#at least i remember reading about it once

[pomrania]

Beta pass! First I'll be reading the whole thing through and jotting down page numbers of stuff to take a second look at, then I'll go back to those pages and see if there's anything I need to say about them. Because I remembered how good it felt when I discovered that method (it works really well!) so I wanted to share it.

…you know, I've never actually asked: how many figures are there on the cover? Is the Fizzgig-looking one a separate character, or a symbiote of the one on the left? And I've also just realized an that character has at least three arms; I don't know HOW that's slipped by me for so long.

Huh, there's bits where I can definitely tell that you rephrased it from previous versions; generally I prefer how it had been, but "getting the meaning across clearly" and "having it be able to fit in the space available" outweighs a witty turn of phrase.

Something that occurs throughout, I believe: the thing about "you can find these [cards] in your download package if you obtained this game digitally, or on the Penguin King Games website". Individually, each instance makes sense that it's written out in full. Put together, it feels kind of odd, like why is that repeated. (There's other things that are repeated in full, but they're rules elements where "being able to find relevant information to what you're looking up" is more important than "artistic flow when you read the whole thing straight through", so I don't consider those to be a potential issue.) My suggestion would be to have it written out in full in the "what you'll need" section, while other instances of it to just refer to the cards, maybe giving the page number. If you make/made a conscious decision that you do indeed want that written out in full, in all instances, then I'll respect that, because you have enough experience in the field that if so then it's probably the best idea.

((So I wrote this all with page numbers listed, but then when I tried copy-pasting it into here, it decided to treat the whole thing as a sequential numbered list, so I'm having to put in the proper numbers manually; if something seems like it's referring to the wrong page, then it's because of that.))

2. "Random selection table" is listed as being on page zero.

6. In the third paragraph, the "optionally" just feels weird as something starting the sentence. Maybe move it to elsewhere in the sentence? I'm also not sure about the paragraph arrangement, like if the thing about a deck of cards should come before or after the thing about the print-and-play cards; it's not WRONG, but it could stand to be looked at some more for considering what the ideal flow is.

10. In the second paragraph, the phrasing "able to bring to bear, or tag, on a test" is mildly grammatically ambiguous; "tag" could replace "bring to bear" (as it actually means), or it could replace "bear" leading to "bring to tag". My preference would be for it to be rephrased, but it's not a major issue or anything. In the third paragraph, "afforances" is presumably a typo. In the shaded box, "descripition" is a typo.

14. "Cunning crafter", "centring" just looks weird to me, like it would be "cent-ring" instead of the "centre-ing" it actually is. If it doesn't look weird to you, then I guess it's okay; otherwise, consider what other words/phrases might work instead.

16. "Extra organs", the "always" effect: I'm assuming that you HAVE to make up an organ to say why you're immune to it, and you're not just "generically immune to environmental effects"? So it's up to the player to be on top of that. And the "with effort" thing for it, that's also an exception to the rules against doing multiple effortful things at once?

17. "Flowing form", if I recall correctly this isn't intended to work as a disguise unless you get creative with your in-'verse excuses, yeah? "Fluttering flight", it feels weird that the link is on "six on"; like, it should include the "take". Maybe also put the page number before the "on", but I hadn't been paying attention to how you'd formatted that in other instances, so I don't know if there's something established or not.

18. "Hearty humours", the description says "drawbacks" but I can't see any in the rest of that entry, unless you count "not being able to tag it for the rest of the scene after you've used its effortful use", but that isn't listed as a drawback for the OTHER forms which have something like that. "Hundred-handed", in at least one other instance later on, the "handed" is capitalized, but it's not capitalized here (or in the "random forms" table). One of those should be changed for consistency.

20. "Menacing missiles", so I assume that if being very accurate is important, then that calls for a test? But just hitting a medium-sized target, when neither it nor you are moving and nobody's trying to interfere, would be an automatic thing. "Mighty muscles", it refers to "striking stature (puny)" and vice versa, but they might need to be looked at together, to make sure that the multiplier on lifting capacity doesn't get applied twice; or more accurately, that it's very obvious that it should NOT get applied twice. "Mobile members", does the "always" effect mean you can act through your main body AND a detached member at the same time, or only one at a time?

21. "Peculiar poise", the "with effort" use, so I'm assuming that it gives you a few seconds of leeway with the GM's description, but once they've described someone's action AND the results of that action, it's now too late to interrupt?

23. "Striking stature", so being Puny doesn't reduce your lifting capacity but it divides your weight by ten, and I'm actually looking back at "mighty muscles"… okay, I see, that one doesn't increase your "lifting capacity" per se but rather sets it at "X times your weight". They do NOT in fact have an unfortunate interaction with each other; but they SEEMED like they do, when the text isn't directly compared. So this would fall under "potentially rephrase to make it EASIER to know what the answer is", but it's still functional as-is. "Vague visage", I'm trying to think of actions you COULD perform while doing its effortful use… that'd be stuff that doesn't involve acting on parts of your environment that you can't carry with you, so you could read a book, or doodle something, but you can't sketch your surroundings because that relies on your being "somewhere in particular" (unless the view is the same from anywhere). And I remember that this Form doesn't allow quantum teleportation without a high-calamity-threshold test; but while staying WITHIN the "somewhere around here", where do you end up when the effort is no longer sustained? Specifically, if it gets dropped involuntarily.

25. This still doesn't feel like "inventing new Forms", or at least, not with its current set-up. You have "the easiest way" which is reskinning things, and then in a shaded box there's something about a concept being represented by multiple Forms. Those both feel like side-things to an actual "how to invent a new Form", because saying "the easiest way" implies that there's a less-easy way, and a shaded box has generally been used for clarification or edge cases. If "how to invent new Forms" isn't something you want to write and/or you feel it wouldn't benefit the game, I'd recommend rephrasing things (possibly including the section title) to make it clear that these are the available options if you don't like the Forms as described. (Also, "hundred-handed", with the "handed" being lowercase, is here, if you decide to go with it being uppercase.)

27. "Hundred-handed" has the "handed" as uppercase here, if you decide to go with it being lowercase.

36. "Art of abundance", can the "summon more copies of yourself while sustaining the Art" only be done once, or can it be done as often as you can pay for it? "Art of alteration", I see you've changed the "forced to end it" thing from "being verbally called out" to "someone speaks your true name aloud". Does that mean "if they say it anywhere in the world", or does it have to be in the vicinity? Plus, that would mean that with what rules we have so far, it could only be done by other party members, which… MIGHT be the intended gameplay, but it doesn't match my albeit extremely vague and distant memories of the relevant cartoons.

37. "Art of autonomy", no problems here, just want to comment that I REALLY wish I had this, since later on today I'm walking somewhere and I can't rely on anyone having plowed or shovelled the sidewalks on the way. "Art of exposition", the bullet points (arrow points?) feel like they're just the sentences from a paragraph put on a new line each. EXTREMELY low-priority, since it clearly conveys all the necessary information, but it can be made to feel a bit better with the format it's in.

38. "Art of guising", so if a role is held by a specific person and it doesn't make you look like that person, then if somebody knows who that person would be… I'm not sure which option is funnier, "I hadn't realized we got a new [role]" or "huh the [role] looks different today". I'm assuming that if someone has a personal connection to the [role] then Shenanigans would ensue. "Art of indulgence", typo, "or the part of to be eaten". If it's not a typo and it's actually a valid construction, then I'd suggest that it be rephrased, because it FEELS like a word got dropped there. …Also, I'm assuming that this doesn't count as "removing Stress by eating something", except in VERY niche cases. "Art of iteration", can it be activated multiple times for the same outcome? Like, you activate it once, get a new result; decide you don't like that new result, then activate it a second time.

39. "Art of keeping", I'd suggest moving the "later" from the start of the sentence, to fit better as part of a bullet point. "Art of making", another instance of "bullet-point division doesn't feel quite right". Very minor issue. "Art of miscellany", does "item in another character's inventory slot" count as "held" or "worn/carried"?

40. "Art of negation", for an ongoing effect where the Art must be sustained, it's possible to act (or have others act) in such a way to end up somewhere that it's no longer an ongoing effect, yeah? And I'm assuming that if it gets dropped when the situation is still there, that you'd then immediately take the Stress you would have earlier. "Art of realization", I wouldn't say that a STATUE counts as a "visual depiction"; like, "a sword in a statue's hand" isn't a real sword, but it's still a physical (sword-shaped) object. Maybe change it to "artistic depictions"?

41. "Art of transition", I just realized; the "sustain" effect isn't just to chain leaps together to go farther, it could also be used to briefly check (as in "take a glance around" not "search the area") a bunch of unoccupied rooms behind closed doors… and I just realized that it doesn't include stuff on what counts as a valid destination any more. "Art of ubiquity", oh I LIKE the change you made to the last point of it, how a creature can react to your action as though you were at Touch range; it's more elegant than the previous thing, AND it neatly suggests potential (direct!) consequences.

48. The "maximum five dice" thing still confuses me. If your intent is that no roll should EVER have more than five dice, I'd suggest putting that BEFORE "you get an extra dice for each Trait you tag", since otherwise it feels like a) when using Traits you're limited to five dice, but Obstinacy and pushing your luck can give you more than that, and/or b) you can get up to five dice from "tagging Traits", which are then added to the "starting" dice to result in SIX dice.

57. Typo in the second paragraph, "quanities of food". Also, I don't believe an that meaning of "atomic" (as "indivisible") is commonly understood; I like how it's used, and it can be figured out from context, but it's up to you to decide if you think it's sufficiently clear.

59. In the shaded box, typo, "eligible perform a reversal" is missing a "to". Also, NOW it's clear what kind of circumstance there'd be where "participating in a test even if there's the maximum amount of Traits added" would be beneficial; genuinely uncertain if that should be mentioned alongside 'cooperative tests', you're the expert when it comes to writing this stuff.

62. Typo in the first paragraph, "immeditiately".

63. Typo in the shaded box, "conjuction".

67. I really appreciate the stuff in the shaded box, about how it's "swapping out Forms" because that's what makes it easier to play. Plus, "trying to figure out which Form/s would best represent the Shenanigans that happened upon the character" is good enrichment.

79. For 11+, when it says "probably shouldn't require a test", my thought was that it should mention "taking six" on a roll.

81. In the first paragraph, "impact penalty for that would normally be suffered" feels like it's either missing a word or contains an extraneous word.

85. Typo in the shaded box, "explicity".

87. Typo in the last paragraph, "inflcit".

88. Ooh I like that thing about ganging up on NPCs, it makes so much SENSE for this game. Third paragraph, I'm genuinely not sure if there IS an HTML version of the current document; I'm reading it from the pdf, since the other relevant option was an epub file. (Also, another instance of the full text about print-and-play cards.)

102. Typo for the first word, actually, "Ths". So, it makes sense that a particular Gizmo has to be rolled for, if it's part of your starting inventory, since some of them are of more obvious use than others. But do you have to roll for ALL your starting inventory if you include a slot or two for Gizmo, or only what Gizmo is in that slot?

120. The note here made me grin.

122. Calling something "Western fantasy" raises the question of whether "EASTERN fantasy" will be a future table. Also, what other kinds of settings there could be… I've recently read the Murderbot books, and I think a lot of the corporate-run stations and planets there could ABSOLUTELY be improved by a bunch of God-eaters running around.

Not specific to any page, but something I realized I should prolly mention. Impact modifiers. When they're listed as "+1" or "+2", it FEELS like they should be additive with each other. (Most often it was seen in the playset stuff, like "XYZ approach has a +2 impact modifier in this situation" feels like that +2 is "in addition to" and not "instead of".) My thought is maybe renaming them to "tier one/two/three positive/negative"; this would add a layer of distance between "what it is" and "what it does", which would be a benefit for "not getting it confused with direct modifiers of the kind encountered in other games most notably D&D", but a detriment for "remembering what it actually does to the roll". Plus all the hassle which goes along with changing something. You're better equipped to make any judgement on the issue; it's just something an I had to raise.

Eat God playtest draft 0.5.0 is now available

Version 0.5.0 of Eat God brings several major changes, foremost among them a full rewrite of the Forms and Rebellious Arts, in a more structured and (hopefully!) more readable format than the previous wall-of-text presentation. This update also includes print-and-play cards (and corresponding VTT resources) for all Forms, Arts, and playset NPCs and locations. A full list of updates is available here, or under the cut below:

Download package now includes print-and-play cards for all Forms, Rebellious Arts, and playset and NPC locations

Revised introduction to provide a link to the new Form, Art, and playset cards

Expanded discussion of the mechanical effect of Traits

Forms and Rebellious Arts are now numerically indexed in their descriptions as well as in their lookup tables

One additional Form (bringing the total up to a full 36 for the first time!), and a full rewrite of all existing Forms

Full rewrite of all existing Rebellious Arts

Added discussion of how to handle resisting Stress when multiple God-eaters are affected by the same threat simultaneously

Small clarifications to activation timing for Rebellious Arts and what it means to "activate an Art in conjunction with a test"

Greatly expanded discussion of how to adjudicate Limit Breaks

Reformatted examples of Limit Break effects and added a few more examples

Random inventory table slightly revised to make its implicit milieu more consistent, and moved from the Inventory section to a separate appendix in preparation for adding multiple random inventory tables for different milieux

"Effect modifiers" renamed "impact modifiers" to avoid ambiguity with other uses of the word "effect"; relevant terminology throughout document revised accordingly

Simplified rules for how Forms influence impact penalties (formerly effect penalties)

Added first-pass rules for imposing temporary Traits upon NPCs

Added discussion of how cooperative tests work in the context of multiple God-eaters ganging up on a single NPC

Reformatted playset location/NPC/calamity tables for better readability

Added "Appendix B: Additional Tables"; right now this just contains the relocated starting inventory table (see above)

[anakinstwinklebunny]

☆.・゜𝐀 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍, 𝐀 𝐇𝐔𝐒𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐃, 𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 ☆.・゜

PAIRING: sweetheart!anakin x f!reader

FLUFF ❦

ANAKIN SKYWALKER doesn’t even hesitate. The moment he sees how exhausted you are, how your body trembles from the exhaustion of bringing not only one human being, but two, into the world, he’s already making decisions imaginable. The doctors left the room minutes ago, giving too much space for your too-excited families that buzzed like bees around, when you—his love, his everything—was barely able to keep your eyes open.

"Out." His voice firm, leaving no room for any stupid, possible to happen argument.

At first, everyone thinks he’s joking. Even our mom chuckled, but then she was met with the sign of the clench of his jaw and the sharp, protective glint in those blue eyes of his.

"Anakin—" your sister, you think, began

"I said out." He was already moving towards your bed, one hand braced on the railing as he looked down at you, only you. "She needs rest. She needs peace. We’re not doing this right now. Come later when you're needed"

His mother was the first to leave the room, after murmuring how proud she is of us but the others only huffed, some had hands on their hips, clearly not understanding the psychical and emotional tool it takes to push an entire human beings out of your own body..by your own strength.. So one by one, people shuffled out and as soon as the door clicks shut, the tension in your shoulders melts away.

"Thank you," you whispered, voice hoarse, to which he softened immediately.

"Always, sweetheart."

He crouched beside your bed, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your temple. Large hand that once held yours as you were trying to give birth, now brushed against your damp forehead, tucking loose strands of hair behind your ear. In his eyes, you looked so small in the hospital bed, just so fragile in a way that broke him apart.

"Do you need anything? Water? Ice? A damn castle to recover in?" His voice teasing, but his eyes stayed serious.

"Just you," you murmured, too exhausted to even fight off the overwhelming love you feel for him.

Breath caught in his throat, and before he could say anything, you shifted, wincing slightly at the sharp pain shooting through your body. He noticed in an instant. "Hey, angel—slow. Let me help."

The nurse had said you should try to take a few steps soon, but your legs felt nothing but like jelly right now. The second you try to sit up, Anakin’s already got you. Strong arm winded around your waist, steadily holding you up as if you weighed nothing at all.

"You’re okay," he whispered, pressing a kiss to your temple. "Lean on me, baby. I’ve got you."

Each step is slow, so careful, yet so weird and even painful while he watched you like a hawk, guiding you towards the bathroom. The moment you sat down, though, you panic.

The blood. There’s so much of it. You knew this would happen, the doctors warned you, but seeing it—feeling it pour out of you—made your heart race, head spin

"Ani—"

"I know, sweetheart." He’s already kneeling in front of you, hands bracing on your thighs, rubbing soothing circles into your sore as heck and too stretched skin. His voice is so soft, so tender. "I read about this, baby. It’s normal, I promise. You’re okay. I’ve got you. If anything bad happens, doctors are one call away, yeah? So don't worry anymore, just let me at least take care of you now"

Tears stung your eyes at that. Gosh, how did you got so lucky to have such man? What did you do to deserve him? With that, he just kissed you—your knee, your wrist, anywhere he could reach at the moment. "You are so fucking strong," he murmured, voice in awe.

And then, without a second thought, he reached for the postpartum diaper, handling it like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

"Step in for me, angel."

"Ani, I—"

"Shh. It's alright, no worries, remember? All you gotta do is let me take care of you" he repeated

And you do. Because you trust him. Because you love him. Because his hands—so steady, so gentle—make you feel safe. Feel actually loved, cherished in a way none ever did.

He made sure the pad is in place, pulling it up carefully before pressing another kiss to your forehead. "Perfect."

By the time he tucked you back into bed, you’re already half-asleep. His arms wrapped so tenderly, so gently around you, holding you against his chest.

"You’re incredible, sweetheart." His lips brushed against your hair. "I love you so much. So, so much."

