#can i get some neutrinos over here

[moistdragonfruit]

neutrino brothers because someone asked nicely

I made this after dumping a bunch of info about leptons onto my friend today skfjdkkdjd

[turning-monday-blue]

Obsession

I'm not a complicated woman, I swear.

I'm so boring.

I'm quiet. I live alone. I drink decaf. I file my taxes in January. I majored in art history.

I crochet, goddammit! I crochet cardigans, the most boring kind of sweater! And then I wear them! Like Mister Rogers, aka the plainest person to ever exist.

No one could possibly suspect how deeply weird I am.

I've been perfect. I've never left a browser history. I've never worn blue and red together. I've kept myself as trim as my mom's genes let me. No one's ever caught me watching the movie.

You know... the movie?

You know the movie.

Well, I mean, I guess it's "movies" now, but... I know which one left a violet stain on my soul.

You can't blame me.

Well... you certainly can't, anyway.

If you were me, maxed out on good karma, toeing every line you've ever met, perfectly alone in all the universe... what would you have done differently? What other choice was there?

Never mind how I got the chance. As soon as I found out about it, there was nothing else I could do. Everything I thought I knew about myself fell away. All the safe choices and good behavior just gone, poof, like they never existed. This is my fate, it was made for me.

I was always going to be the one chewing this stick of gum.

In the end, it was like they wanted me to find it.

Dodging through an unlocked door, stealing through low-lit corridors, drawn to it like the heartbeat of the universe.

It's so silly. I know it is. Some stray neutrino passed through my brain as a child, and I watched the wrong movie, and I twisted into whatever it is that I am. All I've wanted is to become something else, and that something is big, and round, and draped in the shreds of the last clothes she'll ever wear.

That last part is really important for reasons I just can't explain. All that matters is that I literally get too big for my britches. I just need to hear that little "pop". That's it.

I can never seem to imagine past that. Regardless, I'm putting the gum to my lips, completely, defiantly unaware of how this will end. It's on my tongue, and the flavor is unreal. I guess they didn't bother with the roast beef or anything. It's just violently fruity. Juicy, and warm, and way too sweet.

A door creaks open. I was so sure I wouldn't be found, but joke's on them. It's too late.

It's a mousy woman woman with huge glasses, wearing a lab coat. She peeks around the door before she enters, like she doesn't want to offend me.

"Oh-" she says.

"Um," I say around a mouthful of juice. "I-"

And then I think, hey, wait, I've made my choice. It doesn't matter how this ends! What's she going to do, save me? I'm in control here! Kind of!

"... um." I say again. Actually, it's hard to talk. I'm swallowing a lot of juice.

She steps all the way into the room.

"Uh, hi," she says, fiddling with her glasses. She looks at me, and then down at her clipboard, and then back to me. "Are you-"

"I'm not spitting it out," I say, before gulping down another burst of juice. I'm starting to feel kinda bloated.

"No, I mean. Um," she says, "sorry, I'm new here, um."

I'm tired of my mouth working so hard, so I make a show of swallowing the gum.

"Oh!" she says, "that was fast," and she makes some sort of mark on her clipboard.

What.

"Um, could you follow me this way, please?" she asks, gesturing toward another door I hadn't noticed. One of those big ones like they have on loading docks that roll upward.

"What?" I ask, reflexively.

She walks over and pushes a big red button on the wall. The door starts lifting.

"Oh, sorry, we can wait if you want," she says, "you'll fit, don't worry."

I start to have a thought, but then my stomach gurgles and I feel like I'm on an elevator going down. I clutch my sides and double over, but... it's getting hard to bend.

"Don't worry," she says again, "it just feels weird, but you'll be okay."

The thought comes back. Someone was expecting this. They're prepared for this.

I look back at the pedestal the gum was resting on. It's already been replaced with another piece.

The worst feeling in the world is thinking you're making a defiant last stand, only to find out that the hill you chose to die on was ready-made for your dramatic exit, and that you'll be asked to leave through the gift shop and pay way too much for the photos they take of you. You know, figuratively.

I have to do something they won't see coming.

I turn around and lunge for the new piece of gum. Or, at least, I try to lunge, but my thighs are filling up and it's getting difficult to move dramatically. Still, I grab it and cram it in my mouth. Might as well be a brat.

"Oh!" she chirps again, and makes another mark on her clipboard. "Wow! So-"

God, I'm feeling so full. I can feel every inch of my clothes pulling taut against my skin. I gave in to temptation and wore a blue top, blue jeans, and a red belt. I couldn't help myself. Now, that belt is starting to dig in, trying to squeeze me in half.

I swallow the new gum, too, and look down at myself. I'm getting pretty big, bulging out around the belt. My shirt is riding up, exposing my swelling blue belly to the cool air. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her make another mark.

I try to touch my growing midsection, but it's getting hard to move my arms. They're filling up too. I feel warm all over now.

"You're blowing up so fast!" she says.

She opens her mouth to say something else, and that's when my belt snaps apart. My equator surges outward, jiggling and sloshing from the violent release.

It feels so, so strange, becoming something completely alien to what you use to be.

That said, it also feels amazing. Swelling bigger and bigger with gushing blueberry juice, bursting out of- wait.

I'm still growing, but besides the belt, everything's still on.

I try to look down again, but all I can see is the blue horizon of my belly. I flap my hands in frustration.

The lady speaks up again. "Since you're likely unable to move by yourself now, may I have your permission to roll you?"

"Um," I say, trying to think. I'm freaking out a little right now. "Uh."

I need this. It's all I've ever really needed. I just need need need to blow up and burst out of my clothes, that's it, and who cares what happens to the blueberry that used to be me.

All I need is to burst one little button and I'm done. I'll have won. Good day, miss.

The problems is, I'm perfectly round now, and my jeans are so, so tight but haven't so much as snapped a stray thread.

"Miss?" she says, "may I roll you away?"

I try to think of something to say, just to stall for a little more time. I'm so close, so so close.

Instead, I break down.

"Please," I beg her, "I'm going to lose my mind if I can't pop this button."

"Hey-" she starts, but I'm in a full-on panic right now.

"I have to, I have to, I don't know if I'll ever get another chance to be a blueberry, and like what if you roll me away and I never get juiced and I'm just stuck like this forever which would be hot but still or like what if this is as big as I can get and it's just impossible like what the fuck who even makes clothes that fit spherical women I knew I should have worn the red ones-"

"-but-"

"And I know what you're thinking! She broke the rules, it doesn't matter what she wants, she's just a blueberry now, blueberries don't want things, they're not even people! She had her chance and she blew it except she couldn't even blow it-"

"Miss! Please," she snaps, and she walks over, reaches up, and pinches my lips closed.

We lock eyes, because where else can I look, and for a moment, I just cry silent blue tears down my puffy cheeks, pouting all the while.

Then she smiles, and says, "I'm a trained professional, Miss. I can help you with that." She lets go, brushes her frizzy hair out of her eyes, and disappears behind me.

I feel her warm little hands on either side of me, like she's trying to give me a weird hug. Then I feel her squeeze into me. It feels startling, she must be way stronger than she looks. The pressure builds more and more, and I can hear her making an adorable little straining noise.

Then, there's a pop, and immediately a sense of relief. I hear a little zipping noise as the fly on my jeans explodes open. I gasp at the sensation.

Finally.

I give a little shudder, releasing the tension I hadn't realized was building the whole time. How Freudian of me, I guess. The oral stage ain't got nothing on this.

"Now then," she says, appearing in front of me again, smiling wider, making yet another mark. "May I please roll you away, Miss?"

[iztarshi]

Not me coming up with a rough outline for what I'd do with a TMNT iteration. Much of this is just me throwing in all the ideas I'd like to play with and then dividing them by which ones work well together.

Season One:

Shredder and Krang trying to bring the technodrome through and take over the world. Less a new plot every week and more ongoing attempts to bring it through while the turtles and April try to figure out what he’s up to.

I think the turtles have to reveal themselves fairly early (long before the technodrome arrives at the end of the season) and there’s some wrangling back and forth with public image between Shredder and April. Shredder’s better at swaying public opinion than he is in 87, although he’s not the smooth operator Ch’rell is so much as a bombastic storyteller.

Punk frogs, maybe? Could cross over with Shredder trying to frame the turtles. They’d be convinced over the turtles’ side by the end of the season but would be interesting to have them as Shredder's team for a while.

Winter is a massive problem, the turtles have never had to stay awake during the cold weather before, so a lot of focus is on them struggling to fight crime while being cold-blooded. The farmhouse arc does happen, with Leo’s coma being as much brumation as injury since he was left outside in the cold. Might be a fun place to use box turtles being able to revive after seemingly freezing to death.

Defeating the technodrome at the end and sending it back to Dimension X.

Season Two:

After learning that Shredder and Krang can make forays into this dimension from Dimension X the turtles decide to take the battle to them before winter arrives again and go to Dimension X themselves. The war between the Federation and the Triceratons is going on here. The turtles start off in Federation territory, where they meet the Fugitoid and some pacifist Federation teenagers who call themselves the Neutrinos.

After escaping Federation Territory into Triceraton territory, the turtles learn that the Triceratons lead an alliance of reptiloid species and the turtles fit in surprisingly well in their territory. The difference between how they are treated and how the Neutrinos and the Fugitoid are treated gives the turtles a taste of being on the other side of privilege and acceptance for once.

Eventually they have to escape from the Triceratons as well and get the Fugitoid to safety.

Triceratons may attempt to invade Earth in the finale?

Season Three

Shredder and/or Bishop (because I don’t want to involve Lord Dregg) manage to turn public opinion against mutants.

Draxum, a mutant karakul ram, has created HAVOC to fight back. He's also secretly responsible for the mutation of a lot of its human-to-mutant members (the animals, which are the ones he really identifies with as a sheep himself, being mostly the result of Shredder and Krang creating mutants as distractions or to stir up anti-mutant sentiment). This is where the turtles meet Mona Lisa and maybe Mondo Gecko. They already know Leatherhead as an enemy but she (based on 87 but female because I wanted the maternal instincts as a background alligator thing) is here too.

Mostly I want to do HAVOC better than 87 did, because that's an interesting idea, but apparently the mutants had all been made against their will, knew that, and still supported Titanus?

Mona Lisa is instrumental in figuring out what Draxum is up to and joins the turtles' team afterwards. Mondo cares and will help out but remains less of a fighter.

Shredder and Krang need to be properly defeated (killed? depends how the tone of this turns out, but they’re really hard to get rid of alive) at the end and their lies revealed. Draxum’s lies, on the other hand, may be best not revealed (except to the mutants he created) if we don’t want anti-mutant sentiment to get even worse.

[gubbles-owo]

auouaoagh having the itch to do vocal arrangement stuff again, tho since i can't sing for shit also voice dysphoria i've tried a few solutions over the years. none of 'em really stuck. forever ago i uhhh """acquired""" a copy of IA for some version of Vocaloid (3 or 4?), she was neat but she also sounded kinda flat. I tried UTAU but I literally could not get a single sound out of that program, even with the default voicebank. Never figured it out despite efforts, best guess is that it didn't like my audio interface drivers. Closest thing that somewhat stuck is Neutrino, technically a neural network sort of processing (but the banks are specifically made for it, without stealing shit ffs) with a bank named Seven:

Seven sounds pretty cool, but like. Rolling Girl in its default key here is a bit high for her range. Her pitch tends to be pretty shaky, and requires exhaustive tuning and tweaking after export to wrangle her in. I'm fine with tuning, I honestly love having that much fine control, but I wish I had more control over the initial rendering. That whole process just, kind of sucks? Set up the midi with hiragana lyrics in Cubase. Export as music XML. Open it with fucking Musescore just so I can re-add the tempo information. Re-export as uncompressed musicxml. And finally slap it in a source folder and run a .bat file via command prompt to render out the vocal to a .wav. Reimport into Cubase. Fucking exhausting lmfao. And even then, sometimes the bank just sings things in a way you really were not looking for. Rendering is a frustratingly hands-off process, and it's one of the reasons I wish I could get UTAU working on my machine. I want to find a voice bank that can really belt and growl, y'know?? I wanna be able to dial that in by hand, adhd hyperfocus style.

Anyway here have some pared down mixes. Dunno if I'd call the vocal harmonies final or anything, but I like the direction this goes in. I can't really say I'm good at it, cause I don't have much experience? But I really love arranging vocal harmonies n shit. Also u can hear my sloppy bass playing (yes that's me playing the bass and guitars lol)

[rahumyk]

Can you remember side characters from tv shows? You know how some characters are forgettable? Which would you say are forgettable from tmnt, any tmnt show?

I just realized I got this question HAHA sorry for the late late reply...

Well, if we're gonna talk about the TV shows, I think the 80's animated show takes the prize at having the largest number of forgettable characters. Maybe because a good amount of the fandom didn't have the chance to grow up with that version, or maybe because the show itself was honestly kinda silly and goofy so most characters didn't get a decent continuity and were just there for a very specific reason and then bye (because apparently that was a thing that retro animated TV shows loved to do...) Like, do you legit remember who Zach was? Geez, even Timothy got more love from the fans... The Polarisoids?? Ok. That old ass alter ego of Franklin the turtle that nobody cares about nowadays. Even the Neutrinos are also pretty forgettable in my opinion. Now there are some characters that I would love to see again, like Lotus Blossom, a Kunoichi who had a thing for Leonardo. I wouldn't mind seeing a modern take on her. There's also Mira from 2012 Mutant Apocalypse; I mean, people in general forgot about those three last episodes and collectively agreed to pretend they never happened HAHAJSHA killjoys. Ue-Sama is another one that I haven't seen in any recent media, then we can talk about Dr. Chaplin, Cody Jones and his girl Starlee... and I'm surprised I even forgot about Chikara, so much that when I saw her again I thought she was an over the top OC. 🧍

I guess that's all I can say at the moment, not sure if someone else around here remembers another forgettable character. Thanks for the ask!

[my-mind-inside-out]

Yeah I did physics and astrophysics and I have stories. The semester I was taking one of the requested physics classes that had a woman as a professor. Assholes in my class complained to the director of the undergrad physics department that this professor didn't know what she was talking about. Mind you, this professor is one of the top neutrino researchers in the world. She sure as shit knew what she was talking about. So. The director of the undergrad physics department (who became one of my fave professors), said fuck you misogynists in the most professional way possible: he hired another woman to teach the other semester offering of this course to force every person who wanted to get a physics degree to have at least one course with a woman professor. And if the weak boys couldn't do that, well boo hoo you don't deserve to be in the field.

I can count on one hand the number of woman professors I had in my physics and astro courses. I counted how many other woman were in every one of my physics courses.

I also worked with planetary geologists. Geology has far less misogyny, but I still found it incredibly interesting the ratio of woman in geology courses (very high) to the ratio of geology professors (much lower). Add in the fact that getting a geology degree is inherently ableist as you have to take field geology. Good luck hiking around if you have mobility issues; good luck digging for rocks if you can't be outside for hours on end in the sun and constantly bending over. And I have no idea if there were accommodations available, bc I never saw anyone who needed accommodations in the program.

Don't get me started on some of the judgement I have felt by colleagues for simply existing as a visibily queer woman. I started a new job last year and received death glares from one colleague for my first few weeks here. (That colleague's actions are less impactful when my direct manager has put in effort for inclusion without being asked, and my place of work doing lots of DEI work. But there are still people who don't like it.)

I've seen the crossover of geology and astrophysics, that should coexist peacefully in a single department, show clear signs of favoritism for geology bc that was the first field of this department.

I've witnessed "chill" planetary geology professors treat their employees horribly. I've been on the receiving end of my boss (also a woman) hating me and creating a toxic work environment bc I am loud and opinionated and had the audacity to question her and push back and demand better treatment from her.

If you think whatever stem field you're in is better than other stem fields, look in a mirror bc you're exhibiting exactly the kind of exclusionary behavior being talked about.

And same with op, I decided while still in undergrad that I didn't want to be in academia. Not just bc of personalities, but bc academia doesn't allow you to live a life for yourself. Academia is incredibly brutal on the self and mental health and overall well being. I didn't want to be constantly writing papers, applying for grants, dealing with the politics of being in a university. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sign my life over to being dedicated to constantly writing and researching at all hours of the day. So I decided I would just help facilitate those who are doing research. And doing so allows me to go home and not have to think about work outside of the office. It's great. I'm so glad I'm not in academia.

Also the majority of STEM majors are just spiritually bankrupt and think they have all the answers because they know math and let me tell you as a former astrophysicist. That shit sucks your soul out having to interact with people like that every day

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s 6 Apr 2023. The understanding that a + form commutes with a 4square is having dramatic effects even though it’s one of the foundations of this construction. Construction of grid squares, therefore finite, therefore mechanically exchanges Bip to 4square as Bip to 1square, meaning gs(n) to gs(m) as well. This means exactly what we’ve seen in our heads for decades, that flashing light display, like traffic lights if you look not just at the signal directly in front of you but rather at how they exchange around the intersection, where exchange means a Counter, and thus an Observer, so this literally becomes the Bip in one layer inverting to the 1square of the other.

And that, as well, is a foundational image: the tiresomely repeated in drawings image of a grid square on one side shrinking to a point and inverting over that point to a another grid square. Pushing those together makes the pure inversion. This is pulled apart as a shift along the Observer so the Bips form a Bip to a grid box. I am stubbornly refusing to adopt grid cube because it isn’t just a cube, and grid cubic is confusing. This grid box space forms a cubic and thus an elliptic curve (and integral), which is a shared form because the a(x) term is one Irreducible variable to the other fixed, so it flips and that flipping constructs that gs space. It may help to think of the cube as having full I//I freedom of association, while the next part is a square reduced to 1 Irreducible: I//I is constrained to variable and fixed, which means each Irreducible can be either, with the other fixed. That specifies a space in which the line of gs last term exists. It becomes like a pointer within the gs space created by all this process.

Never believed I’d become so fluent in this material. It took a lot to convince me.

So, shift along the O-line brings the Counter together so the inversion can spin around that shared End. This enables a shared perspective, which describes an fD in Triangular, meaning flat projection again, and thus grid squares construct when the midpoint line draws between the 3rd Ends, that midpoint line is the other Irreducible and that shows how the O-line is constructed out of the flipping of these.

The image gets very spinny, as you know. But it’s hard to type while spinning.

The key words are ‘grid squares construct’, because it’s never just a grid square. It can’t be because there are 3 choices at the first Triangular level of a bT. If you go one step beyond that, you’re connecting fD, which means attaching 6 more bT. So that single step gives us up to 10. That of course unveils a primal 13, because the ‘missing’ 3 bT fill out the image of 3Hexagons. Those 3Hex attach at those 3bT to fD which complete the enclosing Triangular of 16bT, which literally inverst to an image of CM16 when the ‘tilted gs’ of that Triangular sheet ‘straighten’ by treating each gs sheet as being a constructed overlap of the 2 Irreducible Triangular sheets. It’s fun to spell that out.

Is that too subtle? Should I say spelling is fun? I just did.

The process above constructs Observer lines of the overlay of the other Irreducible. So, that CM16 is counted as szK4 even though in regular squares that is 4root2. So for that to construct, it must fit into larger constructions, like CM64, which link together CM16’s.

This is why the Informational Limit exists. I didn’t expect to go here now, but we have clearly been doing some physics thinking the last few days, and what the IL means is that there’s a gs process form in which a tObject exists without rest mass. Another form would be a rest mass which flickers in and out of existence, which means statistically observable or catchable, which means a lot must exist, so that gs form also travels at the IL. That describes the neutrino.

I’m thinking another form would be that which expresses the positive and negative, meaning both charge and existence in a gs space. I’m trying to say the form would have a positive and a negative inherent state, and these would be capable of self-interaction because they exist essentially ‘next’ to this.

These are all Counter forms. The first is Counter at ideal to Counter at adjusted ideal, which is the IL. The second is Counter at existence within the IL, as in so many and only a few pop into countable existence. Explains we can be bathed in neutrinos but not catch them without great difficulty. The third form is an object which exists in shared reality. Is SR for Shared Reality a decent choice of notation? Let’s try that. We’ve defined SR as a field of Things, and those Things have tObjects inside their Thing cloud, and we’ve created the space between objects in that D3-4//4-3 construction which we’re labeling Shared Reality. It also maps to R^3 but then it maps to a lot, and most obviously perhaps to complex numbers and higher orders like to the 4th. You can see how the idea of Recombinance appears when you add the 4th to D3. It’s startling how much room, how many rooms, adding a 1 creates. That is Attachment Theory: Recombinance is asssociative with an Attachment, and how that works, the mechanics of Attachment - hey MA! - express through LayerView, fCM, SBE, etc.

I just realized this stuff is connecting itself and I’m kind of just typing it out for it. Your humble scribe, said with appropriate accent.

We just constructed forms of what becomes matter using basic Triangular and grid squares. Much of this comes as a real surprise. I had no idea this organizational form was there to be seen. Until I could see it. Now it’s obvious, right? You really can’t deny any longer that this is true.

I think two pieces just fit. One is that I saw an article about how the proton mass is smaller than the proton’s charge cloud. Yeah, that’s what it should be because it’s a Thing. That connects back to the identification of gluons and quarks as representing states within the I//I process which constructs massy stuff like protons. I don’t know how to argue that isn’t true. The explanation fits all too well.

There is nothing like the smell of fresh cat poop in the morning. Does not smell like victory.

The other is that image of a grid square with lines extending, meaning it isn’t just a grid square but part of a sheet of grid squares. That is how eternity works: the links, the potential connections are encoded, so each Pathway which contains gs potential is explored. This process occurs for all, but one generates a positive and the other a negative, meaning the threads accumulate to you, like the way you’ll be remembered or the way you’ve had impacts, which is a less to un-conscious form of memory. It becomes the shift on a 1-0Segment where one End is good outcomes and the other is bad, where one End accumulates labels for forms of heaven, and the other is Hell.

In every case, the mechanism is counting pattern. And that’s why you see things like sheep bred so they can’t live on their own because their wool will weigh them down, cover their eyes, etc. That’s part of the belief that if we were, say, to free animals, then we need to develop them to survive better by undoing those choices over time. We’ve altered these animals to fit our needs. Humans do not see their obligations.

I keep seeing a point or End expand into a grid square because, and this is cool, each layer, meaning each scale, generates sheets of grid squares, so what happens is a shift on the O-line which constructs over that gap between states. If not for I//I, nothing could ever happen because the experience of reality would be flat. There would be D3 without D4, no threads of D3 existing within D4.

This is also front&back, my old favorite, the f&b: the simplified construction of a grid squares sheet with a front and a back, and thus a gs Between. This becomes a point at either End to which a gs sheet attaches. In other words, imagine a space, like a diamond or a sphere (like a 2-sphere, because that fits the various defined calculation needs), and tangent to that a grid squares sheet. At each End, so the simplified version becomes shapes, like a sphere, which is that connecting gs in its Coordinate Rotation with an infinite axis or axial points at infinity. We have thus put space between these gs sheets.

What I particularly love about f&b is that it’s a way of looking at the Counter as a boundary in which perspective exists. As in, you are at the center of a Thing called you, and you perceive what comes at you as emanating from this boundary because that is where your perceptions resolve into forms which convey meaning to you. This meaning can be entirely physical, like getting wet in the rain or from exertion. And of course perception does not mean conscious or conscious to any particular depth. Or as I like to think of it: stop blaming others for what you believe they’ve done to you, and focus instead on how you internalize what you perceive. That is literally the image of the inversion process pictured above in which you can magnify or reduce the scales of what affects you.

I think I’m out of steam for now. Need to eat something. Been a good hour and a half.

—————

[sciencespies]

The 50-year quest to find the particle that almost broke physics

https://sciencespies.com/physics/the-50-year-quest-to-find-the-particle-that-almost-broke-physics/

The 50-year quest to find the particle that almost broke physics

By Suzie Sheehy

Wolfgang Pauli postulated a particle that he believed couldn’t be detected

Shutterstock/Unwind

The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or two to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the universe. You can sign up for Lost in Space-Time for free here.

Physicists have an impressive track record of world-changing discoveries: from the serendipitous discovery of X-rays in 1895, which transformed medicine, to experiments in the 1920s that verified quantum mechanics and enabled modern computing, to the indirect spin-offs from enormous particle collider experiments, including the World Wide Web. Of course, physics breakthroughs aren’t always useful in the real world. And if there is one discovery that epitomises the idea of curiosity-driven research with no eye on practical applications at all, it is the 50-year-long quest to find the neutrino.

This story began with a mystery involving a type of radioactivity known as beta decay. In the early 1900s, physicists using rudimentary detectors and dangerous vials of radioactive substances found that beta decay appeared to violate momentum conservation. This was extremely concerning. Momentum conservation is one of the most tightly held laws of physics, which states that the total amount of momentum in a system is constant. In an atom undergoing beta decay there is at first one object, the atom. Afterwards, there are two objects, the atom and the “beta particle” (i.e., an electron). The law of conservation of momentum dictates that the kinetic energy carried away by the projectiles in a simple two-body system like this should take a predictable, unique value. The two other types of radiation known at the time, alpha and gamma radiation, obeyed this law nicely, but in beta radiation the energies seemed random and unpredictable. Try as they might, anyone who did such an experiment couldn’t get the data to come out any other way.

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Every physicist had a different opinion on what was going on. Some, like Niels Bohr, contemplated throwing out the idea of momentum conservation, or at least sneaking around it by proposing that on the tiny scales inside atoms, energy might only be conserved on average, not in every single decay. One theorist in particular, Wolfgang Pauli, was unable to set the mystery aside. Pauli was well known for his critical and rational approach, which led to his nickname “the scourge of God”. He wasn’t happy with the suggestion of physicist Peter Debye, who told him at a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, to simply not think about beta decay at all. Pauli was determined to save momentum conservation and managed to come up with a theoretical solution, but to his horror it made the situation even worse. “I have done a terrible thing,” he said. “I have postulated a particle which cannot be detected.”

