#but that doesn’t mean that the instinct to help people is the red flag here it’s the shitty fucking people taking advantage of it

[speakercrab666]

counterpoint: it’s not “he hurt me a lot bc i couldn’t let go” it’s “he hurt me a lot, one time, fearing for his life. i refused to let go bc a minor injury was worth it to save his life.”

it’s knowing that this tiny scared little thing doesn’t know any better than to hurt you, but the pain you’d get by helping him is manageable to you and and it won’t last long. if you don’t help him you won’t get hurt, but he will get hurt without your help, and he can’t take it nearly as well as you can.

Great news everyone. There was a kitten wandering in the drive thru at work and my inner warrior cats kid tried to be a hero and capture him.

I have now suffered multiple puncture wounds and have to go to the emergency room.

[rgr-pop]

I have a friend in the midwest who's looking for a political org and i was wondering if you could you offer some advice. Are there qualities you would look for in an org that would make you feel like, okay, these are people I can work with?

Yea! I think there’s a ton of variation and it depends on what kinds of work they like to do or want to learn to do. I’d be happy to talk to them directly about their city.

As a materialist, I sort of think any group or org can be worth trying—doing so gives you a sense of the conditions and things to learn, and helps you follow where people are, which is the best way to learn about a new place you live. Always join stuff, you can always stop going if you don’t like it, never try to start something from scratch until you’ve been going to stuff for a long time (unless that something is a union in your workplace :p). Your friend should just trust their instincts but be open to learning from others, honor their time/energy/boundaries, and watch out for red flag orgs that don’t respect boundaries and don’t allow members to vocalize concerns or bring ideas to the table. I think that’s the key line.

For me personally, I am only interested in deep involvement with democratically organized groups that are not primarily concerned with providing service to people who are mostly non members. I definitely respect and work with these kinds of orgs all the time, but it’s not where my organizing energy goes — I am not a mutual aid person, but your friend might be! Examples of groups locally that I like and work with and would trust as a model are food not bombs style mutual aid as well as some urban farm style stuff (some of which can be soooo fashy but some i like here!), syringe access and harm reduction, eviction defense and other anti carceral rapid response. I do work with abortion funds and infinitely recommend anybody who can stomach it do the same (they can reach out to me for info on their local funds). I’ve been doing stuff around parent/childcare/repro and I would strongly advise to tread carefully there given the entrenchment of socially conservative religious actors. Just stay vigilant and research. Antifascist style orgs are also very interesting, frustrating, messy, frequently dangerous, occasionally surprisingly fascist, and presently useful—look into them but be thoughtful.

Questions to ask, many of which especially apply to mutual aid style groups: is there a leadership structure, and if so, how do leaders become leaders? Is there a board of directors? Who is on it? Do we have money, and if so, where does it come from, who decides how we use it, and what is its legal status? Who decides what work we do and how? Do I as a participant have a vote, the potential to run for leadership, or the right to propose work or organizational ideas? How does this group conceptualize the relationship between me, the community at large, the people we focus on, and people in other places? What other orgs do they seem to be connected to? Is anyone paid staff, and if so, what are their working conditions and how do they relate to the non paid staff? What does this org have on paper, online, etc.? What kind of safety or security norms do they have? Do they have a procedure for handling violence or just mundane conflict between participants? How are everyday decisions handled? None of my judgments relate to an assessment of the people themselves, per se—which is NOT to say I don’t make those judgements lol.

Many different responses to the above are valid depending on the work, and not having clear answers doesn’t mean that an org is bad, especially if it’s open to development. Having said that, again, I only organize with groups that give me a vote. And I think everyone should consider that guide.

My pitch for joining DSA if you have a chapter is that it has the best answers to the above compared to anyone else. It has the most things you can do as a beginner, the widest variety, and the best opportunities to grow yourself as an organizer, and it’s the biggest leftist organization in blah blah you’ve heard it. I strongly recommend not getting too involved with small communist leftist factionalist orgs (I won’t name them here), but there are a million exceptions, especially in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis with long deep weird histories. And no need to hate on them, either. If some communist league seems to be really doing something and not uhhh openly trafficking people or something lol, go off. (Where I live this is the case on campus!) The other exception is the IWW. It’s always fine to join the IWW, especially for labor, and there really are a handful of cities where the IWW is effective and the place to do rank and file labor work (and mostly those are in the midwest!) In many more cases the IWW is a sad little thing but it’s our duty to be nice to them.

In conclusion “make you feel like you wanna work with them” is complicated—I’m a hater, and do not enjoy the company of most of these people, or in fact even the masses in general. You have to find your own balance, which requires pushing yourself out of your comfort zone for a little while, and see how the org reacts. But ultimately, you don’t need to want to work with the people—you need an org that is productive and moves by creating conditions for people to work together regardless of whether they like each other. Fundamental premise of socialism and communism specifically, and it’s what sets us apart from tendencies on the right and common versions of certain tendencies on the left whomst I won’t name. My #1 advice is always to avoid any group whose mission is based on affinity and friendship between its members. (But if you make friends with them, go off)

[csueno]

Sixteenth Day Event Prompt:

Dream picks flowers in Kinoko Kingdom

OKAY. TRIED MY BEST. unedited unbeated you know how it is

Dream & Sapnap (George ment.) | Gen | 1.1k words | two ex friends having a super normal conversation trust | @sixteenth-day-event

He doesn’t mean to stray far. 

He was just looking to make dye, for pink flowers that—despite his paranoid overstock in everything else— Techno lacked. 

A few tulips, maybe peonies if he could be bothered to look for more, because the guy has insisted on knitting himself a scarf, of all things, and they didn’t have pink sheep. Between a simple scouting mission and feeding Techno’s army of dogs, he would always pick to stay away from overexcited little beasts. Besides, he missed the sun, a delicacy in the tundra Techno chose to make home. 

Anyway. 

He doesn’t mean to stray too far; anxiety still lingers under his skin, making his muscles lock up whenever he isn’t inside the cabin, or rather, inside his 10 x 10 cubes mini bunker under the main cabins, only connected to Techno’s and the Syndicate room. Every second outside is a reminder that he’s still vulnerable, that he hasn’t built his own muscles again, that his response time is still stilted, and that his body and mind simply don’t work the way they used to, fine weapons intimately connected. 

He’s clumsy in his steps and only barely avoids leaving any important tracks behind him, but he knows any skilled hunter (and there’s people on his mind, there’s always people on his mind) would know exactly where to find him. He trusts a bit too much on his main prosecutor's incompetence in traversing the forest, and follows a path down, where he sees the beginning of a plain. Away, a mess of colors that promises wild flora.

His spotty vision isn’t an issue outside of the general feeling of fear he gets whenever he isn’t able to see too far beyond. He’s reconnecting with the world, and it takes time and effort, so it warns him (a tight feeling around his throat) whenever he’s in danger, but he can’t see above what another player would, like before. And when he sees tall, red mushrooms, he just wonders how far away from the cabins he is to appear on such an unfamiliar biome. 

Then he hears the sword draw, and he notices the flap of a flag too late. 

“Fucked up of you to show your face around here.” Sapnap spits, smoke falling out from his mouth and ears. He looked a bit like a kettle, which almost made Dream smile. His mask would’ve hidden it, but it’s the principle of the thing.

He’s in a bad position. He can barely move his neck (itchy, terse) fast enough to catch Sapnap’s face. 

 He’s in such a bad position, that he considers simply giving up, as easy as that. Letting the Syndicate’s efforts go to waste, render Ranboo’s ‘sacrifice’ useless, just to avoid arguing for his own life. He barely manages to turn his back away and face Sapnap completely, trying (and failing) to hide the flowers on his hand. He had only gathered two pink tulips and one single peony, wilting miserably with the grip Dream had on his hand. 

“Hey, hey, Sapnap… uh, long time no see?” 

Sapnap blinks down at the flowers. There’s a heavy pause, where he stares in disbelief. “Is that—are you looking for George?” 

Closer to hyperventilating than he would like, Dream doesn’t even think of lying. He just thinks about how he has an non-enchanted diamond pickaxe and Sapnap is one of the few people that can stand against him in fair combat. “No. These are for a scarf.”

“A scarf.” Sapnap echoes. 

“I-I’ve been staying with, uh, someone. They like to knit.” Dream continues. Whatever little self perseverance instinct he still has reminds him not to sell his only ally to a person who will not hesitate to kill him today, and help kill his other allies tomorrow. “I wasn’t going to enter. It’s, ah, a nice place.”

“Dream,” Sapnap looks conflicted all of the sudden, like Dream dropping all pretense he has the control has managed to wreck him. Dream swallows, something like pain cursing fast through his body. “I. I have to kill you.”

“I mean,” Dream drawls, standing up slowly, keeping his eyes connected to Sapnap’s. His heart is beating too fast, the unwavering grip of Sapnap’s hands on his sword keeping him on his edge, but he’s willing to bet on Sapnap’s own doubts. He’s good at making plans in a second, and he didn’t even expect to be able to make Sapnap pause anymore. Maybe Dream’s deplorable armor is getting to him. “You don’t have to, not really. I’m not planning anything. I don’t want trouble, I swear. Just getting these,” a weak gesture to his own plants. “I can even leave them there, if you don’t want me to steal. But they’re flowers. You guys have plenty. 

“Why do you think I can trust you?” Sapnap snarls, somehow remembering his own anger. His eyes flash red again, and his face blushes, irate. An angry Sapnap is an unpredictable, hasty Sapnap. Dream takes a step back, seizing his chances. 

“You haven’t killed me,” Dream reasons, another step back. “You could’ve before I even noticed–Sap, I had like, my back to you for five seconds. You’ve killed me in less time.”

“That was in fucking Manhunt, you asshole,” he stomps his feet, irritated. “There were no stakes there.” 

“What difference does it make?” Dream asks, getting frustrated too. He’s tired. He’s hungry. He would let Sapnap kill him. He—doesn’t like how okay he is with the thought of Sapnap killing him here, without a witness. To be buried between the flower beds that welcome the kingdom George and Sapnap made—explicitly— without him. It would hurt, but it would be the last time they hurt. “Look, you either kill me now, or let me go. I can’t even,” he makes his ax appear, which makes Sapnap’s shoulders raise until he realizes is a chipped, used one, “what the fuck can this do against netherite?” 

“You fought me the last time,” Sapnap seethes. “What’s the difference this time?”

“Honestly? I’m fucking exhausted.” Dream mumbles. “There’s nobody to see me losing. You could tell them, I guess. I don’t know. I’m tired, I don’t care to fight.”

He doesn’t say: the plan is both taking too long and is coming faster than I thought. He doesn’t say: Techno’s carpet floor itches, but I can’t shake off the wrongness of a bed. He doesn’t say: this isn’t the way things were meant to go. He doesn’t say: at least let me make sure you keep your promise. I wish you would keep your promise. Out of everyone, I know you would make dying the least painful. 

When Sapnap doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, he remembers the sun. The aurora borealis of Techno’s cabin. He remembers how good it feels to swim for ours, to cook something good and have others praise you for it. And then he throws an Ender pearl as far away from the mushrooms and flowers as he can. For a second, it stands against the sun and turns Dream’s world gray, and then it’s over and he’s far away. 

“If I were to bring George flowers,” he shouts, not looking back, “I would bring him roses!”

He goes back to the forest, and chooses a different path.

[the-almighty-gob-john-langley]

Shifting Consciousness.

Sometimes, it feels like the people around us have changed overnight. A friend who once seemed trustworthy becomes distant or unreliable.

Sometimes, it feels like the people around us have changed overnight. A friend who once seemed trustworthy becomes distant or unreliable. A loved one who appeared caring and kind suddenly reveals a different side. When this happens, it’s easy to believe they’ve undergone some transformation - that they’ve somehow become someone new. But in truth, the reality is often simpler, yet more profound: they didn’t change. You’re just now seeing who they really are.

This realisation can be both unsettling and liberating. It’s unsettling because it shatters the illusion we’ve held about them, forcing us to confront the gap between our perception and their true nature. But it’s also liberating because it frees us from false expectations, allowing us to see things clearly and make decisions that are aligned with reality. Here’s how this shift in understanding can deeply impact your relationships and your life:

1. Illusions and Reality When you first meet someone, you often see them through a lens of optimism, hope, or even necessity. You might project qualities onto them based on your desires or needs. As time goes on, however, the truth has a way of revealing itself. The person might not have changed at all; rather, the layers of your perception have peeled away, exposing their real character.

2. Self-Awareness and Growth Recognising that someone hasn’t changed, but that you are simply seeing them more clearly, can be a powerful moment of growth. It’s a sign that your awareness is deepening, that you’re becoming more attuned to the nuances of human behaviour. This kind of clarity is a form of empowerment, helping you to navigate relationships with a better understanding of who people really are, not just who you want them to be.

3. Acceptance and Boundaries With this understanding comes the necessity to accept people as they are, not as you wish they were. It doesn’t mean you have to keep everyone in your life. On the contrary, it allows you to set boundaries where necessary, to protect your own well-being, and to engage with others from a place of truth rather than illusion. Acceptance doesn’t mean tolerating harmful behaviour; it means acknowledging the reality of who someone is and deciding how, or if, they fit into your life.

4. Lessons in Disguise These experiences, though difficult, often come with valuable lessons. They teach you about the importance of discernment and the need to trust your instincts. They remind you that not everyone who enters your life is meant to stay and that some people serve as mirrors, reflecting parts of yourself or lessons you need to learn. These lessons, though sometimes painful, are necessary steps on your journey of self-discovery and personal evolution.

5. Letting Go When you realise someone hasn’t changed but that you’re just seeing them for who they truly are, it can be a signal that it’s time to let go. Letting go doesn’t mean you’re giving up on someone; it means you choosing to honour your own truth and path. It’s an act of self-respect and self-care. By releasing those who no longer serve your journey, you create space for more authentic connections to enter your life.

6. Healing and Forgiveness This kind of realisation can also be a catalyst for healing. It’s natural to feel hurt or betrayed when someone’s true nature is revealed. But healing comes when you accept what is, forgive yourself for any misplaced trust, and move forward with greater wisdom. Forgiveness doesn’t have to be for the other person’s benefit, it’s for yours. It allows you to release the hold that the situation has on your heart and mind, and to continue on your path, unburdened.

7. Moving Forward Armed with this new clarity, you can move forward with a deeper understanding of yourself and others. You become more adept at recognising red flags early on and more skilled at distinguishing between superficial charm and genuine character. This awareness helps you to build healthier, more fulfilling relationships based on mutual respect and authenticity. In the end, when you encounter this kind of revelation about someone in your life, remember that it’s a natural part of the human experience. It’s not a reflection of your judgment or worth, it’s simply a part of life’s ongoing process of learning and growth.

Embrace the truth for what it is, allow it to guide you toward greater wisdom, and trust that with each revelation, you are becoming more aligned with your true self and your true path. Some people didn’t change; they simply revealed themselves to you. And that’s okay. Now, with eyes wide open, you can continue your journey with a heart that is wiser, stronger, and more prepared for the authentic connections that await you.

To summarise - "People are like onions: they have layers. And sometimes those layers are a whole lot stinkier than you bargained for. So the next time someone surprises you with their true self. Remember: it's not them who changed; it's you who got a better look at the onion. And with that newfound clarity, you can decide if you want to keep peeling or, just order a pizza."

[thenovelartist]

Could I request the ToT boys reactions to something seriously scaring MC? Something that leaves them visibly shaken, maybe teary?

Let's hope I did this justice because I tried editing this many times over and my mind just wanders away XD

Luke

He’s her childhood friend; he knows her inside and out.

Or, so he thought.

He’d never seen her like she is now: visibly shaking, staring off into space, and almost unresponsive to his voice.

The only thing he can think to do is take her cheeks in his hands and try to get her to look at him.

But when she balks, turning that wide-eyed gaze on him, his heart shatters.

“Hey, you’re okay.”

Eventually, the haze in her eyes clears as recognition flashes in them, and he watches her break.

Instantly, he pulls her close, and she clings to him like a lifeline as she sobs.

He holds her tightly, rubbing her back and whispering comforting words.

He doesn’t know what happened to her in the eight years they’d been apart, but he’s determined to find out.

As for now, he’ll hold her small, shaking frame as tightly as he can and be her protector from the world.

Once she settles, he’ll carry her away back to his place, where he’ll insist she stay the night. Because he’s not going to leave her alone when she’s like this.

He’ll hold her as long as she wants and needs.

Only once she’s okay again will he begin to gently pry into what happened to cause her to react like that.

And afterwards, he’ll take her cheeks in his hands, wiping away the tears as he promises to protect her from everything.

Vyn

He’s a psychiatrist, and he’s seen a lot of trauma in patients.

So when he sees MC balk, eyes wide with pure panic as she’s practically ready to flee, a little red flag goes up in his head.

And when she’s left shaking, breathing heavily with her eyes glazed over, he knows what that is.

He’s handled his fair share of people in trauma like this, but none of them were people he cared for as deeply about as he does MC.

So his first instinct is to take her gently by the shoulders, turning her attention away from the source of her trauma and get it on him.

He’s not surprised when she startles at his touch. He’s surprised by just how much the panic on her expression hurts him, but he knows this is typical and patience is needed here.

“You’re safe.”

He watches her break, realization clearing up the haze in her gaze, and when she starts bawling, he pulls her in.

He doesn’t say anything as she grabs at his shirt, hanging onto it like it’s the only thing keeping her standing.

He holds her close, both to comfort her and keep her steadily upright, as he rubs her back in a soothing motion.

He hates seeing her like this because that means something happened previously to scar her like this.

It makes him sick.

Once she calms, he slowly guides her to his car, his arm never leaving her back so as to support her.

He’ll take her home, get her tea, and put on some classical music to calm her down. And he won’t leave until she has recovered.

Later, he’ll pry into her past and offer treatment for her.

Artem

To Artem, his MC is unflappable.

So when he sees her become panicked, he’s completely caught off guard.

She’s holding her chest, her breathing heavy, and she looks on the verge of tears.

After a moment of standing like an idiot, unsure of just what to do, he approaches her side and touches her shoulder.

He instantly regrets it when she flinches, turning her fearful look on him.

He pulls back, uncertain of what to do in this situation as his heart breaks at the helpless feeling that engulfs him.

Before he can apologize, she leans into him, hugging him as her tears flow freely now.

Slowly, he embraces her back, allowing her to cry as long as she needs.

“I’m here.”

He’s never felt so helpless before, feeling her body wrack with sobs.

And there’s nothing he can do to fix it.

All he can do is be here for her now.

Eventually, when her crying subsides, he’ll take her home. His arm will be around her waist as he guides her to his car, both steadying her and keeping her close for comfort.

He’ll linger around for a long time, cooking her something warm to eat and just stay by her side.

He doesn’t want to pry, but he will ask. It has less to do with his burning curiosity and more to do with him thinking it’s a safety issue.

Because if something bad were to happen when no one was around to help her, she’d be in danger, and he cannot in good conscious let that happen on his watch.

No matter if she tells him now or promises to talk about it later, he’ll be by her side until she’s comfortable enough to be on her own again.

Because it doesn’t matter how long he has to stick around, even if it’s long into the night. He won’t leave until he is sure she’ll be okay.

Marius

He’s seen his Miss Attorney in court; she is fierce.

And she’s always ready to rip him a new one, much to his delight.

So when he watches her unravel, her breathing heavy and eyes far off and glazed over, he almost can’t recognize her.

She just looks… so fragile.

That realization snaps him into action, touching shoulders and calling her name.

Except she panics at his touch, backing away and turning her terrified gaze on him.

He freezes for a moment, regretting his quick actions, but eventually takes her by the shoulders again.

Slowly, the fear leaves her eyes as tears begin to form in them.

He sweeps her up, engulfing her in a tight embrace as she clings to him and sobs.

“I’ve got you.”

His heart is broken for her. He may be soothing and gentle on the outside, but inside, he’s pissed.

Something happened to hurt her if his fearless Rosa is acting like this.

Eventually, when she calms, he’ll sweep her up in his arms, carrying her to his car so he can drive her to his place.

Unless she says she wants to go back home, then he’ll go with her.

Either way, he’s not leaving her until she’s calm and he’s certain she’s going to be okay.

As long as she shows him glimpses of her getting back to being the girl he knows and loves, he’ll be able to settle down and be at ease.

One day, he’ll pry into her past. Because he wants to know what happened so he knows how to protect her the next time.

[nastybuckybarnes]

Hoist the Colours  -  2/3

Pairing: Pirate!Bucky X SeaGoddess!Reader

Summary: An encounter with the man you used to love lands you and your new crew in peril, stuck on a ship with the people responsible for binding you. And what they have planned for you is far worse than what you’d first imagined.

Warnings: Language, Angst, Fluff, Kinda slow burn

Word Count: 4.3K

A/n: Second part of this mini series! inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 

~*~

“Alright lads, you know the drill. I expect you back on the ship by dusk tomorrow.” The men of the king are more than eager to head to the longboats, wanting nothing more than to satiate their hunger for ale and whores.

The door to the quarters that you and Wanda share gets slowly pushed open, and Tony smiles brightly at you.

“Are you going to be coming ashore with us?” He asks, eyes hopeful. You don’t have it in you to say no, and you also can’t fight the nagging feeling that there’s something waiting for you here.

“Yes, we will. We’re ready now,” You say, smiling at him. He leads you out to the longboat and helps you in. There are a few other cremates already in the boat, waiting to be lowered to the shallow waters below.

You and Wanda sit beside each other, across from the men as they row you to shore.

Wanda looks at you, her eyes asking a question. You incline your head the slightest and she leans forward.

“You’re looking for something,” she whispers. You sigh and shrug weakly. “Something is coming to find me. And I must meet it.” She nods thoughtfully, eyes flashing from you to the docks up ahead.

As soon as the longboat is tied off, men on the shore are hurrying over to you and Wanda to help you both.

You accept the outstretched hand and climb up onto the dock, turning and waiting for Wanda to join you. As she comes up, a man’s hand strays too far south, and she hisses.

You grab him by the wrist, thunder clapping above you as you glare at him.

“You lay another finger on a woman without permission, and you’ll lose your entire hand. That is a promise.” He opens his mouth to make some sort of snarky remark but snaps it closed when he sees the tip of his fingers starting to turn black with the mark of death. He nods quickly and you drop his hand, watching with a stone-cold look on your face as his fingers return to normal.

The group of men who were so willing to help you quickly disperse as they realize that they aren’t going to get what they want from you or from Wanda.

“You ladies feel free to roam. I have no doubt that you can take care of yourselves. If you want to rejoin us, we’ll be leaving at dusk tomorrow.” You’re surprised at the offer, having thought that you and Wanda would have been forced to rejoin them.

“Thank you, Tony. For all you’ve done and for your kindness.” He smiles warmly at you and nods. “It’s nowhere near what you deserve, but it’s the best I could manage.” He offers you a small bow then heads off to drink himself into a coma for the night.

“Well. Shall we explore all that Tortuga has to offer?” You ask, extending your arm to Wanda. She grins and takes your outstretched arm. “We shall.”

~*~

Bucky sits in the pub, eyes roaming around the place for the millionth time as he tries to pinpoint your face amongst those of the strangers in the crowd.

A man plops down beside him, a cup of ale held loosely in his fist and a poisonous grin on his face.

“Barnes, good to see you again.” Bucky hardly glances at him. “Rumlow,” he says with a nod.

