#but compared to everything else i've had to do to finish this.......... might as well!

[asterdeer]

Y'ALL.

after just over 2 years of work, i finished the Ace Jon Quilt.

inspired by @/speakerunfolding's fanart of jon jarchivist sims with an ace-colors quilt, which was so sweet and cozy and which is still one of my favorite pieces of jon artwork. anything unsightly in this quilt is original to my work; the fanart is adorable and lovely, 10/10, no notes.

as previously mentioned, i've been working on this quilt since late 2022, which means i started it when i was still pretty new to quilting. i batch-cut a bunch of pieces for the the gray squares, and they were a quarter inch too small, which doesn't sound like it should be a big deal! but it sure was! there is....... not as much lining up of the squares as there should be, and it does not lie particularly flat.

it's also the biggest quilt i've made - approx 7 x 9 feet. actually quilting it was a pain in the ass, which is why i didn't do as much of it as i probably should, but i love quilting with decorative stitches. i backed it with bubble/double gauze which i didn't want to put through the machine, so i did most of the quilting on the top and batting and tacked it to the backing by hand. the green thread is because, you know, tma, and also because why not throw some aro + agender garnish on the ace quilt?

ANYWAY. all the yapping to say. i love this quilt. it's messy and imperfect and i worked on it through a nearly month-long cold/headache to finish it, it's essentially all i've done since christmas besides sleep and watch arcane. don't look too close at anything about it except for the parts that i was not necessarily responsible for, but also......... look at it !!! this is currently my masterpiece and i can't wait to cuddle up underneath it properly.

[yannawayne]

i. what's up danger?

SYNOPSIS: "Alright, let's do this one last time. My name is Y/N Kyle. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, And I've been the one and only Spidey in Gotham. I’m pretty sure you know the rest." PAIRING: Older! Damian Wayne/Fem! Reader TAGS: Established relationship, Mild sexual jokes, Making out, Blood, Explosions, Mentions of Child Abuse, Good Aunt-Mom Selina Kyle AO3: yenwayne SERIES LINK: gotham's only spidey

 NEXT ->

༻⊰───⋅

“Uh, good morning?” you offered weakly, trying to give a casual shrug despite the mess around you. “Mom, this might sound insane. But, I think I might have accidentally discovered superpowers.”

Selina stared at you, blinking slowly as she processed the scene before her. Her lips twitched as if she were trying to hold back a laugh or perhaps some form of disbelief.

“Accidentally discovered superpowers?” she echoed. “I think you've been around your boyfriend and his family too much. Baby—”

Before she could finish, your hand instinctively reached out. With a flick of your wrist, a web shot from your fingers and latched onto the door behind her. In a heartbeat, the door was yanked from its hinges, splintering as it flew across the room and crashed into the wall with a resounding thud.

Selina’s eyes widened in shock as she turned to face the now doorless doorway. She blinked at the empty space where the door had once been.

“Well,” she said, “I guess that’s one way to explain things.”

༻⊰───⋅

Saturday, 9:02 PM - Catwoman’s Apartment, Gotham City.

SELINA'S DEFT FINGERS SLID over the fabric of the dress, adjusting and smoothing it until it drapes perfectly over your figure. The elegant emerald gown shimmered softly under the dim apartment lights, the material flowing luxuriously against your skin.

"You didn’t steal this, did you?" you murmur, adjusting the necklace that rests delicately around your neck. "I’d rather not end up in jail tonight."

"The dress? No, it’s one of my old ones," Selina scoffed, turning away and handing you a pair of black heels. "But if anyone asks about the necklace, just say it’s a family heirloom. Which, technically, it is."

You shot her a pointed look. She rolled her eyes with a smirk.

"Oh, hush. I haven’t stolen anything in... at least a month," she drawled.

"A month, wow! That’s a new record," you teased, slipping into the heels.

Selina laughed and shook her head. "Don’t get too comfortable. Just because I’m on a hiatus doesn’t mean I’ve gone straight."

"Well, let’s hope your hiatus lasts at least through tonight," you winced.

She smirked, giving you a once-over. "Trust me, darling, tonight is all about you."

You were about to respond when Selina suddenly snapped her fingers.

“Before I forget...” she said, reaching into one of her drawers. She pulled out a thigh strap and wrapped the leather around your leg, fastening it securely. 

Then, she slid one of her blades into the strap. You rolled your eyes but accepted the gesture with a resigned nod. It was Gotham, after all—being prepared was always a need.

“Damian’s got me covered tonight,” you say, trying to reassure her. “You don’t have to worry so much.”

Selina paused, her hands still on the thigh strap, and gave you a skeptical look. “Sweetheart, I worry about you all the time. It’s not that I don’t trust Damian—he’s solid. But Gotham? That’s a different story. Where those Bats go, trouble’s sure to follow.”

You chuckled, adjusting the strap to make sure it was secure. “We’ll manage, mom.”

Selina Kyle might not have been your biological mother, but she became your mother the moment you were placed in her arms years ago. In that instant, the blood that bound you was inconsequential compared to the unspoken promise she made to protect you.

To Selina, you were her child. Not because of any legal ties or shared genetics, but because she chose to be your mother every single day.

And to you, Selina was more than just an aunt. She was the lifeline who stepped in when everything else had crumbled around you.

Selina and Maggie, your biological mother, had both grown up in a fractured family. Their father was a vicious drunkard. Their mother, Maria, was a ghost in their lives—emotionally absent and detached. 

When Maria died, the world turned colder. The sisters were torn apart: Maggie was adopted by a warm, loving family, while Selina was abandoned to the unforgiving grip of Gotham’s orphanages. Those grim streets, steeped in shadows and danger, carved her into Catwoman.

But darkness has a way of creeping back into the light, no matter how hard you try to keep it at bay. Maggie, who had managed to build a life of stability and warmth, became a target for the shadows of Catwoman’s past. 

Black Mask.

Kidnapped, tortured, and left to die, Maggie was nothing but a ghost by the time the attack was done. Her husband was slain in the carnage, and the only remnant of their family was you— barely a toddler, too young to grasp the gravity of your loss but old enough to feel its weight.

With no other family to turn to, she took you in, binding her fate to yours and vowing to protect you from a world that had already taken so much from both of you.

Her life wasn’t easy. She was young, barely in her twenties, struggling to make ends meet in one of Gotham’s most unforgiving neighborhoods. The meager jobs she managed to scrape together were barely enough to cover the rent, let alone the needs of a growing child.

Selina's decision to take up the mantle of Catwoman was never about the thrill of the heist or the allure of jewels; it was about survival—yours and hers. Gotham demanded a price, and she chose to pay it herself, risking her life each time she donned the suit to give you a chance at something better.

You grew up with a keen sense of the world, your intelligence uncovering bits and pieces of her double life. The mysterious disappearances, the luxurious items that mysteriously appeared—each clue painted a picture that you slowly began to understand.

When the time came for the truth to be revealed, it wasn’t easy

Selina’s hand glided across her vanity, fingers brushing over the cool surface before settling on a sleek black clutch. With a flick of her wrist, she turned and handed it to you.

You accepted it with a gleam in your eye, stepping back as you held it close. A playful twirl sent the emerald fabric of your gown swirling around you, catching the light in a way that made it shimmer. 

“Well? What do you think?”

Selina’s stern look melted away like ice under a warming sun. Her gaze swept over your outfit, absorbing the delicate neckline, the tailored fit around your waist, and the gown’s fluid cascade to the floor. 

In this small, quiet moment, the weight of the world seemed to lift. For just a heartbeat, she allowed herself to pretend that the two of you were simply a normal mother and daughter, sharing a simple, beautiful moment together.

“You’ve always had a way of making everything around you look better,” she purred. “You’re going to knock the whole school off their feet. Damian’s going to need a crowbar to keep the other guys away.”

Selina reached out to adjust the straps on your dress, her touch precise and caring. Her fingers brushed a stray strand of hair from your face, the movement as gentle as a whisper.

“Just remember, darling,” she spoke slowly, “it never hurts to stay safe.”

Ruby-red manicured nails tapped your cheek as she straightened up, a knowing look in her eyes.

Pause. Your eyes widened as you caught the hint of her meaning. “You’re not saying I—”

“I was at that age,” she interrupted with a mock-serious tone. “I’m just saying you should be prepared. Especially with the way that boy looks at you like you’re the only person in the room. You’ve got him wrapped around your finger. Make sure he wraps something else too.”

A flush of embarrassment rose to your cheeks. You sputtered and fumbled with the clutch in your hand. “Mom! What the hell?! I think that’s enough advice for one night!”

BEEP!

Just as Selina was about to respond, a car horn blared from outside, slicing through the evening’s quiet. Both of you turned towards the window, where a Porsche 911 emerged from the darkness. It looked painfully out of place against the backdrop of your neighborhood—cracked sidewalks strewn with trash, graffiti-streaked walls, and the occasional flickering streetlamp battling the encroaching shadows.

“Looks like your chariot awaits,” Selina said, her hands sliding up your shoulders as she gently nudged you toward the door. “Have a great time, but keep your wits about you. Gotham’s never as calm as it seems.”

With one final hug, you stepped out of the apartment and descended the narrow, dimly lit staircase. As you reached the bottom, you emerged into the cool night air, where Damian stood by his car parked right under a street lamp.

He was impeccably dressed in a deep black suit that seemed to swallow the surrounding light, giving him an almost smoky allure. An emerald button-up shirt peeked from beneath the jacket, its rich hue a perfect match for the striking color of your dress. 

Damian’s smoldering gaze warmed as he saw you approaching, a small, approving smile curling at the corners of his lips. He lifted two fingers in a beckoning motion, and though you rolled your eyes, you stepped forward.

“Beloved,” he greeted, extending a hand to you. “You look stunning.”

“Hi, handsome,” you grinned, taking his hand and stepping closer to press a gentle kiss against his lips. Damian responded with a soft hum, his arm slipping around your shoulders as he tilted his head slightly. The kiss deepened just enough to make the moment linger, leaving a warmth that held between you. 

Just as you were about to lose yourself completely, Selina’s voice sliced through the night air. 

“You’re going to be late!”

Damian pulled away from you so abruptly that it looked as if he’d been yanked back by an invisible force. His face flushed a patchy red, a blend of embarrassment and irritation. He shot a sidelong glance at Selina, his eyes quickly shifting back to you.

Damian huffs, releasing a sharp exhale through his teeth. “Shall we go?”

The click of the car door echoed as Damian opened it for you, his lips twisting into a scowl. You settled into the plush passenger seat, the soft fabric of your gown rustling as Damian carefully lifted it to prevent any creases. 

While you adjusted yourself in the seat, you glanced back and waved at Selina, her silhouette framed against the windows. A snort escaped you as you noticed the deadpan look Damian shot in her direction.

Damian was always somewhat awkward around Selina. As Robin, his view of Catwoman was clear-cut—she was a criminal to be dealt with. And yet, he still held a deep respect for her as your mother.

Once he settled into the driver’s seat and started the engine, the car roared to life with a smooth, powerful purr. The sleek vehicle glided down the streets with impressive speed, Damian navigating through traffic with a confidence that bordered on recklessness. 

As he shifted gears, the radio flicked on, filling the car with a soft, pulsing beat.

This may be the night that my dreams might let me know All the stars are closer All the stars are closer All the stars are closer This may be the night that my dreams might let me know

Tilting your head back into the seat, your hair bunching around your shoulders, your thoughts drifted to the first time Damian took you for a drive. Both of you had been sixteen then, and his aggressive maneuvering had left you gripping the seat, your heart racing as if you were in a high-speed chase. Now, though, the thrill was familiar, adrenaline thrumming steadily in your blood.

The ride was brief but exhilarating, and soon the car pulled into the school’s parking lot. Sleek cars and limousines lined the lot, each more extravagant than the last. Students and their dates, dressed in their finest formal wear, mingled and laughed, making their way toward the entrance.

Stepping out of the car, the crisp night air greeted you like a refreshing embrace, carrying the delicate scent of fresh flowers and the faint strains of classical music wafting from the entrance. The soft glow of string lights and lanterns illuminated the path ahead, casting a warm, golden hue over the scene. Damian drew you close, his arm slipping around your waist as you walked together.

The ballroom was stunningly elegant. 

Crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, their shimmering prisms scattering colorful reflections across the polished marble floor. Tables draped in white linens, adorned with fresh roses and flickering candles, lined the room. The dance floor gleamed under the ambient light, already alive with couples swaying gracefully to the gentle strains of Franz Liszt. 

The whole scene practically screamed old money.

You were going to die.

You’d never quite get used to events like these. Over the years, you’d been to your fair share of galas and charity balls, mostly because of your relationship with Damian and that brief, awkward phase when Selina was involved with Bruce.  

Each time, you had a knack for stumbling through social minefields, unintentionally insulting high-profile guests or spilling wine on someone’s multimillion-dollar gown And, without fail, the next day’s press would seize the opportunity to spotlight you and your social faux pas.

Gotham Academy, with its glossy veneer and elite crowd, was just another arena 

It was a breeding ground for rich fucks, each one more insufferable than the last. The halls echoed with the chatter of kids who had everything handed to them, their lives a far cry from yours. The only reason you’d managed to slip through those gilded gates was thanks to the Martha-Wayne scholarship. Without it, you’d still be stuck in the middle of nowhere with your mother, scraping by on whatever scraps you could find.

“Ya amar, are you going to keep staring at the floor? Or may I have the honor of requesting a dance?”

Damian’s voice cut through your self-deprecating spiral as he snapped his fingers in front of your eyes.

Blinking up at him, you pursed your lips. “I don’t know... this is a really interesting floor.”

Damian raised an eyebrow, feigning surprise. “Oh, really? Pray tell, what makes it so interesting that you’d rather stand here instead of dancing with me?”

“I don’t know. I could stare at it all night,” you hummed, crossing your arms. “Plus, we’ve got to keep our thing going, you know? I can't give in that easily.”

“Our thing? What thing?” Damian blinked.

“The thing where we act like we hate each other but still want each other carnally,” you said, throwing your head back as you laughed.

"Tt," Damian deadpanned, reaching out to grab you by the waist. He lifted you off the ground, your feet barely brushing the polished marble beneath. You wrapped an arm around his neck and giggled, holding on as he carried you toward the center of the ballroom.

“You never miss an opportunity to mortify me, do you?” Damian scolded, gently setting you back down on the floor. Both of you assumed a waltz stance, your hands finding their places on each other’s shoulders and waist.

“I think I just enjoy keeping you on your toes,” you replied with a grin, swaying gracefully with him as the music enveloped you.

Damian's lips curved into a wry smile, despite his grumbling. "You know how much I despise these games you play, Cat."

“Oh? Cat?” you laughed, the rich, velvety fabric of your dress brushing against Damian’s sleek suit as you danced. “Are we going for the classic Batman and Catwoman trope here? Because once Selina retires, I could always take up the mantle of the next Catwoman.”

Damian’s smile dropped, replaced by a look of exasperation. “Please do not. I fear what will become of you then."

“Why not?” you asked, batting your lashes coyly. “Does the idea of me as Catwoman not thrill you?”

Damian made a noncommittal sound, his ears tinged with red as he averted his gaze.

“Don’t get shy on me,” you said with a grin, your voice dropping to a teasing purr. Your hand glided up his jaw, your touch lingering just enough to be felt.

A shadow of something intense flickered in the depths of his jade-green eyes. Damian’s grip on your waist tightened slightly, his gaze narrowing into a mock glare that barely concealed the warmth beneath.

“I guess I would not... be entirely opposed to that idea,” he muttered.

He led you into a slow dance, his movements fluid and graceful, reminiscent of those quiet, moonlit nights in his manor’s kitchen. You recalled late evenings when the room was bathed in the soft, silvery glow of moonlight streaming through the windows. On those nights, the world outside felt far away, leaving just the two of you swaying gently to the soft strains of music playing from his phone’s speakers.

It was moments like these that peeled away his walls. In the soft glow of the ballroom lights, the tender, affectionate side of him emerged—like a rare flower blooming in the quiet of twilight. Each layer revealed a deeper, more intimate part of him, offering you a special kind of attention that made every shared glance and touch feel intimate.

“This crazy, almost maddening attraction I have for you makes me feel like I want to stab myself,” Damian murmured as he spun you around, the fabric of your dress flared out like a blooming flower at his feet.

“Wow, you really have a way with words,” you said with a smile. “Admit it—you love every second of it, don’t you?”

Damian’s lips curled into a smirk.

“Perhaps,” he conceded. He drew you back into his embrace as he guided you across the dance floor, your bodies moved in perfect harmony, like two pieces fitting together in a delicate puzzle.

The world around you seemed to blur into a gentle haze of soft music and swirling lights. Damian’s gaze, however, remained sharp and vigilant.

“I don’t like how they’re staring at you,” he murmured, his green eyes narrowing as they scanned the crowd. His voice carried the familiar edge of possessiveness. “Perhaps they need a reminder of whom you belong to.”

“Damian, no—”

Before you could protest, Damian leaned in, closing the distance between you with a smooth turn of his head. The kiss was tender yet heated, his teeth gently tugging at your bottom lip.

Anyone who glanced your way would see Damian Thomas Wayne with his lips pressed against yours, making it clear who he was with. It wasn’t the first time he’d been so overt—there was that incident when you both ended up in detention because he couldn’t keep his hands off you by your locker.

You whined softly, trying to pull away, a thin strand of saliva connecting your lips in a delicate, glistening thread. “We’re in public—”

“Shut up,” he murmured against your lips, his voice rough yet tender, before diving back in. The breath you had been holding escaped in a slow, shuddering sigh, mingling with his as he drew you closer, his hands firmly cupping your hips.

Damian seemed to swallow every sweet sound you made, chuckling softly as you mumbled curses against his lips, your grip on his tie tightening. The world around you blurred into insignificance, leaving just the two of you enveloped in a bubble of intense sensation. Your breaths came in ragged bursts, eyes fluttering open and then closing again, lost in the heat of the moment. When you finally pulled apart, both of you were breathless and flushed, the lingering electric buzz of the kiss still crackling in the air between you.

