#even the stars and planets will disintegrate on the winds of time

[geekyanglophile]

Dude heard that lobsters are “biologically immortal” because they have a little bit of telomerase going for them and thought that meant death is unnatural lol. You realize many animals have shorter lifespans than humans? In fact, for many species the norm is to live only as long as it takes to reproduce.

And really the argument about whether telomerase would ever be an effective “anti-death” solution is completely irrelevant to the original post (and even if we could be immortal… imagine how quickly we would completely overrun the planet… I mean we already are). The anti-aging argument isn’t really about whether ppl are dying or not… we are literally all dying… every last one of us. Anti-aging products are about beauty standards (which is why they are primarily marketed towards women). These products aren’t actually about stopping aging (you’ll notice none of them contain telomerase). Their only purpose is to cover up, reverse, or minimize the physical signs of aging. And by all means, if those features make you sad or uncomfortable, then use whatever products work for you. But people (and women specifically) should not be expected to use these products to cater to beauty standards. Using these products will not improve your lifespan or overall health (other than sunscreen but I don’t consider that an “anti-aging” product).

scrunching my face real hard rn

[whoovesnassistant]

Skit Contest Entry 2

Planet of the Devilfruit - Submitted by Freddo

Scene 1

Doctor: (In the TARDIS, sounds of the TARDIS groaning, some sparks flying and then the sound of metal scraping and a toolkit rattling) Alright, alright…I think that did it! Derpy: So, you finished tinkering with the TARDIS? The Doctor: Yep! Tick tock: I must say, it was fascinating watching you work on the TARDIS. The Doctor: (Nervous chuckle) Yeah…it’s good I did it right or we could of all been sucked into a black hole, atomised, cease to exi- Derpy: (Cuts the Doctor off) I uhh…I think we get the point Doctor. The Doctor: Oh…ok, anyway those adjustments may of eased some of her struggles with this universe…I hope, which means…it’s time for a test run! Tick tock: Yes, a test run is a good course of action after all that work. The Doctor: So Derpy Hooves…Tick tock, how does muffin world sound? Derpy: (Gasps) Oh boy, finally! I have been so excited for this…(her excitement dies down quickly) if we can….actually get to Muffin world this time Doctor. The Doctor: (Lets out a awkward laugh) W-well it SHOULD be fixed…sort of…probably…ah let’s just go!

(Sounds of buttons being pushed, levers switched and the TARDIS groaning with some slightly shaky sound effects) (Derpy, Tick tock and The Doctor all react with gasps and groans as the TARDIS’s shaking becomes more violent before finally landing) The Doctor: Well…. aside from the bumpy landing, we made it! Outside those doors is the planet you have been dreaming of Miss Hooves, Muffin world! Derpy: (Can’t hold her excitement and gasps, sound of galloping to TARDIS door and door opening) Tick tock: Well then, let me see as well a planet of muffins is fascinating in its own right! (Sound of trotting) (Sound of alien, unnatural bird chirps in the far distance and a light breeze fill the area, sound of hooves hitting squelchy ground, like thick mud) Derpy: (Annoyed) This…. isn’t Muffin planet, is it? (INTRO THEME)

(Scene 2) (Sound of a 3 rd set of hooves galloping out onto the squelchy landscape) The Doctor: Ah….no….not Muffin planet…but hey, atleast it isn’t equestria!

Tick Tock: Hmmm, well the Doctor is right while not the destination we wanted, it is still another planet. Who knows what there could be here. The Doctor: (Laughs) See, that’s the spirit Tick Tock, don’t be glum Derpy we might find muffins here! Derpy: (Sighs) I guess you are both right…eww, (sound of hoof lifting up and sound of thick substance falling off) What is this stuff anyway? The Doctor: I have no idea, let’s find out! (The sound of the sqelshy substance being picked up followed by a lick) Derpy: (Slight concern in her voice) D-doctor you don’t know where that has been.. The Doctor: (Spits it out and starts screaming in anguish) Stars of kasterborous! Ew, ew, ew!!! Tick Tock: Doctor do you require aid? Water from the TARDIS? The Doctor: (Continues screaming and even begins to cry) Yes please, quick! Derpy: (with even more concern in her voice) G-g-go get the water, I’ll look after him! (The sound of hooves galloping into the TARDIS, doors shutting behind) Derpy: (Panic building in her tone) D-d-doctor what’s wrong? Is it poisonous…uhh…i-is it hurting…oh I don’t know! The Doctor: (Still crying, but now has fear in his voice, any form of happiness has been disintegrated) No…no, it’s something much worse, so much worse Ditzy. Pure evil! Derpy: (Gasps) W-w-what? What is it Doctor! T-t-tell me! (The sound of the TARDIS doors reopening and hooves galloping on the squelchy surface once more) Tick Tock: Here drink it! (sound of water slushing around in a cup) The Doctor: (Sound of him snatching it from the unicorns hooves and drinking it all down) (Sound of the wind gushing and distance animal cries for a few moments) The Doctor: It’s gone…(he groans) Thank you. Derpy: (Concern begins to fade from her voice) N-now will you tell us what it was? The Doctor: It was…. pear. Tick tock and Derpy together: (Confused tone) What? Tick Tock: You are joking Doctor…right? The Doctor: (Silent for a few seconds before answering, still with a serious tone) No…I know that taste anywhere, that was pear…we need to go. Derpy: H-hold on Doctor! Just a minute ago you were telling me to not be so glum! It’s only pear, not like it will kill us! The Doctor: (Mutters) That’s what you think….(he sighs and speaks up) it wasn’t just…the pear it all felt off, something is very…strange about this planet, and I can’t put my finger on what.

Tick Tock: (Sound of swooshing air as he nods his head in agreement with Derpy) I agree with Ditzy, it’s only a fruit Doctor. I want to learn why this…(he uses his hoof to stir the substance up slightly, it makes a loud squelching sound)…stuff is like this and why it tastes like pear. The Doctor: You two go ahead…I’m going to uhhh…take a sample yes! And s-scan it! (the sound of the squelchy material being quickly picked up, He trots into the TARDIS and closes the doors behind him.) (Silence for a few moments, as the wind picks up slightly, in the distance strange roars of distant creatures) Tick Tock: (Clears his throat) Hey, Ditzy, do you see that in the distance? Derpy: Uhh…it just looks like more of the same here…. green mud. Tick Tock: Look closer, a glint! Looks like something is over there, something made out of metal. A structure maybe, inhabitants? Derpy: (Gasps) Oooh like, other ponies?...(low) maybe I’ll get my muffins today after all. Tick Tock: Indeed, or atleast intelligent life on this planet, they may be made out of this substance too. I’m going to go check it out, if you wish to accompany me? Derpy: (Sighs) Well, I might as well…but what about the Doctor? Tick Tock: It isn’t that far, look to only be a mile…most likely much less thinking about it. I’m sure he’ll know where we have gone too. Derpy: Ok then.. (Sound of two sets of hooves trotting away in the “green mud”.)

SCENE 3

(The sound of pacing on metal as the Doctor mutters to himself incoherently until the TARDIS bleeps at him.) The Doctor: Right then lets see.. (sound of a few buttons being pressed) That’s impossible…it’s like the matter of the mud on this planet has been forcibly infused with….pear. But why? (Cut to back outside of the TARDIS with Derpy and Tick Tock still wading through the green mud with each hoof step, sound of roars and cries from the alien creatures slightly closer.) Tick Tock: Ah I see it, it looks like some sort of ship…? Derpy: A-a ship? Spaceship, why is it here? Tick Tock: I have no idea, which is why we shall board it and ask its crew members. Derpy: (With slight concern in her voice) B-b-but what if they are not friendly? The Doctor t-told me about space pirates once, they could have weapons! Tick Tock: We can deal with that if it becomes a problem…it looks abit rusty.

Derpy: R-rusty? It does abit.. (Back in the TARDIS) The Doctor: (clicking more buttons) Even the micro details have been changed to that of a…pear, this is odd. Very odd. Who would do this to a planet and why? (The TARIDS bleeps at him.) The Doctor: No, I’m not going out there…that’s my worst nightmare, a planet made out of pear! (The TARDIS bleeps again) The Doctor: (Laughs dryly) I’d take a Dalek anyday over planet of the Devilfruit…..wait, what’s this? (the sound of a few more button clicks)

(Back with Derpy and Ticktock)

Tick tock: Here we are…looks abandoned. Derpy: (sighs) and with no way in, oh well let’s just rest here and get back to the TAR-(she is cut off when leaning on the side of the ship which gives way and she falls in with a yelp!) Tick Tock: (with as much concern in his voice he can muster) Ditzy! Derpy: (with a slight echo as she is now in the ship) I’m ok!...i’m ok…I guess we can go in now. (The sound of hooves trotting on a steel floor with a sqelshy sound effect still) Tick Tock: It’s a interesting ship for sure, hmmm, I wonder if they crashed or if they landed here. Derpy: Either way, what happened to the crew? This ship looks old…a-a-and that weird green stuff is growing here. Tick Tock: Indeed, it seems to be quite abundant here as well, it seems nature has reclaimed this vessel. Derpy: Oh look at this Tick Tock, Science section! Maybe you can find some cool gadgets to take back to the TARIDS and experiment on! Tick Tock: That is a excellent suggestions Ditzy, thank you. Let us investigate. (as the two leave, the sound of gurgling begins, and the sounds of something organic beginning to grow and form) (Back in the TARDIS) The Doctor: It’s…its mutating, shaping itself…this stuff it isn’t just Devilfruit, it’s living devilfruit! Derpy, Ticktock! (The sound of the Doctor galloping out of the TARDIS and the doors slamming behind him).

(Back with Derpy and Ticktock)

(Sounds of rummaging through draws and stuff) Derpy: Ooh what about this? Tick Tock: That’s just a plank of metal Ditzy. Derpy: (Slightly embarrassed) O-oh sorry… Tick Tock: (lets out a small sigh) It’s no bother I can use it for something I’m sure (sound of him taking the piece of metal) Derpy: (sound of trotting away) Hey Tick Tock, look! One of the computers…I think it’s called? It’s still working! Tick Tock: (sound of him trotting over) you are right, let me see if I remember how to use one of these. (The sound of mouse clicks and keyboard pushes for a few seconds) (The sound of the organic popping in the distance and a slight growl) Derpy: (reacting to the noise) huh? Tick Tock: I am in!...looks like some form of document, from a “head of science” sounds like a rank. Derpy: Yeah…yeah (absent minded for a moment, still interesting by the noise before her attention goes back to Tick Tock) What does it say? Tick Tock: Let’s see…(He clears his throat) Dear Command, Project Exalon has failed. Food planets may exist someday, to feed the millions who need it. I thought we had the right terraforming equipment But alas today is not that day, we have made a terrible error. That is why I deleted all my files on this matter, because nopony else should make this stupid mistake. it’s alive. (A few moments of silence are shared between the two as the ship groans, and the sound of that strange organic popping..forming noise again with another low growl) Derpy: Is that it? Tick Tock: Unfortunately…it seems we are not going to get a straight answer. Derpy: Well that’s asha- (Derpy is cut off by the sound of something crashing on the ship) Derpy: (with fear in her voice) T-t-tick Tock what was that? Tick Tock: I….do not know, maybe the Doctor? (The sound of a howl, like a wolf, but twisted, corrupted, not right at all echos throughout the ship, with the popping sound from earlier) Derpy: (Fear building in voice) T-t-tick Tock, the D-doctor doesn’t howl… Tick Tock: Yes, he does not. We should leave..quickly. (the sound of their hooves on metal begin to quicken into a run as does the sound of whatever is on the ship with them getting closer, it sounds big, and cumbersome, knowing down distance shelves and breaking metal.) Tick Tock: Woah! (sound of him tripping and falling into the metal/green mud) Derpy: (Gasps) Are you ok? Here let me help you up!

(The sound of the creature grows closer until it is already upon them, the creature roars, it’s roar like a wolf but corrupted, not right.) Tick Tock: (The sound of magic and a metal beam hitting the creature with a crunch) I told you I would find a use for that plank of metal!

(Back with the Doctor, galloping in the outside again, in the squelchy green mud)

The Doctor: I hope I’m right they came here…knowing Tick Tock he would want to investigate the old rusty spaceship! (Back with Derpy and Ticktock) Derpy and Ticktock: (both jump out of the ship and into the outside) Doctor!! The Doctor: (stops quite quickly) Oh, I’m so glad you two are ok! (the sound of him hugging them tightly) Derpy: (being slightly crushed) w-w-hile I love hugs Doctor n-now isn’t the time! Tick Tock: (also being slightly crushed) We are under attack! The Doctor: (lets them go) By what? Derpy and Ticktock: A pear monster! The Doctor: (gaining his fearful tone again) A what? (The sound of the creature roaring and beating on metal) Derpy: Eek! It almost got me! The Doctor: That small hole isn’t gonna contain it, get back to the TARDIS, run! (The sound of the 3 trying their best to gallop as fast as they can through the thick green mud, the sound of the hole from earlier expanding is heard, metal being broken until a large CLANK! The newly born creature is free and begins chasing the trio, howling, maybe to its breatherian in the distance to join in with this hunt) The Doctor: (sound of him slamming into the door) Uhh key, key, key. Derpy: Here out of the way! (sound of her shoving the Doctor out of the way and using her own key to open the doors) Tick Tock: It’s coming! (The three gallop into the TARDIS and slam the doors behind them, a slightly slam can be heard a few seconds after, the creature hitting the doors, after a few more seconds of the sound of the creature trying to get in, it eventually leaves, silence fills the TARDIS for a few seconds more.) The Doctor: (Clears his throat) So…you two now know why I think pear is evil, the devils fruit, yes? (A few more seconds of silence are then filled by Tick tock and Derpy agreeing with low voices)

The Doctor: Riiight then…maybe it’s best we never think of this..ever again, I’d rather not have to think about devilfruit planet EVER again…..so Muffin planet try 2? Derpy: I uhhh…..i don’t really want to go a planet centered around food right now Doctor…(she trails off with a awkward laugh) Tick Tock: I agree…I shall never look at a pear the same way again after a….(he pauses for a moment, trying to take in what he just experience) after I was almost eaten by one.. The Doctor: Well then….how does a nice stroll in the Canterlot gardens sound instead? Tick Tock: that sounds pleasant, what do you think Ditzy? Derpy: Uhh…yeah, yeah let’s go! The Doctor: Alright then, one normal walk coming up! (Sounds of levers and buttons being pushed and pressed, as the TARDIS begins to take off)

(Roll credits)

[chronoccg]

Carrying the Hat

The gunslinger was dead. The Amalgam saw to that. Three green disintegration rays to the heart, his armor and skin peeling away in the solar winds. The Amalgam carefully rumbled up to him, optical capacitors trained on the corpse. Seven spindly limbs burst forth from the android's spinal column, rifling through his cybernetics and armaments for any valuable Sungrace technology. Their far-future Cores were a marvel, even by the Overmind's standards, and the Amalgam would use every edge it could scrounge to stay free of Her. It cackled wildly, gears grinding in a facsimile of a laugh as it flipped over the gunslinger's wide-brimmed hat to discover a Chrono-Core hidden, shimmering, within. It extended a claw to pick the hat up -- and exploded sideways into a crumpled heap against the fuselage of the starcruiser.

"Hat's off to you, friend."

The gunslinger lowered his smoking pistol and finished stepping through the time portal. He wrinkled his nose at the corpse below before picking up his hat, dusting it off, and setting it carefully on his head with a smile.

---

The gunslinger was dead. The city wept at his sacrifice. Above Clarion Spaceport, the undulating star hung like a slumbering god, rippling occasionally in its blazing, fitful sleep as the containment field performed its crucial task of containing and siphoning near-limitless solar energy. The wreckage of the gunslinger's silver starcruiser floated above the city like a small, personal eclipse; a testament to the courage of its pilot, visible to the billions of living and mechanical beings below who once again had a future. By delivering the payload of reverse-entropic explosives to the star's heart, he had averted cataclysm. 

On the ground, droves of people crowded around the medical ship as it unloaded a charred body - they gasped when his face was revealed. Malark, the Silver Wave. Unmistakable, though his hat, the symbol of his enduring spirit, was gone, burned away in the chaos of his valiant, doomed mission.

Somewhere beyond the edge of the system, a small ship pierced the silent void. Inside, the gunslinger leaned back in his captain's chair, a faint smirk playing across his lips. He tossed the hat up in the air and caught it, the battered metal and worn leather woven into its fabric catching the starlight. He placed it on his head with a flourish, his grin widening. Lark fixed his eyes on the distant stars and piloted the ship forward into the cosmic dark.

---

The gunslinger fought for his life. The Amalgam had found him again, shielding itself and plunging into the star's heart before ripping the reverse-entropic bomb from its moorings and launching it back at his starcruiser. These rogue machines really knew how to hold a grudge.

Lark swerved under the hurtling warhead, engaging his ship's 'tractors to latch on to the volatile bomb. The explosives' intense gravitational pull whipped him in a dizzying circle away from the star, keeping him from burning to a cinder while gravity ripped his cruiser like paper between the pull of the bomb and the red giant. At least the bomb wouldn't hurtle into the planet beyond. The Amalgam came screaming at him, molten plasma streaming from its roaring chrome frame, and Lark fired a grappling line at the nearby warhead, activating his pressure-field before zipping from his ruined ship to land catlike on the clump of spinning explosives. He barely grabbed his hat before the Amalgam was upon him, claws and green lasers bristling from its amorphous body. The gunslinger flailed backwards, cloak and armor shredding away as he tapped his temple - and the Amalgam froze, one bladelike arm only inches from his face. Lark's pressure field flickered a pale gold as it expanded to encompass the Amalgam, rendering its dynamos temporarily inert, but trapping them both against the spinning mass of reverse-entropic explosives. He reached up to fix his hat and found that it was missing - knocked away by the writhing Amalgam. Lark cursed, then sighed, and relaxed.

The payload continued its slow arc away from the planet and back towards the star. Gravity would do the rest of the job and the red giant would be contained before it fried the system to a crisp. As he slowly circled the blinding gas giant, Lark leaned back, shaded his eyes, and began to whistle - a calm, peaceful tune.

In space, in a time unremembered, around a stable, softly-glowing red sun, a wide-brimmed hat floated. If one was looking carefully at this hat, at just the right angle, they might notice a small, orange portal open in the void, an arm's length away. They might notice a gloved hand reach from the portal to grab the hat, and pull it through. They might hear a soft, pleasant whistle float by before dispersing into the cold, infinite blackness beyond.

Author Credit: Madruin Hunter Artist Credit: https://www.instagram.com/zed_edge/

[bluebird-poetry96]

Unveiling the Soul's Prayer

My purpose...?

Well honestly, I try, very hard, not to think about it.

I have always thought, my purpose..

Was to, love more than I'd ever receive...

To teach, people how to love themselves.

I know, they, will never stay, but,

Maybe, I, can help to give them,

Good Karma.

Life is hard.