“What are the odds of me seeing you here, huh?” Bucky shrugs, sighing heavily. “What is it you want, Rumlow?” “Where’s your captain? I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Over by the bar chattin’ up a dame. Go interrupt him, I dare ya.” Rumlow purses his lips and chuckles lightly. “A man of business, as usual.” Rumlow gets up from the table and heads over to the bar, giving the woman talking to Steve a smile before stepping between them, far too close for Steve’s comfort.

Bucky watches them, watches as Rumlow speaks and as Steve’s eyes widen. The eyes in question are suddenly on him, a chin raised up towards the ceiling, beckoning the dark-haired man to join the conversation.

Bucky gets up with a groan and heads over to the bar. Crossing his arms over his chest and looking at the two other men expectantly.

“There’s a ship of the King’s men here tonight, they leave tomorrow at dusk,” Steve starts, waiting for his friend to catch on. When he simply stares back at the blond, Steve sighs.

“We split the bounty down the middle if we help take the ship. Think about it, Buck. They’ve always got gold on those ships.” He shakes his head. Right as he’s about to open his mouth he hears a familiar note being played on the piano. It’s being played softly, so softly he has to strain to hear it, but he hears it no less.

Whipping around, his eyes search for the piano, and, more importantly, the person playing it.

“Buck?” Steve asks, concern lacing his voice. Bucky ignores him, pushing his way through the pub until he gets to the back corner.

His breath catches in his throat, heart racing in his chest as he sees the woman seated at the piano, playing the song that lulls him to sleep every night. His fingers instinctively find the locket around his neck, the one that plays that very same song, and he finds himself blinking back tears.

You can feel him behind you before he says anything, but when he whispers your name you can’t help the shiver that rolls down your spine. Your fingers continue playing but your posture stiffens slightly, the only indication that you heard him.

“Where have you been? We’ve been searching for you for so long.” This has your fingers freezing, and you slowly stand up.

You turn to him and he’s beyond confused and concerned at the betrayal and sadness in your eyes. Without speaking a word, you brush past him, ready to walk straight out of the pub and meet up with Wanda.

He grabs your wrist, urging you to stop, and you do, only to yank your arm out of his grip as if he scalded you. “Don’t you dare touch me,” you hiss, your eyes filled with rage.

His brows pull together in confusion, having absolutely no idea why you’re treating him this way. You turn away from him again and he runs after you, fighting the urge to grab you again.

“(Y/n) wait! Stop!” As soon as you’re out of the pub you feel better, the cool air doing wonders to clear your head.

“Where are you going?” You continue walking, grinding your teeth together as he follows you. His fingers just barely graze your shoulder and you whip around to face him, thunder crackling above you.

Clouds roll in, your emotions getting the better of you as a storm forms quickly overhead.

“You have no right to touch me. I should kill you for even looking at me after what you did!” He looks genuinely confused. “What I did? (Y/n) what are you talking about?” You chuckle once without humour, your eyes stinging with unshed tears.

“Don’t play dumb, James. It doesn’t suit you.” With that you turn and walk away just as the rain starts to fall around you, droplets splattering on your face as tears claw their way down your cheeks.

He stands there in the pouring rain, staring dumbfounded at your retreating figure while wondering what the Hell happened that you’re blaming him for.

“Buck? You okay?” He doesn’t look away from where you last were, his eyes having lost you in the downpour.

“She... I...” He looks over at his friend, eyes rimmed red. “What happened?” Rumlow asks, squinting against the harsh rainfall.

“I don’t know. She just... she hates me. I don’t even know what I did.” Steve pats the man on the shoulder. “After we lost you she went ballistic. Maybe she heard a rumour of something untrue and believes it? I’m sure she’ll come around.” Bucky shakes his head. The way you stared at him, utter betrayal in your eyes... he knows you far too well to believe that you’ll simply change your mind.

“Enough of that. Do we have a deal, Rogers?” Bucky looks over at the two men, confused about whatever deal is going down.

“The King’s ship is here. And they never travel without gold. The colours on this one lead me to believe that there’s an important man travelling for his Majesty. And you know what that means,” Rumlow explains, grinning at the metal-armed sailor. “Leverage,” he murmurs, mind still on you while he ponders the deal.

“The amount of Gold on a king’s ship, even if we split it halfway, would set us over for months,” Steve whispers. Bucky sighs then nods.

“Alright fine. Now which ship are you wanting?”

~*~

“Ladies! It’s good to see you. I’ll be honest, I was unsure if you’d be joining us again. But I’m glad you did.” You smile warmly at Tony then look back out across the open water, eyes flittering towards Tortuga in the distance.

“What did you expect to happen if not that?” Wanda asks softly, stepping beside you and keeping her eyes focused on the horizon.

“I thought he would be surprised to see me. And he was. But he acted as if he didn’t know it was he who caused this in the first place,” you whisper. She frowns but says nothing more, giving you the silence to think over your interaction with the man you used to love.

“Captain! We.. we’ve got some trouble it looks like,” Peter says hurriedly. Tony steps away from where he was listening to your conversation and glances to where the young man is pointing. Sure enough, coming up on the stern are two ships, each with dark flags waving.

Clouds roll in overhead quickly and Wanda’s eyes glow red.

“Pirates,” she whispers. The wind comes in strong, sending a few crew-mates stumbling as they run across the deck.

“They aim to plunder, they want nothing to do with us, unless they deem us of value,” you inform, gathering your skirts in your hands and marching over to Tony.

“We have no chance of outrunning them. And outgunning them... not even a hope.” He looks at you then up to the skies. “Can you not conjure something?” You shake your head. “Nothing more than a storm. But what aids us will aid them. We’ve lost.” He sighs heavily then nods, looking over at his men.

“What will they do?” Your eyes travel to the two pirate ships that are quickly gaining, trying to focus on the flags and determine which ships they are.

You incline your head slightly to the right and a gust of wind comes in, pushing their flags to the side. With wide eyes, you stumble back, the sight of the flags making your heart roar in your ears.

“What is it?”

You shake your head, the wind picking up as the rain starts to fall harder.

“We’ve got no chance,” you whisper, chest rising and falling rapidly as the ships grow nearer.

Wanda is by your side in an instant. “It’s them, isn’t it?” She asks, staring at the ships. You nod, grinding your teeth together.

“There is nothing we can do now,” she says firmly, taking hold of your arm to grab your attention. “Do not let them think they’ve won. They have not.” You take a few deep breaths, reigning in your emotions and clearing the rain. The skies stay grey, but the winds die down and the rain ceases.

“We’re going to be boarded, men. And when that happens we are to remain calm. They are pirates. They will take our gold, they may take our lives, but they will not ever take our pride! They will not strip us of the very thing that makes us men! We are strong and we stand for the King!” The men on the ship all shout their agreements, readying themselves for whatever fate awaits with the coming of the pirates.

Quickly, far quicker than you would’ve expected, you’re being flanked on either side by massive ships. One of them far too familiar. A home long forgotten.

You can see the pirates on either side, shouting profanities and grinning wickedly.

“Prepare to be boarded!” A man shouts at you. You look around at the men surrounding you and take a step closer to the back, burying yourself in the crowd as much as you can.

Pirates swing onto the ship, swords and pistols drawn and prepared for a fight. When they receive none they seem far too happy.

“Imagine my surprise when I see a ship of the King floating idly in the waters of Tortuga. Seemed too good an opportunity to be missed, right boys?” That voice... it sends a shudder ripping down your spine and darkness taints the sky.

You look up, eyes burning with anger, and you stare directly at the man who’s speaking. His murky eyes meet yours and he smiles a sickly grin, stepping down onto the main deck and pushing his way through the crowd.

“Ah, but you are not all men of the King, are you? No, some of you are much more valuable.” He stops when he’s in front of you, eyes raking over your figure.

“Yes. Some of you are far more valuable than mere men of the King.” He raises his fingers up to stroke your cheek and a clap of thunder shatters the silence. You glare at him in warning but he only chuckles, grubby fingers tracing dirty paths down your cheek.

“What are you going to do, witch?” He asks softly, stepping even closer to you. You say nothing, glaring up into his eyes with pure hate. He chuckles and right as he leans down to say something more you spit in his face. He flinches back then glares at you. He raises his hand to strike you but before it can come down, long fingers are wrapped around his wrist.

“No harm is to come to her.” You look over at the man, clenching your jaw shut so tightly you fear you may break it.

“Fine,” Rumlow spits, yanking his hand free from the blond man’s grip. “But we’re going to be changing course,” he shouts, pushing through the crowd to the poop deck.

“Tow the ship! And bring the prisoners aboard and shove ‘em in the brig. We set sail for Nassau.” Rumlow’s men are more than happy to start grabbing at people and chaining their wrists, stopping them from fighting and forcing them towards the edge of the ship where a plank is being laid down.

As men start crossing the gangplank to Rumlow’s ship, the man himself walks over to you and Wanda. Two men come behind him, each with thin metal cuffs in their hands.

“Hope you don’t mind, darling. Just a little precaution. Can’t have you using what little you have left to disturb my ocean.” The way he says it, with such smugness and certainty makes you want to pull his tongue right out of his mouth.

The cuffs are snapped into place and you nearly collapse. The remainder of your powers are stripped from you entirely, leaving you a mere mortal. Wanda inhales sharply at the sensation and you know she’s feeling just as terrible as you.

As the two of you are being pushed towards the plank, a hand lands on your shoulder.

“The witch will have my quarters. She has no place with the men of the king.” You wrench your shoulder out of his grasp and stumble away from him.

Rumlow watches in amusement as Bucky pleads with you with his eyes.

“As generous as an offer that is, I’d rather remain with the only crew who hasn’t betrayed or abandoned me,” you whisper harshly, glaring daggers at them. You cross the plank and are promptly shoved below decks, Wanda close behind.

You’re then locked in the brig with the rest of the crew, chest heaving at both the emotional strain and the physical one of having your powers drained.

Tony looks at you in complete and utter confusion, trying to piece together what he can, but he has little success.

You stay absolutely silent, back pressed against the damp wood of the ship.

Trapped and bound yet again by the hands of the same men.

~*~

“Once they reach Nassau they will look for the other ship of the King, try and find any leverage that they can. They are gathering far too many hostages, and we will be killed soon,” you whisper to Tony, a frown on your face as you peer through a crack in the wood. The ocean is rough, not by your doing, but you cannot help but feel as though the gods are on your side.

“Those men know you. Who are they?” Your bottom lip trembles and you take a few deep breaths. “One of the ships... used to be my home. The other is the reason why I am bound. Why I cannot access my powers fully. And there is only one man alive who knows how to strip me of my powers.”

He’s quiet for a very long moment.

“Why not just kill you? Why bind you?” He asks. You shrug, having asked yourself the same question. Because this, this fate that is now yours, is one worse than death.

“They mean to use you as a weapon,” Wanda says softly, her eyes closed as she tries to get used to not having her powers.

You and Tony both look over at her, waiting for her to continue.

She opens her eyes and looks between the two of you for a moment.

“By keeping you alive, your power remains on this earth. If they were to kill you, then your power would be lost, and that power is of great use to them. I anticipate that it will only be a matter of hours before you’re brought to the captain’s cabin and your purpose is discussed.”

Wanda is correct.

It’s only after the sun has set and night has taken hold that anyone descends the stairs.

“Cap’n wants you in his cabin, Witch,” a man sneers, yanking the door open and grabbing you by the wrists.

He’s awfully rough with you, but you pay it little to no mind, trying instead to focus on figuring out Rumlow’s game plan.

You’re forced into his cabin, nearly tripping over yourself in the process, but you regain your footing just in time and your eyes find those of your captor.

“I thought you would put up more of a fight if I’m honest,” he says, arms crossed over his chest as he looks you up and down.

You say nothing, mouth shut tightly and eyes focused on a scratch in the wall.

“Nothing to say? Really? I thought you would have some choice words considering your current predicament. Or are those words reserved for someone else?” A muscle in your jaw ticks and he grins, realizing he struck a nerve.

“It was he who told me how to bind you, how to strip you of your powers. He was there when we did it too. And yet he acts so innocent.” He stands up and walks over to you, circling you slowly, like a vulture.

“How does that make you feel? Does that... anger you? Does it make you hungry for revenge?” He stops when he’s in front of you, two fingers brushing gently across your jaw.

“Your wrath is something I’ve only ever dreamed of harnessing. And I can bring it back. You only need swear alliance to me, and you’ll be free from your bonds. You need only tie yourself to me, and your power will return.”

You look at him, face stoic and cold.

“I will not trade one set of bonds for another. Find someone else to do your bidding.” With that you turn on your heel, only to be yanked back to his chest.

“You will watch your tongue, woman, or I will cut it out. Do you understand?” You say nothing, but for the first time in a long time, you feel truly helpless.

“I am your captain now, and you will listen to me. Unless you would like to join all those that you have sent to the depths. And this time, you won’t have your powers to save you.”

You clench your jaw and tug out of his grip, glaring at him for a moment longer before turning and leaving his cabin.

“You will do my bidding one way or another, Wench! It is only a matter of time before you realize it!”

You’re ushered back below decks and shoved into a separate cell than before, successfully isolating you from the rest of the crew.

“That was brief,” Tony says cautiously, eyes on the retreating crew-mate before returning to your figure.

You say nothing, only close your eyes and pray for something as sweet as death to take you.

~*~

It’s hours later that you’re woken from your sleep, metal clanking together and hushed voices speaking quickly.

“Hurry now, before they wake up.” You push yourself into a seated position, watching in curious confusion as Steve and Bucky hold the cell door open, helping the prisoners out and up the stairs.

Only after they have the permission of Tony do they leave, and even then, the Captain and Wanda stay behind, each of them looking at you.

Upon realizing where you are, Bucky yanks your cell door open, holding his hand out to you.

“We must hasten, it won’t be long before they realize what we’ve done.” You shake your head, crossing your arms over your chest. Tony and Wanda leave their cell, lingering on the stairs and watching as you refuse help.

“Why would I exchange one traitorous pirate for another?” You ask rhetorically, your words like a slap across Bucky’s face.

“Buck, we need to leave. We don’t have time for this,” Steve whispers, gently pushing Wanda and Tony up the stairs.

You stare at the brunet in front of you, daring him to make a move.

When he doesn’t, you take matters into your own hands.

“What are you waiting for? Leave. It’s what you’re good at.” He doesn’t have time to argue, but your words cut him deep.

Against his better judgement, he turns and runs up the stairs, hating himself for abandoning you, but knowing that there are far more lives at stake.

The ship branches away from Rumlow's, heading West to escape him.

“We’ll drop you off at the nearest trade stop, but that is all we can do,” Steve says, looking across the table to where Wanda and Tony sit, each eyeing the goblets of rum in front of them.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Tony asks, looking at Bucky. The pirate furrows his brows in confusion.

“You’re the one who got her trapped.” He’s beyond confused now.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He demands, metal hand clenching into a fist.

“Don’t act so innocent. You’re the only person alive with the knowledge of how to bind her to her human form, how to cut her off from the sea. And you act as though you’ve done nothing.” Wanda’s eyes glow red with her anger but Bucky is still confused.

“I-I never told anyone... She trusted me and I kept it to myself. Why...” He trails off, horror colouring his features.

“Steve, when Rumlow found me after I fell overboard, what did he say happened?” Steve ponders this for a moment then shakes his head.

“Just that they found you in the water. Nothing else.” The red slowly fades from Wanda’s eyes as she realizes what must’ve happened.

“Rumlow’s the one who wanted power all along. And he’s stopped at nothing to get it. He means to use her as a weapon to control and conquer the seas. He’s the one who bound her. He must’ve used your knowledge to bind her without you knowing.” The three men in the room are confused by her suggestion.

“Consider it. He has no recollection of the time spent away from the ship, and he is also the only one with the knowledge.” She rises slowly to her feet, red glowing from her fingertips.

“If you let me, I could bring forth the memories, show you what your mind is trying to forget.” He looks at her hesitantly for a moment.

“(Y/n) is a dear friend of mine. If what you are saying is the truth then I promise I will not harm you.” His gaze travels from her to Steve then back to her, a new determination in them. He nods once and then her fingers are hovering right by his temple, a red hue flowing from them.

His eyes slowly take on the same colour before rolling back into his head, his hidden memories finally being brought to the surface, the truth being revealed.

It takes a few minutes, but he finally reopens his eyes, anguish written on his face.

“She... Steve, we must free her.” Steve sighs, not knowing what to say.

“Buck, how are we supposed to do that? We need to free the crew before we do anything. We cannot risk all of their lives.”

“Rumlow’s knowledge may be enough to bind her powers to his ship, his command. The only way to keep the seas safe is to release her, and soon,” Wanda pipes in.

“My crew can wait. And any man who wishes to leave may take a longboat and find their own way.” The Pirates look at the King’s man for a moment before nodding.

“Very well,” Steve says, turning back to his friend. “How do we free her from her bonds?”

“The same way they trapped her in the first place. And to do that we must go to the island where she was born.”

[omg-foreverfilledwithweird-posts]

A Siren Song

Pairing: Robert Dubois/ Bloodsport x Reader

A/N: so I just finished watching the new Suicide Squad for the second time and I’m even more obsessed now than I was the first time I watched it. It’s a brilliant film with actually good humor, a non-sexualizing and actually empowering view on Harley Quinn (that leg scene?? y'all-), the rats?? Rat-catcher 2?? THE SHARK?? FLAG?? Who looked really good in this movie, he might be another contender for a story as well as Harley Quinn so lmk ;) but Bloodsport immediately piqued my interest because it’s Idris Elba and he’s gorgeous, I loved the complexities of his character and I want to write for him and no one else has done it yet?? so shoutout to @honey-im-emotional​​ for the support and push to do it! also love The Bodyguard movie, helped with the inspo <3 and i’m so sorry all of my stories are similar but I HAVE A TYPE enjoy and feedback is always appreciated loves and there will be SPOILERS so be warned, also if you want a Harley one next lmk ;) (it’s so long I’m so sorry lol)

Summary: You’re a highly targeted member of the royal family, the last in your line. Bloodsport is hired to be your bodyguard to both watch and assassinate the men after you. He believes it’s below his pay-grade, but reluctantly agrees, doing so to the best of his abilities. But the closeness brings more intimacy than you two expected, and sparks fly.

Warnings: foul language, sexual content, smut, choking, light bdsm, fluffy fluff, dirty dancing, dirty talk, violence and bad guys getting murdered, mentions of Harley x Reader (y’all sexy dance and kiss), reader likes women, dom! Bloodsport, age gap, alcohol consumption, jealousy, heavy kissing, slight angst, just a good time honestly

Word Count: 3,825

You dangle from the ceiling with your aerial silk, fitting your leg in the loop you’ve created, and dangling upside down. The rope wraps around your waist as you hang gracefully from your marble walls, flying. Your friend Harley Quinn taught you how to do this years ago, it now being your favorite form of exercise and relaxation when you need a moment to clear your head. 

As you lightly spin, twirling and dancing in the air with your chandelier reflecting light everywhere, a dazzling fairy floating in a sea of stars. You hear footsteps approach and move to hang upside down, facing towards the grand door. Robert Dubois, a.k.a Bloodsport, walks forward to stand directly in front of you. 

You have known him a few weeks or so now, him having to watch your every move and tracking down your family’s killers. He stands and meets your eyes as you dangle, hair falling below you.

“Hi,” you giggle, face flushed with heat. “I probably look ridiculous right now.”

He composes himself so he doesn’t crack a smile, but you see his lips twitch when he speaks, “No, Mrs. y/l/n.”

“I have a first name, you know,” you grin widely. “I’m younger than you, which hardly warrants such a professional title.”

“My apologies, y/n,” he fixes himself.

“It’s alright,” you ease, filling him with a sense of softness he hasn’t felt in a long time. You flip and land on your feet, letting go of your silks. 

You don’t notice as his eyes glaze over your body in your sports bra and shorts, something his cold, calculated stare should never succumb to, but he does anyway and he kicks himself for doing it. You’re his client and should therefore remain as such, no conflict of interest or thoughts other than to protect. He didn’t want this job, hell, he still doesn’t know why he said yes. Maybe it was the money. Or maybe it was upon seeing you that first time, in that star-studded gown the night of a charity gala you were attending, the way the diamond littered fabric hung over your figure, absolutely dazzled. The way you looked at him and smiled, like you were used to with all the other nobles and adoring fans. But he let himself believe it was different.

He can’t do that anymore, however, because he can’t allow for any complications. And falling for his boss is certainly a complication. 

You look at him and your eyes widen with realization, “Oh, I’m sorry. Let me cover up.”

You grab a tee shirt and toss it over your exercise clothes. He looks down as you do so and clears his throat. This brings a small smile to your face.  

“You called me in here,” he gestures to the necklace charm hanging around your neck that you can squeeze and send an instant distress signal whenever you need it. “What can I do for you, y/n?”

“Wanted you to spot me,” you tease, a smile overtaking your delicate features. You have a sort of stunning beauty about you that takes him by surprise every time he lays eyes on you. Which is often. You lay on your yoga mat and sit up straight with that same damned smile. 

“I’m here to do a job, y/n,” he says, his deep, honeyed voice coating the way he says your name like heat to sugar. “Not aid you in your workout routine.”

“What? Your assassin training didn’t include sit ups?” you smile, tongue in cheek.

“No, but if you need a way to kill a man with a book,” he presses a foot over both of yours as you begin to do sit ups. “Then I’m your man.”

“Yeah, you and John Wick,” you breathe out with a laugh. “And shouldn’t you be in here watching me already? Not by the door?”

“This room has no windows and no other door or entrance besides the one I was standing by. I thought you would want privacy,” he averts your gaze. “I’m sure it’s a hard thing to come by these days for a woman like yourself.”

You stop what you’re doing and look up at him, blinking, “Well, you’d be right,” you tuck your hair back. “So thank you.”

He meets your eyes, bordering on a smile, “You’re welcome.”

“Is that a smile I see?” you chuckle.

The smile shines, “It was a diversion. And you failed.”

You laugh loudly, “Will the next diversion be an actual laugh?”

“Wouldn’t be a proper diversion if you knew what it was.”

You tap his feet so he’ll get the hint and let you up. You rise to your feet and dust yourself up, “I appreciate your spotting.” You press a hand to his chest and hum. Warmth radiates from your palm and he inhales sharply. “For someone who wasn’t trained, you sure are a fast learner.”

He looks at your hand and back to your eyes, heat sprouting from where your hand touches. His hand flexes at his side as he looks around the room, to the door, seeing if it’s closed. 

“I-” he cocks an eyebrow then settles. “I think I should go.”

He watches you look at him with wounded eyes, brow lowered, you open your mouth then close it. 

You nod, moving away from him, “Right.”

You move to walk away when he stops you, mouth by your ear, voice dropping an octave when he whispers, “Just so you know-” you tilt your head up almost instinctively to hear him better. “-my assassin training did include reminding people who they are when they’ve forgotten their place.”

You look up at him fully now, “You work for me, remember?”

“I work for money. And you didn’t hire me. I was employed by Mrs. Waller to keep you alive,” he cocks his head slightly. 

“So it would be frowned upon by her when you’re unable to walk if you touch me like that again.”

You couldn’t believe he had just said that. Your eyes widen and your cheeks once again heat up, blushing. Your chest gets hot when he doesn’t break the stare like he’s calling your bluff, and fuck, did he do just that. You turn away from him.