Damian and you locked eyes, his face blank until a shit-eating grin slowly spread across his face.

"I hate you so much," you scowled. “You’re impossible, Damian Wayne.”

“Perhaps,” he murmured, his voice a low, teasing whisper. He leaned in, using your own words against you. “Admit it—you love every second of it, don’t you?”

Before you could respond, he tilted your chin up, his lips brushing lightly against yours as he whispered, “Let them see. They’ll just have to get used to the sight.”

The kiss was softer this time, more tender, as you swayed gently against him, savoring the moment of calm.

BOOM.

Without warning, the tranquility was shattered by a deafening explosion. 

The sound of shattering glass and a violent burst of energy tore through the ballroom, turning the once elegant space into a scene of utter chaos. Crystal chandeliers swung erratically from the ceiling, their light flickering in disorienting patterns as debris rained down like confetti. The room erupted into a frenzy of screams and frantic movement as everyone scrambled for cover.

“Holy shit!” you gasped, your voice barely piercing through the screams and destruction.

CREAK.

A sudden, ominous groan echoed through the room, drawing your gaze upward. The chandelier, swaying precariously, seemed to shudder as its support gave way. Then, with a heart-stopping creak, the massive fixture began to fall. 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Damian’s hand shot out, grabbing your arm with a firm grip. 

“Move!”

You scrambled to keep up with his rapid pace, but your long gown snagged on the edge of a flipped table, sending you sprawling to the floor with a jarring thud. Your hand slipped from his grip, and Damian, realizing you were no longer beside him, turned back in a surge of panic.

With no time to guide you gently to safety, he yanked you up from the floor. He pulled you both behind the overturned table, using it as a makeshift barricade.

The chandelier crashed down with a thunderous roar, sending shards of glass, splintered wood, and shattered fragments spiraling through the air. As the debris rained down, you screamed and reached out desperately for Damian. Without hesitation, he rushed to your side, enveloping you in his arms. He pulled you close, pressing your face into his chest and shielding you from the rain of debris with his body.

Finally, the noise of destruction faded into a heavy silence. Damian lifted his head slightly, peering down at you.

“Are you okay?” he panted, voice edged with worry.

Shaken up, you heaved and shook your head vehemently, unable to find the words through your trembling fear.

“What the fuck was that?” 

"I don't have a single clue," Damian shrugged, eyes still scanning the room as he peeked over the edge of the table.

From the smoke emerged a middle-aged man, suspended in the air by his mechanical arms—sleek, metallic, and bristling with a variety of intimidating gadgets. The arms whirred and slashed through the air with deadly force, carving through the walls and sending more chunks of debris down.

“You think you can just throw away everything I’ve built?” the man roared. “This school, this place, it’s all been a mockery of my work, my life! I’ve sacrificed everything for this and you’ve repaid me with nothing but scorn!”

Damian cursed under his breath. He settled back down, biting off the fingertip of his glove and pulling it off with a grunt. Pulling up his sleeve, he tapped an emergency button on his wrist, activating a silent alert to his family.

“We have to go,” Damian whispered. He shrugged off his suit jacket and wrapped you in the fabric, pulling you close. He lifted you effortlessly, cradling you in his arms as he sprinted through the chaos.

He carried you swiftly through the building’s hallways, the shrill sound of distant alarms and the echo of your hurried footsteps reverberating off the walls. When you finally reached a safer location, he paused briefly, his sharp eyes scanning the area for any further threats.

“I’ll be okay,” you said, your voice trembling as he gently set you down. You gripped his hands tightly, trying to steady your breath. “Do—do you have your suit?”

“It’s in the car,” Damian grumbled, frustration evident in his voice as he ran his thumb over your knuckles.

“I’ll stay here and start helping with evacuations,” you say, already moving to slip out of your heels, the shoes discarded onto the floor.

Damian opened his mouth to protest, but you cut him off, shaking your head firmly.

“No,” you said firmly, your scowl sharpening. “None of this again. I make my own decisions.”

Damian’s expression hardened. “You’re not a trained fighter. You’re not supposed to be in harm’s way.”

"It's just evacuations. I’m not going to be fighting," you met his gaze as you stood up straight again. “And I’m not going to stand by while others are in danger.”

“Fine,” he said begrudgingly, “but stay hidden and keep away from the villain.”

“I know,” you said softly, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. You met his gaze lovingly before turning to re-enter the chaos. The corridors were now a frenzy of frantic students and faculty, desperately trying to evacuate.

Damian shot you one last look before sprinting back toward the parking lot.

You slipped back into the ballroom, heart pounding in your chest. The smoke swirled around you, as decor and debris lay strewn across the floor. Amid the chaos, you spotted a girl trapped beneath a toppled table, her muffled cries barely reaching your ears. Clutching your dress in your hands to avoid tripping, you hurried over to her.

“Hey, we need to move!” you called out, shoving aside the debris and wrestling with the heavy wood. With a determined push, you finally freed her from the wreckage. She wobbled as she stood, but you swiftly caught her, your grip steady and reassuring. “You’re okay now. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where’s everyone else?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Everyone’s heading for the exits. We need to move quickly,” you replied, guiding her toward the nearest emergency exit. The sounds of the villain’s rampage echoed through the room, punctuated by the distant wail of sirens.

Once the girl was able to get back on her feet and run on her own, you rushed to assist another group, directing them towards the exits and making sure they stayed calm.

SWISH.

There was a sudden, sharp slice, and you snapped your head back toward the ballroom. Damian had reappeared, now clad in his suit.

“Robin?!”

With a decisive, diagonal slash, his katana cleaved through one of the villain’s mechanical arms. The blade sliced through the metal with a sharp, resonant hiss, and the arm’s severed end burst into a cascade of dazzling sparks. Pieces of twisted metal flew through the air like shrapnel, their jagged edges catching the erratic light from the shattered chandeliers.

His cape, a deep, blood-red shroud, billowed behind him like a dark wave, trailing in his wake as he moved. The clash of his katana against the villain’s mechanical arms echoed through the room, each strike a precise blur of red and black. 

Amidst the fight, your eyes were drawn to a figure huddled in the far corner. The student, paralyzed with fear, was frozen in place, eyes wide and fixed on the destruction unfolding before them.

Without a second thought, you sprinted towards them, nimbly navigating through the scattered debris and overturned tables. As you reached the student, you crouched beside them and gently placed a reassuring hand on their shoulder.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay. Alright? We’re going to get through this, but you need to move—now!” 

The student’s terrified eyes flickered with a glimmer of hope as they slowly began to rise with your help. Their breath came in shallow, panicked gasps, each exhale mingling with the smoky haze that filled the air. You grunted, your muscles straining as you slipped your arms beneath their shoulders, lifting them to their feet.

"Move!" you urged, guiding the student toward the doors. Their feet stumbled over the debris, but you kept a firm grip on their arm, pulling them along through the chaos. As you hurriedly navigated the wreckage-strewn floor, you felt a strange tingling sensation creeping up your leg.

It started as a subtle prickle, almost like static electricity, but quickly grew into an unsettling sensation that made your skin crawl. You glanced down, trying to pinpoint the source, but the shifting shadows and debris obscured your view. 

The legs of a spider, sleek and shadowy, crawled up the fabric of your emerald dress. Its tiny, pulsating body was nearly camouflaged against the rich material, and its eight eyes glinted with an eerie green glow, peering out from the shadows of the gown. 

Oblivious to its presence, you continued leading the student toward the safer part of the ballroom, focused on ensuring their escape.

The spider’s glow intensified, its eerie green light pulsating with an ominous rhythm as it crawled up your arm. Just as you pushed the student to safety, a sharp, burning sensation erupted where the spider sank its fangs deep into your skin. A piercing scream erupted from your lips.  The searing pain surged through your body, radiating outwards from the bite like a fiery wave. In a frantic, instinctive reaction, you slapped at your bicep, your nails digging into the skin. 

Panicked, Damian’s head snapped in your direction, eyes widening in alarm as he spotted you writhing in pain. In his moment of distraction, a metal arm swung violently towards him. The arm connected with a sickening thud against his side, the force of the impact sending him hurtling through the air. 

Damian crashed into a wall with a bone-jarring slam and his body crumpled to the ground, the force of the impact visibly shaking him. He lay there, gasping for breath, spit and blood spilling from his chin.

Groaning, he raised his head, feeling the crack in his mask press against his face. Strands of dark hair fell over his single exposed eye, partially obscuring his vision. Squinting through the haze of pain, he cursed under his breath as he saw the villain advancing toward you.

The spider's venom surged through your veins, a wave of searing, unbearable pain radiating from the bite. You stumbled and collapsed to the floor, struggling to stay upright. Pain tore through you as you crawled toward a nearby pillar, your fingers clawing weakly at the surface

Through the haze of your deteriorating vision and the throbbing fog that clouded your mind, you could barely make out the figure of the villain advancing toward you. His mechanical arms whirred with a menacing hum, their sharp, glinting edges catching the dim light of the ruined ballroom.

The last thing you saw before darkness swallowed you was a blur of red.

With a snarl, Damian lunged, his katana slicing through the air with deadly intent. The blade crashed into the villain's mechanical arm, the impact resonating like a gunshot. Sparks exploded from the severed joint, showering the room in a cascade of crackling light as the villain staggered, his metal limbs convulsing with malfunction.

Sliding across the debris-strewn floor, Damian executed a perfect skid, coming to a stop on his knees. He positioned himself between you and the advancing threat, his katana held in a poised, defensive stance.

“Is this all you’ve got?” Damian seethes. “A pathetic tantrum because your grandiose plans fell apart? You’re nothing more than a washed-up has-been clinging to your failures.” 

“You think you know what it’s like to sacrifice everything? To watch your life's work crumble? You have no idea what I’ve lost! My research was going to change the world!”

The villain’s mechanical arms flared up in response, their whirring growing louder as he prepared to strike again. Just as an arm was about to land, the piercing whir of a batarang sliced through the air. It struck the villain’s mechanical arm with precision, a bright explosion erupting from the impact. Damian grunted as he braced himself, holding firm against the shockwave, his muscles straining to keep steady. One hand instinctively dropped to your head, shielding you from the force. 

The villain recoiled in surprise, momentarily disoriented by the sudden blast, his movements faltering as the shockwave threw him off balance.

Suddenly, the room was engulfed in darkness. The lights flickered and died, plunging the space into a pitch-black void. Shadows danced along the walls, punctuated by loud bangs and the crackling of debris.

Through the darkness, Batman emerged, his imposing figure cutting through the shadows. The sound of his cape rustling was almost like a herald of doom as he got into a fighting stance.

“Robin,” Batman’s voice was a low, commanding growl, “take the girl. I’ll handle it from here.”

Damian wasted no time, swiftly scooping you into his arms. The icy chill of your skin against his own drove a spear of terror through him. The panic clawing at the edges of his mind was a monster he couldn’t afford to face, not now. He focused on keeping you as steady as possible, though your limp form felt like dead weight against him.

He tore out of the ballroom, his shoes skidding on the polished floor as he barreled into the hallway. His breath came in ragged gasps, each inhale burning in his lungs, but he didn’t slow down. He couldn’t. The entrance was just ahead.

Bursting through the doors, Damian propelled himself into the open air. The scene outside was pure pandemonium. Parents screamed for their children, kids clung to each other in terror, and the harsh wail of sirens pierced the night. Ambulance lights flickered like distant stars in the dark, red and blue blurs.

Now outside, Damian spotted a group of paramedics and, without a second thought, sprinted toward them. His hands shook slightly as he laid you down on the gurney, the coldness of your skin searing itself into his memory.

“She’s unresponsive,” he rushed out in a pant. “Pale skin, cold to the touch. Vital signs are unknown. She needs immediate attention.”

As he spoke, Selina rushed over, her fur coat billowing with each urgent step. The strands of her short, dark hair whipped wildly around her face, framing eyes wide with fear.

She bent down to your level, her breath visible in the cool night air as she placed a trembling hand on your forehead. Her fingers, warm against the alarming chill of your skin, recoiled slightly at the clammy coldness that greeted them. Selina winced, her gaze hardening as she took in the stark contrast between your deathly pallor.

“What happened?” she demanded, her voice taut with concern.

A paramedic, swiftly assessing your condition, replied, “We think she’s in shock. We’ll stabilize her and check for any other issues.”

Selina’s eyes, reflecting a storm of emotions, darted between you and Damian.

“Go,” she urged Damian, her voice carrying a firm edge despite the underlying tremor of her fear. “I’ve got this under control. Go take down that bastard and make him pay for what he did.”

Damian hesitated for a heartbeat, his gaze lingering on you. Every muscle in his body screamed to stay, but there was still a threat that left no room for hesitation. He nodded and without another word, turned and sprinted back toward the building. His cape flared out behind him, a streak against the night sky.

Selina's eyes followed Damian's retreating figure momentarily before refocusing on the paramedics. She watched them with sharp eyes, taking in every action and every word. Her hand never left your forehead, each pass of her thumb trying to provide comfort that her heart couldn’t.

As the haze of unconsciousness began to lift, you slowly became aware of your surroundings. The dim, unfamiliar light filtered through your closed eyelids, and a dull, persistent ache from the bite lingered in your arm. You winced, raising a hand to your arm to find that the pain had subsided, leaving only a faint, dull throb. There was no scar, just a vague sense of discomfort. 

Was that just a dream?

Before you could think about it anymore, your aunt's face was already in your peripheral. 

Selina's voice caught in her throat as your eyes began to flutter open. Her grip on your hand tightened involuntarily, a mix of relief and worry playing across her features.

"Hey, there," she said softly. "You gave us quite a scare, sweetheart."

You stared at her in confusion, teeth chattering against the biting cold. Selina’s eyes softened and she shed her coat, the plush fur rustling softly as it slipped from her shoulders. With gentle hands, she draped the coat around you, the dense, velvety texture brushing against your skin. The rich, warm scent of her perfume mingled with the coat’s embrace. As the coat enveloped you, its heat began to seep into your shivering body, gradually easing the icy grip of the cold.

“You’re going to be okay,” she whispered, the words more for her own reassurance than yours.

The night was supposed to be a celebration, a rite of passage, a milestone to cherish. Instead, it had turned into yet another brutal reminder of what Gotham’s streets truly were: a merciless battleground that chewed up hope and spat it out with a sneer.

God, this city was shit. 

Selina sighed, pushing those thoughts aside for the moment. The priority now was clear: get you home and into dry clothes.

"How are you feeling?" she asked softly, her fingers tracing a path along your cheek as if trying to reassure herself that you were truly okay. 

“Dizzy,” you mumbled. A soft groan escaped your lips as you tried to shake off the haze clinging to your senses. Your eyes fluttered shut for a moment, only to snap open again with a jolt as a sudden realization struck you.

“Damian—where—” you gasped, your voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. In a frantic attempt to sit up, you tried to push yourself upright, but the paramedics and Selina were quick to intervene. Their hands gently, yet firmly, guided you back down onto the gurney.

“Whoa, easy there,” Selina murmured soothingly. “Don’t push yourself. The paramedics said you’re in shock. You need to stay still for now.” 

You could feel the gentle pressure of her hands, steady and reassuring, as they anchored you in place. Her eyes, bright green, locked onto yours, conveying more than words ever could. She took a breath, her gaze flickering to the paramedics who were working swiftly around you.

“And Damian is... with his father,” she said, her voice trailing off as she gave you a look, the unspoken meaning in it clear.

Selina’s gaze shifted back to the paramedics with her usual air of confidence. She squared her shoulders, her tone now authoritative.

“Is there a chance I could take her home?” Selina asked, brushing her fingers through your hair with a gentle but firm touch. “It’s getting late, and I’d really rather have her safe in her room.”

The paramedic, a no-nonsense woman named Helen, gave Selina a critical once-over before shifting her gaze to you. Her eyes, sharp and assessing, took in your pale face and the faint tremors still running through your body.

“Well, she’s stable enough for transport, and we’ve done the basic stabilizing procedures,” Helen said, her tone pragmatic. “But she’s still in shock, and it could be risky to move her too quickly. Are you sure you can handle her?”

“She’s my kid. I’ve dealt with worse, believe me,” she replied with a wry grin.

Helen’s gaze softened slightly, though her voice remained stern. “Alright, but she’ll need monitoring for the next 24-48 hours. Light meals, plenty of rest. And no strenuous activity. She should see a doctor as soon as possible.”

Selina’s fingers idly traced patterns on the back of your hand as she listened intently to Helen’s instructions. 

“I’ll make sure all of that’s taken care of. Thank you,” Selina said, her voice carrying a rare note of sincerity. Helen nodded, seemingly satisfied with Selina’s response. She handed Selina a card with basic instructions and a phone number to call if any complications arose.

Despite your reluctance to leave while Damian was still knee-deep in the battle, your hazy mind and Selina's insistence eventually led to you being pushed into the back of your aunt's sleek convertible.

The drive was a blur of city lights and concerned glances from Selina. You leaned back, your head resting against the cool, smooth leather of the seat. The gentle hum of the engine beneath you was a steady, rhythmic comfort, a small solace amidst the turmoil. 

"Don't worry," Selina murmured, her eyes flicking to the rearview mirror to check on you. "Damian can handle himself. And the Bat will make sure he's safe. You rest. I'll tell you if anything happens to him."

Her words were a quiet promise amidst the rush of the city outside. You nodded weakly, feeling the weight of exhaustion pressing heavily on your eyelids. As the city sped by, its neon glow and shifting shadows blending into a dreamlike haze, you closed your eyes. The fatigue finally overtook you, and you drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

༻⊰───⋅

 Sunday , 9:02 AM - Your room, Catwoman’s Apartment.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

There was a deep, throbbing ache in your arm, an insistent rhythm that seemed to pulse with each heartbeat, dragging you reluctantly from the depths of sleep. Your eyelids fluttered open to the soft, golden light spilling through the curtains, bathing your bedroom in a warm, comforting glow.