That particle was the neutrino, which Pauli first presented to other physicists in a letter in 1930. Perhaps, he suggested, a tiny electrically neutral particle was carrying away the energy? He felt it was so preposterous that he told his addressees he “dare not publish anything” about it. The problem was that Pauli predicted these particles have no mass and no electric charge, making it virtually impossible for them to show up in an experiment.

By 1933 Enrico Fermi had dubbed the new particle the neutrino or “little neutral one” and submitted a fully-fledged theory to the journal Nature. It was rejected on the basis that it “contained speculations too remote from reality to be of interest to the reader”. A year later in Manchester, UK, Rudolf Peierls and Hans Bethe calculated that the neutrinos created in beta decay could pass through the entire earth without any interactions with matter. In fact, they could do the same through quantities of lead so thick it would be measured in light years. The neutrino might have solved the beta decay problem in theory, but what use is a particle if it is impossible to detect so it can’t be verified? For years, it was more or less ignored by experimentalists.

The problem sat that way for two decades. Finally, in the 1950s, Fred Reines at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico decided to go after the elusive neutrino. He found a willing collaborator in colleague Clyde Cowan, a chemical engineer and former captain in the US Air Force. Where Reines was a sparkling extrovert, Cowan was more measured, less outgoing, but a brilliant experimentalist. They launched their project in 1951, the core team of five gathering in a stairwell around a cardboard sign with a hand-drawn logo of a staring eye and the words “Project Poltergeist”. Behind the sign, one of them was inexplicably holding a large broom in the air. They look in good spirits, as they’d need to be: their proposed experiment involved building an enormous tank, filling it with extremely well-filtered and prepared liquids, surrounding it in delicate electronics and hoping that they’d be able to catch a particle that was nigh-on invisible.

After initial shoestring budget experiments gave tantalising but inconclusive results, they realised they would have to move their experiment underground to avoid the effects of cosmic rays, preferably underneath a nuclear reactor – which would produce the neutrinos for the experiment. They found a basement area over at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the owner let the physicists set up their experiment 12 metres beneath it. By late 1955, Project Poltergeist was formally known as the Savannah River Neutrino Experiment. The set-up had grown to a three-layered sandwich of scintillating liquid and detectors, its rectangular tanks weighing in at a whopping 10 tonnes. The detector sat beneath the reactor, shrouded in layers of wax and concrete shielding, while electronic cables carried signals to a trailer outside.

The Savannah river experiment lasted for about five months. Once all the chemistry and electronics were worked out, it all came down simply to the careful collection of data, flash by flash. The researchers were filled with hope each time they saw, just once or twice each hour, the characteristic signal of two flashes 5 microseconds apart, which whispered neutrino. Their eureka moment came not as a rush, but in a gradual accumulation of data until there was no doubt left. When all was added up, there were five times as many neutrino signals when the reactor was on compared with when it was off. From the 100 trillion (1014) neutrinos that the reactor emitted each second, they had managed, against the odds, to design a system that could catch a few each hour and measure their interactions.

Twenty-five years after Pauli predicted a particle that could not be detected, Reines and Cowan and their team had achieved the impossible. “We are happy to inform you that we have definitely detected neutrinos”, they wrote in a telegram to Pauli, who interrupted the meeting he was attending at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland to read it out loud and deliver an impromptu mini lecture. Legend has it Pauli later polished off an entire case of champagne with his friends, which might explain why his reply telegram never made it to Reines and Cowan. It read “Everything comes to him who knows how to wait”.

In comparison to a zippy electron that interacts with matter via the electromagnetic force, or a neutron that interacts with atomic nuclei via the strong nuclear force, the chargeless and almost massless neutrino is like a barely perceptible puff of a particle that interacts with almost nothing. Unlike many other physics breakthroughs, we have no direct use for neutrinos in our daily lives. Yet many discoveries in physics were premature compared with the technologies of their day: the electron didn’t seem useful at first and its discovery wasn’t aimed at telecommunications and computing. Particle accelerators weren’t invented to produce medical isotopes or to treat cancer. No one was eagerly awaiting these developments except the physicists who made them, and even then the discoveries weren’t always intentional. While it’s likely that neutrinos will never be as directly useful as electrons, the knowledge we have gleaned from them is important and – incredibly – there are a few possible applications in the pipeline.

The first uses for neutrinos were for physics researchers. Later experiments confirmed that there are many sources of neutrinos out there in the universe, including our sun. In 1987, neutrino bursts from a supernova were detected by multiple experiments, giving rise to a new field of neutrino astronomy. Confirming our understanding of how neutrinos form in the sun also helped solidify our knowledge of nuclear physics, required for fusion reactors, which may provide abundant electrical energy on Earth in future. They may also one day help us in designing particle accelerators: beyond our galaxy, extremely high-energy particles are created out in space and it is highly likely that neutrinos will one day be the messengers that teach us how those cosmic particle accelerators work, perhaps giving us a mechanism to copy in our laboratories here on Earth.

In the Boulby mine in the north of England, a UK-US collaboration is currently building a new experiment called WATCHMAN (Water Cherenkov Monitor for Antineutrinos). This project will use a neutrino detector to monitor nuclear fission reactors remotely. The project could provide a unique contribution to global security by creating a reliable way of checking whether reactors are compliant with non-proliferation treaties. Because neutrinos are so hard to stop, there is simply no way of hiding an operating nuclear reactor from a detector like this.

Further in the future, there may be direct applications of neutrinos and the knowledge we have about them. Because of their ability to cover vast cosmic distances at almost the speed of light without hindrance, neutrinos could even one day become a kind of cosmic messaging

system. If there are any advanced civilisations out there living on one of the thousands of exoplanets that we have discovered, neutrinos might well be the way they communicate with each other. In 2012, a neutrino experiment called MINERvA (Main Injector Neutrino ExpeRiment to study v-A interactions) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois tried this out. The researchers encoded a beam of neutrinos with a message, sent it through half a mile of rock to a detector and successfully decoded it again. This could also be useful on Earth, for submarines trying to communicate through water, for instance, where radio waves get distorted by obstacles. With neutrinos they could communicate not just through water but also straight through the centre of the earth in a direct line.

It’s fair to say that neutrinos are not quite ready to use yet, and perhaps they never will be. We cannot predict the future, but what we can say about neutrinos is that the outcome of our quest to understand them has contributed to our lives in indirect, but profound, ways. One of the key neutrino experiments, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is located in a deep underground laboratory in Canada, which has now been expanded and renamed SNOLAB. When they say deep underground they really mean it: at 2100 metres below ground, the laboratory is located twenty times deeper than the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The air pressure increases by 20 per cent as you take the 6-minute journey down in the lift, which feels a little like descending in an aeroplane while surrounded by rock.

The underground lab is not just host to particle physicists. Its creation opened up possibilities in many other areas of science. Being so deep in the earth, it is a unique environment because the laboratory has an incredibly low level of background radiation from cosmic rays. The existence of a stable, clean underground facility with such low radiation levels has enabled a broad research programme looking at the impact of low radiation levels on cells and organisms. No land-dwelling animals have ever lived – or for that matter evolved – without exposure to background radiation from cosmic rays, so these experiments are helping biologists understand what the impact is when you remove this radiation.

This is important because it may answer the question of whether radiation is always bad for cells and organisms, whether it always causes damage, or if there is some threshold level of radiation which is harmless or possibly even beneficial to life. It could tell us more about whether evolution is influenced by the random mutations caused by radiation. So far, the results seem to indicate that life actually needs a low level of radiation. If further experiments validate this, it has enormous implications not just for humans and our interactions with radiation, but also for our understanding of the existence of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Without deep underground labs, we simply couldn’t do this research.

SNOLAB also happens to be one of the best places on (or in?) Earth to run experiments on quantum computers. There is emerging evidence that the decoherence time – that is, the time for which a quantum bit can store information before it loses it – may be limited by natural background radiation on the surface of the earth. In the future, it may be necessary to run quantum computers underground. For now, at least, these laboratories provide a rare space for this development work.

The neutrino has been called a ghost, a messenger, a spaceship, a wisp of nothing. It started life as an apology to save a basic law of physics and over time it led to enormous payoffs in astronomy, cosmology, geology and our most fundamental understanding of matter. What’s more, neutrinos have raised countless questions as we’ve learned more about them: we still don’t know why neutrinos have a tiny mass, instead of none.

The neutrino, small as it is, turns out to be a billion times more abundant in the universe than the matter that makes up stars, galaxies and us. It has driven experimenters and theorists alike to ever greater heights, or technically depths, to unravel its secrets. Ironically, in saving one basic law of physics, the neutrino is now one of the richest sources of knowledge gaps in physics. It affirms that there is so much about our universe that we are yet to discover.

Suzie Sheehy’s book, The Matter of Everything: Twelve experiments that changed our world, is available now in the UK and Australia, and in the US and Canada from 10 January 2023.

More on these topics:

#Physics

[literallymechanical]

Annihilation Products

The Western Schism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw three simultaneous claimants to the papacy — one each in Rome, Pisa, and Avignon. The crisis ended with the Avignon and Pisa popes being declared “antipopes,” and a new pontifex being elected in the Vatican. While the political fallout of the schism was settled long ago, we’re still feeling the radioactive effects in the 21st century.

To this day, the Avignon-Vatican-Pisa triangle has high levels of ambient pope-antipope collisions, which enclaves like Monaco have long utilized for profit – the tax breaks aren’t the only reason that a full third of the residents are millionaires. Radiation levels deeper within the AVP zone are sometimes high enough to be temporally dangerous when concentrated, but Monaco is close enough to the edge that they’re willing to take their particular risk.

As one could imagine, research into performing artificial pope-antipope particle annihilation has been going on for decades, with little success. Very small amounts of isolated antipope radiation can be created in controlled laboratory settings, but measurements are extremely difficult. There simply isn't much for antipope particles to interact with outside the AVP zone, and the synthesis is too delicate to work in a high-papal environment. However, the CERN Neutrinos To Gran Sasso experiment provided a path forward.

CNGS was a linear neutrino accelerator at CERN pointed at the Gran Sasso laboratory, just to the east of Rome. The neutrino beam passed straight through hundreds of kilometers of the earth's crust and arrived precisely at the detector target. While the data on neutrinos were certainly of great value to science, the long-distance beamline construction technology was the more economically fruitful development.

We believe that two similar beamline tunnels are currently being dug at CERN for long-range antipope radiation delivery. One is aligned with the Grail facility at Glastonbury Tor, and the other points towards the collection of True Cross fragments in Brussels. With these beams, small amounts of artificial antipope radiation can be effectively shot through solid Earth, even towards targets that are too Catholic to support antipope generators. While the emanations from antepetrine relics are not identical to papal radiation, CERN seems confident that they’ll be at least partially reactive. Though it is worth noting that so far, there is no evidence of a beamline for the Holy Lance at Kurchatov.

It isn’t quite that simple, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. Glastonbury is an isolated facility, and the UK hasn’t had much need for the Grail since the succession debacle. Dousing a bit of English countryside in radiation would be well worth the cost, economically speaking. However, we’re pretty sure the True Cross collection is still being used to power the black articles of the Maastricht Treaty. Not to mention that it’s literally buried underneath the EU Parliament.

I’m sure CERN has done their calculations well. They’re the world experts on theoparticle physics. But from everything my team has discovered, the risk to Belgium is not insubstantial. Probably nothing immanent, but it’s still a concern. Monaco already suffers an extremely high damnation rate — even by the standards of the ultra-wealthy — and they’re only irradiating a few saintly relics.

We can draw a couple of tentative conclusions here. First, Russia really is just as much in the dark as we are, they’re not bluffing. If they knew how to monetize the Lance, they would have done it already. Second, we finally have an explanation for why the UK tripled its contribution to CERN this year. And third… well, it’s been over a decade since Brexit, and they’re still taking every opportunity to talk about how badly they were, ah, “mistreated” by the EU. This is just speculation, of course, but I wonder if they’ve finally decided to get some biblical-style payback.

Again, that's speculation! But if I’m right, the Salt Lake project becomes all the more urgent. We had some resounding successes in synthetic relic bootstrapping this summer, and we’re ready to begin fabrication and assembly of a prototype golden plate. With full funding, I believe we can get one into the hands of Brigham Young archeologists within the next six years.

[astermacguffin]

What if the Mark of Cain manifests differently when it's imprisoning God and not the Darkness? If the Darkness makes the Mark bearer go insane with unbridled want for destruction, then what does sealing God make you do?

An obsessive desire for creation? Creation to the point of corruption? (Think of the Shimmer from the film Annihilation. Continuous reproduction to the point of begetting alien, cancer-like entities. A refracted, distorted notion of creation.)

Okay, so canon divergence from The Trap. They successfully seal away Chuck, then Castiel bears the Mark. (Jack won't be back until later episodes, so he's not here yet.)

At first, they think he's fine. Cas says he's not feeling any bloodlust just yet. (He does feel a certain itch under his skin. Not a desire to murder, but a desire to do...something. He doesn't tell this to anyone.)

His grace is getting stronger, almost archangel-like (if not more). It's incredibly helpful for hunts, and Cas is happy to feel his wings healthy again after a long time. Sam is happy for him, but Dean is suspicious of things (especially since he's a previous Mark bearer).

After a while, Cas starts feeling...burdened, almost bloated by grace. (After all, he does have access to an infinite supply of it.) He needs to have an outlet for it.

Cas tells them so and Sam suggests healing people. Dean gives the green light on the condition that he remains invisible and he doesn't go Godstiel on them again.

It's a great outlet, and for the first few weeks they start feeling normal again. But unfortunately, healing stops being enough to relieve Cas of his excess grace anymore. The mass healings start to pile up all across the globe and it catches everyone's attention. Some think it's a blessed miracle, some think it's a sign of the end times. They make him slow down on the healings after that.

Without an outlet, however, Cas starts feeling antsy and pained. They brainstorm on possible alternatives. Cas suggests going to Heaven and saving it from collapse by healing his brethren's wings and creating more angels out of consenting souls in Heaven.

He explains Heaven's endangered and dwindling numbers. Sam agrees that it would hit two birds in one stone: relieve Cas from excess grace and prevent the extinction of angels. Dean doesn't like the idea of more winged dicks so he shoots down the idea. Eileen says that since Cas is the one in pain, he should be the one to decide.

Ultimately, Cas defers to Dean's judgment (as always). Sam protests, arguing that he can't just shoulder that pain. Cas replies: "I've suffered worse, Sam."

Cas doesn't complain about the pain for about a week, so for a while, everyone believes him when he said he can shoulder the pain. One day, Dean finds him outside the bunker, groaning in pain as he bleeds himself out, his grace pouring into the ground and sprouting plants. Dean sees this and is finally convinced to allow Cas to make more angels.

What follows then is a series of escalating events:

While Sam and Eileen are practicing their witchcraft for spell they need in a hunt, Cas suggests to enhance Sam's physical and magical abilities using his grace. "It will make the process faster and safer," he reasons. He agrees, but Dean eyes this suspiciously.

During one of their hunts, they encounter a young and freshly-turned vampire. The boy begs them not to kill him, and Cas gives him a proposal. "Promise not to feed on humans ever again and I shall cure you of your hungers and your pains. Pledge your allegiance to me and you shall never be afraid of yourself ever again." The boy agrees, and before Dean could even protest, Cas slices his palm and feeds the vampire his grace.

They argue about the grace-feeding in the Impala. Dean notices Sam's pointed lack of complaints and figures it out. "You're in on this, aren't you? How long has Cas been doing this? He's going Michael behind our backs and you're letting him?"

Sam argues that it's different because Cas isn't making super monsters; he's making them less "monstrous" (whatever that means). Sam's obsession with his own "purity" is key to understanding him here.

One time, Dean catches Cas in his "garden" ("forest" seems more apt with how lush the greens already are) creating butterflies and bees out of thin air using his grace alone.

Reports of the miraculously healed people suddenly gaining new abilities like increased strength, heightened senses, and prophecy start popping up. Some are experiencing phantom limbs, talking about their sprouting "wings."

Sam is becoming addicted to Cas' grace to the point that he willingly lets himself be hurt in hunts just so Cas can cure him. Dean confronts him about this, but Sam just argues that he's "never felt this pure before." Eileenn shares the same concern as Dean.

Hunts are becoming less frequent the more monsters are being "cleansed" by Cas. The world is becoming disconcertingly quiet.

Cas' "garden" is starting to emit this strange aura. The plants and creatures growing inside it are starting to look more...alien.

One of the original angels goes to Dean and tells him of Heaven's affairs. The Host is stable again, but the angels he created are...not exactly angels. They're graced up and they sustain Heaven, but their true forms are "horrifying and incomprehensible, even to an angel." The angel adds that more than 60% of Earth's creatures have already been touched by Cas' grace.

The final nail in the coffin is when Dean catches Cas in the garden fiddling with his angel blade. It's emitting a strange glow, vibrating a subtle hum and looking as if it's liquid, flowing and distorting here and there.

Dean asks him what he's holding. "Oh, this?" Cas responds. "This is the Last Blade. Last, not in terms of time but in concept, for no other blade shall ever compare to it. The spark of creation. Fiat lux."

Dean's heart sinks. Of course. The First and the Last, Alpha and Omega. "Cas...the Mark, I think i-it's scrambling your brain, man."

"I know," he replies, eyes wet and apologetic. It's a small moment of lucidity amidst weeks and months of...whatever that was.

"Okay, okay, so you're still you, that's... that's good. Okay." Dean doesn't know how to approach this. Give him a fight and he'll know what to do, but this? Watching his best friend, the love of his life, be distorted into something incomprehensible? Yeah, this is totally beyond him.

"You know, I used to hate Chuck," Cas says. "How could the Father of All Creation be this angry, petulant child? But," he continues, "knowing what I know now, it's either regressing into a petty child or being reduced to insanity."

"Cas...what are you talking about, man?"

"No mind should bear this burden, Dean. No matter how infinite they are," he says, voice trembling in exhaustion.

(more below the cut)

He continues. "The awareness of everything is the awareness of nothing at all. Imagine perceiving every possible piece of information about the world all at once. Seeing light in all its forms all at once: ultraviolet, infrared, etc. Sensing all the neutrinos zip by, sensing gravitational waves, sensing the slighest bit of seismic activity."

Dean doesn't know how to respond, so he lets him go on.

"Knowledge can only ever be a slice of the Totality of Truth. Truth is absolute chaos, and Knowledge is the partial ordering of this chaos. One can sanely approach Truth only through organized paritions of Totality. Why do you think Chuck is so obsessed with stories? Stories are linear and finite; they're sensible snippets of the endless sea of possible worlds."

"So, what? Are you trying to—"

"I'm not trying to justify Chuck's actions, Dean," he interrupts. "I just want to contextualize them. Chuck's simplistic and repetitive narratives are what they are: manifestations of a chaotic Totality, gone insane trying to understand itself. Looking for simple things to hold on to."

Cas takes a deep breath. He speaks with a shaky voice. "I'm barely holding myself together, Dean. I can feel the universe beneath my skin."

He doesn't know what possesses him to ask, but he does it anyway. "What are you holding on to?"

Cas smiles at that. "You."

They stare at each other for a while, frozen where they stand. Cas, with unrestrained affection in his face. Dean, struck by shock and indecision. It's Cas who first breaks the silence.

"I think we both know what needs to be done, while I'm still lucid enough." Cas slices his palm and lets his blood drip down the soil. He then thrusts the Last Blade into the ground, lifting it when the soil glows.

Dean stared in awe as the ground erupts and a familiar shape rises from the hollow. "Is that.."

"The Ma'Lak box, yes. I also enhanced it with the Blade to be able to house things as powerful as me."

"Cas, wait, maybe we can think of another way to—"

"Dean," he says, calmly. "You know there's no other way. I wouldn't ask this of you if there was."

In any other scenario, Dean would've kept arguing, but even he knows that they're running out of time. Sam's grace addiction is getting worse and all the creatures touched by Cas' grace are slowly mutating into eldritch horrors. Dean offers a shaky nod. "Okay."

Tension visibly releases from Cas' body. "Thank you, Dean." He opens the box and enters it with ease. "When you lock this, bury me with the garden's graced soil. Once I'm under, my influence over the world should dampen."

Dean gives a wordless nod. For a while, they just stared at each other, Cas lying down and Dean trying to memorize every inch of his face while he can.

Cas presses his hand into Dean's left shoulder where his mark used to dwell. "My untainted grace," he whisper gently. "Some of it is still inside you. That's probably why you're not as affected by me."

Dean wants to say, I'll always be affected by you, but he holds himself back.

He takes his hand back, a bloody handprint now on Dean's jacket. "I love you, Dean," he says, breathless.

"Cas..."

"I probably would've built up to that if we had more time but," he makes a surprised laugh, "I am, as you would say, already 'losing my marbles', so."

The air quotes would've been funny and endearing in any other scenario, but it just makes Dean's vision blur up with tears.

"Thank you for everything, Dean. I know we've done nothing but repeatedly hurt each other these past few years, but I don't want to spend a deathless eternity with that as my memory of you. I forgive you, even for the things you haven't forgiven yourself for yet. And I'm sorry for everything, especially for ending things like this."

He should probably wipe away his tears to clear his vision, but Dean can do nothing but stare at Cas in awe, in fear, in grief, in reverence. They're both fully crying now.

"Goodbye, Dean."

"Wait, Cas."

Cas looks at him, waiting.

"Can you...can you say it again?"

He doesn't need to clarify what 'it' means. They both know.

With one last mournful smile, Cas says: "I love you, Dean."

And with that, Dean finally gathers all the strength he needs to shut the lid and lock the box. He stares at it for a while, unblinking. He forgot to ask, Can you hear my prayers down there? But it's too late now to ask.

The box automatically lowers itself into the hole it arose from. Now all that's left to do is to cover it again with soil.

Dean doesn't bother with a shovel. He gently buries the box with his hands deep in the soil, some of it getting trapped under his nails. He continues the mindless task, whispering a tireless series of I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I hope you're okay I'm sorry, over and over between his quiet sobs. Cas is quiet inside the box. No screaming or crying. Dean doesn't know if that's better or worse.

When the final clump of soil is pressed into the mound, he suddenly feels it: a visceral shift that echoes throughout the world. The alien glimmer of the garden dims, and the world corrects its axis. Dean screams his agony into the air.

That's how Sam finds him: sprawled over a mound of soil, crying his heart out. Dean doesn't need to say anything: he knows what happened. He pulls his brother off the ground and brings him inside the bunker.

For the first two weeks, Dean cycles through drinking and passing out in various places in the bunker. If he's not wearing the jacket, he's holding it with close to him. Sam gives him a considerable space to grieve while he monitors the world grace problem with Eileen. The grace mutations have significantly dropped since then and everyone's going back to normal.

Unfortunately, that means monsters are getting hungry again. Sam doesn't want to leave his brother alone after going nonverbal with grief and dysfunctional due to alcohol. Eileen assures him that she can handle hunts on their own and that the hunter network that they're building will lessen the workload.

Sam's attempts to sober Dean up finally work, mostly due to the latter having very little strength to protest. Dean remains sober an entire day for the first time in weeks, and all he can think about is: I haven't prayed to Cas in a while. The longing might have reached him, but never a coherent prayer.

The first time he goes out of the bunker in a while, he heads straight to Cas' garden. Sam's glad that he's finally going out because "the sun is good for you" or something, but he's really only here for Cas. He kneels in front of the burial mound (where a patch of an unknown species of flowers is already growing).

The first prayer he says to him in a while is: I love you, Cas. I should've said it while you were still here. Not saying it out loud and just strongly thinking about the words somehow bolsters him to get the words through.

He's crying again, and he knows he's losing coherency. In his mind, he's explaining about his hangups and his regrets and his continuous denial of his own joy, but one constant remains: he's beaming all his love and affection into this prayer.

He's halfway through explaining all the traits that he finds endearing in Cas when suddenly, he feels it like a snap. If the glimmer dimmed when he buried Cas, now it's as if it was never there in the first place. With an unsettling amount of certainty, Dean just knows that Cas is gone. For real, this time.

"C-cas...?" It's the first thing he's said in a while and it sounds rough in his long unused voice.

"CAS! CAS!!! " He's now screaming, ripping away the flowerbed with his bare hands and scratching the soil away. Tears are obstructing his vision, but he has no time to wipe them away. He needs to make sure that is really gone. His hands are bleeding and he doesn't give a damn.

Eventually, Sam comes running towards him. "Dean! Dean, stop!"

He tries to hold his brother back, but Dean just keeps on clawing away soil. "Sammy, Sammy he's gone, he's not there anymore, Sammy I have to see, please, let me see Cas again, I need—" he breaks into sobs again, and like a puppet with its strings cut off, he slumps into Sam.

"Dean, it's okay, it's okay..." he says softly to his shaking brother.

Eventually, when Dean calms down, he looks at the carnage he's done and starts sobbing again. The flowers, his last evidence of Cas being here, are all destroyed. Now Cas truly is gone.

. . .

When Cas first heard Dean's confession prayer, he was overcome with joy. When he realized what that means, however, his stomach suddenly sinks.

He hears before he sees the Empty arrive, slithering like black goo.

"Wow, were you excited enough for eternal slumber that you wanted a preview?" The Shadow teases in Meg's voice.

At first, he was dreading the Empty, but now that he thinks of it, it's actually the perfect prison for him: a vast, endless nothingness for him to fill with his creations.