You can hear the smile in his voice, “That’s what I thought.”

~~~

“Robert said that!?” Harley exclaims, eyes wide. Her jaw is dropped as she does her mascara aggressively in the mirror. “He’s usually so...”

You tug down your tiny halter top over your head, your bright, flattering makeup complementing the colorful swirling pattern, “An empty void with no emotion?”

She nods emphatically, agreeing, “Exactly! I had no idea he had it in him?” she raises her brow and smooths down her leather black and red dress, “Or that he wanted to put it in you-”

You slap her arm, chastising, “You don’t know that. It might have been a threat to actually paralyze me in a very not sexual way.”

“I say both are arousing,” she shrugs, platinum curls bouncing.

You roll your eyes with a small smile aimed at the floor, “Anyway-” you slip a belt through your tight jeans, hitting at your waist when you cinch it in. “We should get going if we want to get to the club on time.”

She pauses. “Y/n. Are you sure we should be doing this?”

You do a double take, “You’re telling me that we shouldn’t sneak out and have a good time?”

“I know the irony is apparent,” she looks at you with a knowing stare. “But not if it means you’re in danger. Which you are.”

“I know,” you frown. “But I’ve been locked in this house for months, I miss going out and having a life. I’m tired of being coddled.”

“I know, sweetheart,” she sighs, looking past herself in the mirror to flash me a sympathetic smile. She thinks for a beat and finally spins around, “Alright, screw it, doll, let’s go paint the town.”

You buzz with excitement, grinning, “Yay! Thank you, thank you! I wonder who will be djaying...” you trail off. 

Harley’s face falls and her mouth goes in a solid, straight line, looking past your shoulder, “I don’t think anyone will be.”

You laugh, completely oblivious, “Of course there will be. There has to be music. Dancing in silence would be pretty fucking awkward.”

“This moment is pretty fucking awkward.”

“What do you mean?”

A deep, irritated voice sounds off behind you, “Because you’re not going.”

You jump out of your skin, “Shit, Robert! You scared the hell out of me!”

“You’re not going to that club,” he folds his arms over his chest. You look over him and his casual, night wear: a loose tee and low hanging joggers. You almost wipe your mouth from salivating. Your outfit elicits the same reaction.

You pinch your eyebrows together, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Yes, I can. I’m tasked with protecting you.”

“Yeah. And nowhere on your job description does it say ‘become my parent’. There’s not an opening now just because I don’t have one. I am a grown ass woman and I have been a prisoner in my own home. The same home where...” you pause, a lump in your throat at the reminder of your family’s passing. You shake it off, “I’m just tired. I want a piece of my life back. You can either stay here or come. Either way I’m going.”

He gives you a quick once over and contemplates his options before dropping his arms to his sides and letting out a long exhale.

“Fine.”

You somewhat relax at his defeated tone, “Fine, what?”

He relents, “You can go, but I’m coming with you. But if anything happens to you, I’m not to be blamed. I will leave your ass in that club.”

You grin and jump up to give him a tight hug around the neck. He stiffens before slowly rubbing your back. You sink into his embrace, feeling like you were floating in water, now above the surface as he brings you back to oxygen. Harley smiles at the exchange and she winks theatrically. 

He glares. 

It’s not long before you three arrive at the club, music blaring and colorful lights flashing over the crowded floors. From his stare and intimidating aura, the club staff thought he was a bouncer and let you all in immediately. But before he was roped into working, the three of you bee-lined to the bar. 

“The prettiest and strongest drink ya got, sugar,” Harley smiles at the pretty bartender.

“And what if that’s me?” she responds, ebony hair falling onto one shoulder.

“Then I’ll have to drink you later,” Harley gives her a flirty once over and you roll your eyes.

The bartender grins and gestures towards me for my order, I answer quickly, “Scotch on the rocks.”

Robert looks at you, poorly covering his shocked expression. “Really?”

“Yeah, why?” you look up at him.

“Didn’t peg you for a straight liquor type, Ms. y/l/n,” he finally lets his hidden laugh show through, butterflies erupting in your chest. The diversion definitely worked, whatever you were thinking about before this has immediately left you.

“Then this is going to be the first surprise of many tonight, Mr. Dubois,” you return the smug look as he orders the same thing. You both share a look.

The bartender slides you all your drinks, each of you taking a long swig for liquid courage for the night. Harley’s favorite Doja Cat song comes on and she gasps, clapping excitedly when she grabs you by the wrist, pulling you on the dance floor, “Come dance with me.”

You mouth a small ‘sorry’ to Bloodsport who you left at the bar, he shakes his head with a smile over the rim of his glass, watching you guys’ drinks. 

She dances wildly, jumping up and down, spinning to let her hair fall in many beautiful angles. She’s a powerful force and your greatest friend. She puts her arms around your neck and the two of you move in time with the music.

“So...” she motions to Bloodsport who’s being forced into a conversation with a woman at the bar. The woman puts her hand on his and he visibly shrinks back and whispers something to her that causes the most horrid look from the woman and for her to walk quickly away. You smile at the relief that interaction has brought you.

“So what?” you spin her around and pull her back.

“Quit with the good dancing, or I’m gonna fuck you myself,” she teases with a lightheaded giggle.

You smile, “We’ve tried that already, remember?”

“Too much history, I know, I know. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice...” she whispers into your neck, kissing the soft spot under your chin. Your skin heats up under her touch as she drags her hands down your sides, pulling you close to her so that you’re flush against her chest.

You give into her and kiss her slowly, her soft lips melt into your own when her hands tug in your hair. Harley and you have always had a complicated friendship, with enough sexual attraction to fuel a nuclear bomb, but not enough romantic. You love each other but not in the way you both need. You were in love with Robert and she is continuing to explore her sexuality because she likes women and so do you. So as she trails her hot mouth down your neck in the middle of dozens of bustling bodies and you lock eyes with an angry Bloodsport, you knew exactly what she was doing.

You whisper, out of breath, “Are you trying the jealousy trick?”

“It worked in college, didn’t it?” she kisses your cheek, smiling gently against your skin. “And it’s working now.”

“I think you’re just obsessed with kissing me,” you kiss her back.

“It was a win-win situation, doll,” she grins devilishly and you can’t help but agree. “So when you’re done with him, come see me. But right now, I have a sexy bartender lady to drink up.” You grip her hand and let her make her way to her next conquest.

Robert had seen the tail-end of your kiss, his deft fingers clenched around his whiskey glass. He knows he shouldn’t let this sort of thing affect him, something as juvenile and simple as jealousy. But he couldn’t stop that feeling of being stuck, unable to think about anything except the fact that it wasn’t him with his hands on you like that, lips marking you as much as he pleases. Sadness washed over him in a tidal wave and he set his glass down, about to get up to leave when he spotted a man eyeing you from the door. He looked familiar and it wasn’t just attraction he sensed in his eyes but something far more sinister.

A few more men followed suit and began making their way to you in the middle of the dance floor. He had no time to consider the facts, just to get you out of there as soon as possible. 

You feel a rough hand tug your arm and turn to face who you think to be Dubois, you smile, “Enjoy the show?”

“Very much,” an unknown voice answers, and you look up, eyes wide. “Now why don’t you come with me for a little talk, beautiful.”

“Get the fuck off of me,” you yank your arm back, slamming your heel down into the perpetrator’s foot. More men surround you on all sides, making it impossible for you to escape or use your subpar martial arts skills. Aerial yoga was a very different ballpark than kicking ass. And you were just a beginner.

You poorly punch a man in the face, only making them all angrier when you’re grabbed from all sides, being dragged towards the exit kicking and screaming. You didn’t want to be that helpless damsel in distress, but as all of these men, men you recognized from your family’s death, were surrounding you, you couldn’t breathe. Their hands felt familiar, grabbing your arms like they’d done that night before you hid in the secret door in the dining room. You had watched these faceless men through a hole in that door, stifling your cries when bullets sprayed the room your family was having dinner in. So while they were coming after you and pulling you outside, it’s all you felt. That same feeling when he wasn’t near.

Drowning.

There’s a hand that pulls you back and you watch, dazed, as Bloodsport puts every man who touched you on the ground. It’s filled with swift yet aggressive and barbaric movements, controlled, expert chaos and it happens within moments. His chest is heaving when he looks down at you and scoops you up in his arms. You’d object in any other circumstances, but this time, head against his chest and tucked in his arms, you were okay.

His voice rumbles against your side, “We’re going home.”

~~~

Harley’s tears hit your shoulder as you sympathetically pat her back.

“I’m so sorry, y/n. I shouldn’t have left,” she sniffles loudly. “I should’ve been there.”

You laugh softly, fitting your head into her shoulder, “It’s okay, Harls. It’s not your fault, there was no harm done.”

“There could have been,” she sighs. “I’m not letting you convince me to go out next time, you’re staying here forever.”

You roll your eyes with a smile, “Alright.”

She gets up and sniffs, wiping at her nose that’s now flushed from crying, “Good because I’m serious.”

“I know,” you laugh again, hugging yourself in a hoodie much too large for you, (because you stole it from Rick Flagg) swallowing you whole. 

Your eyes wander down the hall to where Robert is no doubt pacing around in your bedroom, the only room not laden with cameras (ironically for privacy). You kick at the floor in your fuzzy socks and think of an excuse to go check on him, even though you’re probably the last person he wants to see right now. You, frankly, don’t care.

“I’m gonna go-” 

“Check on Robert?” she finishes. “I know, honey. I was a psychiatrist, I’m not stupid.”

You crack a smile and grip her arm affectionately as you walk past her towards the bedroom. You don’t even take the risk of knocking for fear he’ll lock it and try your luck with just simply opening it. You see him, shirtless with a towel over his shoulder, a low hanging towel wrapped around his waist, while nursing his knuckles. He looks you over once you enter the room, trained eyes on you and the intimidation is definitely working already when he takes the damp towel on his shoulder and dabs the cuts on his skin.

He remains silent and you move to sit down on your bed, the awkward squeak filling the already high-tension atmosphere, thick enough to make your ears pop like you’re in an airplane too far up in the sky.

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly, drawing his eye. 

He hums and steps into your bathroom, washing off his hands. 

You frown at his lack of response, “Are you really going to pout this whole time? Because honestly, it’s beneath you, Robert.” You lean forward, watching as he walks out of the bathroom, still half naked, still silent. 

The silence is beginning to slowly kill you, especially when he looks this good, water droplets running down his chiseled torso from a hot shower. You didn’t let your mind wander because if the reaction your body is giving from the image before you was any indication, you want him. He walks in the room once again, mouth in an amused yet firm line. 

In actuality, he was ashamed of himself. Not so much of you. He would’ve left as that despair overcame him back in that bar. He would’ve left you there and abandoned his mission, leaving you to be hurt. If it hadn't been for those men, you could’ve been killed and it would be his fault. He alerted Waller of the attack, making up a lie about the two of you going for a walk at night and getting ambushed there rather than at a club. There’s a hit on each of those men being taken out as we speak as well as a search for their boss. Even though that still got him chewed out. He couldn’t imagine what she’d do to him if she found out the truth.

Robert walks slowly towards you, leaning against the bed frame, gesturing for you to continue. You watch him, distracted, as he wraps a bandage around his knuckles.

“I shouldn’t have kissed her to get a rise out of you, that was hurtful,” you exhale your words, quiet enough he wouldn’t be able to hear you if you weren’t within a breath of one another. You hang your head, “And it was stupid to go out in the first place when I am in this much danger. I could’ve been killed, and you could have been hurt. I’m sorry.”

He represses a laugh at the idea of him getting hurt, when the two of you both know that would never happen. But as the silence from him grows thicker, the more you start to ramble.

“Okay, this silent treatment isn’t going to work for much longer. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you need to stop.”

He gives you a look that says ‘make me’. But you both know you couldn’t if you tried, and vice versa. He thinks of you as a siren, one of those alluring creatures in old sailor tales that lured unsuspecting men to their painful deaths. As if he has no control of the way he feels about you. Which in a way he does, but he knows better. He knows better than to fall under your enchanting song, but he can’t help but be pulled beneath the surface of the water. 

Robert tenses when you move forward and the hoodie falls off one of your shoulders, revealing more of your chest, the smooth skin that lays there. 

His chest tightens when you look up at him and sigh.

“But thank you for saving me,” you say, both because you think that’s what he wants to hear but also because you mean it, you wouldn’t be here at all if he didn’t come with you.

He licks his lips and nods his head in simple recognition. He appreciated the apology, truly he did, but a part of him enjoyed the way you continued to ramble on, so he remained silent. This was an old interrogation tactic he learned when he served, keeping quiet always got people talking. He looks down at you and leans to meet your face, hands on either side of you. 

“I don’t know what else you wish for me to say,” you admit quietly, fiddling with your hands.

He didn’t know either but whatever you would say, he would listen.

“So I take it you’re not mad anymore?” you infer from his relaxed posture, heart beating out of your chest, fast enough that it catapults to your throat. 

He tilts his head down so he’s an inch before your mouth, breath fanning over your face. when he tugs you up to your feet, hands gripping the sides of your waist when he pulls you close. Your heartbeats began to sync up, chest to chest.

“I’m fucking furious, sweetheart.”

You meet his eyes, looking up in that seductive stare of yours you never knew you were capable of until him, and close the distance, kissing him lightly. His arms falter by your side and it’s the first time you’ve seen him hesitate, losing his cool. It’s the most gentle thing he’s ever experienced, everything in his life being forced, hostile, and malicious, while your soft lips against his are anything but. You kiss him like he’s not the monster he thinks himself to be. 

“Then let me make it up to you.”

“Fuck,” he grips your sides harder, palm moving to push you closer with his hand flat against the small of your back. “We shouldn’t.”

You search his face for uncertainty, but all you sense is a profound sense of clarity, in the both of you. “I know.”

“Will you regret this?”

You shake your head, hand against his cheek, “No.”

His dark eyes fall to your lips, pupils filling his dark brown irises, lust blown, “You’re so good, baby. You’re too good for me.”

Before you can tease him about the new nickname and object to that, his lips have crashed against your own. His hand slides up to cup the side of your face, drinking you in with his intoxicating kiss. You hum, content, against his feverish mouth and he opens it, vulnerable and on display. You feel his guard still up, tense and calculated, so you rest your hand against his chest. You press a kiss to his eyelid, his cheek, his nose, his chin, his jaw, his neck. He softens beneath you, groaning aloud as his hands tighten. 

“You don’t need to be afraid with me,” you whisper to him, tender fingers trailing down his shirtless chest, hot skin against hot skin. It’s enough to make you sweat.

He exhales and captures your bottom lip with his own, holding your face in both of his hands. The kiss grows heated and rushed, like you’re running out of time, as if at any moment those men would come back and find you and take you away from him again. His tongue expertly works with your own, licking the pout of your bottom lip, and coaxing you open. He slides his hand down between your legs, dipping his finger to find the slick in the middle of your thighs. You moan into his mouth, his other hand at the back of your neck when he buries his face in your shoulder. He kisses you there, the crook where your neck meets your collarbone, that damned sensitive spot. You succumb to his touch. His beard tickles your skin and you gasp when he sucks hard, a bruise forming.

You breathe a laugh, “Everyone will see if you leave a mark,” you tug on his hair when you thread it through his coarse curls. 

He falls under your spell and there’s something so ironically beautiful about this trained assassin with a heart of gold and the scars to show for it, being so open with you.

His hands, his entire life, have been forced to be instruments of death and violence. But as they slide down your figure, holding your face, and pulling you into him, they’re his greatest gift. He’s surprisingly tender with you. 

But then he has enough and pushes you down on the bed, arms trapping you on both sides.

He responds bluntly, “I don’t care.”

You part your legs for him and he releases a shaky breath. He slowly unzips your sweatshirt and it falls off you just as you do the same and tug his towel down. Both of you are bare before the other as you take a moment to drink each other in. You were just as, if not more, beautiful than he imagined you to be. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he says quietly as his hand drapes down the line of your figure. He touches you how someone would handle a glass vase filled with flowers. 

You take his face in both of your hands and kiss him, “So are you.” 

“I don’t think you know what you do to me, baby.” His hand finds your breast and squeezes while he kisses your neck.

You moan when he uses his other hand to grip your neck, thumb against your pulse point, “If it’s anything like how I feel right now, then yes, I do.”

He lifts his head up to watch your face as he chokes you, softly so he doesn’t hurt you but hard enough to play with your breath. His thumb opens your mouth and your legs tremble. 

“So I take it you’re into choking, my love?” You nod excitedly, unable to speak, and his grip tightens. 

You let out a squeak and he releases, face etched with worry, kissing your neck where he touched you. “Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry.” 

You shake your head and smile comfortingly, “No, baby, I’m okay. I’ll tap out if it’s too rough, I promise,” you tease.

His grumbling voice deepens, “Good... because, darling, right now all I want to do is bury my face in between those gorgeous thighs of yours.”

You inhale sharply when he opens your legs once again, looking up at you and you nod in consent.

“I need words, beautiful,” he smirks with his mouth just above your center. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe out and he responds with a swift lick to your pussy. He looks up at you and when he catches your eye, it’s as if the sensation grows stronger and your head hits your pillow.

“I’ve barely even touched you,” he mumbles into you and you feel his smug smile in your thigh. His fingers dip into you as he flattens his tongue and crooks them towards himself, you grip your sheets.

“Don’t... flatter yourself,” you sigh out. “I-it’s just been awhile.”

He removes his mouth and fingers from you, “So anyone can make you feel like this?”

You enjoy the feeling you get when he looks at you like that, his eyes dark and dominant, so you play along and nod. “Yes, in fact, I’ve had better.”

He licks his lips and gets up from the bed. He opens his drawer and you sit up to look what he grabs: a belt. Your heart beats excitedly in your chest even though you know you shouldn’t be. He gets back on the bed and climbs over you.

Robert looks at you, “Hands.”

You extend them to him wordlessly, watching as he ties your wrists together and puts them over the bedpost so you’re trapped there, unable to move.

“Now,” he holds himself above you, pressing a kiss to your lips. “You’re to stay tied up until I say so, anything like that again and they get tighter. Nod if you understand me.”

You nod emphatically. You had never seen this side of Robert before, so in control and not afraid to go too far, it was so unbelievably sexy. 

The best part was he didn’t tie it tight enough, afraid of hurting you, so you could easily slip out your hands at any moment.

He kisses, painfully slow, down your chest and wraps his lips around your nipple. He swirls his tongue around the erect bud and you gasp, desperate to touch him. He looks up at you from you chest as he switches to the other, massaging the unattended one as he sucks, the pleasurable feeling overwhelming you. So much so you have to clench your thighs together, longing for some sort of relief for the tension building in your abdomen.

“Baby, please,” you whine, squirming beneath him.

He shuts you up with a bruising kiss while his hand slips down to enter you, two fingers in already. He pumps them in and out of you before sliding back down the expanses of your body and letting his mouth latch onto your clit. He sucks hard and you stifle a loud moan that would surely alert everyone in the home of your arousal. He holds you down against the bed with a palm flat against your stomach as you begin to lift your pelvis. His tongue enters you while his fingers take over, stimulating you with gentle rubs and flicks. But just before you feel that euphoric release, his actions cease and you’re left hot and flustered. 

“Robert,” you look at him with a deep frown.

He grins, “Y/n...”

You blow hair out of your eyes, “I hate you.”

“No you don’t.” He puts his lips near your ear, “Are you ready?” You nod as he pushes himself inside you and you bite back a moan into his shoulder. 

You finally have enough, slip your hands out, and he pinches his brow, unable to hide his shock before you bring him down to press your lips against his. He melts into you, arms wrapped around you while he holds you close, filling you out in all the right places. He quickens his pace and you whine into his mouth, nails digging into his skin. You wrap your legs around his torso and he hits you so nicely. He was right, it’s the best you’ve ever had. He rises and looks at you, lips swollen and red from kissing, eyes clear and pupils large, and face flushed with heat. Your hair is in messy tendrils at all angles and you’ve never been more attractive.

“You’re doing so good,” he praises in your ear, placing kisses across your jaw. “Taking my cock so well.”

You whimper and his movements stiffen as he approaches release and so do you, walls tightening around him. He reaches down and rubs your clit with his expert fingers. You finish together, mouths open and hands all over each other’s bodies. It overcomes you in a tingling, perfect sensation, it continues on, leaving you aching and wanting more.

He rubs his knuckles over your cheek, softly and adoringly he looks at you. You tuck yourself into his arms under the blankets. Everything you both have wanted for a long time, laying right in front of you.

“Still want to make me not walk?” you tease, looking up at him.

He kisses your eyelids and you giggle, “Fuck yes.”

Part 2?

[veilder]

"I thought you left" "Nope, just making pancakes" - Convin

Okay, so, I love this prompt and I promised I'd try to write it so... I actually did this last week at like 2 am and have been too busy to edit it until now. But I'm kinda sick of trying to puzzle it out so just take it please, omg.

(Prompt from this post if anyone's curious.)

