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jokerscrazybrilliant · 3 years ago

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Survive - Chapter 4 - (Captain Rex)

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“Master Anakin,” I was surprised to see him on the bridge as I entered. “I thought you would’ve been preparing your ship for battle.”

He turned to me with a small, excited smile. “Actually, Ahsoka is leading this assault.”

My eyes widened lightly in surprise. “Oh! That’s exciting.” I moved to join him and Rex at the holo-table that displayed the planetary blockade. "So, how come she gets her first command here before I do?!" I piped up lightheartedly.

"She's been training with me for longer." Anakin responded without looking at me.

"But I've been training for years!" I protested in dismay.

"But not with me." He turned to me with a small smirk.

"So what?! You don't believe in my abilities?"

"I only leave my squad with people I trust."

"So you don't trust me?!" My voice was between hilarity and hysteria as I stared at him in disbelief.

"I didn't say that exactly..." Anakin trailed off, grinning teasingly.

The captain tried but failed to hide his snickers at this, and I narrowed my eyes as I turned to glare at him. "What are youlaughing at?" I made my voice as threatening as I could as I stared daggers at him.

"Oh nothing, commander." He straightened up immediately, not quite able to maintain a straight face as I chased Anakin off the bridge towards the hangar bay, threatening him that he would soon learn what true regret is.

***

Anakin beat me to the hangar, wanting to check on Ahsoka before her first solo lead, and I followed soon after, walking over to where they were speaking, Ahsoka sitting in her red Jedi Fighter. “You nervous, Ahsoka?” I asked, smile on my face as I recalled my first time commanding a fighter squadron. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, and I remember the adrenaline that took over my veins in that first dogfight, leading my men over a separatist-occupied world.

“What is with you people?!” She threw her hands in the air frustratedly. Clearly, I had struck some sort of nerve.

“Sorry, sorry.” I laughed, holding my hands up in surrender. “Well then, are you feeling ready for your first command?”

“I hope so.” She muttered lightly.

“I believe she is.” Anakin gave her a warm, encouraging smile.

“I do too.” I grinned at her, trying to convey confidence to her somehow. “Trust in the force.” I told her, and she nodded pensively, taking a deep breath to calm herself before she began her assault. I left her there with her master, heading back to the bridge where I could oversee the battle with Master Skywalker and Admiral Yularen.

***

It was a trap. Four enemy cruisers had been waiting to reinforce the blockade, and the moment we launched our attack they made their entry. Ahsoka, too headstrong and determined to make her first mission a success, had not relented to Admiral Yularen and Master Skywalker’s orders to return to the ship until it was far too late, losing her entire squadron in the process.

I felt bad for her but didn’t blame her. When I was younger, I would’ve made the same mistake. Excited at the prospect of being seen as a proper leader, wanting to make my master proud… I could understand why she was so crushed. Losing your men for the first time was not an easy thing. The loss weighed heavy on your soul, even years after the fact. Their faces haunted your dreams…

Shaking myself out of my trance, I headed to the hangar bay once more to see what Master Skywalker was up to, after hearing he had called for the immediate evacuation of the starship Defender, one of our only two remaining cruisers.

“Master, what’s the deal? Why is the Defender evacuating?” I found him standing with Ahsoka in front of his shuttle, R2 waiting behind him on the ramp.

“Oh, Ahsoka will bring you up to speed on the plan.” He winked at me, turning to walk up the ramp, Rex following after him.

“Rex, you don’t have to come. I don’t intend to put anyone other than myself at risk here.” I raised my eyebrows at Anakin’s words. Just how risky was his new plan?

“Of course, Sir.” Rex ignored him, climbing up the ramp ahead of him, Anakin grinning in amusement at this.

“Alright. Then good luck with this plan Master. Oh, and Rex, keep an eye on him please.” I called to the captain.

“Of course, sir. Someone has to.” Anakin laughed at this and followed Rex onto the ship, ignoring Ahsoka’s frustrated calls as he left her and I in a hangar full of confused soldiers.

“Awaiting orders, commander.” The men peered at her curiously, unsure of what to do with the new commander in charge.

“I’ll be on the bridge…” Ahsoka backed away hesitantly, looking thankful when another soldier stepped in.

“You heard her men, back to work!” Quickly everyone went back to business as usual, and I followed Ahsoka to the lift.

“Everything alright?” I inquired concernedly as the doors hissed shut behind us.

She nodded, not meeting my eyes. “Yeah, it’s fine.” She muttered.

Before I could say anything else the doors opened back up to the bridge and Ahsoka walked out, me following after her slowly. I stood to the back slightly as I observed her debriefing, not liking how the men were doubting her explanations.

Master Skywalker’s brilliant plan was to try to ram his way though the blockade with the now evacuated Defender, taking down their major defenses and allowing for us to mount an attack with our remaining forces. It was by no means an ideal plan, but if Anakin were here to tell them, no one would question him. He would’ve gone through the debrief with such confidence the men would actually start to believe it might work.

Ahsoka, on the other hand, was having some trouble, understandably. She was young, and new to command, and she had just suffered a blow to her confidence when she lost her squadron. But this was an important lesson for her to learn, and I understood why Master Skywalker was pushing her like this. It was the only way to teach her to someday be a great Jedi Master. Either you could deal with the pressure, or you couldn’t.

“I wish General Skywalker had discussed this plan with us. The odds are very much against us.” The Lieutenant sighed, shaking his head as he stared at the holograms displayed in front of us.

“They always are.” Ahsoka murmured dismally, eyes lowered in defeat.

“Yes, but normally we have General Skywalker to lead us and–” My eyes widened at this, heart sinking as Ahsoka’s confidence sunk even further. “I meant no offense – commander.” The Lieutenant apologized quickly, realizing what his words insinuated. I bit my lip, watching the interaction before me. As much as I wanted to step in and defend Ahsoka, to lend her some of my strength, Anakin put her in charge for a reason. This was a learning chance for her, and she needed to find the strength and confidence to be a leader on her own. She needed to learn to trust herself.

“None taken.” Her eyes lowered to the floor, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was too soon for Anakin to be testing her in this manner. Her confidence had already taken a major hit when she lost her squad. I decided it wasn’t my choice. I simply had to trust Anakin’s instincts as a teacher. I also had to focus on his suicidal plan at the moment, and try to figure out how we would make that work.

“Just one problem.” I folded my arms as I stepped forward, closer to the circle, drawing everyone’s attention for a moment. “When Anakin takes out that command ship, how are we going to manage to destroy the remaining ships with our limited firepower?” I raised my brows lightly, inviting ideas, eyes focused on Ahsoka.

“I thought about that, and, well, I have an idea.” The corner of my lips curled up into a smile as Ahsoka brightened, realizing she had something to contribute.

“Go ahead, commander.”

“If we took the Resolute and angled her hull against the incoming frigates, the bridge and hangar deck would be relatively safe from their attack. We could draw them in and then use the bombers to outflank them. The bombers would be too fast, and they would be trapped.” Her eyes lit up as she pitched her idea, hope trickling into her force signature.

“I’m not sure about this, commander.” The Lieutenant quickly dismissed her idea, doubt littering his voice. “Perhaps a different strategy – we need more time to plan.”

“No!” Ahsoka cut in angrily, “We don’t have any more time! Master Skywalker needs me now! He needs us now.” I smiled proudly as she regained her resolve.

I opened my mouth to support her, but Admiral Yularen spoke up before I could, walking up to join us at the holo-table. “The commander is right. I know this strategy is very bold, but these circumstances call for drastic measures.”

“Then, the strategy will work, sir?”

Yularen turned to Ahsoka, brow raising to her. “Well, will it?”

“Yes, it will.” Ahsoka flashed him a grateful smile, and, the men reassured, we began preparations to set our plan in motion.

***

“I can’t believe that worked.” Ahsoka murmured to me, watching the new wave of our bombers taking out the remainders of the enemy fleet.

I chuckled at her admission. “Me neither.” I reached out, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. “You did well Ahsoka. This success is yours. Now let’s go grab your master before he manages to get himself in trouble.” I gave her a warm smile as I headed over to the comm table, turning it on and switching it to Anakin’s frequency.

He appeared onscreen with a grin, a slightly disgruntled Rex behind him. “Nim, Snips! How did my plan go?”

“You mean you didn’t see Ahsoka utterly decimate the enemy?” I raised my eyebrows at him curiously.

“Yeah, about that. We were hit by an enemy ship, grazed, actually, and we’re fine, but we may have drifted off course…” He gave a slightly guilty smile as Rex gave a sigh behind him. “It was an accident!”

“You thought you could hit it and take it out without hurting our escape pod, sir.” I let out a small laugh at this, Ahsoka raising the heel of her palm to her forehead with a small, exasperated sound.

“Well, I’m sorry for trying to help my padawan in any way I can!” Anakin exclaimed, gesturing towards her in emphasis. “I didn’t realize these escape pods were so flimsy.” He muttered under his breath.

“It’s an escape pod, not a fighter.” I grinned at Anakin’s inability to stay out of a fight.

“Well, our beacon has been transmitting and we’re just waiting here for you to come get us.” I turned to Ahsoka, about to tell her we could take my ship to pick him up, before Anakin turned to look at something offscreen, catching my attention. “Oh, is that you already?”

I frowned at this, sharing a look of confusion with Ahsoka before looking back at Anakin. “That’s not us, what–” The comm froze and fizzed out, his image disappearing in front of us. “Ahsoka, update Admiral Yularen on the situation, have him scan our surroundings using long and short-range scanners and send out two shuttles to take opposite sectors and find that escape pod.”

Ahsoka nodded at me and turned, hurrying off to find the Admiral, and I took a breath, keeping any panic at bay as I formulated my thoughts on what could’ve happened to Anakin.

***

“We’ve been monitoring any transmissions, it doesn’t seem the separatists have–”

“None of our shuttles have found anything–”

“We’ve boosted signal to the scanners and still haven’t found any sign–”

“Commander! Incoming transmission.” I turned to the trooper and gave him a nod, dismissing the crew around me as I followed him into the transmission room, Ahsoka following behind me silently.

Masters Mace Windu and Obi-Wan were waiting for us onscreen, Obi-Wan turning and addressing us immediately as we walked in. “Nimra, Ahsoka, I’m glad to see you. I hear something about Anakin’s escape pod getting lost?”

I nodded at this. “His shuttle was damaged in his escape, and they were thrown off course. We were speaking to him when he seemed to think we found him, and his transmission was cut off. We’ve been searching for him with as many resources as we can afford right now, and we’ve been keeping an eye on any outgoing separatist transmissions. It doesn’t seem that they have him.”

Master Windu finally spoke up, looking at me as he conducted himself in his usual, serious manner. “I know that these are stressful times, but it is critical that you maintain the airspace in front of this planet in order for us to be able to successfully take the capital.”

“Understood, Master Windu.” I nodded to him respectfully.

“Let us know when you have any updates on the situation. That’ll be all.” With that the holograms disappeared, leaving me and Ahsoka in the empty room.

“We need to send more people to look for him – widen the scanner range!” Ahsoka’s anxious voice cut through the silence.

I shook my head at her gently. “You heard what Master Windu said, we need to maintain this airspace. We will keep monitoring all comms and scanners, but we can’t afford sending out more ships, we need them here. Anakin will manage just fine. Besides, Rex is with him. He’ll keep him out of trouble.” I gave her a small smile, and she tried to contain her disappointment as she let out a small, frustrated huff, nodding to me obediently before going back out to the bridge.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, letting out a small plea for patience into the force before following out after her.

***

After another eighteen hours straight on the bridge, monitoring all movements and squads, Admiral Yularen finally forced me off the bridge, pulling rank and demanding I take some time to rest, which, as I so helpfully pointed out, I did not need. But alas, I made my way to my quarters and laid in bed for a fitful two hours before giving up and exiting my room once more, wandering the halls until I found myself in the hangar bay.

With most fighters either deployed or in the repair space, the rest of the bay was fairly empty. Slowly, I trudged over to where my own personal ship sat. The Aa’kua, which translated to ‘respect’ in basic. It was an old Corellian word, and one of the few ways I ever tied myself to my planet of origin. I didn’t remember anything of Corellia, I was only a youngling when I was found and brought into the order and I hadn’t returned there since. However occasionally I would find myself wondering about it. Maybe I had some family there that was missing me. I would never know. So instead I learned some old Corellian words, ales and recipes.

I looked up at the ship, tracing my fingers along the custom painted teal hull. It was a Theta-class T2c shuttle that had been retrofitted with particle shields as well as more powerful ray shields. The hull of the ship was larger than usual to account for and house where I had equipped proton torpedoes. It was originally a personal transport shuttle, one typically used by senators to transport them to and from Coruscant’s surface, but I made sure it was ready for battle.

With nothing to do and no intention to go back to my desolate quarters, cracked open one of the ship’s panels and searched for any repairs that could consume my attention for even a moment.

***

It had been a few days since Anakin’s escape pod went missing. Master Obi-Wan’s mission was a success, and Master Windu was about to mount his attack on the capital when we got a message from him telling us the separatists had begun attacking innocent civilian communities, bombers attacking entire cities at a time. “We need you to take them out.”

I bowed my head to him. “Yes master.” Exiting the communications room, I knew I would need Ahsoka to help me if we were to eliminate the enemy forces quickly enough to help Master Windu. We had limited resources and needed every last hand on deck.

I commed her to let her know to meet me in the shuttle bay and I got the men ready to deploy in two flights. One under my command, and one under Ahsoka’s.

“You called for me?” I turned to find Ahsoka looking up at me, eyes flickering from me to the ships behind me, men prepping fighters for flight.

“Yes. Master Windu needs us to provide air support on the planet’s surface. The separatists have begun attacking innocent civilians.”

“But Master Skywalker–”

“We will find him, Ahsoka, I promise you. You have a strong bond with him. Search through the force, can you feel him?” I closed my eyes for a moment, allowing myself to go through the exercise with her.

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you know he’s okay. We both know Anakin can take care of himself, but right now those separatists are attacking innocent people, and they need us. They can’t protect themselves, so we must protect them. Can you do that?”

“Yes, Nimra.”

“Good. My squadron will cover the north, and the planet’s capital, but I need you to lead your men and destroy whatever ships are in the south.”

“We’ll destroy every last one of those bombers.” I smiled at her determination.

“Alright then. Let’s go.”

***

We managed to destroy all the bombers successfully, and in time to make Master Windu’s plan a success, and once we saw them safely take the capital, we made our way back to our cruiser. Charger found me before I even made my way down the ladder as I descended from my Jedi Fighter. “Commander Sayla, Admiral Yularen wants you in the communications room urgently. Something about General Skywalker.”

I gave him a quick nod, thanking him before I gestured for Ahsoka to follow as I made my way to the lift. “What’s this about?” She asked after hurrying to join me.

I shrugged and the lift took us up to the bridge. We quickly hurried across the bridge, catching glances from the officers around us as we made our way into the small comm room where Admiral Yularen already stood, arms folded neatly behind his back as he observed the hologram before him.

The weequay turned to us as we entered, grinning as he spoke. “Welcome, welcome, my friends.”

Admiral Yularen turned as well, and I looked to him with a raised brow. “Who is this?”

The weequay lifted his hat and bowed, brandishing it dramatically as he introduced himself. “I am Hondo Ohnaka, at your service!”

My second brow rose at this, confused by who this person was or why we were speaking to him.

“This bounty hunter claims to have gained custody of General Skywalker.” The Admiral informed us, and I quickly raised a hand to restrain Ahsoka. I gave her a look that told her to stay silent, and stood forward as this ‘Hondo Ohnaka’ gave an offended gasp at the Admiral’s statement.

“Don’t insult me! We are pirates! And I do not claim to have, I have him!” He gestured behind him, flopping into a chair and propping his feet as the hologram expanded to show some of his background, including a handcuffed Anakin. He looked to be unharmed, apart from his damaged ego, giving a sheepish smile as he waved a hand. Anakin disappeared from the transmission again as the focus went back to Hondo. “We found a damaged escape pod and so kindly rescued it, and now we are returning your master jedi to you safely. I have already been talking to this Admiral of yours about the small matter of… payment, for our services, you know, fuel can be so expensivethese days.”

"What about the captain that was with Master Skywalker in the escape pod? Where is he?"

The pirate fiddled with his hands for a moment. "Ah yes, well you see, that is kind of a funny story, actually." He stood from his chair dramatically as his speech became more animated. "Someone managed to get away with him. Presumably, he had an arrangement with some third party. He tried to take both my guests and flee, but we managed to stop him! Partially, anyway."

"Who managed to get away with him?" My eyes narrowed as my patience waned thin, growing more and more frustrated with how at ease this pirate seemed to be, like we were old friends or colleagues.

"One of my men, one of my own crew – betrayedme! Oh – I taught them so well. But that does mean I have no idea where your friend is. But at least we have the Jedi!" He grinned widely, gesturing at where we had previously seen Anakin off to the side.

"If you harm him, you will regret it. I swear to you." The animosity in my voice surprised even myself. I wasn't sure which part of me this was coming from, but it certainly wasn't the rational part. The rational part of my brain was citing everything Master Obi Wan and Master Diya had ever taught me about patience and being the bigger person, to no avail.

"Oh–" the pirate gasped and brought a hand up to his chest. "You offend me! There is no need for threats here, believe me. We are a civilised people, we do not require that sort of thing. This Master Jedi will have our best treatment! So long as you bring the payment of course." The pirate gave a final smile and little wave before shouting at someone in the background to end the transmission.

I brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose for a moment. "How much do they want?"

"They are asking for one million credits."

"I will ask the Council on how to proceed." I received a nod from him before exiting the bridge.

***

I sent word to my informant to look for any information on Rex’s whereabouts, and the council sanctioned the credits to trade for Master Skywalker. And since we were no longer needed on Ryloth, we made our way to the coordinates to collect our wayward General. It took some convincing Ahsoka that we would simply make the trade rather than fighting these pirates for Anakin, but she was learning patience the hard way.

As was I. "Any word back from Cid yet?" Echo pulled my out of my thoughts, drawing my eyes away from my cup of caf. I shook my head bleakly. "And you trust this bounty hunter?"

"Cid isn't a bounty hunter, Cid is more of a... Third party coordinator. And yes, all the info I've gotten in the past has been good. I haven't been betrayed yet." I gave him a sarcastic smile.

My private comm flashed and I jumped to me feet. "Might be Cid, I've got to take this." I didn't wait for his nod of acknowledgement as I made my way out of the mess hall, stepping into a quiet corner to answer my comm.

Cid appeared before me, sitting behind her desk, as usual. "You have the intel I asked for?" I asked, trying not to let myself sound too hopeful.

"Well, some of it. I've got a location. Not sure who the bounty hunter is but according to some chatter I picked up, the exchange will take place on the planet Karkaris. And soon."

My eyebrows raised at this information. Karkaris was in the Nilgaard sector, only a few parsecs away but we were due to meet with Master Skywalker's captor for an exchange and if we veered off course there was no way we'd make it on time. And, of course, there was the small matter of Karkaris being a separatist planet, but that was a whole other set of roadblocks.

"Alright. Thank you, Cid, I'll transfer your credits now."

She peered at me over her desk, uncharacteristically concerned. "Everything alright, meddler?" I smiled at the nickname she had given me when I fixed her broken dejarik table without her asking when we first met. She couldn't seem to wrap her head around why I would fix someone else's things for free.

I gave her a small nod now, feeling slightly reassured now that I knew Rex wasn't hopelessly lost to the galaxy. "Everything is fine Cid, thank you. Take care of yourself." I gave her a final smile and shut off the communicator, heading up to the bridge to discuss my new information with Ahsoka and Admiral Yularen.

***

"We don't know what we're getting into with this pirate business, and our fleet is severely depleted. We cannot split the fleet and go into separatist controlled space with no plan or backup. We'll simply have to conduct our arrangement, get General Skywalker back, and then we can intercept Captain Rex's location." I frowned at Admiral Yularen's words, hating the finality in his tone. He had already made up his mind.

"But my informant stated that the exchange would happen soon, and we need to be there when it happens."

His expression remained neutral as he stared at me and I sighed heavily, running a hand through my hair. "Alright. If you won't deploy any of your fleet, I'll take my own ship. I can't risk missing the exchange. You get Anakin and I'll head to Captain Rex's position. I'll rendezvous with you once I have him."

Not waiting for anyone's approval, I turned and stalked off the bridge, sighing deeply once I passed through the doors.

It's okay. It's just me versus one bounty hunter, how hard can this be?

***

Very hard, the answer was very hard!

"Flopsy, divert power to the thrusters and jam that ship's communications!" I shouted at my astromech, struggling to keep up my maneuvers as the bounty hunter shot rapid fire in our direction.

"Rex's thank you better be worth it," I grumbled as we took another hit, Flopsy immediately beeping its response at me. "No, I know he's my friend, but I am going into overtime here!" I joked, then sighed as I tried not to worry about his condition, whether he was safe and in one piece or not. "If this bounty hunter has laid a single kriffing finger on him they are gonna wish they had born a protocol droid." I narrowed my eyes at the ship in front of me, which was making its way to the planets surface below us.

Flopsy told me that the ship was landing at a port near what appeared to be a small separatist ship, meaning clankers. "I am really starting to wish I had some backup here." I complained as we landed the ship not too far from where the action would take place.

I told Flopsy to watch the ship and quickly headed down, stealthily moving over to where the transaction was taking place. I bit my lip as I watched the bounty hunter head down from his ship dragging a hovering carbonite slab behind him with a familiar form encased inside it. He headed to the centre where a seppy was standing, surrounded by a small platoon of droids, standard B1s with two rows of super droids behind them.

It did not look pleasant, but I knew I could handle it. My mind was more on which angle would be best to have all their fire directed away from Rex’s position, and quickly I made my way to the optimal point, slowly moving closer. The sleazeball separatist handed over a case of what I assumed to be spice over to the bounty hunter, and as he set the carbonite down, I made my move. Jumping down to my feet just behind the squad of droids, I took out three super droids with one slash, moving to another two before my moves were even registered.

The slower droids finally turned to me, firing immediately, drawing the attention of the separatist and the bounty hunter, who grabbed his spice and made for his ship, loyally calling out to his employer, “I believe our transaction is concluded!”

I moved through the droids and directly intercepted the seppy, who, predictably, dove for cover as he saw me approaching, dropping Rex where I could quickly drag him back to where the Aa’kua was waiting, Flopsy keeping her ready for takeoff. "It's just me saving everyone's kriffing skins." I mumbled under my breath, deflecting a blaster shot back and the droid who sent it.

I shoved the hovering carbonite slab up the ramp ahead of me, deflecting lasers at the base as I shouted up to Flopsy, “Get us out of here now!” I staggered up the surface as it moved to close, the ship humming excitedly as it moved from the ground.

The door latched shut and I shut my lightsaber off, attaching it to my hilt then moving to check on Rex. The small interactive pad on the side told me his vitals were being held stable, so I hurried to the cockpit to set us into hyperspace before I worried about him.

“Have you calculated the jump?” I fell into my seat and turned to the controls, diverting power to the rear shields and stabilizers as I felt the ship thunder around us. Those droids were relentless, two small fighters following us into the atmosphere. Flopsy beeped affirmatively at me, and I nodded, taking us higher so we could make the jump.

We made it out of the planet’s atmosphere, and I flipped the ship around in a violent one-eighty turn, firing on the droid fighters the moment they met my sights, obliterating them on impact. Huffing in satisfaction, I turned us back around, checking that all systems were a go before pushing the lever to launch us into hyperspace.

Once we were safely underway, I left the controls with Flopsy, heading back down to unlock the captain from his carbonite confines. I set the slab up vertically, moving to the sides and fiddling with the controls. I couldn’t read whatever language it was written in, but I had a guess as to what buttons corresponded to which controls, so soon enough I heard the hissing noise that meant I was successful.

“Ach–” I stepped back, the vapour clogging my throat as the carbonite dissipated. I heard a groan and a concerning thump, and the air cleared to reveal a crumpled Rex on the floor of the storage bay. I hurried to him, laying his head down on my leg and looking him over for any injuries. I took in a blaster wound in his side, the carbonite couldn’t have helped that.

