#does he see himself as different to all the other winners…. does his suffering make it more noble lol

[marsbotz]

im thinkkng Curiously abt all the other winners that Didnt come back.. all the winners that were able to put it behind them and make the most of their life. Or Not

[marvelstoriesepic]

Wake up (part 2)

Pairing: Avenger!Bucky x Avenger!Reader

Summary: Bucky will not abandon you unconscious while hoping for answers about what viciousness is running through your body. After all, Hydra always takes everything a person has to offer.

Word Count: 6.2k

Warnings: mentions of Bucky’s past; Bucky is going through some emotional shit here; Hydra; vomiting; seizure; guilt and self-blame; medical setting and distress; grief; PTSD; anxiety; panic attacks; so much angst

Author’s Note: A second part to Wake up has been the winner of my poll, so here we are. I’ve been sticking with the angst of the first part and I'm not gonna lie, this might have been the hardest thing I’ve written so far. So, please read the warnings before diving in and be beware that this does not end well. (I really don’t believe that all hope’s lost but read for yourself) But I actually do like how this turned out despite it hurting me so much lol. Let me know what you think ♡

part three

Angstober Masterlist | Masterlist

Bucky Barnes has lost a lot in his long life.

He has lost pieces of himself - some torn away violently, others slowly dissolving in his grasp no matter how hard he tried to keep them.

It was torturous and agonizing, prolonged over time, creating empty voids where something complete once used to be.

He has lost the weight and warmth of his own limb, his left arm stolen from him under the most excruciating circumstances, only to be replaced by a piece of metal that messed badly with his nerve endings.

His body bears the evidence. Scars marrying his flesh, muscle and sinew replaced by cold and unfeeling vibranium.

His mind has suffered even worse. Memories shattered, rewritten, erased. A name that once meant something - James Buchanan Barnes - reduced to something foreign, something he had to claw his way back to.

He has been unmade and remade too many times to count, his identity fractured into a thousand pieces. Each one holds remnants of the pain, of orders barked in languages he barely recognizes, of faces he was forced to forget the moment they fell.

His past is an open wound that never quite heals, no matter how much time passes. He has lost friends, family, freedom - every tether to the life he once lived.

But he survived.

Somehow, despite the things Hydra did to him, despite the decades of blood staining his hands, despite the decades of his limbs moving to another brain, despite the guilt slithering through his veins and dragging its nails down his spine. He survived.

He fought his way back. For you. Because of you. You helped him get himself back.

And that’s why this loss - your loss - would be different.

He doesn’t even acknowledge this with dramatics, doesn’t try to make it sound noble or poetic. It’s not something to be proud of. It’s just the truth. A certainty.

If you leave him, he will not survive. He would not even try.

A simple fact that is not simple at all.

It’s the most devastating, soul-crushing fact of his existence.

Because if you never open your eyes again - if those beautiful, expressive eyes, the ones that soften whenever they land on him, the ones that twinkle like stardust only for him because you love him so much - stay closed forever, then what reason does he have to go on?

If he never sees that smile again, the one that makes his knees weak, that makes his chest feel too small to hold everything he feels for you - the smile only made for him because you love him so much - then what point is there in taking another breath?

If you never wrap your arms around him again - never squeeze him so tightly he can feel your affection seep into him, warming the coldest, most forgotten parts of him, because you love him so much - then what is he supposed to do with himself?

If your lips never touch his again, never press against his skin, never ghost over his own in those kisses that steal his breath even if it is a simple peck, or if you end up breathlessly clinging to each other, all because you love him so much - then he might as well have nothing at all.

And if your voice - your sweet, adoring, and grounding voice - never speaks those three words again, the ones that leave him on this world, the ones that remind him that despite everything, despite all that he has done and all that he has lost, he is still capable of being loved - if he never gets to hear those words again, then there will be nothing left of him.

Because without you he is just a man with too many ghosts and too little purpose. A man trying to walk on broken legs, reaching for something, grasping at something, hoping for something, that will never be found.

He would not survive it. Not again. Not this time.

Bucky doesn’t remember the run to the med bay.

It went so fast but also way too slow.

Moments before, he was in your shared room, shaking you, begging for you to wake up, and then, he was barreling down the hallways, your body limp in his arms.

His boots slammed against the floor, his breath coming in ragged rasps. His grip around you was so tight that if you had been awake, you would have told him to ease up, that you weren’t going anywhere with that soft and gentle voice of yours. But you weren’t awake. It was only him.

He doesn’t remember how many doors he crashed through, doesn’t recall how many people shouted his name as he stormed through the compound like a man possessed.

All he could focus on was you, your weight in his arms, the unmanageable silence coming from you. It was too quiet. Too still.

You were and still are the only thing in his focus. The only thing in his mind.

The moment he bursts into the med bay, Bruce is already moving, eyes wide behind his glasses as he takes one look at Bucky’s desperate face - at you - and points to the nearest examination table.

“Put her down. Now.”

Bucky hesitates for only a second.

“Barnes!” Bruce snaps, voice sharp.

And Bucky moves, his hands trembling as he lowers you onto the cold metal table, his touch lingering longer than it should have, afraid you will leave him the moment he lets go.

Then Bruce is there, hands on you, tilting your head, checking your pulse. Bucky feels something inside him snap.

Bile surges up his throat, hot and acidic, and before he can stop himself, he staggers backward, barely making it to a medical waste bin before his stomach heaves violently. His whole body shakes with the force of it, his metal hand clutching the edge of the table so hard it groans under the pressure.

He only hears someone - Tony - mutter behind him. “Jesus. Alright, Barnes, maybe you should-”

“No.” His voice is hoarse, sore. He doesn’t even look up, just wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, his entire body coiled so tightly he feels like he might snap in half.

He is not leaving.

He doesn’t hear whatever else is said because Bruce is calling for Dr. Cho, his voice tight, controlled but urgent. She appears within moments, already shrugging into her white coat as she assesses the situation with a practiced eye.

“Tell me everything,” she demands, moving beside Bruce as they work over you.

“She was exposed to something - some kind of airborne agent.” Bruce says quickly, Bucky not able to get a word out. “Came back from the mission fine, but then-”

“Then she wouldn’t wake up,” Bucky rasps, his voice barely above a scratchy whisper. He forces himself to step closer again, his fingers jerking at his sides. He wants to touch you, needs to touch you, but Bruce has already started attaching monitors to your chest, your temples, your wrist.

So Bucky can only stare at your unmoving face, and his gut contracts dreadfully, twisting like a wrung-out rag. A breath flees his mouth in a rough gust.

Because you are lying here, looking as if you are fading further away by the second.

Bucky is grateful that no one is paying him any mind.

Every ounce of attention in the room is on you, and that’s exactly where it needs to be. No one spares him so much as a glance, and hell, he is thankful to be ignored.

Because if they looked at him, they would see the way his hand wouldn’t stop shaking. Even the metal seems to be quivering, the nerve endings in his shoulder acting up. They would see his chest rising and falling too fast, his breaths sharp and strained like he is moments from shattering into something unrecognizable.

But none of it matters. Because you are still lying there, too still, too limp, too silent, too pale against the stark white of the medical bay’s harsh lights.

The color has drained from your face, your lips slightly parted, your breathing faint but regular. It’s the only sign of life you give.

Your head remains tilted unnaturally to the side, strands of hair sticking to your cheek from the moisture of Bruce’s sensors as they gather data, searching for something that might explain what the hell is happening to you.

Tony is somewhere behind him, speaking hurriedly into his earpiece. “Yeah, well, tell me something useful, here, Fitz!” His voice is sharp, frustration a part of it, but there is something else there, too - something too close to fear. Bucky doesn’t hear that in Tony often. “I don’t care what Fury’s saying - no, I don’t care - just get me those samples analyzed faster.”

There are agitated voices somewhere to his left. Steve and Natasha. Steve is trying to get to him. Bucky knows it without turning around. He can feel his best friend's presence, hear the urgency in the way his boots scruff against the floor, the way his voice lowers as he mutters something to Natasha, arguing. But the redhead doesn’t budge, Steve doesn’t reach him, and Bucky is left standing in place, barely keeping himself upright.

Bruce and Dr. Cho are working in tandem over your body. Bruce adjusts the monitors, his fingers hovering over your wrist for a moment, measuring something by touch alone. His jaw is tight, his usual steady hands moving just a fraction quicker, his eyes switching between the data on the screen and your unmoving form.

Dr. Cho is settling up and IV, her hands deft as she inserts the needle into the delicate skin of your forearm. The bag above you fills with something clear, something Bucky doesn’t recognize, but he trusts her. He has to. She murmurs something to Bruce, and he nods, glancing at one of the monitors before adjusting the oxygen mask now resting over your face.

“We need a full toxicology scan,” Dr. Cho says, voice firm but calm. Something Bucky can’t manage right now. “Start running a metabolic panel and check for neurotoxins. If this was airborne, we need to know if it’s still in her system.”

Bruce is already moving, tapping rapidly at a tablet screen. “Her vitals are stable, but they’re low - lower than they should be. She’s there, but barely.”

Bucky’s hands clench into fists, his nails digging into his palms, he is sure even the metal will have marks. His head is spinning, everything outside of you irrelevant to him. There is too much movement, too many sounds, too many people talking, but none of it matters because you still haven’t moved. You still haven’t opened your eyes.

His bones feel like they are collapsing. Like a house of cards caught in a slow fall.

And Bucky swears that if you don’t wake up soon, he won’t be able to breathe at all.

The waiting for results is maddening. He is hardly moving, hardly breathing, only able to wait for someone to say something that will make sense of this.

Bruce is the first to speak. He pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, squinting at the tablet in his hands like maybe if he looks at it long enough, the numbers will rearrange themselves into something different. Something fixable.

“There’s nothing,” he says, voice quieter than before. Stunned.

Bucky blinks, his body stiffening. “What?”

Bruce glances at Dr. Cho, but she is already busy studying the results on a separate screen, her lips pressed tightly together.

“Nothing toxic in her blood,” Bruce continues, carefully neutral. “No neurotoxins, no foreign substances - nothing that should be causing this.”

Bucky’s insides lurch, churning like a sea under a violent storm. He tilts his head forward as if he misheard, his mind running. “No. No, that’s not-” He gestures uncoordinatedly to where you still lay, unmoving, breath slow but there. “Look at her! There’s gotta be something.”

Dr. Cho finally speaks, measured but voice set. “Medically speaking, she should be awake.”

Bucky got shot in the chest once.

He still doesn’t know how he survived. It hurt like hell.

But those words are the bullet that will tear through his heart, make him crumble, kill him.

Should be awake.

Should be awake.

But you fucking aren’t.

“You’re saying she’s fine,” he grits out, his tone steely, voiced with something dark. The same darkness that knots deep in his belly. “But she’s not moving, not waking up, not-” His voice breaks, and he presses his mouth closed so tightly to make a sound stop from boiling up. His head shakes vehemently. “There has to be something.”

“Bucky-” Bruce tries, but Bucky doesn’t let him finish.

“Check again.” His voice is lower now, dangerous, but everybody surely hears the desperation in his tone. “Check again, check everything - you must’ve missed something.”

Bruce exhales, rubbing his temples. “I’ve run the tests twice-”

“Damnit, then run it a fucking third time.” Bucky’s voice rises.

“We’ve checked everything. There is nothing wrong-”

“Then why isn’t she waking up?” Bucky roars, and suddenly, everyone in the room is dead silent.

Tony looks between Bucky and the doctors, his expression grim. Steve, who had edged closer, takes a careful step back, but looks at Bucky warningly, yet still utterly sympathetic. Natasha has just the slightest sheen over her eyes herself, but tries to keep her composure. Sam is standing in a corner, watching without a single remark. That’s new for him.

Even Bruce and Dr. Cho pause for just a second, eyes falling to him.

Then Dr. Cho exhales sharply, snapping her gloves off with quick, almost harsh movements. “Everyone out. Now.”

Tony raises a brow. “You kicking us out, doc?”

“Yes,” she replies curtly. “You’re all in the way. We need to focus. Here are too many people. This won’t help us and it won’t help her.”

Steve hesitates but eventually nods, throwing one last glance at Bucky and at you before stepping out, Tony following behind. Natasha slips out almost quickly, searching for a place to be alone. Sam leaves without a word, expression stony. The room empties.

But Bucky doesn’t move.

“Bucky,” Bruce says, softer now, as if he is speaking to a wild animal, careful not to startle it. “You should go too.”

Bucky doesn’t even blink. “No.”

Dr. Cho frowns unpleased, crossing her arms. “You’re not helping her by being here. You’re just getting in the way.”

“I’m not leaving,” Bucky grinds out, planting his feet like a goddamn mountain. His breathing is too rough, his pulse too high, but he doesn’t have time to care. The only thing he cares about is not to leave you.

Dr. Cho lets out a breath through her nose, but she doesn’t argue further. There is no time to fight with a stubborn ex-assassin who looks like he’s one wrong word away from losing his mind.

“Fine,” she relents, turning back to Bruce. “Then stay out of the way. We have work to do.”

Bucky doesn’t even acknowledge her.

Guilt sits in his chest like something rotten. It is an anxious tangle of nerves and dread and agony that curl in his stomach, inescapable. It’s as if his body is rejecting him all over again.

It feasts on every nerve and every cell and gnaws and gnaws and gnaws, hollowing him out from the inside.

He let himself believe that you were fine. That this is just his paranoia, just his need to keep you wrapped up, shielded from every possible danger - the worry he always feels for you, the way he clings so much.

But your chest rises and falls so slow and mechanical, and it’s not right. Your color is drained to the point that you look ghost-like. It’s as if your body is just pretending to be alive. As if it’s just waiting for something, stalling.

You look like you are already knocking on death’s door.

And they try to tell him there is nothing wrong.

The words make his scull vibrate with rage, but even more so with fear. Such a gripping and burning fear. His pulse is a single beat he can feel all along his skin.

Because what if there really is nothing? What if there is nothing to fix and you are already half gone?

His hands are trembling so hard, not even forming a fist can stop it.

He should have brought you here sooner. Should have forced you here the second you got back, should have ignored your reassurances, your sugary and alluring voice telling him that you feel fine and that you love him and there is nothing to worry about.

But he did worry.

He did have that awful, gut-deep feeling, a whisper in the back of his mind, telling him that something was wrong. But he convinced himself that it was just him. That you are fine. And you would be fine. And this was nothing. And there was nothing to worry about. That you would wake up and smile that soft smile at him and wish him a good morning, honey. You sleep well? with your endearing morning voice and all would be fine because you would be there and awake and with him and in his arms and the sun filtering in would illuminate your body and make you gleam in your ethereal glow and he would tell you you look beautiful and you would giggle and you would kiss him and you would tell him you love him and he would repeat it a thousand times over and-

He wants to throw up again, feeling the nausea rise. He wants to undo whatever led you here, wants to rip apart the universe until he finds the moment where he should have acted, should have saved you, should have known better.

Because things like that happen to Bucky Barnes.

The voices are there. Bruce and Cho speaking in hushed and clinical tones, words slipping past his ears. He hears them. Knows they are saying things that should matter. Should mean something.

But he can’t focus.

Because the only thing his brain registers, the only thing anchoring him to anything right now, is the slow and rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor.

It pounds in his eardrums, in the space behind his eyes, sinks beneath his skin. Unchanging. It should be a comfort. A reassurance. But it’s not.

It sounds too artificial - as if it’s the machine keeping you here instead of your own will. Instead of you.

His heart seems to try and outrun a fate that has not been decided yet. His hands flex and curl, doing nothing else. He is so helpless. Drowning in the air, like a scream caged behind his ribs with no way to escape.

Bucky is not a man who would ever think about praying.

But for you, he would sink down onto his knees and beg, beg until his lungs give out, plead until his voice dies, and him with it.

He wants to move. Wants to do something. But all he is forced to do is watch. Watch the way your body doesn’t stir, the way your lips remain slightly parted, breath scarcely there. You seem asleep in a way that isn’t right.

Bruce says something. He doesn’t catch it.

Dr. Cho responds, sharper this time, with a note of urgency in her tone. But Bucky still can’t process the words.

Because the beeping is the only thing.

The only proof that you are still here.

The sole factor preventing his thoughts from plunging into a darkness he can't drag his way out of.

The sound of your heartbeat, manufactured and distant, is the only thing between him and utter ruin.

And then it stutters.

Just for a second. A fracture of a hesitation, a hiccup in the mechanical pattern.

But it is clear.

And Bucky’s breath seizes, every nerve ending in his body lighting up under a fire that might just burn him to the ground.

Another stutter.

He lunges forward without thinking, knocking something over in the process, metal clattering against tile. Bruce shouts his name, Cho curses, but Bucky doesn’t hear anything.

Because something is happening.

The beeping stutters again. Then again.

Then your body jerks. A sudden, unnatural motion, like a puppet with its strings, yanked too hard. Your chest arches up, limbs jolting, fingers curling in on themselves like they don’t belong to you anymore.

The heart monitor lets out a rapid sequence of beeps, the steady pattern broken, discordant - like a song ripped apart note by note.

A seizure.