I always wanted to, help people, live a little easier,

Breathe a little easier,

Even if only for a moment..

Probably sounds dumb...

But...

At some point, I don't know when,

Maybe, I was born with it there?

But, my heart...

My heart was, always, uncontrollably, buried,

In empathy.

For me,

It's not hard to understand that,

Life, will in fact,

Kick you, as hard as it can, in the teeth,

In the chest, over and over, again and again...

However...

After that stops, sometimes, very rarely...

Someone, helps me remember, who I was, before that cycle of pain.

Before all those times, it was true torture, just to keep going...

All those times that, I thought it was, one foot in front of the other,

When, in reality, it was, one foot forward, ten steps back.

All those times that,

Shattered my aching, heart, disintegrated my, tired mind, splintered my, lost soul.

As time passed, I closed up my heart, it was out of business,

For what, I thought, the rest of my life...

Despite that...

One day, when I was least expecting it,

The Sun, broke through the, never ending, grey clouds...

I met Someone.

They, are a breath of fresh air.

For an infinite, moment, an indomitable weight, is lifted from my chest, more importantly,

My soul.

I start to remember, that yes, there are good things in life.

I start to remember, the magic, in this world.

I start looking, and actively seeking out, the beauty, that the Cosmos, holds.

I remember, how much, the Moon, speaks to, Me,

How, just seeing it, makes my soul, happy.

I see, nature, through the eyes of my younger self.

I feel the, alluring, desperation to be, deep in the, intensely spiritual,

Powerful, force of Nature,

From the bone shaking, explosions of thunder, and the heavy patter of rain,

To the terrifying, wind and waves, an impending storm, has on bodies of water.

I see, the purity, that is simply, The Great Mother,

Mother Earth, Gaia, Nature,

The Cosmos...

I see, the infinite complexities, of the lush greens, from forest leaves, moss and ivy, hanging, from dark brown tree branches.

Creating a tunnel, encompassing the road, on my drive.

I see, a Mother deer, crossing the road, just doing her thing,

Protecting and teaching, her young, the circle of life.

I see, the wind on the tall grass, creating an ocean in a field.

I feel the wind, caress and purify, my essence.

And finally, once again, I am, able to

Breathe freely.

When I was a kid, I never thought, I, would forget how to look at the world.

How to see, how to feel, how to experience, the magnificent, magical, energy,

That connects every, single, thing.

On this planet, in this Milky Way Galaxy, in the Universe.

I, finally remember.

We, are made up of, Star Dust and Burning Nebulas.

Each and every one of us, is Important.

I pray, pray in agony,

I pray, in desperation.

I pray, in torment.

I pray, in hope, that it never leaves me again, that I will, always, remember.

That, when memories are hard to come by...

These, stay with me, till the very end.

I know, my prayer, is futile...yet, even still.

I pray.

-Raven Blue Bell

[lavellenchanted]

I’ll Crawl Home (1/?)

A post Infinity War reimagining where Sif survives the Snap and tries to find her way back to Thor. 

Read on AO3

Sif is a galaxy away from her home and everyone she loves when half the universe disintegrates into dust.

Keeping track of the time that has passed since she left Asgard has been difficult – not every realm and planet measures time the same way that Asgardians do, and in the endless, star-speckled darkness of space between them all time quickly loses all meaning whatsoever – but it has been at least two years, if not more. And there is still no sign of Thor.

It had not taken long to realise that his search for Infinity Stones had taken him outside of the Nine Realms, and though a small part of her was relieved, the galaxy beyond the realms being outside Loki’s reach and therefore safer for her as she searches for a way to bring him down, it made her quest that much harder to achieve. Thor might be anywhere on a myriad number of planets, and with Heimdall also labelled a traitor and forced to remain in hiding, Sif had only her wits to guide her.

She started with the obvious – the Collector, to whom they had entrusted the Reality Stone. He confirmed that Thor had been there, briefly, to check that the stone remained safe with him, but had left long since – further out into the galaxy, he thought.

After that, it was a matter of trying to follow his trail. Not easy, when she is following months later and he had been travelling by himself without much pause. But an Asgardian prince who wields the star-forged Mjolnir and the power of thunder and lightening does not go unremarked, and Sif hears more than once of the golden-haired warrior god passing through. Several times she thinks she comes close to catching him, but he is always gone just before she gets there.

The hardest part is the loneliness. She misses Hogunn’s quiet but steadfast companionship. She misses Volstagg’s raucous laughter and bold smiles. She misses even Fandral’s mockery and constant jesting.

Most of all she misses Thor himself. His strength and fierceness, the way he makes the worlds around them seem bigger and brighter just by his presence. She misses fighting by his side and talking and drinking with him late into the night. She misses his smile, and his goodness, his unwavering belief in her. She just misses him, with an endless, relentless ache, like a chasm inside her.

Some nights she thinks about giving up, returning to Asgard and her friends and doing what she can there instead of pursuing what seems more and more like a fool’s errand.

But then she thinks about Loki masquerading as Odin on the throne, of his declaring her and Heimdall traitors because they could see through his illusions – and in doing so tacitly declaring war on her, Sif, the very Goddess of War. As much as she would like nothing more than to beat the truth from his deceitful tongue, she knows they need Thor if they really wish to set things to rights. He is the only one that has ever been able to deal to his brother, and he is the only one that Asgard will accept on the throne if they unveil Loki.

So she presses on.

As she follows talk of another sighting, she realises that the path she is on seems suddenly to have diverted, to be heading back towards the Nine Realms. Is Thor going home, after all this time? But why so abruptly? Why change his course so rapidly?

A feeling of unease makes her spine prickle – and it is just as she is worrying about what she might find when she finally manages to get back to Thor that half the universe disappears.

Screams and cries of terror and anguish echo all around her. She turns, drawing her blade, ready to face an enemy, but all she sees is confusion and dust. Black dust swirling in the air, drifting high on the wind and dissipating into nothing.

People are sobbing, crying, reaching out in front of them as though to hold on to something and slowly as she watches and looks around, Sif begins to understand with a dawning sense of sheer horror what is happening. It is people that are dissipating, crumbling away into those terrible flakes of ash and dissolving on the wind.

She feels sick, her heart pounding in her chest, and her fingers tighten on her sword. But she cannot fight this. She doesn’t even know what’s causing it.

Skin crawling now with dread she runs forward, and for a moment she thinks it is everyone – it seems like everyone, so many people, everywhere, just unravelling at the seams like a loose thread has been pulled and they are all coming undone.

Some instinct, honed over a millennium of battling throughout the Realms, tells her that this has something to do with Thor’s search – with the Stones. Something like this, a travesty of such magnitude that Sif has never seen in all her long years, that she is struggling to comprehend, cannot be a random happenstance on a small, quiet planet at the end of the galaxy.

Did Thor know was about to happen? Is that why he left and headed for Asgard?

Asgard.

A jolt of panic stops Sif in her tracks. Is this happening there, too? Are her friends – Heimdall, Hogun, Fandral, Volstagg, are they -? Is Thor -?

“Heimdall!” The scream rips from her throat, raw and frightened. “Heimdall, open the Bifrost! Heimdall!”

She cannot be here. She needs to be with them, to die beside them if she cannot fight against this with them.

“Heimdall, please! Open the Bifrost!”

There is no response – only the continuing cries of those around her.

“Heimdall?”

Slowly, the sobs give way to silence. Deep, terrible silence, the sound of an untold number of voices simply vanishing from existence. Silence that rivals the void of space.

If Heimdall can hear her, he gives no sign. The Bifrost remains closed.

And Sif is alone.

--

It takes almost as long to return home as she has been away, despite the fact that she is now travelling with purpose, knowing where she is headed rather than waiting for the next sign. With half the universe gone, the rest has fallen into chaos and once peaceful planets that she passed through are now war torn, the survivors of whatever it is that has happened lashing out in fear and anger and burning what remains down around them.

Other places are dead, filled only with the ghosts and echoes of what was. Where before Sif was able to scavenge and work her way across the galaxy, now she must take whatever passage is available – however out of the way it takes her – because there is no guarantee of getting anything else.

There are those that work to take control of the chaos, to put out the fires and rebuild from the ashes. Sif hears rumours of a captain with golden fists and strength unmatched, and once she might have sought her out and volunteered to help, but now she can only think of home, of Thor and their friends. She has to find them, to know what has happened to them.

It has become clear the further she has travelled that the unravelling of people has happened everywhere, and when she thinks of Asgard sick fear makes her stomach clench.

She imagines the gold citadel of her youth devastated, half its people ash on the wind. She imagines her friends turned to crumbling flakes of dust, gone as if they had never been.

But what she finds is so much worse than she imagined.

Because what she finds is nothing.

The black void of space stretches out before her, littered only with dust, debris and rocky remains. A creeping cold claws its way up her spine as she checks the navigation system of the small ship she was able to commandeer – its owner was one of those that have disappeared – but it does not appear to be faulty.

This is where Asgard should be, but Asgard is not there.  

Asgard is gone.

Shock rolls over her like a wave, relentless and forceful and leaving her breathless. There is an echo of pain, but distant; that cold unease has turned to numbness as she stares at the vast emptiness where her home should be, and she is vaguely aware that the pain will hit her later but, for now, her mind is keeping the full impact at bay so she can think.

Nowhere she has visited has disappeared entirely and instinct tells her that there is more at work here than what else is happening throughout the galaxy. There is no sign of survivors, or of anyone at all – there is nowhere for anyone to be. But Thor had been on his way back. And Heimdall had still been here, and the Warriors Three. Surely they managed to save some of their people.

If Thor had returned to Asgard in time, he would have taken any survivors somewhere safe.

And there is one place, Sif knows, that Thor is fonder of than anywhere else in the realms. One place where he would first seek refuge.

Her hands shake only a little as she keys in the coordinates for Midgard.

--

With nothing else to occupy her mind as she flies, her imagination offers up various possibilities to try and explain the complete disappearance of Asgard – but nothing seems to be enough, she cannot imagine anything so disastrous as to erase an entire world so completely. Not even half the people of the galaxy crumbling to dust managed that.

So how? What happened?

The question beats loudly, ceaselessly, in her mind like a drum, along with another that hurt even to think about, a sharp edge that she flinches away from but cannot avoid being cut by: could she have done anything?

She’s not sure she could. If Thor, the Warriors Three and Heimdall between them could not prevent Asgard’s destruction, Sif does not know what she could have done to tip the scale – but she could have helped. She could have been there, to fight with them.  

At the very least she could have died alongside them.

It is as she is thinking this that the asteroid belt appears on the horizon and she frowns; she did not think she was that close to Midgard. A glance at the navigation system confirms that she has only covered about half the distance. So what is that ahead of her? Unease makes her stomach knot and she wonders if she is about to discover another world destroyed and its remnants scattered in the cold void of space.

As she gets closer, and the shapes coalesce, her blood turns to ice in her veins.

They are the remnants of a world, but not lifeless hunks of rock. They’re bodies, floating frozen and crystalline in the lonely, infinite darkness.

“By Ymir,” she murmurs, and even though she speaks softly her voice sounds much too loud, echoing harshly off the metal walls of the ship.

Amongst the bodies, she realises, is the twisted wreckage of a ship that has been practically split down the middle. Jagged shards of metal float here and there, some bearing burn marks, and Sif can only imagine the intensity of the battle that took place here. They must have been attacked rather than being the aggressors, she thinks, since they do not appear to be warriors. Most look like civilians, in normal, everyday clothes –

– Asgardian clothes, she suddenly realises.

Cold spreads through her as though an icy hand has gripped her heart, and she can hear the grief roaring at her again, threatening to overtake her. She stands, but although she can hear the clang of solid metal beneath her boots she has the notion that she is balancing on the very edge of a great abyss and it would take only the smallest push to cause her to fall in and be lost.

Her ship has reached the edge of the field of bodies and as one floats past, she finds she knows the face. One of the women that worked in Odin’s palace.

Sif wants to be sick.

It feels like a dream – no, a nightmare – as she forces herself to fly through the site of the massacre, looking for people she knows. There are so many, and yet at the same time so few. Does this mean there were survivors here, who went on to Midgard? Or were these people all that survived whatever destroyed Asgard, only to meet death here?

Is she all that is left of her people?

She looks at every face she passes, but there is no Volstagg, no Fandral, no Hogun. Nor is there any sign of Thor, the face she dreads seeing above all others.

A gleam of gold catches her eye and she turns the ship, manoeuvring it through a cluster of men and women whose faces are vaguely familiar but Sif cannot name, towards the wreckage of the ship. There, caught among the twisted, broken sheets of metal, is the body of a tall, slim man, pale-faced and dark-haired, and Sif feels the air leave her lungs.

Loki.

She bore him little love as children and even less in the last few years, but to see him here, dead, floating like debris in space is like a physical blow. He is still a prince of Asgard, and he was, at one point at least, a friend. She remembers him as a child and an adolescent, remembers talking and laughing with him as well as fighting with him and at times despising him. For this to be his end . . .

It’s wrong.

Dread making her tremble, she moves the ship as close as she can, looking past Loki’s body into what was the belly of the ship. But rather than the golden hair she fears, the only other body inside is dark haired and dark skinned, and still clutching his sword even in death.

“Heimdall.” Sif’s voice cracks on his name, and she sinks down on her knees. As he slips out of sight, her vision blurs, and the numbness can no longer hold the grief at bay. The tears spill down her cheeks as sobs rip from her throat in staccato bursts. She huddles on the floor of the ship, shaking and gasping for breath while it feels like her very soul is being torn asunder.

How long she cries for, she isn’t sure, but when the tears are finally dried she feels empty and hollow, as though the grief has carved everything else from her and left her just a shell. Asgard is gone. Her people are dead. While she was halfway across the galaxy searching for a way to save them, they were fleeing and dying and she didn’t know. Asgard was being destroyed and she didn’t know. Her friends fought and died without her, and she didn’t know.

How could she not know? How could her entire world be destroyed without her feeling anything – no twinge of warning, no snapping of an invisible cord that bound her to her home, nothing to tell her that everything and everyone she loved were fighting for their survival?

She should have been there.

Her head is pounding, so she pushes herself to her feet, her limbs tired and heavy, and reaches for the flask she carries with her. The cool freshness of the water inside helps to revive her a little, and eases the pain in her head enough to focus. She has seen Loki, Heimdall and many other faces she knew, but not Thor, or the Warriors Three. Bringing her ship back out, she drives once more through the debris and the bodies, looking for them, but she is certain they are not there.

Not a one of them would have abandoned their people, so if they did not die here then they must still be out there – maybe with other survivors.

The hope that thought kindles feels thin, fragile, and Sif is afraid to hold it too tightly lest she crush it, but it is there.

She set out on a mission – to find Thor – and she will not rest until it is complete. Midgard is still her best lead, since it seems what remained of Asgard’s people were indeed heading there, and the route the navigation system had plotted out is still there.

Quietly promising herself that she will come back and retrieve the people here to give them a proper send off into the next life, Sif turns the ship and once again flies forward into the endless, stretching blackness of space.

[bruciewayne]

And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone

— The Song of Achilles

Bruce will admit, if pressed, that there have been many, many times where he would sorely enjoy punching Clark in his idiotic, perfect face. Though all of those times, bar one, he hasn’t followed through with it, and the one time he did, he rolled with it, turning his head so Bruce only bruised his knuckles and didn’t shatter his hand.

At this particular moment in time, Bruce thinks, he’ll punch him a second time. Except he won’t, because even though he’ll survive it, and he’ll survive anything, up to and including the eventual heat death of their solar system as they currently know it, he won’t, he won’t and he can’t.

And that terrifies him, it terrifies him down to the very depths and fundamentals of his being. He is the only one who can stop Superman, because Superman– because Clark himself willed it so, he is the only one who can stop him, on paper, in theory, as a hypothetical. He is the only one who can stop him and yet, and yet, he can’t.

He knows, in the very depths and fundamentals of his being, that when, if, the time comes, he won’t be able to stop him, if the worst was to ever transpire, if Clark, kind, gentle Clark who lived off the sun and smiled like a thousand stars, like he could outshine a quasar, if Clark– if Superman had turned evil, for a given value of evil (as if Bruce has a checklist, as if Clark himself gave Bruce a certain set of parameters), Bruce, current owner of all (all but 4.3 grams) the kryptonite on the planet, wouldn’t be able to utilise it.

Because, and here’s the kicker, here’s where one takes a long look at Bruce Wayne’s life, at both his lives together, where one decides the kicker in this scenario would be: he can’t stop Superman, because Superman no longer exists. And where one would be wrong.

Superman, Kal-El, Clark, currently, is staring straight at him, expression like barbed wire through the heart Bruce pretends he doesn’t have and acid on the soul he pretends doesn’t exist. He’s almost surprised that he’s not coated in blood, a red river winding down from his chest. Almost.

“You can’t,” he says, softly, though for all intents and purposes he could have shouted it: it would echo in the empty cave the same way, it would echo in his heart and head and soul.

He’s terrified to ask, terrified of the answer, but he does, what else does he have to lose? “Do you? Have you even ever?”

Clark stares down at the floor, at the rough stone, at the atoms. If he squints he could burn a hole to the center of the world. If he smiles, he could burn a hole straight through Bruce.

“Wasn’t it obvious?” Soft, yet deafening, quiet and gentle and like a grenade to a building in the center of a city.

Why else would Bruce tear his chest in half, crack his ribs open and present his heart, bloody and beating?

“Why?” Bruce resolutely doesn’t stumble over the word, he doesn’t stutter, there’s no inconsistencies in the intonation. It's the same voice he uses in the suit, under layers of modulation, undetectable to the human ear. Except it’s Clark.

He smiles. It reaches his eyes, makes the unearthly blue of his irises, or, at least, what look and act like irises, sparkle. He smiles and it’s like all the photons from the sun are expended back out, he’s the sun and Bruce is his moon: he can feel his own lips, without his permission, curving into some facsimile of a smile. He smiles and the room brightens by a good few lumens.

“Have you seen yourself?”

Bruce looks straight into his eyes and shakes his head by the smallest humanly possible degree. He’s fairly sure that it happened, like the facsimile of the smile, without his express permission. Clark understands though, without a spoken word, with the smallest humanly possible change.

The room dims.

“You.. you shouldn’t.”

Bruce gets some sick satisfaction from the way Clark stumbles over his words, a small human part in the one guy who could destroy everything, if he were so inclined. He wears his heart on his sleeve, without a disguise or cowl.

Why would he? When it can’t be broken, why bother protecting it?

He’s too preoccupied hearing him, watching him, to listen.

“Have you seen yourself?”

Clark grants him a small smile. He swallows. On the verge of tears, Bruce realises, like a gunshot to the chest.

“Bruce,” Clark says, brokenly, “we can’t. I can’t do that… not to you.”

Logically, apodictically, they can’t be together publically, of course they can’t, the logistics would be a nightmare alone.

Bruce knows that Clark isn’t a mind-reader, he knows that, because he knows Clark.

“Not.. not because of that, Bruce, I don’t care about the public.”

