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libermachinae · 3 years

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Notes: baby robot

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“602 RPS. Fuel pressure 124 over 75. Circuits holding—”

“Prowl, come.”

Prowl glanced up from the monitor for just an astrosec. Mesothulas was standing in front of the CR chamber, leaned so close he was nearly touching the casing, well beyond the limits of safety protocols. Even from up here in the observation deck, Prowl could see the way he quivered, fingers flexing as though he really intended to brush them over the freezing pod. He’d spoken without looking away from it, optics fixed on the narrow porthole, its view blocked from Prowl’s gaze by the glare of the lab’s lighting.

When he looked back, RPS had dropped to 598.

“I can observe plenty from up here,” he said, logging the change along with the rest of the readout flashing across his display. The system would do it automatically, but keeping his own logs allowed him to feed the data directly into his risk analysis programs, their last safeguard against any unexpected chain reactions. Reversal and shutdown commands remained queued and at the ready.

“But he can’t see you,” Mesothulas insisted, still with his gaze on the pod. There was a mechanical growl deep within the machine, systems warming to protect them against the coming temperature snap.

“I’ll introduce myself later,” Prowl promised. He had a script prepared, easily integrated into the standard basic function tests he’d plucked from the ruins of Petrex’s last construction center. It would serve to demonstrate the construct’s ability to differentiate itself from other people and recognize when it was being addressed, provided current readings held steady and they actually made it that far. “I need to keep monitoring in case of—”

“In case of what, Prowl? Our design is without flaw. He’s perfect.” Mesothulas did touch the pod then, yanking away and shaking out his hand when the cold bit back. “We’ve already run every test, accounted for every variable. You said yourself, nothing will go wrong.”

“Because I’m up here, making sure it doesn’t.” There was a hiss as the internal ventilations started to draw out the freezing gasses, and a fog appeared over the porthole as moisture in the air responded to the change in temperature. Mesothulas leaned close again, and this time Prowl decided not to bother worrying about it. “I don’t understand why this is an issue. We haven’t installed its datalogging software yet; it won’t remember any of this.”

There was a lot he didn’t understand about Mesothulas, but most of the time that worked to his benefit, their different priorities allowing them to easily collaborate by taking over parts of each project the other had no interest in. It was rare for them to clash, and if it caused him to add a few extra lines to his spreadsheets as he accelerated his tracking speed, the construct certainly wouldn’t suffer for it.

“He, Prowl. He has his own spark.”

And going by the standards Prowl had grown up with, that put it in the animate category, a step above mechanized but not yet in the autonomous phase that signified life. But that was for spliced sparks, borrowed identities who only became individuals once introduced to a unique processor sequence. He and Mesothulas had gone back and forth on what this meant for the construct, whose spark had been struck from as close to nothing as one could, and Prowl was smart enough to know it was not a discussion worth bringing up now.

“And it’s important because we’re not just introducing ourselves: we’re introducing the entire universe to him. We’re his first impression of everything. I’m not letting you waste that opportunity.”

There was a hiccup in Prowl’s momentum as Mesothulas’ sentiments caused his processor to pick up a memory. Its low priority weighed against the negligible file size meant that despite considering deleting it as it lost relevance with each new change to his life, he’d kept it buried in his archive. The auditory component had become uncoupled during one of his early processor crashes, so all he had left was the visual, grainy with the degradation of multiple transfers and processor upgrades. The file played and his optical feed came online to two Cybertronians, one standing back with a datapad while the other stood closer, his optics fixed on Prowl. They were both talking, but Prowl hadn’t bothered to watch their lips: all his focus had been on their plating, his first thoughts a string of hexidecimal codes as he tried to track all the ways their paint reacted to light and shadow.

It was not a long memory. He’d dropped offline almost immediately, having overwhelmed his processor before his temperature controls had finished booting up, and after that he’d had a specialist team to finish his construction. Though he’d had access to the database, he’d never bothered to go looking up the names of the first two bots he’d seen. Their role in his life had been all but inconsequential, compared to the engineers who spent decacycles making sure his spark and frame could maintain the advanced tactical suite he’d been built for.

“I’ll make sure the construct functions long enough to see any of it,” he said, returning his focus to the monitors. 608 RPS.

He thought he caught a glint of yellow from where Mesothulas stood.

“P—”

“Vacuum seal releasing.”

There was a louder hiss as a plume of white mist escaped the seams of the pod door. Mesothulas jumped away from it, then moved back in as soon as it had dissipated, hands up like he wanted to help the door along as it pushed out and then slid aside on a silent track. More mist spilled out, blanketing the floor around Mesothulas’ pedes, but it was hard to tell whether his slight hop step was from pain or eagerness.

“Surge guards holding,” Prowl reported. “Autonomics steady. Entering second stage bootup.”

Mesothulas gasped and Prowl looked up, concerned, but found himself just as startled. Bioillumination was a hallmark of stage two and not in itself surprising. Even the brilliant intensity, light stretching beyond the confines of the pod, was to be expected, given that they hadn’t installed any code to regulate it yet. Mesothulas just hadn’t told him the optics would be blue.

“Sys-systems disconnecting from external fuel supply,” he stammered, feeling a rush of embarrassment before he composed himself. “Fuel pressure 121 over 74.”

Mesothulas made no indication he heard, and a moment later Prowl realized he wasn’t listening at all: he was talking to the construct, his voice a low murmur Prowl couldn’t hear from his place on the observation deck.

“Entering third stage. Somatic systems coming online.”

The construct turned to look at Mesothulas. Even turned away, Prowl somehow knew the scientist was beaming, his lesson from earlier the only thing keeping him from reaching into the pod and wrapping himself around his creation like he was wont to do with Prowl.

And then Mesothulas stepped back and to the side, pointing up at the platform still without his optics leaving the construct.

“And that’s Prowl,” he said, finally loud enough for his voice to carry. “He’s worked just as hard.”

Those blue optics turned to him. Prowl knew it was only the most basic coding compelling the construct to follow the movement of Mesothulas’ finger, its bare processor unable to even register him as a separate element from his environment, let alone a fellow Cybertronian. But there was something about being caught in that gaze, watching the lenses attempt to focus when there wasn’t enough data yet to tell them what to focus on, that caused him to raise his hand in an uncertain wave.

“You’ll get the chance to meet him later, I promise,” Mesothulas said, drawing the construct’s attention back to him. “Ostaros, we have so much more to show you. You can’t imagine.”

It couldn’t, Prowl mused, watching Mesothulas attempt to link his fingers with those of his creation and pulling away with a hiss at the subsequent reminder. But this period of emptiness would not last forever. Like the science that had formed its impossible spark, the construct—Ostaros—would come into being, something pulled from nothing, a person just as much as himself or Mesothulas. Prowl would introduce himself then, to whoever it was that Ostaros became.

#maccadam #transformers #taraprowl #prowl #tarantulas #mesothulas #springer #ostaros #my writing #ficlet #might put this one on ao3 #haven't decided

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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 3 years

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Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige

“The thing I love about being an actor is to fully work with someone and try so hard to be at every level with them, chasing whatever it is you need or want from them.”

GALLERY LINKS

Studio Photoshoots > 2021 > Session 008 Magazine Scans > 2021 > Backstage (August 19)

Backstage: Elizabeth Olsen grins widely over video chat when recalling many such moments on set with her co-stars. Yet, she can’t bring herself to divorce such a lofty vision of film acting from the technical multitasking it requires. The camera sees all.

“But then you move your hair, and you’re in your brain, like: OK, remember that! Because I don’t want to edit myself out of a shot. I know some actors are like, ‘Continuity, shmontinuity!’ But the good thing about continuity is, if you remember it, you’re actually providing yourself with more options for the edit.”

That need to balance being both inside the scene and outside of it, fully living it and yet constantly visualizing it on a screen, feels particularly apt in light of Olsen’s most recent project, “WandaVision.”

The mysteries at the heart of the show grow with every episode, each fast-forwarding to a different decade: Could this 1950s, black-and-white, “filmed in front of a studio audience” newlyweds bit be a grief-stricken dream? Might this ’70s spoof be a powerful spell gone awry? Could this meta take on mockumentary comedies be proof that the multiverse is finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The series’ structure, which branches out to include government agents intent on finding out why Westview has seemingly disappeared, calls for the entire cast to play with a mix of genres, balancing a shape-shifting tone that culminates in an epic, MCU-style conclusion. What’s key—and why the show struck a chord with audiences during its nine-episode run—is the miniseries’ commitment to grounding its initial kooky setups and its later special effects-driven spectacle in heartbreaking emotional truths. It’s no small feat, though it’s one that can often be taken for granted.

“I was thinking how hard it would have been to have shot the first ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” Olsen muses. “Like, you’re putting all these actors [into the frame] later and at all these different levels. All the eyelines are completely unnatural. And yet the performances are fantastic! And technically, they are so hard. People forget sometimes that these things are really technically hard to shoot. And if you are moved by their performance, that took a lot of multitasking.”

As someone who has learned plenty about harnesses, wirework, fight choreography, and green screens (she’s starred in four Marvel movies, including the box office megahit “Avengers: Endgame,” after all), Olsen knows how hard it can be to wrap one’s brain around the work needed to pull off those big, splashy scenes.

“If you think about it, it’s, like, the biggest stakes in the entire world—every time. And that feels silly to act over and over again, especially when people are in silly costumes and the love of your life is purple and sparkly, and every time you kiss them, you have to worry about getting it on your hands. Those things are ridiculous. You feel ridiculous. So there is a part of your brain that has to shovel that away and just look into someone’s eyeballs—and sometimes, they don’t even have eyeballs!”

The ability to spend so much time with Wanda, albeit in the guise of sitcom parodies, was a welcome opportunity for Olsen. Not only did it allow the actor to really wrestle with the traumatic backstory that has long defined the character in the MCU, but having the chance to calibrate a performance that functions on so many different levels was a thrilling challenge.

“It was such an amazing work experience,” she says. “Kathryn [Hahn] uses the word ‘profound’—which is so sweet, because it is Marvel, and people, you know, don’t think of those experiences as profound when they watch them. But it really was such a special crew that [director] Matt Shakman and [creator] Jac Schaeffer created. It was a really healthy working environment.”

Related‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance ‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance Considering that the miniseries spans several sitcom iterations, various layers of televisual reality, and a number of character reveals that needed to feel truthful and impactful in equal measure, Shakman’s decision to work closely with his actors ahead of shooting was key.

“We truly had a gorgeous amount of time together before we started filming,” Olsen remembers. “Our goal was—which is controversial in TV land—that if you wanted to change [anything], like dialogue in a scene, you had to give those notes a week before we even got there. Because sometimes you get to set, and someone had a brilliant idea while they were sleeping, and you’re like, ‘We don’t have an hour to talk about this. We have seven pages to shoot.’ And so, we were all on the same page with one another, knowing what we were shooting ahead of time.

“Matt just treated us like a troupe of actors who were about to do some regional theater shit,” she adds with a smile.

That spirit of camaraderie was, not coincidentally, at the heart of Olsen’s breakout project, Sean Durkin’s 2011 indie sensation “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” As an introduction to the process of filmmaking to a young stage-trained actor, Durkin’s quietly devastating drama was a dream—and an invaluable learning opportunity.

“It was truly just a bunch of people who loved the script, who just were doing the work. I didn’t understand lenses, so I just did the same thing all the time. I never knew if the camera would be on me or not. There was just so much purity in that experience, and you only have that once.”

The film announced Olsen as a talent to watch: a keen-eyed performer capable of deploying a stilted physicality and clipped delivery, which she used to conjure up a wounded girl learning how to shake off her time spent in a cult in upstate New York. But Olsen admits that it took her a while to figure out how to navigate her career choices afterward. In the years following “Martha,” she felt compelled to try on everything: a horror flick here, a high-profile remake there, a period piece here, an action movie there. It wasn’t until she starred in neo-Western thriller “Wind River” (alongside fellow Marvel regular Jeremy Renner) and the dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West” (opposite a deliciously deranged Aubrey Plaza) that Olsen found her groove.

“It was at that point, when I was five years into working, where I was like, Ah, I know how I want it. I know what I need from these people—from who’s involved, from producers, from directors, from the character, from the script—in order to trust that it’s going to be a fruitful experience.”

As Olsen looks back on her first decade as a working actor, she points out how far removed she is from that young girl who broke out in “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

“I feel like a totally different person. I don’t know if everyone who’s in their early 30s feels like their early 20s self is a totally different human. But when I think about that version of myself, it feels like a long time ago; there’s a lot learned in a decade.”

Those early years were marked by a self-effacing humility that often led Olsen to defer to others when it came to key decisions about the characters she was playing. But she now feels emboldened to not only stand up for herself and her choices but for others on her sets as well.

“[Facebook Watch series] ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ I got to produce, and I really found my voice in a collaborative leadership way. And with ‘WandaVision,’ Paul [Bettany] and I really took on that feeling, as well—especially since we were introducing new characters to Marvel and wanted [those actors] to feel protected and helped,” she says. “They could ask questions and make sure they felt like they had all the things they needed because sometimes you don’t even know what you need to ask.”

It’s a lesson she learned working with filmmaker Marc Abraham on the Hank Williams biopic “I Saw the Light,” and she’s carried it with her ever since. “I really want it to feel like we’re all in this together, as a team,” Olsen says. “That was part of ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ and it was part of ‘WandaVision,’ and I hope to continue that kind of energy because those have been some of the healthiest work experiences I’ve had.”

If Olsen sounds particularly zealous about the importance of a comfortable, working set, it is because she’s well aware that therein lies an integral part of the work and the process. As an actor, she wants to feel protected and nurtured by those around her, whether she’s reacting to a telling, quiet line of dialogue about grief or donning her iconic Scarlet Witch outfit during a magic-filled mid-air action sequence.

“Sometimes you’re going to be foolish, you know? And [you need to] feel brave to be foolish. Sometimes people feel embarrassed on set and snap. But if you’re in a place where people feel like they’re allowed to be an idiot,” she says, “you’re going to feel better about being an idiot.”

This story originally appeared in the Aug. 19 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.

Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #WandaVision #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Sorry For Your Loss #Avengers Infinity War #Avengers Age of Ultron #Captain America Civil War #Ingrid Goes West #Godzilla #Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness #Marvel #MCU #Candy Montgomery #Love and Death #Avengers Endgame

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musings-from-mars · 3 years

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@nuts-and-dolts-week - Day 8: Bonus Day!

For Bonus Day, with some inspiration from the FS discord, I gave myself a little challenge to create a story that somehow integrates every prompt for Nuts and Dolts Week! And this is the result!

This has been such a fun event to be a part of, and not only that, this is the first ship week I’ve ever completed! That may not be a huge accomplishment but I’m still super happy 🥰 Thank you to Bio for running this event and to everyone who created content for it, you’re all so talented and sensational!

You can read all my other NnD Week submissions on AO3, maybe kudo and comment if you are so inclined~ Hope you enjoy, thank you so much for reading!

Nuts and Dolts Week 2021 Stories - MusingsFromMars on AO3

Tomorrow they would graduate from Beacon, but tonight, they would have one more picnic in the Emerald Forest.

With a basket full of food and treats in the crook of her elbow, Ruby walked along with Penny down the familiar hillside trail, hiking into the forest towards what they had begun to call Their Spot. The sun at this point was almost set, bathing the partly cloudy sky with a bright orange hue. An evening picnic might have been unusual to most, but to the couple of soon-to-be huntresses, it was perfect.

Since this would be the last time they’d have a picnic like this together, they both went all-out with their preparations. Penny had dressed in her favorite white flowery dress and sun hat, and even had cute sparkly pink lip gloss, eyeliner, and green eyeshadow (all courtesy of Belladonna Cosmetic Services). Ruby had gone even more formal, wearing a white button-up, black suspenders and bow tie, and a red skirt. Weiss had remarked to her that this was a bit much for a picnic, but Ruby assured her that this was perfect for the occasion. Weiss couldn’t be blamed for not knowing all of her plans, after all. In fact, no one else knew what Ruby was planning for this evening.

Tucked securely in her shirt pocket was a small velvet drawstring pouch. Inside it was a ring, Penny’s ring. Ruby had made it herself. Even though her area of expertise was weapons crafting and not jewelry design, she was happy with how it turned out. She even felt confident that Penny would love it, too. Ruby had made it with her in mind, after all. And tonight would be the night that she would give it to Penny and ask her to marry her.

Ruby felt oddly calm about her plan right now. She had imagined herself being really nervous and unable to keep quiet about her plan for long, but now that they were on their way to the very spot she would propose, Ruby felt confident and at ease. Maybe that was the effect Penny had on her. Ruby always felt more comfortable whenever Penny was nearby. It was as if seeing her happy and safe was enough to put everything in perspective. How bad could a problem be if Penny were there for her?

Once they arrived at Their Spot, Penny unfurled the blanket she’d had tucked under her arm, spreading it out over the grass. From here, the thick treeline blocked out the setting sun, leaving them surrounded by soft shadows and gentle warm hues from the dusk sky.

This was all routine by this point. Penny would lay out the blanket, they’d both sit down and open the basket, and Ruby would start munching away at a sandwich while Penny made some tea (using a kettle, the water they packed, and her ability to hold anything in her hand and superheat it, of course). Penny enjoyed making tea this way because it made it easy to smell the complex aromas. While Penny’s tech advancements still didn’t allow her to taste, she at least had made a breakthrough and could now smell things, and tea was one of her favorites. “I am brewing lavender chamomile,” Penny said to Ruby. “It is the tea we had together the first time we had a picnic here.”

Ruby finished her bite of sandwich and smiled. “I love how you can remember little details like that.”

“I remember most everything,” Penny said. “Though our first picnic is certainly easy to recall. It was a lovely occasion.”

“Besides us starting a minor forest fire with Weiss’ electric kettle,” Ruby recounted with a laugh.

“And that is why we use this method now.” Penny nodded to the kettle, holding its underside. “It is much less dangerous.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t be trusted around hot surfaces,” Ruby said with a giggle, then took another bite of sandwich. “Do you…” She began, but recalled her manners and swallowed her food before continuing. “Do you remember our first date?”

“Of course,” Penny said with a grin. “The one you essentially had to force me to go on.”

“I didn’t force you, did I?” Ruby asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I was certainly nervous about raising the ire of General Ironwood,” she recalled. “But I am quite thankful you did convince me to go to the arcade with you, even if the General was cross with me.”

“You got so many tickets!” Ruby remembered.

“The patterns and rhythms of those arcade machines were not very sophisticated. They were easily exploited for maximum payout.”

“I still have that big plush frog we got as a prize somewhere,” Ruby remembered. “What did we call him?”

“Mister Bumpy Butt.”

“Mister Bumpy Butt!” Ruby said with a grin. “Because he had—”

“—bumps on his butt!” Penny finished for her.

“I still say he should talk to his frog doctor about that,” Ruby joked.

“Indeed, butt bumps could be a sign of underlying illness.”

Ruby snorted and laughed, leaning over and lying her head on Penny’s shoulder. “Gods, we’re so weird.”

“Yes, but I enjoy being weird with you,” Penny replied, smiling as she leaned her cheek against the top of Ruby’s head.

“As do I,” Ruby agreed.

As Ruby took another bite of sandwich, Penny’s kettle began to whistle, and she retrieved two mugs from the basket. One mug already had a few sugar cubes sitting in the bottom. That was Ruby’s mug, of course. Penny filled both with hot tea and handed one to her. No matter what kind of tea it was, Ruby always had to drink it with sugar (much to Weiss’ and Blake’s horror). She took a careful sip and hummed happily. “Perfect as always, Penny.”

“Why thank you,” Penny beamed and set the empty kettle aside. She cradled her mug with both hands and enjoyed the smell of the tea as steam floated from the mug and into the air. She watched as Ruby sipped her tea, then asked, “Do you remember about a couple years before we met properly in Vale, you had accidentally met me when I was still in development at Atlas Academy?”

Ruby’s eyes went wide, and she had to make sure to swallow her tea lest she choke on it before answering, “I almost forgot all about that!”

Penny grinned and nodded. “You know, my father almost deleted that conversation from my memory for fear of ‘contamination,’ but then figured he had advanced my software far enough to the point that my interaction with you might be beneficial. And it turns out it was!”

“How so?” Ruby asked curiously, sipping her tea a bit more carefully.

“I think back to that meeting, and the way I remember it, from that day forward I had so much confidence when meeting new people. I admit, it took me a while to really understand that I might have been, well...forward with new acquaintances, but I think because you, the first ‘stranger’ I ever met, were so nice to me, it made me so optimistic about meeting new people.” She smiled at Ruby. “And that’s why I have so many friends now. All thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me and my insatiable curiosity,” Ruby added with a giggle. “But that’s honestly really sweet. I’m glad I ran into laptop you all those years ago.”

“That laptop was not the most aesthetically pleasing chassis to inhabit. I mean, I had very little physical self-awareness at that point, but looking back on it…”

“Yeah, you’re way sexier now,” Ruby joked.

“Precisely!” Penny agreed wholeheartedly, once again making Ruby laugh.

The sun had fully set by now, and stars began to dot the dark blue sky. The daytime warmth still lingered, but a gentle breeze began to slowly whisk it away.

“Ruby, look at me.”

Ruby blinked and looked her way, surprised by the suddenness of her request. “Huh?”

Penny only stared at her in the face, not offering an explanation. A few seconds later, she smiled and nodded. “Yep. Quite similar indeed.”

“What?” Ruby asked.

“Your eyes,” Penny said. “They look so similar to the moon when it is dark out.” She looked over Ruby’s shoulder. “But I have never gotten to make a side-by-side comparison until now.”

Ruby turned and looked the same way and saw the shattered moon. It had been just behind her head from Penny’s view. Ruby giggled and looked back at her girlfriend. “You’re so sweet.”

Penny smiled wide, her green eyes practically glowing with happiness.

“You know,” Ruby began, leaning a bit closer to Penny. “I don’t think I could compare your eyes to anything.”

Penny tilted her head to the side a bit. “Oh? How come?”

“I’ve never seen anything like them. They’re just so bright and shiny and green.”

Penny blinked, then her cheeks glowed a faint green. “You mean my eyes are incomparable?”

Ruby hadn’t realized her own romantic turn of phrase, but she smiled and nodded. “Yeah, exactly! There’s nothing in the world quite like your pretty eyes.”