"Rex? Rex? Easy there captain, you don't look too good." I stopped him from trying to sit up, he looked pale and feverish.

"C-commander Sayla?" His voice was hoarse, and he was shivering. This was not good.

"I'm here, I'm right here Rex." I tried to sound reassuring as I looked around, trying to recall where I had stuffed the deactivated medical droid I had aboard the ship.

"I can't see." He tried not to sound too panicked, but I could still feel it. Reassuringly I put my hand on his armoured shoulder.

"That’s alright, it’s only temporary. I think you have hibernation sickness, let's get you up on the bed and I'll activate the med-droid to have a look at you." I moved to carry him using the force but the moment he felt the pressure around him he protested.

“I can stand!” He protested, making me chuckle.

“You’re injured, and sick, don’t make me pull rank captain, just sit still for a minute.” I smiled as he grit his teeth, and quickly carried him using the force, keeping him still as I moved him to the small med-pod onboard. I set him in the bed and quickly searched for the med-droid, finding it folded and tucked away neatly in a corner.

I quickly pulled it open and clicked it on, but it turned on and frizzled out of life within moments, some of the wires in the back sparking as it died. I turned it over on the floor and observed the frayed wires, rolling my eyes in annoyance. “What happened?” The captain tried to keep his voice light.

“Droid’s wires are damaged, I have spares, give me a minute to go grab them.” I left him and the damaged droid and went to the small room I had filled to the brim with spare parts. I ignored the pile of metal scraps that tumbled to the floor as the door opened for me, stepping over the mess as I made my way to a back corner where all types and tangles of wires lay. I quickly found a colourful bundle that would do the trick and grabbed a spanner on my way to the med-pod. I rolled my eyes as I walked in, realizing he must have sat himself up when I was gone.

Flinging myself onto the floor I crossed my legs, beginning work on the droid. "I don't know why they had to take the whole fleet for Skywalker, but whatever." I grumbled to myself as I ripped out the damaged wiring impatiently.

"You forget, we clones were bred to be expendable."

"Don't say that. It's not true." I disagreed furiously, glaring into his unfocused eyes. "It's not. Not to anyone who knows you. I would gladly give my life for yours – or Fives, or Kix, or any other soldier, so don't you say that."

He said nothing, face incomprehensible as he stared ahead intently. Satisfied, I went back to work trying to replace the wiring as quickly as I could, trying not to think about the fact that I just told him I was willing to die for him.

I moved back with a triumphant huff as the droid finally buzzed to life. It stood slowly, then began scanning me before I redirected it. "That's the patient," I said, pointing at Rex. "Blaster wound and suspected hibernation sickness."

"Understood. I will begin scanning the patient and then select the best possible treatment." With that it forced him to lay down on the cot, then beginning its scans.

I got up and put away the tools and scrap parts before making my way to the door, figuring I'd check on Flopsy and the ship while the droid worked on Rex.

"Commander?" His voice stopped me just before I made it out of the room, and I leaned back in to respond to him.

"Yes, captain?"

"For what it's worth, I'd give my life for yours as well, sir." A small smile graced my lips at this, and I bowed my head to him respectfully, even though he couldn't see it.

"It's worth a lot more than you know, captain. Now rest up, I'll check in on you later." Finally, I managed to make my exit, thinking about his words on my way to the cockpit.

It's Rex, he'd sacrifice himself for any innocent. It doesn't mean anything special. It's just Rex being Rex. I knew this to be true, and yet I could not stop the flaming blush from reaching my cheeks or the nervous flipping of my stomach. He hadn't even done anything out of the ordinary for him and yet he had reduced me to a jittery mess.

Stars help me. I was screwed.

***

After checking that everything with the ship was doing fine, I switched on the ship's comm, switching to my desired channel.

"Nim, I'm glad to see you." Kix's image appeared in front of me, and his smile set me at ease. "Any luck with the info on Captain Rex?"

I nodded at him, anxieties rising to the surface as I thought about the state of the injured captain. "Yes, I have him, but he has hibernation sickness, and the kriffing nerf herder that stuck him in carbonite shot him first and I don't have any bacta to patch him with. I've activated the med-droid, but I don't know how much it can do with the little I have onboard, kriff, Kix why haven't you taught me more first aid skills?"

"Woah, Nim, calm down!" He laughed at my panic which only aggravated me farther.

"This isn't funny! It's your captain's life on the line." I crossed my arms at Kix with a small frown.

"Sorry Nim, I'm not laughing at you it's just... Take a breath." He smiled at me, and I lost my frown immediately, unable to stay angry with him. "Rex will be fine. Everything went smoothly on our end, and we have General Skywalker. We're making our way to the rendezvous coordinates and once we meet you there, I will personally make sure Rex has enough bacta to last him a lifetime."

I gave him a small appreciative smile, feeling much calmer than before. "Well, I'm enroute to you now so, I'll see you soon, I guess. You're certain he'll be alright until then?"

"Trust me, the captain's been through worse."

"Thanks, Kix."

"Not a problem Nimra."

***

I traded off Rex to Kix when I arrived at the hangar bay, then quickly made my way to where I knew I would find Anakin, on the bridge. “Nim!” Anakin squeezed my shoulder, giving me a warm smile as he greeted me, Ahsoka by his side. “Thank you for holding the fort while I was gone.”

“Of course, Master.” I returned his smile, relieved to see him back and completely unharmed.

“You know better than to call me that, Nim. How is Rex?”

“Well, he had a minor blaster wound, and he has hibernation sickness from the carbonite the bounty hunter stuck him in. Kix said he should be fine, but I’m going to go check on him in med-bay now. See how he’s enjoying his stay there.” I grinned devilishly. “You know how much he enjoys being stuck in bed rest.” Anakin gave a laugh at this, nodding.

“Alright, sounds good. Leave some teasing for me, I’ll come down once I’m done here.” I nodded at him and shared a quick smile with Ahsoka before heading back down to the med-bay. A small gaggle of clones, including Echo and Fives, were leaving the area as I was entering, no doubt having just been there to welcome back their devoted captain.

I smiled as I entered, taking in Rex’s familiar form on one of the cots near the wall. He was fast asleep. I drew closer, Kix immediately coming to join me, holo-pad in his hand. “How is he?”

“Resting. I’ve treated his blaster wound and giving him medicine for the carbon fever. He’ll be up and running by tomorrow.” Kix drew a chair and gestured to it. “Sit.”

“I’m fine Kix, injury free.” At his disapproving face I took a seat, frowning right back up at him.

“Yeah, I know.” He thrusted a ration bar in my face. “Eat.”

I rolled my eyes, taking a bite ruefully, trying not to show how hungry I really was. “Fine. But give me your holo-pad, I’m not going to sit here with nothing to do.” Kix grinned at this, handing it over before returning to one of his other patients. I finished the bar before taking turns working on my mission report and stealing glances and Rex’s unconscious form.

***

Voices reached me through a haze. I knew my eyes were closed but I was too tired to open them yet, reveling in the warmth of sleep that hadn’t come to me in so long.

"I don't think she's slept since you two went missing sir. I've never seen her like that before. She oversaw everything, made sure everyone was okay, but I don't think she was resting or eating right. I tried my best to keep an eye on her."

"Thank you, Kix."

"Of course, General." I heard Kix’s footfalls as he walked away, and slowly cracked my eyes open to see Anakin standing there, giving me an all to knowing look.

“I’m just – I just wanted to make sure he didn’t die on my watch.” I tried to ignore his smug look.

“Sure. Whatever you say.” He chuckled, patted me on the back, then left before I could protest whatever assumptions he was making in his head.

I adjusted myself in the uncomfortable chair, pulling out my holo-pad to continue filling out the report but ended up staring ahead, falling into my thoughts. I had befriended the members of this battalion so easily, we got along so well, but was I growing too attached? Was my connection to these clones affecting my judgement? Was it leading to something that might be wrong?

"Commander?" A voice jolted me out of my stupor, and I looked down to see Rex looking at me tiredly with a slightly surprised expression at seeing me there.

"Rex! I'm glad you're finally up – and you can see me!” I hated the way relief so heavily coloured my voice. Did I truly sound so desperate or was it just in my head? Feeling the need to say something lest I get consumed by my thoughts, I gave Rex my best winning smile, holding up my holo-pad. "I don't suppose you want to help me fill in my mission report?"

"I can assume you've only filled in your name and about half a sentence?" He raised a brow at me quizzically.

"That would be a safe assumption, yes. Although come to think of it, I may have forgotten to sign my name." I grinned widely at him.

He groaned as he sat himself up in bed, favouring his injured side as he moved. "I'm gonna need more pain meds." He half-joked.

"Can I pawn some off you?" At his dubious expression I raised my hands in mock surrender. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding... I can just get them off Kix, eliminate the middleman and all that." I laughed at his expression, my amusement subsiding as he became serious, holding my gaze.

“Thank you.” He said earnestly. “For coming for me.”

“You would do the same for me.” I gave him a serious nod before reverting back to sarcasm. “And if you really want to thank me you can help me fill out my report.”

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glassworkspiderlilies · 4 years ago

Text

the earth shudders at the tower asunder (2/4)

Genshin Impact | Lumine & Venti (+ Mondstadt Chapter Cast) | AO3 Summary: Lumine arrives in Mondstadt and becomes willingly entangled in its affairs. Notes: Chapter 2 of the primordial!travelers AU, approx 7.5k words. Follows the events of the prologue. :)

They look at her oddly, these knights of Favonius.

Lumine supposes she can understand why; in the months she had been alone, struggling to gather the bits of herself together enough so that she could start moving and find Aether, she has grown…very quiet. Lumine had never been loud to begin with, but…her control over herself is tenuous at best now, and the more she speaks, the more she feels as though she will crumble. So she doesn’t, or as little as she can.

She suspects she looks as fragile as she feels.

Paimon, bless her soul, is chatty enough for the two of them. She picks up where Lumine falters, which is often, and her manner is so cheerful and innocent that Lumine is able to feel marginally more grounded as she is integrated back into civilization.

(She is so grateful for Paimon; she doesn’t think the fairy will understand just how much.)

Are you a new ally…or a new storm?

Kaeya had asked this, when Lumine had descended safely from the sky after Stormterror’s winds had whipped her upwards after finally setting foot in Mondstadt—and could Amber understand too, how grateful Lumine was to receive the glider and feel the delight of being in the skies once again?—but she didn’t have an answer to give him. She is neither; she merely is.

The true question is what he will deem her.

I understand the anguish of being separated from family, he’d said too, and she had met his eye and softly asked, do you?

It had not been asked derisively, but as a true, honest question, because she wanted to know if he could understand the cavernous emptiness inside of her. It would be a relief if he did.

But his eye had widened slightly, and he said nothing more. His gaze had only grown a little more piercing after that.

Even know, he is watching her with more scrutiny than the others.

“Lumine? You’re spacing out again,” Paimon says, floating in front of her to draw her attention.

Lumine blinks, and she touches her own cheek, as if she is returning from far away and assuring herself she is still corporeal.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and Kaeya’s lips lift in a smile.

“Were you distracted by my good looks?” he teases, “I must say, receiving such attention from the Hero of Mondstadt isn’t so bad.”

She blinks at him, tilting her head a little in thought. She is no hero, and as for Kaeya’s looks…

“A pretty man can be no secret,” she says absently, “But secrets are what you’re made out of nonetheless, isn’t it?”

A silence.

But then Lisa and Jean chuckle, the latter hiding it behind her hand, while Amber puts her hands on her hips and grins.

“Wow, you’ve just met him and you’re spot on!” Amber says cheerily, “It’s true, Kaeya’s always up to something.”

“It’s part of what makes him one of our most excellent knights,” Jean adds, with a smile.

“Hey now, she never said it was a bad thing,” Kaeya says, but there is a deeper curiosity about him as he looks back at Lumine. “But enough about me—let’s move on, shall we? Will our esteemed traveler sojourn in Mondstadt while we put word out for her brother, and lend us her aid?”

Lumine looks at him, then Jean, who inclines her head in question.

She stares at her for a long time, caught up, suddenly, by wisps of memory. She cannot recall them clearly, but she thinks about sweet faces turning malicious, and the scent of iron.

“Lumine,” Paimon prods gently, once more.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, then focuses on Jean again. “My help. Will you accept the responsibility of taking it?”

Jean’s eyebrows rise, perplexed at the wording, but reaches out her hand resolutely.

“I will,” she says, voice firm, and Lumine graces her with a faint smile before pressing her fingers against Jean’s in the briefest of handshakes.

“So be it,” Lumine murmurs.

The four Favonius knights exchange significant looks, and Lumine excuses herself to let them speak without her.

Paimon bounces excitedly when they are outside, her eyes glistening, already used to Lumine’s odd way of speaking and finding nothing of note remiss.

“Let’s get this done and have the Sticky Honey Roast Amber promised!!” she exclaims, and Lumine smiles.

Simple pleasures and small goals—yes, she can handle these. Paimon is with her, and those knights…they’ve accepted responsibility for the price of her aid.

(But what price is that? She no longer quite remembers, and wonders about the pooling uneasiness inside of her.)

The bard feels like home.

Each pluck of his lyre soothes her; she closes her eyes and for the moments that the notes sweeten the air, she feels like she is back in the early days with Aether, running through fields and collecting flowers at their leisure. Before…before everything (everything?), when they were together and playing around without a care in the world.

Their separation already feels like eons, though surely it cannot be that long.

Tears prick at the corners of her eyes as she opens them. The melody changes then, and the tone of the bard’s voice shifts to a deeper, more somber tone, drawing attention for a dramatic ballad.

He tells a story, of friendship between fair bard and curious dragon, and the tragedy that split them apart: a desperate war with a price perhaps too high to pay, venomous blood inducing a long slumber, the denouncement that followed once the dragon awoke…and the damning absence of the only voice that could reach him thereafter.

Lumine’s tears do fall then while the bard ends his tale, sweeps a bow, and scans his eyes over his audience. He looks startled when he meets her dewy gaze, and almost wary when Paimon leads their approach. Lumine wipes the wetness on her cheeks away with a brush of both hands, and the bard tilts his head in slight recognition.

“I can’t say I’ve never had anyone cry at my performances,” he says, running his fingers over the strings aimlessly, “But I confess I was surprised to see you weep so openly while everyone else was quite dry-eyed.”

“I was lost in thought,” Lumine admits, “But your tale too was…sad.”

The bard looks at her with a faint smile, plucking out a simple melody, and something in her stirs at the tune. His gaze is open and curious as he looks between her and Paimon.

“I know you, don’t I? You were the ones that scared Dvalin away.”

“Dvalin…?” Paimons wonders, and as she and the bard argue over names, Lumine studies the boy.

“The dragon. He is your friend,” Lumine says, and Paimon looks startled. “You were speaking to him, when we interfered.”

The bard smiles.

“That you did, and the price to pay was not a pretty one,” he says, but offers nothing more.

“Your song, too, was about him,” she continues, but the bard continues to smile in silence. “Your name?”

“Venti the bard. Three time winner of ‘Most Popular Bard of Mondstadt,’ to be precise. What is it you need from me?”

“That is not your real name,” Lumine muses, sure of this somehow as she ignores the question, and Venti raises an intrigued brow.

There is a second where his gaze sharpens, but Paimon interrupts impatiently.

“Nevermind that, Lumine, show him!” the fairy insists, and Lumine obediently brings out the red crystal—though it is no longer red.

Venti looks surprised at the sight of its blue glow; his face grows soft, and sad as he speaks once more to Dvalin’s anguish. He puts another red crystal into her hands with a request for purification, and Lumine stares at the tear resting atop her palm.

Lisa had said it stung, when the first one had been brought to her—hurt even to come close. But it simply sits heavy in Lumine’s hand, and she can feel the pain and sorrow contained in it. Filled with impurities, Lisa had said of the crystal, but while the power has been twisted, the emotions are not. The strength of it pulses red, and Lumine—Lumine understands.

Her fingers close around the tear, she closes her eyes, and she sighs.

Come back. Come back to me, back home.

She hears Paimon and Venti gasp, and when she opens her eyes and hand again, the crystal glows a calming blue.

Venti’s eyes are wide and luminous as he stares at her.

“You…” he begins, eyebrows furrowing a little as he puzzles something out. “…Really do have some wonderful abilities. Someone like you is going to end up getting written into a bard’s poem.”

He hums a few rough lines, but Lumine is faraway again. Songs and poems dedicated to her, once upon a time…there were things like that, weren’t there?

“Anyway…even if Dvalin is not taken down, his life will still wither away in the breeze…he’ll burn himself out in the flames of anger.”

Lumine blinks, coming back to the present. A breeze blows through the square, and though the bard isn’t playing, she hears a faint keening melody.

“Save him,” she says, looking up at the sky, voice distant, and Venti smiles.

“I’ve a plan,” he says, “So one must be going. You’re coming too, right? To the symbol of Mondstadt’s Hero.”

“Hey! What makes you so sure we’re just gonna follow you around like that?” Paimon pouts at the presumption, and Venti inclines his head.

“Didn’t you come looking for me in the first place? And, somebody did interrupt me when I was trying to communicate with Davlin,” he says, running his fingers across his lyre again, “And now I’ve got the same poison running through my veins for the trouble.”

Paimon wilts a little, letting out a soft “oooogh…” at his argument, then floats back up again once she fully processes what he’s said, her eyes wide.

“Wait—poison?!”

“Yes, so one must be going,” Venti repeats patiently, then dashes off this time without looking back.

Paimon and Lumine look at each other, and follow.

“Your presence seems to help quite a bit,” Venti greets amicably, as Lumine and Paimon come to stand beside him underneath the great tree.

Lumine blinks at him, then holds out her hand. Venti blinks back, then grins.

“That’s not necessary, but if you insist…”

He takes her hand, and they stare up at the tree together.

“I’d like to know more about the God of Anemo,” she tells him, and he looks at her, eyes wide.

“Barbatos? He already disappeared from Mondstadt a long time ago. Liyue and Inazuma’s gods are still present, but it has been many a moon since Mondstadt saw theirs.”

Lumine looks at him now too, her face impassive.

“Do not lie to me,” she says.

It is said gently, not at all unkindly, but Venti’s eyes widen again marginally as he observes her. There is a faint power in her words, like an old talisman whose ability has faded, but is still recognizable as an object that once held it.

“It’s not a lie,” Venti smiles, tilting his head inquisitively as he lets her hand go, “…Merely carefully worded.”

Lumine repeats what he said in her mind carefully, and concedes to this truth. She smiles faintly back, then takes back his hand to his amusement, and looks up again at the tree.

“What do you need us to do?” she asks, and Venti laughs delightedly at this free offering of help.

“You could come with me to claim a certain Lyre de Himmel,” he says.

“Isn’t that stealing?” Paimons queries, and Venti grins at her.

“Not quite. I said claim, did I not?”

Paimon grumbles at him, but Lumine squeezes his hand gently before letting go.

“Will it save him?” she asks, and Venti inclines his head.

“It might,” he says, but she isn’t looking at him anymore, eyes turned to the blue sky instead.

“Then let’s go,” she murmurs, and Venti wonders just who or what it is she’s really looking to save.

Events swirl around her without abandon. She becomes more and more entangled in Mondstadt’s affairs, but she doesn’t begrudge it, either, willingly letting herself be swept up in them. There’s a pull, a want to right the wrongs that have been done—and she is somewhat afraid of the outcome, because she cannot control the results that could be devastating, but she does want to try.

(Why is that, she wonders. Is it pity? No. But she likes the smiles on everyone’s faces, feels glad to have offered her help when their relief shows. She may be without her powers, but this, too, is a kind of power as well, is it not?)

It feels very mortal, to want to try. Even if she herself is not human, the feeling is…warm.

They sit in Angel’s Share, after the fiasco with the Fatui stealing the lyre and having to explain the situation to Diluc and Jean. Having failed at pilfering alcohol, Venti—whom they all now know specifically as Barbatos himself—wheedles a very patient Diluc for wine. Jean has her hands folded and brows furrowed in thought over a glass of Berry & Mint Burst as they all consider their next step on retrieving the lyre.

Paimon, meanwhile, sucks up apple juice at an alarming rate.

Diluc eventually slides a glass of grape juice towards Lumine, who sits without a drink for some time whilst lost in thought. She looks up at him, mildly surprised at the gesture. He raises a brow at her but says nothing, so she also says nothing before sliding it closer to herself and taking a sip.

The flavor blooms in her mouth; it is sweet and slightly tart, full-bodied and bursting with life. She smiles, and Diluc looks satisfied.

“What a shame you’re underage!” Venti exclaims when he notices, swirling a glass of dandelion wine that he has somehow managed to procure. “You’re really missing out on Angel Share’s finest.”

Lumine takes another sip of juice, not breaking eye contact.

“Underage?” she murmurs, trying to think back. It’s no use; she and her brother had never measured time by proper mortal standards. “Is…that how I look to you?”

Everyone stares.

“…And how old are you, Traveler?” Jean asks politely, and Lumine shakes her head at the question.

“I can’t remember,” she murmurs, and Paimon hmphs before the situation becomes too awkward.

“What’s the big deal? Paimon doesn’t know how old she is, either! And anyway, wine is gross! It’s all weird and sour…Paimon doesn’t think Lumine is missing out at all!”

Lumine smiles.

“An order of fried radish balls for Paimon,” she says to a Diluc, who motions to a waitress, and the fairy cheers.

“Yesss! You’re the best, Lumine!”

But the other three continue to stare, though Diluc returns to polishing glasses, and Venti sips his wine thoughtfully as he scrutinizes her.

“Could you be another Archon, somehow?” he muses, tilting his glass towards her, “But if you were a god, it’d be strange that I couldn’t tell. And yet…I hesitate to say you feel...hm…normal. But not abnormal, either?”

“I’m not a god,” Lumine demurs, “I’m just…me.”

Venti laughs, and Jean smiles and nods in approval.

“I’ll drink to that,” Venti says, gently clinking his glass against hers and following his words.

But his eyes remain thoughtful, and wondering.

Diluc and Jean are looking at her oddly again when she purifies the remaining crystals they have gathered, amazed and pleased with the results, yet also curious.

Lumine says nothing, for she can no longer speak to what she is, anyway.

They infuse the Lyre de Himmel with the tears’ powers, and make their way to Starsnatch Cliff. Lumine shivers as they approach, reminded of the aching, lonely days beneath its tall crags, and Paimon plops herself on top of Lumine’s head comfortingly. She reaches up for the fairy’s small hand, and feels a little better at the touch.

The view atop the cliff, however, is unfailingly beautiful, and Paimon voices her thoughts in awe.

“Lovely for a fated reunion, isn’t it?” Venti grins. He breathes in deep as he stands at the tip of the cliff, just short of dangerously close to falling. “Well—we must be prepared for a fight.”

Always for a fight, Lumine thinks with an ache in her chest, but everyone seems to be rather optimistic, regardless.

Venti takes his position, and begins his melody.

The notes are crisp in the cool air, and she recognizes the same song he had played in Mondstadt’s square when they had first spoken to him. But so too can she tell that what he plays now is different, the music infused with a particular quality that only the God of Anemo can achieve. A tale of friendship and wonder…like the first time, she can feel the tears welling up in her eyes, the emptiness inside her even more present in the face of this performance.

Before Venti’s song can break her, Dvalin surges up from underneath the cliff, the ensuing wind nearly too strong for them to withstand as they attempt to shield themselves with their hands. Only the bard stands undisturbed by the violent wind.

Home, home, come home—

“You have come…what has been done…cannot be undone…”

Lumine’s heart aches at the sound of the dragon’s voice. She watches as Dvalin slowly descends, and dragon and bard finally confront each other.

“Then why do I see sadness in your eyes?” Venti counters, his voice carrying clear despite the wind, “Sadness that speaks of your yearning for this song…”

For a moment, the dragon’s glowing eyes grow less harsh as he hesitates.

“They’re communicating…” Jean murmurs in fascination, and Lumine turns to her for a brief, damning second.

An arrow flies true. The Holy Lyre is shot from Veti’s pale hands, the instrument’s arm shattering further as it hits the ground, strings snapping with strident, discordant twangs.