And Clark knows him.

“Then what the fuck, Clark?” Fundamentally, it’s the simplest thing to him, he tells him as much, “I love you, and you love me, and we’re not… this isn’t some Romeo and Juliet bullshit!”

“They both die at the end,” Clark says, because he’d thought that Bruce knew.

“So will we,” Bruce says, simply, because it's a fact. A fundamental fact of human life.

Like a gunshot to the chest.

“You will.”

Before me, and I’ll watch everyone we know, all the kids, the kids’ kids, die and disintegrate before I even get a single grey hair.

The truth rings around them like the aftermath of a nuclear reaction, like the ripples in a pond, left in the wake of skipped stones.

Bruce almost asks if it matters, if, really, truly, it matters. But he’s not the one who’ll be left alone.

The thing, regarding falling in love with an alien, with his best friend and teammate, the thing is he was in the middle long before he’d realised he’d even begun loving him. At this point, he would, without question, without even considering any other possibility, go to the end of the universe with him.

The thing is, regarding falling in love with Clark Kent, is that he knows, he knows like he knows the exact amount of kryptonite on this planet, like he knows exactly why Clark kept 4.3 grams, he knows that Clark loves him to the same extent. To the end of the universe. To his own destruction.

“Are you going to stop?”

“Stop?”

“Loving me.”

“No.”

He’s decisive, confident. Maybe naive, maybe too hopeful, too optimistic. Or maybe he’s just in love. It’s so, so painfully Clark, it perplexes him how… just how he exists, still like this, despite everything, in the face of the sheer abundance of evil and violence and corruption. An invincible summer in the midst of a perpetual winter.

“I’m not going to stop, either.”

Decisive, confident. Brought about by proof, logical, cogent evidence. Brought about by love, pure, unfiltered, unending, unconditional love.

That’s where they are.

“I love you, and I… I think I’m incapable of stopping, and you love me, and you’re not going to stop.”

Be with me, even if my life is blip on the line of your life, be with me, let us be happy for decades, even if you live for millenia.

“You’re going to grow to resent me.” Decisive. Confident.

“Aren’t we past hating each other?”

And they are. So far flung from it Bruce can barely see it.

Superman, Kal-El, the alien from a far-off planet, the alien who could destroy the world with a squint, who could live out his considerable days anywhere of his choosing. Who could, utterly and wholly and completely, destroy Bruce, soul and body, with one look, with one gesture, looks into Bruce’s eyes, and says, “I’m scared.”

Clark Kent, his best friend, teammate. The man he loves beyond measure and reason, loves beyond the boundaries of the universe and time, looks into his eyes, bright blue, and nothing else matters, the world around them, the universe, falls away to leave just them, alone and infinite.

“So am I.”

Terrified, actually, down to the depths of his core and being and soul.

Clark looks at him the way sailors used to look at the north star, he looks at him the way astronomers now look at the stars, impossibly infinite.

His world falls away to leave the feel of Clark’s waist, hard and firm, under his hands, the gentle, so fucking gentle, way Clark’s hands card through his hair (and if he concentrates, can feel the kryptonite ring Clark refuses to take off around him), his eyes, wide and terrified and determined, the curve of his nose, one black curl. His body, warm and firm and solid and there. The feel of his lips moving against his.

  Even when he buries him, and his children, and his children’s children, he can’t bring himself to regret loving him. Even if, technically, it’ll barely be a blip in the line of his life, even if, for the rest of it, he’ll never find anything like him, like what they had, he doesn’t regret it, he doesn’t resent him for leaving, he doesn’t regret loving him or the life they had together.

Later, long after civilisations have crumbled and humanity and Earth has ceased to exist, long after Clark found a decent use for all the kryptonite, a hand slips into his, warm and solid and there. Impossibly infinite.

“You took your time.”

[avengerscompound]

Start Over

Start Over:  A Black Widow Fanfic

Buy me a ☕

Character Pairing:  Natasha Romanoff x F!Reader Square: @ladiesofmarvelbingo​ - M4 Temporary Death/Presumed Dead

Word Count:  2524

Rating: M

Warnings:  Canon compliant alternate ending.  Angst.  Grief.  Hurt/Comfort.  Mentions of the extremely bad consequences of both the snap and the blip.

Synopsis:  As you try and pick up the pieces of your life after the blip and the death of your girlfriend you discover things aren’t as they seem.

A/N: This is kind of a fix-it fic but not really...  Just an extended ending to Endgame.  I’m apparently emo for Nat this week.

Start Over

The world was supposed to be better.  After everyone had turned to dust things had gone downhill really fast.  Thanos had taken out half of all life which hadn't actually changed anything.  There was just half as much of everything.  But it wasn't just that.  Planes had dropped out if the sky and crashed into populated areas killing hundreds.  Power Plants were suddenly left unmanned.  Some caught fire.  Some went thermonuclear and wiped out entire areas making them uninhabitable.  Babies and small children were left without parents and starved in their homes.  People disappeared while cooking creating house fires and because the emergency services were all overwhelmed all of a sudden whole city blocks burned.

In the end, what was supposed to be half was actually two thirds.  It took a long time to recover.  But slowly things seemed to start to.  Humanity was struggling but the planet seemed to take a moment to breathe.  The air was cleaner and you started to be able to see the stars at night even in the middle of New York City.  You met Natasha Romanoff.

Things were pretty far from perfect.  Whatever you had been before everyone had turned to dust, you weren't any longer.  It was like that for everyone.  There was before the incident and after.  They were separate.

Immediately after people began to turn to dust, you’d heard the cries of your neighbors baby.  Thankfully your landlord hadn’t been one of the ones dusted.  You and he had gone through every apartment looking for children or pets left alone or appliances left on.  You’d then gone to the next building and the next.  You collected a police officer on the way and a volunteer firefighter that helped you break into the places you didn’t have keys for.  By the time you physically couldn’t move your legs anymore you had gathered 23 children under the age of 10 and another 3 teenagers who were home alone after seeing their parents disintegrate along with more birds, fish, cats, and dogs than you could count.  The next day you had gathered more people to help.  Until there was a team of people taking turns looking after the kids you had found and going around finding ones you’d missed.

Thankfully you’d had your head together when you had started the process.  You’d taken pictures from each place you took the children from and written down addresses and any other personal information you could find.  You knew that whether the disappeared people came back or not there would be family who would look for some of the children at least.  You needed to make sure you weren’t making it harder to find them.

When the word had gotten back to the Avengers about the group you’d coordinated Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff had come to provide help.  Initially, they’d just done the initial sweeps of the city following the very protocol you’d started.  There was something about both of them  Of course, they were hurt like everyone else.  Everyone had experienced loss.  But for them, there was more.  They blamed themselves.  It was guilt and loss and fear that no one else seemed to carry with them the same way.  They were determined they fix things but they seemed to have no idea how or where to start.

They moved the whole thing into the old Avengers Tower.  The building had mostly been empty since it had originally sold and with what had happened a lot of businesses had downsized.  Stark Industries didn’t own the building anymore, but one of their subsidiary charities now rented out the ten floors of apartments and dorms that used to be used for the Avengers and the other employees.  It was now housing for displaced children and carers.  Many of the carers had lost their own children and were trying to fill that hole in themselves by helping the kids you’d found.

Having the use of the AI Friday to clear background checks and find family members made things work so smoothly that children from out of state were sent to you.  When the city had been scoured and deemed free of homeless children and pets Natasha and Steve both began to help with the kids.  Natasha more than Steve.  You’d later learned about Steve’s support group he set up.  Natasha did get something special out of helping the children.  It helped her with her pain and the need to fix things.  She was lost and god damn if she didn’t want to be found.

And find her you did.  It wasn’t easy.  Her walls were built high and she fortified them by keeping busy all the time.  You were busy too, but there was something that drew you to the red-head ex-assassin.  It was slow-burn in the worst way.  Holding each other at bay.  Two steps forward one step back.  All the cliches for two hurt and scared people who want more and are just too scared and have too much to make up for before they get to be happy.  But like all cliches you had ended up together and in love.

Maybe not happy.  It was hard to be completely happy in the post-snap world.  Or so Nat would say.  Not when your friends and family were gone and you spent your time taking care of orphans who were more afraid than you were. Not when her best friend was on some kind of murderous spree and the family she had made with his and her other friends and scattered to the wind.  But you were happy together.  You shared each other’s burdens and the joys.  And they came.  When you found a lost family member for one of the kids or found a loving adoptive family or when one came home from school proud about a grade or excited about a project.  You felt like parents in a way.  And as time moved forward you started to picture a life where maybe you could actually be parents.  Where you adopted some of the kids as your own and she realized that maybe the world as it stood didn’t need her to be an Avenger anymore.  It needed people to nurture it.

You had plans.  Not for now.  For later.  For when she was ready.  For when she could let go of what happened and moved forward in the world as it was and not get trapped in the idea that she could undo it all.

And then… and then …

And then Scott Lang had come back and given her hope again.

She’d said she was going to fix things.  She said they’d be better.  It was supposed to be better.  Bringing everyone back was supposed to make it better.

Maybe for some people, it was.

Not for you.

There was a lot of shit really.  When people returned some of them just appeared mid-air and fell to the ground because they’d been on planes when they disintegrated.  Lots of people appeared in the nuclear no go zones.  Some appeared inside other people and both ended up basically exploding, only worse, and more graphic.

People who had disappeared with infants now came to you to get their children who didn’t know them back from the parents who had raised them.  People who had skipped five years now no longer had homes or jobs because the world had moved on without them.  The population suddenly more than doubled and there weren’t the resources to provide for almost four billion new people.  Not anymore.

And worse… with all these people suddenly back, now there was no Nat.  She wasn’t there to hold you and tell you she would fix this.  Or even just tell you it didn’t matter because you had her and you’d get through it together.  Because you didn’t have her.  You didn’t even have someone who could come and break it to you easy.  You found out on the news like someone who hadn’t fallen asleep wrapped in her arms night after night.

She’d told you she was going to save the world.  Instead, you had lost yours.

No one mourned her openly.  There were monuments to Tony Stark everywhere.  On the news, there were groups of people openly mourning the sacrifice he made to throw the world back into chaos again.  Nat had small shrines in back alleys like she was an afterthought.

There were suddenly twice as many people on the planet and you’d never felt so alone.

It had been months since they’d returned and you were still struggling.  You knew Natasha wouldn’t want you to dwell on it.  You knew she’d want you to keep moving forward but it felt impossible.  You’d been carry all this stuff for so long and she’d been there and now you had the burden of her loss too.  You couldn’t sleep.  Instead, you walked through the city streets at night, visiting the little shrines set up for her.

You wore your grief like a coat.  You wrapped yourself in it and used it to keep the rest of the world out.  As you reached the first of the shrines on your circuit, you began pulling candles out from your purse.  You liked to refresh them.  There hadn’t been a funeral for Natasha.  That had broken your heart too.  You figured she’d at least earned new candles every night.

You kneeled down on the damp, broken asphalt and started lighting the candles that looked like they still had something left in them and putting out new ones.  The ground was cold and it bit into your legs, but you wore the discomfort like a penance.  A penance for not appreciating the time you had with her more.  For not begging her to stay behind and let the world move on.

You closed your eyes.  Not really praying exactly.  But you thought about her.  You thought about the nights you had stayed up talking work with her.  Which kids had family coming for them.  Which ones you thought you could place with families.  Plans to take them on trips to the zoo or to visit the Statue of Liberty or the Natural History Museum. You thought about what it was like falling asleep with her and waking up with her.  Her cute little half-smile when you showed up at the compound with real food.  Or the twinkle in her green eyes when she was about to pounce on you.  You thought about the plans for the future and how badly you wished things were different.  How badly you still wanted that life.  And how guilty and selfish you felt wishing she hadn’t done it.

Someone said your name.  It startled you from reverie and you looked up.  The voice had been familiar and so was the hourglass silhouette that stood at the end of the alley.  “What are you doing, Solnishko?”

“Natasha?”  You said.  Even as her name fell from your lips you thought you must be losing your mind.  You’d been carrying top much for too long and your mind had just fractured and you were starting to hallucinate.

The figure approached you, and as she got closer to the lights of the candles you could see her hair, blond at the ends, and her natural red from midway up.  She’d talked about having it cut or recolored to be even, but never found the time.  She looked down at you and smiled her half-smile, offering you her hand.  “It’s me, solnishko.”

You scrambled back from her, knocking over some of the candles along with a picture of her and some flowers.  “No.  No, you can’t be.  She’s dead.  Who are you?”

She sighed and crouched down, picking up the things you knocked over.  “Did you do this?”

You didn’t answer.  It felt like your heart was going to beat out of your chest and you were pretty close to throwing up.

She looked at the photo of herself and smiled sadly before putting it back.  “It’s really me,” she said gently.  “I don’t know if I can explain it properly.  Will you let me try though?”

You nodded, though you moved a little further away from her.

She sat down cross-legged on the ground opposite you.  “I told you we were going to time travel and collect the infinity stones?  The things that killed half of life in the first place?”

You nodded.  You’d heard the stories about Thanos a thousand times, and her call to tell you that she was going to get them and undo it had been rushed but she’d told you she loved you and would see you soon and everything would be fixed.  “Clint and I were sent for the soul stone.  The deal was you had to give up someone you loved.  A soul for a soul.  So I sacrificed myself.  I couldn’t ask Clint to do that when we were so close to getting his family back.  I died.  I remember dying.  And then… the stone was returned and I wasn’t dead anymore.  Or… I was but not at the same time.  It was like being in limbo.  There was an open expanse of water, only ankle deep.  And a hill with a tree. And me.   Then a voice said that because the soul had returned mine no longer needed to take its place.  I had the choice to move on, or I could go back.  If I went back I couldn’t go to Clint.  He’d given me up for the stone and that was the trade.  If I go to him it would take us both.  He can’t know I’m alive.  But you can.”

You looked her over and moved closer.  She didn’t move, just let you take your time coming to her.  “Is it really you, Natasha?”

“Yes, my darling.  I swear. I couldn’t leave you.”  She said holding out her hand to you, almost as if she was trying to befriend a scared puppy.

You reached out and put your hand in hers and when her fingers closed around yours, warm and familiar you fell into her and started to cry.  She held you as you sobbed against her.  The tears of relief and fear and all the pain you had been carrying with you flowing from you easily.  “It’s okay, Solnishko,” she soothed, her hand running down the back of your neck again and again.  “I’ve got you.”

When the tears slowed and your sobbing quieted she kept holding you and rubbing your back.  “I can’t stay here.”  She whispered.  “If Clint finds out I’m alive, then we both die.  I can’t risk being in the city where most people knew me.  I was thinking I’d go somewhere.  Australia?  Or New Zealand maybe?  Or we could go into space.  I’ll have to dye my hair again.  But I can start over.  Be whatever I want to be.  No one knows I’m alive.  Will you come?”

You looked up into her eyes.  They looked down at you with both hope and fear.  “Of course.  Yes.  Let’s do it.”

She smiled and leaned in and kissed you.  When her lips touched yours all the last remaining doubt that this wasn’t real, washed away.  This was Nat.  Your Nat.  And you were going to go and get the life you’d both earned.  The quiet family life you’d both dreamed of.

[firemagicked]

Icecrown - Distraction

Crunch.

Crusted iced over snow folded and held. Lyren breathed out, peering out from the crest of the hill into the valley of stone and ice. The howling windows and storms might start up again at any moment and for now, they had a few moments. As Darnath's attention was taken up in engineering, Lyren had offered his help to strengthen the enchantments around the tournament grounds. It helped to keep busy.

But when there was a moment of quiet like now where Darnath was still distracted and he had a sudden spare moment there was nothing to do but think.

Snow and ice and howling winds, nothing but rocks for color. Even he dressed in more muted tones to blend in. It made sense then, that everything, everyone was just a little bit colder. That was the reasonable argument his mind brought up to explain away growing oddities.

It was also absolute bullshit. He knew it. Darnath knew it.

Which was exactly why the death knight distracted him every time he started expressing alarm over a growing number of things Lyren had noticed. And most likely there were several things he hadn't noticed.

Surreptitiously trying to ask the other death knights about… anything, really, related to their health and physicality did not normally get him anywhere. The new dragonsworn were a bit more polite about it. But their newer loyalty was more like - Dragon, Ebon Blade, Darnath, with a strong possibility of the latter two being flipped if Darnath spent enough time around them.

Not that Lyren was advertising he was asking because of Darnath either which was as much the problem. No, no, he was a mage, it was perfectly natural magical curiosity! If any of them guessed otherwise, well, he was stubborn on his point.

And so he wouldn't give away a possible weakness of Darnath's, and they wouldn't give away theirs.

He snorted, quietly, exhaling heavily to watch the air steam with heat and disappear.

Below, the scourge teamed and grew and with every push the Argent Crusade made to contain them, more dragged themselves up from beneath the ice. Or worse, if someone fell on the battlefield they need not await broken snow and dirt. Not to mention the creatures that looked like dark val'kyr that came down from the broken sky and brought forth long dead enemies that needed crushing waves of the Crusade forces to bring down again.

Behind the tournament grounds held strong, but never not in danger if too many slipped up, if anyone weakened. Spellcasters threaded defenses and early alarm systems that Icecrown's very nature worked to disintegrate. It had taken days even to get a stable enough grip on everything to create anchored portals.

And above… above Atlas' Aurora hovered, usually hidden out of view. It was exactly where Lyren should be right now, having eked out a tiny break of time. He should curl into the warmth Darnath provided for them with the wonders of engineering created heat and rest.

One of them should.

If not rest, then call the kids. Call Javinth. Call Sunsoul.

He did every day. But usually with Darnath. There were things he couldn't mention or even hint at in front of his daughters. Star was especially sharp and Arenlia still remembered when he had disappeared for a month. Either of them would pick up on the slightest hesitation in tone.

He wished they could be with them, that it was safe. He wished they were back with them. He especially wished Darnath was there, back on the island. If he thought there was any way Darnath would leave, he would have tried to arrange it. At this point, he would rather accept one of the teenagers being out here instead of the death knight.

Because something was wrong with Darnath. And it was now, in these moments of quiet, that he could let it terrify him.

Not the snow, the ice or the cold. All of them could hurt him, if he wasn't careful to keep his temperature up, if he let ice magic into his core. But he wasn't frightened of that. It was a known issue.

Darnath wasn't. It was something growing worse the demonic death knight didn't want to talk about. Because clearly that would only have worried Lyren.

Problem: Lyren was already worried.

Solution: Distract.

It was easy to say he shouldn't let himself be distracted. But the other problem was the distractions weren't always normal Darnath distractions. The problem was there were very serious problems in Icecrown.

The newest problem was the longer something was wrong with Darnath the less Lyren cared about the giant hole in the sky. The backup dream of gathering everyone up and getting off this insane planet was getting more appealing by the moment.

Crunch.

Snow shifted beneath him. Too close. Snow was melting around him before he had fully acknowledged the ghoul that had been crawling its way up an incline of snow toward him.

