#because she knows the kid's not at fault. but she loathes with her entire soul the fact that she IS and HAS to be a mother. forever | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

masterweaverx · 4 years ago

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RWBY Parents from Best to Worst

That’s right, everybody, I’m a-going to rank how terrible these people are to and for their kids! For the sake of covering as many parents as I can, I am defining ‘parent’ as either ‘legal guardian’ or ‘the one that gave birth to you’, and excluding relationships that are explicitly something else. That does mean that we’re going to miss out on some very important people, though, so before we begin, let’s have some Honorable Mentions!

Yang Xiao Long and Winter Schnee: Professional Momsisters

“That’s why big sisters come first, to protect the ones that come after.” I don’t know who said that to these two, if anybody actually did, but it’s a quote that most definitely applies to them. Not only would they take a bullet (or a sword, or a fireball) for their younger siblings, they took the time out to give them affection and training that they needed when their own parents weren’t quite doing the job. If I absolutely had to rank one of them as the better momsister, I’d say Yang, but that’s really only because Yang had less to deal with overall; a depressed single dad not being able to pull himself together just doesn’t stack up with an abusive powermonger, a self-loathing drunkard, and all the institutional bigotry and pressure of Atlas. Plus, you know, Winter went into the military for a bit. Still, pretty good track record considering!

Klein Sieben: Doing the work of seven good dads

Look, there is only one reason Klein wasn’t listed before the momsisters, and that reason is that he is technically the hired help (and could therefore become the fired help). He is, hands down, a better surrogate parent than Yang and Winter, providing guidance and care to all the Schneeblings and very effectively undoing the damage Jacques Gele (HE DOES NOT GET TO BE CALLED SCHNEE!) did to them. And he even helped out Willow! If he was allowed to do more, he would absolutely be My Real Dad of the year.

Qrow Branwen: “The only one that gets to be sad in this house is me!”

Qrow has a lot of flaws. Like, so so many flaws. As Yang said in a noncanon spinoff, he’s cool but not exactly a role model. Thing is, you don’t have to be a role model to be a good parent--you just have to make sure your kids (or nieces in this case) get good advice and the opportunity to grow into the best versions of themselves they can be. And when Qrow’s not beating himself up or drowning his sorrows, he’s actually very good at helping Yang and Ruby. Honestly the only reason he’s not on the actual list is because he’s technically not a parent.

Uncle Copper: Adopting a blind kid automatically makes you cool

So here we have a character that appeared in a single flashback in the novels, but from what we do know he was pretty likely to be a good guy. Like, raising a blind kid is hard enough; raising a blind kid in a desert after their actual parents got nommed by sand is so, so much more difficult. And yet, this guy said ‘If nobody else is going to adopt this kid I will!’ and by all measures he was a very caring and loving guy. Also, shout-out to the tribe, who took Fox in after Copper got killed by some maniac (and also killed said maniac). Fox has had a rough life, but it’s been filled with supportive people. Not everyone can say that.

Starr Sanzang: She put up with Sun

Sure, she’s only had one scene in one novel, but Starr showed patience and caring and... probably did a lot to make sure Sun stays as aggressively cheery and patient as he is. Plus she’s got a dojo in Vacuo now... okay, I’ll be honest, I don’t know nearly enough about her to really assess her. Still, as far as cousins go, Sun Wukong could do a lot worse. And there are the implications of their motifs to factor in...

Rhodes: If you’d done even just a little bit more--!

So, reasonably, what would you do when you see a little girl enslaved with a shock collar? Would you (A) get the girl out of there, (B) arrest the woman doing it, (C) try to get the girl therapy, or (D) all of the above? If you picked (E) secretly train the girl in swordplay so she can join a huntsman academy when she comes of age, then congratulations! You’ve given her hope! Good for you! And what if she snaps after five years of literal torture, kills her abuser, and then turns to you for comfort and/or approval? Welp, obviously she’s an irredeemable criminal and you have to bring her in, crushing all the faith she had in you and herself.

Seriously Rhodes, dropped the ball hard on that one. I’m only mentioning you because you had such a serious impact on Cinder’s development.

Brother Gods: Creating and destroying entire species

Like, okay. Look. These are the two that made humanity, so an argument could be made that they’re humanity’s parents. But, by the strict and arbitrary rules I have selected, they aren’t parents. And even if they were, they would be just the worst sort of parents possible. Darkbro is bad enough, what with viewing only strength as valuable and creating the Grimm and, you know, annihilating humanity that one time, but he’s at least honest and honorable. Not like the cryptic Lightbro, who doesn’t bother making sure people understand him, who doesn’t even keep his own promises to his brother... I get that they’re basically overpowered children. Yeah, they are. Still... kinda terrible.

So, now that that’s all done, let’s get to the actual list! After the break, so you don’t get stuck scrolling a lot. RWBY parents, from best to worst, are as follows:

23. Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc: Two moms are better than none!

If I’m rating all the parents, and I am, then I have to acknowledge their flaws. And... these two don’t have any! Okay, fine, they used Adrian in a criminal scheme that one time (and that was literally just asking him to cry on command) and maybe Terra’s overworked and, to be fair, parenting a young kid is a lot different than parenting a teenager. But not only did they support their kid, they helped out all the kids that needed to room with them for a while! Saphron may also qualify as a momsister, depending on how well the Arcs managed their massive-numbered horde of kids. Look, the point is: Excellent parents. Bam.

22. Yatsuhashi's Parents: Their slipups weren’t their fault

When your kid can wipe your memories and you don’t know about it, you’re bound to get a few mistakes down the line. Luckily for everyone, after the whole incident with Hiyoko Yatsu came clean, and his parents made absolutely sure that he understood (A) that having such an ability was a big responsibility and (B) that even though he really screwed up he was NOT evil. Given the man that Yatsuhashi is now, I’m pretty confident in calling them great parents--even if they only appeared in a book flashback.

21. Coco's Dad: He exists!

That’s... honestly all I really know about him. He’s mentioned once in the books, and Coco has a few brothers. I’m kind of just assuming he’s a good parent from that, even if he didn’t figure out how to help Coco with her claustrophobia. So... yeah, shrug, Coco’s got a dad.

20: Ghira and Kali Belladonna: Actually marvelous people

Loving. Caring. Mentoring, protective. You may be asking why these two aren’t lower on the list, given that they are absolutely great for Blake, and I’ll have to admit that they only really made one slipup--letting Adam talk with Blake.

And okay, look. The thing about people like Adam is that they don’t start out showing their true colors. It’s always a slow, gentle broil. Blake was young and stupid, Adam was cute and edgy, and these parents want their daughter to be happy. So not twigging on what Adam really was--or at least not being able to properly convince Blake--that’s entirely understandable. And they did instill her with a strong enough moral code to leave when enough was enough, and they absolutely welcomed her back with open arms. Frankly, if the lower-listing parents didn’t exist, I would happily say they are the best parents in the show.

19. Pietro Polendina: He took Penny’s death flags

When you carve out part of your literal soul to bring your girl back from the dead, you get MAJOR parenting props. And even beyond that, Pietro is an absolutely caring and supportive father to everyone’s favorite bundle of sunshine. Even when she’s put in the rough position she was in, Pietro did his best to help her out. His one big flaw, though, is being overprotective and a bit presumptive. He does want Penny to live her best life, but he also can be just a touch too quick to say he knows what’s best for her. To his credit, when he’s called out on it, he does mend his ways. And he’s at least better then the GENERAL...

18. Salem and Ozma: Good parents, surprisingly!

Sure, Salem decided that world conquest was a good idea and wanted to put down anybody that wasn’t directly from her bloodline. Sure, she psychologically manipulated her husband when he had doubts. And, being fair, it’s highly likely that her four daughters were killed in the crossfire of her and Ozma’s little tuff. But! That was likely an accident, she’s been shown to still clearly mourn their passing, and before that point she absolutely loved and adored the girls. Ozma gets points for being a generally good person who fell in love with her before she became unstable and, honestly, was just trying to help his girls escape... and hey, he blames himself for their deaths. As does Salem.

Just because they’re kind of directly responsible for a LOT of Remnant’s woes doesn’t mean they aren’t good parents!

17. Will and Meg Scarlatina: Estranged but loving...

Yes, I know Rooster Teeth hasn’t officially confirmed that Bill is Will. I still believe though! Also it makes for a great picture, in any case.

Look, you can be the best and most loving parents ever--and from what we saw in the novels Will was definitely loving--but if you split up, your kid is going to get a little stressed. And hey, it’s not like these two were terrible people! Velvet’s just got a lot going on because of things entirely out of her control. Parents are people too, but sometimes the stress of one situation will leak out into another. Just... give people time to adapt.

16. Nicholas Schnee: The man, the legend, the titan!

Nicholas Schnee is the rockstar success story of Remnant. Some guy from Mantle put in all the work to make the SDC, and honestly from what little we know about him he was probably a great guy! But if we’re registering parental goodness, well... he wasn’t quite smart enough to warn Willow away from abusive gold diggers, and he’s not present when the story starts. So, yeah, even if he was a good parent otherwise--and I think he would be--he kinda... didn’t put in the work to prevent Willow breaking later. Still. Not deliberately terrible!

15. Li and An Ren: Don’t die in front of your kids, folks!

Seriously, it traumatizes them, especially if there’s a Grimm assault going on at the same time. Oh, double-especially if you reassure them that everything will be fine literally the second before the roof collapses on your head. And... well, okay, you couldn’t help your son and some random girl being the only survivors...

In all seriousness, that whole situation was absolutely out of their control. And before their deaths they were shown to be loving, wise, giving good advice to Lie Ren and helping him understand what the right thing to do was. Honestly, if they hadn’t died in front of him he’d be a lot better, mentally speaking. His trauma is not their fault. Plus Li went out distracting the big Grimm so Lie could run. No greater love hath man, indeed.

14. Summer Rose: Loving mother, ticking trauma bomb

When she was around, Summer Rose was probably the best mom Yang and Ruby could ask for. Sure, everyone could be exaggerating a little on how great a person she was--fond memories and grief can do that--but even taking that into account, she was probably a great and wonderful woman to be raised by. And hey, it turns out the reason she vanished was to go confront basically the Devil Herself so her kids wouldn’t have to live in a world where she existed! I can totally get the logic behind that.

And to be fair, “I’m going to do this on my own so nobody else suffers” is a pretty common character flaw among the RWBY cast. There are entire arcs where each character learns to overcome it. Still, wandering off on your lonesome without telling anyone was not the smartest move, Summer. Especially if you expected to die--which, you know, Devil Herself, high probability. And you know, if you had died, that would be bad enough, but now Ruby’s practically certain to have to fight your grimmified self. At least she figured out what happened to you before Salem decided to hammer in the trauma button, so she’ll be a little more ready, but... seriously.

13. The Arc Parents: Look, you try juggling eight kids!

To be fair, neither Arc parent has appeared on screen, but we can derive some of their traits from their kids. Jaune’s father said women like confident men. Jaune’s mother said strangers are friends you haven’t met yet. Jaune’s sister moved out of the house and (it’s implied) was happier for it. Jaune himself took his family’s ancestral weapon and ran off to Beacon to become a hero without any training whatsoever....

I get the impression that these two are not horrible parents, but they aren’t really stellar ones either. They slip up, don’t understand their children, give some really bad advice (as well as really good advice), and... look, it’s kind of middle of the road here. The Arcs could be wonderful people that just weren’t ready for the complexities of raising eight kids. I come from a big family myself, I know it can be stressful. And their kids turned out well anyway, so...

12. The Mother of Pyrrha Nikos: You taught your girl too well

Hero complexes are funny things. And Pyrrha Nikos... in retrospect, she was really hiding a lot of insecurities under that facade. Laying it all at this woman’s feet is unfair, I’ll admit, a lot of that came from being The Mistral Champion. But... with stories and fairy tales of heroes, it’s not hard to imagine a genuinely loving mother making sure her daughter knew right from wrong, always knew to act with mercy and protect the weak, and made her hardline into being a hero at the cost of her own... sense of self. It wouldn’t even be something either of them noticed, really. Good people can make bad choices sometimes.

11: Ilia's Parents: Oh god, can good people make bad choices...

So the idea of getting Ilia up to Atlas for a better life, that rocks (if you assume the propaganda to be true). And I’m certain her parents absolutely did what they did out of love. But what they did, you see, was tell Ilia to hide a very important part of herself from anybody who could find out, since it was likely she would be kicked out of the school she was in if people found out she was a faunus.

Which actually, did a lot of damage.

I mean look at Ilia now! She has trouble expressing herself until she explodes, she follows a crowd instead of her own morals, she broke down in tears when she finally did the right thing... Conceal Don’t Feel is never good advice, and these two went on and said ‘Honey, because of racism, you have to hide the fact you literally change color when you have emotions.’ Oh, and then they died offscreen--again, not their fault, but boy howdy did it give Ilia a complex.

10. Taiyang Xiao Long: Slumped at just the wrong time

Honestly, Tai as he is now is a wonderful dad. Supportive of his daughters in their time of need, able to lift their mood with a tasteless joke or two, frankly if we were assessing just how they were in the moment... I’d still be a little critical of his refusal to talk about the girls’ mothers, but hey, that’s minor. Compared to, you know...

Okay, so this needs serious addressing. Taiyang cannot be blamed for falling into a depressive slump. People can hurt, and need time to heal. That said, his depressive slump is at the root of Yang’s many issues, and frankly if she hadn’t had to pull herself together for Ruby she would be a major mess. It’s a bad situation all round, even if it’s not his fault.

9. Willow Schnee: “Kids, don’t wind up like me.”

Drowning her sorrows isn’t the best way to handle being stuck in an abusive marriage, but it was the best way Willow could think of. And, yeah, that really cut into her skills as a mom... but despite that, she did her darnedest to make sure her kids had what they needed to free themselves. Heck, once Jacques was out of the picture, she even pulled herself together and risked her life to save them! A broken women, to be sure, but not a shattered one.

8. Neptune's Mother: She exists!

Being fair, there’s not a lot to go on here. We know Neptune’s mother is a lawyer (insert evil lawyer joke), that their family are famous swimmers, and that his brother caused his hydrophobia by tossing him into the water. It does paint a bit of a picture, though, of everyone having expectations for Neptune that he was not able to live up to. Pretty poor parenting, if it’s true.

7. Nora Valkyrie's Mom: Come get your girl!

Literally the only factoid we have about Mama Valkyrie is that she abandoned her to the Grimm. We don’t know when this was, and it’s feasible it’s a case of ‘Oh No I Lost Track Of My Daughter In The Panic!’ But given we see young Nora scavenging for scraps of food... I’m not optimistic on her parenting skills.

6. Raven Branwen: "I wasn’t part of your life, how could I ruin it?”

Raven is just not a good mom at all. And, surprisingly, she seems to know it. Or that’s one interpretation of her character. The thing about Raven is that she plays her cards close to chest. We still don’t know why she left her daughter, and we only have inklings about the reasoning behind her behavior once they reunited. In the end, though... she did concede to Yang, she did apologize for something, and there’s a very deliberate indication that a lot of her behavior is a mask to both others and herself. So, terrible mother, for the moment, but self-aware.

5. Salem's Father: Explicitly noted as cruel

We get a bit more about Salem’s father from ‘Fairy Tales Of Remnant’, how he became possessive of the last remnant of his wife and locked her away in a tower. From what we know of him, that’s all he did--lock her away and not let her go. Still makes him a terrible dad. And with this, we transition firmly into the most definitively abusive parent figures. Everyone before this might have the excuse of not realizing what was going on or having their own damage, but now we’ve got parents actively deciding to make their kids’ lives worse.

4. Jacques Gelé: HE DOES NOT GET TO BE CALLED SCHNEE!

His children are property, to be manipulated and traded for the benefit of the company he married into, and any defiance is to be quelled instantly. He is manipulative, scheming, abusive, and frankly the worst sort of scumbag to ever wear a white suit. He does have the single redeeming quality of only leaning into the punishment if it benefits him; nobody would ever accuse the man of being needlessly cruel. His name is Jacques, and you will hate him... especially on the rare occasions he actually has a point.

3. The Marigolds: There’s no peppy tagline, they’re just mean

There’s not a picture of these jerks on the wiki, so you’ll have to make do with the woman that is no longer their daughter. See all that empty space around her? That’s about as close as they ever got. May spells out how much they hated her for having a heart, and how little they cared about her as a person, in one epic line. And even if they have other redeeming qualities (unlikely) we can tell they’d probably still be terrible parents because of how sleazy May’s cousin is. Honestly, for once I’m glad some characters don’t get pictures. They don’t deserve to be remembered. They aren’t even the cool kind of evil, they’re just... gross.

2. Marcus Black: Look if you train your kid to be a killer...

...you’re going to have to expect them to kill you. I mean, you basically ripped apart Mercury’s legs, man. He had to get cyberlegs. Also, you used your semblance to steal his. Which, given that semblances come from aura, and that aura is a manifestation of the soul, is kinda... that’s a deeply personal and intimate violation. Sure, you got your assassin kid. And can we talk about the fact that Marcus was an assassin? It’s not a pretty job. I guess I can see all the abuse--physical and mental--as a good way to train up another assassin, but... geeze, if that’s your goal, why did you use your own kid?! Why not hire some angsty teenager?! Yeah, no, Markus Black stood high on my list of parental monsters... and was only toppled by the arrival of one other.

1. Madame of the Glass Unicorn: She only appeared in one episode and she rocketed to the top of this list, that should tell you something

Let’s be clear here: What Madame did to Cinder is bad enough. It was literally slavery. Enforced by a shock collar. And because the collar looked like a necklace, she pulled it off in front of I don’t know how many clients. Granted, said clients were racists, why else would they be customers at a ‘We Do Not Serve Faunus’ hotel, but keeping her torture just out of the public eye very clearly shows both that she knew what she was doing was illegal and that she was clever enough to avoid detection.

Oh... and then there are her birth daughters.

With Cinder, she was abusive to a dangerous degree. With her daughters, she was permissive, not only allowing but encouraging them to bully their adoptive sister. The whole point of parenthood is to teach your children how to become the best version of themselves, but Madame didn’t even bother to instill a semblance of morality in these girls. She used them as extensions of her will, and they obliviously played along because that was all they knew.

You’d think the biggest monster on the show would be the Grimm woman, but no--it’s some random lady with a hotel.

#RWBY #Analysis #Ranking #I had the urge to make this #Feel free to disagree #Some of this is opinion-based

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ahgaseda · 4 years ago

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aura | three

driving me crazy, look in my eyes, follow me, come here, dance with me now, I’m gonna make you feel like that...

summary : back again at a camp for kids that can’t behave, you are still brokenhearted over your ill-fated romance with Jaebeom, until your friend Jackson offers to help make your ex jealous in exchange for helping him land the most unattainable girl at camp.

warnings : strong profanity, explicit dialogue, recurring alcohol or recreational drug use, graphic sexual content, brief mentions of illegal activities, potentially triggering elements involving toxic relationships and emotional manipulation, etc.

miniseries chapters : one / two / three / four / five / six / seven

Every step down the path was slowed by dread and anxiety. The auditorium sat on a small hill, looming over the rest of the camp, and the sight made your stomach turn each time you laid eyes on it.

Such an unassuming building and yet it still shot nerves through you.

Entering through the double doors, you were blasted by air conditioning, which was a bit excessive with the crisp morning air. You simpered when you made eye contact with a few of the other campers. It was a small group, as to be expected for these little sessions.

Then, your gaze shifted to the wall where Jaebeom was leaning back and had just looked up at the sound of the door opening.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you groaned, wanting to march right back out. Fate was such a cruel bitch.

Jaebeom cocked his head at your reaction, following you with his eyes, and asked sweetly, “Sleep well?”

“Yes,” you replied, curt, avoiding his stare.

Jaebeom shifted closer and whispered, “Did you think of me last night?”

If only you knew how you had filled his thoughts and dreams. Those kisses in the pool still made his heart race.

Smirking with a chance to torment him, you retorted, “Not even once. My mind is full of Jackson and how good his head looked between my thighs.”

Jaebeom frowned, the blood draining from his face. Hearing about your escapades with Jackson made him insane, like being dragged through pieces of broken glass.

“That bastard,” Jaebeom huffed under his breath.

Your arrogance faded and you turned somber. Part of you realized that you were giving yourself away to spite him. It was like trying to heal a burn by directly applying more fire.

Doctor Ambrose stepped inside, greeting everyone with her signature smile. “Good morning. Are we ready to begin?”

No one was. Not one of these poor souls wanted to discuss their daddy or mommy issues in group form. But it was mandated by the camp and having been attending for many years, you were accustomed to dodging.

You and the others followed Doctor Ambrose into the main auditorium, approaching a ring of folding chairs waiting on the stage. You swallowed the lump in your throat and avoided a look at Jaebeom as you took a seat.

This was the room where it happened - where you surrendered your virtuous flower. Blah, blah, blah, you thought to yourself. Eventually, you were going to have to come to terms with the fact you were less bitter about losing your virginity and more broken at having lost your heart.

The theater was the one place no one bothered to lock after curfew since it was solely used for group sessions and the occasional motivational speech, but if someone did remember to lock up, the door code was common knowledge. Guys went there to blaze up. Girls went to sneak drinks.

Jaebeom had brought you inside. The relationship had grown and was leading to a physical consummation of your feelings for each other. You knew exactly what would happen. After all, you had snuck out of your cabin in the middle of the night to meet a boy beneath the stars.

You let him lay you down on the stage, behind the heavy velvet curtain. Jaebeom at least had the wherewithal to put his jacket down for you to rest on.

You stole a glance of the shadow behind the curtain, not too far from where you sat, and your expression soured. You could still remember the rampant beating of your heart when Jaebeom kissed you with all he had and laid you down beneath him.

The memory raced across your mind in steady bursts. Your eyes burned at how gentle he had been with you, how loving. Jaebeom convinced you that he was madly in love and that there was a future between you and him.

And you were such a fool to believe it. You were over the moon thinking you had finally found love in the most unlikely of places. With someone you trusted. Someone you considered a friend.

Taking a deep breath, you were officially angry.

The time spent with Jackson had taken off the rose-colored glasses. You were able to see your affair with Jaebeom for what it was. And though you were still hopelessly in love with him, you were mad as hell for what he had done to you.

Doctor Ambrose called your name and began, “Let’s start with you. Why don’t you tell us the behavior that warranted your presence back at camp this year?”

You crossed your legs and sang, “Oh, where to begin, Doc? I lied. I cheated. I stole. Short of murder, my rap sheet is long.”

“You’ve been coming here for many years and you know that’s not what these sessions are about,” she chided, giving you a stern look. “Skip the bravado and get straight to the real talk.”

You narrowed your eyes. Ambrose always did hit the nail on the head. That’s why she was one of the few people at this godforsaken place that held everyone’s respect. Which was impressive in its own right since you and your fellow rich, troubled kids had very little respect for anyone.

But if Doctor Ambrose thought you were going to bear your soul to a room full of people that didn’t give a damn about you - Jaebeom included - she was sorely mistaken.

You sighed and continued, “I’m sure it’s common knowledge by now that I had a terrible lapse in judgement last summer and that lapse in judgement had a lot of unforeseen consequences.”

Jaebeom was unmoving in his seat, but his eyes were heavy on you.

Ambrose gave you her undivided attention and spoke softly, “Go on.”

You shrugged, hoping to hide just how miserably the words were coming from your mouth. “I lashed out. I cycled through all of my emotions and when they were too painful, I did something bad. Something that distracted me from how angry or hurt I was. Classic reckless human behavior.”

Her response was blunt, but genuine, “It’s called self-destructive behavior and you were punishing yourself for the pain someone else inflicted on you.”

You studied her, wanting to smack this woman across the face for defining you in a single sentence. “Forget psychiatrist,” you scoffed. “You’re a psychic.”

“I know you,” Ambrose said tenderly. “And you are not defined by your mistakes.”

You rolled your eyes, though you would love to believe that. “We all are, Doctor Ambrose,” you told her morosely. Then, your tone shifted, “Now, please take the spotlight off of me before I do something bad. Like I said, it’s what I’m known for.”

Ambrose exhaled loudly, conflicted, but decided not to push you. Turning to the next participant, she called, “Jaebeom, your turn.”

Jaebeom was still looking at you.

“Why don’t you tell us the activities that landed you back for yet another summer here?”

Jaebeom grumbled, “I’m a dick. The end.”

A few of the other attendees chortled.

“Jaebeom, everyone here knows you’re more complex than that,” Ambrose shot back.

“Am I?”

She cocked her head. “You don’t think so.”

“Ask her,” Jaebeom said, waving his hand in your direction. “Everyone knows what I did.”

You didn’t dare look at him, offering no absolution. You kept your gaze firmly rooted to Doctor Ambrose, who was now glancing between the two of you suspiciously.

Tapping her pen, Ambrose ordered, “After this group session I want to see both of you in my office.”

Your heart sank and you pleaded, “But, Doctor Ambrose…”

“Moving on,” she cut you off.

You folded your arms tightly across your chest in defiance, stiff in your seat. Jaebeom stretched out his legs and braced his arms on his thighs, keeping his head low.

Tuning out the conversations going around the circle of other campers discussing their toxic and sometimes illegal activities, you could only think about how angry you were. How it was billowing and growing inside of you until it threatened to burst.

Though Jaebeom was in the seat beside yours, he felt an entire world away. What had you done to him to deserve this? And for fuck’s sake, why couldn’t you stop loving him? If you fell in love with someone, couldn’t you ultimately fall back out?

Stealing a glance in the corner of your eye, Jaebeom looked up at that same moment and your eyes met. You looked away immediately, bitter and vengeful, but Jaebeom persisted. For someone who prided himself on being set in his ways, he couldn’t stand how you spun him on his edge.

You made him want to risk it all.

When the group session ended, Ambrose twirled the pen between her fingers and said, “I suppose we can forgo my office and just speak here.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” Jaebeom spoke up, venomous.

“I think there’s plenty,” she asserted, studying you intently. “Wanna tell me about it?”

Your eyes glistened when they met hers. You wanted to tell her she was right. That you had punished yourself for a year because you fell for a boy - the wrong boy. It was stupid. It was juvenile. And you resented yourself to hell and back for it.

“You wouldn’t understand,” you finally murmured, voice shaky.

She smiled, comforting. “Try me.”

Jaebeom could see you were about to crack. He could hear the weakness seeping into your words. Running a hand through his hair, he blurted out, “It’s my fault.”

Ambrose questioned levelly, “How so?”

“Be quiet,” you hissed.

“I fucked up,” Jaebeom confessed.

“Language,” she corrected loosely.

Jaebeom frowned. “I seduced her. I convinced her I was in love.”

“And were you?”

“No, I…,” Jaebeom trailed, like he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “I don’t know.”

You glared with nothing short of loathing at the floor.

Ambrose was putting the pieces together and she didn’t hesitate to scold, “What was your purpose, Jaebeom? What were you trying to achieve?”

Jaebeom paused a moment. Then, he finally admitted, “I was trying to get her into bed.”

Ambrose clocked a glance at you and said, “I’m assuming you succeeded.”

Your breaths came faster. Your heart was revving like the engine of Jackson’s blood red Corvette. Any minute you were going to explode.

“I went too far,” Jaebeom mulled, scratching his head. “I had never gone that far before, but I was addicted. I had no idea it would… I didn’t know she would…”

“You’re full of shit,” you snapped.

Doctor Ambrose called your name, giving you the same warning about profanity.

You leveled your scowl at Jaebeom, who had already bowed his head in submission or shame, and sneered, “I will never believe a word you say. You knew exactly what you were doing. You wanted someone to hurt as much as you hurt.”

Jaebeom still couldn’t meet your eyes. Pathetic, he thought to himself, but he couldn’t face your wrath. He couldn’t see the pain manifested on your beautiful face.

“Congratulations,” you continued, rising to your feet. “I know how you feel and I almost derailed my life because of you!”

Ambrose held out a hand amicably. “Please, sit.”

“No, I’m out of here,” you barked, gritting your teeth to keep the tears at bay. “And if you plan on physically making me stay in the same room with this asshole a minute longer, my stepfather’s attorneys would love to blow this shit wide open.”

Doctor Ambrose gave you a nod and sat back down.

Your steps echoed through the frigid silence of the auditorium and you nearly knocked the doors off their hinges when you pushed them open to escape outside.

When you had gone, Jaebeom exhaled heavily.

Ambrose looked at him. She could see the guilt weighing down his shoulders and though she didn’t want to take pity on him after what you had just revealed, compassion was a cornerstone of who she was as a person.

“Jaebeom, it goes without saying, but I’m going to say it,” Ambrose whispered for his ears only. “Breaking other people doesn’t fix you.”

Jaebeom stood to full height without another word and skulked away, hiding his teary eyes behind his long black hair.

“The nerve of that bitch! I know that she knows what happened last summer,” you vented, pacing back and forth in front of Jackson as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Everyone on the east coast knows by now. I had to hear about it for the first month of school on a daily basis!”

“I know,” Jackson replied patiently.

You tried to mimic the voices of the nosy, gossiping girls back home, “‘Can you believe she spread her legs for him? Did she really think he loved her? I thought she was smart. Turns out she’s a dumb whore like the rest of us!’”

Jackson grimaced. He remembered that morning, when you told him you slept with Jaebeom. You were so happy, so sure of what you wanted. And he knew it was going to unravel, leaving you holding all the pieces. “No one said that.”

“Everyone said that, Jacks! Admit it,” you yelled.

Of course, they did. Jackson had never threatened so many people in his life. Jackson had a lot of friends, but he only had one best friend. Whenever they spoke of you and Jaebeom, it made his skin crawl. Made his fists clench on instinct.

He was supposed to protect you.

Jackson rose from the bed, grasping your arms and staring you in the face. “Who cares what other people say? I sure as shit don’t!”

You cast your gaze down, shifting from angry to sad. “And he really sat there acting like he didn’t think I would take it so personally,” you whispered, trembling.

Jackson gathered you in his arms, squeezing tight. “He’s an idiot. It is known,” he quipped dryly.

You pulled back and sighed, “Maybe we should just fuck.”

Jackson frowned, but quickly hid his disappointment with a swift, “I’m not in the mood.”

You quirked a brow. “Seriously?”

Jackson released you and teased, “Yeah, I’m not a faucet.”

You let a smirk play at your lips and reached for his belt. “What if I…”

Jackson grabbed your wrists and chided you so sternly you almost faltered, “Listen. You are more than sex. You understand me?”

There were very few occasions Jackson reprimanded you and he always snared your full attention when it happened. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you murmured, “...Okay.”

Jackson simpered. “You don’t need to fuck. You need a hug.”

You chuckled, squeaking in surprise when he pulled you to his chest faster than you thought possible. You smiled, burying your face against his neck as he enveloped you in his embrace.

It was exactly what you needed.