Bucky doesn’t even have time to feel the utter terror pumping up his belly and rushing up to his face in less than half a second, only that it is propelling him forward. He doesn’t care that Bruce and Cho are already moving, doesn’t care that there are hands trying to hold you down, voices shouting instructions.

He drops to his knees by your head because his legs won’t hold him up anymore. His hands reach instinctively - one cradling the back of your head, the other threading into your hair, gripping almost too tight, as if he can keep you here just by holding on. He never should have let go in the first place. Another thing to hate himself for.

“No, no, no, baby, baby, please-” His voice is wrecked. Shattered and gravelly, rasping against his throat like it’s tearing him apart from the inside out. The words barely make it past his lips, broken things gasped between strangled sobs.

“Stay with me, doll. Please. Please, don’t- don’t do this, you don’t get to do this, not to me, not to me-”

His breath is failing him, catching on every desperate syllable, every plea. His chest aches and caves under the panic and horror, he can’t hold himself up properly anymore. His forehead presses against yours, his tears hot where they land on your skin, his entire body shaking against you.

He is crying, saying things not even he understands. His voice is a single crack, a sound so undone it doesn’t sound human. He begs and begs and begs, but you continue to cramp.

A sob rips through him, brutal and loud, and he sucks in a desolate breath between the wreckage of his words.

He doesn’t know the way Cho and Bruce are working frantically, doesn’t hear the sounds of other people in white coats hectically running around.

All he knows is you.

And the way your body seizes beneath his hands, the way your face remains slack, the way your breath catches as if your body itself is deciding whether to keep you here or let you go.

Bucky grips you harder and presses his lips to your temple in a way that is almost rough.

“Stay with me,” he whimpers against your skin, voice not even a real whisper, hoarse and thick with cries. “I can’t lose you. Won’t survive. I won’t survive.”

You gasp.

Your body stills. Limbs falling back onto the hard table with a sharp clang.

And his world is falling apart, into itself, collapsing, crumbling. His eyes fail, not showing him the whole picture anymore, burning his vision away and replacing it with cruel pictures. He falls into an abyss so deep he won’t ever meet the ground and the reprieve of shattering into the floor-

Beep.

A single note.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It’s rhythmic. It’s there.

Your heart is still beating.

The sound sends a shockwave through his chest, his heart, his core, him. It rattles his ribs.

Bucky shudders. A deep, guttural sob rips through him and he buries his face against your hair, his arms wrapped so tightly around you it’s as if he’s trying to fuse you to him, trying to force the universe to let him keep you.

He chokes on a sound, nothing more than a shattered breath. His body sags, overwhelmed, drained, but his hands refuse to loosen their hold on you, careful of the cables attached to your body.

The chaos of the room dims just slightly, shifting to more focus.

“That-” Bruce analyses in a clipped tone. “That wasn’t just a seizure. That was an autonomic collapse. Her body just shut down.”

Bucky is still swimming in the aftershock of nearly losing you, he can’t comprehend anything other than the smell of your hair and skin.

“That’s not possible,” Cho considers, voice low, but there is just the tiniest hint of concern in her voice now. “Not without something triggering it.”

There is shuffling around him - machines being adjusted, readings being analyzed. But Bucky stays right there, forehead pressed to yours, his thumbs smoothing over your cheekbones as if you were made of glass. “Come back to me,” he breathes, pleading. “Please come back, please. I can’t- I can’t do this without you. Can’t do anything without you. Y/n, please!”

Bruce releases a breath somewhere nearby. Bucky lost all his senses.

“I need to see the chemical breakdown of that gas - now,” he instructs.

“Come back. Come back to me, baby, come back,” Bucky croaks out, still not addressing the two discussing your situation, his voice rough and barely working. His lips don’t move from your temple.

Cho’s hands move over the tablet, scanning your vitals. “Her body didn’t just react to it. It adapted to it. And now-” She pauses, face tightening as she processes the data. “It’s waiting for something.”

Bucky heaves up a breath, a sick and swirling tension writhing in his stomach like a nest of snakes. “Waiting for what?” he finally acknowledges.

Bruce’s gaze flicks up, something apologetic and utterly pained behind his eyes. His voice is careful. “A command.”

Silence slams into the room like a sudden, vicious drop in pressure.

Bucky grows cold. The sickening sensation in him spreads. His hands tighten around you in instinctual protection.

Fucking Hydra.

“This wasn’t just some toxin or experiment,” Cho continues, flipping through the data, her expression darkening. “This was programmed. Her nervous system - her brain - it’s been put in a dormant state. Not a coma, not unconsciousness. Something else.”

Bucky is shaking his head before she even finishes speaking. “No. No, she - she’s right here, she’s breathing, she-”

But he can’t deny it. Can’t ignore the chilling, creeping terror worming around his spine, despair festering it. Because he knows this. Knows the way Hydra takes people and twists them, programs them like machines, like weapons, like him.

His stomach sinks, drops, falls - down, down, down. Falling into the abyss. Never to land. Never to return.

Nausea rolls over him in sick ways. But he can’t let him heave it up again. Because therefore, he would have to let go of you. And he will not do that.

“It’s got to be some kind of activation sequence,” Bruce says grimly. “A failsafe. Whatever was in that gas, it did something to her. Put her into a kind of-” he pauses, carefully glancing at Bucky, “-standby mode.”

Bucky’s jaw is hard, it would hurt if he could feel it. “Then wake her the fuck up.”

“We’re trying,” Cho snaps back, stress sharpening her usual calm tone. “But this isn’t just a medical problem, Barnes. It’s neurological. It’s programming.”

Bucky flinches. His fingers tangle in your hair and he tucks you impossibly closer. “She’s not a machine,”he spits out, voice shaking, harsher than he means it to be but not able to change it. “She’s not like-”

He stops himself. The words She’s not like me nearly escape, but he forces them back down his throat, though it burns.

Bruce and Cho exchange a look.

And that’s when Tony speaks up from the corner of the room - seemingly having allowed himself to come back inside - voice resolved, hard. “Then we need to figure out what the hell they were trying to turn her into.”

No. Please, god, no. Not her. Not you.

Bucky is unaware of his movements, of the way he is clutching you tighter, the way his body trembles, the sting in his throat from how ragged his breathing has been for the last couple of however long he’s been here already.

He can’t keep you from this. Can’t protect you from something that has already taken root inside you.

Just like it did in him.

His vision is a hot fog. The room nothing but a smear of sterile white light and moving shadows, the voices of Banner and Cho turning into indecipherable noise as they scramble for answers.

Tony is heading to his lap to probably run every scan known to a man on that goddamn gas. Steve is speaking too. Where did he come from? Since when is he here again? But Bucky doesn’t care. He doesn’t listen.

Because you are still motionless in his arms.

They are talking about activation sequences. Standby modes. Neurological programming. They’re using all these terms, these medical, scientific explanations - but none of them are saying what it really means.

Hydra did something to you.

Hydra put something in you.

And if there’s one thing Bucky knows, one thing that has been burned into his very being, it’s that Hydra does not give. It does not take halfway. It does not leave things unfinished.

They only ever take everything.

And only with a little bit of smoke in the air, you have been exposed to for mere minutes.

A rough, strangled sound makes its way up his throat, and it takes him a second to realize it’s even coming from him. A horrible, cracking noise of grief and rage and devastation. His fingers dig into the warmth of you, your neck, your back, your thigh, needing to feel you, needing to have you here with him even though his mind is screaming at him that all the parts of you he had are gone already.

But he won’t accept that.

Shaking fingers card through your hair, pushing damp strands away from your face, his metal hand cradling your cheek.

His voice is an aching whisper. “You’re stronger than me, you know that?” His breath shudders over the words, his quivering lips brushing against your forehead, lingering there. “You always have been.”

His thumb gently strokes over the hollow beneath your closed eye, his jaw clenching hard as he takes in the deep stillness of your body. His chest tries to draw in air but is constricted.

He can’t see you like this. You are never this still. Never motionless. You live in the moment - in bright, uncontainable energy.

“You’ll get through this.” Each word drags thickly from his throat. It hurts so much. Everything hurts so much. “I know you will. You always do. You always pull me with you, too.” His laugh is soft and hollow, broken like the man he is in process of becoming again. “Even when I didn’t want saving, you just-”

He swallows hard, squeezes his eyes together, and takes a deep breath filled with your scents. But it mingles with the sterile smell of that moisture and clinic. A tear slips past his lashes. Another follows.

“You never let go.”

His head bows, his forehead against your temple, a shallow gasp slips from his lips.

“And I won’t either.”

His flesh thumb presses lightly to your neck, enough to feel your pulse. He hears the beep of the monitor but he needs to feel it.

“I’m right here, baby,” he breathes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He presses his lips to your temple, to your cheekbones, to your forehead, your nose, everywhere he likes. Everywhere he has to. He lets himself feel the warmth of you, the thumps of your heartbeat against his fingers.

Another tear slips past when he presses another strained whisper to your skin.

“I’d go anywhere with you. I’d follow you to the end of the world. But you gotta wake up, baby.”

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice finally meets his ears, but it sounds too damn soft. As if he is talking to a wounded and aching creature.

As if he expects Bucky to break. He might. He will.

Bucky snaps his head up, and the look on his face must be something terrible because Steve actually takes a step back.

“You think I don’t know what this means?” Bucky growls, his voice a debris of sound. His hands shake so hard against you, he can’t even hold you as tight as he wants to anymore. And for the first time in his life, he hates the warmth of his flesh. Hates that the metal doesn’t run through both arms, because maybe then he wouldn’t have to feel this overpowering helplessness.

Maybe then he wouldn’t feel human enough to understand what it means to lose.

Maybe then he could just return to be the machine he was supposed to be all along.

He already feels himself going back to him.

“She’s not like me,” he snarls, voice catching on the words, breaking them apart. “She’s not going to be like me.”

No one answers him.

No one says no, of course not, she’s going to be fine, we’ll fix this, we’ll wake her up and this will just be another nightmare we all wake up from.

Because no one knows if that’s true.

Bruce’s fingers move over his tablet. “Whatever Hydra did… it’s not finished yet. We need to be prepared.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bucky’s voice is lethal, pure steel dipping into panic.

“It means,” Bruce hesitates, glancing at Steve for help but the blonde doesn’t seem to know better, so he continues. “We don’t know in what state she is in. This could have done anything to her-”

A low, animalistic sound rumbles from Bucky’s chest. “Then we stop it.”

Bruce looks at him, eyes trying to soften, but he seems too remorseful. “We don’t even know what it is yet.”

“We stop it,” Bucky repeats, harsher this time. Because the alternative is something he can’t think of.

He sways, a choking sense of deja vu inching up his spine. He knows this feeling. He’s lived this feeling. That moment, the harsh, dizzying drop into nothingness, when you realize you don’t know yourself anymore. That you never really did.

And now, Hydra is doing that to you.

Cho stiffens suddenly, eyes rapidly moving across the screen in front of her. “Wait - something’s changing-”

Every muscle in Bucky’s body locks as his gaze snaps to you, his breath stalling.

Your fingers. The barest twitch. A tiny, nearly imperceptible movement against his chest.

But it’s there.

Bucky sucks in a breath so sharp it burns. “She’s-”

Before he can finish, your entire body spasms intensely.

Alarms shriek. Machines stutter to life. A sharp, erratic beeping floods the room.

Your scream tears through the space. Guttural and fervent and wrong.

Bucky’s blood freezes mid-flow, turning to shards of ice beneath his skin.

Because you are screaming like you are dying.

And suddenly, everyone is rushing around. Bruce and Cho are lunging forward, Steve is cursing under his breath.

Bucky can’t move.

Frost crackles through his veins, leaving only numbness behind.

You continue screaming. It sounds like it’s affecting your vocal cords.

There is winter inside of Bucky.

His arms tighten around you, his body moving on pure instinct, pressing you to him.

“It’s okay, baby,” he gasps out, not even sure if you can hear him, but he can’t help it. He cups your face between his hands, hoping to still the way you thrash around and bump your head against the metal beneath you. “I’m here. It’s me, baby. It’s Bucky. I’m here. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

But your screams don’t stop.

Your hands claw weakly at your own chest, at your throat, as if trying to get something out, as if your own skin is suffocating you. Your nails leave scratch marks on your collarbone.

And Bucky loses it.

“Do something!” he yells, his head whipping around to Bruce and Cho, his voice shredded with desperation. “Help her!”

Bruce quickly injects something into your IV, Cho adjusts the monitors as they beep wildly.

But Bucky doesn’t see any of it.

He only sees you.

His world narrows down to your face, to the way your lips part on a strained gasp, the way your body shakes in his grip, the way your screams turn to whimpers and then stop altogether.

Then, your eyes snap open.

Bucky stops breathing. Stops moving. Only stares agape.

Your gaze is on him, wide and glassy and soaked in terror.

But you look at him in a way you never looked at him ever before.

You look at him like you are not yourself anymore.

You look at him like you don’t know him.

You look at him like you don’t recognize him at all.

“Without you, the world means nothing to me.”

- Emily Brontë

Part three

[emmettisqueer]

The Toxicity of a ship that I don't understand how it's toxic

Ngl, Love Squid Games, it's rotted my brain for the last few weeks, and I've rewatched S2 like 4 or 5 times already (Watching for 5th or 6th time soon)

And something I've found strange, being a person who watches YT (A lot), is the controversy with the 457 ship (Gi Hun/In Ho) and how people either hate it or love it. (I like the ship personally, just no Sexual implications towards it)

Like people calling it a toxic ship because In Ho is a bad guy and likes to watch him suffer. Their ship is basically VillainxHero which If I'm not wrong, I've never heard anyone call that ship a toxic one, so why the fuck is it considered toxic??? In Ho, the guy who sees his past self in Gi Hun and deep down rooting for the man? Sure, it's most definitely one-sided when In Ho is dressed up in his frontman façade Gi Hun despises him, which he has the right to. But In Ho, when he is putting up the Young il façade, he is enjoying the games, and possibly even enjoying his group's company. Just like Il Nam did in season 1, why do people automatically think if he does something bad all his personalities are awful, and just enjoying people suffer?

All that man does throughout the season with Gi Hun is indirectly mock him for picking the umbrella in season 1 and betrays him at the end of the season. Because he's the Frontman, and he has to stop Gi Hun from reaching the main room. He was clearly stalking the man in between s1 win and s2 when the games start. And I quote, "You should've got on that plane." But another quote he says in the end of s1 is that he should just forget it happened, and to pretend it was a dream. In Ho wants him to forget all that trauma, so Gi Hun can have a good life. Unlike himself cause when he won in 2015 he also did not want to use the money as he also saw it as blood money. His wife died in 2018 2 years after his win. Why would he not save his wife? It made no sense? (In 2024 when s2 takes place, it was her 5th year death anniversary.) Unless, like Gi Hun, In Ho went M.I.A after his win, which could definitely be the answer to why he didn't save his wife. But that is all speculation and hasn't been revealed yet. (At least to my knowledge)

The only toxic bit of the ship is the stalking, and him killing his friends, Which technically he only killed 1, cause Sangwoo killed Sae-Byoek and Sangwoo killed himself. But Gi Hun blames the Frontman, because he runs the games. Which Is another toxic thing. But see how it's directed towards his Frontman façade and not In Ho/Young il himself. Gi Hun hates a part of In Ho, which he doesn't know is In Ho/Young il. Young il is just observing the guy because he is trying to understand him, and stop him from doing his plan. The Frontman is doing his job to stop Gi Hun from stopping the games.

The ship is not as bad as people say it is. In my opinion. It's just two previous traumatized winners who went down different paths after their win.

Also, something I'd like to point out is that another ship that is 100% a toxic ship, no one takes a second glance at it and love it, which is the BakuDeku ship. Like if you ship these two but hate 457 ship is a bit weird. Like you're going to hate on a ship that has minor toxicity and then like a ship of some dude who bullied the other dude since they were kids? Don't get me started on how he told the other to kill himself. You're telling me that ship isn't more toxic than the old men Yaoi? (No. I do not hate the Bkdk ship. It's just not something I ship. Personally.) Please make it, make sense. Also, I would like to say this tangent is mainly directed towards the Squid Game fandom and the people who dislike the ship. I am not saying you have to change your mind on the ship, I respect your opinion. I would love to hear your opinions on this!

Love you all /p <3

[annabelle-creart]

Why would you like the Decepticons, other than the fact that they are evil, they always lost in the TV series.