Flames curled at his fingers, swirled into a dense ball of yellow and orange. He let it get hotter, larger, as the ghoul came closer, snarling now like it knew it was doomed.

It was a flick of his fingers, not a throw that rolled it out of his hands. The ghoul was close enough the ball of fire dropped more than it flew, engulfing the ghoul in bright warm tones for a brief moment before there were only flames.

The crackle of fire was louder to Lyren than the ghoul's death screams.

He stared behind it as it burned. No one had been posted up here. No guard. ...The storms had piled snow and ice on the other side of what he thought was a "hill" and should in fact be a cliff. And now they were coming up this way too.

It was tempting to try melting it away. He probably could. But fighting Icecrown's nature would have him down and out for likely the same amount of time it took for the storms to fill it in again.

So, here it was. Another distraction. Something else to figure out. And as tempting as it was to try and drag Darnath out of Icecrown altogether until he knew what was wrong, in a battle of wills about this -

(The mark on his back was a warm comfort beneath his skin and in his mind and why would he want to fight Darnath on it anyway?)

- he knew he wasn't coming out the victor.

Maybe the next conversation would go better.

@darnath

[paullicino]

On French Toast: A Recipe for Revolution

My Patreon is two years old this month and I wanted to celebrate with something both a little special and a little silly. I finally learned how to make my favourite food during the latest lockdown and I want to share my particular take on it with you. Bon appétit.

What you will need (makes 2-4 slices of French toast, scale this if necessary):

A heating surface (stovetop, hob, flame etc.)

A pan

A toaster (though using the pan for toasting works in a pinch)

A bowl

Butter (or margarine)

Bread (sliced recommended, though you can try other kinds, from baguettes to bagels)

Quarter cup of milk

One egg

A sweetener (sugar or caster sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, etc.)

What you may optionally desire:

Fruit

Syrup

Savory sides (bacon, hash browns)

Garnish

Strength of spirit and a determination to make the world better

A guillotine (for slicing)

Begin by lightly toasting whatever bread you’re going to use, imbuing it with a gentle firmness that will match your own stoicism and strength of character in facing the many challenges ahead.

Look out at the world. Look inside toward the very core of your soul. Steel yourself.

Continue by melting butter in a pan over medium heat, thinking about how, in a culture that teeters and totters, flails and falters on the very edge of existential, political, environmental, sociological and even epistemological failure, in a society that staggers slovenly toward its disintegration and demise, there is but one saviour that has the power to check our collapse. Muse on how we have but a single hope, a single champion, a single Samaritan that can and that will bring us back from the brink. Understand that we have a secret weapon. Know that we have French toast.

Whisk together the egg, milk and any flavourings or sweeteners in a bowl, while considering this world of falsity, of fakery and facades, where the truth has wilted and withered, hanging limp in the still, cold and stale air that has long lost the wild winds of change and which now shudders with nothing more than the sound of dead and hollow notes of too little regret released far too late. Dip the bread into this mixture, safe in the knowledge that French toast remains our constant confederate. When all else fails, it will be the one thing we can rely upon. It is the final and the ultimate, but also the emotional and the spiritual. The only salvation is French toast.

How long you dip the bread for is just one of your many very particular decisions. Do not let it soak for too long, otherwise you will create a limp and overly forgiving companion of meagre character and little backbone. Do not be thrifty, for this is the attitude of the miserly  bourgeoisie, born of hoarding and jealousy.

On a planet gone mad spinning through an empty and uncaring universe, place the now wet bread in the pan, noting that French toast remains the constant by which all can be measured and the fundamental from which everything will be rebuilt. As basic as hydrogen, helium and oxygen are eggs, milk and bread, and certainly almost as abundant. Together they combine to shape matter, give life and create joy. The first and greatest virtue of French toast is this transcendent simplicity, this holy trinity more foundational than any science or spirituality.

Fry the bread as if it were a pancake or slice of bacon, flipping it once its forgiving fluidity becomes the same firmness found in those who have faced adversity. Find a texture that matches your personal preference, perhaps one that mixes a solid crust with a gently yielding body.

Celebrate how, from this simplicity, all glory is grown. How French toast emancipates us. How it enlightens. How it emboldens. How it is a dish of the working people, food that could be made in almost any home, a meal that requires only the most rudimentary of tools and the simplest of ingredients. How, in the event of an apocalypse, whether under burning skies, surging waters or crumbling mountains of ash, French toast could still be consumed amongst the ruins. How it could be the energy that fuels humanity’s revival, shared and spread by word of mouth even when all other knowledge is lost. How, when the revolution comes, French toast will be the food of the uprising, the food of the proletariat, the food of the resolute. How, its loyalty unwavering, it will be consumed by the chosen in either their moment of triumph or in their moment of regret, feeding their elation and their exuberance, or their languishing and their lamentation. How bread, milk and eggs will become the working people’s new troika, replacing blood, sweat and tears, epitomising liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Remove the bread from the pan and garnish or supplement according to taste, perhaps adding sliced fruit, coating with sugar or drizzling with syrup. Be ardent in the unwavering belief that French toast is not only the true equaliser, but also the true test of skill, for in spite of the apparent artlessness of its three core ingredients, it is truly a food forged in technique. It is a meal defined by its details, a canvas upon which any person can unleash their artistry. Whether they express themselves in sugar or cinnamon, in whisking or folding, in their choice of bread or addition of fruits, their French toast is not only a mirror of its creator, but an insight into their very being.

Serve warm and with pride, as I do, for I know that French toast will be the last thing I see before I die. It will shine in the sunlight, held aloft and fluttering in the breeze. It will be shot into space, to travel beyond our solar system and carry our message to the stars. It will be etched into our monuments and woven into our legends. It is itself a statement that requires no extrapolation, no punctuation, and yet it speaks for us all, endless and eternal, and will exist even beyond time itself, when all other things have collapsed in on themselves under the infinite weight of nihilistic nothingness.

Lament.

Then continue onward, regardless.

Made, of course, with the support of my patrons on Patreon. Thank you!

[victimofthemusic]

Five Times Tony Stark Was a Good Dad (And One Time He Wasn’t)--Part 6

Hello guys! It’s been a while since the last installment of this and I thank you for your patience. I’m terrible at writing angst and this chapter is filled with it, so it took me a while to write it. But it’s here and I’m proud of it and it’s long, so hopefully that makes up for the wait. It begins during Infinity War and I made a few changes to the movie, so, there’s that. I hope you guys enjoy it! :)

Read Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 here!

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

Tony’s been questioning every choice he’s made in his entire life ever since they’ve infiltrated this stupid space donut, hurling two hundred miles an hour towards uncharted intergalactic territory.

He knows in his hearts of hearts that this is a one way ticket, there’s no possibility, not a chance in hell that his feet will ever touch solid ground—Earth—ever again. He’s never going to see Pepper’s smile, smell her perfume, hear her laugh. He thinks of the last conversation they had, the thought of a unknown child, the thought of the future. The thought of Peter playing with a small ginger haired kid, with his eyes and Pepper’s nose and her penchant for making him be better, want better. He thought of Peter and the kid working towards his final years in high school, already picking out colleges and making plans for his future.

All of that went up in smoke when he followed this flying saucer and the world was at risk again. His world—Pepper, Peter, Happy, Rhodey—was in danger and he mourned the loss of that future for a second and then all thoughts of children and wedding venues left his mind and it was set on saving the world. For Pepper. For Peter. For Rhodey. For Happy.

And that kid—that frustrating, eager to please, always ready to save someone even if it means his life—shows up, with his movie references and his big heart and his penchant wanting to save everyone in trouble.

The dread that had settled like lead into his stomach since boarding this giant space ship increased ten fold when Peter Parker came out of the shadows and punched his one way ticket to space with no certainty of return.

But seeing Peter, a kid, his kid for all intents and purposes, with an entire future a head of him, stand there in the middle of a space ship hurtling them further and further away from Earth—which was safer by a bigger margin than this level of unknown, foreign territory they were currently in  —and marvel at his surroundings lit a fire of determination to get that kid back home, back to his aunt, whole and happy.

Even if it meant he didn’t get to go with him.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Their plan was going to work.

It was shaky and risky, at best, but this Mantis was sure she could subdue Thanos enough so they, Peter and Tony, with combined forces, could get the gauntlet off and kill Thanos and not just save the world from almost complete eradication, but they could go home.

Home

Tony believed in this plan because he had to. He had to believe that he was going to get a chance to save Peter, who was torn between watching a twitching Strange as he filtered through all possibilities, all the outcomes of their victory and observing Titan with awestruck eyes. He had to believe that at the end of this, Peter was going to get to walk away from it, unscathed and go back to Earth, home to his aunt May and his friends and live as normal of a life as he could. One that didn’t involve intergalactic war-zones and aliens hell bent on imposing their will on the entire universe.

“Do you think this is going to work?”

Tony looks down at Peter, dressed in the IronSpider suit he’d designed for him when the thought of something horrible happening to this kid kept him up at night, the same suit the kid turned down weeks later when it finished because he wanted to continue to look out for the little guy and Tony hasn't believed in God for a number of years, but he finds himself praying to any deity that will listen, that he can get this kid through this.

He looks nervous, scared, but there’s a determination in his eyes that gives Tony the confidence to look his kid in the eye and reassure him.

“It’s going to work, underoos.” He says, putting his hand on Peter’s shoulder, give it a squeeze and through the armor, he feels him relax, like Tony’s assurance was all he needed to believe. In himself. In them. In this plan.

“Okay,” Peter says, blows out a breath and when he meets Tony’s eyes again, all his fear and nerves are gone. Replaced with a confidence and a fire that makes Tony feel even more determined to prove to Peter that his  words deserve the blind trust Peter places in them.

And when Tony hears Strange announce that there’s 14,000,605 possibilities, alternate futures and outcomes that can stem from this fight for their lives, he’s almost afraid to ask the number of times they can win, but he’s Tony Stark and he will forever put more stock into numbers and statistics than any prayers one can utter, he asks anyways.

“And in how many of those outcomes do we win?”

Strange’s lips form a grim line when he replies, “One.”

One

He feels Peter tense beside him and the sober air turns even more foreboding at this revelation, this new piece of data and Tony wonders if they were better off not knowing.

Because out of fourteen million scenarios, they only win in one.

Which means they have 0.000007% of winning.

And, when Tony looks around, that means that at least half of them are going to die for that one chance they have in saving the entire universe.

He looks to Peter and he makes peace with the fact that he’d happily be put in that half that dies trying if it means Peter is in the half that lives.

One

One chance to save this kid that’s engraved himself on Tony’s heart and who Tony would do anything to protect, give up everything to protect. Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, the hypothetical child that he dared let himself dream of having because of this kid, standing next to him.

And Pepper, bless her, would understand.

Because despite it all, Peter was his son.

And he would give anything to give his son the one chance to go home.

So he placed his faith in science and numbers and his technology that his son would be in that half that got off this red wasteland and let this day become a memory.

He has one chance

~~~~~~~~~~

It was working

Their plan was actually working

It was working, they had it, the gauntlet was coming off, just a little bit more to go and then—

Snap

The fighting stopped, an eerie silence settled over the forgotten planet and they braced themselves for the promised awful that was to come and then—

Strange went first, falling to his knees and gasping as if he couldn't breathe and then—

His body began to break down and disintegrate, floating off into thin dust particles and then he wasn't there.

Tony whipped his head around, eyes wild as he watched as it started happening to Quill, Mantis, Drax—their bodies began to turn to ash, until they disappeared into thin air and then nothing.

“M—Mr. Star—Tony— I-I don’t feel so good.” Peter gasped and Tony turned his wild eyes to Peter, who was falling to the ground but Tony grabbed him before he could, falling to his knees with the weight of Peter and he tried to ignore the fact that it already felt like dead weight

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Tony panted, trying to hold back the panic, “You’re okay, it’s okay—“

Not Peter, please not Peter

Peter’s brown eyes were wide with fear and panic and Tony’s hand shook as he held the kid tighter, “I-I don’t want to go, please Tony—“

“You’re not going anywhere, it’s okay—“ Tony tried to sooth through blurry eyes.

“I’m scared Tony—please-d-don’t let me go—“ Peter pleaded, his eyes begging Tony to fix it.

Not my son, not my son, please not my son

“Stay with me Pete—no don’t close your eyes, bud, please—“

Peter’s cheeks were wet with tears and Tony could feel his legs begin to disintegrate, ignored the way he felt lighter and the ash that began to float in the air where parts of Peter’s body used to be.

“I-I’m sorry, Tony, I-I tried—“

Tony was trying so hard to not let his tears fall but his heart was reaching unhealthy levels of panic, “You did so good, bud, I’m so proud of you.”

Peter gasped and his face began to blur and Tony wanted to scream, “Peter, I’m going to fix this—Pete stay with me bud—“

“—Tony—I—“

No nonononononoo

“—Pete? Please, buddy, you gotta—“

“—I’m sorry, Tony—“

Peter’s hand was gone, his brown eyes closed and his body—the ash that was Peter—drifted away and Tony screamed in agony, his tears mingling with the sweat and blood and his heart felt like it was going to shatter and disintegrate right along with Peter’s body.

Peter was gone

He was gone

It was supposed to be me

~~~~~~~~~~

He doesn't know how long he floats in space, he knows the number is upwards of twenty-something days, and all he could think about was how he wishes, more than anything, he would've floated away in the wind with Peter.

He didn’t want to leave Titan, Peter, it had taken Nebula physically shoving him in what remained of the space doughnut and forcing tools into his hands to get it up an running, handing him a purpose, to get him to leave. They managed to get it running, enough to get off Titan and headed towards open space and if Tony didn’t feel like he was leaving a piece of him behind, he would be staring out at the planets and galaxies with wonder.

For someone who was more computer than human, Nebula was observant and kept her distance from Tony for the first few days, allowing him to wallow in his own grief and regret. But as the days wore on, the ship needed repairs and despite the growing bleakness of their situation, the low food and water supply, Tony was grateful for the distraction.

They were a good team, Nebula was calculating and matter of fact, knowledgeable with mechanics and computers and the foreign mechanisms used in a space ship.

But she wasn’t Peter.

And even up to his elbows in foreign mechanics and spaceship guts, he couldn't help but think of his days in the lab with Peter. Everything reminds him of Peter and it makes his chest ache and his eyes sting.

“Was he your son?”

It’s day fourteen and Tony’s up to eyeballs in the ship’s main engine, screw driver between his teeth while he attempts to rewire the main power source to give them the extra boost they would need to get them home. The question makes him pause and the wire in his hand short circuits, shocking him and he curses under breath at the burnimg sensation it leaves behind.

The question is simple, but the answer is complicated and complex and everything in Tony aches. He wants to go home. He wants to find that purple bastard and bash his head in until his blood stains the orange dust on that wasteland of a planet. He wants to turn back time and never allow Peter on this ship. He wants to go even further back and stop that god forsaken spider from biting Peter in the first place. He wants to trade places with Peter, he wishes that it was him who turned to nothing, not Peter.

Never Peter.

He just wants Peter.

He’s gone beyond the normal social standard of time one has to answer a question when asked, but Nebula either didn’t notice or care, just watching him intently from her own project across from him.

“Yes,” he said eventually, fiddling with the wires again, the burn on his thumb smarting and it distracted against the other wounds that were throbbing in synch with the beat of his heart, “he—Peter—he is mine. Not biologically speaking, but yeah, he is—was my son.”

Nebula cast her eyes downward, “I’m sorry my father has caused you so much pain.”

Tony eyed her for a moment, considering, “I’m sorry you had to call someone so ugly ‘dad’.”

He didn’t mean it as a joke, but Nebula gave a sinister hiss that resembled an incredulous laugh, “He was no father. Thanos might have taken me and called me his daughter, but he wasn't a father.”

“And I thought I had Daddy Issues.” Tony muttered.

Nebula gave him a odd look and he realized his joke was lost on her.

They settled back into silence and their respective projects.

When stands Tony stands to go forage for food in their dwindling supply, he pauses, turning to look back a Nebula, who's diligently mapping out their route home and he has to clear his throat from disuse.

“I’m sorry your father has caused you so much pain. I know what he did to your sister and I’m sorry.”

Nebula pauses, the map above her spinning and twirling in order to find their best option home and she stares so long at it, Tony wonders if she’ll even respond.

Just as he’s turning to leave, he hears Nebula speak, “She wasn't really my sister, you know. Thanos took her, like he took me. He murdered my family, her family and all my other siblings families. But he saw something in us worth keeping. And I hated my other siblings. I hated Gamora, too. Thanos—he would make us fight against each other, preparing us for battle. And she would always win. Always. And every time she did, he would replace a piece of me with metal and armor. An upgrade, he called it. I hated her for it. But she protected me, in the end. She fought for me and she saved me.”

She looked up at him and for a moment, Tony could see his own pain reflected in her eyes, “She wasn't my sister. Not by blood or biology, but I will avenge her death if it’s the last thing I do.”

Tony feels the same need for vengeance in his chest and it burns almost as much as the ache in his chest that was left behind the minute Peter disappeared in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~

They’re out of food. They ran out of water a day ago and the hope he had at the beginning of the journey home disappeared around the same time they ran out of supplies. Their ship is in shambles and they’re floating among the stars aimlessly.

Tony feels the hunger pains in his stomach, the dryness of this throat and the chill that has settled over the inside of the ship. He can no longer feel his toes or his fingers and he wonders, idly, what will kill him first. The lack of food, water or the cold.

He’s never felt this level of helplessness before. Not since the cave and even that situation didn’t seem as dire as this. At least in Afghanistan, he was on Earth and closer to human life, closer to a chance of a rescue attempt.

But here, floating further and further away from Earth, millions of millions of miles away from any human life form, the chance for the calvary to recuse them were very slim.

Fatigue settles into his bones and he closes his eyes, resting his head against the glass window of the ship. He feels a numbness that has nothing to do with the freezing temperature. He just wants it all to end. The hunger, the thirst, the hope, that maybe, maybe help his coming. The hope that maybe this is all just a nightmare and he’ll wake up from it. He knows what it’s like to have nightmares this real, to be trapped inside his own mind and he hopes that this is just a nightmare.

Hope, Tony thinks to himself dazedly, what a debilitating and crippling concept.

He slips into a fitful sleep and a part of him hopes that this time, he won’t wake up.

Hope

What a cruel and bitter bitch.

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

Someone was nudging him.

That was the first thing Tony registered as he woke from the memory of Peter pleading for his life. The taste of failure was bitter on his tongue and he swallowed, wincing at the sandpaper texture of his throat.

He blinked up at Nebula, who was kneeling over him with a mild look of disgust on her face, “What?”

Nebula gave a sound which sounded both relieved and annoyed, “I thought you were dead.”

Tony rubbed his eyes and sat up, wincing at the ache in his bones, “Sorry to disappoint you, Blues Clues, but I’m very much alive and well.”

Nebula hissed in what was annoyance, Tony was now sure, “I do not understand such a statement.”

