#but this is then coupled with the fact that she's evil aligned. so it's hard to want to give her free will when part of her baggage is:

[wetcatspellcaster]

If it’s not [REDACTED] material you plan on covering further on in Pieces, would you mind talking about why Hemlock is so jealous of Rosalie? It seems like every time she’s “on screen” she’s making some sort of jab at Rosie concerning either Astarion/Rosalie’s past relationship, or Astarion and Hemlocks (insinuated?) carnal activities, but hardly anyone ever comments on it. Like poor Hemmie practically spat the fact Astarion comes to her bed in Rosalie’s face during Chapter 12 in front of Shadowheart but no one acknowledges that she’s constantly trying to make Rose upset with this info. Is it just the power of the Ascendant that Hemlock is drawn to and makes her wish she was on Rosalie’s level (in Astarion’s eyes), or is it the bond between vampire and spawn that makes her act like this?

Hey anon! Thank you for the question! I'll try to answer you as best I can without spoilers :)

Firstly, the reason no one ever comments on Hemlock's behaviour or the buckwild things she says is because.... they all find it kind of cringe :') In my mind, by this point in the timeline, this party and Tav have encountered Gortash, Orin, Cazador, Raphael, Mizora, the Emperor's bullshit... not to mention any villains Rose encountered in her post game life, and in Avernus. They've had their fair share of villain speeches! They're used to it! They feel like water off a duck's back at this point! It's easier to simply not acknowledge it, than engage.

(Rose talks about the social energy it takes to interact with evil people in another fic I've written, she's just like "more than anything, it's exhausting to act like I value their opinions and pretend I care".)

Hemlock also thinks her and Rosalie are fighting over an Ascended Astarion... they're not. Rose doesn't want Ascended Astarion. So when Hemlock's like, "yeah, did I mention we fucked", Rose is just like "...and? you and every other person in that house. happy for you, i guess?" Like yes, it does sting a little in the sense that it shows how much Astarion has changed... but it's kind of missing the real mark? And most of Rose's friends know her well enough to know that, but especially Shadowheart, who walked round that awful dungeon with her.

That being said, Rose is more petty with Hemlock when they're alone and no one's there to judge her, but that's more because of the Feeblemind than anything.

As for Hemlock's motivations, it's unfortunately a mixture of all of the things you list above. Astarion's spawn are all people he recruited post-Ascendency, so all of them buy into his spiel to some extent. Hemlock, in particular, is a person who was already evil-aligned before she became a vampire. She was promised a lot of power and a position of supposed equals (where have we heard that before?) I do think, if she doesn't have feelings for Astarion, or may now have started to reach a point where some of the sheen of this hot, all-powerful vampire man has been tarnished, she does at least want the peak ascendency romance: the glamour, the debauchery, and the power that comes with it (she is, essentially, a Tav that picks all the pro-evil plan lines in the dialogue tree and means it).

Instead, she's forced to live a circumscribed and domesticated life, because of some girl she's never met, who Astarion waxes lyrical about whenever he has a free moment to pause for breath. In Chapter 13, I reveal that all the spawn have to live according to Rose's dictate of 'no harm' - notice that Astarion enforces that perfectly on all the people he can literally command, meanwhile he is the only person with freedom in that situation, and he can act however he likes and keeps 'messing it up uwu'. He thinks he's being 'good' and doing vampirism 'well', but what it actually is is just hypocrisy, and a way to continue to exercise power over those he controls, to some extent. Hemlock is someone who actually wants to be an evil vampire, or even a Cazador, and can't, because she's not given the free will with which to do so.

So Hemlock has this mixture of 'I am actually in love with this man and want what he promised me'; or 'I was in love with this fantasy and now I'm facing the reality, after having sold my soul, and even if I hate it here now I'm trapped, I want to find any way to salvage this so I've got to continue pretending he's right'; 'I fucking hate this woman who I'm constantly compared to and can never live up to, even though, to my mind, she sounds fucking stupid'; ....AND then there's the bond between vampire and servant. Hemlock tells Rose that she's already under orders not to displease Astarion - I fully believe that order has been in place for a long time. This Astarion words commands and orders in a way that means the spawn have the illusion of cooperation and free choice, which basically means he makes the spawn complicit in their own oppression. He'll say something like "because you've upset me, you should go to the dungeon cells and starve yourself and not move, while you think about what you've done" - that's still, to all intents and purposes, an order (especially when you're already under orders not to displease him).

Hemlock says a lot of what she says to Rosalie because it's easier to hate the woman who 'ruined her life' and 'prevents Astarion from reaching his full potential', rather than examine anything too closely and realise she's ruined her life herself. If she stops buying into the vampirism she chose, she's fucked bc it's not like she can leave it, so better to hate anything else but being a spawn.

It's just also unfortunate, that she thinks the way to hurt Rose is to brag about sleeping with Astarion. But then, the only version of Astarion Hemlock has ever known is obsessed with sex, so why wouldn't she think the woman who loves him wouldn't be as well?

I hope that makes sense! Sorry, this ended up being very long!

[imoenhatesthis]

Lily makes it really hard to not want to correct her takes on media. There’s just an itch to want to correct lies. So here’s the hopefully one post I’m making for me.

There’s other more important things to focus on in this post. But this stuck out to me:

-

“I want characters that will react to me being evil, up to leaving me for my actions, just like my favorite mod.” Okay. Easy.

This is in fact, a feature in MOST RPG games where companions are a focus/are ‘real characters’. Yes, including recent 3D ones filled with playersexual companions.

Since she made that comment I’ll leave out BG2, outside of saying the old BG games do have a similar system in place. Characters leaving over disagreements is a feature in Baldur’s Gate 3. It tracks companion approval, and if that gets low enough they’ll leave without any chance to convince them otherwise. This includes romanced companions. That’s without getting into a whole host of actions one can do where the companion right there will leave or even attempt to kill you with no chance to talk it out. If you do account for scenes with failed rolls, that pool gets larger. Or you know, the fact people play lone wolf runs on harder difficulties all the time. Or that you can kill every single companion, or just simply never invite them in your party. Literally no one is necessary.

She wants a romance where the character breaks up with you for abusing them? Low bar. To pick something totally random…the Astarion romance. If you break his boundaries, he will break up with you and let you know you’re a piece of shit for not valuing him as a person. And that isn’t even the only scene where a breakup can happen. Both times you’ll notice the trigger is trying to push his boundaries.

To be charitable and include a good-aligned character to scale… Wyll also has a breakup event that can be triggered with no talking out of it depending on certain events. He has strict morals and goals, he also obviously will disapprove of certain actions and statements, and again, will leave if approval is low.

These aren’t mods. These are base game, these are what the writers intended.

So yeah, I’m not all that impressed it took more than 10 years for a couple of people to write up and add creepy fanfiction to a game that was already completed and also port it to the newer edition. That’s not impressive, if anything, that’s a really long time to spend on a project like that. It even still has bugs and typos, and doesn’t match the writing style of the games at all.

It took the BG3 team 7 years to make the entire game and first ship it out. Maybe add another for current updates to address bugs and to continue to add content. And when it does reach 10 years of development, I think most everyone will agree that one of these was a big triumph for RPGs, and that it was just perfected over 10 years. The other will continue to rot away on old message boards.

[patronsaintofteachercrushes]

3/7

get ready, it’s a long one. and it’s probably not what any of you want to hear. sorry for any mistakes, i’m too lazy and upset right now to fix them.

truthfully ? i’m not sure what’s going on. i did what i said i would, talk to him whenever possible. but today was just different. H was all up on this other girl in my class and i just couldn’t take it. i wanted to command all his attention onto me but i just couldn’t, he wouldn’t let me sway him.

i hate him in times like this, because he knows how to resist. he knows how to say no, when things get to be too much. he knows how to react and that’s something i can never be comparable to. he’s so much better than me at everything and i know it just comes with being his age and me being my age but it’s driving me absolutely crazy. the age difference really never bothers me, it’s something that i enjoy like i’ve wrote on here before, but its this. i cannot catch up to him no matter how desperately i try to. he knows so much that i don’t, he knows about the things that really matter.

on days like this it’s hard to remain hopeful. he said something today that absolutely obliterated my fantasy. it made me remember he’s never going to actually love me and something about that was particularly devastating today. (it hurts every day of course, the constant feeling that i am wasting precious time with him, that our relationship exists mostly in my head, that i am just one out of the 100+ students he sees everyday.) and foolishly, i cried. i cried in class. in front of him. and i couldn’t stop. i would try to take a deep breath and work myself down but i couldn’t. each time i’d inhale and hold it in my chest, the silence there would sneak up on me and the tears would rip down my face again. and to make it all worse, he saw. he saw me sitting there, losing control over all the things i had been working so hard to keep a hold on, and he watched me. he saw the wetness glisten on my face with the sunlight coming through the window in front of me, and continued his conversation with that girl. i’m not exactly sure looking back now what would’ve been worse, him asking me why i was so distraught (because i would’ve had to lie and have the truth splayed all over my face) or him to just ignore me.

i’m really at a loss now about it though, and i know i’ve said that a million times before. but this might be the biggest loss i’ve taken so far. and for that girl, it all seems so effortless. everything i do around him is done with the utmost intent. i cannot breathe without thinking of how i might be appearing towards him. i know a couple of people who have crushes on their teachers now, but their crushes in comparison to mine are extremely different. theirs still feel fun and innocent, meanwhile mine feels like a black mold consuming every inch of my soul. there’s something evil growing in my rib cage and spreading everywhere. its hard to explain, but i feel like maybe i’m a bad person. i know somewhere deep down, this girl isn’t in love with H like i am, i know she thinks nothing of their interactions besides maybe a mild likeness. and that’s not me at all.

when you look at just the facts of H and i’s relationship, it sounds horrible. a 51 year old man and a 16 year old girl. a teacher and his student. a girl lusting over a married man. and i know that to everyone else outside of this perfect circle i’ve created for myself sees me as a victim. but i don’t feel that way about myself at all, in fact i feel much more closely aligned with the perpetrator. the villain. the predator. the possibility of H not returning my feelings towards him even a little bit is so grand that really i would be the one in the wrong. i mean i’m fucking losing my goddamn mind over here and all he’s doing is being nice to a misguided young girl.

and yet, despite my overwhelming self awareness, i’m delusional enough to hold onto that tiny piece of hope that maybe just maybe there’s more than he’s letting on. i suppose that’s all i have to do now. keep hoping. either that or i give up entirely. but i’m naive (if not selfish) enough to cling to that sliver of a chance. so here i am.

when i got home and looked in the mirror, i had distinct streaks of tears on my cheeks, it felt like a big damning slap.

[taiblogcomics]

Apex Predator

Hey there, shaving nicks. Well, we're on our last issue of this batch of Avengers Arena reviews! We'll take another short break to cleanse our palate again--I have something very nice lined up for that--and then we'll do the last six issues over the course of the summer. After that... Well, who knows~? One travesty at a time, please.

Here's the cover:

Hazmat, dear, I don't think you should be watering the trees with blood. It's not healthy for them--in fact, you could say it makes them sick-amore. I know you took the time to dig out your little tournament bracket to fill with blood in order to do so, but... Just sayin'. Maybe you didn't need to spend the time to do that. Speaking of, this whole thing probably would've gone a lot smoother if Arcade had used a bracketed gladiator tournament model instead of the battle royale format. It was 2013! Battle royale games weren't even in vogue yet! If you just waited a couple years, Arcade, you could've invented Fortnite! Alas, we have only this to ridicule him for~

So last time, Hazmat got her groove back, and she and Reptil joined the others in going to look into what happened to Nico. Unfortunately, what happened to Nico was Apex, who we now have to endure as our narrator for this issue. And she starts with some pretentious twaddle about how "no one thinks they're the villain of their own story", and asking us who the villain of this story is. Is it her? Is it Arcade? Is it the superhero community that let this happen? Is it the audience who keeps this going? No, I'm pretty sure it's you, dear. You're the one murdering people.

And speaking of people she murdered, we cut over to Nico lying in the snow. Suddenly some purple energy crackles off the Staff of One, slurps into Nico's orifices, and raises her from the dead--and off her feet. The Runaways were probably the third-biggest name in this series after X-23 and Reptil, you didn't really think she was staying dead, did you? She's about to show everyone exactly why too much pink energy is dangerous, as she finishes reviving and takes off flying in a huge colourful cloud of flames.

Apex is still monologuing about her dreck, starting on about how Murderworld isn't a story, it's a game. Arcade said so! And that games don't have heroes or villains, just winners and losers. Oh, she's one of those folks who thinks games are just pure numbers and haven't evolved since the arcade days. She's also listening to Arcade, so she's definitely an idiot. Thankfully, Nico shows up to put a stop to her garbage musings. She then uses her wand to collect up all the forest fire and redirect it at Apex. Smokey would be proud~

Speaking of Arcade, we cut over to him being a smug douchebag, eating popcorn as he enjoys Nico's attack on Apex. Hey, man, you may have set up this scenario, but this isn't for you. He does, at least, helpfully exposit about Nico's new power-up. See, the Staff of One usually requires a blood sacrifice for her to use. A couple drops is sufficient. But she died. That's about as much blood as you can sacrifice. So the Staff's rebuilt her from the ground up (even regrew her missing arm) and filled her with as much magic as it can muster.

Apex is taken aback because she thought she already killed Nico, but she's happy to try it again. She breaks into her stupid villain monologue again, thinking maybe she's the hero because she's the only one playing Murderworld by its rules. "Villains hate rules", she says, completely failing to acknowledge that Lawful Evil is a legitimate alignment. Anyways, "maybe I'm not the villain here" is a valid line of thought. "Maybe I'm the hero here because I'm the only one killing people" is definitely not.

The battle rages on. Nico uses a spell to simply reduce Deathlocket's arm cannon to its component pieces, removing her lethality from the fight. The Darkhawk powers are a bit more complicated, so she then hits Chase with a hard enough blast to return him to his sense--for a moment. Chasehawk returns fire, and Apex snatches the Staff of One in the moment, starting a gloat. But Nico just recalls the Staff with a word, to Apex's surprise, and then just closes the dirt up and around Apex, taking her out.

Chase is returned to his senses again, and he tries to apologise. Nico doesn't want to deal with that right now, though, and she just wants to sit with him quietly for a bit. Meanwhile, the dirt that swallowed up Apex and Deathlocket has dumped the pair into some underground facility. Locket also returns to her senses, while Apex remains limp and lifeless. Sneaking around a bit, Deathlocket finds a room full of the preserved bodies of the other Murderworld victims, among other science experiments. She realises where she is: Arcade's inner sanctum...

This is what I’m gonna call a catharsis issue. Once the smug douche is done smugging it up, they get their very justified beatdown by someone we like, and the world returns to good things again. Hopefully it won’t be the last one of the series, I can think of another smug douche who also needs his beatdown. Otherwise, a pretty all right issue. Resurrected a character, beat up the insufferable jackass, and end on a bit of mystery.

Now we have only six issues left! But next week, as stated above, I’ve got a couple things on the back-burner to tide us over. Why ruin this good feeling~?

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 201 Rundown

Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture: The Seven Stars off-screen kick the ass of one of the Einbergs and the guy his so humiliated at the next Evil Council meeting he’s basically shut out of the group and ends up shooting himself to avoid the shame, like damn Lelouch mentally fucked up some people but the evil organization is gatekeeping their own people now. More importantly Sakuya is FUCKING STACKED and is taking a break to lounge around in her underwear and I am kinda all for it. She meets with the Young Emperor’s new favorite secretary Natalia who’s apparently a double agent and like… idk maybe this café they meet in is a safe location and they DO have her meet in the Rozé disguise but it feels like having the emperor’s secretary meet with flashy twink terrorist is just as bad as meeting with the semi-generic looking presumed dead princess but what do I know, just saying Sakuya has confirmed people that look like her and ain’t NO ONE gonna mistake seeing Rozé on the street. They get Sakuya to act as a maid for the café now that we know she’s hot why not stick her in a maid outfit, also Ash saves the other waitress maid from some guys who threaten her for… having a job? God racists are so uncreative, but it is funny to watch him just take them out in two seconds and be like “I domed the racists, have a nice day”. And she brings Ash back to the café to get the awkward situation of him unknowingly blushing at his female brother in a maid outfit. It’s really funny how Ash is such a sweetheart flirting with her by talking about how he can cook and takes care of lots of puppies and kittens, idk how much Sakuya’s Geass messed with his personality given he’s supposed to be a silent killer but I’d say he’s probably just a killer AND a dork. Also kind of a side note when Natalia meets the Emperor it sounds like they have him voiced by an actual child which is just always kind of weird and puts into context the weird lines adults write for kids because it sounds like things someone with this voice shouldn’t be saying, still he’s naïve and afraid of the Japanese that keep trying to assassinate him for being a racist figurehead so who knows what we’ll do with that. Sakuya kind of wonders to herself what kind of person Ash really is thanks to the killer/dork dichotomy and the fact she’s resolved to kill him for killing her father. Meanwhile Catherine is now Sakura’s personal knight so we’ll get to see even MORE titties bouncing around given she can’t do an introduction without gainaxing like crazy. The Seven Stars regroup with a couple of new Knightmares for the main aces of the group and a flying tactical frame for Rozé so he doesn’t have to double up with Ash, meanwhile Ash tells his brother he’s in love, unknowingly with his alter ego. Before we can go too deep into that though turns out the Child Emperor has been assassinated (as child emperors tend to be) by a drone mosquito thing and as a result Sakura!Sakuya is going to be the next emperor, leaving Sakuya in the awkward position of the person she’s trying to save being the figurehead of the country she’s trying to destroy. Sakuya remembers being granted her Geass by Lelouch and the whole ‘the power of the king is lonely’ speech and I didn’t see Lelouch of the Ressurection so idk how that’s even possible but the “The dead protagonist didn’t die he just became the guy that gives out the powers” theory has always been popular since back when it was used for Death Note so I guess it’s not that hard to follow in the long run.