“No! Tone-Deaf Bard!” Paimon shrieks with concern as they all rush to his aid.

An Abyss Mage floats from behind Dvalin’s neck tauntingly, its poisonous voice rooting its lies.

“Do not be fooled by him, dear dragon…he left you to rot alone. Now he attempts to deceive you once more!”

“No!” Venti cries out, and Lumine’s heart cracks at the desperation in his voice, “Listen to me!”

“Barbatos…” Dvalin breathes, wavering as if unsure.

But not unsure enough. Too many years between them, and too many years under the influence of the dark blood that taints him.

“Let your wrath fester! Mondstadt has already turned its back on you!” the Abyss Mage screeches, and Dvalin roars in anger.

Lumine acts, summoning her sword. Diluc and Jean’s eyes widen as she throws it with terrifying speed—but she misses the Mage by a breadth, and Lumine clicks her tongue as her blade returns to her hands. The Mage cackles at the miss, and Dvalin loops the air before rushing forward.

“You! You planned this all along, to have me slain?!”

He does not yet attack, only intimidates. But he is so close. His maw is open, the wind is strong, and even Venti stands helpless without any tools to reach his friend.

“The time has come for the dragon to serve its true master!” the Mage shrieks, waving its staff with glee, and Lumine—Lumine walks forward.

“Silence,” she commands, seething at the Mage’s arrogant tone.

And for a second, the world stands still.

“You serve no master,” Lumine says, reaching for the dragon’s jaws. Her voice is soothing, calm, almost akin to the quality of Venti’s music. “And if you do, it is of your own choosing. Who is it you wish to listen to? Whose voice is it you want to hear? Where is it you want to go home to?”

Dvalin closes his maw, and she lays a hand on his snout. He growls loud and low, but Lumine stares into his eyes, and for a second, she feels the energy shift.

Not enough.

The Abyss Mage shakes itself out of its stupor; despite its confusion at what transpired in that brief moment, it still knows what it must do. It mounts Dvalin’s back, digging its staff into his flesh; the dragon cries out, his howl metallic in his pain. Lumine feels someone jerk her back by her dress with astonishing speed; she stumbles to the ground hard as the dragon lunges and narrowly misses hitting her.

“Bewail your pathetic selves and watch the world tremble with fear!” the Mage yells, and Dvalin pulls back from the cliff and nearly blows them all away before flying off.

Lumine watches him get smaller and smaller in the distance from the ground, and Diluc peeks down at her from overhead.

“What the hell was that?” he says, surprised, and Lumine looks up at him then down at her hands.

“You almost succeeded,” Venti says wistfully, and somewhat pityingly, as he comes to stand beside her.

“Simply astonishing,” Jean adds, her tone wondering.

Paimon says nothing, but floats into Lumine’s lap.

“Are you okay?” Paimon asks, and Lumine’s face crumples as she hugs her tight, burying her face into the fairy’s hair.

Paimon makes a soft noise.

Lumine feels a hand sit gently on her shoulder. She lifts to face to meet Venti’s understanding gaze; she isn’t crying, but her eyes burn. The others gather behind him, looking at her with kindness on their faces too.

“…What next?” Diluc finally says, tone businesslike, and Lumine turns to look at him again.

He is resolute, as are the others as she meets each gaze, and so she steels herself. Next, she thinks. We must keep going.

Venti offers her his hand to help her rise from the ground.

She takes it.

“Are you ready to take to the skies, Traveler?”

Lumine tears her eyes away from swirl of clouds and fog she sees through the hole in the roof of Stormterror’s Lair, her eyes glittering with a savage light. Despite the challenge of the impending fight, the thought of flying unencumbered again like she used to be able to fills her with joy. Venti raises an eyebrow at her expression.

“I confess that was not the reaction I was expecting,” he says with some humor, and Lumine gives him a wry smile.

“Flight,” she says shortly, turning away, “I miss it. But yes. I am ready.”

They have too little time to spare for conversation, but Venti squirrels that bit of information away for later. The plan is simple; the bard and Traveler will bring Dvalin down from the high skies, and then Diluc and Jean will join the fight where they can from the platforms at the Lair’s tallest point. Paimon awaits on the sidelines where it is safe, prepared to shout warnings or throw potions.

“Let’s go, then,” Venti says, and both the air around him and the tips of his braids glow green as he strums his usual lyre. “May the thousands of years of wind that have blown through Mondstadt go with you.”

Wind bursts forth underneath them; Venti spins upward and Lumine opens the wings of her glider, and the two are airborne—high, high, higher until they are well into and above the clouds.

While Venti concentrates on channeling the Anemo energy for her, Lumine aims the power at the poisonous blood clots they’ve identified on Dvalin’s back from their vantage point.

Dvalin screeches when the second one shatters, staggering in the air before recovering and descending down to his lair. Venti and Lumine drop after him, the bard ensuring that their landing is safe; Diluc and Jean come to their sides as they stare down the center of the tower from the platforms. Fog swirls violently, a tornado of energy shooting up and blowing their group back before Dvalin reveals himself by dispersing it from the center with a few violent beats of his wings.

He roars, harsh and grating and anguished, and the fight begins in earnest.

“Now we can fight Dvalin on equal grounds,” Venti winks, though Lumine can still see the concern creasing his brow. His lyre glows green in his hands then rematerializes as a bow, the arrow that he nocks bright with Anemo energy. “The grandest bard is here to help!”

A smile ghosts Lumine’s lips at his persistent cheer despite the gravity of the situation.

Diluc and Jean take their positions while Venti fires off his arrows with remarkable speed and precision at the weak spots in Dvalin’s armor. Lumine is no archer, but she picks her shots and throws her sword with as much precision as she can, attempting to control the trajectory. She senses the surprise from the others as they watch her do so—Paimon had remarked before that watching this summoning ability of Lumine’s never got tiring, and it seems to hold true for the others too—but she must use what she has at her disposal, and she is in no danger of losing her weapon.

Periodically, Dvalin lands on the stone and lunges, scattering the team before the sword-wielders close in. Diluc’s bright fire singes the air, while Jean’s cool breeze heals their accumulating wounds.

It’s slow going, the battle. Dvalin peels away from the platform after some time and howls, white-hot energy irradiating the sky before dropping and fissuring the stones around them.

“Watch your step!” Venti cautions, and spreads his arms to bring up a wind current.

Diluc and Jean flounder a little as they surge up; they have their own gliders too, of course, but they are not able to maneuver so effortlessly in the air so suddenly. Lumine grips Diluc by the arms as they fly, while Paimon darts close and assists Jean to the next platform. They narrowly miss a swipe from the dragon’s teeth as they do so; and Venti lets out a deceptively airy laugh at their close brush with instantaneous death.

“Lucky for us, huh?” he says, and Diluc shoots him a nasty glare before nodding his thanks at Lumine’s aid.

“His armor’s almost cracked!” Paimon shouts, pressing potions into their hands before floating back to safety, “Go, go!”

Venti and Lumine aim true, and with their next hits, Dvalin collapses onto the platform entirely.

“Aim for that blood clot on his neck!” Venti shouts, and the three swordmasters scramble up the dragon’s neck as the bard aims his next arrow.

Six hits, seven, eight, quadrupled by their combined attacks—it feels too long, but the last crystal finally, finally shatters.

Their relief is short lived.

Dvalin rears, thrashing from side to side as the three hold on for dear life. The wound underneath begins to glow purple, tendrils of murky light spidering out to the rest of his body.

“What’s happening?!” Jean shouts in alarm.

“The wound,” Diluc grits out as he nearly slips, “It’s festering.”

“A curse,” Lumine says quietly, “Venti had said the Order had cursed the wounds.”

The bard in question shoots up from the platform, maneuvering expertly as he avoids getting slammed by Dvalin’s head. He joins them on the neck, as close to the wound as he possibly can, hovering a hand over it. His palm glows green, but the light disappears rapidly; he tries again with the same result—then a third, and fourth with no difference—and the look in his eyes is both desperate and ashamed.

He is not strong enough.

There is no second chance. At this stage, if the Abyss Order cannot control Dvalin, their magic will kill him.

Dvalin screeches, and even to those who do not understand his words, it is a sound of only pain and anguish as the evil light pulses. The brilliant blue of Dvalin’s scales begins to turn dark and muddy as the curse takes and takes, and Venti lets out a choked cry.

It’s that sound—so crystalline, so pure in its unhappiness and helplessness—that kindles something inside of her. She feels herself rushing through the years, back, back, back—

(“And us? What is there to challenge us?”

“Each other?”)

Lumine thinks of her brother, her conversation with him long ago, when gods aplenty had come to test their mettle against them to no avail.

(“Bewail your pathetic selves and watch the world tremble with fear!”)

Lumine remembers the Abyss Mage’s parting words, gritting her teeth at the swell of anger that crashes against her ribcage.

What challenge?

You are not Aether.

What world, trembling with fear?

Lumine grabs Venti’s hand, who startles at her touch; his braids go green, and she holds her other hand aloft, positioning her fingers—

“You are not the one who tells me what to do,” she hisses, and plunges her hand into the wound.

The others watch with wide eyes and open mouths; it lasts only a few heartbeats, the brutality of the moment. Lumine digs deeper and then rips something out of the wound and crushes it in her palm; the purple light recedes, then fades, any remainder of the coagulated blood along Dvalin’s body shattering into dust.

For that brief moment, they all forget where they are as they stare, Lumine’s eyes glowing with a faint golden light as she blows the offending residue from her hand, the particles sparkling white before disappearing.

Then Dvalin thrashes once more, the four falling from his body and rolling back onto the platform with the assistance of a carefully timed breeze from Venti; the dragon screeches, body seizing for a second—and at that moment, the proper color starts coming back into his scales—before plummeting down, down, down…

None of them have time to react further before the stone underneath them begins to crumble, and all of them instinctively reach for purchase before they plunge. The debris rains down all around them, and the storm-heavy air of the Lair grows more oppressive with the fall of its occupant, weighing them down so much that not even Paimon can remain afloat.

Whatever Lumine manifested earlier is no more, and does not help her here. A scream bubbles in her throat as she drops; she is not used to falling, not like this, and the nightmares so especially prevalent from her days under Starsnatch Cliff come bubbling to the surface. Fear clouds her mind and she squeezes her eyes shut—

And she hits something hard, but warm.

She opens her eyes to the blue sky, wings beating solid around her, and it takes a moment to realize that she and the others rest safely on Dvalin’s back.

Diluc and Jean look a little shaken but recover quickly, awe at their location taking over. Paimon crawls forward to hold Lumine’s hand, far more distressed at their sudden descent.

And Venti—Venti smiles gently as he sprawls at the base of Dvalin’s neck.

“It’s been awhile since we last flew like this together, huh?” he murmurs, and the dragon lets out a low rumble.

“Why…why did you not ask me to protect you…like the last time?”

“Me not wanting you to listen to the Abyss Order doesn’t mean you have to listen to me,” the bard chuckles, “Can freedom, mandated by the god of such, really be considered freedom at all?”

Lumine blinks at the question, and Dvalin does not answer, or at least does not do so now.

“It has indeed been a long time…Barbatos…”

Venti smiles.

“Welcome back, old friend,” he says.

The sky is a brilliant, brilliant blue, the view even more breathtaking from the back of a dragon. Venti looks remarkably relaxed, a smile lifting his lips, and after a moment, he begins to sing. Even unaccompanied, his voice is beautiful and pure, and Dvalin’s body illuminates with Anemo energy as the bard graces him with power once more.

“We really did it,” Diluc says wryly, as they soar through the air, and Jean chuckles.

“I believed we would,” she replies confidently, looking to Lumine.

Lumine’s lips crack into a smile, and then she laughs, perhaps a little hysterically, before realizing that tears are rolling down her face. She touches them with surprise, baffled by her own reaction; she hurts just as much as she feels exultation.

“I’m glad,” she mutters, unable to say anything else.

She looks to Venti, who lifts his head just enough to give her a blinding smile as he continues to sing.

This time, when she laughs again, the pressure in her chest is lighter.

Now go, with my blessing…

The air blows cleaner and sweeter when the curse upon Dvalin is broken and the much of the poison purified from his body.

Still, there is much to clean up upon their return to Mondstadt. Venti and Dvalin fly elsewhere for a while to catch up. Diluc returns to his own affairs. Jean handles the politics and diplomatic relations back in town, and Amber takes care of a mounting hilichurl invasion. Somewhere along the way, Kaeya has unearthed intelligence of the Abyss Order, enough to learn that there is now a Prince who heads the organization.

Amidst all this, not a single sighting of Aether despite numerous flyers and questions. The days following the fall of Stormterror and the return of Dvalin are busy for the others, though Lumine is free to come and go as she pleases.

In the end, she spends much of it with fair bard and curious dragon.

Dvalin comes to land every so often by the Hero’s Tree, curling around its base. Lumine approaches him slowly at first, but he already seems quite used to her presence—as perhaps one might, if they had another’s hand dug into their very flesh before. In any case, Venti would vouch for her. She and the bard lean against the dragon’s side, and both Dvalin and Venti sigh contentedly at the purity her presence seems to add.

“You…” Dvalin says, turning his head to sniff Lumine’s hair. “You feel…familiar…and yet, your powers are not that of I’ve seen…”

Venti plucks at his lyre, humming in agreement. She had taken…no, channeled was perhaps the better word, for what she did during the battle. She had channeled his powers, but there had also been some of her own present, of course. It had been a startling feeling, yet not strictly unpleasant.

“Not an Archon, and supposedly not a god, but just you. And yet…you are not mortal, are you?”

Lumine says nothing for a while, but Venti seems content to wait.

“No,” she says, “But I cannot answer the question you are not asking.”

He laughs.

“Well of course not, for how will you know what I am asking?” he says, and she gives him a pointed look which makes him laugh again. “Come, why don’t you tell me about yourself, Lumine, Traveler of Worlds?”

She blinks at him, leaning forward a little.

“Me?”

“Isn’t that what I said? Your favorite flowers, favorite foods? Or…what you do if you can’t sleep, or what you like to do if it rains?”

She leans back again, and reaches over to pat Dvalin’s neck absentmindedly. He makes a pleased sound, then stops abruptly as if such a thing is beneath him.

“I like all flowers,” she finally begins, “And all foods. There’s nothing in particular I do if I cannot sleep…I sleep as I need to and wake as I need to. There is nothing in particular I do if it rains, either.”

“Tough crowd,” Venti murmurs, but doesn’t seem deterred. “Alright, then, how about your brother? What about him?”

“Aether? Hmmm…” Lumine tilts her head, thinking, but answers far more readily. “He likes all flowers, too, but…I think he’d be particularly fond of the lamp grass and windwheel asters here. If he cannot sleep, or if he is bothered, he flies. If it rains, he flies then, too.”

“Sounds like he likes to fly, then,” Venti says, and Lumine smiles.

“We both do, but Aether…Aether liked the acrobatics. He liked tricks. And the thrill of plummeting. He was not afraid of falling.”

Venti plucks his lyre, debating on what to say next. How interesting that she can hardly speak of herself, yet so much of her brother. He wonders if she knows what it is she does.

“How would you describe yourself, O Hero of Mondstadt?” he asks, and she furrows her brows.

“Not a hero,” she replies, “And just what is it that you hope to achieve from these questions?”

“Oh, humor a bard,” he grins, and she sighs.

“Aether was better at speaking, I think,” she begins again. “I am not so angry as he. But he accepts more than I do. The sun, the flowers, the air. Isn’t that enough to live for? That was his answer, when I asked why we were here. He won many arguments with his simple, easy logic. I queried more than he, perhaps. He was more…relaxed, about forgiveness. And I was not so ready to love things as Aether was; for me, it was pity that came first.”

Venti strums a tune as she speaks, half-composing as he changes chords based on her answers.

“Do you know—when asked to speak of yourself, you tell me of Aether first, and define yourself by what he is not?”

Lumine tilts her head.

“Is that so strange, when we were born together, and have spent our lives in each other’s company?”

Venti inclines his head in acknowledgement.

“And yet…is it so strange to define yourself in other ways?” He doesn’t expect her answer, however, for the question is…too difficult for her to do so at present. “I should like to meet your brother, and hear what he says about you.”

Lumine watches as a crystalfly comes close, and opens her palm for it to land. It hovers only for a moment, and she closes her fist the moment it flies off.

She leans back again and closes her eyes, folding her hands in her lap as she lets her mind wander. Eventually she opens her eyes again, looking up at the tree, her brows furrowed in thought.

“Can freedom mandated by the god of freedom be considered freedom at all? I am still considering the answer to the question you asked of Dvalin.”

The dragon peers at her at the mention of his name.

“I chose,” he rumbles, “If I chose to choose….that is an answer…”

Lumine considers this. Venti smiles and draws his fingers across the strings loudly, then begins a new song.

She leans back and listens, feeling at peace.

She curses how weak she’s become when Signora plunges her fist into Venti and steals his precious core.

Lumine screams; the sight evokes a distant memory that she cannot recall clearly, but she is terrified suddenly of Venti disappearing entirely. He had not been lying before when he called himself the weakest of the Seven; his powers were just enough to provide aid in the fight against Dvalin, and are no match against the freezing ice the Harbinger had trapped him in.

(And her own…where? Where was it now?)

“At last, Mondstadt’s rodent ruler in the flesh. Scurrying through the streets, looking for leftovers…Mondstadt calls this a god?” Signora had drawled, gripping Venti’s face and turning it to and fro.

“Resident rodent beats invasive vermin,” Venti spat, and Lumine could have commended his cheek if not for the additional violence it brought against him.

His body falls to the ground, and Lumine is relieved that his body does not disintegrate into the air. He taunts Signora once more before she kicks him unconscious, and Lumine lunges forward despite her captors’ vice grip.

“We have what we came for,” Signora says, the core’s green glow disappearing as her fingers close around it. “Leave nothing for our dear Favonian friends to find.”

Sharp pressure strings at the back of the neck, and Lumine too topples to the ground. Before her vision fades, she reaches out; the scene is familiar, too familiar. Black and red at the pinpoint of her vision, her hand reaching for what has been stolen…

She had told Venti that it was Aether who was more prone to anger, but as she watches Signora walk away, the last thing she feels is rage.

After the Deaconess Barbara’s healing (and a hurried word of gratitude), Lumine makes a mad dash for the Tree, skidding through the streets with fervor.

The moment she spots Venti underneath its branches, she nearly tackles him as she wraps her arms around him for a second, then holds him at arm’s length to inspect him.

“What did she do to you?” Lumine demands, and Venti blinks at her in astonishment at this rare display of such intense emotion.

“Your concern is touching, but your actual touch is quite bruising at present,” he says, and Lumine lets go immediately with a frown. He smiles. “A bit down on my luck nowadays, aren’t I?”

“What was it she took from you?” Paimon repeats, “That…gnosis of yours?”

Venti inclines his head, looking at Lumine, who also waits for his answer with creased brows.

“Perhaps something like a god, and yet unknowing of gnoses…how curious,” he murmurs, but answers Paimin’s question anyway.

Without his gnosis, he has lost much of his elemental powers, but not all of it, and can still subsist. Lumine stores the information he is willing to share with them away; gnoses, Celestica, Visions, allogenes, the Tsaritsa and her Harbingers, a catastrophe from 500 years ago...there is so much she does not know—or remember.

But when Venti suggests her next destination as Liyue, she does realize that it is time to go. She has grown to like Mondstadt and the air that Venti has encouraged; already she is a little wistful, but she will not stop searching for Aether.

Venti smiles at her expression, and when he speaks again, there is a different quality to his voice.

“Traveler,” he says, and as Lumine breathes in the air is both sharp and sweet, “As you set off once again, remember that the journey itself has meaning. The birds of Teyvat, the songs and the cities, the Tsaritsa, her Fatui and the monsters…they are all part of your journey. The destination is not everything. So before you reach the end, keep your eyes open. Use the chance to take in the world around you.”

She feels…guilt. She has lived a long, long time, and there are things she has purposefully let go, as well as things she has not.

“Yes, Barbatos,” she whispers, and Venti’s eyes are just a little sad.

“Right! That’s enough of the Anemo Archon’s admonishments. Back to Venti time!” he exclaims, eyes brightening as he claps his hands together. “Say—we’ve become a great team during this time, don’t you think? Once you find your brother…how would you like to become one of the new Four Winds?”

Lumine blinks at him, then lets out a small laugh, much to both Paimon and Venti’s surprise.

“Perhaps,” she says, and Paimon makes a doubtful noise.

“You don’t seem too into it, Lumine…but if it means free food, you can consider Paimon!” she exclaims, turning to the bard with an excited wiggle.

Venti lets out an insincere chuckle, rubbing the back of his head, and Lumine covers more laughter with her hand while Paimon pouts.

“Thank you, Venti,” Lumine says, and he gives her a sweeping bow.

“Well then, best be off to Liyue,” he says with a wink, “If the descension ritual you fail to tally, then another year you must dally.

When he straightens again, however, she cannot quite tell which identity he is speaking with.

“And go,” he says, “With my blessing.”

Regardless, Lumine sweeps a returning bow. But before she leaves him, she holds out her hand, and after a moment, a cecelia shimmers into her palm. Venti blinks, and in another second she is tucking it behind his ear.

He laughs delightedly at the gift, and she smiles at him before making her way back to Mondstadt.

“Well then, shall we go too?” Venti asks, and surges up to where Dvalin is waiting.

They watch from above later as she leaves the town after making her goodbyes.

“The winds are changing at quite the rapid pace,” Venti murmurs to his friend.

Dvalin rumbles low in agreement.

“She smells of sorrow, and of age-old memory…” Dvalin says, and Venti furrows his brows.

“Yes, it’s very curious, isn’t it? I can only think that she too is a god. And yet…of what, and where?”

Neither have an answer.

Rain begins to fall, a couple hours after she’s left Mondstadt.

Lumine stops on the road, looking up at the grey sky, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the drops plop onto her face.

“We should look for shelter!” Paimon exclaims, putting her hands over her head, and Lumine considers it.

Instead, she puts out her hand, and an umbrella manifests in it. She opens it, the blue-green fabric patterned with dandelions, and rests the handle on her shoulder.

“I’ll keep going,” she says quietly, “But I’ll not ask you to stay out.”

Paimon looks at her, then also takes shelter under the umbrella.

“No, I’ll stay,” she says, “Paimon is your guide!

Lumine smiles faintly, and the two continue onwards.

After a while, she begins to hum softly, absently. The tune rises and falls, and speaks to the wind, and traveling through worlds. Paimon eventually comes to rest on her shoulder, hanging sleepily.

“What’s that song?” she murmurs, already dozing off, “It’s nice.”

Lumine stops abruptly, blinking, the notes dissipating like wisps of smoke.

“…I’m not sure,” she says softly, with a slight frown as she resumes walking. “I seem to have already forgotten it.”

#genshin impact #genshin lumine #genshin traveler #genshin venti #mondstadt #genshin impact fic #fanfiction #i spent too long thinking and then gave up on the chapter summary #maybe i'll come up w something better later LOL

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detectivecarlosreyes · 4 years ago

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Series: Part 2 of Hidden Truths / Link to Part 1: The Secrets We Keep

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Chapter summary:

Buck has moved into Eddie's place, Eddie has noticed something is up with him but he doesn't know what. Maybe things would have turned out differently if Buck had remembered to shut his bedroom door.

read under the cut

Eddie loved having Buck around. As much as he loved Carla’s help with Christopher when he was at work, it just didn’t compare to having a second set of hands around the house when he was home. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t felt stressed as a single dad trying to get everything done in a day.

And now he had Buck there who was just there to fill in the gaps as if it was the easiest thing in the world. It hasn’t felt this easy since he lived with Shannon. Having him in the house made Eddie realise what he had been missing since he moved to LA.

Buck somehow managed to get the things done that Eddie never seemed to have at the forefront of his mind; Putting on a load of laundry before the hamper was overflowing, wiping down the cooktop of the stove before it was caked in layers of splattered food and oil and lastly but most importantly, keeping the freezer well-stocked with homemade frozen meals for the days when they would get home late and didn’t have the energy for cooking but were still in need of something substantial to eat.

