#as a coping mechanism does so much damage to your body (town)

[computerpeople]

pov i cant stop fucking crying my eyes out

[herinsectreflection]

I really love how much of Faith there is in S6, and I mean that completely seriously. She's a constant unmentioned figure, haunting the narrative. The central ideas of her character become the central ideas of the season, and for Buffy's character specifically.

Faith is such an interesting figure because despite appearing in less than thirty episodes across both shows, she’s one of the most important characters for reflecting both leads, but especially Buffy for obvious reasons. She's Angel's mentee figure, the representation of how good desire to right his own wrongs and give others a chance to do the same can reciprocally save him. And she's Buffy's dark mirro, representing who Buffy could be if she surrendered to the mercy of her circumstances. Faith’s status as Buffy’s distorted mirror image is constant throughout the show. Cordelia was Buffy’s first shadow self, but Faith owns that role, long after she stops appearing regularly.

The season opens for Buffy with her hand stretching up out of her grave, with a visual almost identical to Faith’s dream in This Year’s Girl. You could almost see Buffy’s ressurection as akin to Faith waking from her coma to find a world that has left her behind. They both wake up alone and stagger around town, finding themselves at the burned-out site of the previous season’s finale, and both their initial instincts are to destroy their bodies - Faith by disappearing into Buffy's, and Buffy by leaping off the tower again.

Throughout the season, Buffy exhibits a lot of Faith-like behaviour. A big one is using sex as a coping mechanism. Buffy instigates an unhealthy sexual relationship with Spike to stave off her depression and hide it from others. Faith uses agressive sexuality to intimidate others and keep her pain hidden (see her initially attempting to seduce the Mayor to avoid accepting his paternal affection, or instigating sex with Xander in response to his attempts at emotional connection). Both are prone to violence against their sexual partners too - Faith with Xander in the same scene and Buffy with Spike multiple times. Like vampires, the Slayers seem inclined to conflate sex and violence (I'll let the fact that they are both prone to violence against each other speak for itself). In her dream in Dead Things, Buffy mixes up seeing Katrina's corpse and having sex with Spike in a blurry whirlwind of sex and death, bringing this conflation to the forefront.

It's also worth noting that Faith is implied in many ways to be a victim of sexual abuse, and it's in this season that Buffy experiences an attempted rape. Both are caught up in that cycle of abuse, and thankfully they manage to both escape.

And then there's the suicidal ideation. Oh god, the suicidal ideation. There's a few examples of characters being self-destructive or sacrificial in a way that evokes suicide (Angel springs to mind in multiple instances), but it's only Faith and Buffy in S6 (and parts of S5 to be fair) that explicitly grapple with this. Buffy's arc in S6 is basically her grappling with suicidal ideation, and struggling to actually want to be alive. Faith attempts suicide multiple times - metaphorically in This Year's Girl and literally in Five By Five, when she attempts suicide-by-copvampire-detective. I would even argue that Graduation Day is another example of attempted suicide-by-slayer, given that she actively goads Buffy to kill her (and therefore become her), and seems almost relieved and proud when she seemingly does so.

The kicker is really Dead Things. This is such a vital episode for understanding Buffy in S6, and it is absolutely dripping with Faith parallels. It's almost a Frankenstein episode, made up of bits of other Faith-centric episodes. The central conflict is the exact same as Bad Girls, with a routine patrol (seemingly) killing an innocent bystander at the hands of a slayer. Spike has the same solution as Faith - dump the body and forget about it. He even uses the same utilitarian argument to justify it - that one lost life is meaningless, collateral damage, against the many that Buffy has saved. But it's Buffy who is in Faith's shoes, struggling with the idea that she killed someone. Ironically, her solution - to hand herself over to the police - is in fact the same solution Faith eventually comes to in Sanctuary. At this point in time, that was the last thing we saw Faith do in the Buffyverse, and now Buffy herself reaches for that same idea to try and achieve peace.

Her attempt to turn herself in can and should be read as a metaphorical suicide attempt. Her words to Dawn saying goodbye are pretty much a repeat of her words to Dawn before she jumps in The Gift (see @impalementation 's great post on this). She's been trying to recreate that feeling of exquisite peace all year, just as Faith repeatedly turns to metaphorical and literal suicide to find her own. That idea of "peace" being equated to both voluntary incarceration and suicide makes the ending to Sanctuary much darker, which makes me glad that Faith ends up taking an active role in the world by the end.

Buffy beating up Spike in the alley - himself a mirror to Buffy in many ways, and behaving identically to Faith in this episode - is lifted from Who Are You.

"Shut up! Do you think I'm afraid of you? You're nothing. Disgusting. Murderous bitch. You're nothing. You're disgusting."

- Faith Lehane, Who Are You, shouted while crying and punching someone on the floor, but obviously talking about herself.

"You don't have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never be your girl!"

- Buffy Summers, Dead Things, shouted while crying and punching someone on the floor, but obviously talking about herself.

Both scenes come at the climax of an episode-long metaphorical suicide. Both strip away the characters' defenses and lay bare an unfiltered and messy psyche, dominated by anger and self-hatred.

So we can see that when Buffy is at her lowest, she becomes her own shadow self. Faith is in many ways a permanent part of Buffy's psyche, which comes up to the surface occasionally and has to be actively quashed (I'm thinking about her taking on parts of Faith's wardrobe along with her personality in Bad Girls, until the accident at which point she actively goes in the opposite sartorial direction). In her post-ressurection depressive haze, Buffy is simultaneously less connected to her own personhood and more emotionally volatile, so her shadow self is exposed, and that shadow self is Faith.

It gets extra interesting when you remember that Faith is The Slayer at this point. No new slayer is called when Buffy dies - nobody even suggests that one might be out there - which suggests that the sole Slayer line runs through Faith now, and Buffy is an abberation. (S7 kind of confuses the issue when it suggests that the First will have to kill Buffy last, but it makes more sense to ignore that than to ignore this). The Slayer is a core part of Buffy's identity, one that she ambivalently pulls away from and grabs on to - but technically it belongs to Faith now. In S6 Buffy loses connection to her identity, and so becomes an echo of Faith, who owns that part of her now.

Going even further - Faith only exists as The Slayer at all because of Buffy's first death. Slayers are kind of an undead like vampires in a way - they can only ever exist because someone else dies. They live because of death. Faith is the walking, talking corpse of Buffy, a reborn figure given purpose by death, for death. Buffy in S6 is experiencing her own kind of un-life, as depression so often feels like. She too feels like the walking, talking corpse of Buffy. The Slayer, Faith, and Buffy are all caught in their own purgatory, born out of death and unable to see anything but death in their near future.

It's just so much fun to pick apart this season and see how it relates to this seemingly unrelated character. Faith feels like a major presence in a season that she doesn't appear in - and I'm not sure even explicitly mentions her - solely thanks to how effective a lens she is to view the main character. Now that's effective connection of character and theme.

[kaypeace21]

Stranger things is about mental health & trauma- deal with it!

I’ve seen a lot of people claim anyone who mentioned this topic immediately be gaslit and told they’re “just crazy” and “rudely projecting their own issues on to the characters.’ Like- no you don’t have to believe my  Will DID/Lonnie theory ( I could be wrong). But to claim one of the show’s central themes isn’t about mental health/trauma (screams either complete lack of lit comprehension or denial cause you have your own negative biases towards such people). So let’s just go into what’s literal text-not subtext/symbolism. Just the super blatant stuff.  RIGHT IN THE SHOW!

S1

-We have El when she first appears on screen  asked by Benny if her parents starved and hurt her and if that’s why she ran away. Benny then calls CPS to say El “may have been ab*sed or something.” After this Lucas says there is “seriously something wrong with her-wrong in the head. She’s probably from the NUT-HOUSE in curly county.penthurst” We also see El  cannonically has PTSD-all of s1 she’ll see something benign (a cat, a coke commercial, a closet) and is triggered to see a traumatic flashback. That’s literally ptsd.  There’s also hints throughout the seasons she’s developmentally behind in both language, telling time etc (neglect like El’s irl can cause an intellectual disability-analysis on El/that subject here).The real pethurst in pensylvannia (not the one in stranger things/ Curly county)  closed in 1986-  it was a facility for people and mostly  kids with intellectual disabilities (it wasn’t technically a psych facility like the one in st)-but it was infamous for it’s abuse of these intellectually disabled patients kept there. We also have Brenner be a ab*sive psychiatrist.

- Hopper after suffering from the loss of his daughter. Is popping pills like candy, drinking and smoking constantly. He later says he used to hallucinate and forgot what was real -seeing and hearing sarah and says if he didn’t confront the pain he’d “fall down a black hole he couldn’t get out of.” NO... subtext here about what the void represents nope.

- Both mothers (Terry & Joyce) are dismissed as being mentally ill and simply grieving the loss of their kids . But both end up being right about the supernatural.

- “Terry pretends Jane is real. i mean it’s all make believe. you know the doctors all say it’s a coping mechanism.”

- While with Joyce the whole town pre s1 already questioned her mental health. Jonathan says “She used to have anxiety problems (pre s1).” And Jonathan, Hopper, and Lonnie all assume she’s hallucinating: talking to Will via lights, seeing a man without a face, saying Will’s body is fake -due to grief. Plus Lonnie mentions the fact Joyce’s aunt Darlene also used to hallucinate as a possible reason  (terry’s aunt also had mental health issues mentioned in s2 by Becky). Lonnie even says everything Joyce is seeing  is “all in her head.”  Hopper and Jon both say she needs to sleep and accept reality and Lonnie says she needs to see a “shrink”.  Hopper “i’m not saying that you’re crazy”. Joyce : “no, you are.” Joyce also says to Lonnie “Stop looking at me like that... like everyone else like i’m out of my damn mind.” Hopper also says about Joyce she’s “on the edge”. Callahan says in response , “she’s been on the edge for a while now” (referring to her mental health- even before Will’s dissappearance)”. While Lonnie says Jonathan is “feeding into her hallucinations ... you’re going to push her right over the edge.” In s2 Hopper says “ I think everyone is on edge- you, me, Will most of all. (when talking about Will’s ptsd/trauma)” 

- in s1 They claim Will just “fell” over the edge of the quarry’s cliff. Later the only other queer coded character (Mike) jumps off the quarry cliff (where Will’s body was found) cause the homophobic troy forced him too jump. Troy even says earlier dead-Will is “flying with all the other fairies all happy and gay” (to Mike). And Troy says to Hopper El made Mike “fly” after jumping off the cliff. Friendship saved him from jumping off the edge metaphorically ( and he’ll prob eventually be happy and gay too).

s2/3

-Will is seeing a therapist . And we are told he has ptsd and will experience the anniversary effect, personality changes,nightmares, having episodes, etc. And things “will get worse before they get better”.  Mike also asks if what Will is seeing is “real or like the doctors say all in your head?” And Will continues to see hallucinations of the mf/upsidedown that only he can see initially.

-Hopper also agrees with owens mentioning how he knew guys with ptsd . joyce : “it’s not like he’s describing a nightmare. He talks about them like they’re real.” Hopper: “Yeah, because they’re not nightmares they’re flashbacks.I think he’s right about trauma.I think everyone is on edge (bringing that s1 ref back), Me you, Will, most of all.Nothing’s gonna go back to the way that it was. But it’ll get better.In time.”

-Nancy suffers from survivor’s guilt and drunkingly says she killed Barb. Jonathan says like Nancy he has “a weight that you that carry all the time . i feel it too.” (cough depression). He also says he tries to be there for Will but says about Will “he’s not the same. maybe things can’t go back to the way they were. (mirroring Hopper’s words earlier that season)”

-Jonathan said in s1 Joyce had “anxiety issues” than Nancy says in s3 “you really are your mother’s son... you worry too much.” Then we see him look worried after the comment.

- in s2, Axel & a scientist both call El and Will “schizos” because of their powers. In s3 mrs driscoll isn’t believed about the supernatural cause she’s schizophrenic-but like Joyce/Terry was right.

- Kali saves a woman named Dottie (a british slang term for crazy)  from a mental hospital and then compares herself and El to dottie. saying her non-powered gang is “Like us ...outsiders... society discarded them.”  In graphitti we even see the title “obedlam” a british poem about discarding the mentally ill and leaving them homeless.  El before this sees a mentally ill man screaming “we’re all dead!” Kali’s friend says to El, after this encounter they were “dead all of us” until kali “saved them here” (points to head) “and here” (points to heart). Pointing to the theme of love and friendship helping those with such issues. Similar to the cliff analogy.

-The cycle of ab*se. Max in s2 says she’s afraid of becoming like Billy (her ab*ser). We see Billy mimic his ab*ser neil and inflict pain on max. In s3 we see the roots of his behavior are linked to mimicking Neil- Neil in a flashback says  about baseball “what are you scared?”  “ did i raise a p*ssy for a son”. So young Billy later in a fight says to a boy “ what are you scared to fight me? fight me p*ssy. (as he beats the boy)” Deflecting his anger of his father on to someone else. In s3, We see as a kid he used to say to Neil “don’t hurt her” (his mom)-specifically after  Neil backhand slaps her -but we later see possessed Billy backhand slap Max (just like neil).  The resentment to his mother leaving - festered into how he views women and max negatively . And his attraction to mrs wheeler prob is linked to him subconsciously missing his mother. Max in s2 even says  he can’t take it out on her mother so he does so to her instead (we even have Billy hallucinate hurting mrs wheeler).We see in s2 the cycle of abuse is there- Billy mimics Neil, and then Max mimics Billy. Billy harrasses Max and yells “SAY IT!” (mimicking Neil).  Max like Billy later  yells “SAY IT” and uses a bat /violence to stand up for herself against Billy- which earlier she said she was trying to combat … explaining she can be angry like Billy sometimes but she never wants to be like him (her nickname symbolizing this: aka ‘mad max’).  Billy’s last dying words were an apology to Max- for becoming her neil. And we hopefully will see Max break this cycle.

- Will says his now memories (that he describes like dreams) are “growing “, “spreading “,and “killing”. While Kali says they need to face their father and (as Brenner) says El has to confront her “wound” or else it’ll “grow”, “spread” and “eventually it’ll kill her.” Kali says she used to be like El . She used to bottle her pain away and it “spread.” But she then says  “I confronted my pain and I finally began to heal (from those wounds).” We also see with jonathan and nancy when describing “shared trauma” zoom in onto the scars on their hands. The wound heeled into a scar so to speak.

S2 & 3 ENDINGS

both have Hopper do a speech that delves into dealing with trauma/depression but still finding good along the way.

-s2 Hopper outside the snowball: “how are you holding up? Yeah, that feeling never goes away. It is true what they say, you know. Everyday it does get easier.”

-s3 Hopper monolouge : “ Feelings jesus. For so long, i’d forgotten what those even were. I’ve been stuck in one place,in a cave you might say , a deep dark cave (cough s2 supernatural cave). For the first time in a long time, i started to feel things again. I started to feel happy. Life... yeah sometimes it’s painful .sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s suprising... happy.. And when life hurts you, because it will .remember the hurt . The hurt is good. It means you’re out of that cave.”

BUT YES- St has nothing to do with mental health/trauma, we’re just “crazy” and “projecting”. It’s not like some of ya’ll  act pompous when you just have a bias and get pissy at the idea of relating to characters you “other” as “crazy” or “damaged” irl or anything (so attack people for pointing it out). Or (benefit of the doubt) you are just like.... oblivious... or just a kid who doesn’t know better XD

[scullydubois]

Only the Light Ch. 13

13/? | AU where Melissa moves in with Scully after Scully’s abduction | angst, msr slow-burn, occasional fluff | currently: Christmas Eve 1994 | T | 5k | previous chapters | read on ao3 | tagging: @today-in-fic <3

As Scully copes with her diagnosis, Mulder joins her for the Scully family Christmas dinner. Plus, Melissa's girlfriend meets the family.

TW for disordered eating, cigarette smoking, references to abduction/medical rape.

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

Self destruction is a natural impulse for Dana Scully, though she’ll try to deny it. Take one unexplained abduction, add a dash of premature menopause, and sift out time spent proving Mulder wrong, and you’ll get a struggling Scully.

She can tell she’s entering a bad mental state when food becomes a suggestion rather than a necessity. Every bite is either earned according to whatever trivial rules she’s set for herself in that particular moment, or is not deserved and therefore not eaten. It’s a game where she’s the coach, player, and referee, yet she still loses every time. Nourishment is both prize and punishment, feeding her hunger but vacating her control.

This habit started when she was a teenager and wracked with feelings her petite frame couldn’t contain. It felt much safer than the route her siblings had taken of sneaking out in the middle of the night or using fake IDs to buy alcohol or skipping church on the regular. As far as fifteen-year-old her was concerned, she wasn’t bothering anyone by foregoing some meals. Her mother disagreed and called her out every time, humiliating her into her second coping mechanism, smoking.

There were the times when Scully was really young and enticed by her sister’s cigarettes, but that was simple preteen rebellion. What developed when Dana was seventeen was something different entirely. A survival mechanism with poison inside, snuffing herself out while keeping her alive and sane. She would walk to the gas station and buy packs of Marlboros with coins from her piggy bank. The laws were lax in the 80s, the prices too. She would blow rings of smoke while walking home, then hide the pack in her bra and swish some mouthwash. She’d repeat the process to and from school, steadily acquiring a nasty nicotine habit. It continued until the summer before college, when she made herself go cold turkey so as not to take the habit with her. As far as she knows, neither her parents nor any of her siblings ever knew about it.

It resurfaces in times of stress, though normally for no more than a single pack. Lately she’s accustomed to keeping a pack and a lighter with her at all times. Her building is smoke free so she steps outside, but her car is off limits because she doesn’t want the smell to cling to her. It is a hassle, but then again, so are most things.

Missy knows about the poor eating habits--those are hard to hide from someone who shares the same space as you. Nevermind the fact that the scale shows six less pounds than before, and that adds up when the number’s not that large to begin with. Scully’s edges protrude now...that can’t be hidden.

Missy never says a word. She remembers Dana complaining about their mother’s condescending comments about her weight, and she knows the damage that does to a young psyche. Instead, she offers. Healthy meals, guilty pleasure meals, all her sister’s favorites. She cooks more than she ever has before, well aware that her sister will struggle to refuse her.

“I recognize what you’re doing,” Missy told her sister when she tried to turn away a caesar salad, of all things. “I’ve been known to do that too,” Missy admitted. “Eat. You’re hungry, you just think not eating will give you some form of control over your body, or your life...but wasting yourself away is letting the bastards win.”

And so she did, that time at least. Scully has enough shame regarding her habit to push it aside whenever confronted---that’s how she insists to herself that it’s not an eating disorder. She can stop on command. That makes it okay, right?

Getting back into the office helped her a lot---you can’t starve yourself and function as an FBI agent. Besides, she would dissolve into thin air if Mulder figured out what she was doing. He was the one who batted around the idea of Scully helping prep each case and supervising any tests he might need the crime lab to do while he’s in the field. He understood that in lieu of therapy, she needed something to take her out of her own mind.

It was as much for him as it was her; at this point, it’s almost incomprehensible to him that the X-Files had existed before her. Of course he was the laughingstock of the FBI! He had huddled in the basement by himself with UFOs and blurry Bigfoot sightings pinned on the wall like a shrine to his own delusion.

Her fall from grace was his absolution. He’ll make an angel of her, somehow. Even if it means he has to meet the devil.

Scully has no interest in becoming an angel, though she’d sure like to avoid hell, and that hasn’t worked out too well. Locker room jokes are one thing. Underestimation another. But assault? Rape? Trauma and torture because she is who she is doing what she does? She is not a quitter, and that is killing her.

Her barrenness haunts her because it was bestowed upon her as punishment, an implication that she only has worth as a walking womb. She wants to be seen as a person, not a pawn.

The arrival of the holiday season is another weight on her shoulders. It used to be Scully’s favorite time of year; now the sight of carolers makes her want to poke her eyes out. It’s the first Christmas without her father, and that is simply unimaginable. Her and Missy spent a quiet Thanksgiving with their mother---small portions and whispered thanks--in preparation for an elaborate family Christmas. Bill Jr. and Tara are flying in from California for the annual Christmas dinner and midnight mass. They will all try to move forward, pretend it’s just like any other year, but it’s not and it never will be again. Happy Christmases are over for the Scully family.

And yet, they will try to enjoy the moment. Missy told her mom that she’s bringing a friend, which is completely true. Trinity is her closest friend that she doesn’t share blood with. That said, she plans to use the occasion to introduce Trinity as her girlfriend, come what may.

Then there was the suggestion that their mother made, which caught her youngest daughter completely off guard. “Why don’t you bring Fox?” Margaret Scully proposed demurely during their weekly phone call. “I’m making a zoo’s worth of food, I could use another mouth to feed. I hate to see any of it go to waste.”

“Mulder’s spending Christmas with his family, I’m sure,” Scully had replied. “But I’ll pass along the offer.”

That was how Scully learned that Mulder’s family isn’t much for celebration, that he usually spends the holiday flipping between It’s A Wonderful Life and the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story, and that he has a particular fascination with the idea of midnight mass.

“I just don’t get it,” Mulder mused. “You believe that a jolly old man with flying reindeer leaves presents in your house, but you think he waits until after you’ve gotten home from celebrating Baby Jesus’ birthday? Didn’t you ever look for his sleigh in the sky on the drive home?”

“No, Mulder,” Scully sighed. “I just believed that he knew when we were tucked in bed. Santa’s all-seeing, you know,” she teased.

Mulder chuckled. “Kind of presumptuous to assume he functions on your schedule, huh?”

Ultimately, Mulder said yes. He figured attending the Catholic equivalent of Jesus’ birthday party would be another check off his supernatural bucket list, though he did not say this part out loud for fear of Dana Scully’s wrath. Besides, what else was he gonna do on Christmas Eve? Shake the shoebox of junk he stuck under his mini-basketball hoop so he felt like he was getting a gift?

And so the fateful day arrives. Mulder flips his Garfield page-a-day calendar to December 24th, chuckles at the comic strip of the orange cat eating all his owner’s Christmas cookies, and makes his way to his partner’s increasingly familiar doorstep. The sun has already slipped behind the trees by the time he arrives. It gives up easily in the winter.

He rings the bell and hears Scully’s dainty footsteps on the other side. She’s snuck up on him enough times for him to have developed a keen sense of her light footing--no more jump scares for him.

“Hey Scully,” he stammers as she opens the door. She had told him to look “festive,” so he donned his nicest green sweater (a gift from his mom from J. Crew...he had never worn it) and slacks. Scully rounds out their show of holiday spirit with a velvet red blouse and black trousers.

“You look lovely,” Mulder says reflexively, unsure when he started using such a word. Scully pulls at her shirt, obscuring the bit of cleavage that has revealed itself. “Thanks Mulder,” she mutters, ushering him inside.

He holds up the shiny silver gift bag he hastily stuffed with tissue paper. “Some candy canes I picked up at the gas station. I figured the whole family could enjoy them.”

Scully nods, amused by his feeble attempt at gifting. “I’m sure they won’t go to waste.”

A fire crackles in the fireplace. It’s so hot in the apartment that Mulder is surprised it hasn’t melted the snow outside on the sidewalk.

“Where’s Melissa?” he asks, hoping they will hit the road sooner than later.

“She’s picking up her girlfriend from the airport. She couldn’t get an earlier flight.”

“Dulles?” He sure hopes not. It’s all the way across town.

“No, Reagan.”

Whew. Much closer.

“She should be back any minute now,” Scully continues. “Trinity’s flight got in at 3:30.”

Mulder rolls his sleeves up. “So your family doesn’t know about Trinity?”

Scully shakes her head.

“Do they know that Melissa’s…” He gestures, unsure which word to fill the space with.

“Bi? No.”

“So she shows up with Trinity, and then what?”

Scully shrugs. “She introduces her as her girlfriend. Mom already knows Missy is bringing a guest so she’ll have a plate for her.”

“You’re not worried about how the family’s gonna react?”

“Well, I’m sure Bill is gonna be a dick about it, but that’s normal. We only see him once a year, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Bill’s your brother?”

“Uh-huh. And Tara is his wife. They got married about a year and a half ago.”

Even as he pushes into his thirties, it still surprises Mulder that anyone close to his age could be married. He doesn’t even sleep in a bed.

“You think your mom’s gonna be cool with Trinity?” he asks.

“I think she loves her daughter enough to be.”

“Mmm.” Mulder sticks his hands in his pockets. If only he had dilemmas like this. He imagines him and Samantha speculating about their mother’s reaction to Sam’s nose piercing or dyed hair or...anything really. He would give so much to have someone to laugh about his uncle’s sideburns with.

His emotional deep-dive is promptly cut off by the entrance of Melissa and a brunette woman whose bangs graze her eyebrows, her hair falling just below her shoulder. “Hi!” she chirps, taking in the magnificence of Dana Scully. “Dana, I presume?”

Scully nods.

“May I hug you?” Trinity asks, hazel eyes shining.

“Sure,” Scully says, feeling the brisk air against Trinity’s coat as she’s pulled in.

Scully lets go first, and Trinity takes that as a cue to pull away. “You look just like Mel, wow,” she remarks, fighting the urge to run her fingers through Scully’s hair.

Scully smiles softly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, it is,” Trinity assures, exchanging a gooey gaze with Missy. Next, her attention falls upon Mulder, who does an awkward half-wave. “Hello!” She points between Mulder and Scully. “Boyfriend?”