You set your hands to his shoulders, feeling burly muscles underneath. Jackson always radiated heat and energy, and you were content to let him hold you forever. Jackson was warmth and safety.

He was home.

After a moment, you blurted to alleviate the tension, “Can we go get food?”

Jackson exclaimed, “I thought you’d never ask.”

The two of you walked arm in arm to the mess hall. It had been ungodly, the hour you woke to attend your group therapy session, but it meant you were starving for breakfast and the smell that hit your nose when you entered the dining room made you salivate on the spot.

Approaching the line, Jackson said, “Damn it. I forgot to tell you I’m sitting with Yeona today.”

“Oh,” you replied, remembering you didn’t get a chance to talk to him much after you had pounced on him. “I take it everything went well last night.”

“Yeah, we hit it off. I’m laying the groundwork.”

You rolled your eyes. Part of you was rooting in Yeona’s corner, that she stick to her guns and save herself for someone who loved her. The other part felt guilty as hell for being part of the same scheme that destroyed you last summer.

Pushing those thoughts aside, you told him, “I think I want some alone time to myself anyway. I’ll sit in the corner.”

Jackson eyed you worriedly. “Are you sure? I can totally blow her off.”

“Positive,” you insisted, beaming at the gesture. “Go with Yeona. You two would make a really cute couple.”

“Ha. Ha,” said Jackson in mock laughter.

Together you got your food and then parted in the aisleway. Yeona smiled when Jackson joined her by the window and you vaguely wished happiness for them. Jackson wasn’t like Jaebeom.

Maybe Yeona would be good for Jackson. She could help him work through his commitment issues. You had seen firsthand what his parents’ marriage had done to him. It was no surprise he broke off relationships as soon as they started to become serious.

Taking the empty table in the corner, you backed against the wall. Pulling a magazine out of your purse, you placed it next to your tray and opened to a random page, biting into your toasted bagel.

Jaebeom leaned against the adjacent door frame, hands in his pockets. He was sporting his trademarked leather jacket and his hair had strayed into his eyes while watching you.

He was at war with himself over what to say.

First and foremost he wanted to apologize, but Lim Jaebeom had way too much pride for that. Secondly, he considered offering you a better deal than whatever Jackson was giving you, but given your furor at the group session, Jaebeom knew better than to stoke your wrath again.

Jaebeom thought of all those times last summer when he caught himself staring at you. How could someone so beautiful and amazing be interested in the likes of him? You were confident and fearless, a little rough around the edges with a heart of gold. You were everything he aspired to be and you brought out the best in him without even knowing it.

By then, Jaebeom was in too deep. He could feel himself falling for you and he forbade himself from ever putting his heart on the line. And so he cut you loose.

Jaebeom remembered your face when he spoke those words. I never loved you. The joy left your face. The light fled your eyes. With four words, he had broken someone completely and it kept him awake at night.

Sex was a release for him. No more, no less. Jaebeom could fuck a girl and never see her again afterward, and it wouldn’t bother him for a second. After her - the woman that loved and left him - Jaebeom didn’t attach sex with emotion and certainly not intimacy or commitment.

Then, he had you. Suddenly, he wanted to wake up to you in the morning. He wanted to fall asleep in your arms every night. He didn’t fuck you… he made love to you. He felt passion for the first time in a long time. When it was over, he didn’t want to leave like he had always done. And that scared the shit out of him.

Jaebeom realized you had begun to heal him and he panicked.

Even now, Jaebeom wanted you back. He needed another chance. His first instinct was always to run when he felt emotions he didn’t understand, but he could fight back this time. He could change for you, couldn’t he?

When Jaebeom slid into the seat beside you, you weren’t the least bit surprised.

“What are you reading?” he asked nonchalantly, picking up the magazine and fanning the pages.

“Chick magazine,” you deadpanned. “There’s an article in there on Ten Ways to Achieve Female Orgasm. You should read it.”

Another snide jab at his bedroom skills. Jaebeom wrinkled his nose, but rebuffed you, “I only got one round with you. How do you know I couldn’t give you the best loving of your life?”

It was a provocative thought. You felt your heart stutter a little, but your mind was fully in control now, and you shot back, “Because I don’t think you know what love is.”

Jaebeom met your eyes and this time, you didn’t back down. “You know what I meant,” he huffed.

“So, I’m a mind reader now? Good to know,” you retorted, acerbic.

Jaebeom turned to you, leaning in and whispering, “Tonight. After curfew. Sneak out with me.”

You shook your head, mouth full of food. Swallowing, you told him coolly, “I have a regularly scheduled dick appointment with Jackson.”

“Cancel it,” Jaebeom said, appearing unaffected though it made him want to destroy Jackson a thousand times over. “I’ll have some wine. We can go to the lookout. You know, like old times.”

You scowled at him and yet, you wanted nothing more than to go back to those old times. Before you were stupid. Before you fell in love with him.

“Give me one good reason,” you hissed, taking a sip of your orange juice.

Jaebeom shifted, like the words pained him. More from pride than anything else. “I just want to talk to you. I miss you. As a friend.”

You didn’t say anything, but you shuffled your attention between him and Jackson. The latter was making Yeona laugh heartily and you felt a twinge of jealousy. Not from a place of malice, but a protectiveness over your best friend.

Jackson would tell you not to. He would tell Jaebeom to take a fucking hike.

Angling back to Jaebeom, you warned, “If you so much as grab my boob, I will kick you in the balls and leave you there.”

Jaebeom smiled, but quickly fought it. “That’s fair.”

“What time?”

“Eleven.”

You nodded. “Okay, I’ll meet you at the spot.”

Jaebeom rose and you were sad to see him go, but he added, “Nah, I will come to your cabin and get you. I don’t want you walking at night alone.”

You rolled your eyes. “Chivalry isn’t dead after all.”

Jackson stitched his brows, having listened to you recount the exchange to him back at his cabin.

“Of course, chivalry is dead,” your best friend exclaimed incredulously. “He killed it.”

“Jacks, please,” you whined. “He just wants to talk.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Jackson countered firmly and he looked a heartbeat away from combusting. “He hates that you’re sleeping with me. It’s jealousy. Plain and simple.”

You propped your hands on your hips, frustrated from arguing with him. “Wasn’t that the plan? To make him come after me again?”

Jackson remembered what had started all of this in the first place and he changed his tune. “Right, yeah, but this is just going the same route as last summer. You see that, right?”

“No, it’s not. I’m wiser now.”

Jackson approached briskly, taking you in his arms and roaming his hands around your waist. “You could just stay here with me,” he coaxed, voice a low growl. “I can eat that pussy like it’s my last meal.”

You snorted a laugh, but slipped out of his arms. “Nice try, but you were right. I’m more than just sex and I need to see where his head is at.”

Jackson sighed in defeat.

“Don’t wait up for me tonight,” you called back to him as you slipped through the door.

Jackson watched you go and stood rooted in place. Fuck, he was conflicted. Every instinct he had told him to stop you, but how could he? What right did he have to you in the first place?

He was just the guy you fucked to get back at another guy.

Jackson exhaled loudly through his nose. He could feel himself slipping, losing his nerve. Even when he sat with Yeona, making her smile and laugh, and noticing she leaned into his touches, his eyes still wandered to you. And when Jaebeom had appeared by your side, Jackson could feel his heart sinking into the bottom of his stomach.

Jackson reminded himself of the deal. He would get Yeona and you would get Jaebeom. That was it. Those were the terms you both agreed on and thus far, everything was going quite smoothly.

But Jackson was thinking of you and now he was thinking of Jaebeom touching you. And it made him want to die.

The day passed by at a glacial pace. By the time night fell, you began the long, arduous process of doing your hair and makeup. When there was a knock at the door, you had to stop yourself from sprinting across the room to answer.

Instead, you made his ass wait.

“Hey,” you greeted, stepping through and shutting the door behind you a moment later.

“Hey,” Jaebeom replied, scanning you over. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you,” you said sweetly, noting the backpack slung over his shoulder. “What you got back there?”

“None of your business,” he teased. “Ready to go?”

You pursed your lips, watching Jaebeom turn and stride away, expecting you to follow. Which, of course, you did.

The lookout was a small patch of open field between the trees. It was the perfect spot for stargazing and late night makeout sessions. You and Jaebeom had spent many hours in this place. As did you and Jackson.

It was a place of clarity and self-reflection. Something about seeing the stars so clearly, away from the noise and smog of the city, made you feel a sense of belonging. That everything would be okay. Sooner or later.

Jaebeom dropped his backpack and began rifling through it. Reading your mind, he called, “Don’t sit yet.”

You were about to complain, but then he stood and fanned out a red flannel blanket, smoothing out the corners over the grass.

“Now, you can sit.”

You almost chuckled, but you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Plopping down, you overlapped your ankles and watched him take the spot beside you.

“Wow, this is actually romantic,” you smarted, monotonous.

Jaebeom popped open the bottle of wine and took a swig. “I’m full of surprises,” he quipped, handing you the bottle.

A bit perturbed he had neglected to bring separate glasses, you took a sip and countered bitterly, “Not really. I remember all the romantic gestures and sweet words of last summer.”

Jaebeom sighed. So did he.

He had taken something so precious and innocent and filled it with poison. Jaebeom could have walked away at any point. And even worse, when all was said and done, he could have stayed.

There was a lull of silence and you didn’t mind. Jaebeom studied the stars, feigning interest. You turned your head, looking at his profile alight with the glow of the moon.

“Jaebeom, why did you bring me here?”

Jaebeom swallowed and whispered, “I hate myself for what I did to you.”

You frowned. “And what about all the other girls?”

Jaebeom shook his head, remorseful only for you. “They weren’t naive. They weren’t inexperienced,” he explained, somber. “They weren’t my friends. They weren’t you.”

You narrowed your eyes. The anger was pooling in your belly again. And your next question was scathing, “So, what sets me apart is that you hurt me the most?”

“Yes,” Jaebeom said, feeling small. “And you didn’t deserve it.”

You cried, “Why me?”

“You were the holy grail. Every guy wanted you.”

Biting back tears, you whimpered, “You talk about me like I’m not a person.”

Jaebeom realized that and he looked away, mulling over if he could put his feelings into words for once. “Would you believe me if I said that looking back I meant the things I said to you - that I loved every moment we spent together last summer?”

You thought about it for a moment and then you answered, “No. It’s what I’ve wanted you to say and yet. . . I don’t believe you. Everything you said and did was the means to an end.”

Jaebeom didn’t deny it. “I thought so, too. But when I got home, you were all I could think about. I wanted to see you and hold you. I missed having you in my life.”

The tears were flowing freely now and you turned your head away.

Jaebeom came closer, cupping your cheek and wiping the tears with his thumb.

You sobbed, “Why did you do this?”

“Shh, baby,” he whispered under his breath.

“You hate yourself for hurting me. I hate myself for loving you.”

Jaebeom felt like a gaping open wound, one that refused to heal. And yet your pain surpassed his own. He would rather writhe in misery than see you crying in his arms. Knowing that he had driven you this far.

“You were right,” he choked out. “I wanted you to know hurt the way I did. I envied you. You never let anyone get to you. I thought in some twisted way I wouldn’t be alone and I could finally move past what happened to me.”

You could feel yourself falling for it again and you lowered your head.

“I’m sorry,” Jaebeom finally said.

Those words you had wanted for so long and they did nothing for you. They didn’t fix you. They didn’t numb the pain. They didn’t restore what had been taken.

You pushed his arms away and got to your feet, wiping the tears with the back of your hand. Stomping toward the gravel path, Jaebeom was hot on your heels, calling your name.

When he grabbed your arms and spun you back around to face him, you yelled, “Let me go, Jaebeom.”

“Tell me what to do,” he pleaded. “Tell me what you need me to do!”

“Break this fucking spell,” you shouted back at him. “Make me hate you. Because I love you and it’s killing me!”

That was the last thing Jaebeom wanted. He was consumed by you. There were those words again and Jaebeom couldn’t stand it. No one had ever loved him, much less fallen in love with him, and he didn’t know what to do.

So, he gathered you in his arms and melded his lips to yours. You didn’t hesitate to kiss him back hard, carding your fingers into his hair.

Jaebeom held your waist and hips snugly, trapping you to him. You pressed yourself to his chest and tugged on his hair, earning a groan. You slipped your tongue past his lips and Jaebeom made a noise at your aggression. He could taste the salt of your tears.

This was stupid, you thought to yourself. You just never learned, did you? But God, kissing him was amazing. You let your hands fall from his head to roam his shoulders, pressing your nails into his shirt. You felt so small in his arms, like you were lost in him.

Jaebeom began to move, steering you with him back toward the blanket, still kissing you like his life depended on it. You weren’t surprised when he lay you down, but Jaebeom was beyond surprised when you wrestled him to his back and straddled his hips.

You wanted to grin at the shocked expression he was sporting, but you only caught a brief glimpse of his widened eyes before smashing your lips back on his.

You just wanted to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until you were satisfied, satiated. Maybe then you could finally get on with your life. It was senseless logic, but all you knew was he kissed so fucking good. It made you crazy. Just like everything else about him.

For fuck’s sake, you would never understand why you were in love with the one thing determined to destroy you.

“Stop. Stop,” you suddenly told him, panting and breathless.

Jaebeom looked at your hand pressed to his chest, watching you sit up on top of him, and his heart sank. He knew that look. You were about to bolt.

“I can’t do this,” you whispered, more to yourself as you brushed your hair out of your face with your fingers.

Jaebeom stroked his palms up your thighs, clad in the tightest jeans he had ever seen, and coaxed, “Why?”

You blinked, thinking of an answer. There were many, but you were trying to invalidate them on the spot.

Jaebeom sat up, wrapping an arm around your hips and rocking you closer to him. “Tell me,” he mumbled, pressing a wet kiss to your neck.

Your eyes fluttered and you felt resolve melting away each time his lips touched over your racing pulse.

“You’ll leave me again,” you cried shakily.

Jaebeom shook his head, proceeding to suck beneath your ear. “I’m not going anywhere,” he growled.

You ran your hands through his hair, hips arching ever so slightly in search of friction. Your body was heating up, excitement pulsing through your veins. You craved him. Lust was a powerful thing, and now you truly understood.

“I am,” you said firmly, pushing him back with both hands and rising to your feet.

Jaebeom slumped back, disappointed and defeated, and shook his hair out of his eyes. Watching you walk away, he begged, “Please stop sleeping with Jackson.”

You turned to face him, lips parting incredulously.

Seeing your anger, he lowered his tone to something more pliant, but definitely snide. “Give me a chance to make things right before you let him get his claws in you.”

It only confirmed what Jackson had said. Jaebeom’s newfound pursuit of you was solely from a place of jealousy. Your best friend had been right and you were too blind to accept it.

“You really are the worst,” you snapped at him, heading back on your way.

Jaebeom shouted vengefully, “He doesn’t fucking deserve you!”

You kept walking and retorted with disdain, “Story of my life, it seems. I guess I only fuck guys that don’t deserve me.”

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sepublic · 4 years ago

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Over-Analyzing Boscha

Given what we’ve seen about Boscha, specifically her mother… And how she ends up coming across as emotionally-clingy and needing, asking if she can join her daughter’s sleepover (while at the same time only learning at the last second and not even remarking on this), I’ve gotta wonder…

This is just speculation, but maybe Boscha’s mother (and potentially father, or other mother) is someone who treats their kid more like an emotional crutch and somebody to take care of them, rather than somebody they’re responsible for. And obviously, this kind of thing has BAD effects on a kid (see my previous analyses). I wonder if Boscha was conditioned from a young age to see emotional openness and vulnerability as a weakness, and very toxic because of how uncomfortable it made her as a child.

Perhaps to her, friends are people you should keep a certain distance from, lest they become clingy, overstep their boundaries, and start weighing you down with insecurities as they become overly-reliant on you. In her opening monologue from Wing it like Witches, Boscha apparently believes this principle applies to fans, since she thinks that being feared and hated is just another sign of success and supposed to be normal.

Given how prior to their falling out, Boscha constantly followed Amity around and seemed to be almost fishing for approval at times… As pointed out to me by @theowlhouseheadcanons, I wonder if Amity was someone she actually admired and look up to, as a guide for how to act; Or at the very least, Boscha looked up to the façade that Amity put up.

From Boscha’s perspective, Amity is cooler than her; Her own parents may have some status, but Amity always talks of her friendship with Boscha as a privilege she’s extending. Amity is the Top Student at Hexside for a reason, and the personal favorite apprentice of Lilith, Head Witch of the Emperor’s Coven! She’s aloof, while keeping people at a distance, and was always better at Grudgby than Boscha.

To Boscha, Amity may have been someone she wanted to emulate; And with the distant, cold way Amity acted around her, always setting boundaries and maintaining a distance between the two, I could see Boscha legitimately thinking that; Oh, this is how friends should act! Because keep in mind, Boscha was basically ‘gifted’ her position as Team Captain, and all the fame that went with it, from Amity; And all because Amity felt bad for injuring her.

Boscha seems very much like the kind of person who doesn’t realize that you can dislike a person, while still treating them with dignity and respect… So if Amity felt bad about injuring her to the point where she quit Grudgby, cold-turkey, at the height of her success? Clearly Boscha means a lot to her! I mean, why else would Amity choose to hang out with her?

Which naturally, this leads to Boscha believing that her and Amity ARE friends… And that Amity’s cold, distant way of regarding her, always keeping each other at a distance while making sure to remind Boscha who’s the dominant one in the group, is how friends should act. Coupled with what I said earlier about Boscha seeing emotional openness as weak and toxic, and I can see Boscha being under the impression that people should be admired from a distance, even by their friends, and that maintaining that kind of distance is important and just a natural thing in a good relationship.

Which, there are differences between setting healthy boundaries, and always keeping ‘friends’ at a distance from you, reminding them of one’s superiority over them, and applying this to fans and admirers as well. What’s worse is that to Boscha, getting injured by Amity may not have been something she held against her; Not just because it was a legitimate accident and Amity even gave up her position as Team Captain to her… But I could also see her legitimately thinking that it’s totally fine to injure your friends to achieve success, and that real friends should let themselves be hurt for the ‘stronger’ of the pair!

Obviously, I can’t see Boscha letting herself get hurt for her other friends, nor do I necessarily think she actually hurt any of them either. Which leads me to my point that Amity, or at least the image she put up, was the only person that Boscha ever actually respected and looked up to for a while (given her lack of reverence for rules and the adults); That she was always content with being second-best because it was to Amity!

Perhaps Boscha regularly followed Amity around, always trying to get her attention and ‘impress’ her, show her how much she was like Amity, while unintentionally being clingy in her own way like her mother. So when Amity, seemingly inexplicably, leaves Boscha behind for Willow… Boscha is now at the top of the friend group, but like with Grudgby it’s only because Amity stepped down.

What’s worse is that Amity did it because she actively rejected Boscha for being a toxic person as well. She’s now at the top, but what does Boscha do with this position, having lost the one person she looked up to, now that they’ve been ‘corrupted’? Having nobody to look to for guidance, when her own parents were unreliable? Especially now that her position at the ‘top’, both in Grudgby and amongst the friend group, is becoming hollow as attentions diverts to Willow…

(Not that I think Boscha’s friends necessarily intended to displace her with Willow, but to someone unhealthily competitive as Boscha it would definitely seem the case.)

Being at the top is already lonely enough as-is, but considering Boscha’s outlook on life and the way she treats people, it’s only going to get worse. I can see her being trapped in a period of confusion, not sure what to think anymore, wanting to hate Amity but also realizing that a lot of the things she knows, she was taught by her; So can she keep operating by these rules still? And so Boscha tries to distract herself from it all by just throwing her entire soul into Grudgby, only to be left in despair when Grudgby Season inevitably ends, regardless of whether or not Boscha becomes THE champion of the sport that year!

To Boscha, she HAS to be the best, because if she’s not, then maybe she’s a loser like her parents… And she has to distance herself from them. Boscha’s parents prioritized themselves over her, so she was taught that to have any real happiness in life, she has to put herself above everybody else at any cost, lest others try and ‘take’ that from her, that she has to keep a tight hold on what she has lest it be jeopardized. Everybody is a selfish enemy trying to encroach on her territory, so Boscha has to defend at any cost!

Obviously, I’m not saying Amity is somehow a bad person, or that she’s necessarily ‘responsible’ for who Boscha is. Amity was distant from Boscha because she was forced to be friends with her and just genuinely did not vibe; Not to mention, she was also internalizing a lot of abuse from her own parents that encouraged Amity to be someone who was cold and closed-off, which when coupled with her loneliness in the situation… It’s no wonder she didn’t really interact with Boscha on a personal level. Really, I just see the situation as being the fault of both girls’ parents, for not being caring enough and leaving their kids confused and trying to navigate one another, and getting the wrong lessons in the process.

Clearly Boscha has some issues of her own, that are of her own choosing and fault; She’s spiteful and petty to a degree that Amity has never been. But ultimately, I think it’s fun considering why she is the way she is, and what her relationship with Amity was like, in the wake of Amity revealing more about herself and thus re-contextualizing a bunch of interactions!

Amity isn’t at fault here, she’s a kid who was forced to hang out with someone she didn’t want to, and it’s not her fault that Boscha got the wrong messages because of abuse from her parents. And if Boscha’s mother was a ‘lonely loser’ who was clingy and toxic to her, then I can see that influencing Boscha’s way of treating Willow and her outlook on lonely people as being ‘desperate’, ‘pathetic’, and deserving to be mistreated for being ‘parasites’.

That they need to be taught to always know their place and maintain a distance from those who matter, lest such ‘losers’ drag them down with them as well. Similarly, I can see her bullying Willow almost as a means of garnering Amity’s approval, because obviously Amity seemed intent on telling Willow to leave her alone; So Boscha would prove her loyalty and helpfulness as a friend, by telling Willow to back off! Amidst her own narrow mindset, it must be incredibly baffling to her for Amity to suddenly be hanging out with Willow and defending her from Boscha, who had always ‘protected’ her!

I don’t know why Boscha’s mother is like this, or if her other parent is complicit as well. But generally speaking, a parent usually doesn’t resort to asking to hang out with their own kid if they aren’t lonely; So I wouldn’t be surprised if Boscha’s other parent is also distant, and responsible for her mother being emotionally needy… Which then causes Boscha’s mother to rely on her own daughter, making Boscha uncomfortable around those kinds of people, and causing a chain of events that result in the messed-up fourteen-year-old we see today!

And again, Amity’s not responsible for Boscha, and she’s still busy trying to heal herself as well and definitely has worse self-loathing issues- Amity has never been truly selfish, mainly doing what her parents want; Which of course, she confuses as being what she wants as well. Obviously I don’t want to compare abuse, but at the same time it has to be acknowledged that Amity REALLY needs to prioritize herself and the friends she’s actually chosen for once.

Amity is NOT a hypocrite for calling out Boscha on her bad behavior and indicating she’s more mature than her, especially since she’s never been an active bully and already made clear that Willow is to be respected. She’s still unlearning the abuse from her parents that makes Amity believe that kids like her are supposed to ‘be mature’ at an early age. She never planned to be Boscha’s friend, and Boscha was clearly more interested in the façade she put up; And even then, the image that Boscha had in mind wasn’t entirely accurate to Amity’s façade either!

Boscha’s idea of what Amity was supposed to be like no doubt contributed to the pressure Amity had to be someone she wasn’t. It’s best for both girls that they separated, honestly- So that Amity can finally be free to make her own friends and not be beholden to someone she was forced to be with, and so Boscha can stop using Amity’s fake self as an unhealthy standard to follow, stop participating in a one-sided and unhealthy ‘friendship’, recognize where she’s messed up, respect others’ boundaries, and hopefully become kinder to others.

Maybe then, Boscha will stop almost projecting her insecurities and needs onto Amity, looking to her almost as someone to depend and rely on, without considering who Amity ACTUALLY is and what she truly wants; Because Amity isn’t some stoic emotional crutch, she’s still a kid with her own insecurities and needs, just like Boshca. Boscha can perhaps stop looking at Amity for who Boscha wants her to be…

…You know, the way her mother treats Boscha herself.

#the owl house #owl house #the owl house boscha #the owl house amity #amity blight #speculation #character analysis

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chickensarentcheap · 4 years ago

Text

Never Gonna Be Alone- Chapter 12

Title: In the Quiet

Warnings: very brief mention of sexual abuse

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @alievans007, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @tragiclyhip

He wakes to the press of her warm body against his and the smell of her hair. A mixture of coconut and honey; an inexpensive shampoo that she’s been using for more than a decade and he never tires of. It’s the scent of home; the reminder of the place where he’s the happiest and feels the most comfortable and secure. Where he can be himself without judgment; not looked down upon for his weaker moments or when the darker days of battling his own mind have him feeling scared and vulnerable. For years he’d tucked that side of himself away; using booze and pain meds as a way to mask the pain and escape the demons and the monsters of the past. He’d become emotionally absent; refusing to make connections with anyone out of the fear of becoming too close and getting too attached, only to lose them. And he’d convinced himself that he was unable to love or be loved; years of torment at the hands of his father and the horrible decision he’d made while his child was dying condemning him. It seems like a lifetime ago now; a whole other existence entirely. In the last twelve and half years he’s learned to love again; wholly and unconditionally and so profoundly it is physically painful at times. And he’s allowed himself to be loved in return; blessed with a woman that knows his deepest and darkest secrets and sees past all his faults. Who forgives his mistakes and always gives him another chance, even when he knows he’s not deserving of it. And seven children that he’s had a hand in creating; incredible little human beings that adore and trust him without hesitation.

It’s a life unlike anything he ever thought possible. When both the enormity of his horrible decision regarding his son and his profound grief had set in, he’d sought comfort in the bottle and the unpredictability of a dangerous and bloody career. Relegating himself to a solitary and miserable existence; refusing to allow anyone to get too close and using women for nothing more than sexual gratification. Convincing himself that he didn’t deserve anything beyond that; a warm body on a lonely night and that beaten and battered shack in the outback with its rusted tin roof. Knowing if he wasn’t lucky enough to catch that fatal bullet while on a job, he’d more than likely die there on the dusty floor; drinking himself to death or OD'ing on a mixture of painkillers and cheap whiskey. There were days he prayed for it; an end to the demons that had been tormenting him since the moment he’d gotten the call in Afghanistan that his only child had passed away.

Part of him had died the moment Austin had; all the experiences he’d hoped they’d share, all the dreams he had about what his son would achieve and who he’d become suddenly coming to an abrupt end. Logically, they’d ceased to exist months before. When the specialists had said that despite their best efforts with both chemotherapy and radiation, the cancer had returned and was just far too aggressive and advanced; palliative care and pain management the only remaining options. But while his wife had been devastated and immediately began planning for the inevitable, he’d clung to that faint hope that the medical professionals were wrong; some miracle would occur and Austin would beat the odds. Reality soon began to set in, and it was then that Tyler had discovered just how weak and vulnerable he really was; turning to alcohol to numb the pain, spendings hours and sometimes days away from home because he couldn’t bear seeing his son suffer and his wife run herself ragged and fall deeper and deeper in the pit of despair and grief.

He hadn’t been able to handle it; unable to ‘man up’ and be who and what both of them had so desperately needed. Despite the ongoing issues in their marriage and her long and sordid history of cheating -and the rumours that the kid wasn’t even his to begin with- she had deserved so much better. And he had longed to give her that; a shoulder to cry on and someone to help with the burdens of caring for a terminally ill child. But he’d chickened out. His own grief and fears getting the better of him; unable to handle the realization that he was a total failure. So he ran. Volunteering to head overseas instead of staying behind and stepping up. Leaving his wife to handle everything on her own and his son to wonder what he’d ever done to deserve being abandoned.

It doesn’t hurt as much as now. Not just the trauma of seeing your child suffer and waste away, but the guilt and the regret his poor decision had brought about. It’s taken years of therapy to get as far as he has; moments of profound anguish as every single one of the skeletons in his closet came tumbling out. It took reliving the initial pain to kick start the healing; periods of immense grief for the child he’d lost followed by periods of extreme self loathing and time spent in the deepest and darkest bits of despair and desperation. But it HAD helped; the guilt and regret lessening, the hatred for himself losing some of its power. It will always linger just under the surface; the sting of the decision he’d made, how he sees himself as a monster not just because of it, but because of the things he’s had to do while on the job. Killing had never been about satisfaction or enjoyment. It had always been a means to an end; his chances of survival hinging on whether he could be quicker to pull the trigger or if he could outwit, outsmart, and out strength his opponents. And the only times he had gotten some pleasure out of it -other than just recently in Laos and Cambodia- had been five years ago. When he’d brutally and bloodily taken the lives of two of Mahajan’s men in an elevator in Mumbai, and when he’d had no chance but to eliminate that threat that had drugged and attacked him first. It had been personal then; threats made against his wife and his children. And taking the lives of those who would have delighted in torturing and murdering his family HAD given him a sense of satisfaction.

The demons of the past don’t carry as much weight now. Their power significantly decreased. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments when self hate and disgust DON’T return. When his mood is dropping and he’s more prone to returning to the pain and the regret of the past. It doesn’t happen often; medication and therapy helping to keep those moments to a minimum. But they do make an appearance. Self loathing making a comeback; reminding him of all the things he’s said and done that DO make him a monster and telling him that he doesn’t deserve the life he has now. That he’s committed way too many heinous acts to ever be truly forgiven. Absolution would never come his way; he's too far gone for THAT. In the same way guys like him aren’t allowed to love and be loved in return. And that’s when the fear kicks in; the concern that his life is way too good to be true and everything that is beautiful and perfect in it will be taken away to teach him a lesson. His protectiveness stems from it. The fear and worry profound; driving him to hold on to what he has even tighter than usual. On those days it all becomes too much to bear; a tightness in his chest and an ache that reaches to his very soul.

Some of that returns now; the fear that tugs at his chest and gnaws at his stomach. It had started last night; decorating the tree with the kids and coming across the ornament that Millie had made for Austin years ago. It’s always bittersweet; remembering what he’d lost while reminding himself of everything he has now. Had things gone differently and Austin never gotten sick, life would have been dramatically altered. His marriage somehow managing to be salvaged despite her inability to stay faithful, or at the very least being able to co-parent peacefully and amicably. He would have stayed in the military; grief and regret and the feelings of failure never turning him towards alcohol and pain meds to numb the pain and effectively ending what could have been a great career in special forces. Had he stayed with SASR and kept on the straight and narrow, mercenary work would have never even been on his radar. And that’s when things become complicated and troublesome. Even if his marriage HAD still fallen apart, there would have been no chance of ever meeting Esme. It WAS the job that led him to her; years as a hired gun somehow culmination with him coming face to face with who would turn out to be the love of his life. He had always thought he’d loved Sarah; she’d been his high school sweetheart and his first of many things. And it wasn’t until he was thirty-five that his eyes had been opened to just how wrong he’d actually been. Simply by chance meeting someone that would -even twelve and a half years later- take his breath away. Who would see past his jagged edges and the amount of baggage weighing him down and take a chance on him; looking past the mess he’d made of his life and patiently tearing down all the walls he’d build up around his heart. Who still looks at him as if he’s the most incredible man on earth; loving him with everything she has and everything she is and possessing an extraordinary amount of blind faith and trust.