There was only one thing that bothered him though, Buck had moved in a little over two weeks ago and Eddie, for the life of him, couldn’t put his finger on what was different about him. The only thing he noticed was that Buck was quieter, more subdued somehow, but Eddie couldn’t think of a reason why that would be.

He still kept to their usual routine of cooking the three of them breakfast or dinner when they had that time together, so they didn’t have to rely on Eddie’s woeful cooking abilities. He still lit up like the sun when Chris would ask him for help with something. And he was always ready to lend a hand whenever Eddie needed something done.

He fit seamlessly into their lives without breaking a sweat and yet it felt like Eddie was missing a vital piece of information, a piece to the puzzle that was Buck because at the moment he could see the puzzle, but he wasn’t actually seeing the picture it created. It bothered him, but he didn’t want to bring it up, because there wasn’t an actual problem to bring up and he knew that Buck would tell him if there was something wrong, wouldn’t he?

He finally got his answer a couple of nights later when he was woken up to the sound of low whimpers and whispers. He was generally a light sleeper, it came with the territory when you were in the army and it was something he’d never been able to shake since.

Getting up, Eddie padded his way down the hallway, expecting to find Christopher having a rare nightmare, something he hadn’t had for months now, only to find him sleeping soundly. Frowning, he listened again thinking maybe he had been imagining the sounds, only to hear more clearly now that they were coming from Buck’s room. And his door was open.

Eddie frowned even more deeply at that because in all the time Buck had stayed here, never once did he leave his bedroom door open. He must have been exhausted if he’d forgotten to do it this time.

Not entirely sure what to expect, Eddie hesitantly peered around the doorframe to see something he never could have anticipated.

In the silver moonlight that was filtering through the window by Buck’s head, Eddie could see that Buck was curled up in the foetal position facing the door, looking the smallest he had ever seen him. There was sweat beaded on his forehead and he had a white knuckle grip on his pillow which he had pulled tightly to his chest. Even from his position by the door, Eddie could see Buck’s lips moving as he murmured in his sleep, periodically making a sound louder than a whisper.

It was heartbreaking to witness Buck in such a vulnerable state, and before Eddie knew it his feet were carrying him to Buck’s bedside and he was reaching out to wake him from whatever bad dream he seemed to be having. Eddie hovered with his hand above Buck’s shivering form, wondering whether or not this was a good idea.

Now that he was closer, he could see that the sweat was not just on Buck’s forehead but actually coating his body in a glistening sheen, matting his short untamed curls to his forehead. While he tried to make up his mind, Buck uttered the first clear thing since he found him like this, “Christopher… where are you?...” he muttered into his pillow, “…need to…find you….”

Eddie couldn’t take it anymore, not with the amount of anguish he could hear even in Buck’s smallest of voices. The instant his hand contacted Buck’s exposed arm the guy jolted awake, blindly flailing his arms as if he was fighting an unseen force.

Eddie reacted quickly speaking to him as he manages to catch both of Buck’s forearms and pressed them to his chest “Buck! Buck, it’s alright, it's just me, its just Eddie.” It takes Buck a few beats, but he slowly takes in his surroundings, eyes eventually landing on Eddie.

“Eddie?” He managed to croak out, “What are you doing in my room?”

Seeing that Buck was back with him, Eddie released his arms but stayed close to the bed, “I could hear you from my room. You left your door open.” He ended up answering.

Buck sat up abruptly at that, eyes going almost comically wide, “Oh shit, Eddie! I forgot to shut it, I’m sorry for waking you.”

“It's fine, I’m actually glad you did. Are you alright?” Eddie asked even though he already knew the answer.

Buck shrugged and looked down at his lap. “Yeah, I’m fine. You should just go back to bed.”

Eddie considered the answer for a moment tempted to leave him be and just go back to sleep, that is until he eyed the glazed look in his face and saw the tremors wracking Buck’s body. He knew a bad nightmare when he saw one. “Hmm, nope. Come on.”

Eddie took Buck’s wrist and pulled him out of bed, ignoring the hushed protests coming from said man. He doesn’t release him until they were in his bedroom standing at the foot of the bed. He left him standing there but Eddie felt Buck’s eyes on him as he moved to close the door.

Buck stood there, mouth slightly agape, crossing one arm to rub the other. “Uh, Eddie? What are you doing?”

“Get in the bed Buck.” He said as he gestured towards it from his position beside the door.

“What?!”

“Get. In. The. Bed. It’s not rocket science.” When Buck still doesn’t move from his spot, he sighed and lay down onto his side of the bed and pats the spot next to him, “Look, I know how hard it can be to sleep after a nightmare. What I do know is that it’s easier when there’s someone next to you. So just get in the damn bed. I won’t bite.”

In the darkness, Eddie could see Buck’s silhouette standing there as he weighed it up in his head before he gingerly settled himself under the covers on the other side of the bed as far as he could be from Eddie. Even across the space between them, Eddie could feel the tension coming off Buck in waves and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep until Buck was comfortable and relaxed.

“You were dreaming about the tsunami, weren’t you?” He asked quietly in the dark void of the bedroom, breaking the tense silence.

“How did you know?” Buck’s voice was small, barely louder than a whisper.

Eddie shifted his head and looked at Buck before rolling over to face him, sliding his hand under his pillow. “You were talking in your sleep before I woke you. Buck, that was so long ago, why are you having nightmares about it now?”

Just barely Eddie could see from Buck’s profile that he was staring up at the ceiling. “I haven’t had one in ages but then I had to recover that body from the river a few weeks ago.” He eventually ended us saying after a pregnant pause. “That’s what brought back the nightmares, it was a vivid reminder of what I saw when I was searching for Chris.”

Well, that explained why he reacted the way he did all those weeks ago. “So, this isn’t the first time you’ve had them, you had them back then too. Is that why you always sleep with your door shut? So we wouldn’t hear you?”

“Pretty much yeah.” Buck breathed out.

“Oh Buck, come here. I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner.” Eddie reaches across the bed and tugs at Buck’s still-damp shirt until he was on his side facing Eddie, and he shuffled over so he could wrap his arms around Buck, so his face was against his chest. Buck stiffened at the unexpected hug before he slowly relaxed into Eddie’s arms with a sigh.

“Thanks, Eddie,” Buck mumbled into his shirt, his voice was thick with sleep as he valiantly fought to stay awake as if he knew that if he fell asleep again, it would just result in another nightmare. Peering down at Buck’s face Eddie felt this unexpected want well up inside him to kiss away the worry lines on Buck’s forehead. Feeling like that would definitely be crossing some sort of line, Eddie draws Buck in even closer instead, “I’m here now, so try to get some rest and I’m a light sleeper so I’ll wake you again it if it starts back up.”

That must have been what Buck was waiting to hear because barely a minute later his breathing was evening out, gently pressing the loose material of Eddie’s shirt against his skin in slow rhythmic breaths as his body tilted forward so he was resting more heavily against Eddie than he was before.

Eddie stayed awake for longer though, thinking about the situation he’d put himself in. Nothing about this felt uncomfortable, Buck was his best friend and holding him like this, in an almost intimate way felt so normal. And that’s what had him wondering. Wondering if what he’s feeling was platonic love or romantic love. For goodness sake, he had just thought about kissing his best friend’s head which was a sentiment that has never crossed his mind before.

Has he gone from loving Buck as a friend, to think that there might be something more to it than just that? If so, when did that happen? He has loved having Buck’s friendship, and yet now, in this moment it felt like how it was when he was with Shannon. And it felt good, better even, than he could have thought possible. But what would Buck think about it? He’s only here in the bed right now because he was in a vulnerable state with nightmares clouding his judgment.

It was too late now for him to be thinking about this, and maybe he was imagining things with exhaustion pulling at the edges of his consciousness. He’ll consider everything when he wakes up, thinking about it properly with a clear head, but right now he was content, cradling Buck’s sleeping form to his chest as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and maybe, just maybe it was.

Tags: @judsonryder @bisexualbuck @benjisvictor @seaofashes @chimbuckleys @maysgrant @pan-buck @adamngoodbuck @buckleydiazs @nearly-writes @oliversstark @brilliantbanshee @eddiediaz @gracieli

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gunnerpalace · 5 years ago

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How do you think how Ori would do as a villain?

In my view, Orihime’s pathway to villainy would be using her powers to reject all the events that get in the way of her getting what she wants (which is to say, mostly Ichigo). In other words, going Full Spooky Galadriel and deciding, “In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen! […] All shall love me and despair!”

Now, she could settle for the present where Ichigo already knows Rukia, and Aizen and Yhwach are off the board, but we already know what that yields because of 686: a universe where Ichigo is at his absolute happiest when he just sees Rukia again and argues with her, rather than when he marries Orihime or she gives birth to their son, or whatever typical things might be cited as the happiest moments of one’s life. And, honestly? From Orihime’s perspective? That must really fucking suck.

So, if Orihime is going Full Spooky Galadriel (Orihime Untethered), why would she settle? Surely she can do better than that. And the simplest way to do better would be deleting Yhwach and Aizen at the right times in history.

The right time for the former would be during the late 1980s or early 1990s, and would keep Masaki alive and fundamentally alter Ichigo as a character (probably significantly dulling his focus on protection and removing his disaffection), and removes future problems associated with the Quincy coming back.

Doing the latter could only be done in the latter-half of the 1980s, after Ichigo had been conceived, but before Aizen set any of his other plans in motion. So the Visored and Urahara Shop would still be around, and Kaien and Miyako would still be dead. Regardless, doing this would keep him from doing what he did with Rukia.

Trouble is, the Hougyoku is already in Rukia’s soul by that time. And it seems highly likely that Aizen did not “send” Rukia to Ichigo, but rather that the Hougyoku bent Aizen’s machinations so that it happened. (Why would Aizen be immune to the Hougyoku’s effects?) In other words, the Hougyoku being stuffed in Rukia’s soul makes it seem likely that Rukia would still encounter Ichigo eventually, regardless of how normal and happy his life was, because their encounter is essentially fated. (Kaien more than likely reminds Rukia of Ichigo, in a non-linear framework, rather than Ichigo reminded Rukia of Kaien.)

So the trouble for Orihime Untethered is that she has to:

Delete two of the most powerful dudes in the series (admittedly not at their strongest) to get a lock on the guy she wants (i.e., by removing “incentives” for him to not want to be human, and to remove her main competition) when her powers don’t work on any sufficiently powerful reiatsu.

Her main competition still having a reality-altering device shoved into her soul which may or may not be beyond Orihime’s powers to mess with even if she could kill a merely Shinigami Aizen and a comatose Yhwach. (As it was never made clear whether she actually could destroy the incomplete Hougyoku with her powers, and it sure seems like Aizen is impossible to destroy with one in him in the present.)

So the question here is: where does Orihime Untethered get the kind of monstrous power that would be necessary for such feats? And the only place she could reasonably get it from would probably be if Uryuu decided to somehow lend her the power by going beast mode in a reishi rich environment.

Whether Uryuu is stupid enough to do that for her without knowing what she really intends, for the sake of making her happy even if he’s not in the picture at all, is an open question. (Perhaps yes, because Uryuu can be dumb like that.)

So, Aizen and Yhwach get deleted and the Hougyoku is plucked out of Rukia. (I feel it’d be going a bit far for even Orihime Untethered to delete Rukia, and I really don’t think Uryuu would agree to that.) This of course means it is never around to be in proximity to Orihime herself and Chad, so she is also retroactively keeping herself from getting powers in the first place.

Oh, that’s a problem. It’s a one-way ticket. This isn’t Donnie Darko or The Butterfly Effect: if your powers get deleted from the timestream you can’t get them back and you’re stuck. Ooh. So maybe don’t delete the Hougyoku from Rukia, even if you can. But doesn’t that then mean you’re relying on encountering her…?

Masaki would probably teach Ichigo about Quincy powers once he was of age, so he’d probably have noticed and gravitated toward Uryuu in school?

But the thing is, even if Masaki (and Kanae) didn’t die, Souken still did. So Uryuu would still become bitter toward Shinigami. Maybe he would turn Ichigo onto that way of thinking too? So they probably still become embroiled with Soul Society.

Okay, so Orihime has to have deleted Mayuri too now, to keep Souken alive and keep Uryuu and Ichigo from fighting against Shinigami. Uryuu in the present giving her the power to change shit carte blanche would probably be cool with that.

So, Souken is alive too. His big thing was cooperation with Shinigami. Working with them to eliminate Hollows in a non-destructive way while protecting humans. His proposal seemed to have been working at least a little.

What’s to say that Rukia isn’t sent as Soul Society’s representative as part of that program? Or one of the people sent? Or that she isn’t sent to walk the beat in Karakura anyway, since it seems to be the 13th Division’s responsibility? Especially so if she still has the Hougyoku in her, warping events around to take her to Ichigo?

So, there’s Quincy Uryuu and Quincy Ichigo (with latent Shinigami and Hollow powers…) working with Shinigami, including maybe Rukia. If Rukia didn’t have the Hougyoku, and turned up like this, Orihime would have no ability to get her powers back and keep up. If you can’t get powers then can’t keep up if Ichigo and Uryuu start getting adventurous in this new, happier Bleach with more functional familial and friendly relationships. So she needs the Hougyoku to still be in Rukia no matter what.

She can’t remove the Hougyoku from Rukia, let alone delete her even if she wanted to, and her having the Hougyoku means she is almost assuredly going to show up. (Plus, even if you could delete her, karma is a bitch. Who’s to say she wouldn’t reincarnate even if you did delete her? Especially if you do it too early? She might just Senna her way back. Hell, even if it works, maybe Senna herself shows up to take her place! Especially since a lot of the filler is now being treated as semi-canonical.)

So, we go around in circles with the real problems.

The first real problem for Orihime Untethered is ultimately that Rukia is absolutely necessary to her own ability to have a role in Ichigo’s supernatural nonsense. Meanwhile, she can’t really strip Ichigo of powers because they’re fundamental to who he is. So there is no way to really undo things when it comes to either of them directly, just the things around them. Ichigo and Rukia are effectively “status locked” in a fashion similar to Doctor Who’s “time locked” concept.

The second real problem is that even without Aizen and Mayuri, Soul Society is still its corrupt self and likely to draw the Kurosaki and Ishida into its shenanigans. And even if Yhwach is eliminated, Wandenreich is also still out there. As are all the Espada. So some version of supernatural nonsense is basically guaranteed to happen, no matter how many other pieces you knock down.

At the end of the day, Ichigo and Rukia are going to meet. They are going to have adventures. They are going to develop a rapport. And her only real solution is going to be social engineering, not her powers. And the truth is, Orihime isn’t really that great at the Mean Girls game, and I doubt Orihime Untethered is either.

I see her trying to force, as much as possible, the series into being a slice-of-life school comedy series, and it kind of playing out like Groundhog Day as she selectively undoes things and redoes scenarios, and it just never works out. And that leads back to the fundamental issue she’s encountering: she is trying to fuck with something that is more or less written into the fundamental laws of the universe itself.

Even if she gets Ichigo, it’s always going to be some form of settling for less. She is always going to be the second-place prize. And she is also likely to be only a temporary one, because if souls are kicking around at a rate of aging ~30 years per 2000 years that pass, an awful lot can change. And that’s before taking into account the confirmed mechanic of reincarnation.

(And this is, ultimately, why 686 is stupid in addition to being a non sequitur: okay, IH and RR had kids. So fucking what? Divorces happen. People can change, grow apart, and move on. As I said once before, what is “five lifetimes” in comparison to like, 5000 years? Or an infinite cycle of maximally 5000 year reincarnations? Barring their souls being killed somehow, Ichigo and Rukia are going to be around for longer into the future than we are now from when the Pyramids were built. You think some possibly expedient marriages are going to keep them apart all that time? Or into their next lives? Yeah, no. That’s the thing: their story isn’t over even if Bleach is. That’s yet another reason that ending is so shit beyond its character assassination and ass-pull pairings: literally anything could happen beyond it. It is not definitive because these are not normal-ass normal people.)

So what does she do, trapped in this hell of her own creation? As I see it, she has three options:

She goes completely crazy and decides to delete existence itself or massively restructure it a la Yhwach. I also really don’t think Uryuu would agree to that and I can see it ending rather tragically.

She decides to just accept being second-best with a smile until it eventually burns her out, at which point she probably tries to find someone who actually appreciates her. (One guess as to who that is.)

She skips being miserable and instead grows up and realizes that Ichigo is never going to be as happy with her as he is with Rukia, and that she needs to find that person immediately rather than wasting everyone’s time, including her own.

So we’ll call (1) the really angsty ending, discard (2) because it’s just a drawn out and angsty version of (3) which admittedly a lot of real people fall into, and we’ll call (3) the happy ending because hey, at least Orihime’s selfish efforts to rewrite the timeline would have improved the pile of shit that is life in Bleach by restoring some sense of family bonds and healthy relationships.

#Asks #also #paging #rodella #because this seems like a concept you might be interested in

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bounward · 4 years ago

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DAW | 1,623 words - but still not enough [re: everyone]

Dawson… was ready. He (thought) he knew what would come next, and he was prepared for it. Or, rather, as prepared as a man could be, before ultimately facing death.

Then death walked through the doors, alive as ever.

The folklorist stared, his head reeling as he tried to make sense of the situation. Listened, as his peers spoke - voices somehow more real than ever before, when they had been mere ghosts of themselves. Waited, for the questions about his crime, for O'Malley to pull away, for the escape via punishment that… seemed like it would not come. Not yet.

Shaking and miserable, Dawson was not. A man wrestling with his convictions… perhaps that was more apt.

His heart ached, seeing Dola again. Lucita again. Chirin again. Vixen and Chuck again. Basil again. He’d had no way of knowing that they’d be returning, somehow, some way. If he had, would he have held back? Dawson felt the familiar sting of loneliness, of loss - now more than ever, seeing them here, in the flesh. It was right that the people he longed to reach out to most sat furthest from him, out of reach. (Not that they would consider reaching back, at this point.) He watched their emotional reunions, aching for one of his own. Dawson withdraws his hand from O'Malley’s entirely, and places it in his lap.

Well, he’d made his bed. He could lay in it later - for now, answers.

“Ah, I suppose any questions I have can come later, hm?” he asks, green eyes slowly drifting from person to person. “You want to know the how, and I assume Prix’s not going to give us much time for the remainder of our discussion, so… Allow me lay it out plain, then. No point in hiding it, and no time to waste hashing it out.”

After inhaling deeply, he begins speaking, and does not pause for questions or sidelong glances. Dawson keeps his eyes trained to the table in front of him, as if looking anyone else in the eye might cause him to falter.

Even as he spoke, their words flooded his mind.

“This wasn’t as methodically planned as you probably assume. I didn’t sit and stew over wanting to kill [Basil] for weeks, plotting out my plan of attack. You saw the hasty cover-up - death hadn’t been my intention. Not at first.”

“I spoke to Basil a few weeks ago, about… more or less the same topic. The Wardens, whether our association with them might be able to lend itself to some use in understanding the tapes. I’ve been mulling those things over, since I realized they existed. How do they work? Why do they work? What combination of technology and magic allows these artifacts to function, and could we glean some sort of information from them? I’d hoped Basil would be able to assist.”

“… The conversation didn’t go anywhere, and I felt as though he’d been hiding things. Understandably, in hindsight, considering his feelings toward the Wardens - ah, and towards me.” You’re a real fuckin’ dick now. “Both of which I have been oblivious to, it seems. And since I seem to be rather skilled at drawing the ire of my peers around the topic of the tapes, I took it to the living members of my crew.” You cooooooooouldn’t wait until I was cold in the ground before pissing me off again. "Dola and Lucita were gone, but this was something we might be able to do. The three of us talked it over, decided to try and question Basil further. I asked [O'Malley] to stay behind, knowing that I didn’t want to put him into the middle of my own theories - and knowing his closeness to Pan. However, we decided Fievel would tag along, just in case anything did go awry - and to be a second set of ears to hear what Basil might have to say.“

"The plan was to question him, then bring the information back to the rest of the group to discuss and figure out how we’d handle it from there, together." …But you have never listened to me anyway. "Fievel and I went to the theme park to test out his abilities in a larger body of water. If anything went wrong, we wanted to be able to stun Basil - not kill him. You saw the results of those tests - the People Mover was drained of power, the fish in the lagoon had been killed. Not exactly a thorough means of training, but good enough to know how much or how little charge to use in the moment.”

“… I met with Basil that night, in the lobby of the Modern building. We were headed toward the Old Time Bar via the Oasis, and I stopped to discuss things there, where Fievel had hidden himself. I brought the tranquilizer gun with me, tucked into a pocket, just in case. The conversation… didn’t go anywhere, again. Ah, it got a little heated.” Yo-ou gave him no escape, forced him to dig up terrible memories for your own satisfaction, to satisfy your own theory crafting–! “I pushed Basil into the pool, and yelled out to Fievel. I think what happened next is obvious. We quickly retrieved Basil from the water, and restrained him with the bedsheets I’d cut earlier, preparing for an interrogation once he woke up. I’d tossed most of them into a bucket of bleach, not anticipating needing them all… but ended up using them, anyway. I’m not a master of tying knots.”

“Which is clear, since Basil broke free from his restraints upon waking up, after Fievel had already left to recharge. I pulled out the gun, but didn’t shoot. Basil started to use his powers - light radiated from his hands. It was bright, I dropped the gun, I, ah… I panicked.”

Beneath the table, Dawson knits his hands together. He wouldn’t force O'Malley to comfort him through this. He could hardly look to Smee for support, now that Dola was back with them. He’d put enough on Tanya, after killing her close friend. His quadmates couldn’t be expected to carry him anymore.

But still, the image of the light… It seared through his memory, like a seven-year-old boy, back in the forest amidst a thunderstorm. His heart beat faster with every clap of thunder, until he saw that flash of light, and everything went dark. His mind turned to static, and his body moved on its own. Dawson squeezed his hands together, knuckles draining white.

“I rushed Basil. He was still weak from the shock. I thought his reaction to my questions was proof enough that he might have had something to do with the tapes as a whole. The traitors. And… I figured that the only way our group would be able to make an actionable decision would be here, in the boardroom, with a vote.” If you don’t want what happened to [Chuck] to happen to Fievel or Dawson, vote for me. "Even if it meant facing my own death in exchange for murdering an old colleague, I… wanted to bring us back here.“

Finally, he pauses for longer than a breath between paragraphs. It’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot to put out. There’s no catharsis, no release of the weight from his shoulders. They droop, as if holding more weight - as if each explanation only adds to it, rather than allowing it to lift.

”… I’m not going to re-hash all the details about trying to cover it up. Most of you saw it, anyway. And I’m not going to excuse my actions, either. Ah… What was it I said, last time we were here? ‘Every single one of us has something that can justify the crimes we might commit, or the crimes we might overlook.’“ You didn’t get it none. Guess, guess you do now. ”I suppose in that moment, I felt that the ends justified the means, despite being unforgiveable.“

His eyes pan to Knuckles, next to him. A gaze that reads, I understand now, affixed to an expression that laments, I don’t want to.

After a few moments of this, he turns his face to meet the eyes of those who had asked him questions. To Campion, to Chirin, to Dola - a pause, however brief - to Tanya, to Chuck, to… as many faces as he could, before returning back to the table.

"I think the connection of the case to the traitors is clear, isn’t it? I wanted to question [Basil] based on my assumption that he could have done something to help explain - or at least more effectively look into - the tapes, and how they worked, perhaps lead us to a connection to the traitors. I killed him because of his reaction; I assumed he was one of the traitors, and wanted to bring us back here to discuss and vote on it. If I was going to kill anyone, at least it would have been…”

He trails off. Easier? Better? One fewer person to have to kill later?

“… one out of the two traitors. I know that so many of us were content to living here for however much longer - but why would we trust Prix on her word, or lack thereof? And none of us knew that we’d be reunited at all, let alone so soon.”

“I would not have done what I did, had I known everyone would return. That we might have been able to get this chance without the need for such drastic action. But I can’t undo my mistakes, so ah, perhaps all I can say now is…”

The regret permeates throughout his body as Dawson finally allows his eyes to settle on Basil.

“Welcome back.”

#ch4 #trial #dawson #submission

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curewhimsy · 4 years ago

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More Shiro-Sora things

I haven’t uploaded these tidbits to tumblr yet.