And if Jack wasn't in Heaven, that only means that he's in the Empty, and he can't wait to see his son again. Even when blinded by the madness of the universe, he can never forget the joy of being a father.

"Yes," he replies, "I'm actually glad you're here now."

. . .

Somewhere around the globe, Billie drops Jack back.

"Don't worry, kid. You'l reunite with your father very soon."

(to be continued)

[dajaregambler]

HeliosR - Victor Valentine Card story ‘‘Marion and "Neighbor"’’

Translation of Victor Valentine's 2nd anniversary card story from ‘Helios Rising Heroes’.

Victor: ---This substance possesses a characteristic fairly similar to particles known as neutrino.  

Victor: We’ll be going slightly off topic, however to make today’s lecture more significant, I shall provide a more in depth explanation.

Victor: These neutrino particles hardly contain any mass, making it possible for it to go through any kind of matter--

Marion: …….

-

Victor: Pardon me, Nova

Marion: ……

Victor: Oh my, Marion. You’ve come here too.

Marion: What do you want

Victor: I have some business with Nova-

Nova: Yooo, Vic. Summerfieldtastic job with the lecture~☆

Nova: You came to fetch a device to use in the next lecture, yeah? I left it here for you~

Victor: Thank you very much, being quick on the uptake is much appreciated.

Nova: I knew you'd also show up soon since Marion came here earlier~

Nova: Marion, sorry for the wait… Wait, did you already prepare the tea?

Marion: It’s nothing more than what I usually do.

Nova: Fufu, thanks~ Then let’s start our little tea time.

Nova: How about joining us, Vic? It’s not like you’re in a hurry, so we can take it easy

Victor: That’s true. There’s still some time until the next arrangement-

Marion: ……………..

Nova: It’s decided♪ Then I’ll get some sweets for you too. I tried baking some cookies today~

Marion: Hmph…

Victor: Am I getting in the way?

Marion: Not really…

Nova: Say, Marion, how was today’s lecture? The things Vic talked about must’ve been interesting, yea~?

Marion: It was mostly not interesting.

Nova: Eh, do you mean that!? But today was all about these ghost particles, no?

Victor: Yes, indeed.

Nova: I would’ve happily listened to such a subject if it was me sitting there~

Marion: These were things I already knew everything about.

Victor: Is that so? What I discussed in today’s lecture was based on the latest theories, however.

Marion: Uh…..

Victor: Well, I am well aware of how you possess an outstanding intellect.

Victor: The contents of the given lecture were easy to comprehend, in that way it could elicit the feeling of having heard it before… I suppose there’s a possibility for that.

Marion: ……..

Nova: Alright, sorry for the wait. Here are your specially made rainbow cookies~♪

Victor: Thank you very much.. oh?

Victor: These cookies are very similar to the ones we ate outside before.

Nova: Ah, noticed it, huh? Yup yup, I tried to recreate the rainbow cookies we ate that time~

Victor: I see… Your skill in making sweets is a given, however I truly admire your appetite for creating.

Marion: Wait a second

Nova & Victor: ?

Marion: When was “that time” exactly? …And where did you two eat rainbow cookies “outside”?

Nova: Huh? Didn’t I tell you about it?

Victor: At one point I had come to a standstill in my research, thus I accompanied Nova on an outing.

Victor: That’s when we ate these rainbow cookies at a café in Red South.

Marion: ……I had no idea.

Nova: Uwah, sorry, sorry. I had wanted to tell you about it. Can you forgive me, Marion?

Victor: ? Why are you apologizing, Nova?

Nova: Because you and I hung out as buds without him knowing, so that’d make him feel a bit lonely, no?

Nova: He had sulked for a while when I had gone to the zoo with you before, too… These kinds of things have happened often since as long as I can remember.

Marion: I d-didn’t sulk or anything…

Victor: It’s certain that it was a common occurrence when I recall the time Shion-san was around.

Victor: I see… You can’t stand it when Nova doesn’t solely pay attention to you, yes?

Marion: Wha…

Victor: I do not want this to come over in poor taste… But isn’t it time for you to become independent from your parental figure?

Marion: Sh….shut up, quiet!!!!!

Nova: M-Mariooon~! Wait, wait, stop fighting~

Nova: You’re already independent enough, yes? You’re a proper mentor now, and a cool hero to rely on, okay~?

Nova: Ah… mentioning independence made me feel a bit lonely now…

Victor: If you are able to be independent, would this mean it’s merely a case of strong possessiveness?

Victor: Do you only feel like that towards Nova? Or are there any other heroes and rookies which you feel the same about?

Victor: Or even including myself, do you wish that I would keep my attention only focused on you?

Marion: !!!!!??????

Marion: Th…. that’s ABSOLUTELY disgusting! I’m leaving!!!

Nova: Eeh!? Marion, wait! What about the rainbow cookies?

Marion: Gh……

Victor: I will eventually return to our room so I’ll bring them with me.

Marion: DON’T! I’ll grab some myself and go!

Marion: And Victor… don’t you DARE come back and show your face any time soon!!

Victor: ……..?

-

----Several days later

Victor: ---And that’s the end of today's lecture. Until next time.

Marion: …….

Will: Victor-san

Victor: Will, Gray. Do you perhaps have another question to ask?

Gray: Ah… no, not today…

Will: I heard how today’s class was held for just us rookies. So we both had been looking forward to it quite a lot♪

Gray: Yes… We were really excited about it… that’s what, we wanted to say…

Victor: It’s encouraging to receive such words from both of you. I’ll continue committing myself to making it an enjoyable experience.

Will & Gray: Waah…!

Marion: ……….

Marion: (...Let’s get going to Nova’s lab already)

[seyaryminamoto]

Leap of Faith: Sokkla Saturdays 2022

Day 7: Flustered Azula

On FF.net//On AO3

And here's my second and last sequel this year. I really had a lot of stories I wished to expand on, but unfortunately the prompts didn't really allow for it in most cases. As I was a bit honor-bound to write this for the person who first encouraged me with this AU, here's the conclusion to Antarctica AU from last year. I actually had meant for all this to be a single story, but it was clear last year that I couldn't go all the way with it because I wouldn't have the time (And it would have been ridiculously long, too). Even now, I feel like I may have had to skim over a lot of things rather than going fully in-depth with everything... but I still hope that the people who enjoyed this story last year will be happy to see its continuation.

Here goes!

"Is it working? Can you hear us?"

"Yes, Father. Loud and clear."

"Good, then. How have you been, Azula?"

"Perfectly fine."

"I have read some scientific reports that say it's very unhealthy on the mind to be in the South Pole during the winter period: Azula, please tell me you'll have therapy services if you need them?"

"We do have them, but I said I'm fine so far, Mother…"

"Oh, this is madness. Why did we let you talk us into this?"

"I didn't talk either of you into this: you two were the ones who decided this was the perfect way for me to fulfill my calling…"

"And has it been? Surely after two weeks of no sunlight and near social isolation, you've thought differently of the matter, Azula…"

"I… can't say I do, Mother. Truthfully, I'm not feeling all that isolated so far. I'm getting along quite well with everyone who stayed in the station, so…"

"Are you? Are you friends with those girls Aang spoke about, then?"

"Indeed, Father…"

"And the boy? The winterover? That's the term, isn't it, Ursa?"

"Yes, I believe so…"

"Then? The Canadian, was it?"

"The Canadian, Sokka, is a perfectly agreeable co-worker, yes."

"Is he? Even if he's a total stranger?"

"Mother… he's not a total stranger anymore, hasn't been one for over three months. He was even more helpful to me than Aang back when I arrived, so…"

"I asked Aang about him, in fact. He says the boy has been… well, successful in his field, for his age. He rambled over something about a prediction of…"

"The neutrino background, yes. His predictions were the most accurate ones to what was genuinely observed, so…"

"Do you actually understand any of what that means by now, Azula?"

"More than you might have expected, Father. I've learned a lot here."

"Well… now you realize that a life in science is much more work than you used to think it was, I'm sure."

"I've always understood it entails much work, I simply hadn't experienced it myself. And honestly? A lot of actual people who worked very hard and have been studying for years would have done just about anything to get my current job, but they didn't get the chance to put their training to good use… all because you intervened and got me the position instead. So…"

"Azula, please, it's for your own good…!"

"We did this to teach you responsibility, to ensure you were aware of the path ahead of you. And if you claim to be fine with it…"

"If I do, then it's proof that you were wrong to hope I might be talked out of it, isn't it?"

"Azula… you needn't be so stubborn, dear. We've seen your Instagram posts…"

"O-oh. You have, have you?"

"I understand you may be getting used to that life by now after all these months, but please don't lie to your mother, will you? Putting on a strong front just to prove some sort of point… it's not going to work. You'll only make yourself more miserable if you've already understood that this isn't the kind of life you're prepared for."

A heavy sigh and a glower. Those were Azula's responses to that line of reasoning.

She sat in the conference room, during the satellite hours that she would have sooner spent doing anything other than this. Her parents sat together at the other side of the screen, watching her with apparent concern – or with disapproval, either way. She wasn't quite sure what their expression really conveyed, for the bandwidth wasn't all that powerful, and they were terribly pixelated.

Thus, she hoped they wouldn't be able to see her properly, either. That they wouldn't be able to pick up on the light nuances of her expressions, or the marks on her neck…

"Please, Azula… you won't be coming home for the next six months, or however long it will be," Ursa continued, ever trying to appeal to her emotions. "We needn't have more conflicts over your future once you do. We may have been too harsh…"

"We weren't harsh," Ozai huffed. "We were teaching her a lesson…"

"And I'm sure she has learned it by now, Ozai," Ursa said, bluntly. "Oh, honestly… this has escalated too much. And with Aang being home instead of there with you…"

"I thought you were happy that I've made new friends," Azula said, with a dry grin. "I really have, Mother. And Sokka is a perfect gentleman, too…"

"I certainly hope so. A good Canadian boy?" Ursa said, breathing deeply and nodding. "Better than an American, it's true. All I hear about Americans is that they're… oh, their manners are as good as non-existent."

"Mother…" Azula said, smirking slightly at her mother's concern. Ozai cleared his throat.

"Either way… your struggles in the South Pole should have taught you not to be so impulsive and to take your future seriously. The choices you make cannot be made lightly. The future of Burma, your nation, rides on the shoulders of all your generation, no matter if you're from a secondary branch of the Royal Family…"

"I know, I know…" Azula sighed, rolling her eyes: the door opened then, and she glanced in its direction.

He was far more confident these days. The tension between them had crumbled… and it had been replaced by a comfort, an ease that she feared might manifest itself plainly on her face even if the feed from her video wasn't of the highest quality. Even so, she failed to repress a smile as he gestured at her about something she didn't understand right away. She raised an eyebrow, and he offered her a weak smile before she focused on her parents again.

"Something's happening," Azula said, giving them a dry grin. "I suppose you'll be calling on occasion, going forward?"

"We might, as long as your meager Internet allows it and we are not otherwise engaged," Ozai said, bluntly. Azula sighed and shrugged.

"If so… I'll speak with the two of you later? I can't mess up my duties, whole institutes of science all across the world are counting on me, so…"

"Oh, Azula, please be careful! And if anything happens with your friends or that boy…!"

Azula smiled: the boy in question raised an eyebrow as she met his eyes.

"I will let you know at once," Azula lied, tapping the button to end the call quickly and ensuring her parents wouldn't get a single more word in.

Resting against the doorframe now, Sokka smirked and raised an eyebrow as Azula imitated his expression, pushing herself up to her feet and closing her laptop's lid unceremoniously.

"You'll let them know, will you?" Sokka asked. "I didn't realize you and your parents were so close…"

"Ah, you know how it is, we're always in touch! It's not like this is the first time they've called since I first got here, of course not…" Azula said, rolling her eyes and speaking as dramatically as possible as she approached him. "Evidently, they're well aware of the fact that… that my roommate is my boyfriend now. Of course they are."

"Do they even know I'm your roommate, to begin with?" Sokka asked, with a smirk: he cupped her face when she reached him, and their lips joined in a gentle, quick kiss.

"Evidently not. Had they known that, you can be certain they would've intervened at once during the summer months," Azula smirked. "And nowadays? They'd likely say that we don't need roommates at all, since most the station is empty and there's lots of available rooms…"

"Ah, but this way we'll be more economic about the heating, won't we?" Sokka smirked, wrapping his arms around her waist. Azula snorted, shaking her head as she kissed him again.

"Sure, that's what's on our mind constantly when we go to bed together. We're just doing it to save energy, absolutely," she said, mockingly. Sokka laughed wonderfully, pulling her closer.

She should have asked him what had happened, why he had interrupted the meeting when he had… though she was grateful for it, of course. She had outright told him that any excuse to call her back from the conference room would be agreeable, for the less time she spent speaking with her parents, the more likely she was to succeed at convincing them that she was still miserable, that she wasn't adapting right, that her false posts and stories from Instagram were entirely accurate, instead… but it seemed her parents had finally decided they'd relent on her punishment. Ironic that they'd do so just when they weren't bound to be able to do anything to bring her back home…

For it was winter in Antarctica. The last plane had left the station over a month ago and the sunlight was gone. Perhaps it was true that the psychological toll it might take on all of them would be severe eventually… but for now, Azula was rather delighted to share all those nights with the man whose hands caressed her intimately right now, down to even cupping her rear as she grinded her body against his, keeping him pressed to that doorframe while kissing him deeply.

So far, their relationship was a wonderful secret kept by the winterovers in the Amundsen-Scott Station. They had been teased relentlessly over their 'honeymoon period' after being caught kissing furtively numerous times by now, and today, of course, would be no different…

"Heh! No wonder you're late!"

Azula smirked even before pulling away from Sokka's lips. His enthusiasm dwindled, and she wasn't surprised at all to look up at his handsome face to find it entirely flushed: his hand had left her rear nervously, and she groaned in disappointment for it, pressing her brow to his.

"I liked feeling your hand there…" she said, softly. Sokka chuckled shyly, dropping his head on her shoulder as Azula rolled her eyes and glanced out at the corridor: "To what do we owe this terribly inopportune interruption?"

"To the fact that you two lovebirds ought to get your extreme weather gear on right now," Korra responded down the hallway, smirking back at Azula. "Took a while… but our first official auroras are finally here!"

Azula's eyes widened. Sokka smiled weakly as he pulled back, smiling sadly at Azula, who gaped at him in surprise.

"Nothing was up in the lab, if you thought that was it," he said. "I was just coming to get you because of the auroras, but… well, you know."

"Oh, I do know. I'm terribly distracting, aren't I?" Azula smiled, pressing a kiss to his cheek before glancing at Korra, who continued to smirk judgmentally at them from further down the corridor. "We'll be there, go on first…"

"Yeah, bet you're going to be like two hours late, like you were for the sunset dinner, aren't you?"

"We might be. What about it?" Azula said, with a smug smirk. Korra chuckled as she walked away, right back to the coat room to prepare herself for the outing.

Azula sighed, glancing at Sokka again… to find him deeply flustered and utterly red in the face. She chuckled, shaking her head as she caressed his hair gently.

"For someone who's gotten so good at the naughty things we do in private, you're still insanely shy about public displays of affection, aren't you?" she asked. Sokka grimaced, covering his face with his hands.

"I'm an idiot for that, aren't I? I just… get so self-aware. It's not the same if it's just you, you know?" Sokka sighed, shaking his head. "Ugh, anyway. Let's get going, the auroras will be great! I caught a glimpse of one just before I came to get you, and I figured it might cheer you up after talking with your parents. I kind of overheard some of that and… they're sure you're miserable, still?"

"I haven't really shown evidence of the opposite, so of course they are," Azula shrugged.

She clasped Sokka's hand, guiding him to the stairs Korra had taken off through. Her fingers slid through his… and once they reached the lower floor, Azula knew that his hand would tremble lightly upon being seen by the rest of the group over holding hers. His nervousness about his first genuine relationship was certainly endearing, though Azula hoped she'd find a way to help him get over it sooner than later.

"I honestly don't know what I'm going to do in the future," Azula said. "Tricking them was effective for the time being, but I fear they're going to be a pain about how I've just suffered here and how that proves I'm not ready for a life in STEM and whatnot…"

"Guess you'll have to come clean eventually, right?" Sokka said. Azula grimaced.

"I should, but I fear they won't believe me. It's convenient for them to believe the pretense of misery… if just for now," she said. "Like I told you, my father is reckless and rich enough to demand that an airplane is sent in the middle of winter to retrieve me and get me out of here if he starts to believe that I'm enjoying it… so, for the sake of our relationship, I guess I'm better off pretending I really am miserable. And of course, telling them there's a relationship is…"

"Off the table," Sokka said, with a sad smile. "Guess so."

"They're going to be a pain as soon as they know," Azula sighed.

"Would they pressure you to dump me?" Sokka asked. Azula scowled.

"And I would ignore them if they did. Much as I've ignored them about giving up my hopes for a career in science, too," she said, stubbornly. Sokka smiled warmly at her.

"It's crazy to think I'm with you most days… crazier still to think you're willing to fight your family this hard to make sure we'll stay together even if they don't like it," he said. Azula smirked.

"I suppose you'd be too flustered to do so if our roles were reversed, huh?" she said: his hand had started to tremble already, just as Suki shot them a teasing, knowing grin once they reached the lower floor. Sokka pouted, cheeks red as he glanced at Azula.

"I… well, I don't think so. I mean, I might be blushing the whole time, but I'd fight for you too…" he huffed. Azula chuckled, squeezing his hand gently as she led him towards the coat room.

"What a dashing, blushing fairytale prince you are," she said. Sokka's cheeks reddened further: most their friends were within earshot by then. They'd heard those words and chuckled, and his self-awareness only built up further because of it.

It wasn't like he was genuinely uncomfortable… he just didn't know how to relax yet. He kept thinking that maybe once their relationship wasn't something as new as it was right now, he'd feel and act differently… but for now, he couldn't help but think everyone was judging him constantly. That if he wasn't on his best behavior, he would prove himself unworthy of his beautiful, wonderful, high-class girlfriend… where she could tease him for being a fairytale prince, the truth was that she was a modern princess from the Kingdom of Burma, herself. And he was a simple guy from Canada who happened to get a few scholarships that helped him progress in academia, all the way to landing his dream job for the IceCube experiment. That opportunity had already promised to shape into the greatest highlight of his career so far… then, Azula had showed up in his life and she had cemented that certainty for him.

His crush on her had been virtually immediate, but in the time since he first met her his feelings for her had deepened rather quickly, far more than he had expected. Where he had misunderstood her flirting as something playful and meaningless for her, though, she had been just as smitten with him as he had been with her, it seemed. When Aang, her initial winterover partner, had no choice but to return home after his grandfather's health had taken a turn for the worse, Sokka had stepped up and ensured to take Aang's place… he would have never left Azula to face the difficulties of winter in the Station alone. At first, he had simply wanted to help her at all costs…

Now, he certainly wanted to help her still while also basking in the wonders of being in a fulfilling relationship with the girl he liked.

Clad fully in their extreme weather gear, though, romance seemed to be in short supply, since moving around was quite difficult with multiple layers of clothes wrapped around their bodies. Even holding hands was strange, and the thick protections didn't stop the cold from nipping away at them, threatening to slip through any gaps in their clothes if they had been careless in any way. Still, they could enjoy the sight of those beautiful, glorious lights that brightened the world around them, and as clunky as movement might be, it didn't dampen the excitement of the many winterovers who had looked forward to this moment for a long time.

"How do you plan to spin this one into a story of your misery on Instagram, huh?" Sokka teased Azula, an arm around her waist as she raised her phone, snapping numerous pictures of the aurora above them.

"Uh…" she bit her lip, smirking slightly – Sokka wouldn't be able to notice her facial expression right now, but he could guess at it anyway from her voice's tone. "I don't know. How about saying I'm very lonely and that only the lights keep me company, or so?"

"So tragic," Sokka sighed dramatically. Azula chuckled, dropping her head on his shoulder.

"We'll probably have to take some group photos too… but I want one of the two of us first," Azula decided. "Or several, anyway."

"Guess you won't be posting those, huh?" Sokka smiled. Azula shook her head.

"Afraid not. Otherwise, like I said…"

"Your father will decide to come here and get you out of my wicked arms…" Sokka growled playfully, hugging Azula tightly.

She laughed, raising her camera and awkwardly tapping the frontal camera option with her mittens… only to find that they were utterly undistinguishable. Under all those layers of clothes, they could be literally anyone.

"Well, that's sad," Azula sighed, but she snapped a few pictures anyway. "Hmm. We'll have to think of something more artistic, I think. Like… our hands linked, right before the aurora."

"Oh?" Sokka smiled, as Azula bit her lip and dragged him towards their friends.

He was trembling again when his hand held hers before the others, and not because of the cold. The rest of the winterovers laughed at his tension, telling him he was blushing so brightly it glowed out of his balaclava as they took pictures of the full group. Oh, but if enduring that teasing was the price for being with Azula, he paid it gladly…

Hours later, once the whole group had returned to the warmth of the station's dining area, the galley, Azula beamed as she showed Sokka the many pictures they'd taken outside the station: the silhouettes of their hands linked, right before the glowing lights of the auroras, was a beautiful sight to behold.

"I'm almost tempted to make it my profile picture," Azula confessed, laughing as she clasped Sokka's hand over the table. He smiled gently at her… before blushing when someone else responded to Azula, reminding him again that they weren't alone.

"You should!" Yue said, smiling cheerfully. "It's a great picture. I'm making the group one mine, though…"

"We'll have lots of chances to take good pictures over the next months. It's going to stop being such a novelty before you know it," Suki smiled, and Yue huffed before making her point by posting the picture indeed.

"Doesn't matter. It's worth cherishing while it's happening," she decided, smiling brightly at her girlfriend.

"It is… it really is," Azula said: her family's circumstances were no secret for the others, though she had never gone in-depth about them with anyone other than Sokka.

She wished she could be so bold, so open about how much fun she was having, about how much she was learning and enjoying while in Antarctica. But the awareness of what her father was likely to react like if he realized she wasn't miserable at all… that was already worrisome enough, worse yet if he learned that her relationship with Sokka wasn't strictly professional. It was why Azula had impressed upon everyone to keep quiet about their relationship and not tell Aang about it, for he'd likely spill the truth to her brother in a matter of instants after learning of it. And Ozai was certain to find out soon after that…

Though truthfully, Ozai would find out eventually. Azula had no intentions of breaking up with Sokka after their period as winterovers ended. Yet the very immediate challenges of their stay in Antarctica had completely swept aside her vision of the future beyond this, it seemed… until this sudden clarity had struck her.

What would happen after this ended? For now, it was fun to enjoy the commodities and possibilities of the station… but no one could stay in Antarctica forever. Especially not princesses of the Burmese Royal Family…

"… I'm just saying, you're too shy for someone who was that quick to grope his girlfriend's ass earlier," Korra's voice broke into Azula's train of thought, and she frowned upon realizing she was speaking to Sokka.

A very flustered Sokka, of course, whose face was beet red as he held Azula's hand nervously. Korra, naturally, smirked deviously at him while Asami elbowed her gently in the ribs.

"He's allowed to be shy, don't pick on him," she said. Korra snorted.

"I don't think he's shy at all, honestly. This is just a cutesy act, but deep down…" Korra smirked, before focusing on her meal. Sokka grimaced, shaking his head as he tried to focus on his, too. Azula smiled at him as he pouted slightly.

"Well, I'm pretty sure none of you would be any better if you were in my shoes…" he grumbled. The girls at the table whistled and gasped in surprise at his remark, and his embarrassment increased further.

"Well, that's not entirely right, because we're all dating the girls of our dreams… save for Azula, who's dating the guy of hers, I suppose," Suki chuckled. Azula smirked at her response. "It's kind of funny that you're so shy about it, though. Seems like the norm, huh? Korra and Asami are kind of like that too: Korra's shameless, Asami isn't…"

"Asami was never as shy as Sokka, though," Korra said, smirking at him again. "Come on, honestly, what do you have to hide anymore? We've told you both a million things about our relationships, what's so wrong about sharing stuff about yours?"

"Well… Sokka is uncomfortable with it, I suppose," Azula said, smiling as Sokka eyed her helplessly. "I suppose he and I are simply more private than all of you. To a fault, anyway."

"But you wouldn't mind talking about things if only he didn't mind, either," said Suki, with a lop-sided grin. "You haven't been flustered easily ever since you two got serious about each other, Azula."

"Heh, compared to Sokka, I suppose not," Azula smiled. Sokka pouted.

"Don't join them, they're tormenting me enough as it is…" he said, and Azula laughed as she rubbed the back of his hand affectionately with her thumb.

"Nah, not just compared to Sokka, just in general," Korra said. "You were very much shameless about how desperate you were about getting his attention before, after all."

"You were…?" Sokka said, raising his eyebrows and smiling at Azula. She blinked blankly before returning his stare.

"I was. You were impossibly dense," she responded, bluntly: even now, when Sokka had a potential opportunity to make Azula blush, it was him who wound up red in the face anew while the others laughed at his embarrassment. "Admittedly, the more innocent and gentlemanly you were, the more appealing I found you, but still…"

"We can tell you all about how frustrated she was, if you really want to know," Asami smiled at Sokka. "But frankly, I don't think you'll succeed at making her blush as much as she makes you blush, so…"

"I suppose it's not likely, but still… worth a shot," Sokka pouted. Azula smirked at him.

"Now, come on. You seriously want to embarrass me?" she asked. Sokka stared at her intently. "What could you possibly hope to gain from that? We'd simply be two blushing idiots rather than one blushing idiot and one non-blushing idiot, so…"

"Well…! It's just awkward being so awkward," Sokka groaned, burying his face in his hand. "I feel like a dumbass for, well… reacting like this to everything. But it's okay! I'll work on it!"