Ranma ½: Ryoga trains Ranma for the… gymnastics karate… thing, and is nice for all of five minutes before revealing he’s only involved to make sure Ranma loses and breaks off engagement with Akane by becoming Kodachi’s boytoy. Kodachi’s still determined to sabotage the match in the stupidest ways possible and her and Piggy!Ryoga end up aligning for this purpose. It’s kind of wild how much they hype this match up because apparently a local school rivalry is watched by TEN MILLION people and since they can’t give away Ranma’s name they just call her “this girl” the whole time, like how is a last minute replacement that won’t give her name or school ID or anything not immediately disqualified? Especially given several people want this match thrown out against Ranma. Ranma does finally have to give them her name and he’s like “yeah don’t worry it’ll work out” and everyone’s just like “yeah they have the same name, no biggie” because Ranma’s growing aware he’s in a gag show and bystanders have the IQ of a wet piece of wood. Kodachi chains Ranma to Pig!Ryoga which doesn’t matter much since Piggy’s so small and it basically just gives him a pig on a stick weapon. The match itself is really fun, kind of a really good example of what a good fight in a gag show can be like with lots of ridiculous turns and blatant rule-breaking, Ranma even getting turned back into a boy halfway through but getting bailed out from a save from Akane and his dad. Turns out Kodachi actively has her classmates under the ring to move it around so she can’t get flung out so Ranma tears up the whole area meaning only the perimeter is safe now since we’re on Cell Games rules. She eventually destroys Kodachi’s foothold and barely wins, so Kodachi decides to give up on Male Ranma… for like five seconds, yeah we’re not clipping a love triangle that quick this is a Rumiko Takashi work after all.

Arcane: Vander busts Vi’s heroic sacrifice to perform his OWN heroic sacrifice, but Silco busts in with Venom!Deckard to stop that heroic sacrifice and kidnap Vander and cut off the unstable peace deal between the two sides, the first ten minutes up this episode are just a series of people interrupting heroic sacrifices. Jayce and his new boyfriend break into Science Jail to get his shit back and prove Sciencing the shit out of Magic by just sciencing it harder is a great idea trust me bro. Meanwhile Vi goes to get Vander and Jinx gets left behind where she finally figures out the crystallized nitroglycerin she’s carrying is the shit that caused the explosion that caused all this shit and instead of that throwing her into existential dread her new explosion arsenal motivates her to blow some shit up so she’s kind of already a little unstable. Jayce gets the magic shit running because it’d be a short plot thread to say ‘it exploded and they died, the end’. Still Vi comes to get Vander and turns out it was a trap by Silco to frame Vander for abandoning the area since everyone knows he wouldn’t leave without his kids. They work on freeing him and Vi kicks some mook ass until Venom!Deckard comes and kicks her ass and forces them to retreat. Jinx comes in with the REAL villain of Toy Story 3, the cymbal-banging monkey and the resulting explosion kills the two secondary backstory friends and forces Vander to try and fight off Deckard, doing a decent job of it before Silco fulfills their backstory foreshadowing by finishing the job himself and having Vander have to go full Bane mode himself to save Vi before dying. Now with everyone dead but the two characters that actually make it into League of Legends, Vi’s pretty pissed that Jinx set off the direct explosion that killed most of her family though there is some reasonable doubt that they may have been screwed anyway given Deckard still kicked Vander’s ass in the end and having to get three kids out of there definitely would’ve been a lot harder even if he’d somehow managed to Hulk up, so yeah the direct cause of their death is Jinx but it’s sort of a trolley problem situation where her inaction may have still resulted in the same or similar amount of death.Still Vi’s understandably upset and blows up at her and gets like five feet away before wanting to go back to protect her but she gets abducted by the one Piltover guy left standing and Jinx is adopted by Silco to start her true advent as a Harley Quinn expy.

Dandadan: The group continue to fight the Acrobatic Silky and are able to briefly restrain her long enough for Okarun to hit her with his full force and take her out of the fight. Only one problem… Aira’s fucking dead, yeah turns out getting eaten by demons sucks your soul out. Though getting knocked the fuck out gave Silky time to think and now that she’s had a Snickers, she decides to give her aura to Aira to let her live. Though since Momo’s psychic and Aira’s receiving Silky’s entire being, both of them get Backstory Vision and see the spirit’s tragic past. A single mother up to her eyes in debt, she worked a variety of minimum wage jobs and prostitution to scrape by enough for her little girl, piecing together some form of happiness along the way but eventually being killed when fighting back against her daughter’s kidnappers, dying in the streets bleeding out looking for her. Apparently Aira could see spirits as a kid too (maybe kids are more sensitive to that or something since it was established she couldn’t see anything until she touched Okarun’s testicle) and called out to her thinking she was her own deceased mom who she was missing a great deal, fueling rage and obsession in Silky’s heart that festered to turn her into a youkai. Filled with regret for almost killing Aira and failing her daughter in life, the Acrobatic Silky starts to fade away, resigning herself to neither heaven nor hell and finding nonexistence to be her deserved fate. Aira musters her strength and gives her the biggest hug she can, thanking her for being a great mother, knowing they can’t truly fill the holes in each others’ hearts but appreciating the comfort she did give her in seeing a mother care so much for her daughter and knowing she deserves better than thinking she only destroyed her daughter’s life. It’s not known whether it was enough to soothe her spirit and help her find the peace needed to pass on, but Aira hopes she can find her daughter again somewhere soft and warm that will be kinder to them both.

Gleipnir: Claire finishes her Unbreakable Vow with Jason Voorhees lady and she reveals that she actually had a crush on Claire’s sister and doesn’t think she could be a bad person but idk if ‘she asked me to sit with her at lunch’ holds up to forensic evidence. Meanwhile Shuuichi and dog girl run into the evil faction’s ace who happens to have what I presume Sasori’s Susanoo would look like because it’s just a giant parental issue golem and it crushes Shuuichi’s costume like a soda can with dog girl inside. Turns out that doesn’t matter though because this just unlock’s Shuuichi’s Inner Hollow and they basically… fuse, I guess? This is kind of a pretty cool mechanic honestly, like it represents his connection with someone and presumably manifests differently depending on who’s inside him when he does it. But yeah now he’s basically Ultra Instinct Berserker Dog Lady and that’s pretty cool, they manage to put Parental Issues boy on the backfoot for a moment before Claire’s sister stops the fight and dog lady is somehow able to remember parts of Shuuichi’s past that he’s blocked out and sees his relationship with her and presumably why she gifted him the mascot suit powers and is so yandere towards him, so she stops him from trying to kill her. The bad guys escape and Claire and co. find Shuuichi with a naked dog girl still alive inside so that’s good, didn’t want dog girl to die already.

Trigun: Vash and the girls are in a new peaceful town where Vash involuntarily makes friends with the town drunk. Turns out this is kind of the “good guys with guns” episode since the backstory is this gunsmith Vash is looking for to tune up his gun gave everyone in the town a gun to drive off some bandits Seven Samurai style, now given the only important character we’ve met is the town drunk who noticed Vash’s gun was out of tune, three guesses who the old gunsmith is. Turns out turning this town into an average American city had some consequences as a bank robbery gone wrong claimed the lives of Frank the smith’s wife and daughter, resigning him to a stoic ‘do nothing as to no harm’ philosophy. This holds until more bank robbers descend on the town and Vash confronts them, telling Frank letting bad things happen isn’t the equality he’s looking for. Vash’s nobility stirs up the townsfolk who are all still fucking strapped and run the Vash Impersonator of the week out of town (come on this guy wasn’t even wearing red or blonde, they’re not even trying). Frank resolves to quit drinking and go back to the messy process of helping people instead of just stopping trying and Vash gets his gun fixed as Meryl follows him out of town.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: It’s a Nanami episode so get ready for the stupidest shit you’ve ever heard. At one of her fancy parties Nanami receives a designer cowbell as a present and puts it on without even looking at it. From then on the episode becomes a real Emperor’s New Clothes situation with no one quite knowing how to break the news to Nanami that she looks stupid and is wearing farm equipment. It’s really kind of remarkably stupid in a way I’ve only seen from this show’s filler episodes specifically, but wait, it gets worse. Nanami has a dream of Touga shipping her off to be steak and then eating her, Freud would have a field day with that one. And next she becomes more docile and sleepy and just starts BECOMING A COW, like some of it you can chalk up to Nanami being stupid and easily influenced but no by the end of the episode she is LITERALLY A COW. Utena manages to Dios Thrust the bell off her with a pitchfork after doing the Matador thing everyone knows is a myth now (also doesn’t that only work on bulls? Nanami’s clearly a girl cow, she has udders like that cow from Barnyard). And at the end it turns out Anthy named her cow Nanami in a surprising little bit of spitefulness which doesn’t make sense that the bell was ADDRESSED TO THE COW, but that’s fine, I just kinda wanna know WHY WAS IT MAGIC!? Like the rules of this show are so strange it’s just like “Anthy where did you get a magic cowbell?” “Internet” and I can’t, the fucking Nanami episodes break my brain, I can’t.

[true-blue-sonic]

About Lanolin, I recall a while back there was a semi-popular? fan theory that she would turn out to be a villain of some sort, apparently just because of there being a couple panels where she was drawn looking kind of sinister.

I mostly dismissed it after Eggperial City since it was hard to see where a motive for her to be outright evil would come from in her backstory, but I wonder if things like her being harsh with Silver but lenient with Duo and screaming furiously at Tangle as she pulls them out of the ravine are deliberately playing into that thought a bit?

It seems to me that yeah, she's supposed to be at least sometimes a bossy no-nonsense hardass and not particularly easy to like, but I also wonder with the way things could be going with Mimic not being exposed as of issue 67 (maybe with Lanolin's help, unwittingly or not?) if Lanolin will develop into somewhat of a hero-aligned antagonist moving foward.

I have heard of the theory; I even dabbled in it myself for a bit! But especially in issues 37 and 41 she just looks... off?

Just... unhappy, unengaged, uninterested, exhausted, stressed, dour, down, whatever you want to call it. And as far as I know, no explanation is provided for this! Is she overworked? Overwhelmed? Is she unhappy in the Restoration? Is she feeling out of place? If so, then why is she suddenly out in the field doing actual battles against Eggman despite the fact she is clearly not prepared for that and doesn't know how to lead a team? She does look sinister, or just extremely tired, but nothing comes of it except that she's suddenly a main hero, basically. But that leaves me wondering why they drew her so uninterested and down in the issues she was in before #57.

I definitely agree there seems to be no reason for her to be evil: she herself also states that she wants to protect the world against Eggman and ensure no-one needs to go through the helplessness and terror that she has. And I really do see no reason for her to lie about that! But the way she is trying to achieve that, indeed by bossing around the actual heroes like Sonic and Silver while simply not being on top of things with her own team, plus her insanely short temper with especially Tangle (and Silver :<), and the fact everyone listens to her as if she's been the boss for years, is very strange in that regard. While I do think it would be interesting to have Lanolin develop into someone who realises that the way Sonic and friends work is fundamentally different from what she is willing to deal with, it strikes me that the comic seems to paint her and her line of thought to be in the right instead. She hardly gets scolded for her temper and bossiness, nobody speaks up for the people at the receiving end of that, and the one time Tangle did say something eventually ended in Lanolin kind of being right after all. So I am definitely interested in how her personality is going to develop, also in relation to Mimic's upcoming betrayal of the New Diamond Cutters and the fact she fell for Duo's disguise hook, line and sinker... but like, not curious in a positive way. I would be highly surprised if the comic did a full 180 and suddenly presented her as being villainous for her ideas and methods/developed that further, let's put it like that.

[oh-cool-a-burning-sword]

A few things about the new Engage trailer that I wanna talk about now that the captions got updated

Alear's mother is named Lumera/Lumere, which means light. And the Fell Dragon is named Sombron, which means dark/shadow. Other than the names being pretty on the nose with their alignments, it's clear that these two are connected somehow. Wether their siblings or were once a couple is hard to say but Alear's definitely related to Sombron in one way or another

Mystery girl finally has a name so I no longer have to call her mystery girl. Her name's Veyle, which is translated to Veil. I find this to be interesting since a veil is a piece of cloth that conceals someone's face. Could this indicate that she's hiding something? There's already people wondering if she could be the floating cloaked girl who we see in the trailer, so that could be it.

Also, does anyone else find the fact that there seems to be a manakete in the Fell Dragon's forces to be interesting? I know I haven't played that many FE games, but usually isn't the only evil dragon we see the final boss? So Zephia's kinda surprising to me.

Not just that but thanks to what looks to be a memory of Evil Alear, we know that at some point they could have worked for Sombron too. So that's two dragons on the Fell Dragon's side

Then since there's a chance that Veyle is also a dragon... if she really is the cloaked girl then that means THREE dragons we're on the fell dragon's side at one point

Crack theory: Sombron took the kids in the divorce

Anyone else think that there's an suspiciously high number of villains/characters on the villain's side in this game? I've tried counting and I think there's about 10-11? Maybe more? Though it could be likely that some characters are recruitable (aka, Ivy as she's an ally in the announcement trailer)

idk about y'all, but I actually like the detail of the Emblems turning red when an enemy uses them. Reminds me of how the pixel sprites in past games turn red when their enemies so I think that's pretty cool!

The caption update reveals that Sombron's the one who says, supposedly to Alear, 'Everyone you care about, their already dead'. And honestly I really wonder what's gonna happen to make him say that. Is he talking about the friends and allies Alear must have had 1000 years ago? Or something else entirely? I for one am curious to find that out

[butwhatifidothis]

Can't STAND these bitches in the fandom whining about "Wah, Rhea didn't wanna let go of power, she endangered the students by never revealing the truth of anything to them" and then turn around and fuckin' GUSH about how ~brave~ and ~daring~ Edelgard is for ~standing up against Rhea~ by doing THE EXACT. SAME. SHIT.

Edelgard never told her allies about TWS and thus they were ill-prepared for them when the post-game war came about. You can tell that no one was prepared for the war because so fuckin' many endings Byleth has in CF has it say that their marriage with the person they get with was immediately followed by the war against TWS. The other characters were literally never told once about their existence and Edelgard expected everyone to throw themselves into this war she never told them would happen, after already finishing a war she'd already forced on them. Run it back guys! Edelgard's War That She Makes Everyone Go Through Without Their Prior Knowledge Or Consent Part 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Edelgard stripped every noble that stood against her of almost any power they had and only nobles that at that moment stood against her got that treatment. Counts Bergliez and Hevring were equally involved in the Insurrection of the Seven - that thing that revealed Vestra, Varley, and Aegir as "corrupt" in Edelgard and Hubert's eyes - but since they choose at that moment to stand by Edelgard they're suddenly not corrupt anymore - they "earned forgiveness". As long as they never go against Edelgard - i.e., threaten her hold on power - then they are cured of their supposed corruptness. How convenient for Edelgard, that that's how that works! Suddenly Bergliez and Hevring are totally good guys and all it took was them bending the knee to her, how lovely. Also, see Acheron.

Everyone expects Rhea to just fuckin' spill the beans of everything right away as if that exact thing didn't fuckin' lead to the near extinction of her race. As if humans knowing everything the Nabateans know didn't almost lead to the permanent ruination of all of Fodlan. And then they pull excuse after excuse after excuse out of their asses for why Edelgard was so much better for all the shitty things she did. They pin all the blame on Rhea for Edelgard's actions, because I guess Edelgard isn't a grown ass woman who's capable of making her own independent decisions. She can never be blamed for her actions, no, someone else is always at fault, but Rhea can and should be completely and solely responsible for the decisions she makes.

Nothing can influence her decisions. No outside force made her think her actions, morally questionable they can be, are the best course. Nah chief, it's her being just fuckin' evil that was the reason she did what she did. Rhea's bad for secrets, but not Edelgard! Even though her secrets involved hiding the existence of two incoming wars that she was planning on spearheading- that's fine! Rhea is bad for wanting to hand the reigns over to someone specifically, but Edelgard wanting a successor worthy of her bloody throne is something to be admired. Just look over the fact that this person almost certainly cannot be someone who came from the people, and that it's almost definitely someone deemed worthy by Edelgard, from the elite social circles, with connections to Edelgard and/or other powerful people, with the best tutors and the perfect environment, and an already surefire shot at success already. See, Rhea's means were more morally questionable, so that means Edelgard is squeaky clean!

Who cares that there is literally no fuckin' way the weak aren't gonna be fuckin' trampled under the boots of the stron- oopsy daisy, I meant "meritable". Who cares that the literal one person in BE that could even possibly be considered someone who defies this is someone who 1) admits herself that she had to "pull some noble strings" to have a chance at paying the fees - oh, yeah, because you know who thrives under a meritocracy? Bitches with no money, for sure!! - and 2) is the only BE to not be appointed general post ts. Who cares that the weak have gotten persecuted and exiled under Edelgard's reign if they believed in the wrong faith, and who cares if any faithful in Edelgard's Fodlan have to cope with the loss of a foundational support system of theirs - just be strong! Just be good! It's just that easy amiright guys

And like... look, I honestly wouldn't care about people raggin' Rhea so hard about what she's done if it existed in a vacuum. She's done some questionable shit! Shit that could very easily warrant disdain! But it's when it's coupled with the fact that I know these people will go on to praise Edelgard and love her despite her doing equally morally questionable actions that peeves me off so much. Edelgard deadass started a war that lasted five years! She starved her citizens to have more food for her men! Men of whom some of which are forced to be there! She uses meat shields in AM and VW just like Rhea does in CF! She lets her citizens be turned into Demonic Beasts for her to use as war assets! She hides shit that people oughta know just like Rhea does!

But people wanna ignore that, just like they ignore Rhea just having the Church fuckin' off away from Adrestia 120 years before the game even starts, and how Faerghus definitely has a unique view on religion that doesn't align that perfectly with the Seiros faith, and how the Eastern Church might as well don't real for all the power it has, and how it's Rhea and the Church that is dealing with all of the issues in the game and not, oh, I dunno, the nations the problems are set in (with the only possible reasonable exception being Faerghus, because of Edelgard's allies) - fuck all that I guess!

