#congrats to the one (1) follower who is still alive

[nzaploveblog]

when will nzaploveblog come back from the war

hilarious that you sent this ask when you did bc i JUST got back into splatoon. my internet was horrible during lockdown so i kinda fell out of it but i have a stable connection now yay <3

i'd say the return has been pretty nice. i've forgotten most things but i'm still a slightly above average grizzco employee 👍

[nyxnightshade1332]

Expectations When Expecting (Book 1)

Chapter 14

Chapter 15:

"El borracho!" She called, presenting the makeshift card to the boys.

"Hell yeah!" Deuce cheered, placing a small stone over the drawn and replicated four times loteria card. "Loteria!" He called, chest puffing proudly.

It had been about three hours since the group had gotten yuu to draw out the entire game of loteria.

"Congrats Deuce!" Yuu chuckled, pulling the notebook paper cards back into a very thin deck. "Alright boys, let's head to bed before I struggle to wake myself up." She remarked, dismissing the group.

.

.

.

The moment Yuu closed her eyes, she felt something odd pulling at her. It was... familiar, yet terrifying. Some strange force that she could not fight. It became quite evident to her, when the scent of the old Ramshackle room disappeared, a slight aroma of a rose garden replacing the smell of moisture.

Another dream...? Yuu opened her eyes, examining the area of what appeared to be a maze of roses. Her eyes landed on two figures. A tall, intimidating woman, a queen waving around an uprooted rose bush, and a young girl in blue cowering close to the ground. Alice...

"For painting my roses red, someone will lose his head!" She fumed, glaring at three cards that shivered, terrified at her words.

"Y-your majesty..." The three of clubs trembled. "If anyone is to blame, it's him!" He pointed to the Two of clubs.

"Have mercy, you grace!" The two pleaded. "It was the Ace!"

"So it was YOU." The queen demanded with a terrifying glare. The Ace shrunk back, cowering at her presence.

"Gah! No! It was the two!" He blamed. Yuu furrowed her brows, a frown deepening on her face. They're willing to do anything to stay alive, but they cannot protect each other...

"Then he will pay!" The queen growled, prompting the two to jump to his own defense.

"It was the three, I say!" He cried, face dropping in horror as Yuu saw that the Queen had finally seemed to snap.

"Enough of this!" She snarled, glaring at the three cards, taking a deep breath as her face became bright red. "OFF with ALL their heads!" She roared as the card soldiers errupted into cheering.

Yuu watched in stunned horror at the sight of the three cards being dragged away, one leaving behind a trail of red paint turning the scene all the more morbid.

Just before Yuu could avert her eyes, she caught a glimpse of the queen, who giggled as if she had done nothing wrong in sending off three of her people to an unfair execution.

"A fitting end. Color, you can't mend." The two of diamonds praised, the three following suit.

"Everyone knows the roses should be red." He sang, praising the queen.

Yuu felt horrified dread pool into her stomach, beginning to suffocate her. She closed her eyes tightly, trying not to imagine the moments before the execution of the cards. And then, she woke up.

.

.

.

"Yuu, wake up." The young woman felt her body being shaken gently. "The unbirthday party is today. If we're late, well, you know..."

Gasping for breath, Yuu shot up, her head nearly colliding with Deuce's nose.

"Woah!" He yelped, noticing Yuu's confused expression. She paused, processing her surroundings and the information before slowly nodding.

"That's right... The party's today." She muttered before turning to Deuce. "Sorry... I almost broke your nose." She said, sheepishly.

"Nah, it's cool. I'll leave you to get dressed, okay?" Deuce smiled, leaving the room and closing the door.

Yuu quickly got up, getting dressed. She was grateful for the lack of nausea this morning, as she was already anxious. Yuu messed with her hair for a bit before giving up and settling for keeping it down.

Yuu then opted for making her way down the stairs before hearing a knock on her door.

"Look like you have a visitor!" Deuce called from his place on the couch before going back to bicker with the still-collared Ace.

Yuu sighed, attempting to fight the grogginess as she opened the door.

"Good mooorning!" The sunshiny voice chirped, making his way in. "Did you all enjoy your sleepover? Did you bond over pillow fights and card games?" The third-year ginger asked, curious and excited.

"No and yes." Yuu responded as Ace entered the conversation.

"Oh, good morning, Cater. We did play some cards, yeah." Ace yawned. "We played Old Maid, 'cause that was the only one Grim knew how to play."

"And I still got the old maid every time, dang it!" Grim grumbled, pouting.

"Let's just say Grim doesn't have a very good poker face." Deuce chuckled.

"We also played loteria after I drew a board and all of the cards. Deuce won our last game, so I owe him a Coffee. Again." She said, making Deuce smirk.

Cater gave a laugh before speaking."Well, you should get one of the tarts we made yesterday and go apologize to Riddle." His face seemed to strain to keep smiling as he added, "And you should probably hurry, because after the trouble yesterday, we're a little short-handed."

"What does that mean?" Ace questioned uneasily.

"Don't worry. I've totes got it under control. Anyway, off to the party we go!" Cater chirped once more, dodging the question.

Yuu shook her head, trying to get the feeling of dread to subside, sensing that there was something that Cater did not want the group to know. She made a silent prayer that things would go well as she watched Ace grab the box from her fridge before following after Cater.

.

.

.

"All right, so..." Ace said, checking over the tart once again. "I'll hand over the tart and say I'm sorry, then-" He went over the plan before freezing when he looked back up.

Yuu followed his gaze, her mind somewhat blanking as she saw another, differently dressed Cater.

"Hey, it's about time I got back! Good to see me!" Cater number two called, waving cheerily to the first Cater.

"And me! Looking good as always, me!" Cater number one said with a playful finger gun at the other.

Yuu blinked incredulously. "Excuse me, but what the hell-" Yuu remarked, turning to face Cater one.

"Th-there're two Caters?!" Deuce gasped, eyes wide in surprise.

"Are you guys identical twins?!" Ace yelped, eyes flying between the two Caters.

"Nope. Don't have any siblings." Cater one smiled, making Yuu narrow her eyes. Oh, he's definitely not a single child... he doesn't give off that energy.

"What I DO have is my signature spell, Split Card. It lets me make magic duplicates of myself." He informed the group, gesturing for someone to come to join them. Yuu looked around in surprise as she saw two more Cater approach.

"This must be how Cater kept coming after we beat him over and over again yesterday..." Deuce mumbled.

"Welcome home, daaarlings." One said cutely, making a fake bow.

"Good to see you, Yuu!" The other said with a nod of his hair. She returned his greetings with an awkward wave and a crooked smile.

Wow. This place is weird.

"You're late! I was worried sick!" Cater two fussed.

"Bwah! There're more of them?" Ace cried, bewildered by the revelation.

"J-S-Y-K, I'm actually the real Cater." Cater two said, raising his hand. "Making these duplicates is suuuper exhausting, so I can't maintain them for long." He gestured toward his duplicated before checking the time on his phone, eyes widening for a brief moment.

"Anyway, if we're late, heads will roll. And since we're several people short, we'll need your help. But when this is over, I promise I'll take you straight to Riddle."

"What... MORE roses?" Grim groaned loudly, clinging to Yuu, who scratched behind his ears.

Yuu pursed her lips, carefully placing a hand over her stomach as she recalled the dangerous interaction with Cater when they'd painted the roses before. Naturally, the young woman was a bit skeptical.

"And here we go again!" Ace rolled his eyes.

"Get the lead out, peeps! We need to get started!" Cater called, clapping his hands. "Chop chop!"

Yuu noticed as Cater seemed to be watching her, making his way over to her, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, leading her away from the group.

"And Yuu... I need to talk to you." He said, seriously. Yuu felt her heart sink as she gulped, nodding. 

Chapter 16

[anulithots]

Anuli gets an interview. (Very dangerous, do not recommend. )

Let's pretend that @gummybugg tagged me. (Bliar and Elijah will now live in my head rent free)

TW for self-deprecation and suicidal ideation. (Mild and overdramatic <-- the sort of comfortable joking about it)

Anywho, welcome to Trinity Hollow!

You've happened to stumble across flower bushes. A hollow exists underneath, studded with mushrooms. (I cannot find the picture)

Anuli has this expression.

Fae looks like this:

And congrats! Anuli will probably do whatever you ask, because fae doesn't like deviating from others instructions, lest something awful happen. Fae also doesn't like following instructions, because something bad will happen. Good luck!

(The fancier language Anuli uses, the more nervous fae is)

[1.] Are you named after anyone?

.... I- er. Plot holes and darling murders, the possibilities for character depth here! Wonderous questions, pinnacle questioning.

Figures that I do not have an answer for this one, my apologies.

I was just... Anuli, since forever, perhaps past that.

...

Wouldn't it be ironic if there was another being named Anuli and they had a similar arc as mine.... and perhaps one's name governs their fate and that's how Kamari's star-y fates dictate the destiny of all the beings because they just reuse the names over and over and over again.

.... and if the stars lived forever, did they see the same story repeat? Is there a limited number of stories in the world, a limited number of ways lives can play out, and yet we never learn. No one has an arc unless they live through it, no one goes "aha! I have just popped into existence, and I know everything about everything, and life is simple and easy, what are all these buffoons doing?"

.... Revision... most beings are like that. They always seem to go on some arc that makes them a protagonist or a side character or a foil or a mentor, and the ones that don't have that arc... (a pre-existence arc?) are left to scramble and eventually they become villains.

Apparently, ignorance of ignorance is bliss, awareness of ignorance will eat you alive.

... my apologies. I- I did not answer that question.

[2.] When was the last time you cried?

I'm still crying. Without tears.

Symbolic crying.

Metaphorical crying.

From a villain who should not cry.

Why would the proponent of harm cry?

Fae doesn't actually care.

If fae cared, it would've ended better.

... Unsure if disclaimers that sound better will work better. Because if this story repeats ONE MORE TIME I'M GOING TO [redacted]

[3.] Do you have kids?

Younglings? Me?

... that will never happen. That's not fathomable. I'd probably... pass on my antagonistic traits to them and mess everything up or accidently squish them, or I'd start sparking on the inside with those heat-ripple flesh and blood and morbidity thing (Anuli's trying to describe anger) and I'd purposefully squish them. That's... taking care of little things is nowhere in the 'antagonist character bio'.

[4.] Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Sarcasm gives one the power to shroud truth and leave it up to interpretation, making the one interpreting it find whatever meaning they want...

IT'S WONDEROUS AND I WOULD NEVER BE MISUNDERSTOOD AGAIN... but alas, its elusive nature leaves me tragically unfunny.

[5.] What's the first thing you notice about people?

.... I tend to... not notice things about people? I definitely do not notice a 'first thing'. A new character takes time to decipher into their desires, fears, worldviews and purpose in the story after all, but I... well I thought I was good at analyzing them. Was being the imperative word.

Er, suffice it to say that I don't notice anything about anything. My internal world takes first priority... it's the bane of my existence.... my grand villainous trait.

[6.] What's your eye colour?

... That's a wonderous question... Kamari might've told me once.

...

...

Plot holes and darling murders.

For this VALUABLE PIECE OF EXPOSITION... we shall say yellow. I think Kamari said yellow. Maybe. Possibly. It might fit in with the narrative... actually red.

Red is now my official and metaphorical eye color, for peak villainous disclaimers, symbolic for the blood on my hands (metaphorically).

Anuli's eyes are green. Kamari has told Anuli faer eyes are green at least seventeen separate times.

[7.] Scary movies or happy endings?

.... CONTEXT???? BACKSTORY???? IS THIS A "what do you, Anuli, prefer?" OR A "what type of story do you tell?" QUESTION? THE CONJUNCTION 'or' IMPLIES THAT IT'S ONE OR THE OTHER...

CAN SCARY STORIES NOT HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS? I WAS NOT AWARE OF THIS CRITICAL STORYTELLING-

oh.

'Scary stories cannot have happy endings'.

.....

I HAVEN'T ANSWERED ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS, THIS ONE IS STORY-RELATED, MY SAVING GRACE, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SHALVAGE THIS, BUT ALAS, OBSTICALS.

.... plot holes and darling murders.

... LET'S DO BOTH QUESTIONS.

*Ahem, Anuli what types of stories do you prefer?*

'Why thank you for the question Anuli! I liked Kamari's stories, they were...simpler than mine, all with happy endings. I don't know- how fae told such happy little stories all the time eludes me.'

*what an insightful answer Anuli! What types of stories do you tell?*

'Yet another wonderous question Anuli, I typically tell stories that spiral into morbid deaths full of blood and flesh that rips off of bones and characters that never get their happy ending no matter how much they wish for it! It's ironic really, how attempting to get that happy ending only makes it spill from their fingertips!

I tried to tell a story with a happy ending once.

.... tried being the imperative word.

[8.] Any special talents?

Ruining every story beat, happy ending, and spiraling into morbid nonsense no one would want to hear.

[9.] Where were you born?

... This must also be valuable exposition, apologies for not containing the answers in this.. needlessly complicated internal world.

My tree is in the wanderer's nest, so I assume I sprouted in the wanderer's nest?

FROM THERE, DEAR AUDIENCE, COMES THE PLIGHT OF THE WANDERER'S NEST AND ITS VILLIANOUS COMPANION - THE PLACE OF TETHERS - TO KEEP ITS VILLIAN SPAWN FROM RUINING THE PROTAGONIST'S HAPPY ENDING INSTEAD OF DYING LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO.

[10.] What are your hobbies?

Storytelling! Art once in a while! Overthinking! Daydreaming! Nothing helpful! Messing up everything! Talking to inanimate objects!

[11.] Do you have any pets?

What's a pet?

[12.] What sports do you play/have you played?

What's a sport?

(Anuli is extremely slow and has awful motor control and will trip over faer feet and reach for something and miss it. Fae can't fly nor walk that fast. Anuli's spent most of faer young life tethered to a fence, and fae sat and rolled around for most of that tethered existence. Standing up suddenly will make faer dizzy. Do not get this one in a sport.

Human AU Anuli likes to float in a pool, that's about it.)

[13.] How tall are you?

I can answer this one! HUZZAH!

About a half-Kamari length.

(This is the most accurate height chart you're going to get. And the Anuli doll took three months and is about the size of newborn child. I don't think I'll ever make a Kamari doll because... making that size accurate would be a nightmare and I don't think I would ever finish)

books for size comparison

[14.] Favourite subject in school?

What's school?

(Human AU Anuli would have hyperfixations in musicals and classical literature, along with the occasional high fantasy modern books... as long as they break tropes or have a good sense of storytelling (fae gets bored easily.) That being said, assignments are faer least favorite thing in the world, fae would have the highest grade in literature.... but only when fae gets to analyze stories or write faer own. When this happens, fae will write pages and pages longer than the assigned length.

All other subjects are barely over failing grade, except for art, although Anuli might do something completely opposite of what the instructions where but fae gets a decent grade anyways because it had a lot of effort put into it.

Anuli miiigghhhtttt have a learning disability in math, since cannon Anuli has a hard time counting. Numbers are hard to work with because fae can't see them that well... they are very abstract things.

History would be pretty good... except for the assignments parts. Human Anuli could infodump on ancient history for hours and think they all happened in the past hundred years.

Science is a hit or miss. Anuli's gone on a hyperfixation from time to time (mainly genetics because fae saw this one show where they use DNA to identify a killer), but fae just... doesn't do the assignments.

TL;DR - Literature and a bit of history, has a failing grade in most subjects because school work = executive dysfunction)

[15.] Dream job?

... I get to tell stories to Kamari while fae hums songs and makes windchimes, but that's another story entirely. That's not mine to have.

... I don't daydream about myself in a... positive light that often... so... I'll take suggestions for free lifestyles as long as it doesn't involve anything important or breakable or involving emotions or other beings or consistency.