Penny smiled, then leaned forward and kissed Ruby’s cheek. “You are so sweet.” Then her eyes went wide, noticing something else behind Ruby. “Oh, the fireflies!”

Ruby gasped and turned her head quickly, and sure enough, the night’s first lightning bugs were beginning to emerge, darting about and glowing. More and more appeared, blinking in a constant array of light like a visual symphony.

“It has been so long since we have seen so many,” Penny said with delight. “Oh, I am so happy they appeared tonight. You know it is almost as if they knew this was our last picnic here, because at this time of year their numbers typically begin to dwindle due to the changes in weather…”

Penny was once again infodumping about insects and Ruby’s heart swelled with a familiar adoration. She wanted to kiss her so bad, but that would mean interrupting Penny as she talked about the temperature preferences of flying bugs. She held off her desire to tackle her into the grass and pepper her face with kisses until later. In the meantime, she set her tea aside and propped her elbows on her knees, all while watching those aforementioned incomparable eyes as they followed the flights of nearby fireflies as she continued.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later that Penny’s voice began to trail away, and she turned to look at Ruby. “Oh, I have been talking for quite some time, huh?”

“Yeah, but I like listening to you talk about fireflies, Firefly,” Ruby said softly with a smile, still with her hands under her chin, still resting her elbows on her knees.

Penny chuckled bashfully. “They are just such fascinating creatures.”

“Hey Penny?”

“Hm?” Penny turned, her eyes meeting Ruby’s again. With the moon reflecting off her eyes, they almost seemed to shine.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” Penny smiled gently.

Ruby reached out and took Penny’s hand in hers, then took a moment to look around. “Uhm, here.” She got to her feet, still holding Penny’s hand. “This way.”

Penny stood and followed as Ruby led her off the picnic blanket and onto the grass. They walked through the grass a few steps, fireflies floating about them as if used to their presence. Ruby stopped and faced Penny.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, and despite the slowly falling temperatures outside, she was beginning to feel a little hot under her button-up. Here was the nervousness she expected to feel earlier, springing up just as she was about to do what this entire evening was leading to. She took a breath and fidgeted a bit with her bow tie.

“Are you okay?” Penny asked quietly, still holding one of Ruby’s hands.

“I’m...great,” Ruby said. It sounded like a lie, but it wasn’t. She felt anxious, sweaty, and absolutely fantastic all at once. “Penny, I… I have something to ask you. It’s important.”

Penny nodded, giving her her full attention.

Ruby took a breath and nodded. “Penny, when I told you that you are a real girl, I meant it. That day in that alleyway in Vale, I could see how unsure you were, how scared you were. And yet, when I assured you that you’re as real to me as I am to you, you believed me. I could definitely tell how happy that moment made you feel from how hard you hugged me, but...it made me happy, too. To know that I had said something to make you feel real…” Oh no, tears. Not now, tears. “And you believed me.”

Penny stepped a little closer and nodded. “Of course I believed you.”

Ruby smiled, but she willed herself to continue. “Then that day when I thought you were going back to Atlas. I was so scared because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to see you again. I ran to find you, and I confessed to you right then and there that I loved you, that I couldn’t let you leave because I knew that you wanted to stay just as much as I wanted you to stay. And…” She was losing her fight against her tears, one escaping and running down her cheek as a smile grew on her face. “I said I love you. And...you believed me.”

“Of course I believed you,” Penny said again with a soft chuckle. She lifted her hand and gently wiped away Ruby’s tears. “I have loved you since the day we became friends.”

Ruby nodded and sniffed. “So have I.” She wiped at her own face, doing her best to compose herself. She wanted to get this moment exactly right. “And now we’re here tonight, for like the hundred-dozenth time. And…” She stared at Penny for a second, taking in a deep breath. She let it out slowly, then reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out the pouch. Penny’s eyes followed as Ruby loosened the drawstring, flipped the pouch over, and let a ring roll from the bag and into her hand. It was a shiny bronze color, with red and green gems embedded in a zigzag configuration all around the circumference. Ruby pocketed the pouch and held the ring between her thumb and index finger. She looked up at Penny and saw her eyes were wide, as if she were slowly beginning to understand.

“Ruby…?”

“And now I’m asking you to marry me,” Ruby said, chuckling with a grin. “Can you believe that?”

“Ruby…” Penny covered her mouth with her hand.

Ruby got down on one knee, holding the ring up to her. Her nerves were gone, replaced only with a blooming joy in her chest. She will never forget the look on Penny’s face at this very moment. “Penny, will you marry me?”

Penny proceeded to tackle hug her to the ground. Ruby grunted and laughed as her back hit the grass. “Yes!” Penny lied on top of Ruby and smiled down at her. “Yes, I will marry you, Ruby!” She kissed her, and Ruby hummed softly and wrapped her arms around Penny’s neck, deepening the kiss. Her nerves were a distant memory now. Now she felt like she was floating just like the fireflies around them, with the love of her life in her arms.

After their kiss, they both found their way back to their feet. Ruby was glad to have held tight to the ring both during and after getting tackled, and she smiled at Penny as she took her hand. “Well then,” she slipped the ring onto her, a perfect fit. “Just call me fiancée.”

Penny grinned and hugged her again, not tackling her but still squeezing tight. “I love you.”

Ruby hugged her back, happily sinking deeper into the embrace. “I love you too,” she whispered.

After reveling in this embrace for a while longer, Ruby opened her eyes and looked up, seeing the Beacon tower in the distance. In a lot of ways, this place had changed her life. She had fulfilled her dream of becoming a huntress and had made friends that she’d forever consider family. But at this very moment, she felt the most thankful for having met Penny. If coming to Beacon had changed her life, then meeting Penny was what made it brighter. She would never forget the years she spent here, but when it came to her and Penny, they had countless more memories to make in the future, together as real girls, as wives.

#rwby #nuts and dolts week 2021 #nuts and dolts week #nuts and dolts #fanfic update #ruby rose #penny polendina

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novembermurray · 4 years

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Patient Evil Haunts Your Steps

Read on AO3

Rating: General

Pairing: Din Djarin x Omera

Summary: Jedi!Omera AU - When Din returns to Sorgan he brings something of the Dark Side with him. It drags up a past that Omera has tried to forget and threatens a future they both long for.

For @mandomeraweek Day 5

It was a subtle sensation of wrong that Omera tried to ignore. It nagged at the back of her mind, from the shuttered abandoned place within her memory she tried to forget. But that feeling of wrong didn’t go away. It came with the Mandalorian when he returned, and it hung around him, not a part of him but never apart from him.

The Mandalorian himself was changed.

When the unknown craft had landed just outside their village the people had been terrified; were these new bandits? Pirates? Conquering warlords? Slavers? But only the familiar figure of the Mandalorian they knew had emerged. Alone.

The ship took off again, leaving the silver armored man behind with a spear and a jetpack and no other luggage or company. He had been a silent tumult of grief, relief, regret, hope, pain, love… but mostly just exhaustion.

“I… I needed a place to…”

“To rest,” Omera finished his sentence. There was no need for any other greeting.

She showed him to the barn. He thanked her quietly and no one saw him for a whole day afterward.

That was a month ago.

The Mandalorian had become something of a shadow in their midst, at the edges of their lives but never integrated with them. He wandered the forests, dissuaded any bandits that strayed closer than he was comfortable with, hunted birds to supplement the village’s aquatic food source — once even using his jetpack to retrieve medicine from the nearest town in a quarter of the time it would have taken anyone else. He enriched their lives, but he didn’t join them. There was still a barrier—something more impenetrable than beskar—that kept him separated from everyone else. Omera knew that only time would wear it down, so she waited.

The wrongness waited too.

It waited.

Until now.

Omera put down the bowl of krill she had been shelling for their dinner, eyes wide and looking around for the source of a sensation that had no sound, or smell, or touch, or visual. But she felt it all the same. Wiping her hands on her apron absently she got up and left the kitchen, following that feeling through the village, between the krill ponds, and into the forest. It wasn’t far away, just far enough that the sounds and sight of the village were lost in the trees. There was a clearing, she had brought Winta there on quiet evenings before. That’s where she found him and the pulsing sense of wrong that grew with every step.

The Mandalorian’s armor gleamed in the afternoon sun, flashing as he stepped through a controlled series of prescribed movements; slash, block, uppercut, spin, parry, parry, block, lunge. Turn. Repeat. They were the motions of sword drills that were familiar as a childhood dream. He moved through each form with a fluidity of practice yet the hesitation of long disuse. Everything about him channeled focus and calm. He was rigorous in all his crafts; this was no exception. His dedication and intensity was neutral, neither joy nor fear; only right .

The wrongness was in the blade. It had gleaming white edges that crackled in the shadows and disappeared in the direct sunlight while its center was a stark black void deeper than the darkness between stars. It seemed to suck in the sunlight and offered absolutely nothing back: hungry, greedy, demanding. Wrong.

“Omera,” the Mandalorian had stopped his practice when he saw her. “Is everything alright?”

“What is that?” She asked him.

“A laser sword. It’s called the Darksaber,” he lifted it, horizontal and out towards her in a relaxed grip. There was nothing threatening about the motion, but when he stepped forward to offer her a closer look she took an instinctive step back. He paused, reading the fear on her face and thumbed a switch on the blade. The void, the light, the wrongness slithered back into the handle with a hiss. But it wasn’t gone, just dormant.

Waiting.

Omera shivered.

“It is… not a pleasant weapon,” the Mandalorian explained. “I didn’t want it to unnerve anyone in the village.”

She felt herself nodding.

“You were looking for me?”

Omera shook herself out of her shock and confusion, scrambling for a lie to dispel his suspicions. Suspicions meant death. Two decades of running and hiding had beaten that lesson into her.

“Dinner will be ready soon. Perhaps we could eat a little early, take Winta up the hill for some stargazing; she likes the stories you tell.”

“That sounds nice,” he agreed. “Thank you. I’ll be along shortly.”

Omera nodded and backed away. She forced herself to turn around and walk towards the village. She flinched when the wrongness flared behind her, released once more. Something about it felt like vicious satisfaction, and she shivered again.

Over the following week the Mandalorian spent more and more time with the blade—the Darksaber. He found time to practice with it usually once a day. Omera tried to find reasons to keep him from it: something she needed help with, someone who wanted his opinion, a broken machine, a missing child wandered off… but it didn’t always work. She thought he might be seeing through her as the days wore on. Her excuses grew thinner and her desperation grew stronger.

He took to practicing at night, when there was nothing to distract him or keep him from his task. It was all together worse because there was nothing to distract Omera either. She lay in her bed feeling the pulsing sensation ebb and flow from beyond the village and bit her lip against the helpless tears of fear. When she would finally find sleep she would dream: nightmares. Usually they were of war, sometimes of assassinations, of armored warriors cheering her as she held the black blade aloft, of cutting down her foes with its impossible sharpness… of the hundreds and hundreds of dead it had claimed… of the rivers of blood it had spilled… of the darkness… and the wrongness.

On the third night she couldn’t stand it any more. She heard his footsteps on the path outside and rose from her bed. She caught up with the Mandalorian as he passed between the krill ponds toward the edge of the forest, his beskar edged in moonlight.

“That blade is evil.”

He stopped dead at her words though he gave no indication he was surprised at being followed. She saw his hands flexing at his sides. He turned towards her tensely.

“It’s just a weapon,” he replied.

“No,” Omera shook her head, “It isn’t. It remembers. It remembers centuries of blood and ambition and greed.”

“You didn’t even know what it was until a week ago,” he snapped, taking a step towards her.

“I don’t need to know what it's called to know it is corrupted,” she argued back just as sharply, matching his step with one of her own and refusing to be intimidated. “You should get rid of it, throw it away.”

“I can’t,” he shook his head and turned away from her.

“You must,” she knew she sounded desperate, “before it destroys you.”

“You don’t understand,” he spun around, ripping the handle off his belt and shaking it at her angrily. “I can’t get rid of it because it isn’t mine to discard. I shouldn’t have it. I don’t want it. But I need to know how to use it well enough to lose against another Mandalorian and relinquish it with honor. So I must train with it. Don’t try to stop me again.” The wrongness thrummed in the night air and even the insects fell quiet under its heavy presence, but Omera would not be quelled so easily.

“If you fight with that blade it will only be a fight to the death!”

The Mandalorian shook his head, ignoring her warning. “Bo-Katan doesn’t want to kill me. She just wants to win the Darksaber properly and reclaim her homeworld, reclaim Mandalore. It isn’t about me.”

“Maybe that is how it will start,” Omera softened her voice and dared to take a step closer, “but that weapon can twist the intentions of weak willed minds, and it will demand blood. That is its nature. Do not fight with that blade, please. It will only end in more tragedy.”

“Then why didn’t I kill Gideon?” He demanded angrily. “I won it from him, after he stole the child— nearly killed my-my son with his demagolyc experiments— and I spared his life. Explain that!”

Omera was brought up short and drew a sharp breath. Of course he wouldn’t have given in, she thought. He has carried it so long, and still it has not overwhelmed him.

“Because there is nothing of the Dark Side in you,” she said tenderly. “Because you are strong and kind despite everything that has happened to you, all the horrors you have seen. Everything you have done, you do out of selfless love. But the longer you carry that and the more you wield it the darkness will find ways to bend you to it’s will, take advantage of your grief and your pain to make you covet, and fear, and hate. I couldn’t bear to see that, to lose you to the Dark Side. Please, get rid of it.” She begged him through the lump forming in her throat and the hot liquid pooling in her eyes.

“The Dark Side?” His helmet tipped, questioningly. “The Jedi said something about that too.”

“You met a Jedi?” Omera barely managed to breath the question.

“Two. Ahsoka Tano and another; Cara told me he’s called Luke Skywalker. He… The kid, Grogu…” The Mandalorian’s helmet dipped as his gaze dropped to the ground, arms limp at his sides. “I let the kid go with Skywalker to be trained… to be safe.”

He took a deep breath, he looked up at the stars spreading overhead.

“I’m…. tired, Omera.” He admitted to the night sky. “I did what I was tasked to do and it cost me everything: every home I have ever known is gone, my people dead or scattered, my Creed broken, my child…” His voice failed him and he paused to swallow painfully. “I need to learn to wield this blade so I can pass it on. Until I do I can’t take this armor off for good. I want that. I want what you offered me the last time I left. But I can’t until I find a way to give up this weapon. I didn’t come here to disturb the peaceful life you have made.” His tone took on the pall of defeat. “I will leave, return when it is done.” His visor was turned away from her, unable to meet her gaze.

“Ok,” Omera breathed, the short agreement coming out shaky.

The Mandalorian nodded before she could explain and started to turn away again.

“No,” Omera rushed forward the last of the distance between them to grab his hand. He looked back, shock practically vibrating off him. “I meant…” Omera took a deep breath. “Ok, until you can take this armor off for the last time, I will help you.”

She dropped his hand and lifted her own over the pond beside her. She closed her eyes and mentally stepped into the long abandoned place at the back of her mind. It felt like coming home, like opening the windows to a bright summer day and feeling the warm breeze on her face. The world was abuzz with life around her and a familiar presence called out from the bottom of the pool, where it had laid buried for seven years right where she had left it. That presence was easy to grasp now, rising at her command through soil, mud, and water.

She opened her eyes to see the rippling surface of the pool break and the cylindrical handle lift into the air. Drops of water that fell from it caught sparks of twinkling moonlight. At her call the handle floated to her outstretched palm, and her fingers closed around it; right. She thumbed over the switch and the blade of blue plasma sprang to life between her and the Mandalorian.

His visor was bright with the reflected glow of her lightsaber when she met his gaze with determination.

“I will train you.”

#mandomeraweek2021 #the mandalorian #my writing #fanfic #din x omera #mandomera #Jedi Omera #the darksaber

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doomonfilm · 4 years

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Ranking : The Coen Brothers (1954/1957 - present)

Directing a film can be one of the most vast, task oriented and stress inducing undertakings imaginable, which makes it odd that more directing duos, specifically sibling duos, do not exist. Sibling duos like the Wachowskis, Hughes, Farrellys, Safdies and even the Zellners have made names for themselves, but one set of siblings easily towers above the rest : the Coen brothers. With nearly 20 films under their belt, and nearly as many stylistic varieties and storytelling approaches found within, it is hard to argue the impression they have left on moviegoers worldwide over the past nearly four decades they’ve existed professionally. With such a stellar record of films under their collective belts, I’ve decided to do the most stress-inducing task of all : rank these films from least to most favorite.

18. Intolerable Cruelty (2003) For a duo with so much distinct style and flair for storytelling, this film feels the least like a Coen Brothers film. If anything, this feels like a script that sat on a shelf in pre-development hell, possibly for years, only for someone considering themselves a bit of a ‘maverick’ or ‘forward thinker’ to discover it and think that a dose of Coen Brothers magic could save it. Even with the star power of George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones behind it, this one feels a bit too ‘by the numbers’ to stand out from an oeuvre that nears perfection.

17. Hail, Caesar! (2016) I’ll be completely honest with you all... I don’t remember much about this film. I remember enjoying it, but I don’t remember being blown away by it. I remember enjoying the colorful display of old Hollywood, and it’s always refreshing to see George Clooney lean into roles that border upon slapstick. For as much as I found this film not all that memorable, however, it stands above Intolerable Cruelty simply because it does not trigger bad memories.

16. Burn After Reading (2008) This film is what Intolerable Cruelty wanted to be... a property that is a hair closer to by the books, but full of a screwball approach that heralds to a forgotten era of film while using an incredibly stacked cast. Of all the Coen Brothers films I’ve seen, Burn After Reading feels like the property that all involved enjoyed making the most. Like many of the Coen Brothers films, the cast on this one is mega-stacked, and from top to bottom, everyone involved shines in roles that go against their standard types, or amplify the most off-beat aspects of their performing ability.

15. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) The fact that Netflix was able to pull the Coen Brothers for a film is a win in itself, and with the duo choosing to do an anthology piece, Netflix was primed to maximize on their investment. While highly entertaining, however, the anthology nature of the property leaves it feeling a bit unfocused and disjointed at times... none of these stories really had enough meat on the bone to be expanded into feature-length films of their own, but for some reason, all parties involved passed on the opportunity to make a multi-episode serial rather than a film comprised of multiple tales. While using variance in storytelling methods and visual styles may work for some less talented directors, in the case of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, it feels more like snack-sized bites in the place of true sustenance.

14. The Ladykillers (2004) On paper, this film should have been a disaster. The Coen Brothers generally opt for original stories, so the fact that they chose to adapt such an obscure 1950s property for the modern day was strange, especially in light of the fact that most every element with the exception of Tom Hanks’ character was given a modern update. Somehow, despite all of this oddness, The Ladykillers managed to capture a sense of the classic Coen Brothers slapstick comedy that they famously established themselves with early on in their career. Tom Hanks is given the green light to go completely ridiculous, and to much of the viewers’ delight, he does so with great aplomb. His supporting cast shines, the comedic turn brings new energy to the story, and the southern gospel setting brings a rich sense of spirituality to an otherwise run of the mill film.

13. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) The Coen Brothers were essentially household names by the turn of the 20th century, but O Brother, Where Art Thou? propelled them into a legendary status. The grassroots mix of The Odyssey and the Robert Johnson crossroads legend took on a life of its own, leaving behind a soundtrack that birthed an entire generation of folk and bluegrass enthusiasts, as well as a film that showed the world George Clooney’s comedic chops. Much like The Ladykillers, O Brother puts viewers deep into the unfamiliar territory of Southern ‘discomfort’, with the African-American experience playing a major role in the narrative. Of all the Coen Brothers films one could use to introduce a stranger to their catalog, this one may be the best, as its infectious nature and stunning look leaves an impression on most anyone who has the pleasure to view it.

12. True Grit (2010) The Coen Brothers had already covered a wide bit of genre ground within their first three decades, but surprisingly, they’d not done a true western up to that point (though many argue that No Country For Old Men is a modern take on the western). Therefore, when it was announced that their first western would be a remake of the iconic John Wayne film True Grit, many were surprised, and curious if they could pull it off. Not only did they pull it off, but in my humble opinion, they made a version that more than holds its own against the original. For the handful of big name and seasoned actors that signed on, it was the breakthrough performance of relative newcomer Hailee Steinfeld that outshined all. While The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was a fun revisit to the world of the western, True Grit was the kind of achievement that makes me want more traditional westerns from the duo.

11. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) Listing the Coen Brothers films is by far the most difficult ranking I’ve done to date, and the first film that really gave me trouble in terms of placement was The Man Who Wasn’t There. Personally, I find this film to be captivating and nearly flawless... Billy Bob Thornton’s detachment is rich and intrusive, which makes it all the more sinister when he does choose to exude even a hint of passion about something, be it positive or negative. The black and white photography, in league with the tone of the film, puts me in the mindset of films like In Cold Blood, and some of the sequences in the film stand out as some of the most iconic in the world of Coen Brothers films, especially the car crash. For a classic-style film noir, a genre that anyone with half a brain knew was a slam dunk for the Coens, the duo went above and beyond to both modernize and wholly embody the style. One of several Coen Brothers films that sits with you long after the final credits have faded away.

10. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) If this isn’t the darkest comedy in the Coen collection, it’s certainly giving the number one contender a run for its money. The intimacy of this film is unmatched within the broader collection of Coen characters, excluding The Dude, but the difference between Llewyn and The Dude is the personality equivalent of the difference between oil and water. You may marvel at Llewyn’s talent, but all the while, the film is screaming at you that “THIS IS A CHARACTER YOU SHOULD NOT ROOT FOR”. The symbolism found in the film is minimal while being incredibly effective in how it punctuates Llewyn’s personality and character, and the story structure is an equally subtle swerve that baits you into paying deeper attention, only to realize that the setup was the punchline the entire time.

9. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) I’m a sucker for a Coen Brothers comedy, especially the ones that play like human cartoons, and one of their absolute best was The Hudsucker Proxy. The writing on this film is so tight that it would absolutely pop if it were any tighter. The entire A Christmas Carol-esque approach to the story makes it a wonderful moralistic tale that makes people laugh so much that they often don’t realize they are being taught a lesson about morals, integrity and self-respect. Tons of familiar character actors fill the frames, everyone tasked with supporting roles fit firmly and comfortably into the created world, and the man trio of Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman are functioning on genius levels of performance... especially Jennifer Jason Leigh. While not quite a holiday movie, there is enough of a holiday sense that it could be shoehorned into a seasonal viewing, but any time set aside for this gem is the right time to watch it.