Rhea's power hungry and Edelgard "just NeEdS all that power guys!!" and Rhea's bad for holding secrets and Edelgard is FoRcEd to keep the literal cause of all of Fodlan's problems hidden from literally almost everyone and Rhea should be held solely accountable for every single one of her actions and Edelgard shouldn't because others MaDe hEr Do iT

[asset35-maya]

CALYPSO 🐚 ☕️

Part 1 & Part 2

Part 3/3:

Nines froze as the human’s body melded to his. Gavin kept his eyes shut and his lips moving. Then what he’d been bracing for finally came.

Pain.

Sweet glorious pain, blossoming everywhere Nines gripped his body. Gavin was sure that his lips would bruise under the pressure of the reciprocal kiss… that his rib cage would shatter if Nines held him any tighter… that his lungs would burst if they didn’t fill with air soon…

A wolf-whistle broke through the stunned silence in the yard.

Gavin pulled back, light-headed from the rush of oxygen and drain of adrenaline. He didn’t fall though. Didn’t even move an inch. Strong arms and a heated gaze kept him pinned.

//

\\

“Of all the things in the world… why coffee?”

“I could ask you the same.”

Gavin tucked his head into the crook of Nines’ neck, cuddling closer.

“Hmm… I think weird working hours made me actually need the caffeine… but the bean snobbery just came with the rest of my superiority complexes.”

Nines laughed. It was more of an exhale than an actual laugh, but Gavin was thankful for it nonetheless.

“And you?”

Nines kissed his forehead, prolonging his answer as much as he could before finally relenting with a sigh.

“The reason you’re asking… is because running a café is just about the last thing you’d expect an android like me to be doing. And… that’s your answer. That’s exactly why I wanted it.”

“To subvert expectations…?”

“To not be the terrible thing I was meant to be.”

Gavin’s breath hitched at the depth of emotion in Nines’ voice. He didn’t dare look up to meet his eye and settled for pressing his lips to the razor-sharp jawline.

“I dunno what kinda code runs through you, but believe me when I say you don’t have it in you to be… terrible.”

Nines scoffed at that.

“How can you say that after all the shit you’ve seen me do.”

“I can say that after all the shit I’ve seen others do. Fifteen years on the job, remember? I can vouch that righteous anger is one of the least terrible things out there.”

When Nines didn’t respond, Gavin decided to move the ship out of uncharted waters. He propped himself up on an elbow and ran a hand down the android’s smooth chest.

“In fact, I think it’s downright sexy.”

That did the trick. Nines pressed Gavin into the mattress with a low growl and rolled over him, clamping his mouth over his throat. Their hips aligned and the conversation ended.

//

\\

“Ralph tried hard but the machine is not working. Ralph is stuck.”

“Move. Let me see.”

Gavin took the filter holder and disconnected it from the espresso machine with a firm tug. He leapt away in shock as water came rushing out. That was absolutely not supposed to happen.

“Er… I’ll get a mechanic friend to take a look later. Why don’t you go check on inventory?”

Ralph shuffled away with a thoroughly sceptical look in his eye. Gavin sighed openly once the android was out of earshot.

The café was in shambles.

The vandals may have gotten as good as they gave… but they’d left their mark. Even with insurance, there was no way such a new establishment could financially recover from a setback like that.

Nines said nothing but seethed with his usual brand of silent, impotent rage.

Unable to bear the slammed car doors and dismissive grunts any longer, Gavin had taken a solo day off to come down to the Calypso and see what could be done.

Not much, without a boatload of money, it seemed.

He sat down with a sigh and Ralph brought over a cup of coffee. Black. A pour-over. He set a bowl of runny eggs and a small basket of bread down on the table too.

Gavin looked up in surprise. Ralph shrugged.

“Nines is telling Ralph that you left without breakfast. Ralph’s equipment is all broken so Ralph just made something simple.”

Touched beyond words, Gavin motioned for Ralph to sit down with him instead of scurrying off into the shadows as per his usual habit.

He took a sip of the hand-poured drip coffee and broke a piece of the bread, dragging it through the eggs, European style. It was utterly homely and reminded of him of some bygone era that he’d needlessly bypassed. He looked up and met Ralph’s mildly unsettling stare.

“So… why the name Calypso? There’s nothing beach-themed or Caribbean about the place.”

“Nines chose it. After the Greek goddess.”

“Huh. And she was the goddess of coffee? Did they even have coffee back in those Hercules Orgy Olympics days?”

“She is a sea nymph. She detained the mythic hero Odysseus on her island for seven years.”

Gavin’s brows furrowed as he swallowed a mouthful of fresh bread.

“Did you bake this?”

“Yes. Ralph is baking daily. Ralph does it first thing in the morning at five. It is very calming to knead the dough and hear the birdsong.”

“It’s phcking delicious. Leavened perfectly. Now back to the name. This goddess nymph creature. She doesn’t sound very nice. She trapped this hero dude, right? Reminds me of my ex. Why name this pretty café after her?”

“Ralph can only imagine that Nines’ fascination with Calypso is the ambiguity of her nature. She can seduce and manipulate, but she can also heal. She is neither good nor evil.”

Gavin drained his coffee and sank back in his chair contemplatively.

“What do you think she is, Ralph?”

Ralph’s LED flickered and his eyes dipped to the table. He knew what Gavin was asking.

“Calypso is immortal. Calypso cannot help but fall in love with every sailor who lands on her shores. Calypso dreams of an eternal husband but lets Odysseus go when it’s clear he wishes to return to his wife. Well, maybe only when the Gods commands her to… but she releases him without harm!”

Gavin waited. Ralph’s head snapped up and he spoke in a short burst.

“Calypso is mythical. It does not matter what she is. Nines is real. Nines is good. Very good. Honest and honourable! Ralph will do anything for Nines!”

Gavin leaned back in his chair with the satisfied smile of an experienced police negotiator who’d gotten exactly where he wanted to.

//

\\

“What the hell is this? Where did you get so much money from?”

Nines’ amber LED cycled furiously as he took in the sight of the restored café. Ralph was humming to himself as he proudly polished the knobs of their repaired espresso machine.

Gavin led Nines by the hand to look at the repainted walls… the new furniture… the new crockery replacing what had been smashed…

“How…?”

“Oh I just embodied my inner Gen Z and tapped into the power of social justice.”

Nines looked thoroughly nonplussed.

“Crowdfunding, baby. I set up a link and Ralph told everyone on Twitter what happened to him and the café. Well, showed them, more like.”

Nines looked up at the ceiling and his LED slowly returned to a calm blue as he understood… but when he looked back down, his expression wasn’t any less troubled.

“Okay I just saw it. Edited footage from his optical units and a tearful testimonial. Ethically questionable, but clever.”

“Super effective. We overshot our target by a couple hundred bucks.”

“Hmm. People are kind.”

“Yes. They’ve actually done more for you. Look. Connor gave me this earlier today.”

Gavin reached into his jacket and produced an envelope. Nines’ eyes widened as he spotted the official seals of the Mayor’s office, the Manfred Estate and New Jericho.

“Someone started a petition… to let you back behind the helm of the Calypso. It really took off. I don’t know how you didn’t hear-”

“I muted any mentions of myself and the other RKs from showing up in my newsfeed.”

“Then this makes for a good surprise.”

Gavin gently pushed the envelope into the android’s hands and watched him open it with a precise fingernail flicked under the wax. He scanned the contents of the letter in a split second and let it fall through his fingers.

Without warning, he scooped Gavin up and set him down on a polished table for a deep kiss of even deeper gratitude. Ralph turned his back on them with a bashful giggle.

//

\\

“Baby.”

Nines didn’t respond.

“Hey baby?”

“Hmm...”

There was an intensity to the grumble that had Gavin second-guessing whether to persist. Being Nines’ lover didn’t exempt him from the consequences of asking stupid questions.

“Your thoughts are fucking loud. Just say whatever you want to.”

“Oh. Um… I was actually wondering… I mean, you don’t have to tell me… but like why… um…”

“Why haven’t I turned my badge in yet?”

“Yeah…”

Nines turned on his side and brushed the back of his hand over Gavin’s cheek. The intimate gesture sent a thrill through the human despite how much more intimate they’d just been in the recent past.

“Because I haven’t decided what to do next.”

Gavin’s brows knitted together.

“What do you mean? Aren’t you going to take back your business?”

Nines’ wan smile told him all he needed to know.

“Why?”

“It’s doing really well in Ralph’s hands. He’s capable. He’s creative. And I don’t think it’s fair for me to go back and get in his way all of a sudden.”

“He needs you.”

“He absolutely doesn’t. It’s his café. You helped him get back on his feet and he’s going to be fiiiiine without me.”

“Is it because you don’t wanna be her anymore?”

Nines scrunched his nose up in confusion.

“Who?”

“Calypso. The siren who trapped the Oddball.”

That earned Gavin a heartfelt laugh.

“Odysseus, Gavin.”

“Yeah. You were like Calypso and now you’re letting go of the coffeeshop because you figured it wasn’t meant to be!”

Nines frowned and pretended to check the human for a temperature. Gavin swatted his hands away with mock petulance.

“Fine, I’m probably way off the mark. You tell me what the deal is then!”

Arms snaked around his waist and pulled him flush against the android’s defined chest. Lips brushed the shell of his ear and when Nines spoke next, it was in the huskiest of undertones.

“I’m Odysseus. Not Calypso.”

The realisation was painfully obvious in hindsight.

“I’m the one who’s stuck on an endless journey home. I’ve faced a hundred artificial trials and tribulations. I’ve been a puppet at the hands of false gods. I answer existential questions to prove my self-worth every single day.”

Nines paused to gauge Gavin’s reaction. When he received none, he pressed a brief kiss to the human’s bare shoulder before continuing.

“It’s been a long journey. But not a pointless one. Every metaphorical island I’ve visited has granted me something. From literally running into Ralph in an old building… to defending our turf from other stray androids… getting ourselves off the street… setting up a café from scratch… being arrested on opening day… ending up on the police force with you…”

Gavin recognised that as his cue to squirm around in Nines’ arms and peck him on the lips.

“So who’s Cyclops?”

“What?”

“The story’s starting to come back to me now. Your boy Oddy fought a one-eyed monster on one of the islands he went to. Who’s the Cyclops in your story?”

Nines huffed another breathy laugh.

“Markus, probably. Connor is definitely Helios.”

“Who’s your wife?”

“Definitely not you.”

Gavin elbowed him in the ribs. An action that had more repercussions on him than Nines.

“So which island are you off to next?”

“I have no idea. But it doesn’t matter. I might already be home.”

[pacificwaternymph]

Hello i come to ramble about last life uninvited in your inbox.

I have many thoughts about all of them. So i am writing about each of them. Yes.

Scar - oh many thoughts here. how he now has the most lives on the server when he was the first red in 3rd life. also that he is definitely evil aligned. much more. funky evil wizard.

Grian - oh you wanna murder someone so badly don’t you? seriously so far 3/4 he was involved with the boogy kill, he was veey eager to warch joel set up his trap and see said trap in action.

Mumbo - died to lava 2/2 times. Burn scars yes. Also i was very surprised to see how easily he would have betrayed the ahallience for a life. One of two people to have killed a boogyman.

Joel - absolutely feral. i love his talks with scar on the cobblestone bridge. He is trying so hard to be evil and everyone is so scared of him.

Lizzie - absolute girlboss. Nothing more to say currently. Oh! And her boogy kill. [chef‘s kiss]

Martyn - So far, rather drawn to ren. i am bot crying. not at all.

Ren - Speaking of: theatre kid (affectionate) he is so dramatic, but i am also very invested in the fact that he is sworn to lizzie to protect her while he made scar swear to him to not kill him

Etho - his thing in the last episode is either going to help him or bite him in the butt immensely in the near future. The boy who cried wolf too many times, but who is to say that this can’t come as a help.

I also recently saw a multiple headcanons for (boogy) kills. My favourites are that the victim gets a scar that won’t heal. Grian with a line around his neck when he was killed by bdubs. Mumbo with burn scars from getting a lava bath curtesy of scar. Pearl and Scott with wounds from being attacked by lizzie and joel respectively. But also the boogyman getting a constant reminder of their victim(‘s fate) in the form of a tattoo/mark.

Also i love how different people described the feeling of being the boogyman. thinking about the feeling being something that consumes your mind until you no longer can think of anything other than to kill someone. Which would also tie into the fact that if you don’t kill as the boogyman you automatically go red.

This is getting so long. I am so sorry.

- Bear

Excuse you, the fuck do you mean uninvited? Come ramble whenever you like, I don't mind!! I enjoy seeing other peoples' thoughts :D

Scar- I don't know that much about him but he seems like a really interesting character. Also I love how he just goes around absolutely scamming the heck out of people.

Grian - He's so feral and I adore him. He seems so ready to kill someone and I love him for it.

Mumbo - Absolutely burn scars, I love head canons about scars if you let me I will go on for hours (please for the love of god do not let me). Yeah that's a bit surprising, but then again considering he isn't very loyal to his faction on Hermitcraft either (from what I've seen), should it be?

Joel - Also feral. Also I love the whole thing he has going on with Lizzie right now. I am very soft for the couple because they're very sweet, but also there is so much potential for angst in there.

Lizzie - Lizzie and Cleo are both girlbosses and should be feared by everyone on the server. Those two together are going to take the server by storm. Her kill was so clean, and then she turned around and went "Still up for an alliance?" It was so funny

Martyn - Oh my GOD. Martyn's claim to fame on Tumblr so far seems to be that he still has a connection to Ren? Idk, I haven't seen much of him. But yeah no he and Ren are a pair a could easily see myself falling down a rabbit hole for.

Ren - REN. I didn't watch him before Last Life but my GOD. I'm a bit of a theater kid myself so I immediately latched on to his energy. I love how Lizzie responds to his dramatics. From his POV he's swearing his allegiance to a dark faerie queen. From anyone else's he's a dramatic, overenthusiastic puppy.

Etho - Yeah it could go either way to be honest. Fear will make people less likely to attack him, but also less likely to ally with him, which would leave him vulnerable SHOULD someone decide to attack him. Especially later on with red-lives running around.

YES the scar head canons! It kind of reminds me of the whole scars thing from Dream SMP that is widely accepted to be canon despite no actual evidence of that (to my knowledge. I think one or two may have canonized it). And I saw the tattoo one too, I really liked that one as well, it was a cool concept!

Yeah! Between itches and hazes and frustration it's amazing. I feel like Lizzie's is the most similar to actual bloodlust people get when they're red? That may have something to do with the fact that she's new to the server, and so hasn't experienced proper bloodlust yet.

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR LEAVING A LONG ASK.

I. LOVE. RECEIVING THEM.

Thank you for your thoughts, they are greatly appreciated :D

[cayofdreams]

I Can See It in Your Eyes

Summary: You’re a full-fledged cold-blooded villain, but Dabi suspects otherwise. And he knows just the way to get you to prove your loyalty…and your faith.

Words: 3.7k

Rating: 🌊 Explicit, Smut

Warnings: cursing, virginity (not very explicit), deep-throating, choking, heavy breath-play (receiving), asphyxiation, God complex, dark ending

Notes: Was supposed to just be a smutty angsty drabble to release some anger from the day. Oh well. Enjoy my rage~

 You’d been a part of the League of Villains for the past 5 months now. It was a gradual process for your mind to go from being the ambitious, good-natured upcoming pro-hero, to a cold-hearted deviant that seemed to show no one an ounce of mercy.

And why should they deserve your mercy? It was their fault that you became who you were now.

You’d been kidnapped and kept as a ransom by the league, constantly tortured in hopes that the monetary demands would be filled. Their torture techniques becoming more sinister by the day.

But you put up with it, because you knew the light at the end of the tunnel was closer than it seemed.

Besides, it wasn’t even a lot of money. A measly $2.3 million dollars. Any rich pig could’ve came up with that to rescue such an admirable hero.

So you waited.

And waited.

Waiting for someone to answer the ransom to let you free, until one day Dabi came into the cell you were in, holding his phone. A dubious grin on his face, possibly signaling they had got the ransom they hoped for.

“Good news, little kitty. Would you like to hear it?”

Your eyes looked up expectantly at his bright blue ones. If this was the news you’d been waiting for, you’d probably call them the most angelic eyes you’d ever seen despite his more devilish appearance.

Dabi chuckled at your childish expression and without saying another word bent down to your eye-level and played the news clip on his phone. You excitedly looked at the news clip, finally, FINALLY you would be sav-

“BREAKING NEWS: RANSOM WILL NOT BE PAID FOR THE RELEASE OF H/N, PERSONALLY KNOWN AS L/N F/N”

“…wha…?”

Dabi’s chuckle turned into a sinister cackle as he watched your hopeful eyes change almost on cue, into a pair of almond-shaped pool of despair and confusion.

“Aren’t you happy? You get to stay with us forever, now.”

“No…no. That can’t be right…” You looked at Dabi as you still tried to latch onto hope that he had digitally manipulated the clip. “Go to another news channel! Do it! Please!”

Amused by your agony, he let you watch his fingers tap around on the screen, showing you all the different news sites saying a different variation of the same thing. He clicked on another video clip.

It was your old classmate Midoriya standing at a podium in front was what seemed like hundreds of reporters. All shouting questions at him. Finally, he picked one reporter to answer to.

“Deku! What do you say to the people who are outraged at the rejection of submitting to the League of Villains’ ransom? Don’t you think H/N’s life is important?”

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the audience with determination.

“It was a hard decision. But we have an integrity to keep as heroes. We will not give into measly demands by the same villains who’d burn us down at any chance! We are heroes! And we’ll keep looking and fighting for the return of H/N the best way we know! With dignity! It’s what she would want!”

Your eyes dazed over in apathy as you watched the No. 1 hero ultimately send you to your death.

Dignity? Integrity? Ha. What bullshit. Bullshit that probably took on the appearance of beautiful flower, but still smelled of shit all the same. How dare he pretend like letting you stay in this hell-hole was the honorable thing to do.

Dabi took the phone away from your eyesight, smiling maniacally at your dying resolve.

“I told you many times over these past couple weeks, kitten, that your heroism is nothing but a façade.”

You stayed silent as every emotion you developed as a normal human being in a society, became figments of destroyed past.

“Will you kill me?” Your eyes continued to look forlornly at the cold cement floor, ignoring the rats that would run over top your feet.