[waywardsalt]

on my knees gripping my head hnngggg i thought abt bellumbeck too hard

tag ramblings are fun and on brand but i have too many disorganized thoughts and tags are limiting.

anyways thinking too hard abt him is an extremely good and fun thing but i cannot draw the way i wish and can't really put my thoughts into fic form so this is very much going to be a fun ramble.

bellumbeck drives me insane we all know this. he showed up in my dream last night as of writing this sentence so he is on my mind, which is surprising bc fictional stuff doesn't usually show up coherently in my dreams but there it was.

it's so incredibly fun to think about bellumbeck. he's such a black sheep of a loz final boss, there really isnt another loz final boss like him in concept or even in 1:1 tone imo. it's so fun to take bellumbeck incredibly darkly seriously.

to be fair bellumbeck is kind of objectively a fairly dark and disturbing final boss on a conceptual level, and it's not really out of nowhere since phantom hourglass has at least a little darkness running through it even if the general tone of the game doesn't really acknowledge or take advantage of it. but if you think about it hard enough even without getting into post-game speculation in regards to what happens with linebeck, bellumbeck is kind of a dark boss and it's great. full on screen demonic possession of a major character with most of the cast incapacitated and link isolated with no escape on the ruins of the ghost ship that started everything and facing a boss that is constantly facing him and both someone he's been with the whole adventure and also the creature that's captured his friends and killed who knows how many people.

it's so oooouuuugghhhh it's so much fun to think about bellumbeck even though it's such a short encounter. it's so... the mystery around bellum, the way linebeck is built up throughout the game and saves link directly before getting possessed, the fucking on-screen vaguely violent possession (i am forever obsessed with the way bellum grabs and tugs on his arms), the way ciela is captured early into the fight, too, the first companion character you meet and, if you had her equipped, it leaves you without a fairy that follows your cursor around for the first time all game, it's very... congrats you and your friends are at rock bottom! good luck getting everyone out of there alive!!!!

of course it's not quite that because this game is geared a bit more towards younger players, but still keeps those streaks of darkness and complexity just simply because they're inevitable parts of this story and it's characters. bellumbeck. i'm talking about bellumbeck. what a soulsborne-ass final boss, huh?

there's only so much a ds game can do in terms of boss animations, but i think a lot about more complicated movements and animations for bellumbeck, so, so much character can be communicated through a boss's animations. in my mind, i enjoy bellumbeck movements with an emphasis on puppet-like flourishes and mannerisms, and an emphasis on weight with how he fights. these two go very well together, and its something i love imagining.

with the latter, an emphasis on weight, would ideally focus on the sword (and im a fan of it being this huge greatsword, reading berserk got me around to liking it because you can do that really well) and how it has to be used one-handed, with bellumbeck leveraging his own weight against it and taking advantage of momentum to use it especially effectively to turn link into a little green and red smear on the wood. attacks blending into each other as he builds up momentum, and using that weight primarily against link, who is a small opponent who relies on rolling around and can’t really stack up at all in terms of brute force.

i imagine this kind of physicality and movement would lend itself very well to bellumbeck also having more puppet-like movements, being a little too tugged-along by his attacks but still retaining his footing, his free arm being just a little too limp a little too often, and his leaning away from his sword side, likely with the intention to properly balance himself out, looks off with how his head lolls unnaturally to that side. the puppetry effect lessens as the fight wears on and bellum gets the hang of the body he’s using, but never actually goes away since he’s not looking to act properly human anyways.

just like... movement flourishes and details that could add a whole lot to the overall experience of bellumbeck that i think about often.

[manofmanymons]

thanks so much for responding to my ask about Ryo x Minoru!! the stuff you wrote was so cute, especially the “this could be us”picture (I 100% could see Minoru sending that) also the idea you had of them kissing because they thought they were gonna die…your mind omg. I could also see them doing one of those “thank god we’re alive” kisses where they thought they were gonna die but when they live they’re so happy and that the other person is happy that they just. smooch lol

also I did see that other post you made about them and I loved it! but it’s funny that you see everyone being shocked when they say they’re together because I hc that they’d both be super obvious even when they try to hide that they like each other (esp Minoru, the word subtle isn’t in that boy’s dictionary). if either of them confided in Kaito for whatever reason, I can 100% picture him saying in the most deadpan voice, “congrats, you’re officially the last one to know.” I think it would specifically be obvious because they’d talk about each other all the time, even if it was about things that “annoyed” them and then trying too hard to play it cool by immediately following up with “not that I care about him or anything!!!1!” or something like that.

I just think they’re neat and I’m honestly surprised that there aren’t more people who ship them. like they spend a good amount of time together, they both have come running when the other one is distressed, and I also noticed that falcomon is the only kemonogami who can understand kunemon, and since the kemonogami represent their partner’s hearts, I feel like it shows that they both understand each other. also if Minoru gets captured by dokugumon in chapter 1, ryo will complain about Minoru being a pain, which makes Minoru mad, but falcomon reassures him that Ryo’s just making such a fuss because he was worried about Minoru (which Ryo denies and gets embarrassed over ofc).

on a less serious note, I feel like they would be kinda like those two old guys from the muppets once they start dating where they bond over roasting other people/each other. I also get reminded of them when I see that one post where it’s like “I had a crush on someone in my class and didn’t know how to deal with it so I just wrote a letter that said ‘get out of my school.’” like they both are soft™️ on the inside but have such a hard time expressing it.

sorry i totally rambled about them but it’s just nice to see someone else who ships this rare pair!! i wish more people enjoyed it/wrote about it! I literally made one of those dumb comic sans powerpoints about them one day because I was bored and because digimon survive hyperfixation™️ and because i freakin love them. so thanks so much, i really appreciate it!! 💕

Y'know what anon, I see the vision. I see the poorly concealed crush disguised as annoyance. Them thinking everyone would be surprised only to be met with "guys we literally all knew." I love that we both decided they would not shut up about each other though XD

AND DUDE YEAH I LOVE THAT SCENE. EVEN IN THE BEGINNING WHEN THEY DIDN'T GET ALONG WELL AT ALL RYO WAS STILL WORRIED ToT

Also 100% in love with the idea of their partners being a reflection of how well they get each other. You're so big brained aaaaaah.

They absolutely would talk shit together lmao. Mean old ladies on a porch swing except they're both teenage boys XD Also why are they actually both the "he's bullying you because he likes you" one in the relationship ToT

I am dying to know about this powerpoint lakdjfakj I also am surprised more people don't ship it tbh like at least for me they are like THE pairing from the game that falls the most into my usual preferred tropes. Annoyances to friends to lovers. Sunshine x grumpy except they're both a little grumpy. "He's an idiot but he's MY idiot." Rowdy boys. "I hate you (affectionate)." They're so good together. They should kith.

ALSO BC YOU SAID "not that I care about him or anything!!!1!" YOU REMINDED ME OF SOMETHING NOT QUITE RELATED BUT FUNNY ENOUGH TO SHARE. ONE TIME WHEN I WAS COHOSTING MY FRIEND'S SURVIVE STREAM, I WAS VOICING RYO, AND SOMEONE CALLED HIM A TSUNDERE, SO--

I should provide further context that she has a point redeem for talking in a high pitched voice so that's why we were talking like that lmao.

AND ONE LAST THING: DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR RAMBLING I AM LITERALLY SO THRILLED TO READ SOMEONE ELSE'S CUTE HC'S ABOUT THEM <3

[hellomynameisbisexual]

In the coming-of-age series with a refreshing, queer-forward plot, Connor plays a British high school rugby Nick Nelson, alongside classmate Charlie Spring, played by Joe Locke, who falls in love with him. Over the course of the eight-episode series, adapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Alice Oseman, Nick starts to question his own sexuality amid his growing feelings for Charlie.

The show was so well received when it launched this year that it’s already been renewed for two more seasons. It is one of the first to center LGBTQ characters — both Nick and Charlie, as well as others in the main cast — geared towards a teen and young adult audience. Unlike shows like “Sex Education” and “Euphoria,” which, while also wonderfully sexually and gender diverse, are more explicit.

Calls for Connor to address his own orientation started this spring with taunting on Twitter, which he addressed in a tweet, saying, “twitter is so funny man. apparently some people on here know my sexuality better than I do…” Still though, that pressure did not abate, and Connor became a target of what social media mobs dubbed “queerbaiting,” with claims the show was attempting to reel people in with broader LGBTQ-inclusive themes without being deliberate in revealing his character’s identity — and perhaps that Connor was doing the same.

The truth about Nelson’s character, as well as Connor’s real-life identity, may be much more nuanced. Nonetheless, Connor, who clearly felt backed into a corner, tweeted on Halloween to his 1 million followers that he was bisexual: “back for a minute. i’m bi,” he wrote. “congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. i think some of you missed the point of the show. bye.”

There is a lot to unpack in this story, not least of which is that a young adult has been forced to share very publicly parts of his own identity that are very private — and may still be in flux.

Connor felt the pressure of a moralistic social media mob, a force quick to attack and slow to forgive, that demands you answer its questions immediately and with no room for nuance or context. It is not the way we ought to be operating as a culture.

Sometimes the Twitter mob forces real issues into the light and brings them to favorable outcomes more quickly. Other times, it just blows everything up and walks away, not caring what casualties it leaves in its wake.

Connor’s outing is the latest in a string of celebrities recently forced to out themselves, lest tabloid media exposes or “leaks” do so for them, and stands in contrast to the long history of Hollywood celebrities forced to remain in the closet or else risk their careers.

From closeted actor Rock Hudson in the 20th century to the openly trans actor Elliot Page today, performers have long had to live double lives and hide their true identities to remain on the A list – even to remain safe and alive. It took Ellen DeGeneres decades to rebuild her career after she came out on the cover of TIME magazine in 1997, at the same time as her character in the eponymous ABC sitcom.

It’s true that many LGBTQ characters in contemporary media have evolved — from murderers, murder victims, sex workers and one-dimensional characters who provide a punchline — into actual human beings, including those who aren’t just the sidekick but the leading roles.

They include Michaela Jay Rodriguez, Billy Porter, Dominique Jackson and Indya Moore on FX’s “Pose”; Sara Ramirez as Callie Torres on “Grey’s Anatomy” (and, yes, as Che Diaz on “Sex and the City” spinoff “And Just Like That”); the casts of this year’s movies “Fire Island” and “BROS”’ and Zendaya as Rue Bennett from HBO’s “Euphoria,” to name just a few. We’ve come a long way in a short time in terms of representation in media.

(HBO and HBO Max are both owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.)

Now LGBTQ audiences are rightfully asking the hard questions about who gets to play LGBTQ characters. Does a cisgender person playing a transgender character amount to a White actor in blackface, or playing a role of a BIPOC person, or is there a different litmus test? Does acting mean playing a character distinct from the actor’s personal identity, or are there rules we have yet to adequately draw and maintain?

Cisgender actors like Eddie Redmayne, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role playing a transgender woman in “The Danish Girl,” later said he regrets stepping into the role and that it should have been reserved for a transgender woman. But other casting choices, like Cate Blanchett or Mara Rooney playing lesbians in the stunning 2015 movie, “Carol,” feel more forgivable. Perhaps casting someone to play a character they do not identify as in their personal life is more palatable if they were cast by a director, producer or writer who does inhabit that identity authentically.

Who gets to create queer art and media — and what qualifies as accurate representation? Would a television series or movie get attention if a star-studded cishet cast was replaced for the sake of aligning representation? What if the show’s writers or directors are queer, but the actors aren’t?

While it’s progress that openly queer actors are being cast in leading roles, weaponizing criticisms of queerbaiting and appropriation as an excuse to force a teen or any actor out of the closet is not the answer. Those conversations have reached a fever pitch, and the result is hurting people who should be allowed to make their own decisions when and how to come out, if at all.

For thousands of years, humans have felt the need to categorize things in the world in order to make sense of them. Younger people are disrupting that rigid framework with more fluid gender identities and romantic expressions. That makes some people uncomfortable (read: the current culture wars targeting trans kids, LGBTQ rights, literature and school policies, among other things). But many of those disrupters are also demanding people like Connor now put themselves a box with a label slapped on the front — and share it with the world in short order.

Coming out is not a one-time act, or something that remains fixed, and why should it be? Identities are malleable, and many young people are still on the journey to find themselves. What we shouldn’t do is publicly shame someone into disclosing a part of themselves they may not be ready to or want to share.

With LGBTQ rights under heightened threat across the US and around the world, coming out involves a whole different assessment of risk and repercussions. There is only person who should drive that decision, and no, it’s not a Twitter troll.

Note: There are plenty of resources available for those who want to learn more about how to best support those who are coming out as LGBTQ, and for people who are exploring the queer corners of their own sense of self.

[vsnotresponding]

untitled project playlists masterpost part 1

by yours truly

spoilers ahead if you care (? you’ll probably forget about them by the time i actually write UP so there’s that. anyways

before the wall of text that will surely follow this, a note about how the playlists are organized:

the playlists are as follows (linked for your enjoyment):

untitled project

up: book 1

up: book 2 & 3

up: book 4

up: book 5

B1 B4 and B5 playlists have the same structure: vibe/mood songs for the particular book followed by the songs in chronological order as they relate to the plot (B1 only has plot songs)

B2 & 3 has literally just 2 songs about the respective plot

untitled project is a playlist that has the songs by character (ely, lyric and the first lost soul) and then some vibe/mood songs for the story as a whole

i’ll make 3 separate posts (you are on the first one, congrats!)

playlists for B1, 2&3

playlists for B4, 5

playlist for the vibes

so let’s go, shall we?

BOOK 1

book 1 is all about how ely went from being a trapped child to the eternal master of death itself. cover is the background of an ely drawing i did in 2021

Dream Girl - Idina Menzel

teen!ely’s angst as they feel more and more trapped in their village. the wolf they befriended as a child is getting hunted and the situation at home is not great (their parents want them to marry)

This treasure you found bury it The only way out marry it That shadow of doubt carry it Carry it down to your grave

sorrow aka the wolf is the treasure they found, and they carry their shadow (influence) wherever they go. they will indeed carry it to their grave.

Don't be sentimental Some legends are born in the wrong timе

literal line

Requiem - Laura Dreyfuss

so teen!ely dies trying to protect the wolf they befriended, only, they wake up. they are not dead or alive. a ghost maybe? they don’t know. they don’t want to mourn their life, they hated it, all of it. death has brought them freedom, life and their future in that village only had hell waiting for them

so they don’t mourn

and they forget

No one lights a candle to remember No, no one mourns at all

why should i say i’ll keep you with me? why should i go and fall apart for you?

they keep seeing a ghost of their past, when they were a child. and they hate them

The Calling - The Amazing Devil

forget all but one thing. something calls to them, like a memory. red eyes, ocean hair, a war and an underwater grave and, maybe, something else too

That light I thought was blinding brought me here

eternity and their newfound power are overwhelming to them at first, but they learn to follow where it leads them

I look into the waters and see a face I don’t recognise Who’s this (Who are you)

still don’t know who they are, or who they were

And when that fox howls I’ll howl with it In its cries I’ll find an end And when I think I’m fine you’ll visit And then you happen to me, you happen to me all over again

they keep being brought back to their past life, to their ghost, but they can’t recognize it

Dear Wormwood - The Oh Hellos

until they do. they remember. him, yes. and them, themselves. ely, their name, their life

I have always known you You have always been there in my mind But now I understand you

let’s ignore where it says “and i will not be a part of your designs”, but yeah understanding what sorrow really embodies, what eternity really is, is what they lacked before they could master it

I know who I am now And all that you've made of me I know who you are now And I name you my enemy

leaving the enemy part even if ely doesn’t resent sorrow for what they did. ely's ready to face eternity

Caesar - The Oh Hellos

ely finds sorrow. like the first time they met him. cold air, winter fading. they’ve already seen the war, and History. and him. the messiah.

“tell me how to save him.”