8. Barton Fink (1991) In my humble opinion, this may be the strongest end to end performance from John Turturro in his long and storied career. As clear-cut fans of film, it is always a pleasure to see the Coen Brothers explore the world of film, and by using this approach, they are able to tell a bold, brash and haunting tale about the issues that come with assumptions about character and talent. The takes on Hollywood and the indifference of those in power, especially when it comes to assisting young and promising talents that may one day usurp them, and powerful. The real bow on the story, however, is the larger than life presence of John Goodman, who goes from being a slightly aggressive and overbearing sense of support to a literal madman by both name and action. For a film that mainly consists of individuals talking to one another about passion, talent and secrets, there is a kinetic energy that feeds the forward momentum of this movie, and for that, it stands out in the Coen collection.

7. Miller’s Crossing (1990) It’s not surprising that the Coen Brothers could make a compelling and memorable gangster film, but I don’t think that anyone expected a film as vicious and dark as Miller’s Crossing. For a duo that generally relies on nuance and contemplation to get their points across, this film certainly proves that they are more than capable of excelling in the direct approach as well. The era-specific costuming is outstanding, the murky city areas stand in stark contrast to the woods of the titular Miller’s Crossing, and the sheer volume of bullets are a stark reminder of the Prohibition-era story we are viewing. Gabriel Byrne shines in his lead role, bringing a world of fury, deceit and mistrust in tow with him. The iconic hat blowing in the wind serves as not only the biggest memorable moment from the film, but possibly also the single moment of peace and beauty found in a film that holds up a dirty mirror to a dark world.

6. A Serious Man (2009) Of all Coen Brothers films, this is easily the most underappreciated and slept on of the bunch. I’m a sucker for movies that embrace Murphy’s Law, and when mixed with the parable nature of the Book of Job, we are presented with a darkly comic and relatively unique version of the hero’s journey. The way that the personal, professional and philosophical problems pile up on Michael Stuhlbarg’s Larry are meant to be felt by the audience, and the way that his bad luck boomerangs out into the world during the film’s resolution must be seen in order to be believed. The way that destiny and chance dance around one another in this film is narratively breathtaking, and for such a subtle film, it is a truly remarkable achievement.

5. No Country For Old Men (2007) When you think of the Coen Brothers, you don’t necessarily think of evil incarnate, and yet, the duo succeeded in capturing a character in the form of Anton Chigurh, the closest thing to the Terminator that the duo has ever created (to my knowledge). The story is a wonderful, subtle tale of how the times can change into something we don’t recognize before we recognize the change, but it is easily Javier Bardem’s iconic performance that gives this film all of its power and ominous energy. His unyielding forward momentum, his disdain for obstacles in any form, and his disregard for human life are enough to instill real fear into those who partake in viewings, and his presence will more than likely haunt you far beyond completion of the film. A true modern-day masterpiece that would have been higher, if not for...

4. Blood Simple (1984) What a powerful debut, and one that not only hinted at, but outright put the spotlight on the promise of the Coen Brothers when it came to stark visuals and stunning storytelling. For such a simple, small scale story, the tangled web that is woven is a slippery slope of deception and distrust that leaves little to no survivors in its wake. The scale of the film is deceptively small, but the quality shines in every aspect that it can. Seeds are placed that pay off wonderfully, and the color palette presented gives the film the feeling of a Technicolor film-noir. Much like A Serious Man, Blood Simple deserves to be talked about and held up much more than it is by fans of film.

3. Raising Arizona (1987) What a wonderfully ridiculous movie about something as simple as the trials and tribulations of navigating love, marriage and parenthood. The most hilarious aspect of this film, in my opinion, is how it feels like a living and breathing cartoon, both in terms of the character performances and the outrageous events that take place within the world of the film. Nicolas Cage is operating on a completely different level, Holly Hunter is equal parts charming and hilarious, Trey Wilson is wonderfully over the top, John Goodman and William Forsythe bring excess hilarity to the wild proceedings, and Randall “Tex” Cobb is downright iconic in terms of his ridiculous character. The pacing of the film is breakneck and feverish, the comedy hits never stop coming, and the utter charm emanating from the midst of the caper presented is infectious. As a second film, this could not be any more different than Blood Simple, and yet somehow, it connected so vividly with viewers that it remains a must-watch film to this day.

2. Fargo (1996) What is there to be said about Fargo that has not already been said? For a duo with more iconic films to their name than some directors have completed films, Fargo was an immediate signal that the limits of the Coen Brothers’ creativity and skill had not even began to show its full breadth. Within less than five years of release, the film was already heralded as a classic (of all-time, not just modern day), the mystery surrounding its possibility of being based on a true story built a world of intrigue around the movie, and it has gone on to create a universe of its own in the form of an FX TV show that recently wrapped its fourth season. There is not a wasted role in this film, and to this day, any movie fan worth their salt will happily bust out their version of a Minnesota accent that is almost certainly based on one of the many memorable characters that inhabit the world of Fargo. Numerous actors, including William H. Macy, Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi, all found breakout success in the wake of this wonderful film.

1. The Big Lebowski (1998) Was there ever any doubt for this placement? For everything that Fargo did in terms of success within the world of the film industry, The Big Lebowski did that and more for the worlds of the counter-culture and cult film fans. The story we are presented with is so simple, yet so ridiculous in its journey, that it almost insists on viewers revisiting it over and over. Like many Coen Brothers films, nobody cast in the film is wasted or misused, and due to these stellar performances, the film finds itself as one of the most quotable in recent memory. Much like the performances of the cast, the writing does not waste any words or opportunities, often referring back to itself in extremely subtle and nuanced ways that present themselves over time, and to hilarious effect. Nobody would have expected a film of this nature to have a fandom, and yet, the legions of fans for this film are unique to that of the Coen Brothers catalog in the sense of their dedication, devotion to and love of the movie. While not everyone’s cup of tea upon first viewing, The Big Lebowski is truly an example of the gift that keeps on giving.

If the Coen Brothers never make another film, they’ve already created and achieved more in their journey that most filmmakers can dream of. Many of their films could honestly be considered works of art, and nearly all of them are compelling with an ability to leave deep and lasting impressions. If you are unfamiliar with the Coen Brothers, do yourself a favor and check out their work, as it may bring a new sense of invigoration to your love of film.

Editor’s Note (12/10/2020) : Inside Llewyn Davis added to the number 10 position, all films ranked lower adjusted accordingly.

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phoenixrisesoncemore · 5 years

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The Feast of the Annunciation at 35,000 ft

March 25th, Tolkien, and the X-Men

[Content Warning for discussion of Panic Attack Disorder and Anxiety Disorders as well as Dissociation]

Panic attack disorder really messes with you.

It stops you from doing the things you really want to do. It prevents you from enjoying life. And because—intellectually—you know the fear it generates is irrational, it not only steals life from you, but leaves you feeling guilty for letting it.

“If only I could have been brave,” you think. If only you could have stared down the beast.

You never feel so much like an animal as when you are having a panic attack; the urge to escape is all-encompassing. Your heart is pumping blood faster than it ever has before. Every second is elongated. Whatever you didn’t smell before is suddenly suffocating you. Whatever you didn’t see before is suddenly ballooning across your visual field and, oh, was that color always so bright? Noises are all so loud, touch is all so much. You must get away, your body tells you, your cells tell you, your bile tells you—get away or you’ll die! But where do you go? You start to disassociate. You sink into feelings of surreality. Is this you? Whose are these eyes you’re seeing out of? There’s an extra step between the thought and the movement of the hands. The part of your mind that is not ruled by the clump of cells that kept your distant ancestors safe from Things With Jaws is perfectly aware there is nothing to be afraid of. There are no jaws. There is no predator. There is no cause for fear. But there is still fear.

Gripping, penetrating, chemical, animal fear.

Against the wash of hormones, the cerebral cortex holds no power, it can only watch you, watch itself, detached and analytical. It realizes—quite quickly, really, and in parallel—two things. One: that the thing you need to escape from is yourself, and Two: that, therefore, there is no escape. Be reasonable, it asks you. But who can escape their own mind?

No matter. The urge is still there, and it’s so hard to suppress.

Now extrapolate the fear of having a panic attack to the enclosed cabin of an airplane at 35,000 ft.

You see the problem, I’m sure. And yet...

A year ago today, after a lifetime in fear of flying, I got on a plane for the very first time. How? The Maker of Middle-earth exhibit came to New York.

I’d been drawn back into my Tolkien Obsession about 4 years before, digging deeper than I had in over a decade into notes and reference books. I was remembering what Middle-earth had meant to me—what it had given me—when I was a teen. In light of all that, could I miss what might be the only chance in my entire life to see some of these things in person?

But it was a long drive, I didn’t want to go alone, and we only had so many free days during my husband’s spring break. And it was New York! I’d never been to New York. Think of all the other things we could see while we were there! Did we want to spend that time driving instead? I tied myself in knots for days while ticket prices rose, until a scant week remained before we’d have to leave.

Watching the turmoil practically radiate from me, my husband turned to me and said, “If you go, and you see it, will you cry?”

I didn’t even have to think: “Yes.”

He smiled, though he had already known the answer. “Then you should go. Do you want me to order the tickets now?”

I swallowed, then froze.

This was a trip about Tolkien, about my greatest love, the primary lease-holder of my brain.

So why am I peppering this with comic panels?(1)

In 1976 Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum decided to shake things up in a comic called The Uncanny X-Men. They wanted to add a cosmically powerful character, and they wanted this character to be a woman—a first for parent company, Marvel.

Marvel hadn’t had the most progressive run with their female leads. X-Men in particular had started out with only a single woman on the team: the kind telekinetic Jean Grey, whose primary characterization seemed to be her gender. She had experienced some changes in the 13 years since the first issue of X-Men was published, the revelation that she was also a telepath among them. We’d later learn that her powers developed too early when she telepathically linked, in desperation, with her best friend, Annie, as Annie lay dying, allowing Jean to feel what it was to die without dying herself, causing her to grow into the fundamentally compassionate human being we knew so well. But back in the mid 70s, compared to the more diverse and exciting cast that Claremont had devised just a scant year prior, Jean seemed rather dull, and not long after Claremont took over, her character decided to leave superhero life behind.

Or so it seemed.

Pulled out of retirement on a space mission gone wrong, Jean finds herself trapped with her former teammates on a space shuttle. The shuttle is on a re-entry course, but must pass through a massive solar flare. Sealing her teammates, many against their will, in the shuttle’s only shielded chamber, Jean does the most quintessentially Jean thing: she decides to sacrifice herself for her friends. She telepathically absorbs the flight training of the only pilot on board, locks herself in the cockpit, and prays she can use her telekinetic shield to keep herself alive long enough to land the shuttle.

We do not get to see what happens to her, and nor do her friends, as the shuttle crashes into Jamaica Bay.

But we know. This time Jean did die: either her flesh was burned to ash by the sun’s fury, or her body was crushed in the crash, or was she drowned in the depths of the bay.

She is truly gone.

But Phoenix Rises in her place.

Claremont took the woman perceived as both the kindest and the weakest of the X-Men and made her Marvel’s first cosmic female hero, a being that has “the power to cut and re-grow any part of the universe, as well as destroy it entirely, which is part of the Phoenix's purpose: ‘The Judgment of the Phoenix’, to burn away what doesn’t work.” The Phoenix Force is described as being “the embodiment of the very passion of Creation—the spark that gave life to the Universe, the flame that will ultimately consume it.” And the first thing she destroys and remakes is herself.

Not many issues hence, she’ll do the same for the whole of Creation. Claremont even goes so far with his purple prose to dip into Kabbalah. Phoenix becomes Tiphareth(2), the Sephiroth at the center of the Tree of Life, “the force that integrates the Sefira of Chesed ("compassion") and Gevurah ("Strength, or Judgment (din)"). These two forces are, respectively, expansive (giving) and restrictive (receiving).”

If you search for info on Phoenix you’ll inevitably be inundated with articles about the span of Uncanny X-Men issues known as The Dark Phoenix Saga, and with good reason: The Dark Phoenix Saga—the events that follow Jean’s transformation and quest to save Creation—is still considered one of the greatest of all comics stories. In it Jean-Phoenix—under the influence of a powerful, manipulative telepath who wants to use her limitless power—is twisted into something fundamentally without compassion, a threat to the whole of the universe. Understanding this, she chooses to die again, to save the world and the people she loves from what she has become.

The intricacies(3) and implications of this transformation and the devolution that followed it are a post for another time. Suffice it to say that any human, even a supremely compassionate one, struggles to adjust to godhood; the ability to care, empathetically, and so deeply, about all of life made the Jean-Phoenix capable of rebuilding a dying universe, but it also made everything in that universe lose all meaning.

But Tolkien. This was about Tolkien. And airplanes. And New York. And the Feast of the Annunciation.

Before I knew Frodo, even before I knew Taran and Eilonwy, I knew Jean; I knew the gentle, compassionate woman who died twice for those she loved--once to save them from the burning heat of re-entry and once to save them from herself--and in between looked the universe in the eye, and understood it was good, and gave it another chance.

Before Tolkien codified in me a kind of personal mythology, gave me a vocabulary for my spiritual relationship to the world, I had Phoenix and her birth from the ashes of what had been Jean Grey.

Now, sitting there with my husband waiting for an answer, I opened up my iPad and pulled up flight dates and our potential flight path on Google (because I deal with fear through research). And I laughed.

We’d be there on March 25th, and we’d have to pass over Jamaica Bay as we came in to land.

“Buy it,” I said. And I, a 38 year old woman, dyed my hair red, threaded my film reproduction One Ring onto a silver chain around my neck(4), and boarded a plane for the first time.

Fortified by love, Xanax, and a personalized mythology, I saw clouds from the top side. Imagine how many tens of thousands of years humans existed when not one of them could have said that(5).

I saw dinosaurs, I saw Madame X(6), I saw an amazing view for three nights from our hotel room.

And I saw Maker of Middle-earth.

Today is March 25th, The Feast of the Annunciation and, not coincidentally, the day the One Ring falls into the fires of Orodruin.

It’s the day I flew over Jamaica Bay and burned away the part of me that didn’t work. It’s a day of promise. Of expectation. Of new life. The promise of redemption, and the power of compassion—and pity—to change the world.

And that is what stories can do. That is why we tell them. That is why we read them. That is how we live in times that are good and in times that are bad. That is why, when there were only stars in the night to give light, those stars became things with stories—people, animals, gods—and like lanterns they illuminated the dark of both the sky and the soul, mapping out meaning, obliterating the shadows where the Things With Jaws dwelt.

Notes

Comic panels are taken from The Uncanny X-Men issues #100, #101, and #108.

“A new pattern forms—shaped like the mystic Tree of Life—with Xavier its lofty crown and Colossus its base. Each X-man has a place, each a purpose greater than himself or herself. And the heart of the Tree, the catalyst that binds these wayward souls together, is Phoenix, Tiphareth, Child of the Sun, Child of Life, the vision of the harmony of things.”

There is very little in the Marvel universe as intricate as Jean and Phoenix.

The Ring is treacherous. As we were sitting down to dinner just before we left the Ring somehow caught on the underside of the table, broke the chain, and forced me to wear it on my finger for the rest of the trip.

I realize it is entirely possible to climb high enough to be above certain types of clouds without the need for aircraft, and that clouds can form quite low to the ground, but I’m speaking both more abstractly about the nature of fantastic experiences and in the specific about cirrus clouds.

I also saw the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, but I talked about that here.

#tolkien #phoenix #namesake #stories #xmen #x-men #new york #lord of the rings #the one ring #maker of middle-earth #the feast of the annunciation #march 25th #fear of flying #cw: anxiety #cw: panic attack #cw: dissociation #cw: fear of flying #dark phoenix #jean grey

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kiyabujayniah1996 · 4 years

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Reiki Images Creative And Inexpensive Unique Ideas

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Reiki Healing Classes

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Reiki Healing For Tinnitus

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#Reiki Images Creative And Inexpensive Unique Ideas #Reiki Dans Le 06

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underwaterwoods · 5 years

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so i saw the star war

spoilers ahoy

i guess this is just gonna be random bullet points

* i actually feel pretty chill about it. yay for being spoiled. also like.... if you ignore the ridiculous stuff there’s actually a lot to have fun with in this one. i don’t know how i’ll feel about it once i’ve processed it more. i just know i had fun while watching it, which i know isn’t true for everybody. i totally understand the negativity - it all makes sense to me. i’m just glad i sort of.... FORCED myself to have enough distance to just go in like ‘i’M PrepArED fOr wHAtEveR’

*i did like all the jumping around between locations in the first half and how ben would show up everywhere rey was. what a ‘you’re everywhere i go’ pairing. /chef’s kiss/. also having the different locations gives a sense of spaciousness (even if it’s all happening over a short period of time) which i missed in tlj.

*one of the things that gave me the most joy as the hux thing ??? X’’’D it was EXACTLY like that ‘the farce awakens’ ep where hux LITERALLY JOINS THE RESISTANCE cuz he can’t stand kylo. like what kind of fanfic...... how do the hux fans out there feel? (i really love the hux fans they’re a great bunch XD). shame that he was gone right after though.

* i actually enjoyed the trio dynamic? like i get the desire to move away from ‘trio mentality’ but the rey/poe tension with finn as mediator was fun. and finn and poe as joint generals? adorable. shame that the whole finn/poe thing got a bit clouded by.... stormpilot baiting and rose erasure and all the things... Also i’m not anti any character - i like zorii - but.... let poe stay a gay icon? i guess he can still be a queer icon it’s all good i’m down for whatever.

*speaking of finn.... loved seeing more of his humour back. didn’t love that there was no unpacking of how he feels taking out stormtroopers. but loved the found family of jannah and the other ex-stormtroopers. i feel like that gave SOME resolution/depth to finn’s origins. and finn being a non force user but seemingly super attuned to the force and its ways? i can roll with that.

*more speaking of finn... i wonder what they were doing with the ‘thing he wants to tell rey that he never gets to tell rey’. seems like an obvious ‘i love you’ thing. but at the same time we got reylo (/basks in that for a second/). it feels to me like throwing a bone to the finnrey people? like they didn’t get it in this movie but it could be a thing in the future? regaurdless, i did like how finn and rey were very connected and back to that loving friendship they had in tfa. we never quite got the ‘you have a force bond with the supreme leader?!!’ conversation but we got.... SOME conversation.

* speaking of the supreme leader... kinda love that we got renperor AND ben solo TM. i prefer to view ben more holistically (he is both ‘ben’ and ‘kylo’) but i get that making them two distinct identities was a helpful shortcut of sorts. he could ‘kill’ kylo and switch to being ben in a single scene. i always prefer Soft Boi Ben but if we were gonna get Bad Boy Kylo i’m glad they established it right out the gate. it was like ok, this is what to expect; this is where we’re at with this character.

*ben with his costume change at the end....... omg. gave me BIG smuggler!Ben vibes. urgh, give me all the AUs. ben deserves more.

*the amount of swagger when he was fighting the KOR

*idk i feel like i’m not even touching on the big stuff. this was just a ‘get all my side thoughts out of my system’ post.

*adam’s smile after the kiss though......... ... /the most beautiful thing in this world/

*truly iconic that people were right about the strategic, covert introduction of force healing via baby yoda like one month before tros.

*oh yeah it was wILD that so much of the imagery from the trailers/tv spots etc was in like the first five mintues of the movie ??? i totally assumed the ‘i have been every voice you’ve ever heard inside your head’ moment would be climactic rather than right up front

*oh yeah the vader mask.... that didn’t really mean anything in the end then did it?

* re: ben’s death. maybe it’s because i was braced for it but in some ways it’s the best way he could have gone. he was definitely happy and reunited with the light - both through love of rey and of his family. hIGHKey could have done with ben’s force ghost also appearing at the end? the only good thing about not seeing it is.... LF deciding to retcon his death ? ??XD obs they’re not gonna but if you want a crackpot silver lining there it is.

*what exactly does rey’s future look like, may i ask?

* oh yeah, Passing The Saber Through The Force. maybe my favourite moment. the force bond as a bare concept is so romantic to me i would watch a whole trilogy just exploring the magic system of that - it’s limitations and possibilities.

* i do like that jj developed the visual style of the bond. we got to see them occupying the same space, the way each of them would be seeing the other (’can you see my surroundings, i can’t see yours, just you’)

*i miss that rian johnson sound editing on the bond though..... god, the iNTIMACY of the tlj bond scenes....

*’i DID want to take your hand’

*also just the word choice of ‘take your hand’/ ‘i offered you my hand’. it’s extremely marriage.

*there was also a moment in the hanger when ben was like ‘we’re one’ basically? he was saying it in the context of rey’s lineage but still...............the validation. one soul.

*palps was like ‘you live and die together’ which made me REALLY think of skytalkers podcast. obviously assumed they would both have to LIVE together but.... /deep sigh/

*blah this could go on forever i’ll add more later

edit #1:

* OH YEAH! reverse anidala was such a thing! why did it have to be SO reverse anidala though? X’D instead of taking her life, he gives her his own. (i know it’s not clear anakin totally killed padme etc etc but ya feel me)

* ok i hate that ben died obvs obvs but, taking that for what it is, it was very romeo and juliet. i kinda love just the imagery of it. like... the physical blocking/choreography of adam getting daisy into his arms, holding her, then he falls and it’s her holding him. the way she catches his neck. really reminded me of the smoothness of the bridal carry. and rey’s flexed foot in that moment of shock. love the body language. back to that kind of ‘’staccato’’ rey of tfa days.

edit #2:

*lololol @ LF trying to establish how ‘bad’ kylo is by having him kill a bunch of people in the beginning. it was just.... Hot.

edit #3:

* rose deserves better. obviously. she looked so good though. i like that she had some moments with connix too.

* ben called han ‘dad’......

*ben standing there, overlooking the waves, with his leG EXTENDED BEFORE HIM. wanderer above a sea of fog. wanderer above a sea of foggg.