“Oh no, kitten. That would be a waste of an asset.” He brushed his fingers over your now sickly-looking skin, grasping your jaw so he could admire your new callous face expression. “You’ll be joining us for real now. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

You didn’t reply as he let go of your face to let it hang dejectedly from your shoulders.

“I’ll just let you sit here and think about it. I’m sure you’ll come around.”

----------------------------------------

As you sat on the torn, dusty couch you scrolled through your phone looking at what people were talking about on forums and the like about the League of Villains. It seemed as time grew on, more and more people were joining the league’s movement…your movement.

Good.

It was about time people got a wake up call on what was really going on in their so-called “hero” society. And they didn’t even have to get tortured to see it. How could you have been so oblivious all this time? You always thought the League of Villains and their supporters were a cult. A demented cult.

But you felt more accomplished here than you ever did “above ground”. After-all you were the hottest topic that people talked when it came to villains. There were always two distinct opinions when it came to your ultimate aligning with the league.

Those who said you were still in need of rescue, plagued with Stockholm syndrome.

And those who said that if someone like you could side with such a group, the League of Villains must not have been as evil as heroes portrayed.

You’d probably care about the public’s opinion of you if you had the emotions to engage in such a controversy. It seemed all feelings of love, hatred, sadness, happiness, and every other useless emotion left you the day that you saw Midoriya in that news clip.

That was for the better. You could focus now, on the important things.

As you read various articles on your screen, you heard a creaking on the floorboards. When you looked over you saw your ally Dabi standing by the hallway.

“You’re up early, Dabi.”

“I could say the same to you, kitten.” He came over and sat by you on the couch. You’d grown used to his ghastly appearance, now admiring his scars from an aesthetic point of view.

You used to wonder what he thought of his scars. How he got them. But those feelings of curiosity would dissipate as the cold-bloodedness in you took over more and more.

“Anything new?”

“Other than our growing number of supporters, not much. Before long, heroes will be a thing of the past.”

He snickered at you. “You say that like you mean it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dabi moved closer to you, his cerulean meeting your e/c once again. “You think I don’t see it?”

You stayed quiet, wondering what he could possibly be accusing you of.

“I know you still check the news in hopes that your hero, Deku has discovered new leads on your location.”

You laughed at his absurdity. “You’re delusional, Dabi.” Your eyes went back to looking at your phone. “Perhaps you should go back to bed, you’re obviously still tired from your atrocities of the night before.”

“Perhaps. But I don’t think those atrocities are affecting my eyesight.”

When you looked back up at him, he had pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. A photograph to be exact. “What’s that?”

“You tell me, kitten.” He upheld the photo to your face and your eyes widened at the picture depicted.

It was an old photo of you and Midoriya after getting ice cream together. He had looked so cute with melted cream all over his cheeks so you snapped a photo of the both of you. It was a photo you kept in your costume all the time. Your old costume, that is.

“That proves nothing but the fact you ravaged my costume during my capture.”

“You’d have a point if I didn’t just find it under your mattress.” He crinkled the paper up in his hands. “You still think about your little crush?”

You squinted your eyes at him. How could he think that? You despised Midoriya and everything he ever stood for. If there was even a twinkling of emotion left in you, it would surely be hatred. “You’re pissing me off, now.”

“Oh so you do feel things? Then you won’t mind if I…” A flash of blue flame appeared on his hand, burning the crinkled paper in a matter of seconds. Unconsciously your eyebrows had lowered in a saddened expression.

“See there? I can see it in your eyes, kitten.”

Your face became deadpan again as you stood up from the couch. “If you’re going to continue with these erroneous allegations, I’ll be going for a walk.”

Before you could turn away, he grabbed you by the shoulder making you look back at him confusingly. His hand slowly moved up to your neck, fingers gripping tightly around your throat. The heat of his quirk slightly stinging your tender flesh, but you didn’t move.

“I’ll kill you, you know? Turn you into a little charred kitten.” He turned up the heat and you twinged at the increasing sting. “No one would be able to tell how pretty your face was. I’d make sure of it.”

You thought carefully on your next words. You trusted and gained the trust of everyone in the league, but that didn’t mean they weren’t deranged sociopaths. Your bond with them, while apparent, was still the weakest due to them knowing each other longer, and your lack of emotions making it difficult to form deeper relationships.

“What do you want, Dabi?” As you looked impassively into cerulean eyes, you felt his thumb move smoothly over your bottom lip before sticking it in between your lip and teeth, rubbing along your gums. A laugh escaped as you realized his intentions with you. “So this is what its about? Ridiculous.”

“I don’t think there’s anything ridiculous with confirming the loyalty of the maniacs I have to be around.” He took his other hand and slipped it under your skirt to grip the side of your panties before heating them to ash. “I want what I’ve been asking of you for a long time, kitten.”

He pressed his warm fingers around your vulva and slowly circled your folds. The heat adding an indescribable pleasure. A small moan escaped from your lips. “...If I do this with you, you’ll never mention my shitty past again.”

“Deal”

Immediately you pushed him off you before gripping him tightly by the collar of his shirt, dragging him down on the couch. You crouched down on the couch with him with your head by his crotch, roughly palming him over his pants. “I don’t plan on dragging this out, I have actual duties to attend to.”

“Then you better work hard, kitten” His freakishly villainous grin teased you, knowing this was your first time being intimate with someone before. He probably thought you were going to be some shy scared girl who didn’t know the first thing about sex. But you’d prove him wrong.

You took the zipper of his pants and briskly pulled it down. Pulling his pants and boxers down, you were presented with a perfectly intact, flaccid cock. He chuckled at your hesitation.

“I told you you’d have to work hard.”

Ignoring his comment, you took his cock in his hands before shoving it in your mouth. It was softer than your tongue, and a bit cool compared to the feelings of Dabi’s hands on you earlier. Perhaps he wanted to feel 100% of the warmth from your mouth.

As you began sucking, you felt your mouth feel fuller and fuller. A part of you feeling a bit accomplished at arousing your sinister ally, another apart a bit worried at how you were going to take any more of his cock in your mouth. You started to use your hands to stroke the part of his shaft that you couldn’t handle. Dabi glided his fingers through your hair before gripping your locks.

“You need some help with that, kitten?” His calm suggestion not matching the force of his hands on your head, forcing you to suddenly take all of his cock down your throat. You gagged and spat up whatever saliva you could to keep from choking. Your gargling noises arousing Dabi even more, making your throat feel even more constricted.

“Now, don’t worry. I’ll do the work since its your first time.” Still having your cock in your throat, he sat up so that one of his knees was between your thighs, digging into the couch, while his other leg stood on the floor for stabilization. The strong grip on your hair maneuvered you to sit on your ass as he slowly worked his cock in and out of your throat. “But next time, I’ll expect you to service me on your own.”

Before you could protest his suggestion of a second time, he thrusted his hips vigorously towards your face. You reached your hands up to grip the hem of his shirt trying to stabilize yourself, but it was impossible with how ruthless he was going. You started struggling to breathe and tried pulling on his shirt to get him to stop. But it was to no avail.

“Just breathe through your nose…and stick your tongue out..oh fuck yeah- that feels so good, kitten.” Dabi shoved your face into his hips so that your nose was firmly pressed against his pelvis and paused. “Look up at me.”

He could cum instantly from the look you were giving him right now. It wasn’t apathy. Nor seduction. It was the look you gave him when you were pleading for him to find a different news source. When you were still caged up and begging for the news to be a lie. He found amusement in your change to apathy, but deep inside he wanted to see those eyes again. Those eyes that looked at him like a God. Those e/c eyes that portrayed-

Desperation.

That’s right. He craved seeing the desperation in your eyes once more. And right now, he was bathing in it. You looked so fucking adorable like that. The cold, murderous Y/N choking on his cock, begging for air. He contemplated leaving you like this. Letting you suffocate on his cock. It’s the death a true slut like you deserved. But he wouldn’t be able to pet his little kitten anymore so he decided to let up.

With your hair imprisoned between his fingers, he jerked you away from his hips. You inhaled a strong amount of air, so much so you coughed at the copious amount of saliva that went down your wind pipe. But he shouldn’t let you get too comfortable, he needed his God complex to be fulfilled once more.

So before you could even get 3 full breaths in, Dabi quickly shoved his cock down your esophagus once more. Your desperation to breathe made the walls of your throat convulse rapidly around his cock. He moved your head vigorously back and forth down his length.

“Oh fuck, kitten...you look- you look so fucking good chocking on my cock like that...”

You whined at his voice, not exactly knowing what he said because you were too concerned with not dying the most embarrassing death.

The vibrations of your whine rumbled beautifully around his shaft.“You d-don’t actually wanna stop, do you? Y-you want to die on my cock don’t you, kitten.” He moved his hips at an insane amount of speed, now chasing his orgasm. “I’ll grant that to you…just hold on. Y-You can choke on all this fucking cum, Y/N!”

Before long you felt hot spurts of thick liquid running down your throat. You coughed viciously around his cock, trying not to choke on his seed. Your coughing making his cock twitch even more as he released his seed down your pulsating windpipe. You grabbed desperately at his shirt, trying to get him to spare you.

Once he was properly drained, he jerked your head off him with enough force for you to fall back on the couch. You violently tried to cough up whatever of his thick cum that you could. You’d probably feel lumps of it in your throat for days.

“*cough!* *cough!* D-dabi! You f-fucking *cough!* psychopath!” You looked angrily at him as your hands pressed tightly to your chest as you kept choking and gasping for air.

“I’m sorry, kitten. You just looked so cute with your throat gagging around my cock like that.” Dabi slopped back down on the couch. Now in better view of your body, he couldn’t help noticing your glistening pussy, shining with arousal.  He cackled at your shameless masochism. “Apparently you agreed.”

“What- Hey, wait!” Dabi grabbed a hold of your thighs and pulled you so that your pussy was aligned with his cock. “Again?!”

“If there’s one thing that I can appreciate with my bloodline, kitten, it’s our insatiable urge to spill our fertile seed into available holes.” He rubbed his tip along your folds, gathering your wetness, before slapping it on your clit. The feeling making your pussy twitch on the head of his cock. You shut your eyes, not believing how much you craved for him to be inside you.

Dabi took your jaw into a tight grip and your face clenched at the pressure. “Open your eyes, Y/N”.

Slowly opening them, you peered into a gleaming light of blue. You never really took notice of his eyes before, but for some reason they were reminding you of your past. The nostalgia quickly vanished as quickly as they came as your desires overflooded your mind.

Why was he looking at you like this? Wasn’t he going to stick it in? You hated to admit that you started to get-

“That’s it, kitten…that’s the look I want.” He took other hand to slowly press the tip of his cock inside you. “You’re desperate for it aren’t you?”

You grabbed at his pants, pulling so that you could get him fill you up entirely . “Yeah..I am”.

Grinning at your lewd acceptance, he inserted the entirety of his cock inside you. The tightness of this being your pussy’s first cock made him feel even more in power. He was the only one that could make you so desperate. The only one that could give you what you needed. And he’d prove that to you right now.

Your moans at the feeling of Dabi inside you were cut short when he wrapped his hand around your throat. “Let’s keep playing, kitten.”

Your face went from being pleasured to startled as he tightened the grip at your throat. At the same time, he began to plunge deeply in and out your rigid walls. The heat from his hands stung at your throat and you became intoxicated with the mix of sensations. You didn’t know which feeling overpowered which between pleasure and pain, so you just focused on the azure of Dabi’s eyes and let your body do the thinking.

“I s-should’ve fucking claimed you- a long time ago, Y/N.”  Dabi took his free hand down to your clit and made slow but heated circles around the bud. “I’m the only one who can get you so desperate-“. Your walls twitched as you tried to gasp for oxygen. Failing, as Dabi only continued to suffocate you beneath his heated palms. “And I’m the only one who can satisfy that desperation.” Your pussy hysterically quivered around Dabi as your lack of oxygen prevailed and your orgasm approached.

“I can feel you about to cum, Y/N.” His thrusts becoming frantic as he neared his second high. “Say my fucking name…call me your God.”

He needed to hear you say it. After-all he was the one who was clearly in control of your life and death. He was the one who captured you and gave you the bare minimum amount of food to keep you live. He was the one who convinced Shigaraki to not turn you into a grave of ashes when your precious heroes left you to die. And he was the one right now keeping you on the verge of the plane between this world and the spirit one.

He was your God.

Dabi slightly loosened the grip on your throat.

“G-god…D..abi-..sa-ma…”

He tightened around your throat again, satisfied at your new-found faith. You felt yourself practically about to drift out of consciousness, the once again suspension of your air supply having you see faint stars around Dabi’s head.

The tight pressure in your stomach became unbearable and your body was overwhelmed at the two opposing forces that claimed you. The life of an orgasm, and the death of asphyxiation. You supposed the orgasm would come first as you squirmed and contorted like a fish underneath Dabi’s hands. If this was how you’re gonna die, at least it was while chasing the most intense pleasure life had to offer to humans.  

Your seemingly lifeless face paired with the lively palpitations of your pussy was sending Dabi over the edge. “Y/N…Shit! Y-your face says you’re dead…but y-your pussy is still fucking fighting…Fuck!” As he finally came for the second time, he released his milky fluids inside you. If you were conscious, you’d probably note how the cum spurting in your womb wasn’t as thick as the lumps that still nestled along the walls of your esophagus.

Finally releasing his hold on you, Dabi slumped on top of your motionless body.

“…Still breathing huh, kitten..”

Letting himself fall into a slumber, a whirlwind of thoughts encapsulated his mind.

He thought about how the allowing of your freedom to officially join the League of Villains might’ve been a mistake. You being free didn’t suit you.

No.

You’d go back in the cell. Where you’d pray to him to let you out…or to simply give you water.

Every time you’d be allowed the blessing of seeing his face, you’d be desperate for him to not leave.

To stay with you.

But he’d walk out your cell again for who knows how long…just to hear your desperate wails and begging as he locked the cell door again.

[apiratewhopines]

In the Offing

Summary: AU - Storybrooke - Emma Swan is drafted to help Liam Jones clear his brother’s name in the disappearance of a former flame. As she digs deeper into the rash of missing person cases, she risks losing more than just her heart as she uncovers the truth.

Chapter One - Pilot

Summary: In which our heroine embarks on an adventure

“Let the exits pass, all the tar and glass

Til the road and sky align”

-Angela, The Lumineers

If asked, Emma Swan would land firmly in the ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ camp rather than the ‘Once Upon a Time’ one.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in happiness and true love and good triumphing over evil. She did. Or at least she tried to believe in them, which was nearly the same thing.

It was just that in her experience, relationships were more likely to end in indifference and divergent roads at best or disappointment, deceit and violence at their worst. It rarely ended in laughter over the dinner table, surrounded by the people you loved and admired. In fact, it never ended that way for her. And she was fine with that. Or at least she tried to believe she was, which was not nearly the same thing.

So it was without the slightest bit of surprise that she made her way back to her office from yet another honey trap date, her third this week if anyone was keeping track. She didn’t anymore, had stopped wondering years ago how there were so many cheating spouses and deadbeat dads and none too bright criminals in one city. Nor did she have the energy to wonder why she found her doorway blocked by the broad form of her sometimes collaborator, sometimes competitor, always annoying quasi-neighbor.

“What do you want, Liam? I’m not staying. I’m only dropping off paperwork so I can go home and mourn the loss of human decency uninterrupted.”

“Perhaps a bath would be more helpful, lass. You smell like a walking distillery,” he replied, not bothered by her unfriendly tone and refusal to meet his eyes as she elbowed him out of the way and unlocked the door. “Were you drowning your sorrows or were they drowning you?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I caught the guy who did this and he smells like jail now so I would say I won,” she muttered, bristling only a little bit when he followed her inside. She would like to say that she and Liam had a complicated relationship but the truth was they tolerated each other when they had to and avoided each other when they didn’t. She could count on him to be professional, which unfortunately was not a given in their line of work, and his complete disinterest in her as a person was a quality she appreciated, having never been someone who craved attention or willingly engaged in small talk.

Now that she thought about it, he was probably one of the better connections she had made in Boston. If his self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude chafed at times...well, no one was perfect. She had met him when her boss moved their bail bonds office operations to their current location and with his private investigation business occupying the suite next door, they would throw work each other’s way when it made sense. Despite knowing him for nearly two years, she would be hard-pressed to recall a single interaction after hours or off the job so even though she was tired and her feet were killing her from running down tonight’s skip in stiletto heels, she was a little curious about why he was there. “Barry isn’t here.”

“If I was looking for Barry, this is the last place I would be.”

She snorted as she dropped off a packet of reports on the nearest desk. The truth was that her boss, who also happened to own the business, was probably cruising off the coast of Florida at that very moment and hadn’t stepped foot in the office since they moved. But she considered absenteeism a great quality in a boss so she wasn’t complaining.

Sighing, she turned around to face him. She leaned against the desk behind her and hoped he didn’t notice her flexing her feet in an attempt to keep them from cramping. “As nice as it is to catch up, I’ve had a long night. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“Henry mentioned that he was going to spend the summer with his father when he came by last week,” Liam stated as if that explained everything. Henry’s capacity to make friends never ceased to astound her and was definitely a characteristic he inherited from Neal. Even curmudgeonly Liam Jones had fallen victim to her kid’s ability to engage with anyone. Little did her visitor suspect that reminding her that she had nearly eight weeks of going home to an empty apartment was not the best way for him to start a conversation.

It had been with great trepidation that she had agreed to the trip at all. After years of fielding her son’s questions about his father, she used her considerable tracking skills to finally run her ex to ground about eighteen months ago. Enough time had passed for her to forgive him, although she doubted she would ever forget, but she felt she owed Henry the chance to at least meet his father. And of course, they had hit it off as she had both hoped for and feared.

She had worried, apparently needlessly so, that Neal would quickly lose interest in the son he hadn’t know existed and was inconveniently located in a different state. However, the man who had no issues with abandoning her a decade ago had surprised her. He called Henry every day and made the trip at least once a month to visit. He had shown up and supported Henry in ways she hadn’t expected and it reminded her that not all the times had been bad and maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t a villain. When Neal had approached her about a long distance trip that spanned their son’s entire summer break, her first reaction was to forbid it but she knew Henry needed it. Although she would never admit it to Neal, she had also appreciated that he had brought it up with her first rather than sending Henry to talk her into it.

