour in from his top residency programs had felt like nothing short of his own personalized nightmare. He had spent several nights in a row on the phone with Alex, his undergrad roommate and only friend, clamoring back from the edge of many a panic attack, spiraling into all-out existential dread about the future and the past and what all of it meant for him if he couldn’t land an internship, let alone a real job out of school. To his credit, Alex never gave up hope in his friend. Or at least, he did a decent job hiding it if he did. Which was probably exactly what Sebastian needed to get through that particularly dark time in his life, and a good reminder of what a solid friend he had. Even if it was a party of two.

Unfortunately, Sebastian did not have the same faith in himself.

He was able to keep up some facade of optimism as his top five were picked off one by one. Telling himself, despite his devastation, that they were a pretty far reach, anyway. Even with good academic standing, it was famously no walk in the park to land yourself at John Hopkins or Mayo as a first-year. He even maintained a brave face as his first few safety programs reached capacity and moved forward without his name on the roster.

It wasn’t until he received his final rejection letter from some internal medicine place in Bumfuck, Idaho that he felt himself slip into dangerous territory. Sebastian knew himself well enough to know his own depressive patterns by then, and he knew it was only exponential decay from there.

Rock bottom came, as it did, in the wee hours of the night, after a full bottle of wine. Alone in his small apartment, surrounded by half-packed boxes with no destination, Sebastian found himself sprawled out on the floor with his laptop hot against his thighs. He couldn’t have explained why he opted for a privacy browser, but something about it allowed him to justify the words that he typed into the search bar.

It was a new low, and one he had sworn to himself he would never stoop to. Yet there he was.

He gave himself a moment to reconsider, to back out of what was undoubtedly a morally-gray train wreck waiting to happen as his thumb hovered over the enter key. And then the alcohol decided to override his moral compass.

Facility Care is the open secret of the medical profession. It comes with its fair share of stigma, and rightfully so, but it is notoriously easy to break into and pays a decent wage.

There are two types of people who end up stooping to that kind of employment. More often than not, it consists of doctors and nurses who had their licenses revoked or suspended somewhere along the line and needed a way back in. As far as Sebastian understood, they aren’t terribly ridgid about the particulars of each circumstance. After all, in the eyes of the law, the patients they would be treating are a price tag away from being entirely expendable.

The other percentage of Facility Care workers, and the reason Sebastian found himself staring at his too-bright computer screen with a sinking feeling of dread that night, are young medical graduates who find themselves in a tough spot. It isn’t difficult to spell out the logic behind that one when you open the WRU CAREERS tab on the home page and see the bright white words printed across the top of the screen:

LOAN FORGIVENESS.

It is shamelessly predatory and aggressively capitalistic, but Sebastian supposes that particular exploitation is pretty far down on the list of transgressions for an institution of legalized slavery. A few broke and hopeless medical students were hardly going to keep the Powers That Be up at night when they were able to rest easy under the weight of hundreds of thousands of stolen lives.

The whole thing is part of the massive PR overhaul the company did a few years back. In a world that was slowly inching toward civil activism and with the accessibility of platforms like social media to hold them accountable, WRU had to adapt to survive. Adaptation, in this case, took the form of changing the barest of minimums in order to keep themselves above board — to the public eye, anyway. Anyone who dares to take a closer look at the policy changes can see that it’s bullshit.

Changing ownership conditions to a rent-by-contract basis isn’t the humanitarian move they try to paint it as. In the end, it probably just equals out to more money in the company’s pocket when they can get more return on their “investments,” and a larger chance of exploitation for the people being moved around.

Getting rid of the Romantic division is an entirely meaningless gesture when they are still loaning out human beings with no legal rights and the inability to say “no.”

And offering an open job market with good wages and healthcare options to lower class individuals is a pretty convenient way to mute the backlash.

Essentially, you can tie a system of slavery and abuse up in a bow and make it pretty on the outside, but at the end of the day, it’s still fucking slavery.

Not that he has any room to criticize now. Now that he’s one of them.

In the end, Seb tries to justify his decision a few different ways. He is, after all, more or less a young man alone in the world. The odds are stacked against him and have been for a while. With only his own two legs to stand on, the only force stronger than his internal ambition is his instinct for survival, and he’s been running on those fumes for longer than he can count.

He had lasted less than two months under his parents’ roof after he came out of the closet at eighteen. It wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone involved; Sebastian’s parents had known about (and subsequently bottled) his… urges… since he was in high school. Probably before that, if he is being honest with himself. And Sebastian, for his part, had spent the better part of his teenage years mentally preparing for the inevitable. He can recall long, late nights he had spent crying into his pillow and the perfectly-scripted ‘coming out’ speeches he recited to his mirror when he was one-hundred percent sure his parents were asleep.

Of course, none of the preparation had been anywhere near adequate when he actually found himself wilting beneath the heat of his father’s glare, the weight of his mother’s grief.

But. He had recovered. That is the point he tries to remember when the memories sting fresh beneath his skin, even all these years later. He has more-than proven himself to be a survivor. He has worked harder than anyone he knows for every scholarship, every grant, every dollar to put himself through school. Sacrificed nights out and real relationships for night shifts at shitty diners and long weekends cramming for exams. It hadn’t been easy, but he considers it the price he had to pay for his independence. For freedom, to live the life as the person he is meant to be, despite his unfortunate odds. He spent years telling himself it would be worth it. That one day, his hard work would pay off.

He can’t stop now.

Sebastian doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off to reroute when his navigation has gone amiss. He is walking the precarious line of rapidly accruing interest and student loans and a dwindling savings account, and there is no safety net below him.

Beggars can’t be choosers, and as it turns out, beggars sometimes have to compromise their moral integrity in order to survive.

It’s only temporary.

That is the mantra that gets him through the (half-drunken) application process and the (disturbingly lax) interview process. It is a job. One job. In the medical field, though the details are up for debate, and it is real-life money for rent and food and a savings that will hopefully be sizable enough to get him where he really wanted to be. Which is… really, anywhere else.

He can do ‘temporary.’ And perhaps, some misguided part of him thinks he can do some genuine good from the inside, too. ‘Be the change you want to see’ and all that.

It is a far jump from the floor of his apartment, sloshed and exhausted and desperate, to the cold, sharp reality of walking into his place of employment on his first day of work. Ironically, it feels a lot like an echo of the emptiness from his graduation day.

‘Sterile’ doesn’t quite cover it. ‘Sterile’ is the expectation of any well-respected medical establishment, but the inside of the facility walls has been wiped clean of far more than bacteria and germs. It is completely devoid of humanity. The long corridors that connect the medical wing to the general ward are windowless and dimly lit by flickering fluorescent panels that had make his head pound for the entirety of his first week.

He is given an office, though it is a term he, himself, might use loosely, as it is more akin to what was probably a storage closet before the old prison had been converted into the state’s training headquarters. It leaves him just enough space for a small desk and two chairs. On his first day, he asks if it is okay to bring in some personal items to spruce the place up. The older, balding doctor who had been assigned to show him around merely shrugs, and Sebastian decides to take that as a yes.

The small, pink-framed photo of a six-year-old Sebastian Tate in his grandfather’s white coat and an old-school stethoscope around his neck is hardly enough to make the place cozy from the corner of his desk, but it’s a good enough reminder of why he has to make this work.

‘It’s only temporary.’

‘Be the change you want to see.’

He will do his best.

[runnyeggsnham]

"With Loki taking that value of order from Mobius, it just makes how Mobius took the value of freedom from Loki here that much more beautiful."

Oh my gosh. Thank you for welcoming my asks. I've been dying for obsessive analysis because I live for that shit.

And I'm so glad you pointed this out because from the moment they met, Loki said he'd burn the TVA to the ground, and Mobius blithely offers that Loki starts with his desk (foreshadowing???). Now here he is, happy to torch the place because his moral compass is not so rigid that can't weigh the difference between order and tyranny.

Which! If you think about it, Loki and Mobius are each moving towards that balance between anarchy and tyranny, free will and responsibility for others. The themes are really quite beautiful, and I honestly can't decide if the writers got there on accident because the quality of the writing is inconsistent.

As for Sylvie, I would hate for her character (and actress) to be treated like a throwaway. Aside from plot, it's also an awful pattern with female characters/actresses, but that's a different, more frustrating conversation for another day. That said, I think it would be fitting if she didn't change, if for no other reason than to pound home how difficult it is for Loki, regardless of variant, to break away from their destructive patterns. She very obviously doesn't have a plan for what comes after, and I don't doubt that the completion of her mission was not only empty, but anticlimactic. Her being lost forever at the end of time is pretty dark, and I hope our Loki will return to free her and then part ways, telling her (in Mobius fashion) that it will be okay, as another gesture of self-love.

I'm interested to see how the new Mobius will react to Loki's claims. I really hope, no matter the timeline, that he's inclined to believe and support Loki. I genuinely feel they bring one another a lot of joy. Like you said with the Pompeii quotes, they very much have the same... Inclinations as to what is considered "cool". It's easy to forget that before this series, Loki literally destroyed most of NYC with very little remorse. Now, he still finds destruction fun (I mean, I have morbid curiosity, too, I think a lot of us do), but he doesn't hunger for it in a self-serving way. If Loki is going to play a pivotal role in the movies, I hope his hero's ending is with Mobius. They could be guardians of the multiverse, preventing it from being caged and running completely amok.

Thank you - I love analyzing shows like this, so happy to oblige! That's something so lovely about this little corner of the fandom; it seems like every day I check the lokius tag, someone has a new comment or observation that's just amazing. 😄

There's definitely foreshadowing with that comment, absolutely. And I think the last episode even gave it two dimensions. Mobius just goes along with Loki's threat, and like you said, Mobius later is "happy to torch the place." And just, how great is it that Mobius remembered those words? Every little thing Loki did was always worth Mobius remembering. Ugh, that makes the finale hurt more... Anyway...I was thinking, the second dimension of that foreshadowing also makes it ironic, because Loki shifts course and doesn't want to burn it down once he knows everything that's at stake.

On that note then, how interesting is it that Mobius reaches that same kind of conclusion? Where Loki gets to see the universal implications of such a choice, Mobius sees the personal, for the people in the TVA. At least for now, none of these people have anywhere else to go. And when Ravonna's insistent that the TVA must be for some greater reason, Mobius doesn't immediately discount that, he proposes they "build it into something better." The last glimpse of Loki is running to find Mobius to fix it all, and the last glimpse of Mobius is him and B-15 manning the station selflessly. And as B-15 says, it's not about going back. The TVA won't be what it was...but it can be changed, still has a purpose, and neither of them will shirk the responsibility they have in leading that. And the way they end on "For all time." "Always." Love them.

I adore that entire balance phrase! Perfection, and so true. Yes, so much of the writing is inconsistent, so I will only wager to guess that the dynamic between Loki and Mobius was only intentional on the surface. It was necessary for Loki to be balanced by someone so that he could right himself from his starting state and kind of speedup, in a different way, the development of Sacred Timeline Loki. However, I think the heart of it - mainly from the acting and presentation of Loki and Mobius' bond - was not intentional by the writers and not to the degree that many of us in the audience embraced it, either. Though one has to wonder if it was greenlit because some higher ups did see that...I'm thinking of what iirc were some Feige quotes, here.

I too don't want Sylvie to be treated as a throwaway by the writers and I hope some of those highers ups in Marvel step in and change that. It is super dark for her to be left at the end of time by the writers. I mean, she has the wrist device, so she can and probably will leave the citadel (all contingent on her survival instincts kicking in, despite being devoid of a mission now), but as to us getting to see that...?

Personally, I would love to see her connect with Kid Loki and Croki. To kind of...find herself in that familial setting, find her after and explore what she wants, and transition on to that self-journey. Now with the universes converging, I hope Mobius and/or Sylvie go back to the Void for them and insist they join the world again. I understand why they didn't want to then, but they don't have Old Loki anymore, and the TVA is not going to stop them now from finding a home in the universe.

The reason I've thought about Sylvie having that journey with Kid Loki and Croki, actually, after meeting up somehow with Loki again and then parting ways with forgiveness - "another gesture of self-love", like you said, I totally agree and love that idea - is because I feel that's why we got Mobius in the house with the Lokis in the Void while Sylvie and our Loki were outside. I think Sylvie isolated herself. Kid Loki has a line like, "I hope they know what they're doing" to which I wonder, were they in there assuming that Loki and Sylvie were talking about how to enchant Alioth outside? Because that didn't happen. They weren't even talking, initially. Sylvie was clearly contemplating her car ride with Mobius.

Sylvie in those scenes felt so disconnected from the other Lokis. Which yes, highly likely to be a writing decision to make the romantic thing they were going for look less weird to the audience, but the way Sophia plays it, it feels like Sylvie doesn't feel she can belong or connect with them and doesn't try. And of course, romantic feelings or not, Loki wouldn't leave her to sit outside alone because he'd adopted her mission and taken on her purpose as substitute for any glorious purpose of his own.

So yeah, I don't expect the show to bring her back, but I hope they do so and do so in such a way that we get the hopeful not defeated self-acceptance that we see our Loki and Old Loki develop. And I just am warming to the idea of her and Kid Loki doing that together because Kid Loki's been to a very dark place of his own doing as well when he killed Thor. I cannot accept that he feels no regret about that - he totes around Croki like a baby, and was rolling with Old Loki, that's not an evil boy! And there's just such warm potential for found family dynamics among the Lokis, and that unconditional familial acceptance (and also a chance for sibling-like snark between Kid Loki and Sylvie, a bite they both seem to share) that would be such a shame to go to waste.