Stay

The sun was already high in the sky when Gavin finally blinked awake. He could tell because there was one fuckin sliver of window he could never manage to cover with the blackout curtains hanging up in his bedroom and the goddamn sun was shining right in his fuckin eyes, Jesus Christ! With a groan, he rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut in a futile attempt to go back to sleep. But even that small burst of cognizance had its consequences. Gavin could feel the awareness creeping in fast, God fuckin dammit. Was a little shut-eye too much to ask for? But there was something... Something niggling at the back of his mind. It itched at instincts well-honed by over a decade on the force and not even his most earnest desire to return to oblivion could keep it at bay. Restlessly, Gavin huffed out a disgruntled sigh as he kicked at the covers, frustrated despite himself at being roused after the night he’d had— Like a shock passing through his body, Gavin’s eyes snapped open, memories of the previous evening flashing through is mind. But just as readily, a heaviness settling deep in his heart as he took in the other side of the bed. The sheets were mussed and the pillow indented, a clear sign of its former occupant. Evidence as plain as day told Gavin that last night hadn’t been some delusion or dream. And yet… He reached out a hand, an involuntary, desperate motion, tracing the outline where his partner had lain. Where Connor had lain. But just as he’d feared, the sheets were cold. They matched the ice filling his heart. Slowly shuffling upright, Gavin leaned back against the headboard as memories of the previous day filled his waking mind. Flashes of the case he and Connor had worked together rushed by in a flurry. The tip-off for the perp they’d been tracking for weeks and the reckless chase that followed. The abandoned warehouse. The shootout. Vivid Thirium across dirty concrete. Connor had taken a bullet for him. Gavin remembered staring up into those brown eyes, watching as a splatter of blue burst from his chest. "I'm fine," Connor had said, "the bullet didn't nick anything important." And even though the android had gotten right back up and proceeded to almost single-handedly take down the rest of the hostiles attacking them, it was still a moment Gavin knew would haunt him for a long-ass time. Shit was enough to give him nightmares. It did give him nightmares, in fact. Which is how the two of them had ended up back here. In Gavin's apartment. Together. Because after that little fiasco, after the gang had been arrested and the hostages recovered and both he and Connor had been checked over by a medic and technician respectively, it still left the job far from complete. Needless to say, Gavin had eventually nodded off at his desk after a long night of interrogation and paperwork, the rushes of adrenaline and fear more than even his beloved coffee could contend with. He only meant to rest his eyes for a moment. Just a moment and then he'd finish up. But when he awoke some indeterminate time later, it was to his own voice screaming, Connor's name upon his lips, Connor's blue blood scattered across the darkest corners of his mind, Connor's hand upon his shoulder jostling him awake. The android’s LED was flashing a violent red as he stared Gavin down, his brown eyes wide with worry. Gavin couldn't help but cling to him, something twisting, clenching in his heart and demanding he hold on tightly. From there, things had passed in a blur, though he remembered Fowler's imposing figure ordering the both of them to take the next few days off. Too tired and distressed to argue, Gavin agreed immediately, only too glad to get the fuck out of there and go home. And Connor? Connor insisted he drive Gavin home. Connor insisted he make sure Gavin got to his door. Connor insisted that he get Gavin to his bed. And Gavin, still clinging to the android with every last bit of his flagging strength, let him. Over and over he let the android steer him along, trusting a partner fully for the first time in... For the first time

in far too long. And when Gavin had finally settled, comfortable yet shivering in his too-large bed, he took a moment to insist right back. "Stay," he'd said. One word. One plea. A lifetime of wanting to not be alone wrapped up in a single syllable. A few short weeks of shifting worldviews and growing affections cradled in four letters. A wealth of experience in loss stealthily couched within a breath. Gavin insisted. And Connor stayed. Or, at least Gavin thought he had. Because here and now, in the stupidly bright light of day, he was alone again. Like always. He didn't know why he'd expected otherwise. He really should've known better. After all, why would Connor want to hang around here? Especially after his fuckin embarrassing little act last night, fuck. He probably had loads of things to do. Important... android things... People to meet. Places to be. He wouldn't waste his entire day sitting around in Gavin's shitty apartment while he slept like a log. How fuckin stupid would that be? It didn't mean anything. Gavin told himself this over and over again as he shifted, swinging his legs out from under the covers and onto the floor. Just because they could be considered friends now didn't mean Connor had to drop everything for him. Just because he'd begging him to stay didn't mean Connor owed him anything. He'd probably felt uncomfortable as hell last night, what with Gavin whining and bitching at him like a fuckin child. Probably said what he could to mollify him before getting the hell out of Dodge. Gavin couldn't even blame him for that. Fuck, Connor'd just had emergency maintenance done! Because of Gavin! Like hell he'd want some handsy human all over him for ten straight hours, Jesus Christ. It didn't mean anything. Even if he wished it did. His stomach picked that moment to rumble, thankfully interrupting his little pity-party. Thank fuck. It was too early in the morning (or afternoon technically) to be crying over stupid shit. He was probably just hungry. Yeah, that's it. He's all fuckin emotional cause he hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours. It didn't matter that Connor fucked off ASAP, Gavin could get some waffles delivered. Waffles never fuckin betrayed him. He could trust waffles. With newfound resolve, Gavin stood, fumbling for his phone on the nightstand before scrolling through his food delivery aps to see if he could get waffles from anywhere at two in the fuckin afternoon. With heavy tread he stepped out into the hallway, mouth already watering at the prospect and stomach rumbling again in agreement. Fuck, he could almost smell them already. Wait. No, he can smell them? What the fuck?! Before Gavin could do anything more but stand there in his pajamas, wide-eyed and mystified, a figure stepped into view. Instinctively, Gavin's heart raced, adrenaline flooding his veins as the threat of a home invader cycled through his brain. In that fraction of a second, he was prepared to dive into an all-out brawl with the bastard. He was not in the mood for this shit! But then said bastard's lips quirked into a dazzling grin and a brown-eyed gaze sent Gavin reeling in disbelief. While his brain was preoccupied with keeping his suddenly-weak legs standing, his idiot mouth opened up on it's own: "I thought you left,” he said, choking on his disbelief. Connor (because of course it was Connor) only quirked his head to the side in that cute way he does, looking for all the world like the dogs he so adored. His LED flashed a single, swirling yellow before settling back to blue and he said, "No, I was just making pancakes. I thought perhaps you might be hungry." A strange hesitance entered his voice, some dour note falling across his features. "Did you want me to leave?" "No!" Gavin blurted out in a moronic, high-pitched squeak because again, he was nothing if not an idiot. (And one destined to embarrass himself at every possible moment at that.) Clearing his throat, he tried again. "I mean, you can do whatever you want. Doesn’t matter to me." (He's lying through his teeth. It obviously did matter to him. It

mattered a huge fuckin deal!) Connor blinked at him, the only sign of the awkward atmosphere between them the flashing colors at his temple. "Your words run contrary to both your body language and your involuntary actions," he said, "And they are a direct counterpoint to your request last night." Gavin fidgeted, knowing the damn android was right but never in a million years wanting to admit it. "Stop analyzing me, dipshit, it's too early for this." Finally, Connor's face relaxes a bit, a smile smile stealing across his lips. "It is two thirty-three in the afternoon, Gavin. Far from early." "Oh, can it, Poindexter! You know what I mean!" With a huff, Gavin moves forward, sidling past his annoying house guest. "What was that about pancakes?" Connor beams at him as the two of them enter the kitchen. "Ah yes. I determined that you would be hungry after going so long without food. I managed to make due with your atrocious grocery selection and have prioritized calories over nutrition for the time being. But just this once.” While Connor seemed dead set on critiquing the apparently-lackluster pantry he’d been forced to bravely overcome, Gavin only had eyes for the heaping pile of flapjacks sitting at his breakfast nook, fluffy and golden brown and still steaming. Fresh off the griddle, holy shit. How did he…? Despite his hunger, Gavin looked over at Connor questioningly. It was almost like the android could read his mind (which was a scary fucking thought) as he answered his unspoken query immediately: "I calculated your sleep cycle based off the Circadian rhythms I observed during your convalescence. I'm glad I timed it right. I wanted you to enjoy your breakfast." "It's past 2 pm," Gavin retorted with a smirk, "can't be breakfast now, hotshot." Connor's answering smile made Gavin want to melt into a puddle and he quickly turned away, staring at said breakfast with a helpless desperation. "Indeed," the android said, heedless of his partner's distress. "Regardless of the time of day, I wanted you to enjoy your meal, nonetheless." And something more vulnerable finally stole into his voice then, the merest shadow of his quiet pleas from the night before. "I thought, perhaps, you might consider them an offering." Gavin tore his gaze away from his not-breakfast then, looking up at his partner with enough confusion to drive out all other complicated emotions. "What offering? What the fuck are you talking about, tincan?" And now Connor was the one to look away. "It's just that..." He drew in a deep breath (though Gavin knew it was only him mimicking humans. Fucker didn't actually need to breathe) and continued, "yesterday... Yesterday frightened me. When I saw that gunman aiming at you, I—" He clenched his eyes shut, LED flashing a dangerous red. "In that moment, I preconstructed a multitude of outcomes, many of them where you did not survive. In which that bullet found its mark. And the thought of it, Gavin!" he wails. "I couldn't—! The thought was unbearable! And so I calculated the best result. And I determined my course of action. And you lived. You lived. And I thought that would be the end of it. But..." Finally, Connor looked up, his eyes meeting Gavin's head-on once more. "It was like a glitch. The preconstruction, it— It kept resurfacing again and again and again, every time you were out of my sight. And I... I disliked the feeling immensely. I think perhaps I hated it, even. And so I did my best to linger. I didn't want to leave you. Even though I knew you were safe, I still... It was so irrational but I still wanted to verify that you were okay. I still do." Before them the pancakes were growing cold, but neither paid them any mind. Connor looked away again, eyes shut. "I thought that, perhaps you had figured this much out last night. Which is why you asked me to stay. Because we are friends now and that's what friends do. But I worried that I may have... forced the issue... in my desperation. And I-I... I wanted to do something for you in return for your generosity." Looking down at the cooling

breakfast, Connor's face fell further. "I know it's not much but I thought at least—" Gavin had heard enough. "Okay, okay, okay, hold the fuck up, dumbass!" He stood, breakfast forgotten, and approached the shocked android with a fierce determination. Jabbing a finger directly into Connor's chest, he stated as sternly as he could, "You don't owe me a goddamn thing! For fuck's sake, Connor! You fuckin saved my goddamn life yesterday! You took a fuckin bullet for me! And even after that, you still fuckin stayed with me and made sure I got home safe!" A growl rumbled through his chest as Gavin poked Connor again. "I was having a fuckin nightmare about you dying! When you woke me up in the precinct! Did you know that?!" Connor shook his head but Gavin only poked him a third time, this time with much less force. He left his hand there, palm splayed across where his heart would be were he human. "That shit kept replaying for me, too. Over and over again. So I get it. I get wanting to 'verify.' I was doing the same thing. That's why I asked you to stay. Because I fuckin—! I wanted you here, okay?! Because the idea that you were hurt or injured or fuckin dead had me panicking!" He brought his other arm up now, slinging it around Connor's broad shoulders in a half-embrace, and leaned in, burying his face in the android's neck. "That shit's unbearable to me, too, tincan. Thinking of this fuckin trash heap of a world without you in it is—" He sucked in a breath. "Can't stand the thought." They stood there for what felt like an eternity (though it was probably only a few seconds) before slowly—tentatively—Connor brought his own arms up to squeeze around Gavin. He held him with a brittle tenderness, his touch light and careful as if he was afraid Gavin might break. And fuck, maybe he would. Maybe Connor could shatter him into a hundred-thousand little pieces. But shit, he'd take it. Because Gavin would never have been in this situation in the first place if Connor hadn't broken right through his walls first, scattering him and leaving him adrift in a strange, new world. And when he’d managed to build himself back up, it was into something—someone—stronger. Someone who could look at the world and see progress instead of oppression, opportunity instead of limitations, people instead of just machines. Connor had shattered his body once before down in the archives. He'd shattered his mind too over these last few months. It’d only make sense for him to shatter his heart as well. But he didn't. He wouldn't. And as Connor held him like a thing to be cherished, Gavin felt again that perhaps he'd been right last night. Perhaps this was a partner he could trust. A partner who could trust him, too. And perhaps he would— "Stay."

_____________

Bonus:

Connor: "Okay, but only if you eat your pancakes. I didn't download an entire cooking catalogue for you to let them go to waste, Gavin." Gavin: "Fuckin bite me, we're having a moment here." Connor: "Is your stomach rumbling part of that moment?" Gavin: "God fucking dammit, I fuckin hate you." Connor: ^_^ "False!" Gavin: "Fuck!"

And they lived happily ever after. ♥

[funkymbtifiction]

Please, help me understand Fi more.

Hello! I hope you are enjoying your day!

I was hoping that could help me understand xSFP types and Fi types in general better, because as an ENFJ most of them seem reckless, annoying and egotistical to me. It’s easy to resonate with some of their fears and desires, however, I don’t really get them.

E.g.: in ‘Shadow and Bone’ Alina Starkov’s whole personality is a huge red flag. It is quite difficult to understand how one can think only about herself (and Mal sometimes) when there are much stronger forces at work and you can feel that historical events are literally at your doorstep. It’s quite surprising to see Alina not making any effort(she doesn’t really want to know other Grisha or train or even think about what is going to happen). She gets a chance to feel normal, to fit in, to have a kind of family with other mages, and yet…

As you have probably guessed, I have no problem understanding Kirigan’s intentions, but I would like to understand Fi a bit better, as there a lot of main characters with Fi.

Thanks in advance.

I am enjoying my day, thanks. I got done with work early, and realized I’m exhausted, though, so I doubt I’ll get much more ‘productivity’ done today.

SFP / SP types “live in the moment” and focus on what is immediately in front of them; they don’t see or look for the big picture, and whatever Ni flashes of insight they have are rational “sequence of order” premonitions. For that reason, you cannot judge them from an NF big-picture perspective, because their focus is here and now. Sometimes, they are reckless; other times, they are “on point” and skilled at seeing what is coming and doing something about it (either being part of it, or getting the hell out of Dodge).

I had a conversation with a friend one time about Marie Antoinette, as we debated whether she was ESFP or ISFP, and she pointed out that Marie could not have been ESFP, or she would have had a quicker sense of the reality of her situation. One of her ladies in waiting, an ESFP, saw what was happening and the way the trend was moving toward beheading aristocrats and left France. Marie was swept up in it all, and a casualty of it, because her feelings (subjectivity) outweighed her Se objectivity.

That is, in a nutshell, what is happening with Alina. Her personal feelings are directing every decision she makes. You have to “get” her not only from an ISFP perspective, but a 6 perspective, and factor in that she’s a social-blind Enneagram type. Her feelings are all that matter to her. Her feelings dictate her actions. Who she cares about influences her choices. She is a Fi-dom. Fi-doms have barometers that are in flux between “I love this,” “I hate this,” and “I don’t care.” For love, they love a lot. For hate, they loathe. And for the “I don’t care,” there’s no middle ground, and no need to think about it further, because they really do not care. Fi weighs everything according to itself – what its ethical judgment is about this thing, person, situation, belief, etc. How *I* judge it.

Alina is an orphan who has only ever had her best friend, and she is ripped away from him without any choice in the matter, and forced to attend a magical school where the only other person who seems to care about her, and offer her protection and guidance (the same thing Mal did) is the general. She’s an sx-user – if she doesn’t have fire with someone, she doesn’t “bond” with them. She’s an sp-user, she wants to feel safe and keep herself “okay.” She has no social instinct, which means friends aren’t to be made for “casual reasons.” (To be honest, that baffles me to; I have strong soc and not to make friends, take an interest in the other girls at the school, and think about what my role is would never occur to me.) She is a Se user, so she’s thinking about what is immediate and what she wants rather than seeing the bigger picture. It takes her time to start doing that, to start breaking down things and trusting her Ni, and by the end, she has a sense of her place of “belonging” in the world, but it’s still… about the person she cares about the most. It will always be that way.

She’s a Fi-dom, she has sx, and she’s a 6 – she NEEDS Mal. The story is all about a 6 learning to trust herself and do things for herself, rather than relying on other people all the time; like the Darkling’s mother said, you can’t always be using “amplifiers” (other people), you need to do it yourself. Every 6 must learn this. She’s about her connection to Mal (and later, the Darkling) and protecting that person; that is the central focus and drive of her life: I need you and me to be safe, and to be together. Other ISFPs aren’t like this. Harry Potter is one, and he takes on plenty of things that are “not his problem” because his Fi says, “Wait a damn minute here… this is WRONG. I MUST ACT.” SFPs act on what they feel is right – you see it in Harry Potter, in Buffy Summers, in Legolas Greenleaf, in Thomas from the Maze Runner. Feelings lead to action.

Fe/Fi conflicts a lot, and it’s not hard to see why, because it’s going in opposite directions. FJs want to be situationally-appropriate, FPs want to live their truth. FJs feel like they are obligated to society, to put themselves aside and work for a greater good; FPs feel like society is made up of individuals who should make their own choices, and not be “forced” to do anything. For an FP, it’s a choice of “*I* am going to do this, because it’s the RIGHT thing to do.” Consider Frodo in LotR. He didn’t have to take the ring, and throw his entire life into the toilet in the process, but he decided, with his Fi, it is the Right and Moral thing to do, and that the task should be his. The Ring came to him. It’s his responsibility.

Alina was not given a choice; she was revealed to have magic, and forced away from the man she cared about, her entire life uprooted – and it was not her choice. IFPs just want to live their life free of outside interference and for others to be able to do the same. Some of them are selfish, some are generous. Some of them would make friends, others would not. Some of them would say, “I have a responsibility to society to do X,” others would say “X is not my problem.” It’s all dependent on the individual. That’s what you need to remember about Fi: it’s all subjective. Everything for a Fi is subjective. You won’t find two Fi’s who are exactly alike in terms of what they think is right, if they feel responsible for what happens, or what should happen. They live in a world of a continuous testing of the outer world, to see where their barometer arrow swings. Do I care? If so, what am I going to do about it? If not, then what?

Ironically, an INFP introduced me to this show. As it turns out, her Fi only cares about the trio of Crows, so she watched it focused on them and sometimes felt angry about the changes to the book / their characters; she didn’t care about anything else, so she didn’t absorb it (or even necessarily watch other scenes). I watched it, absorbed everything, but only cared about the Darkling’s arc, as I found him the most interesting. As a result, we have nothing to talk about after seeing the show, since she only cares about the Crows and I don’t care about the Crows. For both of us, the viewing process was a process of looking for something to care about, something that means something to us as individuals, and devaluing everything else. That’s how Fi works: if I care, I care a lot. And this matters more to me than that does. It comes with a subtle tone of dismissal at times -- I don’t care about that -- but it’s really a process of what draws Fi.

That is just the tip of the iceberg about Fi; you can read a lot more about them and all the types in my upcoming MBTI book. ;)

[pitviperofdoom]

Might I ask about 'Life Preserver'? I have no idea what it could mean, and that makes me very curious👀

This is my pre-S1 JonGerry AU! They meet while Jon’s still in school and Gerry’s on the hunt for a Leitner. It’s part of a trilogy in my head that includes JonGerryMartin later on, but Life Preserver takes place before Jon becomes the Archivist and is just JonGerry.

Here’s a scene from it!

---

“Thanks for meeting me,” Georgie said, by way of greeting.

Gerry shrugged. “‘S fine. What’s the occasion?”

It was a nice day. The cafe was bustling but not overcrowded. Georgie had insisted on dragging him to the one empty table outside, with the nice view of the street and the park on the other side. Gerry had eaten lunch in far worse places, with far worse company.

Shit, were they friends? Had he missed that somehow? Not that Georgie wasn’t nice enough, but he’d always figured she was more invested in Jon than in him. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure if being friends with your boyfriend’s ex was a thing you were supposed to do, and at this point he was too afraid to ask.

“Why does there have to be an occasion?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe I just wanted a lunch partner.”

“Didn’t think you liked me that much,” Gerry said bluntly. Maybe that was harsh—she’d only given him a little bit of stink eye when they first met, and she’d let up pretty quick.

If Georgie was bothered by it, she didn’t show it. “I worry about Jon sometimes,” she said. “He’s not always the best at… at advocating for himself, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’ve gathered.” For someone as prickly as Jon, he was shit at actually standing up for himself where it counted.

“Worried a lot about you, at first,” Georgie went on, clasping her hands around her coffee cup. “But I decided not to prod too much. I didn’t want to be one of those exes, you know?”

“Yeah,” Gerry lied.

“Figured it wasn’t my business anyway,” she said, pausing to take another sip. “Jon and I hadn’t talked in over a year by the time I met you.”

“Right.”

“You know, I didn’t even learn your full name?” she said. “Not til last week. Weird, isn’t it?”

Gerry paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. “I… guess?”

“And you know, it stuck in my mind for the longest time,” she said. “Could’ve sworn I heard it somewhere. So I did a quick Google search.”

Slowly, Gerry put his cup back down. Georgie continued to sip demurely at her own.

“Thought I’d find a Facebook page with a few friends in common,” she said. “Or a LinkedIn or something. So you can imagine how surprised I was.”

Gerry looked around at the cafe’s full outdoor seating area, and the crowded, public street beyond. Plenty of witnesses, in broad daylight.

“Ah,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Besides a slight lift of the eyebrows, Georgie’s expression barely changed. Gerry stared down at his cup, appetite gone. Around them, passersby remained happily oblivious.

“I didn’t do it,” he said after a moment. “The charges were dropped and everything.”

“On a technicality.” Georgie’s eyes were cold and steady when they settled on him. “Contaminated evidence, according to one of the news articles.”

“Look, I don’t know what you expect me to say,” Gerry bit out.

“I don’t know either, Gerry, but what am I supposed to think?” Neither of their voices rose above the dull roar of the street and the hum of conversation around them, but Gerry still felt like he was being shouted at. “Does Jon know about this?”

“No, and if I have my way, he won’t.”

Georgie’s steely gaze turned to a glare. “And you don’t see the red flags that might raise? That you might’ve—”

A tide of red rose up behind his eyes. Not anger, but the memory of blood, both the sight and the overpowering smell. “She did it to herself,” Gerry said coldly.

“Not what the coroner’s report said—”

“What do you want from me?” Gerry went on harshly. “I came home and found her halfway through—that. Went into shock long enough for her to get plenty of it on me, then ran out to the nearest coffeeshop and sat in a fog until the police picked me up. Happy?” Georgie’s glare only hardened. “It really doesn’t matter what you think. It’s the truth whether or not you believe it.”

She waited for him to wrest himself back to something resembling calm before speaking again. “Fine. Let’s say I believe you. Why are you lying to Jon, then?”

“Oh, tell me what the best time to bring that up is,” Gerry said dryly. “Is that a fourth date conversation, or more of an anniversary thing?”

“I’m not talking about the murder,” Georgie retorted. “Why did you tell him you’re living with your mother?”

He probably could have come up with a feasible lie. But what came out instead was, “Because I am.”

The look on Georgie’s face was viciously unimpressed. “You’re living with your mum.”

“Yep.”

“Your mum, who by your own admission, committed a violent suicide in 2008.”

“Got it in one.”

“If you’re not even going to take this seriously,” Georgie began.

“Would you like to meet her?” Gerry asked. “It’s not like it’d be the first time you saw a corpse get up and walk around, would it?”

Georgie froze.

That was the funny thing about saying cruel things, Gerry reflected. More often than not, you had to say them out loud first to realize they were cruel at all.

But it was out, and he couldn’t swallow it back down, so he let it sit there between them, bloating like a dead thing in the sun. He didn’t look at Georgie’s face again. He wasn’t sure he could.

“What did you just say to me?” Georgie said shakily.

“I don’t want to say it again,” said Gerry. “And I don’t think you do, either.”

“That’s…” She sat back in her chair, putting just a bit more distance between them. Gerry shut his eyes. “How—how could you possibly know about that?”

Gerry heaved a sigh, running his hand down his face. He could always stop. He could get up right now and walk away. Never talk to her again, never see her again. Of course, if he did that, it’d probably mean never seeing Jon again, either.

Not for the first time, he wondered if that wasn’t a good thing.

“When you live like I do,” he said at last. “You learn to see it. Recognize it—them. The marks on people. Like the one on you.”

It was subtle, as the End always was. It never looked like a proper scar, the way the more violent ones did. After all, what was more natural than death itself?

“I’m… marked,” Georgie said. It wasn’t a question.

“Kind of impressive, to be honest,” he said. “Dodging Terminus. Not many can say they’ve done that.”

“Stop.” Her hands went to her ears quickly, almost instinctively, before she forced them down again. “Just, stop for a second.”

“Okay.”

Georgie sat and breathed for a moment. Then, “So your mother—” She paused again, gathering herself. “She… she was like that woman in the medical sciences building.”

“Dunno,” Gerry replied, forcing himself to look at her again. “I can see the scar, not what left it. And what my mum did was… unique.”

Her eyes were still fixed on the table in front of her, not on him. “Is this common?” she asked.

“Walking corpses, specifically?” Gerry asked. “Or did you mean more generally?” She nodded once. “Guess so. It’s been common enough to take over my life.” He watched her carefully, waiting for a sign that he should stop again. “There are forces behind the monsters. Powerful. Omnipresent, even. Most people are lucky enough not to notice, or be noticed. Some are lucky like you, and escape with only a scar. Others—” The Eye dropped a helpful bit of trivia in his head. “Others are like your friend.” She flinched. “Sorry.”

She sat and breathed for a little while longer. Gerry picked up his coffee cup again and waited.

“And what about you?” she asked at last. “Where do you fall?”

Gerry grimaced. “Long story. Very unpleasant.”

“Broad strokes, then.”

“Mum grew up seeing the monsters and decided it’d be nice if she could be one herself,” he said. “Then she thought it’d be even nicer to start a little monster dynasty, and that’s where I came in.”