* rey having compassion for the snake thing. we been knew. kinda nice to have it in there. obviously good set up for ~later force healing shenanigans~

* OH YEAH OH YEAH. i kept thinking about atla. i know people have been making comparisons to it from the start and i’ve been DEEPLY INTO those comparisons. but it was truly a blessing for me to remember.... there is a version of this out there that you love and that is Good Content TM. legit i can just go watch atla again to heal from this. omg yeah cuz REY HEALING HIS WOUND ALSO HEALED HIS SCAR. very crystal cave.......... nah but nah but - the ‘you are every jedi’ was EXTREMELY avatar-esk..... like, engage avatar state. i don’t like how it ended up being the same old conflict between jedi and sith - ‘good’ and ‘bad’ - OBVIOUSLY THE POINT IS TO INTEGRATE THE CONFLICTING PARTS OF SELF; THE SHADOW SIDE; TO TRANSCEND OLD DICHOTOMIES - but i did love hearing all the voices from past jedi. that’s some good ‘the ancestors are with you’ shit.

edit #4:

* i think the first thing we hear rey say is ‘be with me’? ngl i was like ‘pls be invoking the force bond’ X’D i am a clown. that was a beautiful shot though. and love that a version of the bond kicked in like two seconds after that.

edit #5:

*there’s that bit where reylo are fighting on the death star ruins and he’s winning and rey kinda falls to her knees panting and lowkey defeated and, not to be a shallow bitch but..... it was Hot.

*also dark rey......... was HOT. SHE WAS SO KIRA, WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS, AND I WAS INTO IT LIKE HNGGGG

*obvs i wanted rey to be truly no one. but casting jodie comer as rey’s mum ? ????? urgh, pefection, i love it.

*palps was so random i stg..... his plan was.... convoluted to say the least.

*also who was under all those hoods?

*the KOR just kinda... being around again was hilarious. no explaination required. the boys are back in town. ben facing them without a mask and essentially wearing his pjs? loved it.

edit #6:

*seriously though ben’s redemption outfit.............. /heart eyes emoji into the sunset/.......... you can see his collar bone.............. /cares about the important things/.................

edit #7:

*one thing i loved about the reylo was how Space Wizards TM they both were in this movie. it so highlights their connection by making it clear that they are each other’s only peer. i thought it would be a thing of ‘why is the supreme leader constantly interacting with/going after this girl?’ but it’s not because it’s so clear that they are the only two people on each others’ level. no one would dare question the fact that they’re constantly circling each other in a lustful murderous rage.

#tros spoilers #tros reaction #3 #4 #5 #mtp #the rise of skywalker #star wars #this is messy as hell #just getting some thoughts down

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we-are-what-they-grow-beyond · 5 years

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some seriously self indulgent TROS thoughts that no one asked for: spoilers ahead!

(i’m gonna try tag every spoiler tag I can think of just in case anyone out there does care, but tbh this is really just for me lol)

the following is going to be a very ‘off the cuff’ series of ramblings so I apologise if it’s all over the place

Overall.. I think I liked it? I left the cinema feeling euphoric, which is honestly all I wanted from ix. While there were very few immediate things that I took offence to as I was watching it [unlike TLJ] I have a bad feeling that some doubts about certain scenes and character choices are gonna creep into my brain in the next few days. Like the longer I think about it, the worse it’s gonna get.

The beginning was a mess. I think every single person who has seen it can agree on that much. There was so much exposition and heavy handed course correction from TLJ that it felt laboured and disjointed. The pacing was at this crazy breakneck speed.. we must have visited at least six different planets in the first fifteen minutes. I think that Poe’s ‘hyperdrive jumping’ [?] sequence really set the tone for the first act - just a constant barrage of different locations and characters.

And I understand that they had to do this. The events of TLJ left them no choice, they needed to establish every main character’s position [both physically and mentally], portray the current state of the war as well as rebuild a believable rapport between our core trio all within the first fifteen minutes if they wanted to give the last act any chance of sticking the landing. And to some extent I think they achieved this. In all that running around on different planets, bickering amongst the trio and the funny asides from Threepio - it really felt like something straight out of the OT. For the first time since TFA I cared about these characters.

However. In doing this, they continually broke the cardinal rule of screenwriting; show don’t tell. While watching the first act I felt weighed down with information, like every five seconds another character would pop in with a monologue that sent them on another wild goose chase in which they had to find another hundred things that I would inevitably struggle to remember. ‘So now they need to go here, to see where Luke went, because he wanted to find this guy, who has this object, that will bring them to this other place, so that they can see Palpatine?’ It was so heavily reliant on dialogue alone that it ultimately lead to this sense of utter messiness.

Where the film thrived was in it’s action set pieces. I adored the way the force was portrayed in this film. The scene in the desert in which Ben [yes Ben, but more on that later] and Rey pulled that First Order Transport out of the sky sent shivers down my spine. We have never seen the force used like this before and the amount of power Rey held was absolutely staggering. I loved it.

The saber battle on top of the Death Star was a visual highlight. Even though I felt like I’d seen most of it in TV Spots the urgency never went away. The moodiness of the water and mist cut through by the blue and red light was beautiful.

The one shot of Poe, Finn and Chewie running through the Destroyer hallway felt like an echo back to everything that lies at the heart and soul of this saga.

We’ve been begging for more space battles and boy did we get a good one. When Lando and Chewie sauntered in on the Falcon with their thousands of rebel support ships set to the theme I was sobbing. There were so many little references in that one shot, from Rebels to Resistance to even Wedge Antilles - My heart swelled.

But where I really broke was on Ahch-To. One of my biggest gripes with TLJ was its treatment of Luke. Every time I watch it again that shot of his submerged X wing infuriates me beyond measure as Johnson never chose to do anything with it [despite there being an obvious answer]. We finally got that scene in this film, the scene I was so desperate for; a callback to perhaps my favourite moment in the whole skywalker saga entangled with an apology for TLJ’s treatment of our favourite jedi master. Set to Yoda’s Theme, I felt like for a split second like I was watching Empire, and that meant the world to me. Thank you J.J.

The characterisation is perhaps the most divisive part of the film for me. It took so many risks, it’s going to take quite some time for me to properly digest them all.

I want to start with our beloved Leia. The CGI, although perhaps not quite as seamless as some reviewers are making it out to be, worked well enough. With the knowledge of Carrie’s passing, it’s easy to poke holes in the performance - I found the beginning of her screen time particularly jarring, with her mostly addressing Rey with one word answers. I knew that there was supposed to be an emotional weight to all her scenes, as there she was, our princess, somehow miraculously on our screens for one final time. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel as if she was truly there in body or soul, and the emotional power of her scenes suffered as a result. Maybe in time, as we forget about the circumstances under which this film had to be made, this obvious detachment might fade away. And I sincerely hope it does, because the backstory they gave her is what truly deserves to be remembered about Leia in this film. The flashback scene of her training with Luke was glorious, the cgi really worked well here, and for the first time we saw Leia as a fully fledged jedi. This is something I could never ever have even imagined and I’m so pleased they did it, it would have meant so much to me as a young girl. As for her death, I believe they did the best they could with it. She ultimately died saving her son, protecting both the light and her family - two themes that have been so central to this entire forty two year saga. I don’t think they could have done much more.

I was shocked to see Harrison in this, surprised isn't even the right word. But this bewilderment that I felt thankfully didn’t overshadow his integral role in the so called ‘Bendemption’ arc, in fact I think it really tied the whole thing together nicely. I have hated the idea of Kylo’s possible redemption since the moment we found out his true heritage during TFA, I thought it was too simple, too obvious. But the way in which it was dealt with here was wonderful. It showed Kylo to be entirely complex and ambiguous, and at the end of it we saw Ben for what he was, a young and vulnerable young man who ultimately made some terrible choices, the conflict in him was brilliantly acted. It was ultimately his parents that pulled him back to the light, not just Rey, and that fact alone saved this story arc for me.

[I refuse to talk about the kiss. I hated it. It didn’t need to happen.]

Rey is a difficult one. Was the Palpatine bloodline convenient? Yes. Terribly so. Did it make sense story wise? Only kind of. But, I think it drew a definitive line under the nine film conflict which was ultimately at its core just Skywalker vs Palpatine, so in that sense I’m happy it happened in the way it did.

[Sheev on an aesthetic level looked dreadful I thought. Proper rubbery. And the logistics of how he survived/who all those chanting followers were/where he got all those Imperial star destroyers from is extremely questionable. I try not to dwell on it.]

My mixed feelings about Finn and Poe cannot be overstated. The film did a good job at giving them more to do, we really got to see John and Oscar bounce off each other and at the end of the day, that is my kryptonite. However, Finn had little to no character development throughout the whole trilogy. All he did was figure out that he didn’t want to be aligned with the First Order anymore, deciding he wanted to fight for what is right. But the thing is, we saw him make that decision about ten minutes into TFA. It didn’t need to be rehashed again and again in every film. We wanted more - we wanted him to be force sensitive, we wanted him to form meaningful connections with others. On some level they delivered on that, we saw a little force sensitivity, he got his own back with Hux, he found his tribe in Jannah and the other deserters.. but it felt like an afterthought. Nothing was ever dwelled upon- even his confession to Rey [whatever it was] was completely forgotten about in the end. Finn as a whole felt like an afterthought.

[Don’t even get me started on Rose, Kelly deserved so much more. I was embarrassed by the amount of screen time she had.]

As for Poe.. Oscar did a brilliant job in this, he successfully harkened back to our favourite scoundrel Han Solo stereotype and I felt that gave the trio’s dynamic a clear anchor. His interactions with both Finn, Threepio and Chewie as he kept crashing the falcon really made me laugh, it was nice to have some actual humour littered throughout, unlike the goofy slapstick stuff in TLJ. But.. the Zorii love interest and backstory made zero sense canonically. Zero. Aside from the ‘can i kiss you’ stuff being extremely contrived, there is physically no actual way Poe could have ever been a spice runner on this new planet that I can’t remember the name of. He lived on Yavin his whole life until he came of age to join the New Republic Navy, and from there Leia recruited him into the Resistance. This much has been documented in countless books and comics. J.J really decided to throw that all away so that they could what.. get that universal key thing? Did they even use it? Was there any other point of Zorii’s character other than that key? Not really. Don’t try to tell me that Kes and Shara’s son ran away from home to become a criminal for no reason. Just don’t. [He was still wearing Shara’s ring throughout and they didn’t do anything with it.. I wonder will we get more of an answer to this in the novelisation?]

[While I’m on the subject of the comics and novels, the decision to kill off Snap was brave. I really loved him in the comics and I’m sad he’s now gone and Karé is now alone. Not that any of that was mentioned but-]

Lando was used just the correct amount. I’m happy he got the ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ line, and I think any more screen time and we could have seen some holes in Billy’s performance. [sorry Billy]

Chewie had some great moments in this surprisingly. He was essentially just an extra in TLJ so it was quite refreshing to have him be a key player again. [I had forgotten about the clips from the trailer that showed him aboard the Destroyer, so when he ‘died’ I really thought he was dead for a moment and I was so angry that that was how he went lol.] But his reaction to Leia’s death was so touching and although it was a tad fan-servicey, I loved the fact that he finally got the medal he missed out on in ANH. It made me chuckle.

The same can be said of Anthony Daniels as C3PO and all of the other droids. I felt as though they really clawed them back into the mix this time - Threepio’s worrisome queries were wonderfully nostalgic and not to mention hilarious, and D-0 was a great new addition. The droids always brought a levity to star wars, it was their job, and they did this to great effect in this film. There was some questionable switching around of R2 and BB8 which I didn’t appreciate - there is absolutely no way that BB8 wouldn’t be Poe’s astromech for the battle against the Final Order but I’m willing to let it slide.. [also why was he on Tatooine with Rey at the end?]

It really sounds like I had more problems with this film than highlights, and I promise that’s not the case. In the end, it made me feel happy, like I was watching something akin to the OT again, and yes some parts of it were clumsy, but the heart of it was there. It all really comes down to whether or not you believe a film must be ‘good’ in order to be.. good. With something as big and sentimental as star wars I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. Return of the Jedi was an utter mess- but yet we all still worship it and the characters it gave us. Why can’t the same thing be said for TROS? It was clunky, but it was surprising, and powerful and fun. It gave us the characters we loved and some interesting new ones, some top-tier lightsaber battles and a conclusive ending to the saga that has defined so many lives. At the end of the day I think that’s all it needed to be.

#star wars tros #tros #tros spoilers #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #spoilers #star wars the rise of skywalker #sw #sw spoilers #star wars the rise of skywalker spoilers #do you think i have enough tags lmao #i just really don't want to spoil it for people #rey #kylo #finn #poe #idk i feel like i have enough now

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naruhearts · 6 years

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14x11 Thoughts, Destiel, & 10x09

(copy-paste from Twitter)

- - - -

So I finally got around to watching this week’s ep — the whole thing — and it was...okay. I don’t think it packed super good characteristic/emotional punches like we’ve seen in recent weeks but it definitely spoke to Dean’s long-running low depressive self-worth (and ever-increasing queer Dean subtext via Michael’s closet!box and 14x10 closet!mind).

What stood out to me was the absence of Cas: no mention of him or Jack. And I don’t know if I should take that as solid or sloppy negative space placement by Perez or what, but there were callbacks/reduxes to Dean’s MoC arc — specifically 10x09.

Interestingly, it seemed like the infamous D/C burger date was reflected by Dean and Donna the Dean mirror’s burger meetup, with both scenarios unfolding in the same narrative context of Dean’s self-sacrificial worthlessness-induced Bad Decisions™ that altogether served as some kind of contrast for platonic vs familial vs romantic interpersonal dynamics.

In 10x09 Sam was also deceived by his brother — observe the visual Dark vs Light difference of both settings — in that Dean obviously wasn’t fine but he still cooked for him (he cooks with Mary in 14x11 as well)/successfully tricked Sam into thinking all is well. Afterwards, Dean went on his heavily Dabb romance-coded burger date with Cas.

In sombre-coloured 14x11 Sam knew Dean was visibly off, whereas Cas is...nowhere to be heard, seen, found. Dean doesn’t mention him at all either, and again I don’t know if that was just some weird lapse in writing consistency, but Perez probably intended to convey the primary negative space: that Dean can be stopped by his lover-coded best friend Cas who, indeed, won’t talk Dean out of his plan like Sam can, but would drill through the box and metaphorically/literally yank Dean out — grip him tight and raise him again from proverbial Perdition (Dean’s metaphorical/literal burial directly ties back to Lazarus Rising, and well, this is what cyclic S14’s thematically highlighted generally all season so far: the old beginning and new beginning of Dean’s first rebirth) aka Dean knew that Cas, like in 10x09, would call him out on his bluff asap. Dean knew that Cas saying “No, you’re not [fine]” could break his free resolve to go through with his self-punishing World Saving scheme.

Dean knows that Cas finding out would stop him in his tracks, because he can’t bear to feel like he’s failing him, but that’s the rub of the episode’s characteristic premise isn’t it? Dean’s Hiding-to-Protect-My-Family is paradoxically counterproductive - he’s failing them, and he’s always internalized that saying goodbye before marching off to his own death isn’t a commonality but a rarity. He almost got away with not telling Sam, and we’ll see how Cas finds out next ep (Sam’s “secret sick farewell tour” comment was accurate). I mean, these are the only logical points I can think of in terms of almost unequivocally Cas-less dialogue (seriously, where’d he go?) UNLESS, like I said above, Dean’s deliberately and consciously holding back (voila, repressing feelings and words) from bringing Cas to his own awareness so that he has an uninterrupted burial go-ahead.

***Recall that in S10 Cas was unable to follow through with Dean’s intimately-confided wish for Cas to kill him as soon as he fell MoC darkside, anyway. In fact, Dean excluding Cas entirely from his conscious functioning may be his Operation: Burial failsafe to protect his family — to protect Cas — from what could become the 10x22-reminiscent line of Michael’s fire. Yet Cas shall remain by his side. Forever, if need be, precisely because “everyone you know, everyone you love? They could be long dead. Everyone except me.” I’ll-Go-With-You Cas is the one Dean absolutely trusts.

And when Perez relays the Who Am I-linked thematic question of How Are You? Dean says:

(Sigh. This is why you must ‘die’, Dean. Break the remaining shackles of miscommunication and performativity that hinder you from TALKING ABOUT IT, from OPENING UP ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU’VE ALWAYS AVOIDED TALKING ABOUT ESPECIALLY ON THE LOVE AND...LOVE FRONT.)

What I really enjoyed were the overt naked cowboy beefcake posters in Donna’s shed that evoked Dean’s subtextual preference for dark-haired thick-bodied male cowboys a la 13x06 Cas etc. Those men?! Yep, they’re exactly your type too, Dean. Just last episode we observed the biggest Repressed Gay Hits of Dean’s subconscious/Michael’s dream construct, poised to nudge at the walls of text. Here, Dean got, uh, pretty distracted for a few seconds until he remembered that he had to “die” (literally locking himself up in his closet!box with naked Cas-representative men surrounding him and oh boy more 4x01 sparks flew during the closet!box building process: meta in meta) but I digress—

Overall 14x11 isn’t one of my faves. Dean basically revealed, more or less, what was in Billie’s Single Win endgame book, and it seemingly overhauled the very notion of Free Will and blank slates that Dean (and TFW) always embodied x. It felt disjointed in certain respects, and I hated that Donna and Mary were DiDs (come on, TPTB, get past the damselized misogyny, in all its veiled and obvious forms). Personally heart-wrenching to me though was Dean’s one-on-one time with Mary (he belittled his cooking abilities by claiming he’s a “terrible cook” *hello low self-worth*) — including his grief-tinged bologna & cheese Winchester Surprise story that almost segued into angry John memories — despite it falling short by missing the mark for true expositional discussion between them re: Dean’s actual feelings (no substantial emotive breakthrough. But yeah, I guess it should make sense that Dean’s regressed to toxic depressive behaviours and maladaptive secrecy before he metaphorically “dies” and is resurrected again).

Rating: 5/10. 6/10 if I’m being generous.

p.s. Donna was trying to ask Dean how he is, but Dean deflected during their burger outing (“Everybody keeps asking me how I am”) —> contrast to Cas seeing through Dean’s walls during burger date. And it’s intriguing that Doug comes up in conversation; her split with Doug — who couldn’t integrate into or commit with Donna’s hunting life — still affects her. It’s as if Dean’s ‘splitting up’ with Cas, which, he technically is (temporarily).

I’m sure I might have more thoughts on 14x11 later on, but this is the gist of my summary for now. Feel free to throw your thoughts around, peeps!!

And by the way, 14x12 promo has Cas saying “Stop with your suicidal plans” to whom I’m assuming is Dean. I just hope next week explains what happened to 14x11’s narrative cohesiveness at least :P

Now I’d like to call on @coinofstone‘s symbolic analysis of the books Dean chose for coffin-building :D

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daggerzine · 5 years

Text

Tony Potts of The Monochrome Set gives us the details! (interview by Steve Michener)

I started writing a weekly post on Facebook about two years ago, wherein I would pick a song from the extensive catalog of The Monochrome Set and write a few words, trying to hep people to their fantastic music. It became a fun, online conversation with friends and fans and the band would sometimes join in, adding to the story or correcting my (frequent) historical errors. I was presenting myself as a TMS scholar when I was really just a doofus with a love for the music. The FB feature eventually led to my volunteering to drive the band on the West Coast swing of their recent US tour, which was a total blast.

Recently, I came up with the idea of interviewing various members of the band and when I initially hit upon this plan, the first person I thought of was Tony Potts, their early ‘5th member.' Tony added another dimension to the band’s early shows by projecting films onto screens (and sometimes the band), helping to differentiate the band in the crowded post-punk music scene of the late 70s/early 80s England. I never personally saw any early TMS shows so I missed out on his contributions until last year when I attended the TMS 40th anniversary shows in London and got to experience his visuals along with the music (albeit from a laptop now instead of a Super 8 film). I’ve always been intrigued by his role with the group and he was nice enough to answer some of my email questions about the early days of the band, his art, and, of course, his favorite TMS song. Tony’s Facebook page is one of the most entertaining around; he doesn’t hold back much, whether it’s about his cancer diagnosis, politics, or the state of the Great Western Railroad. TMSF and now Dagger Zine present the Weird, Wild and Wonderful World of Tony Potts!

That’s Tony far right

Q: How did you come to be involved with the Monochrome Set? What drew you to them and them to you?

Ah, now there are two answers to this question. The first is terse and accurate, although less interesting than the second. Well, I knew John, J.D. Haney. That's the terse answer. However, in the interests of interest, and name-dropping, we have to travel back to about 1974. The story illustrates I think, how our lives are built upon great swaths of happenstance.

While studying on my pre-degree arts foundation I became close friends with Edwin, later Savage Pencil, who later still formed The Art Attacks. After some itinerant drummers, including Ricky Slaughter of The Motors, and Robert Gotobed of Wire, JD became the Art Attacks drummer. Now, Edwin didn't know him, so I can only guess, at this great distance, that I put his name forward. But again, we must spool back in time. How did I know John? After Edwin left for London, and still at my provincial art school, I became good friends with two fellow student artists like myself, Andy Palmer and Joy Haney. They both became founder members of Crass, under the names N A Palmer and Joy De Vivre, and are now exceptionally good fine artists.

It was through my friendship with Joy that I meet her brother, the aforementioned JD, when he came down from university in the summer of '76. We hung out with his college chum, Jean-Marie Carroll, later to join The Members, and discussed narrow neckties and casual trousers. Then Joy, Andy, and I went off to the Greek islands for the summer, before returning to London to take up our degree course at Chelsea School of Art.

Thus it was, with us all now in London, that I believe I introduced JD to The Art Attacks, with whom I worked until their demise, at which point JD took up with TMS. Due to mutual creative interests in art, I was invited to display my films at their gigs. That was late '78, with my first gig with the band being at Acklam Hall, Notting Hill, on 22nd February 1979. Thereafter we fell together and I started to make films specifically for the live shows. It’s worth pointing out that the TMS was not formed in an art school, or by art students. It is lazy journalism that perpetuates the Art School band epithet. Both Bid, the main song writing power behind the longevity of the band, and the other key lyricist, JD Haney, have never been anywhere near an art school.

Q: What were your films like? Who were your art-school influences at the time? What were you doing with the Art Attacks?