However, agreed, either outcome does feel fitting for a Loki... It's just a darkness vs hope choice for the writers to make regarding Sylvie. Another consideration for the dark Sylvie ending to make it more poignant is that she's the one who ran from their nature the most, arguably, and then suffers the most from her mission consuming her soul. Narratively, it does make an interesting juxtaposition imo that she ran and yet fell into ruin while our Loki was forced to confront everything and ends improved (at least, personally, not situation-wise yikes).

I also am super nervous about this new Mobius! Something that gets disregarded a lot in post-season fics is that when Loki was reeling from the Kang statue, Mobius gives up trying to get through to him and looks to be waving the Minutemen forward and turning away, shrugging off the situation? So, definitely, they would end up in a time theater again, right? Or something of the like. Which would at least give Loki time to think again. There's a great mirroring opportunity there, imo, where Loki can be the one entirely honest and calm in their 'first meeting' and Mobius is the one with confused questions and echoes Loki, all, "What exactly do you want with me?" Because Loki will be insistent that he and Mobius fix it. And Loki could even explain their friendship as Mobius seeing something in him no one else did, and that he has hope that all variations of Mobius will be at least half as good and kind and intelligent as the one he knew, and the fact that he hasn't already been pruned, he think he's right.... 🥺

Anyway! Yeah, I hope this Mobius takes a leap of faith on Loki and I think he will if he has even an ounce of those same inclinations, as you said. This Mobius does appear to be close to our Mobius, based on that final scene...he just doesn't have all the Loki reels inside his head. And yeah, the timeline of things is easy to forget. I think Loki has pivoted back to his true self of mischief and morbid curiosity (about destruction without evil intent?) with this series. I think he was ...freed, I guess, of a lot of his grudges and pain, knowing how that path ends in the Sacred Timeline, so it helped him get back in touch with those pre-corruption facets of himself.

He deserves that hero's ending! He has changed, and they've set him up perfectly to prove himself to others like Strange now too. I could totally see Loki and Mobius transitioning to these guardians of the multiverse type figures, with the TVA serving as a balance, like the record keepers and a defense force of the universe, as well as the courtroom and judges for truly exigent circumstances of like time travel issues. I freaking love that idea so much!! My heart actually hurts lol.

[luna-is-on-mars]

I'm so deeply sorry for worrying you @ajokeformur-ray and @jslittlebirdie! That was never my intention and it pains me very much to realize how unfair and careless my disappearance was. In fact, I still find it difficult to realize and accept that I'm actually seen, heard and even valued by the two of you, that I may not just be a nobody on the internet, but a very real friendship. I would like to apologize to you from the bottom of my heart for the sorrow that has arisen, for the worries and thoughts that you've made, for the horrific impression that I've given and all the other terrible things and feelings that my sudden absence caused. I swear none of this was my intention and I hope so much you two know that none of this has to do with any of you! I'm all too aware of how it feels and none of you deserve it in the least. For this reason I understand that you don't want to have anything to do with me anymore and yet I hope that you can accept my apology. What I did was neither fair nor justified, I know that, but I still want to let you know that I miss you indescribably. Even when we weren't interacting or I was online, you were always with me, in my heart and mind. The meaning that you've for me is limitless and I could never thank you for all the wonderful, great things that you've done and are for me. I hope to never forget you and I hope so much that my carelessness and thoughtlessness didn't ruin such a meaningful acquaintance!

I was wondering how I could ever get in touch again, tried not to be a coward just once, to admit my mistake and to apologize. I know that I've always needed you more than you needed me, that I've hoped again and again for understanding and acceptance from you. And I realized that this time is probably no exception. So if you're still reading this text, then the READ MORE will be followed by my explanation of why I disappeared at all, why it took me so long to come back and what was going on in my head.

So, as you may know, my apprenticeship started last Monday. In detail, this means that I have two days of school every two weeks and one day of school for the opposite two weeks. In the weeks where I have one day of school, I also work five days in the store, in the weeks with two days of school it is four days. This means that I only have one day off per week and that I'm awake from 5:10 or 6:00 am, until 1:30 or 2:40 pm at work/school, at 2:00 or 3:30 pm I'm at home and go to bed by 9 p.m. at the latest, so really too little time to rest, cook, clean up, etc. So currently I ride my bike about 40-50 km per week. All of this ensures that I'm quite exhausted, plus the overwhelming changes in my everyday life, with completely new and unknown environments, activities, people and above all routines (which is an enormous effort for me). But all of this has become more or less established for me and I very much hope that not too much will change now and that I'll get used to everything as quickly as possible.

All of these things are already exhausting enough for me, but the worst is that I'm now going back to school with people who're all too quick to judge and who've high expectations of me, who've little understanding and openness for people who're different, with problems and difficulties. People like me. I've already had a negative clash with one of my teachers because he asked me to do something that I couldn't organize in terms of time.

But that's not what's worst for me because that's one of my classmates. She has only seen me for two days, hardly knows anything about me and yet she hurt me so much and made me think that I came home and cried, so discouraged and hopeless. Actually, I'm not an overly "openly" emotional person, but I don't have too high an opinion of myself anyway.

She told me that I'm such a shollow person, invisible, irrelevant, that my being alone alienates me from my surroundings, that I would't understand anything within the real life, that all I'm and feel are just my thoughts, that I'm a waste in this world, that I'm alone and always will be because my lack of social interaction and experiences mean that I'm not able, don't have the right, to feel part of any group or society. She told me that I'm a nobody, incapable of anything, with a cold heart.

And let me tell you, I was overwhelmed, scared, sad and hurt. I actually thought there was some truth to it, and maybe it is, but after days of worrying, I realized that I'm SO MUCH more too!

All of my problems, all of my loneliness don't make me angry, bitter or cold-hearted, on the contrary, in fact. My loneliness and detachment are part of me, neither positive nor negative, they allow me to observe, understand and empathize. Maybe I don't belong anywhere, but because of me, no one else will EVER have to feel as if they're not accepted and valued for who they're. No one will ever feel as lost or hopeless as I do. For me, every single living being is something very special and extraordinary. Maybe I don't have a big or important meaning, but neither am I meaningless. If being part of one of these groups or societies means that it's okay to hurt someone, then I NEVER can and NEVER want to be part of them. I prefer to watch the world, stay away from people who have no idea of the meaning of their words and deeds, stay lonely. Because, in reality, my heart is neither cold nor dead, it's incredibly alive, full of warmth and love. My mind is filled with so many wonderful ideas, stories, observations, and experiences; it's not dull or wasted. My amazement, love, curiousity, compassion and appreciation are truly limitless. Maybe I'll never fully understand the people and life around me, maybe I'll never find my place, my home, but that's okay. My mother always told me that if I don't find my place among people, I'll always have one among the stars. I've no idea what or who is popular, how to do this or that, what's considered normal or realistic, what makes the average life special, worth living or beautiful. And that's okay. I realized, more than before, that I'm capable of something, something very important in fact! I feel, intensely, limitless and almost magical. I know what it feels like to have the rain pattering down on me, to feel the wind in my hair, to see my cats happy, to see the smiles of those around me, authentic and beautiful, how amazing it is to look at the stars, to be filled and flowed through by music. I know what it feels like to live, not to experience, but to simply be alive, to breathe, to see and to perceive everything, no matter how small, around me. To be overwhelmed by emotions, good and bad. Should I actually be meaningless, then I'm definitely grateful for all the meaningful things that I can experience.

I'm lonely, out of place, that's right. Maybe I'm lost, but maybe it allows me to see and discover so much more. I have realized that all of my weaknesses and difficulties, my loneliness, make me understanding and kind. Not cold or incompetent, insignificant or indifferent. I wish I could show her, make her understand that there's so much more than popularity or reputation, all of these wonderfully great things that she seems to overlook or perceive as of less value. And even though her words hurt me, I made up my mind to forgive her. I wish she would understand how complex and meaningful words, deeds, feelings, people and this extraordinary world are, I'm sorry that she understands and appreciates so little. In any case, I want to make sure that she, or anyone else, NEVER gets hurt by me.

I'm sorry to annoy you with my rambling, but that's why I needed time to myself. Unfortunately, I'll not have too much time and energy to be very active in the future either, but I'll try to read and answer all of your wonderful messages. I can't tell how quickly I'm able to do this, but I will try my best! After a really exhausting and intense week, I'm definitely back. And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the compassionate, thoughtful messages. Their, and your, incredible meaning is really difficult for me to put into words, so THANK YOU!

I miss you both so incredible much and I hope all is well with you.

[cinnaminsvga]

🤬 | seokjin

the sleep deprived series (n.): drabbles that i write when i’m sad and tired

→ frenemy!seokjin ft. e2l and the magnificent get-along sweater | 2K words → a/n: this is dedicated to my homie @jincherie​ who has been, as they say, wiping her ass everyday only to shit again. i can’t really do much to actually alleviate your circumstances except maybe making you smile, so i hope this can be your tiny ray of sunshine amidst the crap. this fic literally makes no sense because i wrote this within one hour so i’m sorry but pls know that ilysm!!

“Where’d you even fucking get this abomination?” you growl, struggling fruitlessly against the coarse fabric. In your fidgeting, your elbow knocks into Seokjin’s broad chest, causing more damage to your weak joints than anything. Even so, Seokjin grunts overdramatically, stepping on your toes in retaliation.

“Yoongi-chi, you know that I love you very much—” Seokjin seethes, his teeth clenched almost painfully as he fights to restrain himself from ripping the sweater in half, a la Hulk style. “—but I will not hesitate to stab you once I get out of here.”

“Not my fault that you both are acting like a bunch of toddlers,” Yoongi snorts, hip jutted out in contempt like the homosexual that he is. “And to answer your other question, I bought that sweater online after your last fight, when you two were literally wrestling on the kitchen counter. I didn’t know whether I walked into some intense BDSM play or a WWE ring.”

“You bought a fucking get-along sweater for us? What are you, some sort of Christian camp counselor?” you growl, kicking your legs out in an attempt to hit him. The slimy twink bastard jumps away gracefully, landing onto the loveseat opposite the couch that you were sitting on. He crosses his legs, opening his arms wide when your traitorous cat jumps onto his lap, looking to all the world like a terrible Bond villain from the 80s.

“If I was Christian, I would not put the two of you into a sweater together,” Yoongi says. He strokes your cat, who purrs loudly before pointing a contemptuous glare back at you, as if she was enjoying your torture too. Dumb cat. You never liked Miko anyway.

Yoongi continues, “Anyone would two eyes knows that you both are just one brawl away from fucking each other into the next dimension. Lord knows that your sexual tension could power the entire city.”

It’s Seokjin’s turn to snort, who has been relatively quiet in comparison to you. He’s also less fidgety, but that might be because he at least has the advantage and comfort of occupying 90% of the sweater space due to his oceanic shoulders. You once described him as “horizontally imbalanced,” which he did not find slightly amusing.

“I would rather place my balls into a panini press and feed them to Miko than to ever fuck Y/N,” Seokjin fake-gags, squirming uncomfortably in his seat. “It would be less hot for me to actually grill my penis than for me to sink into her hell-ish cunt. I swear, you could bake bread in there with how much yeast has accumulated from—“

You headbutt his chin before he can finish, squawking indignantly. The satisfying sound of his teeth clacking together in pain is momentary but worthwhile. “Excuse you, but it’d be an honor to fuck me! I’ve got that S-tier pussy! If my pussy was in a gacha game, people would spend thousands of dollars just to roll for my mystical coochie!”

Yoongi smirks. “So you admit that you do want Seokjin to fuck you!”

“What the fuck! No! That is—what the—I don’t!” You stammer, face flushing as you struggle to regain your footing in the conversation. Yoongi’s eyebrow raises, intrigued by your slip-up. “That is totally not what I meant, and you know it!”

Yoongi picks at his nails, pointedly avoiding eye contact. “Sorry, I don’t speak hetero. Prithee, explain thy peculiar mating rituals to one who does not walk the straight and narrow path.”

You slump back against the couch, forcing Seokjin to follow and fall backward with you. His shoulder hits you square in the boob, causing you to groan in pain. “Yoongi, just let us out of this thing before I lose a limb to this walking inflatable tubeman,” you plead, ignoring Seokjin’s glare.

“I resent that,” Seokjin inputs, but no one pays him any mind. Your attention is focused solely on the smirking kitty man in front of you, who grows smugger as time ticks on.

Everyone in your friend group is aware of the weird relationship you have with Seokjin. Ever since you met him in your freshman year of university, things were never peaceful between the two of you. It was always constant bickering, squabbling, competing… everything. Even Jungkook, Seokjin’s other sworn enemy, doesn’t argue with the elder as much as you did.

For three years, everyone just assumed it was your weird kindergarten schoolyard way of showing affection for each other, and at the beginning, it might have been. You and Seokjin, both of whom have never dated in their lifetimes despite being moderately popular while growing up, are unsurprisingly emotionally stunted and never learned how to just be nice to people you like. Affection who? Compassion where? To the both of you, physical connection can only be achieved through hair tugging and nipple pinching, and not even in the sexy way.

But at a certain point, things were starting to get tiring. Your arguments only grew larger in scale, to the point where it was getting hard to differentiate whether the bruises on your neck were from pinches or something else.

“I just… Ugh… When are they gonna fuck, hyung? I’m actually getting tired of their constant fighting,” Namjoon had lamented one afternoon, just a day after your last altercation with Seokjin. It had been a big one, where Seokjin nearly lost a tooth when you had landed a neat uppercut squarely on his jaw after he called your toes ‘a foot fetishist’s worst nightmare.’