She IS love. Everything that is beautiful and perfect about it. Never given up on him or them. Had Austin NOT died, he never would have found her and would have never known real love in its purest and most unconditional of forms. And his kids wouldn’t exist; seven incredible little human beings that he’d had a hand in creating. And even if he could go back in time and change things, he wouldn’t. He would choose to bear the pain of Austin’s death and the punishment that came with the horrible choice that he made. In the same way he’d accept the Dhaka job a million times over; taking a million bullets to the neck if it meant he’d be rewarded with what he has now.

*****

She lies with her back to him and her head resting on his arm. It had long ago fallen asleep; pins and needles stretching all the way from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. They’d decided to bed down in the sunroom; pushing the love seat and the couch together to form a ‘nest’ and then fetching old comforters and pillows from the downstairs linen closet. Sometime in the early morning hours, she’d moved closer to him; briefly waking from her slumber long enough to move from her stomach to her side and then snuggling tightly into him. It’s a common occurrence if she has a bad dream. A desire for closeness; needing the feel of his much larger and bulkier frame against hers, quickly comforted by the warmth that radiates from it. His own eyes had never opened, body moving instinctively as he slid one arm between her head and the pillow while the other wrapped around her waist; drawing her even tighter against him, palm flat against her stomach and his face buried in her hair.

In the years he’d spent between his first marriage falling apart and meeting Esme, he’d gotten used to sleeping alone; enjoying the space and the freedom that came with having the entire bed to himself. In Dhaka, he’d been more than prepared to sleep on the floor until tempers flared; a heated argument erupting, fuelled by both sexual frustration AND tension, and his worry and fears surrounding what he was actually feeling towards her. It had taken some getting used to; having a body in bed with him throughout the night and waking up with them still there in the morning. But the adjustment had come quick, and by the third night he’d found himself actually enjoying the way she’d move closer to him; loving the feel of her skin against his and the brush of her hair and that soft, beautiful scent that lingered in it. Now he struggles to find rest without her. Used to the sound of her breathing and the weight of slender frame against his and the little noises she makes in her sleep; the soft sighs and the occasional murmur and giggles and the moments she starts to carry on very detailed conversations. All those little things that make her, her. And that he misses horribly when he’s away from home.

She rolls over to face him, eyes remaining closed as she issues a long, soft sigh and her hand comes to rest on his hip. The tips of her fingers dip below the waistband off his sweats; thumb repeatedly brushing against the slice of skin between the top of his pants and the hem of his t-shirt. For several minutes he watches as she sleeps. Eyes taking in every inch of her face; smiling and marvelling at the thought of how he’d not only somehow managed to both find her, but have her fall in love with him. She’s beautiful; the freckles splashed across and down the bridge of her nose, the long, dark eyelashes that skim the tops of her cheeks, the curve of her lips and the smooth line of her chin. It’s in those quiet moments where he only sees the damage done to her; the handful of small scars left behind from Mark’s fists and whatever ‘weapon’ he could get his hands on; electrical cords, wire hangers, heavy work boots and porcelain mugs and plates. There’s more. So much more. Disturbing ways that her ex husband had come up with to torture her both physically AND mentally.

There’d been other abuse as well; moments she’d been forced into sex itself or terrified into performing acts. And while it’s all equally vile and disturbing, THAT bothers him more than anything else. The fact that someone could violate and betray her in such a disgusting way. Someone that was supposed to love her; who’d taken vows to honor her and cherish her and care for her. And when she finally confessed the true extent of the abuse, the full story had sickened him; horrified and enraged at the thought of anyone touching her...the love of his life...in such a way. And it’s amazing. The fact that she’d not only managed to survive the abuse with her spirit and sanity intact, but that she’d been so willing and able to trust him. Giving everything of herself from that very first night in Dhaka; placing both her body and her heart in his hands and having all the faith in the world that he wouldn’t destroy them.

He places a palm over her ear; fingers splayed against her dark tresses and his thumb tracing the faint scar that cuts through the middle of her right eyebrow and travels up into her hairline. And when his hand moves to the back of her head and his lips find her brow, she gives another sigh; long and content, warm breath wafting against his skin. A soft smile curving her lips as her eyes flutter open and meet his.

“Sleeping beauty awakes,” he greets, and combs his hand through her hair, allowing the silky strands to slip slowly through his fingers. Lips pressing against her brow, followed by the bridge of her nose.

The smile broadens and those dark eyes sparkle. “Morning.”

“Morning. You good?”

“For the most part. You alright?”

“I’m perfect. It actually turned out to be a lot more comfortable than I thought it would be. You sleep okay?”

Esme shrugs. “I’ve had better.”

“You got up pretty early. Bad dream?”

She nods.

“You want to tell me about it or…?”

“Not really. It’s not something I want to relive.”

“Was it about me?”

“And Ovi. And me.”

“So a Dhaka dream?”

“Unfortunately. The first time there. And I haven’t had a dream about that in a long time. I was kind of hoping I’d never have one again, but....”

“Like Doctor Klein said, it’s never going to go away completely. It DID happen. We can’t pretend it never did.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to dream about it. It was bad enough living it. Do I really have to go through it all over again? While I’m asleep? It’s been twelve and a half years. Since it happened. And I haven’t had a dream about it in at least three. Now all a sudden it’s starting up again? What the hell is that about?”

“Me going away probably brought up some bad shit. And you’ve been stressed. That’ll do it.”

“I’m always stressed at Christmas. I always work myself up. Over stupid shit.”

“Doesn’t help that your mum sent that stuff from the kids and she’s been calling five times a day.”

“She knows what she’s doing, you know. This is a ploy. To fuck with me. She doesn’t bother for years and then all of a sudden decides to play the role of the perfect, doting grandmother? How long has she spent purposefully ignoring our kids? Treating them like second class citizens? Playing favourites? She pretty much stopped keeping track after Declan. I’m surprised she even remembered we had three more after him.”

“I’m kind of surprised she even remembered ANY of their names.”

“She’s not doing it for them. It’s not because she loves them and wants to spoil them. Her love is conditional. It always has been. And she knew getting in contact would bother me. That it would get under my skin and I’d dwell on it and I’d eventually cave and get in contact with her. Isn’t it enough that I sent a text message thanking her? Or that I’ll have the kids make thank you cards and send them to her? Do I REALLY have to talk to her?”

“Normally I’d say just ignore her and I’d remind you that you don’t owe her or anyone else in your family anything, but she’s only to keep calling. She’s only going to step it up and get worse. And seeing as we’d like to enjoy Christmas and have a nice peaceful holiday…”

“Maybe I should let my phone die and we’ll just use yours. Chances are she won’t message you.”

“The perks of being at the top of her most hated list, I guess. Why don’t you just block her?”

“Because then she WILL get a hold of you. And that won’t end well. You’re due for losing your shit on someone. That hasn’t happened in a while.”

“Not like she wouldn’t deserve it.”

“I’ll just keep ignoring her. Maybe she’ll get the picture and just give up.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just talk to her and let her say what she has to say? Let her run her mouth and hang up on her. Then block her. Boom. Done.”

“I don’t want to hear her shit though. I’m already not in a good place. Mentally, speaking. Why let her make it worse? That’s just asking for trouble. And I really do not want to spend my Christmas doped up on Valium or drunk off my ass. Maybe you could message her. From my phone. Pretend you’re me. Telling her off.”

“I’m pretty sure she’ll know it’s me. But I’ll take one fo the team. She already hates me and wishes I was dead. Can’t get any worse than THAT.”

“Who gives a fuck what she says. Isn’t that what you always say? Fuck what my family says? Let’s NOT talk about them.”

******

She wriggles closer to him; the fabric of her plaid shirt pressed against his chest and her cheek resting on his pillow. A hand sliding under his tee and over his ribs and around to his back; fingertips repeatedly grazing up and down his spine. And he lays a palm on the back of her head and presses his lip to her temple; allowing them to linger there for several seconds before resting the side of his nose against hers. Neither speak as time ticks on. Eyes closed and warm breath tickling skin. The tips of his fingers burrowed in her hair and gently massaging her scalp as hers continue their exploration of his back; travelling over the various and tracing the outline of the tattoo that sits between his shoulders. It’s when she reaches the scar left behind from Nathan’s attack that he pulls back to look at her, finding those dark, soulful eyes staring up at him.

“Does it hurt?”

Tyler shakes his head. “Not this morning.” Some days there’s discomfort there. More a tightness than an actual ache; damage done to the nerve sometimes causing loss of sensation into his hip and down the back of his leg. Other times it feels as if the wound is freshly acquired; a burning and throbbing that reminds him of the moment Nathan had stuck his fingers into the bullet hole to cause more pain and inflict greater damage.

“It’s been okay? For the most part?”

“More good days than bad days. Sometimes it feels like there’s something stuck in there; moving around and pressing against shit.”

“There’s no actual chance of that, right? That they left something in there? I mean, they showed me the bullet. They got it all out. Or at least it looked like it did. Do you think something could have been left behind? A small fragment? Do you think…?”

“I think you need to stop worrying. It’s been five years. Almost six.”

“Even after twelve years, I don’t think you fully comprehend that I CAN’T stop worrying. It’s who I am. I worry about the people I love. And I love you a bit more than everyone esle, so…”

“A bit more, huh?”

She grins and presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Just a bit. You know what would be nice? If we could stay here all day. Right here. Cuddled up just like this.”

“It would be,” he agrees, and slides his forearm between her shoulder and the cushions; hand coming to rest on her upper arm, thumb repeatedly brushing against smooth skin. “But..”

“No,” Esme protests, and nuzzles her face into his neck; head under his chin and her nose pressed against his Adam’s Apple. “No ‘buts’. I don’t want to hear any ‘buts’.”

“As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, we DO have kids. Who very shortly are going to discover we’re not upstairs and come looking for us.”

“Let them fend for themselves. We deserve a break. A mommy and daddy break.”

“Few more months, babe. And then two weeks. Just us.”

“In Santorini,” she reminds him.

“Wherever you want to go, that’s where we’ll go.”

“Still doesn’t mean I WANT to move anytime soon. I’d still rather lie here with you all day. Preferably with less clothes on.”

“I was hoping for totally naked, myself.”

“Me too. Just lie, totally naked, and make love. All day?”

“All day?”

She pulls back to look at him; a grin playing on her lips and her eyes sparkling playfully. “What? You don’t think you have it in you anymore?”

“I was more worried about you no longer being able to handle that kind of thing.”

“Oh don’t you worry about me. You know how resilient and tenacious I am. And how I’m fully committed when I’m really into something.’

“I’ve seen all of that first hand. I could handle it. I’d need water and food breaks, but I’d be game.”

Placing her elbow on the cushion below, she props the side of her head in her upturned palm, fingers of the other hand tracing the tattoo that decorates the left side of his neck. “Remember our little apartment? Outside of Sydney?”

“I do. I remember it very well.”

“When you finally got out of the rehab place and were finally able to live there full time? Instead of just weekends home? We had A LOT of those days in bed. Enjoying each other as much as we wanted. Rarely wearing clothes even when we DID leave the room.”

“The good old days, you mean?”

“We had some really good times in that little apartment. It was kind of weird though, don’t you think? Living together and having a baby while still in the process of really getting to know one another? It was strange. How we tackled things. Wasn’t exactly a normal way of going about it.”

“I figured we didn’t start out normal, so why bother going that way?”

“There was definitely nothing conventional about how we met. It’ll make a great story one day. For one of our kids to tell on our fiftieth anniversary.”

“Only thirty eight more years to go. Think you can handle it?”

“I think I’ll be okay. Do you think YOU can?”

“I’m pretty sure that if we could survive the past twelve years...especially the last five...that there's nothing we CAN'T get past.”

“Listen to you all sappy first thing in the morning,” she teases, and hooks a finger around the chain that dangles from his neck and pulls him into a kiss. “By the way, your daughter and I had a very interesting conversation yesterday. While you were out with the rest of the spawn.”

Sighing heavily, he presses a final kiss to her forehead and then rolls onto his back; hands pushing through his hair before clasping them together at the nape of his neck. “If it’s about periods or boys, I do NOT want to hear it.”

“I’ll go easy on you; I think I’ve tortured you enough for the time being. I still say you need to be prepared. Just in case…”

“And I’ll let you do what you need to do to get me prepared. I have faith in you. That you won’t throw me to the wolves.”

“I would never.” She rolls onto her stomach and props herself up on both elbows. “And this isn’t about Millie herself. Just something she’s concerned about.”

“And you promise it’s not about her period or boys?”

“I promise. It actually surprised me. And I thought with having a mercenary husband and after birthing four boys, that there was nothing that could possibly surprise me anymore.”

“Is she okay? Millie?”

“She’s fine. She’s Millie. There’s nothing wrong with her. Like I said, it isn’t really about her. It’s about something she’s worried about. And to be honest, I’m kind of worried about it too. A lot worried, actually.”

“You’re starting to worry ME now.”

“It’s about Alannah. And her home life.”

“About how badly it sucks?”

“Pretty much. I mean, you’ve seen it first hand. You’ve been in that home. You’ve talked to her parents. You know what they’re like.”

“If you mean emotionally absent and full of shit, yeah, I’ve seen it. Those people are fucked up, babe. I don’t know how you can have that much money and have nothing all at the same time. I don’t get it; how people can be that soulless and empty. And that's saying something when it comes from a guy that kills people for a living.”

“Normally this is where I give you a stern talking to about how that’s not all you do, but I’ll let it slide. For now. You’ve been in that home. A handful of times. You’ve talked to them. On the outside, everything looks great. They drive luxury cars, they wear designer clothes, her mother is practically dripping in expensive jewelry everytime I see her. I mean, they send her to a really expensive private school. They put on a pretty good show, you have to admit.”

“It’s what they want people to see. They want everyone to think everything is perfect. That they have a great life. Trust me, there’s nothing great about it. Not for the kid, anyway. And I grew up with someone with no soul or moral compass. That house? Worse vibes than the one I was raised in.”

“Which is saying a lot. You lived a shitty life. You’d recognize the warning signs. You were THAT kid.”

“So were you. You didn’t get your ass handed to you on a daily basis, but the mental stuff is just as bad. If not worse sometimes.”

“So we BOTH know how horrible it is. Growing up where we’re not wanted. And I know my mom always put on a big show for everyone. Acted like life was amazing and that she was the perfect mother. Behind closed doors? Mommy fucking dearest. Both of us deserved so much better growing up And so does Alannah.”

“I agree. She does. So where do we come into this? What’s Millie worried about?”

“It’s not just Millie that’s worried. I am too. I know how bad a crappy upbringing can fuck someone up. I’m a mess. And most of it leads right back to my mom. I’m the first to admit that I’m pretty fucked up. That I’ve got some long term issues I do battle with every day. Because of her. In the same way you have your own things; related to your dad.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t want that happening to her. I don’t want her turning into me. I don’t want her ending up with a guy like Mark because she has zero self worth and doesn’t think she deserves better. I don’t want her being forty years old and married to a second guy -an amazing guy, for the record- and completely unable to fully appreciate him because of some shit experience. I don’t want her turning out like this. I don’t want her spending her life hating herself and thinking she’s garbage because that’s all she was told she was. I don’t want some other guy ending up like you; loving someone so wholly and completely yet having to right another man’s wrong. That’s not fair. To you. Or to whatever guy she ends up with.”

“Babe, you…”

“Don’t try and deny it, okay. Don’t try and play it down. I know what I’m like. I know how bad I can get. You’ve spent the last twelve years having to prove you’re not him. And that isn’t fair. And I’m sorry. For ever making you feel like you’re not good enough or that you’re somehow like him. Because you’re not. You are so far from being anything like him. I’ve never meant to hurt you. And if I knew how to stop being this way…”

“Esme…” He lays a hand on the back of her neck and lifts his head to kiss her. “...stop. I love you. I get it. Why you are the way you are. In the same way you get why I’m the way I am. And you know what? We’re both fucked up. But somehow it works. WE work.”

“I just don’t want Alannah ending up like this. She’s still so young. There’s time to stop it. Before it happens.”

“How? You’re not her mother. What are you going to do? Go over there and over advice? Teach some parenting classes? Because that will go over REALLY well.”

“I’m hardly the person who should be teaching parenting classes. I’m not exactly perfect myself.”

“Your kids think you are. I think you are.”

“You think the sun shines out of my ass and that I poop glitter and fart rainbows. You’re hardly a good judge. But…” she leans in and presses a kiss to his lips. “...I love you for always wanting to stroke my ego. For always looking at me like butterflies fly out of my butt.”

“Your ass is nice, but it’s not THAT nice. And this stuff with Alannah. What can we do about it? She already spends more time here than at her own place. What more do you want?”

“Well she obviously likes being here. You’ve seen her at her own house. She doesn’t smile, she barely talks, hardly eats. Doesn’t even make eye contact with people. It’s like she’s nothing but a shell. And then she comes here and she’s completely different. She’s smiling and she’s laughing and she’s so loveable and sweet. And helpful. She’s a good kid. A good kid that deserves so much better.”

“You’re still not telling me what you think we can do about it. And we’re not moving here, so don’t even bring that up. We’ve talked about that. Numerous times. This isn’t the place for us. Not on a permanent basis:”

“I know. And to be honest, I wouldn’t want to live here full time. I love where we are. It’s private and it’s quiet and it’s beautiful. That’s home. No other place can even come close to that. It’s nice to visit here, but living? Definitely not a good idea. Especially for you. And Tanner. You guys need the quiet and the calm.”

“So what DO you want to do? You say you want to help the kid. How do we help her?”

“Millie brought something up. An idea. And it’s not totally horrible.”

“And that is…”

“She asked if we can bring Alannah back with us. To Australia.”

“As in permanently or…?”

“Temporarily. I think. For now. I don’t know; we didn’t really get that deep into it. She suggested it and I told her that I’d talk to you. So, here I am. Talking to you.”

“We can’t just take the kid. We can’t just toss her on a plane and take her home with us. There’s this thing called kidnapping, in case you didn’t realize.”

“And I told Millie that. That we can’t just take her with us. She DOES have a family. A shitty one, but a family nonetheless. We’d have to go through a lot of steps. Just like we did with Ovi. That was a lot of work. Getting everything in order so he could go with us to Colorado. I mean, we were in Mumbai for a month while the lawyers figured everything out.”

“It was a lot of red tape. And Australia’s a lot more strict than the States. About who they let in. And we’d have to get her signed up for school. She can’t just hang around the house. We both work and the kid has to learn. It’s not like we’d just be bringing her for an extended vacation.”

“But it CAN be done. I mean, I was allowed to stay in Australia.”

“Yeah, because we were getting married and we were having a baby. Two perfectly good reasons to let you stay. We bring some random kid home with us…”

“We’d have to call the lawyer. He’d be able to advise us. On how to handle everything. He’d probably be able to handle all the paperwork. And we’re not talking about adopting her. We became Ovi’s legal guardians. That’s a whole other ballgame. We’d just be taking her on an adventure. Let her experience something new. Give her a real family. People that love her and siblings to play with and drive her crazy.”

“And then what? We just send her back home a few months? Just ship her right back to the bullshit here? That makes NO sense.”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I just thought for the time being, we could help her out. Give her time away from her shitty life. And if in the end she really loves it and wants to stay, then we think about guardianship.”

“You’re talking about taking on another kid. That’ll make eight.”

“Two days ago, you wanted me to get my tubes patched up so we could have an eighth,” Esme points out.

“Yeah, one of our own. A baby. That we make. Together. Not someone else’s kid.”

“But that isn’t going to happen. We agreed on this. After the twins. That seven was enough.”

“But you’re okay with taking on Alannah? Just not with having our own baby.”

“I can’t do it again. I just can’t. I love you. More than I ever thought I could love someone. But I am babied out. And this is a kid that needs our help. You're always the first person that WANTS to help everyone.”

“Usually when I’m helping people, I’m getting sent somewhere to kill someone. Not taking in their kids.”

“I will admit, it’s not a fool proof plan. Or much of a plan at all. And I do have my own concerns.”

He reaches out and pushes a hand through her hair; allowing the dark tresses to slip between his fingers and then looping strands over her ears. “Which are?”

“I worry about us. Me and you. Our plates are full. We have seven kids we’re raising. And we’re doing a damn good job, you have to admit. We make a really good team.”

“Yeah, we do. We always have. Right from day one.”

“But we’re also taking time to nurture us. Our relationship. That’s important. How many times has it been drilled into us? At therapy? That we need to step away sometimes and make the effort to connect and stay close and keep our bond the way it is. We’ve had to work on that. A lot. We’ve both had to step up to make sure we didn’t fall apart. To make sure we remember that we’re not just two people raising kids together. And I don’t want to lose that. Those moments with you.”

“I don’t want to lose that either. It’s a big deal to me. You know that. Keeping things together. Keeping US together.”

“And you’ve been amazing. At putting in the time and the effort. And it’s gone so well. We are so much stronger than we were five years ago. By A LOT. You know how cheesy it would always sound? When you’d hear people talking about loving someone more and more every day? I thought it was so stupid. That there was no way that was true. And in these last five years? I’ve realized how wrong I was. Because I DO love you more every day. And I’m scared something will come along and wreck that.”

“But? I know there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“But I can’t help but worry that we’re letting Alannah down. That we’re just leaving her to suffer and grow up to be just as messed up as us. We have a chance to help her. And I don’t think my conscience will let me just walk away and leave her here. Not without at least trying to help.”

Tyler nods slowly as he considers her words; absentmindedly twirling a strand of her hair around his index finger.

“You don’t think I’m selfish do you? That I want to help? Even thought I’m scared of fucking us up?”

“Actually, I think you’re selfless. Not selfish. If you’re willing to risk something to help this kid....”

“I don’t want to risk anything. That’s the problem. I want to help, but I don't want to jeopardize us. That’s the last thing I want. Because we have come so far and we are so much better now and we’re so much stronger. I do not want this to be a case of a hundred steps forward and a thousand steps back.”

“That won’t happen,” he assures her. “I won’t let that happen. We just keep doing things the way we are. We make each other a priority. Like we've been doing for five years now. Taking on Alannah is not going to change that. If she was a baby or a toddler we were bringing aboard, I’d say no way in hell. Because that would be a lot of work and yeah, things would fuck up. Between us.”

“So what can we do? To help her. You want to, right? Help her?”

“I do. But…”

“I KNEW that was coming.”

“...it’s not just as easy as taking her back with us. I wish it was. But it is NOT that simple. And you know that. From the experience with Ovi.”

“I do. I DO know that. And I told Millie as much. That we had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to bring him with us to Colorado.”

“And I don’t mind putting in the work and calling the lawyer and putting this out there to him. But it’s only going to work if her parents are on board. And honestly, I don’t know how the fuck we’d go about that. Talking to them.”

“You talked to Mahajan. About Ovi. You went to the prison in Mumbai and spoke to him.”

“That was an entirely different situation. He knew he couldn’t provide a proper home for his kid. He knew he couldn’t keep him safe. He didn’t really have a choice, and he knew that. But I can’t just go walking into Alannah’s house and tell her parents I want to take her to Australia. I can’t just say ‘you’re shit parents, give me your kid’. They’ll tell me to fuck off and most likely call the cops.”

“I guess that wouldn’t be the perfect way to approach the subject. But we could. Talk to them. Rationally. And calmly.”

“And they could turn around and tell us both fuck off and then forbid their kid from coming over here. Which means we break Alannah’s heart AND our daughter’s.”

Sighing heavily, Esme places her forehead against his chest and groans dramatically. “Why does this have to be so hard?”

“We need to figure out how to approach this. Without stirring up the hornet’s nest. And we can’t just make a decision like this overnight. We need time to talk about this. REALLY talk about it. Because this is a huge deal. This isn’t just bringing the kid for a vacation.”

“But we will? Talk more about it?”

“Can we get past Christmas first? Because I would really like to get through this holiday with what’s left of my sanity somewhat intact.”

“Maybe after New Years Eve. Then we can sit down and really talk it out. Pros and cons. The whole nine yards. We don’t need to rush into this. There’s a lot of time before we head back home. And if we DO decide to take her and her parents agree, we’ll need to give the lawyer some time to work on getting past the red tape.”

“I’m not promising anything, Me. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I want to do this and I think we should. I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. But I WILL think about it. And talk about.”

“That’s all I want,” she says, and presses a kiss to his cheek and then the corner of his mouth before placing her head upon his chest.

“You know…” he runs a palm down the length of her hair, then rests it on the small of her back. “...I don’t know what kind of hoodoo voodoo black magic you got going on, but I seem to get talked into the most fucked up shit.”

Laughing, she places her chin on his chest and looks up at him. “It’s the eyes. They get you every time.”

“And the ass. And the things you let me do to it.”

“We are NOT having that particular conversation. That’s just a no from me. We can go there, but we don’t need to discuss it. And speaking of going places, today’s the day.”

“Your little shopping trip with Desi. You ARE going to spoil yourself, yeah? No buying anything for me or the kids. We don’t need shit. This is all about you. So go crazy. Buy a whole fucking store if you want. I do NOT care.”

“Any requests? Something you’d like me to buy? Something you’d like to see me in?”

“Not really. I prefer you out of clothes, not actually IN them. But maybe something sexy?”

“Sexy as in a dress to wear for a night on the town or…?”

“Sexy as in only for my eyes to see.”

She grins. “You mean bedroom sexy.”

“Exactly.”

“I thought you didn’t care about the packaging? I thought you only cared about what’s underneath?”

“I don’t usually care. But, I do have plans. For New Years Eve. After Ovi’s wedding.”

“Really?” Her eyes sparkle mischievously. “What kind of plans?”

“It’s a surprise. But I think something sexy would fit right in.”

“Is it mommy and daddy ONLY plans?”

“Yes. Just us. No kids anywhere near us. No interruptions.”

“You want to have wild and crazy sex all night. The kind of wild and crazy sex that we can’t have with kids in the noise. The noisy kind of wild and crazy sex.”

“That would be nice, yeah. I would love to have some wild and crazy noisy sexy with my wife.”

“In that case…” she slides further up the couch and pushes a hand through his hair, speaking between soft pecks that she places on his hips. “...I will buy something very, very, VERY sexy. Just for you.”

“You spoil me.”

“You deserve it. You’re a good man, Tyler Rake. You’re a keeper.”

“And speaking of spoiling…” Curling an arm around her waist, he unceremoniously dumps her onto the mounds of bunched up pillows and comforters and then sits back on his heels. A grin playing at the corners of his mouth as his palms travel along the backs of her calves; fingertips grazing against the skin of her inner thighs before applying gentle pressure in silent encouragement for her to open them. “...it’s my turn.”

#Tyler Rake #Tyler Rake fan fiction #Extraction fan fiction

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thatbookgirl1118 · 4 years ago

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Aight y'all.

I keep seeing these Snape hate posts, and it's driving me nuts. I think a lot of people are just jumping on the bandwagon because of the disgusting things JK's been saying lately, and while I agree that she's being terrible, it doesn't have anything to do with Snape and I don't think that warrants condensing this man's entire complex, conflicting background into "guy got friend-zoned and didn't leave her alone."

So here's why Snape is not the horrible character y'all been making him out to be lately:

Number one. Lily. One of the favorite reasons for why Snape is terrible is that he's a 'creepy stalker' and wouldn't leave Lily alone.

Let's take a look at the facts.

Lily and Snape met when they were, like, eight. They were the only people who understood each other, and Snape was the one person Lily could go to when Petunia was being a royal biatch. They were BEST FRIENDS.

Then they go to Hogwarts, and they're sorted into different houses. Not just different, OPPOSITE. SLYTHERIN AND GRYFFINDOR. And you know what happened? NOTHING. LITERALLY. NOTHING. THEY STAYED FRIENDS. Yes, it was a bit of a strain, especially once Lily and James became friends, but in reality the cause of their falling out had nothing to do with her being a Gryffindor. And before she became friends with James, let's remember: she HATED him. VEHEMENTLY. And Snape agreed, especially considering he was FREAKING BULLIED BY HIM. James was a good person at heart, and he did a lot of good things, but let's please not forget that he made mistakes, too. It doesn't discount the good things about him, it makes him human, and let's please remember that THAT'S KINDA THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SERIES. So how things stand: Snape and Lily are inter-house friends, James is an ass. (Also, part of the reason Snape hated James initially was that he liked Lily, and so did Snape. The difference, of course, was that James was a complete ass to everyone INCLUDING Lily, and Snape was her best friend.) Then Snape starts falling in with the wrong crowd. And his friendship with Lily becomes a liability, because she's both a Gryffindor and, far more importantly, Muggleborn.

Now. I'm NOT saying that everything Snape did was okay. A lot of it was disgusting and despicable and generally horrible. But again. He's HUMAN. He's kinda the biggest grey area on earth, and that makes him HUMAN.

So, one day, when James is, as usual, being a complete ass, Lily stands up for Snape. And he's feeling scared, and embarrassed, and weak, and all the other things VICTIMS OF BULLYING tend to feel, and the girl he likes just stood up for him. Which had to hurt, because Snape wants her to see him as a protector, because he likes her, but she just saved HIM. Add this to all the conflicting emotions he must be having about the future Death Eaters he's hanging out with, and his desire to both have and protect Lily, and he's basically a ticking time bomb. And he explodes. And calls Lily a mudblood.

Major wtf is wrong w u moment.

But that's the point. He SCREWS UP. Because he's HUMAN.

At this point, Snape knows he's gone too far. He probably could've salvaged the relationship, and he probably knew that somewhere in his heart, but he was probably mostly feeling horrified and sick to his stomach and had also, lets remember, kinda convinced himself that Lily liked James and she could never be his. He didn't feel worthy of her. So he decides to distance himself from her, because he knows he's getting mixed up with the wrong people, but it's what everyone expects from him. But she doesn't belong there, and he wants to protect her (also one of the main reasons he probably got involved with these people in the first place, to try and protect her), so he tells her to stay away from him.

Now, if I remember correctly (I could be completely wrong because it's been a bit since I read the last book, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), Lily didn't actually stop. I'm pretty sure she tried to talk to him several more times after the incident. That's not the behavior a victim of stalking and abuse would exhibit, don't ya think? But even if this didn't happen, I think we've made a firm case for them being CLOSE FRIENDS. Honestly I wouldn't blame her for immediately abandoning his dumb butt after what he said to her.

So fast forward a bit. Lily marries James, and Snape joins Lord Voldemort. Then he hears the prophecy Trelawney gives, and not knowing who it pertains to, tells Voldemort. Voldemort then becomes convinced that it means Harry.