Peace - Shayfer James

but someone got left behind. the first lost soul. not a mindless monster, not a bloodthirsty ghost. just a scared and forgotten child. a piece of ely’s soul

I'd rather live alone than live a lie I will never deserve peace

the girl that hunts the narrative is here <3

BOOK 2 & 3

childhood and teens of hannah, akira and lyric. cover is my “god always lies” piece, with hannah holding a torch inside sorrow’s church (she wrote “god always lies” on the statue”)

Dear God - XTC

hannah’s song! her book is called God Always Lies, bold words for someone who has met god (technically). she’s a priestess that doesn’t believe in destiny, because their dreams are broken and so must destiny too.

And all the people that you made in your image Still believing that junk is true

pretty straightforward

That my heart's here upon my sleeve If there's one thing, I don't believe in It’s you Dear God

God’s Whisper - Raury

i’m just gonna:

I hear God's whisper Calling my name It's in the wind I am the savior

yeah a teen lyric song

so yeah, any questions are welcome and such

[librarybunny13]

I hear a lot of people saying Aizawa is “gonna talk to Kurogiri and just BAM Kurogiri will become Loud Cloud via the power of Friendship. 

I think, what some people are missing is that all the kids are trying to “save their villain”. Aizawa needs to save “his villain” as well. But what Aizawa needs to understand is the following:

1. Loud Cloud is gone. He can never go back to being “just” Shirakumo. People change. What Kurogirir went through was literal death, then he was experimented on. The core personality is there. He is still deep down a warm caring guy. But literally this is a guy who has seen and done shit. That happy go lucky kid is death. Shirakumo helped AFO do truly horrible things. It changed him.

2. Kurogirir spent possibly years with Shigaraki. At the very least he started helping out with Shigaraki in his teen years. He has seen Tomura grow up. Also don’t forget the programming. So of course he’s gonna want to help Shigaraki. BUT, what Kurogiri considers “helping” is probably going to be different from what the heroes or villains consider helping. I think that Kurogiri’s programming has made it so he will help stop TomuraAFO. He is the one who takes care of Shigaraki Tomura. Well, right now Shigaraki is being possessed. And that is NOT good for Shigaraki Tomura.  That’s how you get Kurogiri to change

3. How many people do you keep in contact with once you leave high school? Honestly. How often do you hang from your bff from high school after over 15 years? 

I would like to add, notice that the government never told Shirakumo’s parents that he is alive? Well congrats. They’re gonna find out about it on live tv. Dabi’s legacy endures?

I’m not touching that fucking Mic would rather Kurogiri die or disappear then hurt Aizawa’s good memories. I never liked Mic. And this basically puts the nail in that coffin. FUCK MIC!

[formulaford2022]

Okay I'm doing these in order of how I watch them, so bare with me if it seems like my f2/f3 thoughts are all over the place. Weekly disclaimer about me not watching qualifying, I swear once college fully gets into gear I will stop having plans on saturdays (lol). Anyway, the first thing I watched this weekend was Indycar. What a race. I kept thinking while watching that I wish I was there in person. It was a mostly green race with lots of lead changes which is always really fun. Plus Linus Lundqvist and Pato O'ward led good chunks of the race so that way slay. Ferrucci was kind of scaring me for a while, but it all worked out. I'm so happy Pato won.

Oh also Kimi Antonelli got announced as the second mercedes seat for next year and I am so excited for him. The amount of rookies next year is gonna be crazy. So far we have three and there is still two seats left to be announced.

Anyway, the f3 sprint was pretty good. Tim Tramnitz had a good drive. Congrats to him on his first win. Lots of yellow which was uncool. The finale is gonna be so intense. Fornaroli, Mini, Browning, and Lindblad are all such good drivers. I cannot wait to see the last race and also see them all battle it out in f2. I watched the f2 sprint. Ollie Bearman won. Good drive by him. No idea what else happened. I did watch it though, I swear.

Anyway, I accidentally spoiled literally every race for myself this morning cause I was busy all day and totally forgot about the absolutely horrible thing that is instagram showing you posts by accounts you don't follow. Props to Leonardo Fornaroli, even though I am not happy about it, he did drive a good season and deserves it. I am absolutely gutted for Luke Browning and also Gabriele Mini. I thought for sure one of them was gonna win, but whatever. It happens. I did lose it a little when Alex Dunne was leading. Irish representation (I am not Irish). The race was crazy right down to the last second. Anyway, the f3 race was really good, much like most of them this season, and I am really going to miss it. Also I cannot believe Mini got disqualified.

The f2 race was also good. I have less to say about this one because there was no title on the line. Absolutely insane of Gabriel Bortoleto to go from 22 to 1. I feel like he is so underrated and I would not be surprised if he won the championship this year. The Indy NXT race was good, congrats to Louis Foster on his Indy NXT title.

The Indycar race starting under caution and with Newgarden crashing out under a yellow is crazy. Seeing Palou running around was really funny as well. The amount of mechanical issues in this race was insane. Anyway, it was a good race all around (from the cars who survived) and I’m excited that the championship race is alive and well and going to Nashville. Also Linus Lundqvist got rookie of the year, let’s go.

I never have many thoughts on formula one races anymore. That’s a me problem though. These posts are gonna be so short on those f1 only weekends lol. Anyway, Alex Albon scored points, Oscar Piastri got p2, Franco Colapinto went from p18 to p12 on his debut and made a nice pass on Pierre Gasly, and I don’t mind Charles Leclerc, so overall a decent race. I cannot believe Kmag got a race ban. That’s crazy.

I am actually really sad that this is the last huge weekend in racing of the year. In two weeks indycar and Indy nxt will be over and I am not ready at all.

[prolix-yuy]

CONGRATS ON 500 💗💗💗 so excited for you and this request list is GOLDEN. my request shouldn’t come as a shock BUT also dealer’s choice cuz I really couldn’t pick one

sex worker!frankie / hurt&comfort / fear of failure

ORRRR

din djarin / whatever tickles your fancy / companionship as salvation

Kay I am giving you BOTH in my own special way. Laura got me convinced to write Flight Plan, and you convinced me to get into my Din Djarin feels. It's been much too long since I wrote another installment for I Think of You, and you got me pondering on something a little unique than what I've been doing lately. Let's see where this goes...

Interlude: The First Ever Touch

Summary: Din's first meeting with the child sparks a memory.

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: T, canon-typical violence, lots of angst and introspection, Paz Vizla being a little shit, taking liberties with how the Creed works (I googled for a bit, inaccuracies are mine), making up events in Din's backstory. While this story is not explicit, my blog and the content shared on it is 18+ MINORS DNI.

Notes: I missed my little space family, but especially the clan of two who started it all. Companionship as salvation is an excellent theme for Din, but I think if we're going to delve into that, we have to talk about the first companion who truly did save him. I am taking some liberties with Din's backstory here, but still aiming to keep it canon compliant. Come roll around in Din feels with me today, friends.

Takes place around Season 1, Episodes 1-3.

Cross-posted on AO3

I Think of You Series Masterlist

It’s little.

And green.

Big black eyes that reflect almost as much as his beskar.

Ears that should absolutely not be possible on such a small head but then again, Din’s seen some strange things during his lifetime.

But most of all, it’s a tiny hand reaching up to a bounty hunter. It’s trust when Din absolutely should not be trusted. It’s need and fear and hope and a tiny coo that pulls his blaster down and lifts his hand to meet its reach. 

The moment the bounty wraps a three-fingered grip around Din’s sizeable one, claws digging into the thick leather of his gloves, is when his armor chips. Not the beskar and durasteel, of course, but the fortress he’s built around himself. It’s flesh and gruff monosyllables and a voice devoid of emotion, but it’s protected him well in his advancing years. And all it takes is a squeeze, one Din can barely feel, to crumble its foundations.

He denies it as he traverses Arvala-7, the hovering pod following him dutifully. Handles the child like a sack of potatoes, ignores him when he looks up at Din with concerned eyes, reaching towards the cauterizer. 

It’s a bounty. Not his concern. His focus has to be on the beskar, the covert, his Creed. The child needs to be kept alive long enough to finish the deal, then he’ll be rid of the strange ache in his chest that the burbles and trills bring. 

It isn’t the first time Din’s felt this way.

The first days in the covert are a blur to Din. He keeps expecting his mother to turn the corner, warm smiles and a hand smoothing through his unruly locks. Or his father to come up behind him and rest his expansive palm on his shoulder, learning over to show him something. 

Instead, he’s met with noise and silence in frightening magnitudes. 

The adults are always helmeted, armored, impassive. His saviors, but also terrifying. He can’t read them, their movements a mystery until he learns how to understand how bodies twist, lean, express. He’s a quick study, has to be to stop feeling like he’s constantly on edge. 

The children are the opposite. Those who are too young to take the Creed are noisy, energetic as they bounce off the tunnel walls, quieting when the elders split the group with their long strides. The older children who sport their own buy’ces hold an air of superiority over the younger ones. They brag about their swearing to the Creed, and how they’re training to be warriors. A stocky boy with a booming voice even at his young age introduces himself as Paz to Din. 

“My family is made up of generations of Mandalorians,” he brags, swathed in an air of superiority. The thought of his own family line, only him now, lays heavy in Din’s stomach.

The only place he finds peace is in the younger children’s bunk room. The older ones are kept apart once the helmet makes them faceless. The silence in the bunk is not the same as the one amongst the adults. It’s filled with quiet breathing during naptimes, chatter that sometimes rises to a feverish pitch but in short bursts. They toddle and climb over each other, massiff pups tumbling around as their protectors prepare for a war that is always just another day off. 

Din can finally breathe when he’s surrounded by the younglings. He’s not much older than them, but small for his age and fits easily into their compact group. They look up to him, a buffer between the rowdier, older children. It’s a burden he didn’t anticipate, not a true Mandalorian in the eyes of those concerned with blood, but if he can bring them some comfort he will. A guide through the tunnels, someone who’s learning about the Creed and can explain it to them, a voice in the night when terrors feel the most daunting. 

Din can be that for them.

Din still denies the child’s pull on him as they travel, fighting the Jawas and taking up their pilgrimage in return for his ship parts. The green baby is small, easy to overlook with the pram closed, and even easier to brush over if he fusses or cries out. The Jawas study the child endlessly, Din shooing them off when their hands get too brave and eyes too greedy. 

It’s his bounty to collect.

Nothing to do with a surge of protectiveness in his chest. 

He almost believes it too, until the mudhorn. A foolish act, to go in alone and without the artillery needed to take down the powerful beast. Bracing before the charging creature, vibroblade in hand and his life distilled down into the point of a horn ready to rip him apart, he witnesses a miracle. One he doesn’t feel he deserves, but is gifted by the tiny creature with no name, no voice, but more compassion than Din has experienced in years. 

He makes the death blow quick, sparing the mudhorn pain as Din had been spared from its wrath. By the time he returns to the child, egg in hand, it’s asleep in its silver pod. Din thinks it a blessing not to have to worry if the child will wander off, that he can close the lid and keep the pod hovering by his side for the remainder of his mission.

The worry that gnaws at his chest betrays his true concern.

A few months after Din entered the covert, a baby is brought into the youngling’s room. Born of two strong heirs of Mandalore, her wails echo off the stone walls.

Din is captivated by the baby. Her name is Allondria, “a warrior’s name” as her proud parents declare to the covert. The merriment of celebration warms the covert for a time, and Din takes to trailing behind as she passes from person to person.

“I can help,” he says one day, more words spoken to an adult than he’s managed in the past few weeks. Taissa, one of the caregivers in charge of Allondria, cocks her helmet at this.

“Wouldn’t you rather be off training?” she asks, not unkindly.

“Paz says I’m too small to be a proper Mandalorian. Always calls me Din’ika. And I don't even have a buc'ye.” Din’s face crumples into a scowl, fighting to pronounce the foreign Mando'a as red hazes his memories. 

“There are roles for those who don’t wish to fight. Respected roles, needed by the covert. Raising warriors is one of them,” Taissa muses, laying Allondria down in her crib. Din peers through the slats, a protective instinct stirring at her babbles and waving fingers. 

“I can teach you, if your pride will allow it,” Taissa adds, straightening to look down at Din. He nods, a small smile on his face and his fingers wrapped around the crib bars. 

Taissa shows Din how to hold Allondria, what food she can eat and how she will change as she grows. Din struggled with sleep before, but now that he has an excuse to be up at all hours of the night he settles faster, deeper. He whispers the stories the Mandalorians have taught him, and a few he remembers, the threads of his mother’s voice murmuring in his mind. She watches Din with wide eyes, a wispy tuft of blonde hair haloing her face and a toothless smile when he manages to calm her. He gladly takes the worst shifts, the worst jobs, to feel the warmth of her gaze on his face.

There’s no harm, Taissa tells the alor. The boys always end up training eventually. Din’s been through more than most of them. Let him be this for a time. It will make him a finer warrior in the end.

The emptiness is unexpected.

Din sits in the Razor Crest and waits for the gaping maw in his chest to close. It’s never felt this way before. He brings them in hot or he brings them in cold, but once they’re out of his sight he rarely feels their presence, or lack thereof. 

He should have put the child in carbonite, but when it didn’t wake quickly after the mudhorn incident Din was reluctant to take the chance. Instead he fed it, breaking a ration bar into smaller bits that the child could handle. He clipped it into the jump seat, let it play with the silver ball it unscrewed from one of the Crest’s levers. Tucked it into the hovering pram as he brought it to the Imp’s hideout.

And then Din let them take the child, and left with a camtono full of beskar. He should have been thrilled, the payment larger than any he’d brought in before, and more precious. He should punch in the coordinates for Nevarro, return the sacred beskar to its rightful home, and accept his alor’s gratitude. 

Instead he waits for the guilt to subside, for the feeling of failure and shame to recede. His throat is tight, hands gripping the console harder than necessary. He doesn’t know why they need the child, it wasn’t supposed to matter why. He’s a bounty hunter, it’s his job. 

But in the midst of chaos, a child held his hand up to him and asked him to care.

And Din is compelled to leave the cockpit and right a wrong.

“Din’ika!” booms through the covert hallways, making Din’s shoulders hike up to his ears. Paz saunters into the youngling’s bunk room, catching sight of Din next to Allondria’s crib. He’d just gotten her fed and settled, her eyes heavy as he lays her down for a nap. 

“Still playing with the babies?” Paz sneers, one hand on his hip as he twirls a practice blaster around one finger. Din bristles at his volume, and his tone. Once the older boys heard Din was helping care for Allondria the snide remarks and crude jokes began flying in loud whispers. Or not whispers at all, in Paz’s case.

“You know, the whole ‘raise warriors’ part is normally an afterthought. Better to be one.” Din tries to regulate his breathing, not give in to the anger bubbling under the surface. Paz is easily twice his size, and always looking for a fight. The proud Vizla house hangs over his head like a halo, making him a loudmouth on good days, an instigator on bad ones. 

“You’re old enough to be training, the alor offered you a helmet, and you’re in here…bottle-feeding?” he pushes, flanked by a few other boys who look up to the name. Din knows better than to retort. Paz is always ready for a confrontation, hormones brimming with only fists against flesh as a way to release the tension. If he plays it cool, ignores Paz, he’ll get tired and wander off. It normally works, the boys growing bored with the lack of a rise out of the smaller foundling.

Today, however, Paz is in a special sort of mood, one that could only be stoked, not sated.

“Seems like a waste for the elders to have saved you if you weren’t even going to act like a Mandalorian,” he spits out, venom in every word. Din can feel his blood boiling, Paz searching for the soft spot to stab and get a reaction. “Then again, maybe it’s better you don’t train with us. You’re too soft to do much of anything, aren’t you Din’ika?” Din tries to back away from them, mapping his exit route when Paz finally hits the bloodiest spot.

“Maybe if you were stronger you wouldn’t be a foundling.”

The blood rushing in Din’s ears sharpens to a high pitch, the edges of his vision darkening. Paz’s chuckle is the last thing he hears before his world dissolves into blood and pain and rage.