At last, Georgie lifted her chin and looked him in the eye again. “And what about you?” she asked. “What do you want?” Her jaw shifted as it clenched. “What do you want with Jon?”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” he said quietly.

“That’s not what I asked.” Georgie’s eyes hardened again. “You know what I thought, when I first met you? I thought you were just—toying with him. Because I saw how he looked at you and how you looked at him, and it didn’t match. Like he was just—just a diversion for you. Just some passing curiosity until you got bored and moved on.”

Gerry slipped his hand off the table and into his lap. It was a bit late, she’d probably already seen it shaking, but it made him feel better, at least.

“Was I right?” Georgie asked. “It makes sense, even if it’s not the same as what I first thought. Growing up like that, I bet you’re curious. Is that what Jon is, to you? A way to play at being—”

“Human?” It came out harsher than he meant it to.

“I was going to say normal,” Georgie replied, glancing away for a moment. “But if these—monsters are as common as you say they are…”

“Look, you’re not wrong, alright?” Gerry sat back in his chair, letting his spine curve into an ugly slouch. “That’s how it started. He asked, and I was curious, so I went along with it.”

“And now?” she pressed.

“And now I want to keep it,” he said. “I want to keep him. I’m finally starting to like the world outside of the one I grew up in, probably because I finally have a reason to be here. Happy?”

“No,” Georgie said flatly.

Gerry tipped his head back with a groan. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to acknowledge what this sounds like!” Georgie glared at him, sitting up straight enough to look down at him. “What you’re making it sound like! So you grew up in a bad place—fine. I can’t imagine what that’s like. But then—what, you meet a nice guy and now you’re ready to leave it all behind and defy your undead mum and turn to the light side, just like that? That is not how it works, Gerry. It’s not as simple as that in this world, much less yours. You don’t just fall in love and fix everything, and it’s not fair to put that on Jon—”

Gerry barked out a laugh. “Is that what you took from this?” he demanded, dragging himself back up to face her. “You think I need you to tell me that—that love doesn’t conquer all, and I can’t pack all my baggage away and skip into the sunset because a cute boy asked me on a date and showed me the error of my family’s ways? Fuck you.”

Georgie held his gaze, unflinching. “Fine,” she said. “How should I have taken it, then?”

“I’ve wanted out since I was old enough to want anything.” The words came as if ripped from him, raw and bloody-tasting on his tongue. “You think I’ve never tried to leave before? But where’s someone like me supposed to go, hm? Even if I didn’t have monsters in my head and her ready to drag me back if I don’t come on my own, what place is there for me to run to?”

She didn’t flinch or look away again, even with Gerry a breath away from yelling in her face. Instead she watched him without so much as a twitch of an eyelid, leeching the venom from him with steady, infuriating calm.

“It’s like this,” he said. “Like I’m on a—a ship, sinking in a storm. I know if I stay on it, it’ll take me down with it, but what choice do I have? I could jump, but it would only drown me faster.” He swallowed, struggling against the dryness in his throat. “And I can see, just off the deck, all the boats that don’t have room for me, and all the people drowning in the ocean, and all I can do is stay where I am and throw life preservers until I join them.” His eyes burned. “But then I met Jon, and suddenly it’s like I have…” He gestured vaguely, struggling with his own analogy.

“A safe harbor,” Georgie said quietly.

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think there is one. Not from this. Not from them.” He shrugged, feeling inordinately tired. “But for the first time, I feel like—like if I jump, someone will throw me a line.”

In the space that followed, the hum of surrounding conversations washed back in between them. Gerry was almost surprised to see them still there. Apparently he hadn’t gotten loud enough to scare anyone off.

“Well?” he said, when Georgie’s silence got to him.

“It’s a lot to take in,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And I’m still worried about Jon.” She lifted her eyes to meet his again. “But, I’m less worried about your intentions than I was before.”

“Guess that’s something,” he answered, and heaved a sigh. “So what happens now? Gonna demand I come clean with him?”

“No,” she said, faster than he would have expected. “No, I… I never told him about mine. And, just on instinct… I don’t think I’d ever want him dragged into this, if it’s avoidable.”

She didn’t know, Gerry realized. She’d known him years longer than he did, and she didn’t know he came scarred by the Spider.

“Is he in danger?” she asked. “Being with you?”

“No,” Gerry said firmly. “I wouldn’t—no. I keep him as far away from my shitty life as I can. I told him I didn’t want him anywhere near my family, and he didn’t press the issue.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “He thinks your mum’s a homophobe, you know.”

That shocked a laugh out of him. “You know, he’s probably right? Think she might just hate the idea of love in general, though.”

“Messy divorce, I take it,” Georgie said dryly.

“Rohypnol and garden shears were involved, so yeah, I’d say it was pretty messy.” He realized his mistake when the sickened look crossed her face. “Sorry.”

“It’s… fine,” she said. “Probably should’ve guessed.”

They sat in silence again, but the climate of it had shifted. It felt easier, somehow. Less like he half-expected the fog of the Lonely to come rolling in for a snack. Gerry remembered his coffee, and found it just on the edge of lukewarm. He drank it anyway.

Georgie shot him one last odd look, then took out her phone. She scrolled through it for a minute or so, then snagged a paper napkin and pulled a ballpoint pen from somewhere to scribble on it.

“Here,” she said, sliding it over. Gerry looked down to find a line of neat blue numbers. “That’s the number of the therapist I talked to after—what happened to me.” She looked at him briefly, saw the dubious look on his face, and shrugged at him. “Just in case you need another lifeline.”

It was strange—usually Jon was the one to make funny things happen in his chest. This one didn’t feel the same, but he still didn’t quite know what to do with it. It left him feeling uncomfortably like he owed her something.

“I won’t let any of it hurt him,” he said, because he had nothing else to offer. “I’ll end it myself before I put him in danger.”

She nodded, though she didn’t look as relieved about it as he’d hoped. “That’s good,” she said hesitantly. “Don’t be a martyr, either. You—you deserve help. You deserve a chance to get out. You know that, right?”

He tried to smile, but it felt more like baring his teeth in fear. “Don’t think I really know what anyone deserves.”

Georgie reached across the space between them, telegraphing her movements in case he wanted to pull away. He didn’t, even as her hand settled on top of his. “I’m rooting for you, alright?” she said firmly, as if she’d just decided it then and there. “Jon’s… he’s happy with you, you know?”

“Fuck if I know why,” he forced out.

“Stop that.” She gave his hand a quick squeeze. “I changed my mind about you, before. I can tell he makes you happy, too.”

His throat felt tight. “Yeah.”

“Fuck if I know why.”

“Oh, piss off.”

He palmed the napkin while she was busy laughing at him. For a moment he eyed the nearest bin, judging the distance and his chances of making it without her noticing. The moment passed, and instead he folded it carefully around the numbers and slipped it into his pocket to throw out later.

He never did.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Perfect Timing.”

Alright everyone. I am beginning to realize that maybe expecting myself to write a story every week day with a job and trying to get into grad school and writing a second novel might be a bit..... excessive?

So I am going to try for three times a week. I hope you all stick around :)

And I hope you enjoy today’s story as well. 

Adam stood with his hands behind his back, feet spread to shoulder width. He would never have noticed by himself, but the men and women around him stood a little straighter and stepped a little faster under his watchful eye. Once upon a time they might have only hastened their work if he directly asked them too, but just his mere presence these days could send his crew scurrying to do their work. He hadn’t really changed anything about the way he commanded his men. He was firm when he needed to be but allowed for brevity when it would suit the situation.

However, a few years and some tough lessons was slowly shaping him into the kind of man who could command thousands, sharp posture, calm confidence, and a keen eye. 

But then again anyone who could appear professional while wearing high top heelies was a man to be reckoned with.

Sunny walked up next to him her pearlescent white armor glowing under the light as she leaned on the shade of her matching spear. Her head was held high like his. Where once she had been locked up, and defensive, she now stood with the calm confidence of someone who understood what control meant.

Together they had come a long way.

She tilted her head, “You really think he’s going to let you race this…. It’s a million dollar piece of military hardware, they don’t stand a chance.”

Adam didn’t move, hands still clasped behind his back as he  stared up at the F-90 Darkfire he was preparing for the race, “I wouldn’t be so sure…. I’ll be lucky to come in last place.”

Sunny frowned confused, “I saw those shuttles, they were junk shows.”

He lifted his head as the F-90 was rolled across the deck.

“This is a race, it isn’t combat. She was built for dogfights which means she is going to be heavier than the others. Wing tip to wing tip she is also going to be a little longer than the other shuttles and jets making maneuvering around obstacles more difficult. Sure she likely has a more powerful engine, but that can be as much of a detriment as it is a leg up.”  He gestured in the vague direction of the race course, “We are going to be racing through the planet’s smaller rocky ring. It has an unusual amount of larger, thick chunks which we are going to have to manuver around: the kind of conditions you might see in science fiction movies when they talk about an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are generally too far apart to cause any real issue, but here the rocks are dense, and my flying is going to have to be on pont, having a more powerful engine is going to make her more touchy, and my fitness on the controls is going to have to be absolute.”

Sunny tilted her head listening as he continued. She liked it when this side of him came out. There was something about the analytical, logical side of Adam she found….. Very appealing.

He walked forward to examine the jet himself, “Furthermore, I don’t know if you noticed, but there were a few jets there that weren’t exactly junk shows. A few of them were pretty top of the line, and most of them were built for racing. Lighter, sleeker, faster, and with more engine control than mine.

A lot of my maneuverability is lost out of the atmosphere. This isn’t about how well you can manipulate wind currents, this is going to be all about the very minute rotation of the rear and and wing engines. Their wings are smaller and closer in meaning they are going to rotate more easily than me.

She walked up with him and put a hand on his shoulder, “You forgot to fact in one thing.”

He frowned and looked up, “Oh, what did I miss.”

She smiled slightly, “The skill of the pilot, and I know for a fact that we have the best pilot this side of Andromeda. You can have the best plane in the world, but if you have a shit pilot, then a good pilot in a flying trash can has a chance of winning.”

He Smiled, “Thanks, I needed that.”

He stepped back, “Still it doesn't pay to be too cocky. I have a feeling these people have raced this before, they are going to know what they are dealing with, and I am going tinto this completely blind. This is a test to see if my instincts are better than their practice…. Who knows it could be a very close run thing.”

He moved forward to do an extra check on the outside of the ship despite having a whole team of people to do it for him. Adam had learned to delegate a lot of his responsibilities onto others to avoid burnout, but this was one thing he never left to other people. He came back after a thorough check of the ship and stopped next to her.

His head was tilted to one side as he looked at the machine sitting before him.

“It is missing something.”

Sunny turned her head to look at him, “What?”

He smiled, “Do we have anyone here who has experience with graffiti?”

***

Donavan Red met him when he entered the hanger, wearing his flight suit and holding his helmet under one arm. He had gone for some of his more simple equipment. Didn’t want to give the guy an excuse to blame his skill on technology.

Red looked him over.

“Nice suit, princess.”

Adam just smiled thinly looking around at the other pilots, “I see I might be under-dressed.”

To be far though, he wasn’t exactly sure what he would have described the dress code, if he had to put it on an invitation. 

The most apt description seemed to have been.

Dress for Pissing contest.

The men and women wore their uniforms in the same way NASCAR drivers might, covered in logos and patterns. Some of them were clearly custom ordered with personal designs on the backs or the helmets, some sporting flames, others cartoon animals, one guy was just covered in black and white skulls.

The affect up close was ok, but from a distance he just looked like an over excited dalmatian, or maybe some kind of flamboyant cow.

A few of them went for color themes, neon red on black. Neon green on blue.

Most of them tried to coordinate with the matching colors on their ship, each trying to outdo the next.

Red smirked.

The docking bay light began to blink red as the airlock was engaged, and the all turned to watch as the doors opened, and Adam’s jet rolled into the docking bay. She was simultaneously both very impressive and very not impressive. She was an instrument of war, and he rockets lined up on either side of her wings said as much. Adam had once considered her rather sleek in comparison to other jets of the day, but looking at her now in comparison with the racing planes and he couldn’t help but compare her to a pitbull or a bulldog next to greyhounds or whippets.

She rolled up slowly and Red raised an eyebrow.

“A whose guy huh?”

Adam smirked, “I don’t know, I kind of like it.”

They both looked up as the F-90 stopped in place, and along her side in delicate blue cursive script was the name Cinderella. The man who had done the graffiti  had even taken the time to add some stylized pink roses to the front and end of the word giving it a finished look.

Donavan seemed both amused and annoyed at the same time.

The men and women around him turned to look over ridicule dying on their lips as they saw the smirk on his face.

It was made pretty clear.

He was going to beat them, and when he beat them, he was going to have a princess logo on the side of his jet, never mind all of their cool paint jobs.

Donavan frowned but then turned to everyone, “Alright load up!.” Adam did as ordered, switching seats with the young pilot in the cockpit and strapping himself in. he adjusted his controls, did a quick once over, and then pulled some power from his engine.  There was going to be an overwhelming desire to go fast, but he knew that speed wasn’t going to win him this race.

The jets began lining up next to each other, and to his surprise, one of the sleek racing models sidled up next to him, and when he looked over, he saw Donovan Red cambering into the cockpit.

That didn’t exactly bode well, but what was there to do about it.

He felt cool oxygen spilling  onto his mouth and nose as the orange tinted visor dropped down over his eyes. He opted not to use the heads up display preferring to see everything around him as he was flying. 

They were all in a line now, and up ahead a large projection appeared on the docking bay doors.

Red lights began to blink as the docking bay was cleared of everyone except for the jets.

The image of a woman appeared on the screen before them.

It was one of the women he had seen before in her cut off jean shorts and tight tank top.

“Ladies and gentlemen start - your - ENGINES!”

All around him the room was filled with a roar as the group of people pushed their engines to an idle.

He could feel the jet underneath him as it thrummed and whined vibrating into his gloves and down into his skin.

His very bones could feel the trembling.

“The course is simple, one lap around the rocky interior ring of the planet. Rules are only this, no leaving the ring, no weapons, and no teams, every man for himself. If the race moderators see any of this, you will be thrown from the race.”

She smiled and leaned back to reveal two green flags in either hand.

She began to wave them.

“On your mark!”

He took a deep calming breath forcing his hand to relax.

“Get set.”

He felt his heart beating  hard against his ribcage, his stomach crawled up into his throat, and he felt the sudden and overwhelming need to pee.

“GO!”

THe airlock doors shot open faster than they should have been able, a clear sign someone had bypassed safety protocols. Caught off guard by this, Adam shot out of the gate slower than he would have liked. Already the racing  jets streaked ahead, their quicker sleeker designs looking right at home against the blackness of space.

He had to remind himself that in space, without wind resistance, sleek didn’t mean shit.

If he was good enough he could have piloted a brick to win.

He gave more joice to the engine and shot forward. He cut under one of his other opponents and then cythed up next to a second.

He was there for only a moment when he saw something coming in from his right.

Instincts had him move fast, and he turned horizontal  shooting upwards just as another jet tried to push him out. He was flying over the two of them now, and gave another burst shooting forward and past them.

This open stretch was the only time he was going to be able to use the power of his engine to his advantage, so he gave her a little more juice and shot forward catching up quickly with the racing models at the front. Two of them cut sideways attempting to block his path. He cursed, forced to fire his engines backwards so as not to go crashing into them. 

The ring was approaching quickly now, and he could see very clearly that they had not been kidding. The belt was dense, less mate out of fine sand, and instead made up of billions of rocks some the size of him, others the size of cars, and even some the size of large houses. It was the strangest sort of formation he had ever seen around a planet, and he wondered idly how they stayed in orbit.

The two jets ahead of him cut right and then left as a rock came barreling towards him.

He shouted and rolled to the side barely avoiding a head on collision, his instincts saving him where his active brain could not.

He snarled.

“Pull it together.”

There was no time to be thinking, there was only time for flying.

WIth a practiced hand he toggled a switch on the side of his thumb, and his helmet was suddenly filled with the sound of music and drums. His brain focused inward and stopped thinking. He shot over and then under rolling between rocks just inches away on either side. Off to his right the planet below was glowing with the light of it’s star, a lightning blue halo around it where the atmosphere glowed.

He cut the left dove down and then rolled up.

He could see the other jets ahead of him cutting in and out through the rocks. His breathing grew even, his body relaxed, his brain heard nothing but the beat of the music and saw nothing but the obstacles ahead of him.

One of the jets pulled up next to him from behind recklessly rolling around one of the rocks. They were racing wing tip to wing tip now.

They cut right and left under and over he rolled left they rolled right. They were shaky just hanging on, but his flying was smooth.

Up ahead one of the other jets lit up with glowing orange as a set of flares broke from it’s back end shatting against the debris behind it.  Rocks were thrown off their normal course and went smashing into each other turning the rock field ahead of them into a meat grinder. Adam shot forward and dived downward while rolling tight, behind him the racer was unable to replicate the move and a piece of rock caught their wing sending them spinning off to the side and out of the ring.

Adam dodged a piece of debris coming in from his left, flipped upside down and shot diving upward and then righting himself just under the jet up front.

He could see the leader now, and recognized it as Red himself .

The jet above him attempted to drop down and knock him out of position, but he gave a burst to the engine and shot forward.

The jet behind him punched downward and nearly collided into a rock before pulling back into the palace.

Adam took their place in second.

Red could see him coming.

Another set of flares was released.

He checked his forward momentum and rolled three or four times to his right. G forces tugged at his consciousness forcing blackness to the edge of his vision. He tightened the muscles of his chest and stomach forcing blood back up into his head as he breathed out in short controlled bursts.

A rock flew overhead, he cut low, bumped up and then executed a rolling turn over a massive rock pulling in behind red and just up to the right to avoid another burst of flares.

The two of them were fighting for the front now.

And red was good, he knew how to handle a jet, but so did Adam.

They roared past a field of rocks splitting apart as a massive chunk came between them. Adam roared forward, and panicked for a single moment as he saw an impenetrable wall of rock appear just before him. Then a crack appeared. He fired the forward engine and cut horizontal passing through an opening that left him only feet to spare. Rock rose up to meet him, and he rotated his engine up dropping vertically before cutting sideways and passing under a rock. Teeth gritted, he punched upward passing through a gap just as it closed behind him.

A yell of exertain escaped his lips as he pulled straight up cutting up the side of a massive mansion-sized rock before diving right back down into the thick of it.

Red was gone, he didn’t see him anymore.

Was he up front?

And then the sleek black jet dropped down from above cutting him off.

He cursed and swerved low past another rock forced to cut diagonal back into line.

He pulled up wing to wing with the men again.

They dove, they pulled up and they took a wide turn ac coordinated together as a military formation never more than four feet apart.

They were going faster than they probably should have reacted. second by second he rolled left Red went right. They both met in a dive rolling past each other, wings almost touching before cutting upwards mirroring each other in opposite directions. The sound of the music melded with the path of his flight.

They were racing side by side just as one of the other jets roared over them careening out of control in a desperate attempt t o reach front. They watched him dive pull up cut left, and then a rock rolled right into their path. The two of them barely had time to react as the rock hit their right wing and then sent them slamming into the next boulder. There was an eruption and a brief ball of fire as oxygen was consumed from inside the cockpit. Debris blossomed up around them in a miniature explosion.

Adam greeted his teeth, eyes wide .

What was once a race suddenly turned into a battlezone. He and Red dove together rolling around the debris desperately trying to avoid getting cut in two. At these speeds, one hit would be the death of them. His heart raced in his chest as he pulled forward cutting  in the triangle made by three boulders side by side. Red mirrored him below.

A chunk of metal shot towards him, and he toggled his right wing burst just in time, lowering his left side just in time for the chunk to go flying past him. He pulled up with a gasp as a massive chunk of rock cut up before him. Red shot below and he rolled over the top coming into second place.

Up ahead a mining barge ascended through the line of rocks.

Adam roared with exertion as he pulled up and leveled out shooting right under the attached arm of the barge. Red lights erupted over it’s hull in a proximity warning as he went just inches overhead.

The barge driver, clearly spooked twisted to the side and the arm of the barge rolled with it, catching a boulder and sending it flying towards the grouping next to it, there was a sudden explosion of rock and again he was forced to roll to the side. Up down, over and under, cything between lines of rock.

He was almost hit once, then twice.

He toggled the forward engines, slowing himself down and then shooting straight up before continuing forward.

The rocks around him were rolling unpredictably colliding and then exploding into smaller pieces. There was no way he was making it through that alive.

He was rolling diving spinning twisting, and then, he felt it…. Something he had only felt on occasion. The world around him went silent, everything seemed to slow, and he was filled with…. With a feeling. It was like light, bursting out from his chest, rolling up through his skin and into his head.

He entered a moment of perfect execution. He cut into a tight roll his wings cything through the minute gaps between debris with timing so perfect it shouldn't have been humanly possible. Rocks passed by him at hundreds of miles an hour inches away  from the glass of his canopy, one wrong move and he’d be dead. He cut through a gap that gave him inches on either side rolld right dove down, turned left, spun once and then twice, and made a completely vertical ascent. Rocks flew past him on his right and on his left.

Up ahead he could see a gap slowly closing before him. He opened up his engine and shot forward so fast everything was a blur.

The rocks collided behind him as they snapped shut, and he flew into the clear firing forward to slow himself, and then red was there too descending from above spinning and wobbling, almost out of control and careening directly towards a house sized boulder.

He panicked firing up and down at the same time and sending him into a spin.

He was heading directly towards the rock .

WIthout thinking Adam locked onto the rock, and fired. A rocket under his wing detached and shot forward exploding violently just in time for Red to pass through unharmed. Red jolted awkwardly and rolled to one side. Adam cut past under from right to left and rolled straight over red to avoid a rock.

There was a moment where the two of them were staring at each other through the clear canopy.

Eyes met for an instant, and Adam could see the wide eyed fear on the man’s face., Then Adam rolled ahead ducking under the last rock and then bursting out into space.

He let the F-90 have her moment, and completely opened the engine shooting forward and cutting through the finish line which flashed bright green. In that moment He was hit with such a sense of exhilaration and joy that he couldn't imagine anything better. Who needed drugs, who needed love, who needed any of that when you could fly.

Hed did a triumphant loop whooping the whole way.

Of course, a feeling like that can never last long and slowly began to fade away. THe reality of what he had just done was both terrifying and amazing to the point he felt his body begging to shake. The tension and fear he had been holding back exploded inside him just like that joy and he found his hands trembling on the joystick.

He let it overtake him. He had been like this since he was young and fighting it would only make things worse. Despite his shaking hands he flew back to the docking bay and landed his jet with the precision of a surgeon. Finally when the engine was off and the flood stable underneath him he slumped back in his seat shaking and racked with rolling tremors. He closed his eyes and breathed long and slow.

Behind him the others came limping in.

None of them were completely unscathed, at least one person was dead. His hands continued to shake as the airlock doors shut, and as soon as the room was pressurized, he opened the cockpit. As soon as it did, Sunny came running into the room and up the ladder. SHeleft her spear on the floor and helped him to climb out.  His legs were shaking and he almost fell if it weren’t for her support.

She knew him too well, sitting him down on the lowest step and kneeling next to him.

“Are you ok?”

He grinned at her, “That was…. Holy shit.”

He held up his hand to watch the shaking, “I’m having an earthquake.”

It was just then that Red jumped out of his jet onto the floor. He staggered when he did but pushed away the men who tried to help, “What the ever loving FUCK just happened. The field had NEVER been like that. Jaz DIED out there, what the FUCK.” 