Through the thin walls, the distant murmur of the waking metropolis began to seep in—honking horns, the rhythmic rumble of early morning traffic, and the intermittent chatter of pedestrians starting their day. Occasionally, a siren's wail pierced through the background noise, a sharp reminder of the city's ceaseless pulse.

Faintly, through the walls, the muffled sound of the living room TV drifted to you.

“Good morning, Gothamites! Looking for another beautiful day here in the city. Clouds to start off with, but a pleasant afternoon ahead. Temperature’s in the high 40s—”

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

With a groan of frustration, you reached out to silence the blaring alarm clock. As you swung your arm toward it, the clock was crushed under the force. It slammed into the table, which splintered and buckled under the impact. Wood cracked and shattered, sending fragments skittering across the floor. The sudden and violent destruction jolted you fully awake. You stared, wide-eyed and disbelieving, at the mess, your arm still extended in mid-air as if it was frozen.

“What the—?” you muttered, your voice trailing off as you inspected your hand. It looked like your hand, perfectly normal and familiar. Just a normal hand.

Carefully, you climbed out of bed, wincing as you surveyed the mess of splintered wood and scattered debris strewn across the floor. 

You paused. A sudden, sharp tingle pulsed through your arm, like an electric jolt that raced beneath your skin. It was both invigorating and disorienting, sending a rush of awareness through your senses. Instinctively, you turned your head, your reflexes sharp as your hand darted out to catch a fly that had buzzed too close.

To your shock, your fingers closed around the tiny insect with a reflex you didn’t know you possessed. You stared at the fly, trapped gently between your fingers. Carefully, you opened your hand and let the fly go. 

It darted away, disappearing into the room. 

“Okay... That was new,” you muttered, shaking your head as if trying to clear away the confusion.

The tingling in your arm surged again, sharper and more insistent this time. You winced, the sensation both alien and unsettling, your mind struggling to grasp what was happening. Instinctively, you extended your hand, your gaze fixed on it in growing confusion.

Then, without warning, your fingers curled involuntarily, and something shot out from your wrist. A thin, silvery thread erupted into the air, glistening with a strange, iridescent sheen. 

THWIP.

The web snaked through the room, swift and fluid, before anchoring itself with a solid thunk against the wall. The sight of it—a web, unmistakably organic, stretching taut and firm—left you gaping in shock.

“What the actual fuck,” you freaked out. You took a hesitant step forward and tugged on it, half-expecting it to dissolve under your touch. But the webbing held firm.

You tried to pull it away, but it stayed stubbornly in place. Grunting, you pressed a foot against the wall for leverage and yanked harder. The webbing resisted with surprising strength, and a series of warning cracks echoed before a chunk of concrete broke away, crumbling under the strain.

The sudden release caught you off guard, sending you stumbling backward. You lost your balance and fell hard onto the floor, the impact knocking the breath out of you. For a moment, you just lay there, sprawled across the hardwood, your chest heaving as you tried to make sense of what just happened.

“What the fuck did I just get myself into?” you muttered to yourself, a disbelieving laugh bubbling up in your throat.

When you finally moved to stand, curiosity got the better of you. Experimenting, you aimed your hand at different parts of the room, determined to understand this strange new ability. 

This time, when you extended your hand, the web shot out with precision, latching onto a nearby lamp. You gave it a pull, and the lamp skidded across the floor toward you.

There was another tingle, and you perked up. The sensation was almost electric, a ripple of anticipation that seemed to focus on your bedroom door. As you turned toward it, the door swung open and Selina stepped in, dressed in her pajamas.

"What's with the noise...?” she trailed off and froze in the doorway, her eyes widening as they took in the chaos of the room. Broken wood and scattered debris covered the floor, interspersed with strands of glistening webbing clinging to the walls and lamp.

“Oh,” Selina murmured in surprise. She stepped cautiously over a particularly large piece of broken wood, her eyes darting around the room. Her gaze lingered on the webs, her brow furrowing as she raised an eyebrow at you. 

“Uh, good morning?” you offered weakly, trying to give a casual shrug despite the mess around you. “Mom, this might sound insane. But, I think I might have accidentally discovered superpowers.”

Selina stared at you, blinking slowly as she processed the scene before her. Her lips twitched as if she were trying to hold back a laugh or perhaps some form of disbelief.

“Accidentally discovered superpowers?” she echoed. “I think you've been around your boyfriend and his family too much. Baby—”

Before she could finish, your hand instinctively reached out. With a flick of your wrist, a web shot from your fingers and latched onto the door behind her. In a heartbeat, the door was yanked from its hinges, splintering as it flew across the room and crashed into the wall with a resounding thud.

Selina’s eyes widened in shock as she turned to face the now doorless doorway. She blinked at the empty space where the door had once been.

“Well,” she said, “I guess that’s one way to explain things.”

You stood there, face heating up as you tried to pull your hand back. “Y-Yeah, I think I need to work on my control.”

Selina shook her head, a frown on her lips. “Okay. First... Let’s get this mess cleaned up before the landlord starts asking questions. And maybe—just maybe—try not to redecorate the whole apartment with your... spider silk.”

༻⊰───⋅

A warm mug of coffee was placed in your hands as Selina settled beside you. You took a sip, but your knee continued to bounce in an anxious rhythm. She had called the school earlier to inform them that you would be taking it easy for the week, citing sickness as the reason.

You cast a glance at the puncture marks on your wrists with a mix of disgust and unease.

Oh, you felt sick alright.

"Alright," Selina said, taking a sip from her own coffee mug and setting it down with a clink. "We need to figure out what’s going on and how to handle it. The sooner we get a grasp on this, the better."

You nodded absentmindedly, flexing your fingers around your mug.

Selina sat with a laptop positioned between the two of you, its screen a chaotic mosaic of open newspaper articles and news websites. Humming softly to herself, she clicked through the pages, her eyes darting across headlines and images. The rhythmic clatter of her clicks was punctuated by occasional pauses as she focused on key details.

“Am I a meta?” you blurted out, staring at your reflection in the dark liquid of your coffee.

"Well," Selina began, her tone measured, "based on what we've seen so far, you're likely displaying meta-human traits. Though," she added with a wry smile, "I'm pretty sure I’m human despite the whole cat shtick. Same goes for your mother. Your father...well, that’s a different story."

You raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. "What do you mean by that?"

"Secretive guy. Kind of insane," Selina murmured to herself. "He did genetics research—"

She paused.

"Wait a minute," she said, her voice trailing off as she seemed to piece together something significant. "Your father was involved in genetics research..."

Selina licked her lips before grumbling and typing into the laptop. The screen flickered, and she pulled up a dense academic paper with your father's name prominently displayed. The title read: "Genetic Enhancement through Arachnid DNA Integration: Potential and Pitfalls."

She stared at the screen for a moment, a mix of disbelief and concern crossing her face. "Total nutjob," she muttered, shaking her head.

You squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the technical jargon. "So... what’s it say?"

Selina’s fingers danced over the keyboard, scrolling through the dense paragraphs. "It describes experiments involving spider DNA to enhance human traits—strength, agility, and reflexes. Medical use too."

RING!

The sharp ring of your phone shattered the silence, jolting you both. Startled, you fumbled with the mug in your hand, which slipped from your grip and tumbled toward the floor. Your reflexes kicked in, and your foot shot out, catching the mug mid-fall with a swift kick, sending it flying back up into your hand. You blinked.

Selina’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, her gaze flicking from the mug in your foot to you. She grabbed a notepad from the desk, her pen already poised, and began scribbling furiously.

“Fast reflexes,” she muttered.

You scrambled to set the mug back on the table, your hands slick with sweat as you snatched your phone off the couch.

"Hello?" you answered, nervously wiping your damp hands on the fabric of your jeans. "W-Who’s this?"

"Beloved?" Damian’s voice crackled through your phone, sharp with an edge of worry. Arabic curses slipped through his words. “I’m sorry for calling so late. I didn’t mean to. I was knocked out after the confrontation.”

Your heart skipped a beat. “You got knocked out? What happened?”

"Just a minor inconvenience for someone of my skillset," he said dismissively. "I’m fine now. But what of you? Father mentioned that Selina told him about your sudden absences from school.”

You hesitated, glancing at Selina, who shook her head vehemently. She pressed a finger to her lips, urging you to stay silent about the spider situation.

"Fine!" you squeaked. "Totally fine. Just... family matters."

Damian’s voice was laced with skepticism. "Family matters? Are you sure you’re alright?"

"Yep," you replied, trying to keep your voice steady despite the strain. "Absolutely. Just... you know, the explosion rattled me a bit. The paramedics said I needed some rest for a few days.”

"I can head over to care for you—"

Selina rolled her eyes and extended her hand.

“Give me the phone,” she said, her tone brooking no argument. You hesitated for a moment, but the stern look on her face made it clear you had no choice. Reluctantly, you handed it over.

"Damian," she greeted him with a sickly sweet tone, "this is Selina. Everything is under control here. There’s no need for you to come breaking into my apartment."

There was a grunt before Damian responded, "Miss Kyle, I insist. It’s no trouble. I should be there to help. As any partner would."

Selina’s eyes flashed with irritation as she leaned against the couch, arms crossed. "I appreciate your concern, kid. But it’s really not necessary. She’s fine."

"Fine?" Damian’s voice took on a mocking tone. "After a confrontation like that? I highly doubt it. Recovery after such an incident can be complicated.”

Selina scowled. Her voice cut through the phone line with a sharp edge. "Damian, do you seriously doubt my abilities as a guardian?"

There was a pause.

"With all due respect—"

"I've got this!" Selina hissed. "She's safe, she's resting, and you're not needed here right now. Understood?"

There was another pause before Damian reluctantly agreed. "Understood. But if anything happens—"

"You'll be the first to know," Selina assured him "Now, go take care of yourself. I have got this handled."

"Fine," Damian said, still sounding begrudging. "Take care."

Selina handed the phone back to you, her expression exasperated. “He’s persistent, I’ll give him that.”

“You couldn’t even imagine,” you snorted as you pressed the phone back to your ear. “Hi, baby.”

Damian’s voice crackled through the speakers, the faint static only adding to the gruffness of his tone. 

"Tt. Hello," he grumbled, his tone falling flat. You couldn’t help but snicker, the sound escaping despite your best efforts to stifle it. 

“Don’t be mad,” you whisper into the phone. “I’ll only be gone for a week. You’ll survive. Mom's right—I’m in good hands. You need to focus on recovering too.”

“Anything at all. Father and Alfred have confined me to my bed, but the window to my bedroom remains open. The sheer ignorance of their restraint measures astounds me—they failed to account for my skills in evading such confinement.”

"Please, don’t try to escape through your window on my behalf. I really don’t need Bruce lecturing us again,” you groaned, pressing a hand to your forehead. 

“Very well,” Damian said with a hint of a pout, “but do remember, I am at your disposal if you should require anything.”

“Uh huh,” you hummed. “I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself, Dami.”

“And you, my beloved,” he said, his voice softening. “Until then.”

There was a beep, and the call ended. You sighed, letting your hand drop.

Selina took a sip of her coffee, her lips curling into a wry grin. “He’s just like his father—equally obsessive and protective. Must run in the genes. That or we just have a knack for ensnaring emotionally constipated men.”

You laughed, a light, nervous sound that filled the room. As you tried to drop your phone back on the couch, you were met with unexpected resistance. The phone stubbornly adhered to your hand, as if it had decided to become a permanent accessory.

“Uh…” 

You squinted at the phone, wriggling your fingers and trying to shake it off. No matter what you did, the phone remained firmly in place, glued to your palm.

"Sticky hands?" Selina suggested, glancing at the notepad in her hand now filled with scribbled notes and observations. She made a note with a touch of amusement, her pen moving quickly across the page.

Grumbling under your breath, you made a few more attempts to pry the phone off your hand. “Looks like it. Just another thing to add to the list of weird,” you huffed.

With furrowed brows, you used your other hand to grip the phone, attempting to twist it away. In your distracted state, you failed to account for your newfound strength. The device crumbled under your grip, shards of plastic and glass exploding across the couch.

You stared at the wreckage in disbelief, your heart sinking. Not missing a beat, Selina quickly scribbled down “Enhanced strength” on her notepad.

You grumbled as the remnants of your phone fell to the floor, a mix of frustration and embarrassment washing over you.

"Can't we—can't we call Batman for this?" you asked, your hand nervously tangling in your hair. "Why'd you stop me from telling Damian anyway?"

Selina’s expression turned severe. Her hands gripped your shoulders firmly, guiding you to face her.

"Listen to me. Batman, Damian, or anyone else cannot know about this right now."

"What—Mom—"

"Not a word," she cut in sharply. "This is meta-level stuff we're dealing with. The Bats don’t handle metas well. We need to keep this under wraps until we fully understand it. The last thing I need is Bruce doing something to hurt my daughter."

Your face fell as her words sank in.

Selina’s grip on your shoulders relaxed slightly, and her gaze softened. Her voice took on a gentler, more empathetic tone. "Power frightens people, especially when it’s something they don’t understand. When they encounter something extraordinary, their confusion often morphs into fear. And fear... well, fear can make people see threats where there are none."

She took a deep breath, her expression grim. "Batman, in particular, has contingency plans for every potential threat, even for his closest allies. We—I can't risk him viewing you as one." Her fingers tightened on your shoulders, a silent plea for understanding.

"Alright," you said quietly, trying to steady your voice. Lying to Bruce was one thing. But Damian... Damian was different. The thought of deceiving him felt like a weight pressing heavily on your chest.

Selina seemed to sense your hesitation. Her gaze softened, and she placed a hand gently on your shoulder. “I know it’s not easy,” she said, her tone soothing. “Damian is—”

“Different,” you finished for her, the word catching in your throat. “He’s always been there for me, and now... I’m just lying to him.”

Selina nodded. “I understand. But you know, that boy looks up to his father. There’s no telling he won’t spill something. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

"I get it,” your lips pursed. “But... what do we do now?"

Selina’s expression shifted from intense to thoughtful as she took a step back, her grip loosening. She glanced at the scattered remnants of your phone, then at the notepad filled with her hastily scribbled notes.

"Well," she sighed, "we need to find another space. I think you've done enough damage in our apartment."

 ༻⊰───⋅

NEXT ->

[athenagc94]

Dear Daddy Long Legs

Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

A concept I've been toying with. Will probably post the complete fic to AO3 once I've got a few more chapters written, but though I would share some of the chapters here first to garner interest. This fic is inspired by the (musical mostly, but also novel) of Daddy Long Legs.

Warnings: Some angst and self-reflection, nothing too heavy yet.

First (You are Here) | Next

Prologue

Taking the subway had to be the most mundane thing a person could do, and after the night he just had, Jason needed mundane.

He traded his uniform and helmet for a well-worn hoodie and a Wonder Woman cap that hid the streak in his hair. He sat with his shoulders hunched to make himself smaller, less imposing, but no amount of hunching could hide the broad planes of his chest. The stench of blood and gunpowder clung to him despite ringing off before he left the Outlaw safehouse.

It would have been wiser to stay behind and regroup. Everything that could go wrong with their assignment did, but he didn’t want to sit and stew in all the ways they failed—in all the ways he failed. Bizzaro let him without much fuss. Artemis had more to say.

“You can’t run from your failures like a coward.”

Leave it to her to keep him humble.

Their latest job took them halfway across the globe, and after facing metahumans, myths come to life, and sorcerers, Jason missed the psychopaths of home. This wasn’t the first time he’d been away. A month was nothing compared to five years, but he yearned for the familiarity of Gotham.

Nostalgia was a bitch.

Being back brought a well of complicated emotions with it. Anger, regret, but there was something else, something that tightened his chest and left his stomach soupy. He tried to ignore it, knowing he wouldn’t like what he found if he sat with it too long.

So, subway.

Mundane.

Human—he just wanted to feel human.

His knee bounced as lights rushed past, casting harsh shadows across the rubber floor. It was quiet, save for the slow grind of steel on steel as the car raced down its track. It was empty save for him.

Well, him and you.

He might have missed you entirely if not for the bright yellow jacket thrown over your button up and slacks. Unless your name was Robin or Signal, yellow was a bold choice for Gotham—especially this late at night. You chewed on the plastic end of the drawstring as you pored over the book in your lap.

Jason, despite every instinct telling him not to, craned his neck to identify the book. It might have been an effective strategy if you weren’t halfway across the car and facing him. You seemed to sense the weight of his stare and looked up. The string fell from your mouth as it tightened with the guarded look in your eyes.

An embarrassed flush burned his ears as he looked away. It was easier to pretend he knew how to socialize when compared to people like Bizarro and Artemis, who were far from the paragons of conservation. Charm was learned, and his was a little rusty.

But now that he had your attention, he might as well ask. “What’re you reading?”

Your eyes narrowed a fraction as you gave him a once over. When you found whatever, you were trying to ascertain, you lifted the book to show him the cover. The edges were frayed and discolored; its spine well-worn, but the words ���Wuthering Heights’ popped against the taupe cloth.

Jason sat a little straighter. “First time reading it?”

You rubbed the page between your thumb and forefinger as a thoughtful deliberation creasing your brow. “Second time. I read it in high school, but I didn’t fully appreciate it. Now that I’ve dipped my toes into a few more classics, I thought it was worth revisiting.”

“And what’s the verdict?”

You were two-thirds finished, which was more than enough time to form an opinion. Jason had thoughts, but he wanted to hear from you first.

You considered him again, almost conflicted. “I appreciate it more than I did back then. I understand why people consider it a cult classic. It’s complex, and I like complex. Heathcliff is deeply flawed, Catherine too, but that’s what makes them compelling characters.”

He smiled. “I’ve never read a more complex, mutually destructive love story like Wuthering Heights in years. I mean, like, full-body chills every time I read it. There’s something thrilling about it.”

“Right,” you exclaimed, a passion igniting in your eyes.

“Now, Darcy, that’s a real paragon of romance.”