Now, Snape has not only just discovered that the love of his life is about to be killed, but that it was HIS FAULT. He told Voldemort about the prophecy. So he goes to Dumbledore and literally BEGS him to hide Lily. In return he turns traitor to the Death Eaters and risks his life over and over, all for the arbitrary promise he's been made that Lily and her family will be protected. AND HER FAMILY. HE DIDN'T PULL THE THING WHERE HE ONLY SAVES HER AND LETS THE REST OF THEM DIE HE SAVES ALL OF THEM BECAUSE HE KNOWS LILY DOESN'T LOVE HIM BUT HE. STILL. LOVES. HER. AND HE WANTS HER TO BE HAPPY AND SAFE EVEN IF IT ISN'T WITH HIM. Y'ALL THAT'S THE EXACT DEFINITION OF TRUE LOVE YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME.

And then, after all that, Lily DIES. As does James, and while he may have been Snape's rival, I think we've established that Snape is human, and that had to hurt if only because he was the man Lily loved and the father of her child.

And after all this, after risking his life for a promise that wasn't even kept, do you know what he did?

He stayed and helped Dumbledore. He was one of the main reasons Harry was able to defeat Voldemort. Yes, in the beginning, it was probably just a convenient way to avoid Azkaban. But he did what Dumbledore instructed EVEN AFTER THE MAN WAS DEAD. He could've easily killed Dumbledore and then joined Voldemort for real, but he helped Harry instead, because he was still atoning for what happened to Lily.

And speaking of Harry, let's talk about that relationship. From even a conceptual standpoint, before they ever met, think about what this boy represents to Snape. He's Lily's son, yes, but because of that he's a constant reminder of her and everything that happened with her. He's also James' son, Snape's bully and the man who got Lily. And to top it all off, he's the REASON SHE'S DEAD. If it weren't for him and the prophecy, she'd still be alive. Now, these are not things that are okay to think about an innocent child. I'm not saying he was justified in treating Harry like shit. In fact, I loathed Snape with my entire soul for the first 6 books. I'm saying LOOK AT THE FACTS. Snape is not a normal person. He's a Death Eater, who's done and seen terrible things, and only switched to the right side because of Lily. So he's not going to think to himself, "this isn't this innocent child's fault." Hell, even if he did, he's not going to take it into account when he interacts with the kid. And on top of it all, as is said several times, Harry is INCREDIBLY like his father. He looks like him, talks like him, and has a penchant for getting into trouble. So when he clashes with Snape (and honestly I think even if they didn't have a history these two would've clashed, they're just too different), Snape takes it personally and treats Harry like shit. AND YET. First year, when Quirrel tries to kill Harry, who saves him? Snape. Third year, when Lupin transforms into a werewolf (and Snape's been making his potion all year and whether Dumbledore forced him or not, let's remember that Lupin was a Marauder and while he probably didn't take direct part in the bullying, he certainly didn't DO anything about it, so frankly it's a miracle Snape didn't poison him), his first instinct is to protect the children - and frankly I think that would've been his first instinct no matter who those kids were, because regardless of the terrible things he's done, Snape is first and foremost a teacher. Fifth year, while he didn't do anything to help the kids directly, he takes the warning Harry gives him (they've got Padfoot at the place where it's hidden) and sends the Order after the kids. I don't think it's ever directly stated that it was him, but how else could the Order know they were there? ALSO. I'M NOT GLOSSING OVER ALL THE SERIOUSLY HORRIBLE THINGS SNAPE DID FIFTH YEAR. But he DID send the Order, so let's give credit where credit's due. He also gives Harry Occlumency lessons, which he made exceedingly unpleasant but he was still trying to protect Harry. Sixth year he hurts Harry in about a billion ways, but to be fair the majority of those ways were ordered by Dumbledore (I have a separate rant on why he's not a bad character either but this essay is long enough). He also tries to protect Malfoy this year, yes on both Dumbledore and his mother's orders, but Snape does recognize that he's just a child and shouldn't have to do something like this.

Now. Seventh year. Snape does a lot of really horrible things this year. Yeah, he does them because he needs Voldemort to trust him so he can bring him down, but that doesn't excuse them. I'm not going to unpack all those things here, because this is already really long, but I'm NOT just ignoring them. Actually I think that they're pretty important to his development, and how he loses himself a bit. But let's look at the two moments that really show the good in him.

Number one. He refused to fight McGonagall. This woman has not only been his colleague for many years, she was his TEACHER. He's known her since he was 11. She's witnessed everything he's gone through, every choice he's made, good and bad, and even not knowing all the reasons and details she STILL forgave him. She treated him with respect, as a fellow teacher. She TRUSTED him, and as far as she knows, he betrayed that trust. That HAD to hurt, knowing she thought he was a bad guy. So in his final interaction with her, when she attacks him to keep him from Harry, he doesn't fight. He can't tell her he's on her side, because he still has a job to do, but he just deflects her spells. His refusal to fight her is the last good piece of him, fighting its way out.

The second time was, of course, his final moments with Harry. After everything he's done to him, after the years of abuse and killing Dumbledore in front of his eyes, Harry still feels pain when he realizes Snape is about to die. He still feels the need to talk to Snape in his final moments, to carry out his final request (to take the memories to the pensieve). This is personally one of my favorite Harry moments, because it shows just how good and kind he is, that he even feels pity for a man he hates and doesn't even know why. But let's take a look at Snape. He's literally dying, but his first reaction to seeing Harry is to give him the memories, so he can defeat Voldemort. He is, to the very end, loyal to Dumbledore. And his second thought - his last - is Lily. He asks Harry to look at him, so that he might see Lily's eyes one last time, even if they're not really hers. His last thought on this earth was of her, and if that isn't love, I don't know what the hell is.

The point of all this is, Snape is human. He isn't necessarily a good person, but he isn't necessarily and a bad one either. Even as a child, he was never as kind as Lily, but she made him kinder. The time when he lost his way the most was when she stopped being there to keep him good. He thought she was happy without him, so he didn't think he mattered, and he did some pretty horrible things. People go dark when they think they don't matter. That was the entire reason for Voldemort's thirst for power. And when he realized she was in danger, and there was something he could do, he did it. Immediately. Without hesitation. He joined the good side and risked his life for the chance that Dumbledore would protect her and her family, even knowing that she'd never know what he was doing. He didn't do it to "get the girl." He did it to save the girl, to let her be happy. And when she died anyway, he spent the next 16 years trying to bring Voldemort down, and let's be honest, he probably didn't do it because it was "the right thing." He did it because it was what Lily would've wanted. He did it to honor her memory, and to protect her son. Snape wasn't some creepy stalker who got rejected and turned bitter. He fell in love with his best friend and spent his entire life trying to protect her and keep her happy, and then trying to honor her memory. He was a man entirely motivated by love, and honestly, I don't know what's more beautiful than that.

#this is really long #but i feel strongly about this #snape is complicated #but he loved Lily #his story is beautiful because it's complicated #harry potter #potterverse #book characters #fictional characters #book rant #fantasy #character development #lily potter #severus snape #pro snape

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blackcatmanor · 5 years ago

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RWBY V7 Episode 12 Photo Review (Spoilers)

..................WUT

I mean….I can’t really process what happened

So let’s get this part out of the way:

The Good:

Penny and Winter are the true BFFs

Penny becoming more human is endearing to see, and it’s been interesting to see her struggle with understanding emotions against Winter, who also struggles to understand them, in a way. Penny challenging Winter but never abandoning her to join RWBY is nice, and their light conflict is very well done because it shows Penny’s growing humanity struggle against Winter’s much chillier perspective. I really like the dynamic between these two and hope they continue on in the next volume (If Winter dies too this volume I’ll ragequit RWBY), and to be honest it’s become more of a cute bond than Ruby and Penny this volume. Don’t @ me

The fights

Although a lot of the “fights” in this volume were done off screen, when there is fighting this volume it has been extremely good. The camera moves around a lot less so we get a better sense of what is going on, and the moves feel more deliberate to whoever is doing the fighting, such as Ruby and Harriet who dart around a lot, delivering only occasional blows (and Ruby taking more of the blows because she’s not as good as Harriet in hand-to-hand), while Yang and Elm go all-out lady brawl (and it’s nice to see Yang’s semblance again)

Exception: Weiss.

Weiss’ over-reliance on Summoning is making her boring to watch in fights. Seeing the 300 different ways the animators show her spinning around and waving her sword like a magic wand is getting OLD. If you’re going to have her summon all the time, fine, but stop focusing the camera on her. Just show her very distantly in the background waving her sword/wand and focus on how people fight whatever she summons.

The meh:

RWBY vs Ace Ops- welp… I didn’t think the Ace Ops were gonna lose, I thought RWBY would flee and barely get away because the Ace Ops were supposed to be the best of the best. I guess I’m glad they didn’t just go down like total chumps (except Vine- sorry dude), but apparently if you train with the Ace Ops for 6 weeks, you’re as good as them. *Shrug* Who knew? It’s like Fitness Bootcamp- Train with a soldier on an obstacle course once and you’re basically ready to become a member of Seal Team 6, right?

I wish they would have explained this a little more- maybe looping back to the discussion they had in Episode 4 about being friends vs teammates. Maybe RWBY’s personal bond gives them more incentive to win, while the Ace Ops are just going through the motions because it’s just a job to them. Plus I think Elm and Marrow’s inner conflict also maybe helped tipped the sales towards RWBY, perhaps they weren’t trying their hardest, but I wish this was a little more clear

JNPR vs Neo

It’s kind of weird that Neo didn’t incapacitate Oscar, if she was planning to try trapping JNR as well… Or maybe Oscar barely managed to get away? Regardless, Neo had the lamp, so why stick around and wait for more people to show up? The plan was for her to get the lamp FROM Oscar, not necessarily grab Oscar as well. Maybe Neo has her own agenda, which would be cool, but from this episode it looks like she completed her objective but then waited around to fight some more. Maybe getting the lamp was too easy and she likes a challenge...? Who knows (I am saying that a lot for this episode, huh?)

Cinder vs Winter and Penny

This is obviously meh because not much happened, and it’s just set up for the big final fight. With the Ace Ops incap’ed, hopefully RWBY can come in as well to finally fight Cinder directly after dancing around her in V5. I think most of this will go down probably in the Relic room because a grand fight in a cramped hospital room is hard, so I think Cinder will be able to Grimm-snatch the Winter Maiden powers and go down to the relic room, or she will incapacitate whoever does get the powers and drag them there, only to be stopped by RWBY for a big battle. However I don’t think it’ll be Winter Schnee getting the powers since it’ll take too long for the transfer device and they are out of time. I KINDA think now it might be Penny- a girl with an aura/soul- somehow she’ll receive them and it’ll be part of her becoming a real girl (like Pinocchio). Who knows? At this point who gets them is totally up in the air.

The Ugly:

I guess I was right about Tyrian escaping custody again, but it wasn’t because of Salem intervening with Grimm like I thought. It was because Robyn is a terrible person!

Robyn- Please kindly f- off:

I officially HATE Robyn the most. After teetering on a “meh-leaning-towards-general-dislike” feeling, I loathe her now and I hope she gets killed off quickly. She’s a one-dimensional generic hothead character with no personality that is purposely stuck in to create conflict. She is the good guy’s Tyrian- but Tyrian has a reason to be chaotic: He’s an insane zealot. Robyn is just a poorly written idiot.

Robyn just does stupid things that get in everyone’s way all of the time, and actively works to undermine the hero’s at each turn. She prevented the launch of Amity by stealing all the supplies, and now she is going to try and fight in the middle of a cramped ship, risking Tyrian’s escape rather than waiting 5 minutes to duke it out with Clover once Tyrian is safely in jail. The entire time they were squaring off on the ship I kept thinking “Uhm Tyrian’s right there….Tyrian is RIGHT THERE! He’s gonna get out!” Robyn is a liar. She doesn’t care about the people of Mantle, because she’s doing things that could (and did) lead to a serial killer who killed Mantle Citizens escaping.

Not to mention she could have taken Qrow’s advice and talk to Ironwood first! Literally 2 episodes ago you were saying the General had your support and now you’re like “I’LL FIGHT ANYONE, ANYWHERE. Forget talking to people to get the full details and actually following through upon that trust I claimed I had in Ironwood two episodes ago, I’m gonna risk everyone’s lives to fight this out RIGHT here!” She’s the worst!

Confrontation with Qrow and Clover-

This falls under the Ugly because, despite some good dialogue between Clover and Qrow, with Qrow expressing that he feels manipulated while Clover tries to explain his own point of view, every decision made from here on Qrow’s part is inexcusable and totally irrational.

Tyrian joins the fray and inexplicably Qrow agrees to team up with him to take down Clover because THAT can’t possibly fail spectacularly.

Tyrian suggests “putting the kid to bed” but the entire time I knew Tyrian would betray Qrow and go too far with attacking Clover because OF COURSE HE WOULD. But I thought he would sting Clover as a chance to get away, because Qrow would have to focus on getting Clover help. However, what we got was…much, much worse.

Qrow’s questionable decision making

Hey DUMMY- Why not team up with Clover first to neutralize Tyrian again, and then you and Clover can duke it out. Or you and Clover can go talk to James like you wanted to 10 minutes ago!

Oh right…because “You got a score to settle” with Tyrian because this is now a cheesy western where your ego is more important than logic.

I think his bad luck semblance is really just an idiot semblance- like occasionally his semblance makes him do stupid things, leading to horrible outcomes but he mistakenly chalks it up to “bad luck.” It’s also frustrating because this volume they were setting Qrow up to grow into a good character- someone with a lot of anger from the past who learns to cope with it, and learns to accept friendship from others. I guess that’s all over.

So, sadly, Tyrian then murders Clover. It was shocking I will say that...I actually GASPED, and it led to this really cool shot:

But the shock was partly for the wrong reason. Like I said before, I thought Qrow being a dumb-dumb would lead to Clover being injured, sure, but KILLED? Yikes! Qrow’s idiocy leading to Clover being injured would be frustrating, but not unforgivable narratively and he could learn from it. He would learn to not treat his friends as transactional, and automatically write them off when one hint of struggle happens. Qrow’s idiocy in teaming up with a serial killer and getting Clover killed kinda makes Qrow unforgivable in my book. Does CRWBY want me to hate Qrow? I guess so, especially because Clover’s dying scene didn’t exactly stick the landing and alleviate my anger towards Qrow either....

So poor dying Clover is lying there, and a visibly shaken Qrow kneels next to him. So the thought is Qrow is going to realize his horrible mistake, and dive down a pool of self-loathing: tearfully blaming himself, blaming his bad luck, APOLOGIZING, upset about how it’s all his fault, etc. Instead, he delivers (with a straight face) the weirdest line ever about James taking the fall. UHHH- WUT? You teaming up with Tyrian led to this. WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

This sucks. On several levels. Clover’s death was just plain poorly done and a good character was wasted. I really liked Clover. I thought Qrow was going to actually get a break from being shit on this entire series and finally get, at a minimum, a friend that would continue to help him grow and develop as a character, pushing Qrow to see the best in himself and stop continually hating himself. With that cut short, I of course felt super sad and emotional about Clover’s death, even to the point of almost crying.

However, I can’t pretend like a significant part of that isn’t pure frustration anger about how this episode played out. Not only did Clover’s death came about in the dumbest way, but his final words with Qrow were wasted by the weird “James will take the fall” bit.

Qrow should have blamed himself and his semblance (I mean...it actually kinda is his fault, not gonna lie), and Clover could have maybe been the ultimate friend to him, telling Qrow that it happened because Qrow was fighting for what he thought was right, and even though the outcome was horrible he shouldn’t stop fighting for what he believes in…? I dunno….ANYTHING other than “GRRR James will pay”

I can’t help but remember a mere few minutes ago.....

This episode.....woof.

In a long series, you want your hero’s to sometimes lose just to keep it interesting, and to give them something to have to crawl back from. However, what’s interesting is seeing the characters try their best, make reasonable and decent decisions and still suffer a loss, because it makes us want to continue to cheer them on and watch as they make a triumphant comeback. Seeing hero’s simply choke and fail because they make the dumbest, irrational decisions with no logical reason is just frustrating and excruciating to watch, and seeing those moments lead to other characters suffering makes your “hero’s” unlikable.

This argument was made for the V6 climax- that RWBY made a dumb decision and others suffered the consequences, making them “evil” to some hateboner watchers, but I thought this assessment was over dramatic. You have to take things in context, and literally nothing came of RWBY’s decision to steal an airship: the universe was the same as it was before with some filler in the middle. No one was injured or killed, and even the damage to the city was minimal (one roof). Clover, though, is full-on dead and that is entirely Qrow’s fault. I just can’t believe the writers put this down on paper, re-read it, and though- “yea....Someone who totally make the decision to team up with a murderer to subdue their good friend....this is gonna be GREAT.”

But who cares about the story- NEW MERCH DROPPING SOON AMIRITE?!

Ok that was a low blow, but the writing and characters inexplicably took a logical nose dive this episode, after having a lot of thought put into last episode. The characters (especially Qrow, but also Robyn and to a lesser extent Clover) could have made some reasonable and logical decisions and Clover still could have died, which would have had way more impact and made the situation seem way more hopeless. Instead we got Robyn kicking off the shitshow by being just the worst, and Qrow taking the shitshow torch and cranking it up to 11, effectively un-doing all of the development we’ve seen from him this season.

Lastly, even if you are going to have the characters completely fail at making decisions and it leads to a horrible outcome, at least stick the landing and don’t have them go off on some odd tangent about how this is someone else’s fault. *facepalm*

Overall I’d give this episode a very generous 2/10.

The 2 points is because of the decent fight animation and occasionally decent dialogue.

I’m tired...

#rwby v7 #rwby spoilers #rwby vol7 #Robyn Hill #qrow branwen #clover ebi #marrow amin #ruby rose #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #weiss schnee #penny polendina #winter schnee #cinder fall #tyrian callows #rwby salem #oscar pine

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txladyj-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 5 - This Time Around

a Daryl Dixon x OFC collaboration written by @xmistressmistrustx

Rating: Explicit

Relationship: Daryl Dixon/Original Female Character

Tags: Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Awkwardness, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Crush, Fluff and Humor, Angst and Humor, Mild Smut, Strong Language, Eventual Sex, Eventual Romance, Slow Burn, Canon Divergence, Some Canon Scenes and Dialogue

Chapters 15/?

Sleep. It’s when the body recovers and processes the day’s events. It makes things clearer and allows for a new perspective. Resting the mind, the body and the soul all at once. That is, where decent sleep can be attained.

Jess tossed and turned in her sleeping bag all night, tears staining her thin and threadbare pillow. Eventually, when the exhaustion of humiliation and rage had defeated her, she drifted off in the early hours of the morning only to dream of being chased and jolting awake a mere hour later. Her eyes felt puffy and stung with the reminder that emotionally, she desperately needed a break. She sat up, wiped the sleep from her eyes and faced the dread that festered deep inside. Facing everyone after the events of the night before was going to be tough, she knew that much.

When she emerged from her tent, she quickly scanned the camp, seeing no sign of Sarah and Jodie and figuring that it was a good start at least. Carol and Andrea offered her a small smile as they stood and talked by the RV and Dale lifted a hand in a small wave from his perch at the top. Aside from their small acknowledgements, no one else looked up as she headed for the food station. The minimal and careless reaction she received did something to aid her relief at least and she sensed her heart rate calm and her anxiety lessen.

After a night of replaying her recent torture by Sarah and Jodie, she wanted nothing more than to sit next to the one person she found solace with, but even he seemed too far out of reach. She knew deep down his distance from her was down to being associated with the girl that was constantly made fun of. She wasn’t the only one that had been humiliated. The thought of giving up on their friendship was not one she wanted to entertain and so, she had to at least try to talk to him.

Sitting on a rounded rock, alone and with eyes pinned on the still water, like a sheet of glass in front of him, Daryl could hear footsteps wandering across the gravel towards him. He sighed, knowing it was Jess and feeling more torn than ever. Half of him wanted to yell at her and make her go away. To tell her that he was not the type of person to maintain friendships and that he was better on his own, without the hassle of drawing attention from the lesser liked members of the group. The other half craved her company, her lighthearted banter, her smile, the gentle way she nudged his arm and laughed quietly when she was making fun of him. It was this half that was stronger, but he was locked in a war with them both.

“Hi” She said quietly.

A quick glance at her told him she had been severely affected by what had happened. Dark circles under her eyes told of a sleepless night spent crying and pouring over the details. The ‘what if’s’ the ‘maybe I could have’s’. His heart stung with sympathy but his face displayed nothing. A blank expression.

“Hey” He grunted.

She held out a metal bowl to him. It was another habit of their friendship that had suddenly become as routine as their nightly RV meeting place. She would wake as early as him, before many of the others would stir. She’d fix them some food and they’d sit together and eat quietly as the sun crept up into the sky and the warmth in the air became heavy and intense. Jess was never much of a morning person but her disturbed sleeping pattern and her unavoidable new life meant she was adapting and although she rarely spoke much before the others began to emerge from their tents, she enjoyed the fact that Daryl obviously felt the same about the comfort of the morning routine, having never complained or walked off until she moved first.

“Brought you some breakfast.” She told him.

“I ain't hungry.” He muttered. His body was rigid, stressed and on edge and no matter how many cigarettes he smoked, he could not ease the tension in his muscles. He wasn’t lying. Food was the last thing on his mind.

“You can always eat, Daryl.” She smiled.

“Said I ain't hungry.” He snapped. His chest constricted with guilt.

I’m being an asshole to her. Again. Why do I do this?

She immediately noticed his changed attitude towards her and joined the dots, realizing that he was angry about the previous night.

“Look, about last night-” She started

“-I don’t wanna talk about that.” He cut in

“But, I don’t-”

His head snapped around and his eyes met hers. To her dismay, they were filled with fury and she almost flinched at his aggressive attitude towards her.

“-What is wrong with you?! Huh?!” He raged “We ain’t gonna be no best friends! I don’t have friends n’ I don’t want ‘em neither! I don’t work that way! So just give it up!”

Her mouth dropped open and she blinked at him in disbelief. It was no secret that Daryl could be unpredictable and sharp tongued, but she had seen very little of it directed at her until that moment. Her entire body recoiled and screamed at her to leave before she was faced with more bitter disappointment and hurt.

Still clutching the bowl, she turned and walked away. Her path was blurred through yet more tears and she considered that if she was going to cry at anything since the turn, it would be the loss of her friends and family. But it was different, Daryl had changed things. Sarah and Jodie had changed things. She was mixed up, confused and frustrated.

Daryl grit his teeth and swallowed hard as he watched her walk away. Sliding from the rock, he started after her, boots noisily crashing through the pebbles of the shore. But his mind was too filled with complexities to have formed any kind of calm and coherent conversation. He stopped and raised his arms, his hands pushing into his hair on each side as he closed his eyes.

“Shit.”

He didn’t know why he was angry at her, logic told him that none of it was her fault. She was merely an unfortunate and easy target, but the humiliation was still raw and he still felt it from the night before. Always being an outcast and a target himself during high school and in the small, mountain town where he and his brother lived, Daryl had quickly become tired with being kicked when he was down and being dealt the worst hand. He evolved as he aged into what people that knew of him saw as a mini-me version of Merle and it was a judgement he couldn’t seem to shake and so eventually accepted. But the truth was, he wasn’t like Merle. He was empathetic and sensitive, two traits that would only get him targeted even more. He knew how Jess felt, maybe it was why he had raged at her, the all too familiar feeling of being so publicly ridiculed. Or, maybe it was because he felt genuine, powerful concern for her that had startled him and he didn’t know where it had come from or to do with it.

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Sarah flashed Daryl a wide grin as she approached him on the slope but received nothing but a scowl in return. She could see why the camp nerd had attached herself to him, he was brave, mysterious and surly. Not like the other men in the camp and he had garnered her admiration from the day she turned up with Jodie in tow, both shaking with fear and exhausted from the hike up the mountain. Merle had been easier to get through to, easier to persuade to follow her into the woods so she could use him to forget for a while.

It was an occurrence that he didn’t want a single soul to know about and gathered that Sarah felt the same. Daryl didn’t even register the first time she propositioned him, he’d shrugged off her passing, flirtatious comment as nothing, but it occurred to him when she tried a second time and made it more than obvious that she wanted something from him. He knew of girls like her. Whiter than white, rich kids from privileged backgrounds who love to make out that they’re so wholesome and in a position to persecute everyone else for their bad decisions, all the while going about numbing their own pain with the same activities they claim to loathe in others. When she confronted him in the tree line one evening and shoved him against a tree, he felt her hand cup between his legs and for a split second thought he might be having some kind of screwed up dream. Sarah’s long blonde hair tickled over his arms when she pressed herself to his body and brought her lips close to his ear.

“Wanna have a little fun, Daryl?”

His face twisted with disgust as he shoved her away from him, stopping himself from going as far as pointing his crossbow at her.

“Get the fuck away from me” He warned while she regained her footing on the woodland floor and stared at him with a determined look on her face.

“C’mon, let’s just forget for a while” She purred, reaching a hand out and dragging her fingertips down his bicep and biting her lip. “You’re hot. I’m hot. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He grabbed her wrist so quickly it made her jump, his fingers like a vice as he used her arm to propel her backwards until her back hit a nearby tree and the air was knocked from her lungs, she buckled over and wheezed before gasping up at him in shock.

Self control was something Daryl was either good at or impulsive with, depending on the situation. Stood before a fed faced, coughing Sarah, all he wanted to do was shoot her in the face. But he wasn’t about to risk the place in the camp that he had earned. He knew Rick would banish him and probably Merle too for killing the living. He found himself inches from her face, sweat trickling down his temple.

“Don’t ever touch me again.” He growled.

Storming off into the dimly lit woods, he withdrew his knife from its holster and veered off in the direction where he’d last seen Walkers, needing to expel some rage.

When he noticed Sarah walking down the slope towards him, he decided that his lack of action to defend Jess and himself had meant that she thought she had triumphed over them, and so he needed the satisfaction of confronting her. But it wasn't just that, it was also years of being tormented, of seeing other kids dragged through the same ordeals. Dragged down to rock bottom by insecure, selfish kids that just made an already difficult childhood and life even harder. It was more than one thing. It was a multitude of things that Sarah represented and finally, he'd decided enough was enough.

Wearing a thin, dusty pink cami top that left nothing to the imagination, she ran a hand though her hair, gathering it at one side and winking at him. The tiny gesture did nothing but make him want to yell in her face. He stopped in her path and noted her looking him up and down with approval.

“Changed your mind?” She asked with a raised eyebrow.

Hi stomach churned. He couldn't think of anything less appealing. Merle's leftover's which happened to be highly undesirable in the first place. Daryl wasn't altogether as interested in the fairer sex as his brother was. Having never encountered a woman that possessed the traits in which he found attractive. While Merle went for the physical aspects of a female, Daryl was more drawn to the complexities of one's character and personality; Honesty, integrity, a sense of humour and a level of intelligence. As a result, the likes of Sarah was the embodiment of everything he despised.

“The hell was that last night?” He snapped.

“Just lightening the mood. Everybody’s so tense and boring around here.” She complained, rolling her eyes and twirling a piece of blonde hair around her fingers.

“Yeah?” He squared up to her, closing the gap between them. She tried to back up, stopping when she realized she was almost flat against the crumbling wall of the walkway to the quarry. “The next time ya do somethin’ like that for fun, ya better watch ya back, ‘cause you’ll be the one I trip up in front of Walkers to buy everybody else some time.”

An unsure but mischievous smile crept across her face.

“You’re real sexy when you’re mad, Y’know that? I bet you can unleash all kinds of rage in the bedroom. Can see why she’s got such a huge crush on you. It’s a pity your taste in women is so terrible, you sure you’d rather get your kicks with her over me?”

Actually, I would but I’m not about to admit that to you.

An idea crossed his mind. A risky one but an appealing one nonetheless. Sarah and Jodie toyed with Jess like a cat toys with a mouse before it kills it. Bit by bit, stealing small parts of its life force away. Daryl very deliberately dragged his eyes from her face, all the way down her body and back up again.

“You really wanna go to the woods with me?” He asked.

“You were my first choice, you know that.” She grinned.

“Alright, you gonna make it worth my while?” He asked.

“Oh yeah.”

Impulsivity. It was one of his flaws. His emotions and sensitivity leading him astray, into the realm of snap decisions that he sometimes regretted. But in the grand scheme of things, he couldn't see how any consequences that developed from his sudden idea could possibly make anything worse.

“Follow me.” He instructed with a small nudge of his head.

In the woods, Daryl walked as far as he could before reaching the border, stopping and leaning against a tree. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and tilted his head back at Sarah, who had halted in front of him and was looking at him like a lion eyeballs a steak. Merle was the better manipulator out of the two of them, but Daryl possessed the higher intellect that meant he knew exactly what to do going forward. Sarah was a simple creature, after one thing and one thing only. All he had to do was lead her there and she would do the rest.

“C’mon, get over here” He encouraged. "Unless ya shy."

“I’m not the shy type.” She purred as she moved close to him began skimming her fingertips along the edge of his leather vest, drawing subtle lines down his chest. Everything in him was screaming to be removed from the situation. The sensation of her fingertips skimming down his chest over his shirt felt like pure poison.

“Bet you can be a real bad girl, huh?” He asked. She slowly peered up at him, licking her lips. He let her close the gap between them and felt her nose and lips graze the side of his face.

"You wanna find out how bad I can be?" She uttered against his skin.

He clenched his jaw in disgust and wondered how anyone could possibly enjoy this kind of seedy and nauseating state of affairs. He took a deep breath before rapidly seizing her shoulders and ramming her back against the opposite tree. Her back hit the bark with a thump and shock flashed across her face, her hands coming up and tugging at his wrists. She wriggled under the pressure of his weight, his forearm now clamped across her chest and rendering her immobile. He levelled his eyes at her, his glare burning into her self-centered soul.

“I ain't never laid no violent hand on a woman, but you ain't no woman. You’re nothin’ but a fuckin’ parasite. I wouldn’t screw you if my life depended on it. What ya did to that girl was fuckin’ low. She ain’t never done nothin’ to you.” He seethed, finally standing up for Jess’s honor didn’t feel as strange as he imagined it to. In fact, it felt totally right.

“That’s cute. You’re defending poor, chubby Jennifer” she pouted breathlessly

This bitch really doesn’t give up.

Daryl suddenly felt like he was watching someone else make a move as his hand lowered and took hold of his hunting knife. In a split second, the shiny, silver blade was pressed against Sarah’s throat and her eyes flashed with pure terror. The knife pressed further towards her skin and he knew he’d have to let up soon or he really would end up killing her. Her chin rippled and a small, frightened whimper was enough to tell Daryl that he had succeeded in scaring her into submission. Finally, she gave in, her cheeks suddenly wet with tears.