Mulder chokes. Scully picks up his slack--”Oh, no. This is Fox Mulder, my partner at the FBI.”

“Ahh,” Trinity smiles knowingly. “Yes, I’ve heard about you. I didn’t know you would be joining us for Christmas.”

“Christmas is not exactly my family’s cup of tea, so I figured I’d get an authentic experience with the Scullys.”

“Same! I’m looking forward to Mama Scully’s ginger snaps. I’ve heard fantastic things about them.”

Mulder elbows his partner playfully. “Damn, Scully! How could you leave me in the dark about ginger snaps?”

Scully rolls her eyes but smiles. “I apologize, Mulder. Though for the record, the fruitcake is better.”

“Says no one, ever,” Mulder teases.

She grins. Now this is Christmas.

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

Taking a seat at Margaret Scully’s dinner table feels like existing inside a Christmas movie, in Mulder’s mind. Fancy china, green and red serving platters, paper mache snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, and a porcelain nativity scene; the dining room has it all. Not to mention the heaping piles of food there for the taking...if this is Christmas, Mulder wants in every year.

Scully does not share his cinematic fantasy. She knows better, having actually attended one of her family’s dinners before. Bill will get too drunk and start saying whatever comes to mind, their mother will laugh along like he’s still a five year old babbling about nothing (as opposed to the thirty-something spewing bullshit that he actually is), Missy will attempt to debate him to get him to shut up (which never works), and she will sit there and wish to be somewhere, anywhere else. And all without their father to hold the reins and keep a fight from breaking out.

The night has gone smoothly enough, Scully supposes. Missy introduced Trinity as her girlfriend in a very non-ceremonial way, forcing Bill and their mother to nod and accept it, in the moment at least. Mulder received a hug from Margaret and a pat on the shoulder from Bill, so pretty much the highest token of approval. Mulder’s candy canes earned a place in the center of the dessert table, which gave him way more satisfaction than it should have, and he couldn’t help but feel that if they were to vote on favorite man at the party, he would win. A room with Bill Jr. in it is probably the only place he would ever earn this honor, and he’ll take that.

Yet everything unwinds as Scully suspected. Bill waits until everyone has packed plates and full mouths to unleash his particular hyperfixation for the night.

“Trinity?” he questions, raising his fork diagonal across the table toward her. “Is that your name?”

Trinity smiles and nods, oblivious to what she’s in for.

“And you know Melissa how…?”

She pats a napkin to her mouth. “We worked at the same restaurant in Oregon.”

He chuckles gruffly. “What was it, one of those gay bar things?”

“No, an Italian bistro,” Trinity continues calmly.

Missy, however, is not so calm. “Gay people can go places other than gay bars,” she retorts. “We’re not segregated. Though I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Bill sets a fist on the table, clanging his silverware. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Why the hell do you insist on being so politically correct all the time? I’d shoot myself.”

“Gee, maybe you should try it sometime.”

“Now Melissa…” Margaret Scully’s voice rises above the clamor.

“I have the right to defend my girlfriend and I against Bill’s thinly disguised homophobia,” Missy responds.

“You act like I give a damn what you and your friend do,” Bill sneers. “That’s not my business.”

“Then stop pretending like it is.”

“Oh boo-hoo, little Missy thinks the world revolves around her.”

“Bill, honey, I think that’s enough,” Tara says, laying a protective hand on his arm.

“You’re right.” He raises his can of beer toward Mulder. “Whaddya doin here, hot shot? Trying to seduce my sister?”

Scully frowns, but doesn’t say anything, pushing food around on her plate.

Mulder seems rather unbothered by Bill’s advances. He chuckles. “Actually, I think it’s the other way around.”

Bill snorts. “That’s a likely story.”

“You don’t think I’m worth your sister’s time?”

“I don’t think Dana thinks you're worth her time. You’re not her type.”

“I am sitting right here, you know,” Scully says, staring daggers at her brother.

“Then tell us Dana! Is hot shot here your type?”

Her eyes brush Mulder’s face. His cheeks flush, reddening like a stormy sunset. She wishes she could read his mind. The safe answer and the true answer are not often the same. “I think Mulder is a wonderful man. I’m very lucky to know him,” she answers stiffly, her annoyance aimed at Bill.

“Oh, the old run-around!” Bill scraps his fork against his plate. ”Typical.”

Scully grabs her now empty canned cocktail and sulks into the kitchen, leaving her chair pushed away from the table. Everyone watches her go, but Bill gives off the only visible reaction. He laughs. “Scared her away. Thought it would take more.”

Mulder and Melissa exchange a glance. She nods, granting him permission to play knight-in-shining-armor. Quietly, Mulder slips out of his chair and pushes it back into place. He catches the kitchen door as it swings closed behind his partner.

Her anger concealed from the rest of the family, Scully drops her can in the recycling bin with a bang. She ignores Mulder, instead opening the refrigerator and pulling out another cocktail, saying nothing.

“What is this, your fifth drink?” Mulder brushes his hand over her shoulder, and she recoils. “Leave me alone, Mulder.” She slams the fridge and tries to turn around, but he’s cornered her.

“C’mon Scully, Bill’s harmless. He doesn’t bother me.”

“It’s not fucking about Bill,” she fumes, alcohol fizzing through her bloodstream. She inhales, trying to keep it together in front of the man who has done nothing wrong to her. “Please get out of my way.”

“What’s wrong?” He frames her shoulders with his hands, creating their own little bubble.

“Don’t touch me!” she growls. Mulder knows as soon as hears it: he will never forget the pure anguish in her voice. As she retreats to the corner, he looks down at his palms, the stovetop that burned her...he would cut them off if he could.

Unfortunately, the commotion attracts the Scully’s like a dog whistle. Bill leads the charge into the kitchen, getting a full view of his sister hunched over by the back door while her partner stands by the fridge like an idiot. “Ooo, a lover’s spat!” he exclaims, only nominally concerned about Dana’s well-being.

“Shut up, Bill,” Missy hisses. To everyone’s relief, he does.

Mrs. Scully comes forward, maneuvering around Mulder to get to her daughter. “Are you alright, Dana?”

Scully keeps her back to the crowd. “I just need a minute.” She taps her pocket, confirms that she slipped her pack of cigarettes in. “I’ll be outside. Everyone can go back to dinner, please.”

She twists the doorknob and steps onto the back deck without waiting for any response. Mulder feels the tug of tears in his throat, like a dormant animal waking up in him. He is used to being hurt (though not by Scully, never her), but inflicting the hurt is a whole other beast. He doesn’t know what he’s done, but he doesn’t need to. The look in her eyes, put there by what he thought was a harmless touch, made his heart tremble. He is frozen in place, grateful when Melissa appears at his side as the rest of the party returns to the dining room.

“I didn’t mean to upset her, I was trying to make her feel better about Bill…” he laments.

“I’m sure, I’m sure. It’s not you specifically, she’s going through a lot right now--you know.”

Mulder rubs his neck. “I don’t know if I do.”

“She hasn’t shared her diagnosis?”

His eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. “Diagnosis?! Is she okay?”

Missy sighs. “I think you two need to talk. If she gets pissed, tell her I sent you.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Tell me if she’s okay.”

“She’s okay. It’s not fatal or anything.”

“She would tell me, if it was...wouldn’t she?”

Missy bites her lip. “I don’t know, Fox---Mulder. I would hope so, but I was under the impression you already knew about this, and you see how that’s gone.”

Mulder turns toward the back door, desperation living in his voice. “I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta check on her.”

Missy nods. “Don’t let her weasel her way out of this one. I’m expecting a heart-to-heart, mushiness and all.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

He turns the back doorknob and slips through the door, trying to imitate his partner’s ninja skills. The old wood on the door frame shakes as he shuts it. He winces--so much for the sneak attack.

Mulder follows the arc of the deck, winter’s bite colliding with him. He didn’t have a chance to grab his jacket, and now that he’s thinking about it, Scully didn’t either. He can grin and bear it but she is all skin and bones, now more than ever. It scares him to see her like that, but it’s none of his business, he feels, to comment on her body. He can break her fall, but he must not provide an extra push.

The wind has no friends to protect nor foes to defeat, so it will give away anyone. It carries the unmistakable tarnish of smoke to Mulder’s nose, an ashy haze that has come to remind him of Skinner’s office and the shadow lingering in the corner. He almost expects to find him there with his Morleys and his sadistic laugh. Instead, he finds a redhead and her Marlboros shrinking against the December cold snap.

“Bum a cig, ma’am?” He scoots up to her, ready to retrieve his own smoke from her long, slender fingers.

“Mulder!” She pulls the cigarette away from her, holding her last puff captive in her lungs.

He wiggles his fingers like an impatient child. “We’re all gonna die someday, right?”

Her jig up, she rolls her shoulders back and releases the smoke with a great rise and fall of her chest. It mingles in the air with the chill of her breath, becoming one and the same as they leave the contours of her body. Head tilted back and lips parted, she is alive with nicotine’s ease and intoxication’s freedom.

It is better than porn, according to one Fox William Mulder. He’ll keep this observation to himself for now.

“Did your parents never teach you that sharing is caring?” he rambles. “C’mon, give me a light!”

“It’s a nasty habit, Mulder.”

“I’m a connoisseur of those,” he replies loosely. “Now, you’re not gonna make me put you in a headlock are ya?”

Scully rolls her eyes. She’s never felt less threatened in her life. “You’re exhausting, do you know that?”

“I’ve heard it a time or two.”

She pulls a cigarette from her carton and slips it into his fingers. They are warm; hers are ice-cold. “I wanted to be alone.” She hands him the lighter, watches as he generates heat from thin air.

He lights his cig and sticks the lighter in his pocket rather than handing it back to her. “According to my calculations, you should be very drunk right now. Other than your Oscar bait performance back there, you’ve got things pretty under control I’d say.”

Scully gestures at her cigarette smoking, teeth chattering self. “Yeah, I’m the picture of health.”

“Do you have some exceptional alcohol tolerance I should know about, because that’d make you very valuable in undercover work.”

Scully gazes out into the distance. She’d smile if she were to look at him right now, and that doesn’t feel right for the situation. “Those drinks have low alcohol content, Mulder. You can buy them at Dollar General.”

“You ever looked at their hand sanitizer? It’s like 95% alcohol.”

“Well, now I know where you go to get your fix.”

He chuckles. “You got me.”

She stuffs her hands in her pockets and he wishes, god he wishes, that he had grabbed his jacket. He’d take off his sweater if she wanted him to--stand there with his bare chest to the cold--but he has a feeling that would only exacerbate the situation.

He tries a more gentlemanly route. “Do you want me to grab your jacket? I won’t give away your trade secrets.”

She folds herself together. “No, it’s okay. It’ll make me get a move on at some point.”

They stand united in their rebellion, blowing smoke and freezing their asses off. Who needs Christmas cheer when you’ve got Christmas resentment?

Mulder sways a bit to keep his blood circulating. He is careful not to bump her. “You wanna tell me why you’re out-Scrooging Scrooge this year?” he prompts as gently as he can.

“In case you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t exactly been the best year of my life.”

“I gathered that, yeah.”

“And it’s the first Christmas without my father…” her voice warbles.

“Shit, right. I’m sorry,” Mulder murmurs.

“...So it just doesn’t feel very celebratory.” She takes a long drag. Mulder can tell that this secret smoking habit is not new to her, and he wonders when she picked it up, how long she has kept it from him.

He takes a deep breath, watches as it is written in the air. “Melissa told me you received a diagnosis, and I think we’ve already established that sharing is caring…”

Scully looks him in the eyes for the first time since he joined her. It has the sudden intensity of a black-and-white film, Scully the 1940s scarlet and he the leading man who pales in comparison to her. There is no one he’d rather be overshadowed by.

“It’s humiliating,” she croaks. “Missy and my mom are the only ones who know.”

“I’ve got the monopoly on humiliation in this partnership, so I wouldn’t worry about that,” he says, flicking some ashes to the ground.

“This is a particular form of humiliation you can’t experience, I’m afraid. Or at least, it wouldn’t impact you the same way.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She sighs. “My abductors removed all of my eggs, causing my menstrual cycle to shut down and me to enter perimenopause.”

His breath catches in his throat. “Jesus christ.”

“Uh-huh.”

He throws his cigarette on the ground and stamps it out, though it could have burned longer. “That’s fucking horrifying, Scully. You’ve got to inform the Bureau. We’ve got to catch these--whatever they are. We’ve got to make them pay.”

“No, Mulder. It’s too much. I don’t want to keep reliving it, I want to be able to move on with my life.”

“How can you move on when they’re still out there, probably doing it to more women?”

She shakes her head, feeling the snag of tears and holding them back for fear they might freeze on her face. “I don’t know, but I can’t think about it like that. It sort of...shatters everything, the idea that this could be a phenomenon happening to other women in secret. I wouldn’t believe it if it didn’t happen to me. I still don’t believe it.”

Mulder shudders. He can’t discern whether it’s from the cold or their conversation. “Do you think it was men who took you? Or do you believe Duane Barry?”

“It seems like a level of monstrosity that only man could achieve. It requires a certain understanding of society, gender roles...dehumanization that only humans could perpetuate.”

Mulder nods. Her reasoning tracks, but the thought of him failing to outsmart humans who stole away his partner is something he cannot fully process. It makes sense that he couldn’t find her if she was in space, but if she was on the face of the Earth, he had no damn excuse.

“You were just gone, Scully...you were just gone.” His aching is so palpable, his voice a cliff’s edge they could both tumble down.

“I know I was.” She takes one last puff, then lets her cigarette fall to the ground. She crushes it with her heel, her force premeditated and brutal. That pain is for the ones who took her, the ones who have obviously never loved a thing at all.

Head bowed, she moves toward the door, but not without grasping for Mulder’s elbow, assuring that he is following behind. He is and he will be, for as long as she lets him.

Inside, the home’s manufactured warmth hits them, unreal in comparison to the cold they have known. The kitchen is as quiet as it was before their ordeal, the dining room empty aside from Mrs. Scully clearing serving platters.

“Where did everyone go?” Scully asks, momentarily alarmed that she may have ruined the entire gathering.

“We’re going to drive around and look at lights before mass. Everyone’s getting ready.”

“Oh.” She looks to Mulder, as if to check that he hasn’t left her stranded. “I think I’ll stay here,” she tells her mother. “Make a cup of hot chocolate and relax for a bit.”

“Well, you’ll be missed. Fox, would you like to join us?”

He takes a leap, hopes he’s got the right idea. “I’ll stay here, but thank you.”

“As you wish,” Mrs. Scully says with a slight smile. Mulder had never noticed her resemblance to her daughter until that moment. It was like looking at a sketch of a famous painting; the lines are there but the colors missing.

Soon enough the crowd leaves and Scully and Mulder settle on the couch with mugs of hot cocoa. Margaret Scully’s tree forms the centerpiece of the living room, and it’s hard not to admire its gold and red decorations and the shiny angel on top.

“That’s gorgeous. Does she do it every year?” Mulder asks, ignoring the steam rising out of his mug and going right in for the kill.

Scully nods. “Every year since we were kids. There used to be a lot more homemade ornaments, but I guess she swapped those for a more elegant look now that we’re grown.”

“Well, it’s beautiful.” He looks at her, curled up with the glow of the fireplace falling upon her, and he feels warmth and safety like never before. It would be so easy to slip in “and so are you,” it is practically begging to be said. But she wouldn’t believe him if he said it now; she would think it was a pity compliment. Instead, he mouths the words, and she is not looking, and that is okay.

She snuggles deeper into the cushions, closing her eyes and letting her mind wander. She is the most at ease she has been in months--here in the house she lived in during high school with the fireplace crackling and her partner by her side--and that’s not what she expected from Christmas Eve. Heaven strokes her skin, and she blinks her eyes open to find Mulder tucking her in with her mother’s microfiber blanket. She smiles her soft Scully smile. “Thank you,” she coos, burrowing herself deeper into the blanket’s embrace.

“You’re welcome,” Mulder whispers into her ear. His fingers tangle in her hair as he pulls her toward him, his lips meeting her temple. She catalogues the feeling for her memory bank: chapped but carrying the hot chocolate’s warmth. She will spend the next while convinced that it was a dream, a fleeting image in the moments before sleep, but she will carry the feeling until she feels it again.

[wanderingchocolateeclair]

For the asks, 11, 18, 19 for Edgeshot and the soggy noodle (Jeanist) please?

Oohhhh, thank you for sending one in!! I actually did number 11 for these two way back when I reblogged this for the first time in this post (one of your asks actually aha) but I’m going to write out some more/re-write what I’ve written slightly different most probably lmao

Warning: will be mentions of bad coping mechanisms, depression, death and self destructive tendencies and thoughts. Please read with caution. I’ve put number 19 under the cut for this reason.

11. Bad or petty habits.

Okay well, they’re both incredibly bad at dealing with stress and tend to have a habit of overworking themselves.

Jeans gets incredibly fidgety when nervous, however always tends to pick and scratch at his hands. So he’ll always have something with him that he can fiddle with, such as a ring or charm or just the hem of his clothes.

He also is really bad at taking care of himself for some reason, mainly with things like injuries and stuff like that, but still.

Also. Petty habits? His puns. Please, it’s his puns he just cannot stop himself.

Shinya overworks himself, as said earlier, but it just has to be emphasised.

Sometimes (very rarely) he can tend to make a snarky remark relating to someone complaining about their family, with a response along the lines of “oh yeah same” or “ahaha yeah, it’s really annoying huh?” or literally just hitting them with the “yeah, they’re dead.”

He mostly does it to villains as a way to make them actually hesitate, when they say stuff like “oh I’ll kill your friends and family blah blah” he simply answers with a “too late” and he hates how spontaneous he says it.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen often because, well it’s kinda obvious and he has respect towards his family, but some days he just cannot help himself, he considers it a very bad habit.

18. Things they’ll never admit.

That they are tired. Or stressed. Or overworked. Or mildly injured.

They are so stubborn and they just will not admit it.

Also, when one is mad at the other, they don’t like admitting when there is something that they’re mad/wrong about.

They are just incredibly stubborn and will wait for ages. And eventually they feel bad but are still stubborn so don’t want to admit that they want to speak to the other.

Not that they need to admit when one of them feels lonely or sorry or just really bad about something when they aren’t speaking. Because it’s definitely plastered all over their body language.

(To those who don’t want to read number 19 because it does have some pretty heavy angsty stuff, please feel free to leave it here ❤️)

19. People they’ve hurt or indirectly killed, and how it affected them. (Read carefully, contains some sensitive stuff as specified in my warning ^^)

Okay, like I said, these are pretty heavy and contain quite sensitive stuff so please be careful. I’ve wanted to talk about these particular headcanons for a while, but didn’t know how to.

I have a headcanon that Tsunagu has killed someone in the past, and possibly more than just one person. It was all accidental, well, mostly.

When he was younger, about 12, I can’t remember what age I said in ‘When it Rains...’ but he was young. He couldn’t control his quirk and his quirk often would be way too powerful for him and his body to handle.

He found himself rushing to help some kids from a villain but his quirk ended up going haywire and he basically strangled the villain to death, whilst doing serious damage to himself and hurting his sister by doing so. He was just so angry and out of control, his mind was screaming at him.

This spirals him into a very very dark mindset, and he starts to blame himself for everything. The kids at school knew what happened and called him a “freak” and he had no friends.

As time went on, he often got told that “his quirk wasn’t suited for being a hero” and taunted that he should just stick to “making dresses and playing hairdressers” which had a really big effect on the way he saw himself.

He started to agree with them and when they told him that “you can’t be a hero now, you killed someone! Better to just start fresh, yeah?”...he also agreed...and well, I’m sure you can imagine what that leads him to, since I’d rather not go into the details of that too much at the moment...

His sister has to feel all of this pain that he goes through, and this makes him feel even worse.

He manages to get through this with the help of his sister, and a couple of friends that stuck with him throughout it all. And he goes to UA with his mind still clouded with doubts.

He knows he’s weak, he’s thin and not of a suitable fighting form. His quirk is too powerful for him to control and also not suitable for being a hero, but with the help of others and teachers and family he manages to pull through.

As he becomes a hero, he starts to feel better and more proud of himself, however there is still that little comment at the back of his mind telling him that he is weak.

Everytime he fails to rescue someone, or accidentally injured or goes too far with capturing a villain, it takes a huge toll on his self confidence and he starts spiralling again. Even if it wasn’t his fault he will still take the blame. It all brings him back to that moment when he was 12.

This often leads him to overworking himself to the point of passing out or collapsing, and often one of his friends or interns will have to usher him to somewhere he can recover. He lets his health deteriorate and lets any injuries go untreated.

He is the type of person to carry every failure, tiny mishap and any failed missions, completely on his own back. He converts it all to regret and this makes him feel weak, stupid and helpless. He could be on the other side of town and hear of a villain attack that got someone injured and he’d blame it on himself. These thoughts get carried with him until he finally just has to break down and let it all out.

This usually happens at home, where it’s obvious to anyone that he needs to talk about it, even if he doesn’t want to. Or at their usual top 5 meet ups, because they understand and they all listen to him and comfort him beca they know how much it affects him.

Often, in these mindsets, he will end up over using his quirk and injuring himself with his recklessness, however....this time it’s quite deliberate...he just lets it happen.

This carries on until he’s quite a bit older, and even then he still gets moments where his mind starts to slip.

When he meets Shinya, it helps a lot with his mental health, due to them having so much in common (and just being a couple of generally traumatised and depressed heroes who can barely look after themselves properly). They help each other get through the hardest parts and they understand when one feels the way they do.

(I’ve got many other little things that relate to this rather depressing headcanon, but it’s a heavy subject so I won’t write them out unless someone asks and actually would like me to, just for me to make sure you guys are comfortable and okay)

—————got to switch to Shinya now aha—————————

Okay so we have his backstory (which I am still working up the motivation to finish the whole thing)

Shinya ends up killing a large group of the villains that ambushed his village. He didn’t know how it happened, how he did it, or anything like that. But in a moment of rage and adrenaline and pure unbridled emotion, he shot forwards and killed them instantly, brutally.

In the moment he didn’t care. He was scared and had just seen his family and friends die in front of him.

However, once he learnt exactly what he’d done, and how severe it actually was, that’s when he started to feel the regrets.

At first it was not much, but as he started to try to live a normal life again and interact with others, that’s when it became an issue.

He noticed how others glared at him. He noticed the fear in the other people’s faces as they walked past him. The looks on their faces as they acknowledged the broken, empty face of this child and how scared they were of his past.

Slowly this all made him very self conscious and worried about how others saw him. He started to feel more doubtful and less trusting than he was, even with barely any trust left in him.

He trained and trained, overworking himself and using his quirk way too much. This allowed him to gain experience, yes, but it also drained him of having any sense of what a childhood should be - draining his memory of living a normal life.

People were always intimidated by him, and over the years he got used to it, but there are always times where he felt that no one would see him how he really was. Just a lonely person, robbed of a happy childhood and innocence and someone who can’t find it in him to trust anyone ever again. The only person who would understand was his sister, since she wen through the exact same experience and was with him through it all.

When he meets Tsunagu, he finds himself starting to trust again, and found that he was one of the only people that he felt safe with.

Then he started meeting other pro heroes, some with tough backstories themselves, and it just made him feel less alone.

Of course, there will be days where his past haunts him, and he feels the blood of all the lives he’s taken and failed to save on his hands and it terrifies him. It drags him down. These days he ends up shutting himself away.

He doesn’t take care of himself properly and ends up collapsing and becoming ill and rundown.

However, these moments happen. And being with those who he finally trusts and those who are there to help him feel safe...that’s what allows him to recover

That’s what allows them both to feel human once again, despite their pasts and doubts. Despite their flaws and failures. They seek happiness in each other and they find safety in their friends...and that’s what keeps them going.

Thank you for asking! Sorry for how morbid that end one was, but it really is one of my most prominent headcanons for these two, especially poor jeans, and I actually kinda feel a little better to have you guys know it now, so that when I sort of reference it in my writing, you know what I’m going on about.

Please send some in guys, I would love to give you some headcanons on whatever character you’d like to send in! Love you ❤️ This is the post for the questions!! I’m going to bed for now, but please feel free to send some in for me to answer tomorrow, I’ll get to them as soon as I can!!

[lassieposting]

Tell us about Lucifer’s depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and past abuse. I mean I can see the self harm, both the obvious In cutting off his wings and the like as well as the unhealthy self medicating, and the abuse - which honestly comes across as a murky gray area, like some verges on abuse but isn’t quite- but the other things... I need them pointed out to me.

GLADLY, ANON

okay so, to cover my ass: this is just my personal take as someone with trauma & suicidal ideation who self-harms. other people with different trauma and different relationships with self-harm/suicidal ideation might see this whole thing completely differently. This post could be triggering, please pay attention to the triggers in the tags. I am not a professional psychiatrist, and if you are struggling please seek professional help. 

i’m gonna break this down into sections bc, surprise surprise, it got rly long

THE ABUSE:

Now, you’re absolutely right that this is kind of a murky grey area, because at this point we really only have one side of the story: Lucifer’s. And obviously, he’s biased. 

the family dynamics:

But let’s take a look at the family dynamics we see in-show. We’ve only seen a fraction of Lucifer’s family, but it’s still fairly obvious that the ways they interact with one another are unhealthy and tend towards abusive, especially when aimed at Lucifer. 