The car slowed, coming to a stop at an empty platform. The doors opened with a soft hiss as the automated voice announced the stop. Your gaze flicked to the door, then back to him. He half-expected you to make a run for it, but you stayed planted in your seat. He blinked.

Or maybe you expected him to leave instead?

He settled back in his chair to make himself comfortable. The doors closed once more, and the subway continued down its track.

You relaxed a little. “Well, Mr. Darcy, if you know so much about the classics, what do you recommend I read next?”

He choked on his laugh.

Jason was no leading man despite how often he dreamed of being transported into a regency-era romance novel. Throw him in a silk waist coat with a messily knotted cravat and call him a rake because he’d make the fictional women swoon.

Reality, however, was much darker and hung over his head like a thick smog that threatened to suffocate him. He didn’t exist on this earth to sweep ladies off their feet or duel for their honor. That, and he wasn’t nearly as suave in action as he pretended to be.

“And for the record, I’ve already read Pride and Prejudice.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Oh, boy. How long do you have?”

A small smile curved your lips. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Discussing books came easily to him—probably because he had a lot of opinions and not a lot of people to share them with. Artemis didn't read, Bizarro preferred movies, and Roy—well, Jason was still reeling about their last book-related discussion where Roy tried to convince him that movie was always better than the book. For both their sakes, Jason made a conscious choice to not discuss books with him after that.

You listened as he rambled, going off about his favorite authors Austen and Dumas. He should have been embarrassed by how much he was talking, but the quiet intensity in your gaze spurred him to keep going.

His chest tightened with every stop, believing the next would be the point where you two parted ways for good. From the way your gaze kept darting to the door at each stop, he had an inkling that the feeling was mutual. He decided not to ask, lest it break whatever spell had fallen between you two.

All good things must come to an end. When the door slid open on the Park Row exit, Jason stood, albeit reluctantly. You did the same, slinging a plain canvas bag over your shoulder.

He curbed his surprise. “Park Row, eh?”

“The lifeblood of Gotham,” you said humorlessly.

Jason laughed. You did not. It died on a grunt as he tried to appear more sympathetic.

You exited the car with him, zipping the front of your hoodie as the unseasonably cool air pebbled his skin. He stuffed his hands in his jogger pockets and followed you up the stairs that led out onto the street. It was dark, darker than usual given the city had yet to replace the shattered streetlamp on the corner. It might have been his doing, errant bullets were a hazard of the job, but he was mildly irritated to find it was still broken.

Calm washed over him as he breathed. It was good to be home, even with all the complicated emotions that came with that sentiment.

“You live nearby?”

Your dubious look made him cringe. That sounded creepy coming from him, a random guy you barely knew. Sometimes it was difficult to separate Jason from Red Hood, not that he believed for a second that it would change your reaction. If you lived here, which he assumed you did because no Gothamite in their right mind would willingly follow him onto the street lovingly dubbed Crime Alley, the name Red Hood held weight. For all the good he did for the citizens, there was plenty of bad stack against him. He didn’t expect you to trust him with or without the helmet.

“Forget I asked,” he said.

You stared at him a second longer before walking away. “Stay safe, Mr. Darcy.”

Your tone carried an edge of finality, like you never expected to see him again. Despite the disappointment purling in his chest, he agreed that was probably for the best. A brief conversation with you was a warmer welcome than he anticipated, but he wasn’t about to push his luck by asking for more.

He lifted his hand to wave, though you had already disappeared around the corner. “You too.”

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.

[strixcattus]

Every Ending is a Bad Ending: A Slay the Princess Analysis

I've had this in my drafts since... February. Since the Pristine Cut is in less than a week, and will add an entirely new ending to the lineup, I figured it would be best to get this finished, polished (or at least casually looked over), and posted beforehand.

Slay the Princess is a game that makes zero judgement about which ending you choose to pursue. Sure, some characters may make their own standpoints clear, but aside from the "Good Ending" (and we all know what that ending really means and is) there's never an official indicator if you've reached the "proper" ending, because there is no proper ending. There are six different endings (Stranger variants and And Everyone Hates You notwithstanding—they can be folded into the others), each of which has its own nuanced set of implications and each of which is given an equal amount of care from the developers.

And each of which, when you take the time to think about it from every angle, kind of sucks. A lot.

None of this is a judgement on the game itself. I like it, actually! Every ending forces you to make some form of sacrifice in the name of another priority, which keeps any one of them from being cast in a light as "the best ending." (While there are definitely endings that could be cast as "the worst ending," they're still narratively interesting and there's no shame put on achieving them.)

I. The Good Ending

This is the ending the Narrator wants you to pursue, though it's hardly an ending compared to the others. You've really only got one chance to pursue it—once you've met the Shifting Mound, it's too late to go back, so the Good Ending inevitably means a truncated run.

It also means a couple other things, which are worse. First and most obviously, it means the same thing as A New and Unending Dawn—you've killed the concept of death and transformation, and with that ended both of those things, forever, at the Narrator's behest. His world will persist in stasis ad infinitum, and whatever fragment of the Shifting Mound is within you, whatever change and meaning it preserves, the world will be changed drastically, and it's entirely possible that not all the people within it will think that's for the better. But this is a topic for A New and Unending Dawn.

Besides, the player—which is to say, the Long Quiet, not that he knows he is the Long Quiet, the one on the opposite side of the screen from you, the one experiencing all of this—doesn't know any of that. He doesn't know anything. He's just following orders, and now he's received his reward.

His reward is, as the Narrator tells him, eternal, boring bliss. And so it is—if he perceives what the Narrator says as true, then it will be. He'll be happy, and nothing else, for all eternity.

Doesn't bode particularly well for what's happening in places that aren't the cabin, but I said that was going to wait.

The player's awareness, in effect, ends. Sure, he's going to remain alive for eternity, but nothing is going to happen with that life. He's given up his agency, the possibility for experience, and everything else that might make up the definition of life on a more philosophical level.

Which brings us to a point that's going to crop up in different ways throughout this post. Slay the Princess is a game with more than three characters.

The player is not alone in the cabin, but given enough time, someone else might be.

The Voice of the Hero, your only companion who seems to be unilaterally on your side, is stuck in this cabin with you, and he isn't as happy about it as the Narrator tells you you are. He doesn't believe the Narrator's words, even if you choose to, and so he isn't affected by them as you are. He isn't happy, eternally. He doesn't lose his self-awareness to the now-meaningless flow of time, even though you do. If you choose to set down onto the Good Ending, you can hear him pleading for you to get up and take back your choice, but you can't actually act on his words past the first decision point. You've given up your agency, your self, your possibility to change entirely.

Hero is still there. He's still aware, and he will be for eternity. He'll get to experience time in a meaningful way, his only company an Echo (who may or may not fade, and even if he doesn't he likely won't be very good companionship in the face of a dull eternity) and someone who has completely given up their personhood.

This ending may or may not be apocalyptic for the world, and it may or may not be horrifying for the Long Quiet, but there's no arguing that it isn't torture for the Hero.

II. There Are No Endings

This was the first ending I got, and I will say I felt forced into it. Not by the game itself, necessarily—just knowing what the Princess was, and what killing her would mean, I felt as though the only proper option was to allow her to continue on. Death is an essential part of the workings of things, and transformation as a whole is even more crucial—though, even if all the Shifting Mound represented was death, my actions wouldn't have been any different. The game made no judgement—the only things forcing my hand were my own beliefs.

The exact implications of killing the Shifting Mound and ridding the world of death, I'll save for the ending where that actually happens. The general idea is, it's not desirable. The Narrator's world is going to end, and the healthiest way for the cosmos to go on is to allow the Princess to be what she is and create a new world in the shadow of the old.

For the Narrator's world, this is obviously not ideal. It ends. But there's going to be a new world created when it does, and that world will flourish as it was meant to, and when it dies a new world will be born, on into eternity. The progression of the cosmos is the same as it was before—which is probably the best way for it to be, compared with your other options.

For the Long Quiet, though... this isn't the worst experience he could be having. He could be effectively nonexistent. He could be actually nonexistent. Compared to that, a thousand dawns and a thousand sunsets, each containing a thousand more, with your other half by your side isn't all that bad.

But you're alone. Yes, you have the Shifting Mound by your side, but she's the only companionship you'll ever get for the rest of eternity. I'd like to call some attention to a few of her lines throughout the game at this point, just to highlight why I consider this ending to be just as bad as the next one on the list (though, to be sure, they're not necessarily bad in the same ways or for the same people).

"It doesn't matter if there are. People are too small for us. You and I are the only things that interest me."

"There is a warmth and sadness in me at the thought of people. Fresh tears on a winter's day. They are not like us. They do not last."

These are a couple lines from the fourth time you enter the Long Quiet. Depending on how well you've treated the Princesses you encounter, the Shifting Mound's dialogue changes, but there's always an underlying implication that you and her are more important than people.

If you deny the Princesses their freedom more often than you grant it, you get the first variation (of which there are two versions—the other has her calling people "frail and impermanent"), where you have the chance to ask her if she thinks there will be people in the worlds beyond the Long Quiet. She immediately dismisses your question, saying that people do not interest her.

If you grant the Princesses their freedom more often than you deny it, you get the second variation. Here, the Shifting Mound is the one to ask you what you think you will find, and one of your options is to say that you think there's supposed to be people. Her line above is her response to that. She's more sympathetic towards people, but still describes them as unlike you and her. Even at her kindest, she still believes the two of you to be greater than people—and to be fair, you are—but she never seems to care about people in quite the same way the player does.

"A person. A set of eyes witnessing from one perspective. I think that you are more like me than you are like a person."

She says this the first time you meet, but until you're awoken to your true nature, from your perspective you are more like a person than you are like her. You fear death and experience each iteration of the Construct from your own perspective and no other. And even when you reach the mirror, and remember that you are more than a person, you still remember being one. It's not clear she does the same.

Remember, at this point you're certain that you've witnessed, four times now, the only people you've ever been able to fully trust die. You don't have the option to avoid it. At my first encounter with this line (for context and clarity, it was one of the "It doesn't matter if there are" lines), I was thinking of the Voices when I mentioned people—because that's what they are, by her definition. Singular perspectives capable of death. And she shuts them down, insisting that they do not matter.

To be clear, it's not my intention to and I would never bash the Shifting Mound. Maybe at one time I would, and maybe some of my initial feelings are still preserved in my writing here—I wouldn't be able to tell. But I've grown past resentment on this point—I'm simply outlining the way in which the Shifting Mound seems to view people other than her and the Long Quiet.

What, exactly, does this all mean from an objective perspective? I've only been talking about subjective views on the Shifting Mound so far. Maybe your perspective is different from mine. What's really going on?

Let's start with the world side—moreso recap, but it's been a bit of digression and I think we could use one. As I said earlier, this is probably the best outcome for the world. Yes, it ends. It had to end. There is no good outcome for the Narrator's world—it's either end and be reborn, or persist in a manner I'll save for the next ending.

This might be the best-case scenario. Existence persists in a healthy manner. The cycle of death and rebirth continues. Everything is okay, generally. Life retains meaning. Countless worlds are born and live full lives.

But you? You are alone with someone who does not grasp the value that you place in the people within those worlds. She values that which spans the cosmos—you, and her, and the worlds you create. She does not pay attention to what goes on within them, but you do, because you've lived it.

Or maybe you're willing to embrace godhood and leave behind people. I'm not, but I'm only one person and my opinions are not paramount. The Long Quiet does seem to care about people enough that he always has the option to bring them up, and he's experienced living as one, but that's not enough to base a full argument on. Maybe the god of stasis can change his mind. So let's talk about something that definitely does happen.

Those Voices? Your friends? The collective of people who have been by your side this whole time? Yeah, they're gone. They died at the mirror. You know this.

She is a creature of perception, and you are perception itself. She becomes that which people perceive her to be—which is why you cannot alter her once you awaken. You're not a person anymore.

But you are still perception. The world is that which you perceive it to be. Her vessels are within her, empty—even during your final confrontation, their words (notably, her referring to the Apotheosis in third person) show that they are not speaking, but she is speaking through them. Whether or not they were always a part of her, she sees them as nothing more.

Were your Voices nothing more than parts of you? It doesn't matter anymore. You perceive them as gone, dead at the mirror, and so they are. You are alone, forever, with her.

Maybe you're happy like that. Maybe you looked at the choice between her and the Voices, and decided you'd rather have her. But the Voices are dead either way. They don't even get to persist in a space away from you.

And if you aren't happy, well. You'll have an eternity to try to change that.

III. A New and Unending Dawn

Here's the big one—the full 180 from There Are No Endings. The Narrator's second chance, and this one is, let's face it, probably better for the Long Quiet from an objective standpoint. He's not wasting away alone in a room, and none of the Voices are left stranded as they watch the only other thing they know fade into nothing.

In fact, this is one of only two endings where you don't have to leave behind the voices—either in them persisting while you fade, or in them dying while you persist into eternity, or in you leaving them behind forever. This time, you get to keep them by your side as you rule your eternal kingdom. Hopefully they're not too mad at you.

This is probably one of the better outcomes for the Voices and the Long Quiet, though it's definitely not ideal. You've still been forced to kill your other half, and even though you may have deemed it necessary, it's not a great experience.

And you have no idea what that means for the world.

Sure, you know what you just killed. The concept of death. The Capacity to Change. Transformation, or most of it. Without her, the world will persist for an eternity, and so too will the people within it. There will never be an end of the world. There will never be a new dawn beyond your own.

Or will there be an end of the world? There certainly will be a change in how it functions. Will the small piece of Transformation within you be enough to preserve change and meaning in what is left behind? Most of the Voices seem to have positive reactions to the new iteration of the world, though none of you have actually seen it yet. You don't actually know how things are going to work, only that you have the power to perceive them this time. A step up from the "Good Ending."

Let's go back to the Good Ending for a second. I did say we were going to.

Remember how it goes? You're trapped for eternity, happy, forever. And, to be sure, this partly stems from your own perception. If you believe the Narrator when he says you're happy, you'll be happy. The Voice of the Hero doesn't, and so he isn't, and he has to watch you fade away.

But the fact that this can happen, that it is in fact the Narrator's ideal ending, does not bode well. Is this a fate that awaits some of the people in your new world? Will some of them end up fading away, unable to die or to find meaning in a world that cannot change aside from "happiness forever?" You can't say this for sure, but you also can't deny it for sure.

Eternity is not friendly, or at least it has the potential to hurt quite a bit, even if that isn't guaranteed. The one solace is that, at least, the people you've doomed to it will not be alone. They may miss those who died too soon, and they'll have eternity to continue doing so, but they will not be alone.

Whatever you've done, everyone will get to suffer it together. Forever.

IV. Just as You Once Were Nothing

Let's take a break from the standard endings and consider the implications of what happens when you abandon the Shifting Mound entirely. You refuse to perceive her, and since she is shaped by perception, in your refusal you deny her an existence. Eventually, you run out of time to make any sort of amends, and the two of you persist by sheer force of (your) will until you give up and you both fade to oblivion.

This is probably by far the most uncertain of the endings—every ending carries with it the question of what will happen to the world, but this one adds the question of what will happen to you. What exactly happens after you fade? Do you return to your prior existence as an unconscious cycle? Is this effectively the same as slaying the Princess? Whichever it is, the one certainty is that you won't be around to see it.

Most likely, you and the Shifting Mound's annihilation is a bleaker future for the outside world than any other ending. With her gone, the capacity for death is eliminated, but the player also perishes, taking with him the fragment of the Shifting Mound that was meant to ensure that life would persist in some meaningful form. The entirety of Transformation is wiped out, as is the entirety of the Long Quiet.

What, exactly, is the Long Quiet? It's never stated. He is the other half of the cycle of life and death, the counterpart to the Shifting Mound. She is a creature of perception, and he is the one who perceives. She is that which enables death, and he is that which has the capacity to end it. She is the Shifting Mound, the Ebb and Flow, the Capacity to Change, and he is the Long Quiet, the... capacity to not change? She is Transformation, or most of it, and he holds the rest within whatever he is that isn't transformation.

The two of them, combined, form the whole of existence. And without either, it seems likely that a true end of the world will arise, one beyond which there is not and will never be a new dawn. The exact object of the Narrator's fears made manifest.

Suffice to say, this is not good for anyone. At least the player doesn't have to sit with what he's done, unlike in the previous ending.

Or maybe you aren't annihilated. Maybe you just lose consciousness and become a mindless cycle again. There's no way to know anything except that the Long Quiet, as he is, is now dead.

V. And? What Happens Next?

That is the question. I gather that this is considered in the court of collective opinion to be one of the better endings, and it's easy to see why—I myself, when I first reached it, commented that "as far as I'm concerned, this is the good ending." But there's still a lot left uncertain, and there's still a sacrifice you have to make.

When you leave the final cabin, the Shifting Mound is gone around you, replaced by a starry sky similar to the one in the Construct. You never get to see what lies beyond the door or to get any clues as to what happened to the outside world.

I don't think there's any strong evidence to the idea that you've somehow harmed the world itself by abandoning your godhood. The Princess states that she is separate on some level from the Shifting Mound, and killing Her is a choice you have to intentionally make. But is it unchanged? And will you and the Princess ever get to see the world you chose not to sacrifice?

These questions don't have answers. Maybe the concept of Transformation gets on just fine without a mind behind it—whatever cycle the two of you once were certainly seemed to. Maybe it's altered, somehow. Maybe the Shifting Mound's personhood manages to persist without her heart, even. There's no way to know and not even the barest evidence to support any theory, so I won't consider it any further.

But when you step outside the door, where will you end up? The world outside the Construct is typically represented with color—the green new growth in the Networked Wild's peek behind the curtain and "There Are No Endings," or the orange star in "A New and Unending Dawn." All you get in this ending is a colorless night sky, identical to what you'd see if you were still in the Construct. Are you still there, trapped with no way out now that you and the Princess have both given up your godhood? It's possible. It's also possible that you do have a way out, a way back to the world you've never been able to see clearly.