Yoongi’s boyfriend had been staring listlessly into his bowl of soup for the past hour, and he was honestly starting to get worried when it looked like Namjoon had started muttering to himself in a foreign language. Yoongi almost thought he might have been scrying for a prophecy, begging for an answer to their most pressing question.

“What do you want me to do about it? Lock them in a room and let them out only after they’ve done the deed? Mixed bodily fluids? Performed the monkey dance to its climax?! No thanks, I don’t wanna be near them when that can of worms finally explodes,” Yoongi grimaced, shivering at the thought.

Namjoon shook his head quickly, face paling with him. “Heaven forbid. Maybe you can keep it PG? How about getting one of those get-along sweaters or something. I think they used those in kindergarten.”

Yoongi sighed. “Yeah, but the question would be how I’d get them into it.” He flaps his noodle arms around in demonstration. “I’m not exactly in the running for world’s strongest twink. Plus, years of fighting each other means they’re both stronger than I am.”

Namjoon shrugged. “Easy, just dare them to wear it. Make it into a competition. Nothing gets them more riled up than when they’re trying to outcompete each other.”

And so, that’s how the two of you had gotten stuck in a 3XXL Hello Kitty sweater that Yoongi had bought from Ebay. It has yet to be decided whether spending $40 on expedited shipping was worth it.

“Look, Yoongi-chi. We both promise that we will stop fighting once you let us out of this,” Seokjin says, smiling sweetly at him. Had Yoongi been younger and much more prone to the alluring temptation of the Straight Man™️, he might have caved. But Yoongi is older now, plus he knows when Seokjin is lying better than any polygraph test.

Yoongi rolls his eyes, waving him off. “Fat chance. You’d probably stop fighting for approximately three hours before getting mad about mint chocolate ice cream or something.”

“Hey! Give us some credit. We both agree that flavor is abhorrent, so we would never argue about that,” you retort, with Seokjin nodding furiously in agreement. You glance at him. “And I feel like we’d last at least six hours without fighting. What was our record again?”

“Five hours and twenty-two minutes,” Seokjin says.

You hum thoughtfully. “Okay, I can promise at least five hours and thirty minutes. Maybe.”

Yoongi groans, rubbing his temples in frustration. His souring mood even makes Miko jump away in fright, and the two idiots trapped in a sweater can immediately feel the dip in temperature. Uh oh, here we go!

“I am absolutely sick and tired of the two of you dumbasses fighting all the time! It’s embarrassing as hell trying to bring either of you anywhere in public because everyone mistakes your little catfights for strange foreplay or whatever,” Yoongi glowers. The two of you shrink into your seats, ashamed.

“We’ve only gotten kicked out of one Costco—” Seokjin defends. 

“But we did get fined for public indecency at the beach when I pulled your trunks down, which was totally unfair, by the way,” you mutter. 

“You literally threatened to, and I quote, ‘Suck the soul out of Seokjin’s dick until he dies.’ How the hell is that unfair?!” Yoongi exclaims. 

“It was a death threat! I would’ve accepted a charge for attempted murder, but that was not going to be a sexy blowjob, I assure you—”

Yoongi holds up a hand to silence you. “Face it, you both like each other. Whatever! Sure, you guys are the token straight people in our friend group, but that doesn’t make you bland as hell! Well, actually, it does but…” Yoongi pauses, wondering if it was worth lying. It takes a second for him to refocus. “Where was I? Oh right—“

Yoongi clears his throat, starting again. He heaves a deep breath, shoulders sagging tiredly as he puts on the sincerest face he can muster. “Listen, I just want to say that I care a lot about you, okay? And it sucks seeing the both of you hurting every time the other person says something really mean that neither of you even mean! If anything, will you please stop for me? If you really cared about our friendship, will you do it for me?”

There is a heavy pause as Yoongi strives to get his breathing back in check, his impassioned speech causing his fragile grandpa heart to race. He can feel his cheeks darkening in embarrassment, unused to using his “hyung voice” on Seokjin or you. Separately, the two of you are very reliable, never really needing him to scold either of you. Together, however… that’s a different story, but as the next eldest hyung, it really only fell to Yoongi to fix his friends’ mess of a relationship.

Screw age hierarchy. Yoongi would love to see Jungkook try to get Seokjin and you to fuck. Would absolutely pay to see the twerp squirm as he tries to even say the word “penis.”

After a while, Seokjin and you share a look. Yoongi watches with bated breath as he waits for either of you to speak, but he can sense some unspoken conversation happening between you. Perhaps, after years of exchanging blows, you had somehow knocked brain cells into each other and now share a weird psychic connection. Or, more likely, the two of you actually like each other and understand each other on a deeply personal level, so personal in fact that you could probably finish each other’s sentences, like—!

“We refuse,” you both reply in tandem, your joined voices echoing throughout the apartment. You both had said it so in sync that Yoongi might have imagined the other person speaking, but no—you both really did just say that to his face. In front of Miko. In front of his goddamn imaginary salad.

“Excuse me?” Yoongi squeaks. He cleans his ears with his fingers but finds no cotton there. These bitches! How dare they just throw his speech to the gutter! That shit took brain cells to think of, and he is not in the business of wasting his precious minutes by using them for productivity.

You shrug, leaning against Seokjin’s shoulder. He can see the ghost of a smirk tugging at your lips, thoroughly enjoying Yoongi’s confusion. “You heard us. We’ve made the executive decision to double our efforts, actually.”

Seokjin nods, not even shoving you off his shoulder like he normally would whenever you made contact with him. What? “Exactly. Honestly, we’ve been fighting for so long that we’ve kinda been just doing it for the bit at this point, and the fact that it annoys you so much is just the icing on the cake.”

Yoongi stares at them. His brain doesn’t feel like it’s connecting to his body at all; he feels like he’s floating. “So. What you’re saying is—“

“We know we like each other. Whatever. But we also like fighting, so who gives a shit if we’re having fun at the end of the day?” you shrug, pinching Seokjin’s cheek for good measure. As per usual, the elder retaliates by grabbing your finger with robot-like accuracy, before biting you there like a ravaging beast.

“And before you ask, no, we aren’t really dating. Yet. We kinda just wanted to piss as many people off before actually becoming official. We honestly didn’t think that you’d be the first one to crack.” Seokjin says, your finger falling from his mouth. The imprint of his teeth marks on your skin are plain as day, but you don’t look remotely bothered by it. In fact, you’re practically cooing at his ‘baby teefies’ like a psychopath.

“I—“ Yoongi stutters, at a loss for words for once in his life. He stands from the chair, but his knees give out from under him, causing him to tumble to the carpeted floor. He holds his head in his hands, shell-shocked. “So… That means…”

“Yeah, we’re kinda just freaky, I guess.” You muse before laughing hysterically when Yoongi begins to sob. “Hey, you’re right! We did make Yoongi cry! Do you think we could make Namjoon piss himself in rage when he finally confronts us too?”

Seokjin cackles, shaking your hand underneath the sweater. “If anyone can do it, I know that we can.”

And so, the two of you stand up clumsily to your feet, not bothering to escape the ridiculous sweater as you both waddled out of Yoongi’s apartment. From outside his door, Yoongi hears the sound of a new fight commencing, your shrieks resonating down the hall and for all the world to hear.

[out-there-so-it-isnt-just-me]

Hey guys...I have an idea if you aren't sad enough yet. I was struck by a painful comparison sort of crossover idea. It would never be canon, but  I'm mourning the end of Campaign Two, and I want to be sad and over-dramatic. Essek, but as Eliza from Hamilton in “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.” But, it’s for the entire Mighty Nien. Some of the lyrics are so on point for a poor Essek who will probably outlive all of his friends (Elves still generally live longer than Firbolgs by a good 200 years). Anyway, enjoy.

MN

Every other founding father's story gets told

It occurs to Essek, during one of the many periods without one of the Mighty Nein (the time that he dwells on them the most), how unfair their whole situation is. They saved all of Exandria, and no one knows. They are amazing, and odd, and frustrating, and no one knows. They will die loved deeply, but not widely. He knows they prefer it that way, all things considered. But, everyone else who saves all of Exandria becomes legends, while the people he loves best will be forgotten, remembered only by him.

And that. That sounds unbearable. 

So, in-between the times he sees the Mighty Nein, he begins to gather accounts. He writes down stories from those they helped, or simply left an impression on.  The people who have met the Mighty Nein have an air about them that he gets good at detecting. They attracted the oddballs and the outcasts. And if they're entirely normal (whatever that means), then they usually get a certain twitch if you ask for stories about interesting strangers. About half the time, a certain blue tiefling pops up in them. He almost has a heart attack when he hears  “go fuck yourself,” in Jester’s cheerful voice, when he knows Jester isn’t anywhere near there. He ends up getting the kenku’s story, and the voices of his friends are weaved into it. Essek thinks the Mighty Nein are the best people in the world, in their own rambunctious way. Part of him wants the world to love them as he does, or at least have the option to. Everyone should have a chance to get to know them, even if it's just through tales. The world would be a better place for it.

...And when you're gone, who remembers your name?

Who keeps your flame? 

Who tells your story?

Who tells your story?

Who tells your story?

Once there is only him and Caduceus left, this becomes a more prominent part of how he spends his time. After...after a long, long period of mourning. He has so much life left to live without most of the people who made it worth living.

I put myself back in the narrative

I stop wasting time on tears

I live another 50(0) years

He stops hiding his past and bears his sins and his story to the world. Essek tells his story so their story can be appreciated to the fullest; his part in their story emphasizes the depth of their compassion and chaos. He tells his story, but not as himself. Essek continues to drift from town to town under a vast number of aliases. Everywhere he goes, he spreads his stories of his friends, some serious, most silly. He disguises himself so he can stay alive to do a little more good, tell a few more stories, to truly live the life his friends wanted for him.

...I try to make sense of your thousands of pages of writings

You really do write like you're running out of time.

Eventually, he gets his hands on some of Beau’s journals, Jester’s diaries, and Caleb’s research. Well, he always had the research, but he gets to the point where he can share it with the world. He slowly begins to share and explain their thoughts and personalities with excerpts from those. Maybe he also has letters that he shares parts of (though most of those, those words specifically for him, he keeps to himself, for himself). He wonders if they'd be angry at him for spilling their private thoughts. But neither Beau nor Jester filtered their thoughts very much in the first place, and he keeps anything truly painful out of the public eye. Caleb, well, Caleb was always about sharing his knowledge and research, provided it wasn't dangerous. And they were all dead anyway.  One of the last things they told him was to be happy. And talking about his friends, learning more about his friends even after they were long dead, that made him the happiest he'd been in a while. So he hoped they wouldn’t begrudge him this small joy he’d managed to grasp and forgive him, should it be necessary.

I rely on Angelica

While she's alive, we tell your story

She is buried in Trinity Church near you

When I needed her most, she was right on time

Caduceus isn’t particularly interested in being well known or famous, but he never shies away from telling a story about any of his friends. Plus, he thinks it’s a good project for Essek. It's a way to continue to show his love for them and keep them alive in the only way they can be now. When Caduceus eventually passes away, he joins the eight other graves (Veth refused to be buried apart from Yeza) that lay in a tucked-away corner of the Blooming Grove. There is one space left, nestled between where Caleb and Jester lay, but it will be empty for a long time yet.

And I'm still not through

I ask myself, what would you do if you had more time...

...You could have done so much more if you only had time

And when my time is up, have I done enough?

Will they tell your story?

He keeps adding to his tale; he stretches it longer and longer with every shred he can remember. But, even his memory, as long as it is, runs out eventually. And their story finally ends, but he doesn't. He throws himself into activities that remind him of them. He does a lot of gardening ( mostly tea, poisonous plants, and flowers). He teaches children some rudimentary dunamancy in his spare time, for Caleb. He messes around with alchemy a little. Eventually, he publishes the last of the research that he and Caleb worked on together; ones that took him decades to solve by himself. He even finds himself drawing a surprising amount of dicks on random surfaces near the very end.

Oh, can I show you what I'm proudest of?

...I help to raise hundreds of children

I get to see them growing up

The time that doesn’t go towards his now worrying amount of hobbies, he spends doing what he has done since the beginning: caring for the Mighty Nien’s true legacy. He looks after and visits their children. He takes care of descendants of Luc, of Jester and Fjord, of the random teenager that Beau and Yasha seemed to adopt completely on accident, of TJ, of the Clays, and of a lovechild of Kingsley’s that found out who his father was and then somehow found Essek himself to learn about him. In an embarrassing show of sentimentality, Essek always keeps at least one offspring of Caleb's very first cat. There is a very funny story about Caleb thinking the animal was spayed when it was, in fact, not. He visits the different generations every couple of years or so (he has a schedule). The drow makes sure they know the stories of their ancestors, the adventures of the Mighty Nien; he tells them it's all real. He gives them ways to contact him if they’re in danger, or need any kind of help really ( he has funds to spare at this point). Every once in a while, a few of them will get it in their heads to write him yearly updates. It’s nice.

In their eyes, I see you, Alexander

I see you every time

And when my time is up

Have I done enough?

Will they tell your story?

It is strange and painful to see the attitude and mannerisms of the Nein in the descendants who have never met them. It is wonderful too. His stories of the Mighty Nein have become well-known tales that no one can decide how much is truth and how much is fiction (it’s true, it’s all somehow, hilariously true). He preserved them in his own way, in the right way (time travel is something he thinks of with a growing hunger the more years pass between when he last laid eyes on his friends). But in these men, these women, these children, they are truly alive.