I was studying fine art painting, and painting was my main interest. Although I loved films, I never expected to move in that direction. As a painter, I was a devotee of the Russian Constructivists like Tatlin, but mostly the geometric forms of El Lissitzky, and the Suprematist Kazimir Malevich - best known for Black Square and White On White. My paintings were an amalgam of geometric forms in the vein of Lissitzky on grounds inspired by Malevich's painterly surfaces. With the rise of the Punk movement in London, I somewhat changed direction, moving into filmmaking that had a quasi-narrative style, intended to be more emotional and poetic. Although driven by what was happening in music during ‘76/'77/'78, ironically, my films couldn't be any less punk if I tried. Well, not to punks anyway. These days I regret that I never resuscitated my painting practice.

At the time of the Acklam Hall gig, I had made one large scale Super8, and two 16mm works. I think it must have been 'Strange Meeting', which in part was about aliens and The Red Army Faction murders, which we showed at that gig, but as a support. I had previously made some other 8mm films, and I might have used them during the band, but I can't recall. However, I now have vague memories of projecting B & W film over the whole stage and band. With The Art Attacks, I didn't have a creative role, I just supported the band in rehearsal and at gigs with Paul Humphries their manager, and the initial manager of TMS. Paul, JD and I all shared the same squat in Brailsford Road, Brixton. So, with TMS I had something more creative to do.

Q: For those of us who weren't able to see those shows, describe for us what you were doing with the films during the shows. How were the films received by the audience?

As I said, initially I used the films that I had made in another context, and they were added to the performance to create an overall ambiance, a statement of presentation that was not about a band energetically leaping about on stage, as was the order of the day. Soon I started to make Super8 material specifically for TMS performances. This included the scratched and bleached footage for 'Lester Leaps In', or images filmed on the road, like the Berlin footage used for ‘Viva Death Row’, or staged material of the band getting up to also sorts of antics, like the beach ball larks and bits of animations I would make with no specific aim. In the early days, I made two roller blind screens in long boxes, [we took them on the first two US tours] with one on either side of the stage as space allowed, with film projected onto them so the band members were often in silhouette, although it bled onto them also. The stage was very dark, lit by blue footlights, which I made. I think Mark Perry of Sniffing Glue/Alternative TV said something like it was the most brilliantly depressing thing he had seen. That was always the irony at that time, the music was pert and poppy and uplifting, but the show wasn't. What a laugh, we all thought.

The shows became increasingly more elaborate with more screens, more projectors and a theatrical lighting rig. At this time we were using Ground Control, Bowie's original PA, run by a lovely guy called Robin Mayhew. Using the theatre lights allowed me to focus and shape controlled beams of light exactly where I wanted them. For example, I could just illuminate Bid's face or other small areas with geometric shapes, while leaving the stage largely unlit. Then the film screens could glow and flicker in the dark. The lads tended not to move a great deal. A tradition assiduously upheld by Mr. Warren.

As to reception, well some people liked it, and others couldn't see the point. I think it mostly worked as a spectacle, an integrated whole, a total experience, but for those just into the music, it was probably irrelevant. I mean, they are a great band, so nobody missed me when I didn't set up, like at the M80. That stage was toooo big, man.

Bid and Tony

Q; As the 'Fifth Member' whose focus seemed to have been on the live performances, how did you fit in with the band in the recording studio?

Yes, my key role was the live performance; anything else was a bonus for me. I was at all recordings from the second Rough Trade single to the end of the second album, as an enthusiastic supporter and admirer. Of course, I chipped in with the odd suggestion or noise and was probably ignored where and when necessary. Being musically incompetent, my timing is off by a good margin so I'm not sure my handclaps ever made a final mix. You can hear me on TWWWWofTP. I've got quite a pleasant singing voice, also, just not in public. Bid once marked out the chord changes for Ici Les Enfants on a plastic organ I had, to fill out the live sound, but after the first chord change, I was lost and bewildered.

Q: You've done promotional videos for the band. Can you talk about a few of those projects? Do you have a favorite video?

The first promotional film I made was the one for Dindisc, and called Strange Boutique, not after the title of the first album as many think, but coincidentally, after the name of a pair of corduroy trousers! Actually, that may not be true. So, this was conceived as a short film, with two songs and a Rod Serling type piece to camera as a linking devise. Done on the very cheap. Unfortunately, there were syncing issues with some of the dialogue and the master got damaged, scratched, and I'm not sure if I still have the original film, or not. It's on our DVD as a complete piece as far as I remember, but it turns up on YouTube, usually cut down to either of the two songs LSD and Strange Boutique, without all the linking material.

We then waited a long time until I was commissioned by WEA to make the promo for 'Jacob's Ladder' with the release of 'The Lost Weekend' album. The deal was negotiated from a public phone box on Clapham Common tube station. It was somewhat compromised by cock-ups at WEA which meant I was forced to hand it over before it was fully edited to my satisfaction. I seem to have made a style out of technical imperfections; at least that's what I'm saying. At the time Top of the Pops had a video preview section, and a short clip of Jacob's Ladder was shown. That’s primetime TV, folks!

And then, of course, I was delighted when Bid asked me to make the official MaisieWorld video for ‘I Feel Fine’, which I was very pleased with. All these projects were very personal to me, not just the execution of a job, and the first two were part of my life at the time of making.

Q. The only footage I've seen of you actually playing with the band is the Old Grey Whistle Test TV spot. Was it common for you to join the band onstage?

Well, I was usually visible on stage, controlling the projectors, which needed constant manipulation, like a DJ scratching, changing speed and switching images, fading and mixing. Also, there might be some little set piece we had devised, which required me to do something. At one point, during the Ground Control days, I remember I had my own mic so I could interact with the stage, which didn't last that long. So, to some extent, I always had a relationship with the stage as both performer and technician. Once, when Lester Square had had enough, I did perform the encore, He's Frank, by incessantly plucking one string of his guitar. Pretty good, actually! Music and Maths very similar to my mind, no sooner do I believe that I have mastered the execution of some small calculation, but I soon discover that I haven't.

Don’t shake the ladder, Tony gettin’ down to work.

Q: Tell us about your film education and your career in film and video outside the band.

I made a living of sorts working commercially in film and video production, and teaching, but as I mentioned before, I actually trained in fine art. My art foundation took a very academic approach and involved copious hours of life drawing and other drawing classes, while being given time to develop one's own particular discipline and style.

I made one Super8 film based on geometric elements in my painting. I had made three other 8mm film before this. It wasn't until I was on my degree course that I started making more moving image work, but this stemmed from a fine art perspective, so I didn't ever have any film school type training. My own work I would categorise as poetic experimentalism, that is under the general umbrella of artist film and video. Just a reminder that you can catch up with lots more detail of everything I've said at my website, http://tonypottsloopform.altervista.org. Although it has all the history of the films and staging, as well as the making of Jacob's Ladder, it's rather old and not up-to-date. That site includes all the art projects I've worked on, the history of TMS film, and my own films. My creative life can be divided into three separate but overlapping strands. The first being, my personal practice as an artist/film maker, the second, my skills and knowledge deployed in the service of collective artworks and community arts projects, and those same skills employed commercially in film and video production and teaching.

Q: It's obvious from FB that you are a big film fan. Who are some of your favorite directors/favorite movies?

With a few exceptions, I'm not much interested in modern Hollywood, old Hollywood is better, and pre-Hays better still. My film tastes are somewhat esoteric for most folks. I prefer silent film, particularly that of the classic German period of the twenties, Lang, Murnau, Pabst, Dreyer. Then in the sixties, PP Pasolini, Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, soviet era Tarkosky and Parajhanov, plus a host of even less well know eastern European directors like Miklos Jancso, Jan Nemec, or Frantisek Vlacil. Don't you wish you'd never asked?

Q. You live in Wales, pretty far away from the London of your youth. How did you end up there and what appeals to you living there?

Well, we split our time between London and Pembrokeshire at present, while my wife Rachael is still working. In a few years, we'll move out completely, I think. I can't relax in the city anymore. I need some more space to feel comfortable. I've had as much London as I can handle. Rachael is Welsh, although Pembrokeshire is known as little England beyond Wales, and we are fortunate to own her childhood home there.

Q. You were recently diagnosed with cancer and posted your experience on Facebook. How did you discover that you had cancer and how are you doing now?

Yes, that was unfortunate. The prostate gets larger as us men grow older and so puts a bit of pressure on the bladder, changing the way you take a pee, like urgency and frequency. So any chap of a certain age should cut along to a doctor if they have persistent symptoms of this type. Our neighbour in Wales insists on calling it prostrate cancer, but I refuse to take that lying down, and firmly pronounce it prostate, but to no avail. But seriously, although it's a slow-growing cancer, the sooner you act, the sooner you can get the appropriate treatment. I had to have surgery, but it's not necessary for everyone. As my cousin, who luck would have it is a cancer specialist said, do you want to be erect or dead? Haha, what a great choice!

Q: Since this is a TMSF, after all, can you pick a favorite song and say a few words about it?

My choice of song to end this pleasant excursion is 'The Devil Rides Out', from the 'Eligible Bachelors' album. By the time of recording this record JD had left the band and was living in NY, and I was also spending a great deal of time in that city also. I was still contributing to the occasional gig or short tour, but I certainly wasn't around when this album was recorded. Christ, what do you expect for a record made in Luton?

So it is the live performances of this song that I recall, since it was in the repertoire well ahead of it being recorded. Although I could say it of many other songs, the open chords of 'The Devil Rides Out' always gave me a buzz as I waited to play in whatever the film images were [I can't remember]. Even if the audience or critics found the films superfluous or unimportant, I usually enjoyed watching the way that a set of otherwise unrelated images somehow meshed and synchronised with the music and gave the illusion of a premeditated vision. Of course, it was premeditated in as much as I knew what pieces of film would be used for a particular song, but beyond that, there was a lot of slack in the system. With the various parameters of the live installation, having to follow the cue of the band and the hand manipulating the projectors [no computers], there were great possibilities that the extemporisation would result in entirely unique sets of images and sound on each occasion.

Well, I should say something about why I like the song. It's one of a number of Bid's more esoteric lyrical compositions. He had previously pushed the Latin boat out with Adeste Fideles [not everyone's favourite song title to pronounce], and my spell checker isn't too keen on the words, either. In this case, the bridging line is rendered in Latin, but with the exception of the 'Hails', this is written in the ancient language of Sanskrit. Or at least that is my understanding and belief. Whatever the lyrical origins are, this is a classic TMS arrangement, altogether thrilling, incomprehensible and mysterious, yet totally pop, totally accessible and it dumps from a very great height those chart-topping household names who have followed in their wake.

And of course, I can never resist a song that features a sleigh bell, The Devil Rides Out and The Stooges 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' being the two finest examples.

http://tonypottsloopform.altervista.org

www.themonochromeset.co.uk

www.tapeterecords.de

www.facebook.com/themonochromeset

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libermachinae · 5 years

Text

Logic Circuit

This story is also available on AO3!

Summary: It’s a sunlit morning, Cybertron is safe, and Bumblebee is wrapped in Starscream’s arms. Something isn’t right here.

🐝⭐🐝 ⭐ 🐝 ⭐ 🐝

[[Battery level: 98%]]

…

[[Battery level: 99%]]

…

[[Battery level: 100%]]

[[Halting recharge sequence.]]

[[Initializing online protocols.]]

[[Optical center at 12% capacity.]]

Bumblebee onlined most mornings with a flash from his optics and a stream of corrupted visual data, a mash of feedback that did not describe his surroundings so much as suggest that there could, potentially, be something there worth being described, pixels arranged into recognizable colors and shapes only after the links to his optic core had been reestablished. Though inefficient, it was the fastest method he knew of to establish a reliable visual feed, and during the war had been responsible for his survival through both surprise Decepticon raids and early morning command meetings. It startled him every time and wiped his temporary storage of any dreams he’d been having in the moments prior, but he had always known it to be a worthwhile tradeoff, if it meant keeping the likes of both Shockwave and Prowl respectively from getting the jump on him.

Occasionally, though, a glitch in the slapdash programming caused the system to reverse itself. His optical center would boot itself up first, supplied by a trickle of visual data as his optics powered up at the same rate as the rest of his sensornet. Instead of a barrage of miscalculated colors, his recharge was replaced with gently shifting hues, yellow meshing with white like looking through a tarp on a particularly sunny day. His optics dialed up, then dialed in, gradually differentiating the shapes until he was able to recognize a frame lying beside him, one with elegant wings stained the color of sulfur, and a proud helm, no less handsome for being deep in recharge.

Starscream would have complained that the splashes of yellow light clashed with his color scheme, but Bumblebee could have basked in the warm tones, in the transparent shadow that mimicked the shape of a cockpit, in the gentle curl of blue fingers resting over a still frame. Recharge smoothed the space between his optic ridges making Starscream’s whole frame appear younger, less beaten. With this appearance, it was possible to believe that he was still the young jet who had volunteered himself for a revolution, rather than the weary lone ruler of Cybertron, who even in recharge clutched a datapad in one hand like it was the one thing left to shield him from the rest of the universe. Bumblebee’s spark spun until it ached, desire sweeping through him to take up the defense Starscream assumed he lacked, to protect him from his myriad enemies real, imagined, and remembered. The only things holding him back were limitations of the frame, even more noticeable at this time of day which left him waiting for his systems to come online, a procession of one by one by one.

He felt a wave of static electricity, starting at the area around his spark casing and moving distally to the ends of his servos, his tactile sensors firing at full capacity before settling within a more moderate sensitivity range. With that, he could now feel the pressure of the berth under his back, and all the points where the armor on his arm bumped up against that of Starscream’s. The supplementary thermometers within his plating calibrated themselves a moment later, calculating and confirming what his optics had already observed: warm rays of sunlight arching over their still frames, and a jet engine idling beside him, just active enough to raise the temperature of the air by a few degrees.

Easing his joints back to wakefulness, he leveraged himself into a sitting position and reached over Starscream’s still frame to extract the datapad, fingers careful to avoid the screen lest he accidentally turn it on again. The device felt heavier in his hand than he had expected. Like so much of their city, it had probably been built from salvaged parts, not every endeavor able to be resourced ideally like they had in a wartime economy. It was all part of the process, and despite Starscream’s frequent admonishments not to baby him with such talk, Bumblebee himself knew it to be true.

He paused after setting the datapad on a nightstand, nestled on top of a pile of similar devices, and looked down at Starscream, deep in recharge and unaware of any disturbance. Now that Bumblebee’s audial receptors were online, he could hear the gentle purr of an engine at rest, temporarily freed from the stress of always being the most visible target in the room. It was beautiful, in the way that it was only sad if one spent too much time thinking about it, rather than appreciating the moment. He reached a hand over, hesitated, then indulged, gliding his fingers along the edge of Starscream’s sun-drenched wing.

Bumblebee delighted in its warmth and smoothness, but even more so in its stillness. Whether he was smiling through a lie or unleashing a portion of his pent-up fury, Starscream’s wings constantly trembled, taking on whatever excess energy couldn’t be contained within the rest of his frame. Bumblebee doubted it was good for the delicate components’ structural integrity, but Starscream had made a career out of risking his health in one way or another, so Bumblebee contented himself with moments like this, when Starscream didn’t have to sacrifice parts of his frame to keep himself airborne.

He pulled his hand back after satisfying himself with his exploration, though he did not take any steps to rouse Starscream further. There was still work to be done, but the citizens of Cybertron would never know if they stole this one moment from them, Bumblebee awake and Starscream safely tucked into recharge. As a bonus, this angle made it easier to appreciate the sight of Starscream’s frame, and Bumblebee wasn’t bold enough to lie about how much he enjoyed it. He let his optics rove slowly, taking in the crystalline cockpit dome, the powerful thrusters, the elegant wings. A feeling of want gnawed at his spark, not for any individual part but for the masterpiece that was the whole. His processor was uninvolved in the decision to reach up and gently cup Starscream’s face, angling it so that Bumblebee could press a quick kiss to one shuttered optic, and then the other.

Starscream’s lips twitched, and the space between his optic ridges furrowed. For his reboot procedure, he had prioritized somatic motor controls, programming his nervous system to allow for full range of motion before even the true end of the defrag cycle. Although it occasionally meant flinging himself off the berth in a state of uncomprehending panic, the system had also rescued him from several assassination attempts, so Bumblebee didn’t try to debate its merits.

“Come on, Starscream,” he said instead, keeping his vocal synthesizer pitched low. His wasn’t powerful enough to mimic the rumble of Optimus Prime, but the tingle of remaining static tilted his voice further in that direction than he could normally achieve, and added a touch of vulnerability that only Starscream knew. “It’s time to come online. Your planet and I need you.” He rubbed his thumb over Starscream’s cheek.

Instead of responding, Starscream reached up with the hand further from Bumblebee and wrapped it around the back of his neck. Bumblebee allowed himself to be pulled down into a kiss, letting his optics shutter as he leaned his weight into it, enjoying the sweet pattern of gentle pressure and release. There was something thrilling in just how unexciting of a kiss it was; there was no desperation to turn it into something more, because both were secure in the knowledge that there would be more time for further exploration later.

“Mm, Bee.”

“That’s right,” he murmured to familiar lips, “I’m here.”

Bumblebee felt another hand take hold of his waist and drag him over so that he was lying on top of Starscream’s frame. Metal plates at first clanked together unpleasantly, grinding down their clear topcoats, but gradually they were able to configure themselves into comfortable positions, Bumblebee planting a hand beside Starscream’s helm to keep his balance. The other rested lightly over his cockpit, fingers brushing languidly over the crystal in thoughtless patterns.

When he did break off the kiss and raise his helm, it was just in time to see Starscream finally unshutter his optics, revealing twin spent embers. Adoration like arcs of electricity leapt from between Bumblebee’s seams, and it was all he could do not to lean in again for another round.

“Feeling awake now?” he teased.

“Unfortunately, yes, though I can’t imagine why,” Starscream said. His hold on Bumblebee was strong but passive, maintaining their position without demanding anything further.

“Probably because Cybertron’s most glorious leader has work to do,” Bumblebee said, only half joking. To mask his sincerity, he placed a finger on Starscream’s nose, laughing as it was swatted off and trying not to think about whether Starscream had noticed his falter.

“I imagine that by now, said ruler has probably earned a break,” Starscream said, “or at the very least a morning off.”

“Really now? How do you figure?”

“Common decency,” Starscream said, frowning at the scoff he earned for it. “I’m being honest, Bee.”

Bumblebee stopped laughing and forced himself to pay attention to Starscream. Without the easy guise of teasing to act as a buffer between them, it was plain to see the sincerity in Starscream’s eyes as he gazed up at Bumblebee. The level of trust sobered Bumblebee, and he leaned closer, offering a small, encouraging smile.

“I’m listening,” he said. “I’ll always listen to you.”

“Smart mech,” Starscream said, though it seemed more instinct than actual quip. He sighed, letting his vents release some of the warm air that had been gathering in his ducts. “Forgive me if this is not my most eloquent deduction, but no one can deny that Cybertron is better off now than at any previous moment in its long, fraught history. We eliminated factions, developed planet-wide infrastructure goals, and finally turned a Cybertronian alliance into something that other species are actually proud of, rather than forced to hide away.”

Bumblebee felt his optics flicker as his logic center produced an error message, but he dismissed it, intent on giving Starscream the attention he deserved.

“Right. No argument there.”

“I, myself, have not felt any resentment toward the labor of achieving these feats, either. Leading our people to peace has been my true goal since the days when Megatron was an actual revolutionary, and now that I’ve made that happen, I can honestly say that I’m… That I feel…”

Bumblebee waited patiently while Starscream tried to find the word he wanted. If it was an important one, he would find his way there on his own, and if it turned out to be superfluous to the rest of the narrative, he would likely drop the entire point rather than belabor one misplaced lexicon file.

“But it’s exhausting, Bumblebee,” Starscream said, choosing to move on. “I know you feel it, too. All the hours spent solving other people’s problems, trying to get the colonies to put up with one another: they take a toll on the frame that no amount of recharge can fully make up for. I can’t risk letting my helm bow from the weight of my own crown, not if I intend to be an effective leader, so sometimes I need to take it off for a morning.” His grip tightened, pulling Bumblebee down to capture his lips in a brief kiss. “Does that seem so unreasonable?”

“Of course not,” Bumblebee murmured, at the same instant that uneasiness caused his spark to accelerate. He couldn’t remember at what point in their shared histories Starscream had become so persuasive, but now he was finding it a challenge to argue with his berthpartner, or even find fault in his reasoning, despite knowing intuitively that it was far from a perfect argument. It was almost as though he felt a compulsion to agree with Starscream, and the idea made his frame run cold as his processor tried to avoid calculating the implications.

His logic core pinged another error message at him, and he brushed it off again, trying to reorient himself within the present moment.

“You’ve earned so much more than this one planet could ever hope to provide,” he said, in between laying a trail of lazy kisses down Starscream’s neck. The action felt rote, preprogrammed, and he tried not to dwell on the sensation as he let instinct lead the way while he started to flick through their shared calendar. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to give you the reward you deserve. What if, after you’re done with your work, we go down to Maccadam’s and—”

“Don’t have any.”

Bumblebee’s movements halted.

“What?”

Starscream laid a palm on his helm, a gentle pressure urging him to continue.

“There’s no work,” he said. “No meetings, no paperwork, no impending deadlines. There’s no one breathing down our backs, just waiting for me to make a wrong move and screw things up. It’s just us here, Bee.”

Bumblebee would have thought he was being facetious, were it not for the terrible realization that Starscream was right. Their calendar, normally cluttered with reminders and sloppy, last-minute notes, was blank, more than a lifetime’s worth of free time stretching out before them, static and cyclical all at once. It would have been easy to pin it on Starscream’s tampering, try to drag an explanation out of the wayward ruler until he finally acquiesced and got back to his responsibilities, but a part of Bumblebee knew that it wasn’t the case this time. It was the same part of Bumblebee that recognize he could no longer ignore the mounting list of warnings building within his logic core.

Not giving himself the opportunity to hesitate, he opened one at random.

His arm buckled.

[[Error: Extrasensory data exceeds acceptable threshold.]]

[[Error: Core personality components misaligned.]]

[[Attempting soft reboot of interpersonal relations core: 17%]]

[[Error: Unable to justify extrasensory data with preconfigured storage data.]]

“Bee?”

[[Checking for infinite logic circuit.]]