The elders discipline Paz harshly, keeping the boys apart as Din recovers. Bruises bloom on his flesh for weeks, luck the only reason why he didn’t break anything. Paz loses his standing among his peers, removed from the training ring and relegated to chores and work meant for those lower than his station. He’ll climb back up quickly, but it’s a slight that will follow Paz for years.

The weeks he spends isolated change Din. He heals, but something inside breaks beyond what Paz did with his fists. If you were stronger echoes in his ears. He wasn’t strong enough to protect himself. How could he be expected to protect those around him? He lives among some of the greatest warriors in the galaxy. He has to learn, has to make himself strong and worthy and capable enough to protect his allies, his friends, his clan one day.

When he’s well enough to not be under the careful eye of the medic, Din goes straight to the elders and requests to be put in training. No complaints are raised, though Taissa’s concerned expression dances in the corner of Din’s eye. The buc'ye, the first of several Din would doff until he was fully grown, settles heavy on his crown. He promises to bring honor to it.

As time marches on, the Creed fills up every aspect of Din’s life. He still seeks to protect, but he learns the Mandalorian Way and his place in the covert. Duty bolstered by strategy, efficiency, brute strength. The covert needs him to provide, to protect, and his greatest asset is the body he hones and trains to do so. After a teen growth spurt his shoulders broaden, chest barrels and limbs thicken. Paz still towers over him, but he begins to respect Din more, especially as his dedication sharpens him into the deadliest blade. 

Over a year later, Taissa stops him in a hallway, Allondria now close to a toddler.

“Is this what you want?” she asks, the child at her ankle staring up at Din with recognition. She smiles shyly, hands gripping Taissa’s pant leg as she waves up at him. Din’s heart clutches for a moment, seeing the child he cared for when he still showed his face. Her face falls ever so slightly when he replies, “Yes. This is how I can protect everyone.” 

You said it yourself, the alor says to Taissa, no harm done, he’s taken on the Creed and will make a fine Mandalorian.

We do not always need warriors, she retorts, balancing Allondria on her hip.

That is not The Way, the alor says, a cold admonishment that silences Taissa for long after. 

With the helmet firmly in place, Din begins the construction of the wall he puts between himself and those he cares for. Allondria no longer recognizes him, his body growing and strengthening behind the anonymous helmet. Taissa keeps her distance. 

It’s for the best, Din ruminates when he still takes the time to consider his actions, before all that came before is molded into the Mandalorian he is today. Better to be strong, be useful, be the protector he feels deep in his bones. Better to stand alone from those he’s willing to protect. Better to become the Mandalorian, instead of Din Djarin. He can do the most this way.

The child settles into his new life quicker than Din expects. Traversing space to a backwater planet like Sorgan lets Din learn more about the strange little creature he’s spirited away from the Imps. 

It’s male, as far as Din can tell. Eats and sleeps and voids much like any other creature. He tries not to ponder the wizard powers too much.

He’s endlessly curious, to the point of mischief. Din has to snatch him away from dangerous electrical panels, gaps in the floor, the bright blinking lights on the console. 

His appetite is voracious, preferring live meals to ration bars and soup, but he’ll take what he can get.

Sometimes he just sits and watches the stars fly by, glittering in the rounded reflection of his marble eyes. Din wonders what he’s thinking, and if there is any way to communicate with him beyond the directions and admonishments that seem to go unheard. Does he miss a home of his own, a family? Will the Jedi be that for him, or will Din be handing him to a group much like his covert, somber and regulated. With a heart that lends itself to kindness, would he face the same trials as Din, and come out nothing like he went in?

Then the child turns to Din and holds out a claw with a little trill. Din lifts him onto his knee and takes the child’s hand between his thumb and index finger. It’s so much smaller, fragile in his hand, but the gentle squeeze on the pad of his thumb is a comfort Din has denied himself for years. The comfort of a child trusting him, and of knowing that someone might harbor a desire to protect him too.   

Din will never forget it again, because it saved him. 

END

"you were

and always will be

that first ever touch

to have fertilized

the ground

beneath my life’s trees

that first ever rose

to have fragranced

the rest of my memories."

-Sanober Khan

Interlude 1 of the I Think of You series

[rubysunnday]

rooftops

A/N: The finale to my part in Olive's (@lxncelot) , writing challenge! This is fic 3 out of 3 (congrats if you made it this far, well done!) Again, prompts are all from Olive's dialogue and song prompt list) : 3) “I’ll miss this — us.” | 17) “Are we friends?”`| 26) “I could be in love with someone like you.” | rooftop kiss — james horner

Fic 1 | Fic 2 | Fic 3

The wind was howling outside the whaling hut. It was so harsh the windows and doors were rattling in their frames, fighting to stay put. But the two occupants inside didn't notice. They were both too cold and uncomfortable and pointedly ignoring the other to do much more than sit by the fire, bundled in furs, wearing someone else's clothes underneath.

Of course, they were both as far apart from each other as physically possible whilst also staying within the warmth of the fire. Matthias was silent. Y/N was silent. Neither said a word.

Matthias leant forward and poked the fire with the poker, nudging the logs around. They sparked and crackled as fresh wood was added, feeding the fire. Matthias glanced over at Y/N, barely visible under the furs. "You need to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"That does not matter," Matthias said, leaning back. "Because you're so cold it means you don't feel hunger. Your body needs to eat."

"I'm fine. I just want to sleep," Y/N muttered, tightening the furs around her, trying to block him out.

Matthias looked back at the pot that was simmering over the fire. "If you sleep, you'll likely not wake up again."

"Oh, good, that saves you from having to kill me," Y/N said, refusing to look at him.

"If I was going to kill you, I would have done it by now," Matthias replied, rolling his eyes as he spooned the soup into two bowls. "Now, eat," he said, holding the bowl out to her.

Y/N reluctantly reached out a hand from underneath the furs and took the bowl, putting it on the floor in front of her. "And if I don't want to eat?"

"Then you'll succumb to hypothermia and pass out," Matthias said, shrugging. "All Drüskelle learn that mistake in their first few months. Most recover. Some don't. Brum always says that a Drüskelle-"

"If I eat the damn soup, will you shut up?" Y/N snapped, turning to glare at him.

Matthias nodded. He watched Y/N intently as she picked up the bowl and took a small sip of the soup, letting it digest before taking another sip.

"It's good soup," she reluctantly admitted, dipping her spoon back in. "If you've poisoned it, I won't mind dying this way."

"For Saint's sake," Matthias muttered, swearing in Fjerdan under his breath. "I haven't poisoned it! I am eating it too."

Y/N raised her eyebrows but returned to her soup.

Silence fell in the whaling hut again.

"You can have the bed."

Y/N looked over at Matthias as she finished her soup. "Don't be ridiculous, there's room for two of us." Matthias was silent so Y/N looked at him again. "Oh, don't tell me little Matthias is scared of sleeping next to a woman."

"I am not..." He paused, forcing himself to calm down. "I am not scared."

"Good, then we will before sleep in the bed," Y/N said, standing up, setting her half-eaten soup aside.

Matthias reluctantly stood up too. He watched as Y/N clambered onto the bed, wrapping herself up in the furs and getting comfortable.

"Oh for Saint's sake, stop being such a prune and come here," she snapped. "You're the one going on about hypothermia and yet you're over there, freezing."

"I'm fine."

"Oh, look how the tables have turned," she muttered.

Matthias climbed into the other side of the bed and lay down on the very edge - as far away as possible from Y/N.

"Drüskelle," she said, turning her head to look at him. "Do you want to freeze to death? No? Then move closer."

He shuffled closer.

"Closer."

Mattthias shuffled even closer. Y/N could feel his cold skin against her back and shivered slightly.

"There, now neither of us will die in the night and we can go back to hating each other in the morning, happy?"

Matthias grunted, burying himself under the furs. Y/N turned onto her side and pulled the furs up over her shoulder, tucking them around her. She closed her eyes and wriggled down a bit, getting comfortable.

The wind kept on howling.

Matthias awoke suddenly as something jolted him. He sat up, expecting to see Y/N standing over him with a knife, about to cut out his heart. But the room was empty. It took him a moment to realise that someone was crying and that the someone was lying next to him.

He looked down at her and could see the tears falling down her face, the terror clearly written on her face as she relived something. Matthias wasn't sure why, but he felt his heart ache for the girl. He wasn't immune to nightmares - no one was.

Part of him wanted to leave her. A Grisha deserved to live through the terrors they had seen as punishment. But he couldn't believe that this girl - barely younger than him - could be so heartless and brutal. at such a young age, what could she have possibly experienced and seen that would have traumatised her in such a way.

Matthias reached out a hand and put it on her shoulder, shaking her gently. "Roëd," he said, for he didn't know her true name. Neither one had decided to share that information.

Y/N let out a panicked yelled and sat up, almost falling out of the bed. She pushed Matthias' hand away, flinging back all of the furs until she was just in the shirt and pants she'd found in the corner of the hut. Y/N pushed herself up from the bed and bolted from the room and out into the cold, cold night.

Matthias quickly got up and followed after her, not wanting her to get lost in the Fjerdan landscape or end up being attacked because, despite the death threats and the mutual hated, he did care for her. She'd saved him from the shipwreck and, somehow, they were still going.

Y/N fell to her knees in the snow - in the dark - and plunged her hands into the cold, wet snow, needing it to ground her and wake her up from her nightmare. Matthias stood in the doorway, watching warily in the background.

"Sorry," Y/N said quietly, her voice almost being lost in the wind. She sniffled and ducked her head, hiding her face. "I'm sorry."

Matthias approached cautiously. He hovered behind her for a moment before kneeling down behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Don't be sorry for something you can't control."

Y/N chuckled, a shiver wracking through her body. "You surprised that Grisha have nightmares too?" She asked, turning to look at him. "That we're human?"

Matthias was silent. Y/N scoffed quietly, knowing she was right.

Their silent argument ended abruptly when a wolf let out a loud howl, only a few feet away. Both Y/N and Matthias looked up, struggling to see the animal through the dark and blinding snow.

The wolf stalked forward, baring its teeth at Y/N. She didn't move.

"Don't attack it," Matthias said quietly, slowly rising to his feet.

"No offence, Drüskelle, but I'm not going to let a wolf attack me because it's a sacred animal to you," Y/N hissed.

"Just wait," Matthias insisted. "Let him move first. If he attacks first then we know."

"And if he just stands there?"

"Then we wait."

The wolf snarled, taking another step forward. It howled. And then turned around and walked off.

"Get up, slowly," Matthias said, holding a hand out to Y/N.

Y/N reached behind her and took his hand, letting him pull her into his side. Matthias wrapped an arm around her shoulders, trying to warm Y/N up, as they watched the wolf walk off into the night.

"I've never seen a wolf just leave before," Y/N said quietly, shivering under Matthias' arm.

"They're mainly peaceful if not provoked," Matthias replied.

"As are Grisha."

Matthias looked down at her, his eyes finding hers. He looked at her for a moment in silence. Y/N looked up at him. She met his gaze for only a few seconds before she swayed against him, her knees giving out and plunging her back into the snow.

Matthias fell to the snow with her, pulling her into his side and putting an arm under her legs, another around her back, and lifting her up out of the snow. He carried her back inside, sitting her in front of the fire.

He grabbed the furs off the bed and piled them onto her, wrapping them around her shivering form. Y/N didn't protest, her eyes closing involuntarily as she tried to stay focused on the fire.

"Now who's dying of hypothermia," she muttered, her teeth chattering as she gave Matthias a half-hearted smile.

Matthias sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her shoulder as he tried to warm her up.

"For a man who hunts Grisha for a living, you are very determined to keep me alive," Y/N said quietly.

Matthias sighed to himself. "It was Grisha who killed my entire family. They set the village on fire and let it burn. My mother, sister and father all died. Because of Grisha."

Y/N was silent. Eventually, she spoke, her eyes focused on the fire. "Not all Grisha are good, Druskelle. Not all Grisha are bad. Like people. The Grisha who murdered your family are the minority. We are not all like that. And we are certainly not witches. We create from elements that already exist in the world."

"Such as?"

Y/N pulled her arm out from under the furs. She looked up at Matthias. "Are we friends?"

Matthias nodded. "We are."

Y/N nodded. She held her hand palm up and then made a scooping motion, her eyes closed. She felt Matthias stiffen as fire appeared in her hand, orange flames dancing around her fingers.

"It's not magic. I simply summon all the combustible gases in the world, for there are thousands, and fire appears." Y/N waved her hand and the fire vanished. She pulled her hand back inside the furs. "That's all it is. Small Science, as we call it. No magic."

Matthias nodded. He didn't seem to be able to speak. He eventually decided on what he wanted to say. "What was your nightmare about? Only if you want to tell me."

Y/N shifted closer to Matthias. "I'm sure you've heard of General Kirigan - or the Darkling."

"I think it'd be impossible to find someone in all of Ravka, Fjerda and beyond who hasn't heard of it."

"It?"

"It was not a man, nor a human. It is simply it."

Y/N smiled to herself. It slowly faded as she returned to her mind. "I was a Grisha under his orders when Sankt Alina first appeared. I was fresh out of school - a young Grisha desperate to prove herself. And he used me like he used hundreds of others. I was trapped under his control until King Nikolai broke us out.

"But the Darkling had done enough by then. Being used by him - controlled by him is something I do not wish to repeat. Sometimes in the night, I think I see him. I know he is long dead and burnt but... I hear his voice in the wind, I see his shadows in the darkness and all I can think about is what he did to me."

Matthias was silent. He knew about the Darkling. Everyone did. But very few knew about what it did to the young Grisha under its command.

"My name is Y/N Y/L/N, by the way," Y/N said quietly. "I feel like since I'm pouring my heart out to you, we should know each other's names."

Matthias smiled. "I'm Matthias Helvar."

Y/N nodded. She dropped her head onto Matthias' shoulder. "Nice to meet you, Matthias."

Matthias sat there, an arm around her shoulders, watching the flames dance away until morning came.

It took them five days to find civilisation. The snowstorm passed after three days and it took them two days of walking - and almost falling off a cliff - to reach safety.

The inn wasn't much - it was full of Fjerdan sailors on their way out or back from long trips out at sea. But it was warm and it was safe - for now.

"I don't know how I feel about stealing," Matthias said as Y/N unlocked the door to their room.

"I didn't steal, I borrowed," Y/N corrected, walking inside.

"Are you going to give it back?"

"Indirectly, yes."

Matthias laughed. Y/N stared at him.

"Saints, Matthias, I didn't know you could laugh!" She exclaimed.

Matthias chuckled as he took his coat off and sat down on the bed, stretching his legs out.

"It appears we have learnt a lot about each other this past week," he said softly, smiling at her.

Y/N approached him and sat down on his right, dropping her head to his shoulder. "You know, I have no idea what Roëd means."

"What?"

"The other night, when I was having a nightmare, you called me Roëd..."

Matthias' smile grew. "It means red in Fjerdan."

"Red? Why red?"

"Well, when we first met -"

"When you kidnapped me, you mean."

Matthias rolled his eyes. "You were wearing a red skirt, like the one you're wearing now. Since I didn't know your name... I thought Roëd was subtle."

Y/N nodded, a smile working its way onto her face. "I like it."

Matthias put his arm around Y/N's shoulders - an action he'd found himself doing numerous times over the past week. He ran his thumb up and down her arm, gently following an imaginary line.

"What will you do now?" Matthias asked quietly.

The question had been praying on his mind for days now. What happens next. He could easily go back to Brum, resume his training, tell his tale. Y/N could easily return to wherever she came from - carry on leaving her life. Nothing would change.

Except something had changed. The world had shifted. Just a bit, but enough to know that there was no going back to the before.

"Find a ship back to Ketterdam," Y/N said softly. Her left hand was entwined with his, her fingers playing with his. "Tell my boss what happened and hope he gives me my job back. What about you?"

"I don't know."

