creds to @epiimetheux !!!
i kept coming back to this beautiful artwork and i got inspired by it so here you go...
(disclaimer: i haven't completed a fic in forever, let alone published one, so i'm very anxious about this, i apologise if it's a mess •~•♡ love you guys)
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tom watches from the side as his husband steps forward to his coffin. pete's head is bowed, but he can see the trembling of his lips and the coiled muscles in his jaw.
oh my love.
what i'd give to embrace you one more time.
he knew he couldn't reach his husband anymore. his time had passed.
that didn't keep tom from standing next to pete's side. keeping watch. protecting his wingman, as they'd promised to each other years ago on that fateful day.
when repressed feelings and pretentious rivalry finally made way for the unconditional love thay had never wavered once.
partnership that had lasted 33 years.
tom watched as pete took the wings off his uniform, laying them onto the smooth oak.
the gun salutes were no more than background noise, tom's sole focus lying on the man in front of him.
the moment he saw pete punching the wings into the coffin he felt an incredible warmth spread through his chest.
such a feeling had been limited to very few moments in his life.
in the cockpit of his plane, soaring above the clouds with ron at his back and pete right by his side.
the return from the layton mission.
aching and sweaty and all kinds of shaken up but alive, thriving on adrenaline and pent up energy.
they had only seen each other then.
not iceman and maverick, but tom and pete, right there on the deck, what ron had later jokingly called their "confession".
their wedding. finally being allowed to slip a ring onto pete's finger while surrounded by all their loved ones. to call him his husband for everyone to see and hear without having to fear anymore. forever and always - the ending of both of their vows.
when their son had come back to them.
pete, bradley and himself crying with relief in their kitchen as they embraced for the first time in years. pete almost losing it as bradley started called him 'dad' again, and tom almost following suit when 'pops' returned back to daily use.
in that hospital bed, when he'd kissed his husband for the last time. he had wiped the tears on pete's cheeks with trembling hands, mapping that gorgeous face he knew better than the back of his own hand.
hushed i love you's in the quiet of the room, both signed and said out loud as they held each other.
the last words he felt pressed against his forehead being 'forever and always', before he slipped away into neverland.
tom looked over his shoulder just as pete stepped back from the coffin.
the wings on his back were strikingly white. glossy and strong feathers fluttered softly in the wind, and tom couldn't help the smile that spread on his face.
i will protect you, my heart.
my wingman.
my everything.
carefully he guided his wings around pete's sides. shielding him for just a moment. providing the endless support he couldn't give in person anymore.
pete looked up towards the sky, just like the rest of the crowd, watching as the missing man formation flew by.
everyone watched the sky, but tom couldn't tear his eyes away from his husband. how the dusking sun reflected in those tender green eyes. the curve of his nose, and the sweet lips he'd kissed so very often, now being worried at between pearly teeth.
i love you, forever and always.
as if he heard him, pete echoed his words.
"forever and always, sweetheart."
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oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)
she is suri sauthon (later suri laran, after her marriage). her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, but most of her life for like. the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.
despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.
note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]
originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.
this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.
BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).
later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.
years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)
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Look.
Ace Attorney fandom.
I know why people don't like Turnabout Bigtop. I am among the people who dislike Turnabout Bigtop.
But I GET why people like the case. I'm not going to be one of those annoying people who just blindly dump on it because I hate those mfs too.
Thing about Bigtop isn't that it sucks. Thing isn't the weird grooming stuff (though that is a huge part of it). It's not that it could've been good.
It's that - in my personal OPINION - it could have been *great*.
I think it had the potential to be one of the best third cases in the trilogy. It had everything; a fun and goofy setting fit for a pretty dang goofy lawyer game - where the environment itself had jokes and quips and one-liners and mishaps and tomfoolery written all over it, it had the previous case introducing a very interesting and important plotline that gave background for one of the more well-loved characters while also introducing an equally fucked up and lovable new one who was a child forced into a shit childhood of naivete in a CIRCUS with another character who was very naive and childish - whose interactions could have been funny and cute and reflective of said shit from the previous case (seriously she becomes such an important character in the 4th case, WHY would they not include her in this one for some character development? How did they fuck up letting a CHILD explore a CIRCUS?? That would have made the interactions flow MUCH better).
They had a pretty good, sympathetic killer imo, a morally dubious victim, an asshole of a client (who was pretty flat admittedly in-game, but I like his weird, topsy-turvy reasoning for it in the anime. Also, I think Max being kinda a dick would have bode well for the themes of Farewell since most of his clients up to this point have been like...nice? Not nice, but sympathetic, but him having to defend someone who's innocent but a prick would have shown him that just because someone is an asshole, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer for it and that they have the potential to grow as people, which is almost a complete opposite of what Matt was. Ultimately, I would have loved the contrast of them as clients and I think it would have also served as character development for Phoenix, especially with his low-empathy tendencies).
They just didn't think that far ahead. They just didn't execute it well enough. They just decided to make three of the adult characters fight for the hand in marriage of a teenage girl. (Bat's part of the story was actually kinda good if he was just YOUNGER, I think him doing that for Regina would have been a stupid thing someone in the circus would do to impress their crush. Damn you Ace Attorney and your weird treatment of underage girls!!)
It just flopped and that's ok.
Even though it kinda sucked, it can still mean something to me.
Also I'm a Moe Curls apologist. I liked him, shut up.
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