We have Amenadiel, who: 

Is obedient to his Dad on an almost brainwashed level until he falls. 

Blames everything - including his own actions/failures (i.e. saying Malcolm killing humans is Lucifer’s fault, even though Amenadiel himself raised Malcolm from Hell) on Lucifer.

Does not know how to respond to affection or praise, even though he clearly appreciates and enjoys them (i.e. when Trixie hugs him and says she thinks he’s good). This is the son who’s in God’s good books. And he still clearly doesn’t receive affection or praise often. 

Openly competes with Lucifer for Dad’s attention/love, to the point of rubbing it in his face when he discovers he’s the favourite

Is complicit in Lucifer’s abuse - taking him back to Hell (thereby isolating him), threatening him when he doesn’t want to go, and cutting off any attempt Lucifer makes at reaching out to connect with humanity - for billions of years to try and win his Dad’s approval. 

Straight up tries to have Lucifer killed.

Says he’d love to go to war (with Lucifer, and presumably with Hell as a whole). 

We have Uriel, who:

Takes it upon himself to enforce what he believes is his Dad’s will; he had no instructions from God when he came to Earth. 

Delights in getting the opportunity to beat up Amenadiel, and gloats about it. 

Threatens - and harms - the first good thing Lucifer has had in his life in eons as a way of bullying him into doing what Uriel wants.

When Lucifer complies, Uriel decides to kill both Goddess and Chloe, purely out of spite because Lucifer was “being difficult”.

(There is an interesting meta here on Uriel’s potential motivations that I really like, but this is looking purely at his actions.)

And we have Goddess, their mother, easily the most manipulative and emotionally abusive of the lot. She:

Admits to destroying things God cared about - attacking humanity with plagues and floods etc - out of malice and to get his attention. 

Happily releases Azrael’s blade into human hands, hoping for widespread human deaths, to get her ex to get back in touch. 

Plays Lucifer and Amenadiel off against one another like a pro for her approval. 

Only ever touches her children when she’s trying to manipulate them - there’s a good meta on that here. The one exception to this that I personally believe to be a genuine attempt to comfort (both him and herself) is when she hugs Lucifer after he’s just killed Uriel. 

Doesn’t actually care about what Lucifer wants - he’s told her outright that Earth is the only place where he feels wanted and respected, and she knows he has a life he enjoys and a woman he’s falling in love with, but she expects him to abandon Earth and go back to the Silver City with her regardless - to the point that she actively tries to dismantle his human life and kill his loved ones to leave him with no ties to Earth. 

The picture this paints to me is of two incredibly narcissistic parents who see their children as extensions of themselves rather than as people in their own right. If you compare Lucifer - who’s an asshole, but fundamentally a good man - to his siblings here, you can see that the two who stayed in Heaven have caught fleas from their parents - and part of Amenadiel’s redemption arc is him realising how toxic and damaging his family is, giving himself a damn good flea bath, and doing his best to be a better big brother to Lucifer and a better son to his mom (and, later, a better father to Charlie than his Dad was to him). 

angel life cycle

So apparently in canon, angels were created as adults. My personal headcanon is fuck that, baby angels, but we’ll go with the canon explanation for this, because honestly it still lines up with my theory. 

Even if you’re “born” with a mature adult body and adult-level speech ability etc, you still won’t have an adult’s wealth of life experience, or maturity, or social skills. You’re still going to have to grow and learn and experience situations to learn how to cope with them. 

Now, Tom Ellis has said in the past that he plays Lucifer as essentially having the emotional maturity level of a teenager, which I think is honestly perfect. For an immortal being - or at least a being with a lifespan of many, many billions of years - it’s actually fairly believable that the angels are (depending on the age gap between them) either still in the “adolescent” life stage or emerging into the “young adult” one. 

Lucifer says that he’s spent “most of his life” in Hell. If he’s only a young adult now, at ~11 billion years old, that means he’d have been a juvenile (in terms of life experience/emotional development, even if he was “born” with a fully mature adult body) when he was sent to Hell, and the reason he was sent to Hell is because he wanted free will and started “acting out”. 

Even if your 12-year-old is the most unpleasant, rebellious little shithead on the planet, you don’t kick him out of the house and spent the next decade sabotaging every attempt he makes to connect with people or improve his life. Because, you know. That’s your kid. You signed up to have him, that’s normal shitty teenager behaviour, and the chances are he’ll improve with age. God and Goddess went scorched earth on Lucifer because he was behaving in a completely normal way for a kid beginning to mature into a grownup. 

lasting trauma

Lucifer’s parents’ treatment has left some crazy deep scars. 

He uses a neglectful broken home as an analogy for his celestial family. And he does so incredibly smoothly; this is clearly an analogy he’s thought about before. Chances are he’s seen this dynamic on TV and identified very strongly with it. 

He talks about his mother abandoning him as his “lowest point”.  Not his Fall. Not any of the horrific things he’s seen in Hell. The point where he realised his mom doesn’t love him enough to protect him. 

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong. God punished Lucifer harshly for wanting to control his own life, because narcs often see their children’s developing independence as a threat to their own control over their kids’ lives. Obviously He wouldn’t see it like that, but he’s clearly never explained to Lucifer why what he did was “wrong”. This family has a chronic communication problem. 

He’s paranoid as fuck. He constantly suspects God of having a hand in the events happening around him, and any time it seems He is involved, Lucifer immediately sees whatever’s happening as an attempted manipulation. It never occurs to him that creating Chloe - someone immune to his powers who can really love him without any kind of supernatural influence - could be an olive branch or an attempt to give him what he actually needs. He doesn’t believe his Dad would ever do something positive to/for him. 

He’s so badly traumatized by his childhood that he reacts like this to being called by the name his Dad gave him. And he’s clearly doing well in therapy - he might not know the word for it, but he knows he’s being (unintentionally) gaslit here. He doesn’t handle it well, but he doesn’t put up with it either, refuses to accept being told to see his Dad’s abuse as a sign of love. 

He believes he’s unloveable. When Linda gently suggests that maybe Chloe kissed him purely because she likes him, he tells her that’s impossible and reminds her his powers don’t work on Chloe. He doesn’t think there’s any way someone could love him for who he is, unless he’s either giving them something or using his mojo on them. And it’s his family that’s conditioned him to think that way - look at Amenadiel alone, how many times he tells Lucifer he’s evil throughout the show, as casually as if he were telling him that his hair is brown. This is just a fact of the universe in that family: water is wet, leaves are green, Lucifer is irredeemable garbage. 

He doesn’t for a second hesitate to believe that his Dad wanted to kill him. Or that he would kill him given the opportunity. He even thinks Chloe is his dad’s attempt to get him killed for a bit. 

THE SELF HARM

the wings: 

The blatantly obvious one - and the most deliberate - is when he cuts off his wings. Now when Lucifer talks about this, he frames it as him taking back agency over his own life, freeing himself from his Father’s control, and making a statement about his intention to stay on Earth. 

But when you look at him, he doesn’t look victorious, or like he’s looking forward to starting a new life. Physical pain aside - and an amateur amputation would be agonizing - he looks almost like he’s grieving, gritting his teeth through something he feels he has no choice but to do. 

Someone did a fantastic meta that I thought I’d reblogged at some point that says something like “this isn’t the devil in his moment of triumph against god; this is an abused boy mutilating himself to spite his father”. I wanted to link it, but I haven’t been able to find it again (if anyone finds it, please let me know so I can add a link).  

the self-medicating:

I don’t think he realises this is a form of self-harm, and I don’t think he does it to hurt himself deliberately. But he comes to Earth to overindulge in all the things he can’t have in Hell, all the things he’s been cut off from. 

Touch and affection, which he gets through sex. Oblivion, which he gets by drinking. Euphoria, which he gets from drugs. Socialisation, which he gets from being surrounded by people at all times and partying it up 24/7.

It doesn’t matter to him that the touch is from a stranger, it doesn’t matter that the affection only lasts one night, it’s something and that’s more than he’s getting in Hell. He buries himself in those things to forget that he has to go back. He can bury himself in the next line or the next shot or the next attractive body and, just for a little bit, he can forget who he is.

Sending Lucifer to Hell in and of itself is cruel. Angels are clearly social creatures, and he’s been in solitary isolation for billions of years - it’s a miracle he hasn’t gone insane. Yes, he has the demons, but they don’t interact with him by choice and he’s not safe with them. Hell denies Lucifer everything a young person needs to grow into a stable, healthy adult. 

the self-sabotage:

We also see that he’s got a tendency to sabotage himself when he’s on a downward spiral. This usually comes out one of two ways - either:  

He tries to chase away the people who care about him. This comes from being so terrified of being abandoned and rejected again that he’d rather run them off himself than wait for them to inevitably (in his mind) decide that he’s Not Worth It and leave him. For example: 

He tries to push Linda away when he’s grieving after killing Uriel. 

He punches Dan in the face and gets himself thrown off the case by Chloe - she’s already warned him she would bench him if he didn’t pull himself together. 

He throws Chloe’s initial rejection in her face when he’s on his self-hatred bender in S4. 

He’s absolutely vicious to Amenadiel in this scene, when Amenadiel is trying to communicate that he loves Luci and wants to support him. 

Or he talks shit about himself. You can always tell when he’s having a bad time; he’ll start coming out with shit like, “I’m the devil, remember, I’m evil.” His real view of himself will slip out from under the mask of confidence and vanity. Chloe cuts right to the heart of this in S4; he’s been told so many times that he’s responsible for all evil that he now believes it. He blames himself, even as he vehemently denies having ever made anyone do anything. 

THE SUICIDAL IDEATION:

Jesus fuck, it’s a good thing Lucifer is in therapy. 

The first time we see him actively attempt suicide is in 1x13 when he’s being framed for shooting the street preacher. It’s a case of “the straw that broke the camel’s back” here - he’s been having a really rough time lately:

Groups of zealots are cornering him in the street accusing him of murders he didn’t commit 

Being accused of things he didn’t do is already a trigger for him

His own brother tried to have him assassinated.

His bodyguard and oldest friend betrayed him.

He’s just found out the detective makes him vulnerable. 

He knows Dan - and therefore probably other work colleagues as well - think he’s got something to do with the satanic murders. 

And now Chloe is turning her gun - and apparently her back - on him. She’s no different from anyone else. He was stupid to ever trust her, etc, etc, and now he’s spiralling.

She was the last rock keeping his head above the ocean at this point, and when she goes to arrest him, he goes under. We see that mania come out very quickly; he starts laughing hysterically and tries to goad an inexperienced uni into shooting him. He pretends to have a gun, knowing the cop will fear for his life and instinctively shoot. Since Chloe’s right there at the time, and he now knows he can be hurt around her, that’s attempted suicide. He wants to die. He even admits to Amenadiel he was trying to achieve “a good death…or at least a nice and messy one.”

No one ever addresses this bloody hell why

And then there’s the case with the shooter in the hospital. Lucifer’s grieving Uriel at this point, and he’s up to his eyeballs in self-loathing. He killed his brother. He really is the monster everyone believes he is. He’s spent the entire episode up to this point trying to make people punish him. He’s riled up Chloe at a crime scene and she’s told him off. He’s punched Dan, and Dan didn’t retaliate. He turned down Linda’s offer of continued therapy in a way that’s almost a challenge; he wants her to snap back at him. And when none of these little punishments are enough for him, he escalates and escalates and eventually he steps in front of the sniper’s intended victim and, again, goads him to shoot. He goes a bit further this time, though; he outright begs the sniper to shoot him, and reams the guy out when he says he didn’t think Lucifer deserved it. 

Again, he knows Chloe is there. This is a suicide attempt. He even admits to Chloe that he didn’t care about the intended victim, he was just trying to get himself killed. She doesn’t believe him. And it’s never addressed again, and I’m salty. 

Anyway I hope this clarifies some stuff for you anon? and I’m sorry it took so long to finish I rewrote this so many times for Maximum Sensitivity and kept including stuff and taking stuff out and it got SO LONG and i had to condense it and i have A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS OKAY I HAD A LOT TO SAY

[be-compromised]

Recathon 2020 Masterlist

Hello and welcome to the Recathon 2020 masterlist! This masterlist will be comprised of all recs posted to this post (all 144 of them!), with some small edits. Those edits are: (1) Duplicate recs have been discarded. Fics appear under the first theme they were rec'd under. (2) "Self rec" and "rec one of your own fics you think didn't get enough love" have been combined. Unless otherwise specified, all recs are Clint/Nat or Clint & Nat. Also, unless otherwise specified all recs are fanfiction. On to the rec list!