One little half-orc girl has Jester’s mischievous eyes and infectious joy. Another halfling man squints just like Veth when she's trying to figure out if someone is bullshitting her. There’s a boy who charmingly bumbles his way through most social encounters, as Fjord did. A firbolg woman who has Caduceus gentle smile. A tiefling girl with all the audacious bravado of Kingsley. A man with eyes just as piercing as Beau’s, and a tongue just as sharp. Even Yasha’s kind and gentle demeanor somehow shines through in one small boy, despite her having no direct descendants. He gets to see these flashes of his friends in those who survive them, and it thrills him as much as it cuts him. (Sometimes, when the current cat has ruined some item of his, the pleased look it wears resembles the quiet glee Caleb exuded after he pulled a successful prank, but he’s pretty sure that’s just fanciful thinking.)

One of the last things Essek does before he dies is fully publish, in print, the entire tale of the Mighty Nein. How they came together, every person they helped along the way. The love, the loss, the kindness, the chaos, every moment he could recall or record was put into this one account (necessarily stretched out into several separate books). There is only one set, and he hands it over to the Library of the Cobalt Soul in Rexxentrum. Then he goes on his lonely way.

Oh, I can't wait to see you again

It's only a matter of time

There are now ten graves, each one as unique as its owner, nestled in a small corner of the Blooming Grove. One grave has the dirt still fresh around it. And somewhere, beyond the Divine Gate, there are cheers and laughs and cries of joy as the Mighty Nien become the Mighty Nine once more.

fin.

MN

It’s my head-canon that by the time Essek dies he’s practically a mythical figure among the select families he looks after. It's  to the point that in certain locations ( that have a lot of Nein remnants) he becomes a local legend, the guardian angel of nien (no spelling specified and with no real distinction of what that means), with skin like the night sky who drifts (literally) through towns and helps those who meet a certain requirement, unknown to the general populus. There are rumors that certain people have bestowed upon them a token they could use to call upon the angel’s aid. Of course, the people who have the tokens (sending stones or something similar. IDK how he would get that many wondrous items, but I focus on satisfying narrative not, like, plausibility) know Essek and know that he has died and that the tokens no longer work, but for a while they keep them as heirlooms, to show the love of one drow wizard for the friends he had long, long ago. Eventually, one of Veth’s descendants sells off their set because sending stones are worth A LOT, and the money seemed more practical. They have their stories; those are enough. 

And before anyone complains about the Kingsley bit, I felt compelled to add a smidgen of Kingsley content because Essek loves Jester and Jester’s with Fjord and Kingsley is with both of them for years. I’m sure they get to know each other well enough that seeing traits of Kingsley is vaguely nostalgic and warming, even if it lacks the depth and love he feels for everyone else. Also, there’s no convincing me that Molly/Kingsley doesn’t have at least one illegitimate child running around from various trysts, he was basically the Scanlan of this campaign. It goes with the hedonistic vibe he gives off.

Also, is it normal that I completely designed the Nein’s burial site in my head because I did? Like I imagine they’re all spaced out in a circle. It’s almost like a stone gazebo but there’s not really a roof; it’s just a group of nine pillars that support a stone circle. The entrance is the Traveler’s door with dicks around the edge, and each of the nine pillars/supports is designed to look the knowing mistresses staff. The stone circle is covered in carvings of storm clouds and lightning. Wires are strung across the center of the stone circle to form the symbol of the Cobalt Soul. Not that you can see the wires, because vines have been grown all around them. Once you step through the Traveler’s gate, you’ll find yourself on some kind of rough mosaic floor, with depictions of a peacock, a pyramid, a snake, a sun, a moon, and (oddly) a pirate ship. The mosaic is made up of buttons of various materials and shapes. In the center is a saltwater pool/spring (depending on how magical we can get idk) and floating above it is an eternal flame encased in some sort of dunamancy magic that doesn’t  actually exist that keeps it floating and eternal. Look I'm running out of ideas.

I can’t imagine what everyone’s grave marker would be, but I’m pretty sure Yasha’s is a simple stone that says "YASHA NYDOORIN: wife of Zuella and Beauregard Lionette," and the place where’s she’s buried is just covered in wildflowers that spread outside of the gazebo to encircle the structure entirely up to the gate. Also, everyone has a stone tarot card by their grave with the picture and designation that Molly gave them. Beyond that grows a weirdly dense thicket of trees and bushes that make finding the Nein's resting place rather hard. It’s said only the descendants of the Nein’s family or those favored by the Wildmother (or Traveler, Or Ioun, or Storm Lord) can find their way to them. And one tree, directly behind Yasha, is dead, struck by lightning who knows how long ago. 

And they’re buried in this order: Yeza/Veth, Caleb, Essek, Jester, Ford, Kingsley, Yasha, Beau, Cad. I know there’s a good chance that a) Kingsley would just eff off and die somewhere unknown and b) Cad would probably want to be buried with the rest of his family, but shhh let me dream.

[autistic-singer515]

Here’s another scene i want in future Animanics reboot epsiodes. That’s when the Brain was looking for Pinky after yelling at him and kicking him out eariler. When the Brain couldn’t find Pinky, he starts to have conflicted feelings towards him. He starts to get angry and declared taking over the world without Pinky. But he would also question about his desire to conquer the world. He starts crying because of how frusterated he was with himself for not showing enough love and the fact that he misses Pinky and also the fact that he hurts him and other people.

Transcript:

The Brain looked everywhere for Pinky, including the entire Warner Movie lot, the city and the forest.

The Brain: “Pinky?! Where are you, you idiot?! Pinky! PINKY!!!!!!!!!!”

Later on, the Brain went back to the Acme Labs to see if Pinky came back or not.

The Brain: “Maybe Pinky realizes that he was stupid and returned to the lab for me!”

The Brain hoped that he was here. He couldn’t bear the lonliness any longer despite trying to conceal those feelings.

The Brain: “Pinky, you better be here, you nincompoop!”

The Brain looked inside his cage again. He looked from left to right. Pinky didn’t seem to be anywhere.

But the Brain looked at the mouse wheel where Pinky usually runs at. He could’ve sworn he saw a familiar lanky mouse running on the mouse wheel.

The Brain: “Pinky?....”

The Brain walked closer to the laughing Pinky and felt a relief in his heart. He smiled at the sight of his friend.

The Brain: “Pinky!”

Pinky: “Ha, ha, ha, ha! Narf! Hello Brain! Join me at the wheel!”

Was the Brain seeing things though?

He shook his head and closed his eyes. As he opened them, Pinky was gone. He wasn’t even there. It was all in the Brain’s hallucination of sadness.

The Brain’s relief in his heart faded away and it was replaced with pain and worry.

The Brain: “You’re not here.....”

But the Brain’s sadness turned to anger.

How could Pinky do this to him?

Leaving him alone like this!

The Brain’s clenched hand shook angrily. His shoulders shook too. He bared his teeth. He decided he had enough of Pinky’s stupidity.

He doesn’t really understand how he feels!

He doesn’t even understand love!

He’s too stupid to know anything!

The Brain: “Well if you wanna leave me like this, FINE!!!! I never need you anyway! I’ll take over the world myself!”

The Brain’s eyes became blood shot with anger.

The Brain: “Without you, I’ll finally take over the world! I’ll take my future self’s word for it! Trusting you was a mistake! Trusting fools was a mistake! But I won’t kill you! That would be inhumane! I’m not a monster!”

His fist kept shaking as he put them down. Then the Brain rememebered the time he abused Julia and Pinky. His clenched hands extended out. He knew what he did to them was still inhumane.

The Brain: “I’m not....”

But the Brain tried to stay focused on world domination regardless how his other half felt. He couldn’t feel betrayed or hurt again. Nobody trusts him anyway. He knew he was better off alone just so he wouldn’t have to feel pain again. The same feeling he had in his childhood.

The Brain: “But I’m happy alone.... It’s better this way..... I’m fine!.... I’m really fine!....”

The Brain’s sadness and lonliness were beginning to overcome him in his head despite fighting back.

The Brain: “I just have to succeed this time! I have to let everyone in the world know that I’m a strong leader!.... To destroy my trauma from the past!..... And make the world a better place!..... And that will make me happy!.....”

But deep inside his thoughts, his regrets was getting to him too.

The Brain’s thoughts: “Pinky......! Where are you?......I shouldn’t have yelled at him or kicked him out..... I told him that he was just using me just to hurt and betray me!..... Please come back!.... Do you hate me now?..... Oh dear.... Now I really overdid it this time....”

Pinky must be sad and lonely out in this cold world right now.

Or worse, did Pinky die from some sort of accident? Or did he kill himself out of depression?

Tears rolled down the Brain’s cheek and fell on the floor. He was startled by it. He looked at the tear stain on the floor tearfully despite trying to look away and block away his sadness.

The Brain’s thoughts: “I’m becoming less like myself lately..... I’m so confused... Is this right?...... Is taking over the world really worth it if I hurt Pinky and everyone else for that matter?....”

The Brain knew he was getting worse and worse mentally ever since his neverending failures of world conquest and his childhood trauma. His anger was getting much more intense than ever before. He strayed away from Pinky more than usual after more and more failures. He ignored Pinky’s secret depression when he tried to be happy for him. He started to want to take over the world more so by himself. He felt as if his angry green mouse self was consuming him again.

The Brain’s thoughts: “The trauma is getting the best of me!..... If this keeps up..... Our terrible future will come true!..... I’m getting worse!.... I just know it!.....”

The Brain’s tears kept falling. He hugged himself. He tried to fight back.

Must keep focused on world domination!

No more helplessness!

No more weakness!

No more compassion!

No more sentimentality!

But why won’t the tears stop?

The Brain: “These tears..... What good are they?!.... Make them stop!.....”

But the tears hadn’t stopped. His depression, frustration and guilt was still getting to him.

The Brain’s thoughts: “I just want to be loved!.... Why can’t I show love?!......”

But after that scene, Pinky would pop up on the tv camera screen. He was locked in a cage and abused caused by Julia’s mood swings. The scene would be kinda similar to the fanfic Cheese and Chalk’s scene at the beginning where Pinky scolded the Brain for abusing Julia and told him that it would be his responsibility to help her as well as save him.

[bakubitch-minusultra]

Not Alone: Chapter One

-> an apocalyptic series with bnha characters but without quirks because im the writer and i can do whatever the fuck i want :3 anywho i hope you enjoy :)) The main love interest will be reader and bakugo i think edit: it is not going to be just bakugo it will be a love triangle k byebye for the second time oh also this is fem reader k bye lol

-> Word Count: 1.9k (I lowkey popped off)

-> Warnings: None rly just mentions of guns and blood

-> Tag list: @5sosfckss @laudthingcat

Chapter One

People would tell you that the world was made for two, but as Y/n sat in the silence of the old cellar two felt like a long lost dream. It was like wind rolling around you gently, trying to persuade you to move in all directions. It’s an ice cream cone on a boardwalk with the sun above and the salty ocean below. It’s a perfect place no one tries to remember.

Any mind left functioning in the world has evolved to be built for pain. Maybe once upon a time there had been a time and place where love and compassion was something for people to look forward to in life.

This wasn't that world anymore.

To Y/n, that type of world never existed anyways. The world had always been a selfish dark place where love is fleeting and the people are brutal. Once upon a time, true love accidentally affected those who were fortunate. But like every other beautiful thing, they polluted and corrupted it, and like everything else, it got sick.

Y/n’s seen it all. And in the end when it’s taken away the people who protested or cried the loudest, were the one who had taken it for granted the most.

Y/n looked around the cellar, in three days she barely moved. It’s her rule and because of it she can leave easier with the feeling of safety. She always ended a shopping trip with a quiet few nights in a cellar or basement.

Y/n wasn’t born to do this, she had to learn to move around quietly, how to sit still. She knew what she had to do to survive. She had lain amongst the dead, she had run through the dark woods, having to feel her eyesite clear like a wild animal and embrace the darkness.

She crept out into the beam of dust lingering in the stale air, sparkling from the sunlight that found its way down two stories into a dark cellar. The beam of light almost made her smile as she admired the light's determination. Y/n shook her head to bring her thoughts back to the harsh reality as she took her first step towards the stairs.

The explosions never seemed to destroy this home in any way. The stairs were in one piece, which had become a bit of a novelty to her. The old farmhouse was too far from any major centers or roads to have even known of the problems, at least in the beginning. The blood stain smears on the white siding outside proved that sickness has touched every single inch of this world.

The hard wood creaked under the weight of her first step. She held her breath and hoped that the creak went unheard. She slowly took another step up as she let out a shaky breath. On the third step she hesitated, listening for any sort of alarming sounds. Her heart was beating like it was trying to free itself from her constricted chest. She waited a second longer, it was another rule of hers. Never leave when you feel safe, always wait three more seconds.

She put her feet on the far sides of the stairs, where the rusty nails attached the boards to the frame. Shallow breaths make sounds in this new world, in the borderlands anyway. There was no electricity, no cars, no phones, no buzz. The world now sits quiet, as if it was sighing and taking a long inhale after what seemed like forever with mankind and the noise pollution. Y/n was at peace when she was at home, but here in the open world she was one of them. One of what was left of humanity. What scrambles to survive, most of the time seperate from everyone else.

Y/n looked through the cellar door and tried to keep her anxious heartbeat low and her breath quiet. She knew that her body needed to make some noises, but others she could control.

The house was simple. Farmhouses were always the best houses according to Y/n. They always sat a long way off the road, not that roads mattered anymore. They always have canning and pickling that would outlast any human. They always have safety supplies and extras of everything. Farmers lived the longest, just as Y/n’s father said they would.

Two trips a year was rarely enough, but Y/n knew that if she traveled any more than that she would be caught.