TAG LIST: @kingdomhate @divineani @haydensprettyprincess @skyguys-princess @catnipaddictt @heartscone @haydensbbg @inneedsoffanfics @jediavengers @babybell-cheese @anisluvrgirl @slutforfinnickodair @xhunnybeeex @fuckmyskywalker @gallerygourmet @ysrjune @anakinskwkler @bimbo-baggins17-deactivated2025 @cookybananas @emotionallybruisedx @diorvalentina @sevinax @throughparisallthroughrome @aniiuv @ritosparty @ninastyless @lily-strnlo @thesassypadawan @awhhayden @sydkneez @anisangeldust @l1ttle-misssunsh1ne @anakinca @rubiesarepretty @luluartpop @cloverina @nikiloveshayden

[maidragoste]

i am making you feel sick?

Jacaerys Velaryon x Aegon’s Widow!Reader

warnings: this is pure angst, no happy ending, incest (aunt and nephew), mention of infant death and non-consensual voyeurism.

It's been a while since I posted anything, so if you like it, please don't hesitate to like, comment and reblog because that motivates me to keep writing 💖💖

If you have any ideas, questions or headcanons you want to share, my inbox is always open 🤗💖

Disclaimer: English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes.

I hope you have a good reading!

Shame.

Guilt.

Sick.

That's what Jacaerys feels every time he sees you and Jaehaera.

He wasn't the one who hired Blood and Cheese to kill Jaehaerys nor was he the one who butchered Maelor. However, he still feels sick when most of the time your eyes look empty and emotionless, or the nights that Jaehaera wakes up screaming because she dreams of her twin's head rolling on the floor again.

Jacaerys wasn't the one who murdered your children but he still wasn't a good man. If he was a good man then he would have let you leave this castle full of bloody memories and be free with your daughter. But the council said he needed you to strengthen his claim on the throne as well as to prevent the greens from rising against him. So he married you.

On your wedding day, Jacaerys finally saw, after days, an emotion in you: anger. You were dressed in black, and when you had to hold hands you dug your nails into him and recited your vows as if they were an insult. But he was not angry or offended. He felt that he deserved it for having put you in this position.

The night didn't get better when it came time to share a bed. If it had been up to Jacaerys, it would never have touched you, but Corlys Velaryon knew him well, so part of the council was present to witness the marriage being consummated. It did not matter that Jacaerys protected your body with his and the sheets or how much he tried to make it easy and pleasurable for you. It was humiliating and it was horrible, as soon as the council left the chambers Jacaerys joined in your silent crying.

When Jacaerys thought his guilt couldn’t get any worse, you got pregnant. The entire council was happy because the king would finally have an heir, but he felt sick seeing how miserable you looked. At least, before you would leave your chambers and occasionally he could see you smile—never at him, of course, always at Jaehaera—now you spent all your time in bed as if you had no energy for anything else. Sometimes Jacaerys would come to feed you and read you some book he remembered you liked in your youth. Your ladies took care of cleaning you and feeding you, on the days the king couldn’t come to eat with you because he had a meeting or was busy.

Jaehaera's cries got worse because you weren't comforting her anymore, you weren't talking to her anymore. And more than once Jacaerys thought about ending it all, giving you the moon tea himself so that your body would rid itself of the creature that caused so much misery. He preferred things to be the way they were before even though you barely tolerated it.

But the kingdom and the throne were more important, he needed an heir. If Aegon's prophecy was true then from his blood would come the prince that was promised.

Jaehaerys prayed that you would have a child so he would never have to touch you again and make you suffer again. If the council asked for a replacement he would say it would be Aegon, his brother. He couldn't bear to see you pregnant again, he didn't want to see you so isolated from the world ever again, he didn't want the only thing you did was cry, that the only thing you seemed to feel was pain and sadness. He hoped that once you gave birth and were free of the creature, things would get better.

But he had to have been more specific in his prayers, he had to have asked the gods that the child would look like him because when he held his son in his arms for the first time all he saw was Jaehaerys.

Taglist for all my House of the Dragon works

@chaotic-fangirl-blog @venus-flytrap3 @ajordan2020 @iloveallmyboys @sweethoneyblossom1 @fudge13 @crystal-faith @tita004 @ichanelvxgue @snowprincesa1 @joyouart @rosey1981 @alastorhazbin @papichulo120627 @apollonshootafar @jasminecosmic99 @partypoison00 @labellapeaky @rebelliuna @bxdbxtxh15 @impartinghades @thegirlnextdoorssister @angeliod @snh96 @aleemendoza2425-blog @natashaobo @watercolorskyy @nyenye @savagemickey03 @kishie8 @ewwwitsel @arabis-world @missusnora @nzygftoji @alisoncdariel @cookielovesbook-akie @partnerincrime0 @klara-lily @427120lxld @justhereiguess2

@buckylahey @wa801 @artistadistrada2002 @thelastemzy @justanotherkpopstanlol @jacesvelaryons @aemondwhoresworld @cassiopeiablog @multiversemayhemme @dixie_elocin

hotd masterlist

[goldfades]

https://www.tumblr.com/goldfades/776149472466141184/could-u-write-joe-burrow-and-a-young-gf-3

AS A YOUNGER JOE GIRLY (‘04 baby 😩), THIS MADE MY ENTIRE WEEK

that being said, WE NEED MOREEEEE 🧎‍♀️‍➡️🙏🏼 so i was wondering if i could request a part 2 to this post?? your writing is literally my comfort reading material <3

OMGG no thats how i feel as an 05 girl LMAO likeeee

The thing about loving Joe Burrow is that it always sneaks up on you when you least expect it.

Like right now.

Because you’re standing in his kitchen—your kitchen too, technically, though you still hesitate calling it that—wearing his old Athens High hoodie that nearly swallows you whole, scrolling through takeout menus while he tries (and fails) to figure out how to fix the Bluetooth speaker.

"It’s literally not that hard, Joe."

"Then you do it," he shoots back, turning the speaker in his hands like it’s a puzzle box. "It worked last time. I don’t know what I did."

"You probably pressed every button at once."

"That’s literally how you fixed the dishwasher last week—don’t start with me."

You hide a smile behind your phone. He’s got that stubborn look again, brows furrowed, jaw set. The same look he gets when the defense drops into a zone he wasn’t expecting. Concentrated. Calm. Competitive over the dumbest things.

You don’t even care about the speaker. You like the quiet. You like this.

Joe, barefoot on the tile, the late afternoon sun catching in his hair. The smell of laundry detergent clinging to his hoodie. The slow realization that this—here—has become your routine.

"Okay, genius," you sigh, setting your phone down. "Move."

He steps aside with exaggerated reluctance, watching as you press a single button. The speaker beeps, the connection light blinking blue. Instantly, music floods the room—some playlist he made that’s a mix of old-school rap and indie tracks he refuses to admit he likes.

"You’re welcome," you say smugly.

Joe stares at you.

"How?"

"I have the touch."

"Nah, that’s witchcraft. You’re a witch."

You grin, settling back against the counter. "Jealous?"

"Terrified," he deadpans, stepping closer. His hands find your hips like they always do—easy, familiar. "You could end me at any moment."

"Maybe I will."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He dips his head so his nose brushes against yours, voice dropping.

"Do it, then."

It’s stupid. It’s playful. But your breath still catches. Because this is how he gets you—soft, steady, sure. Like there’s all the time in the world.

"I’ll spare you," you whisper, pulling back just enough to glance at the phone. "But only if you pick dinner."

Joe groans dramatically, dropping his forehead against your shoulder.

"That’s worse."

"Big NFL quarterback can’t handle choosing takeout?"

"Not when you are the pickiest eater on the planet."

"I am not—"

"Babe." He pulls back to look at you, giving you a look. "You cried over soggy fries last week."

"They were ruined, Joe."

"You said it ‘destroyed the entire vibe.’"

"And it did."

Joe laughs—really laughs—and you don’t even care that he’s laughing at you. Because when Joe Burrow laughs like that, everything else fades.

It’s always like this. Light. Easy.

But underneath, there’s something heavier.

You see it in the way he checks his phone when he thinks you’re not looking. The season’s creeping closer, and with it, the pressure. The expectations. The weight of it all.

And you? You’re still figuring things out. Still balancing finishing school, internship applications, trying to find where you fit in his world without getting swallowed by it.

The age gap—people still talk.

They don’t see this, though.

Joe brushing your knee under the table. Joe remembering your coffee order, your weird movie opinions, your fear of thunderstorms. Joe looking at you like you’re the only thing that makes sense when everything else gets too loud.

"You okay?" you ask quietly, catching the flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.

He looks at you for a long moment, then nods.

"Yeah. I’m good."

But he leans into you a little more than usual. His fingers lace through yours, thumb brushing slow, rhythmic patterns against your skin.

You don’t push. You never do.

Joe will tell you when he’s ready.

He always does.

Later that night, after the food’s been eaten, the music turned down low, and the city hums quietly outside, you find yourselves in that familiar spot again—Joe stretched out on the couch, you tucked against his side, his hand resting lazily on your thigh.

"Hey," he murmurs, voice barely above a whisper.

"Hmm?"

"You ever think about how this all worked out?"

You tilt your head, looking up at him.

"What do you mean?"

"Us," he says, glancing down at you. His eyes are soft in the low light, thoughtful. "You being there that night. Talking to me. Sticking around."

"You act like I did you a favor," you tease, but your voice is quieter now.

"You did," he says simply. "You didn’t have to."

There it is again—that flicker of vulnerability he rarely shows to anyone else.

"You make it sound like you’re hard to stick around for," you say after a moment, fingers tracing lazy patterns over the fabric of his shirt.

"I can be."

"Not to me."

He doesn’t say anything, just watches you for a moment. Then, with a soft sigh, he pulls you in closer, his lips brushing your forehead.

"I’m glad you stayed."

"I’m not going anywhere, Joe."

And you mean it.

The thing about loving Joe Burrow is that it sneaks up on you—soft, steady, sure—until one day, you realize it’s the most real thing you’ve ever known.

[space-feminist]

irving being the member of the team who is ultimately the bravest and most committed to the anti-lumon mission (literally dying for it) reminds me of that twitter thread* about how a lot of people who end up leaving christian cults are people who were once extremely committed to the faith, seemingly "true believers", and that's because they were so committed to reading the bible they also read the parts that conflicted with what the institution was telling them and started to question what was going on. they were engaging so deeply that they weren't passively absorbing propaganda. lumon forbids workplace relationships but irving and burt have read the actual literature and know that kier and his wife met in the workplace. sure they're justifying their relationship within their faith but knowing that the institution is wrong about him and burt, wrong to rip burt away from him, is what ultimately shatters irving's faith and makes him want to burn the place to the ground. the distance from true believer to revolutionary can be a lot shorter than it seems

*at least i think it was a twitter thread. i don't remember

[ponyosfrogg]

Slut!

Pairing: Dick Grayson x Female!Reader

Warning: Getting threats, harsh language, ending relationship.

A/N: It is short but i think it fits the song perfectly. 🤍 Hope you like it as much as I did. Please listen to Slut! By Taylor Swift while reading it. 🩵

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

The first time you've met Dick Grayson, he was a boy with the laugh that ranged through the circus tents, louder than the roar of the crowd.

You had grown up together in the circus, a pair of reckless kids who knew every hidden corner of the lot. When you weren’t sneaking into empty trailers, daring each other to steal extra sweets from the sellers, you were up high, balancing on beams, swinging from ropes, pretending you could fly like him. Like 'The Flying Graysons.'

Dick always flew higher, always laughed louder, always burned brighter. And you loved him for it. He was your sunshine.

You remember him in flashes—his bare feet slapping against the tightrope, the way he’d toss popcorn at you between acts, the whispered secrets traded under the bleachers. And even when tragedy ripped him from the only life he knew, placing him in the care of Gotham’s richest man, he never forgot you. Letters turned into late-night phone calls, then not-so-secret-visits when he could sneak away from the manor.  He was your wonder boy before he was Gotham’s golden boy.

Before he was theirs.

And somehow, against all odds, he still felt like yours.

Before the world decided to hate you for it.

"You’re trending again," you muttered, scrolling through your phone and giving a big sigh, dreading what you’d find under the latest hashtag with his name. Your stomach twisted as you saw your own face plastered across every gossip site, accompanied by headlines that made your chest ache.

"Billionaire Playboy Settling? Fans Think He Can Do Better."

"Gold Digger or Genuine?"

"Wayne Heir's Secret Girlfriend—SPOILER: NOT GOTHAM MATERIAL AT ALL!"

From that point, the headlines were getting worse and worse. You closed your phone and threw it on the couch while closing your face with your hands.

It was always the same: speculation, dissection. Your entire life picked apart like you were some unworthy trespasser in his world. Some of your friends weren't talking with you anymore; the ones that kept talking, tried to make a move on Grayson so with some of them you weren't talking anymore. You only had Grayson, once again like you were eight all over again.

Dick sighed, setting down his coffee as he leaned against your kitchen counter. His eyes were lingering on you, just to meet your eyes. He hated that you were so caught up with gossip. "You shouldn’t read that garbage, love."

You opened your fingers on your face to peak a look at his face. He seemed as serious as ever once again. "And you shouldn't be dating a nobody apparently." You laughed bitterly at yourself, fingers in your hair.

"Do you think If I disappeared, they'd get bored?"

His burrows furrowed as he pushed off the counter coming to stand right in front of you. His calloused hands grabbed your soft ones and he sat right beside you.  "Don't even joke about that!"

Dick exhaled sharply, rubbing his face once more before turning to you with something raw in his eyes. “You think I care about what they say? What they write? I have loved you before they even knew your name. I have loved you before I was even a Wayne. They don’t get to take that from us.”

You swallowed past the lump in your throat at least tried but it was as stubborn as the media that was chasing you. "It’s not just us anymore, Dick. It’s them. They’re in this relationship too. The photographers. The headlines. The people who call me in the middle of the night to tell me I should kill myself."

He went still. His hand clenched into a fist against his thigh. Now the dark blue part of his eyes were ice cold. “What?”

You shook your head, a bitter smile on your lips. Your eyes started to watch the carpet on the floor, avoiding an eye-contact with him. “You didn’t know, did you?”

His entire body tensed like there was a wire that pulled him too tight. “When?”

"Every night. Every morning. Every time I open my door and there’s another letter. Another threat. Another reminder that I’m just an obstacle between you and the perfect fantasy of you they have in their heads."

His jaw tightened, hands shaking. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’d do this,” you whispered. “Because you’d look at me like that. Like you have to fix it. Like you have to fight something for me.”

Dick shot up from the couch, pacing, running both hands through his hair. “Because I do have to fight for you! Because I can’t stand the thought of you dealing with this alone. Do you know what it does to me knowing you’re scared?”

You bit your lip, looking away. “I’m not scared of you.”

“No,” he murmured, voice harsh. “You’re scared for me.”

Silence started between you, heavy and fragile tension raised.

Finally, you stood, stepping closer. “Dick…”

His hands came to your face, his thumb brushing over your cheek like he was memorizing the sadness within you. His voice was desperate now, barely more than a whisper. “I don’t care what they say. I don’t care about Gotham or its gossip or its cruelty or anything at all at this point.The only thing I care about is you.”

You exhaled shakily, hands gripping his wrists. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to be with you.”

His lips pressed, he looked at you like you said the dumbest thing ever. “Then let me be strong enough for both of us.”

A tear slipped down your cheek. He caught it with his thumb, gently erasing it like he could erase every tormenting thing that is in your life, voice breaking. “Please don’t leave me because of them.”

And god, you wanted to stay. You wanted to believe that love was enough to drown out the noise.

But when you closed your eyes, all you could see were the threats. The cameras. The fear curling in your stomach like a storm waiting to break. It was close now, almost too close.

“I don’t know how to do this,” you admitted.

Dick exhaled, pressing his forehead to yours, his own breath shaky. “Then let’s figure it out together.”

And for once, you let yourself believe that maybe, just maybe, love could be louder than fear.

It started small-really. Dick staying at your place more often, an extra toothbrush in your bathroom, his spare clothes in your drawer-next to your socks.

Then one morning, after seeing someone wrote "Slut!" on your car with a red spray paint he simply said: "I'm moving in."

You tried to argue with him when he went inside to grab a bucket and a sponge to clean that disgusting paint but his eyes shut you up, leaving no place for an argument.

And somehow you felt safer.

Three weeks later the night was warm on your skin, wind simply kissing your body with its soft touch. Your arms were wrapped around yourself and you were watching over the city.

You were fired today. Your boss simply said they were getting threats as well for working with you. It was dumb, really. You were thinking about quitting your job already and focusing more on your art for months now but still it affected you more than you could think.

Dick's footsteps were heard, he came up right behind you; hands settling on your waist firmly before leaving a kiss on your shoulder.

"You're thinking too much love, I'm sure you will find a better job. I'll help." he murmured.

You sighed leaning into him. "I don't know how to stop, Grayson." He turned you gently and now you were facing him. He left a lingering kiss on your forehead while he spoke. "Tell me what you're thinking."

Your eyes flickered over his face, trying to find the right words. "Maybe we should break up." His breath hitched as his grip on your hips tightened.

"Don't."

Tears started to form in your eyes and slowly made their way on your cheek. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

And then he kissed you.

The kiss was raw, emotional. Like if he stopped kissing you would leave. You were struggling with your breathing and emotions that rushed over you.

You melted into him, fingers tangling in his dark hair, holding him like he's the only thing that is keeping you together, keeping you from falling apart maybe.

"I'll find a way, I promise."