[[Error: Infinite loop detected. Attempting hard reboot of logic core: 3%]]

[[Logic core reboot: 3%]]

[[Error: Logic core reboot failed.]]

He was aware of Starscream’s voice, of touches against his frame, of being moved, but he couldn’t process it. He couldn’t process anything. Opening the warning message had given CPU priority to his overloaded logic core, and now more and more of his memory was being hoarded to calculate solutions for all the impossible problems it was being faced with. His vision started to swim with black spots as resources were diverted away from other parts of his processor to try to make sense of all the conflicting data he was receiving, while the reduction in sensory input triggered a panic response as his processor became convinced that it was shutting down, resulting in an increase in fuel pump efficiency and additional power being supplied to his overwhelmed cores, which in turn—

Splash.

Bumblebee blinked as his vision briefly returned to him. Starscream was leaning above him, gripping an upturned bottle leaking its last drops of fluid. Coolant rolled down his face, snaking uncomfortably into his vents, but when he tried to cough it out, he found that his fans were already running at full power. For a moment, their roar was the only sound in the room. Two pairs of optics stared at each other, as though both were no longer sure where else would be appropriate to look.

“What was that for?” Bumblebee asked. He wasn’t sure if he meant it as teasing, but if he had, the wispy tone of his vocalizer caused it to fall flat.

“You were overheating,” Starscream said. Bumblebee’s exhausted processor didn’t have the energy to identify his tone.

“You’re supposed to put coolant in an energon line, not just splash it everywhere.”

“It worked, though, didn’t it?”

It had, and the realization caused Bumblebee’s logic core to shriek with another barrage of errors and incongruities. He grabbed at his helm, too in pain to be bothered by the way the plating heated his fingers.

“Bumblebee!”

He groaned, shaking, terrified that he was about to go into a full systems reboot.

“Something isn’t right here,” he ground out. “It’s not computing, it’s—”

“A dream. This is a dream.”

Bumblebee gasped. The new input was plugged into the infinite loops, disrupting them, and one by one the error messages cleared as his logic core was finally able to justify the data it was being supplied. No longer trapped within impossible equations, processing power was returned to the subroutines and maintenance protocols it had abandoned, repeating the sensations of rising out of recharge without any of the peace or safety he had experienced prior. The irony of it was not lost on him, but he wasn’t ready to dwell on it just yet, more focused on all the previous inconsistencies, each problem added to a queue that his logic core was able to process and solve in an organized system.

[[Input: Cybertron at peak prosperity.]]

[[Logic core error: Input conflicts with storage file 109178.A3.]]

He received a brief playback of the file, needing to only glimpse the flashes of Combiner-wrought destruction and growing unrest in the streets to understand why that discussion had caused an error.

[[Input: Currently engaged in defrag protocols.]]

[[Logic core error resolved.]]

It worked through the rest of the inconsistencies in the same way, taking apart each piece of the morning, comparing it to established memory files, and then quietly shutting them down without any further struggle.

Starscream didn’t have any work to do. There was always more work. This was a dream, so the logic was moot.

Bumblebee and Starscream had a vague relationship that existed somewhere in the realm of lovers. Bumblebee and Starscream could barely function together as colleagues. This was a dream.

Bumblebee could touch, caress, kiss, have weight. Bumblebee was incorporeal

A dream, his processor contentedly supplied. All a dream, a fantasy, unable to harm his logical understanding of the world and how it was meant to function. Each observation was made in turn and then placed in short term storage, to be transferred to his permanent storage later if his subroutines categorized it as valuable. Though, now that he was aware that said processes were taking place in the middle of his defrag cycle, he knew that it was unlikely any of his logic core’s hard-sought solutions would be maintained once he was brought back online.

As the number of logic circuits dwindled, the strain on his processor lessened, and his fans were able to keep up with the rate of heat production, pulsing cool waves of air throughout his frame and easing away the aches of locked joint mechanisms.

He blinked again. Starscream hadn’t moved. His optics were locked onto Bumblebee's, but his expression revealed nothing of his current thoughts, assuming he had any.

“This is a dream,” Bumblebee said. It felt wrong, to accept an absurd idea so easily, but something originating outside of his logic center insisted that it was true. Even believing that was a stretch, of course, but he was Bumblebee. The only mech more likely to pay attention to innate feeling was probably the matrix-chosen Prime himself.

Starscream nodded. Although there was no physical contact between them now, Bumblebee lying on the berth and Starscream kneeling at his side, the simple gesture brought them much closer than they had been before. It was an acknowledgement not only of the reality of their situation, which both were in undeniable agreement of, but also the inevitable conclusion that had to come from it: they, together, were one individual, a processor distanced far enough from reality for the moment that it could turn in and have a conversation with itself. They were in this nonplace together, and as a result, terribly alone.

Bumblebee sat up. They were still in the berthroom filled with spilt sunlight, but the distant edges had lost focus, most of their shared processing power now going towards generating each other and the berth they sat on. He wasn’t surprised that it had taken him so long to recognize the dream for what it was, given how well it was being rendered. Starscream looked like Starscream, all his transformation seams lined up and his colors perfectly swatched and lacking that shimmering vitality that always seemed to hover in the air around dreamt figures. There were even details Bumblebee knew to be accurate that he wouldn’t have thought to notice in waking: the covers over the bolts in his shoulder plating, and the one helm vent that was still slightly bent after getting a pebble jammed into it, little imperfections that Starscream was careful to hide so as not to detract from the quality of the whole.

Out of curiosity, he joined their hands again, and was surprised to find even that to be realistic, his processor-generated sensors able to detect the subtle ridges of Starscream’s knuckle joints. He turned their hands over, watching their fingers slide into place, and only became distracted when the weight of the room’s silence started to press down on him more forcefully. He glanced up and once more met Starscream’s gaze.

“Well, this is going to be awkward when I come online, huh?” he said, cracking out a smirk. “Just, you know, two mechs with histories like ours, this kind of thing has definitely got to be a bad idea.” When Starscream didn’t offer a response, Bumblebee waved toward their joined hands, physical evidence that their processor had not yet forgotten the way the dream had started. “You know? Like, between me stabbing you, and you firing at me, none of it seems like a healthy basis for a real relationship.” He didn’t like the way his vocalizer shaped the words like excuses. “And then even after the war ended, and we had an opportunity to treat each other with some civility, we still were still working in secret and coming up with ways to undermine each other’s successes. That was probably the closest we ever came to actually working as partners, and we were awful at it. We’ve both been through a lot, and a good chunk of it was at one another’s hands, so I’m kind of hoping that all of this just gets wiped before I wake up. It’s too much to be thinking about right now.” He didn’t want the soft touches and genuine concern for one another to come to an end, but he was also lucid enough to realize that what seemed so natural in a dream was susceptible to rust and decay once brought into the harsh elements of reality. He didn’t want to be aware of it when it happened to this one bright thing.

Starscream’s lip trembled, and it took Bumblebee a moment to understand what was happening: he was being laughed at.

“Yes, Bumblebee, please tell me more about what you’re going to do after you ‘wake up,’” he implored. “You can spend a cycle worrying over the moral ramifications of falling for the leader of a free Cybertron, and then, what? Usurp me? Maybe you can find some way to contact our dear friend Nighthawk, too. I’m sure the two of you are quite cozy together right now, recharging somewhere down within Cybertron’s seams.” He shook his helm, gaze drifting around as he observed their room, the walls of which were becoming more indistinct by the moment. “I have to admit, it is humorous, to think that this is the kind of thing Bumblebee could ever dream up.”

Bumblebee didn’t need the error message.

“It is,” he said. “This is my dream. I would know, I’m the one dreaming it right now! You’re just—you’re a figment of my imagination.” That just earned him a burst of exhaust as Starscream continued to revel in glee at his expense. Bumblebee hated that he knew the reason for Starscream’s amusement: both had heard those words spoken aloud before, but not by him. “You’re not real.” He understood why Starscream would get so frustrated having to bite out the words, but he couldn’t tell whether it was a new revelation.

“Well, you’re right about that,” the Starscream said. “I haven’t got any more agency than the berth we’re sitting on. You could do whatever you wanted to me right now, and I would beg or fight you as much as your spark desired.” He batted his ember-like optics at Bumblebee, who felt the wave of desire at a distance, like he was audience to someone else falling for Starscream’s flirting.

“But then this has to be my dream,” Bumblebee said, hoping simple steps of logic would get him through this nightmare of a conversation. “If I’m the only one in control, then that has to mean that it’s my processor generating this reality.”

“Wrong.”

Bumblebee wanted to yell with his frustration, but instead he shuttered his optics and forced himself to cycle a ventilation; his core temperature had started to rise again.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you think is going on?” he suggested. It shouldn’t have mattered what Starscream thought. The mech had already confessed to having no will of his own, which meant that anything he said was coming out of some shared subroutine and should have been available to Bumblebee already. And yet, no warnings popped up as he struggled to understand what wasn’t being said.

“Please, if you’re really intent on ignoring everything that I’ve said, you should at least listen to your own vocalizer every once in a while.” Starscream looked utterly at ease, and in a move that did not entirely comply with Bumblebee’s understanding of physics, leaned back on the berth while keeping their hands securely entwined. “The look is good, I would know that disappointed glower anywhere, but Bumblebee would have had at two or three more denial programs kick in before he gave in and asked for help.”

“So, who am I, then?”

Starscream flashed him a smirk, and his familiarity with it wasn’t the kind that came from seeing it every day. He knew that look because he’d practiced it.

“I could call you a figment, maybe, but an avatar would probably be more appropriate,” Starscream said, claiming a form of delight that he knew only when he was absolutely certain that he was right. “Either way, you’re no more you than I am me. Think about it, and not that automatic process you’ve been leaning on this whole time. I mean actually engage with your logic core and look at the facts. Bumblebee wouldn’t have wanted any of this. He would have questioned what was going on the moment he onlined and fought me when I tried to drag him around a berth with no warning or consent. You’re an avatar, bug, just a convenient fantasy about a mech actually enjoying my company. And anyway, logically, even if you did somehow manage to hijack our processing power and use it to generate your own pseudoreality, the fact that you are a figment of my own fraught imagination means that anything you create automatically falls within my domain. This is my dream, whether by creation or by right.”

“But…” The world was twisting around Bumblebee, in the most literal sense, colors wrapping into each other like distant dying galaxies. “But I’m dreaming right now. I’m aware of it, I know that.”

“Sure,” Starscream said, optics pulsing with a brief cant of his helm, “but that doesn’t mean you’re Bumblebee. You already figured out that we’re from the same processor, so why is this part so hard for you to grasp?” His face was suddenly much closer, and Bumblebee had no way of knowing which of them had been the one to move. “Let me phrase it a little differently for you, so we can get out of this dreadful limbo: between Starscream and Bumblebee, whose psyche is self-destructive enough to realize the logical inconsistencies of its own defrag fantasy?”

All of Bumblebee’s need to fight left him at once. Not because his logic processor had stopped sending him alerts of any kind, or because of some indescribable feeling lodged within the crystal walls of his spark, but because he was finally able to read the calculations that had led to such conclusions, and knew that it was his own processor that had generated them. He had been wrong in his earlier assessment of the situation. He and Starscream were not two halves of an individual. They were just inconsequential shards Starscream’s dormant processor, a miniaturized personification of the bickering he engaged in with himself throughout the day and well into the night. They were less than alone. They were incomplete.

He would have chided himself for falling into his own trap of comfort and security, had he not done it while dressed up as Bumblebee, one of the most gullible bots known to Cybertron. The dream’s ability to slip past the protocols that normally fueled his distrust and suspicion was merely a testament to the perfection with which he executed the ruse, he decided, rather than a symptom of anything like desperation or weakness, though he would have to be on guard in the future in case any of his enemies attempted to employ a similar tactic against him.

He had to look away from the Starscream sitting next to him on the berth, an idol he’d forged in a testament to his own vanity. The walls of the room had regained their crisp appearance, even adding in a few embellishments to improve the appearance, and the sunlight outside suggested early morning rather than late, the perfect time for flying. Without their processor expending energy on maintaining partitions between their systems, now it was able to devote memory space to the things that really mattered to Starscream, like making sure the space around them looked stunning.

For the first time, he looked down at the body he was inhabiting. It was round and yellow, exactly as one would expect Bumblebee to appear, and he was certain that if he didn’t think about it for long enough, a cane would inevitably work its way into his grasp. The plating was smooth, free of imperfections, and he was able to find some small comfort in that. If this dream had been intended to reveal some deeply held feelings toward his deceased colleague, then it would have tried to construct Bumblebee the way he appeared, something for Starscream to properly fantasize about and enjoy. Instead, it had constructed a Bumblebee-shaped frame for him to slip inside, something that he could use to pretend at what it would feel like to be wanted.

The whirring in his chassis sped up and he resisted the urge to place a nonexistent hand against it. The corresponding Bumblebee-shaped spark was announcing its displeasure, it seemed, activating whatever coding was left after its unmasking to insist that he try to comfort himself.

It was an unpleasant feeling, as well as unnerving, to be able to feel his processor trying to mend its own psychological damage. Certainly, this was one of the least self-destructive ways it had gone about accomplishing the task, but it still wasn’t something he had any interest in watching unfold.

“I’m going to wake up now,” he said. If he was lucky, the code that ran this version of Bumblebee in his dreams was distinct from whatever corruption generated his hallucinations during the day, and that Bumblebee would have no recollection of this conversation, or the events that had preceded it. They spent enough time introspecting on his political motivations; trying to factor in his chronic loneliness would just be a complication that neither had the time for.

Starscream knew he was already on the floor before his optic sensors came online, but that didn’t make it any less demeaning when he unshuttered them and was assaulted by the sight of a curious yellow bot peering down at him.

“Morning,” Bumblebee said. “Well, almost morning, I guess. It’s still dark out. You doing alright?”

“Fine,” Starscream bit out, leveraging himself up by grasping the edge of the berth. Bumblebee stepped out of his way, though both knew it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had stayed. “Where’s the datapad I was working on?”

“Other side of the berth. You sure you’re alright? You seemed pretty upset when you came online.”

There was a decent chance he had been, but an old notification on his HUD indicated that he had performed a purge of his short-term memory some time in the space between when his motor functions were activated and when his optic center came online. Whatever data had existed in said memory banks was gone now, which meant that trying to figure out logically what might have had him shooting off the berth would just be an exercise in frustration. Besides, if prior experience was any indication, he was better off ignoring it. There was one face in particular that Starscream had come to associate with corrupted memory files, and the entire planet tended to be better off when he didn’t spend too much time thinking about that one.

“Did you have another nightmare?”

“Yes,” Starscream lied, knowing that it would get Bumblebee to drop the subject. Despite being a manifestation of corruption within his own processor, his hallucination never seemed to know how to respond when such damage was brought up, either growing angry or timid, depending on some pattern that Starscream had yet to fully calculate. This time, the reaction tended toward the latter, and Bumblebee stayed silent as Starscream retrieved the fallen datapad and scrambled back up onto his berth.

He had already gotten all of the recharge that he cared to for that solar cycle, and though his battery was pinging him with suggestions to plug back into the slab, he dismissed them, trying to lose himself in the spreadsheets and reports he’d been studying the night before. They were boring, unsurprisingly, but relevant to at least one of the meetings he was holding that day, and it was always a worthwhile effort to be the most knowledgeable mech in the room, even on topics so monumentally unimpressive as Devisen energon refiners’ compensation. His optics scanned through a large spreadsheet detailing benefits packages in relation to combined experience between pairs of workers, then jumped back to the relevant block of text within the body of the article. As he did, he briefly caught sight of Bumblebee, who had shuffled off to one side, silent as a vigil holder. At one point he would have found the awkward hovering on the edge of his vision to be diverting, but he told himself that the slight pout and big, worried eyes had become familiar enough to no longer pose a distraction.

Even if they were, Starscream knew that his hallucination cared about the progress and development of Cybertron and its colonies to the same extent he did. If Bumblebee ever did become a distraction from those goals, which he wouldn’t, all it would take was a word from Starscream to have him knock it off and go back to being an annoying political advisor, rather than a mopey would-be therapist. That way, they could focus on issues that mattered, and not transitory things like the latest of Starscream’s many woes. It was unbelievably frustrating to finally have someone take a passing interest in them, only to use it as a distraction from one of the few good things Starscream had worked at in his life.

He squinted, then frowned, realizing that he’d read through an entire paragraph and absorbed none of the written information. His vents released a frustrated huff of hot air, and he finally looked up to Bumblebee in exasperation.

“I don’t know what it was, and I can’t tell you,” he said, “so stop looking at me like that.”

Bumblebee perked up.

“Like what?”

“Don’t be cute,” Starscream snapped. He was used to running on 50% battery power, but that didn’t mean he had to be pleasant. “Just, come over here. Then at least I won’t have to see you.” He indicated the spot beside the berth where they’d found the datapad. It was just near enough to the edge of his vision that he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of that damnable frown every time he happened to look up, but he would still have a streak of yellow in his peripherals.

Bumblebee crossed his arms and leaned back.

“Or, if I’m such an eyesore, how would you feel if I came back later, when you’re actually in the mood to talk?”

Starscream scoffed.

“You care how I feel?”

He always expected to hear something when the yellow smudge on the edge of his vision disappeared, a sudden vompf as the air collapsed in on the new Bumblebee-shaped hole in the room. That, he reasoned, was why he looked up every time, without fail, and confirmed his solitude with a pitifully quiet, “Bee?”

#maccadam #transformers #starbee #starscream #bumblebee #bumblescream

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whynotcallitvanda · 6 years

Text

A Question of Identity

Title: A Question of Identity

For: @concretegrrl

Rating: G

Word Count: 4370

Warnings: None

Summary: While on the run after the events of Civil War, Wanda begins to feel like she’s losing herself. Luckily, she has a wonderful boyfriend who can try to help her feel better. Written for the prompt “I would love a fic that focuses on Vision learning more about Wanda’s Sokovian/Romani heritage, either from Wanda or on his own. Bonus points for fluff!”

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16045862

Message for recipient: Hi, Kait! I loved the prompt, I thought it was so interesting and I really hope I did it justice. It was really fun to write, so thank you! I tried my best to do research, and based the food on Czech cuisine because in one of the movies Sokovia is shown to border the Czech Republic. I hope I get the fluff bonus points, and I hope you like it!

A Question of Identity

Vision tied off the end of Wanda’s braid and passed it over her shoulder to indicate that he was finished with it.

Wanda moved out of her spot between his legs and turned to face him on the bed, curling her feet under her. “Thanks, babe.” She pressed a kiss onto his lips, fingers worrying distractedly at the bleach-damaged ends of her hair.

“You are quite welcome.” Vision smiled at her, but Wanda wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead she was gazing pensively at one of the hotel room’s four large mirrors. She’d seemed preoccupied ever since she asked him to braid her hair, and at first, he hadn’t been sure, but now he thought he might know what was bothering her.

“Is everything alright, Wanda?” Vision asked, cocking his head to the side and studying her further.

“Yeah, why?” Wanda didn’t turn her head, but she did make eye contact with him in the mirror.

“You continue to seem . . . dissatisfied with your hair,” Vision said carefully.

Wanda snorted, shoving the unnaturally orange braid over her shoulder where she couldn’t play with it. “Nat said I’ll get used to the color.”

“It’s been six months.”

Wanda finally faced him, wearing that small, slightly-annoyed smile that she got whenever he pointed out any of her logical fallacies. “But I wasn’t a redhead for all of that time.”

That was true enough. She cycled between various shades of blonde and red—never anything too dark, nothing too close to her natural brown. He thought they were all beautiful, of course, but Wanda only got more and more frustrated with each new look.

“I miss my hair.” Wanda sighed. She’d gone back to staring at the mirror. “Maybe it’s vain, I don’t know, but I always loved my hair.” She chuckled a little. “When I was a girl, I wanted it to be so long. As long as I could grow it. Long, and dark, and curly, like my mother’s. Hers was beautiful—curlier than mine, and I’m probably remembering it longer than it actually was, but I thought she had more hair than I’d ever seen in my life.”

Vision felt his chest constrict at the thought of just how much she was sharing with him. She’d shared so much over the course of their relationship, but he always selfishly wanted to know more. “And your father? Was his similar?”

Wanda shook her head, blinking, and part of Vision felt guilty for her tears, but another part of him recognized that this was just the way she remembered, with small details and glistening eyes.

“No,” she answered finally. “Well, sort of. His was dark—we all had dark hair—me, my parents, Pietro when he didn’t dye it, even my grandparents from the pictures I remember. But my father’s wasn’t curly like—” her voice broke, signaling to Vision that this was enough, the conversation had gone too far.

He reached out, drew her into his arms, and held her. She cried quietly into his chest. The tears for her parents were usually silent, like these, tamed by years of hiding them from her ever-present twin. The ones for Pietro were wild and forceful and found her in the middle of the night, so strong that she’d wake the next morning more physically exhausted than the night before.

Vision had seen many kinds of Wanda’s tears, and he hated—hated, something he’d once thought himself incapable of—he hated them more than almost anything.

Wanda sniffed and sat up, shaking her head and wiping her eyes. Vision recognized this as well. It was her ‘get ahold of yourself’ face. He kissed her cheek.

She stood, facing the mirror once more, hands crossed over her chest. “I understand why dyeing it is necessary. I can’t look like me because I can’t be me, especially since we’re already taking a risk meeting like we do.” Wanda took a deep breath, waving one hand in a sweeping gesture. “I just miss feeling like myself.”

Vision reached forward and gently grabbed the arm that wasn’t pressed against her stomach. He took her hand, still unused to the feeling of her bare, ringless fingers. “Is there anything I can do to help in that regard?”

Wanda smiled, leaning forward to kiss him. “You’re doing it, Vizh. Being with you is about the only thing that keeps me from completely losing myself.”

Still, as Vision embarked on the long journey back to the United States the next day, he wished there was something more he could do for her.

Vision sat stock still, the way that unnerved most people with its inhumanness. He could’ve gone through the motions of breathing, shifting in his seat, blinking, and glancing around, but he was alone, here in Wanda’s old room, so there wasn’t anyone else to consider.

He usually tried to stay away from Wanda’s bedroom, both because he wished to ensure his connection to her remained as inconspicuous as possible, and because something about it felt oddly invasive. He could still hear the echoes of “Knock, Vizh!” and though he knew he no longer had to worry about walking in on her naked, being alone somewhere so intrinsically tied to Wanda without her knowledge or consent didn’t appeal to his sense of propriety.