“Blues Clues? The little blue dog that’s always accompanied by a vaguely suspicious man who likes to spend a lot time around children and make believe characters?”

Nebula merely blinked, “Are you intoxicated?”

Tony snorted, “I wish,” he muttered, “Now why did you wake me up?”

Nebula nodded out the window and Tony followed her gaze, wincing against the bright gold light that lit up the dark void that was this area of space.

“What is that?” He demanded, scrambling to stand up, because yeah, that orb of light was heading right towards them.

“I do not know, but it’s heading right for us and this ship can’t take much more.”

Tony swallowed heavily, glancing over to his beaten and battered suit that was slowly turning into a crude version of an Iron Man popsicle. His heart was racing in his chest, his mind was a blur and he had no idea what they were going to do if that thing made impact.

He opened his mouth to ask, plead, beg, scream, he would never find out because whatever that glow-y thing was—an orb, a meteor—was knocking on their door.

Nebula reached for the gun at her hip and she cautiously made her way over to the entrance of the ship, opening the door slowly and Tony swore he was hallucinating because okay, that was a woman, who was glowing and currently suspended about a trillion feet above earth like it was an every day occurrence.

“Who are you?” Nebula demanded, raising her gun at the woman.

“I’m Carol Danvers,” The woman replied, completely ignoring the gun being waved in her face, glancing around the cabin of the ship until her eyes land on Tony.

“Tony Stark,” Carol Danvers said with a small smirk, “You’re a hard man to find.”

“I’m sorry, but I missed the part where we know each other, you’ve been absent from all the super-hero meetings.” Tony said, giving her a wary glance over.

Carol smirked wider, “I’m more of a one woman operation.”

“Oh well, I appreciate the whole lone ranger thing, but what are you here for?” Tony said, leaning back against the wall of the ship. He was beginning to feel dizzy from all the standing, his knees were shaking and his body felt weak to the point where he wanted to sit down and sleep for a million years.

“To bring you home.” She said, her voice softening, concern lighting her eyes as she watched Tony slowly collapse against the wall.

Home

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

When the ship landed, Tony couldn't bring himself to look out the window, couldn't bring himself to hope that this wasn't another dream, that this was real. He wasn't floating, lost in some dark void of space. He was here, on earth, at the compound.

Home

The mouth of the ship opens slowly and tears fill his eyes at the sight of the tops of the trees, the smell of pine filling his nostrils and when it finally lowers, he sees Pepper first, followed by Happy and then Rhodey.

His heart fills to the brim with joy and he hardly believes what his eyes are seeing.

And then his eyes land on May Parker among the ones to welcome him back and something in him shatters at the hopeful expression on her face.

Peter

He collapses when he takes his first step and he just lets himself fall, but strong arms wrap around him and knows without even looking that it’s Steve fucking Rogers that catches him.

He keeps his eyes on May and watches the horror fill her eyes, along with the tears and he breaks.

“I lost the kid,” Tony whispers brokenly, “I lost the kid.”

Steve’s grip tightens around Tony and for the first time since the kid turned to dust in his arms, a sob rips through Tony’s throat and he feels the absence of Peter like a stab to through the chest.

He made it home and Peter didn’t and that fact hurts worse than any blow ever could.

I’ll keep him safe May, I promise.

Nothing will ever happen to him.

May Parker’s hysterical sobs match Tony’s and it rips the remaining shreds of Tony’s heart to pieces.

“God, Steve, I lost the kid.” Tony says and it hits him, now just how permanent that is.

I lost him

My son

He’s gone

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony stays in the hospital for two weeks.

Bruce wanted him to stay longer, but Tony ignored the protests and checked himself out of the medical wing and he wants to disappear for a while.

He knows the others want to start talking strategy, to devise a plan to reverse the damage, to find Thanos and make him pay for what he did.

But Tony just wants to disappear. He doesn't want to think, he doesn't want to talk about Thanos and space and stones and what could or couldn't happen if they gather all the stones.

The only thing he wants is Peter and he can’t have that.

His first stop when he’s out of the medical wing is to stop by the bar and grab the oldest and biggest bottle of scotch he can find, not even bothering with a glass that has dust settling around the rim from lack of use.

He’d tried to be the father that he’d always wanted and that meant being sober. As long as he had Peter in his life, Tony hadn't touched a drop of alcohol. He never wanted Peter to pick up the habit and he never wanted to be intoxicated in case Peter ever needed him.

Something like guilt settles in the pit of the stomach, but the reminder that Peter isn't here and won’t ever be around again, hits him like a shot to the gut and he unscrews the bottle and takes a long pull, wincing at the burning in his throat.

He wanders through the compound, through the hallways and down corridors that he doesn't recognize and he takes long pulls from the bottle and finally, his feet take him to the lab.

He’s unsteady on his feet and the bottle’s half empty, but the ache in his chest has yet to lessen and Tony stumbles into the lab table, catching himself on the edge of it and righting himself.

He looks at the lab through blurry eyes and so many memories swirl in his brain, the kid sprawled out on the couch, up to his nose in homework. Peter leaning over his web shooters, his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration. Peter’s bright laughter when he his web formula exploded over both of them. Peter’s excited science babble. Peter complaining about the level of Metallica and Tony admonishing him for not knowing his classics.

“It’s AC/DC there bud, respect the classics.”

Peter rolled his eyes, “I think you need to let go of the classics, it’s hurting my ears.”

“I knew I’d find you in here.”

Tony startles at the voice, looking up at Steve Rogers leaning against the doorframe of the lab and watching him with a guarded expression.

Tony has to blink several times to get the extra Steve’s to go away and he straightens himself as best as he can, still leaning against the lab table for support.

“What do you want, Rogers?” Tony demands tiredly, taking a swig from the bottle still dangling in his hands.

“Everyone’s looking for you, we’re worried—“

Tony scoffs, “Like any of you care.”

“Of course we care Tony, it’s why we’re here.”

A bitter laugh slips through Tony’s lips and he shakes his head, “Oh yes, you all care so much. Tell me, Rogers, did any of you care when you left me with a broken suit in the middle of fucking Siberia? I don’t recall any of you weeping at my bedside while I wasted away in a hospital bed for two months after Cho had to reconstruct my sternum from your little shield, on top of the hypothermia and frost bite.”

Steve winced, opening his mouth to protest, but Tony had been waiting for this moment for almost two years, he wasn't going to have it taken away from him now, “Or how about Rhodey? Not one of you reached out to him to see how he was doing after your little ant buddy paralyzed him from the waist down. You know it took almost a full year for him to learn how to walk again? And that was after I had to spend months perfecting the technology to do so. You left me with a flip phone and a note that wasn't any form of an apology and you took almost everyone I had ever cared about away from me.”

Tony laughed, “So why now Steve? Did your little buddy get snapped along with the rest of the others? Am I supposed to come up with another plan to save his ass when he’s done nothing but destroy any family I ever had? You knew he murdered my parents and you kept that to yourself. You were supposed to be my friend ,too. Or was I just a place holder until you could find Barnes?”

“Tony—“

“So screw all of you, every single one of you. Because none of you cared then and none of you care now.” He took a swig from the bottled and collapsed into one of the chairs and put his head in his hands.

God, he was drunk. And tired. So tired. He just wanted to curl up on the couch in the corner of the room and fall asleep. But he knew what would be waiting for him when he did. And he couldn't spend another night reliving Peter’s death. He couldn't do it.

A hand settled on his shoulder cautiously, and Tony shook it off.

Steve sighed, shuffling backwards to give Tony his space, “You’re not the only one who’s lost someone, Tony.”

Tony stood up so fast the room spun and he had to grip the table for balance, “Don’t,” he warned lowly through gritted teeth, “don’t you dare go there, Rogers.”

“Tony, we lose good men and women in battle, it’s hazards of the job—“

Anger like Tony had never felt before swelled in his gut, hot and unyielding and before he could even think, the bottle that was on the table next to his hand was in his grasp and thrown at such a speed across the room that even Steve the super soldier almost missed it. It shattered against the wall and the scotch splattered everywhere and Tony couldn't even bring himself to care.  

“PETER WAS MY SON! HE WAS A CHILD, NOT ONE OF YOUR GODDAMN SOLDIERS! SO DON’T TELL ME THAT IT’S A HAZARD OF THE JOB, ROGERS, BECAUSE PETER DIDN’T DESERVE TO DIE!”

White hot pain flared in his chest, an ache so deep Tony felt like he couldn't breathe. He collapsed into a chair and put his head in his hands, feeling the wetness on his cheeks and he realized he was crying.

“Peter was—he was my responsibility, I was supposed to protect him—and I—I couldn't save him,” Tony whispered, his voice cracking, “he just—disappeared and he was so scared and I couldn't save him, there was—there was nothing I could do. And he’s gone and not coming back and I—I shouldn't be here, he should be here—“

“Tony,” Steve said, his voice gentle, “it wasn't your fault.”

“He wasn't supposed to be there! He wasn't supposed to get on that fucking ship! He was supposed to stay here, to be here, with his aunt and looking after the little people, he never—he never wanted this,” Tony said desperately, waving his hand in a vague gesture and Steve understood.

“Tony,” Steve said, his voice still low, calm, “it wouldn't of mattered if he was here or in space, with you. He would’ve…disappeared, regardless. We don't know why it only affected certain people, but either way, losing Peter wasn't your fault. The only person to blame is Thanos and the only way to get Peter back is to figure out a way to reverse all of this.”

He placed what was supposed to be a calming hand on Tony’s shoulder, but Tony shook him off, “And how the fuck do you suppose we do that, Rogers? The only hope we had at reversing time got dusted with Peter and with Strange gone, we have nothing. Unless you’ve got Doc Brown’s phone number—“

“So you’re just going to give up?” Steve demanded, throwing his hands in the air in frustration.

“What do you want from me, Captain Spangles? Do you want me to dust off the ole DeLorean and go back in time to when this purple bastard was born and kill him? I’ve done many things, Rogers, but time travel isn't one of them. It can’t be done.”

“But I thought Tony Stark could do anything.” Steve said with a hint of sarcasm and Tony wished he had another glass bottle to throw at his head.

“I’m only a human, okay?” Tony snapped, “I can’t solve everything. You people think that I have the solution to everything, but you’re missing one important thing.”

“And what’s that?” Steve demanded.

“I spent every waking moment on that god forsaken ship thinking of ways I could fix this and bring Peter home. I thought of everything, every single possibility and I came up with the same answer. It can’t be done. Because if it could, Peter would be here, safe. I would've never left that ship if it meant that I could've saved Peter. And he’s not here. And I get to live with that for the rest of my life. This is the one problem I can’t solve and it kills me. Do you get that? So it’s not for a lack of trying, because I tried. I tried and I tried until I almost lost my mind trying to think of ways to bring that kid back to me. But I can’t, Steve, I can’t.”

Tears fill Tony’s eyes and he wants to scream and yell until he doesn't have a voice, because Steve doesn't get it.

He had to hold the closest thing he had to a son in his arms while he died and there was nothing he could do. Peter died and Tony didn’t and that is something Tony will never be able to live with.

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

They have a memorial service for the ones that disappeared after the snap. They light candles and place them in front of pictures of the fallen and Tony can’t bring himself to look at Peter’s picture. May picked it out and Tony knows it took her days to even bring herself to look at the stack of photos that Happy had brought from her apartment.

Everyone is dressed in black and Tony has flashbacks of his parents funeral and he desperately wants a drink.

They take turns sharing memories, stories and Tony can’t choose which one he wants to share of Peter. He doesn't know if he wants to share Peter with a room full of people who didn’t know him. Peter was his family and most of the people in the room had decided a long time ago that they didn’t want to be a part of his family.  May can’t get through her speech without breaking into tears and Rhodey escorts her to her room to lay down.

Tony locks himself in his room afterwards, because it’s the only place in the compound that doesn't remind him of Peter. A bottle of scotch becomes an extension of his left hand and he fades in and out of a drunken stupor. He doesn't bother to keep track of time. He doesn't eat, he doesn't shower, he just…exists, as this empty shell of a person and it’s pathetic, he knows, but he doesn't care.

It’s on day five, Tony thinks, that F.R.I.D.A.Y. tells him that May Parker is outside his door and wishes to speak to him.

Tony hasn't seen her since the memorial and the first thing that goes through his mind is the memory of her gut wrenching sobs when she realized her nephew was one of the many that turned to dust. And Tony just can’t deal with someone else blaming him for Peter. He blames himself enough for the both of them.

Without waiting for a response from him, F.R.I.D.A.Y. lets her in and he can’t meet her eyes.

She doesn't say anything at first, she just comes in and sits at the end of the bed, Thor the puppy following right next to her.

The sight of the almost fully grown puppy makes a sob build in Tony’s throat and Thor, as if sensing his sadness, comes over and rests his head on Tony’s knee and Tony can’t help but chuckle wetly, combing his fingers through his soft fur.

“He’s been a mess since—“ May stops, her eyes watering and she can’t even bring herself to say it, “I thought maybe—since you got him for—well, you both look liked you could use someone.”

Tony feels the ache in his chest ease slightly and his throat tightens with tears and unspoken words at May’s thoughtfulness. He doesn't know what to say to her, what he could even say to make any of this better. To express how sorry he was.

But she reaches over and grips his hand tightly and he knows without words that she feels it, too. This hollow ache where his heart used to be, like someone ripped it right through his sternum. It hurts when he breathes, his lungs in a constant state of restriction and he can barely breathe through it. He hasn't felt this way since his parents died and even then, this feels worse. Because he was there. And there was nothing he could do.

“May, I—“ He chokes and the tears fall hot on his cheeks and she can only squeeze his hand tight, “I’m so—so—sorry, I never—I never wanted this—not for Peter—not this. I couldn’t—“

“Tony, I—“ She takes a breath, “I wanted to blame you—but I know that you loved him as much—as much I do. And I couldn’t. I knew Peter—“ she winces at his name and her hand shakes in his grasp and he just holds it tighter, “he would've never let you go up there by yourself. And I’ve talked to the others, they think—it would've happened regardless.”

Tears fall silently down her cheeks and Tony wants to look away, but he doesn’t, “I know you blame yourself—but it’s not your fault. None of it.”

May looks down at her lap and fiddles with something for a moment, before handing it to Tony.

It’s a picture and Tony outright sobs at the sight of it, because the memory of that day hits him like a wave and the wound inside him splits wide open.

It was taken on Peter’s sixteenth birthday.

It had fallen on a week day and after much persuasion, May let Peter skip school and spend the day with Tony while she was at work. He surprised Peter with a trip to Coney Island, where he’d rented out the park for the day and they spend the entire trip riding the rides, eating too many hot dogs and too many sweets and they rode every ride at least three times.

Tony couldn't remember the last time he’d had that much fun and you could see it in the smiles on both their faces, big and bright, so much happiness radiating from both of them. Peter filled a void that Tony never knew was there until the kid came into his life. He brightened up every room he came in, spreading his infectious energy with every one he met, Tony included.

Peter had given him so much, had changed him in so many ways and now he was gone and Tony just felt lost. Peter had given him a renewed sense of purpose in life and now, Tony wasn't sure about anything.

“When I lost Ben, there were days that I felt like I couldn't even get out of bed, the loss felt so strong. Ben had been my life for so long, we’d been together since high school and when he died, I felt like he’d taken everything that I was at my core away with him. I was a shell of a person, for so long and there were many days that I just wanted it to end. I wanted to quit my job, I wanted to curl up underneath the covers and tell everyone who was telling me everything was going to be okay, to fuck off. Because it wasn't going to be okay. It will never be okay that he’s not here.”

She looks down at the picture held tightly in Tony’s grasp and gives a watery smile, “Peter was my strength. I had never wanted to be a mom—Ben and I had decided that we were okay with not having kids. And then Peter comes along and I couldn't help but fall in love with this shy, quiet, smart and sweet little boy. He’d just lost his parents and I’d never seen a five year old look at the world with such determination before. He was fearless and he made me brave.”

She sniffles, wiping at her eyes where tears had fallen and Tony’s heart feels like lead in his chest.

He brushes his fingers over Peter’s face and he wishes, more than anything, he could’ve saved him. That he could've gone in his place and if he was given the choice, he would’ve. God, he would. He would've gotten on his knees and begged that purple bastard to spare Peter’s life and take his.

The world could exist without Tony Stark.

It couldn't exist without someone like Peter Parker.

“You’re the only one who can fix this, Tony.” May whispers and her voice sounds so hopeful and broken at the same time. Desperate and frail and Tony feels like she's asking him for something he can’t give her.

“Peter wouldn't want you to throw in the towel, not because of him.” She continues and Tony just feels tired.

He stands up from the bed, tossing the picture on the nightstand and he just wants everyone to leave him alone.

“Why does everyone assume that I can just snap my fingers and reverse everything Thanos did? It might’ve been that easy for him, but it’s not for me. I have no idea where he is, where the stones are and other than inventing a time machine, there’s nothing I can do.”

May looks down at her lap and he can see the angry flush on her cheeks from where he’s standing across the room. She stands, smoothing out the creases in her black dress and it punches the air out of his chest when he realizes it’s probably the same dress she buried her husband in.

She brings her gaze to his and he finds himself amazed at the amount of determination that are blazing in her eyes, “You survived a crude heart surgery, made a suit in a cave and figured out of to survive with a glorified battery in your chest to keep you from dying and you’re saying this is too impossible for you?”

Tony doesn't reply, he doesn't know how to. Because he succeeded in all those things out of pure luck and an eidetic memory. The plans for the arc reactor was already there for him, the parts for the suit were already there, ready to be molded into something with a little creativity.

What she was asking, this was uncharted territory.

“Peter loved you like a father Tony and you once sat there and told me you loved him as a son,” May continued, her words harsh, “And if there’s anything that I’ve learned in the last twelve years of being a parent, is that no matter how much you want to, you can’t give up on your kids, no matter what. And if it was you, Peter would never give up if it meant that he could bring you back.”

May comes closer, the hard edge disappearing and replacing it, a desperation matching his and he closes his eyes to shield himself from it, “You can do this Tony, I know you can. You’re the only one who can fix this and bring him back home.”

“And what if I can’t?” He whispers, his voice small and beyond scared and that’s the truth of it all.

He’s terrified to hope. To dream and believe that this whole situation they're in is reversible. If he failed, it’d be like losing Peter all over again and this time, Tony doesn't know if he could survive it.

“Then you try again,” she says, “you try as many times as you can and in the end, if you can’t—if this is permanent…” she trails off with a sad smile, “I’ll never accept the fact that he’s gone, but it will bring us more peace to know that we tried everything we could to bring him back to us.”

She pats his cheek and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her and Tony collapses onto the bed, rubbing his hands over his face.

He looks over to the night stand, where the picture lays against the wood and he picks it up. He studies the smile on Peter’s face, the brightness of his eyes, the red in his cheeks, flushed from adrenalin and pure joy and Tony can’t help but smile despite the tears steadily falling from his eyes.