[measuredingold]

black butterflies and deja vu

author’s note: more best friend noah because i am only human and can never get enough of it LOL bit of a longer one, so strap in. as always, enjoy and feedback is appreciated :) title from the song with the same name by the maine lol

pairing: noah sebastian x reader

word count: 5.8k

cross posted on ao3 / part one and two ( but can be read as a stand alone )

cw/tw: slight miscommunication, Noah Sebastian Is Bad At Feelings, fluff, friends to lovers, ~first kiss~, jolly is sick of his friends and likes to meddle in their business, noah gets anxious, mutual pining, feelings realization, 18+ minors do not interact

It happened gradually as time went on, that feeling that kept building up inside Noah's chest. He tried to ignore it. He has before. Except, for some reason, this time it was much harder. 

He couldn't seem to shake that feeling in his chest, tightening whenever he was away from you, and then expanding when he was with you. He can't escape the warm sensation that flows through his body whenever you're near or whenever you touch him, even if it's fleeting. He also can't seem to get you out of his mind, always plaguing his thoughts at the most random times.

He feels crazy.

Noah's tried telling himself that it wasn't anything, that he just enjoyed having you as a friend. He tried convincing himself it was normal to feel this way about a friend, but that all came to a halt when he looked at you one evening and the only thing he wanted to do was kiss you.

Which is definitely not a normal feeling to have about a friend, right? 

So now, here he is, staring at you with wide brown eyes and parted lips all the while you remain completely oblivious. 

Fuck. 

Fuckfuckfuck. 

He likes you. He fucking likes you, more than a friend probably should and that was one of the most terrifying realizations he's ever had in his entire life. He can't like you, not in this way, because once that happens then... then everything changes, and he can't let that happen. 

You can't leave him, and he knows you will the second you find out about these ridiculous feelings. At least he thinks they're ridiculous because in what world would it make sense that you feel the same? He thinks that sinking feeling in his stomach is a sign, reminding him that you don't. 

You turn towards him and Noah subconsciously sucks in a breath, heart rate picking up at the sight of your smile. He's absolutely fucked.

"What do you think?"

He blinks at you. "...Huh?"

"The movie?" You arch a brow at him before huffing out a soft laugh, your eyes moving between him and the screen. 

Oh. Yeah. That. Noah had completely forgotten, too consumed by his own thoughts to even remember where the fuck he was right now. Which is his bedroom. With you. In his bed. Alone.

That isn't anything out of the ordinary, Noah's been alone with you more times than he could count. It's actually quite common between the two of you to hang out and watch something together, whether it be in his bed or yours, or both sprawled out on a couch at someone's house. It's a normal thing for friends to do.

Except he doesn't think he wants to be your friend anymore. Actually, he knows he doesn't, because all he wants is to actually kiss that adorably confused expression off of your face right now. 

"Uh. It's good."

You pause. "...You haven't been watching, have you?"

"Um." He feels his cheeks warm, giving you an embarrassed grin. "Not really?"

"Noah." You whine out. "This was your idea!"

"I know, I know!" He holds his hands up, face still on fire. "I'm sorry."

He can't even remember the title of the movie at this point. Some random indie film he had heard about on Twitter, that much he remembers. He's been wanting to watch it for weeks, but Jolly didn't seem that interested. He figured he'd watch it himself but when he brought it up to you, you immediately offered to watch it with him.

He didn't understand the feeling weighing on his chest then, but he sure as hell does now.

"It's honestly not that good, anyways." You hum out, reaching for the remote between both of your bodies.

"Yeah. It's kinda slow. Lost interest." He has no idea what he's saying, but figures it was the right option because you're nodding in agreement.

"Super slow. And the dialogue is so shitty. It'd be one thing to be slow but have a good enough dialogue to get the plot going, but it's lacking in both areas."

"Agreed."

He watches you click around on the remote to his TV, turning the movie off and immediately opening another app, flipping through the selection. His head tilts, brows furrowing.

"What're you doing?"

"Finding something else to watch." You say as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, which it is.

"...Why?"

"Because we're supposed to watch a movie together."

Oh. "You don't have to-"

"I know I don't." You cut him off, glancing over at him. His heart rate picks up at the smile you give him, the softness behind your eyes making his chest feel funny all over again. "I want to. So, help me pick out something to watch."

All Noah can do is nod. He watches silently as you continue to flip through the movies, not daring to use his voice because he's scared of what might come out. Eventually you land on something he's seen about a thousand times but he doesn't object because you seem more than pleased with your choice. The triumphant noise you make has his stomach flipping and he can't help but smile at you.

Halfway through the movie, he barely realized how close you had gotten to him. He holds in a breath when he feels your press against his arm, shifting a bit to get more comfortable before your head falls against his shoulder. 

He doesn't move.

And when you hadn't lifted your head after another twenty minutes, something in the back of his mind shouts at him to do something. He usually never listened to that voice, typically able to drown it out, but this time... he chooses to listen. Noah slowly leans his head against yours, letting out the breath he had been holding when you nuzzle yourself closer to him. 

...

It's been months since that night and yet it's still the only thing he can think about.

You are the only thing he can think about.

Those feelings he was experiencing that were once silly and quite honestly ridiculous have morphed into something much more... serious. Noah isn't quite sure what to do about it. He isn't sure if there is anything he can do about it.

Jolly told him to suck it up and tell you, because "What's the worst that could happen?"

A lot of terrible things could happen, Noah thinks, and decides he'd rather keep this to himself. The longer he doesn't say anything, the longer he gets to spend with you, because he knows once your relationship changes... who knows how long he'll have until you eventually leave. 

It's fucking pathetic, he knows it is. Not saying anything in order just to keep you close to him, but if that's what he has to do then he's going to fucking do it. He can't lose you. He knew it before he figured out these stupid feelings, and there's no way in hell he's losing you now. 

Most times it's easy to do, to act like it's not there, even though every time he's around you there's a voice in the back of his head yelling at him to kiss you. Which is what's happening now, and the alcohol in his veins isn't helping the matter much.

You're all out, and there's no special occasion, just bored on a Saturday night. Nothing special is happening yet you look the most beautiful he's ever seen you, which says a lot because he thinks you're fucking stunning all the damn time. Tonight, though, there's something about you that he can't quite shake. He can't even take his eyes off of you, and he'll partially blame that on the alcohol, and then you. 

The urge to touch you is almost unbearable and he can't stop himself from reaching out every so often, fingers brushing against your arm to get your attention. Nothing out of the ordinary between you two, but each touch almost drives Noah insane. At one point you were sitting together in a booth surrounded by friends and his hand was planted on your thigh, almost as if it was meant to be there. 

You didn't say anything. Maybe you didn't notice, or just didn't care, but Noah did. He cared a lot. 

You're now up and across the room playing a game of pool with a few other friends and Noah decided it was best for him to stay there, the burning desire to keep his hands on you too much. He's gotta fucking chill. His eyes followed you the entire time.

Jolly kicks him from under the table.

"Ow. What the fuck, man?" Noah's words slur as his eyes narrow at his friend who's currently giving him the most shit-eating grin.

"You're staring, lover boy."

His face flushes. "Fuck you."

"I don't think I'm your type." Noah rolls his eyes as Jolly leans back against the seat, raising a brow at his friend. "However, I do know who might be..."

"Don't start." Noah holds a hand up, lips pressing into a straight line. "Not tonight. Please."

He's a bit too drunk to even think about that, especially when he knows Jolly's just going to tell him the same thing. Tell her how you feel. Sounds so easy but it's far from it, and Noah knows that that is not a possibility - and never will be.

"She's staring, too, you know." 

It's almost comical how quick Noah's head whips into your direction, his heart lodging itself in his throat when he finds out that you are staring. He sees the moment that you realize you'd been caught but instead of looking away, you give him a sheepish smile and wave. Noah can see the flush on your cheeks from a mile away and he can't stop himself from waving back, a smile forming on his lips to mirror your own.

Oh shit.

"She likes you." Jolly says in a sing-song voice, his accent a bit more prominent from the alcohol.

"Shut up-"

"All you have to do is tell her-"

"I'm not fucking telling her shit-"

"She liiiiikes you-"

"Dude-"

"You wanna kiss her soooo bad-"

"Jolly." The sterness in Noah's voice makes Jolly shut up, but that shitty fucking grin never leaves his face because he knows he's right - at least about one thing.

Noah does want to kiss you. So fucking bad. He can't stop thinking about kissing you, actually. 

"I'm just saying." The older male shrugs, arms crossing over his chest. "She's still looking at you, man. Can't seem to look away. Maybe she wants to kiss you, too."

His friend's words have Noah's face heating up and his heart pounding beneath his chest. He tries to be as discreet as possible, eyes flicking across the room to find you again. He does find you staring again, choking on literal air the second he watches your tongue poke out and swipe over your bottom lip, before taking it between your teeth as you look away. His eyes land back on Jolly.

"Told you."

Noah's swallows down the lump that was lodged inside his throat. That didn't mean anything, could it? You were just staring at him... but you were staring at him almost like you wanted him? He shakes his head. No. That wasn't it. That couldn't be it. In no world would you ever... but... what if you could?

He blinks at Jolly's smirking face, not sure what to say. His mind was racing, the logical part of his brain battling with the very inebriated part of his brain. He should just leave it alone, brush Jolly off and stay where he is, but his eyes find you again. You're not staring this time, focused on your turn in the game of pool that you're still playing, and something inside Noah is tugging at him, urging him to go to you.

He looks at Jolly one more time and his friend just nods.

He's moving before he can really think about it, pushing himself up and out of the booth. His eyes are on you as you finish up your turn, head lifting up. He sees you searching, for what he's not sure, and then your eyes land on him making his way towards you. You smile, wide and bright, and his stomach twists. 

Why do you look so happy? He wishes you would stop, his hopes rising higher and higher with each step he takes. He watches you hand off your stick to a friend, saying something to them and he reaches you just as you turn around, that same smile on your lips. You still have that slight flush to your cheeks and Noah's going to blame that on the alcohol from tonight, and not because of him, but his heart still pounds against his chest at the possibility of what if. 

"Hi." You say softly. 

"Hey."

"Was wondering when you were going to come over here."

Noah's eyes widened slightly. "Really?"

"Well, yeah." You shrug. "You were all the way over there. I missed you."

Your words hit him hard, crashing into his chest like a ten ton brick. All he can do is blink down at your smiling face, eyes twinkling. Not even an hour ago you were in that booth with him and Jolly, yet you still missed his presence enough to voice it. He tells himself it doesn't mean anything, can't mean anything, but your words are weighing on his chest and his mind is racing so fast he feels dizzy.

The urge to say what he wants becomes almost too much, his body heating up as the words get lodged inside his throat. There's two voices battling in the back of his mind, one yelling Tell her! while the other is screaming at him to Run! as both fight for dominance. In the end, he does neither, and instead stares at you in complete silence.

"You wanna play?" You either don't notice his complete silence or choose to ignore it, motioning to the pool table behind you. "You can go for me. I've been sucking so much this game."

He blinks at the table and then back at you. He wants nothing more than to stay, and he goes to agree but the voice in the back of his head stops him. All the possibilities of tonight's outcome flow through his mind and he has a feeling that if he stays with you the rest of the night, he's going to do something stupid.

And even in the inebriated state that he's in, that voice that's screaming at him to do something reckless, he can't risk that. He chooses to listen to the one screaming at him to run. He shakes his head and gives you a sad smile, and ignores his heart dropping to his stomach at the way your face falls.

"Nah, I..." He trails off, eyes moving towards the bar. "I was just getting another drink, and wanted to know if you wanted one? It's on me."

"Oh." Jesus Chirst, that didn't feel good. "Yeah, sure. Get me whatever you're drinking."

He nods wordlessly, giving you a tight lipped smile before heading off towards the bar. He doesn't glance back at you, can't seem to get himself to, but he can feel two sets of eyes burning through him as he walks. He knows one is you, and he doesn't think he can stomach that sad look on your face again, so when he waits for the bartender to get him what he wants he chooses to look the other way.

The other way is unfortunately Jolly, the older male frowning hard at him from across the bar. He's angry, Noah can tell that much from his body language alone, and for some reason that makes this that much worse. He swallows down those words that were stuck in his throat, trying to push them so far down that maybe he'll forget them, and sends the bartender the best smile he can muster up as he thanks them for the drinks.

He ignores the feeling of regret that's settling in the pit of his stomach, putting on that same fake smile as he makes his way back over to you and hands you your drink. Something clenches beneath his chest at the barley there smile you give him, mumbling out your thanks. You look like you're about to say something else but Noah beats you to sit, nodding towards the booth.

"I'm gonna head back over there if you need me."

Your mouth snaps shut, lips pressing into a thin line before nodding up at him. "Okay."

That same voice in the back of his mind that had just lost moments ago tries to break through again, yelling at him to do something about the sadness swimming in your eyes. He knows he's the reason behind it and he fucking hates it, the urge to fix what's wrong growing. Though he chooses to push it away for the second time that night and heads back towards the booth, Jolly's eyes on him like daggers.

Noah ignores his questions, suddenly growing too tired to speak or to even think about it any longer. He throws half his drink back before casting his eyes towards you again, heart sinking when he finds you not staring at him. Instead, you were looking down, lips set into a frown as you scrolled your phone. 

That voice comes back, but this time to yell at him for fucking up. For not listening and to just do what it had asked. He doesn't listen, again, and shoves it away for the third time that night before throwing back the last half of his drink.

...

He doesn't know why you're here.

Or maybe he does, but he's been trying to let go of that feeling for the last few weeks now. There's no way you're here for the reason he thinks, so you standing outside his door has him confused. 

Noah's head tilts. "Hey?"

You push past him immediately, toeing your shoes off by the entrance. He steps aside, after you brush past him, and continues to stare at you with that perplexed look - brows furrowed and eyes narrowed. 

"Did I do something?" You whip around to face him. "We've barely spoken and I feel like I did something wrong."

"What?" His eyes widen, staring down at you. "You didn't do anything-"

"Then why have you been ignoring me?" You sound exasperated, and he can see the frustrated lines in your forehead as you glare up at him.

"I haven't been ignoring you." Yes he has, but he can't admit that. He swallows down the lie. "Been busy."

Noah sees the moment your eyes sadden and it feels like a punch to the gut. "Since when do we lie to each other? I didn't know we started doing that."

"I'm not lying-"

"Bullshit. You are." Your voice is raising now, your frustration going and Noah can see Jesse on the couch glance your way. "You're lying and you know it, Noah, and I don't-"

This time Noah cuts you off. "Can we talk about this upstairs?"

His eyes flick towards Jesse again who definitely was now eavesdropping, and his roommate's eyes widen before turning his attention back to the television. Noah's eyes land back on you, pleading to go up to his room.

"If I do, will you tell me the truth?"

His stomach turns violently at that because he knows he can't. He can't tell you why he's been ignoring you, why being in the same room as you physically fucking pains him, and why he has to keep conversations short in fear of saying something that'll ruin everything. 

He nods, swallowing thickly.

"Yeah. I will."

He has about thirty seconds to come up with a damn good lie. 

You eye him for a moment, tongue pressing against your cheek before nodding. You don't wait for Noah to follow you, already halfway to the stairs. He catches Jesse's gaze and he can only shrug before he finally follows behind you, letting you lead him to his room. He shuts the door behind him quietly as you sit down on his bed, arms crossing over your chest.

"Talk."

Noah's never heard you so serious before and that makes his stomach turn, swallowing down the lump beginning to form in his throat. 

What does he say? He didn't come up with a good lie like he had planned, the thirty seconds it took to get to his room not being enough time. 

"Um."

Your eyes on him are overwhelming, burning into his skin. He stands in the middle of his room, hands wringing out in front of him as he tries to slow his mind down to come up with anything to say. A beat passes, and then another, until at least a minute of complete silence has gone by. 

Nothing. He has nothing.

"I don't know what to even say."

Your gaze on him hardens and another beat passes before your arms fall to your sides, shoulders sagging. You wave him over and Noah hesitates before he sees the pleading expression behind your eyes, and his feet move before he can think of it. He sits beside you, but keeps his distance, and you turn your eyes away from him, sighing softly.

"I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable that night."

Noah arches a brow at you. "What?"

"That night. When we all went out? You started acting weird after that, so I'm assuming it was because of how I acted and I'm sorry. I just... I thought..." Your words trail off and your head drops, a weak chuckle falling from your lips.

"I'm confused."

"Jolly just told me something that night." You sigh, hands wringing in your lap. "I... I thought what he said was true so I..."

Noah doesn't say anything, continues to stare at you with that same confused expression because he has no idea what the fuck you're talking about. What did Jolly tell you? It could have been anything, and that thought alone has his stomach twisting with nerves.

"I... He... I thought you liked me? Which sounds fucking crazy to say out loud, but he really made it seem like you did, so uh. I was trying to, I don't know, let you know that I felt the same? Which obviously didn't work," You look up from your lap to stare at him, lips dipping into a frown, "or did, which would explain why you're ignoring me." 

It feels like Noah's world comes to a stop. There's no fucking way you just said what you did. His heart pounds so hard against his chest he swears it's going to pop right out, and there's ringing in his ears that he wishes would just fucking stop. 

You like him? You. Like. Him. 

And Jolly told you that he liked you? He's not sure if he should thank his friend or beat the fuck out of him, because he never confirmed out loud that he did. He also never denied it, and Jolly was known to be able to figure out everything. Noah's still not sure how he does it. 

He blinks at you. "What?"

"Maybe I read too into it," You continue, eyes dropping back to your lap. "I just. I thought... You wouldn't stop looking at me. And earlier that night you wouldn't stop touching me. I thought maybe he was right?"

Noah feels like he's going to pass out at any second.

"Or maybe he had just meant you liked me as a friend? I don't know, and I find that pretty cruel because he's known about my feelings for you for forever and-"

"Feelings?"

"-and that would be really fucked up of him to lie about something like that and-"

Noah says your name suddenly and you pick your gaze up once again, mouth snapping shut.