Stories set in/focused on/including IKEA. Some Assembly Required by @alphaflyer Teen, no warnings: "They say that when you go to the seven circles of Hell, IKEA has taken over the suburbs and parts of the ring road.” Natasha and Clint enter an alien universe. Anything is Possible by @cassiesinsanity Gen, no warnings: It's 3 a.m. and Natasha is struggling to assemble an IKEA bed. Clint is woken up by her loud cursing and now they're in it together, both figuratively AND literally. #27 IKEA by @nympheline Teen, post-Avengers, angst: Clint and Natasha will never have normal lives. They have accepted this as fact. Once a month, they pretend by putting on some old rings and going to Ikea to pick out furniture. Or to Home Depot to look at paint samples. Or to Walmart to check out baby clothes. Because they will never have normal lives, but it’s nice to pretend. Things We Learn About Each Other at Ikea by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse) Chapter 7 of Drips and Drabs from Alliterative Domiciles, part of the Alliterative Domiciles series Teen, no warnings: Natasha and Clint in Ikea. Consumer Affairs by @galwednesday Steve/Bucky, teen, no warnings: “Tom,” Sara, the Senior Marketing Associate, said levelly, “if you don’t let me promote our bedroom product line using the Winter Soldier’s tweet reviews, I will quit. I will quit today. I will leave you high and dry with a junior marketing associate and an intern, Tom. The intern just started last week. He doesn’t even know how to work the copier yet.” Comedy! Frank & Matt: A Summary by Ariel Video. Matt Murdoch and Frank Castle. captain america | crack!vid 2 and captain america | crack!vid 3 by chrissy mae Video. Exactly what it says on the tin. Cursed Fork by canistakahari Steve/Bucky, teen, no warnings: There is a cursed fork in Steve’s cutlery drawer. Life of Crime by neveralarch Clint/Carol, Clint/Nat/Bucky, Kate/America, explicit, cntw: A supervillain AU where Clint shoots arrows at people and gets beat up a lot. So, not really that much of an AU. It's Raining Men by DailyAsgardianNews Video. Again, exactly what it says on the tin. xD Here Are All the Sensations of Being Alive by prettyasadiagram Gen, cntw: Contrary to what Clint likes to tell the new SHIELD agents, Natasha does have hobbies other than coming up with new and impressive ways to kill people with her thighs, even though the slight flinches and rabbit-quick swallows in the hallway are always hilarious. Natasha and a bedazzler. The Amazing Naked Avengers by vain_glorious Teen, no warnings: There were Avenger-sized mouse traps all over the damn bunker. All about as effective. Meaning no one got killed, but everyone is naked and bleeding a little. The Great Avengers Body Swap by vain_glorious Teen, no warnings: Loki and the Avengers spend a month in SHIELD's detention cells, because Loki cast a bodyswapping spell against them and got himself with it, too. The Importance Of Being Spidey by @copperbadge and @scifigrl47 Gen, no warnings: The Daily Bugle has some peculiar ideas about Clint Barton and a spandex bodysuit. Extracurricular Activities by @scifigrl47 Gen with background pairings, teen, no warnings: New York has a party for any taste. Some people like high class lounges. Some enjoy a good dive bar. There are gay bars and techno clubs and all night raves. And somewhere out there, there's a club where the dancers are dressed like Super Heroes, and Spider-Man may or may not be their headliner. Let's face it, the everyone assumed that Clint would be the first Avenger to take up pole dancing. He's a little distressed he's been beaten to the punch. Phil Coulson Knows Tony Stark's Super Villain Name by @scifigrl47 Gen with background pairings, teen, no warnings: Look, I’m just going to say SHIELD team building exercise with paintballs. Transfer Students by @copperbadge Gen, teen, no warnings: Five times the Avengers pawned kids off on the Jean Grey School. The Immortal Hawkeye by @copperbadge Clint/Bucky, teen, no warnings: Clint's a little older than he looks, and his DNA has a few surprises in store, too. Leader Of The Free World by @copperbadge Gen with Clint/Bucky, teen, no warnings: Clint Barton's presidential campaign started as a joke. It didn't end that way, except for Steve. 5 Times Steve Got Arrested and 1 Time They All Did by @heartsdesire456 Steve/Bucky, Clint/Phil, teen, no warnings: What it says, 5 times Steve Rogers ended up in jail (with and without Bucky) + 1 time all of the Avengers got arrested with him. Cap3 helicopter scene but with My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion by @darlingpeggys Video, uploaded to YouTube by punkrockchewbacca Clint/Other and Nat/Other recs Prince Charming by @brendaonao3 Steve/Bucky, Steve/Thor, Clint/Wanda, explicit, no warnings: Bucky's not looking for a girl, he doesn't need anyone for the long haul. Then he meets Steve Rogers and discovers that what he's looking for in a relationship isn't a girl at all. in deep with you by @topaz119 Clint/Darcy, mature, no warnings: Darcy could have, under normal circumstances, resisted the aesthetics (however awesome they are, and holy crap are they awesome), but there's an itch under her skin—apparently, nearly dying by giant, fire-breathing robots from space in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico will start you questioning your life choices. Who knew? assume a defensive stance by hoosierbitch. Clint/Bruce, teen, no warnings: No one can understand why Bruce and Clint are together. Clint's loud, brash, irritating--exactly what Bruce doesn't need in his life. fast, thorough, sharp as a tack by @quidnunc-life Natasha/Maria, teen, no warnings: Natasha likes getting a rise out of Hill when nobody else can. longing for the last time by @quidnunc-life Natasha/Valkyrie, teen, no warnings: After they imprisoned Hela, after all her sisters fell to inglorious deaths, the last Valkyrie swore she would not love again. In Your Likeness by hailtherandom Clint/Natasha/Sam, explicit, no warnings, post-WS: In which Sam gets a mysterious package from a mysterious person and, after a spell of feelings and a trip to Switzerland, both of those mysterious things get used quite a bit, much to everyone's delight. Two (Sort Of) Truths and One Complete Lie by igrockspock Clint/Melinda May, teen, no warnings: Melinda May was married once. Good luck finding out to whom. Fic with low kudos/comments Smoke on the Horizon by AuroraShard Teen, major character death, post-IW: Clint falls back on old coping mechanisms after the events of Endgame. Pepper joins him. A short fic about dealing with grief. We Are Family by SneakyHufflepuff. Mature, cntw: Natasha had sister-relationships with some of the other girls in the Red Room, and Nat was hardly the only one to escape. Turns out Clint's going to have to meet the family after all. Self-recs/a story of yours that you wish got more attention the shorter story by @cloud--atlas Mature, cntw: "be careful what you wish for" is written in matter-of-fact writing on the little sign by the entrance. he only wishes to be dry, and idly he wonders if there is any way even that can go wrong. Portrait of an Outlaw by RedBirdBella Teen, cntw: Clint is an undercover police officer working to convict a gang of cat-burglars. After being unearthed he’s beaten up and left for dead in an alley. From his hospital bed, he’s asked to work with a sketch artist to put together portraits for each gang member. Unfortunately, he can only remember one. Diamonds and Rust by @alphaflyer Clint & Kate, gen, no warnings: Kate is back; there's going to be laundry. Driver Choses The Music by inkvoices Teen, mild self-harm: Clint shoves his bag in the trunk of the car – a standard, bland SHIELD undercover ride – and doesn’t ask how Nat acquired the keys. Doesn’t ask how, or even if, she’s gotten permission to take him off base, doesn’t ask what’s in the bag she shoved in his arms on their way out, doesn’t ask what they’re doing in a SHIELD garage at ass o’clock in the morning. Doesn’t care. Some Strings Attached by @topaz119 Explicit, no warnings: "You," Natasha says slowly, "thought we should do something for Valentine's Day?" Five Unrelated Rescues and One Reunion by @crazy4orcas Teen, cntw: Rescue: to free or deliver from confinement, violence, danger, or evil. Reunion: an instance of two or more people coming together again after a period of separation. Show a Little Faith (There's Magic in the Night) by @alphaflyer Teen, no warnings, Dust Bowl AU: Riding the rails in the last bitter winter of the dust bowl years, two drifters encounter something they haven't seen before. Personal comfort fics Woman in the Crosshairs by @freaoscanlin Teen, no warnings: In which Clint has a new hobby and Natasha isn't curious, until she is. Black Widow and Hawkeye, their partnership—and what it means—throughout the years. The Only John Wayne Left in this Town by @gyzym Clint/Darcy, teen, no warnings: Clint's got a secret love, and it's spelled b-a-n-j-o. and at night be warm by @quidnunc-life Teen, no warnings: If Kate would've just talked to him about the Dog Cops finale, then Clint wouldn't be lying in bed, staring pointlessly at the ceiling, when the Insomniacs Anonymous radio show comes on at 1 AM and changes his life three minutes at a time. The First Annual Avengers Convention by starandrea Clint/Phil, teen, no warnings: With damage estimates topping $100 billion, New York City faces a long and expensive road back. Charity organizations have stepped in to support the Red Cross and provide long-term relief, but the economy is struggling and money has to come from somewhere. Everyone wants a piece of the Avengers. Who better to help fundraise than the heroes themselves? Amateur Theatrics by galaxysoup Gen, teen, no warnings: In which Thor’s primary problem-solving method (a mighty blow from Mjolnir) fails to have the desired effect on a magical artefact, and his secondary method (a mightier blow from Mjolnir) proves to be actively disastrous. The Observable Universe by Serea Okelani (sarea) Teen, no warnings, Jane POV: Jane has a low tolerance for stupidity. Clint and Natasha take exception to being called stupid. Catching Bullets in our Teeth by anothercover Clint/Laura, Clint/Nat, mature, no warnings, slow burn divorce AU: Retirement, it turns out, is not a thing that Clint is adjusting to very well. Or, you know, at all. It didn't occur to him that when he dropped the team, it would mean he'd lose Natasha, too. Under the Mountain by flawedamythyst Clint/Bucky, teen, no warnings: Clint and Bucky get trapped in a cave. Natasha and Kate Bishop friendship fics All Night, All Right by MoreThanSlightly (cadignan) Kate/America, Clint/Nat, teen, no warnings: Despite being young and rich and hot and awesome, Olympic gold medalist archer Kate Bishop finds herself in a bar acting like the world’s saddest, dullest cliché: Area Twentysomething Drinks Alone Because Her Ex Is Getting Married Next Weekend. But then, from across the room, she catches the eye of a girl with a wicked smile and an even better right hook. Things start to look up after that. High School/Uni AUs A Whole Month of Detention by @marvelousmsmarvel Teen, no warnings: The first detention was his fault. The second detention was his fault. Not surprisingly the whole month of detentions to follow were his fault too, but Natasha had to admit, marking her flawless record with a whole month of detentions was the best thing she'd ever done. Just A Little Bit True by @lissadiane Clint/Bucky, gen, cntw: Clint is good at cheerleading and bad at flirting and has been pining for Steve Rogers broody best friend for years. Naked Pantomime in the Dark by @intosnarkness Steve/Tony, Thor/Jane, Clint/Natasha, teen, cntw, Modern High School Theatre AU: Clint Barton has been at Carver High for six weeks when they draft him into the theatre department, and his life is never the same. Two for the Show by mousie-tongue Mature, cntw: After her uncle is taken, young Natasha Romanov ends up in state's custody at a group home. She can tough it out alone... but somehow fellow resident Clint Barton becomes the reason she doesn't have to. Wet Hot Avengers Summer by Sarea Okelani (sarea) Clint/Nat, Tony/Pepper, Thor/Jane, teen, cntw: At summer camp, Clint’s met the girl of his dreams. Then he meets her four brothers. Circus or carnivale AUs On the Nature of Dust by inkvoices Mature, no warnings, 1930s dust bowl AU: For as long as he can remember Clint has always been getting into trouble for seeing things that he shouldn’t, or rather for getting caught at it. Oklahoma, 1934, and this time trouble comes in the form of a girl. No Magic Would Save Me by arsenicarcher (Arsenic) Gen, mature, cntw: Once upon a time, an angel with the unlikely name of Pepper came to the circus, and took Clint away. some moments more spectacular than others by @quidnunc-life Mature, no warnings: When Janet suggests a team bonding event, Natasha thinks she means… an art gallery, a movie, even bowling. Something like that. Not the circus. Not clowns. Not falling head over heels for a professional circus archer with an affinity for purple, slushies, and purple slushies. Cover Another Black Eye by @lostemotion Clint/Nat, Clint/Bobbi, teen, some child abuse: History will dub it the summer of love. Natasha neither knows nor cares about love, never has, expects she never will, but history's got one thing right: it's the summer when everything changes. Natasha and the Amazing Hawkeye(s) by @freaoscanlin Gen, teen, no warnings: It starts because somebody orders a hit on the Amazing Hawkeye. No, not that Amazing Hawkeye. The other Amazing Hawkeye. scramble in the summer sky by paperclipbitch Kate/America, background Clint/&Nat, teen, no warnings: Kate’s first week, when she was still pretty sure this was a terrible idea and also not one that real people actually had – seriously, in the twenty-first century, who ran away with the circus – America came up to her three days in and said without preamble: “is anyone going to come looking for you, Princess?” Space AUs The Highest State of Friendship by inkvoices Teen, no warnings: A futuristic space AU in which bounty hunters Natasha and Clint aren’t married. Actually they’re supposed to be hunting each other. We Have Done the Impossible series by Telaryn Explicit, cntw, Firefly fusion, baby fic: Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff were born - and in Natasha's case bred - to serve the Alliance. No one cared when they began sleeping together; under Alliance law an Operative like Natasha could take as many sexual partners as she liked so long as it didn't interfere with her duties. - A baby would interfere. In Two Straight Lines In Rain or Shine by OracleGlass Gen, no warnings, Firefly crossover: "On that barren dustball known as Budapest, Firefly picks up an odd pair of passengers. Homeward Bound: The Adventures of the USS Avenger in the Delta Quadrant by @alphaflyer Teen, no warnings, Star Trek fusion: Sent to track the rebel ship Black Widow and to try and persuade her captain and certain of her crew members to work with Starfleet in defeating the Chitauri invaders, the USS Avenger finds itself displaced to the other side of the galaxy. And that was before the Black Widow opened fire... No Straight Lines by anonymous Teen, no warnings, Firefly AU: “It's curved. You'd end up at the starting point.” Natasha pauses, tilts her head. “Space doesn't have an end,” she adds, trailing her fingers across his shoulders as she passes. Old school, post-2012, they all move into the Tower fics if you let me through the door we can let the world in by @geniusorinsanity Background parings, teen, no warnings: Tony Stark has always wanted a clubhouse. He gets something more than that. Exclusive by @copperbadge Canon pairings, teen, no warnings: Heroes In Manhattan: From Captain America's Hidden Talents To The Truth About The Hulk, We Debunk The Myths And Expose The Daily Lives Of The Avengers. In Great Transition by vain_glorious Teen, no warnings: One by one, the Avengers move into Stark Tower. well, let the drumbeat drop by jonesandashes and @pollyrepeat Gen, no warnings: Pepper leaves, and there’s no more pizza, and Thor’s already talked about Jane, and Tony suspects all of them realize, abruptly and simultaneously, that they actually have no idea what to do now. He is, in fact, pretty certain that they’re just a few minutes away from someone deciding to say something about the weather. It’s probably going to be him. Culture and Other Balls of Twine by LithiumDoll Gen, no warnings: “Okay, I realize this could appear to be poorly conceived - to those of limited vision - but what you have to understand is, I’ve actually just had the greatest, most outstanding idea ever.” Tony’s eyes searched heavenward and then he nodded soberly. “Yes, I believe history will consider this my triumph.” To Be Modified As Necessary by ignipes Background pairings, teen, no warnings: They only need ten rules to ensure (relatively) peaceful cohabitation. Experts at the Fall by @enigma731 Gen, no warnings: After the Battle of New York, Natasha just wants things to go back to normal. But that’s not so easy considering that normal means being a spy, and her partner’s decided to be a superhero instead. And it’s especially difficult when her new assignment from S.H.I.E.L.D. is to collect intel on the Avengers. Fics where Natasha isn't as confident as she likes to pretend to have a home by oceanofchaos Background/past pairings, gen, no warnings: She doesn’t need other people, but she’s beginning to think she might want them. She buries herself in her work instead. Bouncing Baby Sniper by vain_glorious Clint/Nat, Steve/Peggy, teen, no warnings: Clint is actually Peggy Carter's grandson. Favourite kinky fics Get Some by @eiluned Explicit, het anal, butt plug, DP: He had just taken a big drag of coffee, savoring the sugary leftovers at the bottom of his mug, when she turned to him and out of the blue said, "I want you to fuck me in the ass." Cue epic spittake. your mileage may vary by Nonymous Explicit, past abuse, latex, BDSM: Clint's not really sure how to handle this whole BDSM thing. Natasha's not really sure how to handle Clint Barton. But she's definitely gonna give it the ol' college try. Moving the Furniture by @copperbadge Steve/Natasha, mature, friends with benefits: Steve thinks about sex a lot, and he'd like to have some, if he could just stop being an idiot around the people he'd like to have it with. Dropping Glasses Just to Hear Them Break by @lostemotion Explicit, cntw: Clint's mission to kill the Black Widow ends up a disaster when he runs into a third party in the field and finds himself being turned from hunter to hunted. His former target offers her assistance, and soon he's in for a whole other brand of trouble. Favourite poly fics runaways are running the night by anothercover Clint/Nat/Bucky, other parings, explicit, cntw: Natasha, Nakia, Okoye, Jessica Jones, and Valkyrie are the War Dogs: an all-girl rock band navigating their sudden explosion of hard-won success. Clint is a stand-up comedian. Bucky works security. Good People by @paperairplanesopenwindows​ Clint/Nat/Laura, teen, no warnings: "You have ‘Thank God you didn’t die when SHIELD fell’ sex with your wife and partner once and then your partner runs for the hills and your wife turns into a lovesick teenager.” She's My Cherry Pie by sheis-theslayer Clint/Nat/Laura, Nat/Laura focus, explicit, no warnings: If Laura Barton has said it once, she has said it a thousand times: no one touches the food while she's cooking. Especially if it's her pies. But Natasha Romanoff never listens. Alliterative Domiciles by Vera_DragonMuse [series] Pepper/Tony/Bruce, Clint/Nat, cntw: Fluff, schmoop and Tower shenanigans Little Stranger by Not_You OT6, gen, pregnancy: Natasha is not fit to be a mother. She is bitterly aware of this, sitting on the closed lid of her toilet and watching another test come up positive. A Safety in the End by @cloud--atlas​ [series] Clint/Nat/Bucky, teen to explicit, cntw: The relationship adventures of Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov and James "Bucky" Barnes RedStar by @cloud--atlas​ [series] Clint/Nat/Bucky, teen, angst, musician AU: “Clint,” Kate says slowly as two figures emerge from the house, their shapes so achingly familiar Clint wants to wrap himself up in them and never, ever let go. “Are you friends with James Barnes and Natasha Romanov of fucking RedStar!?” this is how it began (this is the secret between) by @notcaycepollard​ Clint/Nat/Laura, mature, no warnings: "Laura's a translator for SHIELD," Natasha tells him. "We're keeping her." i am on a lonely road and i am travelling (looking for the key to set me free) by irnan Nat/Steve/Bucky, teen, no warnings: Wherein Natasha Romanov has a bucket list and a metaphorical feelings-cat, joins the Victoria Hand Rescue Society Inc, and is absolutely not dating either or both of her super-soldier BFFs from the 1940s, no matter what Nick Fury thinks. Friends and Ex-Lovers by @scifigrl47​ Clint/Bucky/Nat, mature, no warnings: Natasha knows exactly what a good thing she's got. She just thinks it could be better Three Step by @copperbadge​ Nat/Steve/Bucky, mature, no warnings: "How many times a week can a couple have a threesome with the same guy before it becomes some sort of three-way relationship?" Keeping Steve by @copperbadge​ Steve/Tony/Pepper, explicit, no warnings: The gifts from Tony and Pepper are nice, and Steve secretly likes showing off signs that he belongs to them -- until some offhanded teasing from Clint makes him wonder if they're gifts from his lovers or payment for services rendered. Hide and Seek by @cassiesinsanity​ Clint/Nat/Bucky, teen, no warnings: There are reasons you should never break into your friends' houses. Kate finds out one of them. Favourite fics 1000 words or less Slow and Simple Melody by limned Teen, no warnings: Today he isn’t expecting to find Natasha awake in the communal living room at two-thirty in the morning, but it’s a pleasant surprise. You Are My Sweetest Downfall by @nympheline​ Teen, mild angst: You know how Natasha’s hair is really long in Iron Man 2 and then for the Avengers it’s completely chopped off? I like to think that’s because she got hurt in a mission in between and loses her hair because of a really serious head injury and Clint’s just going to be a mess because she’s hurt and she won’t say much because she never does. And he tells her she’s beautiful anyway. tower of babel by @sweetwatersong​ Gen, no warnings: Someone very cleverly thinks up a spell to keep the Avengers from talking to each other. They've fallen victim to one of the classic villain blunders, though: Never underestimate Hawkeye. account rendered by Siria Gen, no warnings: Clint lies in the debrief. Favourite Clint/Laura fics Repair Work by igrockspock Clint/Laura, gen, no warnings: Clint says, “I'm retired. One hundred percent. Done with Avenging.” Laura says, “Will that be for five minutes, or for five days?” Fragments by @intosnarkness​ Clint/Laura, teen, no warnings: Clint Barton has brought home strays before, but never one as dangerous as Natasha Romanoff. small town girl by @topaz119​ [series] Clint/Laura, teen to explicit, no warnings: “Oh, nice,” Laura said. “A smartass.” Holding Out For A Hero by @alphaflyer​ Clint/Laura, gen, no warnings: Cooper Barton pens an essay about his father; Laura does damage control. Clint helps (sort of). Topical: favourite trapped/isolated/quarantine fics Time, Baby by cat_77 Teen, cntw: A mission gone horribly wrong leaves Clint and Natasha trapped, injured, and suffering a slow death of suffocation. Time and each other: they have one and kind of need to steal some more of the other. Chasing the Light by Sarea Okelani (sarea) Teen, medical/quarantine/virus themes: A mission that goes awry tests two assassins and their partnership. Kate sets up Clint and Natasha How To Win Friends and Influence People by @cloud--atlas​ Gen, no warnings: For the prompt: Bookshop AU. One is bookseller/bookshop owner, the other a customer. Instead of talking one of them tries expressing feelings through the books they buy. Hawkeye's Pet Supplies by SneakyHuffelpuff Gen, no warnings: For the prompt: AU where Clint and Kate work at a pet supply store. Natasha is a frequent customer, and Kate is suspicious of her motives. Serendipity by silverfoxflower Teen, no warnings: "Why are you still in bed?" Kate demands, kicking at a corner of Clint’s mattress, which, rude. Why were girls and cats always so rude to him. By the Book by @alphaflyer​ Teen, no warnings: Clint Barton's love life isn't just a car crash, it's a multi-vehicle pile-up. Kate decides to lend a hand. Five of Clint’s Relationships that Kate Didn’t Approve of (And One That She Does) by @alphaflyer​ Teen, no warnings: Exactly what it says on the tin Poste Restante by @alphaflyer​ Teen, no warnings: The vials with live pathogens, alien prosthetics and ant colonies aren't the worst things Clint's friends drop off at his place for each other. Matters don't really get hairy for Kate until Natasha Romanoff shows up, with a heart-shaped box that says "Neuhaus". Favourite AUs Brown and Gold by Koren M (CyberMathWitch) Teen, no warnings, Dragonriders of Pern AU: What if they were different people in a different place and time? (A time that just happened to have dragons.) Soiree by ruby_caspar Teen, no warnings, a Georgette Heyer Regency AU: The Dowager Duchess known as the Black Widow is the talk of the ton - rich and mysterious, the only way to meet this elusive lady is through the equally mysterious Mr Barton… no light in this valley by trysts Teen, cntw, wild west AU: It was a good way to end a bad year, Clint figured. Tomorrow Then by @scribblemyname​ Teen, no warnings, reincarnation AU: Neither of them remembers where it started. There is eternity and the earth tilting in the heavens, but there is no beginning. They are not human enough yet for beginnings. Maps by @cloud--atlas​ Teen, cntw, reincarnation AU: Natasha won't let go, no matter what he becomes. Mr. & Mrs. Barton (Or: Why Natasha Sends Jennifer Aniston an Annual Apologetic Fruit Basket) by @geniusorinsanity​ Explicit, cntw, Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl get married. Boy and girl neglect to do background checks. Not a Day Goes By (Not a Single Day) by @intosnarkness​ [HSAU Theatre 'Verse] Gen, no warnings: A Coda: On the life and times of Clint and Natasha Yesterday, Upon the Stair by @intosnarkness​ Mature, cntw: When she was little Natasha had an imaginary friend. But like all little girls, she learned to forget him as she grew up. So imagine her surprise when one day she comes face to face with her old friend. And he's pointing an arrow at her heart. Talking Like Peter Lorre by @freaoscanlin​ Gen, no warnings: Clint has a very important question for fellow zoologist, Dr. Natasha Romanoff. Or: the AU where they’re all scientists in Antarctica and everybody is cold. All Under Heaven by @cloud--atlas​ Teen, cntw: Wherein Clint and Natalia are nature documentary filmmakers, filming for the BBC in Guilin, China. We Together Make A City by @cloud--atlas​ Mature, no warnings: Written for the prompt: Clint was/is a musician. Soft Landing by @cloud--atlas​ Teen, no warnings: Natasha Mends broken hearts. It's easy until it's not. Here I Dreamt I Was A Soldier by @sugarfey​ Mature, cntw: Bletchley Park, 1942: Women are recruited from across the country to decode enemy transmissions. The war stories of Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff, Carol Danvers and Kate Bishop. Like campfires in the dark by @scribblemyname​ [series] Mature, cntw: There is nowhere to run, nowhere to escape the Great Strangeness creeping over the earth. They don't need to run. Clint Barton, Vampire Slayer by Sproid Mature, violence: The adventures of Clint Barton, Vampire Slayer. Or, how to be a Slayer while working for SHIELD and with the Avengers. Something that made you go: "Wow! This person knows what they are talking about!" Habeas Matrimonium by @crystallitanie​ Teen, no warnings: Five times Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton pretended to be hitched (and one time... well) In The Service: Three Times Hawkeye Questions His Orders (And One Time He Doesn’t) by @alphaflyer​ Teen, cntw: Some Government jobs are more … complicated than others. Samsara by xahra99 Teen, no warnings: Burning down a monastery isn't the worst thing they've ever done. Natasha and Clint take on a mission in Tibet. Everything isn't quite as it seems... Domestic Clint/Natasha Junk Food and Dirty Socks: A Love Story by igrockspock Gen, no warnings: Clint and Natasha show their love in unusual ways. Exciting Adventures in Cohabitation by igrockspock Teen, no warnings: Clint and Natasha try to navigate the mundane problems of living together. Like how someone can't be bothered to pick up her damn socks, and somebody else keeps leaving empty milk cartons in the fridge. Friendship fics Frequently Asked Questions by Mad_Maudlin Clint&Kate, teen, memory loss: Today is Monday, March 18th. You started losing your memories yesterday. still officially lost by @pollyrepeat​ Clint&Coulson, teen, no warnings: “Barton has clearly imprinted on you,” Fury starts, and keeps talking right over Phil’s knee-jerk, horrified, “He has not,” to seal Phil’s doom by saying, “so I’ve decided that you’re going to take primary responsibility for him from now on.” something good waitin' down this road by defcontwo Clint&Kate, gen, no warnings: Hawkeyes' House Rules for Dog Ownership and Other Misadventures. Or: Clint, Kate, a dog, and a study in moving forward. When push comes to Chevre by @copperbadge​ Bucky&Various, gen, Bucky Barnes acquires a plot of land in Wakanda, buys some goats, grows peanuts and sweet potatoes, and fosters a wayward rhinoceros. That's it, that's the story. Silhouette by @mariana-oconnor​ Clint/Bucky, Steve&Bucky, Clint&Natasha, mature, cntw: After a mission in Mexico goes wrong, SHIELD Agents Barnes and Rogers are given the job of hunting down the notorious Hawkeye and the Black Widow, the only problem being: no one even knows what they look like. On the other side of the law, Clint's enjoying messing with their new SHIELD shadows, especially seeing how close he can get to Agent Barnes without him realising, but he makes the mistake of getting attached, and that makes everything more complicated. Best Kept Secret by AlchemyAlice Tony&Natasha, teen, no warnings: In which there is a secret friendship, and Tony can’t deal with feelings, so Natasha has to do it for him. These two features may or may not be related. Heartbreak and angst we were emergencies by @gyzym Explicit, cntw (please see story notes): It's not about being unmade; it's about remaking, one aching step at a time. This Bitter Earth by @cloud--atlas Teen, cntw, dystopia: The only beautiful things here are her and the stars. And he can’t reach the stars. White Blank Page by allisnow Mature, cntw: Debt is beautiful only after it has been repaid. Not Easily Conquered by dropdeaddream and WhatAreFears [series] Steve/Bucky, Steve/Peggy, Clint/Natasha, mature, cntw: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Peggy says, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Warp and Weft by legete Mature, body horror: The muscle apparently talked a little much for Loki's liking. Now Natasha has to pick out the stitches. Favourite long!fic your blue-eyed boys by Feather (lalaietha) [series] and the related series [to see you there] (Clint/Nat, Bruce/Betty and Tony/Pepper) and (even if i could) make a deal with god (Steve/Bucky) Various pairings, teen to explicit, extensive warnings - please see tags, canon-divergent after WS: post-Winter Soldier recovery fic > Specifically: what i thought, what i said (Clint/&Natasha, Steve/Bucky, teen, no warnings) and [your albatross: carry it with no regrets] (Mature, no warnings: Five moments in Clint Barton's life.) To Be Vulnerable is Needed Most of All by perfect_plan Steve/Bucky, Clint/Nat, mature, mental illness and PTSD: Steve is a shy comic book artist and meets his new neighbour, Bucky Barnes. Hyperfocal Distance by @freaoscanlin Teen, cntw: The AU where Natasha is an investigative journalist and Clint has a camera and is pretty good at shooting things with it. we are for each other by @quidnunc-life Steve/Maria, Clint/Natasha, teen, post-Avengers, no warnings: SHIELD has fallen, and Steve and Natasha deal with the questions that fell with the Triskelion: who are they, and who do they want to be? Which parts of their pasts are they going to rescue from the rubble? Where do they belong? letting me in or letting me go by @quidnunc-life Teen, no warnings: Natasha Romanoff has worked hard to become a successful member of SHIELD Investigations, and her hard work pays off when she lands a major job investigating corporate espionage at Stark Industries with Clint Barton and his apprentice, Kate. Working with other people isn't Natasha's forte, and she has her reasons for preferring to work alone; but Clint is charming and Kate is irrepressible, and soon Natasha finds herself wrapped up in a case that could prove to shake the skeletons out of her closet and upend everything, including the friendship (or more?) that's started to develop between her and Clint. Agent, Archer, Widow, Spies by @alphaflyer [series] Teen, cntw, James Bond fusion, excellent mission fics. Brooklyn Baby by sprinkle_of_cinnamon Bucky/Steve, Clint/Nat, mature, no warnings, AU: In which Bucky is just trying to live life and enjoy his unofficial official table at the obnoxiously hipster coffee shop but some guy named Steve stole his spot. Or, the time that Bucky unintentionally befriended the Avengers and had no idea. but the sky is the same by @sweeter-than Teen, no warnings: Takes place one year after Clint makes the unexpected choice to bring Natasha Romanov in from the cold. They've become co-workers and acquaintances, but Natasha is still as much a mystery to Clint as she was on the day he was first sent to target her. A story about making friends and making choices, set against the backdrop of daily life at SHIELD.

[herwildwhisper]

stats: Mar Sandoval, 31 (b. September 19th, 1988.) she/hers (cis.) species: human occupation: mountain guide

alignment: chaotic good veering on chaotic neutral.

+ resilient. loyal. affectionate. capable. perceptive. – aloof. destructive. willful. bitter. blunt.

personality

a half-dry, charming-ish sensibility. “take no shit. do harm if they push you far enough.” values honesty, even if it hurts – this does not mean she’s capable of following through personally (looking at you, Sam.) kind, but not sweet. guarded. could use a friend or five, even if she’s convinced herself she’s better off alone.

aesthetic

widow, née [REDACTED.] whiskey aunt, not wine mom. indeterminate drawl. two dozen bad coping mechanisms in a trench coat, struggling to become a person. kinder than she lets on. angrier than you think she is. looking for answers without knowing the questions. inheriting a mystery; continuing the sketchbooks. a wedding ring on a simple chain. learning to count down from a hundred when all you want is to plant your fist in someone’s face. surviving out of spite. living with loss.

history

( tw physical/verbal domestic / child abuse, self-destructive behaviour, self-harm, death of a spouse, mentions of suicide. tl;dr at the end )

BLACKROCK, MT. EARLY MARCH 2011.

For a few years, the Sandoval house has stood empty. Mrs. Sandoval passed away in 2008, and no one managed to track down her son. He left town back in ‘03, a couple years after his father died in an accident, and since then, no one in town has seen hide nor hair of him – not even his pack.

And then, eight years after Dante Sandoval left his family and home behind, his widow shows up in town.

She’s young, too young; only 22. Dark-eyed and dark-haired and dark-minded. She smiles too much, and then she smiles too little. Is the kind of woman who shows up alone at the bar. The kind of woman who tells you to fuck off if she thinks you’re getting too close, too handsy, even if you don’t agree – and very few like that. She gets a job as a mountain guide, and then they don’t see much of her. The house she inherits is left behind like a carcass, just another unpleasant memory as summer stretches on. Then snow shuts down the mountain, and she returns, much to their disappointment. She’s remained a stranger ever since.

(Towns like Blackrock don’t like strangers. Towns like Blackrock don’t like women like Mar Sandoval.)

THE PAST, NOT AS DISTANT AS SHE’D LIKE.

Her parents tried, she thinks. Tried to love her, to love each other, but the bottle won out and the damage was done, their home broken into jagged pieces. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking; maybe they were bickering tyrants from the start, and she just didn’t want it to be true. It didn’t matter where they moved, Texas to Louisiana to Florida – same shit, different scenery. She grew up amidst screaming matches and plates shattered against the wall. Under the constant pressure, Mar fractured, too. She sharpened her edges to survive. Came home with bloody knuckles, and left for school with fresh bruises. She learned the tenets of life from people who had no business teaching it to her: to use leverage, to find meaning in whatever meagre thing you could control, to find fear as natural as breathing. To read a room the moment you walk in. To always look three moves ahead. To take the blame. Even when everything in you was screaming that it wasn’t your fault. To hate yourself for both. That if you excused it all as love, it was okay.

At school, she could be the one giving out beatings, whether they were earned or not. It wasn’t that she always started the fights, though she did that too – but she’d finish them, schoolyard scraps turning into brawling matches when Mar got involved. She was never loud, but she was always angry, rage simmering beneath her skin, a buzzcut saw waiting for an accident, looking for release. A bruise was a bruise was a bruise; it didn’t matter if she left it herself, so long as she could control how it got there, whether through someone else’s fist or her own. Her mind stirred into a constant, exhausting frenzy by thoughts she didn’t have the words for, yet: if you love me, if you love each other, why is it like this?

She left home at 19, slamming the door behind her on her way out, and she never looked back. No plan, no route. She’d never been further north than Atlanta, so it seemed like a good place to start. Got a job as a waitress, saved up every little bit she could, before she left Georgia to continue her trek north. Turned 20 in Tennessee, still no plan in sight – and then, right as she was considering her options, she met Dante.

He wasn’t her first, but he was the first one that mattered. A couple years older, from a small town in Montana, with kind eyes and a nice smile and hands that were firm but gentle. He always had a sketchbook on him; studies of the mountain trail, birds and flowers. No sudden movements. Never raised his voice. He didn’t mind her sharp edges, but before she knew it, they’d been sanded down – still present, but softer than they’d ever been, and better for it. She fell faster than she should have. So did he.

They spent the next few years working as guides on the Appalachian Trail, getting their certificates, and along the way, they got married. Began to plan their future, with a whole life ahead of them that they would share. It was Dante that taught her to be patient, that taught her love had never been – should never be – about leverage, that fear was a cruel thing to cause in someone else. And maybe she was a work in progress, but hey, Mar, so am I.

In retrospect, they both had their secrets. He would tell her about Blackrock with a fondness in his voice, and she would curb her tongue – if you love it so much, why did you leave? She shared what she could with him. Let him reassure her when she faltered, when the things she’d buried came crawling to the surface, when it felt like all the love in the world couldn’t stop her from becoming a black hole that would tear itself apart. They made it work. They were happy. Hopeful.

And then Dante died. Disappeared, technically. But they found his body a week later. Gunshot wound, weapon nearby. Coroner ruled it a suicide, despite Mar’s protests; Dante wouldn’t leave me– there was nothing wrong– why would he–

The pieces they'd mended were broken, and she was left alone with the wreckage, sharp and heavy. Dante would never have done that to her. He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have.

She traveled west in their beat-up car, his ashes and their hiking gear secured in the back. Got her stupid, grief-ridden kicks out of asking obnoxious truckers if her husband could watch, only to let them face the urn. Laughed until she cried when they ran from the ‘crazy bitch’. Came to Blackrock with no intention of staying, only to find herself the recipient of a rickety old house full of family pictures she had no context for, heirlooms and trinkets; memories that weren’t her own, that had nothing to do with her.

And, of course, the collection of sketchbooks depicting wolves. All different sorts, snouts and pelt colours and scars, signed D. Sandoval. The torn old henley at the bottom of a chest down in the basement. The shredded remains of an old journal, the scratch marks by the kitchen door.

BLACKROCK, MT. 2019.

Lonesome, but not lonely. It’s how she likes it, she’s decided. It’s easier, that way. She’s used to it. Isn’t sure if it’s always been her nature, or if it’s just a force of habit, but she hasn’t stopped to ask herself. Mar keeps company when she feels like it, when winter gets too quiet for her taste, and as soon as the snow’s thawed, she’s gone. Just another ghost, until winter calls her back to Blackrock. She knows what it looks like – she arrives, and so do all the other strange things that haunt the town. (But she’s the only strange thing that’s been spotted near the deputy, and she knows the optics of that, too.) She hasn’t done much to improve the wide-spread impression of her. She’s pleasant enough if you haven’t tested her patience, but she remains distant; keeps most everyone at an arm’s length. It’s easier to not get attached, to not get disappointed, that way. To settle for that long life of lonesome, but not lonely.