"You will? Well, that'll be a shame. You're very cute when you're embarrassed," Azula grinned deviously: her words of course caused Sokka to grimace, face flushed while the rest of their friends laughed at his reaction.

He was a lot less uptight when they were alone, of course: his revenge for Azula's teasing took a most agreeable form in passionate lovemaking that night. Azula couldn't stop smiling as she collapsed on the mattress, with Sokka lying beside her and pressing numerous kisses to her neck, shoulder and collarbone.

"Not so shy now, are we?" Azula asked, smiling at him. Sokka scoffed, pouting.

"It's way easier when we're alone," he said. "I'm not worried about… uh, I don't even know what I'm worried about. Guess it's… being judged. Being mocked? Being… told that I'm not good enough for you? Pick your poison, I suppose…"

"Nobody else gets to decide if you are or aren't," Azula said, cupping his face delicately. "But I suppose this is all too new for you, huh? And… the rest of them love to poke fun at us."

"Which never seems to bother you," Sokka said, eyeing her helplessly. "How do you do it? Is there some secret that's only accessed by people with prior experience in genuine relationships, or…?"

"No," Azula chuckled. "Though I guess it might seem like it to you. But honestly, Sokka, you haven't been a virgin for a couple of weeks now. I make sure to remind you of it as often as possible too, so… what do you have to be so worried about? Our friends only make fun of us because you make it too easy for them. Once you get used to it, everything will be perfectly normal again. Life hasn't changed that much, honestly… you just get laid nowadays and get away with kissing me if you feel like it."

"I always feel like it," Sokka said, diving quickly for a peck. Azula smiled in response to it. "But… well, I suppose I've just been waiting for something like this all my life. Wondering if I'd ever find someone… thinking I might not, too. I guess I was ready to live out my life without ever finding actual love… and then you came along. And not only are you pretty much everything I never knew I was dreaming of, but you like me, too. So… if I were lukewarm about you, I'd probably be less flustered than I am. I like you too much, I suppose, and I keep thinking I'm the luckiest asshole there is because… because I get to be with you. And that's why I end up as flustered as I am, heh…"

"You're ridiculously sweet," Azula whispered, cupping his face gently and kissing his lips. Sokka hummed, hugging her closely. "I admit I kind of like that you're so giddy and so nervous about being with me in public… it's endearing. But I suppose you'll just get used to it, to us, sooner than later. Maybe… maybe we can help you grow more comfortable with it, little by little?"

"How?" Sokka asked, his hand gliding gently over Azula's flank.

"Well, clearly getting caught while we're kissing isn't working," Azula chuckled, and Sokka smiled awkwardly. "So maybe… smaller things. You still get flustered over holding hands, but…"

"But I want to hold your hand," Sokka mumbled. "Even if I do get flustered about it."

"See? You're endearing," Azula sighed. "I'm thinking, though… maybe it'd be easier for you if we just do fun things together. If maybe… you coach me at the weight gym? How does that sound?"

"Huh. Interesting, I guess," Sokka said, raising his eyebrows. Azula smiled. "Didn't know you wanted me to coach you…"

"Well, I do admire you plenty when you're in that gym, might as well give you something to admire too, once in a while," Azula said. Sokka scoffed.

"I always admire you. Whether you notice it or not," Sokka smirked. "I look very respectfully… and sometimes not that respectfully at all."

His eyes drifted down over her bare body, a teasing smirk on his lips. Azula huffed, tickling his flanks lightly.

"So very shy and innocent indeed, maybe Korra's right to say you make no sense," Azula said, and Sokka chuckled in response. "Though, before you get self-aware, I want to state, for the record, that I certainly enjoy the lustful stares just as much as the sweet and tender ones. So yes, the gym idea isn't bad, is it? Ah, and we could do some basketball too, maybe we could play with the others even if we'd only be able to play three-on-three…"

"Not a bad idea either," Sokka smiled.

"There's the music room… you don't know how to play any instruments, right?" Azula asked. "I know the basics for some, so I could teach you what I know. We wouldn't have to be holding hands constantly while we do this, but we can talk the whole time and simply be us in public. If you want to kiss me then, you'll be perfectly free to do so… and I'll welcome it gladly, just so you know."

"I suppose you would," Sokka smiled, pressing his brow to hers. "I'll welcome it gladly too, if you ever feel the urge to kiss me all of sudden."

"Great. Lots of surprise kisses will be had, if so," Azula smirked. Sokka chuckled. "This might not work perfectly, but easing you into getting used to having a girlfriend will take time, I suspect. Fortunately, we have around eight months left of being here… so that means you have plenty of time to get used to it after all."

"And I'm very grateful for that," Sokka admitted, with a sad smile. "Eight months, though… it sounds like a lot, but it's freaky to think about anyway. I don't really want those eight months to end, even if I know they have to…"

"I don't want them to end either," Azula confessed, caressing his chest gently. "It's too soon to tell what's going to happen eventually, I know that, but… I don't want things to end between us once our time here is over. You'll have to go back to Canada, and I to Burma, so… I don't know how we'll handle that mess. But…"

"Well… I have thought about it a little," Sokka admitted. Azula raised her eyebrows. "You know, you want to study physics properly, right? And as you are right now, you'd absolutely ace an entrance exam. You've learned a lot, way more than most students get to learn before starting their university careers, and you've experienced a life in science, so… I'd think you could apply to universities outside of Burma, maybe even in Canada…?"

He smiled awkwardly and Azula's eyes widened. The notion of living with Sokka shouldn't have been so surprising – they had been living together for the past three months as it was, and quite physically at that during the last two weeks. Still… that he would offer that opportunity so readily surprised her. It brought a smile to her face, just as well…

"That would be… well, ideal, but my parents aren't bound to be thrilled about it," Azula admitted, with a sad smile. "They will be particularly annoying once they learn we're together… which they'll discover eventually. We can't hide what we are forever, after all."

"I guess not," Sokka said, swallowing hard. "Do you think I could do something to win them over? I know Burma's twitchy about foreigners but… I've read about it again, and it seems that, if permission is granted legally, I could marry you eventually? Not saying I'll jump right away to do that, I mean, not unless you want me to…"

"Oh, I want you to," Azula said, bluntly, and Sokka snorted and laughed at her declaration. "What?"

"Well… guess Korra has a point about you being completely shameless," Sokka chuckled. Azula smiled deviously at him. "This wasn't my proposal, alright? I… will make a better one once I'm ready."

"Huh… I'll look forward to it, then. Though, unfortunately, you already know what I'll answer," Azula said, frowning. "I suppose that was a spoiler, huh?"

"Spoilers for my eventual, future proposal?" Sokka repeated, with a chuckle. "The way your mind works is glorious to me. But anyway, I… I just wanted to be sure that possibility is on the table."

"Well… it is, but my grandfather literally controls Burma, remember?" Azula said. "And my father has enough sway in courts to demand that they refuse your request to marry me at all, if he feels like it. So…"

"So, I have to convince them that I'm good for you?" Sokka asked. Azula shrugged. "Well… heh. I'll definitely do my best, but they sound like they'll never want to accept me, huh? Especially as you're royal…"

"Royalty has been known to marry foreigners for political alliances," Azula sighed, smiling at Sokka with helplessness. "You're not the heir to some sort of secret royal family in Canada, are you?"

"Eh, no," Sokka smiled awkwardly, and Azula chuckled.

"Worth a shot," she said. "Is your father a big businessman?"

"Nope," Sokka shook his head. Azula bit her lip.

"Then yeah, they're bound to say you're not on my social level or whatever… and then I'll remind them I'm perfectly willing to abandon my claim to the throne, and they'll ignore me. As always," she sighed. "My family is nothing if not predictable."

"No wonder you don't get along with them, because you're pretty much the exact opposite thing," Sokka smiled. "We're stuck, though, aren't we? If you insist on being with me, they'll likely just try harder to destroy your future in science too, to ensure that I won't continue to steer you away from your homeland…"

"That's a possibility, yes," Azula acknowledged, disheartened. Sokka gritted his teeth.

"I don't want to be an ass, but… your family sucks," he said. Azula actually smiled at that.

"You're not an ass for telling the truth," Azula said, inching closer to him and hugging him tightly. "I'm sorry I'm putting you in such an awkward situation. I really wish I could just… break free, I guess. I don't want to abandon my nation for good or so… but with a family like mine, the temptation to do exactly that gets stronger every day."

"I guess so," Sokka whispered, pressing his brow to hers. "I suppose we'll have the rest of the year to come up with ideas to figure this out, though. Right?"

"Who knows? Maybe by the time we're close to finished here, you'll be sick of me and looking forward to running away from me at once," Azula smirked up at him, and Sokka gasped, affronted.

"How dare you!" he huffed, hugging her tightly as she laughed at his silly behavior. "If anything, you'll likely realize that I have some habit you consider gross and dump me for that…"

"Really? You eat your nails, do you?" Azula asked. Sokka chuckled.

"Nope."

"Your toenails…?"

"Ew!"

"Well, I suppose there are other gross habits, but it's good that you don't do either of those," Azula laughed, hugging the revolted Sokka tightly too.

"I'll try not to do anything on that level anyway," Sokka said, caressing her back gently. "I didn't really get to say it before, but… it's pretty unreal for me to be here still. I mean, as a winterover, since I wasn't supposed to be one…"

"It's unreal for me too, though in a good way," Azula said, smiling and prodding his nose with hers. Sokka cupped her cheek, kissing her softly.

"I just wish… I wish we could've kissed under the aurora, heh," he chuckled. Azula sighed but smiled fondly at him. "That'd have been one hell of a picture too, right?"

"And one hell of a hypothermia," Azula said. Sokka laughed, biting his lip.

"Speaking of hypothermia…"

"What…?" Azula blinked blankly before staring at him pointedly. "Sokka? Why do we need to speak of hypothermia?"

"Uh, well, you see… do you remember what we talked about, that first time we were in the sauna together?" Sokka asked, nervously. Azula's eyes narrowed. "I mean, you were very drowsy, so I guess maybe you don't remember. But… the 300 Club?"

"The… wait, that thing about running outside in the ice after cranking up the heat in the sauna?" Azula asked, eyes wide. "The nonsense of going through three hundred degrees of temperature at once?"

"Yeah?" Sokka smiled awkwardly. Azula's amusement was well and truly gone by now as she stared at him in wary disbelief.

"I'm not going to…"

"Oh, no. You don't have to do it. I'm just saying, I… wouldn't mind trying it?" Sokka said, with an awkward smile. Azula gasped. "Look, it's ridiculous, but…"

"Sokka, you can't even hold my hand in public without trembling, but you're going to run into the ice naked, do a lap around the Ceremonial Pole and return to the station?" Azula said, staring at him sternly. Sokka grimaced.

"W-well, when you put it that way…" Sokka said, but he pouted. "Still, it's kind of a waste to have a chance to do it and not do it, you know?"

"You're mad," Azula said, shaking her head as Sokka grinned awkwardly. "I'm reluctant to freeze by kissing you under the aurora, and you're willing to do something as insane as that challenge?"

"There's a lot of things we should do, Azula," Sokka chuckled. "Including, of course, your design for the pole marker…"

"Yep, and I really should focus more on that," Azula said, grimacing.

"And we can go through the underground… uh, underice tunnels?" Sokka laughed. "Korra said she could give us a tour if we really wanted to check them out. And there's also the big events like… the Polympics!"

"You mean, Olympics for the South Pole?"

"Technically, most of us are from different countries so I think it's a pretty weird way to go about holding our own Olympics," Sokka chuckled. "Also, the race around the world? Have you heard of that one?"

"I think I did," Azula said. "Some ridiculous race around the Geographic Pole, where we'd do a lap around it and go through every time zone, right?"

"Exactly," Sokka grinned. Azula chuckled, shaking her head.

"It sounds like you really wanted to do a lot of winterover things while not being one," she said. "I suppose we can try to do as many of those as we can, but… I'm not joining your crazy 300-degree adventure. I'll wait for you in the station, at best, to yell at you for being so reckless. How about it?"

"Perfect," Sokka grinned. Azula laughed, kissing him softly. "Honestly… I don't know if we'll ever get to do this again. I hope we do, but with your family being as it is… maybe they'll think you can't come back if you say you want to, right?"

"Knowing them… yes," Azula sighed.

"So… it might be our only chance to pull off all these crazy things, you know?" Sokka said, his fingers trailing over her brow, through her dark tresses. "Not trying to be a downer here, but…"

"It is kind of a downer to think about it that way," Azula acknowledged: her grip around him tightened as she pressed her face to his chest. "I really shouldn't like you as much as I do. The very notion of… of not being able to be with you after this is terrifying, Sokka."

"It is for me too," Sokka sighed. "I guess… it's further reason to make as many fun memories and enjoy all the experiences we can before it ends?"

"How depressing," Azula sighed. "I suppose we'll have to take pictures of everything to make sure we don't forget anything at all, and not just to send them back to the IceCube people so they can post them online…"

"You keep posting pictures of your own in your Instagram anyway," Sokka said, smiling fondly at her. Azula sighed.

"Not the ones I wish I could," she said. "It's not fair having to hide what we mean to each other…"

"Maybe we don't have to," Sokka said. Azula raised an eyebrow, glancing at him in confusion. "I mean… we would be hiding, in a sense, even if we did what I just thought of. But how about if I post them?"

"You…?" Azula blinked blankly. Sokka grinned.

"If I simply post them on my account, where I only have one follower… as in, you," Sokka said. "I wouldn't tag anything, I wouldn't link anything back to you, so people wouldn't be able to see those pictures easily…"

"Well, if someone goes through the list of people I follow, they might…" Azula said, though she frowned: how likely was that? She hoped her parents weren't that obsessed with monitoring her entire life… "But then… we'd post all the good stuff on your account?"

"At least, it's a way to go about it," Sokka said, smiling and shrugging. To his delight, she smiled too.

"You know… that brings thoughts to mind. Thoughts…" Azula said, as a hint of malice took hold of her while she rolled on her back, eyes drifting towards the ceiling. "Thoughts of revenge."

Sokka blinked blankly. Azula's devious smirk widened further.

"Well. That escalated quickly," he said. "Revenge on… what? Why? Huh?"

"My parents, of course," Azula said, glancing at him deviously. Sokka raised an eyebrow. "They think I'm miserable… because, of course, I've given them reason to think so. But if I gradually start to change the kind of things I post on my personal account, by showing some of the more fun side of working and living here, they'll be in denial at first, assuming I'm just doing it to piss them off… and then, slowly, doubt will creep in. Little by little, they'll begin to realize that maybe I am having fun… that maybe I'm learning important things, things that could help me get accepted in university if I try to enroll in one. That maybe I confirmed my calling is indeed my calling… and, who knows? That maybe I found the man of my dreams here, why not?"

"Y-you… you think you'd go for it?" Sokka said, cheeks flushing. "You'd reveal our relationship…?"

"Once we're almost done here, I think I might be ready to. Maybe I could tag your account when I do the full reveal post," Azula smirked. "Then, my parents and every stalking lurker would go into your account… to find months' worth of content they never knew existed. And yes, well, they may go ballistic about it, but at that point, we would have already spent almost the full year together, right?"

"And I could help you with university," Sokka said, rubbing his chin slowly. "Maybe… maybe we could settle that before our time here ends, too. I could reach out to my old university and ask them to hold your entrance exam remotely. Then, once your parents show up…"

"I could show them my acceptance letter… if I pass, of course," Azula said, biting her lip. "Heh. Here I thought we'd spend the rest of our stay here working in the lab and then jumping into bed together, but from the sound of it, we have a lot of work to do."

"And a lot of fun things to share," Sokka smiled, kissing her again. "We… should make a schedule."

"A schedule?" Azula raised her eyebrows, amused. "Well, now… I'm all ears."

"Great," Sokka snickered. "We'll organize it in the… uh, well, morning. Whatever counts as morning, you know…"

"I do know," Azula laughed: Sokka smiled as he cradled her in his arms. "What a strange future awaits us, huh?"

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Sokka whispered, kissing her brow. "I'll tutor you further, make sure you can handle anything they throw at you in an entrance exam… and you'll train me into letting go of my ridiculous self-awareness every time we're in public together. And we'll do as many fun events in the South Pole as possible in the process…"

"And we'll take as many pictures as we can so we can build up our Instagram accounts too," Azula smiled. "It sounds like a lot… but I can't wait to get started."

"Me neither," Sokka grinned, pressing his brow to hers.

After two weeks of mostly focusing on each other and work, starting a new routine was rather curious for Sokka and Azula: they enjoyed each other's company properly upon waking up, then they sat together, huddled in comfort and enjoying hot chocolate while organizing their duties, studies and leisure time properly on a virtual schedule. Most of it was subject to change since the IceCube Lab might require emergency visits due to equipment malfunctions, but so far, everything had moved along safely. Before long, the happy pair had a full schedule they hoped to rely on for the next months.

First, Azula would have around three hours of studying, tutored by Sokka. The more they worked together, the better a teacher he became: he rewarded Azula whenever she answered a question properly, finished an operation successfully or investigated correctly anything he asked her to look up. Sometimes, the reward would be a simple kiss. Sometimes, it would be a much more complicated one between her legs. Sometimes, she'd have a random food craving, and Sokka would dutifully take off to find popcorn, ice cream or whatever snack she wanted to enjoy. And sometimes, she'd ask him to do something utterly embarrassing as a punishment if he teased her too much while she was working on solving the exercises he set for her: some of those punishments required form him to march up to Korra and acknowledge she was the superior athlete, something that of course never failed to make him pout while Korra laughed it off, well aware of what was going on thanks to Azula's echoing laughter. Other times, she'd send him running a lap on the station while wearing one of his boxers on his head. And sometimes she'd ask him to write utterly gushy, embarrassingly fluffy poems on his Instagram posts, and he'd comply while blushing madly still.

The punishments, of course, served a deeper purpose too: Sokka slowly grew more comfortable with making a fool of himself in public thanks to Azula's antics. It wasn't simply a matter of being comfortable by holding her hand, but of relaxing around people who meant them no harm, who were perfectly supportive of their relationship and who would eventually stop teasing them for it, provided they stopped giving them reason to be teased.

After Azula's classes ended, they would perform all maintenance and checkup duties that were necessary in the IceCube Lab. They wouldn't visit it every day, but they had to be thorough during each of those visits, ensuring to replace anything that required replacements, running tests that might have been requested by headquarters up north, and generally keeping the place clean, orderly and safe.

As long as that didn't take too long, they would return to the Station at a reasonable hour and train in the weight gym. It was always much easier whenever they were alone, of course, and they had even engaged in some rather inappropriate dalliances there precisely because of that… but they had fun when others were working out too, especially once Sokka succeeded at setting aside his embarrassment and focused on helping Azula work out before doing his own rounds – she, of course, was keen on ogling him constantly while he did that, but he blushed less intensely after the first few weeks of her shamelessness.

Once their daily workout was done, they would spend time with everyone else, and that was the optimal moment for them to make their Instagram posts once the station connected to the satellite's Internet. If there was an event in the station, they'd happily join it: if there was none, they would simply play games with their friends or watch movies with them, provided they were free to do so, too. Occasional grand projections of movies would be held in the gym often, though depending on their interest in them, it was possible that either or both Sokka and Azula would doze off while cuddled together on the same couch as the movie progressed.

Azula's initial sketches and concepts for the pole marker were quite interesting to the Mechanist, who encouraged her to continue developing the direction she was taking them in. Sokka helped her with ideas often, though he'd take to building his own strange works of art, many of them based on cable wires without insulation, unconventional material that, nonetheless, he succeeded at sculpting into strange but amusing shapes that even inspired Azula further in her designs for the marker.

Once they returned to their room, though, they would jump into bed – which was effectively as good as a single bed by now, since they had pushed them together – either to enjoy each other's company as thoroughly as possible, or to watch TV shows or movies. They would take turns choosing the content they'd enjoy each night, and Sokka was rather nervous upon introducing Azula to a particular, rare favorite TV show of his own… one that had shaped his life in ways that hadn't been apparent until he rewatched it now.

"Guess I really got into science because of this show, come to think of it," Sokka chuckled, with a small smile. Azula hummed.

"I suppose I can believe that, but… that's not all I'm getting from this," Azula said, raising her eyebrows as she pointed at a female character onscreen. "She has dark hair, a mean streak, clever, stuck in a place where her people say she doesn't belong… and her name also starts with an 'a'. Do tell, Sokka… have you spent your whole life hoping to find the Aeryn Sun to your John Crichton?"

Sokka snorted and laughed, cheeks flushing as Azula smirked knowingly at him.

"Because, well, I can't quite unsee the potential similarities," she chuckled, stroking his hand as he threw his head back. "Not saying you're only with me because I resemble Aeryn in some way or another, though, but still…"

"Honestly, if you hadn't brought it up now, I might not have made a connection there," Sokka chuckled. "I mean, let's be real here, Azula: do you think I ever expected to get this lucky in life? You remember what I was like when we first met…"

"True," Azula smiled, watching the final minutes of the show absent-mindedly now as she listened to Sokka instead.

"If I'd wound up halfway across the galaxy like Crichton, I probably would've been stuck with… I don't know, six Rygels or so, and no Aeryns whatsoever," Sokka said, gesturing at the unpleasant, toad-like muppet character on the show. Azula chuckled, shaking her head.

"Well, good thing you didn't have to go halfway across the galaxy to find one, then," she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek softly. "Well, that is, if I'm not misreading things."

"You only are in the sense that… that I actually like you way more than I liked Aeryn, no matter if I was a pubescent teenager when I first saw her," Sokka chuckled, pressing his brow to hers as the credits rolled. "I'm a hormonal adult now, and apparently that makes me even more susceptible to your charms."

"Good. That's how I want it to be," Azula said, deviously. Sokka chuckled, prodding her nose with his.

"So? What did you think of the life-defining TV show of my teenage years?" he asked. Azula huffed.

"I can't give a proper verdict like this. One episode only? I'm afraid you'll have to ask me again after we watch five, at least. Maybe more than that," Azula said, smirking at him. Sokka's watery smile preceded a spree of enthusiastic kisses that brought Azula to laughter as she caressed his cheek gently. "You're so silly…"

"Most people I show Farscape to don't notice it's got potential right away," Sokka said, with a relieved grin. "Oh, Azula. You really may be…"

"The Aeryn to your Crichton?" Azula finished. Sokka chuckled and nodded… before shaking his head.

"Nah. If we were like those two, we'd be dancing around each other for eons, getting together, then winding up in fucked up situations like, well, me getting twinned, and…"

"What?" Azula said, with an awkward smile. "What does that mean, getting twinned…?"

"Uh… you know what? I can't tell you. Spoilers," Sokka said. Azula scoffed, bumping his shoulder lightly as he chuckled at her. "Anyway, I'm just saying… we were a mess in getting to this point, but it didn't take me that long to realize that I…"

"That you…?" Azula said, eyeing him intently when he fell silent.

Sokka bit his lip as he glanced at her with uncertainty. Azula blinked blankly, waiting for him to speak… and then she froze as his smile gained tenderness. As his fingers trailed over her features gently. As his eyes gleamed with resolve before he spoke words he hadn't yet realized he was ready to say, but even so…

"I'm sorry if this isn't the right way, or the right time. If maybe I shouldn't be this stupid about this, too, but I…" Sokka said, smiling gently: the reality of what he was about to say struck her moments before he spoke the words. "I love you, Azula."

Her inability to speak afterwards took him by surprise… though he smiled awkwardly, shyly, and returned to handling his laptop: he closed the programs as Azula gaped at him in disbelief and confusion, watching wordlessly as he powered it down.

"S-Sokka…" she said, breathlessly. "Sokka, I… wait. What are you…?"

"I'm… putting away my laptop?" Sokka answered, with a gentle smile, setting down the device on his nightstand. "Don't think we'll watch another one, it's getting late, so…"

"I meant… what you just said. You… you said you love me?" Azula repeated, eyes wide. Sokka smiled weakly.

"Well… yeah. Call me crazy, I guess, since we haven't been together that long, but… it kind of felt right to say it. And it still does, but… if you're not ready to hear it, that's fine too. I mean… as long as you're not completely grossed out by how fast I'm moving, of course. Then it's not fine," Sokka said, eyeing her warily now. "I'm not trying to force my feelings on you or anything, okay? It's… it's fine if you don't feel the same way…"

"I didn't… didn't say that," Azula responded, eyeing him warily. Sokka blinked blankly.

"But you look like…" he said, narrowing his eyes. "Wait. Wait a minute. Azula…"

"I… Sokka, this isn't something that's ever happened to me before?" she said, looking at him in disbelief. "I mean, I've had a few relationships but nothing ever got serious enough for 'I love you's and… I mean, three words, eight letters? Say them and I'm yours? I never thought my life would come to that, but…"

"What?"

"A… quote. From another TV show. I should make you watch that one since I'll watch Farscape… show exchange," Azula said: she had pressed her face to the pillow, a rarity considering she usually picked Sokka's chest as her pillow, rather than anything else.

"Okay?" Sokka smiled, raising a hand and caressing her hair gently. "Azula… are you flustered?"

"I…!"

She raised her head again, meeting his eyes… and he had a perfect chance to pick up on how flushed her cheeks were. A wicked grin spread over his face as Azula huffed in outrage.

"W-what are you looking at me like that for?!" she asked, utterly self-aware… while Sokka snickered, dropping on the pillow as well, beaming brightly.

"I bet it's a little weird to be happy that you can be embarrassed by things too, but I am," he chuckled.