Today, however, that essence of Wanda was exactly what he was trying to capture. He’d given a lot of thought to her feelings of losing herself and had come to the conclusion that he had to do something about it.

It was honestly no wonder Wanda was feeling frustrated. On the run like she was, she couldn’t look like herself, she couldn’t sound like herself, she couldn’t dress like herself, she couldn’t be herself. One’s identity is tied to one’s appearance, as Vision himself learned when he set about developing his human disguise.

But this wasn’t about him. It was about Wanda.

The first step, naturally, was to figure out exactly what made Wanda feel like herself. After that, he could attempt to integrate those elements into her fugitive life in a way that wouldn’t put her in danger.

Vision closed his eyes and thought about Wanda. He thought about her smile, her laugh, the many different looks in her eyes. He visualized her fingers dancing through the air, the light of her own scarlet power glinting off her rings. The way she hummed when she was preoccupied, and the slight furrowing of her brow whenever Mr. Stark said something obnoxious.

The way she talked of her home, of the years before the bomb, of her mother teaching her to cook and her father teaching her to dance, of Pietro impish pranks and her grandmother's pet cat.

The flash of scarlet in her eyes when she mentions the Sokovian civil war, or the communists, or the Nazis. How civil unrest stole her grandfather from her long before it took her parents. Living on the streets, stealing to survive, barely feeling any shame for it, and the shame she feels now, years later. The sad fondness that overtakes her whenever Pietro's overprotectiveness would come up, and the fierce anger at any implication that Sokovia wasn't worth the effort, that rebuilding it was a waste, that maybe this would teach that backward nation a lesson.

Wanda loved her country, despite everything, and ultimately, she'd given up everything for it. The struggle to make Sokovia a better place had taken her parents, her home, then her freedom, her humanity, and if that wasn't enough, it took her brother, too.

And she still loved her country, and she still saw it as part of her identity, inseparable from herself.

Vision opened his eyes.

He knew what he needed to do.

Vision walked the streets of Novi Grad, clad in his human disguise, doing his best to blend in. He hadn’t seen Novi Grad before Ultron, so he had no firsthand knowledge of the city as Wanda had known it, however before this trip he did as much researching as he could. He wanted to be able to recognize the differences as Wanda would see them, if she was ever able to come back here.

A part of him felt bad for coming without her. She occasionally spoke about bringing him, to show him a place from her childhood, only to remember that it had probably been destroyed along with everything else. Unfortunately, however, if he wanted to get the information he needed, a trip to Novi Grad was the only way, short of asking Wanda herself, which would of course ruin the surprise.

Vision headed away from the city center. According to his research, the best place to glimpse true Sokovian culture was on the outskirts of the city where the damage had been lighter. After the Ultron crisis, nations from all over the world had banded together to rebuild Sokovia, and so far, things were looking up for its citizens. They even had a budding tourist economy based around the battle with Ultron.

That was all well and good, but Vision wasn’t sure Wanda would appreciate a Tony Stark bobblehead that was likely made in China.

After only twenty minutes of walking, he found himself in a much more residential area. There was a bakery to his right, flanked by a brewery on one side and a pharmacy on the other. People were out and about—not as many as he’d seen in other part of the city, but enough to imply that this was a well-traveled area.

He supposed there was nothing else for it except to attempt to strike up a conversation with someone. That was why he was here, after all, but he was suddenly rather nervous.

He scanned the people he saw, deciding eventually to approach one of the men, aware that a strange, foreign man walking up to a woman on the street usually indicated sinister motives. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten someone.

“Excuse me, sir?” he said in accented Sokovian. He was capable of speaking the language perfectly, but for the part he was playing, he needed to seem like an outsider.

The man looked up, distrust evident in his eyes. It appeared that there really weren’t many visitors in this part of town. “Yes?”

“I was wondering about Sokovian culture,” Vision said as smoothly as he could in his accented voice. “Do you know where I could get that information?”

The man’s eyes widened. He clearly hadn’t been expecting that kind of query. “That’s a broad topic.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Vision conceded.

“Are you a professor or something?” the man asked, still carefully appraising him.

“No, nothing like that.” Vision shook his head, belatedly realizing that would have been an excellent cover story. “See, my girlfriend is from Novi Grad, she had to move after the incident, and—” he explained the predicament, and exactly what he was trying to accomplish.

“Oh.” The man paused. “Huh. Well, I’d check out the bakery. Katinka, the girl who works there, she can tell you a lot, and if she can’t, then her grandmother will be able to.” He looked Vision up and down a final time. “Just don’t interfere with business, and I’m sure they will help you.”

Vision looked in the direction the man indicated. “Thank you very much, sir. Have a nice day.”

“You too.” The man walked off, shaking his head.

Vision entered the bakery hesitantly. He didn’t want to detract from business, but generally avoided buying or eating food, as a rule. The bakery was currently empty, however, so he didn’t feel quite as bad about taking up the woman’s time.

She was behind the counter, busy wrapping up various pastries and breads. “Can I help you?” she asked, glancing up.

Vision briefly explained his goals once again. The woman put down her parcels of food.

“Wow. That’s so sweet.” She smiled. “I’d be happy to help! My name is Katinka.”

“Victor,” Vision said smoothly, using the alias he’d adopted for visiting Wanda.

“Nice to meet you, Victor.” Katinka leaned in conspiringly. “I’m really not supposed to do this—my grandmother would kill me if she found out—but I can give you our family recipes, if you want.”

Vision nodded so enthusiastically he began to feel dizzy. “That would be wonderful!”

“Okay, well, the first thing you do is—” Katinka stopped. “Oh, do you need to write this down?”

“I will remember,” Vision said confidently.

Katinka looked skeptical, but didn’t argue with him. “All right. The first thing you do is . . .”

Vision did remember Katinka’s instructions. He remembered them in the same vivid detail that he remembered everything else that had ever happened to him. That wouldn’t be of any help to him, however, if the dough continued to be uncooperative.

He should’ve practiced.

After leaving Katinka’s bakery full of confidence and gratitude, he’d managed to track down the other people she’d suggested, her grandmother and uncle. They were all very helpful, and Vision had thought that everything was going wonderfully. The cabbage soup was simmering, he’d successfully fried the topinky bread (though he was concerned about the large amount of garlic Katinka had told him to use), and the schnitzel was far easier than he’d expected after Katinka’s grandmother’s demonstration.

The trouble came, however, when he tried to make the buchty for dessert. The sweet dumpling, as Katinka had explained, was usually filled with a fruit confit, but he hadn’t even gotten started on that yet, because the dough was just not working!

The consistency was all wrong. Perhaps it needed some more flour? Vision turned, grabbing the bag of flour with one hand, but his other hand was covered in sticky bits of dough. He tried to gently shake it off, and when that didn’t work, scraped his fingers on the edge of the bowl. It only occurred to him later that if he’d simply phased his hand and let the dough fall off, he could’ve avoided what happened next.

In his frustration with the dough, he involuntarily squeezed the open bag of flour in his other hand, causing a puff of the white powder to envelop his face. This in turn, surprised him so much that the bag slipped from his fingers and hit the ground, spilling flour all over the floor. Vision stood frozen in the mess, filled with the overwhelming urge to laugh at his misfortune. Before he could decide on the appropriate response, however, he heard the sounds of the front door opening.

Wanda was home.

"Vizh?" Wanda opened the door to her small Edinburgh apartment, trying to push down her budding excitement. "Is that you?" She knew it was him, she could sense his mind from blocks away, but he wasn't supposed to be here for another week.

"Wanda?" Vision's voice came from around the corner, and the slight panic in his mind made her pause in the door. "You're back earlier than—” He appeared in front of her, phasing through part of the wall. He took a deep breath like he was steading himself and smiled at her. "Hello.”

"Hi." Wanda held back a giggle and threw her arms around his neck. "What are you doing here?" she murmured into the fabric of his sweater. She pulled back, her brain finally registering the rest of his attire. "And why are you wearing an apron? Are you cooking?"

"I—well," Vision rubbed the back of his neck. "I was trying to—"

"To cook for me?" Wanda interrupted excitedly, beaming.

Vision nodded, looking down. "Certain things didn't work the way I anticipated, plus you arrived early, so—"

"Can I help?" Wanda interrupted again. "Or not, if you would rather this be one of those things you do for me by yourself."

"Your aid would be much appreciated."

Wanda grinned, throwing her arms around him again. "You're the best, you know that?"

"You’ve yet to see the kitchen," Vision deflected.

"What did you do to the kitchen?" Wanda pushed past him into the other room, grabbing his hand and pulling him with her.

She froze in the door, staring, her mouth falling open.

There was flour all over the place, the floor, the cabinets, the counter, plus a glob of some kind of dough on the wall that Vision had phased through. She figured that the mess was one of the things that Vision hadn't anticipated, but she barely noticed any of it. She was too caught up in what assaulted the rest of her senses.

Vision shifted uncomfortably, misinterpreting her silence. He stepped forward to pick up the bag of flour. "I apologize for the mess. I was—"

"What’s that smell, Vizh?" Wanda's shoulders were tense, and she knew Vision could see it, and she knew she should reassure him that she wasn't upset, but the scent of those spices and the sight of those ingredients were bringing tears to her eyes and the last thing she wanted was for him to think he made her cry when he was such a sweetheart for attempting to do this in the first place.

Vision clearly didn't know what to do, eyes flicking from Wanda to the kitchen and back again. “Uh, well, I made topinky, cabbage soup, and schnitzel. I was attempting buchty, but as you can see, that didn’t go according to plan.”

Wanda whirled around to face him, throwing herself in his arms for the third time. "I love you," she breathed, unable to come up with any other coherent thought. “I love you so much.”

Vision stiffened, arms still around Wanda, but there was no hesitation in his words. "I love you, too, Wanda."

Wanda kissed him, staying in his arms for as long as she could before she had to pull away. "Why—I mean, what made you decide to—" she waved her hand helplessly at the counter.

Vision looked uncomfortable again. "You seemed like you could use a taste of home."

Wanda smiled, tears pricking her eyes again. "Thank you, Vizh."

“Of course.”

Wanda examined Vision’s first batch of dough. “I hate to say it, babe, but this seems unsalvageable.”

Vision nodded. “I figured as much.” He crouched down and began sweeping the spilled flour into piles with his hands.

“You know that I can get all of that?” Wanda snapped her fingers, letting out a spark of red. “If you’d like.”

“Be my guest.” Vision stood, giving her a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

She smiled, setting down the bowl. This would be harder than most things she manipulated, but if she could extract a cloud of gas from a building, she could clean up a little flour.

A sweep of her hands and few flicks of her fingers, and delicate wisps of red were plucking at the grains of flour, gathering them together into a dust-cloud in the middle of the room. When she was sure she had it all, she sent it flying into the trash can, closing the lid with a satisfying clang.

Wanda turned to Vision, grinning. “Nothing to it.”

“It would appear not.” Vision smiled back at her, and then hesitated like there was something else he wanted to say.

“Yes?” Wanda asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I was going to wait to give these to you,” Vision reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small bag. Wanda recognized it instantly, and her eyes widened. “I thought that there wouldn’t be any harm in rescuing a few of your belongings from the compound. These seemed small enough to go unnoticed.”

Wanda stumbled forward and took the bag from him, fingers trembling as she undid the drawstring and let the contents tumble into her hand. It was her rings, all of them, the ones she’d been wearing when she’d been arrested and the ones she’d left in her room. She put them on immediately, and then laughed, pulling them off again.

“Is everything all right?” Vision asked nervously.

“Yes, don’t worry.” Wanda pressed a kiss onto his lips. “I just can’t cook with all the rings on.”

“Oh, right.” Vision looked embarrassed, and Wanda giggled. He gestured to the ingredients on the counter. “Shall we?”

“Absolutely.”

Cooking was much more enjoyable when Wanda was there to help. It frustrated Vision no end that he couldn't seem to master it, but Wanda's assurances that even many humans are terrible cooks did somewhat mollify him. The food turned out delicious, according to Wanda. He declined to have any so that Wanda would have plenty of leftovers for the rest of the week, but she did make him try a taste of each dish, and he had to admit that the palate was unlike anything he’d tried before.

Vision dried the last of the dishes as Wanda arranged the leftovers in the fridge, humming to herself. Vision figured this was as good a time as any to bring up the next item on his agenda.

"Wanda?"

"Hmm?" Her head was still in the tiny fridge, shoving things around.

"What song is that? You hum it often."

"Oh." Wanda straightened, letting the fridge door swing shut. "Uh, just something my dad used to listen to. An old Sokovian folk song. I don't really remember the words."

"Would you like to hear it?" Vision asked, producing a small CD player from where he’d stashed it in the cabinet.

"What?" Wanda cocked her head to the side. "There's no way that you—"

Vision pressed play.

The familiar melody filled the air. Vision was impressed at how well Wanda had been reproducing it after all these years.

She was silent while the song played, but she didn't try to stop the tears from falling this time.

Vision paused the CD before the next track could play, the anxious knot in his stomach now a familiar sensation.

"How did you do that?" Wanda breathed, "Where did you—"

"There was an old street performer in Novi Grad. He claimed to play nearly forgotten music, so I asked him about the song you always sing. It took some time, but he finally figured out which one I meant. He made a CD with that song, and others he thought you might know, and—" Vision reached into the cabinet again, fumbling slightly. Wanda twirled her fingers, and took the CD player from him with a few curls of scarlet, freeing his hands. "And he wrote down the sheet music, so you can learn to play them, if you want. I would have gotten you an instrument—I know you used to play guitar—but I wasn't sure what would be the most appropriate—"

"Vizh." Wanda said quietly, still balancing the CD player with her powers. "I'm so confused. Why did—How—When did you go to Novi Grad?”

The frustration in her voice and the tears still lingering on her face made Vision rapidly rethink his plan. Unfortunately, it was far too late to turn back now.

"Well, I guess—" He stumbled over the words. "Can we go sit down, and I'll explain?"

Wanda nodded, pulling the CD player towards her and cradling it to her chest as she followed him to the couch.

Vision waited until she was sitting comfortably with her feet curled under her, facing him. She was still clutching the CD player, but Vision took that as a good sign. He templed his fingers in his lap, staring down at them.

"I guess the simplest explanation is that I wanted you to know that you didn't have to completely give up your identity—whether that's your culture, or your personality, or anything else about you—just because you're a fugitive. You can still interact with all of these aspects that make you feel like yourself," Vision explained quietly. “So, I took a trip to Novi Grad to see if I could find something to help you feel better. I met a very nice woman who taught me to bake. Her grandmother taught me to cook, and her uncle was the street performer I mentioned.”

Wanda let out a breath. "Vizh, that's—I—" She broke off helplessly, holding out a hand towards his head. "Can I—?”

"Of course." Vision leaned closer, always welcoming a stronger connection with her, especially when she was articulating complicated emotions.

A few drops of red crossed the distance between her fingertips and his forehead, and then he was hit with a wave of warmth, and love, and gratitude, and just a hint of unworthiness, all jumbled together with confusion that anyone would go to all this trouble for her.

"It's not silly," Vision said immediately, picking up on the errant thought that she had been making a fuss over nothing. "There's nothing silly or inconsequential about your feelings, Wanda." He could tell she didn't quite believe him, or thought he didn't quite understand what she meant, so he persisted. "You think that your feelings of losing your identity were unfounded and ridiculous, and that's simply not the case."

Wanda shrugged, looking away. "I guess, but they certainly weren't worth all this."

"Of course they were," Vision insisted, grabbing her hands and bringing them to his lips. "Darling, you're the one who's always telling me that my feelings are valid, no matter what they are, and I want to show you that yours are as well."

Wanda was crying again. She pulled one of her hands back to swipe at her cheeks, and Vision reached out to cradle her face between his hands, wiping the tears away for her. "I apologize if this was too much. I don't think I've quite got the hang of what is an appropriate gesture. I just want you to know that—as you always tell me—whatever you're feeling is important to me. I want to do what I can to make you happy. Always."

Wanda bit her lip, nodding, and then pulled him close for a kiss. She didn't have the words to thank him, but she made sure that, through both her thoughts and her kisses, Vision knew exactly what he meant to her.

#sve2018 #scarletvisionexchange2018 #Scarlet Vision #fanfiction #my writing #Wanda Maximoff #Vision

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whitewolfbumble · 6 years

Text

The Fallout - Part Four (Bucky x Reader)

Summary: You had been a ghost for years, taking down the bad guys from the shadows that had once enslaved you. That is until the Avengers finally caught up with you and yet again your life changed. But your past won’t stay dead and everything starts to shift when a familiar face joins the ranks: Bucky Barnes. He may not remember you, but you certainly remember him.

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: About 4k

Warnings: Slow burn, language, intense and gory violence, graphically depicted fight scenes, death, threats of rape, vague depiction of suicide (? depends how you read it, message me if you want me to sum it up for you just in case)

A/N: Okay, so this one gets violent, aka people die here. I love the idea of this part and how it visually plays in my head but I wasn’t overly a fan of writing it. Considering the POV for this I wrote it somewhat clinically and tried to keep the gore down, but considering the content... you be the judge. Also fight scenes are HARD and I would appreciate any feedback!!

Speaking of, I really love you guys. Thank you for reaching out to me with how much you’ve enjoyed this story, for liking, for reblogging, or for wanting to be tagged. It gives me the warm and fuzzies and seriously motivates me. If you enjoy this part please let me know!

MY MASTERLIST // THE FALLOUT MASTERLIST // PART THREE

You squinted in the sun, feeling the morning heat start to build in the air around you, breaking up the cool dawn air that was dissipating fast.

“I’m grounded. Voluntarily. He can go, but I’m not shifting my focus,” you reiterated for the fifth time that day. “It’ll give me some time alone to make a proper plan.”

It was a bit of a weird turn out all-in-all, but you stood by your words.

“Which, okay, again, makes no sense here,” Tony said walking up from behind you, ready to go with the others on the quinjet.

Everyone had made some kind of comment as they walked onto the jet in the warm morning air, and you were relieved that he was the last of them. This was definitely the last time you waved them off for a mission.

“He has a point, Y/N,” Bucky himself said.

You and he had walked here together but he had yet to get on, hair blowing in the wind and metal arm practically blinding in the sun.

“Ah, you’re finally learning,” Tony said to Bucky. “Yes, you’re right, I am in fact the smartest, most logical, and in this case certainly the rightest here.”

You rolled your eyes at the pomp and Bucky looked unimpressed.

“You were Hydra," Tony said exaggeratingly, as though you for one second of your life forgot that fact. "And this is a Hydra base. You’re all over this shit normally. We can’t pry you off of this stuff.”

“Yeah,” you sighed, looking at him dully. “So, I join in your merry band and what? Take down the villain of this tale? And then get completely caught up in the terror of it all and lose what my focus should be. Because trust me, Hydra will always be out there for me to fight. Or how about I go in, step on the Hulk's toes- thus killing us all- because there will be six Avengers in one teeny tiny tunnel together doing basic recon?”

You stood, arms crossed and eyebrows raised, giving Tony quite the look.

“You make a decent point," he tried to counter, walking backwards towards the open jet ramp. "But we’re going to the base, not the tunnels.”

“The base is underground Tony, I didn’t forget,” you said, continuing dismissively. “But yeah, cool, have a great time. I’ll hold down our home base tonight.”

Man, this had gotten repetitive. You were glad to finally see the backside of Tony as he strolled on the quinjet with a shrug.

Bucky was the last one on the platform with you, waiting at your side for a moment. He stood there watching you with those blue eyes of his, like you were going to change your mind and follow after him. You briefly wondered if that was what he wanted you to do. But eventually with a pointed nod from you, he got the drift and turned to join the Team. He didn’t say a goodbye, just nodded to you as the quinjet door closed.

You walked back to the door from the helipad, waiting as the buzzing roar from the jet sounded and in one smooth motion was airbourne, flying towards the sun and away from you and the Avengers Tower. Lingering outside you didn't so much feel the sun on your skin, but a bit of a storm inside you.

Your reasons for not going weren’t stupid or insane (unlike the Team thought), just not exactly usual for you.

Guaranteed, you would have become obsessed and tried to figure out the puzzle of what was going on, as you always did with Hydra. There was certainly no love lost between you, and for a long time trying to take them down was like the air your breathed: necessary and life-giving.

Hydra was predictable to you in a lot of ways and without you being involved and seeing it first hand, you couldn’t tell what was happening. Maybe you could’ve figured it out too. But then you would have spent every waking hour pouring over everything and hitting up (as in literally fighting) old underworld organizations for intel. It would mean ignoring the outwardly frivolous time with Bucky that ultimately seemed internally fruitful. And that wouldn’t last forever so it was time to think of a plan now anyways.

But also you were a stubborn and resolute kind of person. It was the only reason why you were alive now. And you had told the Team you weren’t going, that you were out for this mission. And you couldn’t go back on your word no matter how much you wanted too.

The Team was more than capable of handling themselves anyways and you knew they would succeed. Even if it went against every fighting instinct in your body not to jump on that jet.

Gritting your teeth in resolve you shifted your focus, finally having a night to yourself which never happened. You might as well enjoy it for all it’s worth, huh?

_______

Despite the potential activity that had popped up overnight that prompted this mission, to Bucky and the rest of the Team, the base had looked to be unused and abandoned. It had been fruitless, and certainly not worth the whole team going, just as you had pointed out earlier.

Sam was still away, and Vision and Wanda had “separately” taken a personal leave a few days ago, each spouting some kind of see-through excuse. Even Bucky knew they were together at this point, but everyone had feigned ignorance, playing along with the facade that they knew nothing.

Clint had dropped off the Team at the Tower before leaving himself in the jet, though Bucky didn’t know where and no one asked.

It was dark, with the cool night air settling in by the time they got back. Bucky stepped off the quinjet with the rest and looked around to see if you were there to greet them as you had seen them off.

But there was no sign of you. Maybe your resolution to stay out of the way of this mission went deeper than he figured. He thought you would even just casually want to know how it went.

Bucky wondered if you’d be frustrated that nothing happened, or frustrated if the Hydra agents were there and that you yourself weren’t there to take them down. Either way, he was curious on how you would respond.