Oh no, is not because they're evil. And same with last post, this is based on my own interpretation on the characters for my Au based on pure continuity soup

Megatron's case is because I think he is actually right, he just did things wrong in search for power, he is the definition on how society made him hopeless and damn angry, but also I think he is scary and that's damn interesting because he wasn't always scary, at first he was just alone and then became great by using force and I love when a character does that because it gives a break point to them and that's really awesome to see (talking of Meg as a character and not as a person because I consider they're two different things, character refers to good writing or development, person refers to moral and behavior, Meg is a good character and a bad person because he wanted to be more than others)

Starscream is such an asshole but is also a victim that became evil itself, he's such drunk and obsessed on power and does everything to have it and that's such an interestint detail because TFOne gave me the "he had the power but lost it" and made it right. Starscream ALWAYS had power and only wants it back, but he only wants power because he is helpless and wants to feel safe, and that's both sad and shitty because is POWER what makes him feel safe and sound

KO and Breakdown, my dear bois, you suffered so much but also made so much harm, you literally sell the weapons that others used to kill themselves, they were literally the only winners of the war and yet KO lost the one who he cared the most on his life on TF Prime because of that (even if they're still alive in my au) I love so SO much how both were the real winners and yet lose what was actually important: family

ARACHNID IS SUCH A BITCH BUT DAMN, EVIL WOMEN AKKSKSKAKA, I can't literally hate women on fiction for some of their things because those are their thoughts BUT DAMN, SHE'S SUCH AHHHHHHHH- I love her as character because she's a hateful person AND I HATE HER, SHE MAKES ME HATE HER, SHE'S GORGEOUS AND YET SHE'S NOT SEDUCTIVE, SHE'S EVIL GENUILLY AND WANTS TO KILL AND COLLECTIONATE BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO, SHE'S WHAT AN EVIL WOMAN SHOULD BE IN FICTION AND I LOVE THAT. But her vampire arc was literally throwed away for the predacon's arc sake😔how shitty

Shockwave and Soundwave are like the evil twins to me, and that makes it worst: they should be siblings, THEY SHOULD BE TOGETHER BUT YET WAR DON'T LET THEM, Shock just closed himself before empurata (a punishment made by AUTOBOTS) and Soundwave did the same to deal with Decepticon Third in Command shit, and DAMN, They're so mysterious and yet so genuine, they always talk the truth (when they talk) and are so fucking loyal but also so SO fucking emotionless, they made themselves emotionless to deal with war and because of punishment, from both society and for themselves, Shockwave was punished for speaking the truth and making what he thought was correct and AUTOBOTS punished him for that, later he closed himself in sake of that! He punished himself AGAIN. Meanwhile, Soundwave decided to stay silent as protest, only speaking when needed or necesarry, but later it became a punishment for keeping in silent what was important, for keeping emotions array instead of letting them be as should!

So, yes, I find decepticons way more interesting than autobots...

Or maybe is just because they're Heatwave's family and I love the bot, I don't know but yet I love Nemesis Team on TFP and some other continuities like Earthspark, they're by far more interestimg to me than autobots because there's not a lot of moral breaking points to use on them, but yet I love them too! They're a big loving family and that's all I ask in a series like that, I love how such cutie family Team Prime can be

[thesconesyard]

Don’t judge me harshly for my first ever Spock pov, please

Where the West Begins

18. Bandolier

“Spock,” Scotty called across the yard.

Spock stopped and turned, standing still as the Scotsman caught up to him.

“How’s Jim doing today?”

“Much better,” Spock replied, with a faint tightness around his mouth that could pass for a smile. “Though I do not understand why Dr. McCoy did not inform him he was being poisoned.”

Scotty appeared to sigh. “Aye, maybe we should have told ye, but we worried the lass may start to catch onto us or harm someone else.”

“I see.”

“And ye know the lad, he never wants to admit to being under the weather.”

“That is true, unfortunately.”

“But I’m sure if he’d gotten any worse Len would have stepped in. Ye know he was tearing himself up about it trying to fix it,” Scotty said.

“In hindsight his distress was clear. Is there something you needed, Scotty?”

“Aye!” The Scotsman perked up. “I was having some wee trouble with some calculations for that new out building, and was hoping ye could help me.”

“I’d be happy too,” Spock said. He followed quietly behind the other man.

His mind was eased some at Scotty’s explanations of the doctor’s actions. Yes, Jim could be stubborn about some things, especially concerning himself, but Spock had seen McCoy go head to head with the ranch owner many times and come out the winner. If the doctor had been stubborn this time, Jim would not have suffered as long as he had.

Though in the end Jim was healing and that woman was gone. She would be a reminder to them to be vigilant of those who came to them.

In the evening, after dinner, the others were helping wash up or take care of the evening chores, but Spock wandered to his room. From under his bed he drew out a small chest. It was long but not very wide, nor very deep.

He took a very slow, deep breath as he sat on the bed and undid the latches. The relics of a previous life lay inside. Spock had not looked at them since he had come to the ranch and shoved the chest underneath the bed.

The past months had drawn forth thoughts he’d not had for a very long time. Of family, long gone separate ways.

A photograph sat on top, old and faded. Spock lifted it and looked. His parents. So different from each other and so fiercely devoted to each other. He set the photograph aside, and turned to the next item. His fingers ran gently over the smooth handle of a small knife. Gingerly he lifted it and slid it an inch from the hilt. The sharp blade gleamed, though he knew what deeds had been done with it.

Spock closed his eyes for a moment and breathed slowly. He slid the knife back in the sheath and set it down. Soft leather was next.

Spock startled at a knock on the door.

“Spock, you in there?”

Jim.

Spock stared at the door, then glanced at the open chest in front of him. No one had seen these things since he had packed them away.

“Yes,” he finally answered.

“You alright?” Jim sounded concerned. That was wrong; Spock should be the one still concerned for Jim. He was still healing.

“I am fine.”

“Alright if I come in?” Jim called through the door, sounding amused.

Spock looked again at the open chest, and his breath grew tight. He let it out and made himself relax.

“Yes.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in wearing a bright smile.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“The door please Jim.”

“Oh. Sure.” Jim turned back and closed the door before he crossed over to look at the items on the bed.

“Who’s this?” Jim asked, pointing at the photograph. “May I?” His hand reached halfway to it.

“My parents,” Spock said stiffly. “You may.”

Jim lifted the photo carefully and studied it. “You look like both of them,” he said with a smile.

“I wish that I didn’t.”

Jim looked over at him in confusion. Spock looked away towards the window.

“One parent from each side of the conflict does not make one very welcome afterwards in either place.”

“Oh. Spock—”

“They loved each other.” Spock gave his head a sad shake. “But I did not belong. I tried, on both sides. I fought.” Spock touched the knife again. “I killed. But neither side wanted me.”

From the chest he pulled a long leather belt, folded together.

“I was not enough for either, despite my skills.” He held the folded belt angled across his chest.

“What did you do?” Jim sat down on the bed with the chest between them.

“I left. I worked for who paid the most.”

“A mercenary?”

“Perhaps you would name what I did that.”

“What happened?”

“I received a letter saying my parents had been killed. They had tried to stop the next conflict. Each side blamed the other for their deaths.”

“I’m sorry.”

Spock shook his head. “I gave up that life. I wandered and I ended here.” He set the bandolier back in the chest, then laid the knife back on top. He reached over and took the photo from Jim. With it in the chest he closed the lid and did the latches again.

“Too many fight in this world. I choose not to anymore, but I will defend what is mine.” His dark eyes looked across at Jim with intensity.

Jim nodded slowly. “Thank you for telling me.”

Spock nodded in acknowledgment.

“Is there anything I can do?” Jim asked quietly.

“Keep being the good person you are in this terrible world.”

“It’s not all terrible Spock,” Jim grinned suddenly. “It brought you here to me didn’t it?”

Warmth crept up Spock’s face at Jim’s words and he fought to hide it.

“That is true,” he admitted softly.

[sally-october]

something i like about moon knight is that while sometimes he does murder people, it's never triumphant or even grimly necessary. it's only ever a failure and a mistake. condemning waxman only escalated and made cyclical the violence between them and caused more harm, and killing the soldier-eater/slasher at the start of 2014 was tragic too- this guy was clearly really badly damaged and needed help, much as moon knight himself needed help, and if given a second chance might have been a friend, but the only way moon knight could see to interact with him was murder (he does have kind of a cruel blind spot for people whose problems are very close to his own, like soldier) and now he's crawling back into that tomb again because there's nowhere to go.

his big show of bravado and violence against fairchild made things worse. killing that cop informant wouldn't have done anything useful. all the genuine accomplishments he has are when he uses compassion, with rutherford winner and the house of shadows and with 8-ball. All of those are against a backdrop of horror, but that's kind of what makes guys like 8-ball and beings like the house of shadows take him seriously- he can't be overcome through violence and ignored, but it's the love that genuinely changes them for the better. and he comes closer to and further away from getting that- the underlying desire to cause hurt is always there in him.

addiction to violence is a very smart way of talking about it, I think. he has this image of himself as a violent man, and he constructs all his psychological machinery around it, and he can't see a way out of it, but he's now losing through violence what he gained through gentleness, losing one of his closest new friends even, and maybe he might come to see that the good he does is really only outside of the guy everyone (including himself) thinks he is.

like even his violent accomplishments like taking down the structure and stopping black specter are only possibly because he reached out with compassion and cultivated a group of friends who love him, because he reached back out to steven and jake. it's not just "teamwork! power of friendship!" stuff, it's the conflict between the cruel sadist who visits suffering on others and the enormous potential for compassion because for each person he might thinks deserves that suffering, he's done what they've done and worse and he knows why and how they could do differently. he could be there for them instead, and every time even the sadism gets results it's only because the compassion made that possible first. the evil man he thinks he has to be is only ever riding on the coattails of the good man that he could be, and he can't see that.

[legalandnotease]

The biggest problem with Bucky defenders like you is that you refuse to acknowledge anyone else��s suffering. Never denied Bucky grieving nor being a victim of horrific proportions, but he was far from the only one grieving.

"I don't deny Bucky was grieving" but then 10 seconds later you be like "he doesn't have the right to grieve and has zero right to any of his feelings".

There's a word for what you're doin there. Its called *gaslighting*. Its what my abuser used to do to me- yes, you're talking to a real life abuse survivor in the flesh.

That's the problem with a lot of Sam fans. They cannot identify with any other character or their experiences.

I mean this here a prime example of what I am saying:

You really need to get off of Bucky’s fictional dick and stop believing that he’s the grand winner in the trauma olympics

You believe Sam is the grand winner do you not? People like you are convinced Sam and Isaiah have some kind of monopoly on suffering, and because of this they are incapable of identifying with the trauma of others and understanding how other people's suffering impacts them. (Legit they are getting as bad as Tony fans..)

Thus anybody who has feelings or emotions that do not align with what Sam wants is condemned. This is absolutely classic gaslighting, and its also incredibly narcissistic: recognize Sam's struggles by all means but nobody is required to supress or alter their emotions to cater to him.

Nobody is required to turn off their trauma to make him feel better: not that they can.

How Bucky managed to not grapple or try to understand Sam’s mental strife ... means he’s an obtuse little fuck when it comes to emotionally attaching himself to an inanimate object in lieu of feeling abandoned.

Yeah.... um its called the grieving process. Grief impacts different people in different ways.

You're basically saying here that because Bucky doesn't grieve the same way as Sam it means his grief is not legitimate. Gaslighting again.

Sam and Bucky have different experiences, ergo their experience of grieving is different. Although Bucky feels to a degree for others involved in the fight against Thanos he didn't really know any of them aside from the Wakanadans. So its harder for him to grieve for somebody like Natasha because he didn't know her. People generally don't grieve for strangers - that's not selfish its just how we are.

The only person he really knew was Steve Rogers: Steve is the man who literally saved Bucky's life when everyone (including Sam) was telling Steve to kill him.

That's why the shield means so much to Bucky. Its the object that was used to save his life by his brother. It doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to Sam because they both associate it with different things.

Both their experiences are valid: but of course you want to say that Bucky's are not.

But him feeling betrayed and hurt gives him no leeway to be a bastard to Sam as he was

Ah yes, here we come to it. Bucky has no right to his feelings and he has no right to his trauma responses. Gotcha. He should turn off his PTSD to cater to Sam, did I say that already? Only problem is it doesn't work that way.

You see here's the thing: the vast majority of Sam fans who write things like this do not have PTSD or trauma: but the vast majority of Bucky fans do.

This is why Sam fans don't get it: they are looking at things from an outsider perspective. They see a traumatized person acting a certain way and they think they're choosing to do that because they're just being a dick.

What they don't understand is that trauma messes you up. It makes just living from one day to the next a sruggle. Traumatized people do not have room for others because they are struggling to just survive themselves. Not because they are selfish but because they have been harmed in horrific ways and it keeps impacting them long after the event.

Also, certain conditions predispose people to act and respond in certain ways, so when they people say say incredibly misinformed things like this:

Being a victim doesn’t give him a forever pass to be an asshole to those that didn’t cause his pain.

...All they they reveal is that they cannot comprehend trauma. That they have absolutely zero understanding of hiw trauma impacts human beings. That they are incredibly ignorant and certainly in no position to lecture anybody else on trauma healing or say they understand.

See here's the thing about PTSD, the condition that Bucky has. You don't have to be around the person who hurt you to react in a certain way.

In fact, anything that reminds you of your trauma and pain can cause a certain response. These things are called triggers. And when I say it cane be anything I mean *anything*. Objects, sounds, even certain words can remind a person with PTSD of the experience which caused their condition, and this by turn can cause unpleasant responses.

Lashing out, freezing, panic attacks, etc. Bucky doesn't like notebooks because the Soviets used a notebook with the Russian words to activate his programming: that's why Raynor's notebook annoys him so much. Its probably one of his triggers.

This means that Bucky is not being mean to Sam because he's malicious: he's a traumatized person who has been triggered by something or somebody.

Most likely, the talk of the shield reminded him of how Steve had to save him when he didn't feel like he was worth saving- and then he had somebody telling him HYDRA were "his people" so he was feeling like shit all over again.

Of course the vast majority of Sam fans don't see that: all they see is somebody being mean to their fave, and that is an unforgivable sin.

And Anthony Mackie stayed talking shit in the interviews whenever asked what was involved in the films, but you’re 100% ready to believe the character that Sam was only reached out to ‘taunt’ Bucky? Are you fucking serious?

Actually, yes.

Sam taunting Bucky with those text messages is entirely consistent with the behavior he displays throughtout the show- making jokes about his disability, mocking his trauma and the symptoms of his brain damage etc.

Like you pointed out, he was a counselor and knew the importance of contact but he’s only reaching out to fuck with him, not to check in, not to try to connect over similar experiences of losing time and friends? Shows how much you know the character.

Do you remember what I said about certain Sam fans being incapable of identifying with anybody else?

The same goes for Sam himself. Believe it or not, Sam is an able-bodied person who has never experienced things liks captivity, mind control, torture and sexual assault. He hasn't been forced to kill people against his will.

As such, Sam cannot identify with disabled people or abuse survivors. That's why he does things like mocking Bucky's appearance or making fun of his bionic arc and his propensity for staring. Which is due to brain damage btw.

You call that banter- but its very much more like the way able-bodied people act towards the disabled in real life. The kind of casual cruelty or insensitivity able-bodied people display when they ask intrusive or hurtful questions about disability or make off-color remarks about certain condtions.

Sam isn't necessarily trying to be insulting or offensive (although sometimes it appears he is) he probably thinks calling Bucky a "freak" or a "cyborg" and asking him if he killed anybody lately is just a harmless joke, but he is nevertheless being incredibly insensitive.

And like you said "intentions don't mean shit in regard to hurt feelings". Yeah the same applies to Sam. It doesn't matter if his remarks weren't meant to offend Bucky- they clearly did and he had a right to be offended.

You don’t get to dictate how what Bucky said affected Sam and you don’t get to pretend that some of the shit he said didn’t reek of self centeredness.

Guess what? You don't get to dictate how what Sam says effected Bucky either. Just because you think Sam was seeking to bond over mutual experiences it does not make it so.

Its entirely possible that Sam said things in those texts Bucky ignored that were incredibly offensive, insensitive or triggering and that's why he ignored them.

Its like if you sent me a text saying " how is (naming my abuser) today and did you freak out?"

You might think that's a harmless joke, but guess what? You don't know how that is going to impact me.

Being a counsellor doesn't mean Sam cannot also be an insensitive dick. As I said before- Sam is not an abuse survivor so he cannot identify with Bucky's experiences as an abuse survivor.

Which means he also doesn't understand how his negative attitudes and behaviours are likely to impact people who are. That also makes him more likely to engage in things like victim-blaming, and casual ableism.

That’s the way to heal, but Sam giving the advice was such a big problem fer y’all stans and I’ll never understand why.

Um, no.

You don't get to tell traumatized people how they heal. When you don't know anything about PTSD or trauma its very likely you also don't know anything about the long, slow process of healing, so I won't bother going into the complexities of it.

What I will do though is tell you why Sam's "advice is such a big problem".

Sam was doing what is known as victim-blaming. Victim blaming is a phenomena where victims are told that what happened to them is their fault, and that they caused or wanted it in some way.

Sam telling Bucky he had to "make amends" whilst he lectured him on the importance of "being of service, being present in his life and surrounding community" was akin to telling a person who was r*ped that they have to go and apologize to their attacker, and then they have to go find other people who were attacked by the same person and apologize to them as well.

Instead of like, bringing the rapist to justice and telling them to make amends.

Everything about what Sam says is implicity and explicitly telling Bucky that he was 100% responsible for what HYDRA did to him. He was to blame, it was his fault and he has to make right. Victim-blaming.

The fact that this came at the end of a series in which *every single character* as well as the narrative itself said that Bucky was serving HYDRA willingly and wanted to do all the things he did as the Winter Soldier makes it even worse.

Its like if they retconned Nastasha's story and decided to say she joined the Red Room voluntarily and then make her Dreykov's lover or something.