She walked through the small kitchen and was amazed at how pristine it still was. Everything was still in its place, just as it was the first time she came to the farmhouse, although now layers of dust had found their way into the home, along with the bits of weeds that grew in through the cracks. With no busy grandmother to buzz around cleaning and dusting the mess, everything shows the house’s years of abandonment. Vines grew up the sides of the house, like all houses. As always, she stood against the doorframe and put her hand at the top of her head as her measurement. She turned and looked at how much higher it is than the mark she foolishly put there last time she came.

She looked away from the mark and pushed away the memories of the happy little girl she used to be. She walked low to the ground toward the backdoor. She couldn’t help but laugh inside at how ridiculous it was that she still felt safer going through the backdoor, even though there was no front or back. There were only doors. They didn’t go anywhere anymore. There was no direction.

Nothing goes anywhere.

Y/n positioned the heavy pack on her back carefully. It contained jars full of heart and soul and survival. To Y/n each jar was like a gentle kiss from the old lady who canned and pickled from her own farm of fresh vegetables. She assumed there are no preservatives, no added colorings, no added salt. There weren’t any labels to contradict anything. For all she knew there was MSG in everything. Y/n found herself smiling at the letters MSG, they meant something to humanity once. That was before.

She fought back memories of nice old ladies and the world before. She had been to many worlds in her life, and being nineteen felt more life sixty most days. She took a deep breath and creaked the door open, as if the wind had opened it. She closed it and opened it again. It felt like the wind coming off the brown dirt field was playing with the door.

Her sharp eyes focused on the dirt yard. Nothing moved, everything was standing still. She knew that she should’ve been waiting for the night to travel, but she had stayed too long this time. She needed to get back. Things only lived so long alone, she knew this well. Her garden had died many times before.

The old barn door swung in the soft breeze, making it creak slightly as the long tan grass swayed and small pebbles scuttled along. Everything moved in sync with the wind. Y/n learned how to spot that.

Y/n pulled the door and cringed, she knew this was always the worst part of the walk home. She hated leaving this house.

She felt her eyes squint shot, as the intense light of the sun nearly blinded her. Her pack felt like tons of bricks on her back, but she took her first steps, desperate for the walk to be over with already. She tried not to jostle her bag too much because she didn’t want to break any jars. She learned the hard way that pickle juice is hard to get out and that backpacks were even harder to find.

Walking across the dirt and gravel driveway to the field was the worst. Y/n looked around, walking with her shotgun in her hand. She usually practiced often with her rifle and silencer at home. But on the road she always brought her shotgun. She saw it as her lucky gun. The thick cold metal made her feel strong, even though she knew what strength was.

To her, strength was not pulling the trigger. At this point in life she has yet to prove her strength to her own self. She always took the cowards path. Just like her dad told her to.

Her boots crunched along the path. She walked softly but some noises were unavoidable. She knew the noise would last until she reached the huge wheat field. Then she would be a whisper in the wind. She entered the field without looking back, when she reached the field she knew the rule.

Her legs groaned under the first steps, but after the first quarter mile she started to warm up and she enjoyed running. Her back was the issue, what with the pack being so much heavier than she had ever trained with. She gripped the shoulder straps tight until her arms couldn’t stand it for another second. Even then, she kept pushing until she reached the forest.

She ran deep intothe woods, always on the same side. Never the same path but always the same destination. The branches whipped past her. The edge of the forest was always the thickest. As the forest clears I see him. He’s smiling like always. He’s calm. He doesn’t run and jump. He waits to confirm that she hadn’t brought anything with her. He’s seen them before. He knew how bad it could be. Together both of them had seen the people get swarmed and taken, usually women.

“Hades.” Y/n whispered out of breath.

Instead of the warm greeting they both want, she quickly turned around and held her shotgun up. She walked backwards as Hades sauntered over to watch the forest. They sat behind a tree and waited and after a few minutes she put the pack down gently and climbed one of the huge trees. The thick branches were very rough against her hands. She sat on a branch and looked through her binoculars from the high viewpoint.

She could see the entire field of brown hay from where she was sitting. Y/n let herself have a weak moment and let herself imagine living in the farmhouse one day and harvesting hay. She felt her eyes strain as she tried to find even a single strand of grass moving in a way that would mean she was followed. She looked at the farmhouse sitting still and alone and hoped it would stay that way until her next trip.

She looked past the farmhouse and watched everything move just as it should. After coming to the conclusion that no one had followed her, she climbed down the tree, eager to lay in her own bed.

When her feet touched the dry ground, she looked at Hades, whose yellow eyes confirmed her thoughts. They were alone. She dropped to her knees and greetedhim as he bounded towards her. The large tundra wolf licked her face and raised his massive paws up to hug her. She would hug him so often when he was baby and one day he hugged back.

He nuzzled at her softly and nipped at her arms. She rubbed his huge soft ears and stood up. She patted him gently on his head.

“Ready?” She asked.

She picked up the heavy pack and adjusted to having it on her back again. The walk home would take an entire day if she could manage to keep a solid pace. Hades started the walk home by heading past the old broken oak tree. Their meeting place.

--

I worked really hard on this and so i hope people enjoy this although ik this chapter is a lil boring but i promise next chapter will be better k goodbye have a good day love u

[lilacyennefer]

Burning Desire

@oldstuffnewstuff​ asked: from the NSFW prompts - let's try #4 Are you trying to turn me on right now? Because it’s working.” #15 “Forget the bed. Let’s fuck right here.” #16 “Fuck, I love the sounds you make.” with either Will from TF or Ray from the Gentlemen. Thank you 💖💖💖💖

A/N: I had so much fun with this, holy shit. I choose Will because there isn't much single story with him. I hope you like it! Also, since gifs make your post disappear in the tags I use some of the edits I made for my Charlie fan account on instagram.

TW: SMUT, it’s literally pure filth 

It was Will’s idea to go to a dinner with Benny and his new girlfriend so he can check her. Will was always worried when Benny had a new girlfriend, knowing his little brother gave his heart and soul to the person who he was in love with, ending up with a broken heart more than once. So, this is why Will started to invite Benny and his new girlfriends to dinner, sometimes to your place where he cooked, sometimes to restaurants when he didn’t feel like cooking, but wanted to check the girl anyway. With Will’s skill sets, he could read every single person like an open book, sometimes it was good, sometimes not so much. 

You were okay with this, seemingly Benny was too, and you never minded spending the night with great food, a glass of wine, and most importantly, with Will. 

But today, today was a bad day for this, knowing you barely will have time to do anything when you get home from work before the two of you leave for the restaurant, and you needed some alone time with Will really badly. 

It all started with the dream you had, a very sexy and exciting dream that made you wake up all hot and bothered, and you couldn’t help this throbbing sensation in the morning since you overslept and had very little time to get ready and go to work. 

The whole day, all you could think about is getting home and do all the dirty things you dreamed about with Will, so he can finally save you from this sensation. 

Your excitement died down quickly when Will called you, telling you that the two of you are going to have a dinner with Benny and his new girlfriend. 

So, when you finally got home from work, Will was sitting on the couch, reading that new book he bought a few days ago, and he looked so fucking good in his reading glasses, all relaxed and lost in the book, it took you everything to not walk up to him and take the book away from him, and ride him until you finally feel the knot what has been tightening inside of you since the morning snap, and you’re no longer bothered. 

But you couldn’t, because you had a goddamn dinner reservation to attend, and Will hates being late from anywhere, even if you know that Benny will be late, because he’s late from everywhere. 

So you start getting ready, you quickly take a cold shower, hoping it will cool your burning body down, and again, it took you so much self control to not touch yourself, just a little bit until you finally can focus on anything else than that throbbing hotness between your legs. 

But you stopped yourself, you wanted Will, no, you needed Will and not your fingers. 

After getting out of the shower, you quickly dried yourself, put on a white lingerie and chose a red dress. You were standing in only your lingerie, doing your makeup when Will joined you in the bedroom, stepping up to you from behind and wrapping his strong arms around you, pulling you closer to his body as he hid his face in the crook of your neck, kissing the soft skin gently. 

You felt like you got struck by lightning, your whole body tensed from Will’s touch, so you quickly pulled away, pushing him away a little bit before you do something what would make the two of you late. 

“Is something wrong?” Will immediately asks you, confusion is written all over his face.

“No, I’m just—“ you sigh. There’s no point hiding this from him, knowing he can read you like an open book, and maybe, if you have to sit through this dinner all horny, you can tease him a little bit too. 

“Ever since I woke up this morning, I’m so unbearably horny I feel like I could explode any time. So you, kissing my neck, knowing what effect it has on me, is not helping.” You blurt out.

Will is looking at you with a smirk, and he slowly looks you up and down. 

That’s it, you decide. If you have to suffer, so does he.

“Do you know what made me so horny?” You ask in your most seductive voice as you take a step closer to Will. “I had a dream last night where you did all kinds of dirty, unspeakable things to me.” You whisper, and you see Will take a sharp breath and swallow hard. 

“Do you know what you did to me?” You asked as you put your hand on his chest, slowly dragging it lower.

“You tied me up to the bed, and I let you tease me for hours. I know how much you love that, seeing me tied up, completely at your mercy, begging you to touch me, to let me cum.” With each word, you dragged your hand lower on his body until you reached his hardening bulge, cupping it in your hand by the time you finished. 

Will really did love to tie you up time to time. It wasn’t anything extreme, it was more about the trust you had for each other. He mostly used scarfs or old ties, once you tried ropes, but it left an ugly mark on the skin of your sensitive wrists, and Will was feeling bad about it for weeks, so you agreed to stay with softer materials. 

The view of you tied up, being completely at his mercy, turned Will on more than ANYTHING in the world, seeing your complete trust in him was better than anything else. And Will loved to tease you, every time when you were together, you could be goddamn sure that he will tease you. Once you asked why he loves it so much, and his answer was simple: he loved how soaking wet you got from it, he loved to hear you beg, and edging your orgasm makes it more intense when you finally come. 

“Are you trying to turn me on right now? Because it’s working.” Will’s voice was already deeper than usual.

“Me?” You try to play the innocent “I was just telling you about my dream, love.” You try to hide the fact that you’re satisfied now that you’re not the only one who’s turned on. You take a step back and pull your hand away from Will before you say:

“C’mon, we can't be late!”

Will just lets out a loud groan.

“You’re gonna pay for this, Y/N.” He warns you before he starts getting ready.

“I can’t wait!” Is all you say as you put on your dress. 

Will finished getting ready really early, so he went back downstairs to wait for you. When you’re finally ready, you head downstairs, only to see Will leaning against the back of the couch, his glasses is sitting on the bridge of his nose, and his book back in his hands. 

And he looks so fucking good. 

He wears a white shirt and a black jacket, with a simple black jeans, but he’s Will, your Will, who looks good in anything, and you’re so horny, you had enough. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” You ask frustrated, making Will look up from his book.

“Is something wrong?” Will repeats his words from earlier.

“Yes! You!” You walk closer to him “I can’t fucking wait any longer.” You take his book away from him and throw it on the ground, not bothering how it landed, and you grabbed Will’s face in your hands and pulled him down for a heated, passionate kiss. 

“We will—“ Will mutters when you pull away from him.

“We are not going.” You announce to Will’s surprise. 

“Give me your phone!” You reach your hand out, and without any comment, he gives you his phone.

You quickly search Benny’s name in his contacts and send him a text saying ‘Y/N got food poisoning, we can’t go. The bill is on me.’ You give Will his phone back and he puts it in the pocket of his jacket. 

“Now, take me to bed, William.” 

Will shakes his head with a sly smile, and he grabs your hips to pull you closer.

“Forget the bed. Let’s fuck right here.” He growls, and you could feel yourself getting even wetter, if that's possible. 

You didn’t wait for Will to take the other step, without any warning you jumped into his neck, wrapping your legs around his hips, kissing him. With Will’s reflex, his hand was already on your bottom, holding you up as he bypassed the couch and sat down on it, with you on his lap, his mouth never leaving yours. 

You’re sitting in Will’s lap and you can already feel his growing bulge underneath you, so you start rocking your hips against his, soaking through your panties. 

Will groans deeply into the kiss, allowing you to slip your tongue into his mouth, making him moan again. 

“I want you so much.” You murmur against Will’s mouth, lips still touching. 

“You have me, darling, you have me.” 

You kiss Will again, needing, like he was air and you were suffocating, like he was the water and you were at the edge of dying from dehydration. 

You needed Will, not just sexually, but in every way. He was your soulmate, your best friend, your compass pointing due north, and without him, you were nothing. But with him, you were everything, and more. 

Your lips are still pressed together, tongues exploring each other’s mouth, and your hand travels down to Will’s crotch, unbuttoning his pants, freeing his throbbing erection.

William lets out another loud groan as the cold skin hits his heated skin, and you smirk lightly before you run your thumb over his leaking tip, making him jump a little and throw his head back with a curse. 

You sit straight up, watching his reactions as your hand moves around him lightly. You take your hand away from him and you spit in your palm before you wrap your fingers around him again, moving your hand around him, up and down, twisting. 

Will suddenly sits up and literally rips your dress off of you, but you don’t care right now as his hands find their way to your soaked core, his fingers easily slipping through your folds. 

“Please.” you whine, and Will nods before, again, he rips your panties off.

“You need to stop ripping my clothes.” You scold him playfully.

“I’ll buy you all the clothes you want, darling.” He mutters into your neck before he gently nips the skin, making you so weak. 

You slip your hand into Will’s golden locks, giving yourself completely into the feeling of his velvet tongue on the sensitive skin of your neck, and his silken hair around your fingers as every part of you completely focuses on Will, and only him. 