—————

—Catchphrases— Iroha says “nyaa” at times SeeU has a habit of saying “meow” Dex says “woof” sometimes Nigaito’s verbal tic is “gyuu” Miki says “Chun chun!” A lot... to be cute. Haku tends to say “Uwaah!” A lot. Uta’s catchphrase is “Yare yare...” (“Good grief...”) Taya’s catchphrase is “Is that sou, desu ne?” (“Sou desu ne” is basically “Is that so?” in Japanese. I combined the two. —Quirky behavior— Lapis carries around a toy wand and pretends to cast spells. Anon is just... chaotic neutral, in the way Luana and Isadore (OCs) are. She does things like eating Lunchables in the bathtub at midnight in the dark to prove that Lunchables float. Why midnight, and why in the dark? Because she doesn’t want dust bunnies to see her boobs. She’s also a very skilled mime. Kanon is wacky, and chaotic good. Like Luana and Isadore (OCs) but in a different way than Anon. She’s the type of person to immediately press a random button she found that says “Do not press.” She likes to annoy people with sound effects from her slide-whistle. She also likes playing dramatic kazoo. She also has clown skills, like juggling, and the ability to ride a unicycle. Teto is like Fuuko (Clannad) Taya is smart and dignified but... very clumsy and naive as well. Uta is badass, but kind of “chaotic dumb” in certain ways. Sometimes she forgets to do her homework while doing her homework. Don’t ask. Taya loves sweets, and his favorite is strawberry shortcake. He is also a good pastry chef... Uta is horrible at cooking! She is so horrible, that she makes things mega-explode! She is so horrible, she needs Taya to cook for her just so she can get by! Gakupo has some pretty sick ninja skills, just saying. Miki sometimes slips into “animated mode,” where she begins to act like a cute shoujo anime protagonist. Miki also sometimes runs with bread in her mouth when she’s late for school. When Ruko was late for school, she ran to school with an entire plate of breakfast in her mouth! Taya gets completely drunk after just a few sips of alcohol... Haku sure can hold her alcohol. She can beat everyone in a drinking contest... Nigaito is endearingly moe. He likes drawing pictures. Miki sometimes lends him cute manga about hamsters, his favorite animal. Ruby likes starfish for some reason. She always assumes every star-shaped item is supposed to be a starfish... Taya’s recorded voice has a tendency to break headphones. Nobody knows exactly why. Ruko is a very big eater. Akari likes stars. Ruby likes starfish. Piko likes stargazing. Yukari likes star celebrities. Nigaito likes the Big Dango Family song. Ruby tries to convince him that starfish are cuter and proposes the Big Starfish Family. Taya and Momo get into a rather heated argument over whether strawberries or peaches are better. Uta asks herself why she’s surrounded by airheads. Uta buys Taya a strawberry Squishmallow for his birthday. In no time, Taya is able to think of a personality and an extensive backstory for his new plush friend... Uta is impressed. Yukari fakes being mysterious and sophisticated to impress IA. It doesn’t work. —Funny Moments brainstorm!— Group chemistry! Misunderstandings... One time Taya tried playing Uta’s violin instead of his usual cello. He played an earsplitting tune and ended up breaking the violin. Not only does it just break, it comically explodes into little pieces! 46 of them to be exact... Taya mistook one of Akaito’s spicy habanero peppers as a new type of strawberry. He ate it, and it was so spicy that he temporarily lost the ability to speak.

“He’s just standing there... menacingly!” -Len, talking to Rin, referring to Kaito “Why did you set me on fire, Uta? Why didn’t you just write your essay?” -Taya ”Qingxian, I used your clarinet to unclog the toilet...” -Taya ”I am the darkness, I am the edge! I got this bruise falling from the ledge! Oh yeah!” -Zatsune “My voice is just naturally bass-boosted, I guess.” -Akaito ”You make the bass drop in my heart! I want to be together, with you.” -Yuuma, to Mizuki, in front of... everyone ”People all look the same to me. They all have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, arms, and legs. But Taya... you’re different. I can tell your soul apart.” -Uta “Take my hand... I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” -Taya. He was practicing lines from a short play he wrote himself. This captures Uta’s heart... “Take my hand... I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen... Now, shall we go?” -Taya, this time for real. He is reaching his hand out to Uta. He is trying to comfort her after an emotional moment. Both of them are about to cry. This is right before he confesses his love to her at the top of a hill under the stars.

—————

Random details- Taya is very polite, and selfless. He's always willing to do favors for people. He speaks in polite language. He bows at many occasions (Even in this universe that takes place in the USA, and not Japan.) He is humble as well. These may seem like quirks or obsessions as first, but it stems from his feeling of obligation to do things for people and "not be a burden," because he had friends and teachers who treated him like a burden before. When his anemia caused him to faint or miss classes, everyone treated him as a burden. When he starts hanging out with Uta, she comments on how he feels like a butler and tells him to loosen up, it's okay to be a bit more relaxed, and selfish even. Uta is pretty sarcastic, blunt, and sort of kuudere, so it'll be interesting to see her with the pure Taya Uta just lost her passion to depression, but that's touched on eventually/later She's all like "I hate life" but that's because of depression Taya tries to help out Uta and make her smile but... he ends up upsetting her... When Taya finds out how depressed Uta really is he starts crying for her and saying "I'm sorry..." and Uta is like "Why are you crying? Nothing is your fault..." And Taya apologizes again and says it's a habit that he feels responsible for his friend's sadness. Uta hugs him. "I haven't been able to cry for years, so I'm a bit jealous..." She says. "But... I still don't want you to cry though... I like to see your smile, ok?" Well I think the day Uta finally cries is when something bad happens to her but Taya comes and saves her and then confesses his love for her And then come the waterworks, from both of them! ——— There are magical moments where all 46 characters come together and do or create something. Such as a musical play. Do all 46 characters eventually become a gigantic group of friends? Imagine the 46 of them renting out an entire restaurant... and all taking turns performing karaoke! ——— List the backstories, secrets, sad hidden depth, tragedies, stories... and quirks! The quirks are how we grow to fall in love with these characters before we reveal the sadness. In the novel, it all ends happily... If it ever becomes a game, well... there would be a possible “good end” and possible “bad end”... ... Haku Yowane- Haku’s story is that she’s been lonely and insecure for most her entire life. Neru Akita- Neru’s story is that she has found herself alone and misunderstood for most of her days due to her temper. Miku Hatsune- Miku’s sincere, earnest dreams are crushed and she falls into a deep depression when she is diagnosed with an illness that will progressively damage her vocal chords. Miku never sang for selfish reasons. She sang out of love. She sang to connect others. She now compares herself to a caged bird, or one with broken wings. She wants to write a song about it... but she would rather have her final song be a happy tribute to all those who have helped her. Luka Megurine- Is Luka slowly fading away from this world somehow? Teto Kasane- Is Teto a spirit or something or other? Gumi- Gumi was bullied a lot since she was young, which traumatized her. Now people show her the tiniest bit of dislike, she panics or cries. Meiko Sakine- Meiko’s parents were neglectful, leaving her to have to mature on her own. Lapis Aoki- Is Lapis simply a wish fragment? Merli Aoki- Merli is still traumatized by the tragic death of her parents. Lily- Lily wants to change her image to someone more tame. She originally became a delinquent in middle school due to her parents’ constant fighting. IA- IA’s parents are divorced. It started after her mother had a miscarriage. She would’ve had a little sister named IO. Yukari Yuzuki- Yukari feels very insecure a lot... Uta Utane- Depressed, and doesn’t see much in life. Usually bored and glum. Once a bright girl with lots of dreams. Deep inside, she is passionate and caring, really… Can it be restored? Miku Zatsune- Insecure and hates Miku Hatsune for being more popular than her... Rin Kagamine- Rin has a mysterious connection to Len. Whenever Len is sick, Rin gets sick too. If Len were to die, Rin will suddenly die as well. Len Kagamine- Len has a mysterious connection to Rin. Whenever Rin is sick, Len gets sick too. If Rin were to die, Len will suddenly die as well. Kaito Shion- Kaito is actually an adopted child... not from this world... and doesn’t belong... Akaito Shion- Dell Honne- Dell is usually in a bad mood. He currently lives with a father who barely acknowledges him. He tends to keep it all inside, and he’s really just lonely and needs to find someone to vent to. Gakupo Kamui- Yuuma- Piko Utatane- Piko is a shy and compassionate person, but whenever he opens his mouth, he sounds very strict. He is bad at socializing and making friends, which leaves him quite lonely. On top of that, he is sickly and absent from school often. Piko wishes to make a friend. Mizuki- Nigaito Shion- He is sickly and is usually under the weather... Dex- Daina- Ruby- Taya Soune- Thinks of himself as a burden... Longya Yuezheng- His younger sister Ling nearly got into a tragic accident when they were younger, traumatizing Longya. Ling Yuezheng- She feels lonely that she doesn’t have many friends and is devoting her life to studying. Momo Momone- Is always passing out randomly... SeeU- Has a mysterious illness. Ruko Yokune- Ruko was always insecure about their height, six feet and two inches tall. They always wanted to be petite and feminine, but their body wouldn’t stop growing. Ritsu Namine- Ritsu used to be a bully. He remains to have a tsundere attitude... Deep inside, he has an earnest wish to apologize to everyone he ever hurt. Ruko is one of the few people who understands and knows this about Ritsu. In his childhood, he bullied Gumi for being a “coward.” Now he wants to apologize, but... Miki- Miki is too idealistic. She sees the world through rose-tinted lenses... but what happens when those lenses shatter? Aku Yamine- She wishes to have magic... she hates the state of the world. She hates evil, which is ironic... considering her name is pronounced like the Japanese word for evil. She wishes to cast out the darkness... which is ironic because her last name has the kanji for dark. Because of this, and because she tends to be a nuisance, Aku feels as if she is just a curse. Bruno- Bruno’s mother died when he was young. Clara- Clara was bullied a lot as a child. Iroha Nekomura- Yuu- Wil- Kyo- Akari Kizuna- Cheerful and sweet, and wants to make others smile… even though many heavy thoughts are hiding behind her own smile. Qingxian Mo- Being self-absorbed, Qingxian eventually begins to take advantage of Taya’s generosity and inclination to do favors. She may seem a somewhat spoiled brat, but she is lonely... Anon- Kanon- ——— College dorm antics... ——— Supernatural elements? Does the world have magical properties? How about the characters?

List them here...

All 46 characters mysteriously acquires a crystalline “star fragment” sometime during their journey. There are 46 pieces in total. Each character mysteriously acquires one when they are fulfilled. The fragment is from their heart. At a climax scene where all 46 are present, all the pieces are put together to form a beautiful kaleidoscopic star in 46 colors. This crystalline rainbow star can grant a grand wish, any wish... What will everyone agree will be their wish?

#Shiro-sora #my writing #vocaloid #utau #fanfic #life of pastell #brainstorm

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golden-deer-dear · 5 years ago

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An Inch to the Left

Summary: "So the Fell Star consumes even the darkness itself."

But what if it didn't? What if it was the other way around?

Notes: A concept idea I wanted to explore. Used it to also explore some writing style choices. Let me know if you guys think it works or not.

Read on AO3.

An Inch to the Left

She reached out her hand, Sothis' own fingertips brushing against her own. There was so much light, golden and divine, swirling around like a storm. And yet, her heart was calm. This was a fate she could accept, a power that would allow her to protect the ones she loved. Sothis would still be with her, and her power would-

Byleth's thoughts cut off violently as a look of terror crossed over Sothis' face. Tendrils of darkness curled around them, swallowing that golden light. Byleth lurched forward, trying to grab for the goddess, but the darkness was so quick. She could feel it inside her, coursing through her soul like a poison. She could not breathe. She couldn't breathe! Sothis!

She could still feel the goddess, felt her power fully enter her. But where before Sothis had felt like the warm embrace of a parent, now she was cold. Byleth felt like a snake had curled itself around her, and as it squeezed and crushed her ribs, it dove dagger long fangs into the back of her neck, pumping that foul toxin into everything that made her her.

Give in, it whispered, a malicious mirth accompanying the non existent voice.

"Never!" Byleth shouted to the darkness. She struggled, trying desperately to release herself from the snake. There, deep within her very core, she could still feel Sothis' warmth. If she could just reach it.

You will not prevail. Why fight it? The power it offers is so much more than what you receive from the pitiful goddess. The voice said put so much spite into the last word Byleth actually felt ill just hearing it.

She continued to struggle, trying to shut out the voice, but the snake held her tight. It seemed the more she resisted the harder the snake squeezed. And that warmth was fading. Sothis, please don't leave me.

She will not leave you, the voice told her, invading her thoughts. Not even we could separate your souls now that they have joined. But she has already given in. Can't you feel it? Can't you sense her will weakening?

"No!" She had wanted to scream, to rage against the monster, but her voice came out as nothing more than a choked sob.

But it was true. The voice did not lie. The warmth was almost completely gone now. Sothis had given Byleth her power, but the darkness had corrupted that gift before it could be fully given. Sothis had lost hope.

The warmth disappeared, extinguished like the last gasp of a dying candle.

Byleth fell limp in the snake's grasp. Darkness washed over her. It was cold, so very cold.

Perhaps she could convince Dimitri to lend her his cloak when she got back.

Dimitri's grip tightened around his spear, quickly forcing himself to relax again before his unnatural strength broke the wooden shaft.

"Thales! What are you doing here?" Tomas...no, Solon, his real name was Solon, asked. His voice went an octave higher as he addressed the new comer.

The man reached a hand up to the air in front of him, as if he were about to help a lady down from her carriage. "I am here to greet our newest asset," he said as if he were commenting on the weather, but knew there was a tidal wave about to crash against the shore, and the destruction it would being in its wake would leave him with a great amount of joy. There was something familiar about his voice, something that provoked a primal instinct to fight within Dimitri.

Before anyone could really process that, the very sky split open, dark smoke pouring from the cut. A hand, small and strong, reached out to take hold of Thales' offered hand. Her hand slid easily into his own.

"No," Dimitri heard himself whisper. He did not feel the word leave him. His soul was divorced from his body, his entire world crashing around him. He knew that hand. It made no sense that she would allow that thing to touch her, let alone accept its offer of help. No sense at all. Something was very wrong. Voices began to echo in his ears, warning him, screaming that their revenge would go unfulfilled if he simply stood there.

But the sight of her froze Dimitri to the ground. Thales pulled Byleth from the wound in the sky, and the sky itself seemed to crash around him.

Her skin was pale, too pale. He had only seen that coloring before on corpuses. Or on the man and his lackeys that now held Byleth's hand. Her hair had lost all pigment, just as Edelgard's, hanging loose around her shoulders like waves of snow.

Byleth turned to her students, an unnaturally pleasant smile distorting her lips. His Professor's smiles was rare, given like the most cherished of gifts. It was warm and made him feel light. Dimitri could never not return that smile.

This smile was nothing like that. Dimitri swallowed back against the bile rising in his throat.

"Oh goddess, her eyes," Annette whispered, voice shaking as badly as her body.

"I'm gonna be sick." Dimitri thought that was Sylvain, but every ounce of willpower he possessed was currently trying to make sure he did not do that exact thing.

Byleth's eyes were black, as dark as the trails of smoke still curling out from the slowly closing wound. Red irises, dark as freshly spilled blood, stared back at them all. He could feel those eyes devouring him, wanting to take him in and tear him apart. She was a cat looking forward to playing with cornered mice.

She was disturbing. She was beautiful. She was a nightmare wearing the flesh of the woman who made his heart beat erratically.

"Thales, what-?"

Solon was cut off when those terrible eyes turned to him. The smile dropped from her face, and somehow the frown was worse. Dimitri remembered the time Sylvain had snuck in and shifted everything in his room one inch to the left. Looking at Byleth was like that, only amplified. There was something changed about her, more than the physical aspects, something that just escaped his ability to define.

Byleth turned to Thales, and he raised his eyebrows. Some sort of silent exchange took place between them, for a moment later Thales sighed with more than a little melodrama.

"Very well," he said, relenting to whatever unspoken request Byleth had made. His tone made Dimitri think Thales was not all to concerned with whatever was about to happen, and was simply putting on a show. That thought was helped along when Thales raised Byleth's hand to his lips, giving her the courteously of a proper lord to a lady. "If it will make you happy."

Thales let go of Byleth's hand and stepped back. Byleth wasted no time, hand going to her sword as she took a step toward Solon.

"Thales! You can't-" But Solon did not finish. With one brutal strike Byleth separated his head from his shoulders. It hit the ground with a sickening splat, and bounced across the grass, resting someplace out of sight.

Byleth gave Solon's body a swift kick just for good measure. A flick of her wrist sent blood flying from the tip of the Sword of the Creator. The light around it was black instead of the usual red glow associated with a relic, and black lightning cracked in the hole where the missing crest stone should have occupied. Whatever they had done to her, Byleth's crest was just as twisted as the rest of her.

And then her attention was on them again, that smile back in place. Every instinct in Dimitri's body told him to run, every dead voice urged him away from the oncoming fray, but he stood frozen. It was mostly fear, but there was a part of him that felt he would be abandoning her if he left now. He only thought to bring up his spear at the last moment.

Byleth stopped, tilting her head at his defensive stance. Dimitri had barely any time to react. With an almost lazy swing of her sword, his lance was in two pieces, droplets of blood falling from his right hand where the blade had grazed him. He had been very lucky.

No. That was not it.

When he looked into those dark eyes, he understood. She had done it on purpose. If he fought her now, she would destroy him. There was nothing holding her back now. No morality, no compassion. Nothing.

Byleth stepped into his space before he could bring his hands up to attempt another defense. Her hand caressed his cheek in a mockery of a loving motion. It was like a winter's wind had slapped him, and he flinched away. Byleth grabbed his chin and forced him to look her in the eye.

He saw it then, what he could become. He saw the pure savagery with which he could destroy his foes, the delight he would receive as he ripped them limb from limb and their blood stained his hands. Consumed by revenge he set upon a bloody path, leaving the world to burn and walking a path stained red.

That monster was familiar. He had stepped into those shoes before, worn that tormented skin. Every time he did, it was harder to pull himself back, harder to deny what the dead demanded he become for their sake. It was sickening. It was exhilarating.

If he accepted her now there would be no going back. Dimitri would lose himself to the darkness completely, with no guarantee for a path back into the light. He would have the power to exact his revenge, but it would cost him everything.

Those eyes told him he would not be alone. Byleth would be by his side, tearing the world apart right alongside him. They would bow to her as she destroyed everything they cared for. And she would go unchallenged if Dimitri was her sword. He would strike such fear into their hearts that no one would dare to defy her.

"No!" he shouted. He threw his head back, Byleth's nails tearing into his chin. The gashes she left behind were cold, his blood clinging to his chin like ice.

He fought to gain control of his breathing, feeling as if he had to remind his lungs they had to draw in air. Byleth simply stared at him, and for a moment she looked like the mercenary he first met, before she had shown any sign she was capable of emotion.

A strong hand gripped his shoulder, Dedue, reminding him the world was more than just the two of them. The rest of the Blue Lions all had weapons ready, but none seemed willing to use them. Whatever she may have become, she was still their Professor. She was the woman that had made them strong, the very heart of their dysfunctional little family.

But Byleth paid them no mind. She reached for him again, and Dimitri visibly flinched away from that unnaturally pale skin. Byleth paused, and for a moment she seemed hurt.

"Professor? Please…" He trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

Byleth, however, took his words as an invite. She grasped the fabric of his cloak at his shoulder and yanked. Dimitri stumbled forward, hearing the fabric tear. The clasp he used to secure his cloak fell to the grass broken and useless.

Dimitri stared in disbelief as Byleth wrapped the material around her shoulders. A look of relief washed over her face as she curled into its warmth. She flashed him that stomach churning smirk, and turned away.

Turned back to Thales, who once more held a hand out for her to take. It was not right how naturally Byleth's own hand slid into Thales grasp, how comfortable and content she looked being led away by him.

"Professor!" Dimitri cried out, starting forward. He could not let her leave. Something told him that if he let her leave, she would be truly lost to them. Lost to him. He screamed, the very core of him open and raw at the thought of losing her. "Byleth!"

She looked back over her shoulder, blinking in surprise. And she smiled. The one that made him blush. The one he wished to see upon her face every day for the rest of their lives.

A flash of dark light engulfed her.

Thales' triumphant smirk was the last thing Dimitri saw before the world broke apart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I probably won't write anymore for this idea. I'm not sure where I'd go with it, nor do I really relish having to work through just how dark it would get. But it was a fun little snippet to explore.

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #dimileth #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #byleth #my fic #fanfic

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irina-something · 6 years ago

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Roswell RN ep 12 – Is bad writing the bug or the feature ?

I keep watching genre shows – for all the silly, shallow reasons – the beautiful people, the escapism, the entertaining factor of it all , but I also watch them for better reasons – interesting, original premises, interesting characters, new ways of looking at things, lighter ways of speaking about hard things.

So when a show is about ghosts, vampires, aliens and the lot, there is a build in feature of silliness … I love it when there is, at least, a small percent of tongue in cheek writing going on, a small nod from the show that it knows to not take itself completely serious. But being self aware that you are not aiming to be Tarkovsky, does not mean free license to shit all over logic, to screw continuity, to make it seem that you do not remember your own story, to make the conversations between people seem forced and cringy.

So I guess what I am asking myself is – is bad writing in genre shows a bug or a feature? I have no connection to tv channels and I am wondering how much freedom the writers have. But even with a predetermined framework, even when censorship exists, even when a certain level of drama is demanded – is it really impossible to make it seem organic, to make it all cohesive, to thrive for the realness of human connections and relationships even if we get to also deal with demons, aliens, warlocks and such?

For me the series that I watch are divided in 3 – the ones that are about realism and from which I demand that, since that is what they claim to do ( The wire being my all time favourite in this category), the ones that are complete and utter crap, but the level of crap is so high that it only makes my giggle continuously, I have no demands of this type of series, except outrageous entertainment and if at all possible somebody to ogle ( series like The chilling adventures of Sabrina comes to mind in this category) and the last category – the one in between – the one where the characters draw you in, you can feel the potential, some real emotions but the plot remains quite silly ( Roswell NM is in this category).

What got me on this path of rambling was watching Roswell NM ep 12. Damn…so much hurt, so much tragedy going on there, so much potential for emotions being discussed, for trauma being analyzed and yet the episode finishes and I feel a lot like crying while face palming ( it is hard, trust me).

So here is what made me cry and what made me face palm...with a side of sarcasm and some profanity...

So we start with an exposition ( never the best device, but sometimes necessary ) about the aliens’ background …. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is actually a face palm moment, because the whole thing, almost word by word will be said again during the episode, only this time not as running background voice, but directly from Noah ….so in a 40 minutes episode, that contains the mass murder of an entire race, we get to hear the same, not all that revelatory words, twice …. mkay…

Then there is the M/M/I scene where they debate what to do and that felt pretty good, because you can really tell the different motivations and the different needs for each of them. Kyle/Liz interaction is also fun, light and it really flows.

The Malex scene at the junkyard is a facepalm moment – first of all because the writers made it so, while writing on twitter, with no indication in the actual story unfolding on the screen, that between the last interaction we have seen and this one 2 months passed … Seriously, if 2 months actually passed, something should have been said here – along the lines of “where the fuck have you disappeared for 2 month”. Also, we are to believe that Michael did not want to know shit more about the government conspiracy that puts him and his siblings at death risk … and now, supposedly 2 months later, Alex shows up out of the blue and is like – here is some info and also you’re hot, but not like really, but your temperature but also here is a smoldering “I would do you “ look for good measure. And for the fun twist, here is also Kyle for no particular reason…

Then we have the Is/Max/Noah/Liz interactions were we hear all the stuff from the beginning all over again, now with the added bonus that somehow since the conversation is in Is’s mind Noah can not lie.,, mkay… Even with the truth serum addendum, Noah’s story makes about zero sense and I face palm hard. The Liz/Is interaction feels good and organic … there is bitchiness that we know is trade mark Isobel, but also vulnerability and Liz lends an ear and some good advice. Honestly I feel like the scenes with Noah/Max/Is/Liz were somewhat repetitive… some of the things were necessary, but overall a lot of time was lost with no good enough pay-off either emotionally or as advancing the story.