Oh and in addition to that several major characters outright say that Bucky is an evil monster and a pyschopathic killer and can never be anything other than that. Sam never once challenges or questions this version of events. He goes along with it, in fact.

So yeah, that's why Sam's advice is such a big deal- because it and the series itself are constantly shoving this idea down our throats that Bucky was never a victim. That he chose to do everything he did as Winter Soldier, and he is to blame for all that happened to him: which is why according to Sam and everybody else he has to "make amends" help others.

He's not a victim, therefore he doesn't deserve care or compassion. Therefore he doesn't need self-care. He just needs to stop kidding himself and admit it was all his fault. Oh and he then needs to do something which could explicity put his life in danger by confronting the families of victims. Cos' last time he did that it ended so well (Tony Stark almost killed him...)

All the while, remaining HYDRA operatives are walking free, allowed to do as they please.

As for the rest of your post: Bucky had zero intention of allowing Zemo to remain free forever, he fully intended to hand him over to Wakanda when he didn't need him anymore. He literally explained that. He was using the guy as a means to an end and the Wakandans were welcome to him when he was finished.

But if you want to talk about betrayal- how do you think Lemar Hoskins family would have felt seeing Sam treat the little terrorist bitch who murdered their son as some kind of fallen hero on live TV? The same little terrorist bitch who had burned innocent people to death and said she would do it again: the same little terrorist bitch who got her serum off a *Nazi*.

Whilst we're at it this is the most antisemetic piece of trash I have ever had the misfortune to read.

And lastly, while this is a fictional show, real world imitates art and vice versa. Sam not feeling he could follow in Steve’s footsteps, the literal blue eyed, blond poster boy of America, was saturated with racist ideologies.

That show had the fucking audacity to say that Steve became Captain America because he adhered to some kind of Aryan stereotype.

I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they did not watch The First Avenger but no- actually I am not going to do that because the showrunners probably did watch it and chose to ignore it anyway.

They still had the FUCKING audacity to say that the Jewish Doctor who chose Steve for the serum chose him because he looked Aryan? Yes, Dr Esrkine was Jewish.

At a time when Jews in Europe were literally being murdered by the Nazis because they were not considered to fit the Aryan model of racial perfection closely enough

As opposed to the actual truth: Dr Erskine chose a disabled puny son of Irish immigrants for the serum, who was the total opposite of the perfect race stereotype.

If you want to pretend that racist connotations didn’t exist in either the show or the movie, go play dumbass somewhere else.

Racist connotations exist in ths show: its fucking racist against Jews just for a start. Not only did they try to retcon the heavily Jewish coded Bucky to be a fucking Nazi they then tried to say Dr Erskine chose Steve for being a good little Aryan.

Its also utterly and disgustingly bigoted against every other minority group in existence.

...and then to top it all in the movie this continues with Sam saying Bucky chose to get the serum in the same way Steve did. As opposed again to the real truth: he had it put into him against his will when he was being experimented on by Nazis in a Prisoner of War camp. (Just like actual Jews and actual Eastern Europeans were experimented on by actual Nazis in actual real-life prison camps)

I am going to put this in big bold letters.

Sam being subject to racism does not give him a free pass on victim-blaming or being a bigot to disabled people, people with PTSD, Jews, women or anybody else.

Nor does Malcolm Spellman or Kori Skogland or whoever wrote that shit get a free pass on the trash they produced on that basis.

After watching the only scene in BNW that mattered to me, I wanna emphasize how important it is that bucky says one of the most emotionally mature things that a character has said in the MCU in a long while.

He asks sam “Why?”

He doesn’t correct Sam. Tell him he’s wrong. He doesn’t make the moment about himself.

It shows that Bucky fucking grew after TFATWS. a show where he is so self-obsessed (because of his trauma which isn’t inherently his fault) that he rarely considers Sam’s emotions.

Bucky Barnes has one of the best arcs in the MCU, and I think him even saying “I love you” is another sign that he is frankly pretty damn emotionally intelligent and either the writers or Sebastian Stan decided that it was important to include.

[milkteamedley]

So now we have a pretty concrete answer for just what is behind the constant clashes of ideals that Kaveh and Alhaitham have. Kaveh wants to protect people and prevent them from suffering.

Meanwhile, Alhaitham may not agree with a philosophy, but he firmly believes that 'correctness' or how it affects people has very little to do with its merit.

The thing here is, however, we all know his limit is how something will affect him, as he helped overthrow the Grand Sage and save Nahida, at least initially (because there are arguments to be made he became more invested as it went on) because he saw that it would make more work for him and make his life harder if the sages succeeded in their plans. In other words, he doesn't really care what other people do as long as he can live his own life.

At the end of the third event, when he's declaring Kaveh the winner, he displays that he might not agree with how Kaveh carries out his own ideals, but he accepts them.

And one almost throwaway line I saved from the first day (because I love seeing Alhaitham and Nilou on screen together, so sue me) helps us see something a little simpler

He may think that no philosophy is inherently wrong, but he thinks that people could live better if they were more decisive. In other words, he thinks that if people just said what they meant rather than hemming and hawing and deferring to others, it would make things better.

TL;DR: Alhaitham doesn't agree with Kaveh's way of life as far as how he presents himself and how he deals with others, but he cares a lot less about the differences in opinion than Kaveh does. Kaveh is hot-headed and if he just calmed down for two seconds he'd realize Alhaitham is trying to support him in his own way because if Alhaitham truly hated him or saw him as an inconvenience, he wouldn't have even accepted him into his life in the first place.

[rubyinasnuggie]

Random Headcanons No One Asked For:

-Both Ruby and Weiss are left handed

--Yang was 100% prepared to tease them about it when Blake very pointedly uses her left hand to write something

--Blake is ambidextrous

--which makes Yang the only right-handed one on the team

--until the fall of beacon oops

-Ren is fully color blind

--once baby Nora figured that out, she made it her mission to explain to him what colors are based on other sensations (sue me I love this trope)

--she describes pink as the quiet comfort they share in each other's presence

--Ren finally sees color for the first time when his semblance upgrades, and he can finally see the pink petals with Nora

-Blake likes to climb on things and find random nooks and crannies to read

--it turns into a game of reverse hide-and-seek when someone needs her: depending on how urgent it is the entire squad will drop everything and look for her

-team STRQ won the Vytal tournament their first year, specifically Summer was the champion

--Yang was more upset about the disqualification than she'd ever admit, because she secretly imagined Summer was out there somewhere watching the tournament, proud of her babies

-Tai pulled himself out of his depression by gardening: having a routine helped him, so he encouraged baby Ruby and Yang to get similar gentle hobbies

-Ruby raises chickens at home

--she very lovingly feeds them corn and calls them her ladies

--Yang affectionately calls them creatures and cluckers and other such rude things to get a rise out of Ruby

-Ruby deeply wants a cow

--this is her one and only retirement dream

--although honestly she can never imagine herself living past her 20s

-Yang struggled with picking a hobby, she gets bored easily and hates the expected

--its only post-Beacon that she understands the benefits of a routine

--thats why she ends up with a ton of chores, just some structure to help her through the day

-Ruby will drink any type of milk, but Strawberry milk is her favorite

-Sun is allergic to bananas but he doesn't know

--he thinks bananas are supposed to be spicy

-Weiss loves sour apple

-Pyrrha loves chocolate almonds

-Yang thinks fish are creepy, she just generally doesn't love the ocean

--she thinks Neptune is a little clown though

-Oscar gets dressed by putting on his left sock, left boot, then his right sock and right boot

--RNJR made it their mission to interrupt him during this just to see him walk around with one boot on

-Ruby likes to bake, it's one of the few solid memories she has of her mom

--one night Weiss was feeling homesick and Ruby taught her how to make mug cakes

--"its probably not that good compared to your cake butler, but it's pretty simple, and I like them!"

--Weiss secretly makes them at least once a week, even back home in Atlas

-Weiss has taken flight lessons, at one point Ironwood really pushed for her to become a pilot in the military

-Blake has a field journal of the different types of Grimm she's encountered

--team RWBY & JNPR have spent several nights sitting in a circle talking and adding to the journal

--while traveling across Anima, Ruby sketched and took notes on all the Grimm she saw, just in case she ever found Blake again

-Weiss collects rocks

--no, not crystals. actual rocks

--shes rarely spent time in the real outside, but whenever she has, she picks up little rocks and puts them in her pocket before anyone can see

-Jaune never actually stopped writing left and right on the bottom of his shoes actually

-Weiss had never been allowed to paint her nails as a kid, she'd always get weekly French manicures instead

--by the second semester at Beacon, Ruby, Weiss, Nora, and Ren would have weekly manicure nights where they'd paint each other's nails

--there were several times they'd rope the rest of the teams into it, especially during the Vytal tournament where they'd write team names on their nails

--during the singles round they'd write Yang on one hand and Pyrha on the other

--"we couldn't make it fit without cutting one of the R's!"

-Pyrrha and Weiss became each other's default plus one's for fancy events, to the point people began to speculate that the two were dating

--Jaune was somehow jealous of them both and it was very confusing to him since he had poor self awareness

-Yang cuts Ruby's hair, but after she lost her arm she lost the fine motor skills to do a good job, so Blake started to do it

-Blake is always there to help Yang with her phantom pains and residual limb pain

--she helps massage Yang's arm while leaning close and purring

--Yang cried the first time Blake did this because she's not used to being taken care of

-Nora never gets sick and is the designated nurse when a bug goes around the teams

--the electricity incident was the first time Nora has ever been bed-ridden

-Weiss took ballet as a child

-Jaune is actually pretty good at the guitar

-Pyrrha is not musically inclined at all its a miracle she managed to do the iconic JNPR shine dance

--jk but actually she's a decent dancer when she has the steps choreographed for her but she has no natural rhythm

-in the last few months before Pyrrha's death, she and Jaune would waltz on top of the roof together

--there were several almost kisses

--maybe a few successful kisses who knows

-there are occasions (obv extremely rare) when Ren actually takes the bulk of the energy from Nora

--this leads to thrilling game nights where Ren makes multiple 40pt remnant-equiv-of-scrabble plays while Nora naps

-Oscar is the only person who can beat Ren in scrabble, although it's very closely matched

-Oscar is amazing at chess and will play it against himself like a little square

-Yang and Ruby are experts at the tabletop war game they play in the library

--9 times out of 10, the winner is one of them

-Oscar is the only one who also knew about Compost King, which was very exciting for Jaune

--Compost King is a common game night activity while they were in Haven because its so hard to say no to Oscar

-Yang is a straight-A student and has always been

-Blake never had any formal education and she finds a lot of the classes incredibly dull or ineffective at teaching the material

--she's always the one convincing Yang to skip a class and lie in the sun-warmed grass with her

--she still gets Bs easily

-Oscar is a very fast reader and will devour any book he's given

--his aunt would frequently bring home books from town just to keep him entertained

-Ruby has suffered from migraines and nightmares her entire life, post-Beacon they only got worse

-Weiss shops at local dust stores whenever she can, even though she could get shipments for free

--however she does have Ron Swanson's "I know more than you" energy when she's shopping

-Blake and Ren will sometimes take naps together

--not cuddling, just occupying the same general space

--wake them up at your own risk

-if Ruby isn't engaged with something, she can start to scatter and dissolve into rose petals

--its a very slow process and someone has always snapped her out of it before she's fully vanished, but Yang is worried about what would happen if no one caught her in time

-Ren is afraid of horses

-Blake hates being cold

-Yang naturally radiates heat cause semblance duh

-Weiss glued the tiniest gravity crystals to the underside of Ruby's bed to ensure it never falls

-JNPR likes to push their beds all together so they can sleep in one big pile

-Nora can only sleep if she's holding someone's hand

Hope u guys enjoyed! These are in no particular order, sorry that I kinda jumped around a lot 😅

Feel free to reblog and add your own ideas and headcanons! ❤

[danteinthedevildom]

Like, ok, hear me out. Here’s how I think the Kids event should have gone down, based on the cards and the background:

- Solomon’s working on a new spell. He’s managed to create it using a special type of mutated apple that has very unique properties. He’s aware that it works in a very straightforward way - for each bite taken, the person multiplies - but that it’s only been tested when a physical bite is taken from the apple. He’s curious to see what’d happen if he distilled the apple’s juices, and used it like that.

- He claims to have finished the first batch, and asks if MC could take some with them, maybe experiment on something - just something small, like a frog, maybe - so he can get a read on what it’ll do before he uses it. (Apparently, he’s been banned from doing any new spells unless he tests every ingredient individually, first.) 

- MC returns to the House of Lamentation, and forgets about the bottle of distilled magic apple in their pocket. The next day, the brothers and MC sit down for a meal, made by Satan. When the brothers take their first bites, they claim that it tastes different, but in a good way. Satan happily confirms that it is different; as he was doing laundry the day before, he found a small vial in MC’s pocket. He’d done a small test to see what it was - just in case it was anything dangerous - but had been pleasantly surprised to find it was just apple juice. He guiltily admits that he took it without permission to use in the dinner since the recipe called for a more human-toxic ingredient, and he figured that if MC had it on hand, it was probably safe for human consumption. 

- The brothers happily continue eating, but Satan quickly notices MC’s "strange expression”. Before they can explain anything, however, the brothers suddenly claim to feel odd. Satan’s initially offended, until he admits that he’s feeling a little odd, too. Deciding that the food was probably not a success, they all part ways to turn in for the night, with some of them grumbling about food poisoning. Satan apologises to MC, but says that whatever seems to have bothered them will have to wait till tomorrow, after they’ve all had a rest. 

- MC informs Solomon of the outcome. He seems confused, but admits that this sort of thing does happen in magic, sometimes; what you expect to happen simply doesn’t. Maybe the magic doesn’t work in juice-form, or maybe putting it with other food negated it, or affected it somehow - he can’t say for sure. He thanks MC anyway, and bids them goodnight.

- The next morning, MC is woken by an ear-piercing scream. They stumble out of bed and rush into the hallway, fully expecting someone to be out there (maybe prepared to explain, or to defend them from whatever made the sound) - only, it’s dead silent. They do a quick look around each of the common areas - the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, even some of the bathrooms - but the brothers aren’t there. The scream sounds again, only, now that they’re awake, they realise it sounds sort of... familiar? [Choices would appear for which brother MC thinks made the scream, and they’d shout out that name]. Unsure what else to do, MC runs towards the direction the scream came from. 

- They end up outside Lucifer’s office, the door part-open. Voices come from inside, but they all sound a little odd. Eventually, one of them says MC’s name; another quickly hushes the voice, and a third berates it; then the scream sounds again, this time wailed, and MC suddenly realises it’s a very warbled version of their name. 

- They burst in past the door, and freeze in shock. Seven children are huddled in the room, one of which is still in tears on the floor. All seven of them look up as soon as the door slams open, and the crying child gleefully squeals MC’s name, rushing up to throw himself at their waist. Another of the children looks somewhere between furious and embarrassed, while a third sleepily says they’ve been caught. 

- [The sprites would appear on screen, now; each of the children in turn, with MC slowly recognising each of them.] Lucifer is the furious/embarrassed child, standing up on his desk chair to give himself enough height to tower over the others; Belphie is the sleepy child, curled up on one of the sofas; Mammon’s the one currently clinging to their waist; Asmo’s staring into a mirror, his eyes wide, almost entranced; Beel’s sitting on the sofa, next to Belphie, munching on a bag of chips; Satan’s sitting down by the bookshelf, glaring down at a huge tome he’d somehow lugged on his lap; and Levi - is flinging himself at MC’s other side, demanding Mammon let go. 

- Bewildered, MC does the only thing they can think to do; call Solomon and Diavolo. [So begins the next scene with them having already arrived]. Diavolo is initially ecstatic to see the brothers so small, and delights in how easily riled up a young Lucifer is (especially when he’s called cute), while Solomon flits between amusement and confusion. He’s not entirely sure what’s happened to them, or why. Diavolo questions if they’ve come into contact with anything strange, to which Solomon responds in the negative - until, suddenly, he remembers the distilled juice. He asks MC to confirm if the brothers had ingested it, to which MC says they did, but hadn’t suffered any immediate effects. 

- Diavolo asks what the juice was, to which Solomon explains. He hums in thought and reveals that the apple’s magic has a side effect; the more clones made from a single person, the younger their mental age becomes. He and Solomon theorise that distilling the juice, or perhaps adding it in with the other magical properties of their food, or even just the act of cooking it, might have changed the magic. Instead of mentally altering their age through copies, it physically de-aged them. 

- MC asks if that’s even possible, and Solomon admits it sounds ridiculous, but stranger has happened. Unfortunately, since the magic seems to have altered, they have no idea how to reverse it. Diavolo notes that the original method was to satisfy the copies until they all disappeared and re-joined, but that it might not work that way anymore. At a loss, Diavolo asks if MC could look after the brothers while he and Solomon - with the help of the angels - work on a cure. [MC is allowed to accept - which leads to cheers from Mammon and Levi - or have a “What?! Why me?!” response - which leads to Diavolo laughing and saying he’s not sure he could remove the second and third eldest from their hip if he tried.]

- The event then follows MC trying to keep all the brothers happy and entertained. 