With your brain being completely fogged by the pleasure, you try to move your hips a little bit so you can finally feel Will inside of you. Will is sensing what you’re doing and he helps you raise yourself a little bit before you take his cock into your hand and place it to your opening, and slowly you sink down on him. 

You let out the filthiest moan when Will finally filled you completely, stretching you out, making your toes curl. 

Your eyes are closed, and Will’s lips are still on your neck and chest kissing, and nipping your skin, then licking where he just bit you. You don’t wait for yourself to adjust to his size, you start rocking your hips against his, riding him. With every move of your hips, your sensitive clit is rubbing against his stomach, intensifying your pleasure, and making your toes curl. 

The whole room is filled with your moans and Will’s groans as you move in sync, with Will’s large hands still on your ass, guiding your movements.

“This is what you wanted all day?” Will asks you in a deep, husky voice “My cock buried deep inside of your sweet little pussy?” 

You feel yourself clench from his words, turning you on even more, earning more and more filthier moans from you. 

“Fuck, I love the sounds you make.” He groans.

“Will, please!” You whine. 

“You want to come? Then keep riding me, babe, let me see you enjoying my cock.” 

One of Will’s hands move from your ass to your bouncing tits, taking one in your hand and really gently massaging it, then pinching your nipple, making you yelp. 

You feel like it’s getting harder and harder to keep riding Will as pleasure takes over your every sense until the only thing you felt was Will and the fire growing inside of you. 

You suddenly stop moving and lay your sweaty forehead against Will’s equally sweaty shoulder, trying to catch your breath. 

“Please.” Is all you can whisper. Will cups your cheek tenderly and kisses you softly on the mouth.

“I got you, okay? I got you.” He assures you as he carefully lifts you off of himself, laying you down on the couch and he stands up. 

“Come here.” You move and sit in front of him “No, no. You want me to properly fuck you?” You nod “Then ass up, and grab the back of the couch.” You do as Will told you, you turn around and push your ass out to him, he puts his hands on your hips and pulls you closer as you grab the back of the couch. Will grab a his cock in his hands and runs them over your wet folds several times, stopping at your clit every time and tapping its head to you, making you jump. 

“Stop fucking teasing me!” You tell Will, and he just chuckles, but finally slips himself back inside you. 

“Aahhhhh.” You throw your head back with a loud moan, and Will grabs a fistful of your hair, pulling your head back before he starts fucking you hard. 

“Yes!” You scream as you feel Will playfully spank you a few times.

Shakily, you move your hand from the couch and show it between your legs to touch your clit, wanting to finally come. Your legs started to tremble as you started moving your fingers around your sensitive nub, your wetness coating your fingers, making it easier for you to rub yourself.

Will let out the most animalistic growl you ever heard from him, it was barely a human sound.

“I can feel you touching yourself, you dirty girl.” he husked, his dirty talk in the deep voice of his made you clench around him, and you know Will could feel it, he confirms your thought when he speaks again.

“You like this don’t you? Getting fucked hard, huh? I can feel your pussy constantly clench around me. Begging for more and more.”

“Yes.” you sobbed, before you choke “Will, I’m so close.” out. You didn’t think Will could move faster and harder than he already does, but he speed up from your words, and he’s fucking you even harder than before. You’re sure that he will leave marks on you, but you don’t care because this is the best fucking thing you ever felt as Will’s long, thick cock is slamming inside of you, hard, and with every trust his head is rubbing against that one spot inside of you what makes your toes curl and vision fade black, and how his hands land on your ass, slapping it, not hard, but it’s enough to make you jump a little and make your cheeks red, and the way how he’s pulling your hair, keeping you in place, and oh, your hand, the way how your fingers are so easily sliping over your fleshy pink skin, so soaked from your wetness you physically feel it dripping from you, down to your thighs. 

As your things shake even more than before, you finally feel all the tension leave your body as you dissolve into pleasure, falling, screaming, shattering. 

Overwhelmed, you collapse on the couch, chest rising and falling rapidly as you try to catch your breath, and your heart pounds so hard and fast, Will can see it under your skin. 

Your eyes are still closed as you just lay on the couch, in total bliss, when you feel Will’s lips on your cheek, giving you soft kisses. 

“You’re so beautiful like this. All flushed, and relaxed from the pleasure.” he whispers, his lips touching your face. 

You turn your head to kiss him, it’s gentle and loving, and you both need a soft moment like this. When you break the kiss, you open your eyes to see Will is still fully erect and he didn’t cum yet. You sit up, and Will stands up too so his throbbing erection is right in front of your face, standing proudly. 

You look up at Will, making sure you keep eye contact with him as you slowly run your tongue over your bottom lips before you lean forward and take him in your mouth. Will throws his head back with a loud groan, you know he’s close to coming from fucking you, and now your mouth around him, so you put all the effort into sucking him just like he did with fucking you, wanting to make him feel just as good as he made you feel. 

You grab his muscular thigh to support yourself as you start bobbing your head around him, swirling your tongue around him, running your tongue over his veins and head, making sure you suck hard when you reach his tip. 

“Just like that, yes.” Will moans as he grabs the back of your head, pushing his hips forwards to meet with your moves, fucking your mouth just like he did with your pussy moments before. You gag around him a few times when he’s pushing his cock down in your throat as far as he can, and you make sure you swallow around him every time his cock is deep in your throat, to intensify his pleasure, until his whole body trembles and his cock is pulsating in your mouth, filling it with his cum, making you swallow every drop he gave you. 

You let Will’s cock go with a loud ‘pop’, saliva dripping from your mouth what Will wipes with his thumb. 

Exhausted, but satisfied, both of you lay down on the couch as you enjoy your pure bliss. 

“We need to do this again.” you breathe.

“Give me 20 minutes and we can repeat this in bed.”

“Deal.” you turn to Will to cuddle him.

“But just to know, we are going to shopping tomorrow.” you warn him.

“If you’ll try on some lingerie for me, then I’m in.” 

“Anything you want.” you reply, and kiss him sweetly.

Tags: @innerpaperexpertcloud​ @lady-evans​ @agirllovespasta​ @claudiahxrdy​ @keithseabrook27​ @alexa-rae-dreamz​ @minnicelli​ @woahitslucyylu​ @de-profundis-ad-astra​ @mylifeliterally​ @happyhenners​

[panharmonium]

@once-and-future-gay​ asked: 

how do you think will would react to how merlin treats mordred were he alive??

Okay, I LOVE this question.

And my honest answer to it is that I think if Will were alive, things would never have gotten to a point where Merlin felt like he needed to treat Mordred like that in the first place.

(more details under the cut, because this got long!)

The reasons why Merlin ends up in a place where he is able to make those kinds of cold decisions about Mordred are obviously super complex.  But in the end, I think most of it comes back to the fact that by Season 5, Merlin has come to see himself as a tool.  The ultimate fallout of Merlin being constantly told about his role in Arthur's life is that he comes to see himself as an instrument of destiny, not a person in his own right.  His life isn't his own.  He has no inherent worth, no inherent self, just a purpose to fulfill.  His life was always earmarked for someone else.  His value, in his own mind, is inextricably tied up with whether or not he can succeed in his mission.  He doesn’t think he is allowed to have more than that.  He doesn’t think he deserves to have more than that, frankly - every time he tries, something terrible happens.

This isn’t the case, earlier in the show.  In the early days, Merlin still has hopes and dreams for himself.  He still longs for a day where he can be known for who and what he is.  He still chafes at having to hide.  He still thinks he deserves better than what he has.  He's still invested in his own life, as a person who is worth something just by virtue of existing.   But as time goes on, those feelings start to slip away.  He's still fighting, but for other people, not himself.  He stops asking Gaius, "When do I get to reveal myself?"  He doesn't expect that to ever happen now.  He starts defining his worth as how well he can fulfill his “destiny,” and stops seeing himself as a person in his own right.  He's been told so many times that his life belongs to someone else - that his only reason for living is to serve a higher purpose - that he now believes it.  And that makes him more willing to do things (in service of that destiny) that he would have balked at when he was younger, before he lost his sense of selfhood, before he became just a tool to ensure that events unfolded as they were “supposed” to.

In the earlier seasons, we see Merlin defy Kilgharrah's directives on multiple occasions.  He saves Mordred.  He forces Kilgharrah to teach him how to heal Morgana, even after she's been revealed to be a traitor.  He's not yet willing to do things he feels uncomfortable about to bring about “destiny.”  He still thinks things can be better than that.  But as time goes on (read: after Will dies, and especially once Lancelot is also dead) Merlin becomes so isolated from anything that isn’t The Mission.  He has no “real” friends anymore.  Which, as I've discussed before, isn't to say that he doesn't have meaningful, caring relationships with other people, just that every one of those relationships is, for him, undergirded by the knowledge that the friendship is conditional - aka, “if they actually knew me, they would hate me.”  He has nobody to meet his most elemental need for connection - to be seen and loved for who he is - and by the later seasons, Merlin has been deprived of that kind of care for so long that he just stops trying to find it anywhere anymore.  Every time he has had somebody to love him like that, it has gone horribly, terribly wrong, and by the time we reach S5, Merlin just feels like it's better for everyone if he stops feeling these "selfish" desires for real companionship and just focuses on the job he's meant to do, no matter how painful it is for him.  It doesn't matter if he's miserable, as long as he's be able to bring about the better world that has been promised.

Lancelot is able to serve as a buffer against this, briefly, while he’s alive.  His presence is a huge part of why Merlin is so happy in the S4 opener.  Finally, Merlin has a friend to know him, to share his burdens, and everything is changing for the better.  Arthur is basically running the kingdom, and it's only a matter of time before he actually becomes king.  Traditions are already changing, by Arthur's command - now Camelot's most respected knights are commoners!  The Crown Prince is publicly courting a servant!  This is a moment where Merlin really feels that the moment he has been waiting for is right around the corner.  He thinks they're almost there.  He has so much hope, at the beginning of Season 4.  

And then Lancelot dies - for Arthur - and everything starts spiraling.  Lancelot dies on the altar of Merlin's destiny the same way Will does, and that breaks something in Merlin.  He stops trying to make things better for himself.  “Destiny” is going to take everything from him anyway.  He gives up and accepts that the only worthwhile thing he can actually do with his life is to make sure that Arthur lives to create the better world that has been promised, and that he himself is always going to be alone.

And then Merlin is alone, for the next three years.  And that's who he is when we meet him in S5 - disillusioned, desperately isolated, all of his personal needs subsumed for far too long.  The only thing keeping him afloat is his mission, and he will do anything to make sure it succeeds, now, because if he starts doubting it, then that means that everything terrible that has happened has been for nothing.    

And this is really why I feel that having Will around would change things, to a degree where I honestly can't imagine we'd ever wind up in a position where Merlin would have been self-abnegating like this for years, or would have allowed Kara's execution or told Arthur to reject magic just to ensure that Mordred would die (TO BE CLEAR - I'm not putting the blame on Merlin for what Arthur decides to do in 5.05.  Arthur's a grown man; he's seen enough to have more nuanced opinions on sorcery by now).

Will is just....I know he was only in the show briefly, but his presence in Merlin's life was so much more important than that one episode, and his ABSENCE is more disastrous than is made apparent on the surface of things.  Will is Merlin’s anchor.  He gives Merlin something that Merlin cannot access from anybody else, Lancelot included.  He is the only person in Merlin’s orbit who is not somehow connected/beholden to Arthur and Camelot.  All of Merlin's other friends become knights, or become queen, or are deeply invested in Merlin's destiny and the emergence of Albion (eg, Gaius).  Every single relationship Merlin has is with people who are committed to Arthur and Camelot in the same way that Merlin himself is.  He has nobody to tell him “this is wrong; you're sacrificing too much,” because everyone he knows is on the same page as him.  All of his companions are sworn to die for the realm.  Will is the only person whose existence reminds Merlin “you mattered BEFORE you went to Camelot and got this magical homework assignment from the gods.  You were just as much of a person back then.” 

Will is the only friend Merlin has who links him back to his original self, who connects him to who he was before destiny buried its hooks into him.  Merlin in S5 has been so alone and so put upon for so long that he believes his only purpose in life is to be an implement of destiny, but Will, if he were alive, would throw a fit every time Merlin started saying things like “his life is worth a hundred of mine” or “I was born to serve [Arthur].”  Merlin might think he's a tool and that his life doesn't matter outside of its ability to usher in the new world, but Will wouldn’t tolerate that attitude.  Will would tell him you are NOT a tool; you are a person, one who likes to read and whose favorite fruit is apples and who gets the hiccups when he eats too fast.  You don't have to do everything somebody tells you to just because they told you to do it.  That's the kind of wrong-headed thinking that got my father killed.

Will would never let Merlin arrive at a spot where Merlin felt like his life and his principles were disposable or worthless in comparison to the success of the “mission.”  And Will would never let Merlin get away with doing questionable things in the name of keeping Arthur alive, either.  Will, in canon, is the person who serves as Merlin's moral compass - in 1.10, Will is the one who's telling Merlin “it is WRONG for you to consider letting all of these people die in order to keep your secret safe.”  Even Merlin's own mother won't tell him that - when she realizes that Merlin is planning to use his magic to help during the battle, she tells him not to do it, despite the fact that there is literally no way the village can defeat Kanen without Merlin's help.  She advocates for Merlin to protect his own secrets, even at the expense of other people's lives.

Will, though.  Will refuses to compromise.  Will wants Merlin to be safe, too, but not at the expense of what makes Merlin who he is.  Will KNOWS that sacrificing others for the sake of his secret isn't what Merlin really wants to do.  Will knows Merlin is better than that.  He tells Merlin to smarten up.  He tells Merlin to do the right thing.