“Her name’s Jess, dumbass.” He spat. “I don’t know how the hell you’re even still alive if ya this fuckin’ stupid. You even look at her again n’ I’ll slit ya goddamn throat and leave ya out here to the Walkers. You understandin’ me?”

She nodded tearfully, sniffing and still trying to feebly pull on his arm to release her. But Daryl only moved when he was ready, staring her down before he eventually released her and was gone in the blink of an eye.

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Jess didn’t move from her tent for the entire day. She ignored Carol’s attempt to coax her out to eat something and Glenn checking in on her by peering around the zipper of the tents entrance. In the night, she got up and wandered down to the water's edge. Unbeknownst to her, Daryl was sat in the dark, smoking and reflecting upon his actions that day. He was sure that Sarah deserved to be frightened into ceasing her childish and spiteful antics, but he was unsure if his violent threat had been the right move to make. He had never hurt or threatened a woman before, telling himself his whole life that he would be nothing like his father. But in that moment, with Sarah shoved against a tree with a blade to her throat, he wanted nothing more than to be able to follow through with his threat, especially when he visualized Jess’s horrified and devastated face while she watched in horror as Sarah read her journal aloud. He was some distance from her, far enough back from the water for her not to notice his presence but close enough to see her hugging her knees, lit by the moon and hear her quiet sobbing.

It was a sunny, Sunday afternoon. The first Jess and her family had spent in their new home on the Army base in Ft Rucker. Their sixth, official military base home in as many years. Moving so much had come at a cost, Jess never really settled anywhere and found it difficult to hold down friendships. Her studies suffered and her parents piled on the pressure to succeed despite her struggles. She wasn’t like them, not an overachiever in everything she tried and as a result, always felt a little outcast, even from her own immediate family. But she loved them unconditionally anyway. The Barbeque was in full swing, the burgers were being slid into buns and piled up on the table in the yard, the smell of charcoal and burning meat filling her nostrils and cementing its place in her memory as a connection to one of the most enjoyable afternoons of her life. Jess and her older brother played cards while sipping punch made from fruit juices and an extremely large bottle of rum that her father had emptied into it without her mother knowing. He offered Jess a small wink after he hid the empty bottle in a cupboard and carried the punch bowl outside. They ate as much as humanly possible in one sitting, laughed and felt the hazy blur of alcohol after a couple of hours and finished up the evening with a loud and boisterous game of charades. If she could choose to have anything, to go back to any point in time, she wouldn’t erase the last few hours, she would simply opt to go back to that day and relive it again. To be with her family and drink her father’s super strong punch and eat four burgers without caring what anyone thought. But she was stuck in a quarry, in a camp at the end of the world with Sarah and Jodie, the type of people she despised, a bunch of others that she hardly knew and didn’t want to, even though their hearts seemed good and their intentions were sincere. And Daryl, she didn’t know what she thought of him anymore.

He finished his smoke and drew in a deep and thoughtful breath. His heart told him to go to her, but his head said otherwise. He was getting attached; he knew that much because the feeling itself was unknown to him. He’d never felt it before about anyone, never cared enough. Certainly not enough to hold a knife to another human's throat in their honor. It was dangerous to become attached to people, he couldn’t trust them and didn’t need to rely on them and eventually, everyone goes away in the end in some way or another. But Jess seemed different and he pondered if it would be so bad to just have one friend. To have that one person that knew him more than his brother did. His heart won the battle and he got up and went to her, his boots crunching on the gravel. When she heard him near her, she jumped up and swiped tears from her face with her sleeve.

“Hey, Jess.” He said.

It was most unusual, the use of her name in his greeting to her. From this simple and apparently meaningless phrase, she knew everything had changed.

“Hi” She sniffed.

He sighed when he saw her puffy face, a tear glistening in the moonlight on her cheek. In his whole life, he was certain he’d not felt an ounce of sympathy when anyone cried, but stood there before Jess, who was undeserving and innocent, his chest hurt and he wanted to do something totally out of the ordinary…he wanted to hug her.

“Heard ya cryin.” Was all he said instead, unable to muster the courage for physical contact.

“Bad day at the office,” she remarked.

It was clearer than ever that she was the only person he’d ever spoken to that seemed to want to be around him and be his friend. His angry and embarrassed reaction to recent events meant he took it out on her with no grounds in which to do so, but it was all he knew and what she’d written in her journal had made everything exceptionally awkward.

“S’my fault. Shouldn’t have gone in on ya like that” He admitted.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to bed. Goodnight.” She responded, turning her back and walking to the slope.

Something in Daryl urged him to stop her. To say something. Anything to prevent her from walking away and the situation remaining unsolved or even improved in the slightest.

“Hey. Wait.” He called out, but she continued to walk, bringing a hand up and wiping her face again. “Jess. Stop. Please” He tried again. She stopped but didn’t grace him with turning around or even a glance over her shoulder. She couldn’t look at him, too mortified to be near him.

“Just ignore ‘em.”

By all accounts and by his own admission, it was a feeble and pathetic attempt to soothe her feelings. Far from being an expert, the intention was there but the know how and the sensitivity lacked. However, Jess couldn’t deny that she appreciated his effort, it was just too little, too late. Finally spinning around to face him, she flapped her arms by her sides with exasperation.

“You said it yourself, we weren’t even friends in the first place. Why are you even talking to me?” She asked, by that point totally done with skirting around the issue and feeling her temper beginning to rise.

“That was just some shit I said in anger.” Daryl tried to explain as honestly and to the point as possible.

“C’mon, Daryl. Don’t say that just because you feel guilty for yelling at me and being a dick for the past few days. You don’t even have a right to be angry at me, I haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t like me any more than they do. I’ve just forced you to talk to me since I’ve been here.” She argued. Her body language had changed, now laced with hints of anger and irritation as her hands flew up every time she started a new sentence.

“I don’t do nothin I don’t wanna do.” He told her.

She wiped at her face again, her skin still damp and puffy and the extra tears now doing nothing but increasing her anger. He wished he could say what he wanted to say but far from being an expert at such confrontations, he was having trouble getting his point across. Panic set in when he saw her try to leave again and so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“The way you are with me, ain’t like nobody else.”

She halted and shot him a confused look.

“What does that even mean? I’ve always treated you like you’re another human being.” She cried with exasperation. If no one in the camp had heard her raised voice by now, they were lucky.

“Yeah” He agreed. “Exactly.”

Then, she understood. His uncomfortable expression, his hands pushed into his jeans pockets and the fact that he was still stood there despite the emotional toll of the topic, told her a lot. He was trying. What she couldn’t decide, was if it was through guilt, or because he genuinely cared. The prospect of them carrying on as friends after the journal incident was a ridiculous notion to Jess. Nothing would ever be the same again and neither of them had asked for it.

“I’m sorry you had to hear all that. What she read out. I-I didn’t know what I was talking about when I wrote it.” She attempted to explain.

“Don’t have to explain. It’s alright.” He dismissed as he dug a boot into the dirt.

“I don’t want you thinking that the only reason I hang out with you is because I think your attractive or that I have a stupid crush on you. That’s not the reason I talk to you so much.” She confirmed with little belief that it would do anything to stop him going over what he had heard every time he looked at her.

“I know.” He mumbled

“I mean, I’m not saying you’re not attractive. You obviously… are. Very attractive. I just…”

I’m digging my own grave here. Stop talking.

“Nevermind.”

She heard him huff and caught him smiling in the moonlight. It was an overly shy smile and in that moment, during the most difficult conversation they’d ever had about a subject that was leaving them both highly uncomfortable, she had delivered a compliment to him that she was convinced had actually made him blush. To her it was the most amazing thing and a sight she could have looked at all night. He appeared so bashful that his lip curled up into an almost never ending half smile and he could only look out across the water. Her growing affection for him intensified in those few seconds.

“Um…Thanks.” He grunted

She sighed and dropped her gaze to the floor, sensing him studying her silently for a moment. He was baffled by his urge to protect her having previously failed to see how much their friendship had grown over the months they’d spent at the camp.

“We are friends. Alright? And I don’t think you’re a loser.” He wanted her to know.

She slowly looked up at him and he wished it was lighter, just a little more, so he could see her eyes and try to gauge how she was reacting. But a silhouetted figure and a darkness shrouded face was all he had to work with.

“Maybe a little weird…n’ too damn loud in the woods. But ya ain’t no loser.” He added, lightheartedly.

Just smile at me. Please.

“Not sure about that.” She whispered as she wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her torso.

“Jess, it don’t matter. What she did. What she read out. It don’t matter.”

It was a last-ditch attempt at trying to convince her to put it all behind her and try and start over. For a fleeting moment, he thought she was about to agree when she offered him a small smile. But then, she started to back away.

“Matters to me.”

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Such a conversation with Daryl was a first and Jess lay in her tent with her head propped up on her backpack full of clothes and over thought every single detail. It was one of her downfalls, overanalyzing everything and coming up with six when she put two and two together. The stitching on the inside of the roof of the tent was now serving a different purpose than to just keep a roof over her head. It was now a visual representation of every single time she’d been hurt by Sarah or Jodie. Every little quip or whisper sewn into the fabric just like it was now sewn into the fabric of her being.

Sitting up, she crawled to the front of the tent and checked the top of the RV. Andrea was sat alone at the top, reading a book. No sign of Daryl. She growled to herself. Typical. She wanted to find him, to speak to him and tell him that she was willing to try and put everything behind her and continue to be his friend if he wanted her to be. That she’d had time to think and decided that the friendship that had blossomed from nowhere between them was too good a thing to throw away.

She climbed out of her tent, crossed the clearing and approached the slope that led down to the water, checking the place she’d last seen him made the most sense to her. Hearing whispers in front of her from the cloak of darkness, she detected Merle’s voice, along with Daryl’s.

“I hear you right earlier? Ya ain’t comin’ into the city.” Merle asked.

“No. Ya only want whiskey, Merle. Rick was right, s’a bad idea.” Daryl replied, shooting the idea down in flames.

“That little girlfriend of yours got ya all mixed up? You ain’t no fun no more” Merle complained.

Jess sighed, releasing a huff of anger at the notion that everyone seemed to have it in for them.

“She ain’t my girlfriend, man. Get outta here with that shit.” Daryl protested.

“We all heard what she wrote in that diary o’hers. Tellin’ me you wouldn’t tap that? it wouldn’t take much convincin’.”

“Stop.” came Daryl's short warning.

“Oh, I see it now. She actually means somethin’ to you, don’t she? That the reason our plan means diddly squat to you now? ‘Cause ya went ‘n caught some feelin’s for the little, fat chick?”

Ignoring Merle’s offensive description of her, Jess’s mind raced with the possible responses Daryl could have to the question. Would he tell his brother that he cared about her? Would he just brush it off and remind him they were just friends? Or was she about to hear him confess to seeing her the same way as she saw him?

“The plan ain’t a plan no more because it was a fuckin’ dumb idea! She’s just a girl, she don’t mean shit to me, alright?! Just drop it.”

In the blink of an eye, upon the delivery of one sentence, Jess stopped believing in happy endings. She knew fairytales didn’t exist and it was confirmed for her that she would never fully trust anyone again. Her sneakers scraped up over the gravel as she began to back away from the sound of the voices. Her heart was undoubtedly broken, but she was done with crying over it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I think it’s time I left this place. Maybe it’s better to keep moving. I don’t contribute anything to the group that can’t be replaced by somebody else and I don’t think I can live with the humiliation that Sarah and Jodie have caused. I also overheard Daryl telling his brother that I mean nothing to him. I thought we were friends at least. I should have known his mixed signals were lies. I’m so stupid. What was I thinking? In hindsight, it was obvious that getting attached to someone like him would only get me hurt. But I just had that hope. Stupid, wasted, dangerous hope. I still can’t believe it’s all been a lie.

I stole a gun from the RV and a couple cans of food that nobody will notice are gone until I’m at least a few miles out. Hopefully, it’ll help to keep me going on my way back to the city. I suspect Daryl may try to track me at first, but at least I know now that it won’t be because he cares. It’ll be because people will ask him to. Maybe Carol, or Carl. I’ll miss them and I hope they make it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Two hours was all he needed. Two hours of broken sleep and he was up and tracking rabbits in the woods. The task at hand would have been easy enough, having been performed a million and one times over. But that was when his head was clearer and his circumstances were different. Even before the turn, there was always something hanging over him right from when he was a child. His father’s violence, his mothers drinking, Merle’s increasing absence, school, bar fights, drugs, bail money. The only tranquility in Daryl’s whirlwind of a life was the woods. The place he felt like he could be himself and stop entertaining thoughts of whatever issue he had to deal with that day. But now the world had changed and so had he, thanks to the introverted but chatty girl he had befriended and managed to hurt at the same time. He told himself; one more rabbit. It would be enough and then he could go back to camp and sit with her. He didn’t plan on saying much, but he hoped his presence alone would be enough for her to see that he wasn’t going to enable anything that Sarah or Jodie had done to impact their friendship after all.

Catching the final rabbit had been easy, barely ten minutes spent tracking the target that was so busy trying to find its own food that it noticed nothing untoward until the last, deadly second. When he pushed through the trees, clutching a collection of rabbits and squirrels, he was forced to halt where he was. Carol stood in front of him with her arms tightly wrapped around her torso and her lips pushed into a thin line. The first thought that entered his head was that the camp had been attacked and someone was dead. The flash of panic that surged through his veins at the thought of it being Jess took him by surprise. Carol slowly walked towards him.

“What’s goin’ on?” he questioned.

“Daryl…” She started. “It’s Jess.”

No. No, this can’t be happening. Tell me she’s alive.

He could sense his chest constrict and his grip become tighter around the legs and tails of the dead animals in his grasp.

“What? What about her? She OK?” He demanded.

Carol let out a sympathetic huff and tilted her head to the side, shrugging one shoulder up.

“She’s gone.” She whispered.

“Gone? What d’ya mean, ‘gone’?”

Daryl’s voice was now a lot louder than he had meant it to be, but the need for more information was now starting to press on his last nerve.

“Her belongings are missing, so is one of Shane’s guns. We think she left in the night.” Carol explained.

His eyes flashed with disbelief and he surged past her, striding over to the camp and dumping the animals in the dirt by the burned-out fire. Everyone stopped their tasks and conversations as he began throwing open people’s tents, storming in and out of the RV like a hurricane and calling her name at the top of the slope to the water. Carol watched on as he paced back and forth with his hands on his head as Merle emerged from his tent.

“Naw.” He shakes his head “Naw. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t just leave.”

“She not here. We’ve looked everywhere.” Glenn offered from beside Rick and Shane, who were stood next to the loaded-up truck which had all their guns arranged on the hood like a bizarre art installation.

Daryl looked over at her tent, lunging at it and ripping it open, his face falling in dismay when he saw nothing inside. He growled loudly to himself as his breathing increased and his heart started to hammer. Carol, who was usually skittish and nervous around aggression and anger, made the attempt to calm him by gently touching his arm but as soon as the contact was made with his skin, he flinched and threw her off.

“SHIT!” He bellowed.

Throwing his crossbow from his back onto the floor, he spun around, his gaze stopping on Andrea.

“You!” He exclaimed, pointing a calloused finger at her. His hand hovered over her chest and she took a step back. “You were s’posed to be on watch! Why didn’t ya see her leave?! Huh?! The fuck were ya doin’ up there?!”

Before she could even begin to fathom an answer, Rick stepped in and worked his way in between them, placing a hand on Daryl’s chest and coaxing him back. Again, he flinched off the contact which told Rick in no uncertain terms that now more than ever, was not a good time to be touching him.

“Daryl, this isn’t anybody’s fault. She took everything with her. She wanted to go.” Rick reasoned.

“No! You don’t know her! She wouldn’t!” He argued.

“You got it bad, boy” Merle laughed from the other side of camp. His boots cracked over snapping twigs on the ground while he slowly made his way over to the scene. Sauntering casually and rolling a cigarette between his fingers. “I thought she didn’t mean shit to ya. Ain't that what you said?”

Something in Daryl snapped. He swung an arm out and collided his fist with his brother’s nose. The impact was so strong that it caused Merle to stagger back after everyone winced at the sickening crack that echoed around the camp and bounced from the trees. Merle blinked in surprise and brought his hands up to his face. Warmth coated his fingers as blood trickled through the gaps. His eyes flicked up and he lunged at Daryl, only to be stopped by Shane. Daryl's hand thundered with pain but it was a pain he needed, a welcome distraction from the pain in his heart, caused by the knowledge that he had failed to reassure her, to keep her here under the promise that nothing had to change. A million and one 'what if's' floated through his mind.

“Easy” Shane grunted while throwing his weight back against Merle to prevent him from surging forwards and causing a mass brawl.

“I’ma knock you into the middle o’ next week, you little shit!” Merle hissed. Blood sprayed messily from between his teeth, peppering his vest and anyone unlucky enough to be close enough to him.

Daryl, chest heaving and teeth clamped together, made off for the trees.

“Where are you going? Daryl?!” Carol called after him.

“To find her!” He shouted over his shoulder. “Y’all would do well to stay outta my fuckin’ way too.”

“What if she doesn’t want to be found?” Carol reasoned.

Ignoring her, he vanished into the trees, leaving Shane Still struggling with Merle and a dozen shocked faces all peering awkwardly at one another.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

When evening arrived, it brought with it Daryl’s return to the camp. Much to the surprise of the other inhabitants that expected him to be gone for days on end. He said nothing, only sitting down by the fire and hanging his head. His arms were decorated with scratches and as Rick watched him push his fingers into his dirty, tousled hair he realized that Jess’s departure had impacted their resident hunter more than he had thought.

“Here” He said, throwing a plastic bottle of water over at him. It landed between his boots and Daryl wearily reached down and picked it up. He unscrewed the cap and took a large gulp. Around him, was every single other member of the camp. He had walked into some kind of meeting but could care less about interrupting. He knew Rick was mid-sentence when he’d appeared and flopped down onto the ground, not listening to a word that was being said. In fact, he didn’t even notice when the cop and seemingly unelected leader stopped talking and his surroundings grew uncomfortably quiet. Clearing his throat, Rick carried on speaking.

“Is everybody in agreement that we should go ahead with tomorrow morning’s run?”

People must have nodded but Daryl didn’t look up or show an ounce of interest.

“We need more food.” Rick continued “Daryl?”

He didn't want to talk, or have to make any decisions. he didn't want to take part in a meeting or do anything except rest until he had enough energy to go back out in search of his friend. A long and exhausted sigh followed an angry glare when he finally looked up meant Rick had already been put in his place. But he knew he had to ask the question regardless."

“You OK to hunt over the next couple days?”

“No.” Daryl said firmly.

Rick’s eyebrows raised momentarily and he caught the gaze of his wife, Lori. She gave him a small nod, urging him to continue.

“We don’t have enough food for the next few days.” He explained.

“Yeah, n' I said no. I’m goin’ lookin for Jess.” Daryl snapped back.

“Oh, come on.” He heard Sarah scoff. Rage flared in his chest and pumped through his veins, white hot fury fueling him to act. He jumped to his feet and with a click and a gasp sounding out from those around him, he pointed his crossbow at her face. Tense murmurs filled the air and Rick was rapidly crossing the space between them with intent to stop him.

“Back off, Sherriff.” Daryl warned without moving his vision from his target, stopping Rick in his tracks and pushing the crossbow further into Sarah’s face.

“Hey, shit for brains” he hissed through his teeth at her. “You two are the reason she’s gone. If ya don’t shut up I’ma put a bolt between ya eyes”

“Daryl, you won’t be hurting anyone. Put it down.” Rick insisted, drawing his gun.

Merle, who had been slowly ambling up the slope to the camp when he heard a commotion, seemed to turn up out of nowhere. Calmly, and apparently with no recollection of his brother’s savage punch earlier in the day, he stepped between the barrel of Ricks gun and Daryl.

“Woah, now Sheriff. What ya say you just let my brother do what he pleases? He’s been feedin’ y’all for weeks now. He wants to shoot the bitch, then I say we let him.” He smiled. “She ain’t good for much anyways”

Sarah looked up at Daryl’s fierce expression over the tip of the arrow pointed at her forehead.

“You calling me shit for brains? Please. Stupid Redneck.” She shot at him with little to no fear of being impaled in the face with a crossbow bolt. Telling herself he wouldn’t do it, she forced her shoulders back and tried to hide her fear.

“Rednecks good enough to scratch ya itches though, right?” Daryl commented.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh whatever, asshole.”

“You been fuckin’ Merle in the woods” He proclaimed loudly. Sarah’s jaw dropped open and Jodie, who had shifted up considerably from her side, stared at her friend in disbelief.

“You said he was lying.” She whispered.

“Oh, ain't no lie, sweetheart!” Daryl shouted as he jostled the crossbow closer to Sarah's face. “Likes herself some rough, this one! Tried it with me n’ when I turned her ugly ass down she went after my brother! Goes around judging folks, makin’ fun of ‘em. When all the while, she’s lettin’ my brother search her for pocket change in the woods most nights!”

Glenn, who was sitting across the fire with wide eyes, sucked both of his lips into his mouth to stifle what would undoubtedly be a roar of laughter, not only at Daryl’s rage, but at his amusing choice of words.

“This is awkward” He pointed out.

“I know. It’s great.” T-dog added from beside him. He shuffled around on the spot, getting comfortable for the remainder of the show.

Andrea sprang forwards from where she was leaning against the RV, obviously feeling the need to intercept at the sound of such a crass topic.

“Daryl, that’s enough, there are children that can hear you.” She scolded as she stepped into the circle behind him. He lowered his crossbow and turned on his heels, locking her in a death glare.

“People out there eatin’ people!” He shouted as he raised his arms. His crossbow swung clumsily in his grip “Sluts fuckin’ rednecks all over the show but we better not say no bad words, huh?!" His neck flared red and veins protruded on his temples.

Sarah, who by now was completely mortified at the whole camp knowing about her night-time activities, slowly lifted her vision to Merle, who was still stood between Daryl and Rick. He began to laugh loudly to himself.

“Cats outta the bag, sugar! God damn!” He chuckles, throwing a wink her way. “No more squat thrusts in the pickle patch!”

She immediately got up and stomped off, leaving a collection of stunned faces. Jodie watched her depart, her face twisted with disgust.

“I ain’t doing nothin’ for none of y’all!” Daryl fumed, whirling around and swinging a pointed finger at them all. “Gonna look for Jess. Merle can hunt. I’m out”

With that, he threw his crossbow over his shoulder and scuffed out of the circle around the fire, off into the woods to set to work finding the girl that had managed to work her way so far into his heart that he wasn’t about to let her go without a fight.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

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#daryl dixon #the walking dead daryl #daryl x oc #daryl fanfiction #twd fanfiction #twd daryl #daryl dixon imagine #the walking dead fanfiction

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ohmytheon · 6 years ago

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The Wonderful World of Jealousy

summary: Bakugou doesn't need to deal with his feelings, certainly when it comes to Uraraka. He'll just ignore them until they fade away - that is, until, the worst asshole of them all figures out his issues and brings them up to the forefront. Is he really okay with losing his chance with her or does he want to try for something more?

notes: For Hanini on the @kacchako-server! Now I ship Monoma/Uraraka and I want to write more Monoma and it's all your fault. I hope you enjoy your gift! Also I wrote the summary while drinking so please forgive me.

Jealousy was an ugly feeling, one that had taken Bakugou an embarrassing amount of time to figure out. It was one of those feelings that he didn’t even realize he was suffering from until two days later when the realization would strike him like a flash of lightning and he’d struggle to keep from exploding something. He hated being jealous. It made feel so petty and frustrated, if only because there was literally nothing he could do to stop it. There was no sense in it and yet it was there, pulsing in the back of his mind like some sort of ticking time bomb.

He was working on being the very best. He was going to become number one. What the hell did he have to be jealous over?

It turned out, upon coming to UA, that there were quite a few things.

The first had been the sickening realization that he wasn’t the strongest student in his class. He’d never been around other kids with quirks as or even more powerful than his before. It had fueled him to push himself even more, striving for nothing but victory every time, but it had come at a cost that he’d not expected in making people think that he would do absolutely anything to be the best.

The second had been more subtle, one that had taken him weeks to realize. Bakugou would admit that while he’d had friends growing up, he’d never had close attachments. Now that he looked back on it, he wasn’t even sure if he could count them as friendships, not when he’d dropped them all the second that he’d started attending UA. What use had he had for them after that?

However, the kids in the hero course were different. Sure, it had taken him a while and a few hard-fought battles that other people might not have considered the things that made up friendships, but Bakugou would admit now that a few of the kids he’d derisively called Extras before were his friends. Being around others that could be considered near his equal made all the difference.

He found out the hard way that he was very possessive of them. They were his friends. He couldn’t figure out why Kirishima forming a close friendship with Deku outside of him or Mina sometimes sticking with the girls or even Kaminari hanging around that little grape shit pissed him off so much. At first, he’d thought it was just because it was Deku, but then he had started to notice it was about the others sometimes too. The fact was he didn’t like sharing, but had found himself in a group filled with the most social people in the universe. Go fucking figure.

The last one was the worst and the most aggravating. Bakugou loathed it. He did not like feeling jealous at all, but this one ate him up if only because there was possibly something he could do about it but wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t. It wasn’t that he was afraid to do something -- he wasn’t afraid of shit -- it was that he didn’t have the time. He was trying to become number one and he’d come to the conclusion over a year ago that he had a hard and difficult path ahead of him if he was going to beat Deku and Todoroki in order to do that.

He couldn’t afford any distractions and this jealousy right here? It was a fucking distraction that he neither wanted nor needed.

Despite his insistence that it leave him the fuck alone and let him be to work on his goals, Ochako Uraraka -- with her damn smile and laugh, those pink cheeks, her ability to flip anyone on their back, and quirk that could lift tons right over his head with the threat of dropping it -- continued to piss him off. Why wouldn’t she get out of his head?

Even worse, why wouldn’t other guys leave her alone? By the time he’d realized all those things about her and how they twisted his entire being into knots, others had as well. And that was what he hated the most. The fact that he wasn’t the only one that knew those things about her -- that felt those things towards her -- and there was jack shit that he could do about it. After all, it wasn’t her fault she was as bright as the fucking sun and a badass to boot. Of course other people would notice and of course they would act on it. They had the time; they had the leisure.

(They had the guts.)

Bakugou kept telling himself that one day he would get over it. One day he’d wake up, see her eating a terrible breakfast, and wouldn’t nearly be overwhelmed by the urge to take it from her and hand her his. One day his heart wouldn’t seize in his chest when she smiled or laughed at something he said. One day he wouldn’t give a shit when someone else made her do those same things.

Today was not that day.

They were in the middle of a joint combat simulation with Class 2-B. Finals were around the corner and everyone was doing their absolute best. Bakugou knew that he had a habit of getting into his own head when it came to tests like this, but for once, he had a moment to sit back and watch. He’d already had his turn and had come out on top, just as he’d expected. Now was the time to analyze the others and pick out any flaws or weaknesses that he could use against them should their finals call for them to go against each other. It could happen.

Except that it had been his weakness that had been spotted -- by that bastard Monoma of all people. It couldn’t have been worse unless Deku had figured it out. Maybe even then it wouldn’t have been as bad because Deku would have at least had the awful kindness to pretend like he didn’t know. Not Monoma though. Oh no, the moment he caught Bakugou fondly watching the screen with a grin on his face as Uraraka tore through some Class B nerd, it was game over.

“Uraraka is pretty incredible, isn’t she?” Monoma asked out of the blue.

Bakugou was so caught up in the fight that it didn’t register at first who was talking to him. “What?” When he turned his head and saw Monoma’s shit-eating grin, he scowled furiously. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Monoma pointed to the screen. “Uraraka. I don’t pay attention much to you Class A fools” -- which was absurd since he was practically obsessed with them -- “but she stands out. She’s very powerful and she’s cute.” Bakugou gawked at him, his brain so torn between wanting to throttle him and ignore him that he couldn’t do either of those things. “Do you know if she’s single?”

“Why the fuck would you want to know that?” Bakugou demanded. Surely this bastard was so up his own ass that he couldn’t even see anyone but himself.

“Oh, I was just thinking that I might ask her out on a date,” Monoma answered, like that was reasonable.

Bakugou snorted and turned back to the screen. “As if she’d go for someone like you.”

Monoma’s grin somehow broadened, turning almost demented. “You think she prefers someone like you ?”

His question hit Bakugou in the gut like a sucker punch from Deku and he choked on his tongue as he whipped his head back around to glare at him in incredulity. It was the wrong move. He couldn’t have been more obvious had he tried and his only hope was to play it off as pure fury. Then again, if he blew up, his extreme reaction and denial would only be even more damning. He couldn’t say shit.

It fucking sucked since Monoma knew all of that too and he dug in deep. “What’s this? Does the great ‘I am going to be number one’ Bakugou have a crush on the zero gravity girl?” He put one hand on his hip and then pointed to someone in the crowd. Bakugou didn’t have to look to know who he was pointing to though. The name was already pinging like a warning signal in his head. “Isn’t she best friends with Midoriya? They look awfully cozy.” Bakugou clenched his hands into fists, willing them not to explode, but that was all he could do. Monoma wasn’t threatened in the slightest as he waved a dismissive hand. “I’d do something soon if I were you. She might not be on the market for much longer.”

Before Bakugou could even think of something to shoot back at him that didn’t involve exploding him out of the building, Monoma walked away, cackling as he did so. A few people sent Bakugou some curious looks, including Deku and Kirishima, both of whom he ignored. Monoma got a few looks as well, but things like that never seemed to phase him in the slightest and they were all used to his weird behavior. Meanwhile, Bakugou was burning with rage and he knew -- he just fucking knew -- that things weren’t over.

I might ask her out on a date.

Nothing had even happened yet and Bakugou could feel jealousy sucking away at his fucking soul. Why did this have to happen to him? He wanted to ask her out on a date, not Monoma, who sure as hell didn’t have genuine feelings for her. Not that he did, but still, fuck. This was such shit hole that he’d dug and he couldn’t figure out a way out of it that didn’t involve imploding himself.

A week passed in which Bakugou put his entire focus on school and not on Uraraka at all. He wouldn’t have said that he ignored or avoided her, but barring class, if she walked into the same room as him, he either walked out or pretended like she didn’t exist. He had done it very well for half of his first year, even with her catching his eye at their first Sports Festival. So many things had happened to distract him then. He could do it now. He could ignore her like he’d ignored everyone. Eventually, whatever this shit feeling was, it would go away.

There were two issues with that strategy.

The first issue was Uraraka. She could appear seemingly out of thin air, as if waiting to pounce on him and pull him into one of her friendly conversations. He’d fallen victim to that trap far too many times. It was like she had some sort of second quirk -- as if he was caught in her gravitational pull. She was so bright and bubbly, along with intense and powerful. How could he resist that? Well, he tried, but instead he came off as even ruder than normal. Most of the time, it didn’t deter or phase her in the slightest.