"Have I changed you that much, Druskelle?" Y/N asked, tilting her head up to look at him.

Matthias looked down at her. "Perhaps. What is... Ketterdam like?"

"First of all, excellent pronunciation," Y/N said, looking back down again. "Second of all, it's shit."

"Then why would you want to go back?"

"Because it was the only place to welcome me after I left Ravka. I fitted in seamlessly there. No questions were asked about me or my powers. I got a job and they treat me well. It works for me."

"I cannot imagine what it must be like to be... persecuted everywhere you go."

"Saints, I have changed you!" Y/N said, looking back at him. She smiled. "It's hard. Trusting people is harder. I haven't used my power in years as a result but... I prefer it that way, oddly. I was used and wanted for my power in Ravka. In Ketterdam I am just me. I'm just Y/N."

Matthias stared at the wall for a moment. "I'd like to go somewhere like that. Where it is simply just... you and I. Simply Y/N and Matthias."

"No prejudice."

"No hatred."

"Just us."

Matthias looked back at her and leaned down, capturing Y/N's lips in a kiss before she had a chance to move. He leant back and pressed his forehead to hers.

"I'll miss this," Matthias said quietly, knowing deep down, that it would inevitably end as all good things did. "Us."

Y/N closed her eyes, pressing her lips together. "You know, Matthias, I could be in love with someone like you."

"I know. As could I."

And that was the truth. She could love him and he could love her. Despite the ways they'd been raised. Despite what they'd lived through and experienced at the hands of their people, both of them, Grisha and Druskelle, could and did love each other.

It was the truth and the pain of it. Knowing that their love was never meant to be.

And that it was never destined to last.

[versadies]

GASP CONGRATS ON 1000 FOLLOWERS!!! For your event, may I request a scenario of Zhongli w Virgo? HENFJD maybe hurt/comfort for the genre!!

scared to be lonely (hc scenario)

penpal: omg tysm comrade anon !! hope this is to ur liking <3

prompt: virgo the maiden, age soulmate au

pairing/s: zhongli x gn!reader

sypnosis: in which zhongli falls in love with the person who he thought wasn’t his destined other.

include/s: spoilers on archon quest, chapter one (liyue): acts 1-3, hurt/comfort, minor character death, zhongli avoiding reader, hu tao as reader’s friend!

note: in this fanfic, people will know that they've met their soulmate when either some parts of their hair turns gray or have wrinkles on their hands. after that, it will take a long time for the person and their soulmate to earn more of those again until they're at the right age to have more of the features.

-> in all his 6000 years of life, there was never a day when zhongli didn't stop thinking about his soulmate.

-> as a god, he wonders if he's actually ever going to grow old when he meets his soulmate. would his hair turn gray and earn wrinkles as he spends each day with his destined other? or would he suffer to watch his soulmate grow fragile and old while he still looks the same as ever?

-> he would be lying if he said he wasn't scared.

-> it wasn't exactly like this back then though. back before he started co-ruling liyue, he was always looking forward to meeting the person he's meant to be with– not batting an eye on the darker side of the system. it wasn't until he met his best friend when he realized just how much there's a lot to the soulmate system.

-> zhongli could recall the old days when his friend used to talk about soulmates all day with no sign of giving up on the topic. although he would've been annoyed, he couldn't bring himself to, not when he too is as interested in the system as she did.

-> it's safe to say that he felt pity for the goddess when he found out that her destined other passed away, leaving her alone with her people to protect and guide. he thought how tragic it is for a goddess to talk about something she'll never get to have again.

-> because of this, he started to wonder if his soulmate is alive or not.

-> during the passing of guizhong, her last words never left his mind. "look for your soulmate. look for them and never doubt the system."

-> it was enough for zhongli to start hoping more on meeting his soulmate, swearing to his dear friend that he'll never give up on it.

-> centuries have passed and he's still the same.

-> now that he gave up his gnosis to the hands of the fatui, he's no longer the geo archon and is now known as zhongli. although he had difficulties with managing his mora, he's still enjoys living among his people, thrilled to try out things he hasn't had the chance to when he was guiding liyue.

-> he was also excited to officially start looking for his soulmate.

-> to start off, he decided to plan out ways to be in public places. it was a risky and complicated move but it was easier for him to identify if his soulmate is in liyue or not. which leads him to his new hobbies: taking morning strolls around the city, visit some parts of the nation in excuse of "retrieving items needed for funerals", and so on.

-> everyday he made sure to check his features, hoping to see at least a sign of growing old.

-> throughout his journey, he met you; the infamous adventurer who go around places where most common folk dare not to go to. he was introduced to you by the director of the wangsheng funeral parlor, hu tao, who claims that you're one of her dearest companions when going to wuwang hill.

-> zhongli was actually interested in how a few acquaintances of his speak highly of you, curious of your potentials and all. luckily for him, you felt the same way to him as well, interested in the mysterious consultant that your dear friend has been speaking about.

-> which led you two to where you are: eating in wanmin restaurant after hu tao left you both for some "important matters."

-> surprisingly, you both got along really well. with your share of love for liyue, it got you two connected to your conversations that you two could think of, ending with you two talking for hours on end until the sun went down.

-> the last topic you two talked about was soulmates.

"ah i see.." you frowned from zhongli's explanation on his experience of his soulmate. "i too haven't found my other for as long as i could remember. it's actually the reason why i became an adventurer in the first place: if i could adventure around the nation, then maybe my soulmate could be out there somewhere if not in the harbor."

"and if they're not in the nation? what would you do?" zhongli asks.

you sigh. "i'm afraid i might as well give up. i don't exactly have the resources and knowledge on other nations, not to mention the lack of mora to travel the other nations."

zhongli nods slowly, looking down at his drink with a defeated sigh. he would've convinced you to keep going, but who is he to tell you?

you then look outside, gasping lightly when you notice how the sky is turning into the colors of sunset.

"oh my, i didn't realize how much time passed by. i have to visit katheryne to discuss about my commissions." you explain, slowly standing up from your seat with zhongli following. "i suppose we can continue this next time...?" you ask.

the consultant hums in agreement with a small smile. "we may continue conversing when we're both available for the day."

you smile in relief. "well let me know when you're available. you can always find me here if i'm not busy with commissions."

"i would like that."

-> after a while, the two of you indeed meet up again for the second time, for the third time, and the fourth time.

-> throughout those times, zhongli started thinking about you more. he always made sure he looks decent enough before going to wanmin restaurant, listens to every word that comes out of your mouth, and even sometime became distracted from staring at your features. hell, he even pays for some of your meals when he doesn't forget to bring his wallet.

-> he realized that he's starting to have feelings for someone who isn't his soulmate.

-> zhongli began to feel guilty because of it. it wasn't right to love someone who isn't his destined other. even if he accepts the fact that he loves you, who can say that you love him back? you have your own soulmate to look for.

-> it wasn't until his feelings became unbearable enough that he decided to avoid you, not wanting to ruin the friendship he cherishes.

-> as if this didn't make things complicated for him, you recently started looking for him. whenever you see him by the streets, you immediately try to come up to him, only for him to get away and never spoke a word with you.

-> days turned to weeks and he still hasn't stopped. he was impressed that you're still trying to reach out to him but he knew this won't continue for long.

-> as for his job in the wangsheng funeral parlor, he made sure to form a contract with hu tao to not make you visit him or talk to him during work hours, with his reason of "wanting to focus more on his job as the consultant." he was thankful for the director to not question his motives, accepting his contract (reluctantly) and did what he told her to.

-> it was a bad decision, really. but what else can he do? he'd rather avoid you than let you know about his feelings.

-> he was so focused on his problem that he didn't even realized a major change.

it was a rainy day in liyue, with zhongli taking a short stroll around the area near bubu pharmacy with his umbrella, arguing with his thoughts on what he should do with his feelings for you.

what if he meets his soulmate and doesn't love them as much as he does for you? is this celestia's punishment because of what he did?

the man was too deep in his thoughts to notice someone calling out for him until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"zhongli," his eyes widens when he hears your voice, slowly turning around to see you with a furious look that is plastered on your face. "it's been a while, has it?"

he nervously looks away from your glare, the feeling of guilt creeping unto him. "it has... i apologize for my lack of attendance to our daily meetings, wangsheng funeral parlor has been keeping me busy lately."

"how bold of you to say that when i keep seeing you talking to other people whilst avoiding me like a plague." you comment, gripping his shoulder tightly to make sure he doesn't slip away from you like before.

zhongli winces, not from how tight your grip was but from you pointing out his obvious actions. "i... i can't really explain why i'm doing it."

"then could you at least tell me if i did anything wrong?"

"oh, i'm not doing this because you did something wrong," zhongli reassures you. "it's.. complicated but i can reassure you that it has nothing to do with you."

"couldn't you at least try to talk to me? i've been.. i've been trying to reach out to you because i noticed something." you said softly, slowly letting go of him from your grip.

his silence urged you to continue, causing you to slowly look down. "i need you to check on my hair. what can you see?"

zhongli was confused with your request, doing what you told him to without any question and checks your hair closely. "...it's hair–"

his eyes widens when he notices strands of gray hair.

you look up from the ground. "you saw the gray hair, yeah?" you chuckle lightly when your eyes lands on his stunned face. “i know i might make you uncomfortable for what i'm about to say but.. i noticed my gray hair after i met you." you explained with an awkward smile.

he felt his heart dropped, now realizing that he didn't check himself closely ever since he started avoiding you. did he started to show signs of old age as well?

you then continued. "i would've thought it was someone else but during the time you and i hung out, i only met everyone i already knew. you're the only person that’s new to my life and i literally don't know what to do if you don't have the signs."

you took a deep breath for a moment. "if you did notice the signs on you... then are you avoiding me because of how i'm your soulmate?" you ask.

he immediately shook his head profusely. "of course not. i'd... i'd be happy to be your other half if celestia were allow it–"

"then why are you avoiding me?"

before zhongli could finish, you quickly point at his hair. "zhongli, hu tao has told me that you started to have gray hair the day after we met. i don't even know if you're aware of it but i see no other reason for you to avoid me other than the fact that you don't want me." you explained, voice slightly cracking at the end of your sentence.

his heart ached at the thought of you thinking that he doesn't want you. don't you realize just how much he wants you? how he wished that you were his soulmate so that he didn't have to feel bad about loving you?

he reaches out to his long hair, checking if hu tao was telling the truth. he felt thrilled when he saw strands of gray hair.

"if... if you don't want me that much, then you can–" you stopped talking when you felt muscular arms wrapped around you, your breath hitched from the sudden affection.

"forgive me," he whispers by your ear. "forgive me... forgive me for being foolish enough to not realize that i finally found you."

before you could talk, he continues. “i only avoided you because i fell in love with you. i got… i was afraid that you aren’t my soulmate and i had to suffer this feeling knowing that i have someone that i’m meant to be with.”

“you… you love me?” you asked, your voice being shaky.

“always.”

you then found yourself slowly hugging your soulmate back, tears starting to form in your eyes as you exhaled out the breath that you've been holding for an amount of time.

the two of you continued to stand in the middle of the bridge under the heavy rain in each other’s arms, finally relieved that your two problems together had been solved.

after so many years, the both of you can finally stop being scared now that you found each other.

[simping-on-the-daily]

Chamber Meeting an Agent who was a scientist at Fracture

I had this idea in my head for an OC, but I liked it enough to also make it an X Reader, while removing some of the details to make it more reader inclusive lol

Summary: A scientist from the facility at Santa Fe, you lost your job when a suited man came and destroyed the collider. Now a Valorant agent, you find another man in a suit who you can't help but find familiar.

Whether you were from Mirror Earth or Earth-1, you found yourself working at the lab Everett-Linde. Either from Alpha or Kingdom sector, it was your job, and you stayed even when the accident caused your sector to be either a desert or a glorified garden

When Chief Engineer Thomas Poe went missing, and when 'Vincent Fabron' was no longer allowed to enter Everett-Linde, you were gravely concerned, though you still continued working

Probably your biggest mistake

Though you did follow the evacuation email as requested, going to your designated report points and ready to leave, it was all in vain, for the collider blew up and you were stranded, without a job

Now, if you were from Omega Sector, congrats! The teleporter was broken and you were stranded on Earth-1, your family from the other side most likely asking numerous questions about the disappearance of their superstar

If you were Alpha Sector, high chances were you still couldn't contact your family, and your family would beg Kingdom Corporation to let them know where their superstar went

When Viper and Cypher went on their mission to Fracture, Cypher had been able to discover you were alive and kicking, though he still failed to recover the data about the teleporter

Thus, you were recruited and bought in, for you could likely give them information about what happened at the lab

Luckily having the basic information (and more if you were from Mirror Earth), you would help Killjoy build the portal

Then, a newer, newer agent came, named Chamber, who said he had blueprints to give Killjoy about the portal

At first you were excited. Yay, perhaps another Everett-Linde scientist!

But then you took a closer look, and you couldn't help but see the most miniscule similarities between this 'Chamber', and the man who was stated to have destroyed the Collider

When you two ended up on the same team to defuse a Spike in Fracture, you muttered your thoughts. He looked just a bit too familiar to the man who destroyed your home, who prevented you from going back home if you were from Mirror Earth, the man who destroyed everything

Of course, Chamber heard everything, though he kept his comments in his head. He didn't need another Agent breathing down his necks looking for suspicious activity. Viper was more then enough

You couldn't help but share your concerns to Cypher. After all, he was one of the few to not trust Chamber, and he had validated your record and confirmed that you had indeed worked at the lab

Perhaps this is how you became good friends. You despised the French /lh

One thing was for sure, you did not trust him. Sure, he helped with the Portals, but he knew too much about Fracture that not even you knew and your attempts to look up Vincent Fabron bought up nothing. You even sent an email to Brimstone explaining your distrust and begging the commander to keep closer tabs on the weapons dealer

You were once able to work together effectively, though. Another mission involved defusing a Spike, though this time at Breeze, and the two of you had managed to camp down A and obliterate the Mirror counterparts. You were congratulated on your teamwork by Sage. Both of you had known about the portal and used it to your advantage, and for a while you were two peas in a pod.

Emphasis on 'a while'.

Sadly your distrust of the man grew once more, and Viper had to talk to you about him, repeating what she had once said to Brimstone. He was helping, and the moment he went against Valorant's goals, bullet in his brain.

You listened to her, and when Neon was recruited, you reluctantly admitted that she was a huge help (though you never admitted it to Chamber's face)

Conversations were only for around a few minutes, for any longer would have you pinning him to the wall and demanding what he did to Everett-Linde, if he was Vincent Fabron, if he caused Thomas Poe to disappear, and if he was the one to ruin your life

And just like Cypher, you kept tabs on the tattooed French. And, if your theory was correct about him being the one to destroy the collider.....

Well, you were saving up for an Ares.

[scuttling]

While I'm writing Dad!Bod Hotch with babies... 🥺

...Here's a very baby excerpt from one of my other works (modified a little so it can be read as reader.) It's pretty cute if I do say so myself! Tags: 18+, NSFW, Blow job + Pregnant sex The next child abduction case they get happens a year later, and it takes them to Seattle; rain beats down on the Sullivan house while she and JJ sit with the family and try to keep them informed of what’s going on in terms of the investigation. The mother stares out the window at the rain, and she brings over the cup of tea she’d offered to make, sets it down on the table beside her, takes her trembling hands.

“I promise you, Mrs. Sullivan, our team is doing absolutely everything they can to locate your son safely. They are the best in the world at what we do; we just need to let them do their jobs.”

Mrs. Sullivan frowns, takes a sobbing breath, and then wraps her arms around her; she’s a little startled by it, but rubs her back, trying to provide comfort.

After a couple minutes, Mrs. Sullivan pulls back, and she offers her a tissue.

“Do you have any children?” she asks, wiping her eyes.

“Yes. He’s seven years old, and his name is Jack.”

They find the boy five hours later. Alive.

She and Aaron have celebration sex on every available surface.