You don't know, though. You've given up your right to knowing what will happen next. And that's not the only thing you've given up—your Voices, or at least the one or ones you know are still there, remain in the cabin, while you leave them for whatever happens next.

You're just as alone here as you are in There Are No Endings. The only difference is that in that ending, you know exactly what happens to the world and to you.

VI. You're on a Path in the Woods...

...and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess.

You're here to slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world.

This one is a bit different from the rest. It's... not really an ending at all, but the refusal of one. You're pushing your resolution further down the line in the hopes that another you will know what decision to make... or that they'll keep choosing to perpetuate the Construct forever.

There's just as much uncertainty here as in And? What Happens Next?, though it's loaded in different places. You know exactly what happens to you, and the Princess, and even your Voices—this is one of only two endings, alongside A New And Unending Dawn, where you get to keep them with you.

What you don't know is how things will resolve in the end, or even if they ever will. For all you know, you could be somewhere in the middle of a never-ending cycle. And, you know, maybe you're okay with that. But what if a future you makes a choice you aren't okay with?

And what happens to the world in the meantime? The Narrator's world is still dying, and Transformation is still alive. Her being in the Construct isn't going to solve anything—if it would, you wouldn't need to slay her. Maybe the world will die if you keep doing this over again forever. Maybe it already has, and that's a new, worse wrinkle for the endings where you follow through with the Narrator's plan.

Maybe the world will die, and a new one will be born. Maybe the world will die, and a new one won't be born. Maybe you're somehow keeping the world in stasis until you make a choice. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, because you'll never see the world if you keep on like this.

But the things you can see? You, and the Princess, and your Voices, and even the Narrator? You're all still alive and well, and no one has to be left behind, and you will continue to be for as long as you keep choosing to reset the Construct.

You just have to keep forgetting, and to keep refusing to choose a true ending.

Conclusion

In conclusion, every ending in Slay the Princess forces you to make a tough choice and to choose something to sacrifice in favor of whatever you've decided to prioritise.

The Good Ending is one of the most straightforward, and in fact you gain very little aside from the accomplishment of the Narrator's goal—you sacrifice your chance at knowing what's really happening and leave the Voice of the Hero to an eternity alone.

There Are No Endings forces you to sacrifice your Voices and your connections to people, in order to keep the cycle of life and death intact and live an eternity of guarantee with your counterpart.

A New And Unending Dawn sacrifices the Princess and the cycle of life and death, in order to give an unknown vision of eternity to the current world and to retain all your Voices alongside all your memories.

Just As You Once Were Nothing is another ending with heavy sacrifices and minimal or no gains. You give up your Voices, your chance at knowledge, the Princess, and even your own life, and there's no way to know what happens once you fade.

And? What Happens Next? sacrifices your Voices, though in this one you at least know they're alive, and your knowledge of what awaits you post-ending. But it allows you to refuse both the Narrator's desire for eternity and the Shifting Mound's dismissal of people, and to retain the Princess and, presumably, the cycle of life and death.

You're On A Path In The Woods... is the one ending where everything you can and will see, you keep. What you sacrifice here is nothing material, but rather the ending itself, always refusing to move forward.

Every ending forces you to give something up, though some sacrifices may seem more worthy or less devastating than others, and perspective colors them all. But there is no "happy ending" to be found here, no way to have an objectively good outcome, and that is by design. Every ending is a bad ending, and that's one of the things that makes this game so great.

[writingwisterias]

Speak up When it Matters

Leon Kennedy x Mute!Reader (Gn)

Warnings: Events of RE6, Light Violence, Light angst, Fluff, Platonic Relationship

Words: 1.4k

Summary: Leon has to pick who he is training but what happens when the reader is mute and the events of RE6 occur...

Hope you enjoy this! It was again just a random thought, I've written the reader to be optionally mute but haven't specified why so it's up to you with how you interpret the reason ~ Mads <3

Masterlist

He wasn't sure why he was training the new recruits, he spent the late hours of his shift sorting through the files choosing which person would be the lucky one he selected to work with him. Most of them sounded or seemed boring, that was until your came up. In your notes it mentioned that you were a mute, maybe it would be interesting or a relief to finally have someone that couldn't badger him about his life or the missions he had been on.

He met you a few days later, your first mission was to protect the president but also be at Leon's side. You were nervous, refusing to even move away from Leon in fear of doing the wrong protocol, you might as well have been taking notes at this point. At first Leon forgot you didn't speak, he kept finding himself getting frustrated at the fact you never replied to him when he asked you something, instead you would nod or give him a thumbs up and smile as a signal you understood. When you both returned to the hotel he found the silence unnerving as he felt his thoughts beginning to wonder, he probably would turn to the bottle soon as per usual. However, it was as if you could tell because suddenly you stood up and walked over to your bag fishing out what seemed to be a mini whiteboard.

'What's your favourite colour?' He blinked at the question, it was so simple- normal even compared to everything else everyone had asked. His eyes flickering from the board and your face. "Uh-b-blue" He muttered, his brain buffering. You smiled turning the board to face you as you began to write the next sentence. 'Cool, mine's orange' Leon smiled an actual smile not one of the half-assed smiles he gave everyone else he spoke to. 'How do you think I'm doing so far with training?' He pondered for a moment, the question almost stumping him as he thought of the things he had seen you do today or stuff he thought you could have improved on. expect the wasn't anything. you were quiet and listened to everything he explained acting on any adjustments he made to the day without hesitation or panic. "You did really well today" he complimented, his heart thumping as your growing smile. "D-do you have any questions for me?" he asked, attempting to prevent this conversation from being one-sided.

'I'm worried people don't think I do a good job because I don't talk' It wasn't a question but instead a statement, a fear that had been eating at you alive all week as you worked. Leon didn't really know how to respond, he wasn't brave enough to ask why you were mute in case something had happened to you that caused you to become mute, he of all people knew what it was like to relive a nightmare each time you told the story. However, he did notice you spending your breaks sitting next to him never actually speaking, most of the time he didn't even notice that you had spoken to him. "From what I've seen you are observant and notice things sometimes I miss" he shrugged. He watched your face contort in thought as you pondered on what he had said before eventually you began writing your reply. He wasn't sure why he leaned forward eager to see your reply as it took you slightly longer to finish writing it, instead of holding it up for him to read you handed it to him. "Is this your way of saying I need glasses?" he joked as he took the board from your hands, being careful to not rub off any of the black ink. You giggled and shook your head at his comment.

'I'm grateful it was you. anyone else would have just treated me differently, you still communicate and keep me in the loop even if I don't verbally respond. You're a good person Leon.'

Leon felt himself freeze, they were words he hadn't heard from anyone for a long time. You scooted closer, eyes showing concern as you gingerly placed your hand on his knee bringing his attention back to you. You smiled at him, the action confirming you meant your words. "Thank you- I haven't heard that from anyone for a long time"

It was from that point that changed your relationship with him, you kept the whiteboard in your suit jacket pulling it out on breaks to chat with him. You spent the evenings eating hotel room service and watching the crap late-night tv. Everything seemed to go smoothly until the actual event. The power went out and groans began to fill the room causing goosebumps to spread over your skin. "We need to get the president out of here" Leon spoke, his grip on your arm bringing you back to reality as he turned you to face him. "Just shoot them in the head and stay close to me"

You wanted to ask him who, but that was until he pushed you behind him and shot one of your colleagues. You looked at the body its eyes bloodshot and blood dripping from its mouth. You desperately wanted to ask him what was happening, if he was infected. Instead, he placed your gun in your hand, his eyes intensely staring at you, you took a deep breath giving him a firm nod before following him down the dark corridor towards the press room the president was in. You walked back to back, making sure nothing could get to either of you, knives held underneath the gun. Your posture was exactly the same as his, Leon felt pride swell in his chest as to how quickly you adapted to the situation and used his training to protect each other.

It was Leon's turn to freeze once he had opened the door to face the President crouched over the body of one of his secret service members. His gun lowered slightly, trying to picture if what he was seeing was actually correct. You shut the door behind you both making sure nothing could sneak up behind you both. Leon called to him, hoping that maybe he wasn't fully turned and was still alive. The president slowly rose before it began stumbling towards him, his arms outstretched towards your partner whilst low groans left his lips. Leon didn't hesitate. The gunshot made you jump as you watched the body fall to the floor. You moved around Leon to get a view of the president on the floor assuming the room was now clear. Leon just stood staring at the body, his gun shaking slightly as the adrenaline began to wear off. A voice broke him from his trance, he would have assumed it was another survivor they had missed somewhere in the room but you jumped with your knife ready killing a Zombie that had gotten too close to him.

"LEON" You yelled again, the room now becoming filled with Zombies. You weren't sure why you had chosen to now break your year's worth of silence. Perhaps it was the panic of losing Leon, the only guy who has given you a chance since you had been in the industry. "Leon please we have to move" you spoke again, your voice soft and cracked as you grasped his hand and began to pull him out of the room. His body followed your call on instinct, protecting you as you guided him to safety not stopping once. He desperately wanted to hear your call again, to encourage him to keep going to survive.

Eventually, you both managed to escape the chaos for a moment, spending the time reloading your weapons and checking each other for bites or other injuries. "You spoke," Leon said bluntly looking at you from where he sat leaning against the wall. Your hand instinctively went to reach for the whiteboard in your pocket, he watched as it paused before you decided to lower it at your side again. "I did" you croaked out, it felt weird hearing your voice again. "I don't need to hide behind my whiteboard with you, we are going to find out who did this together. I-I trust you"

Leon smiled before nodding, his heart fluttering at you placing your trust in him. "We'll do it together" He responded as he slowly stood. "Thank you for saving me" He added holding his hand out for you to shake. Instead, you smiled and began to bring him into a hug. You felt the tension melt away from the both of you just for a moment before you both readied yourselves to face what you had to.

[edenprime]

if u haven't read it a lot of liara's more action-oriented shift was told in the comics. the shadow broker DLC didn't quite capture how much effort she went thru to secure shep's body and how big feron's role. i personally welcome the change and while i like archeologist liara i think her ME1 characterization is so superficial. she's mostly just a fan girl. the shift is abrupt but it's nice that in ME2 she has her own thing going on outside shepard cos i believe the writers wrote her as the canon love interest in mind so her character often suffers from the fangirl disease. i think a lot of people in the fandom dislike how the game shove her to us so much. which is funny since another famous shepard ship is garrus, who's equally as pushed as liara and is just as much of a shep fan. it's just that he's a guy so he doesn't suffer sexist hate.

I haven't read/seen anything outside the games, no! I've been thinking of getting into that, but first I'd like to sort out all of my feelings wrt the main event - the games. I feel like if I got into the "peripheric" media, it could maybe influence how I view the games and i want to analyze those by themselves (i'm thinking i'll finish this playthrough + another one in which i might or might not play as mshep) and then see about everything else. Thank you for the rec, though! I knew there was extra stuff about tali and garrus but this is the first i'm hearing about liara <3

And well... let's be real, most of the squad is part of the Shepard fan club, even those that can't be romanced, like Grunt and Wrex. The fact that Shepard gets a breeding request in Tuchanka after completing grunt's loyalty mission is like the most Mary Sue thing ever (and I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way). The asari, sex symbols of the galaxy, are throwing themselves at them left and right (Liara, Shiala, arguably Sha'ira, Morinth...). Shepard is the main character, everyone wants a piece of them. It's one of the entertaining parts of the games (or at least I have a lot of fun with it, if maybe a little bit ironically).

I suppose people might single out Liara because she's the one whose actions are the most extreme, and thus it crosses the line from "cute" to "creepy", but she's not the only one. Legion literally wears the armor off their dead body. As I said in my post, maybe her actions and/or attitude aren't 100% justifiable, but they are understandable.

I'm not sure about the game pushing Garrus as a love interest (I think the game itself is skeptical of the player making this choice, like when Shepard says she "can't believe she finds comfort in the arms of a turian" or something like that), but I do think he's definitely meant to be one of the characters that's most influenced by Shepard, regardless of gender.

Personally, I think him being so popular a choice (at least on Tumblr, which has a mostly female userbase compared to other social media) is due to him being a man, yes, but not necessarily because of sexism (or not always), but because het ships are farrrr more popular than femslash. Also, it's very clear how much he respects Shepard in basically every aspect, and it's incredibly fucking rare to see a het relationship in such equal ground, especially with a """bad guy""" lmao. (though ME in general does quite good in that regard I think, the romances in general are not toxic™️ or unequal) (mostly... ignoring that Shepard is basically everyone's boss... lol).

I completely agree that there's a double standard in how female characters are expected to behave vs male ones, and from what i've seen Liara is 100% a victim of this (I had the very bad idea of reading some threads on reddit...yikes). I don't know the fandom enough to know how it compares in relation to Garrus in particular, though, or if there's a correlation between Shakarian fans and Liara haters.

[leggerefiore]

Mechanical Envy

cw: fluff, light jealousy

pairing: Cyrus/Reader

🌌🛰☄️🌌🛰☄️🌌🛰☄️🌌🛰☄️

There was nothing but frustration on your mind as you attempted to turn off your phone again to see if maybe it could fix this reoccurring issue where it just decided that it had no signal whatsoever. The free Poryphone was certainly cute, but its functionality in comparison to your Rotom phone was beginning to annoy you. Sitting down at a table in the plaza, you stared at the infernal device as the screen turned back on.

No signal was to be found. Even after a few moments of waiting. You felt like you were going mad. The next step in this process would be to head to a certain evil team's hideout and bug their totally terrifying and emotionless boss to please be a good boyfriend and help you out. However, someone appeared to throw a wrench into everything. Your name being called out made you jump as you had not expected to see anyone familiar around.

Volkner unexpectedly popped into the plaza with a rare smile and wave. You returned the gesture and greeted him politely before awkwardly turning back to the phone with a sigh. It seemed that this would be on pause until after you had a catch-up with an old friend. Your actions captured his attention, and his gaze, too, shifted onto the device. “Is something up with your Poryphone?” he asked before moving to sit down with you. Well, you supposed it would not hurt to tell him. He was a bit of a gadgeteer himself, despite his ability to somehow send poor Sunnyshore into hours long blackouts regularly.

“Yeah, it just stopped having a signal, and I don't know why,” you showed him the issue on the phone as he nodded along with your words, “I've tried all the basic things, but I guess I'm going to have to get it repaired.” Volkner seemed to perk up at that bit of information.

“Well, there's no need to go to a repair shop,” his face turned serious once more, “This seems interesting.” Ah, of course. He was bored. You wanted to laugh. Your phone troubles turned into entertainment.

“… I wasn't exactly planning on going to a shop,” you shrugged. Cyrus would definitely help you, just out of his pure fascination with machines if not out of his love for you. Still, it might be more convenient to just let Volkner do whatever he wanted. He was not currently trying to “perfect” spirit or create a new world or whatever else Cyrus was up to while leading an organisation of bowl cuts. You seriously doubted he could do anything that bad to your phone, too. “Feel free to,” you offered him, “You're probably still faster than what I had in mind.”

He nodded and quickly got to work on your phone after getting some tools. You watched curiously as he seemed to do some minor diagnostic work before coming to some conclusion and going into the device's hardware. It took quite a while as he worked, but you were fascinated enough by examining his thought process and movements that it felt like no time whatsoever. There was a strange game you made in your head about comparing his techniques to Cyrus's own. Their similarities were eerie, but their differences showed just how far-off they were from one another.

When he finished, he turned on the phone again, and you watched as the signal marker reappeared. A few minor tests proved that it was indeed working once more. A sigh of relief left you. “Here I was terrified you were going to cause some sort of blackout,” you joked lightly as you tapped around to make sure it was truly in working order for yourself. Everything seemed as it were previously with no apparent issues to be seen.

“I still could,” Volkner offered back with a chuckle, “You seemed really interested in watching me. Do you want to learn how to tinker?” You pondered the question. Did you? Learning how to take apart some devices did sound interesting, but your confidence in yourself just was not there. Plus, you could see the downside in learning from Volkner. His capability was obvious, but his intentions could vary.

“Nah, it was neat seeing it in action,” you shrugged, “Thanks, by the way.” He shrugged back in reply. As a way to better show your gratitude, you offered to buy lunch for you both while you caught up. He eagerly took up the offer. Needless to say, you learnt he still plagued the poor port city with his gym renovations, and Flint was still his best friend.

The evening sun was slowly singing in the distance to eerily remind you of the unexpectedly long amount of time you had spent with Volkner ultimately. When you both parted, you began the awkward trek to the Galactic hideout. You did not exactly approve of what Cyrus was doing, but it seemed too difficult to talk him out as it was. Somehow, you felt that spending time with him gave you the ability to better convince him about rethinking things.

However, your journey was interrupted by a familiar pokemon hovering ominously among the houses of the street. Darkrai. Its blue eye seemed to spy you. A cry left it, and it began to float towards you. Before it got too close, though, Cyrus seemed to appear from out of nowhere. His gaze was intense as he walked to stand in front of you. A cool evening wind blew through the isolated area. You felt confused. Was he wandering? Not exactly like him, but you suppose everyone did from time to time.

“… You stepped out for longer than you specified,” Cyrus finally spoke to break the awkward silence, “It crossed my mind that you might have been taken hostage by another organisation in an attempt to blackmail me.” You held back laugh at his phrasing. Oh, he was worried about you but did not want to admit it. His concern was genuinely touching. Suddenly, however, his face became even harsher than it normally was. “I find you with another man… Letting him work on your phone,” his voice seemed to grow strangely hurt at the latter part, catching you off-guard.

“Cy,” you stepped towards him with a sweet smile, “Volkner offered to help me with an issue. You've been so busy lately that I just took him up on it.” His expression only intensified at that.

“So you then take him out to lunch? And let him offer to show you around machines?” his tone was dark. Another urge to laugh had to be fought back. Was Cyrus seriously jealous over this? Of all things in the world that could possibly make him jealous, it was another man fixing your phone and offering to show you how to work on electronics.