Still, it had physically hurt her to see them walking away together at the airport yesterday, similar gaits and probably with matching, wide smiles on their faces.

Now her interaction with her son would be reduced to a couple of texts a day and FaceTime calls a few times a week while Henry had the time of his life gallivanting around California with his father and future stepmother. In a flash, she went from tired and curious to tired and pissed. “Right. Glad you reminded me before I made it home and called the police about a kidnapping. Did you need something, Liam, or are you just trying to bother me?”

“Both. Obviously,” he said dryly.

“Great, he’s got jokes,” she groaned as she threw her head back in frustration. “I should warn you that I’ve already punched one jerk tonight. I’m hungry and exhausted and if you don’t get on with it, I’m not afraid to add another one to the list.”

He sighed and for the first time she noticed the tenseness in the way he was holding himself. Whatever the reason for his visit, it obviously had him wound up pretty tightly. Against her better judgement, she felt her curiosity stirring again.

“Fine, since you’re obviously not fit to be out in public,” he said with a vague gesture toward her whiskey-flavored dress, “order some delivery and let’s talk.”

—

The smell of cheese did a lot to restore her good humor. She watched him from under her lashes as he looked at the meat-lovers pizza with what approached horror in his expression. She never pegged him as a health food nut, although she could tell he took care of himself, so maybe what offended him was the grease that had soaked through the box to the papers that were stacked neatly on his desk. Tearing off a large slice, she hummed happily while she took the first scorching bite.

“I need a favor,” he stated without preamble before he too took a bite and glanced at her with a pained look in his eye.

She was pretty sure that this was the first time he had ever uttered those words in his life and that was probably the source of his discomfort rather than the molten lava cheese he just swallowed. She tried not to show any interest even though hundreds of questions wanted to escape her mouth. She wanted to ask when they started doing favors for each other and why he was acting like a caged animal. Instead, she settled for something that he would probably find a bit more in character considering their past interactions. “Would this be the type of favor that involved payment of some sort?”

“It will, if that gets the job done quicker,” Liam answered, staring intently at his half eaten slice.

“Well, that would depend on if we’re talking about an hourly rate or a flat fee,” she joked. “I have typically found that payment is the best way to insure a job gets done.”

Something was definitely bothering him and damn if that didn’t make the hair on the back of her neck stand up and chase a shiver down her spine. With a hint of disgust she threw her uneaten crust down on her plate. She already knew that whatever he was about to ask, she was going to agree to so she continued, “Might as well spit it out, I would like to go home and get some sleep sometime this century. What kind of favor do you need?

“The kind of favor that involves going away for a couple of weeks and solving a cold case.”

Of all the things she thought he was going to ask, actual work didn’t even make the top ten list so she was a little letdown. His discomfort had her prepared for anything from being a date to an ex’s wedding to a surprise twist of being asked to babysit his previously unknown kids. Even a mundane request to water his plants while he was on vacation would have been more interesting. She wasn’t entirely sure Liam was human and it would have been fascinating to see the lair he crawled back to when he wasn’t in the office.

“Why the cloak and dagger routine? You made me think something was horribly wrong,” she huffed. Picking up another slice, she thoughtfully examined his face. There was more to this request but she was afraid she was going to have to drag it out of him based on his body language. His eyes were shuttered, shoulders hunched in on himself, body twisted slightly to the side as if he had decided this was a mistake and he was on the verge of running out of the room. While she would dearly love to see Liam Jones run away from his problems like a mere mortal, she was clearly already too invested to let that happen. Quickly swiping her fingers across a napkin to rid them of the worst of the grease, she gently laid her hand on his forearm to hold him in place. “Whatever you need to say, it will go no further.”

Apparently those were the magic words to unlock whatever secret he thought he needed to keep because with a sharp intake of breath, he started his tale. “There is a town in Maine...”

—

Hours later, he was dropping her off at the entrance to her building with a promise to pick her up at six o’clock the following evening. She wasn’t crazy about starting out that late or the fact that they would hit the tail end of rush hour traffic but her mind was swimming with too many details to make her normal fuss. Honestly, she would need all the time she could get to go through the files stuffed in the briefcase he passed off to her as she emerged from the car.

Without registering the journey upstairs, she found herself opening the door to her apartment and immediately kicked off her heels with a moan while her toes curled a little to celebrate their freedom. Her dress had climbed up her thighs a bit during the car ride but she had a feeling she was the only one who noticed. She was pretty sure she could have been naked and Liam wouldn’t have paid any attention. He was just that kind of guy. Considering they were about to embark on a trip to his former hometown where they may end up having to give the impression of a relationship, she should probably be grateful that his only attraction to her seemed to be limited to her ability to find people and her reputation for being a spookily accurate human lie detector. For her part, all she wanted from him was a couple weeks of distraction from what was surely going to turn out to be a lonely summer. If she was getting paid for it, all the better.

Leaving her shoes where they fell in the entranceway, she grabbed a hair band from the narrow table that she privately thought of as their crap collector. She had never been the neatest person and she had passed that trait on to Henry so you could never predict what random stuff would be found on the table that served no other purpose than to be a catch all for the things they discarded when they arrived home.

Styling her long blonde hair into a messy bun, she pulled her ruined dress over her head and casually threw it in the direction of the laundry basket. Taking advantage of the fact that there wasn’t a ten-year-old at home that would be traumatized by her behavior, she lugged the briefcase to the kitchen island and spread the files across the countertop before walking back to her closet to slip into a pair of black yoga pants and a Red Sox tank top, not wanting to take the time to shower at the moment. Besides, she was the only one home to know how bad the smell of whiskey and sweat was after sitting for hours in a small office, stuffing her face with the unhealthiest pizza on the planet and getting drawn into the web of mystery that had made the always serious Mr. Jones even more somber.

Pouring a glass of wine, she climbed up on one of stools that formed a line that ran the length of the counter and pulled the top file to her. The photo paper-clipped to the inside showed a rundown pawn shop that might as well have had a neon sign flashing ‘Shady Place of Business.’ Below it was a list of names from various missing persons cases spanning thirty years.

Taking the first sip of wine, she murmured, “What have you gotten me into, Liam?”

She spent the next several hours combing through the files until her back hurt and her contacts felt scratchy in her eyes. It seemed like Jones Investigation had a file for everyone that lived in the town at the time of the burglary as well as newspaper clipping from the various investigations into the suspicious disappearance of citizens.

It was too much information to take in during the course of one night but Liam had been insistent that the files remain in Boston. He didn’t want to risk tipping off any suspects to the real reason for their trip should the paperwork be discovered. So, under direct orders from the former British Naval officer to memorize the facts, when she reached the end of the files, she would start over again. She sorted and resorted the files into stacks based on a variety of factors from chronological order to some distinguishing characteristic like age, proximity to crime, or possible motive.

If her attention kept wondering back to the grainy photo of one Killian Jones, brother of her dour compatriot, she blamed the wine and lack of sleep. Even the low quality of the picture couldn’t conceal that the younger Jones brother was an incredibly attractive man. However, he looked enough like Liam to make her interest unsettling and that was what finally pulled her away from her research and drove her to bed where she dreamed of blue eyes and a wicked smile.

—

For most of the trip, the only sound was of the sports commentators who nearly shouted out a play-by-play of a soccer match Liam had politely asked to listen to as they pulled out of her parking garage. The only other break in their silent commute was the subtle hum and thump of road noise occasionally making its way into the cabin. He had been unimpressed with her offer to take her car, not even bothering to acknowledge her when she suggested it and simply opening the lift gate to the large, dark colored Honda Pilot he had rented. If he noticed her surprise at finding several bags already in the truck and heard her sarcastic observation about packing light as she had to reposition some of his luggage to find a spot for her single gym sized duffel bag, he didn’t show it.

As she had predicted, they spent an hour stuck in traffic before getting beyond the city limits where the cars spread out and their follow drivers seemed to think that allowed them to indulge in NASCAR fantasies. She used the quiet to mentally go over the particulars of the case before them, secure in the knowledge that unless she magically sprouted another head Liam was unlikely to start up a conversation at this point in the trip.

Fact One: Leo and Ava Blanchard left for a date night and never returned home to their young daughter. There car was found broken down on the side of the road about a mile from their home. No sign of foul play, no trace of their whereabouts.

Fact Two: Shortly thereafter, there was a burglary at Gold’s Pawnshop on Main Street. No sign of forced entry and the owner claimed nothing had been stolen, but the alarm had been tripped from the inside. Having nothing to go on and with no stolen items to track down, the local law enforcement devoted a total of five minutes to the case. Basically as soon as the report was filed, the case was closed and life moved on.

Fact Three: Robert Nolan had a few too many at a bar one night, which apparently was a reoccurring circumstance, and never found his way back to his family. He was rumored to be involved in some illicit activities but no proof of a crime was ever found.

Fact Four: There appeared to be a bit of a lull for more than a decade and then a rapid secession of missing person reports: Regina Mills, Peter Wolfe, and finally Milah Gold.

It was the last one that seemed to drive Liam’s interest in the cases. Although he and his brother hadn’t relocated to the US until the early 2000s, it seemed his little brother quickly formed an attachment, which Emma read between the lines to mean had an affair, with the older wife of the town’s local businessman. After his wife vanished into thin air, Mr. Gold and the local police tried their best to pin her disappearance on Killian but could never come up with enough evidence to press charges.

The final piece came through sources Liam was disinclined to name. He had recently found out that a newly arrived visitor had been asking questions around town and according to his source, the visitor was a best-selling true crime author named August Booth who happened to be weeks away from publishing a tell-all book about the sordid history of the town.

Going into full protective mode, Liam had decided the best course of action was to return to the small town and solve the mystery, or potentially multiple mysteries if they were as interconnected as he thought, thereby clearing his brother’s name beyond all doubt.

If it had been anyone else who had asked for her help, she would have been flattered but she knew Liam to be practical above all else. He valued her skills but it was probably Henry’s absence that was the catalyst for this particular partnership. He needed an extra set of eyes and ears and she was a known element who was conveniently available for a long term undercover assignment. Still, he had trusted her with the family secrets, or at least his brother’s secrets, so she was trying to be mindful this wasn’t simply another case for him.

She wasn’t convinced the non-burglary and series of disappearances he seemed to think connected would turn out to be anything but she knew better than to discard possibilities this early on. She also wasn’t convinced that parading in front of his family and friends as a girlfriend was a good game plan.

“I think we need to revisit this cover story,” she said as he pulled off the highway and into the lot of a gas station.

“If you can find a more convincing reason for me to show up with a strange woman, I will gladly listen to it,” he replied before exiting the car and fading away into the dark night.

“No, I wouldn’t like anything from the store, thanks for asking,”she called out to his back, wanting to nettle him in retaliation for his rudeness although she doubted he heard her. According to the GPS, they were only about forty-five minutes from their destination, a place called Granny’s Diner. She tried to research the town, including restaurants, venues, and things to do but it was as if Storybrooke existed out of the modern age. While you could find it on maps, there wasn’t an internet presence at all. There were no tourism sites, despite the fact that most little towns that dot the Atlantic coast were in peak season for welcoming travelers. It appeared that chains and national franchises had no interest in the sleepy town either. There were no notable residents making their marks on the world at large, no complaints on business sites, no reviews of the natural beauty to be found in its forests and parks.

The sound of Liam returning to the vehicle and pumping gas broke her train of thought. Hearing the gentle chime of her phone, she took the opportunity to check her texts before they got back on the road. Smiling a little at seeing Henry’s name on her notifications, she clicked the message and was rewarded with a silly photo of him pretending to be eaten by a shark at one of the selfie stations located on a pier in whatever seaside town they were currently visiting. She text him back a thumb’s up, following it quickly with a good night and reminder that she would send him the details of where she was staying in the morning.

Running her finger gently over her son’s happy grin in the photo, she didn’t greet Liam as he climbed back into the car.

“That’s a nice picture,” he mumbled, clicking his seatbelt in place before pulling out and rejoining the dwindling line of cars heading north. “Is he having a good time?”

“Looks like it,” she answered, turning her head away somewhat embarrassed to feel the prick of tears in her eyes. She wasn’t an emotional person but she missed the kid something fierce.

Either he was being exceptionally sensitive to her distress or he didn’t notice it because they lapsed back into silence until they were about fifteen minutes from the town line. Deciding next to the last minute was as a good a time to broach the topic again as any, she picked up on her earlier comment as if it hadn’t been over half an hour ago. “Listen, I’m not saying I have a better cover but maybe we could not volunteer the girlfriend story. You know, keep our options open unless someone asks us directly. Or maybe actually tell them we are there to investigate.”

Hope for a rational debate on the merits of her suggestions was immediately crushed when he actually started to laugh. “You’ve never lived in a small town, have you?”

“No, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Emma, I left five years ago under some difficult circumstances—“

“What circumstances? How difficult?”

“That’s need to know, lass,” he interrupted in a tone that cautioned against any further questions. “If it had anything to do with our case, I would have already told you. Let me assure you that everyone will know of our arrival within minutes of the car entering town. There will be a description of you circulating before you wake up tomorrow morning. There is no way people aren’t going to ask us directly and repeatedly the nature of our visit and relationship.”

She was about to interrupt again so he held up a hand to stall her and added, “And if we decline to provide details, they will make them up. Trust me, it’s better to control the story than to have eyes following us everywhere trying figure it out for themselves. As far as openly investigating a crime, you’re daft if you think they won’t clam up the second you start asking questions. In my experience people are more comfortable being a gossip than a snitch. If we are simply a couple enjoying a trip down memory lane, we will be able to move much more freely.”

“But your brother,” she countered weakly because she had to admit he had a point. “How can you lie to him? Surely he can be trusted with the truth. Not to mention that if we are staying with him, he’s going to notice that we don’t like each other.”

“What are you talking about? I’m quite fond of you. You’re one of my best friends,” he said in indignation.

Her jaw went slack with shock as she tried to process how she had slipped into some bizarro alternate reality. What in their past could possibly have given him the idea that they were friends, besties even. “I don’t know what—“ she sputtered. “Is this some weird British thing?”

He barked out a laugh that was so unlike him that she doubled down on her alternate reality theory. “Calm down, Emma. It was a joke. We aren’t friends exactly but I don’t dislike you. It will be fine. Pretend I’m one of your fake dates for a couple of weeks. Lucky for you, I’m an old-fashioned guy. Killian won’t think anything of us bunking separately.”

“There is old-fashioned and then there is being a monk, Liam. But whatever. I still think you should trust your brother. Especially since it’s his neck we’re trying to save.”

“I would trust him with my life. What I can’t trust is that he won’t go off half-cocked and muck up the investigation. He’ll understand why I did this as long as we get results.”

She believed that he believed what he was saying. She also believed he was wrong. As a person who always preferred the truth, no matter how painful, her gut told her that it would be a mistake to keep the younger Jones in the dark about the true purpose of their trip. However, besties or not, she knew the mulish tilt to Liam’s mouth indicated that for him the discussion was over.

At that moment, the high beams illuminated the Welcome to Storybrooke sign. She felt an ominous dread settle over her as they approached, turning in her seat to look at the sign as they passed.

It was the last thing she saw before the world exploded in glass shards, twisted metal, and smoke.

[conretewings]

-A SMALL OBSTACLE-

**ATTENTION. THIS IS A RE-UPLOAD. I edited some things and added an epilogue. Please enjoy and reblog if you want**

(I'd like to dedicate this story to @mistwolf4, who's kindness, support, and discussions with me on it helped make it possible.)

When Salem had something to accomplish, she'd usually pick whoever's particular skills were most closely aligned to the task; when technological expertise or sly infiltration was in order, she called upon Watts. When wise diplomacy or intimidation, real or implied, was needed, she'd send Hazel. And when the seeds of chaos needed to be sown or a target taken care of, Tyrian was all too happy to serve.

Bearing this in mind, it wasn't often that all three men in the Grimm queen's inner circle were sent on a mission together; in fact this was only time in recent memory. All of their abilities, she had said, would be crucial. They had no idea about the small yet critical obstacle that lie ahead in their path...

Things started out just fine when they left Evernight in a 'borrowed' Mistral airship. They made it to the first rendezvous point, took care of that aspect of the mission-but when they returned to the vessel found themselves facing an unexpected issue.

Watts banged one fist on the control console after failing for nearly the seventh time to get the ship started, "What the hell is wrong with this heap of garbage?!"

Tyrian poked his head up from an access hatch in the floor, holding a wrench, "I tightened the bolts you pointed out...nothing?"

"Clearly not," the doctor replied with an eyeroll Tyrian didn't see, then leaned his head out the open window, "Is the power supply properly connected Hazel?"

The tall man nodded, closing a panel on the ship's side, "Everything looks fine."

Watts sighed, turning and going to the same access hatch Tyrian had vacated and was now crouching beside. Turning a couple of his rings, he swept a hand out, creating small hard-light platforms in front of his feet, using them as steps as he descended into the small main mechanical control room.

He began to fidget with several controls, muttering and cursing to himself as Hazel, having re-entered, and Tyrian stood nearby, unsure of how and if they could do anything. The scorpion Faunus caught Hazel's eye and gave a shrug before crawling onto the co-pilot's chair, and the taller man sighed, crossing his thick arms and leaning against the wall.

He knew if they couldn't get the thing started soon they'd be out of luck. Thus, ever the pragmatic one, he moved to kneel beside the hatch and said, "Arthur, if we can't get it going, we'll have to be stuck here for the night, or try and secure another mode of transportation. I suggest we head back into town and weigh our options."

A loud rattling and clang was heard from the dimly lit room below, coupled with Watts poking his head into view, "Absolutely not," he huffed, tossing a scorched, blackened piece of metal and wire onto the floor then ascending on more of his hard-light steps, brushing his clothes off, "I've located the issue. This," he picked the piece up, "Is one of the spark plugs for the main engine. We'll just grab a spare from the toolkit, install it and be on our way. Tyrian could you grab me the toolkit? It's the same one you grabbed the wrench from."