"What do you mean by feelings?"

"...I feel like it's pretty self explanatory." You sound so small, like you're afraid to even admit to it. "I like you. Have liked you. For a while now." 

“Since when?”

“…Forever? Don’t act like you didn’t know, I was pretty obvious. Everyone else knew.”

“Well, I didn’t.” 

He feels dumbfounded, staring at you with wide brown eyes and parted lips as if you just told him the secret meaning to life. 

You like him. 

You - his best friend - have feelings for him. Noah's mind races instantly, trying to understand the meaning behind your words because even though you just plainly spelled it out for him, that voice in the back of his head is telling him that he heard it wrong. You don't mean it in that way. You can't. You're you and he's him and it just doesn't make sense why you would and-

"Noah?"

He's still staring. 

"I'd really appreciate it if you said something." He blinks at you and his stomach drops at the nervous expression you're giving him, chewing on your bottom lip anxiously.

The problem is that Noah doesn't know what to say. How can he tell you that he feels the same? He doesn't remember a time where you didn't make his heart race just by merely being in the same room. There was never a time where he didn't search for you when things got tough, when all he wanted was to be shut away from the world with you because you made it feel just a bit better. He can't even think of a time where you didn't make him smile just by the sound of your laughter.

There was never a time, he slowly thinks, and his stomach twists at the sudden realization that he's always felt like that about you. From the beginning. From the very second he met you he has been enamored by you, even though he's always told himself it was nothing.

"I..." His mouth opens but nothing else comes out, words falling short. 

"You can let me down." You say gently, your smile not quite reaching your eyes. It's almost sad, actually, and he hates the pitiful feeling it gives him. "Just go easy on me."

"I don't..." His words catch again and he has to clear his throat, eyes flicking off the side because he suddenly can't look at you. "That's not what I want to do, I... I just don't know how..." 

To say it. He has no idea how to even get across what he feels for you because truthfully, there's no words in the English language to even explain his emotions. And speaking of those, they're becoming a bit suffocating right now, the walls in his room are slowly caving in and-

"Hey. Look at me, please?"

He can't stop the shiver that rolls through his body and has to force himself to blink towards you, seeing your once sad smile much more timid, and he swears he sees something wet flash behind your eyes.

"It's just me. You can tell me anything, remember?"

"That's why it's so hard." He manages to get out, voice thick. "Because you're you, and I'm me, and we're..."

His words trail off yet again and he can't help it, casting his eyes to the side again. He can't look at you, heart pounding beneath his chest because it's too much, too fucking much, and even though there's a part of him begging for him to just say it, there's still another part warning him to protect himself. 

"I know." Your voice is so soft. His eyes flutter shut and he sucks in a deep breath. "I know, but I'd never lie to you. Especially about something like this. You know that."

Your words press into his chest so heavily he has to physically catch his breath.

Yes, he does know you wouldn't lie to him. Not about this and honestly about anything. Yet, that mean voice in the back of his mind is telling him it's still too good to be true. That this is all some sick and twisted game you're playing, and somehow Jolly is in on it too. 

"I know, I just-"

"Noah." He doesn't open his eyes when you call for him, not even when he feels the ghost of your fingers against his cheek. He flinches, actually, body tensing at the touch. "Fuck. Sorry. I'm sorry. Can I touch you? Is that okay?"

He ignores the tremble in your voice and instead counts to ten in his head, head nodding on the last exhale. Your touch is back in seconds, just a ghost of a feeling, and he finds himself leaning into it until your hand is pressed firmly against his cheek. 

"...Can you look at me?"

He thinks for a moment, stomach twisting at the thought of looking at you right now and decides that that may not be the best idea. He shakes his head.

"I don't know if I can."

"That's okay." Your reply is rushed, and Noah shivers at the feeling of your thumb brushing against his cheek. "Just listen to me, okay?"

"Okay."

You heave out a sigh, thumb never stopping it's motion, "I really like you. Like like you. That feels so elementary to say but it's true. I know you're my best friend, but I really... I really like you, Sebbe. So fucking much, and... and I don't know if you feel the same, and it's okay if you don't, but I just wanted - no, needed - to tell you."

Your words hang in the air and Noah thinks he's stopped breathing. All he can hear right now is his pounding heartbeat that's rushing through his ears and he swears you can probably hear it too. What does he even say to that? He can't even think clearly, and he sure as hell can't think of a proper response to you. 

A beat passes, and then another, before his eyes flutter open. Your thumb hasn't stopped moving against his cheek and he's thankful, because he thinks the touch is the anchor keeping him afloat. He blinks.

"...Are you sure?"

You stare at him, brows furrowing and your thumb stutters for a beat that has his heart plummeting for a split second before the motion comes back.

"Am I... sure?"

"Yes." He swallows thickly, trying his best to keep his eyes on yours. "Are you sure?"

The realization dawns on you then, face relaxing at you understand what he's trying to ask. You know enough about him to understand his fears, especially with something like this, and he's thankful he doesn't have to verbally express that out loud. 

"Yes. I'm sure." You sound confident in your answer, eyes locking with his. "One hundred fucking percent."

For some reason, those words are what suddenly muffles the voice in his head telling him to run. It doesn't disappear completely, but it does shut up just enough for him to feel like he can fucking breathe. Warmth spreads throughout his body, and his chest feels kind of funny but in a good way, so he welcomes the feeling.

"Okay." Noah sees the moment your entire body relaxes, shoulders sagging in relief. The smile on your face widens just a bit, and softens around the edges, thumb still moving against his cheek. His lips twitch at the corners. "So, um. You...?"

Something flashes behind your eyes. Affection? He doesn't know, but whatever it was made his stomach flip in the most exciting way. You nod.

"Yeah. I do. A lot." Your smile only widens at that, and he feels his own begin to form. "Do uh... do you?"

Oh. He still hasn't said it. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then opens it one more time before coming up short again. Why were words so hard? It seemed so easy for you to just out right say it. I like you. It feels like it should be easier now knowing that you said it first, knowing that you felt the exact same, yet it was like all words escaped him.

Your eyes search his face and your smile is nothing short but gentle. You're not saying it but he knows this is you silently encouraging him, but also letting him know he can go at his own pace. You've always been so patient with him, letting him take his time to do the right thing, or to get back on track, and he thinks he owes you enough to at least try and say something.

Noah nods slowly, and that same look from before flashes from behind your eyes. "Yeah. I do."

It's like time slows down after that, the two of you lost in your own world. Even though it wasn't the exact words he was looking for, it was something, and the look on your face and the wetness building behind your eyes was indication that that was good enough.

He lets out the breath he was holding.

"Good." You blink away that wetness building in your eyes, your smile so blinding that it has Noah's heart clenching beneath his chest and warmth spreading through his body again. "I'm glad, or else this would be really awkward right now."

He chuckles, low and breathy. "Well, I'm glad it's not."

"Me too."

Your thumb strokes across his cheek again and Noah lifts a hand up, fingers wrapping around your wrist to keep you there. He watches you lean closer, his beating heart racing once again at the close proximity.

"Should we thank Jolly?" You hum out and Noah swears he sees your eyes drop from him down to his lips before dragging back up.

"Please don't talk about Jolly right now."

You inch closer. "Why not?"

"Because I don't wanna think about him when I kiss you."

Pride flares beneath his chest at the instant reaction from you, cheeks twinging a slight shade of pink and eyes widening. Noah's eyes drop as your lips part and the urge to kiss you claws at him, screaming at him to just fucking do it. It seems like you are going to say something but he doesn't wait to hear it, and finally listens to the voice in his head.

His eyes squeeze shut the second your lips meet, too scared to keep them open in fear of this being fake. He just made it all up. It's not until he feels you kiss back, the pressure of your lips on his almost bruising, that he realizes that this is definitely not made up. Warmth spreads through his body as your lips move together, and he's never enjoyed kissing so much until this exact moment.

You pull back after a beat to catch your breath but Noah doesn't wait, instead leans back in to brush his lips against yours. His fingers tighten around your wrists to keep you there and the breathy chuckle you let out against his mouth has his stomach turning, that same warmth spreads throughout his chest. 

For the first time in his life, the voice in the back of Noah’s mind is completely quiet.

[defectivehero]

[smashed thru your door] "GOOD DAY random civilian! Do I have a product for YOU which is TOTALLY not a non-biodegradable glitter bomb!!!" [I say as I hand you a box and my voice fades further and further away]

🎁

[the box explodes in your hand leaving a glittery mess as biodegradable glitter falls all over your room. what is left in your hand is a small hand written note]

“Remember to do your hero/villain agency paperwork! What kind of questions does super paperwork even ask?”

I am so embarrassed by how long this has been sitting in my inbox. I love it 😭 and then this happened, so here! hope it makes up for my tardiness.

“When asked to describe your power, you said weak to Kryptonite."

“I didn’t think anyone would actually read it,” the hero says defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. Sure, when they put it so plainly, it sounds foolish. “The paperwork, I mean.” Safe to say, he thought his identification forms would go entirely unread and unopened. He filled them out within two minutes, marking things at normal and writing inanities in the written response fields. The hero certainly didn't expect to be accosted by a government worker, mere days after his paperwork submission.

The worker stares at the hero in disbelief, before shaking their head. If looks could kill... the hero would be six feet under. “Of course someone reads it; that’s my entire job," they huff, tapping the small emblem on their shirt that reads Bureau of Superhuman Ability Regulation.

“Why?” the hero frowns. “Isn’t this just red tape?”

“No,” the civilian answers, crossing one leg over the other and staring at him intently. “Individuals with superpowers must be identified and documented. The last thing we need is a superhuman running around unchecked.”

“Okay,” the hero remarks after a long moment. He's not convinced, but he knows this person won't leave him be until they have what they need. He settles for glaring at them.

They don't seem affected by his attempts at intimidation. If this is their job, the hero supposes they would be rather accustomed to dealing with supernatural beings (and their difficult behavior, subsequently.)

“Now, let’s try this again,” the worker suggests, looking at him imploringly. “What’s your superpower?”

The hero waves a hand lazily, creating an intangible wave of energy that strikes at the nearby wall and leaves a crumbling hole. The civilian doesn't look particularly impressed by his display, instead looking down and beginning to write at breakneck speed. The hero can only catch the occasional word: things like “mutation” and “physical environment.” He eventually abandons the idea of keeping up with this person, instead tapping his fingers against his desk impatiently. He doesn't like to be kept waiting.

When the civilian is finally done, they look up from their paperwork and blink at him. “And your marital status?”

The question is so out of the blue that it takes a few moments for the hero to comprehend it. “Excuse me?” He chokes out, once he manages to come to terms with what he just heard.

“It’s just one of the questions,” the civilian sighs, not seeming the least bit surprised by the hero's outburst. They hold out their clipboard and the hero squints at it, raising a brow as he verifies the worker is telling the truth. “Believe me, I couldn't care less about your relationship status.” They huff.

“I'm single,” the hero huffs, a bit annoyed. Either the civilian doesn't notice—or they're particularly good at ignoring his irritation. He's almost offended at their callousness. In the same vein, however, there's something about it that's almost... refreshing.

“Any dependents?” They persist, immune to his rapidly changing thoughts.

“No.” He answers briefly.

“Formal training?” They ask. The hero shakes his head. For a while, this endless assault continues. By the time the civilian's pen finally stills, the hero's brain is starting to hurt. He hadn't realized just how tedious this reporting was. Why anyone would want to make a living collecting this information is beyond him.

And if the civilian's behavior was strange before, the hero has no idea how to characterize it now. Before, they were splitting their attention between their paperwork and his responses; now, they're staring at him with an unsettlingly focused gaze, as if looking straight through him.

“What are you doing?” the hero then asks, feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious. The civilian just continues to scrutinize him for a long moment, before writing several things down. “Stop it," he demands moments later. The civilian just hums.

“I’m building a physical profile,” the civilian eventually explains. They look completely bored by this entire interaction. The hero is almost incensed at their nonchalance; he's used to special treatment. He isn't used to being treated as a normal person. “It’s the last step of the paperwork. Now stop fidgeting."

The hero hadn't even realized he was moving restlessly until their remark. Taking a deep breath, he places his hands on his knees and stares right back at the worker—attempting to produce an air of cool composure. The civilian's eyes almost seem to track each feature of his face, before finally, finally going back to the paper.

"So?" the hero asks somewhat weakly. "How'd I do?"

The civilian just stares stoically. The hero resists the weird urge to duck under the desk to avoid their glare. For a moment, there's silence. Then the worker sighs, collecting their papers and getting to their feet. "I'd advise you to take this seriously in the future, unless you want another tedious visit."

They're leaving. They're leaving and the hero is watching. Damn it! "Wait," the hero blurts out before he can stop himself. "I—Ah. When will I see you again?"

The civilian squints at him, blinking in confusion. Then they seem to come to some sort of conclusion. "We refresh the paperwork every five years," they answer. "You shouldn't want to see me before then."

"Why not?" the hero asks.

"Because that means you did something wrong," they respond.

"Oh," the hero remarks helplessly. His attempts at making small-talk were firmly denied. This is weird—he doesn't usually have to try to maintain someone's attention. This worker is different, though: they don't give two shits about him. But he wants them to care, for some reason.

"Bye," the civilian says, breaking him from his reverie.

"Bye," the hero echoes. He watches them go, just barely able to wait for the doors to fall shut before letting out a regretful sigh.

©2025, @defectivehero | @defectivevillain, All Rights Reserved. Reblogs are greatly appreciated—just don't steal or share outside of Tumblr, please.

I see a part two... in my very distant, perhaps nonexistent future... where the hero purposefully fucks up paperwork to see the civilian again... yes, yes.... awkward flirting that goes entirely unnoticed... yes.....

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[mabsmixes]

"Bucky"

This list catalogs the story of James "Bucky" Barnes throughout the films "Captain America: The First Avenger" (act one) and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" (act two).

This playlist includes songs related to the Stucky (Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes) ship

The link to the list is in the title

Primary Genres:

Rock Chamber Pop Folk Punk

Top Artists

Florence + The Machine David Bowie The Mountain Goats

Vibes

Mix of high and low energy songs Dark, moody, and theatrical trigger warning: multiple songs include war/blood/violence/death mentions of suicide

Below is a full lyric breakdown where I highlight important lyrics of each song and describe why I chose it/what it represents. I also have each act separated into sections.

Act One

Section One: Out On The Fire Escape

The songs in this section reflect the time before war, when Bucky was a young man in the Brooklyn slums, trying to get by alongside his best friend, Steve.

"Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk"

and then there's those other things which for several reasons we won't mention everything about them is a little bit stranger a little bit harder a little bit deadly it isn't very smart tends to make one part so broken-hearted sitting here remembering me always been a shoe made for the city go ahead, accuse me of just singing about places with scrappy boys faces have general run of the town playing with prodigal songs takes a lot of sentimental valiums can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy while running on empty you little old doll with a frown you got to keep in the game maintaining mystique while facing forward i suggest a reading of 'a lesson in tightropes' or 'surfing your high hopes' or 'adios kansas' it isn't very smart tends to make one part so broken-hearted

I do think that Steve and Bucky were in love with each other before the war, but neither of them ever said anything - it being the 1940's I think Bucky would have a certain amount of internalized homophobia, and feel a need to play up a sort of "playboy" persona to push down his more honest and vulnerable feelings. He feels like everything he truly wants is bad for him

"Steal Smoked Fish"

Across a different bridge today Over the river and down Broadway Feels so good to have you here Some of you will be dead next year I see your destinies above you Like angels who don't love you Let them kiss you and hold you tight As long as the money's right God bless all my old friends And god bless me too, why pretend? Feast when you can And dream when there's nothing to feast on God bless the guys from my old neighborhood Gone past the point where any blessings can do them any good Attach the C-4 where you must Disappear in a cloud of dust But spare a thought for what it covers up Pour a triple and raise your cup We were here once, me and my friends But we destroyed all of the evidence And vanished into the night At least we got that one right

As the war moves on Bucky watches all of the young men he grew up with go to Europe and die - he knows that he will likely soon be drafted, but theres nothing he can do.

Section Two : 32557038

This section is about the time Bucky spends on the front lines - as well as imprisoned by Zola.

"Jesus and Your Living Room Floor"

And tell them I was loved That you always loved me I know you didn't But spare them the vision Of me in my kitchen Six weeks past extinction Photo in my hands that are cold as your mother's Of two children laughing before they got gutted And now they're a crime scene They're proof of a story A story I sell page by page, door to door, I pledge allegiance to Jesus, Jesus and your living room floor Now every night, I dream of new answers Of crying in limousines, of faking brain cancer Please tell them I was eaten by monsters in caves That they spat up my bones and I could not be saved And tell them you're so happy that you got to know me I know you didn't, but it's better than showing me Covered in ants in my room on the floor Still clutching that same old plastic horse

When Bucky thinks of home he thinks of being a child and sleeping on the floor beside Steve - in the many moments during the war where he expects to die, he thinks of that time at home. All the while still not knowing what he means to Steve.

"Beautiful Gas Mask"

Come hard through the fog Blindfolded and bound 'Till we stand at the edge Of a hole in the ground Crash in from deep space Shot birds falling fast Who will be there to catch us in his jaws When we arrive, alive at last? I can't hear you in the dark Wish I knew where you'd gone Know you're there, off in the shadows somewhere Try to soldier on Never sleep, remember to breathe deep Never sleep, remember to breathe Breathe deep and breathe humbly Secure your mouthpiece when you can

This one I feel is fairly self explanatory - the fear and pain of the soldier.