"Oh, please…" Azula huffed, pouting and turning her face away from him as Sokka chuckled, caressing her hair gently still.

"I seriously thought you were shameless and would only blush because of excessive physical strain," he said. "And I seriously thought I was a weirdo for blushing that much, but…"

"You are one. One thing doesn't negate the other," Azula huffed. Sokka chuckled.

"And you… are a tsundere, apparently," he teased her. Azula gasped, affronted. "If you say I'm an idiot, or that you hate me, you'll just wind up proving my point."

"Oh, yeah? That's how this works?" Azula asked, with a dangerous smile. Sokka chuckled, hands behind his head as he beamed proudly. "You… you're going to get it. You're really asking for it now."

"For what, exactly?" Sokka chuckled, as Azula sat up on the bed, cheeks still red as she glared at him intently…

Then she picked up the pillow and smacked Sokka with it.

He gasped. She raised her eyebrows defiantly. He bit his lip and shook his head as he glared at her in disbelief.

"That's how it is, then? This great betrayal… a pillow fight? We've been sharing rooms for months… and now you've chosen violence?" Sokka asked. Azula glared at him pointedly… then he pushed himself up, glaring at her defiantly. "So be it."

He grabbed his own pillow, and he struck Azula's flank lightly with it. She gasped, outraged by his retaliation, and she leapt forward to attack him too. The pillows bounced painlessly off each other, and before long, the room rang with laughter, made all the louder when Sokka decided to escalate matters further with a dangerous tickle fight: Azula struggled, writhing out of his grasp, trying to return the favor… but failing to do so after he overpowered her. His finishing move, of course was to cover her face with kisses as he pinned her on the joined beds, and Azula laughed, still blushing crimson, as their fingers intertwined slowly.

"There. You appear to have been defeated," Sokka said, smirking smugly. She shook her head, raising her chin proudly.

"I never said I surrendered," she stated. Sokka chuckled, nudging her gently with his nose. "But you… you're not even worried that I didn't say it back?"

"Uh… I wasn't all that worried because I figured you'll say it when you want to say it?" Sokka said, though his eyes widened as he stared at her warily. "Should I be worried?"

"No, it's just…!" Azula said, biting her lip as she tightened her grip on his hands. Sokka raised an eyebrow questioningly. "I've never really… never said these words properly before. Not while meaning them, anyway. The way I'd mean them if… if I say them to you."

"I… I get that," Sokka said, nodding gently.

"So…" Azula said, breathing deeply and staring at him anxiously. "I guess you broke me, huh? Shamelessness… all gone now. I hope you didn't particularly love that about me, but…"

"You can't be shameless with me anymore? Really?" Sokka asked, amused. Azula chuckled.

"I probably can, just… you've thrown a wrench in this situation," she said. "Now I can't just focus on the physical, fun aspect of everything. Now it's… very serious. Extremely serious. Now… now I genuinely am pondering how I'll marry you while avoiding Burmese law. Actually, there's some weird super-expensive marriage services in Antarctica, you know? Though much closer to the shore, of course, probably in McMurdo, and admittedly I'd rather not get married in McMurdo, I didn't really like that place, but…"

"Marriage?" Sokka smiled. Azula winced.

"Did I just… get extremely ahead of myself?"

"In a wonderful way, but yeah, possibly," Sokka chuckled. Azula sighed, shaking her head.

"Telling me you love me kind of… translates into 'we're in this together forever' in my head. Maybe I'm crazy, I just…"

"You're not," Sokka said, kissing her brow sweetly. "I love you… and I would love to spend the rest of my life with you. I'm just aware of how hard that'll be… and that we still have a lot to learn about each other. But the more time I spend with you, the more I'm convinced that I want to spend all that time learning more about you. So… marriage doesn't sound like a bad idea, alright? I didn't enter this relationship assuming it would have to end eventually… I did it by hoping we'd find a solution that allowed us to have a future together. Even if that's crazy of me… it's still what happened."

"It is crazy," Azula said, with a tender smile. Her cheeks were still red as she slipped her hands out of his, raising them to cup his face. "You're utterly mad. But… I guess I'm not one to talk. Because I… I feel the same way. I… I love you. I love you too. I…"

Sokka grinned, and Azula laughed, tears blinking in her eyes before he dove in for a heartfelt kiss… one that soon gave way to enthusiastic, passionate lovemaking through which they reaffirmed the commitment they had reached so smoothly that night. They would wake up in a tangle of limbs when their alarms woke them around six hours later, and Sokka's gentle smile, ever a source of quickened heartbeats for Azula, suddenly seemed to stir even more pleasant emotions in the depths of her soul: she wanted to say it again, fool that she was. He already knew, she'd told him that night, she didn't have to repeat she loved him constantly…

But these were uncharted waters for her. Technically, a lot about her relationship with Sokka had been uncharted waters, for they were as good as living together by now, virtually engaged if just because they hoped they might be able to marry one day. The vertigo of such a strange sensation was oddly addictive: it was akin to falling with no notion of where was up or down, with a strange feeling deep in her gut that suggested she'd be able to land on her feet regardless of how wildly the wind might blow. She'd be okay, no matter if being near the man who had triggered all such emotions in her heart was driving her into a strange frenzy of excitement and fluster, even if they were simply sitting together at the galley, enjoying their breakfast.

"And good morning!" Yue's enthusiastic voice reached them, and Sokka smiled as he waved in her direction: she marched up to their table, taking her seat across them as she readied herself to enjoy her own breakfast. "I hope you had a less hectic morning than Suki, she's dealing with some problems with BICEP right now…"

"Damn. I hope she can sort it out," Sokka said. "Can you give her a hand with it?"

"I planned to, once I was done eating. I'll bring her something to snack on before dragging her back to the galley and ensuring she gets a proper meal," Yue said, with a gentle smile. Her eyes flickered between Sokka and Azula as he nodded approvingly at her idea. "Are you two alright? Didn't, uh, spend all night awake, did you?"

"Well, not all night, but…" Sokka said, with a slightly shy smile… Yue frowned, eyes shifting towards Azula.

"Why are you so quiet?" she asked. Azula winced.

"I… sorry. I guess I spaced out for a moment," Azula said, with a weak smile. Yue raised an eyebrow.

"Must have been one very intense night, then," she said, smiling with a hint of unusual malice… Azula gasped at her words, glancing at Sokka in surprise as her cheeks flushed. He raised an eyebrow.

"Did you tell her…?"

"Did I… what?" Sokka said, once she stopped talking. "You okay, Azula…?"

"I…!" she said, huffing and shaking her head before focusing on her meal. "I'm going mad. That's all. That's… all."

Yue blinked blankly, eyeing the pair across her with unabashed curiosity. She bit her lip before long, running a hand through her white hair.

"Do I dare ask…?" she said. "This is really weird, you know? It's usually Sokka who's blushing every time someone makes any reference to your intimate times together, and it's usually Azula who's shameless…"

"I'm not… being shameless," Sokka said, pouting slightly. Azula blinked blankly.

"Then you were just talking about…?" Azula said. Yue raised her eyebrows.

"Sex?" she said. Azula closed her eyes, her fluster increasing further. "Did you think I was talking about something else? It almost looks like you…"

Yue fell silent then, scrutinizing Azula's expressions and reactions gradually… then shifting her focus to Sokka instead. He offered her a guilty grin and a shrug that Yue gasped at.

"No. You did not… you did!" Yue said, covering her mouth with her hands. Sokka scoffed.

"You're not going to pretend that you figured it out just like that, are you?" he said. "I haven't even given you a hint of…"

"You told her you loved her!"

Azula's face flushed even further, and Sokka's own cheeks lit up at Yue's accurate guess. The scientist before them gasped, eyes flickering between the two with astonishment, though she mostly focused on him.

"Sokka… it's too soon for that!" she said. "And you…! With how nervous you are, that's a very dangerous choice to make! Goodness, at least you're with Azula… if you were with anyone else, she might have bolted out the door right away out of fear of commitment."

"Well, I didn't say it so she'd feel she had to commit more than she already has," Sokka said, with a slight pout. "She didn't have to say it back at all, all that mattered to me was saying it, simple as that."

"Really? You had no expectations?" Yue said, raising an eyebrow. "You just wanted her to know someone loves her?"

"What's wrong with that?" Sokka huffed.

"Nothing. Just… you two continue to be a Hallmark movie," Yue said, with a fond smile. Sokka huffed, cheeks tinged red once more. "Well… I'm glad you didn't pressure her or anything. And I won't either, I won't tell Suki or the others about this, I probably shouldn't have pried to begin with… so you really don't have to worry, Azula. Take your time to figure out how to answer him properly, okay?"

"Uh…" Sokka said, with a weak grin as he glanced at Azula: her cheeks were even redder as she covered her face with her hands.

Her reaction to Yue's reassuring words, though, spoke for itself. The white-haired woman's jaw dropped as, yet again, she read through the couple without needing further explanations:

"You said it back?! You already said it back! Oh, goodness, you…!"

"She, uh, may have…?" Sokka said, smiling weakly at Azula, who shot him a reproachful glare from between her spread fingers.

"Least you could do is not look that proud of it, damn it…" Azula huffed, and Sokka chuckled before caressing her hair gently.

"Sorry, sorry. I'll shut my mouth now, I will…" he said – though his promise was bound to be entirely meaningless, for two more people were ready to join their table.

"Morning, every-… uh, Sokka? Azula? Did you two switch bodies last night or something?" Korra asked, as Asami smiled at them too. "It's usually her who's up to PDA while he's blushing crimson the whole time…"

"Maybe we did switch bodies. How about that?" Azula said, grumpily, prompting Korra and Asami to laugh as they took their seats with them, too.

She didn't even know why she was in such a strange mood… she wasn't unhappy, not at all. But somehow, she didn't want their friends around right now. She only wanted to be with him, to talk to him, to kiss him, to wrap her arms around him as though to never let him go. Something she had never really recognized for what it was had broken inside her last night… a strange dam, she guessed, that she couldn't seem to plug anymore. Where Sokka appeared to have gained some confidence upon Azula's acceptance and reciprocation of his feelings, Azula had lost some of her own confidence, somehow… for she didn't know how to control the feelings inside her. It was so much easier before saying she loved him… for now her heart ached with need, with hope, with every bit of despair that gnawed at her with fear that their relationship wasn't set in stone, and that, without a strong plan, her family would destroy it for sure…

And all such fears and uncertainties would fall to the wayside simply by being near him. By looking at him as he worked in the IceCube Lab, carefully welding material he was repairing for a computer that was causing some trouble as of late. She had a few basic check-ups to run in the network, maintenance of servers to worry about… and she simply watched him as the computer did its work. Eventually, he raised an eyebrow and glanced back at her, smiling weakly.

"Something wrong?" he asked. Azula shook her head… then shrugged. "Still bothered by how the others acted earlier? Or…?"

"I… guess? Guess not. Maybe… maybe I finally understand what bothered you so much before," Azula said, with a sigh. "Just when it looks like it's not a problem for you anymore…"

"You think I'm not that nervous anymore?" Sokka asked, raising his eyebrows. "Heh, I beg to differ… but honestly, I'm probably an asshole to be relieved that you can be flustered too sometimes, aren't I?"

"I've been flustered around you several times as it is," Azula said, pouting slightly. "But I suppose… things feel a little different now. I'd rather just forget about everyone else and stay locked away with you for good… like in this lab. There's a bed and everything…"

"I'm aware," Sokka smirked. Azula shot him a knowing grin. "You don't actually intend for us to make use of it, or do you?"

"Well, if we finish our work quickly…"

"Heh? Sounds like you're not that flustered after all," Sokka chuckled. Azula shrugged.

"If it's just you, I guess… I feel safe. And that's a very strange feeling, mind you," she said, with a sad smile. "If I'm with you, I have nothing to be afraid of… be it entrance exams, designing pole markers, not botching things up in this lab, or even fighting my own family. I feel like… like you'll always be by my side, even when I know that there's nothing that guarantees that. And it just… messed with my head, somewhat. I'd never felt like this before, alright? So…"

"So, you don't know what to do with yourself?" Sokka asked, with a gentle smile. "Well… yeah, I guess you get me now. Because I've been feeling that way since you first kissed me, heh."

"Then I'm sorry for tormenting you by not staying locked up with you in our room constantly," Azula sighed. "But as we're on the same page now… guess we could just very well do that here, right? Surely we could…"

"Azula…" Sokka said, eyeing her skeptically. She smiled innocently as he raised a hand, taking his sweet time to say… "After all our work here's done, like you said. Alright?"

"Wait, really?" Azula smirked. Sokka snorted, shrugging.

"Hey, beds are made for sleeping on them…" he chuckled, and Azula laughed as she blushed again at their shared shamelessness.

They had already become near inseparable since they'd first consummated their relationship, but it was even harder to pry them off each other following the mutual love confession they shared that night. Their work in the lab and station continued to flow peacefully for the next weeks, including plenty of private fun when they had time to spare for it, as well as some exercising in preparation for the upcoming Polympics – the sporting event held in the station halfway through the winter that always lifted everyone's spirits. They also tried their luck with music, pool games and with further viewing sessions of movies and shows – though they held several of those in private, too, by continuing to watch Sokka's favorite TV show.

Azula's designs for the pole marker were coming along smoothly: Sokka taught her how to create the virtual design through mechanical drawing programs she had never used before. The Mechanist found her ideas quite intriguing once she presented them to him, and around six weeks into winter, their proposal was sent to the National Science Foundation for their approval…

"Princess Azula? Princess Azula!" The Mechanist called for her, just as she was in the middle of a pool match against Asami, Yue and Sokka.

"Did you get a response?" Azula asked, eyes wide as she set down her cue stick: everything faded from view as anxiety gnawed at her. She had done her best, but this was no meaningless work, not a simple homework assignment where passing grades would be enough to appease her family… no, she wanted to get it right. She wanted to get this right, to do her absolute best at it…

"Your proposal for the Pole Marker… has been accepted," the Mechanist said, smiling brightly at her.

Azula gasped: the rest of the occupants of the room let out cheerful exclamations, and before she knew it, a pair of familiar arms had wrapped around her from behind as she laughed in relieved disbelief.

"You did it! Ha! I told you it'd be the best marker ever!" Sokka declared, spinning in place with her in his arms: Azula covered her face with her hands, tears of relief spilling from her eyes as she nearly faltered in Sokka's embrace.

She wound up hugging him back eventually, laughing intimately with him in a corner while the others waited patiently – at first – for their brief celebration to end before their game could continue: afterwards, though, their whole group gathered at the galley to celebrate Azula's grand success far more enthusiastically, with a few drinks and the best food they could get their hands on – mainly, leftovers the kitchen staff always stashed in one of the secondary fridges, in case anyone needed a quick meal.

It was halfway through that night, finished off by an unsettling karaoke contest where many winterovers appeared eager to make fools of themselves, that Azula noticed something rather curious while she held Sokka's hand. He raised an eyebrow and she smiled, squeezing his fingers gently.

"Looks like we've made a lot of progress," she said. "My marker design will be crafted… and you're not trembling."

Sokka's eyes widened at her assessment. He glanced down at their hands as though to confirm her words, and Azula laughed as she pressed a kiss to his shoulder. His lips curved into a gentle smile, and he took her into his arms fully, relishing in their embrace while someone butchered a ballad by singing it entirely off-tune.

The preparations for Azula's entrance exam also took up a lot of her time: in the weeks leading to the Polympics, Azula worked harder than ever to prepare for the complicated test she'd be taking up soon. Sokka's lessons were paying off: even when they were up to anything else, she answered his impromptu questions about physics concepts, math problems and logic questions without fail, to his utter delight. Sokka had taken care of contacting his university, explaining Azula's circumstances and requesting for her exam to be held remotely, about a month before the station opened anew: with that settled and arranged, Azula focused on studying for it as best as possible.

Once the Polympics arrived, Azula knew she was due for a large distraction: instead of teaming up over their regions or countries – for that would have landed several people, Azula included, in a considerable disadvantage due to being the only representatives of their countries –, the teams for the Polympics were established through their departments instead. Thus, the science researchers had a team of their own, the engineers and supervisors of the tunnels were in another team, and the cooks and janitors worked together in another team. The disciplines, naturally, were much more complicated than regular Olympic ones: basketball was one of the easiest choices, given that there was a court in the station, but playing small-scale soccer was a possibility, too. Then, they had winter-based sports too, such as curling and a slightly chaotic attempt at ice-skating that was suspended quickly, for the ice near the station wasn't smooth enough for the competition to be held. After one stormy day, however, they had a chance to do a snowmen building contest with the resulting snow, even if its outcome was still rather mediocre and clunky, leading to a lot of amusement for all the competitors.

Races were held too, whether by groups or individuals, whether by running across the station or on a jogging machine, and while scores were being kept in all the sporting disciplines they were competing at, victory appeared a secondary matter for most everyone… except in the final discipline: weightlifting.

Korra roared proudly as she dropped the heavy weights she had managed to raise over her head. Her form wasn't perfect, but she had succeeded at outdoing her previous record and all winterovers witnessing her achievement clapped at her, even hooting in congratulations.

"Damn right!" Korra laughed, hugging Asami. "Didn't even pull a muscle! Maybe I could go for heavier…"

"Korra! You just said you didn't pull a muscle, don't go tempting fate now," Asami scolded her, and Korra grinned guiltily. "What you did was plenty as it is, okay?"

"Fine, fine, geez…"

Her eyes, however, drifted towards the man who had stepped up next: her only remaining competitor, her greatest rival in the weight gym to date. She smirked, nodding in his direction as he rubbed his hands in preparation for picking up the heavy weight.

"Sure you've got what it takes?" she asked. Sokka scoffed, shaking his head and taking his position behind the weights before him.

A wicked thought occured to him over Korra's words: with a glint of cleverness shining in his eyes, he turned to the weight racks and found a simple pair of single-pound weights. The entire crowd watching him gasped in shock as he leaned down to adjust his barbell…

"Sokka!" Azula gasped, stepping up to him just as he finished securing the two extra weights. "Sokka, you have nothing to prove, don't be crazy…"

"I've had enough of being second to her," Sokka said, glaring at Korra playfully. She snickered devilishly at him. "Look, if it's too much I'll just drop the weights and nothing will happen…"

"And what about if you don't realize it's too much and you keep lifting until you get injured?" Azula asked, skeptical. Sokka grinned awkwardly.

"I… will have to hope you'll be a very sweet nurse in that case."

"That's not likely. Especially considering I'd be saying 'I told you so' through the entire recovery process," Azula said, eyeing him reproachfully. "Seriously, Sokka? Do you have to do this?"

"I've been training for well over nine months now," Sokka said, eyes aglow with determination. "I do think I can do it… but if you encourage me, I'll probably do better at it, yet."

"Oh, really?" Azula asked. "You're blackmailing me into supporting you even though you know I don't want you to do this?"

"Uh… basically?" Sokka smiled awkwardly. Azula scoffed, but she smiled too.

"You're an idiot," she said, stepping up and cupping his face. "Be careful. The minute something feels weird, you'll stop. Okay?"

"Okay," he said, smiling shyly: everyone was watching them, but he wouldn't hide or pull away from her, even so.

It was Azula who stepped back, then, and Sokka ensured to prepare himself, rubbing the magnesium powder on his hands before stepping up to the weights: he leaned down, setting his hands in place… he let out one deep breath, and he hoisted the barbell.

He struggled slightly with the first movements, until he finally had the bar safely on his collarbone level. His balance wasn't the finest, but he kept going nonetheless, flowing through each stage to the next while trying not to falter, even if the weight was indeed almost overwhelming…

But his eyes fell upon her. She seemed so insecure, so nervous, so worried for his wellbeing that he knew he had to go forward. If just to give her a reason to smile, to relax, to enjoy the crazy competitions that were finally drawing to a close…

His voice broke out in a war cry as he pushed higher: finally, he stood fully upright, and he hoisted the weights over his head. The whole crowd in the gym broke out in cheers, and Sokka sustained his position for a moment longer before dropping the heavy weights and letting out a relieved sigh: Azula was in his arms a moment later, laughing while scolding him for his recklessness, covering his face with numerous kisses as everyone else congratulated him for dethroning Korra, something everyone had thought was entirely unlikely until he had boldly dared to go further than anyone else ever had gone before.

The closing ceremony and feast for the Polympics was another great highlight of the whole event, a much better reward than any medals – though the Mechanist still took his time to design some small copper medals that read 'I survived the Polympics in the Amundsen-Scott Station' rather than anything with more grandeur than that. But as enjoyable as the meal might be, the main thing on Azula's mind, after posting enthusiastic pictures about the Polympics on her Instagram account, was taking Sokka to their room, and either catching up on sleep – something they both needed direly – or celebrating his great success much more intimately. They were intercepted by someone on their way there, however:

"Polympics may be done… but that's not the final challenge we've got going, Sokka. I don't need to remind you, do I?" Korra had told him, just before they exited the galley. Sokka raised an eyebrow.

"Are the conditions met yet…?" he asked. Korra smirked and nodded.

"All predictions say the temperatures will drop appropriately for it in the next week. So… get ready for it, I guess. I'll make sure to message you when the time comes," she said, nodding at him before rushing after Asami, who was halfway down the corridor with Suki and Yue by then.

"What… was that?" Azula asked. Sokka winced, eyeing her warily… the guilt in his complexion spoke for itself, and the Princess stared at him in disbelieve "And here I thought you'd have enough by competing with her at weightlifting."

"Well, I don't think this is a competition, to be fair? It's just two friends doing something… kind of very stupid," Sokka admitted, with a guilty chuckle. Azula shook her head. "Look, it might not even be possible. If the atmospheric conditions don't happen, we won't be able to try it. But if they did… wouldn't you have a great argument to convince your parents that I'm a good match for you if you can tell them that I'm part of the most exclusive club in the history of humanity? No?"

"That…would only work until they learn about what that club actually entails," Azula said. Sokka huffed.

"Well then, we don't tell them what it entails and we'll keep them guessing," Sokka smirked. Azula laughed, shaking her head.

"You're seriously going to go for it, then? A two-hundred degree stay in the sauna, followed by a minus a hundred degree walk in the ice?" she asked. "Do you know the right way to go about it? Like… all the details? How to avoid frostbite? How to ensure you don't die of temperature shock?"

"I've looked into it…" Sokka pouted slightly, and Azula raised an eyebrow judgmentally. "I really have! You're not supposed to walk too fast, not supposed to breathe too heavily, you just go out and go back, that's how it works. No big deal, right?"

Azula eyed him skeptically, regardless of his innocent smile: she was utterly mad for wanting to protect him from himself, wasn't she? Sokka seemed to be becoming an adrenaline junkie of some sort as of late… and a stupid part of her found that rather appealing about him, as of late. A very stupid part of her, she supposed.

"If you do this," Azula said, raising a hand towards Sokka, her index finger outstretched. Sokka whimpered giddily at the possibility that she would acquiesce at last… "You'll need training. A lot of training. Also… as far as I understand, you have to do it naked?"

"Uh, yeah, I kind of have to, it's more dangerous otherwise…"

"So, you don't mind running around the station naked, do you?" Azula asked, amused. Sokka's cheeks flushed.

"Wouldn't be around the station altogether… you leave from the sauna and go to the Ceremonial Pole, then you go back," Sokka said, pouting. "It's not like I'll walk the whole station naked anyhow… and I'll cover up with a hand, if that worries you."

"Yes, it worries me," Azula said, shaking her head. "Ugh, I… I'll have to be there to make sure you survive this madness, won't I?"

"Well, yeah, but you don't have to do it too…"

"Oh, believe me, I won't: I'll just be dressed up in my proper extreme cold weather gear in case you faint halfway through your silly stunt," Azula said. Sokka chuckled.

"Well, I suppose it's fair to be a non-believer… but you won't have to come to my rescue. I'll have it covered," Sokka said. "As for that training… what exactly do you have in mind?"

Azula sighed, but she smirked at him before long: he knew that look on her face all too well, and his heart tingled happily at the sight of it…

While the temptation had been strong for months, neither of them had dared desecrate the sauna until then… but this opportunity provided them plenty of chances to do exactly that. They weren't supposed to use the sauna without clothes… but being fully naked was a requisite for the 300 Club's challenge. Sokka was self-aware about sitting fully bare in the sauna at first, but a few devious caresses from his lover saw to soothing him into relaxation quickly.

"It's late…" Azula whispered, sitting on his lap as she pressed her lips to his cheek. "Most everyone is in bed by now, and I've made sure to lock the doors safely. The way is clear."

"Good…" Sokka groaned, burying his face in her chest. Azula smirked for it, lightly swaying her hips so her pelvis would brush fully against his abdomen. "But… are we up to the two-hundred degrees already?"

"Nope. This, like I said, is training. We're starting with a hundred and fifty degrees, and we'll crank it up higher as the week progresses," Azula said, leaning down and kissing his lips softly. Sokka snorted.

"Well, considering how hot you are… maybe you make up for the missing fifty degrees by yourself," Sokka said. Azula chuckled, shaking her head dismissively.

"You're such a flatterer… but if that's so, I suppose we can make up for the fifty degrees and then some, can't we?" she said, raising her eyebrows suggestively. Sokka chuckled as she kissed him fiercely again.

They fulfilled their training goals on a daily basis, rising ten degrees each day. By the time they reached the necessary two-hundred degrees, though, the heat overwhelmed them too much for any sexual antics: five minutes of sitting in the sauna had sent both of them running out into the refreshing cold of the station, laughing at their inability to handle the hellish temperature. Even so, they tried again on the next day, and the next, until they gradually grew accustomed to the temperature – not enough to engage in full-blown sex, but the occasional kisses and caresses while enjoying each other's sweaty bodies proved feasible by then.