"There was nothing like that in there that I saw." Tyrian answered, cocking his head, long braid flopping over his shoulder.

Watts rolled his eyes again, striding to and flipping open a large steel box, "Rubbish. There has to be. There's always at...at least...oh for the brothers sake!"

He stood, pinching the bridge of his nose, "There isn't one."

"I told you, dear Arthur." Tyrian said with a sing-song tone, batting his eyes and earning himself a sideways, sour glance.

Hazel pushed himself to his feet, "We have two choices. One is to let her Grace know. The other is to head back into town to purchase the part we need. If we're quick option two is our best bet."

"No, no, you're right as usual my exceptionally tall fellow," Watts relented, giving his jacket another dusting for good measure and walking to the exit ramp, "I'll be back as soon as possible."

"I'm coming too," said Hazel as he too moved toward the door, "I'll grab a few other things in case we run into something like this again."

Tyrian leapt from the chair and swept up behind them, "Well, don't leave me out of the party! It's no fun being here all by myself!"

Watts waved a hand dismissively, "Fine fine! Let's just hurry and get this done."

An hour later, they had finally located a shop that carried the parts they needed. Watts was inside handling the purchase, Tyrian had joined him, and once Hazel had grabbed what he wanted he stepped outside to wait. The man leaned against the side of the store, slightly down the alley between it and the neighboring building minding his own business and trying to remain as inconspicuous as was feasible. It had clouded over in their walk here, and now the sky above was dark and heavy with the threat of rain.

As he stood, keeping an eye out for possible trouble as he always did, he suddenly felt a tugging at his pant leg and looked down to see...a small child gazing intently up at him. She looked to be about five years old, with dirt-streaked brown hair and an equally filthy dress. One hand clutched a stuffed toy with the other firmly knotted in the fabric of his pants, and she stared up at him fearlessly with bright blue eyes.

He resolved to ignore her, as she was likely simply seeking attention or to play a joke on him, neither of which he felt like dealing with. Thus he looked away again, crossing his arms and hoping she'd get bored and leave. After a minute or so of continued efforts, the tugging became more insistent and she spoke up, "'Scuse me mister!"

He sighed, relenting and making eye contact, "Yes?"

"Where's my mama?" she asked plaintively.

Hazel was momentarily taken aback. Of all the people around she had, for some reason, chosen him. Was she truly lost, or did she simply wander off and her mother was right nearby, frantically searching for her? No doubt it was the latter, and not having time to deal with lost waifs, yet unable to force himself to turn a blind eye-there were monsters other than Grimm about-he resolved to take care of this matter quickly. He carefully knelt, still towering above her but slightly less intimidating and asked, "When and where did you see her last?"

The child pursed her lips, looking away for a moment, "Umm...three days ago?"

Hazel felt his heart sink; three days meant it was the former situation after all.

Fishing in her pocket, the girl held out a piece of paper, "She gave me this but I can't read it..."

Taking it, Hazel unfolded it and quickly realized he was now entangled in a much darker, more complex situation. The note read, 'I can't take care of her anymore. Her aunt lives in Fellstone at 36 Walnut St. take her there.'

His brows knitted and he exhaled so lowly in his throat it was almost a growl. There had to be a police station nearby he could drop her off at, though he wondered why the child hadn't been taken there in the first place. Standing again, he stuffed the paper in a pocket and motioned for her to follow.

"Come on. I'll take you to someone who can help."

She gave a tiny gasp of delight, grinning ear-to-ear and reaching her hand up toward him. He paused, realizing she was trying to hold his as they walked, but pretended he didn't notice and kept on. They made their way through the muddy streets, Hazel taking frequent downward glances to make certain she was still there. His Scroll beeped, and taking a look saw the message from Watts: 'Where are you??' He quickly tapped out a reply; 'Had to take care of something be right back'

In only a few minutes they had reached a police outpost and though he was naturally wary of calling attention to himself, especially with law enforcement, he rapped his calloused knuckles on the door. It immediately flew open, a portly man doing a double-take at the figure in front of him.

"Oh-hello sir. What's the trouble?"

Hazel gestured to the small girl beside him, handing the officer the paper she'd had, "This child approached me...she was, apparently, abandoned by her mother. The note lists a relative."

The officer took the paper, looked from it to the girl, who waved at him, then shrugged, "Look, I know you mean well, but here's the thing; I know this kid. Her mom is a good-for-nothing drunk and is always in some sort of crisis. This isn't the first time she's ditched her and vanished. She'll probably be back soon. There's nothing we can do."

Hazel cocked an eyebrow, "I'm sorry?"

Again the officer shrugged, then coughed and handed the paper back, "I said there's nothing we can do. You can leave her here, or at the pub on Eighth, or Cherry and Pilwin. Those are her favorite haunts. Bye."

With that he shut the door practically in Hazel's face. His fists clenched, part of him wanting to punch a hole right through it. He wasn't naïve; the lines between good and evil in the world were, quite often, more blurry than most cared to believe or admit, however he still found himself entertaining the notion that at least some of those that were supposed to be in a position of protecting others would do just that.

He looked down at the child, whose wide eyes were wavering and uncertain, having clearly comprehended the adult's discussion. So she was truly on her own, with no one willing to lend a hand...except him. Despite his better judgement, in a flash of something deep and long-forgotten he sighed again and extended his hand to her, "If you still wish, I'll help you."

Her expression brightened, just a little, and she reached up, her tiny hand managing to wrap around several of his fingers.

"What's your name?" he asked as they made their way back toward the shop where his companions were, likely, impatiently awaiting his return.

"I'm Greta!" she proudly declared, then held up her toy, "And this is Stinky! What's yours?"

He inhaled sharply, stopping short. It wasn't her name, but it was close enough to send an aching stab through his chest. Drawing a deep breath to steady himself again, pushing the emotions and memories back into the corners of his mind where they usually were, he glanced at her and nodded.

"I'm Hazel. I'm going to take you to your family, Greta. I promise."

Watts paced briskly, hands tightly clasped behind his back and mouth pressed to a thin line. Tyrian stood much more casually, leaning against a tree at the edge of town where they'd decided to meet. His tail waved lazily and he watched the doctor's increasingly agitated state with amusement.

"Oh Watts you'll wear a rut in the ground at this pace," he said with a chuckle and stretched, "I'm certain our compatriot will be here any minute."

"Where IS that oaf?! This was HIS idea and now he's run off to who-knows-where!" he gestured to the sky with it's dark, roiling clouds, "It's going to downpour any moment and he can't even-finally!"

As he was ranting Hazel turned the corner of a nearby building and approached them. Watts raised his hands palms up in a sarcastic gesture, "Ah, at last, he returns. Now, let's get out of here. We-"

He froze mid-sentence, as now Greta peered out from behind Hazel's coat and gaped curiously at him and Tyrian. The scorpion Faunus perked up instantly, making a soft 'oooh' sound. Hazel moved his hand to indicate to her to stay back and at this Watts drew a sharp, deep breath, drawing himself up.

"Hazel. What. Is that?"

The large man glanced at Greta, then back to Watts. He had overheard how the doctor had referred to him and chose his response accordingly, "I believe this is what most would call a child."

"You know PERFECTLY well what I mean!" Watts barked, jabbing a finger in his direction, "Why is she with you?"

Hazel sighed, full well knowing this was going to be inordinately difficult no matter what, "She approached me seeking help, and I discovered her mother has abandoned her. She was kind enough at least to include a note listing a nearby relative. I'm taking her to them."

Watts rubbed his temples, his face reddened with frustration, "You can't possibly be serious..."

Tyrian snorted, "I don't recall Her Grace saying anything about babysitting stray children. Did you forget we have a job to accomplish?"

"Thank you dear Tyrian!" Watts quickly replied, then addressing Hazel pointed at Greta, "This is not your responsibility or problem. Put it back where you found it, and be quick we need to make headway before it rains or gets too dark."

Hazel said nothing for a moment. He knew this was exactly the response he would get, and had prepared for it.

"Fellstone, where her aunt lives, is right on our way. With the winds how they are, even with these two detours, we'll get to our next stop on time or ahead of schedule. And speaking of responsibility, if anything should go wrong I will shoulder it myself."

His teammates stared in defeated exasperation; they knew all too well that once he'd set his mind to something, there was no stopping him. Watts threw his hands in the air, grumbling and cursing and spun on his heel as he began the trek back to their ship. Hazel mumbled to Greta to stay close as he set off as well. The small girl clutched his coattails, having to trot to keep up. Tyrian slunk off the tree and took up the rear of the group, eyeing Greta now with curiosity...or how a snake does a mouse. He crept up closer, and finally the girl noticed. Her eyes widened and she tilted her head, watching his tail sway hypnotically.

"Do you like it?" he said in a sweetly venomous voice, "I certainly do...though many others don't..."

Hazel jerked his head to glower at the Faunus, "Leave her alone."

"Oh, but she's just curious! All I'm doing is providing some entertainment for her for the walk! Surely-"

"Leave. Her. Alone." he repeated, this time in a low threatening growl.

Chuckling, Tyrian raised his hands in a mock gesture of surrender and picked up the pace until he reached Watts, his tail gently resting on the doctor's back. He grinned and winked over his shoulder, and Greta held Hazel's coat a little tighter.

Slowly at first, then swiftly picking up into a steady rhythm, the rain finally came only minutes later. With a disgruntled shout of 'I told you' Watts unfurled his umbrella and took off towards the ship, which was now in sight, although still a ways off. Tyrian tried to shelter himself as much as possible with him, mockingly calling behind them to hurry.

Hazel picked up his pace; he had never minded the rain, but they did need to move quickly. Greta, still clinging to his coat, now struggled even more to keep up. She panted and moved her small legs as fast as she could, but between his naturally long strides and the wet ground she just couldn't-and tripped, tumbling to her knees. She knelt where she'd fallen, clutching her toy and started to cry. Hazel stopped a couple steps ahead and sighed.

"Come on, you need to get up."

"I caaaaan't!" she sniffled, "You're too fast and I'm getting tired!"

"You have to try."

"I can't!!" she repeated, then curled in on herself miserably.

He exhaled wearily. He had chosen to take charge of this situation, and now he needed to find ways to navigate it. They had to move, but she was clearly exhausted especially after everything she'd no doubt been through. An idea came to him...

"Greta."

She looked up at him from the muddy ground, her blue eyes clearly showing her weariness yet still holding that fearless fire. He knew she had a fighter's spirit, she must if she was able to survive on her own. He decided to nurture that, while also clearing up this obstacle.

"Sometimes, you'll be tired and hurting and want to give up. You can't. You have to try to push yourself just a little more to reach your goal. If you get up and walk to me I will carry you the rest of the way."

She regarded him solemnly, then wiping her face with one hand pushed herself to her feet and as confidently as she could muster, made her way to him, where she squared her shoulders as she looked up, "I did it."

"Good. Now then..."

He scooped her up with one arm, her slight weight nearly nothing to him, and started to walk. In moments he noticed the rain still pelting her, even worse now that it had picked up further. Yet another idea crossed his mind, one that would shelter her from the brunt of it and enable him to move faster. He loosened the belt overlaying his coat, tugging it aside enough to place her underneath, where she was now tucked against his chest and torso and re-cinched the belt, essentially turning it into a makeshift sling.

"Hold on." he said, and he felt her knot her hands in his shirt as he took off at a run.

Greta peered out as they moved, seeing the trees lining the road fly by. She held tight as he'd instructed, feeling his warmth and the strong, steady drumbeat of his heart. He had been so nice to her, even though he was big and looked kinda mean. Most people were actually mean. He reminded her of her papa...she barely remembered him, except that he was big and nice too. She smiled, nestling herself snugly against him and feeling happier than she had in a long time.

A couple minutes later Hazel made it inside the ship, taking a moment to rest from running in the now deluge outside. Watts and Tyrian were already hard at work on repairs, and Tyrian looked up at him with a fake pout.

"Oh, poor thing, you're soaked through!"

Hazel ignored him and went to his quarters, which normally on one of these ships was meant to sleep three people but was the only room big enough for him. Removing his charge from his coat and setting her on the unused bed, he then shed the garment entirely. Stepping into the tiny adjoining bathroom he grabbed a clean towel, coming back to her.

"You need to dry off. Here..." he carefully rubbed her head and she giggled, shaking out what he now realized was a soft auburn-brown hair. The rain had actually cleaned her up quite a bit. He then wrapped the towel snugly around her and told her to keep it on for a while. This done he sat heavily on his own bed across from her to plot his next move; he was loathe to admit he hadn't a clue what he was doing. Step one; get her off the street, sheltered, and on her way to her aunt, was complete. Now step two..?

He looked through the open door of the room, then back to her, sitting there swinging her legs and making her toy 'walk' across the blankets, "Are you hungry?"

Greta nodded, "I could eat a doughnut thiiiiiis big!" And spread her arms as far as she could.

"Then I'll get you something," he stood, not letting her see him wince. It was true he couldn't feel pain, but all the stiffness and joint damage he'd done to himself cropped up from time to time. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

He made his way to a small back area that served as a crude kitchenette, opening a cabinet to see what they had left. Some military rations left from Brothers-knew-when that they'd ignored, Watt's stash which was strictly off-limits, though for a moment Hazel considered it, some canned goods, and then a few of his own homemade protein bars and pre-packaged pastries. He took one of the protein bars and an apple danish and headed back. Upon entering he didn't see her, so he knelt to look under the beds and finding nothing, started to feel a ripple of concern.

"Greta?" he inquired.

His ears caught the softest rustle and giggle, and upon her bed saw the blanket move ever so much. He realized now where she was and stepped over to flip the blanket aside. Out popped a proudly grinning Greta, "BOO! You found me!"

"Good, I thought you'd wandered off."

"Awwww!" she pouted, "But I'm a scary ghost!"

"...Is the scary ghost still hungry?"

"YEAH!"

Greta jumped to her feet and upon spotting the danish, practically tried to climb him to get at it. He quickly handed it over and she plopped herself in the middle of the bed, tearing into the food with gusto, doing little bounces and hums of joy. He sat across from her, slowly eating the protein bar she'd rejected and wondering for probably the dozenth time what he'd gotten into.

Abruptly the vessel shuddered, and he could hear the engines roaring to life coupled with Watt's triumphant shout. The ship started to lift off, and Greta gasped, dropping the wrapper from her danish and scrambling to the window, seeing the ground move further away.

"Are we flying Mr. Hazel?!"

"Yes."

She began to bounce on the mattress, chanting and laughing "I'm flying I'm flying!" while flapping the towel she still wore like a pair of wings. Seeing her overjoyed by something to him so mundane, and often grim depending on the situation, plucked some long-dormant thread in his soul and he actually felt himself crack a small smile.

"I thought you were tired." he wondered.

"I-am-but-I'm-too-busy-flying-!" she answered in between bounces, then suddenly cried, "Oh no I've been attacked I'm falling catch meeeee!"

Crouching for extra power, Greta leapt and launched herself off the bed right at Hazel. Caught off guard, he nevertheless leaned forward and easily caught her, where she wriggled in his arms and laughed. He raised his eyebrow, again pondering why in the world she'd chosen him...but he was starting to be glad for it. After a minute she stopped and even started to slump against him. He pried her off and held her out to see her eyes slowly blinking, and she yawned loudly.

"I'm...sleepy...too much...flying. Had to make it to...the castle..."

"Then let's get you to bed."

He stepped across to her bed, fixing the blanket as much as possible before setting her down and pulling the covers over her. She suddenly bolted upright, lamenting, "Stinky?! Where's Stinky?"

Hazel bent and lifted the toy from the floor where it'd fallen during her aerial mishap, his best guess being it was a badger, and handed it over. Greta clutched the animal lovingly to her chest and Hazel stood.

"Be careful with your friends. Alright, I'll be right nearby if you wake up and need something. Goodnight, Greta."

"Wait!! Don't leave me! Mama left please don't leave me alone again!"

"I have to go keep watch so you're safe."

"Pleeeeeease?!" she pleaded, on the verge of tears.

He paused, seeing the genuine fear and longing for some sort of reassurance in her face, then sighed, sitting on her bed and scooting so his back was resting on the wall. He gestured and she scrambled into his arms, leaning against him as he held her to his torso, where she settled with a long, contented hum. He fully expected her to pass out at any moment.

But then, she craned her neck to gaze up at him, "Can I have a bedtime story?"

He pinched his brow; ah yes. He should have expected this. Though he did do plenty of reading and knew many tales, the bedtime story variety wasn't his forte. He thought for a moment, clearing his throat and Greta leaned forward with expectation.

"Once upon a time, a young girl took a ride on a flying ship. It was a beautiful day, and soon it was night, with lots of stars. She had had a long trip, and got tired. She went to sleep and had wonderful dreams and when she woke up, she was with her family. The end."

Greta stared blankly at him, then pouted, "That's not a real bedtime story!"

"If I tell you another do you promise to try and sleep?" he grumbled, but with a growing tone of affection.

"Pinky promise!" she declared, holding up her small hand.

He hesitated for a moment, but then finished the gesture with her...and a flash of memory he hadn't asked for came to him-

-"If I win this race, you have to do the dishes. If you win, I will!" said Gretchen with her usual bravado.

"Are you going to try and get out of it again?" Hazel replied with a sarcastic smile.

She held out her hand, "Nope! Not this time! I pinky promise!"-

He let his eyes fall shut, carefully refolding the memory and upon remembering another, one perfect for this moment, opened them again. This tale had always been her favorite.

"Very well. Let me tell you the story of The Brave Weaver Girl and the Golden Tree..."

The rain had let up considerably, now simply a gentle patter against the windows, and streaks of moonlight broke through the clouds. Greta was still curled in a ball in Hazel's lap as he continued to speak.

"...and at last, the brave weaver girl had defeated the shape-shifter, and taking some of the golden fruit of the tree to sell, went home to her family. The end."