“Are you seriously jealous right now?” you asked him lightly and moved forward to hug him. Cyrus tensed up by both things and stared forward blankly. “My Cy should know that I love only him,” you told him lovingly as you nuzzled your face into his shoulder, “You're acting like you did when we were younger.”

Cyrus suddenly seemingly had something snap in him as you felt his hand quickly grasp your chin. His lips pressed against yours as he held you closely to him.

“… If anyone shall teach you to tinker, it will be me.”

Well, if he was offering, you suddenly felt a bit more inclined to agree.

“Teach me how to make a Rotom fan.”

You loved the absolutely mortified expression you managed to draw out onto his face from that.

(You later spotted him doing his own diagnostic work on your phone and checking Volkner's handiwork. Judging by his expression, he was somewhere between impressed and angry. You just let him continue to work whatever feelings were haunting him out. It was always best to avoid his speeches about the uselessness of emotion and spirit when possible.)

[atmilliways]

Wrong On The Money (1-3)

parts 1, 2, & 3 of ?? | 888 words | Teen+

Blackmail fic on Ao3 | on tumblr

Summary:

Wayne is sick and they don't have the money for the treatment he needs. Eddie, desperate and spread thin between school, a part time job, and dealing, spots Steve outside of a gay club and opts for blackmail. Steve, who has heard about Wayne through Dustin... just sort of lets him.

I started writing this while Ao3 is down. Haven't quite finished it yet, but I've got 6.7k written so far, so I should be able to do daily posts for at least a while!

Now also posted on Ao3.

Quick note, if it helps anyone who might be hit too close to home by Wayne's serious but relatively brief health scare. First, he's going to be fine. I love Wayne, I wouldn't do that to him. Second, Dustin's mind goes straight to cancer when he hears that it's serious serious, but Wayne's illness is never specified. The only symptoms described are basically a cough and general weakness/fatigue.

1.

Dustin is really upset one day after school, the day he tells Steve about his dad. 

Steve had never asked, alright? It was family shit, and that kind of thing was. . . . Well, not sacred, he can’t even think that and keep a straight face, but definitely private. There could’ve been any number of reasons why Mr. Henderson wasn’t around. 

Turns out it was cancer.

And . . . it’s not insensitive to wonder, right? Steve doesn't know if it’s an anniversary or if someone’s been giving him shit at school about not having a dad or something. So, after a few bumbling questions about why this is upsetting him now, an explanation comes tumbling out.

The leader or president or whatever of the nerd club Dustin joined at the start of the year had to cancel their game this week. “Eddie never cancels, Steve,” Dustin insists, eyes red from crying and voice gone all squeaky. “And we were giving him shit about it, we all were, even the upperclassmen guys, and he. . . he j-just broke, Steve. Said his uncle is r-really sick, bad sick, and I know what that means. They don’t have the money for treatment. He’s Eddie’s only family, and he’s probably going t-to. . . .”

Steve regrets dropping Robin off at her house first today. She might not know what to say either, but at least they’d be in this together. “Dust, that’s. . . . That’s awful.”

Turns out he doesn’t have to say anything else, because Dustin thumps against him and bawls his eyes out. 

2.

“It was awful, Robs,” Steve says, rubbing a hand over his eyes as he talks into the phone. “I haven’t seen him like that since after Starcourt, when we had to tell him about Hop.”

Robin’s wince is audible in her reply. “Yeah, that's. . . . That’s pretty bad.”

“Yeah.” He heaves a sigh, hoping it’ll get some of the constricted feeling out of his chest. It doesn’t.

“Steve? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” It’s just, he hates it. Hated it then and hates it now, because both times there’s no way for him to jump between Dustin and this thing. “Everything was starting to sort of feel okay again, and then suddenly there's Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson and his uncle, who I’ve never even seen in my life—”

“It’s not about the Munsons, Steve,” Robin says gently. “You and Dustin have that ‘you die I die’ thing. He’s like your kid brother who annoys the shit out of you, but you love him to death anyway. And right now he’s sad but you can’t do anything to help.”

Lifting his face from his hand, Steve looks around the room. He’s on the big comfortable couch in his big fucking house with too many rooms, all empty except for this one. His parents are never home, always away on business trips that got way more frequent after Barbara Holland disappeared from a party he’d hosted. They send money—not an allowance, not since he didn’t get into any of the colleges he’d applied to. But the utility bills are always paid up, and a gardener still comes around to do lawn maintenance every other week.

He wonders how the cost of maintaining a house they don’t live in compares to the cost of whatever kind of treatment Munson’s uncle needs.

Doesn’t let himself wonder if it would make a difference, but he knows that treatments don’t always work. It hadn’t, apparently, for Dustin’s dad.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees heavily. “I know.”

3.

The nice thing about being done with high school and working weekends at a shitty retail job is, Steve can do whatever he wants on some weekdays. As long as he doesn’t have a shift that starts before noon the next day, anyway. Which he doesn’t.

So, a few days after Dustin’s revelations, Steve drives up to the nearest outskirts of Indy. Eventually he ends up in one of those clubs that he and Robin have been researching how to find.

He tells himself that he’s scoping it out before he brings her, but he wants to get lost for a while. Empty his head out of things he can’t do a damn thing about—the Upside Down, the monsters, the Russians, the Munsons, the memories of Dustin crying and, just for funsies, of Nancy calling him bullshit. Because that’s always somewhere in the mix, these days.

Fill it back up with music and movement. Not with drinks, because he still has to get himself back to Hawkins in one piece.

He goes and he dances and he sweats. Sometimes guys dance with him, and Steve goes with it. Who cares? No one knows him here, it doesn’t mean anything.

Turns out, it does mean something after all. 

When Steve finally stumbles his way out of the club, he finds none other than Eddie Munson sitting on the hood of the Beemer he’s been buying off of his parents in installments. (Their idea. It’s a ‘pay for it or lose it’ kind of deal.) 

The buzzing under his sweat-tacky skin—satisfaction at successfully getting out of his head—fizzles out. He keeps walking and stops when he draws even with the car. 

Eddie Munson, looking tired and prickling with restless energy, and exhales a cloud of smoke and vapor into the chilly air. “Hey, man. What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”

[iloveyou-writers]

Hi! I'm sorry this ended up longer than I intended to. I really needed to let it out, and I hope you can share some wisdom with me.

I am feeling hopeless about my writing today. Lately I've been fighting with thoughts about how I'm not getting better, and some jealousy completely pushed me to the edge.

For the past couple of months, I've been working on one of the biggest fanfic projects of mine. Normally I don't read on a fandom if I'm actively working for it, exactly because then I compare my writing to others', but since this is taking more time than my other stuff, I allowed myself to take a look today. I immediately found a story that I haven't seen before, and I was exited the whole time! It was great, and have me so much joy.

At first I was full of admiration towards the writer, and inspired to continue woekint on my own story. It was one of the best things I've ever read, and I immediately sat down to write a comment. Then something clicked. My story can't compare to this. The topics are so much different, but the way they write the characters, dialogues, everything, it's so much better.

I tried to tell myself I'm going to get better, but I just hate that despite having great ideas, the finished work will never live up to stories such as the one I read today. Because even though I know I've gotten better in the many years I've been writing, I never had any work I'm proud of, or one that fit the idea I started with. That what makes me feel the most hopeless.

This broke my heart, so I don't want to ignore it, even though I'm "technically" retired from tumblr.

I do want to offer my utmost respect to you for giving yourself boundaries due to knowing yourself well enough to acknowledge that you have an issue with envy.

It is so healthy that you try to work with what you know your attitude tends to be and that you set a boundary for yourself not to read fanfic while you're writing. It isn't that you're not allowed to ever read it, but while you're writing in the fandom. That's great. That's wonderful. I'm proud of you for that.

It can be really easy to fall into the hole of "I'm never going to be good enough." You read something and you can be so amazed by others. I'll bet, though, that if you wrote the exact story you just read, you would likely feel differently about it. Why? Because we artists are HARD on ourselves. It really is true when they say that artists are our own worst critics. We judge every word, every movement our characters make. Why? Because we know the story we're trying to tell. We know what we envisioned when we started typing.

To us, we're comparing our writing to what we wanted it to be.

Readers? Yeah, they can have expectations or hopes for writing, but they ultimately didn't know what we were envisioning while we wrote it. They only know what they read. So they see it with fresh eyes and they see it for what it is, not for what it was supposed to be.

So it's really easy for readers to see the amazing aspects of a writer's work when a writer might only see what they did wrong or what they had to change in order to make the story work.

It's still the same incredible piece. It's still wonderful and I'll bet you're a much better writer than you feel like you are. 💗🫂

Maybe take a step back. Maybe take a few days off, so that the feeling of being "worse" isn't so fresh. Maybe do something else or work on a totally different story. Busy your mind so it isn't focused on what you feel you're not doing right.

No one's perfect. I guarantee the writer that made the story you read is nitpicking the things they wish they didn't have to change or that they feel they could have worded better.

So cut yourself slack. Remember to love your writing, to love where you're at. Writing is a journey. It isn't about getting to the destination. It's about enjoying the ride there. :) You'll get there, just remember to appreciate your writing for what it is now. And one day, you'll be where you want to be. Just keep working at it and loving yourself and your work.

Thank you for reaching out and I really, really hope you find comfort in this response.

Happy writing, my dear nonnie. 💗 I'm wishing nothing but happiness and pride in your work.

~Hannah

[slxsherwriter]

chase harper x reader please ? 🥺

Evening, anon. Thanks for sending in something. I had a few different ideas for this, but Chase just feels like such a good character for fluff, especially compared to some of the other Costas characters. So, I hope you like this! Sometimes, we all need a little fluff and someone there to take care of us when we get too caught up.

Long days as an editor were typical. The sort of territory that just came with the job. But at the twenty hour mark, even you were beginning to struggle. It didn't help, but it had been days of this, all in a row. A heavy deadline loomed and missing it was not an option. Everyone else had opted to go home or get in a nap. Too tired and too mentally fried to properly do the work. Not you. Though, at the moment, you were just starting to regret that decision. Your eyes felt gritty enough that they could have classified as sandpaper while your vision was beginning to double. It was a dangerous incident when you were editing footage for a movie. Coffee. You needed more coffee. Caffeine and a lot of it was the only thing that was going to get you through the rest of this process. 

Pausing where you were at, it was an effort to pick yourself up and not fall over. Simultaneously, your limbs felt like lead weights and noodles. Groaning, there was a conscious effort that had to go into each and every movement. The coffee station wasn't all that far from the room that you were in, but with the current level of exhaustion, it might as well have been a one hundred mile walk. 

Coffee, sugar, creamer. A simple order of things. Stir it, blow, sip. Thankfully, muscle memory guided you through the process. It took about half the cup for it to really kick in. It wasn't in the suddenly you felt far more lively and awake sort of deal. It was more of a you didn't feel like falling over or passing out standing up sort of deals. 

Standing at the station like a gremlin, cup cradled between two hands, you weren't entirely keen on moving. No, let it sink in before you even thought about going back to the tiny room you had been crammed into for far longer than the human psyche could really handle. But that was the way it went with this industry. Work to exhaustion, have little praise or recognition for the work, start the cycle all over again. Even so, you loved it, which was why you stuck with it. 

Your cup was just about empty when you were startled out of your moment of peace. A warm arm wrapped around your waist and pulled you back against a broad chest. A nasty comment was sitting on the tip of your tongue when a familiar voice spoke right against your ear. 

“Have you been here the whole time?” A glance at the clock confirmed that it was time for others to start leaking back to the studio. Chase Harper was a producer who was hardly ever late to work. And that track record seemed to be holding. You had been at the studio for nearly a full day by now, if the time on the clock was right. 

“Yeah. I think this is the first time I've left the room in….six hours?” 

“Christ. When was the last time you ate?” Having him worry about you created a warmth in your chest. It was early enough that no one was going to walk in and see the affection traded between the two of you so you felt comfortable turning around in his arms. 

“I guess this is the part where I say I don't know, and you aren't thrilled with that answer…” The unimpressed look that he gave told you everything. “It was at some point yesterday. I lost track of time.” He shook his head.

“Come on, you are coming to my office. You're gonna eat and get a little shut eye before finishing whatever it is that needs your attention.” There wasn't any room for negotiating there.

“Your office?”

“Just come on,” he huffed with a small roll of his eyes, though there was a hint of a smile on his lips. His arm slid from your waist, but contact was kept when his hand wrapped around yours. 

The two of you had been dating for the better part of three months. Early on, it had been agreed upon to keep the relationship quiet and under wraps. For your sake and his, it was just the easier way to handle things. He had just finished up with a rather vicious divorce. And you? Well, it just seemed easier to let things settle before dealing with all the shit that came with dating a producer. Being seen coming out of his office while you two were likely the only ones here may seem a little obvious. But you were not about to argue because a small nap and a bit of food sounded perfect. 

The walk to his office felt like a bit of a blur. You hadn't even realized that he had ordered some breakfast, set to arrive in twenty minutes. Led to the couch, you collapsed and reached up to rub your eyes. The caffeine had given a little boost, but it was quickly fading. 

“You just gotta stay awake long enough to be able to eat, okay? Then I’ll wake you up after a short nap.” He settled down beside you and settled an arm around you. 

“You stay that close, and you're gonna lull me to sleep instead of keeping me awake.” The soft laugh that rumbled from his chest was felt as you rested your head against his shoulder. 

“I can think of a few different ways to keep you awake.” Fingers pressed under your chin gently, so you were forced to tip your head upwards. “Starting with this.” His lips pressed to yours. That was one way to be able to keep you awake. At least until the food arrived. The kiss was slow but not lazy enough that you could fade out into it. Just on the right side of demanding that it forced you to participate and succumb to whatever it was that he had in mind. 

Before anything could get too heated, however, his phone rang. He groaned softly but pulled away to grab it. Apparently, the food had arrived, and it was sitting at the front desk. 

“I'll be right back.” You nodded as he slipped away and moved out the door. Now that he had started to relax you, it was incredibly difficult to keep your eyes open. Your body swayed a little, and a few times, your head jerked as you started to fall asleep before nearly toppling over and waking up. Standing up, you decided moving was the best bet for you, simply walking around the rather spacious office in a circle. 

Chase was back in a flash, holding breakfast for the both of you, with a coffee for himself and a juice for you. 

“Here ya go. It isn't gourmet, but it's better than nothing.” You smiled. 

“It's perfect. Thank you.” There seemed to be some expectation about how things were perceived with him. But really, you couldn’t have cared less. You certainly weren't dating him because he made good money. You would have dated him if he didn't have a dime to his name. So, you always made sure that he didn’t feel self-conscious about things like this. Quick, cheap meals were always a good way to go when you were running on such little sleep. 

Once the food was gone, Chase had directed to lay out on the couch. Apparently, most of the work that he had to do today could be done from his office. At least that was what he said. It could have just been an excuse he used to get you to get a quick nap in. Either way, you weren't going to argue. Sleep was ready to overtake you whether you wanted it to or not. Curled up on the couch, you missed the footsteps that brought Chase over, but the warmth of his jacket  that he laid over you as a makeshift blanket was not missed. It smelled heavily of his cologne and caused you to smile, even in your sleepy state. 

“Get some sleep, sweetheart,” he murmured. You swore you heard him cancel some meeting this morning as you drifted off, but it was hardly a problem for the present. Nor did you really notice him lifting your head and resting it in his lap, fingers moving through your hair. 

[a-lonely-dunedain]

'hey, I'm not your pillow,' for character(s) of choice? :D

oh gosh I forgot about this one! I think I'll do this with Ethedis&Tossdir bc I've been very mean to Ethe in my discord lately so she deserves some cuddles with her bestie <3

...........after I chuck her down a minor plinko offscreen. Look, listen, how else am I going to get that sweet sweet hurt/comfort? she's FINE everything is FINE this is FLUFF

--------

“I think this is supposed to go the other way around...” Tossdir says quietly, wiping the dried blood and dirt from a small cut on Ethedis’ cheek with a damp cloth. He’d already finished patching up her more serious wound, thankful that Ethedis was conscious enough to guide him through most of it, and now all that's left is to tend to some minor cuts and scrapes.

Ethedis scoffs weakly "You're hardly the only one here the Iron Crown wants dead."

"No, but between the two of us, running headlong into danger is usually my job," he flashes a halfhearted smile, but it fades quickly as he returns his focus to her bandages, readjusting the ones on her arm that he had hastily tied earlier "and you’re far better at this part than I am…"

"You’re doing fine, Pîn-Toss." Ethedis gently assured, though Tossdir knew well that 'fine' was hardly comparable to what someone trained under Lord Elrond was capable of. He felt clumsy and out of place with such delicate work, only made worse by his nerves at the fact that his friend's life was in his hands at the time. He hoped Ethedis hadn't noticed how much his hands shook earlier.

"You’re usually just so careful… I never expected you to…" He trails off, too preoccupied in his worry to be annoyed at the nickname 'little-shrub' she had given him. He couldn't help but still be shaken by what happened. She was fine one moment, launching storms of embers and lightning at their foes, and then the next she was collapsed on the ground with an orcish blade in her side. She was barely responsive when he finally fought his way to her, only fully coming back to her senses after he managed to drag her back to their camp. The wound was, thankfully, not as deep as he initially feared, but ideally she should not be wounded at all.

"I try to be, though I’m unaccustomed to fighting so frequently. I overextended myself and paid the price, a mistake I do not plan to make again." Though admittedly, she didn't plan to make it this time, either. Calling upon natural powers would be taxing anywhere, and doubly so in a place like Angmar, but she had not yet learned how to accurately sense when she was at her limit. Until recently, she was a stranger the necessity. "I'm lucky you were with me, to think of what might have happened if I was alone…"

"Don't-" Tossdir winces at the thought, looking away "don’t even talk about that. Please."

"All right, I won't. But thank you all for saving me all the same"

"Not as if I had a choice, you know Corunir would have killed me if I let something happen to you." he says half-jokingly.