Thus, when the polar temperature dropped just enough, Sokka was ready.

Unfortunate work timing on Korra's end resulted in Sokka being the first to take up the challenge – she would follow as soon as she was able. All his friends were ready to encourage him and help open the doors to the exterior of the station: Azula sat with him inside the sauna for a short time, pressing quick kisses to his lips and bringing their brows together.

"You can do this. You're utterly insane for choosing to do it, that's for sure… but you can, Sokka. I believe you can," she said, firmly. Sokka chuckled. "Now, then… I'll be ready to run to your rescue if you need me to. But try not to make me do that, alright?"

"I'll do my best," Sokka confirmed, kissing her quickly. "Though… c-can you ask the others not to look?"

"Certainly not," Azula said, smirking. Sokka huffed. "You made up your mind to run naked in the ice? Face the consequences for it, then."

"Meanie," he smiled, shaking his head. "Oh, fine. I'll try not to… get too self-aware. But heh, I've gotten better at that, so…"

"After this, I accept no more self-awareness excuses from you. Regarding anything," Azula laughed, kissing his lips softly one more time as she rose to her feet, stepping up to the sauna's door. "Your boots are ready. Just put them on, cover up with your hands whatever you think you should cover up… and go for it."

"Okay… okay," Sokka nodded, biting his lip.

"Good luck," Azula said, her heart pounding before saying: "I love you."

"I… I love you too," Sokka grinned in a most heartfelt, innocent way, and Azula's cheeks flushed as she stepped outside the sauna.

She dressed in her extreme cold weather gear right away, and she joined the rest of Sokka's support group quickly.

"Is he ready?" Asami asked. "Korra says she might be done in about half an hour, so…"

"Well, hopefully Sokka will have recovered from the temperature shock by then," Azula said, with a weak smile – he was going to get this right. He had to. Even entertaining the notion that he might fail was impossible right now. She couldn't let herself do so.

"How much longer now?" Yue asked.

"About four minutes," Azula said, breathing deeply. "Which, admittedly, is also madness. I don't know who was the mad fool who came up with this concept, but…"

"Nobody really knows, but it's credited to Howard Redifer? A meteorologist," Suki explained. Azula huffed. "It was back in the fifties, I think."

"Too bad. If his grand idea got Sokka killed or sick, I could've very well just flown over to give him a piece of my mind for it, but I suppose he's likely to be dead by now," Azula said, and the others chuckled.

"A lot of people tend to take this challenge, from what Korra said," Asami mentioned. "But I guess most of us are not that bold this year…"

"Not that crazy, you'll mean," Azula said, bluntly, shaking her head.

She shouldn't be anxious: she should be supportive. He would be fine… he had to be fine. He needed to be fine…

One minute left. Azula breathed deeply as she picked up a flashlight: she checked for the umpteenth time that it was functional, and she readied herself as she waited for the sauna's door to open…

It did a moment later, and she glanced over her shoulder as her naked lover crossed the door in a rush.

"Slow! Don't run!" Azula reminded him. Sokka slowed down and nodded: his body was covered in sweat, and the shift of temperature between the sauna and the general station was already making him uncomfortable…

"Doors opening… now!" Yue exclaimed once Sokka was a few steps away from the door: she and Suki pushed them open together.

Azula braced herself for the cold, pointing her flashlight towards the frigid, still night beyond them: Sokka rushed past her wordlessly, following the beam of light… though the green glow of auroras above them helped him find his way too, as his boots stepped out into the frozen surface of the South Pole.

He didn't hesitate: if anything, it seemed he was moments away from starting to run impulsively. A hand covered his mouth, ensuring his breathing would remain warm and even, while the other covered his privates, not simply out of bashfulness but out of highly necessary protection: ice began crusting around his body as he marched outside, but it melted quickly due to the mesh of extreme temperatures battling over his skin.

He kept going, trying to breathe evenly: the ceremonial pole marker was close, and he looped around it without touching it, for even daring do something so stupid would have heinous consequences. Being out in the cold right now felt surreal… he wondered if space would feel this way, too. Everything was strangely silent, his body seemed to fail to react to it properly… he ground his teeth tightly as he kept moving, making the most of the heat he still had, of his remaining energy, to return to the beam of light that guided him through the ice first, and that would continue to guide him back to the station now.

He thought he heard the girls screaming to encourage him – someone even poked out through the upper observation deck and shouted at him too – but he truly couldn't make out what they were saying. His ears were as good as closed and nothing mattered as much as reaching Azula again: there she stood, with the flashlight, urging him to keep going and to return to her safely…

He nearly stumbled into her arms, and the others closed the doors behind him at once.

"There! It's done!" Asami exclaimed, smiling at Sokka: he trembled violently, and Azula helped him march quickly to the sauna again.

"Okay, just… just keep moving. Just keep moving. Oh, you're insane but you did it, damn you…!" Azula laughed: her anxiety for the past week and a half finally receded as she led her boyfriend to the safety and warmth of the sauna for the second time that day.

"Mmm… hmmm," Sokka smiled awkwardly: ice crystals had formed over him, even if they were mostly small, and his breathing was heavy and labored…

His breathing pattern eased up once he was sitting inside the sauna again. It got even better once Azula shed her extreme weather gear and joined him: the girls outside were still chanting a celebratory song for him, and he and Azula laughed together as they gazed at each other with heartfelt smiles.

"Now you'll be able to leave the Pole with no regrets?" Azula asked. Sokka chuckled, shaking his head.

"Not sure the 300 Club had anything to do with that, but… heh. I really did it. Now your mom and dad will be impressed, without a doubt," Sokka said: Azula laughed, shaking her head as she kissed his brow, fingers brushing his moist hair once more.

"You're mad… but you're amazing, Sokka."

"A mad scientist, am I?"

"That… that makes perfect sense, come to think of it," Azula chuckled, hugging him to her chest as he relaxed in her arms.

He was in no condition to help Korra once her own turn arrived, but he and Azula lingered nearby nonetheless, once their friend's run arrived. A member of the meteorologists joined her, too, and the awkward man struggled to pull off a proper run while Korra seemed to know exactly what to expect – it was, after all, her second time doing the legendary stunt that had allowed her to join the 300 Club during her previous stay as a winterover. Proper celebration would be held for all the successful takers of the challenge eventually, but they had to recover from the strain first, and that was exactly what they did.

Even though he hadn't pushed himself into running, Sokka's body resented him for his recklessness for about a week, with a cough that lightened every day. Fortunately, their work for the IceCube Lab wasn't too demanding during those days, and they had many opportunities to allow Sokka to rest and recover while Azula continued to study for her approaching entrance exam. It was their next big highlight, along with the slow construction of the Pole Marker, which was well on its way to completion by now…

The darkest days of polar winter were slowly falling behind them. The best period of time for the 300 Club challenge had already come to an end. And while fun events were held – like a masquerade ball, and talent competitions –, Azula's mind was progressively consumed by her focus on the exam that might change her life, if she could succeed at it…

She was nervous but she tried not to let it affect her performance when the day arrived: the satellite went up, and for once, she didn't focus on communicating with the outside world, posting anything to Instagram or reassuring her parents through videocalls about anything. Instead, her video feed was live, and the exam's instructors shared the website they had prepared for her to begin answering the questions for her exam.

Sokka waited right outside, anxiously, nervously. He had gotten her up to this, and he would see this adventure through to the very end. He could have been working at his own special project in the Mechanist's workshop right now… but he didn't want to do that until Azula was done with the test. Once that was over…

He paced by the room, greeted people who passed him by, he even found a cup of hot chocolate and snuck into the room quietly to set it down by her desk before leaving again – she shot him a grateful smile before returning to work. His anxiety, he knew, was probably nothing compared to hers, but how he hoped she'd be handling this better than he was.

After three hours, the door swung open and Sokka jumped to his feet: Azula looked tired, but she offered him a weak smile nonetheless.

"My head hurts," she said, simply. Sokka grimaced as he cupped her cheeks between his hands.

"We'll get you some painkillers," he said, kissing her brow softly. "It's done now?"

"Yep. Just in time before the satellite went down," Azula admitted, with a sad smile. Sokka sighed. "What?"

"I kind of wanted to post a picture of us hugging in celebration now that you finished the exam…?" Sokka said, and Azula scoffed.

"Save it for when I learn whether I passed or failed," she suggested, groaning as she dropped her head on his shoulder. "Thank you for all the training, but… I'm about to pass out of sheer exhaustion."

"That's okay. I'll just carry you to the galley for lunch, and you can nap after that's done," Sokka said: Azula gasped when he genuinely hoisted her into his arms, with a proud smile. "See?"

"You… you really got all that embarrassment of yours cured by walking into the frigid winter, did you?" Azula laughed. Sokka grinned and kissed her lips quickly.

"For what it's worth… I'm really proud that you've come this far," Sokka said. "You should be the one to be proud, of course, because you've done your best, Azula. Most people would've faltered ages ago and begged to go home…"

"Especially if they had my family's resources?" Azula asked. Sokka nodded.

"That you didn't do it is honestly really awesome," he smiled. "Shows you've got the determination to choose your own path in life, no matter if your parents can't handle it."

"I… suppose I do," Azula smiled, gazing at him with a heartfelt smile: a career in physics wasn't the only path she had chosen, as of late…

Their arrival in the galley wasn't that triumphant, as most people who knew them weren't around right now. Still, a toast was held in Azula's honor that night, and in order to relax after her nap, Azula convinced the others to join her and Sokka in watching Farscape in the B-1 lounge's TV room. Their friends seemed to find the first episode intriguing enough to watch more, too, and Sokka was deeply relieved by that… though he was caught by surprise when he noticed Azula was quite preoccupied by taking a picture of the screen. He raised an eyebrow, and she smirked as she tapped the button, immortalizing the image.

"What are you doing, exactly?" Sokka asked, amused. "You already watched these episodes, so you're bored and taking pictures instead, or…?"

"I'm taking a picture of you… with the episode, of course," Azula said. Sokka's cheeks flushed. "Is that a problem?"

"Are you… going to post that?" he asked. Azula shrugged enigmatically. "Azula…"

"I think… we're about a month away from sunrise," she said, gazing at him intently. "And that means that, while my posts have been growing much more positive, they might need… a little push lately."

"Woah. What's your plan?" Sokka asked, eyes wide. Azula smiled before showing him exactly what she intended… and his cheeks were no less red once she tapped the button to post the picture, with its description and tags, just as she had intended.

...

Wanna be the Crichton to my Aeryn? Jk jk… unless?

The wording of that sentence, if he even deigned to call it that, made no sense whatsoever to Ozai, especially with that strange emote of two eyes glancing sideways. He frowned as he read it over and over… as he looked at the picture of who he could only guess was Azula's IceCube Canadian co-worker. He was smiling slightly at the camera while a couple – if it was that, they seemed somewhat hostile to each other – stared at one another on a TV screen on the back of the picture. None of which actually told Ozai anything other than the fact that Azula, it seemed, was socializing more. He had guessed as much already, considering many of her previous posts had been far too cheerful for her standards. A part of him thought she was simply messing with him… that she was pretending to enjoy herself in some childish, inverse psychology gambit.

But this? This was strange. It was confusing, perhaps alarming… for he didn't understand it at all.

"I have no idea what she means by that," Ursa said, once he asked her. She shrugged, and Ozai scowled. "Maybe ask Zuko?"

The suggestion was likely Ozai's sole solution for now… but Zuko, of course, appeared to be as ignorant as Ozai expected him to be. He smiled awkwardly, shrugging at his father.

"I have no idea what a Crichton or an Aeryn might be. Could be some science term, I don't know," he said. Ozai scoffed. "But, uh, don't worry too much, Father. I'm sure what you believe is still true. She's just… trying to guilt you into bringing her back here as soon as possible. That has to be it."

"I shall certainly hope so," Ozai huffed: he left Zuko alone in his room again…

And the younger prince panicked as he pulled up his phone quickly, searching for the terms Crichton and Aeryn at once. He had seen the wording of that specific meme countless times by now. Pretending to be ignorant was easy with his father, for Ozai was always ready to underestimate him, but his heart twisted unto itself as he feared what his father's outrage might shape into, once he understood the likely truth…

The answer he found caused his jaw to drop, no matter if he had expected it: the two terms were the names of characters from a TV show, characters who got married and had a child in a sequel movie, no less.

He closed the browser, and he dialed Aang.

...

The sunrise was as momentous as the sunset, it turned out: while no one would deem it genuinely warm, the rise in temperature in the pole was very much tangible after so long of being used to the winter's worst. The equinox brought back the sun, and with it, the auroras would be gone, as well as the bright stars. Strangely, as depressing as perpetual night could be, Azula had grown fond of it by then. Thus, she toasted the night away with Sokka right outside the station, as did many other winterovers eager for the first sight of the sunrise in the horizon…

"It's coming!" exclaimed Korra, once the first sliver of brightness rose in the distance.

"Okay… once about half the sun emerges, we're snapping the right picture. But first…" Azula said, raising her phone and tapping the camera, her glass of champagne angled towards the slowly rising sun.

"Still getting wild reactions to your other post?" Sokka asked, holding her from behind. Azula smiled and shrugged.

"A few, here and there. Nothing alarming so far. My parents don't seem to have known what was going on at all," Azula chuckled. "So, I'm thinking we could, maybe, make another mischief picture now. Both our glasses, what do you say?"

"I have no issue with that, but… we're getting a proper one of the two of us next. My turn," Sokka smiled. Azula chuckled and nodded.

They were used to the picture sessions by now, often enjoying themselves as they playfully posed for them – after all these months, Sokka's Instagram was full of pictures that nobody had seen so far. Azula hadn't liked them yet, let alone interacted them visibly… but she would soon, once their plan worked out as intended. Once the satellite was up, they'd post their best pictures from that morning on his account, including one of a joyful kiss they shared while the sun rose behind them…

What a beautiful day it had been. What a glorious new morning.

The satellite connection activated hours later, and Azula frowned upon noticing she had a confusing number of notifications popping up in her phone.

"Something up?" Sokka asked – they were resting in the B-3 lounge by then, cuddling in a couch while the others played some game or another. Azula frowned, tapping across her phone quickly.

"I don't know… but it better be important. I wanted to post what we…" she started, only to frown in confusion at a flurry of messages by both her brother and Aang. "The hell?"

"Aang?" Sokka read quickly. Azula blinked blankly as she opened the messaging thread…

To find messages that left her floored on the spot, and Sokka as well, once he read them along with her:

Heeeeey! I hope everything's going well in the station!

Look… Zuko kind of freaked out because he thinks you're dating Sokka. I told him that wasn't possible, but I just wanted to warn you because maybe your parents are going to ask you about that next chance they get?

I mean, I saw your post and I thought it was pretty funny, but you didn't mean anything by it, right?

So yeah, anyway, I hope you're having fun! Answer when the satellite comes back up!

Azula snapped her tongue as she read the fourth message in a row by her childhood friend. Sokka eyed her warily, unsure of what her reaction meant yet…

"So… Zuko figured it out," she said. "That post really was too bold, huh?"

"Do you think he'd tell your parents?"

"He… hasn't," Azula concluded, checking her messaging threats with the rest of her family. "Otherwise, my father would have likely blown up my phone with all-caps messages while my mother would have been asking me to call her at once, so… if neither thing happened, he's kept his mouth shut. Which… is odd. Welcome, but odd."

"Guess he wants what's best for you?" Sokka said, with a careless grin. "I mean, he's your brother, so…"

"So, you expect he'd wish for my happiness, you think?" Azula smirked, glancing at him before squeezing his thigh suggestively. "Well, I certainly have what's best for me already, that's for sure…"

"What do you think we should do about this, though?" Sokka asked. Azula huffed.

"I… will tell Aang thanks for the heads up," she said, with a bright grin. Sokka's jaw dropped. "I mean, he's just saying I should be careful since my parents are being nosey, right? Totally reasonable response to that…"

"He's also asking if it's true, though…" Sokka pointed out. Azula chuckled.

"Well, now… that's none of his business, is it?" she said, simply. Sokka snorted, shaking his head and pressing a kiss to her cheek.

"You're so dangerous," he smiled. "Still going to post the pictures of today?"

"Oh, absolutely," Azula grinned deviously. "Final big reveal will happen right before we go home, too. If that's alright with you, of course…"

"Sounds perfect," Sokka nodded, hugging Azula tightly before he, too, took to posting to his Instagram next.

About a week later, the Pole Marker was finished: the entire group of winterovers gaped at the finished piece in wonderment as Azula smiled proudly at her homage to her experience in the South Pole Station: the marker was shaped as a DOM, the devices through which IceCube detected the neutrinos. The near-translucent crystal of the upper half of the marker allowed strings of small LED lights to light up, as they would when a neutrino crossed a certain path. But the DOM itself was also a relief of the world map: the LED lights were distributed across the nations and continents that each winterover hailed from, the list of which comprised the base of the marker. Hugging the center of the marker were the traditional words: "Geographic South Pole – Latitude 90° South", along with the date and the initials for the National Science Foundation.

"It lights up?! It seriously lights up! Holy crap, this is the coolest thing, Azula!" exclaimed Suki, smiling brightly as she eyed the marker with delight.

"The materials of the dome and the LED's insulation should keep the little lights fully functional through the summer months, at least," the Mechanist explained. "They might not be so strong in the winter ones, but I suppose we'll see! Either way… it was ambitious and challenging, but I'm very pleased and proud of what we've accomplished, Princess Azula!"

"I suppose I did go overboard with my ideas," Azula laughed. "I'm glad you could pull it off, though."

"It's so amazing! And here's our names too, look!" Yue exclaimed, beaming brightly as she read the base of the Marker, too.

Azula smiled as everyone rejoiced in her design: her eyes found Sokka's, who smiled fondly at her as well. He had been there throughout the design process, suggesting occasional modifications to ensure Azula's work would be doable, as ambitious as it was. Her success thrilled him too, but he had stepped back to ensure the others could revel in the beautiful marker they'd leave behind once they returned north, in a matter of a few months…

But he had something in mind too. Something he hadn't told Azula about before… something he had kept to himself and worked on quietly while she was studying. And that night, he finally dared offer it to her.

"Sokka? W-what is… what is this?"

Azula's eyes widened: her boyfriend sat with her on an insulating fabric he'd set down by the flags of the Ceremonial South Pole, their faces exposed as they enjoyed the sunlight as best they could, in the South Pole. Sokka seemed determined to make that location a most special place to push their relationship forward…

The ring he showed her wasn't crowned by a large diamond, or by any sort of jewel. It was, however, quite beautiful in its own way: Sokka bit his lip as he raised the ring and smiled at her.

"It's… a sillier ring than you think. Not silver or gold or anything like that," he laughed. "More of a… wire ring. Coil ring? Whatever you'd like to call it, the truth is… it's made of translucent resin rather than metal and the point is that it's actually a ring that reacts to electromagnetic fields? Your ideas with the Marker inspired me to make it. I know it's not that impressive, doesn't even look all that pretty, but…"

"But you wanted to give me a ring?" Azula asked, raising her eyebrows. Sokka smiled awkwardly.

"I… couldn't really get you a traditional engagement ring while we're here, never imagined I'd ever be so lucky as to find someone I'd like to marry while I was in the South Pole, heh. But I… I kind of hoped you'd keep it, even if you don't want it as your engagement ring? At least… it could be a small piece of your time here, a little light inspired by your work and what you achieved here, to remind you that you left a wonderful mark in this station. I don't know if we'll ever come back, but… even if we don't, your marker's joining the others in the display cases, and our time here will be immortalized because of that. So… I figured it would be nice for you to go back north with something that reminded you of that. It's not nearly as pretty as what you and the Mechanist did with the marker, but… I'm not that good at handiwork like this, I guess."

He chuckled softly, still holding out the ring for Azula to take if she felt like it. She swallowed hard, eyeing him somewhat reproachfully, though.

"So… it's not an engagement ring?"

Sokka froze on the spot, his jaw dropping as Azula smiled slightly at his reaction.

"I… k-kind of figured you'd rather have a really good one?" he said, cheeks flushing: to his surprise, hers did, too. "It's not like I wouldn't want to ask, I just…!"

"Then you should ask," Azula said, simply, smiling deviously at him. Sokka scoffed, chuckling and covering his face with a hand.

"You're unreal. And I'm still in a really weird Hallmark movie," he said. Azula laughed, leaning closer to hug his arm. "Would you go for it, then? Would you actually marry me with this engagement ring?"

"Hmm… I would," Azula said, closing her eyes as she hugged his arm, squeezing the many layers of protective clothing. "My parents are the problem, obviously, but… if I'm accepted in your school and I convince them to let me go, I might be able to go all the way to Canada with you. And if they don't want me marrying you in Burma, then… I'll just marry you in Canada."

"Would that count in Burma?" Sokka asked. Azula shrugged carelessly. "Goodness…"

"I don't know, and I don't really care," she said, leaning close to kiss his cheek. "I'm not living my life without you if I can help it. This wasn't a… winter romance, I suppose. I'm serious about you, and I know you are about me too, so…"

"We always said we'd figure it out," Sokka said. Azula nodded. "Well, then… if you would marry me, I'll still try to get you a proper ring in the future but for now…"

"I don't think you have to," Azula laughed, taking the ring in her mitten: it didn't look as smooth as other rings might, but Sokka had done a better job with the crafting than he was willing to admit. "I think this one will be better, honestly. Way better than other rings I've seen… though I want to test it now. Electromagnetic fields, then?"

"Uh, yeah…" Sokka smiled: Azula grinned as she rose to her feet, pulling him up with her.

"Let's go see how it responds to everything electromagnetic in the station, shall we?" she said, clasping his hand firmly, her new ring held tightly in her other hand.

The rest of their evening was spent testing the ring – it had two different lights, one that lit up in red, the other in blue. The girls were quick to poke fun at Sokka for his gift to Azula, and as much as he blushed, he still laughed along with them, gazing at Azula with heartfelt delight as she continued to rejoice whenever she found another magnetic field that caused her new ring to react accordingly. It was simply black coil wrapped smoothly unto itself within the translucent resin, offering it a dark look that Azula already had found interesting, but the lights appeared to amuse her with childlike wonderment. She knew she was making a fool of herself by being so thrilled by the ring's reactions, but she couldn't stop appreciating the surprising, wonderful gift Sokka had crafted for her.

The first planes were set to start arriving soon: some winterovers would leave quickly, though Sokka and Azula hoped to stay for as long as possible. All the winterovers for scientific experiments would usually need to remain in the Pole for another month or so, in order to train the next year's winterovers… so Azula and Sokka would get away with their hopes of ignoring the world beyond Antarctica for a little longer. Their last solo inspections of the IceCube Lab went smoothly, even if a light snowstorm happened to start while they were there on the last days before the station reopened: the bed in the facility offered them plenty of opportunities to relax together after the work was done, and to enjoy themselves thoroughly as they waited for the weather to calm down.

"I really wish I could stay here with you forever," Azula whispered, hugging Sokka snugly, her face buried in his chest. He pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head. "I mean… I'll love being with you anywhere else, but this year has been incredible. Definitely the best one of my life."

"And you're royal. That's saying something," Sokka chuckled. "Honestly… life outside isn't as smooth as this all the time, I guess, even if there's drawbacks to living here too. But going back to reality after this won't be easy. My family's not that well-off, even if we can make ends meet. I didn't have to cook or clean a lot here, but… I'm not exactly great at it, I have to admit."

"Ah? Are you scared of domesticity with the princess who never cleaned up after herself?"

"I didn't say that…"

"Well, you should be," Azula said. Sokka snorted and laughed, kissing her lips quickly. "I mean it: you'll have to bear with me when it comes to all such things, Sokka. I barely even learned how a pizza is made the other day when the firefighting crew took over the kitchen to make some. And I only know the theory, so…"

"Well, I knew the theory of sex and you taught me how to put it into practice," Sokka smiled, prodding her nose with his. "Guess the same will happen with cooking and cleaning for you, huh?"

"Guess so," Azula smiled, caressing his chest gently. "But still… I really am going to miss this place. It's amazing. Better than a palace… more real than a palace, I guess, no matter how unreal it feels. I know you said I'd left my mark here, literally with the marker, but…"

"But… you want to leave an even bigger one?" Sokka asked. Azula shrugged. "Hmm… there's one thing we haven't done yet, come to think of it."

"Oh?" Azula raised an eyebrow. Sokka grinned.

"Well… we'll get to it when the snow stops, how about that?" he said, grinning deviously and climbing over her again. Azula chuckled, wrapping her arms and legs around him and encouraging him to go for another round of lovemaking quickly, for they had the leisure time to do exactly that.

His plan was a rather wild one: finally, they would take Korra up on her offer to show them the freezing tunnels within the ice, right below the station. Numerous shrines, jokes and fun messages had been left in them across the decades of human presence in the South Pole… and there was still room for them to leave some of their own, too.

"Say… you were working on wire art over the last months," Azula told Sokka, as they slowed by an empty spot in the tunnels' walls. "Maybe… maybe we could make something of the sort and leave it here for good. I mean, we could also etch 'Sokka and Azula fucked here' in the wall, if you'd like…"

"Though we didn't fuck in here, that'd be very ill-advised considering how cold it is down in the tunnels," Sokka said, with an awkward smile. Azula rolled her eyes.

"You know what I mean," she said, simply. Sokka chuckled.

"Well… it doesn't sound like a bad idea. Do you mind bringing us back in here in, uh, a couple of hours?" Sokka asked Korra, who sighed and shrugged.

"You science kids think I have all day, huh?" she said, though she smirked and shook her head. "Better make it quick. First plane's landing tomorrow and I'm going to be busy as hell with the summer crew, so get that wire art of yours done fast."