Peter was his purpose in life, he was the person Tony wanted to leave his legacy to, should Peter want it. He belonged in future Tony had envisioned for him, he belonged here, on Earth, and continue to spread the kindness and care he readily gave anyone he came across in his life.

Peter deserved a future, a second chance.

And if the world could grant someone like Tony a second chance—and the jury was still out on whether or not that he’d really deserved it—then Tony was more determined to give Peter one, too.

With one last look at the picture, he tucked it into the pocket of his worn jeans and headed down to lab, Thor the puppy following hot on his heels. Tony was so lost in his thoughts he forgot the dog was even here, but the knowledge that he’s got someone, soothes something in Tony and he finds himself thankful for the little guy.

“FRIDAY? We’ve got work to do, honey, start the coffee.”

“Welcome back, boss.” FRIDAY responded.

“Now you great purple bastard,” Tony murmured, grabbing a tablet, “what did you do with those stones?”

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

Thank you guys for reading :) Please let me know what you think! :)

[missdulcerosea]

king and lionheart

taglist (please ask to be added or removed!): @mordredfuckingpendragon​ @gringolet​ @cukibola​ @kouvei-matarra​

warning(s): mild violence and gore.

i. 

It starts with Gareth. His older brothers have learned to adapt - they blend in in blues, greens and gray. Keep your heads down, listen to Mother’s every word, listen to your king. But Gareth is young and has yet to learn.

And he suffers for it.

Gawaine shields him. He is the sun of their family, setting every night so the moon can rise without struggle. But sometimes he is too late, and comes across Gareth curled up in a corner of the castle, fingers pressing at the faint bruises at his knuckles or hastily scrubbing away the blood so that no one knows that Mother didn’t like him crying too loudly or saying the wrong thing. They all know but they try and hide it - he is still learning how to fade like his brothers, even though he is red.

Gawaine sets too late. He finds Gareth too long after he should, when Gareth is clutching hold of his eye - it is the magic. Gareth said the wrong thing again and Mother didn’t like that, even though he insisted that he was getting along fine with her, that in fact he tired of her coddling him too close this time. Though he’s tied the bandages around where she hit him, they are tattered and clumsy and he can barely hold them in place. He cries, even as Gawaine runs over and throws his arms around him.

They don’t say a word, because they all know Gareth is the red that runs through. And they know that it won’t be the same after this.

“How - how - she said she loved me - that she - that she’d never hurt me - and - and-”

“It’s okay,” Gawaine says, letting Gareth crumble in his arms. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He’s lying. They both know he is. But the lies are all they’ve got.

Gareth is the first of them. He burns brightest, he is the flame that must be extinguished. 

Gawaine knows that Camelot is crumbling away. It is but a gilded kingdom, and they are the walking corpses that populate it - decaying, decaying, decaying. If, perhaps, he’d arrived a little sooner maybe Gareth would at least get a bittersweet ending (they are all dying, so anything more than that is impossible), where Gawaine sees him off before he is gone, and he gets to hear the last words his second youngest brother - the one who he’d failed to keep completely safe - would ever say.

If he’d arrived sooner.

But when he arrives the flames are dying. Corpses are strewn around on the ground, and Gareth lies staring up with an empty eye at the sky. 

Again, he’s too late. The facade begins to crack (if it hadn’t begun already).

ii.

Mother warns them to stay far away from the woods unless they are hunting, but for Gaheris it looks like he doesn’t have to blend in. He fades the most, and thought Gawaine lets him know otherwise he lets himself go invisible. Though the words may leave him bloodied and wounded he keeps his lips sealed shut, like Mother told him. It is different when they are in the woods - he stands out, always racing ahead of his brothers, always the one who runs back saying he’d seen a unicorn there, he really had.

And Gawaine thinks about that a lot. Because if his brother fades away forever, how will he be able to know what goes on - what could be wrong? Though he keeps reaching for Gaheris’ hand, he only grasps at empty air.

“You had a nightmare, didn’t you?” 

Gaheris stares up at his brother. He swallows thickly. 

“You were tossing ‘n turning in your sleep - you weren’t saying a thing, but I could tell.”

“Well, I’m alright now.” Gareth speaks quickly. “Go back to sleep, I don’t want to keep you up-”

“You’re not alright.”

He’s lying through his teeth, even though he tries to frantically rub - no, scratch, because he will hurt himself if it means people don’t end up hurting him - away the tears that stain his face. His eyes are rimmed with dark circles and he shivers beneath the thin blanket in their tent. They’d found a wyrm guarding a tree of golden apple and though they’d managed to take it down it was only after they had several of the knights with them devoured by the flames it spat out.

“I’m staying with you. Gaheris, you have to tell me or Agravaine about these things. You’re hurting. I just want you and everyone else to be happy.”

Gaheris nods. He has nothing. He is the gray of their family - not even a color, because he does not want to be noticed. And again he’s lying, because he will fade farther away from them again till he’s just a phantasm, an afterimage.

Gawaine pulls Gaheris close. “I’ll stay with you till you stop having nightmares. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Gaheris does not go with Gareth, his twin. Gawaine finds him with an arrow poking out through his chest, gulping in one desperate breath after another. He’s dragged himself away from the mess of dust-tinted red on the ground, where he sits against a tree where the woods begin. He’s fading.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Gaheris mumbles. “You have to go. You have to go on.”

“Not without saying goodbye.”

He holds Gaheris’ hand till the warmth begins to fade. Another brother that’s left behind as an afterimage, another brother of his gone.

The part that makes him the most numb, Gawaine realizes, is that Gaheris still told him to leave him be, to let him fade. Even though it was the end.

iii.

They’re sent to Camelot once the truce is made official. They see the envelope sealed with a lump of red wax and are sent on a boat to Camelot. The water laps at the boat, the skies above are a dull gray. Gareth and Gaheris are still so very young, and though they have felt pain no one as young as them should feel they bounce around on the boat, waiting for the stars to poke through the sky and for the high towers of Camelot to appear on the horizon. Gawaine, too, thinks that now that Mother is sending them away they will be different. They will be heroes. They will be free.

Agravaine stays the same.

He squints past the setting sun. The wind presses his hair against his face and distorts his vision, but still he leans over the deck of the rocking boat to stare at home - by now it is but a dot far away on the horizon.

Gawaine is their sun. The other brothers are the planets, and Agravaine doesn’t want to fall out of alignment.

“What’s the matter?”

Agravaine lets out a hushed sigh. “I don’t know. There’s a part of me glad to be so far away from Mother. But at the same time some of the things she said and did - she said she loved us, and now that Father’s gone and this king of England who we barely know’s the only person we have left-”

“I understand.”

“You say that. But do you really understand?”

The gravitational pull shifts. Gawaine falters in his words. “Maybe I don’t.”

“Damn him. Or at least damn Uther for ruining our grandmother’s life and ruining our mother’s. She says she’s happy, especially with the new baby, but I don’t think she is. And at the same time I kind of want her to be unhappy because of the times she beat me, even if she was just angry and I was in trouble.”

“I don’t know what to do or say about any of that. Because for me it is different.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Just having you listen is enough.”

He’s seen Mother rub off on Agravaine. It is how he snaps at his brothers, the cold blue of his eyes (like ice - glittering but with no warmth or life to them), how he says that he can say things because he is angry or sad. But Agravaine is his brother, and Gawaine does not want him to go through the world like this. He will be his brother’s shield, even if his brother spits venom, because he knows that one day the ice will melt and the sun shall shine through.

Agravaine does not go gently. He reaches the end still spitting forth venom, determined to draw blood and infect Lancelot with all that he has been infected with.

And Gawaine goes with him, because Agravaine is one of the only brothers he has left - he tells Agravaine to get out now, better to live in exile than to be killed. There is no convincing Mordred of anything other than tearing the kingdom apart now, only letting Agravaine escapes. If it comes to the sun setting once and for all so that the moon can rise, then Gawaine will let that happen.

“Go.” Gawaine will have no regrets in saying this. He knows that much.

Agravaine stares back at him. “What do you-”

“Go!” Gawaine shouts. “I don’t want you gone. I already lost two brothers. I don’t want to have another one dead and gone, too.”

Lancelot lets him go, and turns to Gawaine. They both knew Agravaine would lose - he does not have what Lancelot and Gawaine do. Lancelot lets him go because then he will get to call him a coward, a snivelling, pathetic coward just like the rest of his brothers.

“I’ll fight you in my brother’s name. Because I know it’s all your fault. It’s all your fault they’re gone.”

iv. 

“Am I good enough?”

Mordred is very, very young. His hair is ash-white, from Mother’s meddling with magic and using him as a test subject. He stares up at Gawaine with drooping brown eyes - Arthur’s eyes, Gawaine knows, the eyes of Mordred’s father. A father who promises to be everything their mother was not. 

“At parrying your blows, I mean,” Mordred adds. “‘Cause I know I’m not as good as you-”

“Don’t say that.” Gawaine shakes his head. “You’ve still got a long way to go. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

“Thanks for teaching me.”

Gawaine smiles. “Of course. It’s what brothers do.”

While Agravaine is cold as ice, Mordred burns bright - if he is not careful, his flames will disintegrate all he comes close to. There’s no monster, just a boy Gawaine needs to keep his eye on. Like he has always done with the rest of the family. It is no different for his newest, youngest brother.

Mordred shatters.

He is wounded and bleeds, and decides to wound Camelot in return for all that he has been through. Gawaine thinks it isn’t right, for though Camelot may be gilded there are still remnants of the true gold glittering underneath. Mordred thinks he needs to break everything, and rebuild from the ashes.

Mordred of Orkney - Mordred Pendragon, whoever he is, a stranger - is not dead.

But with all that has been said and done, he might as well be.

[im-a-goner-foryou]

Starker Valentine's Day 2019 for the prompt 'first I love you's ', this is also my first songfic so please go easy on me

Love

/lʌv/

Wise men say only fools rush in

Tony Stark doesn't do love. He's a mechanic, through and through-- he sees things as they are, for their practical uses, views the world through a rational lens, and love is something entirely illogical.

Love, as Tony had been taught all those years ago, is something that if he can't help but feel, at least shouldn't be expressed. To wear your emotions on your sleeve is to admit weakness, as Howard had said-- or rather slurred while waving off Tony's attempt at a goodnight hug in favour of pouring himself another glass of bourbon, and after much more similar occurrences the he eventually took his father's words to heart.

It takes a while for Tony to realise otherwise, to go from instinctively recoiling from the look of concern in Rhodey's eyes as he chides "go to sleep Tones, it's late" or a gentle caress of his head from Pepper, to slowly but surely welcoming those silent acts of love; and it takes longer before he begins to reciprocate. Even then he's hesitant, cautious as he takes his first steps and reverting back to his signature snark at the first sign of apathy, the possibility of being hurt.

Tony loves carefully.

But I can't help falling in love with you

Then he meets Peter Parker-- who loves so openly, so easily. And their differences should frighten Tony, yet inexplicably he finds himself drawn to this boy who's much too young to realise that while falling in love may be easy, love itself certainly isn't. It's... a nice change, being around someone so artlessly candid-- maybe, just maybe-- Tony hopes silently to himself, he won't have to hide behind his usual four walled defences this time against such genuine feelings.

Shall I stay?

The first time Peter raises his voice at him is to cry "if you even cared, you'd actually be here," and just like that Tony's taken back to all those years ago, in his MIT graduation gown and around the same age Peter is now; hand clutched tightly around his phone with Howard on the other end while he stood lonesome among celebrating families. That memory stings like a slap would, leaves Tony feeling almost raw-- and when he steps out of his armour there on the rooftop, he feels more vulnerable than he ever has been.

"I just wanted to be like you," the boy whispers quiet enough for his words to be almost blown away with the wind, and it's like a sucker punch to Tony's stomach.

"I wanted you to be better," Tony simply replies Peter-- and himself.

Would it be a sin

Tony feels the beginnings of a wave of butterflies erupting in his stomach as he watches the boy leave the Avengers compound, and he feels sick. Peter's hazel hair glints gold under the sunlight streaming through the panelled windows and curls sweetly around his ears; and Tony has to resist the sudden and overwhelming urge that overtakes him then to run his fingers through those silky locks.

If I can't help falling in love with you?

Peter is sixteen. Tony starts drinking himself to sleep once more, yet the bottles of liquor lying shattered around him and burning bitter at the back of his throat aren't enough to block out the yearning deep in him for the boy, to hold him close and keep him far away at the same time. Tony thinks of bright eyes that crinkle at the edges with laughter and beautiful chocolate-brown pupils, and then one day he just can't deny the feelings he harbours for his young protégé any longer.

Like a river flows surely to the sea

Darling so it goes

Peter always has been incredibly perceptive; it's likely he found out how Tony felt even before Tony himself. On his seventeenth birthday the man goes all out and is in one of the rare moments in his life grateful for the title 'billionare'-- he flies the both of them out to one of his favourite restaurants in Venice for a comfortable candlelit dinner by the canal; and when Peter dissolves into another one of that giggly laughter at something Tony said, the older man finds himself absolutely enthralled, unable to look away.

He's still staring at those pouty, rosy pink lips and wondering how they would feel against his, when he finds out only seconds later-- Peter makes the first move, leaning forward across their table to press their mouths together so painfully shy and sweet, and Tony--

Some things are meant to be

He kisses back, and feels the last of his fortifications crumble away at the happy little sigh Peter exhales into their joined mouths.

Take my hand, take my whole life too

For I can't help falling in love with you

Tony Stark soon learns about himself that he's really a hopeless fool for love, when it comes to a certain bright boy who easily keeps up with him in the workshop and challenges Tony with his brilliance every day, who reminds him to go to sleep early but also brings him hot chocolate during those particularly dark starless nights and kisses away his tears until they finally fall asleep tangled up together, who's also a dork when it comes to Star Wars and the Avengers, who has a heart filled to the brim and yet still manages to find the capacity, is unafraid to love some more.

It probably was never meant to last, the hurting eight-year-old in Tony reminds him.

Like a river flows surely to the sea

Darling so it goes

Some things are meant to be

"There was no other way," Stephen's parting words hang heavy in the still air; dimly Tony wishes the words were the ones disintegrating instead, his knees buckling underneath his weight even before he hears the soft whimper from behind him. No, no, no.

Not you, too.

Peter wastes his last few moments clutching at him desperately, and Tony just wants to cry because there's nothing he can do, and he's never felt so utterly helpless as he does in this moment. "I don't-- I don't know what's happening," the boy rasps, the usual bright undertones of his voice now longer present and only to be replaced with something raw and hurting; it's now does it finally occur to Tony that maybe he's not the only one who puts on a mask.

"I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go..." Peter begs almost childishly, his extreme youth so incredibly obvious now. Tony grips him by the waist, holds him close and cradles him through it, which is the least he can do-- the only thing he can do. The eerie golden light setting across this strange planet casts shadows on those beautiful eyes, swimming with tears as they look at Tony in a way only the boy could.

"I'm sorry," are the last words Peter whispers--why, why?-- before slipping away from Tony's arms and leaving behind a mere empty shell of a broken man.

Tony realises he's never said those three little words to Peter, even though their months together; he never gasped the significance of "I love you" until he thinks he'll never be able to say it.

Take my hand, take my whole life too

"I'm sorry," are the words that replay like a broken recorder in his dying mind, plauging him the most when Tony sits alone on that barren planet and ignores the warning signals from the spaceship that oxygen levels are running low. I'm sorry, too.

But with those oxygen-deprived hallucinations come memories too; of them both dancing in the corner of one of Tony's fancy fundraisers, the boy's arms clinging around his shoulders and head resting on his chest as they sway to the soft music in the background, of Peter falling asleep at the desk after working hard on a particularly difficult assignment and Tony draping a blanket over him, of late drives down the highway in a convertible so Peter's yells of joy fade away into the night, of waking up in the morning to the smell of coffee and the sight of Peter in a flowery pink apron bustling around the kitchen, and Tony walking up to him to whirl him around by a hand on his hip to kiss him soft and sweet.

Through his entire life, there's only one person that Tony's certain he's ever loved the most he could. And now Tony tries his best to bring him back.

It's a long arduous process for sure, but Tony after all, is a mechanic through and through. He fixes the spaceship to send him and Nebula to earth, and he defends it just like he always has-- he fights, mind clinging to thoughts of Peter; just in case he doesn't make it, he wants that endlessly loving gaze to be the last thing he sees.

They win in the end, and bring all the fallen back. Even as Tony stumbles weakly onto his feet he ignores the burning sharp pain at his side, heart racing, eyes already blurring with tears-- though despite them he still manages to catch sight of those chestnut brown wide eyes among the others, and he doesn't hesitate. Tony sprints towards and holds a weeping Peter close to his chest, clutching at him with the intention of never letting go; his heart aches with a feeling that he welcomes readily, croaks into the boy's ear.

"I love you." He fiercely kisses Peter; the boy sobs harder in his arms. "I love you," Tony finally expresses plainly, against the palm pressed reverently against his lips.

For I can't help falling in love with you

And Peter says it back, the way every single part of Tony knew he would. "I love you too."

Love, Tony Stark knows, is illogical. It hurts, and yet people still chase it so eagerly.

But love is worth it.

For I can't help falling in love with you

[the-desolated-quill]

‘But They’re Covered In Nipples’: The Story Of Destroy All Humans - Quill’s Scribbles

Another E3 has come and gone. There was some good announcements. Square Enix unveiled their Avengers game, Keanu Reeves came on stage to give us the release date of Cyberpunk 2077, Ubisoft are making another Watch Dogs set in London, and... um... what else happened?

Oh yeah!

DESTROY ALL HUMANS IS BACK!!!!!!

Yes, the cult classic Destroy All Humans is returning next year, developed by THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games. This was quite possibly the nicest surprise I’ve ever had. When the teaser trailer came up on my YouTube recommendations, I practically screamed the house down. It’s a level of excitement I felt when 20th Century Fox announced they were finally making a Deadpool movie. 

Yeah. That excited.

Destroy All Humans was my favourite video game series growing up. I played the first two games non-stop on my PS2 and I even bought a Nintendo Wii and PS3 just so I could play Big Willy Unleashed and Path Of The Furon (yeah, we’ll get to them). Unfortunately, while the series was reasonably successful, it never quite broke through into the mainstream, and it ended up having a very short lifespan, making it one of the most underrated franchises of all time.

So, to mark the return of Crypto and Pox, I thought I’d take a retrospective look at the series as a whole. Analysing each game in the franchise and talking about what made them so good, whilst also looking at how it faded into obscurity and how THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games can hopefully avoid this fate with their remake.