Which I could imagine going down a little something like this:

- It starts with Mammon and Levi, who refuse to leave MC at all. They cling to their hip and argue at each other from either side, with lots of angry demands that the other leave, refusals to leave, and claims that MC likes one over the other more. It ends up with them both almost in tears, and MC has to find a way to calm them down. 

- It doesn’t succeed. No matter who MC tries to soothe, something will kick them off again (Levi getting jealous, if Mammon’s chosen, or Levi gloating, if he’s chosen). A little helplessly, they watch as the boys eventually land on a “MC loves me more” argument, which continues until Levi declares a competition: they each have to find something to give to MC, and whoever’s gift MC likes more is the winner. They’re gone before MC can even try to stop them. 

- Next, MC tries to seek out the other boys. They stumble across Asmo, still in the livingroom, looking into the mirror. No matter what they do, he keeps staring, unresponsive. It takes them a bit to realise that he’s accidentally hypnotised himself. As soon as they take the mirror away, however, he gets very upset, and starts to throw a tantrum. MC gets given a few options of things that’ll make Asmo happier than the mirror; letting him paint their nails, letting him do their makeup, or letting him do their hair. 

- Whichever option MC chooses, Asmo immediately perks up. He scurries off to grab everything he needs, and comes back a few minutes later, struggling with a very, very full bag. MC gets a sudden feeling of dread, but settles down as Asmo directs them, and lets him get to work. Once he’s done, he happily exclaims that they’re “maybe even a little more beautiful than [him]!”. 

- Since he seems to have forgotten about the mirror, MC is happy to let him go off and play. Just as they’re about to let him rush off, however, the door opens, and in comes Simeon - who takes one look at them and struggles to hold his laughter. Asmo asks him if he thinks he did a good job, to which Simeon (still trying not to giggle) says that MC looks lovely. Asmo happily wanders off, and Simeon teasts them for their new style. 

- Simeon explains that he’s there to give a helping hand. He was helping with the cure, but Barbatos suddenly took him to one side and informed him that they might need a little help - so he’s brought about a dozen things to try and keep the brothers entertained and out of trouble. [MC can either act as if Simeon is their saviour or pout that they wanted to look after the brothers on their own, but either way, he’ll respond teasingly.] He informs them that he’ll keep an eye on Asmo, and try to set up a few things the others might enjoy. 

- MC wanders off again to try and find one of the brothers, eventually being drawn to the library. Inside, they hear someone trying to read, stumbling over each word, until eventually they hear a book being slammed shut. Just as they enter the room, the book is thrown at them, and they just barely duck in time. 

- Satan’s too frustrated to notice them. He stomps in place, tears in his eyes and red-faced, surrounded by books, yelling angrily that they’re stupid, and awful, and he hates them. He startles when MC says his name, and then immediately hiccups before bursting into tears. MC rushes to his side, asking what’s wrong, and he - between wails - explains that he can’t read his books anymore. The words are too big, and he’s forgotten what they mean. Plus, he can’t reach a lot of them - he’s too small, and the ladder’s too difficult for him to push around - so he’s stuck with whatever’s on the floor. 

- MC consoles him, and asks if he’d like to: listen to MC read to him - have MC find him an easier book. Whichever option MC chooses, he slowly stops crying and agrees. They scurry off to find a book that looks easier for children to understand, and have him sit down on the sofa with then. [Either MC finishes reading the book for him, or Satan finishes the book]. Either way, he seems a lot happier, and thanks MC for their help. MC asks if he’d like to go downstairs, but he says he’d just like to read a little more, and admits he’s really invested in the children’s series MC found. He more than happily picks up the next book, and begins reading to himself, completely ignoring MC’s presence. 

- Content that he’s safe to leave reading, MC exits out into the hallway, starting to turn off towards more of the bedrooms. However a sudden crash, and a yelp from Simeon, draws their attention away. They rush downstairs to the kitchen - where they find Beel, throwing a tantrum, the fridge’s door thrown off its hinges, and a wide-eyed Simeon holding a sleeping Belphie. 

- Simeon stammers out that he’s not too sure what’s wrong. Beel was already upset - and the fridge’s door gone - when he found them, and wouldn’t answer him when he asked. He only seemed to get more and more upset, until finally, he just started storming around, trying to destroy the table and chairs. Except that, somehow, seemed to make him even worse. 

- MC crouches down, and tries to ask Beel what’s wrong. Like Simeon said, he’s completely silent; face scrunched up in anger and flushed red, barely even making a sound when he finally looks at them. MC can either ask if he’s hungry, to which he’ll nod, or ask him what’s wrong, to which his belly will growl and he’ll clutch at it pitifully. Either way, he’ll point at the fridge. Inside, MC will see a few things have been munched on, but a lot of them have been spat almost immediately back out. There’s only a few things that were successfully eaten, but it’s barely anything. 

- Simeon notes how strange it is for Beel to not eat, especially when he’s hungry enough to rage. He comments, however, that children can be picky eaters, and suddenly realises that Beel’s probably struggling to find something he actually wants to eat. When he asks Beel if he’s got it right, Beel nods, and Simeon says he’ll try to whip him up something quickly. 

- They get him set at the table, and Simeon plates up some food. Beel takes a single bite... and immediately spits it out. Simeon again expresses surprise; what he made was one of Beel’s favourites. He tries again, and again, but each time Beel spits it out, until he’s starting to look even angrier (and just a little miserable). At a loss, Simeon asks MC if they have any ideas. [MC can suggest either Human World food, or suggest that they look at what Beel ate in the fridge - revealling it to be some of the human-safe foods stored for MC’s consumption]. Either way, Simeon quickly whips up a Human World dish, and places it in front of Beel - who happily eats the whole lot. 

- Relieved that the whole fiasco is over, Simeon takes Beel and Belphie into the livingroom, where Asmo is drawing - just in time for Levi and Mammon to charge into the kitchen, both red-faced and panting, claiming out of breath that they’ve each found the “best present ever” for MC. 

- The two demand that MC pick one present to see first [though MC can also choose for them to be revealed at the same time; this option avoids dialogue where one of the brothers gloats over the other], though regardless will both show off what they got. Levi picked a super-rare figurine, one he absolutely 100% adores, and goes off on a ramble about how good the show is (though mostly focuses on how cool it looks, rather than all the actual facts about the show). Mammon picked a very sparkly gem, one that he thinks is worth a lot and also just looks super pretty. They each say how they just know MC will pick their present, and how much worse the other’s present is, and eventually end up squabbling.

- MC can decide to either pick up both presents or to reject both presents. In either case, it confuses the boys (and makes them upset, if they were both rejected), and they ask why MC didn’t just pick one. MC claims that they care about both boys just as much as the other, and that they’re both special to them, so they can’t pick. In fact, picking would actually make them very sad. [The boys ask if MC would really be sad if they had to choose; they can either simply nod, or pretend to start crying. The second option has the boys panic, and quickly try to backpeddle and comfort MC]

- In either case, the boys get quiet after a moment and very reluctantly agree to a truce. They guess MC can like them both as much as the other. MC thinks that’s the end of it... until they start arguing over which of the two of them loves MC more. Thankfully, Simeon comes to the rescue; he informs them that he’s finally managed to put a DVD on, which immediately gets Levi’s attention, and he rushes into the livingroom with Mammon hot on his heels. 

- Simeon laughs once they’ve gone, and says MC looks a little haggard; they can either say they feel exhausted, or say they’re having a lot of fun. Either way, Simeon will say he’s enjoying it a lot; he loves babysitting, and he has plenty of videos and pics to remember it all by. After a moment, however, he’ll admit that he came to ask MC something, not just to chat; have they seen Lucifer? He’s not seen hide nor hair of the first-born since arriving. MC says they haven’t seen him since Diavolo left.

- Between them, they agree that Simeon will stay looking after the younger brothers while MC goes off after Lucifer; Simeon’s pretty sure he’d respond better to seeing MC than him. So begins another search around the House, through each room, slowly getting more frantic as each one comes up empty. Even Satan’s finally moved himself downstairs to the livingroom, but still no Lucifer. 

- MC can choose whether they should report back to Simeon or keep looking, but neither one truly matters; as soon as the decision is made, they hear a little voice floating down from the attic. They make their way up the stairs, the voice getting clearer and clearer until they can finally make out the words. 

- It’s Lucifer, of course. He’s up in the attic, quietly berating - himself? When MC walks inside, they find him sitting stock-still, back straight, on the bed, his fingers curled into fists on his knees. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights when he notices them, but he quickly recovers, and greets them normally. MC asks if he’s okay, and he says he’s fine. It’s nice to have some peace and quiet, for once. He thanks MC for looking after his brothers, and says they can leave him to enjoy the break. MC notices, however, that he seems strained, and that he’s trembling just a little. 

- MC can either wait him out or ask him what’s wrong, but either way, Lucifer eventually crumples. He hates it. He hates being small, and feeling weak; he hates that it’s harder to control his emotions, and that his voice sounds so high; he hates that he had to awkwardly scramble on the bed, and that he can’t hold a pen properly, let alone write neatly anymore. He starts to tear up, and scrubs angrily at his face when he realises he’s doing it, demanding himself to stop crying. As his frustration mounts, however, he just tears up more, which makes it worse. 

- MC can either hug him right away, or crouch down to comfort him with words; either way, he ends up hugging them and crying against their shoulder, letting them soothe him until he finally stops. They have the choice to reassure him (reminding him that it’s only for a while, and that it’s okay to not be able to do the things he normally can), or to call him cute (which makes him indignant and fluster up), but either way, he thanks them for making him feel better. He asks them not to tell his brothers about his little breakdown, and admits it’s... maybe not the worst thing in the world, even if it hurts his pride. (And maybe sometimes it’s a little nice to be cuddled when he’s upset). 

- They return downstairs together, where Simeon greets them. The movie’s almost over, but they already have another one lined up. Lucifer just nods quietly and goes to join his brothers on the sofa. 

- Simeon informs MC that he got a text from Solomon. He thinks the magic should be out of their systems by the morning, so they shouldn’t need to worry once the brothers are put to bed. MC can either cheer with relief or express a little sadness that it’s ending, but either way, Simeon will laugh, and say he’ll start on dinner. It looks like they need a lie-down, anyway. MC sits down in one of the chairs, and almost immediately drifts off. 

- When they wake up, it’s to Simeon shaking them gently. Mammon and Levi are asleep on their lap, curled up against them - apparently having climbed up there while they were asleep - and the other brothers are likewise conked out across the sofa. He apologises for waking them; they missed dinner since he thought they needed the sleep more than the food, and the brothers are already fed. He made sure to pack up some leftovers for them to warm up later. Right now, however, the brothers need to be put to bed, but there’s a few too many of them for him to take on his own - and the chair probably isn’t a good place to sleep for the night, either.

- Between them, Simeon and MC manage to get each of the brothers back in their normal beds, luckily without waking any of them up. MC can comment that they’re much better when they’re asleep, or can comment on how cute they look (especially swaddled up in beds that are way too big for them). Simeon issues a short comment, but is cut off by a yawn; he flushes in embarrassment, and admits that it maybe took more out of him than he thought it would, even though it was fun. 

- He bids them goodnight, and - still yawning - makes his way back to Purgatory Hall. MC retreats to their room, slips into their bed, and falls asleep almost as soon as their head hits the pillow.

- The next morning, MC wakes up to a very quiet House. They get dressed and head downstairs, but none of the brothers seem to be awake yet. They make themself breakfast, eat in the dining room, and even go back to wash their plate when they’re done, but still, there’s no sign of the brothers. A little worried, they send off a message in the group chat - but even after waiting a few minutes, there’s no response.

- MC gets a choice of which brother to check up on first, but the option doesn’t matter. Before they can actually leave the room, each of the brothers files in one at a time, looking sheepish and embarrassed - except for Belphie, who slept through the whole thing. 

- It’s silent for a while, until Lucifer eventually clears his throat and says that, on behalf of the brothers, he’s thankful to MC for looking after them while they were incapable (moreso than usual, anyway) of doing so themselves. Mammon immediately cuts in that Lucifer was a kid, too, so why’s he acting like he wasn’t affected? Which starts a much more normal back-and-forth that relieves MC. 

- As shenanigans begin - including each brother thanking (and apologising to) MC for what they did (and teasing each other for it) - Satan takes MC off to the side and apologises for taking their things without permission. If he hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been turned into children, and MC wouldn’t have had to look after them. MC can either agree with him (in annoyance), tell him that he’s right but that the ordeal was a punishment enough, or say that it was alright since they had fun, anyway. Either way, he’ll thank them again, and admit it’s nice to be back to normal so he can read his books. 

- Eventually, Lucifer takes control, stating that none of them will ever speak of the incident again. The brothers all agree (though some reluctantly). Just as he’s about to dismiss them, Lucifer’s D.D.D. chimes. Then, each of the brothers’ D.D.D.s chime in turn. They take them out to look at. Of course, each has been sent a picture (or two) from Diavolo of them from the day before, including an ever-ellusive image of Lucifer actually asleep (on the sofa, curled up against Simeon’s side) and Asmo’s new makeup look (which is as bad as you’d expect, despite the proud, beaming smile in the photo). 

- Chaos ensues, until the brothers start demanding where Diavolo had gotten the pictures from. They all turn on MC, who can either gulp (and run) or blame Simeon. In either case, the event ends with Lucifer on the phone angrily demanding Simeon delete the pictures, only for them to be sent even more - much to their joint embarrassment. 

[shirophantomvox]

Analyzing Illumi Zoldyck's Character

Chrollo Analysis | Hisoka Analysis | Killua Analysis

What’s up y’all! Sorry for being away for the last few days. I needed a break from social media because I am so tired of seeing toxic, self-righteous people on my TL. Anyway, quite a lot of you liked my posts about analyzing HxH characters and somehow comparing them to VLD characters. Today, I’ll be talking about Illumi Zoldyck and I’ll try to compare him to a Voltron character. I know many people have already analyzed this character before, but it wouldn’t hurt to add to the discussion some years later. If you want me to write about anything else, send me an ask! The formatting of this post may be different than the one I wrote about Hisoka Morrow (click his name to view that post).

HERE WE GO!

In the first season, all of the characters are contestants for the Hunter’s Exam. I say contestants because this is a contest to see who can win without any injuries and can keep up with each host. I forget what number stage they were at, but I do know they were at the stage where each opponent has to fight each other. They are declared the winner if their opponent forfeits or gives up mid-match. (Off-topic, but) I am going, to be honest; Gon was my favorite character but his flaws began to show, annoyed me, and later led to his horrific downfall (based from YouTube clips). He didn’t know when to stop and kept pushing himself over the limit. Anyway, Killua and Gittarackur are set to fight. This is when things take a turn for the worse.

Gittarackur is a form of a disguise for Illumi to mask his identity. His face is long; nearly (and reminds me of) in the shape of a Tiki. His face also reminds me of the Witch Doctor mask from Scooby-Doo and Hell-raiser. He has several pins stuck in his face to maintain the facial features of Gittarackur. On the flip side, if he removes the pins, his biological form is revealed. Once he does this, Killua is nearly paralyzed; he cannot believe his eyes and I’m sure the trauma he endured at home hit him like a sack of rocks. Illumi then tells Killua that he wants him to return home, that he cannot maintain a friendship with Gon, stated that he was going to kill Gon, but realizes that if he does so he will be disqualified and will not obtain his Hunter’s license.

I’m assuming the cops aren’t a thing in this reality and the only way for them to “destroy” under the law is by obtaining the license. What do you think? I rarely see police officers; all I see are the Mafia and every they suck compared to the Zoldyck's and the Phantom Troupe. Shit, it seems like they’re the police but have twisted motives.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a fictional character or not, first impressions matter and he bombed this one...even for a villain.

But you did this for what?

How can you hypnotize (by using Nen) your own brother into killing another opponent because he doesn’t want to become an emotionless zombie like you? At least, that’s my perception. Telling your brother to run every time he faces an opponent that he knows he cannot win against is the sickest shit I’ve ever seen. I know I’m jumping around but another thought popped into my head. As the seasons go on, Illumi expresses an odd way of loving his younger brother and to him, that means to make him suffer in the same way he had to. It seems like Illumi is jealous of Gon in a way. (I’ve seen clips on YouTube) Killua takes Alluka to the hospital to heal Gon. Illumi has stated several times to Hisoka that Killua was hiding rules from him and that he still wanted to get rid of Alluka. Although it is clearly stated why he wanted Alluka gone, I still think that Illumi was jealous of Gon simply because his younger brother preferred to be with a friend instead of him. This is why he emphasizes “You cannot have friends. Either they will betray you or you’ll betray them.”

As I read and watched as the seasons went on, I noticed something about Illumi and his family. We all know that the children were raised by their parents. Specifically, their dad is a trained assassin. I can’t remember but I think Zeno is their grandfather who is also an assassin.

I view him as a character that has suffered from abuse and trauma in order to mold him into an assassin. He is emotionless, doesn’t really care for others, has an odd relationship with Killua that he doesn’t have for his other siblings, and is a hypocrite. Killua can’t be friends with Gon but every time the show cuts to him, he’s with Hisoka? Something is fishy there. Are they more than friends? OK, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Here's the physical analysis below.