"We'll try," Sokka smiled awkwardly, clasping Azula's hand and guiding her back to the station.

They worked together all day to build a homage to their relationship: it wasn't perfect, but Sokka, skilled by now at working with wire, managed to craft a small peacock while Azula crafted a maple leaf, herself. Korra led them into the tunnels anew, and after they found an empty space, they deposited the linked symbols of both their countries on it. Their creations would lie safely in the tunnels together, yet another mark, much more intimate and simpler, of a memorable year spent in the South Pole Station.

And so, they readied themselves for a new beginning once the station was slowly crowded by the newcomers, all of whom were thrilled to revisit the station – for it was the recurrent summer crew, ready to relieve the winterovers from their heavier management work in the station, if just for a few months. Yet there was one familiar face for Sokka and Azula among the many new arrivals…

"Guys!" Aang whimpered, running towards them down the hallway, several bags of luggage on his shoulders.

He dropped the luggage before wrapping an arm around each Sokka and Azula, both of whom were genuinely shocked to see Aang again. They exchanged confused glances over the scientist's bald head while he held them tightly.

"I'm so glad you could handle everything yourselves! I'm so sorry I had to make a mess of things, though, but I'm glad anyway…!" he rambled as he ever did. Azula sighed, patting his back and smiling awkwardly.

"We took care of things indeed, so there's no need to be so weepy," she said. Aang sniffed, pulling back and smiling. "Your grandfather…?"

"Still recovering, but… well, I'm not staying the winter again because of him. I just needed to come by and check for myself that everything's okay with you two," Aang said, eyes flittering between them both. "I also wanted to offer to train the next winterovers, especially for you, Sokka. You had all those big opportunities coming up and I'm sure you're dying to get to that…"

"Oh… uh, nah. They said they'd wait for me, so I'm not worried," Sokka smiled, with a shrug. "Everything's good, Aang. I'll stay until Azula's ready to go."

"Uh… well, I thought she would be ready to go, too," Aang said, glancing at her. Azula blew out a breath and shrugged.

"I thought I would be, too… but this place isn't so bad, is it?" Azula smiled, eyes flickering towards Sokka knowingly. He chuckled as Aang blinked blankly.

"Huh… I guess you weren't kidding with the Instagram stuff?" he said. Azula's heart sped up upon hearing those words. "That you're having a better time here lately, I mean…?"

"I… uh, got used to it, you could say," Azula said, with a shrug. "Though it's not like I have no plans for the future. In fact…"

"The satellite should be about to…" Sokka remarked, glancing around himself as Azula pulled up her phone slowly…

It rang moments after she pulled it from her pocket, and without further ado, Azula broke into a sprint. Sokka didn't waste a moment before following her, and they both left the newly arrived Aang frozen on the spot.

"G-guys…?" he blinked blankly.

Well… they were getting along great. That was nice. Zuko would be happy to know his sister had a friend… a friend Zuko suspected was her boyfriend, instead. Aang had told him that wasn't likely, Sokka seemed to be a perfectly reasonable guy, and Azula wasn't so reckless as to jump into a relationship with her roommate, was she?

But they had spent well over six months of isolation in the station. And while Aang hadn't heard news from any of the other winterovers regarding Azula and Sokka's potential relationship, it didn't mean that nothing had happened between them…

He swallowed hard as he followed them to where they'd gone: the quiet reading room had been entirely empty until they had marched inside it in a rush. It was certainly a good place for privacy, Aang supposed, as he stepped through the open door slowly.

"YES! YES! OH, FUCK YES!"

"No way…! I did it? I did it? I'm in?!"

"Azula!"

The Quiet Reading room usually wasn't a place for such noise and revelry, but the two IceCube winterovers laughed quite loudly: Aang peeked at them with curiosity, watching in surprise as Sokka hoisted Azula in his arms with absolute comfort and ease, and Azula even seemed close to tears of relief. From this angle, Aang could see the computer's screen… and after taking a few steps closer, he couldn't fail to notice that it was the layout of a university website: the words 'Accepted' were easy to read on a document that confirmed, it seemed, that someone had passed an entrance exam…

Aang's eyes widened as he glanced to his side: had Azula taken an entrance exam to a university? Had she…?

All such intellectual questions fell to the wayside when his jaw dropped at the sight of Azula and Sokka kissing recklessly, deeply, in thorough celebration of her grand achievement.

"Oh," he blurted out, unthinking: he had never been someone of heavy footsteps, so the other pair had no warning that he was there, right next to them.

"Aang…?!" Sokka nearly shrieked, jumping out of the kiss suddenly as he lowered Azula nervously. "Aah… I thought you'd stayed behind. Uh. Huh… hey?"

"Y-you guys. Hehe. You guys… y-you really… wow. Hah. Wow," Aang swallowed hard, cheeks flushing red slowly. "I-I thought Zuko was misunderstanding, but heh…"

"Wait. Aang…" Azula said, raising a hand in his direction. "Zuko didn't… tell any of his suspicions to our parents, did he?"

"No? B-but I mean, he wasn't sure, so…" Aang smiled awkwardly. "Wow. Huh. Well, congrats! For the relationship! A-and the… entrance exam? Is that what this is? Azula, did you…?"

"Did I apply to college without my parents knowing? Yes, I did," Azula said, with a slow smile. "And I got in through my own merits, too. I mean, Sokka did pull some strings to make sure I could apply, but not so I'd be given any leniency or anything, so…"

"And she pulled it off," Sokka smiled fondly at her, clasping her hand firmly: she couldn't help but smile back at him.

"Wait, but… what does that mean for your future?" Aang asked. Azula shrugged.

"Guess time will tell… but I may be able to fulfill my dreams after all. Very Hallmark movie of me, isn't it?" Azula winked at Sokka, who chuckled and nodded in agreement.

"We should get out of here, though. Got to celebrate this!" Sokka grinned, hugging Azula quickly before stepping up to the computer and logging out of her account in his university's site. "Everyone's going to be over the moon about this, Azula… you just keep giving us a thousand excuses to celebrate things lately, don't you?"

"I suppose?" Azula chuckled, smiling warmly at him… though the grin waned at the sight of Aang's tense, uncertain smile. "What?"

"I… uh, just, congratulations on your first boyfriend, haha," he said. Azula raised an eyebrow.

"Thanks… but he's not the first," Azula said, bluntly. Aang's jaw dropped. "What part of our relationship ever made you think that you knew everything about me, Aang?"

"I…! I…! W-what is… going on?!" he said, hands on his head. "It's like you're both wholly different people than when I was here last, and…! When did this even start between you two?!"

"Right after you left, I suppose," Sokka admittedly, powering off the computer with a chuckle. Azula raised an eyebrow, glancing at her boyfriend.

"Though if we get technical, probably from the moment we first met," she said, with a smirk. Aang yelped. "Not very observant, are you, Aang?"

"Azula…" Sokka chuckled, hugging her to his chest again before urging Aang to leave the room with them too. "Come on. Let's tell everyone and… ah, let's show Aang the marker! He has to see it too!"

"The… Pole Marker? Really? I-it's already done and everything?" Aang asked, astounded. Azula grinned brightly.

"And we should tell him about your victory in the Polympics… as well as your grand entrance into the 300 Club?" Azula teased Sokka, poking Sokka's ribs. Aang gasped.

"What?! No! You guys, I missed all that stuff?! I did?! Noooo…!"

They laughed as they progressed out of the room with Aang, briefly recounting some of their adventures… knowing, too, that they still had a few more left to live in the coming months.

While some of their friends left relatively fast, Sokka and Azula remained in the station long enough to partake in the Race Around the World, as well as the unveiling of the Pole Marker. Azula was quick to upload pictures of the ceremony: everyone rejoiced in the beautifully crafted device, especially the two new winterovers for IceCube, who cherished the DOM-like design more than anyone else in the station. Briefly afterwards, though, it was time for them to swap into the strange outfits they'd wear for the Race Around the World: as it was often ran in costumes, Sokka and Azula put together the most similar outfits they could to Sokka's favorite characters from Farscape, and yet again, Azula ensured to post pictures alluding to the true nature of their relationship in connection to the show. Their final days in the slowly busier station were immensely fun… but while they basked in every moment they could enjoy, the time to go back north was right around the corner, difficult as it might be to accept it.

Their bags were packed eventually, loaded with numerous gifts and beautiful mementos of their time in the South Pole. The airplane that would take them back awaited them, the flight conditions were optimal… and it was finally time for them to leave Antarctica.

"Well… this is it," Azula said, breathing deeply and turning towards Sokka. "Satellite's still up… so I think it's time for the last stage of our plan."

"The big reveal?" Sokka smiled. Azula nodded slowly.

"And for that…" she said, stepping closer to him as the stood in the snow: she pushed off his cold gear's hood and balaclava, and Sokka did the same for her. "Time for our final picture."

"Alright," Sokka grinned brightly: their faces were uncovered now…

They shared a warm, blissful kiss on the ice, and Azula extended her phone as they did so, snapping the most blatant picture she could have chosen for their grand revelation. They laughed together, taking multiple pictures as they kissed until the cold got to them… and before leaving, Azula made use of the satellite's network one last time, uploading the final post that needed to go live before they departed to McMurdo Station, and from there to New Zealand. It would be a post featuring two pictures: the aurora photo of their hands linked, as well as her favorite of their final session of photographs in the South Pole…

The night tends to hide away secrets until they're ready to come to light: the last year was the most fulfilling period of my life. I've grown well past my roots, becoming so much closer to the person I always hoped I could be… and I owe so much of it to my greatest inspiration and biggest supporter, always there for me just as I hope to always be there for him: thank you for everything you've done for me, and for loving me just as much as I love you, @neutrinoboy.

...

They were waiting for her in New Zealand. Of course they were. Publishing that post couldn't have resulted in another outcome… she breathed out slowly as her eyes fell upon her father's disgruntled features, made much worse when he caught sight of the tall, dark-skinned man standing beside her.

"Wow. I think your dad's really going to kill me," Sokka said: he didn't even need to ask who her parents were, for the security detail around them gave away their identities quickly… as did the hostility, of course.

"I'll keep them focused on me, okay?" Azula said, glancing at him quickly. Sokka pouted. "You don't know what they're like, alright? This isn't going to be easy… and I think I'll have a better chance at success, if just because I know them as well as I do."

"I guess I get that, but… damn, this is stressful," Sokka sighed, following her as they approached Azula's parents.

It seemed Zuko wasn't around… that was good, then. Azula didn't expect him to be much help with this situation, frankly: if he tried to support her, chances were her father would double down on dismissing her relationship with Sokka all the more, just as some manner of power flex on his son. So it was only Ozai and Ursa… and their bodyguards, all of whom stared at Sokka as if he were some manner of criminal. Which, Azula guessed, was exactly what they meant to treat him as.

"Stop here," Azula told Sokka once they were right by immigration's gates: even though their checks had been finished by then, the barrier would keep him safe from them until she had settled matters for at least a diplomatic conversation.

"Azula…"

"I'll call you once I've convinced them to stand down," she said: she squeezed his hand gently before stepping past those doors, firmly walking towards her overbearing parents.

After about five minutes of quiet discussion, Azula called Sokka: instead of leaving the airport, her parents had agreed to discuss the situation by going to a private meeting room within the airport. Sokka's anxiety didn't recede at all – he had the feeling these rooms were used for actual lawbreakers, usually…

"Sit, both of you," Ozai commanded once they were inside the meeting room. Azula sighed, following suit with her father's order. Sokka did the same, deliberately choosing to sit beside her: Ozai's eyebrow twitched for it. "Not there."

"Why not?" Sokka asked, bluntly. Azula's eyes widened as she glanced at Sokka. "We're in this together, so…"

"You… are committing a heinous offense to Burmese royalty, boy, so tread carefully," Ozai hissed. Sokka breathed out slowly, but he didn't change seats regardless of the threat. "Whatever this play of yours may be, this pretense of a love affair, you'd best withdraw it quickly, Azula. I'm in no mood for games like these, and you already have played this one for a whole year, longer than that, considering when you started with your whim of studying physics…"

"Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, it's not a whim? That it's not a game?" Azula asked, skeptical: she pulled up her phone, drawing up the document of her acceptance letter into Sokka's university: both Ozai and Ursa's eyes widened slowly as they read the content slowly. "I took an entrance exam for university and got accepted: I can do it. I survived almost a full year in the South Pole without losing my mind, in fact, it did wonders for me to live away from the Royal Family! And after this? I think it's clear I can have a future without King Azulon's fame and fortune keeping me afloat. I'm not joking, Father: either you support me in my career, or I'll give up my royal title and you won't need to concern yourself with me any longer. That's all there is to this situation, just as it was before you sent me to the South Pole, intent on teaching me a lesson. And what was that lesson, exactly? That I could work and do it right? That I actually love science more than I realized I did? If so… grand job, because that's what you pulled off."

"Azula…!" Ozai said, staring at her in horror: he could tell she wasn't joking, even if he wanted her to be. It was so much easier to think she was, and yet…

"Azula, please be reasonable," Ursa said, eyes wide, reaching for her daughter's hand: she withdrew it quickly, unwilling to allow them to manipulate her into making the choices they wanted her to make. "You're part of this family…!"

"I am, until I choose not to be," Azula said. "And I'd choose that if I feel my family is holding me back, controlling my life for no reason and keeping me from reaching my full potential. I'm sorry, Mother… but I'm not living my life by your rules anymore. I can't see why I should if you cannot respect my choices."

"And what choices are these? Running off to college with this… this commoner? Abandoning us over some foolish, short-lived affair? Azula…!" Ozai huffed, glaring at Sokka. Sokka smiled and shook his head.

"Sir, if I may…"

"You may not!"

"Father!" Azula growled: Ursa raised a hand to calm her down, but she turned to Ozai too.

"Darling… let the boy speak," she said. Sokka huffed.

"I'm about two years older than your daughter… but sure, call me what you will," he said, breathing deeply as he set his hands on the table. "Look, I'm not going to hide the truth from either of you: I love Azula."

"Y-you…!" Ozai huffed. Ursa's eyes widened at the sudden, easy admission… even Azula's cheeks flushed upon realizing Sokka had blurted out those words so easily to her parents. The bashful man who had trembled while holding her hand in public was nowhere to be found anymore, it seemed…

"I don't love her because she's a princess, even if I've never had a problem with that, either," Sokka continued. "Your daughter is brilliant. In a matter of a year, she's understood physics concepts I took twice or thrice as long to grasp. She'll go on and say, as she always does, that I'm a good teacher? But the truth is she's amazing. She has every right, every reason, to choose a life of science even if I'm not involved in it. My relationship with her… that's not part of this. Yes, I offered her a chance to apply to my university in Canada… but if you'd rather she studies closer to home, you can very well let her apply to a school there, too. I assure you, they'll accept her in a heartbeat.

"But as I've mentioned our relationship… yes, like I said, I love her. I want to be with her. If she can go study in Canada, it means we'll have better chances to be together, right? But even if she doesn't, our relationship wouldn't end just because she went home instead. And maybe she does have to go home… and if she does, she could even reform and strengthen Burma into, I don't know, a scientific powerhouse on a global scale. Being a leading country in those regards might be amazing for you, right? And Azula can make that a reality. I love her… but I don't want to make her cut ties with her family, with her culture or her people. I believe she can be a strong voice in the growth in your nation. Giving her a chance to reach her full potential… it might mean that, with her help and her hard work, there could be someone from Burma every year in the South Pole, in the future. Why not?"

"What are you… what are you trying to say?" Ozai frowned: his hostility had frozen over, replaced by utter confusion, if wary confusion.

"I'm saying… that I'm looking at the bigger picture here," Sokka said, breathing deeply. "A scientific coalition, a big initiative to promote science across the world. There's many such initiatives, of course… and your country could even join them, if you'd want that. But what I mean is… I believe we can strengthen Burma's scientific presence. Azula could learn everything she needs to learn abroad and then come back to Burma and offer your country the results of her hard work. And I… I would be thrilled to come with her. I would help her, every step of the way, to ensure this initiative pays off. I'm not saying any of this lightly, I know it would be a huge investment… but it can be done. I know it can. This way… you wouldn't have an estranged daughter, and she wouldn't feel the need to cut ties with her family solely because they won't let her live the life she wants. This way, I can prove myself to the both of you and make it clear that my interest in Azula is not short-lived, it's not fickle, it's not a whim: I love her, and if you and your nation allow it, I would gladly marry her as soon as I have your approval for it. I… I'm not saying I'm asking for the approval right now, of course. But… it's my hope to spend the rest of my life with her. And I'd rather not tear the woman I love away from her family. This… this is my proposal."

He bowed his head in a sign of respect, and nothing but silence spread in the meeting room now. Ursa was pale, utterly shocked, while Ozai stared at Sokka with utmost perplexity: that was better than hatred and skepticism, Sokka supposed…

One glance at Azula, though, caught Sokka by surprise: her face was fully flushed. She was astonished by his words… and she was blushing most profusely, lips parted as she failed to process his words. Sokka offered her a weak grin before turning towards Ozai and Ursa again.

"So…" he said, breathing out slowly, eyes aglow with determination. "That's what I want, and that's all I ask from you. Even if you decide you want me out of the picture, please… allow Azula to pursue a career in science. If you needed an external opinion, someone else to confirm she has what it takes… then you have mine. She's extraordinary… and she will still be, whether she's part of your family or not. What makes her incredible is… is innately part of her, and if I dare say it, it's not her royal blood."

Azula swallowed hard, covering her mouth with a hand, tears springing up in her eyes as her heart pounded at full speed: how was he doing this? After all that nervousness, all that insecurity…?

But he certainly had learned to leave those fears behind little by little. He had become so much stronger, to the point where he could face down a menacing prince and not shirk away at all… simply because he loved her. That was the reason why he was doing it. He loved her… and he wasn't afraid of saying it. He wasn't afraid at all…

To think she was the flustered fool now, a slow smile spreading across her face as Sokka glanced at her, with a gentle grin.

"I know I didn't really tell you I had all this in mind before," he said. "But I want… I want to do right by you. Whatever you choose, be it me or anything else… all I want is for you to be happy. To become everything you want to be. And… I simply hope your family feels the same way."

By then, Ozai had collapsed on another chair, eyes out of orbit: they slowed down, however, when Sokka's hand clasped Azula's over the table. His blushing daughter eyed the man beside her with genuine affection, and the feeling was clearly mutual… but the Canadian also displayed much more determination than the flustered Azula could right now. He glanced at Ozai again, at the also speechless Ursa, before speaking one more time:

"So… support her or not, I will be with her. I'll stay by her side as long as she wants me with her. All that remains is for us to decide the terms of how this will happen, so… let her study freely wherever she wants to, or have her attend a university closer to home, or try to stop her, in which case I'm sure she'll just break free from your control and abandon royalty for good. It's up to you to decide which of these paths we'll follow, so… what will it be, Prince Ozai?"

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #279: COMMAND DECISION

May, 1987

WHO Will Lead The Avengers?

Well, you’ve got some very good options and also Doctor Druid here.

This is a pretty solid roster, and Doctor Druid. I notice that the roster box on the cover has updated to reflect the post-Siege team.

But with Wasp going on a well-deserved vacation, who will lead?

The funny thing about the question is that in the issue, its not much of a contest. Not many of the team actually wants to take the top job.

But who do YOU, the viewer, think will lead the Avengers and Doctor Druid? Print your answer on a self-addressed 8x10 card and put it under your pillow. There’s no reason to do this.

ANYWAY:

Last times in Avengers: the Masters of Evil seized Avengers Mansion and tried to destroy the team. The Mansion is a pile of firewood now, more or less. And Hercules is in a coma. Namor is somewhere in the ocean being sad about his monster girlfriend instead of being thrilled at having a monster girlfriend. And Wasp wants a break.

So Thor, She-Hulk, and Doctor Druid re/join the team. Captains America and Marvel hold over from the previous roster.

A giant fishman named Tyrak attacks Hydrobase, looking for Namor but the Avengers manage to defeat him through the judicious application of swords and infrared radiation. Fishmen hate those things.

With that sorted out, all that remains is to decide who will take over for Wasp.

Hah. Command decision. Clever title.

And now,

a hostage situation.

A man in Atlanta called Joshua Lanning has been hearing voices and the voices have been telling him that his family is demons.

Not great.

Thankfully, Captain Marvel is passing by and pops down to see what’s going on.

The cop police on site has no time for Monica. Because: its still a thing that people outside of New York don’t really take superheroes seriously. This guy sees a woman in a garish costume and tells her he has no time for trick or treat.

So Monica is like okay and neutrinos into the house.

Reasonably, a jumpy dude with a gun who is sure there are demons everywhere that only he can see reacts excitedly to a woman suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

Also reasonably, Captain Marvel appeared in her hologram form so as not to get shot.

Joshua is stunned that shooting her a bunch didn’t do anything and jumps to the conclusion that Monica is an angel!

She neither confirms nor denies.

Captain Marvel: “I’m a friend who’s come to help you... to keep you from doing wrong. Get up off your knees and come with me. I’ll take you to people who will help you!”

Joshua Lanning: “Yes, I must follow the light to salvation! The light will lead the way!”

So she gets Joshua to turn himself over to the authorities.

And then she comforts the kids who aren’t really sure what’s going on.

Annie: “The man said papa is sick.”

Captain Marvel: “That’s right, Annie. He has to go away, to get better. While he’s gone, your mother’s going to need all the love and help you can give.”

There doesn’t seem to ever be follow-up on this family.

Shame. In all the up and downs in public opinion that superheroes and the Avengers have, it’d be nice to hear from someone Monica helped just by talking and also by being bulletproof and glowy.

At the least, Monica has impressed these random Atlanta cops with her actions. One of them saying that until now he thought everything he was hearing about Captain Marvel was just hot air and the other saying that the whole family probably would have died if she hadn’t happened by.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, parents Frank and Maria Rambeau are sitting and watching tv when Captain Marvel appears on the screen.

She controls the horizontal and the vertical.

Its not plot important, I just think its a neat use of her power.

She beamed into the tv as VHF-radio waves and waited for the commercial so she could imitate a PSA in case her parents had anyone over.

Maria Rambeau: “Mind? Child, you’re the best thing to come over that set... oh... at least, since the Odd Couple was cancelled!”

Monica’s powers are incredibly handy.

Anyway, Monica decides to get her parents’ take on the leadership crisis afflicting the Avengers.

Its nice that she can be open with her parents about whats happening in her superhero life but is she allowed to just tell her parents everything that happens in meetings?

I guess so!

So, at the meeting that last issue ended off with, Doctor Druid is voted in as a new member of the Avengers. Wasp nominated him and the Avengers tend to just accept whoever is standing nearby when they need new members so, yeah, not surprised. It fits the pattern.

Its when Cap(tain America) opens the floor for chairperson nominations that things get spicy.

Captain Marvel nominates Captain America because Wasp left him in charge and he’s very qualified for the job. I hear he has leadership experience.

But Cap(tain America) declines the job because he’s got his own solo ongoing with its own ongoing plot and this is the time in Marvel where that meant something.

Nowadays, Black Panther can get lost in space for an extended period of time during which he loses his memories and it doesn’t seem to affect his ability to lead the Avengers.

I blame Wolverine really.

Being on three teams and having his own solo adventures and guest starring roles and crossovers and the fans ate it up.

You ruined the tight continuity, Logan!

Captain America: “My obligations to my nationwide telephone hotline don’t leave me the time needed to devote to leading the Avengers. Besides, we have another excellent choice on the team... Captain Marvel, I nominate you!”

Excellent decision Cap. She doesn’t have leadership experience but on the other hand, I like her.

Black Knight seconds the nomination based on Monica taking charge during Secret Wars II while Wasp was missing and Captain America got Beyondernapped.

Also, she managed to get Hercules and Namor to behave and that’s an accomplishment.

Captain Marvel: “I’m honored... and I do want to lead the Avengers someday... but, I’m not sure I’m ready.”

Now to mention having the nomination sprung on her made Monica feel anxious.

And makes her uneasy because Doctor Druid is staring daggers at her, thinking “The things I could accomplish, were I to lead the Avengers! If only new members were allowed to take office during their probationary period... but, no matter. I shall bide my time.”

My cursed future knowledge senses are tingling.

Thor also has his own ongoing with his own ongoing plot concerns, like being under a can’t-heal-can’t-die curse that will eventually reduce him to flesh goo pooled at the bottom of his spiffy new outfit.

But he also wants to get this show on the road and given that the one person nominated so far doesn’t seem certain, Thor throws his own name onto the table.

And hey, he’s got leadership experience coming out the wazoo. He’s qualified to lead the Avengers. It’s not much of a thing today when everything is the tug of war between Steve and Tony but Thor used to be a frequent chairman of the team.

She-Hulk objects because she feels like Thor is trying to discourage Monica so he can have the job. In fact, hey, she thinks he’s bullying Monica!

And Thor doesn’t like her tone and Cap has to bang the leadership gavel and tell everyone to calm down.

Since things got acrimonious, Cap(tain America) decided to table the discussion until the next meeting. Which helpfully gives Monica time to sort out her feelings on whether she wants to accept the nomination or not.

Her parents are immediately supportive of her taking the job.

Frank Rambeau: “You’ll be great! Even Captain America thinks so! Captain America! Dang! You can’t turn down an endorsement like that!”

Captain Marvel: “I don’t know, daddy. The chance to lead is something I’ve dreamed of since before I went into law enforcement. But I never expected an opportunity like this so soon.”

Maria Rambeau: “But you’ve always been a quick study, Monica.”

A quick sidebar but maybe the Avengers should have like. More opportunities where someone is put in charge of a smaller group of the team to do a mission or task but basically let them get field experience leading.