Radioactive, Exploding, Zombie Cows

The first Destroy All Humans was developed by THQ and Pandemic Studios (the latter probably most famous for making the original Star Wars Battlefront games. You know? The good ones that weren’t overloaded with loot boxes and microtransactions) and was released in 2005 on the PS2 and Xbox. You play as a Furon warrior called Cryptosporidium 137, or Crypto for short, who is tasked with harvesting the brains of humans in order to extract pure Furon DNA from them. His leader Orthopox 13, or Pox, explains that the Furons are at risk of cloning themselves into extinction as they are unable to reproduce naturally due to a lack of genitalia and the DNA in their cloning banks are starting to degrade. Fortunately the Furons visited prehistoric Earth on their way back from destroying the Martians and took the opportunity to ‘let off some steam’ with the natives. As a result, humans possess a strand of Furon DNA that can hopefully restore the Furons’ reproductive organs. Unfortunately a secret government organisation called Majestic (a sort of cross between Project Blue Book and the Men in Black) have caught wind of the Furon invasion due to Crypto 136 crash landing in Roswell 10 years earlier. So Crypto 137 will have to be extra cautious in his quest to take over Earth.

The game was released four years after Grand Theft Auto III, which had completely revolutionised gaming with its open world sandbox. As a result, other companies were attempting their own open worlds and putting their own spin on them. While Destroy All Humans didn’t quite have the same scale as GTA, it made up for it with quality over quantity. The game offered six small open world areas for players to have fun in and its central premise was utterly captivating. After countless games where you had to fight alien invaders, Destroy All Humans allowed you to play as the alien invader.

Pandemic Studios completely embraced the alien invasion premise, giving the player a vast number of weapons and abilities to wreak havoc on planet Earth. You had access to weapons like the Zap O Matic, Disintegrator Ray and Anal Probe (no, really, there’s actually a gun called the Anal Probe and it’s as funny as it sounds) as well as mental abilities such as Psychokinesis, Hypnotism and the Cortex Scan, which allowed you to read the thoughts of humans and was also used to help maintain your Holoblob disguise in stealth missions. And if that isn’t cool enough, you also get your own flying saucer, which you can use to destroy buildings and landmarks. The game gave you a lot of freedom, essentially dropping you in a small destructible playground and telling you to go and enjoy yourself.

But the thing I loved most about the first game was the writing. The plot itself is actually pretty good with plenty of twists and turns as the military and Majestic become more and more desperate to stop you. And the humour, my God the humour! Honestly Destroy All Humans remains to this day one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. It’s use of satirical humour and 50s pop culture references never failed to make me chuckle. There was one moment that I’ll always remember where I scanned the mind of a police officer and it revealed that he was thinking about forming the Village People. If only he could find a cowboy, an Indian and a construction worker. 

The game’s main source of comedy mostly came from poking fun at the culture and attitudes of the time period. 1950s America was of course gripped by ‘the Red Scare,’ which the game mocks frequently as we see Majestic and the US government try desperately to cover up alien activity by blaming the death and destruction on communists, to the point where it just gets more and more absurd. At the end of each mission, a newspaper headline is shown, often blaming recent events on freak weather or communist propaganda. Yes, that should explain perfectly why people’s heads are exploding and why the cows are glowing green. It’s all perfectly normal. No aliens here. What’s that? A little green man in a flying saucer is blowing up ice cream trucks? Damn you commies!

The game also pokes fun at 50s sci-fi B movies, often parodying and lampshading the tropes and gimmicks one would expect in a low budget sci-fi flick. For example, the game ends with you fighting a giant robot that houses the President’s brain. It’s fully aware of how ridiculous and stupid it all is and clearly revels in it. Killer robots, mind control, radioactive animals, mad scientists and secret government conspiracies galore. Destroy All Humans is very much a love letter to cheesy sci-fi.

But by far the biggest draw was the main characters. Crypto and Pox. They’re both such funny, wonderfully realised and likeable characters. Pox is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz, who you may remember from Invader Zim, and he gives the character a maniacal glee. I honestly could listen to his rants all day. He’s the quintessential evil genius. Crypto meanwhile is voiced by J. Grant Albrecht, who gives the character a Jack Nicholson-esque voice. Unlike Pox, Crypto is crass, crude and craves destruction, which often puts him at odds with Pox, who favours more subtle styles of invasion such as mind control. The two characters often bicker and squabble, which never fails to be entertaining, and yet there is an underlying respect and fondness for each other that helps ground the relationship. It’s the perfect double act.

Destroy All Humans was a good game, but does it still hold up? Well there are a few issues. Controls can be a bit clunky at times and missions can often get repetitive. Destroy x number of farmers. Collect x amount of DNA. That kind of thing. Also, annoyingly, there’s no checkpoints, which means if you die or fail the mission, you’re automatically sent back to the Furon Mothership and you have to start the mission all over again. But the writing, humour and entertainment value more than make up for it.

Hot Monkey Love

While the first game wasn’t what you’d call a hit, it was successful enough for THQ to commission a sequel. Destroy All Humans 2 was released in 2006 on PS2 and Xbox, just one year after the first game, and this time Crypto was going international.

Set in the 1960s, ten years after the events of the first game, the KGB in Russia learn about the Furon’s takeover of America and plan a counterattack. They nuke the Furon Mothership, killing Pox, and try to assassinate Crypto 138, who is posing as the President of the United States. The assassination fails and Pox’s mind is able to survive in hologram form. The two then embark on a global adventure, seeking revenge against the KGB and uncovering a massive conspiracy that puts the entire Furon invasion at risk.

Destroy All Humans 2 is an ambitious sequel that increases its scope from the first game. No longer confined to America, we see Crypto terrorise San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Russia and even the Moon. Our arsenal of weapons are also expanded. The original weapons from the first game return as well as some all new ones such as the Disclocator, which fires a purple disc at a human or vehicle and sends them flying around the map, the Burrow Beast, which summons a Tremors-esque space worm to cause carnage, and Meteor Strike, which I think speaks for itself. We also get a few new mental abilities such as Transmogrify, which allows you to turn objects into ammo, and Free Love, which causes everyone in the general vicinity to start dancing, allowing you to make a quick getaway while they’re distracted. The saucer too has some extra features, including a cloaking device and the ability to drain vehicles of health using your Abducto Beam.

This sequel pretty much takes everything that worked from the first game whilst tweaking the things that didn’t. The GTA style Alert system got a complete overhaul. If you want to raise or lower the Alert level, all you have to do is bodysnatch a cop or a soldier and make a call using a police box (you can also make prank calls from them, which is good for a giggle). Holoblobbing has been replaced with Bodysnatching, which works so much better and it does away with the annoying Concentration meter, so you can PK cars and humans to your heart’s content. There’s also a lot more stuff to do now. There are numerous collectables such as Alien Artefacts, which unlocks the Burrow Beast weapon, and FuroTech Cells, which are your main currency that can be used to upgrade your health and weapons. Missions have greater variety than in the first game. There’s a lot more side missions, including Odd Jobs and my personal favourites the Cult of Arkvoodle missions, where Crypto brainwashes humans to worship the Furon God Arkvoodle of the Sacred Crotch.

As you can tell, the humour is still just as wacky and ridiculous as ever. Destroy All Humans 2 lampoons and ridicules the 60s mercilessly, taking aim at the Cold War and the hippie counterculture movement. It also pokes fun at 60s sci-fi films, spy films and Japanese movies like Godzilla. In fact there’s a boss fight that involves you fighting a Godzilla-esque monster and it’s honestly the best boss fight in the series. It regains health by destroying buildings, so you have to destroy them first before you can kill the monster. It’s a great premise.

Story-wise, Destroy All Humans 2 is a worthy successor, raising the stakes and expanding the lore. We’re introduced to the Blisk, the Martians that were presumed extinct by the Furons millions of years ago. It’s a brilliant conflict and ostensibly allows the developers to make commentaries on America and Russia at the time using the Furons and the Blisk respectively as stand-ins. Crypto and Pox are well written, funny and likeable as ever and we’re also introduced to an assortment of new characters, including the Russian spy Natalya and MI6 agent Ponsomby (voiced by none other than Anthony Head from Buffy). The game is engaging and rewarding, but it crucially never takes itself too seriously. For example there’s one instance in Tokyo where Crypto learns about the battle between the White and Black Ninjas and he guesses that the conflict started because of the cliche student betraying his master type origin, but it turns out that both groups of ninjas were originally Grey, but then they ran out of grey fabric and disagreed over which colour they should be instead. There’s so many great comedic moments like that and they pretty much hit bullseyes every time.

That being said, there was one aspect of the game I didn’t like and that was the crude sex jokes. Crypto 138 is the first clone to have pure Furon DNA, which means he now has genitalia. As a result, this new incarnation of Crypto is far more randy than 137 was in the first game.  This mostly takes the form of Crypto constantly trying to hit on Natalya, despite her showing no sexual interest, which I personally found pretty gross. Worse still, the game ends with Crypto cloning Natalya and ‘making a few adjustments’ so she will consent to have sex with him. The word ‘creepy’ doesn’t begin to cover how I felt about this. If THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games ever decide to remake the second game, I really hope they consider rethinking that ending because... Jesus!

On the whole, Destroy All Humans 2 was a brilliant sequel. It was also sadly the last Destroy All Humans game to be developed by Pandemic Studios before they were bought by EA and eventually shut down in 2009. Unfortunately this would have a severe impact on the future of the series going forward.

Limp Willy

The next game in the series was a spinoff for the Nintendo Wii, released in early 2008 and developed by Locomotive Games. A PS2 version was also planned, but was scrapped due to budget cuts (remember this. It’ll become relevant later).

Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed was... underwhelming, to say the least. Set in the 1970s, six years after the second game, Crypto and Pox have opened a fast food restaurant called Big Willy as a way of disposing of the corpses left behind during Crypto’s missions. However a rival fast food chain, run by Colonel Kluckin’, is stealing their business and socialite Patty Wurst is threatening to expose Big Willy (smirk). So it’s up to Crypto to protect Pox’s Big Willy (haha) and maintain their cover on Earth.

Now you’re probably thinking this sounds quite tame compared to the previous two games, and yeah, it is. But it’s a spinoff, so I can understand to a certain extent. However there are a few narrative discrepancies. The big one being Crypto has retired from being the President. No explanation given as to why and we have no idea what Crypto is doing instead. When we first see him, he’s watching TV. He doesn’t even know Big Willy exists until Pox brings it up. So what’s going on exactly? Are they still trying to invade Earth or have they gone native? Also, compared to the grand conspiracy stories of the previous games, Crypto protecting a fast food restaurant sounds a little beneath him.

Gameplay is virtually unchanged from the previous game. There’s some new guns such as Ball Lightning and the Zombie Gun, but nothing special. The biggest addition is Big Willy, the restaurant mascot that’s actually a Furon battle mech in disguise. It’s... fine. Not that much different from the Saucer really. We also get some new locations. Harbor City, Fairfield in Kentucky, Fantasy Atoll (a weak parody of Fantasy Island) and Vietmahl (a painfully obvious homage to Vietnam). None of these locations are particularly interesting however. There’s also a multiplayer mode, which... exists.

Honestly the game as a whole is just lacklustre. The story just isn’t as good as the first two games and the humour doesn’t have the same wit or intelligence. Most of the comedy surrounds the fact that Pox has called his restaurant Big Willy and isn’t entirely aware of the double entendre, which admittedly is funny for the first few missions, but by the time you’ve finished Harbor City and move on to Fairfield, the joke gets old real fast. There’s less of an effort to actually satirise the culture or films of the time, instead merely making 70s pop culture references without ever actually doing anything with it. It’s like the Family Guy school of comedy. Take Fantasy Atoll for instance. A pisstake of Fantasy Island, but instead of Mr. Roarke and Tatoo, we get Mr. Pork and Ratpoo. That’s the level of humour we’re talking about here.

What’s worse is that J. Grant Albrecht and Richard Steven Horwitz don’t return as Crypto and Pox. Sean Donnellan and Darryl Kurylo voice the characters instead and it’s just not the same. It doesn’t feel like Crypto and Pox. So from the very first cutscene, we’re already off on the wrong foot.

And then there’s a bunch of other stuff that I find really questionable. The most obvious being the revelation that Colonel Kluckin’ makes his chicken wings from the corpses of the Vietmahl (Vietnam) war, which just seems in very bad taste to me. If there is a satirical point being made here, I can’t find it for the life of me. There’s also some side missions where Crypto finds out that he and Natalya have a son, which goes absolutely nowhere and doesn’t feel like something that should be in a Destroy All Humans game.

Overall, Big Willy Unleashed was a massive dud meant to tide us over until Destroy All Humans 3 came out later in the year. Honestly the one aspect of it I thought had potential was the side missions involving Crypto and Pox being assessed by a Furon Efficiency Expert called Toxoplasma Gondii. Considering what happened in the second game, including the destruction of the Furon Mothership, the return of the Blisk and the Furon operation on Earth being jeoprodised, this could have been a great premise for a sequel.

Instead what we got was... 

Disco Inferno

Oh boy. Where do I begin?

Path Of The Furon was developed by THQ and Sandblast Games and released in December 2008 on the Xbox 360 in North America. The PS3 version was cancelled because Sandblast (and Locomotive Games) was closed down before development was finished due to THQ’s financial problems at the time. However the PS3 version was released in Europe and Australia, so either THQ got another studio to complete it or, more likely, they just released it in a broken, buggy state.

Fans really didn’t like this game, myself included, but before we go tearing it a new one, lets look at the few positives the game has. First off, J. Grant Albrecht and Richard Steven Horwitz return to voice Crypto and Pox, which is great. As a result, the original chemistry is back and they help salvage the game when the writing fails to deliver. There are a few cool new weapons, like the Black Hole Gun and the Venus Human Trap, which creates a giant man eating plant. The Saucer’s weapons have been tweaked, so now they affect the environment as well as destroy buildings. So if you fire your Death Ray at the ground, for example, you can create scorch marks. PK now has its own dedicated button, which means you can pick up and throw objects whilst using your guns simultaneously. There’s also the titular ‘Path Of Enlightenment,’ which upgrades your mental abilities significantly as well as allowing you to freeze time.

That’s the good stuff. The bad stuff is... pretty much everything else.

The humour is, again, quite poor. Rather than satirising 70s culture, the game continues to make references to 70s films like The Godfather and Star Wars, but not actually doing anything with them. Just making the reference. The writing as a whole is quite substandard as the plot pretty much recycles the plots of Destroy All Humans 2 and Big Willy Unleashed, except instead of the Big Willy restaurant, it’s the Space Dust casino and instead of the Blisk, it’s Nexosporidium warriors, who are basically Furon cyborgs. Things do threaten to get a bit interesting when Crypto and Pox discover someone has been manufacturing synthetic Furon DNA, but nothing ever really comes of it. Instead the game focuses mainly on the Master.

Ah yes. The Master.

In an attempt to recapture the magic of the second game, Path Of The Furon tries to spoof kung-fu movies just like how DAH 2 spoofed spy films. Unfortunately this leads us to a slew of unfunny gags, cultural appropriation and some of the worst racial stereotyping I think I’ve ever seen. The Master is a Furon who crashed on Earth a hundred years ago and embroiled himself in Eastern culture, enhancing his PK abilities. This is what he looks like:

YYYYeah.

Oh and if that’s not awkward enough, he also speaks in an over the top ‘ah so’ accent. It’s incredibly cringeworthy and made me want to crawl out of my body and hide in the darkest corner I could possibly find. How anyone involved in this game’s development could look at this deeply racist and downright embarrassing excuse for a character and think this was okay, I don’t know.

And before anyone tries to excuse it by saying that he has been living in China for a hundred years, so he’s bound to pick a few things up, please note that Nolan North is in this game playing the Furon Emperor Meningitis, who also has an over the top ‘ah so’ accent. Now I suppose some could argue that the game is satirising how Asian people were portrayed at the time, but if that’s what the game is going for, they’ve failed miserably. See, the problem with that argument is that replicating something doesn’t count as satire. By recreating over the top racist caricatures, you’re not making fun of them. If anything you’re just reinforcing them. The first game’s satire of the Red Scare worked so much better than this because there was an actual point behind it. It comments on how paranoid the people of the 50s were at the time by using Majestic to exploit the threat of communism in order to cover up alien activity, and everyone willingly buys into it because of that sheer paranoia. Now yes, admittedly the humour in Destroy All Humans isn’t the most sophisticated in the world, but it used to be a LOT better than this. Not only do I find the racial stereotyping in this game deeply offensive, it’s also frankly beneath this franchise. And it’s not just limited to the Chinese either. The final act takes us to the Furon homeworld (which was pretty underwhelming after four games worth of buildup) and we meet another Furon called Endometriosis whose only characteristics are that he has an Italian accent and wears a beret. It’s these broad strokes and general laziness that makes this game such a disappointing experience.

Path Of The Furon is subpar in every way imaginable. The writing, the humour, the gameplay and even the graphics. The first two games looked so much better than this and they were on older consoles from the previous generation. It’s shocking.

It’s hard to blame Sandblast Games for this considering they were shut down before development was finished. It was THQ’s mismanagement and financial woes that killed off this franchise and indeed themselves. The company went bankrupt in 2012 and their various IPs were sold off to other studios, with Nordic Games buying the lions’ share, including Destroy All Humans, which briefly reignited hopes that we might get another game, but that seemed unlikely considering the franchise has never exactly been a mainstream success. There was even talks of doing an animated sitcom based on the games for Fox, to be written by the same guy who did King Of The Hill, but that never went anywhere.

No. It seemed like Destroy All Humans was gone for good and fans reluctantly made peace with that. It was fun while it lasted, but perhaps it was time to move on.

Oh The Furonity!

I’m not going to lie. I was pretty sure we were never going to see Destroy All Humans return. Not just because of its lack of mainstream appeal, but also because game development studios and publishers in recent years have become more and more reluctant to make single player, mid-tier games. Instead pivoting toward massive triple A releases and ‘live services’. So it came as a rather pleasant surprise when Nordic Games, now named THQ Nordic, released Darksiders III in 2018, a sequel to a series of games that were also not very mainstream but still had a significant cult following. This briefly reignited a small flicker of hope within me that maybe, just maybe, we might see our favourite Furon return.

And as you already know, I got my wish. A new Destroy All Humans game will be released next year by THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games.

So what can this remake learn from the franchise’s past? Well thankfully the writing and voice acting is going to remain the same, so story, characterisation and humour won’t be an issue. They’re also incorporating elements from the sequels such as Transmogrify from Destroy All Humans 2 and giving PK its own button like in Path Of The Furon. There’s also a few new additions that I’m excited about such as the ability to dodge and strafe using the jetpack. That should make combat much more exciting and dynamic. I know a few people have a problem with the new cartoony designs of the humans and the world, but I honestly don’t mind. In fact I think it suits the tone and setting quite well. Hopefully people will eventually get used to it. The big question mark hovering over all this is whether they’re planning to remake the other games in the series. I for one would love to see a remake of the second game. As for Big Willy Unleashed and Path Of The Furon, I think it’s best to leave them firmly in the past. The big dream would be to see Crypto and Pox have further adventures together beyond the first two games. Hopefully even have enough sequels to get the characters to the present day. We’ll just have to wait and see what the future brings. My only word of advice for them would be to never forget what made the first two games so good and so beloved. Big Willy Unleashed and Path Of The Furon lost their way, as its writing and humour grew lazier and lazier. If we are fortunate enough to get more games, the developers will need to remember what it was about the first game that made it so special and build off of it.