He glanced down; her eyes were almost closed and her breathing slow and steady. Very carefully, he slid off the bed and turned, gingerly setting her on it and pulling the blanket over her. She hummed, pulling her stuffed toy closer and yawning again as she finally shut her eyes. He slowly started to back away, taking a pillow and a novel with him, hoping she wouldn't notice...and just barely caught her whisper-soft murmur as she said, "G'night papa..."

He stopped short, the shock hitting like he'd been kicked in the gut. ...Papa? His chest tightened uncomfortably and he swallowed hard, conflicting emotions he hadn't known he was still even capable of clawing at him. Exiting, he silently shut the door and turned so his back was against the wall, slumping down until he was sitting cross-legged on the floor to begin his vigil.

Her words kept echoing in his mind. Did she actually believe he was, and that's why she'd approached him? No, if she did she would have said so. It was most likely then she simply saw him as a father figure, a notion that sat heavily in his heart.

He was no type of man to be a father. The things he'd done, the pain he'd caused, all in the promise of a different, hopefully better future yes, but still...he didn't deserve such an honor. Briefly he looked back at his younger self and recalled the time he'd wanted a family of his own someday...a dream long dead.

Hearing footsteps approaching, he flicked his gaze upward to find Watts standing there, a mug of what smelled like coffee in one hand and his Scroll in the other. The doctor stared at him disparagingly for a moment before he spoke.

"May I inquire as to why you're sitting there?"

Hazel glanced around before quietly answering, "I don't trust him."

"Ah, yes, Tyrian did mention you'd ended up bringing your little pet along after all. Well, I'm still not a fan of the whole situation however I'm clearly outmuscled," he leaned against the wall opposite Hazel and took a sip of his drink, "I am curious though; why her? What compelled you to not turn her away?"

"She came to me. I..." he trailed off, having been forced for the first time to truly stop and consider it, "She was an innocent, alone. I know that fate all too well."

"Aaah, I see. Ironic, isn't it?" Watts sniffed, "I wonder how many people you've...dispatched, and here you are suddenly deciding this one life is worth saving. Curious."

Hazel felt his hands clench as they rested on his knees; he was well aware of the many lives he had taken and the, as Watts had put it, ironic nature of this venture. He also was in no mood to be reminded.

He looked Watts squarely in the eyes and said, in that tone denoting having had enough, "If you have nothing productive or helpful to say, I'd like some peace and quiet."

With the faintest eye roll, Watts pushed himself off the wall and turned on his heel towards the front of the ship, saying over his shoulder, "We'll be passing through Fellstone in the morning. Goodnight Mr. Rainart."

Hazel unclenched his fists and let his shoulders relax, having not realized just how much he'd had them tensed. Watt's words had struck a chord, leaving him now with a bitter taste in his throat and dark thoughts he'd hoped to avoid for at least one night. He glanced at the door behind him, through which slept one tiny girl, one that in the brief time she'd been with him, had brought him trouble he hadn't planned on...but also a slight, fragile sliver of joy and even healing. Soon he'd be sending her on her way, but that was good. That was what she needed. For the second time that day, he felt himself forming a small, wistful smile.

Leaning back with the pillow behind his head, he opened his book and settled in for a long, sleepless night...

He sat up with a start, nearly banging his head on the wall. It was much brighter around, and he realized it must be morning. Turning he saw the door was ajar, and with a groan from stiff joints and passing out in an awkward position, he stood and opened the door a little further, stepping in the room. He called her, but got no answer, and assuming it may will be another case of hide-and-seek pulled back the covers of her bed and even the others–but found no sign of her. Fighting back the panic starting to brew, he stepped back into the hall area and called her. It was then he heard her giggling coming from the front control area of the ship and he immediately made his way there-where he froze.

Tyrian sat crouched on a pilot's chair, his tail wrapped around Greta's waist as he rocked her gently back and forth like a swing.

In two long strides Hazel made it over and scooped the small girl up to hold her on his shoulder, cold fury in his eyes, "What are you doing?" he all but growled.

Tyrian stood and wisely sidled around the large man, grinning ear-to-ear, "Ah! Good morning! As I said before, I simply wish to entertain our young guest! She was all alone, poor dear, so Uncle Tyrian came to the rescue! Didn't I, little one?"

"Get out." Hazel stated in a tone that did not invite any further discussion, and Tyrian backed out of the area and out of sight, his smile no less taunting.

It was about an hour later that Watts announced they were near Fellstone and he was going to land the ship a safe distance away. From putting the address into his Scroll, Hazel had realized her aunt's place was a small farm toward the edge of town which was perfect; the less people saw them the better. The thick fog that had settled over the land after last night's rain would further disguise them.

With what time the pair had left, Hazel spent much of it telling her stories and she spun her own yarns, though they were generally much more disjointed.

"Are you gonna stay with us?" she asked at one point as she traced invisible patterns on his arm.

"No. I can't, I have places I need to go. I'm sorry."

"Oh..." she said with disappointment, pressing herself into him a little more, "Okay...hey!" She brightened and clapped her hands, "Maybe you can come visit!"

He felt his stomach knot up. No. He knew what he was, what he'd still have to do, how death and danger were always nipping his heels. The moment she found out who he truly was she'd rightfully despise him-as well as be in grave danger herself. No...it was safest for her if she never saw him again. "Perhaps. We'll have to wait and see..."

Finally, Watts called to him that he was going to land as close as he could, and that they had to make it quick in order to stay on schedule. Hazel sighed and gently picked her up, making her make sure she had Stinky, and they made their way to the outside hatch and down the ramp.

It was damp, and the fog was so dense it obscured the small farmhouse only a short ways off, and thankfully the airship behind them. Through the mist however, Hazel could see lights on in the house and could hear sounds of life. Greta gasped, chattering about the times she'd been here before and all the fun things she'd done. He listened to her well, taking a mental snapshot of this moment to tuck away for when times were harder, to have a small bright spot to look upon and hope everything he did was worth it in the end.

When they had gotten as close as he dared without him possibly being seen, he set her down, making sure the note she had had with her when he found her was still in the pocket of her dress. He then knelt, also as he had done just the day before.

"Now," he said kindly but sternly, "I held up my end of our deal. I got you to your family, now do you remember your part?"

She saluted, "Be strong, be brave, be good, and don't be a Huntress!"

"Very good. Now then..." he stood, "Go on."

She didn't move, just stared at him with those bright blue eyes. He raised his eyebrow, "Yes?"

She held her arms up, and he realized what she wanted. Lifting her he gave her one more hug, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering, "Thank you Mr. Hazel...I'll never forget you. Thank you for being my Papa for a while."

He again felt that kick in his gut but kept himself steady, telling her it had been his honor, and he set her back down. Without another word she turned and ran toward the house shouting happily. He watched her go with a silent prayer, taking a small piece of what was left of his heart with her. A door flew open and a woman came out, calling her in confusion. The woman scooped her up and held her while crying joyfully; clearly this was indeed her relative. Hazel exhaled with a rare feeling of contentment; she was home.

"Greta! My goodness how did you get here?!" her aunt exclaimed in astonishment.

The girl turned and pointed, "The big nice man rescued me! ...mister?"

But by that time Hazel had turned and left, vanishing into the fog...

-EPILOGUE-

Hazel stood in the woods, the fading sunlight shimmering in golden beams through the thick trees, the air beginning to cool. He felt the weight of his axe across his shoulders and could hear the soft calls of birds and the distant bark of a fox.

Where in the world...?

His nose caught a faint whiff of wood smoke and some sort of food, and he looked around to see a small cluster of houses on the gently sloping hillside near him, with many more in the valley below. One house, set just apart from the others, had wisps of smoke coming from it's chimney, and he could now also hear faint voices.

Oh. Yes. Of course. He was heading home after a day at the lumber mill. It was a good job, and payed well. Dinner would probably be ready soon, unless the kids were especially a handful today. He started toward the house, seeing now signs of movement through the windows. One face appeared and moments later vanished, reappearing as they threw open the front door and started running towards him.

"Papa!! Papa's home!" they called, and two more small figures tumbled out the door as well, all happily calling him. He grinned and knelt, setting the axe down and opening his arms as he braced for impact. Moments later three children collided with him in a flurry of hugs, all excitedly talking over each other as they greeted him and described their day. He chuckled, telling them he'd missed them too and stood, hoisting one under each arm as the third clung to him piggy-back and finished the walk into the house.

Still carrying the kids, Hazel strode into the kitchen area, setting them down in their respective chairs. A tall woman with chestnut hair turned and smiled warmly as she grabbed several plates, "Hey you. Glad you're home."

"Hey..." he returned the smile, stepping up to and gently kissing her, earning a collective 'eww!' from the children. He tried to take the plates from her, offering to set the table, but she yanked them back, asking if he'd washed his hands. He coughed and turned to the sink, and she sighed affectionately.

After dinner, the kids were seated at the large oak dining table, one that Hazel had made himself, with their various craft projects, chatting among themselves while the adults played chess in the living room and enjoyed the cheerful, crackling fire in their fireplace.

"You've been staring at the board for a while. You stumped?"

Hazel shook his head, chin resting on his calloused knuckles, "Not yet."

His wife leaned back with a smug grin, "You're getting much better. Maybe someday you'll win, but-"

He reached and moved a piece a couple places, "I believe that's check."

"Wait how-?!" she scanned the board, then wagged a finger at him with a grin, "Oh ho, I see what you did. Very clever."

He looked up at her, deep brown eyes filled with that challenge and fire he fell headlong into love with what now seemed like ages ago.

"You'll probably still win this game, but you won my heart a million times already."

She paused with her hand above the board and met his gaze in appreciative confusion. Smiling softly with a blush she replied, "Of all the times to say something so romantic...trying to distract me?"

"No. Just being honest."

Her expression softened, smile widening a little, and she leaned across to kiss him tenderly, "I love you too...so much. You just surprised me is all."

"Speaking of surprises," he shifted to place his large hand over her smaller one that was unconsciously resting on her stomach, "When are we going to tell them they'll have a new sibling soon?"

She chuckled, "I guess...now is as good a time as any," turning she called, "Hey! Munchkins! Come here please..."

-He awoke with a choking gasp, bolting upright and sweating, for a few moments throughly bewildered; where was he? Where was his wife, their children? This wasn't his home it was-

Gradually, the fog of sleep seeped away and reality's unwelcome claws sunk their way back into his mind. All of it, the love, the happiness, the peace and sense of normalcy was nothing but the crumbling wishes of his subconscious, no doubt brought on by the previous day's and this morning's detour with Greta. Evidently, the girl must have reignited some embers deep within he had long since assumed to be burned to ash. Now however, alone in the icy moonlight, all of it quickly faded again, along with the faces and laughter of his non-existent family. He didn't bother to hold on to them.

There was no point in mouring that which you've never had and never will, after all.

[pollylynn]

Title: Overlap WC: 1000 Episode: Ghosts (1 x 08)

She finds it kind of odd that he is not a fan of True Crime. No, that’s not right. He’s not just not a fan, he is vehemently dismissive of the genre, so much so that it snags in her brain. At first it’s just another grain of sand there—something she figures she’ll file away either to slam him with at a later date,  or it might even be that valuable. It may just be a fun for her eye rolls only factoid. But it doesn’t just sit still. It becomes a kind of persistent knocking at the back door of her mind, so she hauls it out for examination. 

That has to begin with the fact that she’s surprised that he’s not a fan, at least in part, because she is not a fan, and he is the very antithesis of her. He prefers creamy to chunky peanut butter, roots for—shudder—the Yankees over the Mets, and will take reality television over scripted, every day of the week. Without evidence, she has taken each of these to be facts, and his voluble distaste for True Crime disrupts that narrative. 

She’s not exactly ready to abandon her conviction that he is the evil, goateed mirror-verse incarnation of herself. She thinks back to him wrapping the boys around his little finger with a ludicrous story, rife with details that connected exactly zero of the dots they have currently on hand: Westchester Housewife crosses paths with a lover who is in a position to slip her cash regularly, even as he insists that their hook-ups take place at an SRO that aspired to seediness. So, yeah, maybe his distaste for True Crime is really a distaste for facts, and the two of them remain comfortably at opposite poles. 

But the facts are not uniformly her friend here. As more of them roll in, particularly on the True Crime front, they don’t align quite the way she would like them to. For example, he really ought to be all over Lee Wax’s stalker collage, the strange-but-true story of Allison Goldman, AKA Cynthia Dern, reaching out to tell her story after two decades in hiding from the law. He really ought to—double shudder—be all over Lee Wax herself, at least according to the Castle is to Beckett as Anti-Matter is to Matter model, because her own aversion to True Crime has nothing on her aversion to Lee Wax. 

It’s perplexing, then, to find that he is rather adamantly not all over Lee Wax. He comes at her hard in the interview about paying Cynthia, about going behind her source’s back to other relevant parties, about the glee over the fact that a woman’s death has moved the manuscript dead center into her area of expertise. In a moment truly devoid of self-awareness, he looks aghast when Lee Wax starts talking about the favors the NYPD can do for her.  

It upsets her worldview how violently the two of them seem to agree that Lee Wax might give Calvin Creason a run for his money in terms of how much interaction with her requires an immediate shower. In fact, it’s so disconcerting that she bails on the interview as soon as possible. She abandons him to the dark forces of Lee Wax and pretends not to notice exactly how swiftly he manages to extricate himself rather than . . . throwing her down on the interrogation room table for some overwritten writer sex, rife with unrealistic details.  Or something. 

The idea is repulsive in every respect, other than its ability to return balance to the force by reassuring her that he is a secret lover of True Crime and Lee Wax, and thus there is nothing under the sun that the two of them agree upon. It’s also a little bit bananas. She is making too much of this. He doesn’t like True Crime, and neither does she. He doesn’t like Lee Wax, and neither does she. It’s not even two things agree on, given how closely related they are. It’s a grain of sand. It’s something to file away. 

She does, mostly. She manages it, even when he’s pounding on the one-way mirror shouting the woman’s name. She’s able to ignore their mutual seething hatred for her and focus on the fact that another one of the myriad differences between them seems to be the fact that he has no idea how sound works. She is even mostly able to blow right past whatever transpires between him and everyone’s least favorite True Crime writer while she is handling Susan Mailer’s booking. 

She thinks she’s past it—this worrisome little nook of the Venn diagram where the two of them overlap. It seems as if she can return to her regularly scheduled set of assumptions that there is nothing in this or any other iteration of the multiverse where the two of them agree about anything. 

But then they play poker for Gummi Bears. They play poker for hours, quietly talking about this and that. The conversation eventually turns to unhappy endings. It turns again to Susan Mailer and the mistakes she and Jared Swanstrom have had to live with that did little to touch Cynthia Dern, at least until greed and self-absorption led her to inadvertently engineer her own gruesome end. It turns to the Pikes and the choice that was no choice at all—justice or the means for their family to scrape by. 

“And they won’t even have that now. Lee Wax’s sleazy publisher won’t be handing them a couple hundred a week.” He folds his hand, even though she’s pretty sure it was a good one. He bites the head off a red Gummi bear from his dwindling bank. “It sucks. It’s . . .  whatever the opposite of poetic irony is.” 

“True Crime,” she says with a bitter smile as she rakes in another pot.

“True Crime,” he echoes. “Man, I hate that stuff.” 

A/N: This was going to have so much morphousness. It was going to be about the phone call from Martha tattling on Castle. And then it was all about Everyone Hates Lee Wax, which I would like to remind Brain Poneh, HAS BEEN DONE. 

images via homeofthenutty

[threadsketchier]

So I saw the prequels prior to the Originals and it always bothered me how Luke got dumped on a death planet of Tatooine considering the state of that environment and shot that when down in the previous films while Leia got a life of privilege. I was hoping Bail would argue against splitting the twins. I obviously knew why it had to go that route because it had to align and follow up with the Originals. I guess it came off that Luke wasn’t really wanted...?

I already wrote a ficlet somewhat addressing this misconception.

Also, frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of rehashing the same issue - why do people keep assuming that the Larses don’t matter and don’t have a right to be in Luke’s life just because they live on Space Australia?  Why do their feelings not count just because they’re low-to-middle-class moisture farmers who don’t live in a palace on Space Switzerland-Utopia?  Why the fuck do people assume that Luke wasn’t wanted just because the Organas have a personal preference that was obviously previously established before shit hit the fans and they wanted a daughter and Bail, as a senator and Viceroy - essentially co-leader of his planet - is a fucking rational guy who understands the necessity of making hard decisions dictated by logic over emotions?

The twins weren’t just “split up because that’s how the movies have to go,” it does make internal sense within the narrative that it was safer to hide them in vastly separate locations to prevent both of them from being discovered at the same time and thus lost together, or for their latent Force bond to make them a psychic target if they grew up together and established it, acting like a beacon for Vader and Palpatine and any minions of theirs.  It sucks, it’s painful, it has awkward consequences for them later on when Leia’s a bit too loose with her lips, but that’s why these movies have a tragic backstory.  It has to suck real hard before it gets better.

Does it seem crazy that Leia wound up raised in such a screamingly obvious position as daughter of a then-Imperial Senator and princess of a highly prominent Core world being trained to follow in her biological mother’s footsteps and become a senator herself, thus occupying a very exposed role in the Empire, right under the Emperor’s and Vader’s noses?  Yeah.  But also remember that the Superman/Clark Kent illusion can actually work in real life.  Assumption is a powerful thing.  Your average Joe Citizen would assume that someone as otherworldly as Superman, an alien with the ability to fly, strength to bench-press skyscrapers and jumbo jets, heat vision, and other amazing things, would never stoop to living as a normal, humble, inconvenienced human being.  It’s not merely the hiding behind a pair of glasses and hunching over a little with a nerdy tone and habits - it’s the entire idea that a Clark Kent could even exist in the same person of Superman.  They don’t understand that he was raised as a human and actually desires this life, and doesn’t feel the need to lock himself away permanently in his dope Fortress of Solitude and never interact with the very people he wants to save and protect.

Vader was lied to by Palpatine about the nature of Padmé’s death, but there was no disputing that she actually died.  In his crushing despair, Vader accepted with heaps of self-flagellation that his child was dead.  He didn’t even know he had two children.  In his mind, whenever he saw Leia - surely they were in each other’s circles at least at a distance before Rogue One and ANH - even if she reminded him of Padmé six ways from Sunday, he would not assume she was his daughter, because as far as he was concerned his child was dead.  The OT establishes that latent Force-sensitivity also does not automatically make two related Force-sensitives consciously aware of each other until they mutually know one another as being related and Force-sensitive, so not even torturing Leia revealed this to him.