"Gut-Shot Soldier"

i silently wander through what remains and feel the chill of a light ashen rain beautiful boy peace has released you from grief and joy gut shot soldier no one hears you when you fall gut shot soldier you remain nameless after all precious boy in a tattered costume stitched from the remains of ancient countries and ancient warriors unknown and unnamed gut shot soldier no one hears you when you fall gut shot soldier you remain nameless after all

Trying to keep hold of himself while experimented on by Zola, trying to pick up the pieces of himself, and of his joy, and what he thinks is real once Steve comes and saves him.

Section Three : Bucky Alone At The Bar

Bucky recovers in London, but he is soon asked to follow Steve once again into the war, and he will. But Steve has changed, and Bucky needs Steve to see that he has changed just as much.

"The Prettiest Star"

Cold fire, you've got everything but cold fire You will be my rest and peace child I moved up to take a place near you So tired, it's the sky that makes you feel tried It's a trick to make you see wide It can all but break your heart in pieces Staying back in your memory Are the movies in the past How you moved is all it takes To sing a song of when I loved The prettiest star One day though it might as well be someday You and I will rise up all the way All because of what you are The prettiest star

Bucky will always love Steve, no matter what changes, but Bucky also can't stop hurting.

"Stuck In The Past"

I don't know what that arrangement was I could never tell But you could I had hopes, but the hopes all fell Leveled with the smell of new wood Stuck in the past A planet only on paper Guess I'm the last A living memory of vapor I don't know what that arrangement was I could never tell Like you could I had hopes, but that's just because Hoping was a well Where you stood

Bucky is both happy for Steve, and wants so desperately to be strong enough to take care of him again - rather than the other way around. He feels like he's being left behind.

Section Four: Flying/Falling

Bucky should never have been on that train - but he had to. So now he is seeing the view from halfway down.

"Under Ice"

It's wonderful Everywhere, so white The river has frozen over Not a soul on the ice Only me Skating fast I'm speeding past trees Leaving little lines in the ice Cutting out Little lines In the ice Splitting, splitting sound Silver heels Spitting, spitting snow There's something moving under Under the ice

I don't think I need to explain this one.

"In Germany Before The War"

In Germany Before The War There was a man who owned a store In nineteen hundred thirty-four In Dusseldorf And every night at fine-o-nine He'd cross the park down to the Rhine And he'd sit there by the shore Reflected in his glasses As he watches her A little girl has lost her way With hair of gold and eyes of gray I'm looking at the river But I'm thinking of the sea Thinking of the sea Thinking of the sea We lie beneath the autumn sky My little golden girl and I And she lies very still

This song is what I imagine his mind sounded like as his vision went black - Russian soldiers standing over him, laying in the snow.

Act Two

Section One: The Red Room

The second act begins between the first and second Captain America movies - during the mid-to-late 20th century when Bucky was being held/trained by the Red Room and later by Hydra.

"Red Football"

I'm not no red football To be kicked around the garden No no I'm a red Christmas-tree ball And I'm fragile I'm not no animal Though I am to you I'm not no crocodile Like the one in Dublin Zoo Who lived in a cage The length and breadth of his body When a window which people would look through And throw coins on his back to taunt him Though he couldn't move Even if he wanted to I'm not no animal in the zoo I'm not no whipping boy for you You may not treat me like you do I'm not no animal in the zoo My skin is not a football for you My head is not a football for you My body's not a football for you My womb is not a football for you My heart is not a football for you I'm not no animal in the zoo This animal will jump up and eat you

It is the early days, Bucky still remembers his name, he still has fight left in him.

"Search and Destroy"

I'm a street-walking cheetah With a heart full of napalm I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb I am a world's forgotten boy The one who searches and destroys Honey, gotta help me, please Somebody gotta save my soul

The missions begin, he is becoming the Winter Soldier - but he can still feel that this is wrong, and he sometimes can remember why.

"Relay"

I resent you for being raised right I resent you for being tall I resent you for never getting any opposition at all I resent you for having each other I resent you for being so sure I resent you presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure And I see that you keep trying to bait me And I'd love to get up in your face But I know it if I hate you for hating me I will have entered the endless race Evil is a relay sport When the one who's burned Turns to pass the torch I'm sorry Evil is a relay sport When the one who's burned Turns to pass the torch Wipe it all away I used to go to the Ferris wheel every morning Just to throw my anger out the door

The few hints of memory he has of his old life only result in anger and confusion - they can no longer fuel him, and no longer bring him hope. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he remembers Steve, and he resents him. The torture and brainwashing from Hydra and the Red Room have done their job.

"Daffodil"

I'm not bad, I'm not good I drank every scar that I could Made myself mythical, tried to be real Saw the future in the face of a Daffodil You practice resurrection every night Raising the dead under the moonlight And in the gloaming, I start to cry You're a perfect pearl hung in the sky There is no bad, there is no good I drank all the blood that I could Made myself mythical, tried to be real Saw the future in the face of a Daffodil English sun, she has come To kiss my face and tell me I'm that chosen one A generation soaked in grief We're drying out and hanging on by the skin of our teeth

This song Bucky sings about Pierce. Bucky is gone, all that is left is the Asset. Between the wipes, the only person he has memory of is Pierce, and he clings to that like a lifeline. Pierce tells him when to eat, sleep, kill, forget, and when to go back to the ice. He would do anything to keep Pierce happy with him, to keep the one thing which remains constant.

Section Two: Mission Report

This section begins where "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" begins. The Winter Soldier is a myth known to very few. The Asset can feel his bones getting tired. The endless cycles of torture and killing have become monotonous.

"The Autopsy Garland"

One clear shot or else he gets away Red sun high in the sky tonight Look west from London down to old Hollywood Remember the first days in California You don't want to see these guys Without their masks on You don't want to see these guys Without their masks on Fat rich men love their twelve year olds Deco cuff links and cognac by the glass Look west from London toward the Emerald City Remember Minnesota You don't want to see these guys Without their masks on You don't want to see these guys Without their masks on, or their gloves

All of his short term memories blur together - whether it's a mission, a reboot, or an inspection by Hydra officials.

"Smoking Section"

Sometimes I sit in the smoking section Hopin' one rogue spark land in my direction And when you stomp me out, I scream and I'll shout "Let it happen, let it happen, let it happen" And sometimes I feel like an inland ocean Too big to be a lake, too small to be an attraction And when you wander in and start to flail a bit I let it happen, let it happen, let it happen Sometimes I stand with a pistol in a hand I fire at the grass just to scare you right back And when you won't run, I'm mad, but I succumb Let it happen, let it happen, let it happen Sometimes I go to the edge of my roof And I think I'll jump just to punish you And if I should float on the taxis below No one will notice, no one will know

The Asset gave up on trying to kill itself years ago, but sometimes it still feels the pull.

"You Feel So Lonely You Could Die"

No-one ever saw you Moving through the dark Leaving slips of paper Somewhere in the park And I'm gonna tell Yes I've gotta tell Gotta tell the things you've said When you're talking in the dark And I'm gonna tell the things you've done When you're walking through the park Some night on the thriller's street Will come the silent gun You've got a dangerous heart You stole their trust, their moon, their sun There'll come assassin's needle On a crowded train I'll bet you feel so lonely You could die Buildings crammed with people Landscape filled with wrath Grey concrete city Rain has wet the street I want to see you clearly Before you close the door A room of bloody history You made sure of that I can see you as a corpse Hanging from a beam I can read you like a book I can feel you falling I hear you moaning in your room Oh see if I care Oh please, please make it soon Walls have got you cornered You've got the blues my friend And people don't like you But you will leave without a sound, without an end Oblivion shall own you Death alone shall love you I hope you feel so lonely You could die

Something he would sing to himself, somewhere deep in the back of his mind.

Section Three: The Man On The Bridge

The Asset sees someone, who calls him by a strange name. He does not know why - but something inside him feels familiar.

"Prayer Factory"

All the things that I ran from I now bring as close to me as I can Ripping hotel sheets with gritted teeth My montage of lost things My shiny trinkets of grief Why don't you give me a call? Open my mouth, yes, I'll take it all All this work gone to waste You make me climb, then you shut the gate

The brief moments of panic when he realizes he is feeling something - he isn't supposed to do that.

"Shoulders"

Please wake up Please wake up Touch my skin and tell me where you been You brought me in My best friend So touch my skin and tell me where you been You showed me how To hold my sin And kiss the bad ways I have been They found you in the morning The blood was on your shoulders They found you at the corner Your head was doubled over And the blood of the man who's killing our mother with his hands Is in me It's in me In my veins

This is an old ache, he doesn't know when it started or why this stranger triggered it - but he knows this is not the first time he has felt this way.

"Fight Like Gods"

What happens when the dream is better than the waking? What happens when we don't dread our own body breaking? From our bed we can see the dark clouds start to seeth right above us And my stare is hard and my grip on the knife tightens You doubt and you're desperate, you wear both your cross and your hammer Such beautiful dreams of violence, in them your tongue is made of silver But we don't fight like animals, we fight like men No, we don't fight like men, we fight like Gods

All he wants is for this feeling to go away, this man to go away, who is making him falter in his mission because somehow, somewhere in his mind he feels the need to spare him - to go to him. But, he is his mission, so instead they fight.

Section Four: "But I Knew Him"

Deep in the Asset's mind, there is Bucky. And Bucky Remembers.

"How Does The Grass Grow"

Would you still love me If the clocks could go backwards The girls would fill with blood and The grass would be green again Remember the dead They were so great Some of them But I lived a blind life A white face in prison But you made a life out of nothing Now I ride my black horse I miss you more Than you'll ever ever know Waiting with my red eyes And my stone heart I gaze in defeat At the stars in the night The light in my life burnt away Where do the boys lie Mud mud mud How does the grass grow Blood blood blood

There is no way to fix or change what has been done, what the Asset has done, the part of him that is still Bucky knows this - but still battles with the Asset to try and get free - Steve is so close, but so far.

"I Am Stretched On Your Grave"

My apple tree my brightness It's time we were together For I smell of the earth And am worn by the weather When my family thinks That I'm safe in my bed From night until morning I am stretched at your head Calling out to the air With tears hot and wild My grief for the girl That I loved as a child Do you remember The night we were lost In the shade of the blackthorn And the chill of the frost Thanks be to Jesus We did what was right And your maiden head still Is your pillar of light

Bucky had been told by the Russians that Steve had died when he crashed in the ice, and a piece of that grief always stayed in his mind even if he - The Asset - didn't know where it came from. Now Bucky is standing in front of Steve, and he regrets the fear he had as a young man - he regrets never telling Steve he loved him. Because the two people standing in front of each other now are two very different people from the ones who fell asleep next to each other on the living room floor.

"Morning Elvis"

When they dressed me and they put me on a plane to Memphis, well I never got to see Elvis I just sweated it out in a hotel room But I think the king would have understood Why I never made it to Graceland The bathroom tiles were cool against my hand I pressed my forehead to the floor and prayed for a trapdoor I've been here many times before But I've never made it to Graceland Well, pick me up in New Orleans Pinned in a bathroom stall Pick me up above my body Press my corpse against the wall I told the band to leave without me I'll get the next flight And I'll see you all with Elvis If I don't survive the night If I make it to the mornin' I should've come with a warnin' And if I make it to the stage I'll show you what it means To be saved Oh, you know I'm still afraid I'm still crazy and I'm still scared But if I make it to the stage I'll show you what it means To be spared

(I read this song as using "seeing Elvis" and "going to Graceland" as metaphors for dying, not to be taken literally) He has died again and again, and he has always come back swinging, as Steve saves him once again - he wishes his mind could stay quiet, for just a little longer.

Section Five: Fighting, Falling, Running

"This Is The Sea"

Now you say you've got trouble You say you've got pain You say've got nothing left to believe in Nothing to hold on to Nothing to trust Nothing but chains You've been scouring your conscience Raking through your memories Scouring your conscience Raking through your memories But that was the river This is the sea Now I can see you wavering As you try to decide You've got a war in your head And it's tearing you up inside You're trying to make sense Of something that you just don't see Trying to make sense now And you know you once held the key But that was the river And this is the sea

The Asset's resolve is crumbling under the weight of Steve's voice.

"★"

Something happened on the day he died Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried "I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar." How many times does an angel fall? How many people lie instead of talking tall? He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd "I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar, I'm not a gang star." I can't answer why (I'm a blackstar) Just go with me (I'm not a film star) I'mma take you home (I'm a blackstar) Take your passport and shoes (I'm not a pop star) And your sedatives, boo (I'm a blackstar) You're the flash in the pan (I'm not a marvel star) I'm the great I AM (I'm a blackstar)

Bucky breaks through.

"Free"

Sometimes I wonder if I should be medicated If I would feel better just lightly sedated The feeling comes so fast and I cannot control it I'm on fire, but I'm trying not to show it As it picks me up, puts me down It picks me up, puts me down Picks me up, puts me down a hundred times a day It picks me up, puts me down Chews me up, spits me out Picks me up and puts me down I'm always running from something I push it back, but it keeps on coming But I hear the music I feel the beat And for a moment When I'm dancing I am free Is this how it is? Is this how it's always been? To exist in the face of suffering and death And somehow still keep singing? Oh, like Christ up on a cross Who died for us, who died for what? Oh, don't you wanna call it off? But there is nothing else that I know how to do But to open up my arms and give it all to you 'Cause I hear the music I feel the beat And for a moment When I'm dancing I am free

Bucky begins to pick up and piece together his history and his mind. Healing will not come easy - but he is free.

End

if you've read this far - heres a cookie

🍪

[thefallenangel2008]

So, I had come up with a Gravity Falls x Arcane AU, which I had called Arcane Falls AU, and I want to make some art about it but I don't have the motivation which is KILLING MEEEEEE. I'm gonna expand on the idea here more, so prepare for yapping!

Ok, so, I tried to keep the characters the same age. For example, Pacifica, Dipper, Mabel, Mermando are all 17 because here because in GF they're all the same age. But unfortunately I had to age up/down a couple of characters for the sake of the plot.

So, Grenda will be in Sevika's place, although I didn't want to age her up too much so she can still have some in commons with Mabel. She got a job in Ford's business at a kinda young age (early 20's) so in the plot she would be somewhere in her late 20's. She wouldn't have any harsh feelings towards Mabel- well, Star, despite being the reason she lost her arm, because she understands she was just a kid who didn't mean to hurt anyone. She'd be cold and stern with people during work to appear more threatening but once she's inside with people she feels comfortable with (or in a pub), then WOOOO, the party animal's out! That being said, Candy will take Isha's place (😈) and I will keep her 12/13 like she was in the show. I just wanted the girls to form a semblance of their og friend group like in the show. :)

I mentioned Fiddleford in the original post but I don't remember clarifying his place in the AU. He will be in Signed's place. In the AU, Tate got terribly sick, which then turned out that sickness was terminal, and Fiddleford had then started working on the prototype for shimmer. Tate was sick before the plot happened and then was pronounced dead, a funeral happened, Fiddleford dag his grave to retrieve his body, and yeah. •-• (that would explain his deteriorating mental state even more tbh). So when Ford said that they need something to make the Zaunites stronger than the Enforcers, well, Fiddleford already had a prototype. It was useless anyway. It might as well serve a cause. And with some adjustments to fit more into Ford's image, it became the perfect serum (I just thought that Fiddleford going full mad scientist was pretty in character and in episode 1 he literally built a giant death robot to get his son's attention so just imagine what he would do if Tate was DEAD). In this AU he wouldn't use the memory gun because he would be afraid of forgetting how to make the shimmer for Tate. So to make sure he never indulged in that habit again he took it apart and used the parts for other creations like weapons and robots. For the sake of his son. Also after Tate died him and Emma-May had a divorce (Fiddleford kinda had an affair with Ford before all that shit happened so Tate dying was the cherry on top).

I think I made it somewhat clear in the original post, but in case y'all didn't get it, Mermando is in Ekko's place. (is it only me who still ships Mabel and Mermando?😭) I think the place where he created the Fireflies would also have water, because, a place with a small lake with clean water and a big, healthy tree? Hell yeah! (I still wanted to keep some of Mermando's merman things on him, so I decided to give him a small lake). Once the tree started to get poisoned due to Hextech it would also be a danger to the lake because the tree's roots are in the lake.

After season 2 act 1 events happen, Dipper wouldn't go out and fight. Because, unlike Vi, Dipper is not really the one to initiate a fight, especially when he isn't in danger. Despite growing up in Steelwater where if you weren't strong enough to fight you were practically dead, as I said, he only fights when he's in danger. Initiating fights is the least logical thing to do, unless you have a death wish! Instead of taking part in pit fights, he would go to a library and just... Read. He would read. Because as long as his brain is already occupied, he wouldn't have to think! He wouldn't be left with his thoughts. How could Pacifica abandon him like he was nothing?The librarian would feel sorry for him, a young kid who's obviously going through a tough time, so kind of them for setting up a small room for him and letting him use the shower! And maybe for a change, he would go to some bars at night and drink. His time in Steelwater has roughened him up in appearance so he looks older than 17. He's not that scrawny anymore and he DEFINITELY doesn't have noodle arms now! Which results? In an older-looking appearance! And the reason why he dyed his hair black would be so that he doesn't look like he's related to that... That awful person!