There are answers to be found in Blackrock, if only she can find the right questions. She’s sure of it. Someone has to know what happened – why he left, why he died, why someone would kill her husband. But until she can find those questions, she observes. She adds her own sketchbooks to the pile. She takes meticulous notes of all the odd, out-of-place things she sees. And she bides her time.

So Mar Sandoval remains a stranger. Drinks her cocoa with a dash of peppermint liqueur, brings a book to the bar, doesn’t give a shit about small town nosying disguised as small town kindness. Takes up odd jobs at nearby ski centres if the money’s tight, and by summer, she is gone. None of them truly know her. None of them ever will.

tl;dr

grew up in an abusive home; has Issues as a result

certified brawler and troublemaker – currently on the mend, but not before she got a Reputation in Blackrock

met her now-departed husband after leaving home. they got married young AF 

said husband...... was from Blackrock. said husband....... was a werewolf, but Mar is (so far) unaware 

her husband disappeared and was found dead a week later. police ruled it a suicide, Mar did Not Agree

she came to Blackrock in 2011 with a car full of hiking gear and an urn strapped in, a widow at 22. inherited a house full of Weird Things, including sketchbooks filled with drawings of wolves

she had 0 intentions of staying for as long as she has, but she’s convinced the answer to her husband’s death can be found in Blackrock

knows SOMETHING’S up, but not quite what

specific pitches

(aka cherrypick what works for you from my ramblings!)

Redcedar / Teddy

I like to think that Teddy’s parents took care of Mar when she got to town, back in 2011 – maybe they took care of the Sandoval house, or knew the Sandovals?She liked them a good deal, felt grateful for their kindness and indebted to them for it, and with them gone, she sees Teddy as a young woman in a strange town that could maybe need some kindness, too. Mar’s just too awkward to fully commit to it, yet.

Basswood / Sam

It wasn’t necessarily the first reason, and it definitely isn’t the only reason, but a big part of her connection to Sam is that she hopes he could help her piece together the Dante puzzle. It’s not fair, she knows. It’s probably fucked up, asking him to help her figure out what happened to her dead husband, on account of.. whatever it is that they are. She tells herself that’s why she’s yet to really ask him for help with it. This thing between them was never meant to go this far, because now she likes Sam – and that makes her feel guilty, in more ways than one.

Blackthorn / Carson

She sees herself in Carson, sees the woman she used to be, the woman she’s done her best to bury – all fists and venom-veins, ready to set the world on fire. She doesn’t know the cause of Carson’s anger, doesn’t necessarily know Carson all that well in general, but like calls to like. Mar might be trying to reign herself in, these days, but she knows the anger she thinks she sees in Carson, the need for destruction. Pulling them out of that bar was an emotional impulse, one she doesn’t really want to acknowledge: she got cold feet right after. She’s got more on her own plate than she can handle; why did she try to take on someone else’s? That’s why she avoids them now. She has no intention of calling on whatever debt they think they owe her; in her eyes, it was almost selfish to not let nature run its course that night. Almost.

Oak / Diego & older wolves

Dante was 100% a werewolf, and I’d love to potentially plot out the older wolves of the Blackrock pack having known him, if you all are game! They wouldn’t know how much Mar knows about the pack, if she even knows anything, which I think could be a great source of ~drama – especially now that there’s a dead wolf. Diego in particular is someone I think could be cool for this, as he’d be the right age range and would have been there for long enough to have known Dante.

Ash / Romeo

Ash / Romeo is a new face, and Mar knows all-too-well what that’s like. I don’t think she’d be looking for any meaningful friendship, to start with, but I could see her potentially reaching out, just to see who they are, and maybe to let them know that there’s other out-of-towners around.

Sycamore / Eric

Much like herself, Eric doesn’t have a good reputation, though his is probably worse. Depending on his disposition, I could see them being acquaintances, even friends, united by their shared less-than-nice natures, with some drama added in thanks to their respective relations to Sam / Basswood. I also wouldn’t rule out the potential for future hunter plots, depending on where it goes!

wanted connections 

( consider these starting points! if something could work if we tweaked it a little to suit your character more, hit me up 💖 also, in the event that something is filled but you’re interested.... hit me up for that too! we can Work It Out )

witness ( Sam – multiple )

Men who won’t take no for an answer isn’t something Mar puts up with. By now, most of the culprits in town have learned their lesson, and leave her alone. In turn, Mar’s gotten better at using her words.. but back when she first came to town, there’s a good chance her anger got the best of her, resulting in someone walking away with a shiner and a split lip. (Hell, push her far enough, and it might happen now.) She’s good at brawls. MUSE B witnessed one such occasion – did they step in, or leave her to it? How do they feel about it?

ghost ( 0/2 )

MUSE B met Mar before she came to Blackrock: maybe it was years ago, down south, while she was a walking carnage, or maybe MUSE B met the two of them, Mar and Dante, leaving them to reconcile the vastly happier past Mar with the current version.

bruiser ( Raine – 1/? )

Mar and MUSE B traded literal blows a couple years back, and the fist-fight ended with no certain victor and both parties bloodied and bruised. Is there a grudging respect – or is it just a grudge?

reflection ( Lola – 1/2 )

Mar isn’t.. sweet the way some folks are, but there’s a kindness there, one that’s easy to forget what with her reputation and penchant for self-isolation. She helped MUSE B out, and asked nothing in return – maybe she let them sleep on the couch one night when things were rough, or maybe she offered company on an evening it was needed. Maybe it happened a while ago, and there’s a tentative friendship, or maybe it’s fresh!

ex-fwb ( 0/2? )

Mar arrived in 2011, self-destructive and reeling after her husband’s death. mistakes were made. good ones, but still mistakes. MUSE B and Mar had an unspoken thing for a while, before she broke it off. Are they still friends, or are things icy? How serious was it? How does MUSE B feel about the rumoured fling Mar has with the deputy?

[spirit-of-the-void]

Ebony and Ivory (V x Reader Fanfic) Chapter 37

Author’s notes: So. Remember when I was sitting on something big? Yeah

Chapter 37

The Outsider smiled softly once the area around you settled, his dark eyes meeting yours with an emotion you did not recognize.

He looked so calm, so pleased with how things were going. Meanwhile you were aghast, heart thrumming away like a caged bird after all that you had seen and experienced. The cold was so very jarring as it followed the scorching heat of flames, like being doused in ice water and sending chills down your spine and arms. What the hell had any of that accomplished, other than putting Vergil through a harsh punishment? Even you, who hadn’t known Eva personally had been shaken by what your eyes were made to witness. No one should be forced to watch a mother and her children suffer through that, especially not one of the very children who went through the tragedy and came out the other side damaged.

Your mind was a whirlwind of questions, mostly pertaining to what happened to Vergil when he left that house. Demons had been crawling all around the surrounding town and homes, attacking and destroying everything in sight. Young Vergil, all alone on a playground, still upset about his mother and brother’s actions...what terrible things must have happened to him? Attacked by demons, hurt by them, forced to suffer through it all without the love of his mother and knowing that she was killed. No wonder he was such a surly, bitter man--he was starting to make more sense to you, bit by bit. God, what would Eva have thought if she knew what would become of Vergil? How many deaths that he would cause, the man he would grow to be.

And worse...you couldn’t stop thinking about the what-ifs of the situation. What would have happened had Vergil not ran from the house, if he had stayed behind with his brother and mother when the attack started? He would have been forced into that closet too, maybe his mother would have stayed with them and survived. But...things were rarely so cut and dry. The fact that the closet Dante was in didn’t burn was a miracle, coupled with the demons not finding him despite being explicitly sent by Mundus to kill Sparda’s kin. Maybe they assumed since they found Vergil, that both sons had been taken care of? Or maybe they assumed Dante would burn with the mansion. Whatever the reason...maybe the circumstances of the situation would have changed if all of them had tried to hide.

Maybe the demons would have found that closet. Maybe all three would have been lost.

Regardless, the tragedy of it all was a lingering wound on you now, one that you doubted would be soothed. And that pain was starting to translate into rage, seeing Vergil wheezing on the floor, one sleeve scorched by the fire’s illusion and hair unkempt and messy. You knew the kind of pain he was feeling, one so heavy it could make people drown in it. There was a tolerance for these kind of things that existed inside your body, made strong and firm by years and years of gritting your teeth through suffering and terrible memories. You could still stand after seeing that, you could still breath despite how much it hurt. Vergil was not like you, years of coping mechanisms and cold-heartedness made that pain all the more heavy to bear. 

This solved nothing. All it did was hurt the man for his sins and break him down further and further.

You stood up from the floor, eyes still black as you approached the Outsider with rage boiling in your veins. He was steadfast, staring you down with the calmest expression you had seen and poise in his posture.

“Vergil Sparda has passed his first trial,” He said once you paused before him, your eyes steely and lungs still stinging from the smoke. The Outsider tilted his head, a smile playing on the edge of his lips as he regarded you with something close to amusement, “Is there something you wish to say to me, Y/N? You seem distressed.”

You didn’t hesitate, especially when he was using a tone like that. Your hand whipped out, cracking him across the cheek with as much force as you could muster and ringing the sound out through the Void. Had you ever showed such defiance to the Outsider before, physically striking him in retaliation for his actions? Never. Never. But...Respecting a God who had helped you was one thing, sitting by and letting him be cruel and sadistic was another. Your fear and caring you felt for this creature, one who was seemingly a father figure to you, was like a weight on your chest battling with the anger and fury at his actions. But some things could not be excused, and you had been a slave to ignorance and the wills of this God for far too long. Powers be damned, blessings be damned. After what happened in the Qliphoth tree, this had been a long time coming.

You hurt me, you betrayed me. And now you’re trying to break him.

“Are you satisfied?!” You hissed, grabbing the God by his collar while he put up literally no fight. In fact, he hadn’t even flinched when you hit him, merely blinking slowly and tilting his head back to look at your furious eyes. Somehow his lack of reaction made you even more angry, “What the hell are you thinking, forcing this upon him like it will somehow solve anything! It solves nothing!”

The Outsider’s gaze did not waver, eyes steady as they stared at the black gaze you inherited from him. What had become of him, this creature that you once looked up to and would willingly say you adored? He was the closest thing you had to a parent and he just...He was crushing everything. 

“This man has hurt you, has he not?” The black-eyed God replied, narrowing his stare and tipping his head to the side, “Yet you still wish to save him, to preserve the part of him that you think still exists.”

You bit the inside of your cheek so hard it drew blood, the taste coppery in your mouth. Just because he was right didn’t mean a damn thing.

Your fingers still gripped his jacket, feeling his cold breath as you leaned closer and said in a biting tone, “And what does that matter? Why are you doing this?!” All the pain of his betrayal was spilling forth, mind reliving the moment of V’s absorption and the feeling of the Outsider’s firm grip on your neck, “You wouldn’t even let me try…! You wouldn’t even let me attempt to stop him, to find another way…! All of this, forcing me down, torturing Vergil with his past--just tell me why…!”

Please. I don’t want to hate you, I don’t want this doubt. 

You could remember the beginning years of the Void, of his blessing. The first years of learning your powers, of pulling your shattered mind back together. The Outsider had been calm and patient, kind to you and understanding of the trauma that came with your existence. It was he who had done all that he could to rebuild you, taking away the burden of memories and shaping you into a fighter, one who could withstand the Void’s power and not break under its weight. Yet through all of that had been a distance, a wall you had always secretly hoped would be breached. The Outsider never embraced or touched you, never gave the physical affection that a parent would. 

It was as if he had never knew how, just as puzzled by you and what your relationship was as you were. There was a sense of naivety, an impassiveness covering up a lack of understanding and years and years of passing human contact. All you had wanted was to regain what was lost, what you had never properly tasted--the chance at having loving parents, ones who were proud of you and not afraid to say it. To be strong, to love and be loved equally with no trauma of pain holding it back anymore. Human existence had robbed you of that, taking it all away and leaving you wanting, hungering for the fruits of happiness you were only allowed to briefly sample.

It was why you couldn’t hate Vergil, still wheezing and rasping on the ground, trying to gather his emotions together. He had been hurt time and time again, broken down without rhyme or reason and searching desperately for a means to cope, to feel strong. Had you been offered it, had a darker power sought you out...would you have hurt people as well at a chance of happiness, drowning in that desperation and letting it choke you? The son of Sparda had done terrible things, been selfish and cold and greedy. Things that could not be excused by his trauma, but...you understood it. You did. When one had their face constantly pushed into the dirt, they tended to do all they could to breathe. 

You had done that too. Had taken the first hand that pulled you out of the dirt. 

The Outsider let out a slow breath, the icy chill of it making you shudder lightly as you wheezed out your own angry, panting breaths. That calm expression shifted a bit, and if you weren’t mistaken....was that sadness in those endless, dark depths? The Outsider shocked you then, lifting his hands from his sides and doing the one thing you had never felt from him--he cupped your freezing cheeks with his own icy fingers, making you gasp and muscles tense almost painfully. The tender action shocked you to your core for a moment, anger trapped between the surprise and confusion with nowhere else to go. 

But...why? Why is he doing this?

I don’t understand.

“You are the closest thing to a child I have ever been allowed,” The Outsider replied in a low tone, sounding  a bit grave and serious as he continued on like you weren’t staring at with an expression so lost, “Born of my power, my essence. All that I do, I do to make you stronger, even if those actions make you hate me.”

What? 

You blinked in shock, eyes wide and staring at him with a tortured expression on your face. This was too much, this was too much. All those months of thinking, waiting, not understanding...this didn’t help, it only served to increase the turmoil coiling inside and breaking down the walls of hatred you had formed to protect yourself from the Outsider’s betrayal. This validation, the knowledge of him seeing you as his kin...it only amplified the pain, leaving you wondering and pleading internally, not able to understand why he hurt you so much despite claiming you were his only child.

Why now, when it will only sting the most?

I just want to be happy. 

I wanted you to be a part of that happiness too.

 “P...please...Outsider...Father...” Tears started forming in your eyes, voice hoarse and conflicted as you whispered, “I don’t want this…! I don’t want anyone else to be hurt…!”

Not you. Not Vergil. Not anyone.

Using such a name for the God made his pause, eyes finally closing and breaking the stare he held between you both. He looked a lot closer to a human when he wasn’t gazing with those deep, empty eyes. Softer. Up close it was apparent just how unbelievably tired the Outsider looked, dark circles lining his lids and skin so pale in complexion. 

“There is still so much you do not know,” He finally replied after some pause, opening those exhausted eyes of his to meet your teary gaze, “Things that cannot be forgiven. Even if it means earning your malice, there are things that must be witnessed.”

That was not the answer you wanted to hear.

You gasped, stumbling when the Outsider removed his hands and took several steps back with his expression switching back to the calm, unfazed look from before. As he did so, black crystal started swirling around the space, morphing the surroundings like they did before, but...only partially this time. No no no--No more trials, no more punishments…! You summoned your tendrils, wrapping them around Vergil to help him sit up, shielding him from the view in front of you. The dark crystal formed a wall behind the Outsider, like a screen that stretched all the way into the Void’s non-existent sky. On that screen formed an image, like the two worlds had been spliced over each other and now overlapped.

Your eyes widened, taking in the view of what could only equate to...Hell.

This was Hell.

It was dark, a vision of red and blood in a cavern that you knew could never see sunlight. Unlike the previous illusion, you were not immersed in it, not standing in it, but...seeing what was going on was bad enough. You felt your chest clench, staring beyond the Outsider at a man suspended by fleshy tendrils from all directions, dripping blood into a pool below. He looked like hell, practically ripped apart and completely limp. You knew that white hair, even with his back to you it was very clear who you were seeing. 

Vergil.

The man behind you was panting, making you turn to see him sitting up with a glassy look in his eyes. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, gaze still burning with tears and expression conflicted. No more trauma, he shouldn’t be seeing this--but you doubted he would even if you weren’t there. He wasn’t seeing anything with a faraway expression like that, eyes downcast and hair draping over his face. You resisted the urge to embrace him, to cover his gaze and ears to protect him from this madness. V’s trauma was a vision in your head, breaking you down to nothing for each moment you remembered, that vulnerability so raw and real. It hurt, Vergil was in pain and you just wanted it to stop.

“Outsider…!” You whipped back around to stare at him pleadingly, stepping back and raising a hand to shield Vergil from view, “No more of this, please…! He’s had enough, we both have…!”

The Outsider clicked his tongue, shaking his head at your words and walking a slow circle around you both. Your tendrils summoned around Vergil as he went, acting as a shield despite how little you knew it would do. The God could stop your power with a flick of his fingers, but...he didn’t. Those eyes remained trained on you, watching with curiosity and something a little...disappointed. You half expected his new illusion to encompass the surroundings, enveloping you in the wet, hot air of hell and furthering the torture for the son of Sparda behind you. But that didn’t happen either.

“We will forgo this second trial a bit,” He replied to you, clear and precise. Like the training lessons he had given you all those years ago, “If that would please you, dearest Y/N. But you wanted to know, didn’t you? About Vergil’s bloody past, about what the poet spoke to you of...his trauma caused by his time as Nelo Angelo.”

Not like this, not at his expense.

As you watched in shock, the image before you moved, a newcomer appearing in view before the suspended Sparta. Your gaze snapped back to the screen, fists clenching at your side and tendrils resisting the urge to shield your eyes too. By the Void--He was huge, emerging from the shadows as a behemoth tall enough to be  sky scraper. There was no mistaking this creature, with his king-like stature, curling beard and powerful presence--this was Mundus, the King of the Underworld you had heard mentioned before.

The realization made you gasp, feeling a chill travel up your spine and your fists clench at your sides. It was a strange sensation, wanting to protect Vergil behind you while also watching the Vergil of the past suffer and struggle. Alone. He wore different colors then, more in hues of blue, but...they were so sullied by his own blood that it was hard to tell. 

Mundus stared at the son of Sparda with a cold expression, eyes not visible in the shadows of his face. You knew Vergil would have never fared against something of his stature, the very aura he exuded through the screen of illusion enough to make you want to turn and run. The younger Vergil’s fingers twitched, dropping the broken remains of the Yamato down into the pool where it landed, slowly beginning to sink into the blood. This is how the sword was broken, to be found by the Order of the Sword and then by Nero later.

Things were coming together disgustingly well. Griffon had only told you the minor details of his own existence, about how Vergil took on the King alone and had fallen, Mundus manipulating his weakened form and making him into Nelo Angelo. There his three Nightmares had spawned forth, bringing with them the trauma and reminders of his failure. They never told you what Mundus had done to Vergil, how bad it was. And you were going to learn why.

Mundus parted his lips, voice emerging in a sound that dragged along your earlobes like razor blades. You flinched, hands instinctively rising to cover your ears and taking another step back. But as soon as the sound reached you both, you heard Vergil gasp, the sound choked and hard as he raised his head. His expression was one of shocked fear, of remembrance. And it shattered you into a million pieces.

He cannot see, he can’t know this pain again.

“Sparda...Sparda--that traitor!” Mundus growled, the sound loud and vibrating the air as the Outsider continued to circle you both, not looking fazed in the slightest, “Had he not sullied demon blood with a human womb...Perhaps he could’ve had a son with at least some grit.”

He spoke of Eva, Vergil and Dante’s mother. Something about his dismissal of the woman made your blood boil, but you couldn’t afford to focus on that now. You snapped your gaze to the Outsider, feeling your shoulders shake as he met your gaze like it was a challenge, as if there was something to prove. 

This helps no one.

“I wish to see no more…!” You spat at him, kneeling by Vergil and putting an arm around his waist, trying to urge him to his feet. Your voice seemed to snap the confused, panicked daze Mundus’ voice brought, icy blue eyes sharpening and lips parting in a gasp. He finally met your gaze, chest rising and falling with slow breaths and expression so very conflicted, almost...humiliated. He was at his weakest mentally, and he knew it. To fall to pieces in front of you, to break down into hysterics and cry for his mother...you couldn’t image how much that did to his pride.

“Y/N…” He rasped, voice raw from yelling even as you helped him slowly to his feet, “This..this is...I cannot…”

He didn’t have to elaborate, you understood.

The Outsider paused, tilting his head when the other Vergil spoke, the one from the illusion. It made you and his present day counterpart turn, watching as the Sparda lifted his head and rasped.

“...Done with the drivel yet?” He was so young then, so cocky and full of himself. It made you want to shake the poor half demon, the feeling doubled when he added weakly, “I can keep going.”

An obvious lie. You doubted Vergil could lift his fingers at that moment if he was asked. The one at your side stared at the memory with regret, his hands clenching into fists so tight that he was digging the nails into his palms. You gasped when blood started to trickle down, pattering onto the piece of debris you stood on like the blood trickling from his past self. He looked like he was going to be sick again, forced to watch a moment in his life that had brought much trauma and pain. And that heavy, drowning humiliation. Mind you, it was his choices that lead to this outcome, but…it didn’t make things any more tolerable. In fact, you were willing to bet it stung a lot more knowing he could have avoided all the pain had he just went with Dante, had he tried.

Like with everything, what would have happened if he swallowed his pride and decided to live his life with his brother? The agony of that uncertainty was drowning him, and that was a truth you knew he didn’t need to face anymore.

No more of this. No more.

“Outsider…!” You summoned more tendrils, cracking them out along the ground and stopping the God’s infuriating pacing, “End this, please…! What more must he endure before you are satisfied, what truth does this bring other than pain?” 

But that’s what this is about, isn’t it? Bringing pain.

You took one of Vergil’s hands, stepping closer to him and feeling his fingers grip yours like they were a lifeline, “He knows what happens here, and so do I…! If you had any ounce of caring for me, you would stop this nonsense where it starts…!”

You could feel Vergil’s gaze leave you, staring at the image of Mundus pulling him up into his grasp, hand big enough to hold his whole body. His fingers twitched, Vergil stepping back and pulling you close enough to put your back flush against his side. He was gritting his teeth again, trying to hold onto the anger above the pain and maintain his composure. Those walls wanted to rebuild themselves so fast, but Vergil seemed so exhausted, so tired. Each breath was slow and measured, brow dotted with sweat and hand gripping yours tight enough that you were afraid he would break bone. 

The Outsider paused at your side, keeping his eyes on Mundus and raising a hand to freeze the image. You could almost breathe a sigh of relief, seeing the King’s mouth open and say nothing as the illusion waited for the God to continue it.

There was an air of aggravation now, the Outsider turning toward you and letting out a low hum as he asked, “Do you truly wish for me to end this trial?” Those black eyes lingered on Vergil, narrowing slightly in annoyance as he added, “I will forfeit this as you ask, child of mine. But...the final trial I will not. There is truth to find there, since you claim truth should be the the only trial he faces.”

The God almost sounded...sullen, like your desire to protect Vergil disappointed him. There was something hidden in those black eyes, a sorrow you did not understand. Regret. What more did he possibly have to see, what other truths? You hesitated at the bite in his tone, feeling like a child who had been reprimanded by their father despite all efforts not to. But...this was not something you could tolerate any longer, sitting idly by and letting the God have his merry way. Someone needed to protect Vergil, even if he didn’t want you to. Not that he was going to say anything now, staring down the Outsider with such a fierce hatred that you were shocked the God didn’t catch fire from the heat.

No, all he offered in response with a slow smile, seeming utterly pleased by seeing the Son of Sparda so wrecked. Vergil was growing more and more furious, crackling with an air of anger that made the cold of the Void pale under its fire. You knew damn well he didn’t want to take part in these trials to begin with, especially not with no other choices and no way out. Now, seeing exactly what it had in store for him...he must want the Outsider dead, hating feeling weak in any capacity and being forced back against the wall. You saw his fingers twitch, free hand grasping the hilt of his Yamato like he wanted to attack the Deity before you. But trying was a waste of time.

And he knew it.

“I care not for your trials…!” Vergil growled, tone gravelly and raw as he narrowed his gaze on the smug God, “If you wish to punish me, then leave her out of it…!”

That made you jolt, indignation rising along with the worry in your throat as you protested, “Vergil--!”

“Enough,” He snapped in reply, cutting you off and meeting your pleading gaze with an exhausted one of his own, “This is what V wants, would you really deny him that which he desires?”

Of course he would say that, of course he would bring V into it.

And for the record, hell yeah you would, especially if it meant him sacrificing himself. You learned after those four months that doing so was never the right way to solve anything, not when there were people who cared about you. And everything be damned, you knew there were people who cared about Vergil. You, Dante, even Nero...you owed it to your friend to make sure he got to know his Father, that he would return home to make amends. Becoming one with the Void was a fate worse than death, losing your consciousness to the thousands of others and becoming a part of the chorus, lost to never be found again. You had been a strange case, you had gotten lucky--By circumstances beyond your control, you had not been consumed and were promptly found by the black-eyed God.

Vergil did not have that kind of luck.

“I’m done with losing people,” You replied to Vergil in a harsh tone, gripping the collar of his jacket and forcing him down to stare at you on your level, “You don’t get to make that choice…! It was my interference that brought us here, my mistakes…!”

Because of that, you refused to run. You would see this through to the end.