Then there was that one time he’d said something so pointlessly mean that she’d slapped his chest and sent him flying into a tree. She’d left him desperately hanging onto a branch for fifteen minutes until he’d apologized and then returned his gravity to him so quickly that he’d fallen to the ground. She couldn’t have known how much he’d regretted acting that way and he had taken extra effort to avoid her since then, more so out of shame and humiliation than anything else.

The second issue was one that he couldn’t avoid: himself.

Bakugou could ignore anyone in the world except for himself. His mind rarely ever gave him peace and quiet. It bounced around, almost always loud, either focused like white hot lightning or scattered like debris after one of his massive explosions. The theme was constant -- his goals -- but there was so much that pertained to that theme and it kept getting added to each day. At one point, he had only ever considered becoming number one all on his own. Other people didn’t matter. What did it mattered who was with him when there was only room for one person on that pedestal and it was him?

Things were so different now. He had actual friends, mentors that he could trust, peers to push him, and even a better relationship with his family. It wasn’t perfect and things were still rocky with all the people in his life, but he’d learned that being at the top didn’t mean being alone. He didn’t always like that. Being alone was so much easier. There wasn’t nearly as much to juggle. There were times when he didn’t understand the point of it all. Then he would watch people like Deku, who thrived even more with the people in his life in a way that Bakugou hadn’t understood for the longest time, or Todoroki, who had perhaps been worse off than him but made even stronger the more he accepted that change.

It pissed him off, knowing this and knowing that it was for the better, because he didn’t want it and yet he did. And sometimes that want clashed with everything else in his mind.

Like the way Uraraka twisted him all up inside. How was that good for him or his goals? It was a distraction.

One that, despite his attempts at ignoring, Monoma capitalized on now that he had a line on Bakugou’s problem. The fact that it worked was even more maddening. Bakugou now knew that Monoma was the worst person to have figured this out. Sure, maybe he didn’t know the full extent -- and how could that bastard when he barely knew himself? -- but he knew just enough for it to be problematic.

Because if there was one thing Monoma knew best, it was how to exploit others to give himself an opportunity. That was basically his whole fucking quirk and he was smart to use it. Even smarter, he knew that Bakugou really couldn’t do shit to him without exposing himself.

Everything started going downhill at the end of the week when lunchtime came around. Like usual, Bakugou went to the mess hall with Kirishima and the others. They all split up while they got what they wanted to eat. He was slow, still sore from a hard morning workout, and scanned the large room for the table one of his friends had chosen when his eyes landed on something else entirely. His stomach twisted so uncomfortably that he no longer felt hungry and he had to actively keep his hands from smoking as he tightly gripped his tray.

Standing in what felt like the middle of the room, like a light was beamed on them and they were all he could see, were Uraraka and Monoma. As much of a little shit as he could be, Bakugou knew that Monoma could be, ugh, charming if he wanted to be. He was smart. And in a purely analytical point of view that Bakugou also hated, he could admit that the shit stain could be considered attractive in that stupid conventional way. He didn’t like it and he didn’t agree with it, but he’d be stupid to think that some girls and guys didn’t think so.

What the two of them were talking about, Bakugou hadn’t a clue since he was too far away to hear and had no intentions of getting any closer, but it didn’t matter. Uraraka was actually smiling. It wasn’t a forced smile as he’d hoped. He knew what those looked like, even though she was pretty good at hiding it from others. Monoma wore a calm look on his face and then smiled in return as he said something that made her laugh. He’d made her laugh and it wasn’t fake either.

Thankfully, Deku called to her from their table and Uraraka bid Monoma goodbye. He took her hand to say one more thing to him, which had her blushing, and then let go so she could walk away, looking quite content as she did so.

And then Monoma turned, caught eyes with Bakugou, and fucking winked.

Bakugou almost screamed.

“Bro, are you alright?”

“I’m fucking fine!” Bakugou snapped, knowing damn well that Kirishima could tell that he wasn’t.

This was so stupid. He hated every second of this. His stomach was in knots; his heart was lodged into his throat; his whole body felt hot enough to burn up; and his mind was a jumbled mess. He just wanted this to end. Was that too much to ask for? How could a little shit like Monoma get him so worked up? It wasn’t fair.

Kirishima sighed. “Whatever you say, but if you need to talk…”

Bakugou rounded on him. “Does it look like I need to talk about my fucking feelings?”

“Kind of,” Kirishima replied without any fear. “But I know you won’t, so let’s go find the others and eat. Maybe you’re just hangry for all I know, cranky pants.”

Eating did not help, not when he was no longer hungry. Bakugou spent the majority of lunch shoving his food around the tray and picking at bites. He didn’t even talk much, choosing to stay silent as he stewed over what Monoma could’ve possibly said to make her smile and laugh like that. He’d even taken her hand in his and made her blush. Was he that charming? Did Uraraka think he was? What would she do if he tried to do those things? Ugh, probably float him to the ceiling again since he’d been an ass to her yesterday.

If the others noticed his moodier and more reserved nature at lunch, they didn’t say anything, probably because of a look that Kirishima gave them. It was a good thing too. He was not in the mood for Ashido’s interrogation. She could pinpoint a crush a mile away like it was a sport. Not that he had a crush on Uraraka, but if she caught on to even a mere hint of one, she’d create a crush out of thin air. She loved the romance and drama of that shit and it would probably make her month if she thought that he had one, especially on one of her close girl friends.

No, no, he didn’t need any of his friends in his shit, not when it wasn’t important. Having Monoma in it was bad enough. His friends would blow it out of proportion and make his life even more miserable.

Two days later, Bakugou dragged himself into the common area of their dorms, exhausted from a sparring session with Kirishima, who looked equally tired. They’d ran themselves more ragged than usual in Bakugou’s attempt to expel all the extra energy that this rage and jealousy had been giving him. It had worked. By the time they had decided to call it quits and go back to the dorms, all he could think about was his bed. Luckily, Kirishima hadn’t complained about going harder than usual. He took everything in stride and considered it a win that he had not given up so easily.

Of course, something had to leap out and force his mind on another track that wasn't sleeping.

“Did I see you talking with Monoma earlier?” came Ashido’s voice from the couches.

“Oh, yeah, he wanted to compare notes on the joint combat battles we’ve been doing,” came Uraraka’s response.

Her voice was like some sort of static shock that short-circuited his brain, causing him to halt and zone in on where she, Ashido, and Asui were sitting. Was that how Kaminari felt whenever he overdid his quirk and fried his brain? One second, all Bakugou could think about was how much he wanted to sleep and now here he was doing his best not to look like he was listening in on a conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with him.

“You coming?” Kirishima asked.

“Do I have to walk you to your dorm?” Bakugou demanded, annoyed at being interrupted. What were they saying now? The jerk had talked over Ashido’s reply.

Kirishima blew a raspberry. “After that sparring session, you might have to carry me.”

“I’m gonna get a drink before I go to bed,” Bakugou told him. “I don’t want to wake up with a headache because I didn’t hydrate enough like an idiot.”

“Whatever,” Kirishima huffed in exhaustion before wandering towards the elevator.

It was a good idea to drink some more water. He’d run out before their session ended and had continued to sweat up a storm even without using his quirk. After getting a glass of water, he rested against the corner, but kept the group of girls in the corner of his eyes. No, this wasn’t weird at all. It would just be a waste of time to take this glass to his room when he’d have to bring it back.

“And you said he was really nice?” Asui asked, sounding skeptical. “Not weird?”

Uraraka did that giggle-snort she sometimes did when she thought something was amusing in a dry way. “Well, I guess him being nice is kind of weird, right?”

“Super weird!” Ashido agreed. “He’s only nice to anyone in our class when he’s, you know, being mean.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what was up with him,” Uraraka said as she sunk back and pulled her legs up onto the couch. Bakugou couldn’t see her face from where she was sitting, but he could imagine her chewing her lip as she thought about something bothering her. “He, um, said that he couldn’t wait to see me in class tomorrow? That I was ‘very impressive’ or whatever.”

Ashido gasped. “Oh my god, do you think-?” She leaned forward and Bakugou did not need to see her to know that she was grinning like an idiot. “Do you think he has a crush on you?”

“Wh-what?” Uraraka’s voice was so high-pitch that he was surprised she hadn’t activated her quirk on herself and floated to the ceiling. She laughed, the sound so awkward that it would have fooled no one in the slightest. “That’s crazy talk. Monoma hates everyone in our class.”

Asui nodded. “He has had it out for us since day one.”

“Maybe it’s part of some secret plan,” Ashido continued in a tone that was far too serious for whatever dumb idea she had concocted. “He’s trying to infiltrate us and take us down from the inside by dating Uraraka!”

Uraraka scoffed. “That’s silly.”

Not to mention convoluted. Except… Bakugou gripped the glass tightly. Monoma was just doing this to get into his head. He was sure of it. That prick had never shown this much interest in Uraraka before until that day a little over a week ago. This marked the third time that Monoma had interacted with her though in less than a few days, although this last one had been when Bakugou wasn’t there to witness. That wink in the cafeteria told him that this had to do with him though. He was trying to take Bakugou down.

And fuck if it wasn’t messing with his head.

“He’s gonna ask her out,” Ashido decided, sitting upright and folding her arms. “I just know it.”

“He is not!” Uraraka protested.

Ashido was not swayed. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to ask you out after you basically turned Shishida into a baseball and knocked him out of the arena with a streetlight?”

Fuck, Bakugou had wanted to ask her out after witnessing that display of strength. The second she’d managed to cancel out Shishida’s gravity and wield that streetlamp like a baseball bat, a stray thought of, That’s the girl for me , had popped into his head. He’d been left doing mental cartwheels to explain it away even though no one else had heard him think it. When she’d come back to an excited hug from Deku and a high-five from Kirishima, all Bakugou could do was stick to himself and wish that he could sweep her in his arms. Which pissed him off. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to want that.

“It’s Monoma though,” Uraraka pointed out.

“He might be the worst,” Ashido replied sagely, “but he’s kind of hot.”

Bakugou felt winded by a stab of betrayal. How could Ashido say something like that? She could be stupid, but that was just plain idiotic! One of his friends couldn’t possibly think that. Saying something like that to Uraraka too? As if she needed that thought in her head. Was Ashido trying to push her to Monoma? What kind of friend did that? The guy was an egomaniac.

Oh, right.

Bakugou must have slammed his glass in the dishwasher too loud because he heard Uraraka ask, “Oh, Bakugou, how long have you been standing there?” Long enough, too long. He ignored her, as he’d been doing for a few days, and pretended as if he hadn’t heard her as he stormed out of the room. He was going to pass out and forget that he’d heard any of that conversation.

Things came to a head all of three days later on one of their days off. In each of those days before, Bakugou had witnessed two more excruciating interactions between Uraraka and Monoma, one during their joint class and the other in the gym. Since when did Monoma work out? She could literally crush him with her thighs. Bakugou had spent the next ten minutes trying to scrub that thought out of his brain. Why had he thought of that? The last place he wanted Monoma to be was…

Fuck. He had to think of something else.

The third time he came across them had to be purely by accident. Not even Monoma could have staged this, seeing as how Bakugou had changed his mind last minute about visiting his parents. While most of his classmates were either off-campus or doing homework in the dorms, he had decided to go for a jog. It was close to dusk, his favorite time to go for light runs. He didn’t go super hard all the time. However, on his way to the track, he spotted Uraraka walking out of the library building while Monoma held the door open for her.

Bakugou’s blood boiled and he froze on the spot. Again, he couldn’t hear what was being said from where he was, but he saw the gesture that Monoma made, offering to carry her books for her. She laughed a little and shook her head, opening her arms so that the books could float in the air. Over the past year, she’d worked on negating only a part of an object’s gravity. She was getting better about it every day, even able to use it on herself sometimes so that she could do these super cool jumps. It made his stomach flip, seeing her doing something silly like that with Monoma, and he dug his nails into his palms so hard that he nearly drew blood.

Before either one of them could see him, Bakugou ducked behind a tree and stayed there as they walked past him. This time, he couldn’t help but feel like a creep, but if he moved, they would see him. Monoma would not be able to resist acting like a bastard and Bakugou honestly didn’t know if he would be able to resist punching him in his smug face. It wasn’t because he was jealous. Well, okay, it was a little, but it wasn’t all that.

It just… It really fucking pissed him off that Monoma would use Uraraka to get under his skin.

(Unless he wasn’t using her. Unless it was all real. Bakugou didn’t know what was worse.)

“I actually really like it when we get to work with Class B,” Uraraka was saying as she poked the books gently ahead of her while she walked like a game. “We’ve all grown so much since our first year, but I’m around the others’ quirks so much. It’s nice to see something different.”

“You are quite different,” Monoma said, walking next to her with his hands in his pockets and a small knowing smile on his face.

He had known exactly how Uraraka would respond, blushing and clearing her throat before she continued, “Plus, it gives us a chance to work together instead of competing! Ah, well, I guess we’re still competing, but it helps us build each other up. I like that. We should work together more often.”

“I’ll admit to my reservations about Class A,” Monoma said.

“Reservations?” Uraraka snorted. “They’re a little more than that, I’d say.”

Monoma gave her a sheepish look. “You caught me.” He took one of his hands out of his pockets. “May I?”

She gave him a hesitant look, but then slowly nodded. The moment he touched her arm, Bakugou’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. His hand lingered longer than necessary, but then he pulled it away from her and touched his satchel. Uraraka was locked on it, an openly curious expression on her face. She took Monoma copying her quirk a lot better than him. He still burned with anger whenever he thought about how he’d taken a blast to the face by his own quirk that first time the two of them had clashed.

“I easily get jealous, a trait that I’m not particularly proud of,” Monoma said, sounding...genuine. Was he being honest? Was he being open? Bakugou tried not to gawk. There was no way this was happening. If there was one thing that Monoma was not, it was fucking genuine. That was...something that Bakugou wanted to do but couldn’t. If he could be more open with Uraraka, he wouldn’t be in this shit position hiding behind a tree. Seriously, what was wrong with him?

“You? Jealous? No way.” Uraraka was actually teasing him. No, this didn’t feel like getting stabbed at all. Monoma went to press a hand against his chest in mock-offense when Uraraka grabbed his wrist to stop him. “You’ll float yourself and get sick.”

Monoma pulled his hand away and she let go of him. “Nice save.” Bakugou felt a little put out. It would’ve made him feel a shit ton better had he done that. “I think it comes from my quirk though. For the longest time, I hated it.” That was surprising. It didn’t sound true and yet, besides him being a bastard, he didn’t know Monoma well. He didn’t know anyone in Class B well enough to say much about them besides that they weren’t worth his time with Ibara and Shishida being the exceptions. “I have to copy someone else’s quirk to have any power. I wanted a quirk that was entirely my own. I wanted the power to be mine alone instead of borrowing someone else’s.”

“I...never thought of your quirk that way,” Uraraka admitted.

“Most don’t consider other people’s quirks,” Monoma explained, “but I have to know everyone’s and I have a very limited amount of time to figure out how they work.” He pulled his other hand out of his pocket and pressed the pads of his fingers together. “Release.” The satchel dropped and he slung it back over his shoulder. Uraraka looked surprised, her eyebrows raised. Bakugou felt strangely embarrassed. Monoma had probably understood Uraraka’s quirk before even he had back in their first year and Bakugou had been the one to fight her. “I watch for people’s quirks so much though that I tend to forget the person behind it. To be honest, they usually don’t catch my eye. The quirk is far more interesting and of use to me.”

“Ah, there’s the Monoma I know.”

Bakugou would’ve felt relief had he not seen the way Monoma gazed down at her now. He grit his teeth and clenched his fists at his side, just waiting for that moment, when the other boy said, “Someone has caught attention though and I’d like to remedy that.”

He couldn’t do it -- he couldn’t stand there any longer -- and so he booked it for the track. The two of them were far enough where they wouldn’t hear him and they had their backs to him at this point. He didn’t dare look back just in case one of them turned around. That whole conversation hadn’t been at Bakugou’s expense at all -- unless Monoma was playing some sort of long game, which was possible too. After all, he couldn’t just ask Uraraka out without any precedent or building up to it. He had to make it believable. It seemed like so much work to just make him squirm though.

Was he so egotistical that this whole thing had to be about him? Maybe, just maybe, it really was about Uraraka. She was pretty incredible. Was he pissed that Monoma was using Uraraka to get at him or was he pissed that Monoma had the gall (the guts, the time, the willingness) to ask her out?

He didn’t know. He didn’t fucking know. All he knew was that he didn’t want Uraraka to get hurt over some stupid, petty fight that he wanted nothing to do with.

The next day, Bakugou set out on a mission. He left the dorms before anyone else, heading towards the cafeteria for breakfast, where he waited outside. Making sure to look busy reading so that no one would bother him in case one of his friends came by and got nosy, he kept his eyes peeled for a certain someone. About twenty minutes into waiting, he spotted his target. After snapping his book shut and jamming it into his backpack, he stormed through the crowd like a guided missile.

Before anyone could say or do anything, Bakugou barreled his way through the small group of Class B kids and snatched Monoma by the front of his shirt. “We need to talk,” he growled as he continued to push through the crowd, taking the other boy with him.

Kendo spun on her feet, activating her quirk and enlarging her hand to snatch Bakugou and stop him. “Monoma-”

But Monoma held up both of his hands, taking care not to touch him and not looking afraid in the slightest. In fact, he looked like he’d been expecting this. “Go on without me. I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”

“Are you sure?” Tetsutetsu asked, clenching his fists in a way that suggested he was ready to fight Bakugou right outside of the mess hall. Oh, so the bastard had friends ready to defend him at a moment’s notice. How nice.

“He said he just wanted to talk,” Monoma insisted calmly, but then he smiled in a way that made Bakugou want to growl all over again. “Let this Class A extra get something off his chest.”

Despite looking more than hesitant, Kendo, Tetsutetsu, and the others walked into the mess hall without him. Monoma arched an eyebrow at him and Bakugou let go of him. As if on cue, he turned and walked to a more private area of the hall. Yeah, he’d definitely been expecting this, which irritated the hell out of Bakugou. He didn’t like the idea that he was predictable.

As Monoma fixed the front of his shirt and collar of his jacket, he asked, “Any particular reason you felt the urge to assault me before breakfast or has terrorizing Class A proved too boorish?”

Bakugou scowled. “You know damn well why I’m here.”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Monoma replied as he adjusted his tie. Despite his overly innocent tone, the smug, knowing expression on his face suggested otherwise. Gods, he had a face that just screamed punch me. He wasn’t going to admit to anything until Bakugou copped to it first. Monoma wasn’t the most stubborn person on the planet, but he was willing to go to extremes to be above someone and indeed he had the upper hand here.

That pressure, along with the image of Uraraka’s blushing and smiling face, was too much to take. “Uraraka.”

“What about her?”

“Leave her alone,” Bakugou snarled.

Monoma’s eyes glittered dangerously. “I wasn’t aware that you had a claim over her. She’s not your property.” Of course she wasn’t. He’d never presume to think such a thing. He never had, even with all of those stupid, complex emotions towards her swirling in his mind for months. It wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t get rid of them. She didn’t owe him shit for how he felt. “I can talk with her if I like. Just because you won’t act on your crush--”

“I don’t have a crush on her!” Bakugou snapped.

“--doesn’t mean that she’s off limits until you gather the courage to do so,” Monoma continued effortlessly. He wagged a finger and tsked, as if scolding a child. “She told me what awful thing you said to her the other day. It’s almost like you want her to hate you.”

It would have been so much easier if she had, but no, that was the last thing that he wanted. He could admit that now, as much as it embarrassed him. The fact that she had told Monoma about that made him flush with even more humiliation. How far had he fallen?

Yelling and sniping at Monoma weren’t getting him anywhere. He had to take a different approach, one that the other boy wouldn’t expect from him. Fuck, he had to be reasonable, but still intimidating. He had to… Gods, was he really going to have to go to the level that Monoma wanted him to go? Somehow, some way, he’d get back at him later for this shit.

Swallowing his pride, Bakugou folded his arms across his chest. “You’re only talking to her to get under my skin. I know you’re used to using underhanded tricks like the worm that you are, but if you’re gonna fuck with me, then don’t involve her. I get it -- you don’t like me and I sure as hell don’t like you -- but involving her is petty as fuck.”

“Caring about the collateral damage, are we?” Monoma asked.

“She’s not--” Bakugou clamped his mouth shut. Monoma was trying to drag him further into this and he was leaping headfirst into the trap. “Listen here, fuck face, if you hurt her feelings just to piss me off, you are not going to like the results.”

Monoma actually had the audacity to laugh, a little maniacally as usual. “You think this is just some sort of game that revolves around you?” He began to walk away, done with the conversation, but then paused to look back. “Did you ever stop to consider that it has nothing to do with you at all? Uraraka stood out enough for you, the most arrogant person in U.A. to notice. Maybe you aren’t the only one.”

“You saying that you actually like her?” Bakugou demanded in a bark, his heart beginning to give the first signs of him having a heart attack. He’d always known that other guys would like her -- how could they not? -- but barring the idea that Deku was a rival for him, he’d never really been forced to face it up front. She wasn’t some sort of prize to win -- she was so much more than that -- but the idea that he had competition that not only would make a move but had done so before him was not pleasant.

“Maybe it did start out as a way to make you squirm -- and it’s been great, believe me,” Monoma told him, a savage grin on his face, “but things do change. Uraraka sure is full of surprises, isn’t she?”

Bakugou felt as if the entire world stopped on its axis as he watched Monoma laugh again and walk away. He couldn’t move, couldn’t school his face into an expression that wasn’t a stupid mixture of shock and fury, couldn’t get his brain to work as it screamed at him to do something. All he could think to do was hurt Monoma and he couldn’t do that. Not only had he been called out entirely, but the stupid shit was right. As much as it pained and pissed him off to admit it, Monoma wasn’t wrong at all.

This whole mess was his fault. He’d ignored how he felt for so long -- he’d kept telling himself that Uraraka wasn’t important and was just a distraction to what he wanted -- that there was a possibility that he’d lost his chance. He had spent so long pretending like it didn’t exist that he’d missed the knife being dug in between in ribs. Had Monoma been the one to twist it or had it been himself? Bakugou couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he couldn’t take this feeling anymore. She wasn’t the distraction; the jealousy was. Once again, he’d been his own enemy and Monoma had used that to his advantage.

Whatever the case, he had to figure this shit out before it was too late.

For the rest of the day, Bakugou worked on just calming down. He knew that his friends were suspicious about his behavior, but thankfully none of them said anything. He had to prep himself though. He couldn’t fly off the handle; he couldn’t act like a total ass; he couldn’t make a wrong move. The issues were that he felt like he could explode at any minute; he was most definitely an ass; and he didn’t know what the right move was. The last time he and Uraraka had spoken had been on decent but lukewarm terms at best since it had been during class. For all he knew, she wanted nothing to do with him.

Besides, he’d realized after talking with Monoma that what he wanted didn’t matter much. In the end, all that truly mattered was what Uraraka wanted. It didn’t matter if he liked her. It didn’t matter if he was filled with so much jealousy that he felt sick with it. If she didn’t like him, that was that. With the way he’d been acting, he wouldn’t be surprised if she only felt uncomfortable around him if he acted on how he felt or was honest with her.

The idea that he could be rejected seriously hadn’t occurred to him, if only because he’d kept telling himself that none of it mattered. Like some arrogant bastard, he had thought that only he was holding himself back. Now that another insecurity had been added into the mix, it made things all the worse.

By the time dinner rolled around, Kirishima couldn’t hold his curiosity in any longer, hunching over the table to block everyone else out of their conversation. “Okay, seriously, what gives, Bakugou? You’ve been acting weird all day, maybe even all week.”

“I’m fine,” Bakugou replied sharply, but without any actual heat. His gaze wasn’t on Kirishima, but had locked in on Uraraka when she slunk into the common area. She’d just come back from the gym with Deku and Todoroki, all sweaty, pink-faced, and exhausted. She looked great.

Kirishima sat back and shook his head. “That was scary. You’re way too calm.”

“I can be calm,” Bakugou snapped, tearing his eyes away from Uraraka briefly to glare at Kirishima before moving his gaze back over.

“That’s more like it.” Kirishima followed his gaze and sighed. “Just go talk to her.” Bakugou grit his teeth and returned to digging into his dinner with the sort of viciousness meant for wolves while they tore into a deer. He wasn’t going to respond to that. “The only one who doesn’t seem to know how you feel is her.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bakugou demanded.

“I mean,” Kirishima continued, absolutely unafraid by the heat in Bakugou’s red eyes, “if it wasn’t obvious before by the way you freaking light up when she does something badass, you nearly having a nuclear meltdown whenever Monoma gets anywhere near her made it impossible to miss.”

Bakugou’s face flushed. Okay, so he’d known that his ability to put a cap on his jealousy had started to deteriorate, but he hadn’t realized it had been that bad even before. Had other people seen it and figured it out before Monoma and just not said anything to him? Why? Because they wanted him to come to this conclusion on his own or because they didn’t want to piss him off? Maybe they’d actually decided to give him some privacy and time. No, that was ridiculous. If either Kaminari or Ashido had known, they would’ve badgered him relentlessly.

Unless Kirishima, despite usually nosing his way into Bakugou’s business, had acted as a stop gate this time. After all, he and Ashido were close friends with Uraraka too. Did they know something that he didn’t?

“This is fucking stupid,” Bakugou grumbled. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You’re right,” Kirishima replied, pointing a chopstick at him. “You’re wasting all your time on this jealousy crap when you could be doing something about it.” When Bakugou frowned, he shrugged his shoulders and shoveled some more food into his mouth. Did he have to eat so fast? It wasn’t like he was a kid anymore. He swallowed and huffed. “She doesn’t like Monoma in that way if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not,” Bakugou said flatly. (He was.)

“But you keep waiting around like a stick in the mud and she will find someone more worth her time or she might even grow to like Monoma,” Kirishima told him emphatically. “Because she’s awesome. You know it. I know it. Others will too. And you’re going to be left in the dust because you’re either too scared, too stupid, or too arrogant.”

Bakugou snorted. “Have you met me?”

Kirishima dared to crack a grin. “You’re right. Arrogant isn’t a strong enough word.”

“You’re shit at giving pep talks,” Bakugou said as he pushed aside his empty bowl. “You know that, right?”

“Well, it was either me or Mina,” Kirishima told him. “I think she already had a list of first date ideas planned that she was going to sell you on.” On second thought, yeah, he was great at giving pep talks. If it had been Ashido in his place, Bakugou would’ve likely blown a gasket. She was way more aggressive in her approach. “Now go on: be brave and get the fuck over yourself. You’re a huge pain in the ass when you’re jealous.”

Rolling his eyes, Bakugou grabbed his empty bowl and glass and took it into the kitchen to wash them. As if by some design of fate, Uraraka walked in as well. Tired as she was, her face wasn’t as flushed anymore. She brushed past him, mumbling an apology, and started to root through the cabinets, probably for something sweet to snack on. She’d never get over that sweet tooth.

“Top shelf on the left,” Bakugou told her. “Kaminari hides his candy there.”

Uraraka turned around to stare at him and then smiled. “Thanks!”

Using her quirk on herself, she floated to reach the space that he’d seen Kaminari kneel on the counter to reach. Upon finding his stash, she pushed down on the ceiling to get closer to the floor and then released her quirk. She took a piece of candy and popped it into her mouth, looking quite content with herself. After a moment’s hesitation, she held the bag out to him and, despite the fact that it wasn’t his favorite, he took a piece as well.

“Ugh, this was just what I needed,” Uraraka moaned.

Bakugou did not let that get to him, but he still rolled his shoulders. “A reward for going to the gym?”

“Exactly!” Uraraka exclaimed, pointing the bag of candy at him. “It’s a little trick. I can only get some candy if I meet my goal. Besides, we all deserve a little reward here and there.”

“You’re really pushing yourself hard, huh?”

“Well I’ve got to if I’m going to keep up with everyone else,” Uraraka said very seriously around a mouthful of candy. “I was so caught up in my first year how amazing people like you, Deku, and Todoroki were and how I should be more like you all that I wasn’t focused on myself.”

Bakugou sneered, but there wasn’t any rage behind it and she could tell. “Those nerds wish they were as amazing as me.” She laughed at that, though not mockingly or at him. Had it been anyone else responding like that, he might have bristled, but with her, it just made him feel good. She genuinely thought he was awesome. Granted, so did Deku, but he wasn’t going to get into that mess.

This was what he liked, these little conversations that the two of them slipped into without thinking. It was easy to talk to her. It was easy to talk with Kirishima too, but it felt different with her, somehow lighter. She could sass him just as much as his friends, but unlike with them, he felt this all-consuming urge to impress her, which tripped him up half the time and made him say something stupid.

“Listen, Uraraka, about the other day…”

“You were really mean,” Uraraka cut in, not leaving any room for his usual defensive bullshit.

“Yeah, I was.”

Uraraka frowned, pleased with his honesty but upset that it had happened in the first place. Bakugou wasn’t all that good at apologizing. In fact, it could probably be considered one of his weakest skills. As intelligent as he was, words failed him in those moments and the idea of lowering himself to that level grated on his nerves and made him uncomfortable. Bringing it up though was a step in the right direction.

“I’m used to you being an ass -- wouldn’t really be you if you weren’t -- but you’re normally not…” She glanced down at the candy. “You don’t go out of your way to hurt people’s feelings.”

“Yeah, I was acting out because…” Bakugou’s fingers twitched his sides. He didn’t want to talk about this. He could just apologize and move on. He’d get over this. Eventually, it had to fade away and he would look back on this moment years later and laugh about it. He didn’t need anyone else. He just… He just needed…

Are you really that weak that you’re going to let Monoma be braver than you?

“I was jealous,” Bakugou blurted.

Uraraka raised her eyebrows, clearly taken aback, and nearly dropped the bag of candy. “Jealous? Why? Of who?”

Bakugou growled irritably and held a hand over his eyes. Now that he was standing here talking with her about this, it sounded stupid. How much of an idiot could he be? “Monoma.” As soon as the word left his mouth, Uraraka burst out into laughter and had to put a hand over her mouth to muffle it so that the few people in the common area wouldn’t gawk at them. When he pulled his hand away, he was disgruntled to see that she was having trouble stopping herself. “It’s not that funny!”

“I mean…” Uraraka pulled her hand away and bit her lip. “It kind of is.” She giggled again. “ Monoma ? Really?”