Bill, despite being disabled, wouldn't be on the brink of death, at least not because of his disability. The reason he would start testing the hexcore on himself would be because Steve was SUCH a coward! They have been working on hextech for YEARS, just for him to throw that opportunity out?! Oh it was that pink Yordle's fault, wasn't it??? They got into his head. He knew STEVE should be the assistant, not him!!! Just because it was STEVE'S idea, it doesn't mean he's capable of handling that responsibility!!! He wasn't a coward! He wasn't afraid of risks!!!! So he started testing the hexcore on himself. He had to see the effects it would have on the human body. Maybe that way they could expand it even more! Find out just how much more it can do! And the hexcore seemed to really like his blood. It was so scary, it was exciting!!! But... It was slowly killing him. Logic said that he should stop. But when has he ever been logical? NEVER! Ironic though, isn't it? The thing killing him is the very same thing that'll save him after the explosion. When Bill starts the cult it's gonna have more cult-y vibes because of the statues of himself and how the people in the sanctuary would call him "Herald " or "Lord" (per Bill's demand). He wouldn't cure people just to make them healthy again, he couldn't care less about that! But more sick people meant even more followers! When the twins (plus Candy) brought in Warwick/Stan, at first Bill wanted to heal him just to gain one more follower. But his mind was... Wow. So broken and twisted, it was honestly making him low-key apprehensive every time he went into his head, half expecting he would get a punch into his good eye. When he gets his "glorious evolution" he's gonna be going by the name "One-Eyed Herald" (I gotta make a sketch of him as that). I just think the whole cult thing Viktor created was such a Bill thing to do, considering he has created cults in the past.

Bill had met Fiddleford wayyy back, before his parents died, when he was just a kid. Bill liked the mad scientist stuff he was doing and the experiments he seemed to be doing on a raccoon. Until it got WAY out of hand (it was after Tate's funeral).

I think that's it so far. I have come up with Dipper and Mabel's designs for the final battle and I have Bill's One-Eyed Herald design in my head. Gotta start drawing these at some point.🥲 Unrelated, but I can't think of people to replace Mel and Ambessa. At first I thought I should put Pyronica in Mel's place but then I remembered Ambessa's existence so maybe she'll take Sky's place instead. Maybe Gideon and Bud? But I don't really like thattttt...😭 It has been bothering me for some time now, any suggestions would be great. :)

[jo-harrington]

Luminous Beings - Episode 4: Order 66

Art by @monologichno || Beta Read by @undead-supernova Part of the @eddiemunsonbigbang

Summary: The Dragonborn is plagued with tension and uncertainty as Thalia's secrets finally come to light.

Word Count: 9.8k

Pairing: Eddie Munson x OFC (Thalia Trieste)

Warnings/Themes: Star Wars AU, Fluff, Budding Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Torture, and Death, Miscommunication, Distrust, Minor Canon Inaccuracies/Adaptation, Galactic Politics, Criticism of Government and Authority, Criticism of the Jedi, Betrayal, Depictions of Order 66 and the Jedi Purge

Note: This chapter made me nervous, I'm not gonna lie. There have been so many depictions of Order 66 in so much Star Wars media but when you fold such a huge canon event into a fic like this...UGH. I truly hope I did it justice. Thanks to @courtingchaos for giving me a second look at that little snippet and giving me some extra courage, I feel so much better. And yes, if I ever decide to write Thalia's story, I will be pulling a Dave Filoni and writing it again.

Thanks again to everyone for reading.

Luminous Beings Masterlist - Jo-Harrington's Masterlist

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Thank you for reading. Enjoy!

Hyperspace, 10BBY

The atmosphere in the Dragonborn was tense.

No one said a word once they'd gotten off Outpost 86 and jumped to lightspeed.

None of them knew what to say, least of all Eddie.

They'd all witnessed what happened—the Guavians had too—and Eddie knew that he should have said something to his crew at least. He knew he should have gone and said something to Thalia. But as soon as the boarding ramp was shut, he had stomped up to the bridge, barking orders to his friends to get to their stations so they could get the hell out of there.

Now, safe and sound, Eddie’s mind began to race as quickly as the streaks of stars and nebulae that soared past them. He kept flipping switches and turning knobs to keep himself from facing the inevitable. To keep himself from facing the truth.

Thalia saved his life.

Yeah, that was one thing.

And she was a Jedi.

That was the other.

He was almost hesitant to think those words, but once he did, all of the pieces seemed to fall into place. All of the odd things about Thalia that he noticed suddenly made sense. The feeling of calmness that surrounded her, the connection he felt with her.

Did that mean she had read his thoughts? Or manipulated him in some way?

No, that wasn't it. Was it?

He would've known. Wouldn't he?

However, those realizations, those answers, seemed to raise new questions.

Because...she wasn't really a Jedi, was she? She was around his age, if looks were anything to go by; she must've been a Padawan at the time of the Clone Wars. He remembered seeing the names and faces of Padawans on the Holonet, wanted by the newly-formed Empire, and how horrified he'd been when he realized the implication that they'd be hunted down too.

She couldn't have been accomplice to any sort of treason against the Republic then. But there was suddenly no wonder why she had a negative opinion about the Empire now.

If she was a Jedi Padawan, that is.

And if she wasn't?

He'd been around the galaxy a few times. He'd heard whispers of Force-users in hiding, ones who weren't Jedi. They'd been hunted down by the Empire, too. Maybe she was one of them?

He'd never know unless he asked.

He rose from his seat and ordered G'areth and Dayv to keep an eye on things. Then he made his way down to the medbay.

Thalia, of course, wasn't alone when he got there. While he’d rushed off to the Bridge, Jeff had gone to tend to his blaster wound.

Admittedly, the guys didn't know much in the way of medicine. Bacta, stimpacks, and synthskin bandages. That was what they had, what they felt comfortable using. Anything requiring more than that, they could go planetside and seek medical attention.

That was the extent of healing that Eddie expected Jeff, who was a notorious crybaby when he was hurt or sick, to receive. But there was something to be said about having someone take care of you, instead of injecting yourself with a hypo-syringe.

Eddie leaned against the entrance to the medbay and crossed his arms over his chest as he watched D5-TN pass kolto patches for Thalia to apply to Jeff's injured leg. All while Jeff softly, but animatedly, told a story that Eddie—and Dustin, for that matter—had heard a thousand times.

"...and then I said to him, 'Strono, I know I just made you the best cup of Caf you've ever had, but you cannot propose to me. You can have the recipe though.'"

Thalia snickered at the tale Jeff spun, but kept working.

Even from a few yards away, Eddie could feel the calming energy emanating off of her, which caused the bitterness to rise within in him.

The story telling continued, along with hums and beeps and the ambient roar of hyperspace, until Thalia announced, "Alright, you're set." She clapped her hands together as Jeff swung his legs off the bed. "How does it feel?"

"Good as new," he grinned, attempting to jump to his feet, only to falter and nearly fall. She grabbed him as he gripped the edge of the bed tightly, and they worked together to haul him back upright. "Ok, maybe not as good as new, but close enough."

"To be fair," Eddie piped up, startling Jeff and D5-TN but somehow not Thalia. "You weren't in that great a shape to begin with. I've put you in the crosshairs enough times."

Then, for some reason, Jeff turned his attention to Thalia when he said, "Ed gets us into all sorts of trouble, but we've all made mistakes. Ask G'ar about the time he broke his wrist."

"I'm the reason G'ar broke his wrist," Eddie insisted.

"You tell yourself that, captain," Jeff scoffed. "Hey Dusty, you mind helping me up to the bridge?"

D5-TN whistled and honked; he teased about running Jeff over if he fell, which earned a deadpan laugh from Jeff.

Before long, though, they were gone.

And then Eddie and Thalia were finally alone.

The medbay hadn't ever really felt like a sterile place of healing, but it had come a long way since Eddie and his friends had taken their first excursion across the galaxy. If Thalia complained about having kolto over bacta now, she would've had a conniption back then. They barely even had a bandage and a bed to their name.

But now the small medbay had taken up a new purpose since she'd been onboard. It had only been a few days, and she didn't have much by way of luggage or belongings, but the room held the same energy she did.

A cot was set up in the corner, one she insisted on instead of the medibed, and a few changes of clothes set out atop a nearby cabinet. A datapad, a small commlink that he didn't realize she carried, and a handful of credits that, even from a distance he could tell, were a mix of old republic dataries and new imperial ingots.

The pack she'd brought with her to the Outpost lay on the floor by her cot, slumped and misshapen; with everything that was strewn about the medbay, Eddie wondered what might still be inside.

"Is that why you don't carry a blaster?" he asked once he finally found his voice. "Because you have a lightsaber?"

"No." She shook her head.

"So you don't have a lightsaber?"

She paused as she cleaned up the supplies she used for Jeff, then glanced up at him. She inhaled slowly. Pensively. 

"Now you're just putting words into my mouth."

Any joy or excitement that the child that still lived inside Eddie might've felt at the prospect of there being a real lightsaber aboard his ship was immediately extinguished when he began to demand answers from her.

"Why didn't you just tell me? Us," Eddie questioned desperately. "We're outlaws too. Criminals. It's not like we'd have delivered you to some imperial labor camp on a silver platter."

"Ignoring how...absolutely idiotic you sound to even suggest that," Thalia began with a scoff. "Say I did trust you not to sell me out; how would that conversation have gone? 'Hi, it's nice to meet you. I'm in need of your services and, oh, by the way I can use the force and need to hide it from the empire?'"

"Well, no, but—"

"Then how would you have liked to find out a secret that countless beings need to keep in the name of self preservation? Because I think saving your life is a pretty appropriate method. You're welcome, by the way."

He took an involuntary step back at the venom in her words, but recovered quickly.

"Thank you," he said softly, then pivoted back to the original topic. "I don't know another way that wouldn't have made me question everything, but some kind of indication that I was working with a fugitive Jedi would've—"

Thalia immediately squared her shoulders and crossed the distance so she could press a finger into his chest.

"I want to make one thing clear," she said, practically through gritted teeth. At this distance, her eyes even looked glassy with unshed tears, and Eddie felt his stomach drop, knowing that he was the one who caused them, in one way or another. "I am no Jedi."

Wait.

"What do you mean, you aren't a Jedi?" Eddie scoffed. "Of course you are. You just said you had a lightsaber...and you saved my life...and there's that feeling of—"

"There you go again, Moonsun," she said, voice more lighthearted than it had just been, as she poked fun at him. And she quite literally poked him again, prodding the same place that she'd jabbed him to get her point across just moments ago. "Putting words in my mouth. I didn't say I had a lightsaber. And I didn't say that I didn't have one."

"Do you have a lightsaber?"

"Not with me." Eddie clapped his hands together and just about shoved his finger in her face in triumphant mockery, but she continued. "But that doesn't mean I am a Jedi. And I have never been one either. I know...in the lift, you said that you'd always dreamed of becoming a Jedi...and I'll admit I had that dream fed to me once...but I don't understand how anyone would have dreamed of that life.

"The Jedi were the heroes of the galaxy...and I'm no hero." She held her hands out in front of her and then clenched them into fists. She looked back into his eyes. "But I'll do what I must to keep people safe, Eddie. To keep people alive."

If Eddie had been demanding answers from Thalia in the medbay the night before, his friends were absolutely relentless come morning. It seemed like the chance to let their thoughts and feelings simmer meant that they didn't carry the same chip on their shoulders as he did; they'd not only had time to process what they'd witnessed on Outpost 86, but also what Eddie had told him when he'd returned from confronting Thalia.

To be fair, after they'd parted ways, Eddie also cooled down and cleared his thoughts.

And Thalia answered their questions good-naturedly, as she had before. As if they were still asking about simple things, how the weather was on Dantooine, instead of questioning the workings of the force.

"Can you float things?"

"Sometimes."

"And can you read minds? What color am I thinking of right now?"

"Blue."

"Woah."

"But that's because you're staring at my hair, Dayv."

"Oh, kriff, you're right."

"Have you ever met Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

Even Eddie looked up from his bowl of oats at Jeff's question.

Thalia was frozen in her seat, spoon just inches away from her mouth; her eyes darted around the table to each of the guys as they stared expectantly back at her.

"Eddie has a great impression of General Kenobi," Jeff added, as if the context would help. Thalia's eyes drifted to Eddie and she lifted a single brow in question. "Uh...well...he used to. When we were kids."

"I probably do a better impression of the Emperor now, to be fair," Eddie snickered and ducked his head back down to his breakfast. Still, curiously, he glanced up at her through his bangs. "So...did you ever meet him?"

"I'm..." she put down her spoon and ran a hand through her hair nervously. "No. I didn't."

The questions became more rapid fire after that, especially from Eddie as he picked up where they'd left off before.

"Who did you meet?"

"What did you do?"

"If you weren't really a Jedi, did you live in the temple?"

"If you weren't really a Jedi, how do you have a lightsaber?"

"What really happened when the Jedi betrayed the Republic?"

That seemed to be where the line was drawn for Thalia though, because she slammed her cup of blue milk on the table. She sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest.

The galley went silent, save for the shameful coughs and scraping of utensils along the bottoms of bowls. None of them were brave enough to meet her scathing gaze, especially not G'areth, who'd uttered the fated question in the first place.

D5-TN, who'd been sitting at his charging station in the corner of the little galley, was the first to pipe up. His blunt binary beeps questioned why Thalia looked about ready to murder when the Jedi were supposed to be peacekeepers. That immediately cooled her down.

"Supposed to be, is the key phrase there, Dustin." She let out a dry laugh. "Everyone is supposed to be one thing, and then they turn out to be something else. I'm the living proof of that. I'm supposed to be hiring you guys to haul something to Coruscant for me."

"Does that mean we can dump that container right into hyperspace?" Dayv chuckled.

"Does that mean we're not getting paid?" Eddie added, much more seriously.

"The Jedi were supposed to be peacekeepers,” she continued, ignoring their questions. "Not soldiers for the Republic. But that's exactly what they became, little by little. The Clone Wars were a catalyst for the downfall of the Order, but it had been a long time coming. Hundreds of years, not just over the past few decades. And this wasn't the first time in their history, either."

She got a faraway look in her eyes, and a bitterness in her voice.

"What made a good Jedi was that you could be a good soldier. That's how younglings were chosen as Padawans, even before the Clone Wars. Even before the possibility of war was on the galaxy's doorstep. And I wasn't fit for being anyone's soldier."

"So you weren't chosen?" Eddie asked. "And then you...what'd you say? You worked at a diner on Coruscant?"

"No." Thalia's brow furrowed. "No, that...came after. If someone didn't pass the Initiate Trials or they didn't get chosen as a Padawan, most of the time they got foisted off into the Service Corps to keep them useful. Education Corps...Medical Corps—"

"Well, we know you're not Medical Corps," Jeff interjected and then patted his leg. "You did a better job than any of us could've but, uh, if that was your job, I would be concerned."

The mood in the room lightened as everyone laughed and returned to their meal.

"No," Thalia continued serenely. "I was in the Exploration Corps. We would travel across the galaxy, scouting and surveying planets. Transporting Knights and Masters to different temples."

"So you've always been a sort of flight attendant," Dayv noted, along with D5-TN whistling his own question about what in-flight snacks were served aboard Jedi Order transports.

"You know," she snorted, "now that you mention it, I guess this was my destiny after all.” It got a laugh out of everyone. “I was assigned as an assistant to the researchers looking into ancient secrets of the Force. I'd always been interested in the history of the Jedi...in the deeper meanings in the ways of the Force. That's why I was shocked that you'd gone on a trip to Moraband. It's a forbidden planet."

"Forbidden?" Eddie smirked and leaned back in his seat. "Sweetheart, nothing is forbidden when there are credits to be had. Moraband is an untouched goldmine."

"It's full of tombs," she argued. "Corruption. Relics connected to the Dark Side of the Force. Even now, the Empire forbids travel there."

"Some senators love their tchotchkes." Eddie shrugged. "They buy, we'll fly."

"It's the ancient Sith homeworld, flyboy."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

Thalia let out a noise of frustration before pointedly turning in her seat so she faced the others more than she faced Eddie.

"Anyway, shortly before...before the fall of the Republic, I got partnered with a Jedi Master named Eno Cordova, who'd been researching ancient force-sensitive civilizations. It wasn't much in the way of travel, so, yes, I still lived in the Jedi Temple to access the archives."

"And your lightsaber?" Jeff scooted closer in his chair. Everyone leaned a little closer, even D5-TN, who rolled off his charging station so he could join the others.

"Was the one that I built as a youngling, ahead of the Initiate Trials," Thalia explained. "It's back on Coruscant. Someplace safe."

"Wait a minute," Eddie butt in again. "Hang on. You're a former Jedi whatever, with a functioning lightsaber, who's in hiding from being hunted down by the Empire...and you live on the Capitol? Right under the Emperor's nose?"

The others made noises in agreement and concern.

"Hidden in plain sight," she offered as an excuse, along with a shrug. "It always made the most sense."

She got a faraway look in her eye then, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

"The Empire..." She squinted her eyes a little in thought. "They might be looking for whoever they can to make an example of now. But back then? After…” She trailed off for a moment. “Well, they weren't interested in someone like me."

Before the others could ask anything else, she excused herself from the table and practically ran out of the galley.

"You know there's nowhere you can hide that I won't find you. This is my ship."

"I could try."

"Well, you happened to pick the one place in the ship where I go to practice the guitar alone," Eddie explained. "So you didn't try very hard."

The escape pod was small, and if Eddie was honest, it probably wouldn't do much in the event of an emergency. It's why they weren't too concerned with blocking it with their cargo. He'd had D5-TN run diagnostics on the life support systems and controls many times, to no avail. And they'd always been so eager to move onto the next job or planet that there hadn't really been time to test it in the safety of a spaceport.

But it was a small little space, away from the rest of the ship, where you could be alone. And they'd all taken advantage of that more than any of them cared to admit.

G'areth had even come to have a little personal time once, back in the early days. That's when the "no jerkin' it in the escape pod" rule was enacted.

It was astounding how quickly Thalia had acclimated to the habits of everyone on the ship, though, if she was here. Either that, or she'd scraped the idea of it from one of their heads with her Force abilities.