The people milled around in confusion.

Red turned to him, eyes narrowing as he stalked over. Adam sighed and looked up as the man stopped to stand over him

“I’m sorry, I’ll get out of your hair.”

The man paused confused, “What?”

“I broke the rules. Means I forfeit.”

Red looked almost nonplussed, “What are you on about?”

Adam slowly took to his feet taking a few more deep wreaths to steady himself before drawing to his full height. He was stead now and looked down at Red with an unwavering gaze. He held out a hand, “I used weapons during the race, that was against the rules. These weren’t flares to move the rocks. I used a targeted missile during the race and that means I broke the rules.”

Red stared at him.

Then he snorted, “Damn the rules. You saved my ass.” he turned to look at his people, “I am more than man enough to acknowledge that.” HE turned back to Adam, “You saved my life you crazy bastard. I am not even sure how you are still alive ….. Because that flying…. That was….. Holy fuck.” He grinned and took Adam by the shoulder, “you shaking, man.” He held up his hand to show a tremor, “Me too, now let's go get some drinks and talk this out. I owe you after all.”

The two of them walked off through the forest of shaken pilots, “You are the kind of man I can see myself doing business with.”

[nitewrighter]

Does Hanzo ever find out what Genji went through/what he was like during Blackwatch? If so, how does he react?

I think he does eventually, like... Genji lets him know that he was in a very difficult physical and emotional place with Blackwatch, and Hanzo’s able to pick up from Mercy that “Okay no, I don’t think you understand, it was really bad”--but she’s also fairly light on the details mostly for Genji’s sake like “Hey, I’m not going to tell you any more than Genji was comfortable with telling you.” And Zenyatta hangs back for the same reasons, and also he wasn’t there so he doesn’t want to distort the details from what Genji’s told him. So the one person Hanzo can actually get the full story from... is McCree.

Also this fic references the first meeting fic so yeah!

----

“Well?” Hanzo had one elbow resting on the bar. Music was faintly playing but it blended in with the humming murmur of the other patrons. Snowflakes were buffeting the glass of the windowpanes just outside and both of them had shrugged off their heavier coats. The bar itself had a homey, lived-in quality to it. Not dirty, but with a definite age to it that seemed to lend a further brightness to the bodies gliding through it and chatting. The icy Andean wind had heightened the redness of Hanzo’s nose and cheeks well before any alcohol had. It contrasted against the cold discernment of his dark brown eyes.

“I’m gonna answer your question with a question--” McCree started.

“Which isn’t an answer--”

McCree leaned back in his bar seat, folding his arms across himself. He almost looked sagely. “Are you asking this because you genuinely think it will help you get a gauge on your shit and move forward, or are you freaking out because things are going more okay than you think you deserve and feel a need to kick yourself square in the Rocky Mountain oysters?”

“Rocky Mountain--?”

“It’s this fried--I’m talking about--” McCree sighed and sipped his whiskey, “I’m saying you’re doing... you’re doing really well, Hanzo. You’re touching base with the team, reachin’ out, you seem to be sleeping and eating better, hell, you’re clutch on missions, but now you’re asking about this, and it worries me.”

“Why should it worry you?” Hanzo’s eyes narrowed.

“Because--y’know... I care about you. You’re a part of this team and I care about you... in a..” McCree cleared his throat, “Team-y way. And... you were stuck in a dark lonely place and I ain’t itchin’ to give you the means to go back there. ”

“But you can understand that the fact that I don’t have the full story distresses me more, can you not?” said Hanzo, “As well as the fact that knowing the more the truth of it is obscured with me, the worse I can assume the situation was.”

McCree scratched at his beard, frowning. “Yeah... yeah I can understand it--but I can also understand Mercy and Zen not spillin’ the beans on Genji’s account.”

“Mm...” Hanzo glanced off and sipped his own drink.

McCree twisted his glass slowly, “Then again, sometimes I think Reyes brought me on the team to begin with because I have a pretty high success rate with the whole, ‘Beg forgiveness before asking permission’ rate.”

Ana called you a charmer, the words almost slipped out of Hanzo but he wasn’t sure how they would land, so he held them in. Instead, Hanzo only mildly gestured at the bartender to refill McCree’s glass.

“Don’t think you’re getting it just because you’re gettin’ me drunk. It ain’t exactly a pretty story,” said McCree.

“I’m prepared,” said Hanzo.

McCree studied him a few moments longer, one hand still wrapped around his glass and one corner of his mouth pulled up with indecision before he closed his eyes and exhaled. “All right,” he said, “If only to keep you from kicking your own ass over what you don’t know.”

“I want you to start at the beginning,” said Hanzo, his stare steady.

“Well t’be fair, Blackwatch was casin’ Hanamura for months, even before your old man passed--er---my condolences--”

Hanzo snorted a little. “It’s... fine,” he said a bit awkwardly. He was more disarmed than really upset at the idea that McCree may have been far better versed in the activities of the Shimada Clan than he had really anticipated.

“Gérard, that is, our UN Attaché, had this whole thing about ‘pulling everything out to the light,’---And the fella was good at it. Could sniff out paper trails and track down dirty money like no other. The initial plan was to get Genji on possession charges and drag the whole clan out behind him. Your old man’s passin’--again, condolences--threw the whole schedule off though. And then we received additional intel that the Shimada dragons might be more.... uh... what’s the word for ‘unusual’ but it’s like... more business-y unusual?”

Hanzo shrugged.

“Un... Im... Uhhh.... Anomalous! That’s the word! Might be more anomalous than we thought and ‘warranting further investigation’ or whatever,” McCree seemed to be easing into the story now, plucking up details from debriefings, “SEP and all its affiliates had been more or less shut down post-Crisis, but there were still worries about human experimentation... strange abilities, and the like. And the dragon stories had been floating around your family for decades, but only when things got destabilized did we consider they might be more than stories. Then we got word that the wheels had been set in motion that the clan would kill Genji before we could get our hands on him--Arrest mission became extraction mission, and extraction mission became rescue mission. The time frame was so sudden we had to bring the Doc along because we thought she would be our best chance at saving him--She wasn’t in Blackwatch, you understand. Wasn’t too keen on undermining the Japanese government either. But... it turns out bringing her along was the right choice.”

Hanzo seemed to be maintaining a veneer of calm, but there was an unmistakeable new undercurrent of tension in his movements and expression as he sipped his own drink.

“You know what he looked like when you left him,” said McCree, “Do you really want me to go into the details there?”

“Yes,” said Hanzo.

McCree huffed and took another gulp of whiskey. The burn of alcohol rasped the first few words of his next sentence. “So it was me, Reyes, the Doc, and a handful of Blackwatch extraction medics touching down in Hanamura that night. Apparently the Shimada clan’s forces were decentralized from the castle. We infiltrated the castle grounds. Found a handful of your security already dead. Took out one more... left his body with the others. Didn’t have time to run a full investigation, or lock anything down. Finding Genji was the top priority. And we found him. Three limbs gone. Puddle of his own blood. Looked midway between... someone had dropped him in a garbage disposal but at the same time... not right--just... gone. The limbs were gone. The wounds were too clean but still bleedin’ out.”

Hanzo’s knuckles curled in, white and shaking as he took a steadying breath. “Consumed,” Hanzo said quietly, “The dragon consumed them.”

“I can stop--” McCree started.

“Finish what you start, Cowboy,” Hanzo’s voice was steady.

McCree swallowed. “I’d seen some fucked up shit under Reyes, but this... yeah, it was new. I kind of froze up, not quite scared, but just trying to make sense of it. But then I snapped out of it as the Doc rushed to him first. I had a vantage point in case other castle security showed up. Reyes was at the opening to that big-ass balcony so he could flag down our evac. So uh, what you need to understand here is that we uh... we actually had very little solid intel as to what the Shimada dragons were capable of.”

“...but I had left the scene well before this,” said Hanzo, trying to puzzle out the timeline of his own fleeing the castle grounds.

“Yeah it... wasn’t your dragon we saw,” said McCree, “See, the Doc, she had to do this... staff... defibrillation thing? I didn’t get a good look at it but Genji, he uh...started thrashin’ and this light sprang out of him. Bright green. Never seen anything like it. He was screaming. Next thing I know he’s grabbing Mercy’s neck.”

Hanzo flinched with some alertness. “What?”

“I mean--first instinct, I’m saying to Reyes, ‘Boss, I got a shot’--like, I know the mission was asset acquisition, but light show or not I wasn’t about to let him kill Angela, but then she hollers out ‘Don’t shoot him!’ And I’m stuck there looking to Reyes like, ‘You’re gonna override that, right?’ And... and Reyes was so calm... I--I could see him doing the math. Breaking people down to resources... breaking their deaths down to trade-offs...”

“You... thought you had to shoot Genji--” Hanzo’s brow was crinkling.

“If Reyes gave me the word,” McCree shrugged, then itched at the brim of his hat, “I never thought someone would hesitate on saving the doc like he was doing right there, though. But.... then she said something to Genji. Never asked what it was, but it seemed to calm him down before he passed out.”

“And you’re saying he grabbed her neck when they first met,” Hanzo’s eyes were narrowed, “But they’re...”

“Well, he was only half-conscious and in this full-on survival mode and she had just... jammed a huge amount of biotic-whatever into his chest. He didn’t know if she was helping or trying to... y’know it was like those times you nearly punched me in the face when I was trying to wake you up from those night terrors.”

“I’m sorry for that,” said Hanzo.

“Psh. If I had a nickel for every time someone took a swing at me out of some kind of traumatic reflex...” he smiled to try and make this seem more lighthearted than it actually was, but Hanzo seemed to still be processing everything, so McCree cleared his throat. “Word of advice, though, don’t make any ‘I guess you’re into that’ jokes with the doc,” he said with a nervous laugh, “No it uh... it took them both a while. I mean, there was this thing there, definitely, but yeah, they were both neck-deep in a whole bunch of shit for a while before they really acknowledged anything.”

“Did Genji take a swing at you?” asked Hanzo.

“Not outside of a Blackwatch sparring ring,” said McCree, “But Jesus, he was scary on the training floor. Still is, sometimes.” McCree paused for a few seconds. “He was obsessed with killing you, y’know. Taking down the whole clan and killing you. Every mission where he got a sniff of you, every mission he thought you might be there and you weren’t, he’d come back snarling.” 

Hanzo blinked a few times and glanced down. He knew it made sense, given the idea of justice their family had ingrained in them, but there was still an odd sting to the idea. But I’m his brother, he thought, but then he thought, But that didn’t stop me. 

McCree seemed to take Hanzo’s silence as permission to go on. “ I’d try to distract him... try to get his head out of his ass sometimes, but a lot of the time... you see any living thing in a state like that, all you can do is give it space. Genji did give us a decent amount of intel on the Shimada clan’s bigger operations... but when it came to actually getting in there... he was always the first one on the ground. As you can imagine, it was personal for him. There were a handful of bullshit ‘stakeouts’ in Japan where Genji would ditch me... I knew Reyes wasn’t telling me the whole story, then again, it wasn’t my job to know the whole story.” McCree sipped his drink. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t know what he was doing, though.”

“...killing heads of the clan,” Hanzo said quietly.

“Can’t exactly confirm or deny that but... yeah,” said McCree. A prickle of alarm seemed to go through him. “Look, I don’t want to kick off any more brother-killing fuckery--”

“You’re not, Jesse,” Hanzo’s voice was subdued, “I was the right hand of the clan... and the destruction wrought by Genji was, if anything, a product of my own actions.”

“Also his actions--He was fucking nightmare--I mean I liked him, but he was a fucking nightmare, sometimes. Lashed out--like... you didn’t really think of him as giving a shit about you with all that seething over the Shimada clan--- but then he’d know how to say something that hurts, and he knows exactly how it hurts, and you wouldn’t know if he learned how to hurt that bad from your family or just because he was hurtin’ that bad and---” McCree seemed to catch the alarmed look in Hanzo’s eyes, then took a steadying breath before sipping his drink again, “Look... this stuff... it’s all in the past. And he is a lot better now. And he is one of my best friends. Kind of wild how someone who hurt you that deeply can be a best friend like that, but... that’s kind of how life works. Kind of how this shit works when you don’t know if you’re coming back from that next mission. We’re all fucked up here. It’s about learning to take the fucked up parts of yourself and trying to make it into something that helps the people that mean something to you. ”

“The people that mean something to me...” Hanzo repeated quietly.  He remembered McCree’s words from his second night on the watchpoint. ‘We’re all just background noise to you. You’re just here so you can stop kicking your own ass after Genji.’ Then he remembered Genji’s words. ‘Well... you’ve been traveling the world for a decade... has there... been anyone? Anyone special? Anyone you loved?’

“...I feel like I’ve let that part of me atrophy,” Hanzo said quietly. Answering Genji’s question, not McCree’s words.

“Atrophy?” McCree repeated.

“When you don’t use a muscle for a long time and... it ceases to be able to functi--”

“I know what ‘Atrophy’ means--” McCree wasn’t making eye contact, “You let... caring about other people... atrophy,” he parsed, trying to trace out Hanzo’s thought process.

“Mm,” Hanzo took a sip of his own drink, “So while I was wandering in grief, Genji was consumed by pain and rage.”

“Which... he’s told you,” said McCree. 

“Well, yes, but he didn’t go into details,” said Hanzo, “I know, this might be difficult or painful to talk about, but I really do appreciate getting a more complete picture of what happened to him after my actions.” 

McCree tilted his own glass back and forth on the bar counter, letting the whiskey rock around the interior.“I know, but...don’t heap all this on yourself. Reyes always said he wanted the cockroach motherfuckers, and he was more than happy to let Genji snap and swear and lash out and burn the house down because that suited Blackwatch’s agenda better than, I dunno, therapy? Only when we got benched after the Venice incident did he yank in Genji’s leash, because hey, it turned out having a PTSD cyborg tearin’ around the base cussin’ people out wasn’t a good look for Blackwatch.” 

Hanzo huffed a little. There was an odd comfort in that. But then he paused, running over the course of McCree’s words in his mind. “...you keep bringing up Reyes,” Hanzo said, fixing his eyes on McCree.

“Sorry--I--I know this should be about Genji,” said McCree.

“No it... it gives some perspective,” said Hanzo, “You trusted Reyes, didn’t you?”

McCree’s mouth tightened for a few seconds before he drew in a short breath through his nostrils. “Yeah... yeah, I did. He just... I mean I’d keep telling myself I was my own person, that I did things with my own style, but so did he. So like... whether it’s ‘your own style’ from fuckin’ Santa Fe or Los Angeles... is there really that much of a difference? If you still picture yourself in their boots, give or take a decade or so?”

“Hm,” Hanzo was thoughtful at this, “I imagined myself in my father’s position so long that when everything came apart and I found myself wandering the world, dodging the clan’s assassins I felt... like a stranger.” 

“Kind of liked being a stranger,” said McCree with slight shrug, “Stranger’s from nowhere. Got nothing to prove.... guess it probably hits different if you got a whole... magical crime lord prince destiny thing, huh?”

“The dragon is not magical,” said Hanzo flatly, but a smile was tugging at his lips. 

“Debatable,” said McCree, “First of all: It’s a dragon.”

Hanzo snorted and a quiet pause passed between them. Not uncomfortable, but definitely tired, letting McCree’s words and all the pain and memory that came with them drift and dissipate into the warm air of the bar.

“...I could tell you more if you want,” said McCree, after a few beats. “I do have funnier stories... wasn’t all... ‘he was fucked up.’ And--Genji did seem to be getting better-ish towards the end there, once they put him on Tracer’s strike team... but by then Overwatch itself was coming apart.” He snorted. “I guess that’s kind of a running theme with this stuff.”

“I appreciate the offer,” said Hanzo with a slight chuckle. He paused. “Tracer’s strike team?”

“Well, she and Winston probably got more stories there than I do,” said McCree, “And maybe the doc, if it’s in good faith.” He sipped his drink. “You’re welcome to run off to try and ask them about it.”

“I think... this is enough for now,” said Hanzo. After a few beats he said, “You’re not... all background noise to me.”

“What?” said McCree.

“That... you said that on the second night,” said Hanzo, “It’s... it’s not that I don’t value life, or other people--I’m just... it’s been a very long time since I’ve worked with other people, since I’ve talked to other people on a regular basis like this, since I’ve stayed in one place this long, and...”  he trailed off, then took a sip of his own drink with some resolve, “I’m afraid,” he said, letting those words sit in the air for a few seconds, “I’m afraid of lending my abilities to another organization that’s used people to hurt other people and then tossed them aside. When your only connection to other people for most of your life was this twisted blood loyalty...” Hanzo trailed off.

“I’m scared of makin’ the same mistakes too, for what it’s worth,” said McCree, “I don’t think fear like that ever goes away.”

“Redemption’s a bitch?” said Hanzo with a slight smile.

McCree broke into chuckles. “You should swear more often. I feel like that’ll help.”

“You’ve sworn plenty for the both of us, tonight,” said Hanzo crisply, sipping his own drink.

“Still, I’m gonna make it a mission to get a ‘fuck’ out of you,” said McCree and Hanzo choked and sputtered. “I didn’t mean it like that! You know what I mean!” McCree was laughing as Hanzo’s attention was split between choking and laughing and desperately looking around for a napkin after spitting his drink. The bartender swooped by with a napkin and the laughs boiled down into chuckles as Hanzo cleaned up a bit. There was another pause then, that same settling of understanding.

“Thank you,” Hanzo said after a few beats.

“You already thanked me--don’t know what’s worth thanking about saying ‘hey your brother was fucked up and so were we.’”

“Honesty. I appreciate honesty.”

McCree smiled and then shrugged.“Hey--y’know, for all the shit I give you,” McCree started and trailed off, “What I said that night about... all of us being background noise... I know that.. that wasn’t really fair. You really didn’t know any of us and, y’know, as far as the general public is concerned, we’re a whole bunch of mercenary weirdoes doing vigilante shit.” 

“And Genji was the only person here I knew, and was really...” Hanzo sighed, “I suppose, I fixed him in my mind to be my last chance at humanity--and made myself out to be a monster to all of you in pursuing that.”

“Well... you’re doing better, I can tell you that much. And... y’know folks are warming up to you.”

“Except Angela,” said Hanzo, with a weary smile. 

“She needs time on that... I wouldn’t try to force it,” said McCree, “Baby steps and all that.” 

Hanzo huffed a little.

“Hey,” McCree lifted his glass, “To baby steps and runnin’ the hell away from all our old role models.”

“Indeed,” Hanzo clinked his glass against Genji’s. Both sipped their drinks and another pause passed over them. Hanzo felt McCree’s eyes on him and looked over at him.l

“Hey just so we’re clear,” McCree’s chin was in his hand, “I didn’t accidentally kick off some huge new bloody vengeance thing by telling you all this, right?”

“You did not,” said Hanzo with a wry smile.

“Oh thank god.” 

[squishmallow36]

Keeper of the Lost Prepositions - Forty-nine

Word count: 2.8k

Tw: if you've read Aurora Irae, that's fairly accurate. If you've read chapter idk-the-number-but-alvar-let-it-go that's the same Dex we're seeing here.

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @kamikothe1and0lny @nyxpixels @florida-fruity-frog @poppinspop @crystallinewalker @uni-seahorse-572 @solreefs @never-mourn-the-good @rusted-phone-calls @when-wax-wings-melt @cotyledon-tomentosa @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizzknees @abubble125 @cherryberrybitch

On Ao3 or below the cut!

    Not much happens in the next two weeks worth noting.

    That is, Fitz came over most days, but that’s routine by now, so it doesn’t exactly count as noteworthy. 

    The first red flag of my day today is not waking up to a text message from Fitz, but I brush it off, figuring he didn’t have a random question for me early in the morning. 

    Although I still check that our, dare I say it, relationship wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. 

    The second one is that he didn’t respond to my text message, but I don’t notice until Elwin is trying to hail me. 

    I sigh, having gotten used to not talking to people through the screen, and answer.

    “Sorry. I couldn’t figure out how to do the thing,” Elwin says. 

    “...Do you mean send a text?”

    “I don’t know what it’s called. Anyway, I need your help.”

    “What do you need?” I ask.

    “How much do I have to fill you in? Do you know anything about what’s happened today?”

    Preposition.

   “Considering that I just woke up a few minutes ago, no.”

    Elwin swears under his breath, massaging the bridge of his nose.

    He looks back at something, and seems even more tense when he turns back, saying, “You’re going to be wanting to be sitting down.”

    “I am sitting half-awake on my bed.”

    “Can’t be too careful. So, basically, the Neverseen made another move.”

    My stomach drops on instinct.

    “I’m terrible at sugarcoating, so I’m just going to be transparent with you. Fitz got caught in the crossfire.”

    I understand now why Elwin wanted me to sit down. My knees would have been jelly, and my world spins. 

    Flickers of anger bubble up, and I start to consider every horrible possibility. 

    A familiar, accented voice cuts through the haze, calling, “I’m fine!”

    It’s enough to let the anger take over.

    “That’s exactly what you’d say if you weren’t fine, Fitzroy.”

    Elwin clearly does not want to get into the middle of this, but Fitz drags him into it anyway.

    “Elwin, tell him that I’m fine!”

    A flash of something uncomfortable crosses his expression, tilting his head.

    Fitz and I both ask, “Elwin?”

    “That’s why I hailed you, actually. They did a number on the same knee as last time. I’m not sure whether it was on purpose or by accident. Either way, it doesn’t seem to matter. I’m not totally sure I can get it back with the amount of damage it’s already taken, and not given nearly enough time to heal.”

    “Back to what?” Fitz asks. 

    He takes a breath with difficulty, mouth forming several different words before settling on, “Right now, as in yesterday, just as an example, it was the same as before the shadowflux attack, yes?”

    Fitz agrees, but I know the truth, and a speculative “Well…” slips out. 

    “Don’t, Dex.”

    “Please continue,” Elwin encourages.

    “From what I’ve heard, Tiergan’s stairs were still difficult. They were difficult for me too, so I’m not really sure that counts, but I don’t go outside so it’s not exactly a fair test. He also said his knee locked up the morning after.”

    “I tell you things in confidentiality and then you tell Elwin without a second thought,” Fitz mutters.

    “I stand by my decision, Fitzroy. It could matter in the long run.”

    Even though he’s not in view of the camera, I can feel him glaring at me, and I have no choice but to glare back. 

    “I feared that’d be the case,” Elwin says, breaking the silence. “I hate to say this, but every day being like that’s our best case scenario right now. Worst case scenario, it might be like your first day off crutches.”

    “Forever?” I dare to ask.

    “Forever is a very long time. However, we’re really not looking good. But before either of you start spiraling, I’ve hailed Livvy for a second opinion, and she said she’ll get over here sometime in the next couple of hours.”

    “So what you’re seriously telling me is that my leg could get shattered and destroyed with shadowflux, and all I get is a little occasional soreness that’ll probably work itself out, but now is when it’s unhealable.” Fitz snaps. 

    “It’s not unhealable--.”

    “So that’s a yes, then. Lovely.”

    “There’s so much scar tissue from last time that couldn’t be avoided due to it being part of the natural healing process, and while it’s much tougher, but it’s so much more difficult to heal--.”

    “Like it wasn’t already difficult to heal.”

    “It was, but--.”

    “But this time is different?”

    Even Elwin is starting to lose it after being interrupted three times. 

    “Yes. Any other knee, and it’d be perfectly fine within a day or two. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do everything I can. I trust you know that.”