So like - having Will alive would change things for the following two reasons: 1) Will, in canon, is the person who tells Merlin “you deserve better than this,” and 2) Will, in canon, is also the person who tells Merlin “you ARE better than this.  you can do better than this.”  I don’t think Merlin would have made the same choices with Mordred if Will had been present for the previous five seasons, because Merlin would never have fallen so far into the “i don’t remember who i used to be and i can only see one purpose for my life now” hole.  Will would not have let him get to that place.

Possibly more importantly - I honestly think if Will were alive, we might never have ended up in a position where Merlin had to make choices like that about Mordred in the first place.  Will living would change the entire story.  Now Arthur doesn’t just get to sweep the whole “oh man an Evil Sorcerer died/almost died saving my life; that really challenges my worldview; hope I don't have to think about it too hard” issue under the rug, like he does in canon.  He’d have to be confronted with that continuously, every day.  And he would not be able to just project his anti-sorcery beliefs onto Merlin like he does in canon, either - he would know that Merlin's best friend is a sorcerer, and that Merlin continues to stand by said sorcerer even after the sorcery itself has been revealed.  

In canon, Arthur and Merlin avoid this topic forever, and I think Arthur honestly tries to forget it ever happened, because it's easier for him and makes him less uncomfortable, but if Will had lived, they would have been forced to deal with that friction every day, and Arthur would have been constantly confronted by the cognitive dissonance of “sorcery is supposedly evil, but how can it be, when this guy so obviously is not?”  

Will being alive would mean Arthur had to confront his prejudices sooner, because a) I fully believe alive!Will would have eventually followed Merlin anywhere, even to Camelot, and b) once he was there, Will would absolutely have kept up the pretense of being a sorcerer.  He would never have allowed Merlin to be endangered by him abandoning the ruse.  So Arthur would have had to deal with that, and honestly, I’m not sure Camelot’s policies on magic wouldn’t have already changed by the time Mordred showed up again, in this timeline.

There’s one other thing that I want to be clear about when it comes to any question that deals with Merlin’s interactions with Mordred (or many of Merlin’s late-season decisions, to be honest).  

The way Merlin ends up dealing with Mordred is obviously something that we all are watching the screen being like "IF YOU WOULD JUST BE NICER TO HIM EVERYTHING WOULD BE OKAY."  Even before I finished Season 5, I typed up my thoughts/worries/predictions, and I said that I was concerned Merlin's behavior was going to be the thing that ultimately created the exact future with Mordred that he was trying to prevent.  We all know it's a messed up situation.

But I also personally find it absolutely imperative to recognize the unique situation Merlin is in, and that Merlin doesn't react this way to Mordred just for the hell of it, or even because he wants to.  

This is something I want to make sure I address, because when talking about the potential for alive!Will to have changed Merlin’s behavior, it’s too easy for the discussion to be framed like “Will would be able to stop Merlin from doing all those stupid/irrational things, like mistrusting Mordred,” and it’s also VERY easy for the discussion to slide into, “Everything that happens at the end of BBC Merlin happens because Merlin was so consumed by how much he cared for Arthur that he was willing to sacrifice everything to keep Arthur alive (and perhaps Will could have snapped him out of it).”  But I want to be very careful not to give either of those impressions.

There are two things that I am dead set on remembering when I think about any and all of the decisions Merlin makes, including his decisions about Mordred: first, that Merlin does not suspect/reject Mordred (or support/protect Arthur) in a vacuum.  And second, that he doesn't do either of these things solely on Kilgharrah's advice, either. 

Merlin, on a personal level, does not want to be in conflict with Mordred.  He still relates to Mordred as kin, even at the beginning of the Disir (“It won’t always be like this.  One day we will live in freedom again.”)  He LIKES Mordred, even, he tells Gaius.  But when he says so, he expresses it like this: “I like him myself - but I can't ignore what I saw.”

To get into this in a little more detail - why does Merlin struggle with Mordred in the first place?  Because he's been shown that Mordred is going to be instrumental in Arthur's death.  And why is Merlin fixated on preventing Arthur's death?  Because Merlin has been told, by multiple magical and/or godly powers, that Arthur is the key to establishing peace in Albion and returning magic to the land.

This is a non-negotiable point for me when I read things about Merlin's decision-making.  I've written plenty myself about the messed-up place Merlin gets into in S5, where keeping Arthur alive at all costs has overridden every other aspect of his better judgment, but it is ESSENTIAL to me that we recognize that this is not something that happens solely because Merlin has a personal attachment to Arthur.  He does care deeply about Arthur, obviously; he loves him - but that is NOT why Merlin in S5 is slipping into the murky waters of “save Arthur no matter what, even if it means doing things that go against my conscience.”  His decision in the Disir - any decision he makes about Mordred, quite frankly - is not made because of a selfish, personal desire to keep Arthur alive.  It is made because Merlin has been told, repeatedly, from all corners of the magical world, that keeping Arthur alive is the only way to establish peace in the world and liberate magic.  And thus, by the time S5 rolls around, Merlin will do anything to achieve this, even things that seem on the surface to be working against these goals.  He does not make his decisions because he is choosing Arthur OVER his people's liberation, but because he has been told that choosing Arthur IS the way to his people's liberation.

Merlin does not develop his obsessive fixation on keeping Arthur alive because his personal attachment to Arthur becomes so strong that he's willing to just let the rest of the world burn.  He develops it because he has been told that Arthur is the key to creating a world where all people can be free.  And it is ESSENTIAL to recognize that Merlin is not foolish for believing this, either.  He isn't just listening to some random dragon spout nonsense at him.  He has literal gods speaking to him, calling him by the name the Druids gave him and telling him his “time among men is not yet over”; he still has work to do.  Druid prophets show him the future (Mordred killing Arthur) and urge him to “alter the never-ending circle of [Arthur's] fate.”  Alator recognizes the legend Gaius speaks of as true and immediately offers Merlin his support.  Bendrui like Finna (aka the remnants of Morgana's own sect, the High Priestesses) offer Merlin the assistance of further prophecies and tell him “without you, Emrys, Arthur cannot build the world we all long for.”  The Catha pass on “ancient knowledge” about Arthur's fate that they've guarded for hundreds of years, in the hopes that it will help Merlin save Arthur’s life.  The Fisher King recognizes Merlin as Emrys and tells him “I have been waiting all these years for the arrival of a new time: the time of the Once and Future King” - and then he gives Merlin the means to enable Arthur's victory in the S3 finale.  

It's not just Kilgharrah telling Merlin about Arthur's destiny.  It's the wider magical world - and bits of the divine world, too.  Merlin is not stupid, gullible, or deluded to believe that Arthur's role in the prophesied future is true.  It IS supposed to be true, in the Merlin BBC-verse.  (And, once again, this is why the finale is, narratively speaking, garbage.  But that's a topic for another day.)

All of that said - the fact that Merlin has legitimate reasons to believe what he believes and fight for Arthur's survival does not mean that every single sacrifice he makes in the name of achieving that goal is necessarily the only way he could go about things, and that, I think, is where Will being alive would have made a difference.  Will, who loves Merlin more than life itself but does not care about Arthur or Camelot at all, would be a counterbalance to all the messaging Merlin receives about “destiny and Arthur over everything.”  Will would have pulled Merlin back from the brink, with his stubbornly honest, “All right, so you have to do this, but not like this.  Listen to yourself.  This isn't you.  This isn't the you I know.”  

I don’t think anyone else could have done that for Merlin.  Even at the very end of the show, after Merlin has been in Camelot for years, Will is still the longest-running relationship Merlin has ever had (excepting his mother, of course).  Will is the only relationship Merlin has that both predates Camelot and isn’t even slightly concerned with Arthur Pendragon’s well-being.  Will is the only one who isn’t beholden to Arthur or sworn to serve Camelot.  Will is the only person who cares about Merlin instead of Arthur, not along with Arthur.  Merlin has other people who love him, yes, definitely, but Will is the only one who says, “You, over everything else.  You are the only thing on the map for me.”   

The part Will played in Merlin’s life is not something that could be performed by somebody else.  That loss is a hole that cannot be filled, even by other people who know Merlin’s secret.  The history is unique.  Merlin can’t just grow up again with someone else.  Will was irreplaceable; the role he fulfilled in Merlin’s world was singular.  Without his influence, Merlin is perpetually off-kilter.  

Merlin needed someone like that in his life.  He needed somebody to balance out the perpetual focus on Arthur+Destiny, which all of his other relationships encouraged, to varying degrees.  The perpetual focus on Arthur+Destiny is what ultimately led Merlin to make the kind of decisions that he made with Mordred, but if Will had been around to push back on that, then I can’t imagine that things would have unfolded in the same way.

[peralta-guaranteed]

Romantic epiphanies are dope

At what point, though, had she decided that it was Jake of all people who would disrupt her calendar so completely, while also fulfilling the dreams she didn’t dare write down on it?

After all, if 11-year-old Amy had been asked to create a binder on her future husband - Jake would have not even been mentioned in the footnotes. If she could’ve wished for a partner back then, she definitely wouldn’t have specified that he had to be dorky and clumsy, constantly making bad jokes, living on a diet that would send any other person to the hospital for malnutrition, obsessed with action movies and cop heroics, spending his free time and money on the most useless things anyone could think of, and pranking and bothering her to his heart’s content.

-*-*-*-

On the evening of their engagement, Amy wonders about her own romantic epiphanies and what made her decide that Jake was the person she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

Read it on AO3

“What about you?”

The scene at Shaw’s bar had settled down a bit after the united ring of the squad had broken down into their own little groups as they always did. Gina was busy admiring Terry’s biceps from a corner booth, phone in hand as always, while he played a game of darts with Jake, who was shooting glances over to Amy every few seconds as if they had been apart for months again instead of just a few minutes. Charles was extolling the virtues of some new restaurant to Captain Holt, who definitely looked like he was preparing to leave ever since he’d stepped foot into the bar. Hitchcock and Scully were… well, somewhere, either asleep or eating, probably.

And Rosa was sliding onto the barstool next to Amy, a cocktail glass - Moscow Mule, her favourite, Amy had learned after literally a year of sleuthing - in her hand and a curious glint in her eye that didn’t quite fit the usually stoic face.

“Hmm~?” Amy gave her a quizzical look - she was not yet anywhere on her scale of drunkenness, still holding the beer she’d used to cheer during today’s round of toasts. She didn’t  want to get drunk tonight - she wanted to remember it all, forever. The little diamonds of her wonderful new ring were shining just perfectly against the dark brown bottle.

“What about you, Santiago. When was your romantic epiphany? Knowing that you’ll say yes if he asks?” Rosa raised an eyebrow and schooled a more appropriate, serious look on her face. “Because let’s be honest, as sweet as Jake is, his’ was pretty lame. You do cross word puzzles like, every night.”

“Oh, I see.” Amy gave the label on her beer a good scratching, peeling off the edges slightly. “I guess-” she started, but nothing else came.

While Rosa usually enjoyed drinking in silence far more than anything, right now she was on the level of inebriated where she would actually let loose enough to, ugh,  chat . And she wanted to chat with Amy, of all people. Well, she supposed, maybe that wasn’t quite so strange, considering she was one of her best friends. Actually, her best friend. Girl-wise, next to Jake. It was still a struggle to admit to herself that these two absolute dorks were far more than just co-workers to her, sometimes even more than just simple friends.

But Amy was still silent, staring at her drink as if it held the answer to everything (which it definitely didn’t if it turned her into Spacey Amy on drink 1).

“It’s fine if you don't have one, you know. S’not always like the movies.”

“No no, it’s just- it’s kinda-” The beer’s label was peeling some more, and the bottle was almost empty after another sip.

It was just kinda… the fact that Amy had always been split down two very different sides concerning marriage.

On the one hand, it had never really occurred to her. Her life plan, hanging proudly over her bed while she was living alone, now replaced by a movie poster of Jake’s that was luckily not Die Hard and the plan relegated to her little office corner, made no mention of it. She had plans for her career - many of them - and actually a few goals for her private life as well, to maintain a healthy work-life-balance as one should. But marriage? There had never been a date set on her wall for that. It was too risky, she’d reasoned even as a teen while drawing up her first plan. Unpredictable, since it involved a whole other person, and relationships couldn’t be planned and dated down to the day, which she hated to think about, and she wouldn’t have much time to date anyway if she was gearing up to be the youngest female Captain in NYPD history. And, if she was completely honest, it was sometimes too scary to think about as well - she knew she was a difficult person to be around, in some ways. Definitely difficult to handle as a romantic partner. What if she couldn't find a man willing to put in that work? And then see the dates on her calendar pass by, alone, or crying from heartbreak? No, marriage was not on her life plan at all, she’d decided at the ripe age of eleven in her pink and off-white bedroom while writing down all the big moments of her life to come.

On the other hand, it had always been an obvious yes. Having a husband,  having a family - she could imagine nothing else, growing up with all her siblings, with her parents still being obviously in love with each other after all these years, with her tias and tios and abuelas and abuelos all around her. What would life even be like without that kind of family? Without people over at her place every holiday, without someone trusted by her side tag-teaming all the tasks and duties of everyday life, without that little group of people that she knew would always be there, would always be loving and caring for her the way she loved and cared for them. It was unimaginable. She’d seen the endlessly romantic scenes in films and read about them in her books, and while she was not easily impressed or swayed even as a teenager, she was definitely... expecting some of that in her own life. She wanted the romantic moments, the flashbacks to tell her children and grandchildren about, the beautiful proposal, the perfectly-planned wedding, the photo album of years and years together, of all the milestones a couple could have. Yes, marriage was definitely on her life plan, tucked into the back of her mind and ever present.