“Hey. So, I got three or four calls from my doctor’s office a couple weeks ago, but I was preoccupied with the Sullivan case and I kept forgetting to call her back,” she says later from Aaron’s lap. He sits up, holding her hips while he shifts his weight.

“Okay. Is everything alright? Why was she calling so often?”

“Apparently, my IUD expired a month ago. I have to get it taken out.” He looks cautiously over her face, like he’s not sure what reaction she wants from him. She’s fairly certain she knows what his first instinct is. “Well, Jack and I were at the grocery store when I spoke to her—and you know I’ve been feeling a little off…” She wets her lips, reaches over the arm of the couch and pulls a little cardboard box off the console table. She can see his breath hitch.

“Have you taken it?” She nods quickly, presses her lips together.

“Just waiting now.” Carefully, he reaches for the box, takes it out of her hand, and sets it back down on the table. He pulls her close for a tight hug.

“Whatever happens, I love you so much,” he murmurs in her ear, and they just hold each other until the timer on her phone goes off. She brushes her hand through his hair, and his eyes are wet; she knows hers are too.

She climbs out of his lap, and he follows her down the hall, clinging to her back like he can’t physically let her go. When they make it to the bathroom, she picks up the test, squeezes her eyes briefly shut, and holds it up so he can read the word on the screen.

The word.

She spins in his arms, wraps hers around him, and jumps up and down, the grin splitting her face nothing compared to the gorgeous smile that lights up his.

“I’m going to see if Dr. Rose can fit me in tomorrow,” she says, leaning up to smooch him several times in a row. “Just to be sure.”

“Let me know, I’ll come.” She nods, kisses him a few more times, takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“I love you so much.” He holds her, repeats it, kisses her forehead, her eyes. Then he starts kissing her for real, reverent and steamy, and they walk gracelessly toward the bedroom, tugging articles of clothing off as they go.

She is kneeling over him on the bed, giving him a very good, messy, ‘Congrats, you’re probably going to be a daddy again!’ blow job when she pulls back suddenly, an overwhelming thought crossing her mind; she looks up at him with wide eyes.

“You know my brother has two sets of twins, right?” “A package came from your brother today,” Aaron says a couple months later as he’s leafing through the mail; he holds it out to her, and she opens it up, excited, then covers her mouth, can’t help but aww. “What is it?” he asks, not looking up from the stack of envelopes, and she puts her hand on his arm to get his attention.

“‘For the Hotchner siblings’—that’s what the card says,” she explains when he looks up, and then she holds up the largest t-shirt: it’s brown, with a cartoon bear cub, white letters spelling out Brother Bear. She holds up a smaller shirt: Sister Bear #1. Then another small shirt: Sister Bear #2. He smiles.

“Okay, that’s cute. We have to FaceTime him and thank him.”

“Definitely. He’s not going to believe how big this belly is,” she says, reaching up on her toes for a kiss; he comes at her from the side, because it’s easier to reach her lips that way. “Uh, Hotch, we need you down in the bullpen. She's crying and we can’t get her to stop,” Spencer says into the phone, looking a little freaked. Aaron must agree to come down, because he hangs up the receiver wordlessly; JJ rubs her shoulders, trying to comfort her.

“It’s okay, I completely understand. It’s normal to feel like that at this stage of the pregnancy,” she explains, and it’s all sounding very rational, but she just covers her eyes and keeps crying.

When Aaron crouches down beside her, he takes her hands carefully off of her face, wipes her tears with his sleeve, peers up at her with soft eyes.

“Oh, sweetheart, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I want…” She gulps, sniffles, and Prentiss hands her a tissue over the desk partition. “Thank you. I want these babies out of me,” she sobs, and she knows she’s making a huge scene, but she doesn’t even care. “I want your babies out of me, Aaron!” He sighs; she knows he’s heard it all before.

“I know, honey, but you have to be patient. It will happen when it’s meant to.” She sobs, then hiccups, and that’s just great.

“But I’m—I’m drinking the stupid tea, I’m eating the dates. I got the, the acupuncture—do you know how weird it is to see those needles sticking out of your body? It’s unsettling!”

Morgan returns from Garcia’s office, takes one look at them, and abruptly pivots on his heel to head back.

“Oh sure,” she calls, and then hiccups, “everyone sees a crying pregnant woman and they just run away!”

“Noo, he just texted me!” Spencer lies, waving his phone that he never even looked at. “He said he forgot something and he’ll be right back.”

“Spencer, tell me what else can induce labor, please,” is all she says, doesn’t call him out because it’s sweet that he even tried. He counts off with his fingers as he recites the list.

“Raspberry leaf tea, dates, castor oil—” she grimaces, because that shit’s the worst “—acupressure, acupuncture, exercise.” He hesitates, looks a little uncomfortable, and she hiccups, gets pissed, takes a deep breath.

“Sweetie, honey,” she says, reaching out a hand for him, and he takes it, pats it awkwardly. Bless his heart. “You’re my partner, and I love you, but please spit it out.”

“Okay, uh. Nipple stimulation, and uh. Well. Sex.” Oh, yeah, the nipple thing they tried, but it felt like a restless cat trying to get comfortable on her chest, wasn’t sexy at all, so they didn’t try the rest. She snaps her fingers at Aaron like a douchebag asking for the waitress, wipes her face, hiccups again.

“Okay, we’re doing it, we’re doing that one. Sex me up.” Prentiss barks a laugh, and Spencer looks deeply disturbed. “Please can we go home now?”

“Uh, yes, we can,” Aaron begins, “but I’m not sure we should—” Nope, she’s not gonna listen to that bullshit. He hasn’t been pregnant for 42 fucking weeks.

“I love you, but shut up. Your dick put these things inside me, and your dick’s gonna get them out.” She moves to stand, and so does he, arms out like he’ll catch her if she starts to wobble. “I know I’m not sexy anymore with this gigantic stomach, but please please please just fuck me.” He closes his eyes, sighs like he regrets so much in life, and then gives her a hard kiss on the mouth. It makes her, like, instantly horny; she’d initiate sex right here if she thought she could get her pants off.

“You are as sexy as you’ve ever been,” he murmurs, hovering over her lips, “and I’m going to fuck you.” Sex this big sucks. Missionary is hilarious, doggy is uncomfortable, side by side seems okay but is actually kind of impractical. She feels betrayed.

Aaron helps her get on top of him—his dick is so hard it makes her feel really, really good about herself—and she’s more than okay with bouncing on him, but her belly bounces too, and it feels weird.

“Can you hold it?” she pants, and she takes the hair tie off her wrist and sweeps her hair into a ponytail because she’s sweating from all the position-shifting. “Just like, hold it.” She takes his hands and rests them on her enormous beach ball belly, sighs because it feels nice. “Good, yeah, thank you, let me try again.”

She braces herself against his thighs, rides him quickly, bucking hard—after about 15 years of wishing she had bigger breasts, she now despises hers, and therefore avoids them at costs, but she does manage to reach her clit, and she rubs it furiously as she moves atop him.

Aaron—who is so great, and sweet, who she loves so much—is all but useless, just holds her belly still and groans like he’s getting the best pussy of his lifetime, which she guesses maybe he is, because she wants these babies out and she’s well and truly desperate. “Oh, fuck, baby,” he grinds out, and his hands move to her thighs, squeezing hard, and she whines.

“No, no, do not come, don’t come.”

He comes.

An hour later, they try again, with her propped up on a pillow, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. The internet said this would work, and if it doesn’t, she’s prepared to let BoyMom282 fucking have it.

“Oh my god, yes, yes,” she moans, clutching at the sheets above her head, and Aaron’s hands feel so good on what remains of her waist as he pounds into her. “Fuck, yes, fuck me until your babies are ready, Aaron. Such a fucking man, knocking me up with two babies at once—you can help me get them out, can’t you, daddy?”

He groans long and loud, and she puts a hand on his, squeezes hard.

“Don’t. Come. I swear to god if you come inside me right now, it will be the last time you ever do it.”

He comes, but luckily for him, she comes first. “So, tell us which is which,” Garcia leads, visibly excited, and she leans back against Aaron’s body, looks at the sweet baby girl in his arms.

“This one is Camila,” she says, touching her teeny tiny little foot, “and Spencer’s holding Mia. Mia Clarita Hotchner Cortes—Clarita after my mother—and Camila Marie Hotchner Cortes.”

“Marie after my mother,” Aaron explains, and he puts an arm around her, which she snuggles happily against. “We’re just waiting for Jack—he should be here any minute.” Spencer hands Mia back to her, and she kisses her forehead.

“This is the best day of your mama’s life,” she coos, touching her soft, dark, fuzzy baby hair. Her heart swells. “I was going to become daddy’s next unsub if you little cuties didn’t vacate my uterus in a timely fashion.”

She can hear the squeak of Jack's shoes coming through the door, and she looks up at Aaron with a grin. When Jack comes around the bed and sees the girls, his eyes get big. “Whoa, are these my sisters?” Haley pops in behind him, and she smiles at them.

“Yeah, buddy, come here,” she says, gesturing for him with her free arm. “This is Mia, and this is Camila.”

“Gentle like we practiced,” Aaron reminds him when he reaches out to touch Camila’s face, and she and Haley both roll their eyes, then laugh.

“He knows, sweetie.” She watches their interaction with so much love, then brushes her fingers over Jack’s hair. “You’re going to be the best brother bear ever, aren’t you?” He looks up at her, grins; he’s missing a tooth just to the left of the front ones, and she’s obsessed with that little gap.

“Yep, I’m going to read them stories and share my toys and play with them at the park.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Aaron says, leaning down to look into his eyes. “And so are we, buddy.” “And do you, Aaron Hotchner—”

“Da-ah-addy!” someone sobs—Mia, she mouths to Aaron across from her—and she sees JJ step out from behind her, trying to soothe her so they can proceed, but she’s not having any luck. Mia is a daddy’s girl, and the fact that she can see him, but she’s not in his arms, is like a mortal sin to her.

She gets it, she really does. She felt that way every day for two years.

When it’s obvious she’s not calming down, the officiant clears her throat and tries again, but Mia’s wailing just gets louder. Aaron smiles, shrugs.

“Sorry. It’s okay—here, Mia, daddy’s right here,” he assures, reaching out to take her from JJ, and he wipes her eyes, her red nose, and bounces her on his hip for a moment until she settles. She shoots them what she’s sure is a sickeningly sweet glance and then turns around and asks for Camila; Emily hands her off with a big smile.

Aaron grins when she puts her on her hip, and he reaches behind him for his best man, Jack, encourages him to come forward so he’s standing between them. She smiles at him, touches his face, and nods at the officiant, who takes a deep breath and proceeds.

“Do you, Aaron Hotchner, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? To love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, from this day forward, as long as you both shall live?”

“I do.” They opted not to write their own vows, because their vows are living, breathing things between them, three perfect little heartbeats. Anything more felt unnecessary.

“By the power vested in me by the state of Virginia, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” He does, so well she thinks she might get pregnant again, and then they each kiss their three babies, and she silently marvels over the fact that all it took was being clobbered over the head with a fire extinguisher for her life to end up this perfect. “Did you know that your chance of having a second set of fraternal twins jumps to 12% after you’ve had the first?” Spencer asks as they’re gathered in the briefing room one morning. She and Aaron are standing up front, pressed close together, nodding patiently. “And considering they run in your family, and that your brother has two sets of fraternal twins, I’d say that statistically the odds are more likely doubled.”

She looks over at Aaron, whose eyes are filled with love and awe and also some pretty sexy other things, and then pulls the ultrasound image out from the little envelope, holds it out for the team to see.

In unison, they answer, “We know.”

They get a package in the mail later that week: One Jack-sized t-shirt—Brother Bear #1—and two tiny t-shirts—Sister Bear #3 and Brother Bear #2. She and Aaron stop by the hospital to visit a friend after surgery and she can't resist walking past the maternity ward. Something about seeing all of those brand new, healthy, happy babies rejuvenates her after a tough case, and the one they'd finished up earlier in the week had been one of the toughest.

A woman comes to stand beside her as she looks at the babies, wearing sweatpants and a hospital gown—she's maybe 30, so just a few years younger—and she smiles brightly at the woman. "New mom?"

"Yeah, she's the one right there," the woman says with a grin, pointing to a sweetly sleeping little girl. "Isn't she perfect?"

"They're all perfect," she sighs, "but she is very beautiful. Congratulations." The woman's smile turns warmer, softer.

"Thank you. Do you have any children?" She's so wrapped up in the dreamy haze of little babies wiggling their toes that she almost doesn't hear the question.

"Hmm? Oh yeah, five of them: Adrian, Isabella, Mia, Camila, and Jack." The woman's eyes go extremely wide, and she laughs, because she's so very used to that. Aaron steps up on her other side, wraps an arm around her waist.

"Thought I might find you here," he says, and he smiles politely at the woman, who's looking like she may never open her legs again. "Can't resist looking at the babies."

"I just love babies," she says sweetly, and she stretches up for a kiss. "Do you ever think we should have another, just to even it out?"

"Hmm. Yes, but knowing us, they'll be twins again, so it's probably best we stick with five." He bends for another kiss, and she pulls him close; when she remembers where they are, she pulls back, to shoot the new mom a sheepish smile, but she's already gone. She sighs.

"Fair enough. But do you want to go home and practice anyway?"

[messedupfan]

Infinity & Beyond (Wanda Maximoff x Reader) Chapter 4

Summary: This chapter focuses on the journey of the reader during the five years without Wanda.

A/N: Thank you for the likes and reblogs! Hope that you are all enjoying the story.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

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You wake up a few months later in the Avengers compound once again. This time with your memories intact and feeling unbelievably disappointed. “She found him,” you find yourself saying to whoever was in the room as you involuntarily sit up on the bed. The nurse brushes it off as some weird superhero thing and not something to address. But then you repeat yourself again and again until she alerts Bruce who grabs the attention of the other remaining Avengers.

"What do you think she means?" Natasha questions as you make the statement again.

"Maybe she's talking about Wanda and Vision?" Steve chimes in with a concerned look on his face and his arms crossed over his chest.

"Why would she be talking about Wanda and Vision? Vision was an advanced robot with a stone in his head, he had no soul for Wanda to find. If any of that exists," Bruce points out.

"I don't know then," Steve shrugs. Then you repeat the phrase again. "Maybe it's Wanda and her brother? I don't know, maybe we're too focused on the cloudy eyes thing. We could be thinking about this too hard."

Then Rhodey comes into the room to inform the members that the radar has picked up a signal of an unidentified flying object. He thinks that Carol might be back. "Just say UFO," Natasha rolls her eyes as she follows the guys out of the building. On their way out she spots a worried Pepper Pots and quirks her lips into a reassuring smile. "I think she found him," she says to the woman and leads her to the landing zone of the compound. It's only then that Natasha realizes what you meant. Sure enough, a woman is carrying a ship into the landing zone with Tony Stark and someone named Nebula. Pepper wraps her arms around Tony in tears and relief. He is quickly brought to the medical wing where you remain. Somehow having watched the whole thing from your bed.

When you come out of it the nurse informs you that your eyes had gone cloudy for a moment and you had predicted the return of your father. "He isn't my father," you grouched. Huh, must be another ability, you think to yourself.

Later, after passing a few diagnostic exams with flying colors, you are discharged from your hospital room and are eating across from a very serious Thor as people argue and yell at each other. It was weird to eat actual food. Thor was almost amused watching you figure out how to hold your sandwich.

Tony is then rolled into the room with a furious energy. You can tell that he is really hurting from this loss, that he is frustrated and you can even feel betrayal radiating off of him somehow. Of course, it's not until he's shouting at the Captain that you realize you are feeling his emotions. You were feeling everyone's defeated emotions and it was beginning to suffocate you. As you try to distract yourself with the food, your mind wanders to how overwhelmed Wanda must've felt being able to read people's minds. That leads to the memory of Wanda slipping from you and it's almost too much to handle. You toss the plate in front of you, disrupting the ongoing argument. You’re squeezing your skull as the tears come and you scream for it all to stop. Natasha and Steve fall to your side as they do their best to calm you down. Once the memory leaves you and you've settled, everyone in the room gets serious about finding Thanos.