    A pit of dread has settled in my stomach with another thought. “I doubt it’s even crossed your mind that Slurps and Burps is still out of commission. So if you don’t have something he needs, it’s going to be pretty hard to find.”

    Elwin once again swears under his breath like we don’t already have an extensive vocabulary. 

    “You would be correct,” he replies. 

    I offer, “I’ve probably got some stuff stashed around here if you need anything,” sensing a natural end in the conversation and reaching for the disconnect button.

    “Wait,” Elwin says. My hand snaps back. “I do need something. Which is why I hailed you. I need your technopath skills to build him something to shift his weight off his bad leg that isn’t crutches. Because I seriously doubt he’ll cooperate with those again.”

    Fitz adds, “Those things were Exile materialized.”

    I have a sudden burst of inspiration at Elwin’s request, mostly in the form of a very clear image of Carl Fredricksen’s cane from Up. 

    When given a choice between making a Disney reference and not making a Disney reference, you can be certain that I’m going to choose the Disney reference. 

    Just a little upgraded with some elf tech. I’ve got to make it more complicated for myself. 

    Not like the original was ineffective, but I think I can collapse it into one vertical bar instead of the four supports, and that’ll make it easier to weight as a weapon. 

    Because I think Fitz’d enjoy hitting people with it just a little too much. 

    And I think I saw something about how thin swords being hidden in canes like a hundred years ago was a human thing. 

    I dimly register Elwin saying, “You look focused, so I’m going to leave you to work on it.”

    I give a half-hearted goodbye as he clicks off, and I plug in my music. 

    Trying to fit the features I want together is more difficult than I’d hoped it was. 

    The bug was easy enough to design, being small enough to fit almost anywhere, but placement is more difficult. 

    Too far up, and it could be muffled by his hand. Placing it at the bottom would be too far from the potential sounds it could encounter. And the middle is largely taken up by the rapier that Lovise has for some unknown goblin reason that would logically fit inside of a slightly thicker than normal sized cane. 

    I begin work on the prototype after two hours of drawing an incomprehensible sketch of what I want it to be. 

    Though, I know from experience, the sketch and the real build are two completely different beings, and what works on paper has a fifty-fifty chance of working in the real world. 

    An hour passes, and I find an issue I’ve been waiting to encounter. The metal shell muffles too much of the incoming sound for the bug, and it’s a little too gadgety-looking to leave it bare. 

    Not to mention that it’s delicate machinery so Fitz will touch it, and his skin’s oils will destroy the circuitry, rendering it useless. 

     Figuring that’s a bit of a lost cause, I start to build the head of the cane; a little Mr. Snuggles for no reason other than I’m sure Fitz’s reaction when he realizes will be priceless. 

     And also its eyes are perfect for a little camera, but who cares about that?

    The tiny wires in the head are more difficult than I’d like, and after it falls apart for the fourth time, my subconscious asks, Why don’t we ask Tinker for help?

    Are you crazy? They’re part of the Neverseen!

    Another thought occurs to me. They’re part of the Neverseen. The Neverseen are the reason why I have to do this. 

    Why Fitz is in the Healing Centre, again. 

    This is her fault. 

    I have to fight back the urge to blame myself for letting them continue on this path in an attempt to learn something, and instead take a page from Fitz’s book and let my anger start to boil. 

    My hands curl into fists, and I start packing my best gadgets haphazardly into my sweatpants, ready for anything they could try to throw at me. 

    I’ve started keeping my pocket knife in my nightstand, and I know I’m bringing it with me. I don’t want to leave the house with it normally, let alone now.     

    I don’t trust the outside world enough, and I’ve gotten incredibly used to the feeling of safety in a very short amount of time. 

    I storm down to the Leapmaster, Lovise following me, begging for some sort of an explanation. An explanation would make me stop, and maybe I would lose my nerve or find a flaw in my logic, so I keep going. 

    There’s a stashed explosive device in a notch in the corner, which I grab, barely even pausing to reach down. 

    We leap to Widgetmoor, and I stomp up to Tinker’s door, knocking aggressively. 

    Tinker, jovially, calls, “What’s the password?”

    “Tinker, let me in!”

    I’m too far gone to care about the preposition. I’m trying desperately to maintain any filter whatsoever. 

    They take a second to open the door, asking, “Aces, what’s up?”

    I grip the knife in my pocket tightly. “What’s up? What’s up‽ What’s up is that I know you’re a member of the Neverseen and I’ve had enough of this, that’s what’s up!”

    She pauses, shocked, although I can’t tell if it’s because they’re surprised I figured her out or because she doesn’t know how to process the allegation. 

    “I’m--I’m a what?” 

    Something doesn’t ring quite true.

    “Oh, don’t even try to play that game with me. I found your journal. It’s pretty clear where your loyalties lie.”

    “...The only reason I’m still a part of them is because I know too much.”

    “Did I ask? Do I look like I care?”

    “They weren’t always like they are today, you must know. That was in my journal. However the Exile you got it.”

    “How I got it is nome of your concern.”

    “Uh, considering it’s my personal journal, I think it’d be of my concern.”

    I glare at her, becoming hyper aware of the knife’s handle pressing into my palm. 

    “Fine. I was a confused trans lesbian kid, not much older than you, that just wanted to figure out what the spades and aces was going on with me, being into girls but not feeling like my body was mine, and the Neverseen provided answers. Fight me.”

    Oh I will. Gladly. 

    “Then explain to me why I had to convince Glimmer that bisexuality exists. If you’re so perfect, that should really be part of your basic curriculum.”

    Their eyebrows draw together. “You know what all the labels mean?”

    “Yeah. What’s it to you?” I snap. 

    “You’re the first elf that I’ve met outside of the Neverseen that knows anything at all.”

    “If that was true, then I wouldn’t know several queer elves that aren’t in the Neverseen. I mean, Keefe was a part of it for a little while, but I refuse to count that.”

    “I call alicorn crap on that one.”

    My teeth grind and my toes curl, but somehow my voice stays steady. 

    “Do you know why I’m here today?”

    They look at me like I’m the idiot here.

    “Did you know the Neverseen attacked today?

    Sarcastically, she replies, “Oh no.”

    They’re the reason I have to build a cane for Fitz. For Fitz. 

    Something inhibits my impulse control, and I whip out my pocket knife, pressing it against their throat, backing her into a wall.

    It’s a little overdone, but some of the most important arteries are in the throat with little to no protection. 

    They laugh nervously. “A little closer, don’t you think?”

    I press a little harder, saying, “Shut up. I’m too gay for that double entendre.”

     “Don’t you mean I’m too gay for that double entendre?”

    “While that may be true, I meant what I said.”

    “Hm. That makes so much sense. How did I not see it before? May I interest you in joining a gay rights club?”

    “Not if you’re trying to get me to join the Neverseen. If you’ve forgotten, I’ve got my own squad. And we don’t commit war crimes on a regular basis.”

    Well, as regular of a basis as the Neverseen. The Black Swan has done some shady stuff. 

    “That sounds so boring.”

    “Yeah, well, when your ‘gay rights’ group just snapped your boyfriend’s knee, again--it’s not even the first time--it livens things up a little.”

   As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize what I just said, and lose my swear word filter completely. 

    “If you tell anyone about that I’m going to--.”

    “What?” they tease. “Look at me like an angry teddy bear?”

    Is that, like, a common thing in the Neverseen? First Alvar and now Tinker. 

    Oh. That’s actually a good idea. Good job, brain. 

    I find my ear plugs, somehow filled with pocket gunk, and stick them in my ears. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I turn on the modified ear plug on whatever settings it has right now, and wait just a few seconds before turning it off. 

     Either Tinker is more sensitive to loud sounds than Alvar, a matter of proximity, or it was turned up higher.

    It doesn’t matter in the end, because I can’t seem to care what the answer is.

    Loudly, so I can be heard, I say, “Don’t question me again.”

    I manage to get her into zip tie handcuffs and leap her back home, ignoring the triplets, and then to a black swan hideout I only found out about because I overheard Mom putting it into the Leapmaster. 

    “Dex? What the--?” Mr. Forkle demands. 

    “I trust Squall has told you that they’re a member of the Neverseen.”

   “Yes? And?”

    “The Neverseen attacked again. So I’ve had enough waiting.”

    “You traded in our chance for getting more information out of her as your own form of revenge?”

    “I stand by my decision. Elwin doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to fix Fitz this time. I refuse to sit around and do nothing.”

    “I think you’re letting your attachments cloud your judgement.”

    Tinker giggles, and I elbow them.  

    “You two have known each other for how long, again?”

    He sighs. “She knows everything we know about her, right?”

    “Yep.”

    “You’re going to take over for her so as to not tip the rest of them off to anything. Maybe we’ll learn something that way. Tell me you can handle that.”

    “Sounds fun,” I deadpan. 

    “And, Lovise, you should really try to control your charge.”

    She ruffles my hair. “Nah. This was warranted.”

    Mr. Forkle barely suppresses an eye roll, muttering to himself as he leads Tinker off to who knows where. 

    As my adrenaline levels start to decrease, the too-familiar pit of guilt in my stomach starts to fill up with the dawning horror of what I’ve gotten myself into. 

    “Hey. I know that look. Don’t give me that look. She’s not going to tell. I doubt she’ll be able to hear anything for a while.”

    I want to argue, I really do. But I just can’t seem to find the energy. As my anger fades, I deflate.

    “I’m proud of you. For not actually, you know. If I was you, it wouldn’t have gone that way.”

    “I was almost there. I can’t deny that.”

    “I know. It wasn’t exactly hard to tell. You wanna play some Portal?”

    “As much as it worries me that you finally agree to play with me, Forkle literally just told us to take over for them, and I’ve got to see how Fitz is doing.”

     She shrugs. “I guess. Lead the way.”

[sweeethinny]

The Duke - Chapter 10

A.N: OK, let's go Thank you very much to the comments, really, I know it takes time, but I'm glad you're here always waiting for a new chapter for your understanding: everything in *ITALIC* is flashback, it's a chapter basically made up of that, it explains some things it was the chapter i waited the longest to arrive, i liked it in the end, i hope you did too <3 AO3 | FF.NET | SIYE

It was a cold night, it had rained that afternoon and the sky was cloudy, it looked like it would rain later in the morning, but Arabella was happy about that, as the damp, muggy weather made her sneeze every minute and her asthma was actually getting worse. She should visit a doctor soon. She continued to walk down the empty street, the hem of her dress was getting more and more muddy, no matter how much she pulled her skirt up a little, every time she stepped into a puddle the mud splashed and it was no use effort in trying to get that dress clean. She should have picked an older one to go out with, since she knew the streets would be dreadful after all that rain, not the brand new one she'd bought after working so hard. Was it just a piece of sewn fabric, why was it so expensive? There weren't even enough details or buttons to justify it. But if Isabel was telling the truth, the fabric had come from India, and that in itself had already increased the price twice as much, and Arabella knew that the woman would not lie to her… She hoped at least. As she walked the streets of Godric's Hollow, she thought about how another lonely night would be, and that maybe tomorrow she would send a letter to her great-aunt asking if she could stay a few days at her farm, just to have the company of other people besides the two her cats; Silk and Melindra. “Help!” The scream echoed behind her, and Arabella turned, startled, to see if anyone was hurt or what might have triggered that scream. It was a female scream, and it made her think that maybe a woman could be chased by some maniac, and even though she wasn't very strong, two women fought better than just one, so she ran towards the scream, not caring more about the mud splashing on her dress. Near Ms. Bright’s shop, there was a woman lying down and bleeding, her clothes torn and a baby in her lap. She looked scared, dumped near a ditch that had been made a few days ago to start building a fashion studio around the corner, the scant dress that still covered her was smeared with what looked like blood and mud, and Arabella thought she saw blood running down her legs. Whether it was an injury or something more disturbing, she couldn't tell. The woman held the baby tightly to her chest, wrapped in an old blanket as dirty as she was, and the poor child spared no effort in crying, looking more than scared. “I'm here, what happened?” Arabella ran to her, helping the poor girl to her seat, noticing that the poor baby was also smeared with blood, but she couldn't tell whose blood it was. ‘Come, come to my house, I can help you-’ "No," she cried, brown eyes startled and wide, as if they'd seen death a few feet away. “Someone is following me, I – I'm going to be killed, I know I will, my husband is after me and – you need to get the boy.” She lifted the baby towards Arabella. 'He's trying to kill us, he thinks the child isn't his, he thinks I cheated on him, and he's coming, I-' The woman stopped, as if she'd heard something, but then thunder made the Earth shudder. ‘Please save the boy, I beg you, he already tried to kill the boy but I was always on time, but now I feel like I won't be able to save him.’ “You must come with me.” Arabella pleaded once more, kneeling in front of the woman, trying to get her to rise. When she reached for her forearm, however, her hand was wet with blood, and the tear in the side of her dress let her see a hideous cut in her ribs, the blood running like water in a waterfall, dripping onto the floor and other parts of her dress. "I told you," she muttered, sobbing. 'I'm going to die, I'm not going to make it, I can't stand walking any longer, I managed to run away from him but I can't stand it much longer… Take the boy.' The woman lifted the boy again, who now seemed to cry even more, waking a few neighborhood dogs, as the sky glowed brighter, the earth trembling a few seconds later. "Take him away, don't let him die." 'How-how am I going to leave you here, I can't-' Another thunder shook the earth, and this time, the storm began to fall stronger

than the afternoon, the winds suddenly getting strong, which seemed to scare the boy even more. ‘He will get sick! Get him, take care of him!” As if on instinct, Arabella scooped him up in her arms, wrapping him in her scarf so he was a little warmer. Footsteps were heard nearby, and the woman seemed to despair even more. 'Go! Get Harry and go!’ “What's his name?” Arabella yelled over the noise of the rain, trying to understand what she had said. ‘Henry! His name is Henry!’ ---------------------- “Poor Duchess,” someone says, but all Arabella can see is the white flag atop the castle, an immense sadness shattering her chest into a million pieces. "Who could do something that horrible?" Another says, all paying attention to the newspaper that reports how Harry Potter, the Duke's eldest son, was found dead near a creek not far away. Probably killed by Death Eaters. “They're all nasty human beings!” A man said, looking horrified by the media descriptions, then looking up at the castle again. It's not that far away, it faces the mountains that end Godric's Hollow, separating them from another village, and it's positioned in a way that's seen from anywhere, no matter where you are, you'll see the castle and the huge towers, next to the flags that stand proudly on the masts. One with the English flag, the other with the Potter family crest. But today, both give way to white flags. The boy is dead. Arabella wipes the tears from her eyes and watches little Henry sleep in her arms, oblivious to the commotion. She sympathizes with the Duchess's pain as she looks at that little baby who nearly died along with her mother - Arabella knew that the woman's body was found lifeless the next morning - and remembers the time she too felt the pain of losing a child, of losing the one she loved most to Death Eaters. She kisses the boy's forehead, the pale scar of lightning makes him unique, and Arabella lets herself cry, thinking of the Duchess herself, and how they took away her right to fondle her own son. ---------------------- Arabella did not remember seeing the Duke in public since the incident two years ago. He smiles and nods, but she notices - because she's been there once too - that he's sick, that the gold-and-red scarf around his neck seems to have a lot of fabric left over, as well as his pants. She notices the dark circles under his eyes, and the sunken cheeks, but the man still smiles and waves at people. Henry was on her lap, yesterday he turned two, and Arabella doesn't know very well when he was born, but her neighbor, who is a doctor, said he wasn't much older than four or five months, so she decided that his birthday would be the day before they met, because she thought it was too tragic to celebrate the day she found him in his mother's lap half dead, but she didn't want to stray too far from the date. The Duke smiles and nods to a little girl on his father's shoulders, he is walking through the village as he usually does, something that brings him closer to the people who live there and keeps him in power. He's a good man, after his father, the best they've ever had for sure. He stops when he gets close to Arabella, and she smiles because she used to paint the portraits of the royal family until she had a problem with her fist and was forced to quit her profession, but the man never seems to forget the time she drew him on his 17th birthday. "I'm still waiting for you to draw me and my wife." He says, as he always has since she informed him that she had unfortunately been forced to stop. The man isn't charging her though, he smiles, and watches Henry in her lap, almost sleeping on her shoulder. “It's a beautiful boy.” She thought she saw a shadow in his eyes, but it was so fast she thought it was just her imagination. 'How old is he?' "Two years," she says, and now she's sure the man looks sick, because for a second he stops and stares at Henry, as if wondering what his two-year-old son would be like. Arabella knows because she used to do this. "My condolences, my Lord." "It's okay, I’m fine," the

man says, and he winks at Henry, who hides in his mother's neck, before going off to talk to another woman. ---------------------- “Why are we different?” Henry asks, sitting on the table as Arabella tends to his scraped knee. 'We don't have the same eye color, and my hair doesn't match yours.' She knows he doesn't mean to be mean, he's just a curious and very intelligent child, that he's noticed the dissimilarities between them. She smiles, applying ointment to the wound. ‘Because you are my son at heart, and children at heart are sometimes not like their mothers at heart.’ 'What is a child at heart?' He agrees to be picked up by her, and Arabella leads them into their small living room, sitting on the sofa with Henry on her lap, looking at her with big green eyes gleaming with curiosity, black strands falling over his eyelashes. She needs to cut his hair soon. “It means that you were born from another belly, not mine.” She places a hand over her stomach. “But that's just what separates us, because my love for you surpasses any barrier.” Arabella smiles, kissing his cheek, and Henry seems satisfied with the explanation. 'I love you so much too, this size here!' He opens his arms as much as he can, and the demonstration warms her heart as always, making her smile and hug her son as tightly as she assures him that she loves him even more. | J. P | James was concentrating on the duels when Remus arrived. He was marveling at how well Mr. Figg dueled, neither shivering nor losing time when Mr. Rosier hit back one of his spells, and the man didn't even look tired. He had always found dueling an incredibly boring and dull part of parties when he was younger, accompanied by his father and seeing the men fall in a few minutes, James preferred the parties and the after, when the house was silent and dark and he could go out to meet some woman. It was at one of these parties that he met Lily, during a nighttime getaway he saw her jumping out the window. First he followed her thinking that she was also going to meet someone, and James being a curious young man that he was, he wondered what kind of man that woman liked to sneak with. Maybe he had a chance. But later, when he saw her come out of the house and run towards the lake nearby, James didn't understand. She didn't like him following her, of course, it had been a dumb idea and nowadays he was ashamed of his younger self's actions, but that's what got them talking for the first time. She smiled in embarrassment as he praised her ability to climb a vine. "James!" Remus called after him, cheeks flushed and blue eyes pained toward him. The first thing that came to his mind was that Lily was hurt, and that made him lose all interest in watching the Duel and made him turn to his friend in alarm. “What happened?” He tried to be as discreet as possible, trying to keep other men from noticing his splurge. Sirius did a good job of distracting two young men. "Lily needs you…and she asked me to take Mr. Figg too." Remus muttered the last part, making James frown and look at the boy on his left, who had finally won the duel. Rosier looked tired. 'Is it urgent.' "Is she hurt?" It was a valid concern, James feared his wife would get sicker now that she was surrounded by people, and maybe someone had said something to her and Lily had one of her fits again. ‘And why does she want the boy? Should I tell Arthur? ‘No, don't say anything to anyone, just come… We're in the dungeons.’ ---------------------- Henry did not know how to control his magic, and that distressed Arabella. If he was a Muggle it would be so much easier, she knew that, because when Henry made that poor boy float, and then made a flower vase explode, she knew she would have to explain a lot to him: Why couldn't he go to a proper college and why she didn't do magic like he did. Arabella no longer felt ashamed of being a Squib, she had accepted the condition and lived normally, or at least as she managed to, avoiding whenever anyone asked about it just to avoid people's prejudice. Some thought she was a

Muggle who had married a wizard, and that's why she knew so much about it. Others thought that she just hadn't had a chance to go to school, and that's why she didn't know how to properly control magic. "They made fun of me!" Henry said, annoyed, his eyes red from crying. “They said things—horrible things to me!” He sobbed, which made Arabella even sadder and more worried. His green eyes glistened with tears, staring at her for answers. "They told me I-I'll never be good at-at anything." He sobbed louder and louder, the scraped knee now forgotten, as if the internal pain was much bigger. She was about to cry with him. “Henry, honey, listen to me.” She took a deep breath, thinking that conversation had come earlier than she'd planned. ‘What they said is a lie. They don't know how to control their magic either, they probably won't for a good few years, and you're already good at a lot of things, of course you are, Henry. You're much better at putting together puzzles, and you're much faster too, I mean, you always win at the races.' Arabella smiled sweetly, smoothing his messy hair, thinking how unfair it was that such a sweet little boy already got to know this side of life. She wished she could just show the good side of life, and leave the thorns and stones for when he understood things better. Arabella wondered how her mother managed to do this so masterfully, because right now, she wanted to be able to hex the parents of those boys and force them to teach their children more respect for others. She wished it had been her who had been pushed and thrown out of the game, not her child. Her heart broke even more, feeling helpless. ‘Don't listen to what they say, ok? You're amazing, a very smart kid, and your future will be bright.” She promised, because it was true. Arabella would do anything for her son. ---------------------- Henry ran as fast as he could, passing through the trees and not even bothering with the branches that scratched his skin, he just needed to get out of there. He knew he shouldn't have pissed off those boys, but they were scaring another younger boy, and just because they'd now gone to that stupid school of stupid people, they thought they were even better than the rest of the people there. Henry wished he could go to Hogwarts, but his mother had told him that you needed to receive a letter, and that they were only sent for a few families - maybe if you're lucky you get the letter, she said smiling, even though the smile didn't reach her eyes. Arabella had never said this, but Henry knew he would probably never get the letter; he wasn't rich and he didn't have a father, and for some reason, that seemed to be enough to keep him away from others. He ran even faster when he heard loud laughter, he wasn't afraid of those kids anymore, Henry had grown up while they were in school, more than they were, but they had one advantage: magic. Arabella couldn't buy a wand, so he didn't have one, and even if he did, he wouldn't know how to use it. “You're a wimpy coward if your only way to fight is with magic…don't you know how to punch?” Henry had said to Jilian, the biggest idiot of them all. Henry wasn't very good at punching, but he was very fast, while when Greg tried to cast a spell on him, he ran off into the forest, barely noticing when his own magic created a dome around him, preventing any spells from hitting him. . ---------------------- “Why are we so different?” Henry asked, taking a seat beside Arabella as she kneaded the bread on the table. She looked at him, noticing that the boy was all sweaty and looking a little smudged with dirt. “How many times have I told you not to go into the woods?” She returned her gaze to the dough, continuing to knead. "It's quieter there." He shrugged, pulling his sweaty hair off his forehead, letting his scar show for a few seconds before hiding it again. “And more dangerous too, and you know it.” Arabella raised her eyebrows, scolding him. She'd heard horrible stories of people meeting a werewolf deep in the woods, and as much as she didn't