At what point, though, had she decided that it was  Jake  of all people who would disrupt her calendar so completely, while also fulfilling the dreams she didn’t dare write down on it?

After all, if 11-year-old Amy had been asked to create a binder on her future husband - Jake would have not even been mentioned in the footnotes. If she could’ve wished for a partner back then, she definitely wouldn’t have specified that he had to be dorky and clumsy, constantly making bad jokes, living on a diet that would send any other person to the hospital for malnutrition, obsessed with action movies and cop heroics, spending his free time and money on the most useless things anyone could think of, and pranking and bothering her to his heart’s content.

Then again, that wasn’t Jake anymore - maybe it had been during their first few years as only co-workers, but he was constantly changing, growing up step by step, maybe a bit later than others, but definitely growing. He was always willing to learn, as much as he’d moan about it all. He was willing to get better, spurned on by competition, maybe, or by the desire to be the best -anything- he could be, not just best detective, but he was willing no matter the reason.

And then again, that wasn’t all that Jake had really been, ever - maybe on the outside, to the unknown onlooker, but not to those who really spent time with him. As careless as he was with his own health, he was always caring for everyone else in his own subtle and not so subtle ways. As ridiculous as his jokes and pranks were, he also knew exactly when they were not appropriate anymore, and he could lend a hand or a sympathetic shoulder just as seriously as he could stand guard for you if you needed a moment alone in the evidence lock-up. As much as he would boast about himself and throw jabs at everyone else, he would also turn into the ultimate hype-man for everyone on the squad at the mere mention of one of them failing or stumbling.

And if Amy had been given the chance to write a wishlist for the man she wanted to spend her life with at any point of her planning - that kindness, compassion and support would’ve definitely been on the top of it.

She realised she still hadn’t answered Rosa. Luckily, Diaz was exactly the kind of person who knew how to hold onto a weighted silence and give her all the time she needed without interrupting her. She simply sipped her heavy-on-the-vodka-please drink and waited.

“I don’t think I-” Amy started up again, realising that her beer bottle was now completely label-less, a small heap of paper on the bar counter next to her. “I don’t think it was one big moment, to be honest. I think it was a lot of little ones.”

“Like what, buying folders together to get his desk straightened out? The moment when he actually used a five-syllable-word right? The day he finally stopped mixing gummy bears with red vines and calling it ‘sugar bolognese’?”

“I know you’re making fun of it, but those were all milestones in their own way, okay?” Amy shot Rosa a little glare, which proved to be extremely ineffective against the other Latina’s taunting grin.

“But they weren’t the moments?” Rosa continued to poke her, turning her voice several octaves higher for the last words. “Where Jake turned into the knight in shining armour baby-Amy definitely used to draw into her diary?”

No, they weren’t. Sure, Amy was proud of Jake for all of them. But they weren’t the moments where she’d realised that this was it, that this person was  her person. That there would never be anyone who loved her the way he did, and that she could never feel for anyone else what she felt for him.

She tried to think of something romantic, something big to throw back into Rosa’s face, make her stop the jokes and understand. Make her see that it wasn’t about the grand gestures or the perfect match that made Jake her one and only, as cheesy as that sounded.

They’d had many big moments, that was for sure.

When he went in front of the whole precinct here at Shaw’s to cryptically talk about how much just six days with her meant to him. When she knocked on his door to say  screw light and breezy and his eyes lit up as if she’d just taken the weight of the world off of his shoulders. When he sat at the back of an ambulance, a bullet wound from her in his leg and the memory of Figgis’ gun still on his temple, and none of that seemed to matter because they were back in sync and he’d get to finally go back home with her. When he forfeited a bet, lost a collar and gave up his entire apartment for her happiness. When she was knee-deep in files at the precinct long after her working hours and her phone rang, an unknown number on the screen, and when she picked it up she heard his voice so far away and metallic and realised that he must’ve broken several rules and put himself into danger just to get a phone into prison to talk to her. When he spun an entire Halloween heist around today to get her to win it, all so he could give her that soft scared smile as she turned and saw him down on one knee.

Rosa knew about all of these. She’d witnessed them, or heard her drunkenly ramble about them during their weekly get-togethers. And they were all big moments, good moments, special moments she would re-tell to everyone who wanted to hear about her and Jake and their story.

But they weren’t all of it. They were the big plot points in their shared book of life, that was for sure. But they weren’t the kind of quotes she’d underline, the ones she’d write little notes into the margins for. The ones that made her love this book more than any other story she’d ever read.

Yet when she thought about those definitely underlined quotes that came up in her mind now, they all seemed so… trivial, compared to what you’d expect about romantic epiphanies.

Like the time she picked him up at the airport coming back from prison, when he leant back in his seat and took a deep, almost inappropriate sniff of her stupid little pinetree air freshener, telling her how unreal it seemed that someone could miss a smell like that, but that he’d longed for it for weeks now. That it wasn’t pinetree to him anymore, it was the comfort of Amy’s car, and their morning drive to the precinct when he was too tired to get into his Mustang, and Amy picking him up after a few hours too long working on a case, all wrapped up in one scent that he never realised he could miss. He was sniffing an air freshener, with his uneven beard scratching all over it, red eyes from an early flight and maybe a few tears they’d shed at the pick up area, and Amy was sure her heart could never ache as much for anyone else as it did for the tired man sitting in her passenger seat.

Or the time she’d come home from work on his first day off after they’d moved in together, expecting to see her prim and proper apartment turned into a slouchfest the way his old place had been. Only to realise that nothing had changed - safe for the take out containers next to the sink, which had enough left in it that they could share it for dinner. Only to realise that he had actually done all of the laundry,  and  folded all her socks and underwear exactly right,  and  even folded the fitted sheets properly,  and put it all into the closet in the system she’d developed but never actually written down, because it came to her like second nature. Only to realise that meant that he’d watched her, every time she’d done it, to learn it all perfectly so he could do it for her. And she looked at him as he jumped up from the couch to heat the take out for her as she changed out of her work clothes, and realised that she never wanted to share her home with anyone else.

Or the time he’d first been invited to the big Santiago summer get together, and she’d stressed over it just as much he did, making information binders on her family and their quirks and their habits and what he could say and what he should absolutely not say. But when the party finally came, and he’d squeezed her hand so nervously stepping into the living room, he managed to remember every single brother’s, sister-in-law’s, niece’s and nephew’s name, made extra time for her abuela Claudia’s stories and waited for her tia Maria to translate everything someone yelled in Spanish for him, sat down at exactly the place on the table that would’ve secretly been reserved for him as a test, and slipped into dinner conversations and children’s games down at the lake as if he’d always been there, always been a part of her family. She watched him running from her nephews’ water guns and secretly rolling his eyes at her while talking to her brother David and offering his arm to her abuela Sofia on a walk the way he would usually offer it to her, and she realised that it fit so well because he should have always been there, that this spot in her family had always waited for him.

Or the time she’d started her period while staying over at his place for the first time ever, waking up to stained sheets and cramps and the rushing feeling of pure embarrassment, telling him she was so, so sorry and would buy him new sheets and probably better get home so she could deal with this and not bother him for the rest of the weekend despite the plans they’d made. And he’d simply gotten out of bed, rummaged through a cabinet in his bathroom and returned with painkillers, a hot water bottle, and a box of pads and tampons he’d bought after an awkward day at the academy when Rosa had lectured him about always being prepared for anything his fellow detectives could need. And he’d parked her on the sofa after she’d changed into one of his boxers, and the washing machine was already cleaning the sheets and her underwear, and he said  be right back and returned from the bodega on the corner with ice cream and salt & vinegar chips and her favourite chocolate. And she looked at him as he sat down on the other side of the couch, remote already in hand to see what they could binge-watch this weekend, acting as if nothing was wrong and she hadn’t just completely inconvenienced him and weirded him out with her problems, and she realised that she hadn’t. That they’d been together barely a month and a half, and he was already so comfortable having her around that he was prepared for anything. That she could lay it all on him, without the fear of being embarrassed or rebuked as she had been with any other man in her life before him.

Or the time she cancelled what was meant to be their second date ever (after that awkward, chaotic, yet happy-ending first one) because she’d gotten sick. When he showed up that evening at her door, she’d been worried he hadn’t gotten her text (she was too stuffed up to speak properly on the phone, she’d realised when calling in sick to work). But he was wearing an old t-shirt and sweatpants instead of a date outfit, and carried a grocery store bag and a drug store bag, and then he made her take a bath with one of those cold-remedy bath salt sachets he’d found, and cooked her his mom’s sickly-soup (with store-bought matzoh balls, he had to admit, he never quite got those right), and let her pick any movie she wanted to watch while they ate their soup wrapped up under one blanket so she could steal all of his body heat. He’d been to her place as her boyfriend only twice before, but she realised as she snuggled into his arms under the blanket and blew her nose into one of the extra-soft tissues he’d bought that she’d felt so wrong being sick and alone at her home, that she’d subconsciously hoped he could be there to rub the vapo-rub on her back before she went to sleep that night, and that nothing felt more right than him already whistling in the kitchen when she woke up feeling slightly better the next morning.

They were all these little moments, these facets of life that barely even mattered to outsiders, that happened and re-happened several times a year. But they did matter, and they came into her mind every time her mom warned her on the phone not to be ‘too hasty’, every time her non-work friends asked her if she was really sure she was talking about ‘Peralta, the guy you used to moan about so much’, every time someone made a joke to Jake and her about her being ‘above his pay-grade’ or them being ‘an odd couple if they ever saw one’. It was these little moments that mattered so much more to her than any grand romantic gesture could, and that manifested in her mind that Jake was it, and always had been.

The bottle of beer in her hand was still label-less, but she noticed that it was also empty. She didn’t know when she’d transitioned into Spacey Amy, but looking up at Rosa’s face, seeing Gina next to her who’d apparently walked up at some point, she realised that she’d been talking, not thinking all of this.

“Daaaamn, girl.” Gina replied, but her voice was quiet, not even close to the usual mocking tone she’d take on for Amy. Rosa next to her was silent, blinking hard, and if she didn’t know her any better Amy would’ve almost believed she was fighting back a few tears. Which was ridiculous, because this was Rosa, and she’d only had six drinks, which brought her barely close to the emotional level she needed to even think about crying. Rosa’s drunk-scale started a lot later than Amy’s did.

Amy swept away a little tear from her own cheek while grinning awkwardly down at her bottle.

“Good thing that was one drink Spacey Amy and not two drink Loud Amy, huh?” She tried to joke, but Rosa only shook her head.

“Santiago, shit like that, you should shout from the fucking rooftops. Or at least into your fiancé’s stupid grinning face. Damn, I’m genuinely so happy for you two dorks, you’re so perfect. Don’t ever quote me on that, though.” Rosa had at least reached the swearing stage of drunkenness, the one where she’d wrap genuine emotion in as many rude words as possible to make it seem like she still didn’t care as much as she did.

Amy looked over at Jake and caught him looking away just as quickly. He’d been watching her again. He often did when he thought she wouldn’t notice, she’d realised that early on in their relationship. They’d be watching a movie, or hunched over case files, or simply hanging out at her kitchen counter nibbling on take away leftovers and discussing their day, and she’d look up and notice him almost flinching away. On the rare occasions that she woke up after him - once in a blue moon, when the night had been far longer than she’d planned, like tomorrow, probably - she would roll to the side and meet with his eyes, half-closed and shining and definitely, completely focussed on nothing but her.

It was almost unsettling to be the centre of someone’s attention like that, but in a good way. In a way that made her heart skip a beat, because she’d never expected to be anyone’s point of focus like this, ever.

Maybe, besides all the little moments and epiphanies, that had actually been the point of no return for her, love-wise - when she realised just what she was to Jake. Everything, he’d told her not just once during his more romantic moments, whispering in her ear and pressing a kiss to her temple.  You’re everything to me, Ames, and sometimes I think you’re even a bit more than that.  

“Hey.” She heard his voice next to her as he walked up from the long-forgotten dart board, where Gina was quick to jump in and challenge Terry to another round to see him flex his shoulders.

“Hey yourself.” She grinned back, one drink Amy still on the clock.

“Thought I should come over here to tell you something really important.”

“Oh, sure.” The serious tone in his voice made her steel herself almost as a reflex. “What is it?”

“I realised I’m absolutely, crazy in love with you. Is that okay?”

And there was this grin, this stupid wide grin she knew so well, that always looked a bit different when it was directed towards her than anyone else. Amy couldn’t help but laugh as she softly punched his arm.

“Yeah, you know.” She looked at the ring on her finger as she stroked over the space she’d only just hit. “I think that’s pretty okay.”

He leant down for a kiss, and they could both hear a gagging sound from the side.

“Knock it off, Diaz.” Jake shot Rosa a fake-angry look. “You’re not allowed to make fun of us today.”

“Alright, alright. I don’t need to watch it, though.” Rosa stood up from her bar stool, only to punch Jake into the other arm, definitely stronger than Amy just had. He grinned at her nonetheless, knowing full well that was as close and emotional as a tight hug would be from his old friend.

“Better take your fiancée home before she turns into two drink Amy, though. Think you’ve got some stuff to say that shouldn’t be heard from the whole bar.” She grinned again before walking off to beat both Gina and Terry at darts.

Jake followed her with his eyes before smiling back at Amy.

“My fiancée.” He repeated, and she could see how strange the word still felt in his mouth, strange and new and absolutely joyful.

“Your future wife.” She smiled back, and it didn’t sound strange at all. It sounded perfectly right. Because it had always, always been.