Nebula is useful as she provides the only lead to finding Thanos and you join them on the spaceship, brushing off everyone's concerns. The talking racoon asks how many of you haven’t been to space before, you raise your hand among the others which seems to be enough to make him laugh. You don't understand why until the ship rushes off to space.

Arriving just outside the planet, a floating woman you hadn't been introduced to yet appears at the front window and is surprised to report that the planet is just Thanos. Along with everyone else, you are heart broken to find out that he had destroyed the stones. You feel for Thor when he says he went for the head and shed another tear for the woman that Thanos had taken from you. It feels like you just lost her all over again.

The first year is the longest. The days feel never ending and drag on. Most nights were spent jolting out of bed in a cold sweat as you're being haunted by memories. It often felt like you were back in the hands of Hydra being electrocuted and injected, spoken to in a language you didn't know, probably German. Everything that was done to you in the time you were captured, everything that your mind had originally suppressed, was attacking you each night. Going through it alone made you miss Wanda even more. So once you could remind yourself that you were safe, you had also been reminded that you were alone. Lots of tears were shed in the night.

After Tony built up enough strength to leave the compound he did but he never stayed gone long. He would return often to attempt to build a relationship with you. It wasn’t easy trying to let him in, the lack of sleep being no help, so you didn’t. Your resistance never stopped him from making the effort to get to know you. Now that he knew you existed, he wanted to be part of your life. Tony knew that you needed family and he was all you had left, even if you didn't want to accept it. He promised to never abandon you ever again.

That didn’t mean he stopped living his life. Within a few months of his recovery, Tony invited you to his surprisingly low-key wedding which you begrudgingly attended with Natasha and Steve. They had been helping you out a lot with coping and figuring out whether or not you wanted Tony in your life. Steve often joked about fighting him again to get him to back off, but you never took the offer. You did your best to enjoy yourself at the wedding but it only reminded you of what you couldn’t have.

You smiled your way through the night as you thought about Wanda.

Her smile, the dress she would’ve worn, her laugh, that look in her eyes that is so full of love and only reserved for you. Your mind went even further back to a time when Pietro was alive and how they would’ve danced together and how happy he would have been for the two of you. You even imagine the wide grin he would have walking Wanda down the aisle and the single tear he would shed. Once he found that ring of yours he was constantly harassing you about when and how you were going to ask his twin. Even giving unwanted advice and ideas. It was all so consuming. That night you fell asleep crying in Natasha’s arms.

Months later, while Tony was visiting you he included you in on a secret. Pepper was pregnant. You didn’t exactly give the most joyous reaction but you were happy for him and Pepper. “When she’s born, promise me you won’t come back here,” you find yourself saying.

“Well I don’t know if she’s a girl yet but… why don’t you want me to come around here?” Tony asks as he returns the ultrasound image to his pocket.

“I want the three of you to be happy. I don’t want you to worry about me. Besides, I’m thinking of asking Nat to start assigning me to missions. I probably won’t be around as much and I really just need to get my mind off of the things I lost and the things I can’t have.” You keep your eyes on the promise ring Wanda had given you on your first anniversary. “But I want you and Pepper to be happy. Enjoy your life Tony. You don’t need to make things right with me to do that.” Tony disagrees but hugs you as he says his goodbyes and you find Natasha for your first assignment.

You are there for the birth of Morgan Stark. You forge her a special necklace from your powers and smile at the little bundle of joy. “Congrats you guys, she is so precious,” you say as you hold the baby.

“Thank you, Y/N,” Pepper says with hooded eyes and a tired smile. You hand the baby back to Tony and leave before thoughts of Wanda could invade and cloud your head. She always wanted a family. She used to fantasize about the kinds of parents the two of you would be. The types of kids you guys would raise. Baby names… Being away allowed you to forget her. But moments like these threatened to tear you down.

More years pass and Natasha is forced to ground you from missions because you have become too mentally unstable and a major liability. Steve drags you to his group therapy sessions but you hardly pay attention or contribute. You just miss Wanda and you allow yourself to feel that pain because running from it has only made it grow. For the most part you spent your time sitting in meetings with Steve or Nat. You preferred being in Natasha’s meetings since they were about mission updates and strategy and not about people crying over first dates. Shortly after that particular meeting Steve began to hint that maybe you should give it a try, you shut him down and turned it around on him. He quickly dropped the subject.

Among that daily schedule you would end your nights curled up on your bed in the room Wanda stayed in while she was waiting for you to come back to her. You would hold some clothes that still smelled like her to your nose as you listened to sad songs. For a while you’re stuck listening to Little Talks wondering if her spirit was lying by your side trying to reach out to you. Some of the things you felt were too painful to keep around and you had them stored at a special place far enough from here. One of them being the old computer. Well, they had been stored away for you but sometimes you convinced yourself that you made the call on your own. Not that Natasha arranged a team to steal most of your belongings.

Tony was generous enough to copy every video and photo file from the computer and put them into your phone. They helped you go to sleep at night.

Then one day, a man you swore had to have been on the vanished list that Nat viewed often, appears at the gate. “Is this old?” Steve asks.

“This is live,” Natasha says. They let him in and the three of you stand around as he explains how he can help. You, Nat, and Steve are skeptical but not so much that you guys don’t have hope it won’t work. Immediately you guys are on the road to find Tony Stark.

Over the years you tried to visit between missions, when you could. Not for Tony but for Morgan. You couldn’t help but fall for the little girl, she was your sister and you wanted to be the best big sister you could be for her. You also wanted to make sure she knew how many people cared for her and that she would always be safe and protected. Natasha was also captivated by her and would sometimes join you on the visits. You girls would play once she was able to run around and you even showed her some of your powers. During this time you finally allowed Tony in and even established a healthy relationship with him and Pepper because whether or not you wanted to accept it, they were your family.

When you arrive at the cabin, Morgan jumps out of Tony’s arms and runs into yours. “Y/N/N!” She shouts happily. You greet her with just as much energy and take her into the house to let them do the talking.

Pepper prepares some drinks and has you take them out to everyone. You re-enter the kitchen to help her with lunch. “Why aren’t you out there with the rest of them?” Pepper asks conversationally.

“Because my powers are connected to my emotions and if your husband says no… I might accidentally blow him into bits and pieces,” you sigh.

Despite herself, Pepper laughs a little. “You know,” she starts. “If you called him dad, he won’t have any other choice than to say yes.”

You shake your head, not this again. “Not going to happen.” Tony hasn’t directly asked you to say it but Pepper has and she keeps bringing up how much it would mean to him to hear you say it. “Besides with what we’re trying to do there’s a chance that he might lose all of this. I’m not even sure if I want him to say yes.” Your gaze lands on Morgan playing with her toys. Pepper follows your gaze and smiles softly.

“Hey Morgan, sweetie?” Pepper calls attention to her daughter who curiously looks up at her mother. “You should go out there and rescue daddy,” Pepper says. The little girl's face lights up as she stands to run to the front door. “Knowing Tony, he will find a way to protect everything he loves and save the world. Even if it kills him,” there is something in the way she says those words that causes the two of you to share a look. A hopeful let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that.

She then gives you a hug and tells you to stop by more often, she wishes you luck, and you leave the warmth of the home to the frowns of your rejected friends. You don’t look at Tony when you bid him goodbye.

Next you find yourself in Bruce’s diner and watch as Scott Lang fails to be recognized as Ant-Man by some kids. Bruce is willing to give the time travel a try and on the day the test run is done, you begin to lose hope again. You eat your taco near a window as you observe Scott set up in the landing zone. You laugh when Nebula and Rocket arrive blowing away his food. You almost can’t believe that is the guy who had access to the closest thing they had to a time machine. Steve walks in smiling at your laugh, you don’t do that often, with Tony barking orders behind him. People get to work on the machine and that pesky flicker of hope is restored.

As you work on things Tony is by your side teaching you about every part you are using and putting together. You just let him rattle on and on as you let yourself fantasize about holding Wanda in your arms again. Before you know it they are doing the first test run with Clint Barton. He disappears and instantly reappears with a baseball glove and a stunned expression. “It works,” he says and that feeling of hope causes your heart to pound in your chest. You are going to see her again. Now to find out when to travel to.

“See you in a minute,” Nat says with contained excitement. She is just as excited to complete this mission as you are. After a lot of thinking and planning they separated into three teams of people. Tony, Steve, Bruce, and Scott leave to 2012 to retrieve the tesseract, scepter, and the time stone. Nat, Clint, Nebula, and Rhodey vanish to 2014 to grab the power stone and the soul stone. The last team is just Thor and Rocket to grab the reality stone that is apparently inside of Thor’s former girlfriend. Tony, Steve, and Nat wouldn’t let you go on the mission because they still think you’re a liability. You argue that Thor isn’t exactly the picture of mental stability but they point out that Thor is the only one on their team that knows Asgard and where that stone is.

So you sit and pout in a chair for the quick minute that everyone is gone. Part of what has you so pissed off is that you didn’t get to experience time traveling. All because of a few bad missions. You watch them disappear and stare at the platform but time seems to drag on and you look down at your phone with a sigh. In that second everyone has returned with their stones and your heart drops. You notice one person missing and frown. “Where’s Nat?” You ask. Clint wears a broken expression and takes a breath before explaining how he received the stone. “Oh,” is all you can come up with.

Clint felt that it should’ve been him and you didn’t disagree but you understood why Natasha sacrificed herself. She confided in you a few times about how she felt like a monster because of what she was forced to do when she was being raised in the Red Room. She even talked about the mandatory hysterectomy and hated that she could never carry kids of her own. You did your best to try and cheer her up by telling her that adoption was always an option. “No agency is going to allow a former assassin to adopt a kid. Trust me… I tried.” She then boasted about Clint and his family, she loved them as if they were her own family. “I’ll deny it if you tell anyone but I cried like a baby the first time his daughter called me aunty Nat,” she got teary eyed and you passed her another shot of vodka.

Natasha missed them so much and you knew she would sacrifice herself to get them back. She wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if his family came back and she had to inform them that he died to save her. She probably would have felt like a bigger monster than she already thought she was. You stood up and left the room to collect yourself and get as far away from everyone’s grief as possible. Natasha had easily become your best friend these past few years. In the past year that you’ve been stuck at the compound there were days when it felt like all you had was each other. You can’t believe she’s gone but you have to hope that there is still a way to bring her back.

Banner finds you later and makes you some food and Rocket sits with you and the rest of the guys sit by the dock to talk. You force the comfort food down despite feeling too sad to eat and notice Nebula walking back into the time machine area. They call you into another room where they’re going to put the stones together but you ignore them and follow Nebula. They let you go, assuming that you’re still upset about losing Natasha. The first time you went on an actual mission with Nebula, you were put off with how serious she was so you came up with random nicknames to call her. She was annoyed initially but eventually she mentioned how funny she thought it was. Her tone had remained emotionless as she told you that and you had to refrain from laughing because it felt rude to do so as she was opening up. Nebula was still a very serious person to be around but she loosened up a bit around you, even called you her friend.

“Hey Neb-Neb!” You called out after her but she ignored you. “Bu-Bu! Hello?” You followed her to the control panel, “Nella, what’s going on with yo–” she cuts you off by wrapping her hand around your throat and speaking to you through gritted teeth. There was definitely something off about Nebula but you couldn’t quite figure it out. So you fought back because you weren’t fighting your friend, you were fighting a stranger. The two of you go hand in hand until she slips out of your hold and goes back to the control panel. You move to stop her but are too late. Next thing you know, you are waking up in rubble.

With a groan you sit up and dust yourself off then quickly panic, you don’t even know if they had time to do the reverse snap. You crawl your way out of the rubble and find Steve, Tony, and Thor speaking in hushed tones. “Did you guys do the snap? What happened?” You ask frantically, you need to know that you’ll be seeing Wanda again. Losing her a third time was simply not an option. Then you see a very alive Thanos just sitting there. That’s when it connects in your head. It was a different Nebula and she was getting a past version of Thanos into this present. “Please tell me you guys did the snap,” you look at Tony and he nods. But the look on everyone's faces told you that they didn’t know if it worked.

You join them as they attack Thanos but he is powerful and not easy to bring down. You’re tossed into another pile of rubble and shake your head, annoyed with yourself because you felt useless. Your powers were failing you and you couldn’t fathom as to why. Out of nowhere you see portals open up one by one, the people that had vanished and the people that hadn’t stepped through each portal. Then an enormous Ant-Man emerges from the ground and drops off a few more people that must’ve been trapped from the destruction of the compound. You gather with the rest of them and really focus to activate your powers as Steve grabs Mjolnir and shouts, “Avengers… Assemble!” Despite the unsuccessful attempt, you still charge along with the rest of them to fight against Thanos’ army.

Without seeing her, you could just sense that Wanda is among the rest and as much as you want a reunion, saving the world takes precedence at the moment. You could practically hear her telling you to go be a hero anyway. As you fight against Thanos’ army, using the hand to hand combat skills Natasha and Steve taught you, a part of you is still distracted and searches for Wanda. Regardless of where you want your focus at the moment. You make your way around the battlefield hoping to knock into her or something so that you don't get yourself killed trying to find her. Then you hear her.

“You took everything from me,” her tone is heavy and her eyes are glowing. You come to the conclusion that she must not know whether or not you are alive. So you don’t let her know and wait to find out what she does.

“I don’t even know who you are,” Thanos responds, angered by the woman's threatening glare.

“You will,” she says before she starts attacking him with her powers. Discreetly killing off a large gathering of Outriders hurtling towards you, you watch Wanda as she comes very close to killing Thanos herself. He calls for the ships to rain fire on everyone and that’s when you finally make yourself present to her. You jump from your spot and land right beside her and create a force field to protect the both of you. Other members are being protected by the sorcerers and it isn’t until Captain Marvel comes flying through that the bullets stop coming down and people are trying to get the gauntlet out of there. You turn towards Wanda and feel her mixed emotions, you wink at her with a smile as you let the barrier go.

“It’s time to be a hero right now, love. We can say hello later,” you tell her before you go back into the fight, the adrenaline rushing through you as your powers have finally activated. Each member does their best to keep the gauntlet out of Thanos’ reach but sadly no one succeeds and he holds the extreme amount of power once again. Carol fights him with as much power as she has to keep him from snapping his fingers but eventually gets tossed aside. You step up next using everything that you have inside of you, using abilities you had no idea you even possessed. But in the end you are tossed onto a metal rod that had been protruding out from the destroyed building. It had stabbed you through your side making it difficult to breathe. As you fight for air you look around to watch Thanos and his army disappear. Tony collapses beside you. “No,” you cough out weakly. You reach out for him and luckily he was close enough for you to touch his shoulder. “Tony,” you gasp as the tears sting your eyes. His eyes follow the sound but you can tell that he’s not actually looking at you.

“Mr. Stark, we won. Mr. Stark,” Peter says as he tries to grab Tony’s attention. Rhodey lands beside his best friend with understanding and sadness in his eyes. Yours tighten shut for a moment as your tears start to fall. You want to wake up from this horrible nightmare but this is reality, a piece of you knew that you couldn’t avoid. Then Pepper arrives and pulls the boy in the spider suit away from her husband. You look up and see that he has finally returned somewhat enough to recognize his wife.

She tells him that he can rest now, then she looks over to you so that you know that now is the time to say something so you don’t regret it later. With a weak grip on his shoulder you nudge him to return his attention to you. It looks like he’s trying to smile at you but is obviously far too weak to do as such. You offer him the best one that you could muster in your current state. “I love you, dad. It’s okay, we’ll be okay,” your hand lands in his and he gives it the lightest squeeze before it falls limp.