Face

When masquerading as Gittarackur, his face has several pins in them and his hair is in a rock star form of Mohawk that is purple. I’ll give him 10/10 for uniqueness, yet it still reminded me of Hell Raiser.

I’ve noticed that when he is in public he is in costume. Why doesn’t he reveal himself in public? I’ve researched this and no one could answer this question. My guess is that he is a verified hunter and assassin. How can you carry out your missions if everyone knows what you look like? Without the pins in his face, it reverts back to his natural state. To me, his large eyes and long, shiny black hair are his distinguished features. Although he may be my least favorite character, he does have pretty eyes. Haven’t you all heard of “I got lost in his/her eyes”?

Yeah, that can be said about him. Most definitely. He rarely smiles and when he does, something BAD is going to happen. I saw him laugh crazily once Alluka began the healing process, the Nen (I guess) rose from the hospital and got on him. This scene reminds me of how Haggar reacted once the Komar’s quintessence bounced from Voltron and bounced onto her. Wow, these supernatural abilities make y’all feel that good?

Clothes

Gittarackur and Illumi wear the same clothes, which should be a clear giveaway that they are the same. Illumi wears a neural green short jacket that has yellow pins in them, a light green shirt underneath, and green pants. His shoes remind me of loafers with a heel on them, something my grandmother would wear.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say again, these bad-ass men in this show are very stylish and seem to be in shape more than I am. Although Illumi irks me, his fashion is great and this is why people prefer him to be their favorite character. Shows should always produce characters that are memorable; that is the key to a long-lasting fan base.

In conclusion, this anime (for the most part) has well-rounded characters that make the plot interesting and wanting more.

Illumi and Lotor are somewhat similar. They both grew up in abusive households and lost some sense of sensitivity, common sense, and were often “misguided” by their own selfishness. Illumi wants a better life for Killua by constantly brainwashing him into thinking that he cannot have friends and his can only find happiness through killing. Zarkon raises Lotor to be a prince that shouldn't work with planets and should destroy them. This explains why he used deceased Alteans from the colony, drained their quintessence, and didn't give them a proper burial. Lotor IS just like his father but Killua IS NOT like Illumi. Ironic, huh? As we all know by now, Lotor is the son of Honerva (Haggar) and Zarkon. After the rift accident, he became an emotionless, ruthless monster that colonized and destroyed planets just to gain their quintessence. He taught this to his son and once he was old enough to think for himself, he refused to act in such a way. Although he was exiled and said he wasn’t like Zarkon, he was; but worse. Lotor studied and gained knowledge about Altea and its people while using Allura to gain the secrets of Oriande. I say he used her because he knew from the moment he met her that he was harvesting Altean quintessence. While fighting the white lion, he yelled “Victory or Death” which is a common catchphrase the Galra use when they are in battle. In fact, the Galra have been victims of trauma from Zarkon. Zarkon’s ruthless ways of ruling had no other motive except for obtaining quintessence so he could live forever. Silva’s way of raising his children was done to mold them into assassins. Since he was taught this way he did the same thing to his children. Zarkon, Silva, and Zeno think that their ways of parenting are necessary for survive in life when it doesn’t have to be that way. Illumi and Lotor have experienced this horrific parenting and deal with it in different ways. Illumi is oddly obsessive of his younger brother and Lotor is a fucking liar.

This analysis was fun! Next, I’ll be analyzing Killua and Keith Kogane.

If you’d like to see more posts like this, send me an ASK!

[rubsjuice]

I'm gonna talk about my two spamton blorbos now

Those are the two Spamtons I roleplay and i wanna infodump about them because i need to and this is my blog and i can do whatever i want

They both have very similar backstories but very different personalities (or rather, the personality traits that are emphasized in each of them are different). Assume the same framework for both, with small butterfly-effect type differences

tacking a read more in it because lol lmao also content warning for drug use

Greedton is 43, lives in 2001, is a big shot turned malewife, is into joker fashion (flashy suits mostly, he looks like a yakuza character). He's called Greedton because he directly quoted the Onceler in roleplay before

He has three children with pink addison, whom he abandoned when he made it big and never called back or assisted; his letters and emails were always sorted into fanmail and given a template reply, and his calls were never put through to Greedton. He had no idea pink was trying to contact him for about one or two years, and he didn't care enough to go after him because he was taking a big sip of the greed and pride cocktail

When Gaster stopped calling him, his profits slowly started trickling down, and when he's not the winner of the Salesman of the Year 2001 award (which would make him the winner for 5 years in a row), he has a joker moment, gets beaten up, and then decides to take responsibility for his stuff and calls pink addison, asking to be back in his and their kids' lives. He agrees and then shortly after he moves in with them

He liquidates everything he has and basically just becomes a stay-at-home dad, occasionally taking from his funds to help make ends meet if things are dire (because he and pink agree all the money he got should be going to their kids for when they grow up). He's currently recovering from addiction, adjusting to being an addison that can't advertise, learning to be a good dad and struggling with his broken relationship with pink. As much as being a househusband isn't what he pictured himself doing like, ever, he's still pretty happy about it, and enjoys it greatly.

Greedton is very straightforward when talking, he's not afraid of saying what he thinks even though it might be rude. He has good intuition and is often dependable to his friends and loved ones in the same way your grandma is: he feeds you, he brings you medicine, he keeps you warm, he confronts you about things you need to be confronted about. This comes at the price of being extremely reserved and self-loathing, constantly in denial and pushing people away: he's fine, he doesn't need help, you don't really care about him because nobody really does, and nobody really would want to. He's a bottle of sparkling water that I am very happy to shake, day by day, and once it's got enough pressure in it, it's going to explode.

==

Skunkton is 62, is from present day, got the bottom half of his face burned off when he fell from big shot-dom and likes painting, especially murals; he has every disease. It's pretty self-evident why he's called Skunkton, methinks. While his rp version takes place pre-game, he's from a Snowgrave route timeline, but hasn't really invested on a ring yet.

His story is pretty much the same as Greedton's, but instead of calling pink, he simply kept on spiraling down, excruciatingly slowly. He spends all of his money trying to fix his own problems, but it's all for nothing. Getting more and more desperate, with bills he can't afford, employees he can't pay, and drug habits sucking him dry, he has one public meltdown right after the other, and in a particularly bad one, he takes LSD, has a bad trip, climbs on a burning building and sees Heaven through the crystal shard, which he had previously acquired but never had any use for. From this, he suffers severe burns on most of his body and part of his face, leaving his limbs' mannequin and the marionette-like structure of his face exposed.

While recovering from the burns, Queen dump-evicts him, and before they could kick him out of the mansion, he's already gone. He doesn't have anyone to turn to, since he burned bridges with everyone before he was a big shot, and by this time he's been such a high-maintenance friend that none of his rich friends lend him a hand. From there, he ends up living in the streets, and has been unhoused for 20 years. Quite the bowl of humble soup.

Due to Gaster tampering with his code, and then not updating it due to disappearing off the face of the earth, Skunkton is currently suffering from corruption, a degenerative disease that cyber world darkeners get when their code stops being compatible with the world's own coding, thus, they stop updating along patches. Essentially, this is one of the three reasons that cause his brackets (the other two are Gaster censoring his curse words, and a faulty voicebox inserting random related voiceclips in place of what he's actually saying), and is a source of frustration and struggle for him.

Right now, he's found a permanent home, and is slowly taking steps to healing from all the shit he's been through while homeless, as well as forming closer bonds with people he's met since. It feels normal, it feels safe. He barely thinks about Heaven now, even though he's been obsessed with it for decades, because truly the real Heaven is the ties he's made with his new loved ones.

Skunkton is energetic, bold and wild. A friend you'd take with you to party with. He doesn't have much in terms of morals, and he's not above doing very bad things to get what he, or people he cares about, needs. He appreciates friendship, though, and will often gift people or do small favors as roundabout ways of saying he cares and treasures them.

[blu-joons]

DATING NCT A⇴Z HEADCANON ⇴ Jung Yoonoh

A ⇴ AFFECTION 

Yoonoh absolutely loves affection and being close to you. He’s a huge fan of hugs and being able to hold you nice and tight to him. He has a lot of love to give and physical touch is his ideal way of showing it to you.

B ⇴ BEFORE DATING 

The two of you met when Yoonoh was filming Inkigayo. You were a member of staff, and so every Sunday the two of you would spend time together and get to know one another. You always looked forwards to your nights with Yoonoh, as he did with you, it was always the highlight of his week.

C ⇴ CONFESSION 

As he planned to say goodbye to Inkigayo, Yoonoh just couldn’t say goodbye to you. On his last night of hosting, he finally plucked up the courage to approach you and tell you how he felt. He couldn’t bare to say goodbye and see someone new work alongside, not without him at least being able to call you his at last. There was no contract, no more rules, just a lot to look forward to as the two of you got together.

D ⇴ DATES 

Your dates with Yoonoh were usually doing something physical and adventurous. Yoonoh loves to show off to you how strong and muscular he is and prove to you that he’s the better of the two of you. He’s super competitive, and is definitely a sore loser, so if you ever beat him at anything, he will demand a rematch and try and convince you that your victory was only a fluke. You were happy to boost Yoonoh’s ego whenever he tried to impress you though as you knew how happy it made him feel.  

E ⇴ EXPERIENCE 

Deciding not to confess to you whilst you worked together was all a part of Yoonoh’s plan to impress you and keep you safe. He didn’t want to ruin your career by getting involved with each other whilst he was at Inkigayo. He’d never experienced love before but he’d watched enough dramas to know how to treat a girl. He made sure to take his time to get to know you so that he was sure the two of you would work well together as a couple. There was never a rush for Yoonoh, but as soon as the two of you got together, he wanted to do everything with you.

F ⇴ FIGHTING 

Yoonoh was incredibly sensitive, he never liked fighting with you at all, anytime either of you raised your voices it would always send a shiver down his spine. He would do everything that he could to stop a fight from breaking out between the two of you, he does not want to hurt his heart, but more importantly, he doesn’t want to hurt yours. The two of you will always talk through a disagreement at the end to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen again. Yoonoh knows he’s not perfect, and if you feel like there’s something for him to work on, then he will definitely listen and do it.

G ⇴ GETTING TO KNOW HIS FAMILY 

His family felt like they already knew you before meeting you for the first time, Yoonoh always kept them updated about his career, but kept them even more updated about you and the things you got up to together. It naturally felt like you’d always been a part of the family thanks to Yoonoh’s endless stories.

H ⇴ HOME 

Yoonoh liked to consider himself as one of the mature members, and with that, he wasn’t afraid to move out of the dorm and live a more domesticated life with you. Just the thought of picking up chores and living with you every day put a smile on his face, he was in no rush, but he couldn’t wait for the day to start living with you.

I ⇴ “I LOVE YOU” 

You were the first to say, ‘I love you,’ after Yoonoh surprised you at a shift one day with flowers. When you arrived home with the bouquet, you raced over to let him know how thankful you were for such a sweet gesture, unable to stop yourself from saying those three words. Yoonoh froze for a moment, whispering in your ear to repeat it.

J ⇴ JEALOUSY 

There was definitely a confidence about Yoonoh, but his sensitive side did often allow him to get a bit jealous. You can always tell when he’s getting a bit jealous as he’ll get even quieter than usual. Few other people can pick up on you that way that you do, but you can tell instantly when he’s not feeling himself. Strangers are usually the ones that set off his jealousy, he doesn’t trust a person at all until he gets to know them. He knows that you’re pretty, and he definitely doesn’t underestimate some people.

K ⇴ KIDS 

Having a family with you was another of the things that Yoonoh looked forward to. Finding a home together, he wanted it to be your forever home, he wished for the place where he could sit back and watch his children grow and allow your relationship to continue to blossom. The two of you would often talk about kids, in fact, it was one of the first things you talked about at Inkigayo before you even got together.

L ⇴ LAUGHTER 

Yoonoh’s sense of humour was very dry and sarcastic which would always make you smile. He wasn’t afraid to crack a dangerous joke or two around you as he knew they would always make him laugh. Whilst others struggled with his dryness, you loved how abrupt and outright he could be with his jokes and laughter. He’d work tirelessly to make sure that he was putting a smile on your face, he’d often think of jokes that could make you happy specifically to make sure that you continued to find him funny. He was competitive about your humour too, he always had to be the one that was funnier than you otherwise he wouldn’t he happy.

M ⇴ MISSING 

Tours were very hard for the both of you, neither of you were afraid to admit that you struggled being away from each other. It was when he rang you, that Yoonoh would often find himself breaking and letting go. He didn’t want any of the other boys to see him struggle, but all of that pent up emotion would be let go of as soon as he saw your face pop up on the screen. You would often end up with one of you falling asleep on the call as you would talk for so long with each other, constantly reassuring the other that the distance between you both wouldn’t last forever and soon you’d be back with each other again.

N ⇴ NICKNAMES 

Yoonoh loved to call you ‘flower.’ He loved adorable nicknames for you, he loved to make you feel special by trying to find unique nicknames rather than calling you ones that you always heard your friends calling their partners.

O ⇴ OBSESSION 

He was obsessed with your hands, Yoonoh loved to hold them, but he also loved to play with them. Whenever he got nervous or anxious, his hands would reach out instinctively for yours for comfort.

P ⇴ PDA 

Being affectionate in public wasn’t something that Yoonoh was huge on. He was always protective of you in public, he would definitely hold onto your hand, but that was usually about it. He’d never draw too much attention to the two of you, he much preferred to lay low and go unnoticed.

Q ⇴ QUESTIONS 

From the moment that he met you, Yoonoh was always asking you questions about yourself. He loved just being able to get to know you, it didn’t matter how long that the two of you were together, everyday he strived to learn something new about you, however big or small.

R ⇴ RANDOM FACTS 

For every game or challenge that you beat Yoonoh in, he’ll tally them up, and at the end of the week or the month, he’ll make sure that you make it up to him with kisses. For every one defeat he suffered, you’d be five kisses in debt. It was his way of reminding you how competitive he was and that he hated to lose, no matter how much you enjoyed beating him. One day he was sure that you’d learn that he always liked to be the winner.

S ⇴ SEX 

He was always very affectionate during any moments of intimacy. He tended to be the one to dominate as he liked to have control over things, but that never stopped him from making sure that his hands and lips especially paid close attention to you. He’d always listen to what you wanted, if you wanted to try something new, Yoonoh would be completely down for that, he loved experimenting and finding new ways that he could make you happy.

T ⇴ TEXTS 

You would be inundated with messages whenever Yoonoh was on tour. He’d text you with updates about his day, especially if he knew that he didn’t have the time to call you that night. He wanted to make you always feels like you were there.

U ⇴ UNIVERSE 

He always knew he was one of the mature members, but being with you taught Yoonoh a lot about how he saw his future as a boyfriend, and hopefully a father too. Being with you gave him a beautiful insight into what his future could be.

V ⇴ VACATION 

The moment Yoonoh ever got the chance to take you on holiday, he’d take you in a heartbeat. He’d always take you on holidays as a thank you for everything that you did for him, he wanted to make you feel as special as you made him feel everyday, and make sure that he gave you the time of your life.

W ⇴ WHINING 

If you dared tried to beat Yoonoh at anything he’d whine in frustration. But you’d never listened, you loved being able to beat him at anything.

X ⇴ XXXXX 

The most Yoonoh kissed you was when you paid up your debts. Sometimes you thought he lost on purpose just so he had an excuse to kiss you, but he’d always protest that he never wanted to kiss you. The shine in his eyes told you a completely different story though, even though you’d count, Yoonoh would always sneak in a couple more as he felt a few of his kisses just didn’t do justice to the affection that he wanted to give to you.

Y ⇴ YOU 

You were his future, Yoonoh never saw anything without you there too.

Z ⇴ ZZZ 

If you could get in between him and his blanket, you’d always curl into Yoonoh’s side at night. He’d usually end up pressing his blanket between you both to keep you both warm, making sure that his arms were tightly around your waist.

---

Masterlist

[itsclydebitches]

I'm sorry, I might have been unclear. ^^;; I mean that when Bakugo is told for ten years he deserves to be arrogant and ambitious, it'd be hard for him to not be. But he picked All Might as his hero, whose compassion and saving people define him. In many ways I see a neglected kid lashing out from frustration before UA. He wasn't going to change until he was among equals in class, and adults who cared enough to tell/show him more than a simple 'you're the best bc you're strong'.