Radom appeance from Cam. I just loved her character through out the story. She has been the right amount of funny, badass, vulnerable, good looking and helpful. If the writers didn’t have an arc for her, beyond what went on so far, I feel good about her departure….it’s hella better than keeping here around with 3 lines and no purpose.

I have to give it to the writers, the interaction among the women of the series has been good and has been consistent. They are not all bitches or all goody two shoes. But while sometimes butting heads, they came through for each other and I am here for that.

The boys arrive at the prison. Kyle has some funny lines, which are genuinely funny and I would have appreciated them so much more if not for WTF I was experiencing from the previous interactions.

Back at the prison it all makes as much sense as pineapple on pizza. High security facility with aliens in it and yet the boys enter with no problem and without alerting any alarms… we have some interaction between Alex and his brother, which I appreciated... I liked the lines, the tension, the background offered about Alex’s life ( see, it can be done without flashback and exposition … yeyyy writers)… but again it’s like the prison has 3 people working there and yet, somehow they developed kickass technology … mkay…

Kyle has the silliest conversation with random army girl … he learns about his father death, actually important for the story, but how the whole scene comes to be is like it’s written in kindergarten… dear lord… how the hell in the prison with 3 people, a guy appears and random army girl is not all that alarmed.

I really wanna know what is the reason and what is the pay-off of making Michael be the initiator of the demise of his mother and what is left of his race? WTF???

Then comes the Malex scene. Damn…. I loved the point of the scene but the execution was face palm level ( not the acting, the acting was top notch and the only thing that help sell the scene ). But this is the pivotal scene of the episode… damn… cut some of the other stuff that had no purpose and really sell us Michael trying heart and soul to save his family, the urgency of the whole situation and how they really had no other choice …. Because honestly, if it weren’t for how talented Vlamis and Blackburn were, the “my mom said run “would have made me giggle.

And after the “you’re my family speech” Alex says nothing to Michael and drives into the sunset with Kyle … it’s been so hard to face palm while the script gave me whiplash … seriously…

And you know, I actually like the conversation between Alex and Kyle at the end… I loved the point of it, what it actually says and how it gives us a little more about Alex … but fucking hell, it is ill placed … because we are to believe Alex let Michael to just drive alone and go wherever the fuck after witnessing the murder of his mother and the rest of his race …. What the actual fuck? Where there no people with writing abilities in the room at that moment?

And then we have the clusterfuck that is the interaction between Max and Michael and I don’t even have fucks to give ….

Really? Really? Were the writers in some sort of race to the finish? Did they not get the chance to look over everything one more time and fix the plotholes ? How come they manage some great lines and interactions and then they fuck up epically ? Is it mandatory ?

#roswell new mexico #roswell nm #malex #i lost my mind #ramble my way to insanity

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humbae · 6 years ago

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Whumptober 31: Showdown

Molly forced herself to breathe calmly and evenly. She would not give Tom the advantage of knowing how scared she was. He had all the advantage he could use already.

“Why are you angry?” she asked. There was little chance of him answering, but at least she should try. Buy some time, if nothing else.

“I’m terribly sorry that your friend is dead. Or was he just a colleague?”

A slight hesitation. A small spark of hope. A few more seconds for Dek to become fully aware. Molly took care to not look into the direction of the bearded man. She could tell he was waking up, but not quite there yet. Just a little longer.

“You didn’t share his passion, did you? You just worked for him,” she said. Tom gave no indication of whether her words were hitting the mark or not, but he was listening. “You’ve only been doing what he told you to do, right. You can’t be held accountable for his crimes. I truly believe you will not be condemned for his deeds.”

Dek was nearly lucid. He was awake, but confused. Hopefully he was listening and would catch on quickly. As long as he had the element of surprise, he could take out Tom. It was up to Molly to give him that chance.

“It counts for a lot that you helped us. That poor man would be dead if you hadn’t supported him. But you must already know that of course. I’m sorry if I’m too forward.”

Tom stood still. Molly had no way of gauging his reaction, and it scared her. At least he wasn’t projecting anything negative, that was something. The short blonde man was also coming to, although the pain spiking off him indicated that he’d be of no help. Come on, Dek.

“You could even join us, be our friend,” she said. Tom looked her in the eyes.

“Do you think me simple?” he asked. A wave of contempt rushed out of him. Molly realised she had gone too far and lost him. Nothing could save her now.

Tom took his time approaching the kneeling woman. Next to her, the dark-haired one was still crying, oblivious to everything going on around her. Three steps and Tom was within reaching distance. He extended his arm, fingers wrapping around the older woman’s throat. She made no move to stop him. Slowly, he applied more pressure, squeezing tighter. She jerked backwards, but Tom’s grip was secure. It was too late to escape.

*****

I was lying on the ground, intensely uncomfortable, but too wiped out to move. My eyes didn’t want to stay open and my limbs trembled from exhaustion. The sensible thing for me to do would be to stay still and wait for rescue. I didn’t know when and from who said rescue would come from, but that was irrelevant. There was nothing I could do, best just wait.

But my nature didn’t allow me to be idle while others were suffering. I felt so much pain and fear that I couldn’t pinpoint its location. Several sources, all of them desperate. Might as well be merging with my own emotions and sensations. Hurt so deep I feared there was no healing from it, terror so strong it nearly paralysed me. But I could still move. It was my responsibility to do something since I was able.

Forcing my eyes to stay open, I looked at Tom. He was standing with his back towards me, unaware that I was awake. I doubted Molly realised it either, being suffocated as she was. The only consciousness even close to alertness was Dek’s, and he was still too far from lucid to act.

No, it was all up to me. I started the process of getting up, as silently as I could to not draw Tom’s attention, and as quickly as I managed to prevent him from killing the older woman. How did I know she was called Molly? I didn’t think I heard anyone say that, but could be that I had just forgotten. Too many blows to the head could do that. It was an insignificant detail anyway, one that should not be receiving any attention from my mind right now. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew more than I should.

“Still think me stupid?” Tom asked the woman he was strangling. She obviously could not reply. Only the tears leaking from her eyes and the hands futilely clawing at Tom’s were any indication that she still clung to life. I balanced on my feet and planted my hands on the ground. If I could repeat what I had done with the doctor, our problems would soon be over. I failed to take into account that Tom was much more aware of his surroundings than his superior had been.

The moment I realised Tom had either heard me or sensed my presence, I jumped. But he was prepared for me. He released Molly and met my feeble attack head-on. It wasn’t much of a struggle. He caught me by the shoulders and used my own momentum to toss me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me as my back slammed into the hard-packed dirt. I couldn’t stop him as he pinned me down and sat on my abdomen. Even at full strength, I doubt I could’ve moved him off me.

“Where do you find the drive to keep on going?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. “You should be dead already.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I said. My voice was weak even to my own ears. I cleared my throat and tried to insert more vitality to my next words.

“It’s not for me. Or it is. But not directly. Well, kinda.”

I shut up when I realised I was blabbering. The feeling I wanted to convey wouldn’t come to me as words. I probably wouldn’t have been able to make Tom understand anyway. Although if I could, maybe he would reconsider what he was doing. Struck by sudden inspiration, I lifted my arms and wrapped my hands around his wrists. He tightened his hold, expecting me to try to throw him off, but that was not on my mind.

With the skin contact, I could feel his frustration and uncertainty more clearly. He was conflicted, but unable to solve his mental dilemmas with so many people around. He felt his duty and debts, and anger, but also some empathy towards the suffering of others, although it was faint. I latched onto that emotion and somehow… amplified it. I fed to him all the hurts and aches of my body, pushing all the pain to him, forcing him to feel it. I drew Silva’s hysteria into me as well, and slammed it all to Tom, making him rock with the power of the delivery.

As I got going, I threw my net further and gathered everything I could reach. Fear, anxiety, menstrual cramps, jealousy, the aching knuckles of advanced arthritis, skinned knees, broken hearts, fevers, coughs, sorrow, despair, the final slash of a razor blade, I drew it all in, throbbing with everything I held, and then I released it. Through the connection between us, Tom was wide open and defenceless. I don’t know how I did it, I had never done anything like it before, but I pushed it all on him, lending him my ability to feel everything. He wailed with the sensory overload, and I cried with him. The more I forced on him, the more fed back to me, creating an accelerating loop between us. I no longer knew where I ended and he began, what was my pain and what was from someone else. The world narrowed into the chaos in my mind, blocking everything else out. I didn’t even feel Tom collapsing on me, bringing more of his skin into contact with me.

*****

“Help them!” Molly croaked, rubbing her throat. Dek was up and looking around, trying to take in the whole clearing while still woozy from the sedative. Molly pointed at Tom and the blonde man, lying on the ground. Dek stood for a moment, confused as to what she wanted him to do, until he felt the turmoil coming from the two. He had never felt such synchronised emotion from two people. Even when people were experiencing the same things, they had their own unique backgrounds and bodies through which everything was filtered. But now, there was no difference between what he read from each of them, no way to individualise the cloud of chaos over them.

“Pull them apart!” Molly shouted. Her voice was rough, but Dek understood. He grabbed Tom and yanked him off the smaller man, not bothering to be gentle with him. He expected the cloud to dissipate immediately, but it lingered. He put more physical distance between the two men, and finally the emotions separated. The blonde one ceased broadcasting anything, hopefully due to loss of consciousness rather than loss of life, but Tom remained awake. His eyes stared at nothing. His body lay limp, apart from the visible shivers. His breaths came in quick shallow gulps.

“What did you do to him?” Dek asked. Tom didn’t react to him. He kicked the man’s side, slightly harder than simply drawing his attention would’ve required, but nothing.

“Do we have any rope?” Dek asked Molly when he was sure Tom was beyond hearing.

“Check their bike,” she said. As he did so, he felt vibrations in his pocket. It was a text message from Molly’s husband, asking if everything was alright since they had missed the agreed rendezvous and Molly hadn’t replied to her. With infinite relief, Dek called him. Not long after that, when he had Tom secured and most members of their gathering were awake, they heard the roar of an engine approaching.

“Is she still breathing?” Dek asked. Molly was attending to the woman who had sacrificed herself to help them. She was in bad shape, but still clinging to life. If they got her to a hospital, she believed she would pull through, on pure stubbornness alone if nothing else. Likewise, the short blonde man was unconscious, but alive.

“They’ll be alright.”

The end.

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themyskira · 6 years ago

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Wonder Woman Annual #2

Previously in FUCKITY FUCK FUCK I FORGOT THERE WAS AN ANNUAL AS WELL: Diana prepared to face down her most terrifying foes yet: the Dark Gods.

Who or what are the Dark Gods? Dunno.

What do they want? No clue.

What is this awesome and terrible power that they wield? So far, mostly just the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes and incite people to deliver badly-written villainous monologues.

Why are we supposed to be so pants-pissingly afraid of them? Because James Robinson told us so.

Last issue ended with the Dark Gods manifesting over Washington DC, at which point it was revealed that they are… giant floating statues, I guess? But, like, scary floating statues. With lasers. So scary.

And then moments later, a couple of Star Sapphires arrived to whisk Diana away so she could appear in this shitty annual.

Diana is teleported to the Star Sapphires’ home planet of Zamaron, which is heavily battle-damaged.

The two Sapphires who brought her here are called Miss Bloss and Miri Riam, who are apparently pre-established minor Green Lantern characters — something I had to figure out on my own, because Robinson just assumes we all known them, and that Diana does too (I’m reasonably sure they’ve never met). The one time his overexplaining might have actually been useful, and he couldn’t be arsed taking a panel or two to make introductions.

Diana yells at them that she’s too busy to help with whatever their deal is, and launches into a recap of last issue. But, you know, that was all of two weeks ago, so by all means, spend a page getting us up to speed.

She’s also still throwing around ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’ like they’re going out of style.

“…and although I’m not certain — the woman who told me was insane at the time--“

How about ‘possessed’, ‘out of control’, ‘somewhat incoherent’ or ‘compromised’? Any of these would be more accurate in this context, as well as not equating mental illness with dangerous and violent behaviour.

But anyway, essentially Diana says ‘my world is being attacked by the Dark Gods and it’s my fault’, and Miss Bloss is like, ‘well, if that was your fault, then our thing must be your fault, too’, and points up at the giant floating Dark God statue thing that Diana has somehow failed to notice until this exact moment.

Oh, goody.

Diana starts questioning them about what happened. Honestly, that’s really all she does these days. If she’s not delivering plot recaps herself, she’s setting up allies for flashback-exposition or allowing villains to monologue at her. Oh, sure, occasionally she fights somebody, but mostly she’s just a vessel for tedious exposition.

Miss Bloss describes the Dark God’s attack:

“Even to recall it now, it feels like a dream or vision from another world. Almost like we were looking at ourselves from outside of it all.”

The first time I read this, I took it to be a figure of speech. I interpreted it as an expression of Miss Bloss’s deep level of shock at the devastation she’d experienced, that it still felt unreal, as though it had happened to somebody else.

I was giving Robinson too much credit: he meant it literally.

As we’ll learn in a few pages’ time, one of the Dark Gods has some kind of power over people’s perceptions, enabling him to induce in others a sense of unreality and dreamlike detachment. We’ll learn that the Dark Gods have deliberately used this ability in order to confuse enemies and limit their ability to respond to or even comprehend attacks.

Frazer Irving — who illustrates the flashback, along with a couple of other scenes in this issue — plays into this well. His stylised art and colour work lends a somewhat eerie dreamlike quality to his pages, creating a sense of altered reality.

Unfortunately, Robinson can’t write dreamlike.

So what in theory should be an eerie, confusing, unreal flashback instead just turns into Miss Bloss telling us that her memories of the attack are eerie and unreal and hazy… aaaaand then proceeding to describe the attack, the enemy, his name, the concept he embodies, his powers and the precise reason why he was able to kill so many Star Sapphires, all in exacting detail.

The Dark God who attacked the Sapphires is called Karnell and he calls himself the god of love, but the love he embodies is dark and gritty and edgy and corrupted. He can sense any ‘impurities’ or ‘flaws’ in a person’s love and rub it in their faces. When he does this to Star Sapphires, something something their rings freak out and they spontaneously combust.

Diana asks, ‘yeah okay, but you didn’t know that this was my fault when you dragged me here, so what gives?’, and Bloss and Miri are like, ‘welp, our leaders are all dead, Carol Ferris is busy in another comic, we all frankly suck, and you were a Star Sapphire once in that Blackest Night crossover event.’

At which point I went, ‘wait huh what??? but that was before the New 52 reboot!’, before remembering that Geoff Johns’ entire preboot GL run survived the reboot for no other reason than because Geoff Johns gets whatever he wants.

Diana agrees to lead the Sapphires against Krakoom (I’m sorry, I’m not going to bother to learn his name, he’s not worth that kind of time), and the Sapphires respond by giving her the Nazi salute due to an unfortunate artistic miscalculation.

Diana: And if I am going to stand among you — fight alongside you — let me look the part. Sapphires: As you wish it, so do we, Wonder Woman… be a Star Sapphire once more.

And with that, they give Diana a makeover.

It’s not a bad costume, especially when you compare it to her Blackest Night design. That one tried to ape Carol Ferris’ hideous then-costume, which featured hip cut-outs and a plummeting neckline that ended around the crotch area, by giving Diana a bathing suit with hip-holes and a bared midriff. This design retains many familiar Star Sapphire costume elements — the stiff pointed white collar, the combination tiara/mask, the starburst symbol, the long gloves and high boots — without going into creepy male-gazey territory.

buuuuut it also looks like Diana is wearing a pink apron over her usual costume, and that is something I cannot get past. It also varies wildly across the issue, depending on which of the four credited artists is drawing it.

By the way, I say ‘makeover’ because despite violet blaze on her right ring finger, it took me several times flicking back and forth before I was certain that Diana had been deputised into the Corps as opposed to just being given a new costume in order to “look the part”, as she put it. I know this sounds like it should have been self-evident, but Robinson gives absolutely no indication of any deeper change in her. Not even lip service to the fact that Diana is connected, through the power ring, to the emotional spectrum and the violet energies of love.

Contrast this with Diana in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3:

“Extraordinary. All of them, in their way, have tried to explain it to me before. Hal, John, Kyle… even Guy, may Ares watch and aid him. But it defies all attempts. There is no way to describe it. What it is to wear a power ring, and feel emotion made manifest. To wear fear on anger or will or hope on one’s hand… To wear love. Too beautiful for words…”

There’s a lot about Wondy’s Blackest Night tie-in that’s flawed and frustrating and flat-out bad, but this page gets it right. If you’re going to make Diana a Star Sapphire — going to give one of the most loving hearts of the DCU the power to channel her love into tangible power — then you need to acknowledge the weight of that.

In this comic, it’s as insubstantial as a costume change.

Flying up to confront Kratakoa, Diana wonders if she could really have summoned the Dark Gods. Supergirl said she brought them into this plane with a careless wish, and… oh, come to think of it, she did inadvertently make a wish during the recent Dark Nights: Metal crossover, while coincidentally handling some magical wishing metal. But nah, that couldn’t possibly have done it!

She reaches the big floaty statue and a bloke with spiky wings emerges from it. It’s Klangalang, and he’s got his monologue cued up and ready to go!

He opens with a fairly standard ‘ahaha, I’ve been expecting you, hero!’, and the implications fly straight over Diana’s head.

Kibble: You came, Amazon! Sooner than I expected, too! Good… I’m going to love this! Diana: You’re some kind of seer, too? You expected me?

Let’s review: The villains Diana supposedly summoned, the villains who have been trying to kill or neutralise Diana before she can interfere in their plans, have attacked the Star Sapphires in advance of their invasion of Earth. Despite not knowing about Diana’s connection to their attacker, the Sapphires reached out to her for help, teleporting her away at almost the exact moment that the villains launched their opening assault. Now the one villain who hasn’t joined the invading force is cackling that he’s been expecting Diana.

Even a half-competent hero should be able to join the dots and realise they’ve been deliberately lured away. Not so Robinson’s Diana, who gazes at him wide-eyed and demands, ‘omg, u expected me? are u psychic or sumthin???’

After a couple more rounds of obscenely dense questions from Diana (along with another out-of-character ’crazy’ slur), Klunk ends up having to straight-up spell it out for her. He also explains how she summoned the Dark Gods.

Krunch: You wished for the gods’ return. Well, here we are. Here I am! Diana: Like a dream, but yes, of course. But I meant the Greek pantheon, not— Krump: Gods! That’s all you said.

Small nitpick: Diana would not think of her gods the “Greek pantheon”. She’d be more likely to call them “the Patrons”, “my gods”, “the gods of my people”, “the gods of Themyscira”, “the gods of Olympus”, “the Olympians” — she knew them as all of these things long before she knew Greece, or any world outside her island home, existed. The only reason she might refer to them as “Greek” is for the benefit of people in Man’s World, as a point of reference.

More importantly, are you friggin kidding me, the friggin layers of incompetence here from our supposed hero

accidentally makes a wish while wielding a weapon of magical wishing metal

manages to make the vaguest wish possible, opening a loophole for THE WORST GODS to infiltrate reality

immediately forgets she ever wished it

why would she even wish for that?! her gods haven’t gone anywhere!

To be somewhat fair, the reason she doesn’t really remember it is that “the God With No Name” (YES REALLY) made it all feel like a dream so that she wouldn’t realise she’d made an irresponsible wish and needed to immediately rally everybody together to resist the Dark Gods.

Except… that in itself doesn’t make any sense.

There are two possibilities here: the Horse With No Name could have clouded Diana’s memory of making the wish after the Dark Gods were pulled into this reality — in which case, why? How would she even land on the conclusion that she’d accidentally summoned some evil gods that she’d never heard of, when her intent was to call on her own gods and she’d had no indication that it had even worked?

Alternatively, he clouded her mind in the moment of the wish, to render her thoughts vague and imprecise and open the door for the Dark Gods’ invasion. Which doesn’t work either, because it turns out that the Dark Gods are pretty pissed off at being pulled out of their awesome reality.

King Koopa: War was declared the moment you dragged us from our home… our beautiful world — which you regard as the ‘Dark Multiverse’ — we see as a paradise… where we were more than even gods to our worshippers… we were everything!”

So basically their plan is to turn Earth into a desolate hellscape just like their home.

Diana, who has already been told that Kraig is a god of corrupted love, conveniently forgets this fact just so that Robinson can tell it to us again.

Diana: You call yourself a god of love. What kind of love wants to be feared? Love is unconditional. KHAAAAAN: Spoken like the addled naive romantic I expected. Love always comes with conditions. Sometimes, I confess, I question… am I god of that love, of those conditions behind it? But then I realise… I don’t care.

Cool story. Glad we can agree on one thing, at least.

He monologues for a couple of pages about how he’s going to open her eyes to the truth of how horrible and selfish and corrupt love is, then draws Diana into his mind so that he can monologue some more.

We learn that the world of the Dark Gods was forged by a group of divinities called Titans, “much like the reality of your own Greek pantheon” (incorrect, you’re thinking of the Protogenoi; the Titans were the second generation of gods). But because these Titans were hardcore, they did it by smashing five other realities together. And into this terrifyingly dark edgy metalscape came… +~teh D4rK g0dz~+

Robinson then undermines the super-extra-double-dark feel he’s going for with another embarrassing name and an accidental rhyme.

“We Dark Gods followed, as gods do. King Best and then the rest.”

KING. BEST.

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to Kalamazoo’s dark edgy totally original backstory!

In fact, this is so dark and edgy and original that I’ll throw in a quick content warning here for descriptions of domestic violence and shittiness towards sex workers.

“You’ll meet a boy — his mother broken by a wanton father who forced her to cheapen herself further with wraiths and under-beings. The mother died — beaten to death. When he saw her blood still dripping from the fists of his father, the boy ran, fearing the same fate. The boy loved his mother, but hated his father and the world. Both emotions — love and hate — burned so brightly that even from within the darkness of our world, their glow caught the eye of mighty King Best.”

Domestic violence! Sexism! Slut shaming! Fridging! It’s like a game of grimdark bingo!

After three goddamn pages of this, Diana suddenly twigs what we all figured out eleven pages ago, ‘oh now waaaaaait a minute, you didn’t lure me here so that your buddies could invade Earth while I’m distracted, did you?’

Klinger responds by almost murdering Diana, and is only stopped by the intervention of the Star Sapphires. They all retreat, and Diana proposes a new plan: all the Sapphires will channel their energy into her, something something, true love wins the day.

So Diana flies up to Kimberley, sword held aloft and blazing with violet energy, and announces, ‘boy did you make a mistake when you told me that you used to be a sad boy child! now I have only love in my heart for you!’

Karma Khameleon is like, ‘oh no, love! my one true weakness!’, and I’m like, “d… didn’t we just have this story?”

Then Diana straight-up stabs him with her love sword, and Korgo fades away with an ‘I’ll beat you next time, Captain Planet! Next tiiiiiime…’

Diana farewells the Star Sapphires, and Robinson shoehorns in this bit of virtue signalling:

Miri: Please… Diana, think of us as your sisters, too, for all time. Diana: Or “brother,” I notice. Miss Bloss: Love is love, no matter who bears the heart.

This is a welcome and needed change to the Star Sapphires. The fact that they have been portrayed up until this point as an all-women corps (with the exception of a few briefly deputised blokes) is bound up in ugly gendered ideas, exemplified by Geoff Johns’ comment in 2009 that “anyone can join, but most men are not worthy”.

But there’s something gratingly self-congratulatory in the execution of this course correction. Robinson’s doing the absolute bare minimum here — including one or two male background characters in a handful of panels — and flagging it as progress with a phrase associated with the LGBTI community. We haven’t even seen a single named male Sapphire, let alone one with a speaking part; I think it’s a little premature to be looking for kudos. And either Miri or Miss Bloss could very easily have been replaced in this story by a new male character.

The Sapphires teleport Diana back to Earth, where she finds DC a smoking ruin. And as the air clears, she sees—

—wait for it—

—this is truly shocking and terrifying—

THE DARK GODS MADE A MEGAZORD

THEY MADE A FUCKING MEGAZORD WITH THEIR DUMBASS FLYING STATUES

A GODDAMN MEGAZORD WHO WHAT HOW WHY.