Vergil scowled at that, desperation in his eyes as he parted his lips to reply. But the Outsider was faster. You heard the God sigh, making you both turn again to look at him as he waved his hand at the image of Mundus and the younger Vergil, making it shatter into crystal that swirled around you all.

“Is this what you want, Y/N?” He looked straight at you, a thousand warnings in his eyes as the wind whipped his black hair slightly with the force, “To see this final trial by his side, to observe this truth no matter how much pain it will bring?”

You had stayed by his side through the death of Eva, through the fire and torment of his burning family home. No matter what came next, you could handle it for his sake. The deaths of those in the Qliphoth, seeing Dante’s struggles, maybe Nero’s? You could handle that, you could be the pillar of strength he needed to get you both out of there alive. Whatever the truth would bring, you weren’t going to sit and be ignorant anymore. Consequences be damned.

So you nodded, squeezing Vergil’s fingers and ignoring his sharp, desperate gaze as you replied, “I will not be swayed. After all, you’ve been showing me new pains for my entire life...haven’t you?”

Every ache, every agony...he made sure I went through them.

I just want to know why.

The Outsider tilted his head to the side at your words, as if he could sense the very context held beneath them. Silence passed between you both, punctuated by the Void’s howling and the whipping wind. You didn’t know what was going through his head, but you hoped it was something close to mercy, closer to what you thought the Deity was upon learning from him, from doing his bidding. There was a pleading look in your eyes, silently begging him to understand and listen. You didn’t want this anymore, didn’t want this conflict or hatred. You didn’t want to hate him anymore. Getting to live your life a second time was a blessing, getting to try again was a gift. And being able to do it all with the power of the Void and the Outsider guiding you was more than anyone could ask for.

But...there was something in the Outsider’s expression that made you nervous. A reluctance, one that was enhanced when he raised his fingers, sending the cloud of dark crystal swirling about you both like a cloud.

“Then so be it. But let it be known that I tried to warn you.”

You flinched, closing your eyes and gripping Vergil’s coat tightly between your fingers as it weaved around you loudly, coldly. Changing the landscape again, you knew that much. It was hard to get your sense of direction, like being turned upside down in mid air and trying to regain balance. You felt the cold start turning into warmth, the shimmering rays of the sun painting on your skin and making you gasp. Inhaling brought the taste of salt water on the air, wind sending your hair adrift and feeling nice despite it being utterly fake. Another illusion.

In a matter of seconds, the Void’s howling dissipated, leaving behind the quiet sound of footsteps, of voices low and murmuring as they brushed past your ear. It took a few moments for you to catch your breath, to get your barrings after being thrust into a new space so quickly. Your brain was scrambling, confused and trying to tell you that the Void was now gone, but you knew better by now, didn’t you?

You knew this place too, that was a fact.

You opened your eyes, feeling shock settle over you as the surrounding registered within. This was Fortuna, you would recognize it anywhere. The architecture, the towers reaching toward the sky and that ocean breeze you had experienced for months of peace. But...it was different now, not the crystal woven buildings of your home with bustling in the streets of new and old technologies alike. No, this was far more subdued. You stepped closer to Vergil, anxiety settling in a hollow pit of your stomach as you watched people walk by with their heads down,  wearing cloaks and hoods and all keeping to themselves. It was so quiet, a far cry from the laughter and talking of the city square now, Fortuna opening its doors to the outside world and finding peace and culture they enjoyed.

And even more shocking was the behemoth looming over the city in the distance. Made of stone, towering high into the sky and staring eerily into the distance. 

Nero had told you the story of how that statue fell, a homage to the demon Lord Sparda that was built by the Order of the Sword. But it was still here, the damage caused by all the events Nero was involved in no longer there. This was definitely the past--so maybe your assumption was correct? Maybe you were seeing what happened to Nero growing up, the truth of living without his parents? But...why weren’t you in front of the orphanage, instead in the town square several streets away. What was the truth to find here?

You looked up at Vergil, finding him frowning and staring around with wariness in those sharp eyes.

“We’re in Fortuna,” He stated the obvious, tone low and still rasping from before, “I...remember coming here to investigate the Order of the Sword.”

You blinked, stepping back from him and looking out at the people oblivious to your existence. One hand reaching out phased right through them, proving this illusion to be just like the other. It felt real, but you could not interfere with those who existed in it. 

But...that wasn’t important right now. A realization was forming in the back of your head, one that made you take pause and turn to look back at Vergil.

“H...how many times did you come to Fortuna?” This was where he met Nero’s mother, wasn’t it? Had to be, considering the fact that Nero was born and raised in Fortuna his whole life. Getting in and out of the city at a time like this was difficult, if not impossible considering the grip held on it by the religious group. 

Vergil frowned, putting a hand to his head and wincing slightly, as if he was in pain.

“...Once,” He finally replied, almost reluctantly, “The memory is vague, most likely due to my run in with Mundus afterwards. I do remember finding a book telling me the information I needed, then leaving to form the tower as a means to gain my father’s power, but…”

He didn’t remember Nero’s mother.

As soon as the thought formed, you froze, seeing a familiar shape walking through the crowd nearby with his head down like the others. The man stood out a bit, tall and broad shouldered with the familiar handle of the Yamato peaking through his cloak. You could recognize Vergil’s air of confidence anywhere, even when his younger self was seemingly trying not to be noticed. Blending into the crowd as best he could, people of Fortuna clearing a path out of his way and not looking at his face at all. His older version at your side noticed too, standing at attention as he watched himself walk past, face younger but still wearing that cold, cocky look he always had. It felt so strange, seeing a closer version to the Vergil you knew, but so much softer and more naive looking. Vergil at his peak of stupidity, it would seem.

But you knew now, the truth you were realizing here. The fact that Vergil didn’t seem to remember anything about Fortuna, about Nero’s mother told you everything you needed to know. What had happened to this woman, one who somehow managed to gain Vergil’s attention enough to form a child? Imagining the son of Sparda engaging in a quick fling seemed heavily unlikely, especially given the lack of interest he seemed to have in anything but power. Vergil clearly had not stayed behind for her, and Nero didn’t know who she was either. It didn’t bode well, and you were willing to bet her story would be a painful one. Of course the Outsider would want him to see what happened to this woman, the mother of his child, and make him feel terrible about that too.

He was doing things out of order--why this last? Wouldn’t it make more sense to show Mundus last, considering that happened after Vergil fornicated in Fortuna?

“Nero’s mother…” You murmured, making Vergil tilt his eyes back to you, “Is there anything you remember about her at all? She must have been special, especially considering the fact that she somehow caught your eye.”

 Vergil seemed so focused, so driven. Romance or lust was so low on his spectrum.

The man in question furrowed his brow, letting out a low growl from his chest and rubbing his temple with hard fingers, “Why do I feel insulted by your tone?” He asked flatly, making you raise a brow at him, “I remember very little. She wore a red dress--does that help at all?”

A woman in red...that kind of narrowed it down, right?

You sighed, running a hand through your hair and feeling absolutely exhausted by the whole situation, “This is what the Outsider wants you to see so pay attention--didn’t you wonder at all what happened to this woman considering the fact that you barely remember her?” You met Vergil’s eyes, a serious expression on your face as you continued, “Nero searched Fortuna for her, but she was nowhere to be found. You are meant to see her fate.”

And like it or not, you would both be witnessing it.

Vergil looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw and an uneasy air settling around his form. You knew this might be less damaging than watching his own mother die, especially if he had no attachment to the female. But...this could bring closure to Nero too, and that was important. Guilt could be an effective teaching tool, one that Vergil needed to become more familiar with after spending his entire life ignoring such things. Her fate was as important as his own, and he owed it to Nero and himself to at least try and see what happened to the poor girl he left behind.

Almost on cue, you saw something out of the corner of your eye--a flicker of color. Right on time. It made your head turn, a breath catching in your throat as you saw a hint of red walking from the direction illusion-Vergil was heading in. You gripped the real one’s hand, making him follow your gaze before you let go and started heading toward the woman in question. This had to be her, there was no doubt about that--head down with a white hood, dress a scarlet red and walking slowly past Vergil on the quiet street with a gentle stride. Her face was obscured, which was unfortunate. But you assumed you’d see it soon enough. 

You walked to her side, phasing through the people of the crowd and pausing once she did in the middle of the cobblestone street. Vergil didn’t look at her, didn’t even seem to notice her--but it was clear she noticed him. You need to see this, right? You weren’t bothered by knowing Vergil had slept with another woman, especially considering he and V had no knowledge of you then. But...Something felt...off?

Something isn’t right.

Your foresight started prickling in your chest, growing in heat and intensity and making anxiety boil through your veins. What the hell was all that about, there was no danger here, correct? If demons showed up in an illusion, would you sense them too? But….you felt nothing in the house when it was attacked, no indication that danger was coming. Your Foresight had been completely quiet then, not seeming to notice the manifested danger or the fire threatening to burn you. So why was it coming to life now, warning you of something that was not seen?

You halted your steps, standing feet away from the woman in red with confusion and worry in your eyes. Vergil approached your prone form, watching her as well but you couldn’t bring yourself to look at his face. Instead focused on her, observing as she turned away from the both of you to look behind, seeming to notice Vergil and stop to look back at him with a soft smile peeking out from the hood shielding her face.

What was it that got her attention?

Maybe the energy he carried, maybe the way he walked. You weren’t sure which, but you could feel her interest like a tangible force in the air. That and...more. You felt recognition above all else, like you had met the girl before at some point in your life, as impossible as that was. It prickled at the back of your mind, sending off warning bells and making you incredibly uneasy.

The only women you met in your travels of this world were Nico, Trish, Lady, and Kyrie--and that was excluding the women of Fortuna you grew to recognize.  And there was no way this girl was any of them based on her body type alone, and the fact that two of those girls would be babies at the time. Not like the women working the shops, not anyone you had helped. In fact, this was years ago was it not? This woman would be in her forties by the time you knew her. And she carried no aura similar to the older women.

But...something felt off, something felt wrong. The foresight was growing louder and louder as you stepped away from Vergil, frowning as you tried to move close enough to observe her face.

Don’t.

Don’t look.

Hide your eyes away, child of the Void.

The whispers turned to screaming in your ears, making your steps falter and eyes blink in confusion. What...was happening? What was going on? You were feeling rooted to the spot, standing next to the woman with your heartbeat increasing on every breath. Vergil wasn’t immune to your fixation, to the intensity of your gaze. He asked you if you were alright, but you barely heard it, ears starting to sound like they were underwater, drowned by your own pulse.  Look away look away, the Foresight chanted, growing louder and louder as everything around you seemed to slow, to dim, You can’t, you shouldn’t, you mustn’t. This was not something you were supposed to see, but it was far too late now, wasn’t it?

The girl’s hands raised from her sides, gripping the edges of her hood and gently peeling it back, revealing her face to your eyes.

Wh--

What? 

Th...that’s not…

This isn’t--

That’s not possible.

There must be a mistake--

Your eyes were wide and unblinking, staring at the face before you and unable to comprehend what your head was seeing. What...what was going on? You saw her eyes, the same color as yours. Her hair, the same color as yours. Her face...that...that was your face, was it not? Those were your lips, your nose, your cheeks, your everything. That was your smile on her lips, gentle and full of interest as she watched Vergil walk away. Your fingers lifted on her hand, touching your-- her cheek like she was in awe. Your breath stopped entirely in your lungs, heart pounding so hard in your chest that the roar of blood in your ears was deafening. Impossible impossible impossible--this was not possible. Your fingers started shaking, the Foresight in your body screaming in agony as you stared into her face, like a mirror, seeing yourself and unable to comprehend any of it.

She is--We are--I am--

I can’t--I can’t I can’t I can’t.

This cannot be real.

Your brain snapped like a weak twig, mouth opening but no sound coming out as your power and soul screamed out in absolute agony. Anger, despair, horror, pain, fear, incomprehension--It was like a tidal wave shattering the glass holding you together and flooding all in its path. You felt yourself crumble, mind shutting down and all the powers enveloping you in a sea of blackness that felt all too familiar to your body. And for once...you welcomed it, that feeling of nothing. Everything went howling into the Void in an instant--no more thoughts, no more sight, no more feeling. You fell to your knees and entirely shattered apart, the image before your eyes snapping away into the darkness like it had never been there at all. 

You fell to pieces, mind shutting down before it could destroy itself even more. Like razors, the weight of the grief and absolute horror was ripping apart any sense of sanity you could have, protecting your soul from cracking into the state it had been all those years ago in the Void. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. This cannot be. This cannot. Be. She is me and I am--

You lost it. You lost it. 

Your mind writhed and thrashed, body going limp on the ground as the blackness consumed all the chaos and sent you into a state of absolute darkness. And in that split second of lucidity that remained before it was all taken, you heard the Outsider’s voice in your head.

Forgive me, my child. There are some things that even you were not meant to see.

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Tagged: @silentwhispofhope @nightshadow4713 @slightlylunatic @just-call-me-no-name @efiicitia @raven-huntress @shaelin444

[antagonisms]

BASICS

Name: Evan Czarnecki

Gender & pronouns: cis male, he/him

Species: werewolf

Age: 27. Jokes about being 63, because he was a wolf for 6 years, which is 42 dog years + those 21 normal human years. Either way, age is a really weird concept now.

PERSONALITY

Traits: Pretends to be flippant to put the world at a distance. Vulgar as a means of distancing himself from genuine vulnerability. Perceptive, but won’t let you know that. More self-aware than he lets on. Self-absorbed. Self-destructive. Loves being seen, hates being known.

Moral alignment / MBTI / enneagram: Chaotic neutral. INTP-A. 5w6.

Values: In other people, he likes independence, open-mindedness, the ability to dress well, a lack of tolerance for bullshit, genuine altruism, and resilience.

Flaws: Judgmental. Narcissistic as a defense mechanism. Occasionally rude, but mostly just cheeky. Not a team player. Reckless. Hedonistic. The brokest bitch in Blackrock.

HISTORY 

( shorter version is in the app. i just like details. trigger warnings for child abuse and sex as self harm.)

1) CHILDHOOD

You had a family, once. Your mother’s a piano teacher and your father is — you don’t know, really, but he’s got enough old money to buy nice things even if he’s stingy on principle. He’s polite, and she’s funny, and your fellow patrons at Sunday Mass love all three of you because you’re down-to-earth, surface-level beautiful — a perfect American family.

But they don’t know what happens inside the too-big house at the foot of the mountain. Your mother’s a pessimist, and your father’s a sniveling piece of shit who copes with his worthlessness by making everybody feel small. He’s kinda good at it. They’re both as loud as they are erratic and it’s all a matter of bracing yourself for when the floor inevitably falls through. You make do, mostly. You hide in your room. You lock the door. You put your ears behind headphones. You drown out their screaming matches and your too-loud mind. 

It all falls apart when Mommy decides she hates Daddy more than she loves you. No goodbye. No explanation. She just leaves. 

Her departure plants a lesson you will later find impossible to uproot: love is earned, Evan, you’re not working hard enough. At least your father stayed. At least he sometimes loved you. At least, you think so. He might have loved you when he took you fishing, or gave you that book you really liked, or when he buys you clothes that look really nice. You flip through your mother’s old sheet music and fumble through the piano keys, and you think he might love you when he watches you fill this house with her memory without saying anything.

But mostly, he’s not very kind. You don’t want to think about it anymore.

2) ADOLESCENCE

You inherit your mother’s cynicism and your father’s stingy heart. The skill you develop is as much a sense of humor as it is a safety net. If life’s a joke, beat it to the punchline. By the time you’re fifteen, you can no longer pretend that your world is worth saving. You keep it at arm’s length. Your mind makes a mockery of the darkness to keep its jaws at a distance, because if you couldn’t do that, your pitch-black pessimism would swallow you whole.

Growing up feels less like maturing and more like mutating. By the time you’re sixteen, you stop feigning perfection to earn the affection of a father who’s heart is colder than your Blackrock winter. Popular misconception claims control is a word you never learned, but that’s just what you let everyone think. The truth is: control is a lesson you pried out of your body when the need for acceptance evolved into a need to rebel. You’re an embarrassment, Evan. Adolescence meant insurrection. You’re a failure of a son. Pills and booze and boys and girls biting the hand that hit him. Your heart is a bullet and your mouth is a shotgun and you will make yourself repulsive if the alternative is admitting that — Evan, I wish you knew how difficult it is to love you.

You only apply yourself when it matters. You get into Stanford. You take a loan. You don’t let your father pay for tuition, because you’re not letting him control your life anymore. You leave your tar pit town the way your mother did, and it’s only a matter of time before your goodbye is permanent. 

It gets better as much as it gets worse. You leave home, but home doesn’t really leave you, and you don’t recognize your body when it’s not in pain. You’re beautiful, though. People see you and want to make you theirs. You let it happen. Too-rough hands salve the ghosts of bruises your father left you. This is the ugliest way of putting it: you feel damaged. Every person you kiss has too-sharp teeth, and maybe that’s exactly how you want it, because if this body doesn’t feel like it belongs to you, then offer it up in a way that feels good.

You always leave first. You love much how it tears them apart. This is your inheritance: your Momma’s love of leaving, and your Daddy’s stingy, stingy heart.

3) THE BITE

Unlike your mother, you tried to come back. Your father called one night, asking if you wanted to return for Christmas, and the small, stupid flicker of hope that your pessimism couldn’t kill begged that you give him a chance.

He didn’t change. He argues about the degree you’re taking with the money you don’t have and insists on carving a future for you, his way. He doesn’t like your independence. He doesn’t like your protests. Your fights are explosive until they aren’t, until a raised fist reminds you exactly what violence he’s capable of.

At least he sometimes loves you. Maybe he loved you when he picked your wounded body up, carried you out of the woods, and bandaged up bite on your side. Maybe he loved you when he brought medicine to your room, and maybe he loved you when made you chicken soup just the way you liked it, even when you didn’t ask. Maybe he loved you when he sat by the side of your bed, and talked about his father, and his father’s father, and how none of them really knew how to grow up without making their sons feel small.

But the fever is strange. A new kind of anger tears out whatever capacity for forgiveness you might have had. Your bones are changing. Something wretched twists and grows inside you, and with a hot flash of pain, you’re something new entirely.

You have one last coherent thought before the wild takes your mind completely.

I have to kill him. So you do. 

3.5) THE THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW

The news of your father’s death spreads like wildfire in Blackrock. It’s not your father’s mangled body that causes intrigue, it’s your disappearance. Wolf attacks, while uncommon, aren’t exactly rare, and everyone’s heard the folktales. Neighbors assure that you were there during the evidence, but the police find no evidence of carnage, not a pound of flesh nor drop of blood to support the fearful need to conclude that there’s nothing supernatural about this. You can’t prove the Czarnecki kid isn’t a werewolf, the gossipers say. Nobody can even prove that he’s dead.

4) WOLF-HOOD

You don’t know what strange circumstance landed you in your new body, but maybe you don’t care. Maybe the bite and the fever killed you, and the Buddhists were right. You don’t really know if you earned enough good karma to deserve this reincarnated form, but either way, you’re never letting it go. You hunt deer. You roll around in the snow. You snarl at any predator that dares to get near, and bite the ones that move into your space without permission. Sometimes you walk into the backyards of strangers and wait for children who aren’t afraid to try and approach you. You don’t eat them, because just because you’re a monster now doesn’t mean you don’t have principles.

You lie down. You let them rub your belly.

It’s a really nice life.

5) NOW

Six years after you thought you died, a woman drags you out of the woods you back into your body. Even a lifetime of pain couldn’t prepare you for the shift back. New bones tear your animal flesh apart, piercing your skin open to make room for your wretched old body. It aches in too many ways. The people — the wolves — the ones who did this to you, they tell you this is your home now.

So it wasn’t Buddhism. Maybe it’s the Catholics who’re right; eternal damnation does await the unrepentant sinner, and it looks like this: you’re here, trapped in a frat house for furries, without a  cellphone, a car, or clothes of your own, or money to pay a doctor to confirm whether or not you’d acquired a tapeworm.

You realize you owe Stanford 213,000 dollars.

You are a very tired wolf.

TLDR:

Evan has a bad childhood. He becomes a wolf. He kills his father. He mistakes lycanthropy for reincarnation and lives in wolf-nirvana for six whole years. You drag him out of nirvana. The realization that he didn’t actually die puts him in a terrible mood. 

CONNECTIONS 

( So uhhh I wrote up possible prompts for the existing werewolf skeletons before I knew what anyone was like and I think they can be good jumping points! If you don’t feel this fits your character, or if you want a different sort of dynamic, just message me! )

1) WOLVES (AND BITTEN HUMAN)

ALDER: You’ve seen him at his ugliest — a small, scared creature writhing on the floor, that horrific cross between a howl and a screech leaving his shifting throat. Now there’s a flare of red-hot resentment in his eyes whenever he looks at you, and it makes you wonder if he’s more monstrous as a human than he is a beast. You saved him from death. You realize you cannot save him from life. He’ll never forgive you for that.

HEMLOCK: You are a bootlicker and he does not like you.

HICKORY: It’s not your job to keep the feral wolf in line, but your brother seems to resent whatever circumstance it was that landed him the role of mongrel babysitter. Consider picking up the slack. The guy’s only half-terrible — sullen and strange but mostly manageable, and maybe earning his trust is only a matter of affording him the patience that nobody else wants to offer. If it’s an opportunity to prove this pack your worth, try taking it.

MAPLE: You’ve worked too hard to protect this pack, to earn your position. Now your lot has dragged some feral creature out of the woods, offered him their home, their humanity, and still, he has the nerve to be ungrateful. He makes it clear that he doesn’t trust you. He makes it even clearer that you cannot trust him. Maybe the demons in your head are concussed, but the new demon in your home now insists on giving you a migraine. 

PINE: You are a mirror of lost days. You are the young flighty creature he once was and can never become again. Home is a word you might have both forgotten, but circumstance has offered you both a new roof over your heads, and a family to go with it. Maybe these similarities should draw you closer, but there’s a glimmer of resentment in his eyes whenever he looks at you. You don’t know why it’s there. It could be pity. It might be envy. It must be grief. 

OAK: He had a father, once, and that shit didn’t end well. For some reason, he sees it fit to pass some unearned blame on you, and now years of buried resentment are yours to bear. Family’s a broken word, he seems to think, but you cannot let him break yours. Still, it’s evident that he lacks the capacity to be as self-sufficient as he’d like, and as long as that’s true, it’s your thumb he’ll be under. You know he needs you. Offer an open hand, or pull the leash tighter. The choice is yours.

REDCEDAR: He shows up at the bookstore to read a new title of Animorphs every other day and you don’t know how that makes you feel.

WILLOW: He might take more kindly to you than he does the others. You’re both new to a home you’re not sure will ever welcome you, and more importantly, you both wanted this. The bite. This beastliness. The difference is that he’s certain. Your condition is a new part of yourself that you have yet to fully love, but he seems to think he can teach you. Man and beast are equally monstrous, he tries to convince you. So let’s be the kind with bigger teeth.

2) OPEN CONNECTIONS

( Open to humans ) has taken an interest in the Czarnecki Werewolf Conspiracy. They’re familiar with the incident — a dead father, a missing son, and the wolf that allegedly kill them both. All the facts line up too neatly, and when somebody who looks to be the ghost of one Evan Czarnecki returns to haunt the streets of Blackrock, they think it’s finally time they get some answers.

( Open to humans ) once knew Evan. Yeah, the kid who always got straight A’s and played piano for Catholic mass? What the actual shit happened to him? They’re watched Evan go from familiar face to murder case overnight, but now, the town recluses have found a new adoptee — and he’s the splitting image of the boy they once knew. Maybe it’s time to reconnect.

3) VAGUE CONCEPTS

he uhhhh (spins wheel) flirted with ( open ) at last drop for free drinks and then realized that spending six years as a wolf made him de-acquire the taste of liquor and now he’s having a crisis

( open ) tells him he needs therapy. evan laughs

this is actually very hard he’s so unsociable

jsut message me... we’ll think of something

[antagcnisms]

turn myself into a gun.

Poor Logan. The words ring in his ears, the sharp edge of her words hidden in the saccharine tone. Go ahead and get angry, she had said. So he does.

Logan isn't a stranger to anger, but it's been a while since he's had a proper episode, all the noise in his head narrowed down to a single emotion. It's not Amelia's fault—she may have been the trigger, but it does not change the fact that he is the smoking gun. His anger is his cross to bear, not anyone else's.

It's kind of fucked up, he thinks, that as much as he claims to hate the swirling mess of anger he carries around with him, the thought of being without it terrifies him, too. Who is he without his vices? Just plain old Logan: unremarkable, unexceptional, unwanted.

He's deep enough in the woods that the world goes quiet, the sounds of the town fading away and replaced by the stillness of nature. No human witness to the way his fist smashes against the nearest tree. The first punch leads to a second, then a third, then a fourth—again and again and again and again until red coats his knuckles, like tangible proof of the anger bleeding out of him.

As always, guilt starts to creep up on him once it's over, filling the gaps his anger left behind. He winces when he checks his hand—the skin is shredded raw from the rough bark, but he flexes his fingers against the sting, satisfied that nothing's broken. No permanent damage. Not this time, anyway.

He remembers Holly's words, remembers her asking what happens if you hit something the wrong way and bang up your throwing arm? It's a sobering reminder of the recklessness of his coping mechanisms, and the thought of risking his entire future for violent catharsis makes him feel sick with shame.