“It’s stupid, okay?” The words began pouring out of him without a filter, which he was most definitely going to regret later but couldn’t stop right now. “He figured out that I like you and made fun of me, which could have been the end of it, but no, he just… It was like he was all over you. At first I thought he was just doing it to get under my skin, which pissed me off since I didn’t want him to use you like a tool to mock me, but then I started to think that he actually liked you and I-- Why wouldn’t he? What if it wasn’t about me at all but you? I was angry and confused and I didn’t know what to do--”

By the time he managed to cut himself off, absolutely red in the face, Uraraka was outright gawking at him like he’d grown a second head. What the fuck had just happened? He’d only come in here to apologize, not spill his guts like some sort of sap. He was breathing heavily and very aware of the fact that his heart was thundering in his chest like a rabbit being chased by a pack of dogs. In the back of his mind, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Deku told him that this was what happened when he held things in for too long. He did not need that right now.

“You, um, you like me?” Uraraka managed in a tone that said she was trying to be casual and failed.

Bakugou harrumphed. “Apparently it’s fucking obvious to everyone.”

“Wasn’t to me,” Uraraka said quietly.

“Me either,” Bakugou muttered. “Guess we’re both oblivious idiots.”

Uraraka watched him without saying anything for a while, as if gathering her thoughts. It made Bakugou want to squirm again, but he stood his ground. The ball was in her court now. He’d practically launched it at her and dared her to respond. Whatever she decided, he would respect. At least Kirishima had said that she didn’t like Monoma. She could like anyone else, even Deku or Todoroki or Iida, and he wouldn’t be upset. Disappointed? Fucking hell he would be, but that wasn’t something he could fight.

“So, jealous, huh?” Uraraka finally said. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

“Well, ignoring it until it either goes away or I die hasn’t worked for me so far,” Bakugou replied dryly.

Uraraka smiled. “I’ve got an idea.”

Bakugou scoffed. “Oh yeah?”

“But you might be too scared,” Uraraka pointed out, her cheeks burning pink again like she’d run a mile.

“I’m not scared of shit,” Bakugou said heatedly.

Uraraka shrugged her shoulders. “You could take me on a date.” She popped a candy in her mouth. “Maybe you can even make Monoma jealous.”

A wolfish grin appeared on Bakugou’s face as they stared each other down. Judging from the way she wasn’t backing down in the slightest, he knew that she was serious. Granted, in his head, he’d always pictured being the one to ask her out on a date, but seeing as how he’d spent months avoiding this outcome, yeah, he should have expected it. Uraraka was a fighter. She gave as good as she got. It was one of the reasons he liked her so much in the first place.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Bakugou said, burning with pride and really quite pleased with himself.

Uraraka giggled a little. “I’m expecting great things.”

“It’s gonna be the best fucking first date of your life,” Bakugou said and he meant it. Okay, so maybe he was going to have to find Ashido and figure out what sorts of ideas she had come up with, seeing as how he knew jack shit about dates, but he swore that it was going to be good. She was going to have so much fun. He wanted to kiss her right now, just for looking so infuriatingly cute eating Kaminari’s stolen candy, but he refrained himself. None of that mattered, not when for the first time in months, that old ugly feeling of jealousy was completely gone from his chest, making him feel lighter than air.

It turned out that the best way to get rid of it was to work through it. After being at U.A. for almost two years, he should have figured that out by now, but at least he was working on improving. That was all he could do. Without that monster clawing in the back of his mind though, he could already breathe easier. It didn’t matter what Monoma said or did. It didn’t matter what Bakugou said or did. It what Uraraka’s choice.

And she’d chosen him.

#katsuki bakugou #ochako uraraka #kacchako #monoma neito #bnha #bakuraka #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bakugou x uraraka #katsuki x ochako #uraraka x monoma #bnha fanfiction #kacchako discord #the things of songs

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mindibindi · 6 years ago

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otp: all is forgiven

Let me tell you why this is my tag of choice for this otp:

The show I was watching, before it collapsed into convention, was about forgiveness. Compassion. Healing. All that mushy lady stuff. Not war and policy-making and all that man stuff. I enjoyed the political backdrop but far more interesting to me than all the positioning and backbiting going on in the halls of power was the collision of these two individuals and their opposing ideologies. It looked like we were going to get some interesting insight into the competing ideologies of these hot political times we live in (no such luck).

Ordinarily, David Budd and Julia Montague would never meet, they would never have anything to do with one another. They exist in entirely different social and professional spheres. The question Bodyguard initially posed was: what if they did? What if you came face to face with your political enemy? Someone who stood for the reverse of what you stand for? Would these opposites destroy each other with mutual contempt and loathing? Or would they manage to find something human in a person that, up until that moment, had only ever been a myth?

The moment above is really the first moment that David and Julia meet. There is a perfunctory handshake earlier and some terse jostling for control. But this is the moment in which they properly face each other, one on one, and see something in the other that they actually like and respect. There are tentative smiles on both sides, though David remains guarded (pun intended). He doesn’t want to like this woman, he doesn’t want to see her as human. He wants to hate her. He wants to maintain his rage, his blame. It is perhaps the only thing keeping him upright.

Unfortunately for him, Julia proves in this moment that she is worthy of forgiveness, worthy of consideration, worthy of respect His and ours. Because she does something here that none of our real politicians have ever (in my experience) done, especially our more hardline politicians. She admits her fault, apologises and asks forgiveness. Despite the fact that she is apologising for something insignificant, rather than any graver crimes she might have committed, it is a moment we have all, like David, waited a lifetime for.

It is also a deeply confusing moment for him as this woman stands before him, honest, humble and human, hand outstretched like an olive branch. He looks at it a moment before smiling and taking it in his. He says all is forgiven but we’re not sure it is, not really, not yet. It is, however, the start of a gradual softening towards her that says as much about his worth as hers. The tragedy is, of course, that this journey towards full forgiveness was so cruelly truncated. Rather than complex, human, ideological questions intelligently and sensitively explored we ended up with a man cursing the heavens until he was allowed re-entry into the comforting institutions of marriage and family. By the end, the old order was nicely re-established, despite the fact that this show started out questioning orders and institutions we know better than to consider sacred.

Of course, you could argue that David fighting for justice for Julia is an expression of forgiveness, an honouring of her life and her humanity. He begins against her and ends up for her. But going to war for someone you resented for sending you to war seems deeply ironic, if not entirely counter-intuitive. Personally, I think that the connection, intimacy, tenderness and love that David and Julia created between them in the short time they had together was a more succinct and apposite expression of the sort of human potential this show promised to explore. It is a far more sustainable choice than constant warfare, not to mention a soothing antidote to the hatred, division and cynicism of the political realm.

I wasn’t necessarily expecting this aspect of the show to last or end well. I was, in fact, looking forward to the shit hitting the fan. I was looking forward to seeing Julia confront her culpability in David’s inner and outer wounds and wrecked life story. I was looking forward to David being confronted with the ramifications of his spying. It would have been so interesting to see just how dedicated they could be in their forgiveness. It would have been so interesting to see, having established that connection, what happened when new truths were revealed and that connection was truly tested. It is in a way a comfort that Julia died without David’s rage and contempt laying heavy on her soul. Jed at least allowed her redemption, both in her final private moment with David and with a public acknowledgement of him that only the two of them fully understood.

So, however untested or truncated, forgiveness was there. And I like to think that, whatever they might have faced in each other, they would have made it back to forgiveness eventually. David’s uncompromising pursuit of her killer was certainly in part him making reparations for any betrayals he committed in his actions, thoughts or heart while she was alive. And if Julia could see him returning to his family following her demise, I think her reaction would be sad but sympathetic, resigned but forgiving. I would like to point out that all we know is that David spent the day with his less estranged wife and cutesy kids. We don’t know that they reconciled (in my mind, they didn’t). But even if they did, I imagine Julia’s reaction would be much like her reaction when he objected to her breaking the rules on his behalf. She’d sigh and simply say: “They’re your family.”

It’s undoubtedly a disappointing ending. Bodyguard started out as a drama about confronting the enemy within. Not just the enemy within a particular man’s mind and heart but the enemy within our own country, within the institutions meant to protects us. The enemy perhaps of our own making. In these deeply conservative times, not only in Britain, this show, this relationship gave me hope that the best in humanity would eventually win out, that all, in the end, might be forgiven.

#bodyguard #david x julia #julia montague #david budd #richard madden #keeley hawes #jed mercurio #lavenderbudd #otp: all is forgiven

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hollowedrpg · 6 years ago

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CONGRATULATIONS, LINDSEY! — You’ve been accepted for the role of Arthur Weasley. I’m so happy to have an Arthur again so soon. He’s extremely important for some upcoming plots, and you do him such justice. I loved the way you write his relationship with Molly, and I can’t wait to see Arthur on the dash.

Thank you so much for applying. Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the follow list. Welcome to Hollowed Souls!

ooc.

name: lindsey

age: 24

preferred pronouns: she/her

timezone: cst

activity: to be honest, i’m not completely sure. i graduated from college (LITERALLY!) yesterday. lol so i can say that i will probably be extremely active as i have a ridiculous amount of time on my hands all of the sudden

how do you feel about your character dying?: i’m fine with it as long as i’m not getting the boot! although i would absolutely love to see molly’s return/discover that she’s actually dead before that point

anything else?: my graduation trip starts tomorrow and i will be gone until the 14th, but emily referred me here and i wanted to apply for arthur before he got snatched up! i can be around on mobile in the evenings until i return, and am happy to. i hope this doesn’t hinder my acceptance at all, but of course i completely understand if it does. if you need to, you can wait to make the decision until the 14th. thank you for understanding either way!

ic details.

full name: Arthur William Weasley

He admired his father from afar, struggling his whole life to feel heard and valued when his tongue always seemed to feel thick and twisted in his mouth. Their relationship was never perfect, but when Arthur had his first son, it seemed natural to pass down the name that was also his.

date of birth: 6 February, 1952

It had been snowing the day Arthur was born. He knew this because in the haste to get his wife to the hospital, William Weasley left their house without shoes on his feet. “Almost lost a toe, I did.” It was a story he grew up hearing, met in later life with eye rolls and sighs of irritation. It wasn’t until he experienced his pregnant wife going into labor in the middle of the night himself that he empathized with the panic he knew all too well.

former hogwarts house: Gryffindor.

Until he met Molly Prewett, Arthur would tell you it never completely made sense to him - why he was sorted into Gryffindor. He couldn’t get words out under the slightest amount of pressure, why would anyone think he could Roar with the Lions? Perhaps it was a sort of Grandfather Clause. He did, in fact, come from an exceedingly long line of Gryffindors. Did the Sorting Hat take pity on him and place him where his parents could finally feel some pride in their only son? Maybe. But then the day came that he tried to voice this fact and the response he got was instant. She came through a crowd like a bolt of lightning (shoving a few innocent bystanders to get to him) and looked up into his face with a look of angered determination. She told him he didn’t have to be loud to be brave. He pointed out the truth that she was quite noisy, herself. To this, Molly Prewett broke out in a grin that (though maybe a tad dramatic) Arthur would swear changed the course of his life indefinitely, and called him funny. And bold. Bold to call her, the argumentative eleven year old than she was, noisy. “See,” she’d said. “A Gryffindor.”

sexuality: straight, but with a jealous admiration for his sex.

gender/pronouns: cisgendered male, he/him

face claim change: no change! Sam Claflin is a lil peach.

more.

how do you interpret this character’s personality? how will you play them? include two weaknesses & two strengths.

Arthur is a quiet man with many thoughts, but few words. His intellect says nothing of his verbiage and though he doesn’t say much, his eyes tell all. There is a slight wonder that had he not been cursed with an abnormal tongue, he might not have had such telling looks. It is just that, however, a mere curiosity for he has no lasting desire to change who he is. Despite his earlier insecurities, he has come to accept himself for all his faults.

The true Gryffindor in Arthur Weasley came to light when he became a father in a world ravaged by war. He wanted to fight for his children, the woman he loves - the family that never questions his worth but sees him as wholly better than he could ever see himself. Everything clicked into place the first time he found himself face-to-face with someone who knew him from their days in school, someone who knew the jibes that would hurt him, and that he had a wife and children back home. He couldn’t place them behind the mask, but they knew his youngest son’s name. “Charlie, was it?” And something in Arthur snapped. He hadn’t realized just how protective he was of the things he considered precious until that moment, but it made perfect sense. What good is a father if he’s not willing to kill or be killed for his loved ones?

Part of the consuming love Arthur has for his family comes from the love he never really had for himself. In his youth, he didn’t care about it. He never focused on self-loathing, but neither did he see any good within himself. That is, as it always is, until Molly came blazing into his life, cementing her position to his left side. When he discovered that she reciprocated his love for her, he admired her all the more. How could she? But she was the smartest person he had ever met, so he wouldn’t dare question it - lest she realize she could do so much better than little old him.

The worry is consuming. He spends his entire day thinking. The gears in his brain churn faster than they ever have, taking his soul and ripping it to pieces. Is Molly still alive? Is she being tortured? Is she at peace, wherever she is? Did she realize how grand her life could be a simply fly the coop that disastrous day? He knows that last one is a bit off the rails, but when his mind is going, Arthur is lost to stop it. Bill might be off safely tucked inside Hogwarts Castle but the rest of his children are with him in Godric’s Hollow. At ten-years-old, Charlie, his most adventurous spawn, gets restless and likes to run off at odd times, causing Arthur’s heart to skip furtive beats. He’s never that far off, usually closely examining stray animals that want nothing to do with him, but Arthur fears one day he’ll be just beyond his reach in the midst of a tragedy (not unlike his mother was). Percy, who is six, is wise beyond his years and stays close to his father as if he can sense the anxiety distance brings. It is young Percy’s help that keeps Arthur from losing his mind over his rambunctious twins, who are barely four and already rebellious. His youngest song, Ron, who has entered the Terrible Twos, clings to Arthur whenever he is awake, making it rather difficult to give his six-month-old (and only daughter) the proper attention she needs. The worry never stops, the change in his daytime routine doing nothing to change that. The only time the young but aging father feels an ounce of serenity is when all the kids are asleep.

how has the war affected this character, emotionally and otherwise?

In her absence, he sees her. Like a ghost, she hovers beside him in his loneliest moments. Molly, the greatest love of his life, reduced to a figment of his imagination. When he longs for her uplifting presence the most, she appears. The first few times, she didn’t say anything. She simply left him stunned, staring at her like he really had seen a ghost. These little visits left him haunted for days. He couldn’t sleep but neither could he bring himself to leave the bed they once shared. His mother stayed with the kids, taking care of them in both their parents’ absences. He thought it meant that she must be dead, but a bigger part of him refused to believe that. This wasn’t her genuine ghost. They had been so connected for years. He knew how she was feeling before he even entered the house after work night after night for years. Surely if she was really and truly dead, he would feel it in his soul. Then he’d managed to ask her what to do aloud, and suddenly she replied. He peered up from the deep pit of sheets their bed had become and took in the insufficient image of his missing wife. “Get up,” she had said, and though it didn’t sound exactly like her, he knew what she wanted. Even as a sad duplicate of the real thing, she wouldn’t let him neglect her children - their children.

where does this character currently stand? with those who wish to hide in godric’s hollow until the war ends, with those who wish to rebuild the order and continue fighting the war, or on neither side? why?

With Molly missing, how is Arthur managing taking care of his children and continuing to be a part of the Order? Does he feel like he should remain a part of the Order?

These questions go hand-in-hand, so I grouped my answer to one longer explanation; I hope that’s okay!

Arthur gathered up his children, said goodbye to his quickly aging parents, and moved to Godric’s Hollow. Lupin had a point. They’d be hiding in plain sight because no one in their right mind would expect them to go where so much darkness remained. Dumbledore promised there would be Hogwarts-level protection on the village to ward off any more disaster. It felt like the smartest thing to do. The draw to continue fighting is there, but he has to think of his kids first. Their safety comes far before his own and the more his soul tells him to fight, the more he considers doing the hardest thing and sending them somewhere far away where they wouldn’t have to be a part of any of it. Time isn’t healing her absence, it is making it harder for Arthur to keep himself together. If he fights, will he finally find her? Will he uncover the truth, that maybe (God willing) she’s alive somewhere? And if she is, what torture could she possibly be enduring? Perhaps it’s better to hope that she’s dead, but the selfish side of Arthur knows what a fighter his wife is - and how lost he might be without her permanently. He remains a part of the Order in the hopes that he will be the first to hear of her whereabouts, determined not to give up just yet. He stays so that the concern and the kids don’t consume him completely. It’s not out of duty anymore. It has nothing to do with wanting a better life for his children. He needs to be the first to know when they finally reveal his biggest fear - that Molly Weasley is dead.

extra.

An extension of the Worry weakness;

Arthur tucks Percy into his sheets and lays a kiss to his sons head, says goodnight to Charlie who doodles in a journal in his adjourning bed across the room. As he leaves the room, he shuts off the light and pulls the door until it is almost closed. Through the crack in the door, he can see the dim yellow light of Charlie’s flashlight. He smiles because he can see his son in his minds’ eye, light tucked beneath his chin, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrates on drawing whatever strange animal he’s dreamed of the night before. In the next room, Arthur has to tell Fred and George to lay down and go to sleep, as he catches them playing in the dark. Fred leans over the top bunk, his small head upside down as he tries to grab the stuffed animal his brother, who is still laying on his back on the bottom bunk, has in his outstretched arm. Ron, in the lowered crib on the other side of the room, stirs restlessly. Arthur tucks the twins in tight, thinking he might invest in restraints - a joke that would’ve made Molly laugh boisterously, had she been there to hear it. He crosses the room to Ron and pulls the blanket up over his shoulders, tucking his stuffed rabbit into his small arms. His hand lingers on the warmth of his sons forehead - does he have a fever? If he does, they all will by in the morning and then Arthur will be dealing with six sick children for the next week. If Molly were there, they’d take it in stages, letting the other rest in the interim. It’s nearly impossible to deal with that many sick kids at one time, each needing something at different times through the day and night until they are back to normal. Arthur heaves a sigh and wanders out of the room, hoping the warmth came from a deep sleep and not an impending epidemic. He goes into his own bedroom at the end of the hall where a crib is pushed against the end of his bed - they couldn’t afford a four bedroom house, especially not with Arthur working half the time he used to.

He plops down on the corner of the bed, sleep pulling at his brain, begging his eyelids to close and he hears it. From inside the crib comes the slightest gurgling noise. He peels his eyes open and leans sideways to look over the bars. His small daughter is awake inside her bed, quite content with chewing on her wet fist. Her small feet kick at the air, her eyes blinking up at the mobile above her. It has little twinkling stars with reflective mirrors and colorful ribbons hanging from it. Arthur feels his throat tighten at the sight of her. The slight hair on her head curls like her mothers, her big, almond-shaped eyes are Molly’s precise color. She’s beautiful. Arthur heaves a deep, exhausted sigh and lays back on his bed, legs bent at the knees with his feet still on the floor. For the briefest of moments, he hadn’t been worried. He said goodnight to all of his children and reveled in the quiet. But the thought of Molly brings on a whole new wash of agony and he closes his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands into them. He would fall asleep just like that, sleeping deeply until the twins awoke him in the early hours of the morning already full of energy and ready to take on the day. But for a moment before sleep and a minute after waking up, he’d stop worry and simply lived.

#hp rp #rp #rpg #marauders rp #lsrpg #accepted

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ronweasleydefensesquad · 7 years ago

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Personal headcanon/rant: of magical prowess and bashing

You know all these fanfics where you have Super!Harry with a bunch of superpowers or Hermione creating spells that Merlin himself wouldn’t be able to dream about? And how, oddly, Ron is pretty much always left out of the loop when it comes to the Powerful!fanfic bunch, because people would rather have a spoiled brat of a Death Eater or an asshole teacher be übermensch?

We know Snape is a good duelist and has “created” spells (unless he simply dug them out of a library somewhere), but he’s got twenty years of experience along with some skirmishes he must have gone through with his fellow DEs. We know Hermione’s good at spellcasting but that she also studies heavily, and that she has trouble with spells that are not entirely theoretical (the Patronus). Harry doesn’t study as much as Hermione does and is not that great at magic; the only spells he can to cast without any problem are the Patronus, Expelliarmus and Stupefy. As for Malfoy… He does Serpensortia once and then we never see him fight again because he’s a big coward. No super-strong magic here.

So why am I complaining about stupid fanfiction that makes characters who have no superior magical prowess whatsoever into the new Merlins of the world?

First, because they always leave Ron out.

Second, because if there’s one wizard in the Potterverse, apart from Voldemort and Dumbledore, who deserves to be given attention about his magic powers, it’s Ron.

Windschild8178 (some of you Ron-lovers might recognize them as the author of the excellent fanfic Stay Standing on FFN) is writing a few Ron-centric stories right now and has written an extremely good author’s note on their story The Boogeyman, a rant about all of the hidden potential Ron’s character presents, and how it gets ignored by pretty much all the HP fandom. I recommend you read it because it’s pretty much as if they took the very soul of Ron-lovers and put it into words.

And now, on to my own, much bigger, much less organized personal rant.

I’ve always had the feeling that Ron was the most magically gifted/powerful of the trio. His so-called “averageness” is very much a lie. His magic is fuelled by his emotions and as such becomes even stronger. This headcanon of mine is founded in several actual canon happenings that we can observe throughout the series (in the books only. Come on, dearest Stevie giving credit to Ron? Now there’s a laugh).

Not only does Ron react very strongly to external magic (the Veelas, Crouch Jr’s Imperius Curse leaves him skipping steps for more than twenty minutes after he’s been freed from it, he notices the locket’s “pulse” whereas Harry only vaguely feels it, he has the very correct feeling that Voldy’s name shouldn’t be said out loud), he also demonstrates great abilities when he gets serious. … and when he doesn’t, as well.

I mean, the class genius masters Wingardium Leviosa and makes her feather levitate 20 inches. Great, fine. Four hours later, the the kid who couldn’t do just that casts Wingardium Leviosa and makes a shit heavy club outright fly 12 feet off the ground!! And nobody thinks that this is slightly impressive?! Hermione states “Ron knocked it out with its own club” and no teacher raises an eyebrow? It’s like Ron is actively ignored by pretty much everyone besides Harry and Hermione.

Second year, Hermione herself tells us that the slug-belching charm is a spell that’s hard to cast, and it’s even worse with a broken wand. Guess who casts it, NONVERBALLY, with a broken wand? Ronniekins, that’s who! Percy was barely learning how to cast nonverbal spells at the time! Oh, oh, and you know what’s even more impressive? Ron’s wand was broken, but it wasn’t even his own wand! It was Charlie’s! Ollivander tells us that a good wizard can do magic with anyone’s wand but it’s easier with their own wand. Basically: holy shit, Ron!

Ron’s crazy magic settles down a bit during PoA and GoF, or at least I can’t remember any instance where JKR describes something unexpected happening concerning him.

However, we then have OoTP, and this time our beloved redhead’s quite in shape. For example, during his Charms O.W.L., it’s said that he transformed a plate into a toadstool/mushroom without knowing how he did it. A wooden plate… into a toadstool… a toadstool, which can actually be considered as… food.

HOLY SHIT RON JUST BROKE GAMP’S LAW OF ELEMENTAL TRANSFIGURATION.

Yeah yeah it was a throwaway joke and JKR created Gamp’s Law in the seventh book so she could justify why the trio was able to starve during the Camping Trip Of Pointlessness™, but she should have known better, or actually establish Gamp’s Law earlier on in the series (after all, they turn pincushions into headgehogs at some point in the earlier years, who’s to say you can’t eat a hedgehog?). And some people might say “but nooo its not food if its a poisoned toadstoool ron is not good at megic bcuz hurmion is bettur, ur full of lies” well guess what, in order to be poisoned you actually have to eat, meaning chew, swallow and digest - or rather fail to digest - the poisonous thing. BAM. IT’S CANON. RON BROKE GAMP’S LAW OF ELEMENTAL TRANSFIGURATION. (And JKR has the freaking gall to give him the same results as Harry only slightly less better. Can you feel her prejudice against her own character?) And that’s not all he does in fifth year!

At the Department of Mysteries, Luna tells us that she, Ron and Ginny fled from four Death Eaters that followed them into a room full of planets. Four Death Eaters. One breaks Ginny’s ankle and Luna blasts him with Pluto. Then they collect Ron, who got cursed by “them” and is acting all loopy and run back to Harry. … what about the three Death Eaters unaccounted for in the planet room? Well apparently Ron fought all three of them, got cursed by at least two, and still won, considering no DEs are chasing after Luna and her group. All hail the King.

In HBP, finally, we’ve got that time where Ron broke up with Lavender and was feeling so guilty, he was simply waving his wand around and… and it starts snowing. INSIDE HOGWARTS. He’s making it snow. INSIDE HOGWARTS. No incantation, no spell, nothing, just “I feel like I’m a coldhearted bastard” and suddenly it’s snowing INSIDE HOGWARTS.

And of course we can’t forget how Voldemort casts a Silencing Spell over the people of Hogwarts, holding his Elder Wand, saying Harry died like an idiot, only for Ronald Weasley, official best friend and badass extraordinaire, to scream AT VOLDEMORT “HE BEAT YOU!” and the charm, the super-powerful, cast-by-Voldemort-and-the-Elder-Wand Charm BREAKS. He wasn’t even using a wand, he wasn’t even saying an incantation, Ronald Weasley, through the simple power of his rage and grief, freaking breaks a silencing charm made by VOLDE-FREAKING-MORT AKA THE GUY THAT COULD HOLD HIS OWN AGAINST DUMBLEDORE.

So that’s well and good but if Ron was so talented, why didn’t he put his magical power to a use, the Ron-lover asks curiously and the Ron-basher sneers contemptuously?

The answer’s simple: 1) blame JKR for getting prejudiced against her own character as she was writing her series; 2) his perpetual negative billions self-esteem that could have been solved had any of his friends bothered paying a little attention to him.

One of the reasons why I’m so hostile to Ron-bashing is because these people look down at someone who already considers himself to be less than worthless… and then they proceed to dig him even deeper. That’s manipulative, abusive, borderline psychopathic behaviour. They do exactly what Draco Malfoy does with Weasley is our King in the first place: they kick people when they’re already down. They act like Snape acted towards Neville Longbottom (you know, the kid whose biggest fear would have been Bellatrix Lestrange had she not been hijacked by a teacher who delighted in belittling him and tormenting him?).

Ron’s the kind of person who needs reassurance to function. He needs affection and nice things said about him. Some people might think it’s pathetic but we all know better. Who doesn’t like to have nice things said about them, and to them? Wanting to be praised, to be appreciated, to be told he’s doing things right for a change, that was everything Ron Weasley needed to blossom, and that’s everything he’s denied for the whole freaking series.

Do you know what Weasley is our King is? If you’ve seen only the movies then no you don’t, and then you have no right to bash Ron. Because this song, this anthem to Ron’s glory used to be a song used to humiliate him so much, he wouldn’t be able to play Quidditch.

Picture it. Draco Malfoy. Sitting down at a table. Thinking “how can I make Ron’s self-esteem take such a nose-dive he’ll be literally paralyzed and unable to play?”. Picture Draco Malfoy actively looking for Ron’s greatest insecurities and fears of inadequacy. Picture Draco Malfoy writing a song about them and teaching it to every Slytherin in the school.

And then try to sell me Draco Malfoy the redeemed little angel, The Boy Who Made The Wrong Choice(s). See me spit right in your face because I refuse to praise an arrogant, bigoted, spiteful little bully, and you should too. He’s not so bad anymore, yes. But do you even begin to understand how Ron must have felt during this school year? How he was probably flushing in humiliation any time he saw something related to Quidditch? How he would have blamed himself for Harry and his brothers’ ban from Quidditch because he thought it was his fault for letting Malfoy get to him? How Harry never, not even once, tries to reassure him? Hermione might try but what does Hermione know about Quidditch? Ron being utterly alone and ashamed and filled with self-loathing? Hm? How’s that for sweet little Draco Malfoy who’s never been bullied and tormented by anyone, ever?

Draco wasn’t irredeemable when he joined the Death Eaters. He was irredeemable as soon as he opened his mouth to say that all Weasleys had red hair, freckles and more children than they could afford. Because while JKR “loathes a traitor”, I loath a bully. I’ve been bullied. I’ve seen people shipping characters with their bullies. I’ve seen people call such relationships as being those of “star-crossed lovers”. I’ve hated these with all my soul. Because being bullied is not romantic, nor is it cool or cute. It’s freaking awful, it’ll make you miserable, cause you to lose your friends, turn your life into a living hell.

Weasley is our King is a metaphor for harrassment and school bullying. It’s basically what a (blessedly) few teenagers have to go through during their school years. Do you know what usually happens to these teenagers? Suicide.

And the worst part? JKR herself partakes in it. JKR herself bullies her character. Do you know what happens after the triumphant reprise of Weasley is our King is sung for the very first time, when Ron saves all these goals, when he shows how incredible he can be, how good he is despite all the mockeries he’s had to endure during all of his fifth year that we didn’t see because it was All About Harry™ as usual? After Ron has finally triumphed and “proved” he was good enough to the entire school?

She has him bump his head on the door’s lintel.

Because being humiliated for an entire school year then proving your abusers they’re wrong without being ridiculed isn’t allowed when your author is named J.K. Rowling and you’re Ron Weasley.

I went on several topics there; Ron’s obvious magical prowess, how he could have used said magical prowess had JKR not restrained him with extra-heavy plot chains, and the disgusting prejudice there is against a kind-hearted character who happens to have a few faults while the bigoted bully next door gets a get-out-of-jail-free card, all by the will of an author who apparently had a nice long discussion with Steve Kloves in-between PoA and GoF to prepare the first movie adaptation of Harry Potter… and we all know how this ends.

That was my little… *looks at slider* … enormous rant on Ron, magic, and bullying. Hope I didn’t bore you that much. Cheers, Ron-lovers!

#ron #defense #submission #ronweasleydefensesquad #ron weasley defense squad #ron weasley #Harry Potter

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renaroo · 7 years ago

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Promises (12/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: I would give a big long explanation as to why this chapter took so long to publish but, in all honesty, I’ve probably ran the full gambit of excuses at this point for this poor neglected story. My only real explanation is a significant lack of free time lately this year. Man 2018 sucks eggs.

Special thanks to Aingeal98, @secretlystephaniebrown, @mitchthebat, and kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

Children of the Revolution

Cassandra didn’t have all that much use for the BatCave — at least not when she compared her methods to Batman or Robin or even Nightwing. And she was certainly nowhere on Oracle’s level. And Cass was constantly comparing herself in the hours and nights after crossing paths with Two-Face at the scene of the most recent murder.

So even without knowing how to use it in the inventive and perfect ways that the other, better vigilantes did, Cassandra stood at the cave’s center, mask in her hands, and looked toward the equipment, vehicles, and computers that were of no use to her at all.

Her clutch on her mask only tightened all the more.

When the door behind the grandfather clock opened, Cass only mildly listened, just long enough to verify that it was Alfred’s familiar steps, then she began to pull the cowl over her head. Her lone batcycle was waiting for her and she had a patrol to do. A patrol that was unorganized, without map directions, and without consideration for the so-called gathered evidence.