Ethedis snorts an almost-laugh "He wouldn't."

"He might."

"I think he's far too gentle for that," she says with a weary smile. "But in any case, you said we should not speak of such grim things..." Her head nodded slightly, as if she was having trouble keeping upright.

"Right," he gives her bandages one last look over, making certain he hadn't missed anything. "It looks like I've done all I can for now," he says after some hesitation "you should try to get some rest, I don't want you scaring me like that again any time soon..."

Ethedis nods again, this time in agreement, but instead of laying on her bedroll she leans forward and rests her head on his shoulder, her face nestled in the warm wool of his scarf.

"Hey, I'm not your-" Tossdir halfheartedly protests, but the words die on his lips. He hesitates a moment before gingerly putting an arm around her "...Alright, fine." Ethedis says nothing in response, but wears a small contented smile.

He carefully adjusted to a more comfortable position, with his back against the cliff their camp was set under, keeping his cloak wrapped snugly around the two of them. Soon enough, it seemed that Ethedis had fallen into sound sleep, the corners of her lips still turned in a slight smile. Tossdir just breathed a quiet sigh of relief, at least her injury didn't seem to be bothering her much. Maybe he had done a better job tending it than he'd given himself credit for.

Tossdir didn't sleep much that night, instead dutifully keeping watch over his friend, although it was probably unnecessary as Ethedis' raven friends were already tasked with guarding the camp and waking them if anyone came near. Still, Tossdir felt better keeping watch himself, maybe he was unable to protect her earlier today, but at least like this, he felt as if he could.

And besides, he never really trusted those birds anyway.

[gellavonhamster]

the wolf and the moon

Turn: Washington's Spies || Caleb Brewster/Benjamin Tallmadge || unspecified fantasy/magic AU ao3 link eng || this was first written and published on ao3 in Russian in 2017 but I didn’t attempt to translate it into English back then. 

You must not be afraid of the changes that I've made

I have come now to bring you away

To our bed that I have made with the seven stones I've laid

And covered in the finest of clay

Lay your head upon the ground, you shall never be found

I will guard against dangers that be

Until dawn comes around you must not make a sound

And I swear you will forever be with me

(Birch Book – Werewolf’s Eyes)

Looking back, Ben is utterly angry at himself for not catching on to what was happening to him until it was too late.

First he notices all smells become sharper. Gunpowder, sweat, horse dung, damp earth, campfire smoke, hair pomade. Hundreds of smells that were not as distinct before surround him in a smothery cloud that seems dense enough to spoon it up like fat broth. Ben frowns, dizzy with this suffocating mixture, and steals furtive glances at the others, trying to find out if they feel the same, but everyone is acting like everything’s normal. He does not dare to ask, suspecting how strange that would sound. The other officers keep their guard up with him as it is – sure, he’s well-mannered and all, but still, heaven knows what to expect from those magicians.

On the last night before the full moon, he blows out a candle in his tent, and suddenly realizes he can see perfectly in the dark. Then he begins to understand – although just what, not how. If he was bitten, he would have remembered it – or would he not? Leave it to Rogers and his men to wipe out his memories. Everyone knows his unit is made up of only those endowed with at least middling witchcraft powers. It is for this reason that much later Ben is so surprised to find out that Jordan – that is, Akinbode – has joined the ranks of Rangers. It is odd and upsetting to know that all those years someone else in Setauket was able to do magic apart from the four of them, and they had not the slightest idea.

It might be that the bayonet he was wounded with was soaked in something. Werewolf’s blood? Werewolf’s saliva? The next day, Ben all but runs to his tent each time he has a minute to spare and leafs through his papers frantically, his own notes and torn-out book pages alike. His command of sorcery is much poorer than imagined by most people in their army, Washington included. Compared to those who couldn’t even deal with a simple spell, he’s a magician indeed. In truth, however – and being aware of it has never made him feel as dejected before – he’s just another self-taught amateur. If what is happening to him is exactly what all the evidence suggests, then he is helpless. All he can do is steal out of the tent when it gets dark and the moon’s silver disk starts to glisten behind the clouds, and rush towards the forest. He manages to put on a smoke-and-mirrors spell so that no one notices he’s gone; at least he’s good enough for such trifles.

He makes it to the woods in time – as soon as he steps into the thicket, he convulses with excruciating pain. A bayonet is like a mosquito bite compared to that; worse, finishing off his brother in arms so as not to give himself away in front of Rogers and his band of warlocks is like a mosquito bite compared to that. It feels as if huge invisible hands are kneading him like dough and sculpting his flesh and bones into something else, ugly and unnatural. Ben struggles to keep his mouth shut, but he still screams.

Then he howls.

Then he’s racing through the woods surrounded by thousands of smells, which don’t seem as obnoxious as before, and he feels good – as good as never before, especially compared to that terrible pain earlier. The moss is springy under his paws and the air is fresh, and the blood of the hare he caught is hot and tastes better than any food he’s ever tried. There is no trace of the fear that has weighed down on him that entire day. How could he be afraid of this?

But when he wakes up at dawn in the depths of the forest completely naked, shivering with cold, his human face smeared with blood, the fear returns.

And the night after it proves itself justified.

***

After the second night, Ben returns to the camp, slips into his tent, falls down on his knees and howls and howls more than he did at night in honour of the full moon.

He has only vague memories of what happened. A dark silhouette sneaking through the woods. A jump, a loud cry, the cracking of neck vertebrae. A blue uniform torn to pieces. A warm throat in his maw. All of it blurred, befuddling; an unpleasant dream right before waking up. But what he saw in the morning he remembers clearly – and will never forget.

He’s not throwing up. He’s choking on tears, he’s shaking with disgust, but he’s not throwing up at all. God, why isn’t he throwing up from the thought of having gorged himself of human flesh last night?

Ben forces himself to get up. His body moves as if by itself – and is it his own anymore, really? Or is the only body he inhabits now that of a wolf, for which that nightmare is just another hunt, and not the most heinous crime imaginable? He keeps looking around the tent dully, until he understands that the thing he needs, the only thing that can save him and the others, is already at hand.

He cocks the pistol and puts it to his temple.

“No!”

An unseen force wrenches the pistol from his hand and throws it into the corner. A shot rings out – in vain.

“You shot a hole through my wall,” Ben says, tired. He doesn’t turn around; he can’t look Caleb in the eye, not after what he did last night. But Caleb is beside him in a blink of an eye, grabs his hand painfully, and makes him turn around – and then he has to look.

Ben isn’t sure he’s ever seen Caleb in such rage before.

“Screw you, Tallboy,” Caleb spits out wrathfully, looking up at him. “Have you lost your mind? What the hell was that?!”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s easier just to blow your brains out, right? Ben,” the tone of his voice changes, and so does his look, and now Caleb is looking at him with a desperate plea and fear and concern, and Ben wants to push him away and shout at him leave, I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve a single drop of your worry, leave. “What’s going on?”

Ben wants to push him away – and yet he cannot.

“You’re going to hate me if I tell you.”

“No,” Caleb says firmly.

That’s what I fear, Ben thinks.

When he comes to the part about him killing someone – no, not just killing but half-devouring him, tearing him to pieces to the point of barely being able to make out the face in the morning, not a familiar one yet still striking horror and grief into him – he realizes he’s crying again. Ben wipes off his tears with his sleeve violently, hoping that Caleb doesn’t think he’s asking for pity. Pity he does not deserve. All he deserves is the pistol, now picked up off the ground and lying on the table, in wait for its hour. Ben knows what he’s going to ask of Caleb when he finishes his story. Ben is tormented by an almost complete certainty that Caleb will refuse him.

“We-e-ell,” drawls out Caleb when Ben is done. He was listening with uncharacteristic sobriety, but with no apparent fear, and that is wrong. He ought to be scared. “What was that poor devil even doing in the woods at night…”

“Caleb, what’s the difference?”

“Was he tryin’ to desert or what?”

“What. Is. The difference?” Ben draws back and stares at his friend with outrage. “What of it if he was? Even had it been a redcoat – Caleb, I bit a man to death! Tore out his throat like he was a rabbit!”

“Hush,” Caleb raises up both hands as if trying to shield himself from Ben’s voice. “Quit yelling. Here, drink,” he fishes a flat flask of Madeira out of the inside pocket of his coat, and pushes it into Ben’s hands.

“Right,” he begins as Ben drinks, gagging and coughing. “So we have to figure out what to do with that trouble of yours.”

“I’ve already figured everything out, and I was trying to do just that, until you barged in.”

“And thank God I did! Ben, I won’t let you kill yourself!”

“Then you will have to kill me,” Ben retorts, and takes the pistol from the table. “In the woods, now. Let’s go.”

Caleb stares at him in horror.

“No.”

“Lieutenant Brewster,” Ben raises his voice and holds the pistol out to Caleb, “that’s an order!”

Caleb takes the pistol and throws it aside – not by magic this time, but simply by hand.

“Stick your orders where the sun don’t shine, Captain,” he replies, his chin defiantly up. “Listen to me. We’re both magicians, right? We’ll figure it out and no one will have to shoot anyone. I’ll figure it out.”

Ben is silent. He’s scared of death, because he knows for sure he’ll go to hell – a magician, even though the church has a complex stance on magic; a killer, even though everyone kills at war; a werewolf, even though not of his own volition; a sodomite, even though he hasn’t ever dared to proposition anyone. He hates himself for this weakness, but he really is scared, man and wolf inside him alike. Besides, the army needs him, Washington needs him, his friends whom he dragged into another risky business need him. Of course he would prefer to stay alive – but he doesn’t see any conditions under which it is possible without subjecting others to mortal peril.

“Trust me,” Caleb says quietly, resolutely. He stares at Ben, imploring him with his warm, always so endlessly warm eyes, and Ben gives up.

***

At night, Ben returns to the forest, and the wolf returns home.

He throws off the scruples of conscience together with his former appearance. Only a tiny part remains, caught on that scrap of human sentience that still remains with him. That scrap causes him pain, but it also brings him hope – hope that strong as the wolf might be, it cannot beat Benjamin Tallmadge. He’s still here, with his guilt and his fear and his remorse, and he has no intention to leave this head.

But the wolf’s hunger is strong, and now, when the wolf has already partaken of human flesh, it’s all the more dangerous.

The camp is asleep. Only the sentries are walking to and fro, small figures barely distinguishable from the edge of the woods. Ben – no, the wolf, that’s all wolf – looks at them and makes a step forward.

A noise behind his back makes him turn around.

It’s a bear. Not the biggest there is, but undoubtedly still bigger than him. Ben bares his fangs, but is in no hurry to run away. It is the first time he sees this bear, the first time he sees any bear, but this one smells like something very familiar, something like home, and for the wolf it is enough not to be afraid of it.

The bear approaches him, extends a foreleg the way a person would extend a hand to point at something, and growls as if calling him somewhere. Ben turns to look at the sentries again.

The bear growls louder and gently nudges him with its paw, and Ben gives up.

Together they disappear deep into the woods, and then they hunt down a big deer, and its meat tastes almost as good as the meat of that young man – deserter or not – that Ben recently murdered.

When Ben wakes up as a man, he realizes two things. The first is that at night he managed to return closer to the camp, because the gnarled oak under which he’s lying is well familiar to him.

The second is that someone’s lying by his side, hugging him at the small of his back.

Ben detaches himself, pushing off the hugging arm, and sits up abruptly.

“Caleb,” and of course it’s Caleb, naked and muddy like him, with leaves and tiny twigs in his hair and beard. “Caleb, wake up!”

“Why are you yellin’, why d’ya always have to yell?” Caleb mutters drowsily, and bats Ben’s hand away when Ben tries to shake him by the shoulder. At last he opens his eyes and sits up too. “Morning, Benny.”

“Morning?” Ben is positively at a loss. He certainly doesn’t like the most obvious explanation – that is, that Caleb followed him through the woods last night, at the risk of being mauled by a beast that does not care who Benjamin Tallmadge’s closest childhood friends are. “Caleb, how did you get here? How did you find me? Did you go after me last night or what?”

“Yeah,” Caleb shrugs, stretches, and gets up, and Ben does his utmost to look away. Caleb pulls clothes, his own and Ben’s, from a hole beneath the oak roots, and throws him his shirt. “Spent all night with you, don’t you remember?”

When it dawns upon Ben, he is halfway through putting his shirt on, and his sudden shudder almost results in him tearing it.

“You’re out of your mind,” he hisses, leaps to his feet too, and grabs Caleb by the shirt. If someone catches them like that – away from the camp, scantily clad – it won’t be easy to explain themselves, but this is not what he’s worried about at present. “I thought you promised to figure out how to stop the wolf!”

“And I did,” Caleb replies nonchalantly, struggling to pry Ben’s fingers away from his sleeve.

“By becoming the same thing as I?!”

“I’m not the same thing, Ben! You were turned, I turned myself. You become a wolf, I keep a man’s mind in a bear’s body. A curious ritual, I learned about it in Canada,” Caleb covers his hand with his own and grins with delight. “Was eager to try it out for some time, see if I could handle it.”

Ben could say a lot about Caleb’s flippant attitude towards magic, but he has long understood that in some cases, it is no use wasting his breath.

“And how is this going to help up?” is all he asks.

Caleb smiles. Every time it gives him laughter lines; this mirth is going to make him all wrinkles when he grows old.

“Weren’t you lickin’ your lips at the sentries last night? But you didn’t go to them. You went with me. I’m stronger and bigger, I can hold you back if needed,” he gives Ben’s shoulder a friendly slap. “As long as I’m with you, you won’t hurt anybody.”

No, thinks Ben, but if neither you nor I are strong enough to resist our respective beast, there will be even more victims.

***

Strange as it may be, it works out. From one full moon to another, their lives are nearly the same as before – the military affairs, the spy ring business, magic-related or not. The bear guards the wolf against hunting in the camp of the Continental Army. Lieutenant Brewster guards Captain – now Major – Tallmadge against going mad with self-loathing and self-abhorrence.

Nathaniel Sackett, a seasoned magician, gets to the bottom of it at once.

“You need a suitable amulet, young man,” he says, looking over Ben with the curiosity of a scientist who has caught a peculiar bird. “Then it will be easier for you to control yourself. You’ll even be able not to depend on the full moon and transform whenever it is convenient for you. Like your friend here.”

“Convenient?” Ben echoes, frowning. “It will never be ‘convenient’ for me, sir. It is not about my convenience, but about the safety of others.”

“But you could be useful on the battlefield in this, hmm, capacity.” Sackett doesn’t seem to notice Ben’s indignation. “Haven’t it occurred to you?”

“No,” lies Ben.

Sackett clicks his tongue. “I’ll see what could be done.”

“He’s insane,” whispers Ben in frustration, when Sackett leaves to meet Washington.

Caleb shrugs. “All magicians are a bit out there,” he points out philosophically. “Just look at the two of us. Though we clearly have a long way to go compared to him.”

“Oh, it’s all fun to you, isn’t it? You furry blockhead.”

“No furrier than you,” Caleb replies good-naturedly.

If it was not for his cheerful nature and eternal unshakeable faith in them being able to get through it all, the wolf would have long gnawed down Benjamin Tallmadge’s soul.

***

The amulet that Sackett hands him looks like a flower or an open pine cone – petals made of different species of wood, and a silver core.

“Put it around your neck on the full moon. And don’t you dare take it off even if it hurts. And it will hurt,” he instructs. “Concentrate on the memories of home, family, friends, loved ones – everything that makes you human. Brewster shall watch over you. I believe it sensible for him to do that in his bear form, to be on the safe side.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ben says ardently as he takes the pendant.

The first night of the full moon, he doesn’t succeed. The amulet hurts him indeed – like pressing a hot iron to his chest. Ben musters all his strength, but in the end he cannot bear it, and tears the pendant off. On his chest, a red print remains. That night he howls at the moon desperately, and Caleb lies in a pit and watches him and waits patiently for him to cry it all out.

The following night, Caleb ties him to a tree.

“Are you sure?” he asks for the last time.

Ben snarls.

The moon comes out, and the amulet bites into his skin, into the still-raw yesterday’s burn. Caleb shucks off his clothes and shapeshifts. Ben still cannot get used to how awful the transformation appears to an onlooker – the body mashed and spread and bent, the limbs twisting unnaturally, the fur growing out in an instant. Ben is well familiar with the kind of pain Caleb is experiencing, but even it seems like nothing compared to the one caused by the amulet.

Sackett told him: when he subdues the wolf, the pain will cease.

Sackett told him: keep thinking of what makes you human.

Through pain, Ben reminisces his father and his late mother, his brothers, their sweet old house and the neat small church in Setauket. The memories of home seem like the memories of a past life; none of this exists anymore. The British soldiers sit in their church. Samuel is dead. Nathan, whom he also reminisces, whom he could never forget, is dead as well.

The silver burns his skin, the tree bark scratches even through the shirt, and the wolf inside him howls in pain. It is hard to focus on anything but pain, yet he tries.

Father. Abe. Anna. Washington.

Happy New Year, Tallboy.

Caleb, his sleepy smile, the warmth by his side, the arm on his waist.

I won’t let you kill yourself.

Ben screams until he suddenly realizes that the pain has passed. The bear lying next to him raises his head and nuzzles against his thigh.

The night after, he stares at the moon with human eyes, the amulet pleasantly cooling his chest.

***

Little by little, he learns – not only to trap the beast inside, but also to let it out when it is his own wish, not that of the skies above. When the moon isn’t full, the hunger isn’t as strong, and he need not fear that his feet – his paws – would bring him to the camp; not that Caleb would let that happen, anyway. What he is the most afraid of is losing the amulet in the thicket; he keeps Sackett’s notes, in which it is explained, among other useful things, how to make one, but that would require a long time and a variety of materials that would be hard to come by.