OH yes yes, sorry for the miscommunication! Yeah, we've definitely seen moments in his past where Bakugo's arrogance was stoked and I think those details are the cornerstone of how sympathetically each individual reads him. Does the reader focus on the actions themselves (bullying, encouraging suicide, recklessly fighting Izuku), or the environment that led to that behavior (doting teachers, his mother, peers who egged him on). It's that line between "Bakugo is just a kid. He needs the chance to grow" and "Bakugo is the perpetrator hurting other kids. His growth should not come at the continued expense of his victim." Which is where I think the structural issues of the story come in. Meaning, both takes are right — Bakugo does horrific things and Bakugo is also a teenager whose behavior is arguably stemming from his upbringing — but it's hard to balance both sides when he's in a story where he's attending school with Izuku, his relationship with Izuku is one of the most important, and he's set from the get-go to be a hero. By making Bakugo such a crucial part of the story in the form of a) being a hero and b) being Izuku's foil, reading #1 — he's a poor kid who just needs endless chances to improve — wins out. In a better story setup, Bakugo would not be training alongside his victim. He would have been expelled from U.A. for all the stunts he pulled. His future as a hero would have been seriously called into question until he learned that bare bones respect. As it stands, the structure of the story ensures that Bakugo (to my knowledge) never faced any actual consequences for his actions, pushing a lot of messages that fans are uncomfortable with: past behavior doesn't matter, any improvement is equal to reaching a standard expected of everyone else, the best thing is to forgive your abuser, talent is prioritized over empathy, etc. Since the apology dropped, I've seen a couple of fans arguing that whether to forgive Bakugo or not is Izuku's decision. It doesn't matter what the fans think because they aren't the ones who suffered. But Izuku isn't a real person. Izuku is a character, controlled by an author who gets to decide how he reacts, knowing that lots of fans want Bakugo's behavior to be acknowledged as serious as it was. I'm currently working under the assumption that Izuku will accept Bakugo's apology because the story has never been interested in actually making Bakugo face consequences for his actions. He was established as a hero from the start, despite his unheroic behavior, which created a contradiction that has hurt the story as a whole.

For me, what it comes down to is the reaction as opposed to the explanation. If I had a kid acting like Bakugo who I know was pushed to that behavior by others and also kid acting like Bakugo for seemingly no reason... they both need to learn the same lesson. Because, as established, that over-encouragement isn't an excuse, just a possible explanation (and I say "possible" because plenty of our other heroes were likewise praised for their talents and didn't turn out like that). What it comes down to is that Bakugo is not the victim here. Was Bakugo neglected? Arguably in some respects, but we know for a fact — seeing from the very start of the series — how much damage Bakugo has done in turn. And yet the story is focused on his pain, his struggle, the tragedy of what supposedly drove a teenager to encourage someone to jump off a roof, rather than the tragedy of a minority kid bullied to the point of someone encouraging suicide. That's the flaw imo. Both kids deserve to work through their problems and have their stories told, but doing that together — putting both at the heart of the manga, as equals in terms of their status as heroes — really doesn't work for me. It's hard to get invested in the supposed tragedy of a kid who was endlessly praised and decided to turn that into despising everyone "lesser" than him when the "lesser" person is right there, having his victimhood largely ignored in favor of unpacking how hard this is for his bully. That's the focus we keep coming back to. It's "poor Bakugo, realizing that Izuku isn't a useless nobody" rather than, "poor Izuku, forced to work alongside the guy who thinks he's a useless nobody." To be totally honest here, I never cared about Bakugo's supposedly sad backstory because it reads as so inconsequential compared to others in the class and compared to what he did to Izuku. Todoroki had his face burned by his father. Uraraka is becoming a hero to try and help her family financially. Izuku is right there... and Bakugo's great struggle, the struggle the story spends so much time on, is "Wow, other people aren't trash I can just walk over and hurt for the fun of it? And I'm learning this at a snail's pace while heading towards the prestigious career of being a hero? And the reason I'm like this is because people praised me too much? What fantastic development on my part!"

I get snarky, but I do honestly believe that Bakugo's story is one worth telling, just not in this context. The story of a kid so talented, and beloved that he developed an ego the size of his school and needs to unlearn that arrogance is a legit story to tell. Trying to tell that story at the expense of his victim, alongside kids his age who went through the same thing and turned out kind, went through far worse and turned out kind, all while having him train to be a hero without ever seriously questioning whether he should be allowed in such a profession is... a mess. It is good for Bakugo to be among equals and learn some humility, but I don't think the first half of the story did nearly enough of that and, even if it had, that struggle is hard for me to take seriously when the others have so much else going on.

Also, did Bakugo latch onto All Might because of his compassion? That always seemed incidental to me. Rather, Bakugo idolized him because he's the best: the most popular, the strongest, the one who always wins. I'd need to re-read flashbacks from the manga to be sure, but I do recall one of the scenes from the anime:

"You see that? I bet he'll dodge and then punch! Think they've won and then ha! Look, he totally stopped him! That's why he's the greatest. No matter how much trouble he's in, he's always the winner!"

Bakugo likes All Might because he's "the winner," not because he's presumably saving people during this news coverage. Izuku is the one who latches onto All Might because of his smile and ability to help. That's their crucial difference between them. Izuku fights for others. Bakugo fights for himself.

Is he slowly unlearning that? Yeah, sort of, but again, it comes down to who continually suffers to teach that lesson, how slow Bakugo learns it, how it compares to the struggles of his peers, and how this is situated in a story revolving around allowing him to be a hero in the first place. Cool character idea, bad context and execution.

[wesavegotham]

(hi I'm sorry if this bothers you but I really need to vent)

I have completely given up on dc doing damian justice like he is my favorite character I want to see more of him but not like what's been happening teen titans and such he is such a complex character and has so much potential for good stories but his stories are only about shifting between his father's or mother's side again and again like maybe instead of sending him on another mission to "humble" him maybe dc could actually explore his character how he deals with what happened in the league with him , the vast skills he has at his disposal, his intelligence , his compassion and empathy maybe just going on a journey for himself to find what he wants to do instead of honoring one side of his family

(I'm sorry for this being so long I'm emotional and just want my baby to be really happy and get a win for once🥺)

Teen Titans destroyed so much, Damian's character developement, all his relationships, my goodwill, my trust in DC as a whole...

On some level I get it if Williamson thinks he needs to put Damian through all his previous character developement again because TT threw it all away, he said in an interview that he doesn't just want to "flip a switch", but Teen Titans didn't give a damn about making Damian's descent into darkness believable either and no other storyline deals with the fallout of what happened in TT, so why don't we just flip the freaking switch and give Damian all his developement back right now?

Of course so far we only have Robin #1 to analyse, so there is still some time to prove me wrong, but to me it seems like Williamson wants to focus more on Damian's weaknesses rather than his strengths. And no, I'm not just basing this on how Bruce introduces Damian to new readers on the first few pages.

What kind of character developement arcs does Williamson set up for Damian in Robin #1?

Who is Damian?

It's what the hallucination of Alfred asks Damian and the manga Damian reads before that moment is very on the nose with its "you have to find your own way and stop only following your mentors/parents" message.

That is probably also why Williamson thought it was necessary to have Damian arrogantly announce to all the fighters who he is related to and thus the best, and why Damian suffered a pretty embarrassing defeat at the hands of Flatline. More on that later.

Damian defining himself through his family and the question who he is on his own is a running theme with Damian, you had it in Batman and Robin 2009 and 2011 when Damian ended up rejecting Talia/the league of assassins and chose to be Robin and part of the batfamily, he even died in attempt to convince Bruce that he was a hero; you had it in Robin: Son of Batman when Damian said he was a Wayne first and an al Ghul second, but also realized that he had found a second family with Goliath and Maya and that being Robin was his redemption; you had it a bit in Super Sons when Jon told Damian that doing good is not just Bruce winning against Talia, it's Damian's choice and thus his win. You even had it in Teen Titans, just that now he was rejecting everything about Batman and leaned more on the side the league of assassins while yelling about how this was "his own way" for some reason.

Because it's a running theme with Damian I guess I can't really fault Williamson for trying to give us his own two cents on the topic, but I don't think one can fault me either for wishing we could finally see something new and different being explored that is not about what side he's on. It's hard to care about the answer, no matter what it is, because chances are the next writer is not going to care about the new answer and will try to answer this question again. I would rather see Damian have some fun as a hero and Robin in peace for once instead of constantly seeing him ask himself who he is and if he's a hero or not. Even a running theme of a character can get tiring if it's overdone.

The second arc this first issue set up for Damian is about him not understanding that losing is normal and necessary.

Bruce talks about how Damian doesn't understand how losing and facing challenges made Bruce what he is today and that topic comes back around in Damian's fight against Flatline.

Her whole thing is that she contrasts Damian because she learned from people that lost while he "only learned from people that never truly tasted defeat" and she proves her way of thinking superior by easily deafeating and killing Damian.

I personally feel like this is a very forced and stupid arc for Damian that doesn't fit what Damian has been going through these past few years. Damian knows quite well that Bruce loses, his whole tantrum in Teen Titans was about him feeling like Bruce's way of doing things was not achieving anything, like they were losing the war against crime. Damian was desillusioned with Bruce. And in my personal opinion Bruce doesn't exactly look like a winner right now, Bruce lost Wayne Enterprises, Wayne Manor and the family fortune, Alfred died, Damian left him, the citizens of Gotham turned against Batman too...I don't really know what Bruce is talking about here when he says "Damian only saw me today. The end results" as if Damian only sees how great Bruce is and doesn't know that Bruce did suffer a lot of defeats. Bruce sucks a lot right now, why are we acting like he's good at what he's doing? And even if Bruce wins eventually, he doesn't win every fight and I think Damian has been around him long enough to know that.

Plus, Damian has lost a ton these past few years, if Damian was capable of learning humility through losing I think he would have already got there at this point.

When I read Damian's and Flatline's fight I felt less like Flatline was a foil created to deal with a problem Damian's character actually has right now and more like Damian was forced into this position and into this arc to act as a foil to Williamson's concept for his own creation.

Connected to this idea that Damian needs to accept that losing is okay and necessary is the idea that Damian is going to be humbled in this book. Humility wasn't really talked about in Robin #1 so I understand why some people were confused as to why that word has been used a lot in discussions about this first issue.

My reason for connecting Damian's defeat with the fear that Williamson will try to humble Damian doesn't exactly come from the comic alone, but from what he has said in interviews:

"Williamson: Well, selfishly for me, I enjoy throwing Damian in different situations where he has to interact with people. And it might be situations where he isn't his normal situation, where he's such a competent person, but I think there are ways of throwing him into situations that might humble him or where he might clash with people."

After seeing Damian either get villainized or be the butt of the joke for several years hearing that Damian will be getting thrown into situations designed to highlight his weaknesses is not exactly making me feel excited. I know that other people find it funny when Damian gets humiliated and beaten down, but I don't. I've been seriously missing respect for Damian in DC's writing and the line where I stopped finding stuff like this funny has been crossed long ago. I have no idea what Williamson talks about when he says that we're usually seeing Damian in situations where he's competent. I would like to know what comics he's talking about because I would really love to read them.

Maybe Williamson will pull it off and make me like Damian's character arc later on but I'm not convinced by the seeds he has sown yet.

So far I'm seeing an arc I've already read through too many times, another one that feels like it's trying to solve a problem the character doesn't have (if anything the character suffers from having almost no wins in recent years) and one that will give me the opposite of what I want to see.

Someone put it quite well when they said to me that it feels like every writer thinks they need to put Damian down a notch because of his arrogance, but we've reached a point where he has been taken down so much that it makes him look stupid.

[sylvanfreckles]

Departing Shadows

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? Here it is, another rescue from my doomed fanfiction.net account.

Summary: Legolas arrives to winter in Imladris after an ill-fated patrol in Mirkwood. But when the prince's refusal to accept the truth of what happened affects his healing, Aragorn is determined to break through the shadows that threaten his friend's spirit. No slash. Second-place winner of the December 2005 Teitho contest.

This is one of the angstiest things I've ever written, so...it'll be right up someone's alley, I'm sure. Please check the warnings if you're concerned. It was apparently partly inspired by The Pretenders' "I'll Stand By You".

And like I always say. I may cringe, but I will never regret! On to the fic!

(I should warn you...I made up the horse's name just so Aragorn could call him Smokey. He first appeared in another fic that I'll post one of these days. His name might look decently elvish but it's total gibberish.)

...

"Legolas!"

Aragorn refused to let the knee-deep snowdrifts impede him as he surged forward to greet his friend. The prince had come to Imladris for the winter, arriving, it seemed, just ahead of the heavy snows.

"Hello, Estel," the blonde elf said wearily, dismounting from his horse and nodding to the groom that had come to take care of the animal.

"I see Smokey is well," Aragorn commented, referring to an old joke they had between them about the horse's name.

Legolas rolled his eyes. "For the last time, Ranger, his name is Simoliké."

Aragorn laughed, throwing an arm around his friend and pretending not to notice the elf's flinch. "It is wonderful to see you again, Legolas."

The elf sighed, relaxing just slightly as the man guided him down the cleared walkway up to the house. "Are your brothers home?" he asked with a hint of hesitation.

"They're out until this evening," Aragorn explained, biting back a grin as he remembered the twins' protests at being sent away the day the prince was due to arrive. "Ada wanted them to help some of the other homes prepare for winter."

He noticed Legolas seemed relieved to hear this, and wondered at the elf's reaction. Then again, he thought, knowing the circumstances behind the prince's journey perhaps it was not entirely unexpected that he would be hesitant to face the rather exuberant greeting that Elladan and Elrohir would cook up.

"How are you, Legolas?" Aragorn asked as they entered the house, turning his friend to face him.

Legolas looked down, and for the first time Aragorn noticed the dark shadows under the elf's eyes, the deep pallor of his skin, and the almost haunted look in his eyes. "I am fine," the prince said softly.

Rather than outright scoff the elf's answer, as he was used to doing, Aragorn simply nodded. "I believe my father asked to speak with you when you arrived," he said. "He's in his study...just leave your bags, someone will take them up later."

Aragorn walked the elf to his father's study, and was surprised when Lord Elrond asked him to remain. He sat easily in a chair, noting with some concern that Legolas was perched as though about to bolt.

"Legolas," Elrond greeted, setting aside the scroll he had been studying. "How is your father?"

"He is well, Lord Elrond," the prince replied, fidgeting a little.

"Are you aware that he sent me a letter to tell the reasons behind your arrival?"

Legolas flinched. "I had guessed as much."

"Can you tell me what it says?"

The younger elf frantically shook his head, his eyes wide. Aragorn looked on in concern, and only a restraining glance from his father kept him from jumping to his friend's side.

"Then shall I tell you?" Elrond asked, not even waiting for a response. "In his letter he mentioned that your patrol suffered a devastating attack by a party of orcs. All but three of the elves under your command were killed in battle, and those of you who survived were taken captive. The orcs recognized you as captain of that patrol and slowly tortured the other three survivors to death in an attempt to get information out of you. Is this correct?"

Aragorn's eyes widened, and he glanced at his friend. Legolas was trembling, his gaze fixed on Elrond as though afraid the older elf would attack him.

"Legolas, you cannot hide from what happened," Elrond said kindly. "Yes, six of your people are dead...six good elves that should not have suffered so. But you must not blame yourself, Legolas. You must face what happened and—"

But whatever else Lord Elrond was going to say was forever lost as Legolas chose that moment to bolt from his chair and flee the study. Aragorn was after him in a heartbeat, not so much to bring him back to Elrond as out of honest concern for his friend.

Luckily, in his haste Legolas was less stealthy than usual and Aragorn could easily follow him. He found the elf just outside the door, bent over on his knees with his arms around his stomach. Aragorn knelt beside his friend and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling the prince's hair back as Legolas was violently sick.

"I can't, Estel," Legolas whispered, his voice shaking. "He asks me...I can't."

"What happened?" Aragorn asked. "You don't have to tell me if you don't wish to," he added as Legolas tensed. "I want to help you...tell me what I can do."

"I..." Legolas shivered. "I can't, not yet."

"All right," Aragorn nodded. "What do you wish to do, then?"

Legolas sighed and sat up just enough to lean against Aragorn. "I want to forget than any of this ever happened."

"I know," the human said soothingly. "But my brothers will be returning soon," he added, squinting at the setting sun. "Do you want me to tell them you've retired early?"

"No," the elf said, standing shakily to his feet. "I do not wish them to suspect something is wrong."

Ai, anyone who looks you in the eye would know that you are not well, Aragorn thought. "Perhaps you would like to bathe and rest before dinner, then?" he asked, ever mindful of all the lessons he'd received on being a gracious host.

Legolas smiled, and in that smile Aragorn finally saw a glimmer of the elf who was his best friend. "You would not mock me for my 'obsessive bathing'?" he asked.

"Not today," Aragorn said with a laugh. "I believe you know the way...or would you prefer me to escort you so you don't get lost?"

"No, Aragorn," Legolas sighed. "But if you could apologize to Lord Elrond for my behavior..."

"Of course," the human nodded. "I'll speak with him immediately," and get him to tell me just what is going on, he added mentally. "See you at dinner, then," he called before making his way back to his father's study.

"Come in, Estel," Elrond called, not even bothering to look up.

"Ada, what is going on?" Aragorn asked, not even bothering to pass on his friend's apology as he knew Elrond would not hold Legolas' behavior as offensive in any way.

Elrond sighed and motioned for Aragorn to close the door. "In his letter Thranduil told me that Legolas has refused to speak of anything that happened during his captivity."

"He said he doesn't want to talk about it," Aragorn said.

"He is burdened because he feels responsible for six deaths that were beyond his control...six elves who would have gladly given their lives to keep the secrets of Mirkwood safe."

"Did the orcs know he was a prince?"

"No, they thought he was only a captain. Had they known, however, they might have tried to use him as leverage. In that case the results may have been different," Elrond sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

"Different?"

Elrond met the human's gaze, a depth of sorrow in his eyes that Aragorn had not expected. "When the deaths of his comrades failed to get him to speak, the orcs resorted to torturing Legolas. He spent three days in their grasp, until another patrol found and rescued him."