This is a second chance. Not a lot of franchises get this. Don’t waste it. Here’s hoping the remake will provide the definitive Destroy All Humans experience and that it will gain the success it deserves.

[damienthepious]

it’s... um... angst time... and i am very sorry

Die Clean And Pretty (Chapter 2)

[Chapter 1] [ao3]

[Fandom: Megamind (2010)

Characters: Megamind, Metro Man, Roxanne Ritchi, Minion, Brainbots

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Fake Character Death, Not Really Character Death, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, (this will... have a happy ending SOMEHOW. even if i don't currently know. where the fuck it's going), Megamind Makes Bad Decisions, Suicidal Thoughts, very indirect descriptions of a body

Summary: What if Megamind had the bright idea to fake his own death before Metro Man did? Turns out, the author who struck upon the idea would cry a lot and then inflict it on others.

Chapter Summary: Wayne and Roxanne, and the immediate aftermath.]

***

Wayne isn’t really aware of himself again until he breaks the atmosphere.

He rarely comes this high; he is perfectly capable of withstanding the void of space, perfectly able to hold his breath for a few minutes out here, but he almost never feels the urge. There’s something about the stars being this bright and vast, something about his city being so distant despite the ease with which he could return, that just makes him uncomfortable.

Discomfort is something too trivial to really even acknowledge, right now.

He should hold his breath. He has a limited time up here, like this.

Instead, he screams.

The vacuum rips the air away from him as he does. He can barely hear the noise, the only sound waves that make it to his ears are the ones that vibrate like an earthquake through his own body, muffled and strange.

When he runs out of breath to scream, he curls in on himself, weightless and spinning with the expanse of blurry white points and the huge blue-white-green ball all whirling around him, slow and dizzying enough that he buries his face in his hands to block it out.

He considers…

Wayne considers letting himself drift. Better: shooting himself off forward, towards the starfield. He can hold his breath for a while, yeah, but if he just goes, then he can put enough distance between himself and the atmosphere that he won’t be able to make it back before he needs air again. He isn’t actually sure he can suffocate properly, but it’s the only thing he can think of that might actually do some damage.

And Wayne… Wayne wants to do damage to himself, just now.

He deserves that. He failed.

His whole life, he’s been under the thumb of his own powers. On this planet of absurdly breakable people and their absurdly breakable places and possessions, Wayne spent his entire youth struggling and failing and struggling more until he could reliably keep from doing harm, until he could use the gifts he had to help people without causing more damage in the process. He knows he messed up when he was younger. Messed up hurting friends, even hurting family with carelessness, and he’d messed up even more with Megamind. Even leaving aside school- he’d certainly done more damage than he needed to, when he first started fighting him as a villain. He’d hurt him, caused broken arms and broken ribs and one memorable concussion that scared the heck out of him, but he’s learned from those mistakes and he’s always so careful, now. He can’t figure out what he did wrong, what the mistake was, why his laser vision had done so much more than it was supposed to, but it doesn’t matter how it happened, because-

The people of Metro City deserve better than to have a murderer as their defender.

They won’t really need him much now, anyway, he reasons. He floats, and his head is still in his hands with his blackened finger carefully held away from his own skin, his adoptive planet spinning slowly around him.

Metro City doesn’t have a villain, now. What use is a hero, to a city without a villain?

***

Back on the surface, back in the city, Roxanne is left standing between a crater and a smoldering wreck, with a massive crowd of police and reporters and citizens far behind her, all anxiously shouting to each other over the noise of the fire and distant sirens.

She crosses her arms- no, she wraps her arms around herself, digging her fingers into her biceps to keep them from trembling, and she stares at the slowly extinguishing blaze. It’s all metal, she thinks vaguely, so once the fuel is exhausted the fire should follow pretty quickly. She can hear the volume of the sirens winding higher, never too distant from these battles, and she wonders if the fire hoses will be out before the flames take care of themselves.

There’s a hole in the center, where the first explosion had burst through, and a hole off to the right that would have been higher up on the suit if it were still standing, where she thinks Metro Man pulled the metal open himself. It’s where the cockpit should be, but the entire mass has collapsed so thoroughly that she can’t see anything inside. Part of her is grateful for that. Another part of her-

She can’t believe that any of this is real.

A decade. A decade and change she’s been involved in this ridiculous push and pull between Wayne and Megamind, and never in a million years did she think that it could take a turn like this. Megamind is ridiculous, but he’s still a genius, he knows what he’s doing when he builds his tech, and even when things blow up spectacularly in his face, he always has a backup plan, and he always has preparations for the worst. Even when he loses, he always bounces back swinging.

Bounced back, an unhelpful part of her mind murmurs. Past tense, now.

She realizes that she’s scowling and she schools her expression into something blank and cool and professional, just in time for a police officer to come close enough to engage with her.

He tries to get her back towards the press line. She sways on her feet, feigning shock (is she feigning, she wonders, or is the wobble in her ankles real, the lightheadedness, the sensation of tunnel vision she keeps pushing back along with the rushing in her ears? Roxanne doesn’t plan to find out; she has no time to faint today) until the officer retreats to try to find her a shock blanket or at least some water. She turns back towards the wreckage, takes a deep steadying breath in, and steps towards it.

She needs to see. She doesn’t know how else to make this feel real.

Roxanne is the closest to the wreck by far, and with her babysitter cop dashing back towards the press line she doesn’t have anyone to stop her from approaching. The heat reaches her early, the fire roaring loud enough to drown out the sirens when she gets close. She scowls hard when she realizes that the angle the suit collapsed at means she won’t be able to see inside unless she goes around the twisted wreck of the arm, unless she steps between the hand and the chassis of the chest itself.

When she passes around the sheared metal of the arm the heat and smoke grow more intense, making her blink and cough and press her arm across her mouth as she forces herself closer to her goal. The angle is almost, almost right. She can see the edge of his chair through the hole, just barely, when the wind catches the churning smoke and pulls it aside.

Another small blast rumbles through the debris, and Roxanne ducks down instinctively as a blast of even more intense heat billows over her. When she stands back up her brow is furrowed in a glare, and she takes another three big steps against the heat, starting to feel the sting of it on her skin.

She can almost see. Almost. Something dark on the arm of the chair, a strange tangle, black against the dark metal gray.

Each step is more difficult. She can see the hairs on her arm starting to curl in the heat, she’s not going to be able to get much closer, but she can’t stop now. She needs to see.

Gushing smoke, yellow-blue flames, metal staining black as it buckles, and on Megamind’s seat, a tangle of something-

An arm wraps around Roxanne’s midsection and pulls her back, pulls her up and away and after a moment where she’s too stunned to realize what’s happening she writhes.

“Put me- put me down I have to see him-”

“Ma’am you’re gonna get yourself killed,” the firefighter behind her says, tone gentle, and he’s lifting her high enough that her feet can’t touch the ground. “And we can’t start putting the fire out with you standing that close.”

Megamind - the battlesuit, the wreckage, the fire - is more distant with each step the firefighter takes, and Roxanne realizes moments too late that she’s kicking at the man, scrambling against his arm and babbling, “let me go, let me down I was so close I have to- I have to see if- I have to see-”

The hoses start up, burying the flames with a new column of smoke. She stops kicking, staring as the battlesuit finally extinguishes, as the weakened scaffolding of metal disintegrates under the weight of the water.

“Ma’am,” the firefighter sets her gently back on her feet, keeping his hand on her arm in case she tries to bolt again. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think he’d want you getting yourself killed too, y’know?”

Roxanne realizes, after a long, strange moment that she’s hyperventilating. The fireman leads her back away until she can’t feel the heat anymore, and someone wraps a shock blanket around her shoulders and sits her down on the back bumper of an emergency vehicle.

She stares at the wreckage for what feels like hours as emergency responders scurry around the scene, and she can feel the reporters on the other side of the line, can sense the pictures they must be taking of her sidelong and distant. Her phone starts ringing at some point and she pulls out the battery entirely. She knows, on some level, that she should be on the other side of that line, doing her job and holding strong against the chaos as she always does, but-

She can’t tear her eyes away. Not yet.

They separate the debris with large, clumsy equipment, with tools, and Roxanne almost doesn’t realize exactly what they are pulling out until they drape the sheet over top.

Roxanne is a journalist. She is a writer. She has given word to some truly horrific things in the past, in her profession, but at this new horror, her mind refuses. The lines and angles beneath that sheet may as well be non-euclidean for all her mind can understand them. She can’t understand, but she can’t look away, either. Not until they lift the stretcher, not until they put him in the ambulance, which seems like a sick sort of joke as far as Roxanne is concerned, not until that ambulance quietly, slowly drives away, the crowd parting just as quietly out of its way.

When he’s gone, when she can look elsewhere again, she closes her eyes instead. She’s not sure how long it is before someone notices and comes near enough again to ask if she is okay. She could almost laugh, the question is that ridiculous. She takes a deep, steadying breath, and quietly she asks for a bottle of water.

There is rubble caked on her shoes, there is smoke seeped into her clothes, and half the hair on her arms has sizzled away, but if she can whet her throat, if she can still speak, then Roxanne can straighten her spine and go back to work.

There’s no choice in the matter, really. It’s all she has left to do.

[lavellenchanted]

WIP Meme

Rules: Post the first line of one (or more!) of your WIPS and tag as many people as there are words some people.

I got tagged by the ever delightful @beautifulwhensarcastic, thank you Justine 😘😘😘 I’ve had to go digging because all my WIPs languish in documents for months if not years on end without ever being touched because that’s just the way I roll

1. Winds of Etherium - a Fjord/Jester Treasure Planet AU 

Normally, Jester wouldn’t take the risk.

Actually, no, that’s a lie – normally she would absolutely take the risk, because that just makes things more fun. At the moment, however, she’s still on probation and for all she spends what feels like most of her time actively seeking out boundaries to test there are some risks even she won’t take. Not when she can picture the disappointment in her mother’s eyes if she comes home with a police escort again. 

Not unless she had no other choice.

2. I’ll Crawl Home - a Thor/Sif reunion fic started before Endgame came out

Sif is a galaxy away from her home and everyone she loves when half the universe disintegrates into dust.

Keeping track of the time that has passed since she left Asgard has been difficult – not every realm and planet measures time the same way that Asgardians do, and in the endless, star-speckled darkness of space between them all time quickly loses all meaning whatsoever – but it has been at least two years, if not more. And there is still no sign of Thor.

3. An untitled Steve/Peggy fic that was going to be my take on Steve going back in time and them building a life together

Never show up to someone’s home empty handed was a rule that Steve’s mother had instilled in him from a young age. Even when they were scraping pennies together to pay for the week’s groceries or whatever new medicine Steve needed, Sarah Rogers had always managed to make sure she had something to offer whenever they were invited somewhere. 

In both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Steve had always striven to follow his mother’s example - so when he finally came to Peggy’s apartment, he brought flowers. Freesias, to be exact; her favourites, in yellow, white and lilac.

4. I’m a Little Bit Frightened of my Imagination, or, a continuation of the Steve/Peggy fake-dating fic that I was going to try to get up for Valentine’s Day but probably won’t

“We need a song.”

Steve, concentrating on the layout of a children’s picture book he’s been commissioned to illustrate, takes a while to register that Peggy is talking to him. When he does he looks up, face scrunching up in confusion, and starts to reply only to remember he’s holding a pencil between his teeth that the words are getting lost around. Taking it out, he tries again.

“We need what?”

6. The next chapter of Tomorrowland that has been languishing in WIP hell for about four years

For once, it was not nightmares keeping Harry awake late into the night. As he tossed and turned, his mind kept straying to thoughts of Luna, until it seemed he could trace the shape of her face, of her eyes and smile, in the shadows he was staring at.

It was strange, how different he felt … and yet nothing had changed. His feelings were the same as they had been yesterday, but he understood them now and was aware of them. In the same way that thinking about his heart beating made him aware of the steady pulse against his ribs, or focusing on his breathing made him suddenly notice the constant rise and fall of his chest, caring for Luna was so natural a process that until now he had never stopped to consider it. What it meant.

But now he couldn’t stop.

7. An untitled Clark/Diana fic set post Justice League that I expect no one but myself will want to read

“Did someone teach you to fight?”

Clark, who’s been stood looking out at the fields stretching away from Wayne Manor, listening to the world around him, turns to see Diana leaning against the doorway. Her arms are folded, and her dark eyes watch him speculatively.

It’s her eyes that give her away, he thinks. It struck him the first time he met her, even in the midst of a battle, and again when he woke from death, and every time since. The feeling that she’s seen so much more than he could ever comprehend. If he had known her as Diana Prince before he ever knew her as Wonder Woman, he thinks he would still have known there something different about her.

8. A Sailor Senshi/Shittenou fic I had totally forgotten I’d ever started

Some might put it down to fate, or kismet, or destiny. There were simply some things in the universe that were meant to happen, and would always find a way.

Some would call it chance. An incredible series of unlikely, but not impossible, coincidences.

Later, Minako Aino blamed poor decision making. One bad choice that caused a chain reaction, like knocking down the first in a set of dominos.

9. A fic that will not mean much to anyone except @jedbartlet

A chill wind rattled across the train station platform, causing Clem to shiver despite her thick winter coat and the scar wound artfully around her neck and shoulders. She huddled further into them, wondering why she hadn’t just taken Christmas Eve off, like everybody else in the country and her office.

--

Obviously I am 100% not tagging as many people as there are words, but I will tag @theawkwardterrier, @thesokovianaccords, @nevertothethird and @ardatli (if y’all want to, obvs!)

[futuredeadbranches]

I love this God bodies post canon thing, mind telling and/or drawing us more?

I’m so happy y'all like this idea!! I’m going to try to put my ideas in words, but warning: this is going to be terribly long (and possibly a mess).

Roxy: Dark spots appear randomly across her skin, changing place every day or so. As time passes, the spots grow larger, and at the end of her growth as a goddess, they cover her entire skin. Those spots are made of void, of pure black (not reflecting any light), though her body is still corporeal/material even in places covered by them. She can morph this nothingness into whatever she wants but can also willingly throw anything in it, losing that object forever in the void (yeah, she can pretty much use her body as an unlimited trashcan).When her body is entirely covered by void, she can fully shapeshift into anything she wants.

Dirk: His body splinters and puts itself back together at random intervals. He can still use his limbs even when they’re separated from his body but doesn’t know how to reform himself during his growth. Using his detached limbs, he can, for example, reach stuff in the distance, but learns how to control them gradually. When he touches someone, sometimes a soft pink light glows under his palm, transmitting under the form of a soothing and warm energy, all the care he has for the person he is touching. It’s pleasant, but can be a bit overwhelming, the love washing over one like a powerful wave. Dirk slowly gets used to it, finding comfort in finally being able to express what he is feeling in a way that feels right.

More under the cut bc this is too long:

Jake: Well, as a hero of hope, he gets wings. They grow slowly, the first ones appearing in his back. But Skaia is generous and doesn’t give him just two. Slowly, he gets more and more pairs of wings, on his lower back, his hips, behind his ankles, etc. (à la satan from devilman crybaby). Golden rings appear over his head. He also starts radiating an aura that puts people at ease around him, making them feel lighter, comfortable.

Dave: At any moment, there’s an infinity of different actions he could take, but a human eye couldn’t see them all at once. Instead, he is surrounded by some kind of afterimages of the actions he most likely would do in that precise moment. For him, these actions actually take place, allowing him to do many tasks simultaneously. At first, he has trouble anchoring his ‘other’ actions in the current reality, creating small separated parallel timelines where he has done one thing differently. But with practice, he manages to make them take place in the same timeline and can actually use his new ability to multitask.

Rose: Small specks of light appear on her skin, similar to freckles, staying there (unlike roxy’s). With time, they accumulate on parts of her body, forming together bigger spots, ending up covering her entire body, looking like a sun. During the growth, she has trouble controlling the brightness of the spots, blinding everyone around her if they dare to not wear some kind of protection for their eyes in her company.A third eye appears on her forehead, with which she can see all the time what she should do to go towards a brighter and better path of life.

Jade: Her dark hair grows longer, more quickly than a natural growth, and small stars appear in it at first, twinkling in the darkness. But with time, more and more celestial bodies appear, galaxies, planets, moons, until a small universe exists in her hair. It develops itself and lives, with stars dying, new ones appearing. In addition to that, some kind of gravity field creates itself around her, allowing her to just let go of objects and have them float around her or stick to her skin, depending on the size and weight of it. Lastly, rings appear around her ankles, wrists, and arms.

Jane: Flora begins to grow on her skin, creating a lively garden that constantly moves and changes. The plants of the garden may depend on her emotions, thorns appearing when she’s angry, flowers blooming and covering her when she feels happy. Specific flowers with specific meanings can appear too, showing her emotions more in detail. In addition to that, moss and flowers start to flourish on anything she touches, except on other living beings, so when she walks flowers bloom behind her but die and disappear most fo the time when she’s too far. With time, she learns to control their random apparition, but also to make them last even when she goes away. She attracts any living thing that’s in her vicinity, people and animals are drawn to her, plants grow in her direction, because she’s a source of life, of energy. Lastly, she sometimes gives life to inanimate objects without noticing. They don’t have sentience, as she is only Life and can’t give them a Soul, but they can move on their own, obeying her words. She learns how to control that power too, giving life to anything she chooses.

John: His hair constantly flows in the air. Small clouds appear and float around his head (and sometimes his limbs), depending on his state of mind: the more upset/sadder he is, the darker and the more there are clouds. In a way, they’re helping him finally let out and express the negative feelings buried in him. With time, his emotions impact the sky itself, the weather in the area surrounding him depending on them.We’ve seen in canon that he already knows how to become wind, but at random intervals, some parts of his body start to turn ghost-like, sometimes even disintegrating into wind. He isn’t always fully aware that he’s getting incorporeal, making him drop things or go through people accidentally. He gradually learns how to control it, while simultaneously learning how to shape the breeze the way he wants and turn it into a fog-like matter.Sometimes, completely out of his control, a part of his body shines with a bluish light, and a vision/scenery appears in it, serving as a window to another universe.

Vriska: Trolls get some attributes of their lusus through the godbod, so additional eyes appear on her face and two more pairs of thin arms grow in her back.As a thief of light, she steals the light of every environment she enters. When it’s a room, it goes completely dark and she shines with its light, when she’s outside during the day, there seems to be a dark aura around her, since she takes all the light of her surroundings, her body shining in the middle of it.When she touches people, it arrives that a golden/orange light appears under her palm, giving her a random piece of knowledge from the person (it isn’t necessarily something important, it can be a simple thought). The nature of the information can depend on the part of the body that is touched (infos about one’s feelings closer to the chest, for example)And she can steal luck in the same way 8ut she already has aaaaaaaall the luck.

None of these changes are painful, since this is the kids’ reward and Skaia isn’t trying to inflict them any more pain. But some mild discomfort can accompany the apparition of new limbs and whatnot, since the sensation is strange and foreign.

EDIT: Added some missing godbods