Diana’s face does this:

#the james robinson shitshow #comics talk

17 notes · View notes

levirens · 6 years ago

Text

[fanfic] of cold arms and pale lips 1/2

Summary: Yuuri is torn between laughing and crying at the absurdity of the situation. The whole point of him leaving was so he could run away from the (literal) ghost of his past yet here he is, watching a silver-haired apparition dance ballet to classical music.

By the time the song ends, Yuuri’s cheeks are wet and he finds that he’s been clutching at his shirt, his hand directly above his heart. The ghost stands before him holding a pose, one arm extended towards Yuuri and a pale finger pointing at him. A moment passes before the ghost seemingly sags, his arms dropping to his sides and his body losing its graceful posture. The ghost smiles, a forlorn upturn of pale lips, and he whispers, “Thank you.”

He prides himself on his ability to stay in people’s blind spots, knowing just when to act and knowing how to trick people’s brains into making him blend in with the environment. To their brains, he’s a blemish, an anomaly that they can’t figure out and so they simply erase him from their sight. Nobody takes notice of him unless he wants them to, unless he does something that warrants their fleeting attention.

That’s fine by him.

He feels the slight rumble of the ground and lifts one foot up, letting it dangle precariously by the edge of the platform. No one takes notice, people going on with their lives as though nothing were amiss. He figures that if he does it just right, if he jumps at the perfect moment, he’d get away with it. The people milling around, they would only be able to see him once he gets into the bigger picture— in front of a fast-approaching train.

That’s fine by him.

The rumbling gets stronger, reverberating inside him through his bones and into the hollow pit in his chest. He sees a girl from the corner of his eye, blond hair tied up into pigtails and a tattered doll hanging from her hand. It’s obvious she’s not one of them, proof being the gaping hole where a fraction of her skull used to be and the red splattered on her dress. For a fleeting moment, he allows himself to think about her, to briefly imagine what life she used to lead and what led to her death, then he prepares for the jump.

“You shouldn’t do that.”

Yuuri whips his head around, staring at the man standing beside him. Blue eyes stare back, a ghost of a frown hanging around the space between the man’s eyebrows. Yuuri’s eyes shift and lands on a shock of silvery gray hair, his mouth almost opening to sound a response. He stops, blood running cold as he spots his mistake just as the man hurriedly speaks.

“You can see me?”

There’s a deafening ringing in his ears, his once hollow chest feeling heavy with dread. He turns, willing himself to calm down. Darting his eyes around, he sees that none of the others have paid the exchange much attention, but that would soon change if he doesn’t get away from the place. He can feel the silver-haired man’s gaze on him, a hand raised as if to reach out and grab him.

No, Yuuri thinks. Not this shit again. He remembers how he had once interacted with one of them, a high school girl sporting a gunshot over her chest. She had followed him home, turning malevolent once Yuuri made it clear he was not open to having a roommate. That situation had escalated into a monthly appointment with a shrink and a one-way ticket to live halfway across the world.

He begins to walk, intent on going to a nearby mall area where he plans to lose the silver-haired man in the crowd. He maintains a brisk pace, moving against the rush of people heading for their morning commute. He rounds a corner and uses this opportunity to check behind him, stopping dead in his tracks when he sees the silver-haired man still standing by the platform, watching people board the train.

Yuuri runs for it, periodically checking behind him to make sure he still isn’t being followed. He still takes the long way home, making sure he passes by as many crowds as he can, doing his best to blend in. It’s only when he’s checked about a hundred times behind him and another hundred through the peephole of his door that he allows himself to breathe. He makes his way into his room on wobbly legs, his limbs shaking from the effort it takes him to contain the sobs threatening to spill out.

Staying in people’s blind spots is one of his skills, seeing and being able to interact with ghosts is another. One skill he took pride in and utilized on a daily basis, the other the reason why there are scars adorning his skin. Both gifts of sight, one allowing him to evade it and one allowing him to see beyond what is human. He drags a hand over his face, the image of blood-matted silver hair burned into his retinas. The blue-eyed man had seem upset at Yuuri, most probably aware of his own death and unable to believe that one of the living would want that for themselves, would willingly throw away their life when his had obviously been stolen from him.

Yuuri has half the mind to feel guilty. He walks over to the bathroom, stripping himself of the heavy winter clothes while he lets the tub fill with warm water. Tomorrow, he would go look for a job again, hopefully one with a decent enough pay that he can stop receiving the money his parents send him on a monthly basis. Then he’d be able to stop talking to them and stop pretending for their sake that their son is perfectly sane.

His parents love him, that he’s sure of. They make sure he knows this by telling him through text and through call on the rare occasion that he answers the phone. Every time he’d get the envelope containing the cash his parents continuously shelled out for him, there would be a note inside. Sometimes it would be his mother reminding him to never skip meals, sometimes it would be his father asking him when he’d be coming back, and, on rare occasions, it would be his sister asking him how he’s doing.

He never answers any of the notes, but he keeps them in a small container, along with the few items he had allowed himself to take with him from his old home.

Tomorrow, he would look for a job. He’s not hopeful, his bachelor’s degree and various skills usually boiling down to nothing once employers flip over the pages of his resume and they see the medical warning that he comes with.

Tomorrow, he would try, but today he simply climbs into the bathtub and wishes the water would somehow find its way over his head.

Yuuri wants to act surprised, wants to feel surprised, but he had expected this. The woman behind the desk is looking at him with an almost apologetic look in her eyes, her mouth moving along to the words that Yuuri has been hearing interview after interview for over six months now.

“We’ll let you know, expect a call from us,” is one of the most common ones, most companies not even bothering to come up with an excuse to not hire him. There’s also the mighty, “The spot’s already been filled, but we’ll keep your contact details in case we have an opening.” The woman uses something along those lines, visibly squirming uncomfortably when Yuuri fails to react on time.

“Mister...” she looks down at his paper. “... Katsuki. Mister Katsuki, are you alright?”

“Sorry,” he says slowly, his mouth feeling like it had been stuffed with cotton balls. This had been the last interview on his list, all the others had been failures of similar kind. “Thank you for lending me your time.” He takes his files from the woman’s hands, bows his head, and leaves the building. A part of him wants to scream, wants to tear at his suit and rip his hair out from its roots. An act like that wouldn’t really do much damage at this point, not when everybody already thinks he’s crazy.

The cold air outside hits him across the face the moment he steps a foot onto the asphalt, snow already collecting on the ground. He brings his scarf up to cover half of his face, keeping his head turned down and his eyes firmly latched on the ground before him. He lets his feet lead the way, walking with no particular destination in mind. His hands start to feel numb, the thin gloves doing nothing to protect them from the cold. Each breath he takes is a bit more painful than the last, and when it becomes too much to endure, he lifts his head and looks around, trying to determine where he’d ended up.

His eyes catches sight of a person walking down the street opposite him, facing away from him and giving Yuuri a clear view of his soiled clothes. There’s a mixture of excrement and blood on the hospital gown and Yuuri shivers, turning away before noticing the store in front of him. The neon sign is turned off, cursive letters spelling out Eri’s Music, and the exterior of the store looks like it needs some repairing here and there. What truly catches Yuuri’s attention is the sign hanging around the store’s door, words written out in a crude handwriting.

Hiring: Store Clerk

Yuuri clutches at the documents in his hand, peering inside the shop to see a decent number of customers walking around and perusing CDs and albums. He’s opening the door before he registers what he’s doing, the chime of the bell drawing very little attention from the customers and only an inquisitive look from the man standing behind the counter.

“Yes?” the man prompts when Yuuri just stands there, gawking. “Can I help you?”

“I read the sign,” he blurts out, walking towards the counter. At the man’s raised eyebrow, Yuuri rushes to add, “The hiring. You’re still hiring, yes?”

Yuuri thinks he sees relief wash over the man’s expression before he grins at Yuuri, seemingly in triumph. “Hey boss, what did I tell you about that sign? We already have an applicant.” He turns to Yuuri, leaning over the counter to appraise the latter’s appearance. “You look fancy. You sure you want to work here? Pay’s not bad but it can’t buy you a suit like that.”

Yuuri blinks, looking down and wincing. He had picked this outfit thinking he’d be able to impress the employers, maybe make him look put together and capable of a desk job. He almost snorts at how stupid and naive the idea was. “I’ve been looking for a job,” he explains, glancing up and immediately looking away when he sees the smirk aimed at him. “I’ve worked at a shop before.”

“Fantastic,” the man beams just as someone claps him on the back. He turns to the taller male standing behind him and gestures to Yuuri. “Says he’s worked at a shop before.”

The taller male, a blonde with a muscular frame and a reasonably attractive face, jerks his head at Yuuri and motions for him to follow. He’s lead to the backroom, an office of some sort, and the blonde looks at him expectantly, a hand outstretched. Yuuri realizes the man is waiting for him to hand over his files.

Yuuri’s folder in hand, the man walks around his desk and sits down, briefly flipping through the papers. He stops at the last page, the one detailing Yuuri’s mental health, then opens a drawer and promptly shoves the folder inside. “Kristoff, the guy outside, will be going back to university soon. You’d have to take over his shift. You alright with working until around 10 PM?”

“Yes, sir,” Yuuri answers, his heart beating loudly against his chest. The man briefly asks him about his experience working at his parent’s inn, seemingly satisfied that he won’t be needing any training regarding the counter and customer assistance. He thanks the man, shaking his large hand, and exits the room feeling infinitesimally lighter. The shift would be long, starting from 9 AM to 10 PM, but the pay would be more than enough to cover his rent and living expenses.

Kristoff spots him and nods. When Yuuri answers with the slightest bit of a smile, the other male winks at him. “See you tomorrow.”

As it turns out, the store has a pretty decent amount of loyal patrons. Kristoff’s job usually consists of locating CDs and albums for customers, restocking shelves, working the counter, and cleaning around the store. Yuuri shadows him for a day and then they split the work between them, Yuuri mostly taking on cleaning and restocking.

A week passes by and Yuuri settles into a routine. He arrives on time, cleans the store, restocks, eats lunch, cleans whenever there aren’t any customers around, and occasionally helps out with the counter. He realizes that there really isn’t much to do at the store despite the long shift, which is probably why he usually sees Kristoff sneaking around the backroom to nap or use his phone. When the other male isn’t doing his job or slacking off, he’s bugging Yuuri.

“You know, you’re really quiet,” Kristoff tells him, watching Yuuri rearranging their CD display. “Like, really, really, really quiet.”

Yuuri laughs, the sound sounding nervous and forced even to his own ears. He doesn’t know what Kristoff expects him to say to that and because he can’t think of a response himself, he goes back to rearranging the CDs. He feels the other male’s eyes on him and turns to Kristoff, racking his brain for something to say.

Kristoff speaks again before Yuuri can formulate something to say. “You are Asian, right?”

Yuuri nods, thankful that this, at the very least, he can answer. “Japanese.”

The other male moves so he isn’t just staring at Yuuri work, grabbing a few CDs and arranging them. From what Yuuri sees, Kristoff mostly just pulls out random CDs, looks at them, then places them back. He asks, “What does your name mean?”

Yuuri hesitates, surprised by the question. “The kanji of Yuuri can be read as “courage to win” or something like that.” At that, he feels Kristoff turn to look at him. Yuuri meets the other male’s eyes and squirms when Kristoff just keeps on staring. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Kristoff says, moving away from the shelves. He opens his mouth, seemingly to say something, but quickly closes it again, his eyes snapping down to glance at Yuuri’s scarred wrist before flicking away. He’s looking at something on Yuuri’s cheek when he says, “I’m off, school starts tomorrow. I’ll see you around on Friday.”

Yuuri hums in response, moving on to the next shelf and waving goodbye at the other male. With Kristoff gone and few customers around, the only thing that fills the silence of the place is the music. The owner had explained to him how to use the sound system and had given him a flash drive containing the week’s playlist. Yuuri is unfamiliar with most of the songs but he finds that none of them are terrible. He would often look at the laptop, liking a song enough that he would write down the title on his phone so he’d be able to listen to it at home.

He sees the customer looking around the counter, a couple of CDs in hand, and he rushes to attend to them. Not many people come in after that, one or two looking around but not buying anything. Around nine, the owner leaves him with Kristoff’s copy of the keys to the front door, tasking Yuuri with closing up. Alone and with nothing to do, he starts flipping through the songs on the laptop, looking for familiar ones.

With a song playing, he wanders around the store, cleaning up as he went. No one comes in, no one usually does around this hour, and he’s able to do the closing cleaning just as the song comes to an end. Another song comes on, one he’s unfamiliar with, so he moves to change it when he sees someone standing in front of the counter.

He feels his stomach drop, his legs unwilling to move any further once his eyes settle on blood-stained silver hair. There’s a tightness in his throat that he knows would result in a scream if he unscrews his mouth open, so he keeps it shut, eyes flickering to the CCTV camera closest to him. He tells himself to breathe, orders his legs to move and carry him towards the counter.

I’ll pretend I don’t see him, he tells himself. He’ll go away. He’ll go away. He has to go away.

Yuuri keeps his face expressionless and walks toward the counter, watching from the corner of his eye as the ghost turns to look at him. He reaches for the laptop to change the song, already about to click on the NEXT button when something stops him.

“Please don’t.”

Yuuri’s hand stills, long enough for it to be an obvious response to the ghost’s words. He wants to punch himself, wants to hurt himself so bad for being so goddamn stupid. He tries to think of his next move, tries to come up with a way that he’d able to brush off his hesitation and keep on pretending that he’s the only one in the store right now.

“I...” the ghost starts, interrupting his thoughts. When the man speaks again, Yuuri notes how his voice is thick with emotion. “I remember this.”

There’s something almost desperate in the ghost’s tone, something that causes Yuuri to slowly look up. The ghost isn’t looking at him, blue eyes staring down at his hands. Then the ghost moves and Yuuri is just about ready to bolt until he sees the silver-haired man twirl, hands extended as if they were holding someone against him.

It takes Yuuri a moment to understand what the ghost is doing. The music, the movement of his body... Yuuri has been able to see ghosts all his life, but he has never seen a ghost dance ballet up until that very moment.

The man dances with the utmost grace, leaping into the air and landing on his toes. Yuuri finds himself entranced, watching everything with wide eyes. He catches glimpses of the ghost’s expression, face filled with such sorrow that Yuuri feels something in his heart flutter in response. He feels tears prick behind his eyes, bewildering him, and he chalks it up to his brain being unable to cope with the fact that he’s watching a ghost dance with both immense beauty and unbearable sadness.

Yuuri is torn between laughing and crying at the absurdity of the situation. The whole point of him leaving was so he could run away from the (literal) ghost of his past yet here he is, watching a silver-haired apparition dance ballet to classical music.

When Yuuri arrives the following morning, the owner looks at him strangely. He sees the owner’s eyes flicker down to look at his wrists, an almost imperceptible nod following soon after. “Are you okay?” the owner asks him, much to Yuuri’s surprise.

Yuuri thinks back to what happened last night, belatedly realizing what it must have looked like through the CCTV footage: Yuuri, standing by the counter, listening to classical music and crying while staring into space. He looks down at his arms, wondering if the owner had been checking to see if Yuuri had attempted to do something.

Not that he would see anything there even if Yuuri does decide to hurt himself. It’s been months since he came to the realization that cuts on his arms were just too noticeable, too risky.

“Yes,” Yuuri says, maintaining eye contact with the owner. “I’m okay, thank you for asking.”

At his answer, the owner nods and leaves him to do his job. With Kristoff’s absence, the owner lets Yuuri eat lunch at the backroom while the blonde male takes over the counter. Yuuri eats as fast as he can without choking on his food, the owner’s surprise evident when Yuuri returns to his post not more than ten minutes after he left.

“It’s fine, I’m a fast eater,” he tells the owner. An elderly man approaches them, asking for a copy of The Carpenters’ last album. Yuuri takes this as his signal to get back to work.

The store is busier than usual today, Yuuri noticing how he’s almost never alone the whole time. He interacts with most of the customers, following the tips that Kristoff had given him. On more than one occasion, Yuuri is asked for his recommendation and he timidly suggests a band that he’s recently gotten into. He smiles when a couple of people listen to his recommendation and buy the album.

Before leaving, the owner reminds him he can close shop before 10 PM. Yuuri nods, his eye flickering to the clock. He watches as the number of customers dwindle down until he’s down to the last one, a student who looks around as if only noticing for the first time how late it is and that he’s the last one there. The student mumbles an apology and heads out without buying anything.

The ghost returns right before Yuuri’s about to shut down the laptop, making his heart race and his body go rigid for a second. He feels himself relax when he sees the ghost giving him a small smile. Yuuri thinks he might just be imagining things but the smile looks almost sheepish, a request hiding behind the ghost’s blue eyes. He looks at the ghost then at the laptop, a silent question. The ghost nods, making the hair on the back of Yuuri’s neck raise.

He looks for the same song from last night, ignoring the way his mind screams at him for interacting with a ghost and fulfilling its request. As if to make him painfully aware of the mistake he’s about to make, his mind flashes back to the last time he had been stupid enough to associate himself with the dead, his hand stilling before he could press PLAY. He looks at the ghost, still smiling at him shyly, and remembers how it had simply disappeared after dancing last night.

He plays the song and watches as the ghost immediately starts dancing, the movements similar from last night but somehow appearing more calculated. Yuuri has no doubt that this ghost, this man, used to be a great dancer before he had died. The thought of that reminds Yuuri of the blood on the man’s hair, knowing that if he were to look he would see the wound on the man’s skull.

Similar to last night, the performance ends with the silver-haired man pointing at him and then disappearing into thin air, leaving Yuuri breathless and with a strange sort of sadness that has him screwing his eyes closed. He stays rooted in place for a few moments, the silence surrounding him doing nothing to ease the thoughts scattered around his brain. He starts packing up, his body moving on auto-pilot and his mind still trying racing. He knows he shouldn’t entertain the ghost, shouldn’t have in the first place and shouldn’t continue to do so. On the forefront of his mind he knows this couldn’t possibly end well.

Still, he finds himself listening to the little voice speaking to his conscience, the part of him that tells him that the silver-haired dancer wouldn’t do anything to him. This little voice tells him that Yuuri might not know the man but he knows the look in the dead man’s eyes, knows it because he sees it every time he looks in a mirror and every time he sees himself reflected in people’s eyes. He knows what it feels like to be surrounded by people but still be all alone.

Yuuri knows what it’s like to be invisible.

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artdjgblog · 4 years ago

Video

vimeo

Innerview: Sarah Benson / Kansas City Star - Ink Magazine

March 2010

Video: DJG & PJC Note: Questions about David Seume’s Will Ya Be My Friend music video.

01) Is this the first music video you’ve ever done? Have you ever animated before?

This is my first music video. I’ve always wanted to do one and would love to venture more. It was a great opportunity and exercise in collaboration and in personal patience as I typically can’t allow art projects to take up a lot of my time per day job, life stuff and other art projects. I’ve never animated before per lack of resources and know-how, but my flat work has always been animated inside of me. It’s so nice to fully translate this in video form for everyone to see. But, it’s not just my video. My friend Philip James Cheaney is animator/co-director and additional artist on David Seume’s “Will Ya Be My Friend” video. This is Philip’s second full-length music video, the first being for The Winston Jazz Routine. I believe he has another one in pre-production for Joel Kraft. He also has several short films under his belt while stationed in Portland, OR. Currently, he is studying for a masters degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. I hope this video lends him extra credit as he captured my insides, enhancing them greatly. We’ve known each other for over a decade and work well together, even completing each others sentences most of the time. And David’s wonderful song made it that much easier. David was so kind to let us pick the song that truly sung to us and it was a treat. Three years prior to working on this video with Philip, he and I actually swapped some fairly extensive brains on an animated short film starring Abe Lincoln that we look forward to getting to in the future. I hope to learn some tech or hands-on trickery by then. Philip also has two other short films featuring my art that are on the back burner. Our back burner is actually a bonfire. 02) How did the collaboration between you and David come about? David connected with me on email out of the blue in late November of 2008 while I was in Texas. We had never talked before and I didn’t know about him, but he somehow knew about me. Coincidentally, he was booked to play a set of music, as well as release his debut album “It Is What It Is”, the same night of my 6th annual December art exhibition at The Brick in Kansas City, MO. He commissioned me to make a poster for his show and I knew instantly via email and after meeting in the flesh at the show that we were on the same page in life and art. I believe it was the same night at The Brick that we talked a little about the prospect of a music video. So, it was only fitting we chose to have the “Will Ya Be My Friend” video premiere and video art production on display at The Brick…with extra special thanks to Sheri! 03) The video was released last weekend, right? The video was officially released on Friday, March 12, 2010 at The Brick and on the internet right away. It’s been fourteen months in the making, and apart from my production work online and a handful of news items on David’s site and my site, has been fairly tight-lipped/tight-eye’d. It’s really neat to finally get it out there, share with the public, and see our year-plus of work fly by in four minutes! Hopefully, it’s four minutes that people will come back to visit multiple times! Tell your friends! 04) How much of the imagery is drawn vs. found? There is a very large percentage of found imagery pieced together in collage. There are also some hand drawn elements and characters. The core landscape I made of multiple ink jet printed overlays of found medical/science and floral illustrations and photos. There are also blow-ups of actual locust wings that make lovely hills. The original landscape, which we call “the scroll”, is made from all these layered collage pieces. The scroll is roughly 22″ wide x 25′ long (give-or-take as it is hard to properly measure the length) , based on the landscape I had in my head and from early sketches that I drew/timed to the flow of the landscape of the song. At one time I thought about the prospect of shooting the video on a continuous scroll cranked by hand, sorta old-fashioned and in tune to how I like to do things, but I’ll save that for another something down the road. Going back to truly visualizing the music, I had a vision of the landscape going on one continuous shot with multiple zooms up ‘n’ down and back ‘n’ forth and with the ability for the viewer to see the entire landscape at once during certain moments to see the scope of the world, or at least the part of the world that we were showing. It was probably a little more adventurous and in-depth than what could have been done, but what we ended up with is great as Philip really captured it well and found great ways to compromise and add his own flavors. I’m very pleased! Once the art and my notes were in Philip’s hands, I didn’t worry about it because I have faith in his abilities. I just hope he gets well rested after this! 05) There are a lot of insects and anatomical drawings in the video. Where did that concept come from? In my initial video thoughts, and something I think about quite frequently, I wanted to not only visually stamp the song “Will Ya Be My Friend”, but what the music might sound like on the inside or outside. Whether it’s the soul or makeup of the song itself or any body or vessel in which the song is played into, anything, even that of the external, in-between or over yonder. The original idea actually incorporated a live-action scene that lead into what you see for the final. There was also an idea of capturing David in full body movement and inserting him into the video world. But, being a little limited, and with David and me in KCMO and Philip, our chief motion man being in NYNY, we slimmed our ideas down some. I did a simple action photo shoot of David and then got to work on the final art. Though, Philip did a great job with the introduction of David in the opening credits and a humorous fall into the video world, so he partially captured some of the initial blue print. In terms of conceptual makeup of the landscape, I love seeing split levels of earth layers and what might be under the surface. So, the medical/science/anatomical imagery just made sense with this and also with the idea of seeing the guts of the musical landscape, human landscape or in-between world landscape. I had a couple of underground or cave-like-dip-down moments in mind fused with an almost Super Mario Bros. feel and this idea of seeing more than what’s just on the surface worked well with it too. The insects included just made sense in complimenting the anatomy and floral arrangements. The introduction of “Will Ya Be My Friend” has locusts and I wanted to play off of that, not only with an animation of an actual one whose skid mark David is after, but a few others in interaction, so the insects and microscopic critters blown-up, worked well, as well as the skeleton hands that act insect and critter-like. The song also ends with the voice of a child singing along and we wanted to capture childlike innocence, wonder and discovery from many aspects of the journey. We wanted a video that would be seen as more than just a video for the song, but more like a personal adventure with an identity that anybody might attach to or become attracted towards. We also wanted to lay the foundation of creativity and imagination and a connection to something larger. In particular, that feeling of experiencing something that can live beyond borders, that can make a person wake-up at any point in a day and get wheels turning. Something that can keep breathing. Something all around us that we often overlook, even sometimes the most important elements of life. Even though online time goes by in a flash, and an overloaded four minutes of video time at that, maybe it will get people to come back for more or rewind to get a better view of something buried beneath the surface, or grab a friend to show them. Maybe even it will get people to be thinking or look at non-video life in new ways. Friendships, life, art, whatever, all have extra things and treasures buried beneath. Of course, there are always chances of the not-so special things lurking. But, faith in the extra good ones can cancel them out, we must hope. 06) Are those Paul McCartney’s eyes on that lion? Good question and shows you were watching and came back for more! No, those aren’t Paul’s eyes. Though, if I had to choose the eyes of a Paul, it would be Newman or Buzan. Actually, those are David Seume’s eyes! And actually, as David exits the cave, a picture of himself that makes up the landscape composition is in the ground. It’s the picture those eyes came from. Up until late in the production art I just had the regular “Lion Guy” eyes there, a frizzy-haired chap I came across in an old thrift store text book. I’m not sure what kind of book, maybe psychology, but this guy was chosen for something and then I chose him. He gave me a giggle with that lion mane hair of his and I found a frame to hang him and then drew a body. He makes for a good friend. I wonder who he is though. I’d like to meet him and hope he doesn’t sue me for extending his likeness because I just like him. 07) Have you found anything good recently? (I remember last time we met you had a cup that said “Your dumb” on it) I’m constantly walking with my head down for keepsakes that other people discard, or trash that turns into animals or art when I walk by, so my pockets always have things in them. There are some great weathered handwritten garage and estate sale signs out there left to dissolve. Also, since we’re finally all thawed out from the winter (maybe?) there is good pickings for pieces of cars that wrecked and weird pieces of trash that was chucked. Much of the stuff I’m finding will all fit well together in a singular piece of art, once I get it all spread out and find the right time for it. This town needs a good, hard rain to wash it up some, but it all makes up the city’s landscape. And for now I’ll take what I can get and make something pretty, at least to me. Thanks! -djg

#interviews #innerviews #musicvideo #design #illustration #kansascity

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charliexhall · 7 years ago

Photo

There are those who have seen, and those soon to beware What your smoke is concealing Just a trail of bones, atop a lemming’s hill All fallen prey All fallen prey

All fallen prey

This house is a witch, luring survivors like children with a candy home in the hopes of devouring them whole. But what didn’t this place have? Food still waiting for it’s expiration date to arrive along with the ability to eat a hot meal - the first in too long. Or even the running water, and Charlie doesn’t understand the mechanics of that, unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth. But maybe she should’ve. Because the mansion is poisoned, something in the water or in the air turning its victims a ghastly pale shade. One by one. It’s written on the faces she’s passed, and she’s terrified to ask what’s wrong, what happened.