You must be curious about it. Maybe this was a demonstration to the Team how supposedly “disinterested” you were. Which was a total lie. He and everyone else could see the glint of regret that crept into your determined eyes when you adamantly refused to join in.

As Bucky stepped into the calm, clean hallways of the Tower, he decided even if you weren’t here to hear about this mission, he would fill you in sometime when you were alone so the others wouldn’t know.

After changing clothes he made his way down to the kitchen, assuming you’d be there with a cup of tea and a book.

But the kitchen was dark and quiet. He debated making you a cup again, knowing how you took your tea, but was inexplicably impatient to see you. He dismissively blamed it on this being the first day in a while both not having you near and having to deal with the team himself without you as a buffer of sorts.

Making his way to the lounge area he figured perhaps you were relaxing there. With the both of you sleeping in the same bed together (Bucky tried not to dwell on how that sounded), you had abandoned your nightly routine of training for hours until your collapsed in exhaustion. Instead, now you both trained together for most of the mornings and ended up in the kitchen or lounge at night, settling into an easy silence or quiet reminiscing.

Walking up the glass-walled hallway Bucky noticed Steve, standing in his sweats having changed himself, unmoving. He was illuminated by a warm glow, staring through the glass wall into the room on the other side, still and silent.

“Hey, what—” Bucky said, walking around to Steve’s right side before cutting himself off.

The two out-of-time men stood in front of a floor to ceiling sheet of glass. It was two thick panels of bulletproof glass with a small gap between them. If you went up to the next floor, or down to the floor below, there would be that same glass running through. It was impossibly strong, needing the structural integrity to run through a few floors.

On the other side of that impenetrable glass lay the lounge area. Low modern couches with sleek leather and slick black coffees tables were in front of the massive TV screen, over by the corner that held shelves of books, and again on the far side of the room in front of the fireplace. There were two other doors in the room, one being the bathroom door and in the far left corner a door leading up to a large private balcony. Bucky remembered questioning the presence of a tub in the lounge bathroom, Y/N explaining that Tony like to fill it with ice and champagne for special (or not so special) occasions.

The room itself was at the corner of the building and massive floor to ceiling windows lined two of the walls, showing off the glittering city lights gleaming in the dark.

And, in the centre of this room, was you.

You were there, on your knees with hands bound behind your back, face and eyes emotionless, barely registering the sudden appearance of Steve and Bucky. Thirteen men clad in black holding weapons surrounded you, all of them facing the two Avengers looking in motionlessly.

They had been waiting.

And immediately the fight inside Bucky that he hated erupted in his chest.

“Intruders on the fifty-third,” Steve said low, hiding well his fear. “Thirteen total, carrying weapons, holding one hostage.”

As Bucky’s eyes stayed glued to you, he could see his own faint reflection in the glass, face contorting as a sudden unexpected rush of emotions slammed into him like a ton of bricks hitting his chest. Confusion, hatred, anger, and worry pounded in in a moment, body instantly tense at the sudden onslaught.

But the sudden conflict he felt inside was the one that sent his mind reeling the most. He struggled so deeply to not immediately start breaking the glass to get you the fuck out of there. Because he knew they would shoot you before he could break through. But the looks of it, everyone staring back at them knew it too.

Tony came first, literally flying down the hall fully suited up in his latest gleaming red and gold suit. Quickly he was followed by Thor and Natasha.

“Not a Code Green, Bruce. Stay back until called,” Natasha muttered in her comm to Banner. “… No, we’ll get nowhere if the building crashes down on us.”

“What have they said?” Tony said muted, helmet sliding back smoothly, face taunted and almost twitching with anger. His eyes were locked to yours too, but just like with Bucky you didn’t so much as blink in acknowledgment. Not even a nod, just to show you were alright. All you did was stay kneeling and bound on the ground, eyes dead ahead.

A sinking feeling gripped Bucky’s throat all the down to his gut at that. You weren’t alright. This wasn’t alright.

“Not a word,” Steve said low.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y… what the hell, man?!” Tony spat out and rubbed a hand on his face.

“I don’t know, boss. Looking into it now,” she said before adding a touch quieter. “The odds for this type of interaction aren’t good.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Bucky whispered through his teeth. Even to him he sounded strained.

“Let the lady go and no harm will come to you,” Thor’s voice boomed to the men, lying.

One man moved forward slightly before smiling. He was standing just behind you and all eyes on the Team were immediately glued to him, sizing him up.

“Any anti-intruder spray built into those walls, Tony?” Natasha asked quietly, barely moving her mouth as her body tensed for fight.

“Everything on this floor is all but disabled," F.R.I.D.A.Y responded. "Still processing how this could happen without being warned. You won’t be able to open that door, boss.”

“No, you won’t be getting in here. Not until we’re done.” the man answered, with just a hint of an accent.

He was generally unremarkable. No defining qualities, just brown eyes, a wave to his brown and speckled grey hair. Just under six feet, voice with a pleasant quality to it. Bucky knew immediately he was the type that could disappear in a crowd with ease. His outfit was black, like that of the others, and nondescript, though he was the only one that had the balls to face them without a black mask on.

“Welcome!” he all but shouted, smiling at the group before him. “To the final conclusion to a largely drawn out story.”

Shit.

The word "conclusion" made his stomach drop all the more.

“Steve,” Bucky said low, barely audible.

“I know,” Steve answered back, knowing what Bucky was thinking. “It’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t know us,” He waved his gun towards you. “But this one does. She worked with us closely for some time. But since stupidly going it alone, she’s caused us quite a bit of trouble over the years. We’ve been long overdue for a reunion.”

He squatted down behind you, eye roaming over your body. It made Bucky fume, but your eyes stayed deadpan, giving nothing at all away like you hadn’t felt an emotion in your life.

“That was the problem, no? You got to know us too well, and then you went after us, like you did so many others. We just can’t let that stand, Y/N. And we put a plan in place to put an end to it, but your fucking team had to screw that up too.”

He stood and walked around, giving you a wide berth and facing the Avengers.

“Usually she’s a last resort, I get that. She enjoys it a little too much, you know? Likes the carnage, gets off on all the blood and bone-crushing,” he said, waving his gun again. “She had to reign it in when let loose. I can admire that myself. But c’mon guys.”

The man gave a disapproving look to the team, making sure to catch everyone’s eye.

“She was supposed to be the expert at Hydra. She was supposed to lead this mission. We put everything in place here, all she had to do was show up. But no, you guys had to keep her behind, again and again. So we came to you instead.”

“So you’re Hydra,” Steve said, keeping his rage in check somewhat.

“No. But partnering with them I suppose," he said with a shrug. "It’s not a bad deal, as we’re both going to get what we want.”

He looked down at you, smiling with hungry, bright eyes. You met his gaze but didn’t react.

But the flame in Bucky’s chest burned somehow brighter and it took every ounce in him not to break this fucking glass and snap this guy’s fucking neck where he stood.

“And your name is?”

“Call me Frenz. Y/N would fill you in more about my sorted past and the dirty little things we’ve done together, but she’s a little busy.”

“So you get Y/N, and Hydra gets what?”

“Well, as I said, you screwed this up. So we’ve changed some key arrangements, let's say. This was supposed to be a two for one kinda of situation. We get revenge and they get a loose end neutralized.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Steve answered, chin and voice dropping.

Frenz gave a fake frown, feigning sadness.

“I think it is, Captain,” he said before motioning around the room. “See, there is one of your agents in here, up against twelve of mine. And your team is out there and useless, even if you weren’t outnumbered. This just isn’t going to be your day. Now, let’s get to the fun part.”

“Tony, I need options now,” Steve said tersely, watching the man turn back around towards you. Steve’s stalling while F.R.I.D.A.Y and Tony worked this out clearly wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Working on it,” Tony said from behind his Iron Man mask.

“Not good enough!” Steve whispered.

Bucky stood still, mind calculating through the possibilities. If he broke the glass, even if it only took one swing which wasn’t guaranteed, he wouldn’t be able to get to you in time. If he made it up to the floor above, down the hall, jumped down to the balcony and stormed in through the back, he wouldn’t be able to get you in time. If Steve’s shield and his arm hit near the same mark simultaneously, they might be able to break through. But Steve didn’t have his shield. And he wouldn’t be able to get you in time.

A thought bubbled up and burst in his head, making his chest tight and blistering fury course through his veins.

I won’t be able to get to you in time.

“Now,” the man rubbed his nose, squatting down with his back to the Avengers, facing you. “There are certain things that Hydra wants. So we’ll comply with some of that. Maybe not all. But there are certain things I want that we’re going to get to first. And your friends out there are going to watch. If they move, you die. If they try anything, you die. If you try anything, you die. So let’s just enjoy this, shall we?”

He stood, looking down at you and you looked up at him, not breaking eye contact. You wouldn’t appear weak to someone like him and look away in fear. You face him- all of them- head-on.

He walked around you, again smartly giving you a wide berth, before crouching again and looking to the Team.

“I’m going to fuck you, right here in front of all of your friends, and they are going to watch. Then, if you do a good job, I’ll kill you. If you don’t do a good job, if you struggle, or if you make any move against me, I’ll let every man here have you before I kill you. And trust me, you’ve seen the sick things they do in battle. You can imagine what kind stuff they’re into.”

The smallest emotion flashed in your eyes before dropping quickly away. Bucky’s heart plummeted to the floor and the heat in his veins cracked open and spilled to every corner of his body. He didn’t think, just reacted, hands flying up the glass. Instantly both Nat and Steve held his arms, trying to pull him back but they couldn’t tear him off. Words erupted from the back of his throat, deep and merciless.

“You fucking touch her and you are dead," Bucky threatened, the meaning and intensity of words resonating to his very core. “There won’t a hole deep enough for you to hide in.”

Bucky was not used to this.

Yes, a room full of trained professional killers. Yes, hostage situations. Yes, sick threats from sick men. None of this was particularly unusual for someone with his past.

But the problem hit him here like a bullet to the gut. In the last seventy years, he had not been in a situation like this where he actually cared for the person.

You had been there with Bucky, reminding him of better days with friends and warmth, showing him that the sum total of his life was not just the acts they made him commit. That he had been capable of small moments of joy at one time and that he maybe he could be a semblance of that person again. With no talk of even whether he deserved that or not. That he wasn’t a monster or killer with a weapon as an arm made especially for him to hurt people, that it wasn’t something to be feared. That he wasn’t something to be feared. That he could have someone with him who understood the brokenness that was inside him without having to voice it. That hadn’t cowered in fear from him. That for the first time ever someone- you, a stranger up until a few weeks ago- had melted into place in his life without effort or pain or awkwardness or even real realization until now. It had been little by little then all at once that you became a part of his life.

Emotionally this situation was all so foreign and so intense. The fire in his body burned him with it.

“Don’t think so, Soldier,” Frenz said, standing up and holstering his gun, walking to get in front of you. “She knew about us, but we didn’t even pop up on your radar, did we? No, I think you’ll find us hard to find.”

He said it almost dully like he had explained it a thousand times before.

Shit.

But it didn’t matter. Maybe Bucky railed against the fight now, but he would find them and use every torturous skill he had learned at Hydra. He would willingly cross a line he thought he wouldn’t cross again.

“Now, I remember they used to call you The Siren? Why don’t you sing a little song for me now, huh?" he teased, that hunger back in his eyes. "Let’s get the mood right in here.”

It took only a moment, but it happened with blinding speed.

You shot into action and moved to sweep the legs of the man in front of you who had stepped just a little too close, knocking him to the ground. You grabbed his head between your feet and wretched hard, snapping his neck in the middle of the room for all to see.

A split second before absolute chaos ensued, Bucky heard himself yell out a crackling “NO!”

You sprung into action, the sudden pile-on in your direction giving barely any space for the intruders to shoot, stab, or fight. You swung over someone’s back, grabbing the knife you found in the belt and cutting your restraints before your feet even hit the ground

“Tony, get us in there!” someone behind Bucky said, their voices falling away as his focus was solely on you.

You slashed the throat of the man next to you, using him a shield as you kicked out your legs, knocking out another man. You moved lightning fast and used everything possible to your advantage to dodge and shield yourself as you fought back against the barrage of men, bullets, and knives.

“Get me the fuck in there!”

Bullets sounded as you fired back, dogging beneath the couches only to shoot up and pull down another assailant, stabbing him in the stomach then heart, your arms and body moving at a blinding speed.

“My hammer will make quick work of this!” In the distance, walls sounded like they were breaking.

“No! This’ll get far worse if you break the glass, don’t!”

“Cap, your shield!” A whiz through the air before it practically slid on Steve’s arm.

“You’re fucking dead!” a man in the room sounded throwing down his gun in favour of a large knife.

You kicked out his knees, sent an elbow to his head, grabbed the gun, then shot him. You slid underneath the coffee table, jumping up to send the table flying into another assailant, knocking him down. The man in front of you got a knife to the groin, stomach, and throat before again you using him a shield against the onslaught of bullets.

Covered in blood as it sprayed down on your from the jugular of the man now at your feet, you flipped over the couch, feet kicking hard and knocked out the next man. You grabbed a small set of knives on a man’s thigh, throwing them through the air like lightning to hit to the two unconscious men you had knocked out in the course of the fight. In a flash you kicked up a gun and sunk two bullets in the head of the man at your feet. Just as someone came barreling from behind you, you threw the butt of the gun back into his face.

Another man came at you and you ran at him, but instead of meeting him head on you ducked down, dodging his fists and stabbed him in the thigh and stomach. As the other assailant came back for you he grabbed you from behind and you twisted to grab his neck and flipped him over, facing the team.

As the Team watched the man bent backwards in your arms, with a yell you wretched your arms up. An audible snap was heard as the man went limp, his neck broken by your arms with considerable effort. Bucky watched you, stunned as your eyes looked back to him, revealing nothing through your blood-drenched face.

Another man lunged at you but you rolled under him, grabbing a knife at his ankle and dug it deep into his leg and pulled it through his flesh up to his hip, blood pouring everywhere.

And then suddenly there was quiet. You stood crouched on the floor, facing the Team, chest heaving and eyes both dead and wild.

Instinctively you grabbed a gun, looking down through the scope as you crouched. Your left hand went up, fingers signing quickly.

“Two went out the balcony.” Bucky translated, voice strained and quiet, before speaking back to you. “Don’t follow them! Wait for us, Y/N. Please.”

But low and silent you crept through the room and over the carnage of the eleven slashed, shot, and now dead men. Within Bucky the heated fury shifted to a different kind of fire as his heart lurched in pain.

Voices again suddenly boomed, yelling and panicked and loud.

“Why the hell can’t he just hammer the fucking thing?!”

“Does structural integrity mean nothing to you?”

“Not compared to people lives, Tony!”

“I’m going up the next floor, I’ll drop down.”

“If they have a jet you best believe there are weapons there! We need to take them down now!”

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., throw me a fucking bone here!”

Eventually, the door clicked opened and at once the Team was off towards that stairwell. Bucky took off fast, ignoring the slick blood underneath his boots as he sprinted to get to you.

When he arrived at the top, you were there, standing still, faced away from them. A gun hung loosely at your side and the black backdrop of the city framed you, not a star in the sky. The only movement was caused by the small enemy jet engines whirling air around you, making your hair whip around wildly.

At your feet were the two remaining intruders, bloodied and dead.

Silently you turned around. You still held your mask up, the one you had used to block out the man Frenz with eyes dead and face expressionless. The one you had kept on while fighting and killing those men. The one you used while you looked Bucky in the eye and snapped a man’s neck. The one you kept on while you left the Team, walked over the gore and horror your hands had caused to finish the job and kill two more that were fleeing.

As fast as the Team stepped forward, they now stepped back, except Bucky. You didn’t make any indication of hurt at that, you simply and slowly walked through the group back down to the room below.

“I’m… so sorry,” Tony muttered to you as you passed. But you made no notice that you heard.

“What do we… I mean what should we…”

But Bucky still wasn’t listening to anyone else. He followed you down the stairs and stopped at the bottom-most step, watching as you looked like you were assessing what you had done. Your eyes moved to each body, looking it up and down.

Bucky's eyes were on you and not the scene in front of him, his mouth tasting of bitter and dry ash. Hesitantly he put his hand up to touch your shoulder before putting it down again.

“Y/N…” Again, Bucky hesitated before reaching his hand up again.

But before his skin touched yours, you moved through the red smeared room and out the now open door, leaving bloody footsteps in your wake and down the hall.

Bucky looked around the eerily quiet room, unable to pull up a feeling of disgust or horror at the scene. The fire that was burning still held on and all he could feel in that moment was crushing pain for you.

The thick silence did not last long as the voices of the Team tumbled down the stairs.

“… defense against thirteen people?”

“If this was her. You’re forgetting that. We just don’t know. Not anymore.”

“Focus here. The lounge is a swimming pool of blood right now, people. Back burner this shit.”

With that the Team filed down and one by one. Bucky watched them do their best to take in the situation. Thor grimaced, Natasha just looked pale, Steve looked heart-broken, and Tony looked sick.

“Where is she?” Steve asked Bucky quietly after a few moments.

But he turned around as footsteps padded softly down the hall, and to Bucky’s surprise, it was you. You hadn’t left to shower the blood that covered almost every inch of you, or breakdown, or leave the Tower altogether. You came back.

Towed in hand was a huge duffle bag that strained your arms. Picking the one small corner near the bathroom door that was blood-free, you set it down and unzipped the bag, contents filled to the brim. You grabbed several items including what looked like a clear tarp and slipped into the bathroom, emerging a few moments later.

You took hold of the nearest body, picking up the dead weight bridal style seemingly with ease like you did this often.

“Y/N, stop, you don’t–”

But a loud low thud with the scrunching of plastic sounded from the bathroom just after you walked in.

And so methodically, you began to clean up.

Moving bodies to the tub in the bathroom, after five were in you pulled out a small vial, a bottle of bleach it looked like, and a bucket from your bag. Filling it with the bleach, you pulled off the top with your teeth and emptied the purple vial of liquid into it. You splashed the contents over the bodies and instantly a sickening fizzle and popping sound erupted. The smell was deathly sweet, adding to the stench of the now quickly disintegrating bodies.

At one point Tony tired to interrupt, frantic and scattered.

“Okay, this is enough–”

Bucky’s arm reached out and grabbed Tony’s wrist harshly before it could touch you.

“Let her do what she has too,” It came out like a threat.

“She needs… This is madness, Barnes. She needs help," Tony sputtered, that sick look on his face getting more frantic.

“I don’t think she’s accepting help right now,” Bucky grimaced. You acted like you hadn’t heard a word either had said.

Once all the bodies were sizzling and disintegrating, you continued with another bucket and another vial. You mix this one with water and splashed it liberally around the room.

In front of everyone's eyes, the blood began to move together in large pools then began to coagulate in large chunks before hardening into a dense, dark solid.

You splashed the liquid around the room in a circle and by the time you were back to where you started, the blood was solid. You poured the last of the liquid over you and snapped your jaw shut in pain for a moment, blood falling off you in blobs before hitting the ground solidified. You picked up every last piece around the room while the Team watched.

You took a moment and put every piece of furniture back into place. You went back into the bathroom to remove and fold the tarp. You tied up the garbage bag of solid blood. You packed everything up back into the duffel bag.

You were concise and calculating and methodical. Like you had done this a thousand times before.

All while you stayed silent, mask still in place.

_______

Several hours later Bucky was woken by a frantic voice, interrupting his just established, uneasy sleep. He knew before getting into bed that he was doomed to have a nightmare but that had hardly seemed important.

Immediately he pulled his arms in tighter, expecting to find your warm body. But tonight you were absent from his bed, and an ache rain through Bucky as that night came storming back.

“She’s gone! Buck, I can’t find her,” Steve said, a shadowy outline at the end of the bed, breathing heavy.

Bucky sprung out of bed and instantly into action, heading out the door without thinking or even pulling on a shirt. He knew it was you. “Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere Buck.”

After a few moments once they entered the elevator, Bucky paused and looked Steve. “Why were you looking?”

“I couldn’t sleep”, he looked down, weariness lining his face. After spending time securing the Tower or worrying about Y/N, there was no doubt everyone was having trouble sleeping tonight. “I needed to see that she was okay. With her nightmares…”

But Bucky knew better than Steve. He tried to keep down the heat that flooded his chest.

Bucky had checked on you, Steve didn’t need too. He had walked with you, a barely-there touch on the small of your back leading you down and safely back to your room. He debated going in, he debated asking if you wanted to stay with him instead. But he simply said a goodnight and you hadn’t responded, only closed the door with that dead look in your eyes.

But it should have been Bucky to notice you were gone. Why hadn’t he checked on you again later to make sure you were asleep? Why didn’t he just stay outside your door, just in case?

But now as the two men enter your room, they found it empty, just as Steve said it would be. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing misplaced, no sign of foul play.

“Training room,” Bucky said whipping around and running down the hall, Steve in tow.

“I’ve already been,” But Bucky needed to see it himself.

Empty. Bucky turned on every light and there wasn’t any sign of you there or that you had been there that night. No long sleeve shirt or water bottle on the bench, no weights out of place, no subtle sway of Steve’s punching bag. No signs of foul play.

“Goddamn it!” Bucky yelled, fury bubbling as he ran out of the room.

Where were you?!

His next thought was the lounge, though you had no reason to go back there. Bucky’s stomach swayed with nausea as they got to the glass wall, trying not to picture you bound on the floor again with him locked out on the other side, unable to do anything.

But the door was propped open, having been done so by Tony earlier in almost an apology for his damned tech and stupid fucking walls having kept them out.

Bucky scanned the dark room but saw nothing. No movement, no sign of you, no sign of foul play.

“No matter where the fuck she is this world, I will find her and kill whoever took her,” Bucky spewed out into the empty room, almost shaking with determination.

“She has to be in the Tower, Bucky. There was no security entry for anyone leaving the building, she’s here I know it.”

“Like I would trust the fucking security system," Bucky spat, storming towards the exit.

Bucky sped back through the room, ready to scour every fucking inch of this place himself, before the bathroom handle caught his eye. He bee-lined for it, debating on kicking down the door before deciding just to turn the handle.

He walked inside, the astringent smell of that sweet cleaner assaulting his nose. It was quickly followed by his heart sinking.

Across the dark, small room he saw on the side of the bathtub the shadowy top of your head and the tips of your fingers leaning against its white side.

“No,” he whispered silently.

_______

PART FIVE

_______

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