For all intents and purposes, Cassandra was off the case.

Batman — Bruce — had made clear where his faith lied. And it was not with her.

It might have never been with her.

And there was something about that information, learning it and letting it break down in her very soul, that made the symbol on her chest burn with scorn. It was like the suit itself did not want her to wear it.

“Miss Cassandra,” Alfred called, halfway down the stairs. He was carrying a silver tray with food cold enough that its scent barely wafted Cass’ way. “I cannot help but notice that you did not eat your dinner. I would shudder the thought that you would think of going on your nightly excursion without so much as your basic calories.”

She glanced back at him, her apologetic look lost beneath the barrier of her mask. “Not hungry.”

“I am not hungry,” Alfred corrected lightly.

Eyes squinting slightly, Cass tried to ignore the ferocious instinct to snap back. Even in her foulest moments, snapping at Alfred seemed unfathomable and unforgivable. “I’m not,” she insisted.

“Then perhaps you are feeling ill and should stay in for the night,” the butler urged.

Biting back on her molars, Cassandra was too angry to speak. All she could hear from Alfred’s pleading was that Gotham didn’t need Batgirl. Because, surely, if that was what Batman thought then it was what everyone who she believed to have faith in her must have thought as well.

Her blood boiled even as she quickly made her way to the waiting cycle.

“Miss Cassandra, please consider it. You have not had any break since Master Bruce and the boys left,” Alfred continued, putting the tray of cold food down and walking toward the carport behind her. “I worry for you.”

“Don’t,” Cass finally snapped, slinging her leg over the cycle and immediately revving it once her computer connected gloves gripped to the handles.

In the rearview mirrors, Cass could see the despondent look on Alfred’s face, but Cassandra was nothing if not highly committed. And she wasted no time in pushing herself forward with the same powerful anger and scorn which was still heating her chest.

And with that, Batgirl was on her way to Gotham, without any tactics or plans other than to punch every person in the seedy underbelly of the city. There was no one to give her guidance or to have her back. And the further she drove, the more she felt that ominous pressure.

Without much of a plan and without a partner directing her through the commlink in her cowl, Cassandra was moving from rooftop to rooftop rather pointlessly, loathe as she was to admit it.

Petty crimes in Gotham were not difficult to locate, even without a centralized location, but the more she found, the more Cassandra could not ignore that the bigger crimes, the ones that would be the focus of Batman’s night, that were what the signal was reserved for, were piling higher and higher without solution.

At least, without Cassandra providing a solution.

Her mind rattled with anxiety over that failure until she found herself landing on the decorative, garish architecture of Gotham’s highest sanctuary. Then she was paused, stopped in place with no ability to move. She was locked in, staring at the city below with the abject sense of failure. She was failing. She was a failure, and it made her throat and mouth dry and wither.

Cassandra could hardly breathe as she put her head in her hands and curled toward her knees.

What was she doing? Why couldn’t she do better?

The ache in her chest only grew stronger with the internal demands when she heard a snap in the air.

It was a crisp night, cold, and leather was tight and pulled more, resisted movement more. And when rope or the like were pulled taut, that signature snap of the line was unmistakable to Cassandra.

Uncurling from her insecurities, Batgirl looked to meet the source of the sound and found someone rather unmistakable in the wait.

Catwoman.

It had been a long time since Batgirl and Catwoman met in Gotham, last time had been unpleasant and after Catwoman had been framed for the shooting and attempted murder of Barbara’s father. The time before that, Catwoman worked with Batgirl to stop some of the Penguin’s improprieties during Gotham’s reconstruction.

There was almost no telling what the circumstances were for the current meeting.

“Hey there, Kitten,” she said lightly with a familiarity that wasn’t quite earned. She brought her hands up to the sides of her head and pointed upward with her pointer fingers. “Saw those long ears and thought you were someone who could use a break from brooding.”

A little confused, Batgirl knitted her brows together and stared suspiciously at the thief. “Wasn’t…”

“Honey, as long as you wear that,” Catwoman pointed toward Batgirl’s chest, “then you certainly were brooding, ‘fraid to say.”

There was something light and teasingly warm about Catwoman’s tone, but it only served to bother Cassandra more. She didn’t know what brooding was or if she was doing it. And not knowing only made her feel all the more sour.

“Go away,” Batgirl said flatly.

“Fine, was a boring conversation anyway,” Catwoman shrugged. “I’ll just have to find someone else that can explain all of these murders going on recently.”

Snapping back to attention, Batgirl got to her feet and looked in surprise Catwoman’s way. “You know… the murders?” she tried to clarify.

“Read about them in the paper,” she answered. “Some of them were taking place in the East End. That’s my neighborhood. I’m not a fan of things happening in my territory that are outside the bounds of hard living.” She paused and looked curiously at Batgirl through her shade heavy goggles. “Do you have anything to go off of?”

Defensive to a fault, she stood warily. “Maybe.”

“Quite the conversationalist,” Catwoman sighed. “Seriously, though, if you have anything that’d be helpful for calming my nerves, I’d appreciate it.” She waited for a moment more. When Batgirl wasn’t responding, she gave a long sigh. “Good ol’ silent types it is then. I don’t know what it is that attracts the to me.” She began to walk away casually, a sly glance over her shoulder. “Still, I take some comfort knowing you are behind some of this stuff and not just that backstabber former-and-ever-current Harvey Dent. Never did trust lawyers.”

For as dumb as Cassandra felt she was, there was one thing she was always confident in, and that was her ability to read people. And that included reading people when they were purposefully manipulative.

With a curl of her nose, Batgirl leaped forward, somersaulting over Catwoman’s head to cut her off.

The sudden change in atmosphere seemed to give even Catwoman pause.

“You… know about Two-Face!” Batgirl hissed. “Who… told you?”

Catwoman blinked in surprise before attempting a causal shrug. “Isn’t it common knowledge by now?”

Not at all amused, Cassandra took a threatening step forward which immediately forced Selina to step back herself.

“Calm down, kid,” she warned. “I’m a friendly. Ask Oracle, she’ll vouch for me. Most likely.”

It all clicked together at once, like a jigsaw puzzle coming to completion.

“Oracle…” Batgirl huffed angrily. “Of course.”

Turning, Cassandra faced over the edge of the building. The sweeping depths of the city below her, her emotions roaring inside, Cassandra felt as unsettled and insignificant as the traffic below. Untrustworthy. Not smart enough. Not good enough.

Not anything…

“Okay, look, I came as a favor to a kind-of-friend,” Catwoman admitted, stepping forward and reaching for Cassandra’s shoulders. “And I did it because I knew that that person, as much as we may not get along, obviously really worried about you, and needed to know that you would be okay. I think that’s something a lot of people would want. That means something. Don’t… don’t you think?”

Eyes narrowing, Cassandra lowered her head. “I… I think,” she hesitantly said, then turned angrily and smacked away Catwoman’s hand in one motion. “I think… adults suck!”

With that, Batgirl pulled out her grappling hook and took off in a well positioned dive. Her motions were so quick and natural it would have been difficult for even Catwoman to follow if she had tried.

She didn’t try, though.

And Batgirl went to practice her brooding, as it were, elsewhere.

Gotham had never been lonelier in Batgirl’s eyes.

She stood solemnly and without direction.

There was crime to stop, there was a serial murderer to be found, there were villains and horrors beyond imagining that should have been her responsibility that night.

But all she could think to herself was how… how those things weren’t her responsibility. Not really.

For the first time since the time she had left Gotham, Cassandra truly felt as though she did not belong there. They were not hers to care for anymore. But if they weren’t, then where was she meant to protect?

The thoughts were so confounding and so stark in her mind that she almost missed the whispers of an approach.

Almost.

With a hiss, she ducked beneath the swing of a sword, buckled her knees and rose up with a push of her hands against the rooftop’s concrete. It was a swift, brutal full body kick that would have hit another challenger squarely in the chest.

But her opponent wasn’t any other challenger. It was Deathstroke, and he twisted with the kick to decrease its impact and land a body length away from Batgirl’s new position.

They stared at each other silently.

“You haven’t lost step,” he announced, less than impressed. “You haven’t improved either.”

“For you… don’t need to,” she spat back.

Batgirl readied herself for a retaliatory attack at any moment. She had only bested Deathstroke before twice — once by surprise, secondly by proxy through Ravager. And Cassandra was not eager to see what her prospects were without those two counters. Her old self would have valued the opportunity to fight a genuinely impressive fighter, someone who had the capacity to best her skills.

Old Cassandra had not been given life by Shiva for the third time yet, though.

Readied as she might have been, she could not have expected for Deathstroke to completely relax his muscles, sheathe his weapon, and straighten up to stand.

She did not move, fists still up, legs spread, but her head tilted in confusion.

“Believe it or not, I am to here to fight today,” Deathstroke announced. He then looked over her. “Obviously you are going for not.”

“Why?” Batgirl snapped. “Wait… Don’t care. Just leave.”

Just beneath his mask, Deathstroke grinned. “That’s why,” he declared at once.

Cassandra squinted in confusion.

“You’re confused, I understand,” he continued, nearing her step by step. “I want to help you. I want to help you be better — be as strong and as lethal as you were meant to be.”

The words rang in Cass’ mind, her heart pounding. They were familiar words, words she had heard before even if it had been ages ago.

“This? Being a sideshow to a freak like Two-Face is not what you were meant to be. You’re limited by his ideals. By his sheltering. He sheltered you from this opportunity to prove yourself, and he shelters you from the rest of the world. The real world, outside of Gotham,” Deathstroke commented lowly. “And beyond that? He’s kept you like a child — naive and ignorant. Unable to read even. Others — people like me, we wouldn’t keep you like that. We would teach you in every art that he refuses you now.”

There was a tremble in Cassandra’s body that she couldn’t suppress no matter how much she felt it coming on.

Deathstroke saw it and he acted on it immediately, feeling he had won the ground he was seeking.

“It’s true. We have an entire organization now—“

With one swooping open palm, Batgirl nailed an uppercut just beneath Deathstroke’s jawline. His teeth crunched together and his head snapped back, though non-lethally.

It was a cheap shot, but Cass felt so rewarded by it as she stood over Deathstroke. Her third victory was through deception, continuing the trend of them being less than how she would consider wins to be respectful.

“Reading… better now,” she informed him as she stood. “Also. Tell Nyssa… it was better speech first time.”

Heart still pounding, Batgirl left the rooftop with her grappling hook, ready to call this particularly awful night to an end.

#writing #batfic #Batfic: Promises #Cassandra Cain #Alfred Pennyworth #Selina Kyle #Slade Wilson

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thatmexisaurusrex · 4 years ago

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The Shotgun Angel: Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1: THE SHOTGUN ANGEL

Wisteria was built around the Undying Forest. Buildings made so that when the trees grew, they had room. Buildings weren’t built by cutting down to create a flattened plain, no, they were built around whatever was there, indoor spaces and green spaces one and the same in the Old parts of town, high on the mountain top where the Heavens meet the earth. People came from all over the world to see a city created to compliment its natural biome, meant to accentuate and appreciate the awe-inspiring fauna and flora on top of the Endless Mountain.

And then there were the edges of Wisteria, New Town. Temporary bungalows made to withstand perhaps a season if they were lucky, tin thin and lacking the elegance of the city that loomed above it. Most tourists tended to ignore New Town. It wasn’t exactly a prime destination, after all. It wasn’t something many people spoke of unless bemoaning a poverty that felt too immense to wipe clean from their eyes or if you lived there and simply couldn’t ignore the nature of your habitat. However, deep in the heart of New Town, hidden near a crumbling chapel, it was said their lives a daemon spawn who will help anyone for the right price.

The first thing Pearl noticed about Noel Baird was her eyes. Pearl didn’t know eyes could be that color. As if someone concentrated the jewelry shine of a polished shell, moving between a seafoam and aqua depending on the light. She seemed to endure forever bedhead, despite trying to comb her short hair into some presentable shape. She wore a suit as if she knew she needed to look professional, yet the suit was too big on her, too unwieldy, making her seem like someone playing adult. Maybe she was. She looked younger than Pearl expected.

“You just going to stare at me all day or do you want something from me? If not, Stop wasting my time,” grumbled Noel, and Pearl didn’t expect how garbled the voice was, as if this thin, small young woman had irreparably burned her throat leaving whatever croak of a voice that was.

Perhaps that was the daemon in Noel.

Pearl straightened, trying to palm down creases in her own outfit as if her body were rejecting whatever Noel’s clothes were doing entirely.

“Yes. Quite. Well. My name is Pearl Morin and I had heard that Noel Baird would help anyone for a price – that you might be able to help me with my…complicated situation,” Pearl responded.

At first, there was a curdling of the face, a souring in the air when Noel heard “anything”, perhaps the tone Pearl had (it wasn’t as if Pearl hadn’t heard before that her tone wasn’t exactly “friendly” nor “amiable”). But there was a shift, as if Noel’s general rule was to always not judge a book by its cover, and the bristle softens as she stalks around Pearl.

“Your empty money, aren’t you?” asked Noel, her eyes devastating as they read Pearl in ways she felt uncomfortable in admitting, “Nice clothes, but worn, well-kept. You’re one disaster away from New Town. I see why you’re coming to me instead of, say, Holy Agency? Or, perhaps it’s the nature of the ‘problem’ you come to me with. Too embarrassing for the gossip hounds? Willing to risk them for New Town trances, but not the actual problem itself?”

Pearl squirmed under the judgement. She loathed it, some daemon spawn judging her, but she couldn’t say the girl was at all wrong. Which gave Pearl some solace for coming to her for aid in this grave matter.

“Do you have an office? Or will we talk amongst the miscreants in the alleyways and pray they don’t sell my secrets for fortunes?” Pearl said coldly.

Pearl was taller than this girl. She used her height as a point of pride, made sure her back, straight, made it pointedly clear that she would not be harassed by this pay-for-help creature. All Noel did was laugh, glancing over at the muddied children ogling them and shooing them off.

“They’ve never seen clothes so dazzling, but if you’re really so worried, we can meet inside,” explained Noel like Pearl was an idiot, vaguely gesturing for Pearl to follow her into the crumbling chapel behind her, which, strange.

Pearl couldn’t fathom how the structure was still standing, with how little upkeep it seemed to have in terms of the building itself and how archaic the building was. It even had stained glass of angels, surprisingly pristine and untouched unlike the rest of the building, something Pearl had never seen herself in person. It felt as if one particularly strong wind could bring this place down, which would be a shame due to the rare specimens of stained glass.

“I didn’t know such a place existed here,” mumbled Pearl, sensing a faint waft of smoke.

“That’s because no one quite cares for the chapels of yesteryear, left behind as you choose more interactive places of worship,” Noel explained, stepping into eyeline.

Pearl flinched when she noticed that it was Noel who brought about the smell of smoke. She was literally smoking in the church, yet seemed completely relaxed in between the pews.

“You’re, y-you’re,” Pearl stammered as Noel smiled at her, her teeth only slightly pointier looking than the average person – or perhaps that was a trick of the light, Pearl’s brain assuming there had to be something physically demonic about this cursed person.

“You think of daemons,” Noel replied without even needing to hear the answer, “You see, an ancestor of mine some five-hundred years ago offered up her soul as well as the souls of five-thousand of her offspring to the Daemon Azazel, Fallen Angel of Mercy, for gifts beyond her wildest dreams. She got the gifts. The rest of us were lost before we were ever given the choice. So, no. I’m not daemon spawn. I’m merely damned.”

She gestured to the smoke as if it was all settled, that reasoning was set. Maybe it was. But such a horrifying thought. To have your fate sealed before you were even alive, so far in the past that nothing could be done, there was no one to be angry at but probably those who birthed you thinking you could still have some semblance of a happy life.

“Is that why you do what you do?” Pearl asked.

Noel laughed again, more bitter.

“There’s nothing that can save me, you fancy mess. I do this because I want to,” Noel replied.

Noel glowered at the pity, so Pearl allowed herself to shut down such feelings. It wasn’t her fault a strange soul was given no chance. Noel leaned onto the pew, crossing her arms.

“Now, what seems to be your issue?” asked Noel.

There was no running from it, Pearl supposed. She let out a stifled sigh, sitting down in one of the pews.

“My brother, Aria, went missing some three weeks ago. He sometimes will do this. A few days, a week maybe, off partying around, drinking, gambling, but…not three weeks. I fear for him. Especially since he maintains a level of, well…rage against the fact that I seem to be the one keeping us afloat,” Pearl said, trying to find her words in her fidgeting hands, “Our father had drilled into his head that the man is supposed to keep a house afloat, and, well…I’ve always been better at the books. I even made sure he could go on his sprees with no dent in our finances, but he seems desperate to prove himself to be better than I and, from notes I found sprawled in his room, well…I fear for his soul.”

Noel bristled, moving away from the pew she leaned on.

“You’re telling me he’s going to make a deal with a daemon because he feels his fragile masculinity is threatened by you making sure he doesn’t burn through all of your funds?” growled Noel in a way Pearl never saw someone do for her, as if it was okay that she was the way she was and it was her brother in the wrong.

Pearl stuttered a nod. Noel roared, kicking a pew, the pew skewing sideways and awkwardly leaning onto the pew behind it. Noel froze, staring at what she had done.

“Oh, halos and harps,” grumbled Noel.

Pearl startled as a stumbling giant of a man hobbled out in undone priest clothes out from the door to some office Pearl didn’t notice hidden in the back corner. He didn’t look drunk like Pearl expected. More lacking sleep. He had stubble that didn’t quit, hair gelled to the heavens, and a piercing gaze to rival that of Noel. He pointed at Noel accusatorily.

“You break it, you buy it, kid,” the man rumbled, a voice both deep and authoritative with an edge of “kids have to listen to me if I sound like this, right?”.

Noel surprisingly panicked at his reaction, arms flailing.

“I didn’t mean to! This place is a crapshoot.”

“You say that when I let you into my home, I let your shotgun angel stay here?”

“I get it, I get it, I’ll pay for it, okay?”

They gabbed like a dad to a daughter, or maybe more like a disgruntled uncle to a turbulent niece. It juxtaposed the mysterious work-for-hire that made Pearl shiver, almost scared.

“Don’t be so hard on her. The blemish on her allows for a stronger vessel, you know she doesn’t know her strength sometimes,” grumbled a voice from in the office, stretching as he walked out.

This other man, dressed a lot like Noel, carried a hundred-meter stare in his October autumn eyes, voice deep and velvety and just a bit horrifying. Everything about him felt a little too put-together, especially with the two disasters he seemed to keep company with. As if he was born to wear a suit but hates it.

“She has a guest. Don’t embarrass her,” this too-put-together man said, pointing straight at Pearl, making Pearl squirm.

Then she realized why his gaze unsettled her. She turned, surprised to Noel, avoiding eye contact with the organized man.

“Oh of Cupid’s bows, why do you have an angel here? Why is he so easy to hide?” whispered Pearl as if that could make her unhearable, which she knew wouldn’t work but a girl could dream.

“Ortega doesn’t count anymore, don’t worry,” groaned Noel as if for the millionth time, “Stop focusing on those weirdoes – what will you give me in return?”

Pearl remembered why she was there.

“So, you’ll help me, then? With my, um…” Pearl stumbled, glancing at the two strangers in the room, “…situation?”

Noel’s eyes darkened, as if Pearl was truly making a deal with a devil, moving slowly towards Pearl, drawing shivers up Pearl’s spine, making her wonder if Noel’s tale was a lie.

“Depends on what you offer,” said Noel, “What do you think I am owed?”

She was prepared, though. For this pact. Clutching the amulet on her neck, Pearl, broke its chain, holding it out to Noel.

“I heard rumors of you looking for protection from heaven. This is a sliver of a maelstrom. From the Darker Days. I heard it hides a person from the eye of a beholder, so maybe this will help? I don’t know if it hides from heaven, but you can try it.”

She held it out for Noel, only to pull it away. Good. Pearl needed to feel some semblance of power in this agreement. Noel glared as Pearl placed the amulet in her dress’ pocket.

“You’ll get it once you find my brother. Before he does something he’ll regret,” said Pearl.

Noel sighed, nodding.

“That’s fair,” said Noel.

“Does that mean you need your shotgun angel? She’s still sleeping, last I checked,” echoed the still-messy maybe priest.

“Ugh, shut up, Iker. Nobody asked your opinion,” said Noel, stomping towards spiraling stairs behind them.

Pearl followed Noel, glancing over at the eyeing sort-of angel and possible priest.

“Hey, who are those two?” whispered Pearl, hesitant to get on the rickety spiraling staircase.

“Iker and Ortega? They own the chapel. Or run it. I don’t know how landowning works. They let Dru stay here, that’s all that matters,” said Noel, the stairs opening to a lofted room filled with soft pillows, fuzzy blankets, and a young woman sleeping, IV attached to her.

Noel crawled slowly to her, cautious. She touched the girl. Shook her a few times. No response. Pearl wasn’t sure what to make of this. What was happening. She wanted to ask, but she also didn’t want to be tangled in anything shady Noel might be doing. That was when she saw Noel clasping her hands to pray.

“Dru. It’s Noel. I hope you’re listening. I need you to come back, if you can. It’s your choice where you are. Don’t let them choose for you.”

And Noel just watched. Hopeful. Watching that breathing body before her. They snuck up from behind without Pearl even hearing them.

“You’re going to scare her, awakening that shotgun angel of yours,” growled Iker.

Noel glared at him.

“W-What’s a shotgun angel?” asked Pearl.

“Nephilim. A child of blood and bone and holy fury,” said Ortega, leaning a little too familiarly onto the strange almost-priest, “Their essence is tied inextricably to both the body birthed to the mortal coil and to the holiest plane, so their pith is shot from earth to heaven whenever those above call upon them.”

“But angels need hosts,” said Pearl.

“Not when they are half-mortal,” said Ortega, “A rarity, yes, but not unknown to be certain. And heaven, well…they like such soldiers in their garrisons.”

Noel kept her hands clasped, pulling Dru’s hand into her clutch.

“Come on, come on, come on. Didn’t you say you’d come when I call?” whispered Noel in a way that Pearl was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear.

And then it happened. A startle. A stop. A deep breath in, as if life dragged itself back into the body, dazzling topaz eyes lighting as her eyes opened wide, wider than they should. Noel’s hands flung up, cradling Dru’s face gently. Her hands smoked more – Pearl was sure it was probably her touching one most holy. Dru’s eyes fluttered, always on Noel.

“What are you doing?” said Dru, and it was if her voice was both raspy yet like a million relaxing wind chimes.

“Platonic face holding?” suggested Noel.

Dru smiled.

“You called, Noel?” asked Dru, her face still cradled.

“We got a job,” answered Noel, grinning.

#writeblr #writing #fantasy #dystopian #original writing #Serial #The Shotgun Angel #Chapter 1

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davidchill · 7 years ago

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Luna’s Holiday, That Book, and Davina McCall.

I’ve been without my pooch for almost a week - but I’m looking forward to our reunion on Friday. In her absence, I’m rattling around in this house with nobody to talk to, so I’m taking a breather from my work and my book to write an important blog. Yes, that’s allowed. And I’ll come back to That Book in a moment.

It’s mental health awareness week, so I wanted to share my two penneth. In the hope that it might help someone… and maybe even help people to understand.

People often scoff when I tell them that I let Luna watch Coronation Street, but, truth be told, that’s one of the few shows that raise awareness of mental health. Also, Luna absolutely loves the meerkats. And the cat in the opening titles. Quite recently a popular male character took his own life, but the story was handled in a very sensitive way. Some people lambasted the storyline, saying that he’d not exhibited “signs” of being depressed - but that’s exactly what the story was trying to highlight. A lot of people with depression don’t wear their feelings on their sleeve. They’re not going to come into work every day and start sobbing at their desk, they’re more likely to be quiet, affable - and crack the occasional joke. To the outside world they’re as happy as the infamous Larry, without a care in the world - because they can’t talk about their problems or bring themselves to talk. It’s STILL a huge stigma in men of a certain age, and it really shouldn’t be. We’re told to “man up” or “cheer up” or “shut up and get on with it” when that’s the last thing one should do. A gentleman of a bygone era might tell you they cycled fifty miles to work every day, in a blizzard, with a broken leg - therefore people of today should do the same thing.

Back to Corrie; I always identify with characters who suffer with anxiety and depression. Yes, I saw the signs in the weeks leading up to the character’s suicide. The crestfallen stares into the middle distance… hiding away in the house… putting bills to one side in the hope they’ll go away…

Thankfully, I’ve not lost any friends as a direct result of depression - but a few friends have gone off the radar over the years. Especially in the past year. One minute you’re exchanging messages or amiable chat and then, suddenly, it’s almost like a switch goes and no matter how much you try and reach out or attempt to be affable, they become very standoffish and matter-of-fact. It would be easy to file such people under “rude” or “cold” but so many people are fighting private battles that we know nothing about.

For the record, if I’ve ever been aloof with anyone I can only apologise. And if anyone ever wants to open up about their struggles then I am always here to lend an ear. Social media can be a very cold place at times, and it’s easy to simply ignore people - but I think it’s important to think how you’d feel if you were constantly ignored by someone who cares for you and only wants to be kind.

In the past few years a couple of things have consumed my life. My dog and my book about my dog. The eagle-eyed amongst you might spot a link there...

In 2016, when I set up my crowdfunding page, the plan was to write a book based on life with my dog. Now this isn’t an excuse, because I don’t need an excuse... but sometimes in life things don’t go to plan. I had absolutely no idea that I’d be forced to sell my home the following year, and all the palaver that entailed. Let’s be honest... most days I could barely afford to eat properly and I owed family/friends around £5,000 so when my bank loan fell through, the only possible way of getting people off my back (and enjoying an occasional meal) was to sell my home. But that was my own fault for spending too many years working for a pittance and spending beyond my means. It’s important to have a “nest egg” and now, if I fell into financial hardship again, I wouldn’t have that “safety net” and it’d be game over.

In the days after I emerged from that gruelling home sale and being “between homes” my anxiety had reached dizzy new heights... I was being asked “Where’s this book?” Or “How’s this book coming along?” And I tried to explain that things had gone off the rails…

Until this very day, and despite sending a number of updates out to the backers - I don’t hear from someone for months and then they pop up with “How’s the book?” Or “This book better be good!” or “Yawn! Still waiting for this book!”

Such pressure always works wonders for my anxiety.

No, I can’t blame people for being curious or even vexed, but my mental well being had to come first. The book is already way over budget, so to those who donated less than £20 - you’re getting an absolute bargain. Perhaps I should split the book into two books (it’s big enough) but I simply can’t afford to publish two editions, so people will get one lengthy book.

I’m not J.K Rowling, or someone who’s being paid to write novels. So I don’t have the luxury of saying; “Today I can sit in my office and write for 10 hours.” Last week I had to juggle the book with Luna, two websites, two logo designs and delivering 800 magazines in four days.

If I was constantly popping up on social media, posting photos of my lunch, I’d understand people getting rattled about me not writing the book. It’s just irksome when, after getting up in the morning and working through until 2 or 3am, I post something [unrelated to the book] on Twitter or Facebook only to receive a dig about not writing the book. Yes, I know it’s probably “banter” but at times it comes across as passive aggression.

Yes, I’m on it. The book consumes me 24/7.

Luna’s been in Southwold since last Friday (at least one of us gets a holiday) as I found juggling the book, the dog, and multiple work deadlines was probably going to drive me to a breakdown.

Taking Luna to Southwold for a holiday while I remain home in Cambridgeshire might sound excessive. But there are few places I trust with my dog… and it actually worked out less expensive (plus I get a very brief bit of sea air too). There’s no way I can afford a holiday myself - so this was the best compromise.

Also, when I get comments like; “Try having kids!” or the extended remix… “Try two kids, three dogs, and the ex wife!” I generally shake my head.

Guys, this isn’t Top Trumps.

Anxiety and depression is utterly exhausting, and when you’re alone with a high maintenance dog, people constantly on your back about something and work deadlines then, at times, things can just get a bit much.

For years I’ve had “Where’s my money?” and now it’s “Where’s my book?” so, rest assured, there’s not a soul on this Earth who wants this book out sooner than me. It’s not going to be out in time for Comic Con on the 25th, but I still have high hopes for going to print at the end of May/ early June.

If often feels like I’ve become second to the book. I’m sure if I was hospitalised, I’d wake up in my bed to hear someone say; “Right, time to crack on with that book!” God forbid anything should happen to Luna. “At least now you can focus on the book...”

So please, before you feel the need to give me stick about the book, ask yourself a question; Is this comment really necessary?

I’ve reached a point now where I don’t actually care if this book is loved or loathed. I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, and that’s really all I can do.

I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who’s just trusted me enough to get on with it in peace. Even if it receives negative feedback, it’s been the most therapeutic endeavour of my life, and has, quite possibly, saved my mind. Perhaps my life. Every day I thank God for blessing me with a sense of humour.

Oh, and please spare me any complaints about the language. There’s nothing in there that the average 12-year-old hasn’t heard in the playground. I never, ever, swear on social media, and if a word is used (very sparingly) it’s only for comedic effect.

Finally, Davina McCall…

Early last year I was asked to appear on This Time Next Year, with Davina McCall. To this day I don’t know why, but I was selected from hundreds of people… application form, telephone interview, Skype meeting that was recorded and sent to the bigwigs at ITV… and suddenly I was sitting on the sofa, in front of a live studio audience, with Davina McCall.

The second series has just aired on ITV, but I filmed for the third series, which is presumably coming later this year. However, my interview isn’t being broadcast. They film around 100, but with only six episodes per series they can only broadcast around 30 interviews.

Davina’s lovely, and we chatted a bit about Luna and how my anxiety has held me back in life. Although coming through those doors to face the live studio audience was perhaps the most terrifying experience of my life. I was on last too - so I sat in the green room for about five hours before walking out to meet Davina. At the time I was battling to clear my debt while wishing to keep my home, get the book out, etc… but from the beginning the producers wanted to focus more on my [lack of] love life. In the end it became something that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with… and I think me finding a girlfriend within the year would have been a very tall order. What with everything else. Also, on reflection, I hope looking back at the interview wasn’t awkward for Davina, because she told me how she met her husband on a dog walk… and at the time they were still together. Like I said earlier; sometimes “life” just takes us to places that we never expect. Still, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m thankful for the opportunity.

In summery; Please try to reach out to someone today. It’s especially easy for single people to fall off the radar and be forgotten about. Talk to them. Invite them for coffee. Go on a dog walk together. They won’t bite! Unless they have a particularly “bitey” dog.

Something as simple as sending a message saying “How are you?” takes seconds (unless you have particularly large fingers) and could even save a life. Sure, you could say “It’s not my problem” or “Someone else will do it” but if everyone took that stance then the suicide rate would go through the roof.

Above all; be kind. It won’t cost you anything.

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