Aragorn sat back in shock. "He was tortured..." he repeated softly. "Is he going to be all right?"

"Only time will tell. I will say this, though," Elrond held up one finger. "If he does not come to terms with what happened he will break. His spirit is already shadowed, and I fear what will happen if he does not begin to release this soon." The elf-lord sighed. "I believe he is on the brink of fading."

The young man felt his resolve harden. "I will not let that happen," he said fiercely.

Elrond's gaze saddened further. "I hope so, ion-nin."

Aragorn turned to leave, but hesitated and looked back to his father. "You were wrong," he said softly. "You should not have confronted him. He is not ready."

The elf raised one eyebrow, his gaze tightening slightly. "And how do you know this?"

"He told me," the man said simply. "He will talk to us when he's ready...not before. For now, the best we can do is simply listen and wait for him to tell us. I dare say there have been enough healers trying to draw him out."

Elrond nodded to acknowledge Aragorn's argument, though the human could tell he hadn't convinced his father of anything. Sighing, he left the study and jogged down the hall to the one elf he knew he needed to see: Legolas.

Legolas was not surprised in the least when he came out of the bathing chamber to find Aragorn perched on his bed. He had almost expected the human to come barging in while he was still bathing, as though thinking that catching the prince unawares would make him reveal what he had gone through.

He shook his head, dispelling that thought. Aragorn would never do that to him. "Are you waiting for something, Human?" he asked, forcing a playful tone to his voice.

"Just wanted to see if you needed anything else."

Legolas sighed. "I don't want to talk about it."

Aragorn's brow furrowed in concern. "I wasn't going to ask."

The elf paused, trying to keep his hand steady as he reached for his hairbrush. "Why not?" he asked bluntly.

"I don't want to rush you," the man said simply. "I want you to talk to me when you're ready."

Legolas caught himself blinking back tears, his emotions stretched too far at this point for any sort of restraint to last. "What if I'm never ready?" he said in a whisper.

"You will be," Aragorn said confidently. "Take some time...take a few days to rest, if you like. You're safe here," the man added, resting his chin in his hand and studying the prince as he brushed his hair.

The elf sighed, setting the hairbrush aside and lying down on the bed. "I know," he murmured, fighting the bone-chilling exhaustion that seemed to follow him everywhere.

"My father's healers," he said after a few moments, "spent every day trying to convince me to talk about what happened...what I saw, what I went through. Every time I saw them I just started retreating further and further within. It was out of desperation that my father sent me here. He hoped your father could do something."

Aragorn grunted an acknowledgement. "He wants to help," the man said quietly. "And he could probably understand what you're feeling...but I know what you mean."

Legolas turned a curious eye on his friend, waiting for the human to continue.

"In my first months out with the rangers," the man explained, "we came across a pack of wolves. They were bent on destroying us, and managed to kill two of the younger rangers before we killed them. One of those men was my friend," Aragorn added softly. "The first human friend I'd ever made. We were near Imladris, so they brought the wounded here. I knew my brothers and my father had lost friends before...but having so many try to help me recover from my friend's death was just overwhelming and I shut them out. It wasn't until one of the other rangers simply told me that he would just listen if I ever needed to talk that I found myself willing to share anything."

He turned a saddened gaze toward the prince. "If you need to talk, Legolas, I will listen. And whatever you share, I will keep in secret as long as you wish. If you need me, I will stand by you through whatever you face."

Legolas sighed and nodded. "Thank you," he whispered, the world darkening as he drifted off to sleep.

Elladan and Elrohir cornered Legolas later that night in the Hall of Fire, demanding an account from their friend of his journey and the latest news from Mirkwood. Aragorn was relieved to see Legolas at ease, laughing and joking, but disheartened when he saw through the facade to the crumbling spirit within the prince.

He could see that the elf was exhausted, though he wondered if that was more due to the journey here or to the terrible weight he carried. "All right, enough," Aragorn declared, smoothly stepping in and maneuvering his friend away from his brothers. "You can speak with Legolas in the morning, the hour is growing late and I wish to have a word with my friend before he retires for the night."

Ignoring the protests from the twins—half-hearted and jovial though they were—Aragorn steered Legolas to a vacant balcony.

They stood in silence for a while, looking out as a light snow fell throughout the valley. "Everything is so peaceful here," Legolas finally said, sighing and leaning heavily against the railing. "Not like home...there is no shadow over Imladris."

Aragorn grunted softly in agreement. "You know, tomorrow the first thing my brothers will do is drag me out of bed and bury me in the snow. They've done it during the first snow every year, but I wasn't here for the first snow so they'll probably do it with this one. They used to try convince me it would teach me to walk atop it as elves do...but I've long since learned that was a lie."

Legolas chuckled. "And I suppose you'll wish me to come to your aid?"

"Of course," Aragorn grinned. "What else are friends for?" he added, and lighthearted though his tone was he hoped Legolas would understand the hidden message.

The blonde elf sobered immediately. "I know," he said quietly. "I have been struggling all day...here I have a friend who has promised to stand beside me no matter what I face, yet when it comes to facing myself I have not the courage to ask."

Aragorn's heart went out to the elf. "You don't ever need to ask, Legolas," he replied gently. "I will always stand with you."

"Always?" the elf asked, turning to Aragorn so the human could see the tears glistening in the elf's eyes. "I am afraid, Aragorn. Afraid to face what is inside of me...afraid that the memories will be too much...but most of all I am afraid that if everyone sees this they will know I am a coward."

The elf turned away, covering his face with one hand. Aragorn immediately pulled his friend into an embrace, letting the elf sob into his shoulder. "You are not a coward," he said firmly. "Fear is just another battle, Legolas. You must face it, and you can defeat it."

When his friend had calmed down enough to release his death-grip on Aragorn's tunic, the human gently steered the elf through a set of fairly empty corridors to his chamber.

"Now sleep," he ordered, taking a look around the guestroom in which Legolas was staying. Sudden inspiration struck, and he turned to his friend's pack and began digging through it.

"What are you doing?" Legolas asked.

"It is far too cold in here," the man complained. "Even for an elf...you'll catch your death of cold if you stay in here tonight," he stood up triumphantly, a set of Legolas' sleeping clothes in his hand. "Come with me," he ordered, grabbing the elf by the arm.

Ignoring his friend's protests, he ushered Legolas down to his own chamber where a fire was already roaring happily in the fireplace. "This is much better, isn't it?" Aragorn asked, swiftly changing into his own sleeping clothes.

Legolas raised one eyebrow. "My room is not cold, Aragorn."

"Well...maybe not to you but I'll rest much better knowing that you're not sleeping in a room so frigid it could freeze a dragon," Aragorn retorted, climbing into his bed. It was large enough for three or four people, so he knew the elf couldn't protest because of lack of room.

The elf shook his head in amusement, and turned his back to change. Aragorn's stomach somersaulted when he caught sight of a few still-unhealed wounds on the elf's back—marks left from a whip and burns the size of his thumb. Whatever shadow had fallen on Legolas' spirit had left his friend unable to fully heal.

Legolas finished changing and slid into the other side of the bed. "Happy now, Human?" he asked.

"Of course," Aragorn laughed. He blew out the lamp on the bedside table, and waited until Legolas' breathing evened out to slip into sleep.

And when the nightmares struck, as he had known they would, he was right there.

Lord Elrond paused outside of Legolas' room—the prince was a frequent enough guest that one of the rooms was considered his—and knocked softly. Not hearing an answer he quietly opened the door and peeked in, a bit surprised to see that the room was vacant.

Then again, he mused, he shouldn't have been surprised at all.

Chuckling inwardly he stealthily opened the door to his youngest son's room just enough so slip in, and couldn't hold back a smile.

They were still sleeping, Aragorn with his arms wrapped around Legolas and the elf's head tucked under his chin, as though his mere presence could beat back the shadow that hung about the archer's spirit.

It was the nature of their friendship—of the friendship of two friends closer than brothers—for each to protect the other.

This time, Aragorn was the protector...against whatever demons preyed on his friend's spirit.

Elrond held back a sigh as he approached the bed, not wanting to wake either prince or ranger. He knew what he had said in his study had sounded unfeeling and harsh, but he had been hoping to force Legolas to face what had happened. He could now fully see the distress his words had caused the younger elf, and standing at the end of the bed he could make out distinct tear-trails left on the prince's face from whatever horrors he'd endured in his dreams.

And his eyes were closed, as though that would keep the images away.

Elves could usually control their dreams, but Elrond knew that Legolas had been repressing memories of his captivity and those memories would seek to break through, mostly in the form of nightmares.

But perhaps...perhaps his son could succeed where all of healers of Mirkwood and Legolas' own family had failed. The love of a brother, extended without hesitation or condition, might be just what was needed to break through the shadow.

As though knowing he was being thought of, Aragorn opened one eye and regarded his father with a raised eyebrow. Elrond pressed a finger to his lips to indicate silence, and slowly retreated, pausing just long enough to throw a smile over his shoulder at his son and the sleeping prince.

He would not speak about these things to Legolas again, he decided, unless the prince approached him. Perhaps Aragorn was right, and the best cure would be to listen and wait until Legolas was ready to speak.

Aragorn had dozed off when his father left, but woke suddenly with a yelp when a pair of hands seized his feet and dragged him off the bed.

"EL!" he shouted, not knowing which twin it was. Laughing gray eyes peeked into his as the less-responsible twin perched on the bed.

"It snowed last night, Estel," the twin—Elladan—said cheerfully.

"It is far from the first snow," the human grumped, trying to wrestle his feet away from Elrohir.

"Ah, but it is such fresh snow," Elrohir exclaimed, chuckling and pulling Aragorn a few more feet when the ranger tried to sit up and pry his hands away.

"Couldn't the snow wait a few hours?" a fourth voice asked groggily as the prince sat up, awakened from his exhausted sleep by the commotion.

"Legolas! Help me!" Aragorn called, ignoring the surprised glances of the twins who had evidently not seen Legolas when they entered the room.

"Aye, help him!" Elladan shouted, jumping to his feet and grabbing Legolas by the wrist. He dragged the prince off the bed, ignoring the protests and finally managing to dump the blonde elf, along with several blankets and a few pillows, onto the floor.

"What do you say, 'Dan?"

"I say the smelly human needs a bath!" Elladan exclaimed. "Shall we go?" he added, easily flinging Legolas over one shoulder and opening the door.

The prince was helpless with laughter in spite of his protests by this time, as every time he tried to wriggle away Elladan managed to poke him in a ticklish spot.

Elrohir followed, still dragging Aragorn by the ankles. The ranger began protesting that they would have to go downstairs—surely Elrohir would let him walk that much?

But he had forgotten his brother's tenacity. Elrohir did let go of Aragorn's ankles, but only to grab him around the chest and haul him down the stairs backwards, leaving his feet to drag behind.

Elladan was waiting impatiently by the door when Elrohir finally arrived with his struggling captive. Together they took their prisoners outside, Elladan depositing the prince gracefully in a clear spot in the yard and running to aid Elrohir.

Aragorn shouted in protest, but was no match for the twin elves as they managed to bring him to the ground, burying him in the snow and wrestling with him until he was completely soaked, shivering in his sleeping clothes.

"A-ada will b-be angry with y-you if I c-catch cold," Aragorn muttered through chattering teeth, hugging his arms tightly to his chest to preserve some warmth. Why did he let them to do this to him every year?

"Ah, but it is winter and you have nowhere better to be," Elladan said with a grand shrug. "What better place than the healers' wing?"

Legolas laughed at this, still sitting aside atop a patch of unbroken snow.

"The prince is amused," Elrohir commented.

"Yes...perhaps before he judges this as amusing he should experience it for himself," Elladan suggested with a wicked grin and in a flash the two had jumped to their feet and ran for the prince.

To Aragorn's alarm, the prince reacted with wide, fearful eyes and turned to flee.

The twins laughed as they chased him down, gleefully giving him the same treatment they'd given their brother. But Aragorn heard Legolas' protests grow more frantic and fearful, until he was in a high state of terror and begging the twins to stop.

Ignoring his own discomfort, Aragorn plunged into the unbroken snow and drove his way forward to the three elves, angered when his brothers treated the younger elf's fear as part of the game.

"Get off him!" Aragorn shouted, somehow pushing both Elladan and Elrohir away. Legolas lay curled up in the snow, his arms over his head and his breath coming in terrified pants. "Legolas?" he asked softly, placing a hand on the trembling shoulder.

The prince recognized Aragorn's voice and launched himself up into his friend's arms, burying his face in the man's sodden tunic to muffle his sobs of fear. Aragorn was shocked to see a small amount of blood on the snow, and more on the back of the elf's tunic.

With a warning glance at his brothers to stay back, Aragorn wordlessly gathered up the archer in his arms and trudged back into the house, heading straight for the healers' wing.

The moment his son entered the room carrying the trembling elf, Elrond knew the twins' yearly prank had gone tragically wrong. He sighed to himself, pulling back the blankets on one of the beds and nodding for Aragorn to set the prince down. He would have to explain this to his sons later...it wouldn't be fair to them to leave them wondering.

Then, as Aragorn showed him the reopened wounds on the archer's back, his concern grew.

"Ada, he was terrified," Aragorn confessed in a low voice, hoping they were far enough away that the blonde elf couldn't hear them. "He was pleading for them to stop, but they were just joking."

"I should have told them," Elrond sighed.

Aragorn agreed with his own sigh, bringing a few rolls of bandages over to bind his friend's wounds. Elrond dispensed a servant to bring down dry clothes for his son and the prince, seeing that both were cold and wet.

"Legolas?" Aragorn asked, kneeling beside the bed to look his friend in the eye. Elrond glanced over and was startled to see the prince pale-faced, tears streaking out of tightly-closed eyes. "It's all right," the human said soothingly, placing a hand on the elf's shoulder. "It's over...they're gone."

The servant returned with the clothes, and Elrond politely turned away, pretending to be hunting for something on the herb table, as Aragorn helped his friend change before changing himself.

"A-aragorn?" the prince whispered.

"Yes?" the man was kneeling again in an instant, grasping the white-fingered hand that extended toward him.

"Will you stay?"

Aragorn smiled tenderly. "I wouldn't be anywhere else."

Several hours later, after hearing the story from their father and shoveling all the paths from the house to the various outbuildings, Elladan and Elrohir peeked into the healing room to see how the prince was faring.

Legolas was sleeping again, Aragorn in a chair at his side with a book in hand. He glanced up at his brothers and offered them an apologetic glance.

"We came to apologize," Elrohir whispered.

Aragorn shook his head. "You didn't know," he murmured.

"Still...when he asked us to stop..." Elladan's voice trailed off when he thought of how he and his twin had unintentionally hurt their friend. "Is he all right?"

"He will be," Aragorn nodded. "He finally told me what happened," he added with a sigh. "He slept a bit just after you...after we came in, but woke up after another nightmare. This time, though, he told me what it was about."

Elladan raised one eyebrow, unconsciously imitating his father. "Another nightmare?"

Aragorn nodded sadly. "He had four last night. Ada said it was repressed memories trying to break through, and now that he finally told me what happened it seems he's sleeping peacefully."

The twins agreed, both noticing that the prince seemed more at peace than he had been since his arrival. "I hope can forgive us," Elrohir murmured.

"He already has," Aragorn replied gently. "He knows you didn't mean to cause him pain."

Elladan nodded, eyes suspiciously damp-looking. "Well, I guess we'd better get changed if we want to be warm and dry for dinner," he commented wryly. "Ada has had us clearing the paths for the past few hours as punishment for reckless behavior."

Aragorn couldn't keep a broad grin from spreading across his face. "Doesn't he do that every year?"

"Aye," Elrohir shrugged. "I'm beginning to think it's less punishment for throwing you in the snow and more because he knows we'll actually do it."

"You do deserve it," Aragorn interjected laughingly.

Elladan just snickered. "It's worth it every year to see your face, though," he teased. "Come on, 'Ro, unlike some humans we don't enjoy playing in the snow," he added, leading the way out of the healers' wing.

Neither he nor his twin caught the devious smile spreading across their brother's face.

Clean, dry, and impeccably dressed, Elladan and Elrohir sat at the table in the dining hall merrily chatting with the other elves in the hall. Their father sat at the head, as usual, either conversing with the elves to either side of him or just watching out over the hall.

Legolas and Aragorn were not in their places, but given the prince's frail condition of late the twins expected them to be taking dinner in the healers' wing.

And so neither one suspected anything until two rather large buckets filled with snow were upended over their heads, the buckets left to sit like oversized hats.

Pushing the bucket off his head and shaking the snow out of his eyes in fury, Elrohir glared about the room to see who had done such a thing. His eyes lighted on Aragorn and Legolas, sitting across the table with suspiciously-innocent faces.

"Why, Legolas," Aragorn said in mock amazement. "I do believe it is snowing indoors."

Legolas nodded, looking up at the ceiling as though it were a wonder to behold and valiantly holding in his laughter.

His heart was lighter than it had been in weeks. Aragorn had listened, offered what strength he could, and simply stood with Legolas as he faced the fear in his soul.

And beyond that fear was the peace he had thought he lost.

Finally, the shadows were departing.