But I’m going off on a tangent.  Let’s break this down:

Tatooine is nothing but a source of anguish for Anakin and his personal loathing for the place made it ideal as a hiding place.  And no, I’m not just haha joking about sand.  He was a slave there and buried his mother there after slaughtering an entire village of natives he knew in his heart that he shouldn’t have.  It holds nothing but misery and failure for him.

Yes, Tatooine is abso-fucking-lutely a galactic cesspit.  It’s ruled by the most vile mob boss in the galaxy, is rife with nasty wildlife that’s out to kill you, and is haunted by the troubles brought about by strife between colonizers and the native population.  It is indisputably a dangerous place.  But it wasn’t Tatooine that killed the Larses.  It was the Empire.  Just because they look like Soft Folks™ doesn’t mean they were - Owen and Beru knew how to take care of themselves, and they certainly knew how to take care of a child in this environment.  They survived to middle age just fine, and would’ve kept going if it wasn’t for those fucking stormtroopers.  Just because they didn’t live a life of luxury also doesn’t mean they were dirt poor either.  When we meet Luke in ANH, he’s a healthy young lad who still has the privilege to fuck off with his buddies around his farm duties.  Life may be tough but it’s not squalor and deprivation for him.

But honestly, even if they WERE dirt poor, they’re still Luke’s family, and they very obviously loved him.  I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to restate it, but I will: Owen and Beru loved Shmi, and upon hearing that Anakin died and left behind a baby son, why wouldn’t they be moved and compelled to take Luke in, and why wouldn’t they deserve to have the chance to raise him in their memory?  Even though they’d be sad that Luke was orphaned, they might even see this as a blessing to be able to raise Shmi’s grandson and Anakin’s son.

As much as he bitched about chores as a teenager, Luke learned damn valuable skills growing up on a Tatooine moisture farm that, coupled with the Force, saved everybody’s asses at the Battle of Yavin, and went on to make him an ideal squadron leader.  Wealth and privilege are not always the best foundation, or at least certainly not the automatic one, for a person to learn good character either.

The Organas are human too.  Faced with a difficult choice, they decided to take this poignant opportunity to fulfill a dream they’d been deferring for some time.  Sometimes parents wish for a specific child, and that’s their prerogative (except IRL they don’t actually get to pick, they get whatever kid they gestate).  If they’d taken Luke and let Obi-Wan take Leia, we’d be having the same argument about Leia growing up on Tatooine.  There was no inequality in this decision.  Bail and Breha wanted a daughter, there was a daughter present among the twins, so they chose her.  This does not mean they valued Luke any less.  Since the twins couldn’t be raised together for their own safety, it might as well have come down to a coin toss.  Bail isn’t evil for exercising a shred of his personal emotions and desires in a situation where he otherwise knew he’d have to restrain himself.  Also, he’d be smart enough to respect the fact that both children had actual family elsewhere in the galaxy and wouldn’t think any less of the Larses just because they live on Tatooine.  The only way his decision would be careless or heinous was if he knew Luke was being taken to people who were abusive or so destitute they couldn’t even care for themselves, much less a third person, and he did nothing about it - but we know this is not that situation.

How do you feel about non-wealthy people living in harsh places here on Earth raising their children?  Would you expect all the rich people in the world to go take those children away from them and adopt them just so they could grow up “privileged” instead?  Think about how that sounds for a moment or two.

Honestly, if Bail had tried to argue about taking both twins because he felt taking Luke to his legal family on Tatooine was “cruel” or “neglectful” because of the planet’s “risky environment and poverty,” I’d hope either Obi-Wan or Yoda would have enough sense to smack him upside the head for being so thoughtless as to insult these people for being seemingly beneath him.

There is more to life than money and power/prestige, and Leia’s upbringing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  She was no pampered, air-headed royal spending her days sitting idle being hand-fed space grapes while her “poor” brother ate sand cookies.  She had to undergo intensive academic, political, and physical training from young childhood in order to prepare her to become a covert Rebel agent while she was still a teenager, as if being a child senator wasn’t already stressful and demanding enough.  Sure, she never lacked for anything, but that is an incredible amount of responsibility to saddle on someone who wasn’t even an adult yet (like her bio mother).  Luke was blessed with far more freedom and peace in his childhood than his sister.  And him living on Tatooine with his father’s surname wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Leia existing within the heart of the Empire while actively engaging in Rebel activities that could have cost her her life, even without getting into the whole “daughter of Anakin Skywalker” business.

Also, just because we joke about Tatooine being Space Australia doesn’t mean every single day of Luke’s childhood was THAT eventful.  It was more likely 80% dull farm life and 20% mayhem, and that 20% would be mostly Luke’s fault for being a crazy nut like his parents and getting himself into trouble he could have avoided in most cases.  In other words, growing up there might not have been nearly as “deadly” as we make it out to be.

[thecagedsong]

Forgotten Light: Chapter 4: History

A/N: Hey guys! Afternoon update since I was busy with pancake breakfasts this morning. Another Kendra chapter. Ronodin gets a little pushy, but it’s still G rated and won’t ever get worse than this, you’ll see what I mean. Remember, you are supposed to hate him. Still playing around with the chapter title for this one, and some of you who caught my analysis post a few months ago might recognize some themes.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11

Chapter 4: History

Kendra picked another book off the shelf, noticed it was in a language she couldn’t read, and put it back. Over half the books in this library she couldn’t read, which seems like poor planning on her part.

She wasn’t even sure she wanted to read. It had sounded like a good way to get her mind off her apparently outrageous life story, but there was really no hope of thinking about anything else.

Kendra was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a noble family, very old fashioned, that obtained their status through years of keeping the undead enslaved and trapping dragons and other magical creatures considered dangerous to mortals. Kendra, as the eldest, was expected to follow in her family’s footsteps as jailors, but had grown doubtful that their way of life was right.

Kendra had met Ronodin at the engagement party for her arranged marriage with his cousin, Bracken. Ronodin teased her that his cousin was such an ugly bore, she had fled from Bracken right into Ronodin’s arms. (Kendra had rolled her eyes when he said that). He had been invited, as family, but Ronodin was far from welcome.

He wouldn’t tell her why just yet, but promised to soon, when they trusted each other a little more. Having nearly killed him, she agreed that that explanation could wait.

Ronodin and Kendra started meeting in secret, and talking. They fell in love strolling through the dragon prison her family kept. To throw suspicion off their meetings secret, they told her family that she was fine going through with her engagement with Bracken.

Her wedding was approaching in a couple of months, and they cared for each other more than ever. Kendra knew that not even her family’s love was worth marrying anyone but Ronodin. He had sounded so amazed when he quoted her, awed that someone so amazing could ever feel that way about him.

Kendra had blushed at her own boldness, and simultaneously felt heartbroken over that fact that she had given that feeling up. She was attracted to Ronodin, certainly, but when she tried to summon the life changing love he talked about, she had nothing. Just attraction and the feeling that he was speaking to someone else.

She had apologized, and he said she would just have to let him court her again. He’d do it as many times as it took to stick, he had laughed. He would understand if she wanted to break off their engagement, but he hoped she would still give him a chance.

Kendra promised to think about it.

They devised a plan, to take place just after she and her brother participated in a coming of age trial specific for their family against the dragons of sanctuary. It was a disgusting spectacle, offering the dragons their freedom once a generation, if they can claim the wizenstone first. It would be the last thing her parents ever forced her to do, she had vowed, and arranged for it to look like her servant had kidnapped her in the immediate aftermath.

For, despite everything, Kendra loved her family. They tried to follow the traditions of their ancestors without cruelty, and they had faced hundreds of trials together. By staging her own kidnapping, she would be breaking their hearts, but in a way they would understand. She would preserve their reputation, and be utterly free.

And that was apparently who she was. Kendra hadn’t counted on losing her memory, but maybe she had felt okay doing it for her brother when she knew about her fake kidnapping going to occur. She must have trusted herself to fall in love with Ronodin again, and Ronodin to take care of her. It was a lot of trust to place in someone.

Kendra did wish she had a family picture. If she went to such great lengths to protect them, then she must have wonderful memories of them, locked under the enchantment. She picked up another book, this one in English, The Forgotten Crown.

The library kept with the crimson and black theme, and she picked a black leather armchair by a fireplace. Normal fire, this time, not blue. It was strange, when things were lit by blue fire, it washed out the red and made the black look like a void. Ronodin must have handled the design choices, she couldn’t imagine picking this out herself under any circumstances.

She wanted to warm her feet, but didn’t think she could move the heavy chair, so sat on it sideways. Her black dress rode up her thighs, but the exposed skin felt the warmth from the fire, so she didn’t bother with modesty while alone. Mendigo was standing guard, he’d knock if someone was going to come in.

Kendra curled up with her book, and started reading about what the author called the six great crowns. They were the pillars of immortality that moved the natural world through its extremes: The crowns of the Giants, the Dragons, the Underking, and the Demons, the Fairies, and the Fair Folk. Humans were the interlopers, and the author took a three whole pages to describe why humans were the absolute worst.

Their sins included but were not limited to:

-Having the audacity to not always want immortality

-Ignoring boundaries like disrespectful heathens

-Killing immortals

-Assuming they have purpose

-Not tasting good

And their greatest sin of all: daring to change. Their ability to change affected even perfectly happy immortals, how dare they! After the rant on humans, Kendra got absorbed in the discussion on the powers and functionality of each crown, and there was a diagram of how they related to each other.

It started with an upside-down triangle. Fairies on the top left corner, Demons on the top right, and the Fair Folk at the bottom point. These three crowns were defined by their morality. The Fairy Crown on light, innocence, and creation. The Demon crown on darkness, pain, destruction, and cruelty. The Fair Folk were the forgotten crown, the main topic of the book, after the background was set. They were entirely neutral, and refused to take part in wars, and only ever offered to broker peace. Their power came from their neutrality, and the author recorded rumors of the horrible fall that came from the one time they broke their neutrality.

Kendra was tempted to skip ahead, but the background came first for a reason. The second triangle overlaid the first to create a six-pointed star. They were creatures based on space. Giants were the lower left corner, and took the sky, the Underking on the lower right took the places below ground, and Dragons stood at the top able to dwell high in the air and a ways underground. Their morality mapped the first triangle. Dragons had the capacity to create and destroy, love goodness or love evil, and came in every space on that morality line. Sky Giants tended between creation and neutrality, while the undead and the underking worked between destruction and neutrality.

The first triangle also worked within the second. The fairies tended between the air and the land, Demons below and on the land, while the fair folk, in the opposite of dragons, could only dwell on the land.

The opposites were also important. Dragons were many things, but it was extremely difficult for them to be neutral. Demons and Sky Giants avoided each other’s domains, so it was most difficult to understand their relationship. The Fairy Realm and the Under Realm however, were the most combative pair of opposites. Neither could tolerate the other. Darkness would swallow light, or light banish darkness, it came down to strength, and there was very little middle ground.

What middle ground there was came from the rare case where beings abandoned their magical alignment for the opposite, spiritual alignment. There were rumors of a demon sworn to pacifism, that occasionally helped naiads, and —

There was a single booming knock, the door flinging open with a bang. Kendra spazzed, fumbling her book and sinking into the armchair. The book fell, and Kendra glared at her “fiancé”, who was chuckling at her again.

“You look lovely,” Ronodin said, pausing to take in her disheveled state.

“Your whole ‘let’s make Kendra jump’ deal makes me think yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve attempted to kill you,” she said. Well, one sleep ago. Time was hard without clocks or the sun.

That made him laugh once more, and Kendra couldn’t help but smile in return.

“No, not the first time, and probably not the last,” he said with a grin, “But you’ve never regretted holding back.” His eyes flicked to her pale legs.

Pale, bare legs. Kendra squeaked, and tried to pull her dress down, but only managed to flip herself onto the floor. She stood up with burning cheeks and a huff.

“I’m sorry, you’re just so easy to rile up. I love that look in your eye,” Ronodin said.

“Mendigo! Come here,” Kendra called, and the puppet came into the room. “Mendigo, next time, please do some gentle knocking yourself instead of letting the guest attempt to destroy the door before entering.”

Mendigo nodded.

Kendra turned and was about to say something when Ronodin squinted at her.

“Oh, right, sorry,” she said, and with a couple of deep breaths managed to dim her own light. It was an odd sensation, like walking around with her fist clenched. She would get into the habit again eventually.

Ronodin led her into another room down the little hallway of their living space, where Chinese takeout was set up for the meal.

“I’m going to take a guess and say my suave fiancé can’t cook?” she said, noticing the cartons.

“If you’re going to be rude, you don’t have to eat,” Ronodin said, pulling out her chair for her.

“Do I know how to cook?” she asked.

Ronodin shrugged, “I don’t think so, you usually had servants for that, and you lost any memory of experiences that would help you cook. We’ll just stick to take out for now.”

“You have any trouble out there?”

“If you mean your family, no,” he said. “You seemed to have pulled it off, and no one knows where you went. It won’t be long, I think, before we can find somewhere else, if that’s what you still want.”

“Yes please,” Kendra said, serving herself some friend rice. It smelled good, even if she couldn’t remember if she liked it or not, “Look, maybe its part of the fairy thing, but I can’t live in hiding forever. This place is really nice, even if it could use some color, but if you’re going to make me fall in love with you again, its not going to be here. Sorry.”

“I’m working on it, I promise,” he said, pulling her free hand into his and giving it a kiss. He pressed it to his heart, like he had done when Seth had made her touch him with the glove, and it made her blush again.

“I need that hand for eating,” she complained, lightly twitching her hand to reclaim it. It wasn’t like she was repulsed by Ronodin, but his overly physical affection got tiresome.

“You can have it back if you promise to hold your chopsticks right,” he said.

Kendra huffed, “Not all of us grew up using these. And even if I had, I lost my memory. You should be giving me a lot more breaks than you are for that.”

He simply waited, smiling, still holding her hand tightly. Kendra sighed, “Fine, show me how?”

Ronodin grinned and helped position her fingers. Kendra ordered the variety that Ronodin had brought in order from most favorite to least, and Ronodin commented on what his favorites were.

“Careful, you’re going to want the left overs,” Ronodin said, when Kendra eyed the remainder of her favorite. “I met with our host on my way back in.”

“Oh? I thought you said I arranged this myself before I came down here.”

Ronodin sighed dramatically, “Yes, and part of your ‘oh so brilliant’ arrangement was to loan your wonderful and talented fiancé out to our host for errands. I have to go out tonight. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but tomorrow night is probably the soonest we can hope for.”

“Oh,” Kendra said. Sure, he was often annoying, but he cared for her and was the only company she had besides Mendigo. “I guess I’ll explore the library some more.” She stood up to throw her dishes in the sink.

“You could do that,” he said, coming up behind her. “Or you can ask nicely for your other present.”

“I have the feeling asking nicely doesn’t actually go very far with you,” she put her hands on her hips and faced him, “And presents are meant to be given, not asked for.”

Ronodin’s arm snaked forward, pulling her into a kiss. She had a moment to flail, then he released her, and it was over. “You’re right, my favors have costs. Lucky for you, you just paid in full,” he teased.

“Ronodin!” she said, flushing and shoving him away. “Don’t do that.”

He just grinned cheekily and held a shopping bag towards her.

Kendra snatched it from his hands. “I mean it. I’ve known you two very stressful days, no kissing yet.”

Ronodin bowed his head in mock humility, “My lady, I didn’t mean to irritate you. I had to try the old fairy tale cure somehow. Alas, it appears true love’s kiss wasn’t the cure to this curse.”

She wanted to protest that of course it didn’t work, she didn’t love him. But she’d pulled that line once before to get him to back off and he always looked haunted when she did that. Haunted and sad, she didn’t have the heart to keep throwing that in his face, no matter how rude he was. This was at least as difficult for him as it was for her. And a small kiss didn’t hurt her, not really.

Instead she changed the subject by looking in the bag. “Wood blocks, books, fabric, and paint?”

“Your hobbies were another reason your family was suffocating,” Ronodin explained, “You liked carving, painting, and sewing more than dragon slaying and ‘monster’ hunting. Each of these materials comes from a magic source. The wood comes from different enchanted trees, the fabric is made from the hair of a goat the size of a house or lotus fibers, and the paints are mixed with tears and blood of various magical creatures.”

“Why is that important?”

“Because you are one of the select few beings that can craft magic items,” Ronodin said, “Part of you is that everfull wellspring of magic. You’ve done amazing at dimming it by the way, your control after just a day is astounding. But you can also recharge magical items that have run out of power, and when using the right materials, you can create new ones.”

Kendra’s eyebrows raise, “I thought…” she chased the elusive fact down, “I thought only wizards can create magical items.”

“They create it by crafting a vessel, using the same materials, and then binding their own magic into the object through an enchantment. You can skip that part, with the unlimited magic source you have at your disposal. You are more limited in what you can create, especially when starting out, you generally have to stick to reinforcing and enhancing the properties of the materials you’re using. When you do it right, the item will retain its magic long after you’ve put it down.”

“Wow,” she said, “And I could paint, sew, and carve?”

He nodded, “Enchanting items wasn’t at all in your family’s plans for you, so you tended to craft in secret. It will probably take you a while to pick up the skills again, but at least you’ll have something to occupy yourself if the library fails. The books in there provide some basic theories that will help.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling and holding the bag close. “This was really thoughtful. I know that since I gave up my memory and my family in one swoop, I don’t have a chance at getting them back. But little connections like this help me feel…a little less lost.”

“I love you, Kendra,” he said, simply, “I’ll do anything to make you happy.”

Kendra smiled back uncertainly, unable to reply in kind. He seemed disappointed when she didn’t respond, but moved on to helping her set up a crafting room.

What kind of person led the life that she did? What would it take for old Kendra to not be a stranger anymore? Ronodin was a lot of things, but he deserved so much more than to have her break his heart at every turn.