know whether or not it was true, she didn't want Henry to take any chances like that. He was only 13 years old, he should have been playing with the other kids on the street and not running into the trees. "Okay, I won't do it anymore." He sighed, but she knew he would break that promise the next time he had the opportunity. ‘But then? Why aren't we alike?’ "Henry, because you were born from another belly. I already said that" She placed the buns in the oven, washing her hands afterwards and looking up at him with a gentle smile on her face. "I met you when you were very young, you know this story." "But why can I make things float and you can't?" His green eyes stared at her with an expression much harder and more serious than she was used to, as if he would know if she lied. ‘Because not all of us are born doing magic. Some of us are good at something other than magic… It's something you need to be born knowing how to do, you can't develop it, just improve it.” Arabella swallowed, trying not to show so much the scars that had left on her. People weren't kind when they found out you were a Squib. He was quiet for a few minutes, looking at his hands as if he wanted to find the right words. The sun streaming through the kitchen windows illuminated his black hair, a few strands reflecting an almost red copper color that Arabella thought was beautiful. 'Can you never do magic?' He looked at her, and all the worry she'd ever felt, scared that maybe Henry would feel sorry for her or ashamed of her, drained and slipped out as his green eyes stared at her, full of affection and sadness. Not the same sadness that always came with grief, but as if he felt bad that he did magic and she didn't, as if he understood now why some people offended her and treated her differently. "No." She gave a half smile. "But I'm not sad about it anymore, I like who I am." And it was true. Henry nodded, still being silent for a while, seeming to absorb the information, then he got up from the wooden bench, walking over to her and hugging her. He was no longer her little boy—as much as he always would be her baby—Henry now almost reached her chest, and it wouldn't be long before he was taller than her. She hugged him back, enjoying this show of affection, imagining that a few years from now he wouldn't like hugs so much. "I love you," he said. ‘I love you very much too. Forever and ever.” Arabella kissed the top of his head, tightening her hold even more, as if she was afraid someone would suddenly take him away from her. ---------------------- It had been a long time since James had been in the dungeons, he didn't like going there, it was cold, wet, lonely, and it made him think too much. It made him think his son's things were there, in boxes organized as if they were just another mess and not everything he and Lily had ever dreamed of. It made him think of the pain that resided in his chest, the emptiness that nothing in the world had ever been able to fill. James hated the dungeons. Lily, unlike him, loved being there, she said it was the best place for her to think, and the calmest of all - 'It's where I feel that no one will look at me with pity, where I can think of my son in peace, you know what I'm talking about," she said when James questioned her about the surroundings. He knew, he understood her, James had changed into Prongs many more times than necessary, he did it every time the pain got too much to take. He walked down the stairs, trying to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine, couldn't anyone make this place something less scary? After Remus left, James warned Sirius, who tried to pretend as best he could and further entertain the men who now looked curious to death, while he went to talk to Mr. Figg. "I need you to accompany me, but I need you to do this cautiously and discreetly," James asked, looking into those green eyes closely, trying to remember where he knew that expression. "I'll go ahead, meet me in five minutes at the entrance to the stone path, do you know where it is?" The man nodded, tucking

his wand into the waistband of his pants and straightening his robes. 'I'll let Arthur know I'll take you, just so he won't be worried, but I think you understand that you shouldn't say anything to anyone, right?' "Yes, my Lord." The man made a brief, discreet bow, and James grimaced, not understanding why that made him uncomfortable. Now James heard footsteps behind him as he walked through the dungeon, neither of them saying anything. Why had Lily asked Mr. Figg to come along? Had she found out something about the boy? Something bad? James glanced quickly over his shoulder, noticing that the man looked warmed too, his hands behind him and his back straight. Has something happened to Miss Weasley? Well, if so, Arthur would be called too, right? James broke off as soon as he reached the last room, the one he avoided the most, and the only one with lighted candles. The first thing he saw when he entered were the boxes, stacked against a wall, then he realized there were some of Harry's things on the floor, smeared with dirt and sticks, and James' heart missed a beat when he saw the Snitch Pajamas The gold one he'd bought when he found out Lily was pregnant was now all filthy and torn. Had they been attacked? Was that why Lily sent for him? Then he saw Remus, opening Lily's herb cabinet and looking for something inside, he looked worried. In the back, near the only window there, was Peter, all smeared with mud too, sitting on the floor with his hands behind his back, his red cheeks making him look like a child caught doing something wrong, and his rumpled clothes hinting that he had fought someone. Finally, sitting on the bench was Lily. Her dress was dirty too, but that wasn't what James first noticed, it was her red face, her pink cheeks like when she drank wine, her hands shaking as she poured something into the cauldron, looking more nervous than ever. "What's going on?" James glanced at the three of them, feeling even more anxious. "Lily, what the fuck is going on?" "Did you bring Henry?" James frowned at her calling the man by his first name, but nodded anyway, Peter sighed in the corner, looking almost terrified, not making eye contact with James for a moment. ‘Great, send him in.’ ---------------------- Henry knew he shouldn't be there, his mother had forbidden him, but he had nowhere else to go. Jilian had come back from his stupid school and he seemed more than happy to train some spells on Henry, and even though he had honed his punching technique, he couldn't compete with magic. So he ran into the forest. It was cold there, it had rained last night and the earth had turned to mud, and because of the tall trees the sun's rays didn't penetrate as much, and the whole environment ended up getting wetter than usual. Henry shivered as the wind made him wonder why he hadn't grabbed a jacket. He was sitting on the usual rock, it was close to the river that separated them from the Muggles, and it gave him a good view across the village. There were houses like the ones on this side, but they always looked a lot less colorful than the ones he was used to, and there weren't as many flowers and trees either, as if the Muggles were willing to clear every bit of land they found, leaving everything gray and monotonous. Henry had asked his mother if they could go to that side of the village, but Arabella had been stern to say he was forbidden to even think about going to the Muggles. He chuckled softly, thinking that if it hadn't been for the river that separated them, he probably would have managed to at least get there, curious as always. A noise startled him, making him jump and hide behind the rock, praying it wasn't one of Jilian's friends, as he would be at such a disadvantage. There wasn't much to run now, Henry had almost reached the end of the forest, and unless he took a chance and ran towards the darkest and scariest part, the other option was to jump into the river. And he wasn't doing any of those things. But when he didn't hear voices or anything to indicate they were people, he stood up,

watching a deer walking around, distracted by everything, as if nothing else mattered. Henry had never seen one this close, and he was a little fascinated by the animal, he understood why there are two deer on the Potter family crest. It really was a beautiful animal, and if he could choose, he would also want them emblazoned on his chest. Henry stepped out from behind the rock, careful not to startle the animal, trying to get as close as he could. “Hey,” he called, even though it didn't make much sense. The animal turned, eyes huge now in his direction. It had been a bad idea, he cursed himself mentally, imagining that that animal was too big and would probably kill him without a second thought… Did deer eat human flesh? Henry didn't know, but they probably hurt anyone who scared them and made them feel in danger. The animal approached, slowly, and each step made the boy's stomach turn and his heart race. Deer were fast, much faster than Henry was. He was dead. But when the animal's black eyes got much closer than Henry had ever thought he saw, the animal bowed, as if saying hello to him. Without thinking twice, he did the same, maintaining eye contact with the deer. Heavens, couldn't he be less weird? Bending over to deer, blowing things up without meaning to... Henry stood up after a while, being careful to do this as slowly as possible, still afraid the deer would decide to kill him then and there. But the animal seemed to have other plans, because he lay down in front of the boy, as if he were an adorable little dog. Henry sat beside him too, having no choice; he didn't have many friends, and he had nothing else to do, so why not? His ass got a little wet from the dirt, but nothing too uncomfortable. The deer shifted and brought its head closer to Henry's crossed leg, as if asking for affection, and the boy didn't wait for another move to do so, leaning his back against the stone and reaching out to stroke the slightly coarse fur of the animal For some strange reason, Henry felt comfortable doing it, as if he had done it before, it was something familiar that burned in his chest. But he didn't think about it much, just fell silent and watched the forest in front of him. ---------------------- "Lily, what's going on?" James asked, feeling uneasy as he watched the tension surround the room, Remus looked nervous and Peter avoided looking up, as if he was suddenly afraid to face one of them. Lily turned to James, her green eyes seemed to glow with hatred, her nostrils swollen, an expression he'd seen a few times over the years, but one that always scared him. "What... What happened?" Her shaky voice made him look at Remus again, the worry growing by the second. "Oh James." She shook her head, as if suddenly too much pain hit her, and he ran to her protection, opening his arms to hold her and protect her from anything that had happened while he was gone. "Guys, anyone…?" He glanced at his friends, but again, Peter didn't look at him. "Tell him, Peter!" Lily yelled, breaking out of James' embrace and turning to the man sitting on the floor, pointing her wand in his direction. ‘Lily, what the hell!?’ "No, James," She held up a hand, silencing him. "Tell Peter, tell him what you did to our son." His world stopped, his eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets as James stared at his friend, begging for all that was most sacred that he hadn't quite understood. Peter was his brother, his best friend, they met when they went to Hogwarts together, he was there when James needed it most, when they decided to become Animagus… Peter wouldn't do that, he couldn't! James doubted that one day the pain of losing a child would be replaced by another, that hellish emptiness that tore at him more and more inside, that made him not sleep well on rainy nights, that still made him walk into the boy's immaculate room and sit on the floor wondering what he should have done differently. He would do anything to get his son back, his boy. But the pain that hit him when Peter shook his head and lowered his head, making him

realize his hands were tied behind his body, came very close. His best friend… betrayed him? "Peter?" James pleaded, begged, for it to be a lie, for Lily to be mad. It was a lie! It had to be. "I had to, James... I... he made me." ---------------------- The weather was not so good, Peter realized when he Apparated, the sky was dark and windy like never before. He should have worn another cloak, this one was too thin and made him cold. And other gloves too, because now these were bloody and torn. Who knew a woman could be so strong? Peter dragged the woman's passed out body with him, feeling a little sickened by that when he realized her wound was getting worse with each passing minute, he needed to be quick. Leaving the body where no one could find it, he pulled a strand of her hair into the potion and then took it, the horrible taste of iron made him want to spit it out on the floor, but now there was no turning back, he would have to swallow and continue with the plan. Lord Voldemort had promised him a great reward in exchange for the boy's life, and for the first time in a long time, Peter felt important and wanted. It wasn't that Black boy who was chosen, or even Snape, no no, he was the one Voldemort thought capable of completing the mission, he thought he was strong enough. How long has it been since? He only stayed inside the Order because James kept him there, no one really wanted him there, not even Dumbledore, Peter didn't need him to say it to know, it was visible to everyone. For the old man, any other man could do the job better than he… Probably if Lily were there too, she would be chosen before Peter. Potter this, Black that, Peter was tired. Why didn't anyone realize he was also strong and smart? Well, now that was over, Voldemort had seen his potential and chosen him to do this mission, and Peter wasn't going to fail now. When he was fully transformed into that whore, he apparated into the castle, glad the potion didn't stop him from doing so. Stupid James should have put in better security than a simple spell. Peter had seen James that afternoon, he said that today was Harry's first night trying to sleep alone and that he and Lily were excited to see how he would react to the change, so the plan would be even easier to execute. As excited as Peter was at the idea of ​​being useful to someone, he knew he couldn't kill James, he had to really want to do it with all his heart. When he reached the boy's room, Peter looked around, noting the choice of bright, cheerful colors, the many teddy bears scattered around, the photos on the walls and in the frames above the dresser. Little Harry slept peacefully in his bed, wrapped in the pale blue blanket, looking peaceful, cuddled up with his deer teddy bear. He was a lot like James, Peter thought, watching the boy move his short legs like he was kicking something in the dream. He hadn't really thought about that part of the plan, he figured he'd have the guts to just take the boy and end his life right there, or in some alley farther along, but when Peter picked him up, being careful not to waking him up, that lavender scent invaded his nostrils and he watched the baby more closely. The boy looked helpless in his arms, like he wasn't even real, and if he wasn't watching the boy's belly rise and fall, Peter would think he was a doll. Voldemort would never know if he had killed the boy or not, and pausing to analyze the situation now, Peter also didn't know if he could kill the boy. He wanted to show that he was strong and useful, but a baby? Harry looked so…small. When he stirred, startling Peter, and seemed to be looking for something - maybe his mother's scent - he realized it was time to act, there was no turning back, it had to be now. And when lightning flashed in the sky, he cast a spell to prevent Harry from listening when he broke the glass to fake an escape, Peter waited for thunder to do so and then Apparated out of the castle, knowing that this was the best thing to do. There were two paths now, and he needed to think quickly

which was better, kill Harry and throw him in some hole, or give the boy to someone else. Of course he would risk this person recognizing the baby, but he would have to bet his luck on finding another baby like this for Lily and James to bury, or maybe even run to the Muggle village and find some woman there. It had to be fast, Harry would wake up any second and Peter didn't have much time after that. As soon as he spotted a woman a few blocks away and Harry opened his eyes in his arms, Peter acted without thinking, taking the knife from his pants pocket and opening a wound in his ribs, before starting to scream for help. ---------------------- James clapped his hand over his mouth, denying it over and over, not believing what he was hearing. No no no no. This had to be a lie, this had to be a lie. Peter would never do that, Peter was his brother, he would never… No, this could only be a joke. He could barely handle the pain right now, thinking he'd rather die than have to deal with it. It hurt so much that James thought he might start bleeding at any moment, his chest lacerated after hearing about it. He couldn't even feel angry. His boy, his little boy, whom he'd loved so much ever since Lily told him she was pregnant, that it made him want to scream from the top of the roof in so much joy… “I could kill you right now,” he said, after what seemed like an eternity, barely able to face the traitor. "But…" James shook his head, closing his eyes to try to make it hurt a little less, his father's voice resonating through his mind; "You must be careful with Peter," he said before he died. "Men like him are easily attracted to the side that shines the most." James had thought his father was delusional when he said that, thought it was the fever, but no, the bastard really was a weakling and a coward. Letting himself be attracted to those he once hated. If he really hated it. "I can't even look at you." James turned to Lily, who looked distraught to death at having to hear that story. He wanted to kill Peter even more for making her suffer like that. The traitor had been there the next day, helping with the searches, he had hugged Lily when she cried, told her everything would be fine. "James, give me your hand," asked Lily, her own trembling, reaching out towards him. 'Why?' "Lils…he could be lying—" She shook her head, telling Remus to shut up. "Give me your hand James." Now her voice was stronger, more determined, and her green eyes sparkled even more. He did so, letting her grab his palm and run the tip of the knife, causing the blood to drip and smear her workbench and floor, before finally dripping into the cauldron. “Lily, what are you doing?” But she didn't answer him, cutting her own palm and spilling her blood along with his, then looking over her husband's shoulder. She looked more nervous than ever, and her severed hand shook even more as she held it out to the man behind James. "Give me your hand, Henry." Her green eyes sparkled with tears, and James didn't know if the man did as she asked just because she was a Duchess, or because she was crying. "Yes, ma'am." He walked over and let her do the same thing with his palm, passing the tip of the knife and then letting the blood spill into the cauldron. The potion began to bubble fiercely, as did James' chest when he realized what Lily was up to. He had seen her make this potion a few times, and if his thinking was correct, then maybe he could vomit right there, his stomach churning and making him feel weak. James didn't want to get his hopes up, it only served to hurt when unrequited, but he was unable to hold back the urge and looked at the man behind him, and then at Peter, who now looked even more guilty, if that was possible. If this was another one of his jobs with Voldemort, James knew he would kill him right there, with his bare hands. Forget magic and wands, he would tear that mouse apart like a hungry lion. James turned to the cauldron again when Lily sobbed and he smelled the lavender scent all over the room, and the once gray

potion was now a pinkish hue, the three drops of blood seemed to dance in the middle of the liquid, before of finally meeting at the end, getting connected. "Harry." Lily turned to the man, but James remained frozen, watching the cauldron in front of him. They had never reached this result, usually the potion would explode or nothing happened, and the smell was never that sweet aroma that seemed to fill all the hollows in his chest, as if he suddenly felt no more pain. As he turned back, as Lily advanced towards the boy, James thought that maybe nothing would ever compare to this. "Harry," Lily repeated, but this time she touched him, and as if the boy felt it too, he lowered his green eyes to her. James remembered then where he knew that look… It was Lily's eyes. Her trembling hand went to his forehead, lifting the hair lying there, just to let them see the lightning scar marked into his skin. It was too much to handle, James didn't know how he was still standing, but suddenly he started to feel tears rolling down his cheeks and as if this was the last drop of water to overflow the bucket, he sobbed. He inched closer to Lily, wanting to take a closer look at his son, as if he was afraid this was a dream and soon he would no longer have the chance to memorize every detail of it. His boy… "You-" Harry trailed off, as if he was feeling like James and Lily, his chest filling up and all that emptiness seeming to finally heal. "My parents?" He looked at James, and it was as if time had never passed. He still had the same expression as that little baby James used to cuddle up to sleep on. "I knew I knew you from somewhere," James managed to say, his throat seeming to scratch with the effort it took. "I would never be able to forget…" He didn't mind the tears rolling down his face, but he tried to wipe the ones down Harry's face. "I would never be able to forget my son."

[dgcatanisiri]

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

[saki-chan16]

Empty Bottles Ch. 2

First parts are here and here.

Let me know what ya think <3

Chapter 2

Kakashi Hatake takes pride in his intellect.

Being hailed a genius from a young age, he never felt the need to question his intelligence. His instincts are sharp, his awareness keen, and his deduction skills impeccable – those are musts when being a tracker and assassin. He trusts his instincts.

So when he meets his Genin team and feels an instant off-ness to one of them, his senses are on high alert.

The first two are predictable. His old sensei’s son has always wanted to become Hokage, and anyone who knows the boy (or can hear) knows how much he loves Iruka. And Sasuke, well, Kakashi working with his older brother gives him better insight into what the boy is and isn’t saying. Itachi and Shisui are aware of the torch he holds for them; they train with him when they can and, even if they won’t admit it, have a soft spot for the youngest Uchiha.

His last one though…Kakashi picks up on the other twos curiosity and wonders why they are looking at her as though they’ve never heard her speak before. Once he hears her speak – it sounds as though she doesn’t use her voice often. Her answers concern him too. As she answered, he sniffed at the air and had a hard time pinpointing what he was sensing.

When she got to her dream, he knew she lied. Her tells weren’t blatant – surprising, considering her age – but it was easier for him to nail it down when he finally understood what he was smelling: fear.

His little pink haired student was scared.

He wants to know why.

After they had introduced themselves, he told them to meet at a training ground the next day so they could come up with a training plan for them. He asked them to show up to training with an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, where they want to improve, and a few short term goals.

The bell test will have to wait. I need to figure out why she was so scared today.

Kakashi is on his way to the Jounin lounge – he knows just who to talk to.

It doesn’t take long to reach his destination. A quick walk through the door and down the hall, and he steps through the doors of the place he usually avoids.

“MY YOUTHFUL RIVAL, YOU’RE HERE!”

And there is the main reason he tends to avoid this place.

Kakashi looks over to his loud friend and sees he’s sitting with a small group of Jounin – one of which is the one he’s looking for. He walks towards them.

“Yo,” he greets, usual eye crinkle in place, “it’s nice to see you too, Guy.”

He stops at the table and takes the empty seat. He looks around and greets the others, “Asuma, Kurenai, Iruka, Genma – it’s nice to see you guys too.”

All of them nod at him, but they’re giving him a look. Kakashi can feel the eyes on him and sighs internally.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; I don’t usually come to them. They always seem to be chasing me around the village.

Guy, ever the best of friends and keen observer of all things Kakashi, breaks the silence.

“Kakashi,” he says in a normal tone, “what brings you here? It must be important for you to come and search us out.”

Kakashi could kiss the man.

He’s too good to me.

Kakashi looks at all of the people around the table and makes eye contact with each of them. He weighs what he wants to say before breaching the subject. What he’s asking could be nothing, or it could mean the start of a very ugly process; he doesn’t want to do this lightly.

Genma and Iruka share a look but wait to see what Kakashi wants. They’re silently hoping he brings up the topic of his female student – something he noticed or even a question to show that he saw something. If he did, then there’s a greater chance their thoughts aren’t unfounded.

“I have a…potential issue,” is what he settles on.

Iruka turns fully towards Kakashi and asks levelly, “A potential issue with what, Kakashi-san?”

An outward sigh leaves his lips before he answers, “The girl on my team, Haruno, Sakura, do you know anything about her?”

Kurenai, Asuma, and Guy look on the conversation with interest. They pick up on Iruka and Genma’s sudden interest and gather that they know something about the girl. Their interests piqued, they lean in slightly closer.

“I get the feeling you don’t mean academically, Kakashi,” Iruka responds. He can’t help the note of resignation in his voice. His fears being confirmed doesn’t feel pleasant, it means there might actually be something happening with the girl. And if he’s right, something that has been going on for way too long.

A slight narrowing of his eye, Kakashi looks to the academy teacher and says, “No, not academically speaking. I had the three of my students introduce themselves to me as an ice breaker – to feel them out. Sakura-chan…when we got to the roof her presence seemed odd.”

He pauses to think about how he wants to word the next part but decides bluntness might be best

“The boys went first; nothing surprising. When it was her turn, the first odd thing was that the boys were very curious to hear her answers. Not in the ‘she’s-cute-I-want-to-learn-more’ way, but in a ‘I’ve-never-heard-her-talk-before’ way.”

“Sakura-chan didn’t speak much during the academy,” Iruka confirms, “she preferred non-verbal forms of communication. The only person she ever spoke to was me.”

That’s a red flag.

Asuma speaks up, “She only spoke to you? That’s a little odd.”

Iruka nods and follows it up with, “She was always formal in her speech too – she always seemed tense. Most kids avoided her because of it and she never tried to reach out to anyone.”

Kurenai takes in these things and feels her gut start to drop. She doesn’t want to jump the gun, but her gut is screaming at her to say something.

“What about her other teachers?” she asks. “What did they have to say about her speaking?”

A wave of anger and irritation floods the table. Genma and Iruka can’t hold their emotions back, old wounds being ripped open after so long.

“Her other teachers,” Iruka hisses – hisses, “said that I was crazy. That they saw nothing wrong with her not speaking because her exams and homework were exemplary; they thought I was being paranoid for bringing it up.”

Genma adds, “They found her silence, and I quote, ‘endearing because it means she’s listening and making for a very obedient student’ as though she’s a dog.”

The wave of emotion intensified as the other Jounin listens to their colleagues' words. Varying degrees of rage and disbelief sweep the group at this revelation.

“Anyway,” Kakashi continues, “she introduced herself, but it felt off. I was trying to figure out the emotion she was oozing as she did so, and it didn’t click until I heard her blatantly lie about her dream.”

Kakashi looks down at his hands as he pauses.

“Sakura-chan was terrified,” he says softly. “I don’t know why, or of what, but as she was talking I could smell her fear increasing.”

The group of Jounin feels Kakashi’s confusion as they experience the same thing. What could the girl be so afraid of? Why doesn’t she like to talk? What could be going on? They know it’s serious too because Kakashi actually came to find them in a place he usually doesn’t frequent.

Said man looks up from his hands and meets Iruka’s eyes before asking, “What can I do to find out the reason?”

A heavy silence falls on the group. Each individual takes in the facts and knowledge at their disposal. Thinking through possible outcomes, possible courses of action to take. Delicate matters require delicate hands.

“I have an idea,” Kurenai pipes up, “I assume because you’ve told all of us about this, you’re okay with us helping, Kakashi-san?”

She asks to be polite. Inside, she’s already decided to help this little girl and get to the bottom of her situation. Her mother hen side is starting to poke through, but she couldn’t care less – a child needs help, she’ll get the child help. It doesn’t matter to her if she has to do it alone or not.

“Ah, you would be correct Kurenai-san.”

“Alright, so here’s what I’m thinking…”

. . & . .