Coming down from an episode is an odd sensation. He always feels like he's outside of his body whenever he snaps, like he's a mere spectator to his anger, and only when it's over does he crawl back into his skin. The pain helps though, grounding him to reality. By the time he makes it back to his truck, he feels mostly like himself again. Grabbing a bottle of water from the back, he rinses the blood off as best as he can, wishes he could wash the abomination within him away too.

It's wishful thinking, he knows, but he indulges in it until the water runs out, forcing his own twisted baptism to come to an end. He is reborn again and the counter resets: 0 days since I let the monster out.

[thejollyroger-writer]

Crawling Back to You

A/n: I was driving home from school today, and the song “Do I Wanna Know?” by the Arctic Monkeys came on, a regular on my playlist since high school, but for some reason, the words spoke to me in ways they hadn’t ever before, I was overcome with Captain Swan angst, and this fic was born. 

1399 words. Rated T. Also on AO3. 

To say he’s been haunted by her is an understatement. Sitting at the corner of the crowded bar, he stares down into the dark liquid in the bottom of his glass, if only to keep himself from staring up at her where she sits across the room from him.

Killian Jones has had his share of one-night stands, of women he’s taken home and pleasured to their heart's desire, who have taken him home just to have him slip away after they have had their way with him.

And for a while, it worked for him. He would never see them again and not be bothered by it in the least.

That is, until he met her. When he had bought her a drink, she had smiled down the bar at him, and at that moment, he knew he was lost. He may never be able to explain exactly why she could affect him in ways that no other woman before her had succeeded in doing, but there was surely something about her shining golden curls, the perfect curvature of her flawless body, and those damned sparkling green eyes that held his attention — hell, his affection — more than anyone had ever been able to before.

Even now, two weeks later. Which is a big deal for a man like Killian. Three days after his escapades with her, he had even done something that he had never done before: he found her name in his phone and texted her, asked her if she wanted to meet him at the bar for a drink.

She said no.

And again a few days later when he asked if she wanted to have dinner with him.

The second time was a startling blow to his self-esteem, to his manhood, as his brother jokingly referred to it as.

Killian did not find it funny.

And then, that night, Killian did something else he had never done before: he had dreamt about her, had woken up in the middle of the night with her name on his lips, his sweat soaking the sheets. His raging erection didn't help much, either.

He thought about texting her again, practically begging her to take him back. He had even typed out the message. But in the end, he decided not to send it, instead hopping in an Uber and returning to the bar, the very location this whole thing started. She was there, too, even in the same seat.

It was when he realized his hand was shaking around his glass that he decided to take action. He bought her a drink, same as before. She even smiled down the bar at him again. But when he left his seat to stand behind her, had mumbled in her ear that he hadn't been able together off his mind since they parted, she just rolled her eyes and told him to get lost.

Killian Jones is nothing if not a gentleman, raised to pride himself on having good form. So he did not press her any further, his shoulders falling in defeat, and he finished his drink and went home. To try to get her out of his mind, he spent the ride home trying to focus on the song on the radio, a trick his brother had taught him to try to help the panic attacks he used to get, but for the first time in his life, it actually made things worse.

 Ever thought of calling when you've had a few?

Cause I always do.

 It was as if the song on the radio was taunting him, the singer's accent thick and so much like his own, just like the story he heard behind the lyrics. All he had been able to think about was calling her, and his physical need for her just grew when he added "a few" to the mixture.

 Maybe I'm too busy being yours to fall for somebody new.

 He'd thought about trying to replace her with someone else, taking someone else home to try to fill the Emma Swan-shaped hole in his heart, but he knew it would have been to no avail. No one would be able to give him what he got from her, even though he hasn't the slightest idea exactly what that might be.

 Now I've thought it through,

Crawling back to you.

 Bloody hell.

 The next morning, he awoke with the tune of the song stuck in his head, but the words that hit too close to home failed to return to him. But he was far from worried — the universe seemed to want him to focus on memories of her and nothing else, and if this song took away his one coping mechanism, he was sure that, with his luck, he would hear it again.

And, to no surprise to him at all, he's right. It's on in the grocery store, but he's with his nephew, so he can't let it get to him. It's on again in the bar that night, one far across town from his usual hiding place, his brother by his side. Liam asks about the women in his life, surprised to hear that there have been none in a week — and perhaps even more surprised to hear Killian recall the tale of the gorgeous brunette who had approached him earlier that week that he had shot down, something Liam wasn't sure his brother knew how to do.

"This one really did her damage on you, eh, little brother?"

Killian is too wrapped up in his own thoughts to correct him.

 His life was quiet for a few days, suddenly busy with work and refusing even to go to the bar because he somehow knew that she would be there. But the stress of it all had gotten to him, finally, and he broke down and called an Uber to take him there.

The damned song was on the radio again.

Which is how he got here now, sitting alone in the corner with his glass of rum, conjuring images of her that he has forced himself to repress in his more sober states: lying spread out before him, her dress only half-removed as he tasted her, as he ran his tongue across her most intimate parts until she was unable to hold back anymore; her bare body, pale skin practically glowing against his dark blue sheets, a breathtaking vision as he drove into her, felt her whole body react around him.

The disinterest that covered her face when he asked her to stay, the first time he had ever actually craved it — and the only time he was ever denied it.

Finishing the last of his glass in one quick, burning mouthful, he allows himself to look up at her for the first time since he noticed her there, trying to push down the images in his head, and is startled to find her looking back at him. The bartender approaches and refills his drink, gesturing over his shoulder with the other hand.

"From the blonde across the bar," he says, and Killian doesn't believe it.

Until he sees her smile at him, in fact, he swears that he made it up. Then he watches as her eyes fall to the bar, where he sees her typing on her phone.

After a moment, his own buzzes on the bar in front of him, and he feels his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest when he sees her name there.

Emma Swan: Is it too late to apologize?

Emma Swan: l was harsh and selfish and unfair.

Quickly, he picks up his phone to type his reply.

Killian Jones: Of course it’s not too late, luv.

He takes a deep breath, trying to decide just how much of his heart he wants to bare for her over text, especially if he has the foreseeable future to bare the rest, but he takes the chance and does it anyway.

Killian Jones: l think I may have waited forever to have the chance to have you in my arms once more.

He raises his eyes to watch her response, and when she smiles down at the words in front of her, he is suddenly weightless.

Emma Swan: Well then, l guess forever isn't as long as people think it is.

Killian Jones: Thank God.

[star-anise]

So. I’m currently reading Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey, since it was finally released on audiobook this year. Re-reading, in fact; reading these books as a 31-year-old therapist instead of a starry-eyed 13-year-old. 

I ranted the other night about the book's depiction of Elspeth as "spoiled" instead of "abused", and @feathersescapism (as part of the post's excellent and thoughtful contributions) said this about Mercedes Lackey:

It’s so effing messy for me because like on the one hand she saved my life. She was the VERY first place I saw loving, validated, celebrated queer relationships and ironically Vanyel was the first time I saw an example of someone who was angry and hurt and messy and bad at people and bullied but not a passive victim be portrayed as fundamentally loveable. As in fact valuable enough, worthy enough to be PURSUED, even, to have someone make the effort to get past his hostile defense behaviors. That was priceless to me. Unfortunately it’s like….it was water when I was dying of thirst but it turns out it was water laced with heavy metals that then did a lot of long term damage.

Which is partly just a concentration thing; if you are drinking from many wells, having one be poisoned won't damage you as much overall. But if it's your only source of water, even trace amounts get dangerous. And, well, we were Eighties babies, mentally ill queer kids with access to small-town libraries who ducked guidance counsellors who pushed conformity as the path to happiness.

So I just found a scene that I think really shows that Lackey was writing from a specifically 80s understanding of psychology, before we knew almost anything about trauma; as considered today, it's bad practice on multiple levels, and can point to some of the underlying problems with the Valdemar worldview.

TW child abuse, child neglect

So in this part of the book, 13-year-old Talia, who was rescued from her awful abusive life among the Holderkin by a giant magical horse, is settling into her new life as a Herald-trainee. She attends classes during the day, and then sleeps in her own room in a dormitory wing of her fellow trainees. Her teachers know that she displays all the symptoms of an abused child, and that she's from an extremely insular and rigid culture.

Her teacher, Teren, asks her to stay after class, and she does, wary and panicked because she doesn't know what's going on. He explains that the Heralds sent a letter back to her family to explain that her disappearance was because of the magical horse choosing her as a future Herald, and they get half-taxes that year and she's going to be very important. Her family, however, replies to say only, "Sensholding has no daughter Talia." Because she ran away instead of staying and getting married, she is disobedient and bad, and therefore totally shunned by her entire community.

She didn't realize she was weeping until a single hot tear splashed on the paper, blurring the ink. She regained control of herself immediately, swallowing down the tears. [...] It was odd, but when she'd chosen to run away, their certain excommunication hadn't seemed so great a price to pay for freedom; but somehow now, after all her hopes for forgiveness had been raised only to be destroyed by this one note-- Never mind; once again she was on her own--and Herald Teren would hardly approve of her sniveling over the situation. "It's all right," she said, handing back the note to the Herald. "I should have expected it." She was proud that her voice only trembled a little, and that she was able to meet his eyes squarely. Teren was startled and slightly alarmed; not at her reaction to the note, but by her immediate iron-willed suppression of it. This was not a healthy response. She should have allowed herself the weakness of tears; any child her age should have. Instead, she was holding back, turning further into herself. He tried, tentatively, to call those tears back to the surface where they belonged. Such suppression of natural feelings could only mean deep emotional turmoil later--and would only serve as one more brick in the wall the child had placed between herself and the others around her. "I wish there was something I could do to help." Teren was exceedingly distressed and tried to show that he was as much distressed at the child's denial of her own grief as with the situation itself. "I can't understand why they should have replied like this." If he could just get her to at least admit that the situation made her unhappy, he would have an opening wedge in getting her to trust him. [...] "I'm going to be late--" Talia winced away from the outheld hand and ran, wishing Teren had been less sympathetic. He'd brought her tears perilously close to the surface again. She'd wanted, above all other things, to break down and cry on his shoulder. But--no. She didn't dare. When kith and kin could deny her so completely, what might not strangers do, especially if she exposed her weaknesses? And Heralds were supposed to be self-sufficient, self-reliant. She would not show that she was unworthy and weak.

What I took away from this book, at 13 and during most successive readings, was that the fault in this situation is Talia's unwillingness to trust Teren and break down. It is her inability to open up emotionally to her deep, vulnerable feelings that causes problems. I suspect that my reading is not terribly far off the narrative's own perception of the central problem. In the 1980s, psychology was very based around the individual, the dance of the id, ego, and superego. Talia's problem is that she has an overactive superego, which prevents her from expressing her natural feelings in a healthy way. She uses unhealthy coping mechanisms, which must be overcome to achieve health and full congruence with her feelings. This runs very much on the catharsis model, where emotions build up like a boil, and must be lanced; once someone "vents", they feel better.

Now, at 31, and trained to help vulnerable 13-year-olds, I can see a lot of differences in how I'd assess the problem now. The trauma field especially has come to understand that humans are essentially relational beings; our brains are born in relationships. We function best in relationships. We need, more than anything else, to feel connected and understood. And then, above that: we are beings in brains and bodies. Our consciousness is limited by the hardware it runs on. If our body is dedicating all its resources to fight-or-flight, we cannot be rational, logical thinkers. We need to understand how to regulate our own emotions, both by personal actions and through relationships with others, to achieve health. It takes repeated, patterned practice to master the skills of understanding and moderating those emotions. Coping mechanisms may be unhealthy, but as I was taught in grad school, "All psychopathology was adaptive once." If you're going to take away someone's unhealthy coping mechanism, you need to have first replaced it with something healthier.

So looking at this scene now, I can point out that Talia represses her emotions instantly because in her family of origin, she got beaten up for crying. Her teachers have already observed that she has the defensive and startle-reactions of an abused child. It should not be very hard for Teren to put two and two together and think: She has been systematically trained to view emotion as unsafe. 

He could, at this point, make the rules of their current situation clear: "It's all right to cry. You don't have to put on a brave face for me." This would let Talia know that she won't lose support or status if she cries. But that assumes, frankly, that she can cry; that the experience of being vulnerable in front of another human being wouldn't be too overwhelming, perhaps terrifying, for her to bear. He could also validate that, and let Talia know he sees her and understands. "It'd be all right if you let that guard down, but it looks like you've got a lot of experience with dealing with hard knocks. If you ever do want to talk about it, I'm here."

It's important for him not to try to force her to show feeling the way he thinks she should. He doesn't actually know that it's safe, or that he's safe. Traumatized people need, more than almost anything else, to achieve a measure of control over their own emotions and bodies. They need to be able to make themselves calm when they need to be calm, and not to be ambushed with sadness or fear out of the blue. It should be, more than anything, Talia's decision of when and where to express her emotions. Is bottling it all up unhealthy for her? Oh, probably. She might get depression later this month, or heart disease in 40 years. But being forced to cry when she's not ready to can leave her feeling violated and retraumatized, right here, right now.

The thing that makes crying comforting for most people is that they have a very deep pattern etched on their brains: They cry, someone comforts them, their pain recedes, they feel calmer. It's the pattern of a thousand hungry wakeups as a baby where someone was gentle and kind and fed them. It's skinned knees kissed and broken toys mended. But Talia probably doesn't have that; her experience of crying has been that she's punished and abused for it, and as an infant whose mother died in childbirth, she probably wasn't adequately nurtured either to build those good associations in the first place. Crying just takes her into a deeper place of loneliness and self-hatred. So for her to soothe herself, she might need to be taught very basic ways of doing that--to take a break, to do something she loves, to get a hug from a friend. Her traditional reaction has been to mask her emotions, and to self-isolate and let those feelings of pain and alienation swamp her.

What he could even do, as I sometimes do as a therapist, is respect that repression as a way of coping and roll with it. If someone can only bear the most glancing reference to their trauma? Then glance. Use black humour or obvious irony to acknowledge the situation without engaging with its emotional depth. “So, you know, no big deal. I bet that’s what you’ve always wanted.” So long as it’s paired with other kinds of real caring--especially useful, immediate help and close emotional attunement--that’s not out of place.

One thing he seems to have assumed is that of course, if your family is awful and devastating, you get to take the morning off to cry. I can only assume that's why he's pushing her to cry at the end of class, when she has another one to go to right after. But she might not know that. Certainly her familyexpected that if they did something awful and devastating, Talia needed to get back to work as soon as possible. Teren doesn't discuss this, and I think it's important; Talia goes to something like four other classes, has lunch, and reads for an hour before she finally gets to do anything relevant to taking care of her emotions. Implicitly, the idea that schedule and routine supercede emotions, and that emotional work takes second place, gets reinforced by the system that thinks it's "saving" her.

The other thing traumatized people struggle with, next to control, is connection. Trauma is hugely isolating; it reroutes resources away from the parts of the brain that foster social connection, so people literally lose track of anyone who might be loving and supportive, and it's hard to make ordinary people understand what you're going through. This is part of why Teren showing Talia all his distress isn't really good for her; he's overloading her still further with natural empathy for his emotions, increasing the weight she has to carry mentally, but not reinforcing her connections. He doesn't remind her that other Heralds are her family now, nor does he give her help in how to reach out to anyone.

Who might Teren remind her of? As much as he's taking on the role of The Person She Can Be Emotional To, he's hardly ever in her life; this is the last day of their week-long class where he met her for one hour a morning. He could encourage her to talk to one of her regular teachers, including his twin Keren, who teaches her equitation, or the cook, in whose kitchen Talia is most confident and in her element. If her dormitory had older Heralds who lived there in a kind of supervisory or mentoring role, spending hours of unstructured free time with the trainees, he could direct her to one of them. He could even direct her to her age-peers, with whom she lives, who might not be the most emotionally attuned but certainly seem to be the group with whom the Heralds expect her to do most of her emotional bonding.

Or he could--now here's a thought--suggest she spend the rest of the morning with the magical psychic horse who can beam rays of love and devotion directly into her brain.

But he doesn't. It is only after Talia has attended classes on history, geography, mathematics, etiquette, and archery, eaten lunch, read for an hour, and cried in the back of the sewing room, that she finally sees her magic horse. And she does feel a bit better! But by then, her major adrenaline has worn off, and with it the ability to etch memories deeply into her brain; the first hours after her shock were spent ignoring her feelings and being disconnected from people who didn't notice she was in pain, thus reinforcing all her old traumatic impressions.

So the book sets up a recurring number of incidents where Talia's loneliness and isolation is reinforced by the world around her; where no one provides her the necessary scaffolding to help her build bridges with other people and develop the skills to be healthier; and then, as happens throughout the series, when something bad happens to her, she is blamed for being so isolated and repressed. 

When I was 13, I had no framework to understand any of this. On the schoolyard, I'd been taught many of Talia's lessons about the dangers of showing weakness, and in the classroom, about the importance of repressing emotions; I used her as an emotional model. (Later in the books, Talia lbecomes an Empath and Mind-Healer, which hugely impacted my decision to become a therapist.) But then, when her loneliness turned into defencelessness and her lack of emotional control turned into instability, the narrative said it was her fault for not being healthier. And so I thought: Yes. It is completely reasonable to provide a young person with no emotional support at all, and then get mad at them for being fucked up.

And so there's lead in the water.

[sorio99]

Deltarune Chapter 1: The Official Undertale AU

At 6:00 AM PST, on Halloween 2018, the official Undertale twitter account released what is essentially a demo for the next game by Toby Fox, deltarune. Between the baffling intro, the odd relationship with the original Undertale, and the implied involvement of a certain missing doctor, everything about this game was shrouded in mystery.

And I loved it.

(Spoilers and Review below the cut)

Part 1: The Story

At first glance, most people assumed this mysterious new game would be a sequel (or possibly prequel) to Undertale. After all, it involves a number of shared characters, the titular rune was prominently featured in Undertale, and even the name “Delta rune” is an anagram for “Undertale”.

However, the relationship between the two is much stranger, and the plots are largely unconnected.

After creating an avatar and having the game unceremoniously throw it in the garbage, you play as Kris (that lovely person up there), the human child of Asgore and Toriel, and younger sibling to Asriel Dreemurr. Right off the bat, about a million questions are raised, especially since later conversations indicate Kris has at least been living with the Dreemurrs’ since they were too young to know their species, but we’ll come back to that.

Toriel drives you to school, though still get there late, and Alphys (who is your teacher here) puts you in a group with Susie, the only student to show up after you, to work together on a group project. However, when she realizes she doesn’t have any chalk, she sends the two of you to go get some from the school’s broom closet. You catch Susie eating chalk, she threatens to eat your face but doesn’t, and you head off to the broom closet.

Then things get weird.

After that, it sort of follows a plot line similar to the original: you fall into another world, there’s a bunch of monsters you can either fight or spare, and you just have to keep going up and to the left to fulfill a prophecy & get to the exit, all while dealing with ambiguously evil characters who are more silly than dangerous. It is, however, a bit shorter, with only about ten unique enemies and only three areas in the whole game. But hey, it is technically just the first chapter, so what do you expect.

Of course, what really makes an Undertale is the characters. Since you’re in a different world for most of the game, the returning characters from Undertale don’t have much of a presence outside the very beginning and very end. Instead, we focus on a handful of new characters, all of whom are pretty well-rounded and developed, with the exception of Kris, our silent, somewhat-ambiguously-gendered protagonist. Susie, in particular, goes through a pretty nice character arc, going from someone who’d casually threaten to rip your face off and eat it, to an actual antagonist at one point, before eventually working her way back to being a good guy and someone you can actually be friends with! It’s definitely the strongest arc in the game so far.

There’s also Lancer!

He’s a villain.

And not a skeleton.

Just trust me on this.

Part 2: Presentation

Just to get it out of the way, the music is fantastic. Of course it is. It’s an Undertale spinoff and, more importantly, it’s made by Toby “Radiation” “I could shit out a better soundtrack than most of you will ever even imagine” Fox.

I will however say that I prefer Deltarune’s sound design in general to Undertale, though. Don’t get me wrong, Undertale still has the better OST (for now at least), but Deltarune’s sound effects JUST beat it out in my books. In particular, I felt like the text sounds for most of the characters was, on average, less annoying than in Undertale. Again, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Undertale’s voices, but some of them could get a little ear-grating, especially for characters who talked a LOT throughout the game. Here, with the exception of one returning character (where the irritation was kind of the joke anyways), all of them work really well. There’s even a tiny bit of voice acting from a couple of the more important characters! So, big thumbs up there.

More pressingly, however, are the visuals. In case it wasn’t obvious from the above screenshots (aside from that second one of Lancer, maybe), the graphics have gotten a MAJOR glow up since the last game. Temmie Chang, aka “Most Precious Meme”, is still the main Artist for the game, and Undertale is by no means a bad looking game. However, in general, the games’ art went from “Beautiful and sometimes even breathtaking” to consistently “HOLY SHIT MY EYES ARE NOT EQUIPPED TO COPE WITH SUCH SHEER BRILLIANCE!!!”

You think I’m exaggerating, but I legit dropped my jaw at a lot of this game’s visuals. I mean, just look at this one End-game animation!

I think this one short scene has more detail and frame than Asgore’s overworld sprite got in the entirety of Undertale.

On the slight downside, however, we no longer get the full-body monochromatic battle sprites from Undertale, as enemies appear in battle almost identically to how they appear in the world. Still, with this much more detail in overworld sprites, it’s not even a slight loss.

Speaking of battle...

Part 3: Gameplay

Yep, the gameplay has gotten a major overhaul over the past three years. First, as the screenshot should make obvious, you have a team now! Yep, in addition to Kris, you can get up to three additional party members over the course of your adventure, including Susie! 

In general, what you can do in battles with Kris is mostly the same; you can Fight by hitting the button at the right time, Act in certain ways to make the enemies not want to fight you, use an Item really quick, or Spare an enemy who you don’t want to kill. You also have the option to defend, which will lessen the damage you take if you get hit during the obligatory bullet-hell attacks your enemies dish out.

Where things get really interesting, though, is the team mechanics. You see, every character is different, and everyone but Kris can use magic (although some of Kris’s ACT commands kinda seem like magic?). However, only Kris can directly ACT, with other party members only being able to preform certain set spells. So, instead, Kris can command the other party members to perform actions, or Kris can ACT while the others defend, use items, or attack. If you use a Team ACT, the other party member(s) involved won’t be able to do anything else that turn, but said Team ACTs are usually more powerful or potent as a result. The whole thing can set up for actually strategic choices in battle: In Undertale, since most enemies only had one or two ways to spare them, the most strategy you could use on a Pacifist play through was “Which enemy should I deal with first?” Here, you have to figure how you’re going to handle each encounter. Do you have Kris ACT first, then have another party member spare that monster in the same turn? Or do you act WITH that party member, and next turn be able to spare at least two monsters?

In addition to the battle system being reworked, there were a number of smaller, quality of life changes:

You now have three item categories: Items (your standard consumables), Gear (your armor and weapons), and Key Items (your cellphone and a couple other important things).

You can sell at pretty much every shop in the “Dark” world, which makes sense, since you’re mostly selling food, armor, and weapons-things people in this world would need to survive.

Each character in your party uses a different kind of weapon, but all of them use the same armor, and you can give them all two pieces of armor each, so you can stack defense and get extra boosts!

Choices are mostly presented in a cross pattern, so you just have to pick a direction and confirm to choose that option.

THERE IS NOW A RUN BUTTON AND IN THE OPTIONS YOU CAN CHANGE SO YOU AUTO-RUN AND THE RUN BUTTON IS JUST A WALK BUTTON!

And speaking of which, YOU CAN ACCESS THE MENU FROM WITHIN THE MAIN GAME! THANK YOU!

You can also have up to three save files at once, although I’ve heard each file has some minor differences in flavor-text across the game, so be on the look-out for that.

Overall, I feel like I honestly prefer the game play to Undertale. In fact, with the exception of the story (which is mostly underdeveloped because, again, this is basically just a very long demo), I honestly prefer most of Deltarune to Undertale. While it isn’t technically a sequel, per se, it does do what any good sequel should do: use the original as a starting point and just improve almost everything. It’s almost like the Bioshock Infinite to Undertale’s Bioshock, if that makes sense.

(Would that make System Shock 2 Homestuck? Am I over thinking this?)

Now, with the actual review out of the way, we can get to the main event.

Part 4: Co̞͞n̤̠͎̙̥̗n̸̰̜̳͚͓͇͍e̸͈͉̳̺c̭̮̬̖̭̗̳͠t͍͓͘i̖̺͙͇̟̫o̢̰̜̦n͈̮̼͈͎͖̦s͈͝ ̹̙̦͈̯̜A̡̟̥ņ̥͙̗d̛͙̤̦͈̹̪͚ ̺T͍̞h̡̜̝̟̬e͏̱̹̲ͅ ͕̯̰͍̜͇͍D͝oc̜t̸̺̱̯͙̠o̷̱r͈̟̣̤̯

As I mentioned before, this game isn’t technically a sequel to Undertale. None of the events of Undertale seem to have occurred in this universe, including (seemingly) things from before the game even began. This becomes especially apparent after you leave the “Dark” world and can explore town, talking to various people. Character relationships are almost universally reset, there is no mention of the “Underground”, and considering Asriel is still alive and in college, it’s safe to say there is no Flowey in this world. It could almost be passed off as a complete alternate continuity, or even a reboot, if it weren’t for a few...

oddities.