"It doesn't work like that," Thalia spoke, as though he'd said the last part aloud, earning a skeptical look from Eddie as he sat on the small seat across from her. "You were projecting that one, Nerfhead."

"Hey," Eddie scoffed. "Bantha brains? Yes. But nerfhead? Absolutely not."

He grinned at the little laugh she let out.

He waited for her to talk, to say anything; usually, he'd be the first one to pry, especially when that thousand-parsec stare that she currently had, appeared on one of his friends faces. He took a different approach this time, though. More along the lines of something his uncle Wane would do when he was lost in his thoughts or his worries.

Usually, for him, it had something to do with his dad.

For Thalia, though, it seemed like the Jedi were the sore spot that sent her into a deep spiral of thoughts.

They sat silently for a moment before Eddie hoisted his guitar onto his lap and began playing a soft trill of notes. A lullaby Wane used to play for him when he was little, right after his mom died and his dad ran the first time, so he could sleep without nightmares.

He closed his eyes as plucked at the strings. He let the sound flow through him, resonate with the space around him. One note after another, time passed slowly but surely, and suddenly Thalia was humming along with the slow melody.

He opened one eye and glanced at her as she watched his fingers move, humming in anticipation of each note to come.

"Do you know this song?" he asked softly as he continued playing.

She made a non-commital noise in response and then shook her head. "I'm not very musically inclined either. Don't ask me to sing. But...there are echoes...in the force. Usually they're tied to objects. Sometimes they're tied to people. Your music amplifies your ties to the living force. It's hard to resist."

Eddie wasn't sure what most of that meant, but knew that he wouldn't try to cheapen it by making a joke about how irresistible he was.

Instead, he said, "That must mean I am a pretty good musician, if the force likes my playing."

She cracked a small smile, but stayed silent as he continued strumming.

"Do you want to know why I find it hard to trust people?" she asked, unexpectedly, after a beat. Eddie was about to answer, but she added, "I would've told you. Eventually. But...do you want to know why I couldn't, at first?"

"Because I don't seem the trustworthy type?"

"Because I've been betrayed by people I thought I could trust before." She looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. "Because even I've betrayed people who've trusted me before."

"Well, I'm not a snitch. None of us are. My friends have kept quiet about worse things than someone being a Jedi before."

"I told you, I'm not a Jedi."

He ignored her, and instead chose to joke with her. "So who did you betray? Do I have to worry about you giving us up to the Empire, instead of the other way around?"

There was a sadness in her eyes when she looked up at him.

"G'areth asked what really happened," she stated, "when the Jedi betrayed the Republic. The Jedi failed the Republic, and were betrayed in return. Which only led to more pain, more betrayal."

"That's cryptic," Eddie whispered. He winced and stopped playing, setting the guitar aside. "Sorry, that was insensitive of me."

"It's ok," Thalia assured him.

She offered her hand out to him, palm flat and facing upwards.

He thought it was just a gesture of peace, so he placed his hand in hers.

And suddenly Eddie wasn't on the Dragonborn anymore.

He was in a library, surrounded by rows upon rows of shelves containing glowing holobooks. Thousands of them.

The last time he'd seen a library of this size...well, he couldn't recall. The Academy on Bracca had a small library, and he had always liked to read, especially when he was younger and looking for escape from his mundane life. But anything he wanted, he could load onto his datapad from the holonet. There was no need for holobooks and no real space for them in his and Wane's flat.

Whoever had amassed this collection must've been very interested in knowledge. Or power.

But how did he get here?

He spotted movement in the corner of his eye, the flash of a shoulder disappearing down one of the aisles.

"Excuse me," he called out. "Could you help me? I think I'm lost."

He tried to take a step forward, but through his body, another body emerged. As though he was made of mist. A phantom.

The figure, decidedly human, took a few steps forward and then stopped and looked back at him.

His heart stopped.

It was Thalia, but younger. Much less worry on her face, lips upturned into a gentle smile.

Her hair wasn't blue, instead an unremarkable, muddy brown and it was longer, pulled into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder. She wasn't dressed in the travel attire he'd gotten used to seeing her in, or the traditional robes that would immediately bring a Jedi to mind. She wore something that was a marriage of the two—a tunic with an unfamiliar emblem emblazoned on the breast, and fitted utility trousers tucked into boots.

"Come on," she nodded her head in the direction she'd been headed. "Keep up."

"Wh-where are we going?" he demanded, but followed nonetheless.

Suddenly, there were more figures around. Jedi Knights and Padawans, he realized as he saw the lightsabers attached to their belts. Thalia had a lightsaber on her belt too.

They weaved in and out of the aisles, sitting at the tables in the middle of the room. The library, which had previously been silent, was suddenly consumed with ambient sounds of whispered conversations alongside the beeping and whistling of droids whirring around.

Was he...was this the Jedi Temple? On Coruscant? It had to be.

He was filled with that deeply-buried giddiness that he'd been trying to hold down since the truth about Thalia came out.

He was in the Jedi Temple. This was the place where the heroes of his adolescence walked and slept and ate and lived. Being able to witness inside the temple walls was everything he’d ever dreamed of. 

He couldn't wait to tell the guys about this.

He tried to take it all in, but was quickly disappointed when the details, the faces, were all blurry. Unfocused and unimportant here.

In this memory, he realized.

Since exploring on his own was futile, he caught up with the younger Thalia, who spoke with an elderly woman in a set of decorated brown robes.

Their conversation meant nothing to Eddie, really, but he tried to keep up with unfamiliar names, places, and titles of books. Zeffo, and The Tales of Light and Life, and something about Master Cordova. Hadn't that been the Jedi that Thalia said she'd been assisting? Did this all have to do with him?

The older woman seemed to get irritated by the end of the interaction, though, as a tight tight smile stretched across her wrinkled face. She still kept her voice peaceful as she offered, "Perhaps if Master Cordova needs all of this information, he could be bothered to return to Coruscant himself, but I'll see what I can do, Miss Trieste."

"Thank you, Master Nu." Thalia bowed respectfully and then turned and continued on her way. Eddie figured that he was undetectable, but he also felt the urge to clumsily bow to Master Nu before he followed after Thalia.

They walked out of the library and out into a wide atrium with marble walls that stretched upwards for hundreds of feet to a domed glass ceiling.

"What did I say about keeping up?" Thalia questioned impatiently a few feet ahead of him.

"Excuse me for wanting to get a good look at things," Eddie scoffed, but closed the distance.

"You'll see more soon enough," she insisted. "We just need to get there first."

They walked through endless halls and down winding staircases. Eddie noted how Thalia would nod and greet certain Jedi respectfully, and how most of them ignored her outright. Only a handful had stopped for a word of greeting, most of them as young as she was—Padawans she must have trained with as a youngling.

"Why don't the others say anything back to you?" he asked.

"Because I'm nobody," she explained. "At least, it felt that way."

"But—"

"W-will you shut up?"

As the words spilled from her lips, a feeling descended upon Eddie, like an inescapable wave from an endlessly deep ocean. A rumble of building anticipation, like boots stomping in tandem, and then a sudden crash of emotion that nearly brought him to his knees.

Pain, fear, panic, despair.

Death.

An explosion as bright as a thousand supernova, then nothing, as uf it was snuffed out in an instant.

Ripples of catastrophic energy hit him again and again. Suddenly the vastness of the Jedi Temple that he had been in awe of began closing in on him as this world attacked him.

Then came the blaster fire.

Thalia seemed to have quick reflexes, and she was able to duck behind a pillar as that first bolt was released from the blaster of an approaching clone. But others weren't so lucky. Eddie, in his incorporeal form and frozen with the assault of his senses, remained in the middle of the hall.

He witnessed the relentless approach of the clones from an intersecting hallway, the flurry of sizzling blaster bolts, and the ignition of at least a dozen lightsabers as their owners quickly sought to defend the onslaught.

It didn't help though, and bodies fell quicker than Eddie could really keep up with. One mis-timed slash of a lightsaber, and suddenly a new wave of pain shot through him. One blaster bolt deflected, ricocheting off a wall, and found its way into the poorly protected neck of a clone trooper, and he was assaulted by another wave.

Screams and cries echoed around him, not just from Thalia or the surrounding Jedi...but from all directions. Every hallway, every corner of the temple.

Every corner of the galaxy.

It was a barrage of the mind. Of the soul.

And Eddie realized that he wasn't simply confronted by his own emotions, his own fear and despair, over witnessing all of this, but also those of beings surrounding him.

His eyes finally shifted from the massacre, to Thalia who was also frozen in fear as she cowered behind that pillar.

No. He wasn't the one being hit with those emotions.

Thalia was.

He only felt it because he was here in her memories.

Blaster fire, clones, and an attack on the Jedi Temple. He had a memory of this night as well, the horror he felt at the news. But his memory of this existed in the safety of his datapad screen. Thalia had lived this firsthand.

She had to survive.

He finally found the courage within him to move. He took several steps towards her and knelt down to her level to offer a hand.

"Come on," he urged. "Let's go."

She ignored him. Looked past him.

"I said let's go."

Her eyes followed every blaster bolt that passed until they slowed, and then stopped.

Eddie could feel the barrage of emotion start to lessen as Thalia took deep breaths and waited. After a few beats of silence and stillness, coldness was all that remained. Emptiness.

And an echo of fear.

"There is no fear," she whispered to herself. Or maybe to Eddie, as her eyes finally focused on him. "There is only peace."

"Well, I'm plenty scared," he whispered back to her.

She hoisted herself to her feet and slowly stepped back into the center of the hallway. She tip-toed over the bodies where Eddie just walked atop them. Through them. She didn't have the luxury of being a ghost here; this was real to her.

Thalia's booted feet toed at lightsaber hilts that fell from limp hands, and she paused in consideration, before she reached the first clone that had fallen in the hallway. She knelt down and pried the blaster from its hands.

"I thought you didn't like blasters," he commented.

She took another deep breath and began, lip quivering. "The force is everywhere. It binds us. Surrounds us. If we focus on it, it can help us find the answers we seek."

She pointed the blaster at him, through him, down the way the clones had arrived. "There are more of them down there." Eddie turned his head and then looked back at her.

"It doesn't take a Jedi to figure that out," he deadpanned, but she ignored him. Then she turned and pointed in the direction they came.

"They're also that way," she explained. "I can feel them. Can you?"

"I don't know, I'm not—" He stopped short as there was the slightest tickle in his mind. Outside of the cold emptiness, he felt the looming presence of danger. The despair, the pain that had assaulted him earlier. Not just the individual feeling of the clones themselves as they attacked, but the carnage they left in their wake.

Yes, if he and Thalia doubled back the way they came, towards the library, they'd encounter clones. But not as many as they would if they soldiered ahead.

"Lead the way, then." He gestured forward to young Thalia, and then followed her as she began to navigate through the sea of corpses. "Why don't you use your lightsaber?"

"I'm out of practice," she explained. "Members of the Service Corps still wear them, but they're more for show. I'm not a soldier, remember?"

"But you'll fire a blaster."

She ignored him again and kept creeping further down the hall. Until she came to a crossroads where several living Jedi ran past, scrambling for their weapons as they fled. Or maybe ran towards the attacking clones to try and defend...

Their home.

"Was this your home?" he asked Thalia.

"That's a stupid question." There was obvious annoyance in the way she flicked her braid over her shoulder and held her blaster at attention.

"There are no such things as stupid questions."

"Just stupid people." It felt like an insult. It was probably meant to be one. "Don't try to distract me."

They kept walking, confidently. Thalia was able to take out a few clone troopers as she came across them, but she had been right. She wasn't a soldier. She was sloppy with her aim, but she was quick to anticipate their movements.

"Why don't you use the force?" he asked as she ducked behind another pillar.

"It doesn't work that way!" She shouted at him.

The momentary distraction led to a blaster bolt hitting the pillar, close to her head, and she fell to the ground as it exploded in with shards of marble and dust.

Eddie felt as disoriented as she was, heard the ringing in his ears that she must've heard. But when it cleared and she sat up, she was immediately alert and attentive.

Especially when she spotted the two figures dispatching of the troopers that had taken the shots.

"Steev! R'sshekh!" Thalia shouted and scrambled to her feet once the coast was clear. They both turned towards her—a young human man and a trandoshan, both with disheveled robes and lightsabers drawn—and started in her direction.

She pivoted, blaster in hand to make sure the coast was clear, before she ran to join them. The human padawan deactivated his saber and pulled Thalia into a relieved hug.

"You're alive," he said, words muffled by the shoulder of her tunic. "They...the clones...they're killing everyone."

"I know, Steev. I saw Master Pace try to seal off the East Wing. There was only so much blaster fire he could deflect."

R'sshekh said something in Dosh, unintelligible to Eddie, but Thalia and Steev seemed to understand. They parted from one another.

"You're right," Steev nodded. "We need to get to the hangar. Get a ship, go to the senate."

"Are you crazy?" Thalia practically screeched. "I'm sure they'll have the hangar guarded. And the senate? The clones aren't acting alone; someone ordered them to attack. We need to get out of the temple as quickly as we can."

"And how do you suggest we do that?" Steev asked impatiently, hands falling to his hips.

R'sshekh spoke again, but Thalia talked over him.

"The service ducts," she said. "The ones we used to explore. If we find the right one, it'll spit us out into The Works."

Steev wrinkled his nose in disgust and scoffed. "Those dusty old tunnels are full of the rotting husks of ancient droids. I'm not going down there again."

"Then do you want to take your chances trying to go out the main entrance?" Thalia asked, voice laden with sarcasm, as she gestured down an adjacent hallway. "I'm sure the coast is clear."

Steev and R'sshekh glanced at each other and then gestured for Thalia to lead them onwards. She looked past them at Eddie and then tilted her head to get him to follow as well.

As if he even could wander off on his own.

The journey was a blur. More winding hallways and stairs, more troopers firing, but Thalia could trust one of her companions to defend her. Especially that Steev kid, who'd jump to her aid and then scold her for being reckless.

At one point, Eddie skipped ahead and tried to whisper in her ear, "Is he your boyfriend?"

"Jedi aren't allowed to form attachments," she snapped at him defensively, then paused. "But yes, he was my friend. And R'sshekh. We were all from the same crèche."

"Well, Steev kind of seems like a jerk."

Thalia looked over her shoulder at Steev, and then sighed. "Yeah. He was."

Eddie noticed her use of the past tense, and he felt a pit open up in his gut.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"How about now?"

"No!"

"We've been walking forever."

"The kid has a point," Eddie piped up from the back of the group, earning a scathing glare from young Thalia. "We have been walking forever."

R'sshekh seemed to agree with Eddie and Steev as well, if their intonation was any indicator, and Eddie gestured at the Trandoshan in an "I told you so."

"Thank you, Thalia, for getting us to safety," Thalia said, deepening her voice to match the timber of...well, truly any of them. "Thank you for having the good sense not to follow us blindly as we got ourselves killed." She made a crude hand gesture to them all to punctuate her point and then kept going.

Eddie had lost all sense of direction by this point. Up, down, left, right. They were in a hallway that didn't seem like a hallway anymore. He wasn't even sure they were even in the Jedi Temple, but the distant sound of blaster fire and the ignition of lightsabers assured him that, yes, they were.

The three older teens had picked up some stragglers along their stealthy escape from the temple. Another padawan with a wounded shoulder, her arm now stabilized and tied to her torso with a ripped piece of Steev's robe. They’d also found two younglings cowering behind a pile of twisted trooper bodies. R'sshekh took to holding each of the small children's hands as they continued on their way.

Eddie felt aware of every step he took, felt each of their weariness and the sting of any injuries, because Thalia felt them.

And when fear suddenly gripped her, he felt it too.

"Go on ahead," she told the others as she stopped in her tracks. "The old tunnels start up ahead. And then we keep going until we hit the pipeworks. We can take a break there."

All the kids groaned but kept going.

Until it was just Thalia and Eddie.

"You wanna show me something?" he questioned.

"Not specifically," she responded with a sigh. "But I had noticed something then...so you need to see it, too, now."

She waved him over and revealed the vent she had hidden behind her. It was a small grate, big enough for one of the younglings to crawl through maybe, if that was the reason she noticed it. But as he got closer, he saw that it overlooked, what he believed to be, the vast Great Hall of the Jedi temple.

He couldn't even enjoy the majesty of it—the towering statues or aurebesh carvings that lined the ancient walls, or the way that the rising sun streamed in and made the marble pillars sparkle—because it was full of the dead. Jedi and Clones alike. And there was a whole legion of clone troopers spread throughout the hall, armed and ready for any living Jedi to be taken care of as they attempted to escaoe.

"Turns out these tunnels weren't such a bad idea, after all," Eddie stated lightly.

"Watch," Thalia hissed.

Two cloaked figures strode through the hall then, from the far threshold that led into the depths of the temple, back towards the steps that led out to Coruscant.

A cloud of darkness seemed to follow them, as dark as the cloaks that they wore. Eddie could feel it, even from the distance, with half of the Great Hall and the thick marble walls separating them. It slithered up his throat, grabbed him, choked him.

But he couldn't look away.

One of the figures stopped and surveyed the devastation, and they toed at the leg of a nearby body, before cackling. Twisted hands raised towards the sky in vile jubilation, and then returned to their limp position before the hooded figure.

"Good, Anakin, good," the familiar, rasping voice echoed through the hall. The other figure dropped to one knee, and dropped their head in deference. "You have done well, my new apprentice. Now, go and bring peace to our Empire."

Eddie felt a chill in recognition. He knew that voice. Everyone knew that voice—

Chancellor Palpatine...The Emperor.

—And he knew that name. Or maybe he didn't, not really. Not at all.

Anakin Skywalker, one of the greatest heroes of the republic.