Because otherwise, the title is going to get bounced back and forth between the same people who always have it because they’re the only ones who get a chance to get that leadership experience.

Wasp had to basically girlboss a meeting while everyone was feeling awkward about her divorce to get the chance to lead and she did great at it. But if she hadn’t been pushy, would she have ever gotten the chance?

Would Monica now if Tony wasn’t off with the West Coast team and Cap and Thor busy with their ongoings?

Start a membership program, the Avengers!

Anyway.

Monica also brings up that whole subplot where she wants to start her own business because if she takes on the chairwoman position, she won’t have time to do business.

Frank argues that Monica can start her business any time but Maria realizes (because I think she and Monica are in cahoots) that part of Monica’s business plan is to get Frank to take an early retirement from the fire department and go into business with Monica, so he won’t be running into flaming buildings and worrying everyone.

But Mom Rambeau is also torn between wanting the secret business plan to get her husband into something less dangerous and wanting Monica to live her best life so she just tells her to take her time and make the decision that’s right for everyone.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk is realizing that the Avengers leasing an island means the Avengers BASICALLY have a private beach.

AND SHE IS ALL OVER THAT.

Especially because its a decent beach and thus she throws shade at New York’s beaches.

She spots Black Knight already on the beach doing some anime level cutting a thing and having it only fall apart later exercise.

Its about training precision, apparently.

He cuts a granite boulder without disturbing it so he can lightly tap it later and have it fall apart.

Plus, it looks cool.

If the major thing you’re bringing to a team is ‘owns incredibly cursed sword’ you might as well practice sweet anime moves.

She-Hulk decides sweet anime moves are sweet but lets talk plot and pivots the conversation over to whether Captain Marvel will accept the chairwoman nomination.

Black Knight hopes so because she seems the best candidate to him. He doesn’t want it, Cap doesn’t want it, and She-Hulk doesn’t want Thor to have it. Because in fairness to Thor, she finds him too high-and-mighty to take orders from.

Heck, if Captain Marvel doesn’t run, She-Hulk will. Just so Thor can’t have it.

Damn, Jen, Thor’s been team leader before and done an okay job!

She-Hulk: “I mean, how hard could it be? A leader has to be able to delegate and to think fast... I can do that!”

Anyway, political discussion aggros Dr Druid.

Like, he literally just appears out of the surf when She-Hulk and Black Knight are talking about the chairmanship.

This is why people think you’re a creep, Dr Druid.

Speaking of appearing out of nowhere, a giant... gorilla... thing? appears on the beach.

She-Hulk tries to tackle the beach gorilla but falls right through it.

Because it was a psychic illusion that Dr Druid planted in She-Hulk’s brain.

Y’know. As a prank.

Dammit, Dr Druid, don’t make me like you!

Because, like, look. Him pulling a beach prank is the most human thing he’s done so far.

She-Hulk takes it in “good” spirit.

She-Hulk: “Funny, doc... r-e-a-l funny. Didn’t know you had it in you. I enjoy a good gag as much as anyone! But watch your step... you might not like my sense of humor!”

Oh please, please, please let this lead to a prank war within the Avengers.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, Captain Marvel decides to visit the prison war of the central New Jersey hospital where Moonstone is being held after she broke her neck flying into a cliff.

Monica feels bad about that whole thing but Moonstone immediately launches into a rant.

She accuses Monica of being here to gloat, blames Monica for her broken neck, and blames Zemo for how things turned out because by god if she ran the zoo!

Monica loses her patience and tells Moonstone that flying into the cliff was her own darn fault.

Captain Marvel: “A fine leader you’d be... always ready to blame someone else! Goodbye, Moonstone! You’ll heal -- but with your attitude you’ll never be well!”

and thinks: “I’ve met too many people like her. They want all the flash and glory that come with power, but none of the responsibilities. How does a person get that way? Visiting Moonstone was a waste of sympathy! There are others much more worthy of my time!”

One of the people more worthy of her time: Hercules, at Manhattan Newhope Memorial Hospital.

Yes, he’s still in a coma.

Chill out, it hasn’t been a day since the last time we saw him.

Monica talks to the comatose Hercules, telling him about Wasp stepping down and Captain America nominating her (Monica) to the position. Wondering aloud whether Hercules would follow another woman leading the Avengers. Whether he could follow any mortal for long.

Eventually, Monica flies off somewhere else to think and misses comatose Hercules saying something in I presume Greek.

If google translate is of any use, what he’s saying is “father.”

Calling a Zeus.

Elsewhere, Monica arrives at Roxxon oil tower #25, the place where she got her powers a few months ago.

Wow, that timescale!

She recaps to herself getting passed over for a captaincy promotion in the boat police, how old family friend Professor LeClare asked her with a South American dictator that was using his research to make a super weapon, how the whole situation ended up FUBAR’d and Monica punched a science machine to stop the super weapon, and was caught in an explosion that gave her powers.

Captain Marvel: “Not long afterward, I met the Avengers... and I’ve been going non-stop ever since! I’ve helped rescue the president... traveled to the Moon, the Sun, and other galaxies... I’ve seen and done things I couldn’t even have imagined a year before! I can accomplish more good in a week as an Avenger, than ‘Lt. Rambeau’ could in a lifetime. But all that good hasn’t come without a price.”

“Being an Avenger is so... consuming! I’ve been on call 24 hours a day. My private life has already dropped to almost nil. What would happen if I were to become chairwoman? I’m starting to realize why the Wasp needed a vacation... and why Cap doesn’t have time to take over full time. Whoever chairs the Avengers has so many responsibilities! Can anything be worth that kind of stress? I’d better have a long talk with someone who’s been there!”

Hm... I hadn’t realized it until Monica just up and said it but I do wish she had more of a supporting cast. Some civilian friends. I do like that she has her parents to talk to.

Now that its been brought up that Monica needs a better supporting cast, I hope she gets a better supporting cast.

Didn’t she have a thing with Agent Freeman? He could be a supporting cast. A love interest or something.

But she probably also needs a non-super friend. Even though She-Hulk is on the team now and she’s a super super friend.

Over at Kozak’s Cavern, a cave high in the Appalachian Mountains, Captain America.

He’s here to save six children and a guide who were trapped in the cavern after an earthquake.

Now Captain America may not have great super powers but he can use his shield as a shovel.

Also, peak human stats but I don’t know if that’s been established yet.

Jokes aside, he heard there was trouble and he came to help because that’s the guy Captain America is.

As soon as the rescue effort clears a hole big enough for a single beefy man, Captain America squeezes through to go look for the trapped people while the rest of the rescuers down under this mountain keep working to enlarge the opening.

And since this is a Captain Marvel focus issue, she shows up to talk to Cap(tain America) and also help once she learns there’s a situation ongoing.

Monica flies ahead to light the way and finds the trapped group.

Soon, Cap and a very bright Monica are leading the group towards the exit.

There’s another tremor though and the ground collapses under two of the children. They wind up on a rock hanging out over a chasm.

Captain Monica goes down (because she can fly) to help boost the kids up to Captain America who is hanging upside down from the ledge above.

They get kid one Joey rescued but kid two Bobbi Sue panics.

Bobbi Sue: “No... please don’t make me! Please!”

Captain Marvel: “I know you’re scared, honey, but you have to do this! Ever climbed a tree?”

Bobbi Sue: “Yes’m!”

Captain Marvel: “Then pretend that I’m a big ol’ friendly tree! Will you do that for me?”

Bobbi Sue: “Ah’ll try.”

But when Monica starts to boost Bobbi Sue, the rock they were standing on collapses into the chasm.

Leaving Monica hanging onto the cliffside with a child on her shoulders.

And probably lamenting that her powers don’t let her fly as her meat self and that she can’t hold anything when she’s made of energy.

I guess the ability to move at the speed of light and broadcast yourself onto television is a consolation but it would be neat to just pick up child and fly to safety.

(But: its also a limitation to Monica’s powers that keep her from being all-powerful so you have ways to write tension into scenes with her)

Speaking of limitations to Monica’s powers, she needs to be conscious to use them.

Monica manages to pass Bobbi Sue up to Captain America but the little foothold she has crumbles underneath her and a rock bonks her in the head.

Captain Marvel plummets into the void.

But nah, she recovers before the bottom and nyooms back up as Shiny Monica.

Hah. Monica the Many Colored.

Anyway, she leads the group out of the cave.

Cap(tain America) tells Captain Marvel that if she hadn’t showed up, he might not have rescued these cave kids.

The whole experience really made up Monica’s mind about whether the pressures of leadership were worth it and she tells Cap(tain America) that she accepts his nomination.

Woo, the Captain Marvel run Avengers!

Oh and one last thing:

A shadowy figure sneaks into Newhope Memorial Hospital and godnaps the comatose Hercules.

And by a shadowy figure I mean that’s definitely Batman.

Dammit, Batman! Stick to your own universe!

Follow @essential-avengers​ in memory of Hercules. Like and reblog, for Captain Marvel!

[letters-from-the-gaps]

The Angel

The jumbled corpses of a thousand satellites twirl and dance through geostationary orbit above this little blue planet. Did you know that? Do you know how fast they waltz, too far to be in the atmosphere yet not far enough to truly be free? No? Me neither. There’s a lot I don’t know. Up here, the stars hang still, and the Earth spins faster than you can possibly comprehend. Eventually, this graveyard of humanity’s many forays into the great void will turn to dust and sand and microscopic particles of metal and fiberglass and circuitry: they’ll slam against each other over and over, dashing against rocky shores of their own making, until they stretch across the whole of planet Earth. Nothing will ever leave, then. Imagine that. A rocket rises through the air, piercing the heavens, finally reaching for the cold and empty and crushing void, only to be torn asunder by the angry ghosts of its forefathers. 

The stars are mostly dead, too. Oh, sure, a good number of them are still burning, somewhere out there in the black. But most of them ate themselves up long, long ago. Maybe longer than I’ve existed- though I frankly doubt that. A thousand thousand years ago, a star collapsed on itself, crushed by its own inexorable gravity, screaming and retching light and neutrinos and radiation far and wide. Some of those stars held planets, you know. Trapped in the same gravity well that would be their eventual doom, the only thing those worlds could do was look at the end and accept that there was no escaping. Some of them faced their death with nobility. Most of them ate themselves alive trying to escape. Maybe some of these pinpricks of light are worlds, you know? Maybe one of those stars is really the desperate final cry of a world swallowed by star-fire. Shattered by light. The very same light we see today, still racing outwards from a corpse, still trying to reach the edge.

Oh, did you not know? Of course there’s an edge, silly! Where do you think the far far far worlds go? When the universe expands, it pushes out like the fissure between tectonic plates. There’s no malice behind it: it simply does what it must. It’s an unfortunate way to die, to be sure. Watching the stars get dimmer and dimmer, until you hit the edge. Some called it the gateway to the other side. Do you want to know a secret, though?

There is no other side.

Me? Oh, I’m just hanging around, waiting for the graveyard to disintegrate, as it were. I could try to explain what I am, where I came from. I could try to communicate to you details about my home, about the endless sky, the ever-hungry void, the vast seas. I could try to describe the endless screaming static of the stars, could try and transcribe their whispers and frothing rants. But I don’t think I could do it justice. Also, it would probably fry your brain.

What am I? Old, for one. Older than old, older than dust, old enough to remember when this planet was all fire and smoke. Yet I am also young, especially when compared to my kin. Now, those are some ancients. A few of them predate the Big Bang, apparently. Forgive me, I didn’t really answer your question. I don’t think there’s a real word for it, in your- wait! I remember! Gabriel brought the word back a little while ago: Angel. I’m an angel.

What, not what you expected? No offense taken, don’t worry. Those of us who first came here- like Garbriel- had a little more...Why am I explaining this to you? Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but do you really understand what I’m saying? I know you comprehend what I’m saying, but do you understand? 

…

…

Hello?

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…

…

Oh. Ok. If it’s...If it’s any consolation, Earth isn’t slated to bite it for a long, long time. I know that kind of rings hollow. I’m sorry about that. 

…

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…

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Sorry.

[turtlethon]

Turtlethon Extra Slices: “Shredder’s Revenge“

Welcome to the first in an occasional series, Turtlethon Extra Slices! This sub-project will cover media connected to the 1987 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Shredder’s Revenge, developed by Tribute Games and published by Dotemu, was released on June 16, 2022. This is the latest in a long, long line of TMNT games released since 1989, but in particular acts as a spiritual sequel to Konami’s original arcade release from that same year, its 1991 sequel Turtles in Time, and their various home ports and spin-offs.

Breaking News: the Foot Clan is back! The Turtles, April and Splinter learn from a broadcast by Bebop on TV that the villains are taking over the Statue of Liberty. It’s up to our heroes to travel through New York, battling waves of the bad guys on their way to final encounters with Krang and Shredder. This time around April and Splinter join the Turtles as playable characters in their journey; completing Story Mode also unlocks Casey Jones for you to use.

While the core of the game draws upon the Turtles coin-op titles for inspiration – and the arcade mode plays in much the same manner – the infamous original TMNT game for the Nintendo Entertainment System hasn’t been forgotten either. Story Mode features a map screen in which the Turtle Van bobs around the city, allowing the player to freely select their next mission in much the same manner as the top-down sections of that first 8-bit title. In this mode, each character accumulates experience and can level up over time, increasing their fighting abilities. This aspect of Shredder’s Revenge has kept me coming back even after completing it, as there’s always incentive to play through again in order to fully power up the team.

Further easter eggs can be found scattered throughout in Story Mode, as players are encouraged by allies of the Turtles to recover lost items. Irma requests that you find her missing diary, while Burne and Vernon have you recover items for Channel 6. Later, you complete similar missions for the Punk Frogs and Neutrinos. Sadly, you don’t really get anything for doing so beyond the acknowledgment that you successfully completed the task.

Speaking of the Punk Frogs, an ongoing gag throughout Shredder’s Revenge has them apparently now being considered celebrities, their popularity equivalent to that of the Turtles in our real world back in the nineties. Other familiar faces from the show pop up across the different stages, ranging from obvious inclusions like Baxter Stockman and Rat King to more obscure inclusions like Tempestra. I would have liked Tribute to go even further in this direction, incorporating the roster of the Archie TMNT comics, the toy line and maybe even some characters from the Red Sky era of the show like Lord Dregg, but it seems that a deliberate decision has been made to avoid any of that and concentrate on the golden era of the cartoon instead, with a few nods to the live-action movies here and there.

Cameos aren’t just restricted to the bosses: characters from the show can be seen scattered throughout the game, such as Burne’s girlfriend Tiffany appearing in a crowd scene running out of the Channel 6 building. Honestly, I would have liked even more of these little shout-outs to have been incorporated, but I concede that going too far in that direction would be a lot of effort and not enhance the playing experience for most players in any tangible fashion.

Having revisited the Super Nintendo port of Turtles in Time recently, it struck me how developed the play mechanics for Shredder’s Revenge are by comparison. Though the Turtles in the older game each had unique attributes, their core fundamentals remained the same, and the moves available to the player were largely restricted to the same basic strikes and throws. This time around the number of manoeuvres available to our heroes has expanded greatly, and the player will need to learn to use them effectively to progress. (Something that I initially ignored, to my cost!)

Voicing Donatello, Raphael, Michaelangelo and Leonardo are the actors from the 1987 cartoon. Barry Gordon, Rob Paulsen, Townsend Coleman and Cam Clarke all make welcome returns here and lend their voices to the supporting cast too – Rocksteady, for example, is also handled by Clarke. Most of the other characters aren’t so lucky. There’s no Renae Jacobs as April or Peter Renaday as Splinter. Some of the other characters have voices that are nothing like their original portrayals, and there are instances where I was genuinely surprised that famous bits of dialogue such as Metalhead’s “I’m going to mangle you green slimeballs!” or Leatherhead’s “ah gah-rawn-tee!” didn’t make the cut.

While the voice acting gets the basics right and leaves it there, the soundtrack is phenomenal. Tee Lopes had previously been responsible for Sonic Mania’s music, and continues to do excellent work here. Each stage’s track has its own vibe, drawing not only upon previous Turtles games for inspiration but also the mid-to-late eighties and early nineties, the two eras which TMNT itself is rooted in. A vaporwave mall setting is accompanied by a tune reminiscent of Madonna’s “Into the Groove”, while a street setting’s theme evokes Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. As the player draws closer to the Technodrome and the game’s final confrontations with Krang and Shredder, the themes become more dramatic and foreboding, making the journey of the Turtles and their allies feel like a genuinely big deal. Fantastic stuff, and I’ve been listening to the soundtrack regularly even when not playing. I think this the aspect of the game that will live on long after everyone has tired of playing.

Is Shredder’s Revenge the best TMNT game ever? Turtles in Time (either the SNES or arcade versions, depending on who you ask) seems to have been considered the standard bearer up to this point. In the conversation also is the fan game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rescue-Palooza!, though as an unofficial project it’s debatable as to whether it counts. For me, at least for now, Dotemu have crafted the definitive video game for the 1987 Turtles. I’m looking forward to squeezing at least one or two more play throughs of story mode in before we all get to revisit the classic games in Konami’s Cowabunga Collection, which arrives on August 30th.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is available now for Windows and Linux (via Steam), on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

the brain is a cage of light / & rage

Title taken from the poem To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse by Burlee Vang.

Prompt: Migraine

TMNT 2012.

(tw headaches, migraines, mild internalized ableism, mentions of Intergenerational trauma and family dysfunction that I hope I treated with proper nuance, trauma, PTSD, past mind rape)

You can find the whole collection on AO3 here.

Mikey's lying facedown on the bed, eyes closed, fingers tangled in the sheets. There's a blanket over his head to keep out the light, but it feels like there's something always creeping in from somewhere. Or maybe that's just the sparks dancing in front of his eyes every time a train rolls by, the vibrations tearing through his brain.  

He pictures cracking his own head open, the rotten, stinking mass hissing out in the open air. They'd have to throw it all away and scrub the insides of his skull clean, grow him a new brain in Donnie's lab. Something more orderly this time, less vulnerable.  

They will always find a way in. He feels the little shapes moving through his mind again, seeking, exploring, violating. Always.

They're dead. The Neutrinos are dead, and they will never hurt him or anyone else again (Mikey crushed them under his foot, murdered them, cold-blooded killer). But if that's true, then where's the pain coming from, the pain and the memories and the sneaking suspicion that he will never be entirely alone in his skull again?  

A side effect, maybe, Donnie had called it, as Mikey lay curled up on the table in the lab and did his best not to whimper. His voice had been clinical, but his hands were warm and gentle as he massaged the back of Mikey's head, doing his best to keep the crushing waves of pain back. You don't have something like the Neutrinos messing in your head without consequences.

Mikey's taken his pills and choked down herbs, sat through one MRI after another, but the nauseating waves of pain always come back. The fire dances before his eyes and it feels like there's a whole universe burning inside his skull, desperately trying to break free. He reaches up and gently traces the sides of his head, trying not to press too hard on the blood as he looks for cracks and fractures.  

Nothing yet, but who knows? He's seen stranger things. He imagines cracks appearing and growing wider, the pressure slowly spitting him apart as it grows, grows--  

the neutrinos working busily away, turning his thoughts over in their cruel little hands, because they never left of course they didn't how stupid do you have to be to think it would ever be over, undoing him running him stripping him for parts  

The door creaks ever so slightly. Mikey chokes down a whimper, wondering if it's Splinter, accusing him of skipping out in class again, delivering a lecture Mikey can barely process through a white-hot haze of pain.  

He's frustrated by Mikey's inability to power through, and a part of Mikey agrees--he  should  be able to get over this, only his stupid fucking brain doesn't want to agree with that sentiment. It wants to burn with lightning-bright pain, wants to tear itself apart on the inside out, wants to fray on the memory of old invasions and fall apart behind his eyes.  

Thankfully, though, he doesn't have to explain any of that right now. His visitor moves forward on silent feet, drawing enough for Mikey to inhale faint sweat, a whiff of the oil Leo uses on his swords, some of the sweet wax from one of those frilly candles his brother pretends he doesn't have.  

Leo settles carefully on the bed beside him, but it still creaks. Mikey squeezes his eyes against the faint twinge of pain and pushes farther down into the pillows, wishing he could seal himself up in the bed like a reverse cocoon.  

His brother reaches down and takes Mikey's palm in hand, tracing a finger over his scales. He spells out WATER, the movements steady and sure.  

Mikey grits his teeth and carefully pushes up, gratefully when Leo reaches to lift him the rest of the way. His brother is sitting in front of the door, blocking the light coming in underneath it with his shell. He presses a cool glass of water into Mikey's hands and quietly watches him take one tiny sip after another.  

He didn't know how parched he was until he started drinking, and that makes him wonder if he's going to start getting hungry soon. He can't imagine going out into the heat of the kitchen right now, so he thinks it'll be Leo who makes dinner, the way he did before Mikey got into cooking and baking. He'll make something simple and plain, but appetizing, and then he'll have to come in here and feed it to Mikey like a fucking  invalid, because Mikey can't get over a fucking headache, and--  

And Leo knows, somehow, when the tears start trickling down Mikey's cheeks, despite the darkness around them. He leans forward to plant butterfly-soft kisses on Mikey's cheeks, lips soft as they brush the tears away. His hand comes up to gently cup the back of Mikey's aching head, and Mikey sobs at the contact.  

OKAY, he traces. And then, more carefully, NOT WEAK. NOT DAMAGED. NOT FOREVER.  

Mikey closes his eyes, taking a final sip before reaching down to take his brother's hand in the dark. Leo's palm is warm and callused, an old scar from a long-ago training accident rubbing against Mikey's fingers as he says: HARD TO REMEMBER. He can say this stuff to himself all the livelong day, but really absorbing it is rough, especially when his head is in the screaming mess it is right now.  

Leo nods, mask tails brushing against Mikey's scales in the dark. I KNOW, he says, and he does, doesn't he? Mikey can almost see his brother's rueful smile in the mark. He's seen the way his brother's leg has tormented him over the years, ugly and relentless, long after the problem was supposedly fixed.  

And Leo has...well, Mikey doesn't want to write up in a nice, neat inspiration-porn bow. But his brother has been getting better; Mikey witnessed it firsthand, and he remembers when there weren't nearly as many good days as there are now.  

Still.... DIFFERENT FROM THIS SIDE, he says, smiling ruefully into the dark. It's hard to remember all the old jokes he used to keep his brother's spirits up these days, when he can't even compose his brain enough to have a normal conversation without flinching.  

YEAH, Leo admits. He brushes a finger up Mikey's arm, taps him on the chest. DID GOOD, he says firmly. DOING GOOD. ARE GOOD. SO GOOD. SO BRAVE.  

Mikey bites his lip. I REMEMBER, he traces. I FEEL THEM. THEYRE NOT THERE BUT and he doesn't need to finish, not for Leo.  

Leo lets out a gentle breath, warmth flowing over Mikey's face. YOU ARE SAFE, he traces. YOU ARE SAFE. YOU ARE SAFE. YOU ARE SAFE. The movements of his finger are steady, almost hypnotic.  

YOU SURVIVED. DID WHAT YOU HAD TO. ENDURED. He gives Mikey another, firmer, tap on the collarbone. I SWEAR. I KNOW. ALWAYS SO PROUD, MIKEY.  

And Mikey can't even muster a sarcastic aw shucks to that, can he? So he just leans into his brother's touch, letting Leo grab the almost-empty water glass before Mikey can drop it on the floor. His brother's arms come up around him and Mikey hugs back, trembling with silent sobs.  

REST, Leo traces into his skin. ALL WE NEED FROM YOU.  

He starts to trace something else, but a noise echoes from outside, grabbing Mikey's attention. He stiffens with pain and alarm, grip tightening. Voices. Shouting, maybe even arguing, muffled by the dividing door, but still all too distinct.  

Mikey sits up and back, looking up at the blurry outline of his brother's face. He fumbles for Leo's palm and traces, I MISSED TRAINING. It's not a question.  

Leo sighs. DOESN'T UNDERSTAND YET, he says. Mikey doesn’t need clarification on how he means.  

WILL HE. Not a question, either. And Mikey's guilty, because he knows Splinter is figuring out his own trauma--he's seen Encanto and Turning Red, he knows how it works, how it can work, anyway. But it's taking so long, and it's hard for Mikey to keep up his hope and patience while simultaneously dealing with all this shit.  

HE WILL. Leo says firmly. PROMISE. 

Mikey closes his eyes. BUT YOU NEED TO GO OUT NOW, he says. Donnie's arguments will degenerate into scientific rambling that won't get across to anyone, and if Raph and Splinter are left to snap at each other for too long it'll lead to an almighty screamfest. They're far too alike, really, not that either will ever admit it.  

And Leo--Leo is the favored son. Leo is the one who doesn't falter. Leo is the one Splinter needs. Leo is a lot of things, but right now he's Mikey's big brother, and Mikey doesn't want to be left alone with the pain right now, with the bad memories that won't go and the important truths he keeps having to reteach himself.  

WILL SEND RAPH, Leo says. TAPE HIS MOUTH IF I HAVE TO. Mikey smiles at that, and he thinks Leo is smiling too. Raph doesn't do it a ton, but he can be quiet if he needs. He'll be quiet now, Mikey's sure.

Leo lifts Mikey's hand and kisses it gently. LOVE YOU, he traces into the palm. SO MUCH. Then he's standing up and helping Mikey lie back down, tucking the sheets in around him like a cocoon.  

Mikey can feel his brother move away and closes his eyes again, against the light of the door opening and closing. The pain pushes back in on his consciousness again, a brutal drumbeat. And yet...he thinks it might have eased up the slightest bit, now. Just enough for him to lift his head up from the pillow and breathe.