Yep, among the returning characters, Sans makes an appearance, having apparently just moved into town and never having met you before. Despite having apparently met Toriel the night before in the grocery store, and having a business relationship with your teacher, Alphys. Plus, there's the fact that what used to be Grillby’s and the Bone Brother’s house both look WAY too close to there original versions (no other building looks that similar), the fact that of ALL the returning characters, only Sans looks the exact same (no redesign, visible aging, or even new clothing), and the fact that some of Kris’s dialogue choices seem to reference things that haven’t happened in this universe, and other characters notice them acting...different.

Plus, you know, there’s Chapter 1′s ending.

Yeah.

(Plus, as you might have noticed at the top of this part, there’s a monster who is the only one in either game who looks similar to this Gaster Follower)

All of this seems to point to something much more sinister going on. And, for those who haven’t seen it, the tweets leading up to the demo’s release might just explain why.

Now, we aren’t quite sure who this is supposed to be, but judging by their vocabulary and how they type, it’s a pretty safe assumption we’re being chatted to by our favorite former royal scientist. And, sure enough, most people are assuming that this entity is at least some version of Dr. W. D. Gaster. Why is he doing this? What does it all mean? Why was the Delta Rune even slightly relevant to the plot of this chapter aside from there being three prophesied heroes?

Well, I suppose only time will tell.

Until then...

L̴͙̖̠̕è̘̝͚̯̩̘ͅt͔͎͖̝͎̼͘͢ ̷͎̮͘ù̴̹̘̮̰̙̮̮̘͝s̵̷̫̠͎̯͙̥͟ͅ ͍͍̤̟͇͕̺ͅh̨̼̼͕̠ą̶̛̦̫̼v̺͞e̸͎̭̱͍̭͞͠ ͖̩̳͕͔͚͚̝̱s̘̭̩͜͟ơ҉̥͖̯͟m̞̠͈e̷͔͖̭ͅ ́҉̤͔͎̫̣̥̱͚̲ḿ̶̩̼̙̪̻̝̥͟o̗͇̩͇̠͍͟r̡͖͇̤̗͔͈̕͠e̶̝̠͔͈̭̟ ̷̫̬̺̮͔̣F̢̗̘̟̯͈̜͖͕͈͞Ų̴͍̜͚̘̠̞͈͇̀N҉̡̣̺̝̩̘͓ͅ.̷̩̹͓̯͝

S̛̪̦͉͎̙̀h̴͇͈͡á̤̣̫̬l̷̬̤͓͈͟ͅl͚͚̙̦̙̣̱̺ ̳̗̩͍̱̤̦͈̣w̡͔é͔̝̹̻̜͎̞͝?͜҉̣̣̥̫͎͎ͅ

[preservationandruin]

Oathbringer Spoilers, Part Three: Chapters 58-62

The name of this section is “Defying Truth, Love Truth” and the spread is Dalinar, Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin. 

Dalinar travels and engages in Diplomacy, we see another Surge in use, Kaladin gets a makeover, Adolin finds a safehouse, and Shallan half-tells a secret. 

We get a beautiful spread of Thaylen fashions, and a new source of epigraphs--the messages contained in the drawers Renarin found. 

As a Stoneward, I spent my entire life looking to sacrifice myself. I secretly worry that is the cowardly way. The easy way out. 

Apparently Stormy’s ego has made a full recovery from Odium’s visit, which is fortunate. Dalinar’s decided not to use the visions so carelessly, not wanting other people to get dragged into conversations with Odium. Not that not using the visions would probably stop Odium, but it’s a good precaution. 

Rial saluted him. Again.  “You don’t need to salute me each time I look at you, Sergeant,” Dalinar said dryly.  “Just trying ta be extra careful, sir,” The leathery, dark-skinned man saluted one more time. “Wouldn’t want ta be reported for being disrespectful.”  “I didn’t mention you by name, Rial.”  “Everyone knew anyway, Brightlord.” 

I’m so glad Dalinar has people around him who can ground him by giving him a little shit now and then. Kaladin and Shallan have been in Thaylenah, and the queen is now ready to meet with Dalinar; Dalinar takes a moment to tell Kaladin that he trusts him and Adolin to stop Elhokar from being a fucking idiot. 

I mean, he doesn’t use those words, but they’re what he means. Also, Dalinar awarded Kaladin some land! I mean, it’s taken over by Parshmen, but hey, it’s there. 

Oh my god please let Kaladin put his dad in charge of one of the villages LIRIN WOULD BE SO GOOD AT LEADING A TOWN and if anyone complained about him being darkeyed Kal could just look at them and go “i literally saved the world” until they shut up. 

Thaylen City has been ravaged by the highstorms. Whole sections of the city have fallen in, and their famous docks are gone. 

One of the other radiants decided to leave a record of the names of her husband and children, instead of anything about herself. That’s...really sweet. 

Fen shows them the areas of the city that are still standing, and I’m thinking about the Heralds, again, since they go to Shalash’s temple. 

You know what I really want? For the Heralds. I want them all to have some house in a nice area of Roshar where they can live and not have to fight ever again. I want them to get therapy. I want them to be safe and happy and live out their lives in calm. Because while some of them have pulled some seriously awful shit, the context of them having been tortured in hell for thousands of years really puts it into some perspective. 

Notedly, some of the statues in Shalash’s temple have the face broken off. She’s been here too, gang. Navani gets on Dalinar’s case for scowling, he denies it. 

“What?” He asked softly. “Stop scowling.”  “I’m not scowling.”  “You’re bored.”  “I’m not...scowling.”  She raised an eyebrow. 

I LOVE MY FANTASY PARENTS. 

Dalinar claims he is a diplomat and Navani’s reaction is basically “doubt.png.” For some reason, they’re not going to visit Ishi’s temple--it hasn’t been damaged, but Fen doesn’t seem to want for them to go there. Given Edgedancer’s mention of Ishar, I’m...suspicious. 

But then, if you’re reading this, you know I’m paranoid in these books and trust nothing. Taravangian, weeping, offers to bring through his surgeons; Fen agrees. 

But here’s the question--is that genuine compassion, or him wanting access to the slowly dying so that he can get their death rattles? 

This is why I’m paranoid. 

Fen notes that Taravangian acts as though the city is a burial ground. Well, in his mind, it is--it’s another necessary sacrifice in his Diagram. Fen isn’t going to take it that easily. They’ll rebuild from stone this time, making it more secure. 

Dalinar has noticed that Queen Fen can’t accede to his requests on her own--she’s dependant on the support in her throne. As long as parts of the city think Dalinar is out for military conquest, they’re not going to let her agree. 

So Dalinar has an idea. 

“Does it involve punching someone?”  He nodded, to which she sighed. 

Why is it now you’re thinking of punching someone and not when Odium was right in front of you. Anyway I’m looking forward to wherever the hell this goes. 

He says that he just has to give them a display, a lesson, and that brings up a strange memory--something about the rift and Sadeas, something his subconscious doesn’t want him to remember. That’s...not good. 

Something happened where Dalinar went back to the Rift and something very bad happened. Bad enough for Kadash to quit altogether, become an ardent. Bad enough that Dalinar has repressed it. Something having to do with Sadeas, maybe having to do with Evi. 

Notably, the temple of Taln has been hit hardest, lightning striking the building. 

None of the other temples had fared this poorly. It was as if Odium had a grudge against this one in particular. 

God, specifically trashing Taln’s temple just because he didn’t submit to your torture is so outrageously petty, Rayse. 

Anyway Dalinar is going to try to pick a fight with her son. Because...i don’t know? He’s Dalinar? I really hope this doesn’t backfire on him. She’s gone to do something else. Dalinar, why are you like this? 

Okay, correction. He’s trying to get Fen’s son to pick a fight with him. While trying to assume that he doesn’t know it’s her son. 

Kholin Diplomacy, Everyone. 

Well, it works, Dalinar throws down a line in the sand and the kid fucking crosses it, so I guess this is happening. Good thing the son says no Shards, because Dalinar can’t fucking hold them without Stormy throwing a godawful fit, and this city has been through enough at the moment. Navani’s like “don’t hurt the kid but...don’t lose” which is a careful line to walk. 

Let’s hope that Dalinar not feeling the Thrill remains true. The Radiants can’t feel it, we think, but...I don’t want this to be the moment we learn we were wrong. 

Dalinar just...lets the dude (armed) go at him (unarmed) for the first bout?? What the hell, Dalinar. I mean, if it works, it works, but dude, you better have a lot of Stormlight. 

And at the very end, Dalinar lets the dude hit him with the sword, and literally pushes it further into him. Again--you better have a fuckton of Stormlight, Dal. So he just fucking pulls a sword impaling him out of his chest, compliments the kid’s form, and heals it up, sharing a sly smile with his wife. 

Fucking power couple right here. The kid points out that, technically, it’s Dalinar’s turn with the sword. Dalinar just asks for a clean shirt. But then he realizes--his actions were a display of force, and he didn’t want to win that way. He didn’t want to win them over by saying that he could crush them. 

He leans against Taln’s broken temple--and hears something else. Unite us. Please. The stones themselves. The spren of the temple want to be fixed. 

Storms. Does everything I do have to be about destruction? About dying, broken bodies, smoke in the air and blood on the stones? 

The warmth inside of him said that it did not.  He stood and turned, full of Stormlight, and seized the fallen stone that blocked the doorway. Straining, he shifted the block until he could slip in--squatting--and press his shoulders against it.

He pushes it in place, and power flows through him, coursing through the building; the lintel raises and is fixed in place, the stones are knit together, the place is restored. 

Of course. When the Bondsmiths use that surge, they use it to fix. 

And he realizes the other thing he can do--provide aid, with the Radiants. He sends for Renarin, who can heal the dying. They’re gonna save this goddamn city. 

“I did not expect to find the Blackthorn shirtless,” Queen Fen said, “And...playing sculptor?”  “I can only fix inanimate things,” Dalinar said, wiping his hands on a rag tied at his waist, exhausted. Using this much Stormlight was a new experience for him, and quite draining. “My son does the more important work.” 

Dalinar also realizes that for a second it feels like he can almost understand the people speaking Thaylen, as though a bond is trying to form. That’s interesting. Bondsmiths might be polyglots, then, through their powers. 

Renarin, apparently, is telling everyone to thank Dalinar for the healings. Dalinar just told Fen that what he did was unimportant compared to what Renarin does. These two...

“Strength and Passion, the Vorin way.” Well, that’s an alarming line given what Odium has said. 

Another gem: I worry about my fellow Truthwatchers. 

We’re over to Kaladin. The storm doesn’t belong to him like the skies do; they’re flying before it, to Kholinar. Shit’s going to get real here, I think. From what we know, there’s a Voidbringer army converging there. Skar and Drehy are there, and then there’s Elhokar, Adolin, two of Shallan’s men, and  a maidservant, and then Shallan herself. Kaladin’s wondering how she keeps smiling, again. 

Five thousand unhealthy coping mechanisms, Kal. 

Adolin is not taking the flight wonderfully. I mean, it’s gotta be pretty terrifying if you are just a normal person. 

Further Syl attempting to set up Shallan and Kaladin. Syl, no. 

Shallan is talking about how beautiful the storm is and meanwhile Adolin has like a deathgrip on Kaladin’s arm. 

Kholinar is still held by the Alethi, although all the surrounding towns are Parshendi. Additionally, Kal gives himself a moment just to stare at how huge and amazing the city is--he’s never really seen it, before. 

Unfortunately, Kaladin feels a cloudlike wrongness around the palace,  and it’s strongest around where the Oathgate platform would be. Take your bets, gang--mine are going on “Unmade is there.” 

So bringing Shallan for illusions turns out to be a good idea. 

Anyway, this next chapter--still Kal--is called “Nightmare made manifest,” so clearly everything is just going to go great in Kholinar. 

Refugees are being let into Kholinar--it seems stupid for the Voidbringers to do this, but it isn’t. They’re overburdening the city. Shallan tries to draw the palace, but it ends up twisted--one of the unmade is there. I was right!

Shallan assumes most of them won’t need disguises, and I really hope so, because if Moash gets into the city he will instantly recognize anyone from Bridge Four. And Kal hasn’t told the others why Moash left. 

That could get nasty, very quickly. Shallan does give Kal one, making both him and Adolin look like old men. 

Someone is having too much fun with her ability to give appearances. Kal ends up looking wretched, Adolin ends up a handsome old man. Shallan. 

Also please note how much fuckin detail Kaladin goes into about this disguise: 

Shallan wrapped Adolin in Light. He resolved into a sturdy, handsome man in his sixties, with dark brown skin, white hair, and a lean figure. His clothing was no longer ornate, but in good repair. He looked like the kind of old rogue you’d find in a pub, with hardy tales about the brilliant things he’d done in his youth. The kind of man that made women think they preferred older men, when in reality, they just preferred him. 

That’s...okay, Kal. That’s pretty gay. 

Elhokar is surprisingly willing to be turned into a woman for this--he needs to help his people and his city, and he’s willing to do what it takes to do that. 

Even Syl is a bit revolted by how Kaladin looks. What did Shallan do? 

None of the other Bridgemen have gotten to the Second Ideal, unfortunately. 

“[Re-Shephir] was...wrong.” Adolin finally said. “Haunting. A nightmare made manifest.”  “Kind of like my face?” Kaladin asked. Adolin glanced at him, then grinned. “Fortunately, Shallan covered it up for you with that illusion.”  Kaladin found himself smiling. The way Adolin said things like that made it clear he was joking--and not only at your expense. Adolin made you want to laugh with him. 

This is quality good content. I know given my comment earlier you might think I mean in a shippy way, and sure, you can take it like that and it’s great, but this is also just good friendship content.

Anyway, the gates have stopped letting people in, and they go over to check it out. Apparently, they’re only letting people in if they can provide the defense, and the wall is being held by a “Highmarshal Azure,” who Elhokar hasn’t--or, at least, says he hasn’t--heard of. 

The ongoing saga of what the hell did Shallan make Kal look like continues, as they guard say they don’t want him because he looks sick. But a Parshendi raid lets them get in. Apparently Highmarshal Azure doesn’t have a superior--no word of what happened to Queen Aesudan or Elhokar’s son. 

There are strange performers on the street, dressed all in white with perhaps augmented clothes with red, blue, or green fabric, calling out nonsense phrases. Shallan notes that they’re imitating spren. The exhaustionspren people produce are of Odium. 

God,  something is fucked in the city. 

Anyway, they get to Adolin’s safehouse. Which is...

“What is this place?” Kaladin asked.  “Well, I figured we’d want somewhere safe,” Adolin said. “We’d need to stay with someone I trust with my life, or more.” He looked at Kaladin, then gestured towards the woman. “So I brought us to my tailor.” 

OH MY GOD, ADOLIN. 

Anyway, we flit over to Shallan punching herself in the face. She’s trying to actively attract painspren, to see if they are normal, I think. 

So Aesudan executed Pai the radiant, and then the riots started. During them, Aesudan vanished, and her proclamations, when they came, didn’t make much sense. 

Elhokar says that, of course, it was the unmade who ordered Pai’s death, not Aesudan. I think someone might not have great judgement regarding his own wife here. Shallan stabs herself in the leg with scissors, which Pattern notes as self-destructive even for her, but it does get painspren. 

They, too,  are strange. 

Anyway, the everstorm brought the darkness to the Palace. The Palace Guard retreated into the palace, and the city watch barricaded into the barracks, then vanished into the palace. Hungerspren didn’t look different, though, back with Shallan’s investigations. 

A group of prominent lighteyes went to meet with Aesudan, and never came back from the palace. This just gets better and better. Again, when the unmade are in a place it starts looking like a horror story. 

Shallan manages to nearly expose her safehand in front of Adolin, Kaladin, and the literal king, which is enough to summon shamespren. They, too, are strange. It’s all the emotions--hunger is a condition, not an emotion. 

Anyway, nobody knows where this Highmarshal, Highmarshal Azure, is from, and most haven’t seen him. The real power in the city is the “Cult of Moments”--people are saying that between the new forms of spren showing up and the queen and the everstorm, a new world ruled by Spren is coming. Fabrials draw screaming yellow spren who signal the voidbringers, who come and either take the fabrial or kill you or both. 

Shallan is starting to notice that Elhokar does have the makings of a king in him. They’re awkward, but they’re there--she takes a Memory to draw later. Kal and Shallan are going to go to the palace, Shallan as Veil--that’s interesting, the first time another main character interacts with her Veil persona--and they’ll be trying to investigate. Kal refuses to let her wipe off the brands on his forehead with an illusion. 

Shallan tells the guys--her guys, her squad of trainee spies--about Veil by just saying “privacy, men, Veil needs to get dressed.” Some are surprised, some aren’t. Ishnah said she thought Brightness Shallan was the fake and Veil was real; Shallan answers that both are fakes. Then she heads out to scout. 

I’ll cut it here--my phone is dying, and that’s how I read. Moreover, I have to change observing targets at work. 

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

Hunger - chapter 27 *final chapter*

Hunger master post

Five months later

 The house still smells of fresh paint. It’s not the same house Stiles grew up in. That rankles, if he lets himself think about it, but there’s another family living in the old house now, another kid sleeping in Stiles’s childhood bedroom, and it’s stupid to get upset about it. It’s stupid, but sometimes Stiles finds himself driving down his old street just to take a look at the place. Just to feel the low burn of grief and anger inside him that he doesn’t think will ever truly fade. Stiles tries to channel that anger into healthy coping mechanisms, but more than once his dad has found him in the back yard smashing packing boxes with his baseball bat.

Derek takes him running a lot. Stiles doesn’t know if it’s the pace Derek sets or the fact they stop to make out under the trees, but he usually comes home feeling a hell of a lot better.

“Your boyfriend is Derek Hale,” Lydia announces one day at school, narrowing her eyes at him like he’s a puzzle she’s on the brink of solving. “Derek Hale who was apparently in witness protection, or in hiding, or raising alpacas in Oregon with his uncle all these years?”

Stiles has heard a lot of rumors around town about Derek and Peter. So has Lydia, clearly.

“Yep,” Stiles says.

He gives her another month tops before she figures out the whole werewolf thing.

Scott and Allison are still going strong. Allison is still refusing to talk about what the hell is going on with Chris and Peter, and Stiles respects that level of denial. Victoria and Peter haven’t murdered one another yet, so who knows? Maybe they have some sort of timeshare arrangement. He’s too smart to ask any of them, though. That’s a death wish he doesn’t have.

Parrish has moved in with Melissa, and the spare room has been painted yellow in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. Scott is still pretending to be horrified about the whole baby thing, but Stiles did catch him buying a wolf plushie once, and he was super careful with the egg he had to look after during that dumb project for health class.

Stiles left his egg in the exhaust pipe of Jackson Whittemore’s silver Porsche.  

It’s a decision he stands by.

School is good.

One afternoon, Stiles finds himself craving curly fries—nothing new there—and stops at the diner on the way home from school. He parks in the lot out the front, and then, instead of going inside, finds himself walking around the corner into the alley that was his home for so many weeks.

The memories hit him all at once.

It’s a feeling not unlike vertigo.

The alley stinks. The trashcans are filthy, and crawling with flies. The cardboard boxes are still nearby, rain damaged and spotted with mildew, and the thought of actually sitting down on the filthy ground makes Stiles sick. He remembers eating from the trash cans, and bile rises in his throat.

He doesn’t get curly fries. He goes straight home instead, and showers.

The new house is on Ferguson Street. It’s a typical California bungalow. It’s nice. Stiles and his dad spent a week painting the inside before they moved in, and picked out all their new furniture themselves. It’s new and clean in a way that doesn’t quite feel like home yet. It needs to be lived in some more, but they’re getting there.

They take comfort in different things. 

His dad likes to sit outside on the back porch at night and look at the stars.

Stiles likes to crawl into a proper bed and stare at the ceiling.

Money is a bit of an issue for now, but David Whittemore promises there will be a compensation payout coming their way. He’s confident it will be a big one. There has been media attention, just like there was the first time around. It’s not every day that a sheriff gets sent to prison, and it’s certainly not every day that it turns out he was framed. Stiles’s dad is working as a security guard at some factory outside of town at the moment, but that’s only until he gets his payout. Stiles teases him about becoming a gentleman of leisure, but he notices when a few of his dad’s old deputies visit, and a few people from the city council, and even the deputy mayor.

“They’d probably vote for you again,” Stiles offers one morning over breakfast, shoveling his cereal in. “If you decided to do it.”

His dad snorts and reaches for the milk. “Maybe. But who even says I want to be the sheriff again?”

Stiles shrugs, and leaves it at that, but he won’t be surprised if his dad decides to run for election in the end.

Derek visits every day. He stays over some nights as well, if Stiles’s dad is working, because Stiles doesn’t like to be alone. It’s not always about sex, but it is always about closeness and comfort, and it’s such a weird thing to be in love, and to be so, so sure of something. Stiles only knows that it’s possible to stare into Derek’s eyes and to be completely unafraid.

Stiles doesn’t know what the future will bring, but he knows that Derek will be there with him every step of the way.

They’re pack.

They’re mates.

Derek says the moon brought them together, and Stiles—cynical, skeptical Stiles—looks into his eyes and makes the decision to believe it wholeheartedly.

 ***

 Derek spends more time on two feet these days instead of four. He relearns the way his human body moves. He remembers how to curl his mouth into a smile instead of a snarl. He remembers how it feels to be alive.

 ***

 “You’re over thinking this, kid,” his dad says mildly when Stiles opens the top drawer of the new dresser to check the contents. A toothbrush, some toothpaste, a razor, and an assorted bunch of toiletries. A set of fresh towels.

“I’m not,” Stiles says, jittery with nerves. “It has to be just right. Like, it has to be right.”

Stiles closes the drawer and inspects the shelf by the bed. There’s a good selection of books there, most of them from the second hand place in town. There are comic books too, because not everyone likes novels.

“Stiles, it’s fine.”

Stiles gives his dad a distracted nod, and begins to straighten the bed. Again.

His dad sighs and peels himself off the doorjamb. “Derek?” he calls. “Come and take Stiles outside, please, before he wears a hole in the floor with his pacing.”

Seconds later Derek is beside him, arms around Stiles’s waist, dragging him outside.

Stiles laughs despite himself. “Derek! Dad!”

He dad points sternly toward the back of the house. “Outside.”

Derek hoists Stiles up, and heads for the back door. They almost make it when the doorbell rings. Derek sets Stiles down again, and Stiles shifts nervously from foot to foot as his dad goes to answer the door.

Then, unable to stand the wait, he hurries along to join him.

“…get settled in,” the woman is saying.

Stiles looks straight past her.

There’s a kid standing a few paces behind her. He’s about Stiles’s age, and his face is pinched into a wary expression that Stiles is way too familiar with. He’s trying for nonchalance, but everything in him is radiating anxiety.

“Hi,” Stiles says. “I’m Stiles. Come in and I’ll show you around.”

The kid steps inside.

Stiles leaves his dad to deal with the social worker.

“Living room,” Stiles tells Isaac, waving vaguely. “And the kitchen’s down there. You can help yourself to whatever, whenever.” He leads the way to the spare room. “This is your room. There’s a toothbrush and stuff in the top drawer, but if there’s anything else you need just let me or Dad know. Like, um, whatever it is.”

The kid sets his duffel bag down on the floor and looks around. Stiles hopes he’s not imagining the loosening on tension in the kid’s shoulders. Stiles knows exactly what it feels like to be in his shoes.

He has to do this right, because he knows exactly how the kid is feeling now, and because nobody did it right when it was Stiles standing there, lost and afraid.

“We don’t really have a lot of house rules,” Stiles says. “Like, there aren’t any lists of chores or anything. Dad has got this thing about getting homework done though.”

The kid nods.

“Okay,” says Stiles, too brightly. “I’ll just, um, I’ll let you unpack and stuff, and—”

“Stiles.” Derek is suddenly standing behind him.

“Jesus Christ, Derek! You’re like a freaking ninja!” Stiles elbows him, and then looks back to the kid. “This is Derek, my boyfriend. Derek, this is Isaac. It’s Isaac, right?”

The kid nods again. “Yeah. Uh, nice to meet you.”

He makes it sound like a question.

Derek raises his eyebrows. “Stiles talks too much. You get used to it.”

The faintest hint of a smile flickers around Isaac’s mouth. Stiles can see the moment he forces it away with another curt nod.

That’s cool.

Stiles doesn’t want to overwhelm him with his awesomeness on his first day.

“Also, we’re getting pizza for dinner,” Stiles says. “So tell me now if there’s anything you don’t like.”

Isaac seems taken aback to be asked. “Um, I don’t really like anchovies?”

“Gross. Who does?” Stiles agrees. “So I’ll let you unpack. I’ve gotta go and kick Derek’s ass at Mario Kart, so if you want to come and join us when you’re done, that’s be cool.”

“Cool,” Isaac says, and Stiles doesn’t know if he’s just echoing back the word or agreeing he’ll play.

It’s okay.

It takes a while to get the lay of the land in a new foster home. Stiles knows that.

It’ll work out.

He flashes Isaac another smile, and lets Derek draw him away.

It’ll all work out in the end.

 ***

 Later that night Stiles and Derek drive out to the Preserve. Derek takes Stiles’s hand and leads him into the trees where they can be alone, bathed in moonlight. The night is quiet and cool and soft. Their hands are warm. They slip amongst the trees, shadows entangled, the wolf and his boy.

The moon will guide them safely back again.