Little by little, he learns to accept that he likes it – the quiet of the woods, the moonlight, the wind singing in his ears, the delicious night air, clear as spring water. The thrill of the hunt and the lazy bliss of fullness. Falling asleep with his nose pressed into the coarse brown fur; waking up with his cheek pressed against Caleb’s chest. Something completely unthinkable and still completely natural, as if someone decided way before they were born that they would sleep best like that – nestled up to each other, not a scrap of clothes between them, the all-forgiving starlight above.

Sometimes Ben is grateful to Rogers for cursing him.

Once, having woken up at sunrise, he goes through the memories of the past night – now that his animal form is subject to the amulet, it is much easier to restore them. They killed a deer and feasted on the hot meat, and then fell down to the ground, sated and tired. The bear tumbled on his back spread-eagle, rolling about funnily and flattening the moss. The wolf climbed on top of him and nipped at his nose. Both had snouts and paws covered in blood, and they licked each other for a long time, played like pups, until the wolf fell asleep and the bear must’ve fallen asleep after him.

Ben, having carefully disentangled himself from Caleb, gazes at him and thinks absentmindedly that the dark hair on his chest and belly looks like animal fur. And that the wolf has already fallen asleep, retreated into the farther corner of his mind, and yet he still wants to lick.

Ben has no idea if beasts are prone to the same sin as some men, including him, but he knows that a wolf cannot and would not think of mating with a bear. The shade their night-time games acquire in his eyes does not come from the wolf, which cannot tell right from wrong. It comes from Benjamin Tallmadge, reverend’s son, the honorary virgin of the entire Continental Army, who’d rather die than admit why he never joined his fellows on a visit to a brothel. He remembers Caleb telling him that the ritual lets him keep a human mind in a beast’s body. Ben is not sure it is still so; Caleb turned without him present several times, stayed alone with the bear, and sometimes Ben worries that confident in his power, he might succumb to his second nature entirely. Still, what Ben would like to know most of all is what Caleb the bear, or Caleb the man in a bear’s frame, thought when he ran his rough tongue over Ben’s belly.

He daren’t ask, but in the evening, when they already can sleep peacefully in the camp because the moon has begun to wane, he comes to Caleb’s tent. The candle is blown out, but Caleb, who is now able to see in the dark perfectly well, like Ben, is still awake.

“Tallboy, what is it?” Caleb asks anxiously when Ben enters and carefully closes the tent flaps. “Has something happened?”

Ben steps up to him, heart beating so wildly as if it is going to break out of his body, and tilts his head to lick Caleb’s neck, animal-like, and then kisses him on the lips, as people do.

Caleb sighs loudly, his eyes closed, and leans to kiss him back.

He growls, leaning on Ben with all his weight on the cot too narrow for two, and Ben bites Caleb’s shoulder when he comes, but apart from that they have no reason to blame all that on the animals in their heads.

That night, Ben presses his snout – no, his face – to Caleb’s neck, and sleeps even more soundly than in the open air.

***

Gradually, the truth comes out. Not all of it, fortunately; not about the two of them. And not about Ben, in contrast to Caleb, being turned against his will, not being able to control the beast at first, and tearing a fellow soldier to pieces on top of that. Everyone believes Ben made the decision to turn in order to become a more dangerous foe to the British army. Washington thinks so. Everyone thinks so. Ben is in no hurry to change their minds.

On the battlefield, both of them are of more use on two feet, with weapons and spells ready, but a couple of times, when ambush is required, they face the enemy in their other bodies. This is enough for the British to start talking about them. As Ben learns from Townsend, casting a spell to communicate with him through a bowl of water (at the end of the conversation, Townsend, icily polite, asks him if he could henceforth warn him somehow before appearing in his washbasin – if it is not too much trouble, of course), the blue-eyed wolf even gains some grand nicknames in the enemy camp. The General’s Cerberus, Washington’s Hellhound. The fact that Ben, lofty manner notwithstanding, is still considered to be a dog is insufferably amusing to Caleb. The latter, however, is not accorded anything more sophisticated than the Shaggy Devil or the Hairy Devil or similar variations on the theme of the devil and bears. Ben likes to respond to Caleb’s dog-related teasing by saying that Caleb’s human appearance is as deserving of these names as the animal one, if not more.

In the camp, they’re respected, yet given a wide berth – both of them, even the ever jovial Caleb, and that continues when Anna joins them. The soldiers are intrigued by her, but also intimidated – which is not unwise, to be fair, considering she’s always been the most skilled magician among the four of them. Washington’s coven, soldiers whisper. A witch and two warlocks – only Abe is missing from the set.

Ben is glad Anna is with them – not just because he needn’t worry she might get in trouble away from her friends, but also because they need a safeguard. He’s reached an understanding with his wolf, and Caleb has been in tune with his bear from the start, but at the end of the day they are still wild beasts. He makes Anna a copy of the instruction on how to make the amulet from Sackett’s notes, and tells her to always keep a pistol with at least two silver bullets at hand to stop him or Caleb if worst comes to worst. Or (he doesn’t say that, though) to stop Caleb first and then, regardless of circumstances, him. An amulet is an amulet, but Ben cannot shake off the feeling that the lion’s share of his control over the beast is tied to Caleb’s presence.

He has heard somewhere that wolves mate for life anyway.

“I just hope I won’t have to use it,” says Anna with a sad smile, accepting the pistol.

“You won’t have to,” Caleb says with confidence and hugs her by the shoulders. “It’ll be alright.”

Ben looks at them, and the wolf in his head curls up snugly and falls asleep.

[opalimagines]

Missing

Courtney finds you after The Shade disappears. Takes place the night of Summer School: Chapter Six.

Rick Tyler/gn!reader (He's not in this one though)

Warnings: None

"Hey."

You looked up from where you sat on the floor, your knees hugged to your chest. It was Courtney Whitmore who spoke, and who hesitantly came to sit next to you in the middle of the wrecked cafeteria.

Only a mere few hours ago, Eclipso had been released in that very room. He'd killed Cindy and Isaac...The Shade, too, it seemed. Courtney sure didn't want to be there after that, but for some reason, you did.

"How did you know I was here?" You asked softly, trying to hide the waver in your voice as you wiped away tears with your sleeve.

"Apparently, when you use your powers, Beth's goggles can pick up the energy. She said you ran all over town then came here, and you haven't moved since." Courtney reached out and put a hand on your shoulder. "We wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm waiting for my father to come back. That's all. I looked everywhere for him and didn't find anything, so I thought he might show up where he disappeared."

"Are you sure he's-?"

"Yes, I'm sure. He's immortal—over 200 years old. He can't die." He'd show up there to pick up his things, and he'd say some kind of witty retort. Because he was going to be just fine, no matter what Eclipso had done to him.

"I've done quite a bit of crime fighting with my father in Opal City, you know. The Shade doing that might sound strange, but he doesn't like any crime going on in Opal. He loves the city." You sniffled, and Courtney rubbed your shoulder. "Stopping bank robbers is nothing compared to what happened tonight. Eclipso killed those other kids. He hurt my father and your friend, Rick. It was..."

"Terrifying," Courtney finished.

"Exactly." Looking at her with your puffy eyes, you asked the question everyone else had been thinking. "Will we be able to stop him now that he's free?"

The staff wasn't working, and her friends and Pat had all been hurt. People were dead. But Courtney still had hope. Always. "Yeah, we will."

"And how can you be sure?"

"Well, me and my friends defeated the ISA a few months ago." Courtney's hand dropped to rest in her lap as she gave you a reassuring smile. "As long as the JSA is together, we can do anything. And that includes getting justice for everyone Eclipso has hurt."

Her words made your heart clench. You didn't have a team you could trust, or friends who believed in you. All you really had was your father, and he was...missing.

You remembered that he wasn't the only father figure that had gotten hurt that day. "Your dad...Is he doing alright?"

"Pat? He's awake now. The doctor said he could come home in a few days." She couldn't help feeling a bit awkward about her answer, considering you were waiting for someone who might not come home at all. Courtney stood up and held her hand out to you. "Come on, let's go. It's been a long night, and my mom and Mike are waiting outside."

"Go where?" You asked, looking at her hand in confusion.

"I'm not sure where you've been staying, but with The Shade missing, you shouldn't be alone. We have room for you."

You got to your feet, the exhaustion from crying really hitting you. After everything that had happened, it felt like you hadn't slept in days. "I appreciate the offer, but I'll be okay, Courtney. You were right, it's been a long night, so I'm going to try and get some sleep."

Courtney nodded and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "You know where to find me if you change your mind."

"And I'm staying in an abandoned mansion on the North side of town. In case you need my help, or you see my father."

If Courtney was correct, it sounded like you were staying at Henry's old house, but it wasn't the best time to bring up that ISA connection.

"Thank you, Courtney," you said with a sniff as you looked towards the hat and cane that still lay on the floor. "For checking up on me."

She gave you a soft, sympathetic smile, and it was the last thing you saw before you ran back to the King mansion and changed into your pajamas, all in a single second.

As you got in bed and let sleep take over, you hoped that Courtney was right about Eclipso.

[deusexlachina]

Wannabe Warden Part 16: Become the Ultimate Darkspawn Slayer

In which I do everything possible to become the deadliest possible enemy of darkspawn. Short of becoming a Grey Warden.

(And, to do it, I use the ultimate weapon of the Grey Wardens: Math.)

It is now Act 3. This is the peak of Aveline's journey. This is when her story comes to a close, when her companions finish their arcs, and, most importantly, when her build is finished. Is she a deadly striker? A flexible battlefield controller? But there is only one true path for Aveline.

I build her to kill darkspawn as efficiently as possible.

Nothing says "as efficiently as possible" as the Primeval Lyrium Rune, so this is the first step in my darkspawn-slaying aspiration. I get this as a reward for doing a quest dealing with the fallout of the deadly red lyrium, which induced Bartrand to betray his brother, broke his mind, and now a mere fragment of it is making a haunted house, with floating pottery and everything, which is a feat because there's not even a ghost story here, just a really nasty rock.

As we venture deeper into the house, Varric becomes increasingly desperate to find the red lyrium shard, being uncharacteristically rough with a survivor. His mind is already beginning to be distorted by the unholy thing, but he insists on keeping the shard - he needs it to find a way to save his brother! But that's more the shard talking, so I take it from him, which he later thanks me for. I dispose of the exceedingly dangerous shard in the safest way possible: by giving the shard, which can make dwarves evil, to Sandal, who lives in my house and can make explosives.

He then makes it into a rune. That's the Primeval Lyrium Rune. I've taken it away for Varric just to use it for myself as a weapon. This is exactly what Knight-Commander Meredith does, an act that leads to her becoming increasingly evil and then a rock. But Bartrand, Varric and Knight-Commander Meredith don't have the strength of a Grey Warden. Neither do I, but that's a technicality. I just decide not to be corrupted. I'm Merrilling the red lyrium.

But I can only use the Primeval Lyrium Rune once, so the next step is to find the perfect anti-darkspawn weapon. Darkspawn have two weaknesses - spirit, because they're unholy creatures, and nature, because uh poison fucks them up I guess. My only Nature option is Desdemona's Blade, which is largely obsolete. I don't feel bad for it. It's had more than enough glory for one blade. That leaves the best spirit weapons - the Celebrant and the Edge of Night.

Most would say the Celebrant is the better of these. (Many would say Bloom, the ice axe, is better than either of these, or anything else, but they're wrong because cold damage is not the most efficient way to kill darkspawn, my true enemy). But after the Arishok fight, I'm feeling especially skeptical - not to mention spiteful - of conventional wisdom. I tanked the Arishok that you supposedly can't tank, and melted him with a one-hander, which supposedly might as well be safety scissors. So I do a few tests of my own.

I do some math and the Edge of Night is better than the Celebrant. With each equipped with the red lyrium, the Edge is just over 15% faster, which is fantastic if you're a Berserker and do lots of damage per hit. Wait! I am that thing! The Celebrant deals slightly more damage per hit...but the difference is miniscule compared to my overall damage, whereas the attack speed difference is much larger and scales better.

I need to test it in practice, and I find the perfect unwilling research participant: a High Dragon has killed everyone working at the mine, which it always does regardless of what you do, whether you save the miners from three other threats or don't even induce them to come back to the mine in the first place. I feel like there must be some kind of moral here, but the best I can think of is the dangers of unaccompanied miners.

But this is just me being scientific. Of course the Edge is better. I just mathed it out. So I confidently stride out to slay the High Dragon and die horribly to hordes and hordes of its shitty babies. I try again, in case that time was a fluke, and die horribly again and again. I'm...just not killing them fast enough. But...but the math! Did the math let me down, just like Other Aveline? The High Dragon is laughing at me so hard that its jaw dislocates.

I try with the Celebrant, and said babies aren't even a problem. I start to wonder if the consensus is a consensus for a reason. But I'm stubborn. I'm determined to prove that a one-hander can be the ultimate darkspawn slayer. I practice more, and find that - while the AOE is much smaller than for a 2-hander, with some fancy footwork, I can manipulate enemies into my small arc, hitting more of them at the same time than it looks like I should be able to with my tiny swings - swings noticeably faster than a 2-hander. I also try a different set of talents, this time taking Perception so enemies get no advantage from being behind me. They're hitting my exposed back but, uh, they aren't. Skill issue. This does a lot to help with survivability.

I also try out Adrenaline, which trades stamina for damage. This is the same thing as Berserk but even more. The tactical depth here is stunning, though not as stunning as the fact that some Berserkers don't use it. Including me, until now. Even the Mach-5 Massacre guide, probably the best build that has survived the purge of the Bioware forums, says jury's out on Adrenaline. I don't know who bribed this jury, because as soon as I fully upgrade it and start spamming it, in conjunction with my usual Vanguard, Berserker and Reaver tricks, I'm killing dragon babies so fast that I risk long-term ecological devastation. Guys I'm starting to think adding 8% to all your damage per cast with no cooldown over 8 seconds might be a little broken.

This is representative damage without any Adrenaline. I would show you damage with Adrenaline, but it's a little tricky to get a screenshot of that, because the enemies die too quickly. The High Dragon can take it, but he's so big that my damage doesn't always display, which is not a big deal at all unless you're doing some kind of damage experiment.

Seething with bloodlust, adrenaline and, most intoxicating of all, the sensation of proving other people wrong, I hack my way through dragon after dragon until the High Dragon runs out of babies to throw at me. I slay it without caring how I got up on its head, why I didn't lead with that, or what my shield is doing floating several inches from my body.

I am victorious, not only against the High Dragon, but against everyone who said one-handers were bad. With its blood, I make a rune of valiance for my gloves and a rune of devastation to make the Edge of Night even deadlier.

I am now ready to slay darkspawn so quickly that the Wardens can no longer deny my prowess. I will reunite with Bethany and avenge Carver. All I need now is the perfect chance to show off my might...

[gothark]

Books I've read in September 2024:

And what I thought about them:

Stars of Chaos Vol 1 - the plot is really interesting but the translation is a bit rough in my opinion so it was a little hard to get into. once i was in though i was very intrigued

4.25 Stars

Stars of Chaos Vol 2 - plot is plotting, relationships are relationshipping and the the translation is better in this one! this is also the one that got me properly hooked with the series though it's definitely more plot than relationship focused (i didn't really mind)

4.5 Stars

Stars of Chaos Vol 3 - mmmm yes good fucking food. i was so upset when i read this and saw that the 4th volume won't be out until the end of september, i was not ready to let go but alas reality did not give me a choice. basically if you liked the earlier two you are gonna like this one as well

4.5 Stars

The Battle of the Labyrinth - oh look i'm at it again, another nostalgia fueled joy ride... but ngl even outside of nostalgia these books are just good, easy to read and i did read this one and the last olympian literally in a single day

5 Stars

The Last Olympian - oh no who would have guessed?? it's not like i literally mentioned it lol such a good end to the original series ngl and i was so down to get started on the other 30-ish books in the extended universe lmao

5 Stars

The Lost Hero - so close to being as good as the original but jason isn't as compelling as percy, leo is a bit hard to get used to and piper is lowkey annoying because all she can think about is her relationship with jason. i get it, your memories being fake sucks but please talk about literally anything else. also slight pacing issues because this was 150 pages longer than any of the percy jackson books and i thought the shorter length worked much better

4.75 Stars

The Outsiders - this was fine, i didn't really care about any of the characters? had slight 2015 fanfic vibes. there is also the issue of me just not liking contemporary apparently

3 Stars

Morning Star - dear god was this so good. the plot twist at the end??? omg. gobsmacked. basically loved the entire ending except for mustangs little surprise lol i thought that was not needed but that is also a very biased opinion. everyone read this btw

5 Stars

The Son of Neptune - percy is back so i liked this a lot more lol hazel and frank are also much more sympathetic to me so i liked them more too xD still has the pacing issue of just being too long

4.75 Stars

The Darkness Outside Us - reread but still one of my favorite books ever, i mostly reread this to get my friends to read it and as a refresher before the second book comes out, i also won't say much about the plot because pretty much everything is spoilers. gays in space, that's all you need to know

5 Stars

The Mark of Athena - book 1 and two collide and so do all the things i liked and disliked lol so glad to have nico back? more of him pls and thanks (still too long)

4.75 Stars

Lor - finally finishing off the series to wait for further releases but this was pretty good, one of my new favorite couples and a super interesting take compared to the other ones. literally my only problem is that it's just too much smut but it's erotica so i'm barking at my own reflection but that's also just my opinion, what can you do

4.5 Stars

Young Mungo - reading this felt genuinly offensive as someone who is neurodivergent. it also felt like all it wanted to do was get in everything horrible it could possibly fit. it's just here to make you feel b a d and not even done well! so i dnf'd it lmao DNF

A Collection of Monstrous Short Stories - ... you will be so surprised but reading this one was a chore for me because it's a solid 60-70% of smut and as just established i just can't take that xD i got so annoyed at this book it's not even funny and it's all my fault

3.5 Stars

IT - soo... i might get stoned for this but I dnf'd this one like halfway through. it's not a bad book but i just couldn't take all the slurs anymore??? like there was literally no reason to use slurs that heavily for 'historical accuracy' at some point it's just offensive and this one reached that line and kept on going.

DNF