Wanda makes her way over to you and panics at the amount of blood you’ve lost but at the moment you don’t feel anything. Not even the pain of losing your father. You just feel… numb. It dawns on you that your body must be failing but that doesn’t scare you. She takes your hand as your loud thoughts of just letting go enter her mind. “No,” she starts through frustrated teeth. “You can’t leave, Y/N. Please, keep fighting. This can’t be our ending. I need you, please don’t leave me,” she sounds so broken but equally determined to keep you alive. As you hold her gaze she lets out a broken sob and tenderly whispers, “I love you to infinity.” She continues to beg, depositing small kisses to the back of your hand. As her words sink in, you find the strength that you need to fight off the thoughts of letting go. Then, with your heightened vision, you look around and find every remaining Avenger kneeling out of respect for your father and you have the urge to join them. You struggle to get up from your position, Pepper and Wanda try to stop you from moving but all rational thought has left you.

“I’m not dying right here,” you grumble as you reach behind you and cut the rod. You shift your position and Pepper sprays your wound to close it around the remaining bits of the rod that was still in you so that the bleeding would stop until you could get it properly treated. Then you kneel for your father to show your respect for him in his death that you failed to show while he was alive. You think about how grateful you were for the last five years and how much you appreciated that he never gave up on you. You silently thank him just as the adrenaline leaves your body and it succumbs to the full extent of your injuries causing you to collapse and pass out.

Chapter 5

[st4rlabsforever]

post-episode 3 fix-it

words: 2.9k

notes: i started a long fic based on this post after watching ep 3. i cannibalized some snippets from another fic i wrote last week so if you see similar scenes, that’s why. i think this will end up being 12-15k words endgame sambucky by the end, but i refuse to post on ao3 until it’s complete. this is the first 3 scenes. feel free to comment and message me your thoughts since i’m still very much in the writing phase :)

summary: “It’s the kind of statement that should be screamed into Bucky’s face, but he’s learning that when Sam’s angry – when he’s truly angry – he’s just as soft-spoken as he is when he’s in one of his pensive moods. And he lets his anger build and build and build until it bursts in spectacular fashion.”

“I didn’t back Steve on the Sokovia Accords,” Sam says unprompted one day. They’re so close to apprehending the Flagsmashers and wrapping up this ridiculous saga.

“I don’t follow,” Bucky says.

“I was the one who refused to sign it first. Not Steve.”

Sam says it so softly that Bucky has to strain to hear him. Sam is loud and chatty and half the time he keeps up a constant stream of chatter just to get on Bucky’s nerves, but Bucky’s coming to realize that when he really wants to make himself heard, he’s soft spoken and mild. Bucky doesn’t entirely follow his train of thought, though.

The thing is, Sam is unreadable when it really matters. He offers words of comfort where needed – in Germany, after seeing Walker with the shield that wasn’t his, knowing that it had affected Bucky just as much as himself; in Madripoor, Bucky’s hand on the throat of some henchman or other, Sam’s hand on his when the Soldier’s memories threatened to overtake him; even in Riga, when Bucky’s guilt over releasing T’Chaka’s killer bubbled to the surface and Sam had checked in with him even though he couldn’t have possibly known about Bucky’s meeting with Ayo. Sam speaks with his eyes, always a searching look that leaves Bucky raw and feeling like he’s been x-rayed. I see you, is what those eyes say.

In contrast, Bucky’s words of comfort feel hollow. He knows that Isaiah is still a live wire for Sam, checks in with him after Madripoor when he can tell the conversation with Nagel weighs heavy on his mind. But he doesn’t see the way Sam does. He knows he’d missed something important because that conversation had ended in an argument and a threat from Sam to destroy the shield.

He never gets a chance to ask Sam what he’s getting at, because Torres signals to them that they’re at the drop point before all hell breaks loose.

***

In the end, after Karli and the Power Broker and whoever else decides to show their head from the emporium of supervillains are dealt with and they finally have a moment of peace, Bucky says, “The shield looks good on you.”

Sam freezes a few paces ahead of Bucky, the shield strapped loosely to his wrist.

“We make a good team,” Bucky says softly.

What he doesn’t expect is for Sam to whirl around suddenly. The look of barely restrained fury is enough to nearly knock Bucky off he’s feet. They fight without ever really fighting all the time, squabbles over who went left and who went right and who was supposed to lead and who was supposed to follow, but never has he seen Sam look like this before. The fury verges on hurt and it’s so fucking visceral that Bucky can barely breathe.

“You don’t get to say that,” Sam says quietly. His voice shakes and he closes his eyes like he’s steadying himself.

“I said I’d squash it until the mission was over, and I did. But you know what? I’m not doing this anymore.”

“Sam–”

“You don’t get to tell me what a good team is. Not after all the shit we just went through. You invited yourself to Munich, and I thought, ‘Fine. I could use the extra set of hands.’ We went through it together against Thanos and I respected that.”

Sam shakes his head. “But then you went off on some lone wolf woe-is-me bullshit, and look at where it got us. You broke Zemo out without even asking if I was down with that. You knew I wasn’t and you forced my hand. Now I’m an accomplice.”

“He was our only lead–”

“Bullshit. That field trip to Madripoor led us right back to Karli. Torres ended up tracking them to Riga anyway.”

“But the Power Broker–”

“–showed his ugly face in the end. All we got out of Madripoor was you digging up your trauma and us getting our faces plastered all over the internet. I promised Sharon one goddamn thing and I can’t even deliver on that now.”

“But I went along with it, fine,” Sam continues. “I knew it couldn’t have been easy reaching back into that headspace, doing what you did to Selby’s men.” The memory blindsides Bucky. “So I tabled it.” Sam taps out a tally with his fingers. 

“And back in Baltimore, you’d been too keyed up about Steve being wrong about you to even listen to what I had to say. Again, I tabled it.” Another tally. 

“I’ve been meeting you halfway this entire time, man, and I’ve gotten near nothing in return. You kept Isaiah a secret from me, and at first I thought you were just clueless about how damn significant it would’ve been for me to know about him.” Sam shakes his head. 

“But then we met him. You saw what they did to him. The one Black supersoldier – a fucking hero – and look what they did to him. You saw it with your own eyes and you still sat there and lectured me about what you thought I should’ve done with that goddamn shield.” 

“There’s precedent for it, you know,” Sam says. It takes Bucky a moment to realize Sam is expecting an answer.

Bucky doesn’t know, is the thing. He feels like he’s all of five years old again, put on the spot. He’s reminded of when Zemo just had to let him know about the African American experience; he’d felt chastised and embarrassed enough to pretend like he’d had any clue what themes lurked in Marvin Gaye’s work. Sam just searches him with those eyes, searches Bucky for something yet unfathomable and decides he hasn’t found it. That hurts more than anything else; Bucky wishes he could sink into the ground, make himself as small as possible. Sam doesn’t notice, or else doesn’t care, and just plows on with a scoff. 

“You don’t even know the true history of the country you’re living in. Figures.” He shakes his head. “You’re not ever going to be able to separate the shield from the history Black folks have endured at the hands of this country. Not now, not ever.”

Sam doesn’t even look angry anymore. Angry, Bucky can deal with. It would be a relief, even. 

Instead, Sam looks at him with a disappointment that somehow surpasses what Steve could have ever accomplished.

“Whatever. I tabled that, too,” Sam says. “And then after Madripoor, after we heard that doctor go on and on about Isaiah’s blood like he wasn’t even a real human-being? I said my piece and all you did was throw that shield bullshit back in my face.”

“Sam–” Bucky tries again. He’s mortified to hear the crack in his own voice.

“It’s honestly breathtaking,” Sam says with something that might be akin to genuine wonder, or maybe even morbid curiosity in his voice. “We saw the same things in Baltimore and Madripoor, but your head was so far up your own ass that you never once stopped to think all of it was just proof to me. That the shield in the hands of a Black man wouldn’t make any damn sense.”

It’s the kind of statement that should be screamed into Bucky’s face, but he’s learning that when Sam’s angry – when he’s truly angry – he’s just as soft-spoken as he is when he’s in one of his pensive moods. And he lets his anger build and build and build until it bursts in spectacular fashion.

Sam’s not even done yet. “And that’s another thing. Stealing the shield from Walker…” Sam rolls his eyes at the memory. “You want to run around with that giant frisbee, fine. That’s your business. But then you forced it on me–”

“That’s not fair,” Bucky says immediately. Desperately. “You didn’t have to accept it.”

“The whole damn country was watching,” Sam says hotly. “It was either accept it, or shit all over Steve fucking Rogers’s legacy and make myself into the villain half the country was already hoping I’d turn out to be.”

“You were dead wrong for that,” Sam says. “I stuck around until we took down Karli because it was the right thing to do. After Munich, though, this little adventure was all you. Zemo, Madripoor, the shield.”

Sam shoves the shield into Bucky’s arms, the impact so sudden that it forces him back a step.

“Since you’re so obsessed with this thing, it’s yours. Congrats,” Sam says sarcastically. “I’m sure you’ll do it proud.”

Bucky lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

“For what it’s worth,” Sam says, “Steve might not have understood everything about me. But in Vienna, when it came time to sign the accords? He was considering it. I put my foot down first and he listened.”

Sam shrugs. “Whatever you thought we were, it's not a team.”

Bucky knows where to drive the knife in to kill a man in as few twists of the wrist as possible – a brutal economy of movement and technique. But Sam...it pales in comparison to what Sam’s capable of. His weapons aren’t knives and his targets may not be made of flesh and blood, but he knows exactly where he needs to strike to rip Bucky open raw. Bucky feels like he’s been flayed alive.

“How about that long vacation?” Sam says, and claps Bucky on the shoulder. 

And we’ll never have to see each other ever again goes unsaid.

Fuck.

***

The thing about ignoring Sam’s texts was that Bucky responded if they were actually important. It just so happened that most of the nonsense Sam sent was inane prattling about his day, about his job, his sister, his nephews. Now that he’s on the receiving end of it, though, it feels awful.

3/25/21, 2:58 AM

I’m sorry.

Delivered

3/28/21, 1:51 AM

Can we talk?

Delivered

3/31/21, 3:05 AM

Let me know what to do and I’ll do it.

Read 3:34 AM

4/1/21, 12:42 AM

Or if there’s anything you need.

Read 1:05 AM

Yesterday, 1:00 AM

I’m available if you need another body for a mission.

Read 1:02 AM

A week into the admittedly one-sided exchange, Sam turns his damn read receipts on. It’s ridiculous and it’s fucking asinine and it gets under Bucky’s skin immediately. It’s a form of twenty-first century psychological warfare that he’s unfamiliar with and already can’t stand. Mainly, he hates that it makes him seem desperate (he’s not), needy (he might be, especially when he realizes with horror that he actually misses Sam’s rambling texts), and ridiculous (he definitely is, because he’s letting petty mind games get to him).

Normally, Sam would send him nearly daily updates on his comings and goings – whether he’d been in New York, D.C., or New Orleans. The radio silence is unsettling. Bucky wonders if Sam made good on his promise to take a long vacation. And then....

The thing about apologies is that Bucky isn’t sure he’s ever done a proper one in his entire life, at least nothing beyond a rote “I’m sorry” with the “let’s move on” part left unspoken. But it stands to reason, Bucky thinks, that a proper apology can’t be given if he’s not completely certain what he’s dealing with. That’s all well and good because he’s got the world at the tips of his fingers, is what Yori always said. And when he grows frustrated with reading on his tiny phone screen, the New York Public Library is only a train ride away.

Sam had mentioned precedent, so Bucky’s first search is for medical experimentation. He knows for a fact he was good at this once, a memory of Steve whining about him being too good at exams coming up unbidden. He reads voraciously. Anything and everything that might offer a clue on what he’d missed. And it doesn’t take long for him to find what he’s looking for. 

He reads with dawning horror. The Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Eugenics. God, the fucking Nazis had even modeled their race science on the American school of thought. The things that the history books left out. Some of it was even happening under his nose in the 30s, he’d just been blissfully unaware. He somehow ends up down a rabbit hole where words like `prison industrial complex’ and `school-to-prison pipeline’ make increasingly more persistent appearances. New Jim Crow. COINTELPRO. War on drugs. The way all of these horrors reached their long arms into the twenty-first century.

Bucky’s going to be sick. The memories come up one after another.

Just give him your ID so we can leave.

You think you can wake up one day and decide who you want to be? It doesn’t work like that. Well, maybe it does for folks like you.

So you’re telling me that there was a Black supersoldier decades ago and nobody knew about it.

This is what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to come here in your over-extended life and tell me about my rights.

The shield wasn’t yours to give away.

He spends the next week in his downtime reading. With the mission being over and his parole in jeopardy, his downtime mostly coincides with every day of the week.

Had Steve known?

No, he thinks. Steve was compassionate, but he wouldn’t have known because he’d taken one look at the problems of twenty-first century America and decided he’d had enough. Then he’d ran back to the 40s to live out some fantasy that simply didn’t – couldn’t – exist anymore. Had he eventually become aware of all the issues plaguing this country that they’d been able to ignore as starry-eyed kids in Brooklyn? Bucky hopes not, because that would mean he’d...no. 

A part of Bucky thinks he’s so surprised because he’d thought things – race relations, civil rights, not things, his brain amends – had been getting better in the 40s. Deep down, though, he knows that’s a lie. A 2 AM read through Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States confirms it. Shady politicians. Klansmen who went back to their day jobs as cops, judges, firefighters. Mass incarceration taking its place as the new king on the throne of segregation. Evidently, 

There had been plenty of folks – white folks – raising an uproar about these hidden horrors back then. The seeds of those movements had even been there in the 30s. Bucky tells himself that he’d been raised during the Great Depression, that his family had been too focused on putting food on the table to focus on social movements, but that, too, ends up being a lie. The poorest and working class whites – some, at least – in movement and solidarity with civil rights. Not him, though. Apparently he’d had his head up his ass back then, too.

Bucky can see the bigger picture a tiny bit more clearly, now. 

Fine. So he’s been disarmed of the little lies he’d used as shields, and he also owes Sam one hell of an apology.

Somehow, he doesn’t think “I’m sorry, I was ignorant then but I read some books and now I know better” is going to cut it. Maybe a commitment to do better would work? Perhaps after Baltimore, but not now. That ship had long since sailed. Some grand act of service, then? He’s sure he can think of something Sam needs in this post-Blip world that he can provide. He vaguely remembers Sarah mentioning something about a ship and bank loan. That could be a starting point.

It doesn’t take much time to find the public records on the Wilson family business and then the not-so-public records on the denied bank loan. It wouldn’t take much for him to pry a little, not when seedy bankers were astonishingly amenable to the threat of violence. But he’s reminded of Zemo and figures that he ought not to do anything so drastic that could jeopardize Sam’s family situation further.

He snorts. Did growth that came several months late still count?

In the end, he decides to rip the bandage off quickly, which is how he finds himself in the sticky Louisiana heat with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring back at an incredulous Sam through his open door.

“I did some reading recently,” Bucky says. 

“Hmm.”

It’s not outright refusal, so Bucky continues.

“About, um, the things you mentioned last time. Precedent.”

“Huh.”

For someone who’s normally so expressive with his language, Sam’s one-word answers as nerve-wracking as anything.

“I didn’t fully appreciate the situation that you were in. That you’re still in,” Bucky amends.

Sam shrugs. “It’s cool,” he says in a way that doesn’t sound like he really believes it. Bucky wonders if this is a test; he feels just as lost as he did on that plane a week ago.

“Let’s do this outside,” Sam says, closing the door behind him and ushering Bucky away from it. “Walk with me.” 

They head down to the pier mostly in silence until Bucky breaks it. “I’m sorry for making it all about me,” he says.

Sam stares at him. It’s true Bucky might stare a little too much on occasion, but Sam’s stares are utterly unnerving in the way he seems to see right through Bucky when he really wants to, like he’s already mapped out all there is to know.