It isn’t safe to travel alone, not even within the confines of these expansive walls it would seem, but the redhead does anyway, selfishly keeping to herself when it might be better to lend a hand to anyone suffering. But what if that pain is contagious? They’d been here for a few weeks now, she guesses after a tiring attempt to chase back time in her memory until she’s reminded she isn’t entirely sure when she left New York City with this group, but it feels like centuries ago. And if she dwells too long upon that, she’ll remember she’s looking for her family and that hope is a barely living candle, flickering with every brush of a day passing - struggling to survive another night.

The kitchen is quiet and the faint scent of her mother baking swirls in her lungs like an almost forgotten memory. But it’s a comfort, the warmth of chocolate chip cookies filling the air, beckoning her children to her side. It’s the only thing the two of them ever really saw eye to eye on. Once the chubby-cheeked helper, she became merely a consumer after a few years, a teenage mind more focused upon softball practice and hanging out with her friends than baking with her mother. But there had been a handful of moments she can recall hitting the kitchen at just the right time, and sparing the afternoon to kneed dough or cut out Christmas shapes.

It just usually came with regret, her mother only requiring a few minutes before she’d start nagging on something her daughter wasn’t doing the way she’d prefer - not wearing her hair a certain style, never bringing home any boyfriends to meet her parents. The two never saw eye to eye. Because Karen Hall finally got a baby girl, who preferred to run with the boys instead of play dress up. It always caused a small burst of humorous air from her lungs whenever Charlie thought about what her mother would’ve thought of her in college - with short skirts and dragging a strange face home every weekend. That probably still isn’t the kind of daughter she wanted.

No, it’s not. You should be dating like a normal woman your age.

It’s only a joke to think that she, perhaps, doesn’t want to reunite with her mother. Because the first thing out of her mouth would be the question of who in the group she’s seeing or what took her so long, she scared them all to death. Charlie smiles softly to herself, something hopeless in the curve of her lips. She’d take her mother’s nagging tenfold if it meant the woman is alive and she’d find her.

A door slams loudly behind her, somewhere down the hall. The sound reverberates in her shoulders as they lift involuntarily, too occupied with her own thoughts to spend much attention on the world around her. She almost forgot precisely where she is. Tentatively, the redhead peeks down the hall, assuming someone is having a rough night, because that seems to be more common place these days - frowns demolishing smiles, or even stone faces. But the echo of the door doesn’t fit the barriers here. There’s something too familiar in it’s wooden collision.

“Hello?” Charlie calls out dumbly, resisting the urge to slap her palm against her face when she realizes what kind of cliche she resembles.

A flash of a black silhouette catches her eye as it races down the darkened hall upstairs. It might be a bad omen to follow, but the logical side of Charlie’s brain races to fill questions with answers. A group member, of course. But did they spot something in the distance from a window, a threat of some kind? Something hellish or something human? Foolishly, she’s unarmed, her weaponry left with her belongings where she decided to camp for the nights they’d spend here. Her feet follow the invisible path hastily up the curved staircase, taking the right side due to easier access. Her thighs pump power through her legs as she jogs up each step to reach whoever may have needed the help.

But the hall is empty, save for a few shut doors. No sign of the figure.

Charlie’s lips part, either to draw in courage from the air or call out to the person she witnessed as a blur. Because something doesn’t sit right in her stomach. Like the scent of her mother’s baking, still heavy in her lungs, rests with a sickly sweetness as though she’s gorged herself on too many cookies. The building is silent, her footsteps coming to a halt at the start of the hall, peering down the corridor at the few closed doors. No sign of life. No sign of time passing.

A voice in the back of her head silences her inaudible question, the desire to calm her nerves by having some familiar face pop out their head just to assure her everything is fine. Violet. Eli. Samson. Anyone.

A creaking shatters the solitude, darting her gaze in its direction and breaking her concentration on her conscience telling her to just leave it be. There isn’t a hand on the knob of the door, or someone even gazing back at her, just a humanless invitation to the room that she knows she shouldn’t take. But her feet refuse to listen. They move of their own accord, like a trance set by a piper and her toes eager to turn into rats.

The door is even louder, the scent of a treat baking heavier in this room, but it isn’t a kitchen and it lacks an oven. She’s been led to a bedroom. The bedroom of her childhood. There’s trophies on the shelf collecting dust and posters of bands she liked in high school, pictures still on her cork board of her friends. Everything precisely the way she left it when she packed up for college. Her stares drifts about the room as though she were in a dream. Because it had to be a dream; this home in a different town in New Jersey couldn’t have an exact replica of her room.

Still cautiously, she takes a few steps inside, unaccustomed to fear and uncertainty at the sight of her own bedroom when it used to be a safe haven. The door slams shut behind her and if Charlie tosses a glance back, she doesn’t try to open it, accepting her fate locked somewhere familiar. Rounding the bed, there’s an outline of a body on her bed, as though it had only recently been slept in. Perhaps the shape she saw, but there isn’t a sign of life in here except for her. And she isn’t so sure that’s true either.

Still, she sits on the edge of her bed, admiring the vision of her bedroom, still in awe of its beauty. This is her room. Entirely. Her mother is baking downstairs, she can smell it with every inhale. She’s made it home. Maybe she’s truly made it home and those days after the mansion all became a blur as she focused on her destination, her one goal. Her family. Her fingers spread along the sheets of her bed, smiling at the warmth as though she’d slept in it. The carpet pads the soles of her shoes.

She’s just woken up. This was all a bad dream, caused by the stress of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. She’s home, on a break. Relief floods her bloodstream. How real that nightmare was, she can still recall the faces of the people she traveled with. But names are beginning to escape her. There was a man with a little girl, and a woman who answered her stupid questions. A guy with tattoos that she kept a secret for, maybe. And she thinks one of her coworkers was in her dream. Maybe Violet.

Charlie flops her body weight on her bed, sinking into the mattress comfortably as she closes her eyes. There truly isn’t anywhere like home. She could sleep forever here, in the safety of her own room, in a quiet little town in New Jersey.

The cellphone chimes beside her on the end table, an iPhone plugged into a charger because she’d always been bad about keeping the battery even half way full. It jolts her awake, eyes opening with the thought she isn’t sure how long they had been closed. The ring is familiar yet almost distant to her ear, as though a nap had been interrupted and she’s still partially living in her dream world. The screen lights up with the name ‘Dad’ and she groggily grins. “Hi dad,” she greets as she holds the phone to her ear.

Static crackles on the other end. “Dad?” she questions, plugging her other ear like she might hear him better, or catch a better signal somehow. “Dad, can you hear me?”

Where are you?

“I’m upstairs. In my room.”

Where are you?

“Dad, I’m home. Where are you?”

The voice grows panicked, still her father’s and that’s clear to her but she’s never heard him sound so upset, so out of control. He’s the one who always keeps his composure.

Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?

The voice at the other end grows in intensity, until he’s screaming on the other line, voice cracking as he cries out for his missing daughter. “Dad, slow down,” Charlies begs, fear closing her veins until it’s impossible for blood cells to continue traveling through. “Tell me where you are, I’ll come find you.”

But reasoning with the voice only frustrates it more until he’s screaming so loud with such agony, Charlie throws the phone away from her ear in fear. It hits the wooden floor, which she can’t recall having a wood paneled floor before, and slides along until it hits the wall, where a large square hangs covered by a white sheet. She feels like a little girl again, dreading the monster hiding in the shadows of her closet as she stares at the unfamiliar aspects of her bedroom. She doesn’t remember that white sheet hanging from her wall. That’s new.

Her father is still screaming from the phone, the electronic tone of his voice terrifying as his pain reverberates off her walls and beckons her towards the device, if only to shut it up. That can’t be her father, he never loses his cool. And yet, it’s his voice, however much of a shock to her system that might be. Her boots ring solidly along the wooden floor as she treads tearfully towards the screaming phone and the covered object on the wall.

She never had a wood floor. She knows this. She has to know this.

The iPhone leaps after each pause of air her father takes, as though it had come to life with just the sound of his voice. She covers her ears, unable to listen to the anguish of her father as her boot stomps against the cellphone. She’d get a new one. A new phone. Maybe a new dad. A working one that doesn’t cry into the phone. That isn’t him. That can’t be him. He’s always calm. He’s always calm.

But the voice wouldn’t be silenced, still forcing its way through the damaged speaker until it reminds her of the shrieks of those creatures crawling out of the pit made of the city she once called home. “Shut up,” she demands through her tears, “Shut up, shut up shut up.” But the tap dance upon the phone only worsens the effect on her father’s voice. And if it no longer sounds like him, it doesn’t sound like kindness either, or the sweetness of silence. It’s sharp tune pierces her eardrums until they might bleed.

Just when it might shatter and fragment the brain inside her skull, the sound abruptly stops until it’s just her screaming back at it, one long tone to match a harmony to it’s frightening tune. There isn’t a silence to follow. Even the dust settling to the ground drums like her heartbeat. Her lungs desperately search the room for breathable air as she pants out the terror playing its song in her chest. The phone lies shattered on the floor before her, no longer usable. Just silent. And each inhale still fills her nostrils with the scent of something baking, causing her stomach to roll in a revolt to something so sugary and sweet.

The corner of the white sheet flickers to life with a breeze she couldn’t pinpoint and catches Charlie’s eye. It isn’t supposed to be there. She’s never covered up anything on her wall. But what is supposed to be there? What is it covering? She couldn’t remember any kind of picture. There’s too much sudden uncertainty in this room, every detail suddenly untrustworthy when she can’t remember whether or not she had carpet or wood flooring, or even how she got her. A nightmare. No, she’d woken up from a nightmare. She probably just took the train.

Softly, as though she might disturb something delicately, she pulls the cloth from the wall and the fabric pools before her feet on the floor, laying the cell phone to rest under a white grave. Charlie gazes back from behind the sheet, a mirror covered and hanging on her wall. She never had a mirror there. She swore she never had a mirror there. Is her mother making changes to her room in her absence? She swore she wouldn’t.

But she isn’t alone in the mirror. Her family stands with her, shown from the waist up. “Dad?” Charlie questions gently, before her gaze shifts to each face staring at her. “Mom?”

Nobody smiles. Her brothers stand beside her parents, looking exhausted and concerned. Michael’s face is hardened. It’s always been that way, bearing the brunt of being the eldest. Shane looks the most exhausted, always a more gentle soul. Their presence goes unfelt, no warmth behind her back to lead her to believe she isn’t alone. But she turns anyway, unsure of what tricks her eyes are playing. There’s nobody there. The room empty and her bed made. She hadn’t made her bed, had she? A chill rips through her spine. She’s alone in her room.

Charlie turns to confront the family in the mirror, but she isn’t standing in the reflection anymore. Her fathers reaches through the bright glass, fingers knotting in the collar of her shirt as he lift her off the ground and pulls her close to his face. “Run,” he instructs sternly but still something soft in her voice, never raising it to get his point across. He always balanced out her neurotic mother. “Go now.”

He lets go of his daughter then, tossing her towards the ground and her spine greets the floor with a painful collision. She groans at the sparks shooting up her back as she rolls onto her stomach, eyes clenched shut at the impact. But now she isn’t alone when she opens them. A delicate hand slips out from under her bed, pale enough that she might assume it bloodless if she couldn’t see the sickening map of veins running through the arm as it reveals more of itself.

The creature’s nails dig into the hardwood floor as it pulls itself from under her bed and she knows that face as soon as the sun shines beams upon its features. Her brother, Shane. But there’s something dead in his eyes, something vacant as he crawls towards his sister. Charlie shifts until she’s sitting, the heels of her boots pushing along the floor to gain space between her and the gaining creature who stole her brother’s face.

“Shane, stop,” she begs as her back meets the wall and the mirror hangs like a storm cloud above her. But Shane advances still, snarling with sharpened teeth and blood dried at the corner of his mouth. “Please,” she whispers, scrambling to gain her footing as her fingers grasp at the edge of the mirror’s frame to help pull her up. Her dad will help her, the one living in the mirror. It’s a window. To somewhere else. He wouldn’t abandon her. But when she stands and presses her palms against the cool, reflective surface. She can’t break through. And her father and Michael’s figures a mere retreating forms. Backs turned to her as they stumble through some barren farmland she doesn’t recognize.

“Dad! Dad, please! Mike! Come back!”

No one turns. And her mother has vanished, never walking with the rest of the family.

But she isn’t out of the mirror. Just Shane, with his dead eyes and fingers around her ankle as he tugs her down to his level. She collapses with his strength, head smacking against the iron edge of the mirror on the way down, and arms up to guard her face as she struggles weakly against his attack. Her vision begins to fade, arms going limp against her sides as Shane drags her away from the wall. The world goes black, the scent of cookies clogging her nose until she can’t breath at all, or maybe that’s her brother’s weight on her chest.

This feels like another dream, the wood floor cold against her spine as her head lolls groggily to one side. Her vision is shapes and blurs of color, a water painting in dull hues. There’s a pain at her wrist caused by the outline of something feasting on her flesh, but she’s too weak to fight. Her lips form to a word, maybe ‘no’ or ‘stop’ but she can’t hear a sound besides what once was her brother smacking his teeth and lips at her muscle and bone. The pain burns red hot but she cannot move, a throbbing at the back of her skull that paralyzes her.

Charlie’s eyes drift slowly shut, tears escaping and cooling her warmed cheeks. How long they are closed, she doesn’t know, but the nightmare is shut out for a brief period of time. And when she opens them again, the room is changed: a bedroom that doesn’t belong to her. She doesn’t know this room, hadn’t explored it before. The floor is still wood but her cork board is gone and the trophies. There isn’t anything belonging to her. Not even her brother, or the mirror. She’s alone, the insides of her wrist covered with unmarred skin.

Only the tears remain.

#twlevent:house of horrors #hall!p:smoke and mirrors #hall!selfpara #tw:violence #tw: blood #this is rubbish i'm still not happy with it but OH WELL HAVE SOME STUFF

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punkascas · 7 years ago

Text

Fic Author Interview

tagged by: the wonderfully talented and incredibly sweet @amirosebooks ❤

tagging: @iggyw @tenoko1 @casolantern @schmerzerling @amazinmango @serricoj @rainbofiction @coffeeandcas @topaz-eyes @angelofthemoor @culumacilinte @coplins

im going to do this from the slightly broader perspective of creative writing in general (since i write fic but i also write scripts and things for my job). also this is v long. sorry.

What inspires your work most? (The show it is based on, the actor who portrays a certain character, maybe the character itself…? It could even be an experience.) so generally my inspiration is (in order): (a) my own life experiences, (b) some kind of commentary i want to make about the source material or about fiction or fandom in general, and (c) the characters themselves and the aspects i love in them, especially trying to find ways to play with the duality of their personalities, the good aspects and the negative ones. i’ve known for a long time that what drives me to create is that i want to make other people feel less alone. you know those times to read something or there’s a line someone says, and you’re like, yes, yes, that’s me; no one’s ever gotten that before or at least never put it so perfectly into words, whatever that experience/feeling might be. i want to give people that moment with anything i create. there’s also a lot of things that i’ve experienced in my life that come up relatively often in fiction, or at least in fic, and a lot of it usually is off-putting to me. it never resonates. it’s melodramatic or simply inaccurate, and i think is often written by someone who doesn’t have the lived experience to pull from. so i always want to add my voice to the pile and benefit from my own experiences to make those kinds of tropes and situations more realistic and relatable -- to me, but hopefully also to others. like generally every character backstory or character arc i write in fic is something pulled from my own life. like it’s probably twisted or adapted somewhat, because i’m not into being autobiographical. but as an example, in faith healer, this bit: Memory degrades with time. Maybe as a child he knew that somehow. He knew that there would be a second, slower death across time, as she became more of idea than person, and so he clung onto specific moments as a talisman for Mom: I had a mom once; this was my mommy. He remembers her hands best. The way her skin was thin and dry, but her fingers strong, and the way they'd close around his hands. The way she would press in love and good luck and humility when he misbehaved with a squeeze to his chubby, too small hands. Second best he remembers her laugh, the way her mouth moved around a smile, the warmth in it, tinged with embarrassment whenever someone startled it out from her. The rest of the memories are vague, more like facts he can read out of a mental police blotter than lived experience. She used to wear some kind of fleece robe in the winter, thick and pilled, creating a soft cushion between her breasts for his head to rest when he sat in her lap for a story. He thinks the robe was red. She used to bake things from scratch and used to let him pretend to help. On Sundays she did laundry, down in the basement. He followed her once, asking when Dad would come back, and she paused on the landing, basket of clothes cocked on her hip, and wouldn't go any further until he went back upstairs. The basement, she said, was too dangerous for him, dark and damp. She wanted him to be safe. She always cut the crust off his sandwiches. that is my experience of my grandmother’s death. when she died i knew i would forget over time the specific details of her, so i picked a couple to remind myself of daily so i’d never forget them. and that was her hands and her laugh. and i do have that memory of her doing the laundry and standing on the landing to the basement asking her where my dad was and when he’d be back (he was on an 18 month voyage to africa - my dad is a sailor). and she did always cut the crusts off my sandwiches for me. (and btw i can’t ever re-read that passage with crying.)

What is your favorite fandom to write for? i mean, usually whatever my main fandom is at the time? which right now is spn. i did also enjoy writing potc fic and RDJ films sherlock holmes. i like writing characters who have a very strong but also very biased or unusual perspective on the world. they make for good unreliable narrators, which is something i love doing.

Which perspective do you prefer writing in? (First-person, third-person) always, always, always third-person limited is my go-to. i only write in first-person if the original source material is written that way (like ACD Sherlock Holmes) and i want to do a pastiche of that style.

Do you prefer writing reader fics or OCs? no. full stop. (okay, one caveat: i do like kidfic, but i am also SUPER PICKY about reading it bc im always looking for some accurate representations of parenthood and what it’s like to have a child. like kids are hard??? they’re hard and they make you worry and they drive you crazy and they have their own, weird, stubborn, fascinating views on life and the world. they’re not perfect angel children who exist only to be cute or ridiculously amazing mary sue geniuses. so yeah a well done kidfic where the kid is an OC i will read.)

Do you prefer writing longer works or one shots? given that every single WIP i have right now are fucking, horrible, lengthy novels,i want to say i prefer writing one-shots. i want TO BE ABLE to write one-shots. i used to do???? but yeah, i guess i really do enjoy plotting and world-building, which lends itself to creating monster plot bunnies instead of short stories or quick scenes.

Do you take requests? i do! do i ever actually get around to writing those requests is another question. but absolutely. send me prompts. ask for timestamps. if it speaks to me, and especially if it’s something i think i can write in less than 1000 words, i’ll most likely give it a go.

Do you enjoy getting random Asks? yes! always! i try to respond at least with in 72 hours. but yes please COME TALK TO ME ANYTIME.

What inspires the names for OCs (or extra character names) in your works? Do you pick them from real life or just select them at random? A mix? so with fic, i never really write OCs, or if i do, they’re p much a red shirt or like extra #243 or smth and therefore don’t have names. if a character has spoken dialogue or no on-screen dialogue but some impact on the plot, i’ll try to “cast” that part with a character from the source material. for example, in the family business (which i realise isn’t posted yet), there’s some issues with a rival gang that need resolving. i cast the head of the rival gang as a well-known character from spn that has generally served a rival or an enemy to the boys on the show. i like doing that bc i like the parallels it draws, especially when working with an AU, and the ability to explore characters and dynamics from a slightly (or not slightly at all but in fact completely divergent) angle. i follow the philosophy that part of the real cathartic nature of AUs and part of why we write them is the ability to offer commentary on the source material. that a good AU should offer commentary on the source material. they're both metatexts and paratexts simultaneously. the one caveat to this, again, is kidfic, because i like and i do write it (i’ve just never finished any of those fics enough to publish them). and then i try to name kids in the way i think their parents would name them. i try to put myself in the character’s headspace and try to figure out what name(s) would appeal to them. and if we talk about work, and the scripts i write, i mean all of that is basically OCs. so far every script i’ve written while employed by my current firm, i always stick in at least one instance of one of my dogs’ names. i also will make subtle film or tv references. like the script i just wrote, there were three characters, and the first character had already been named harold by our content lead. so i named the other two perry and harmony as a reference to kiss kiss bang bang. i’ve done all the clones from orphan black as OC names. i’ve done members of radiohead. if one of the scripts im writing already has a theme built into it for a specific pop culture reference (like yesterday one of the scripts i wrote was using yoda speech and star wars analogies as part of its marketing and engagement strategies) so i’ll name characters in line with that pop culture motif (so the star wars themed script has luke and ben and daisy and carrie as characters).

If your story(ies) have OCs, are their appearances based on real people or celebrities? If so, who? as mentioned above, i rarely include OCs and if i do, they’re unimportant stand-ins. so i never give much thought to how they look. offspring in kidfic i do think about how they look. if the actors who play the main characters have children, i’ll start there. like for dean and cas, i always look at jj and west and maison and try to figure out what a kid with some of those combined physical features might look like. i’ll also look at photos of the actors from when they were kids or teenagers and try to decide if these two people had a kid, what features would that kid inherit. for work, casting people depends on client expectations and design direction and budget, so it’s a different ballgame.

How long have you been writing fanfiction? i think the first fic i published was in 2002 or 2003. so 15 years i guess??? how has it been 15 years dude.

#tag games #kat talks #writing stuff #i heart fandom

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