Eddie recoiled from the vent and shook his head.

"No," he forced out through gritted teeth. "No. It can't be."

"I thought so, too," Thalia said sadly, and when she finally turned to look at him, he saw tears dripping down her cheeks. Kriff, he felt his own tears begin to sting the corners of his eyes. "But it was true."

Anakin Skywalker. General Skywalker. The poster boy of the Republic. The Hero With No Fear. How many interviews had he done on the HoloNet, how many times had Eddie and his friends hero-worshipped Anakin alongside his fellow Jedi? How many times had Eddie considered spending the few measly credits of allowance he got from Wane on a war bond just because Anakin's face had been plastered on every screen in the Terrace?

"He wouldn't betray the Jedi."

"He did."

"He was a hero."

"He was seduced by the Dark Side."

"He wouldn't do that...the Jedi were his family. His friends."

Then there was an echo in the air, as Thalia spoke to him through the Force.

"Anakin betrayed his friends. And so did I."

He was about to ask for clarification when was thrown from the tunnel, and the world swirled around him. Images flashed before his eyes of the ragtag group of kids climbing out of a filthy pipe in The Works on Coruscant. Their slow trek across the city to CoCo Town where they found refuge at a diner. Dex's Diner. The days and weeks that they stuck together to care for each other.

He felt like he was going cross-eyed at the sheer speed and volume of the information being filtered directly into his mind; it was almost painful, and Thalia was in control. He didn’t understand what she was trying to convey, until he followed her younger self through the day her world changed.

The moments leading up to it were deceptively quick. A day as uneventful as any, as she volunteered to venture out alone and find supplies. But she’d made a stupid mistake. Sympathetic to the cries of the younglings who missed the only home they’d ever known, she’d ventured back to the Temple through the tunnels they’d escaped through to fetch belongings that couldn’t be replaced. And upon her return? She was chased down winding streets by the Coruscant Security Forces and captured.

Then he was in a room, lit by only a faint, red light emanating through the grated floors. He couldn’t move, no matter how much he thrashed and shook. His arms and legs were locked in place; he could see Imperial interrogation droids floating in his peripheral vision, and a scan grid hanging menacingly overhead, waiting to be lowered onto him.

“Let me go!” He tried to yell, but the voice that came from his mouth was not his, but Thalia’s. “Help! Help me!”

A blast door opened and clone troopers filed in, along with a ghastly figure dressed in black and red. A Pau’an male who looked sickly and monstrous, but grinned menacingly as he approached. 

“You’ll tell us where they are,” he droned in a terrible voce. “It. Is. Inevitable.”

More images flashed before Eddie’s eyes, of this same man. Healthy and friendly, Hen-ri, a Jedi Temple Guard that had known Thalia and her friends; how had he become…this thing? Corrupted by the Empire? A slayer of the Jedi, instead of a protector of them.

Just like Anakin had been.

“You’re gonna have to kill me,” he…Thalia…spat.

“If that’s what it takes,” he droned and waved to the troopers.

He couldn’t dwell on his emotions for much longer because pain was the only thing he felt. Shocks and burns from the scan grid, injections from the floating interrogation droids. 

They starved her, beat her.

Until she begged them, whimpered for them to stop.

Until she gave them the location of her friends.

Eddie felt the hot, burning pain in his heart as he felt the words fall from her lips; for a second, he couldn’t blame her, as his head drooped weakly and the world went dark.

But when his eyes opened again…there stood a beaten and bloody Steev standing across from him. Across from Thalia. He was being held back by troopers, Jedi robes drenched in blood, as he thrashed and screamed and bared his teeth.

Thalia blinked once. Twice. And then her gaze shifted back down at the ground, and saw the bodies of the children–the younglings and R'sshekh–strewn about the floor. Dead.

There was a flash of light, burning and hateful and shockingly red.

And Eddie was thrown from her body as she screamed, as chaos reigned as her control of the Force became untethered. The sight of the walls of the room caving in on themselves was last thing he saw before he returned back to the real world.

He gasped for breath as he was shoved back into his body in the escape pod. Back with Thalia, the real Thalia, older and wearier and with blue hair. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he immediately rubbed his eyes to get them to stop.

He felt sick, the images of those kids burned into his eyelids. The sound of Steev and Thalia’s screams echoed in his ears.

"What was that?" He barked out the demand, voice scathing and viscous. "Why did you show me that?"

Thalia pulled her hand back to her lap; she cradled it in the other hand, as though she was protecting it from further harm.

Maybe she was...but not harm to herself. Harm to him. Harm that she caused him; he still felt the phantom pains of her torture. And he didn't want to snap at her again, after feeling the barrage of her anguish, but he did.

"Thalia!" She jumped at his bark. He demanded answers. "Why?"

"Because you had to know!" She snapped back at him. "I betrayed them."

"You...you survived." He shook his head incredulously. "You had to survive, you were just a kid too. But why would you show me that way?" he questioned. He got to his feet and stood over her. "Why would you take me though the day that the order fell...and then..."

"How else could I tell you about the most shameful days of my life?" she asked, getting to her feet as well. "I've relive those days enough. Constantly. My mistakes. My weaknesses. You think I just survived? I…I chose to survive rather than die for those kids…for my friends. Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't die for your friends?"

She breathed heavily and stared directly into his eyes, daring him to lie to her. When he didn't answer, she grabbed the front of his jacket desperately.

"Your friends trust you. Just like my friends all trusted me. And I let them down."

"It's in the past," he muttered. "You have to move on. You can't fix it...can't change it."

"And that's exactly what I'm doing," she nodded. "It's what I do next...how I fix those mistakes...that's important.

"I showed you that day because I needed you to...to know. You found out what I am before I got the chance to tell you anything, Eddie. I wish...I wish I could've told you the truth but I needed to know I could trust you with all of it. You're still...you're still angry, still confused abut why I couldn't; I can sense it in you.

"But I need you to understand that the capability for betrayal lies with more than simply trusting someone. I betrayed my friends…I brought them to certain death, even though I said I would die for them. Which is why I did it this way, why I had to make sure I could trust you with my secrets before I revealed them to you."

Why would she do that? Why would it matter?

He was not a jedi. He was just a smuggler. He was nobody, nothing, a stranger. He wasn’t a part of her journey, wasn’t a part of anything. And she'd deliberately put him and his crew in danger. Even more danger, now that he knew that she'd escaped...not only the purge of the Jedi Order, but the clutches of the Empire itself.

So why had this experience shaken him as badly as it did?

He took a breath, swallowed, and steeled himself; he still wasn't comfortable with Thalia being able to read him as easily as she was able to.

"Well, thanks for trusting me with that," he said dismissively. "It's been nice to meet the real you, Thalia. It'll just be a few more days until we'll arrive on Coruscant and you'll be on your way."

"Eddie, please—" She stared at him with pleading eyes but he refused to look, refused to understand what it was she was trying to convey.

"And you don't have to worry about me or any of my crew keeping this a secret. We know how to keep our mouths shut."

"But that isn't enough," Thalia snapped.

"What do you want then?" He shook her hands off of him and stomped out of the escape pod. "Do you want...absolution? Is that what you're looking for? You can't forgive yourself? Well newsflash, I can't forgive you either; I don't even know you. You know what? You want my help? I've heard there are cults in the Unknown Regions who do things like that. We can change course right now."

"I need you to listen to me!"

"I think I've heard enough!"

There were aggressive beeps and the sound of footsteps walking down the ramp to the lower deck.

"What's going on down here?" Dayv demanded.

"It sounds like you let a bunch of Rancors fight," G'areth added.

D5-TN rolled over to Thalia and questioned if she was ok through a series of gentle whistles.

"If she's ok?" Eddie scoffed. "What about me? I'm your captain."

"Hey." Jeff crossed the short distance and slapped a hand on his shoulder then shook him a little bit. "It'll be ok, just take a few breaths. Why're you so upset?"

"Let Miss Mind Meld over there take you on a journey across time and space and you'll understand why I'm upset," Eddie scoffed and threw a hand out at Thalia. "But I'm sure if she did, you'd all want to toss her out into deep space. I think we were better off when she was still keeping secrets!"

"Did she tell you what's in that container?" Jeff asked.

"No!"

"I was about to, actually," Thalia cut in. Her brows were raised expectantly and she had her hands on her hips in a stance that, Eddie recognized, mirrored Steev's.

"Well, I wish you wouldn't," he told her weakly. "I can't deal with anymore...emotional turmoil today."

She muttered a few choice words under her breath and then began walking down to the cargo bay. D5-TN was hot on her heels, and Dayv and G'areth were soon to follow.

"C'mon," Jeff urged Eddie lightly. "It can't be worse than...whatever that was."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Eddie grumbled, but let his friend push him forward.

"The day the Republic fell," Thalia recounted as she stepped around the container, pressing seemingly unassuming panels at random intervals until a small panel slid aside and revealed a Datapad. "I led a bunch of younglings and initiates to safety. And a few weeks later, I was the reason they were captured and killed by the Empire. I would've died too...but...you know, when you witness something so harrowing as your friends dying...something inside of you dies, too."

She tapped the screen of the datapad over and over, typing long strings of code into it.

"I escaped and I honored my friends by surviving. But I vowed never to use the Force again. The thing about that is that the Force has other plans for you sometimes. So, a year ago...I was presented with a new...opportunity. Not only to live, but to do some good. To protect force-sensitive individuals, the way that I couldn't do when I was younger."

The front of the container hissed and then popped open. It slowly creaked forward, like a door.

"And so, I smuggle things...along with a network of other freelancers," Thalia continued, striding towards the front of the container. "Taking precious cargo, like this cargo, someplace safe."

She stopped at the opening and waved her hand towards herself.

"It's okay," she said softly. "You guys can come out now."

The crew of the Dragonborn stood frozen as almost a dozen figures emerged from the cargo container.

Two adults, a short togruta woman and a towering Nikto male. And then...kids.

Two adolescent togruta boys who hovered behind who was obviously their mother. And a little Zabrak girl who held the Nikto's hand. A twi'lek boy and girl, obviously siblings if their coloring gave them away; the older sister held the boy back when his eyes lit up at the sight of D5-TN. After them stomped out a short Theelin female with bright red hair and an awful attitude if the expression on her face was anything to go by.

And then humans. Run of the mill humans. A brother and sister who seemed to be bickering. And a tall girl who was probably more of an adult than a child, but her gangly limbs and round cheeks gave her more of a childish quality.

They all stopped and stood under the scrutiny of Eddie and his crew as Thalia went to each of them and reassured them that everything was safe and they were going to be ok.

"They have food and other supplies in there." She then turned to the group of smugglers. "And they've all traveled a long way, along this...thing...called the Hidden Path. To keep surviving Jedi and other force sensitives safe from the Empire. They could've been sent anywhere but they, unfortunately, got stuck with me for the last leg of their journey."

She held her hands out beside her, as if to say Here I am, take it or leave it.

Everyone turned and looked at Eddie then, who stood there in silent shock. He, of course, was a mess of conflicting emotions. Anger lingered, confusion, relief that this was what they were hauling across the galaxy, and then, deep down, fear. Because, as he had pointed out earlier, they were heading to Coruscant.

The seat of the Empire.

Teaming with Stormtroopers and, oh yeah, The Emperor.

And suddenly he wasn't just faced with the reality that Thalia was the one they had to keep safe from possibly being found. But all of these people, too. People he hadn't even realized had been on his ship.

People who were packed into that container like a can of burra fish.

He couldn't put any words to what he was thinking, so he simply raised a hand to cover his mouth, and he shook his head...confused.

"I have some friends and a ship waiting for me on Coruscant to take them to their final stop on the journey," Thalia explained. "To this planet...Bogano. It's an abandoned planet that Master Cordova had...rediscovered. Before the fall of the Order. Before the Purge. The only others who knew about it were his assistant...and his datapad. Both of which are conveniently on this ship."

She smiled a cheeky little smile at her own joke, then went somber.

"Master Cordova...well, he's one of the Jedi who are still unaccounted for. But...I have hope."

The gangly girl laid a comforting hand on Thalia's shoulder and gave her a shaky smile.

"We have hope, too," she said softly.

Thalia patted her hand thankfully and then looked back at the guys.

At Eddie, specifically.

"It's not much," she said with a sense of finality. "But it's a start to fix what it is I did...all those years ago. I have a list of people that can be saved, and I will do everything in my power to save them. To honor the ones I couldn’t."

"Wait a damn minute," G'areth piped up, voice laden with confusion. "If you had another ship...a crew on Coruscant, why couldn't they have just met up with you and the Assob's on Nar Shaddaa? Taking these guys straight to this...Bonago."

"Bogano," Thalia corrected him.

"Whatever." G'areth rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, and does this really mean we're not gonna get paid?" Jeff added.

"You're going to get paid," Thalia assured him.

"Then I don't see why we need to ask anymore questions," he joked. "We're on course to Coruscant, end of story."

"Well, I wanna know," Eddie finally spoke. He stepped out of the group with his friends and eyed each of the newcomers—if you could call them that—aboard the ship, then at Thalia. "I want to know why you needed our help with this. Why you sought me and my crew to help you haul a bunch of...runaways halfway across the galaxy, incognito. Instead of using your own ship. Your own crew."

"They're not really my crew," Thalia argued, but Eddie's brows jumped as high as they could and he grit his teeth impatiently as he waited for an answer. "Alright. I did my research, I sought you guys out. I sought you out, Eddie, because these kids...are not the only people I'm trying to keep safe from the Empire. They're not the only Force sensitives I'm trying to save."

She took a step closer to him, putting them practically nose to nose, and dropped her voice low.

"You told me on Outpost 86 that you'd always dreamed of a day that the Jedi would come and tell you that you belonged with them. That they'd take you away from your miserable, boring life," she whispered.

His heart dropped into his stomach, anticipating what she might say next.

Still, he had the audacity to whisper back, "I don't think I used the word miserable."

Thalia, of course, scoffed and rolled her eyes.

Then she said, "Eddric Reckless Moonsun. Consider yourself rescued."

Next Chapter: When Ambush Comes to Shove (2/25 at 7PM CST)

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[clopinasworld]

Connor checking himself out in mirrors

+ Bonus

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

"Jason was the happy robin" this, "jason was the angry robin" that. Let's all be fully honest here Jason was the lonely robin

[myokk]

“She’s tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me”😤😤😤

(Regency AU with Eloise and Sebastian inspired by my slow trek through Bridgerton these days & @bassicallymaestra ‘s AMAZING regency inspired art😮‍💨😇🙏)

[words-writ-in-starlight]

just saw ur post about the odyssey and how fucking cool your mom was about it and um. almost cried! i love her please let her know how cool she is next time you talk to her. or like. thank her for being cool about this specific thing, i guarantee it'll make her day. wahh i love it when a parent encourages the weird shit their kid is into, not every parent is like that!! that's just SO GREAT, man

My mother is THEEEEE biggest nerd I know and I'm seeing her in two days to play D&D so that I can try to kill her and my partners with vampires. I had to interrupt my Odyssey tirade on Christmas to tell her to wait with her LOTR rant to see if I covered her point (actually I think I said "give me a fucking minute, I'm making a point here") and she immediately cracked up and went "I am SO proud of you actually" and I think it confused my in-laws even more than the fact that I had an Odyssey tirade locked and loaded. When I was a kid she told me that if I didn't like LOTR then I had to lie to her for the rest of her life. She fucking rules.

[bonebabbles]

I keep starting and abandoning posts that go into my drafts, as I try to stay tasteful about how fucking revolted this part makes me. Like, I'm legitimately unsure if the very relevant trauma I have is making me see things that aren't here

But first we see that Star Flower is trying to ingratiate herself to the group, just after she reappears from chapter 5. Chapter 5 is about how Clear Sky is still abusive towards his son, and she comes in after stroking his ego, stressing how alone she is, and appealing to how she'll be loyal unlike his child. (She glances over at Thunder, directly implying this.)

Now in Chapter 9, she's babysitting and trying to care for Milkweed's kits (in spite of discomfort from Milkweed), taking a wet sleeping space away from the others, and pulling more than her own weight "without complaint." Putting herself through harsh sitations to prove her worth.

All while trying to appear extra attractive to Thunder, and later Clear Sky. Basically every man in power who can "protect her"

Like, am I going fucking crazy? With how we later find out that Star Flower was "promised as a mate" to One Eye's subordinate Slash, is... is that hypersexualization? One of the extremely stigmatized symptoms of sexual abuse?

She goes to find Clear Sky alone to throw herself at his paws, and he's very quickly attracted to how she promises to perfectly obey him, have no needs of her own, and finally be the perfect servant that he desires

"I don't deserve your trust because I am dirt. I understand you because I also regret something. I'd die for you. I'll never betray you unlike those who have."

This isn't manipulation. She means this. The story is playing their romance sincerely. She's comparing "betraying" Thunder by telling her own father about an assassination ambush to Clear Sky's history of child abuse, physical assault, and murder

She believes she's on the same level as this; a monster who murdered a childhood friend in a fit of entitled rage. She was a victim of One Eye who really believes that the way her father used her means she "understands" this monster, deserves this treatment.

And Clear Sky LIKES that.

He likes that she will have COMPLETE FAITH in him. That she will follow him WITHOUT QUESTION. That she will OBEY his orders. That's fucking verbatim, that's THE TEXT!!!

WHILE HE'S STILL CRYING ABOUT "ive tried to atone every day" FOLLOWING THE LAST TWO BOOKS WHERE THE ONLY SHITTY THING HE DOESN'T DO IS MURDER INNOCENT WOMEN

Am I insane?? Am I wrong??? Am I missing something here???? Why the fuck is the fandom takeaway "haha sexy girl steals his dad." Did I read the same book