#for the LONGEST time i have wanted to draw or write him getting edged bc i think that shit is so cute

[unexpectedbrickattack]

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[demenior]

My dude I am relating so hard to your writing updates right now. I'm at the exact same stage as you, every update you have I'm like: same!!! 😭 I finished writing my longest fic ever a few weeks ago. It's dramatically longer than anything else I've edited and bro the editing is suffering. Any tips haha? I've got so many bits where I put "write later 🙂" and now is later and I've still got nothing.

AYYOOO CONGRATS!!!!

I'm of two minds on editing. Because on one hand, I love finishing things because then I get to finally SHARE IT.

On the other: now i have to face the [write later] bc it is... later...

My biggest tip is that if [write later] still feels too daunting to challenge:

Do you really need this scene, or can you fit in the relevant information before and after it and get away withoutout it (this is the best as it is the laziest method and therefore the most satisfying)

If you have to write it: start breaking it into smaller pieces. The reason you haven't tackled [write later] is because that's too Big an issue.

I usually do this via bullet points: jot down the most important things that have to happen (I try to do it in chronological order)

If THAT isn't working, it's time to break it down even FURTHER. This often means putting dialogue in lose points and writing the scene out like a screenplay script without actually writing the scene like a novel

Once you do the screenplay script, you have effectively written the scene and just have to "translate" it into prose

Examples for #2-4 under the cut:

This is how my notes go for scenes once I have to start breaking them down past the main plot points. These are my actual points for Chapter 9 of The Stranger Who Was Your Self

Eadwulf on guard at night

It’s a clear night sky

He’s a little taken away by the stars. Never seen them like this, not from Rexxentrum.

Reminds him a bit of home.

And yet it is so far from home my goodness :(

Sees stuff in the water, a little freaked bc he doesn’t know if it’s an attack or not

He draws his sword anyways!

Recognizes them as jellyfish. Intrigued by the glowing. Has heard of sea things that bioluminesce but never seen them.

Fjord and Jester wake up and come outside, and stand at the edge of the ship to look out over the water. This is a romantic moment for them.

And then here is where I start getting more detailed with dialogue (often these will be bits of dialogue i have in my head that I don't want to lose, and will lift them verbatim into the final chapter, as I did with the last 2 points here.)

Eadwulf hovers nearby, just in case

See something in the water, disturbing the jellyfish

Eadwulf gets closer to FJ to protect (as in, pushes between them and the edge of the ship)

Oh its a whale shark!

“Looks dangerous”

“I think they’re friendly. Don’t think they have teeth” Fjord admits

Jester leans her head onto Fjord’s shoulder, “it looks like it’s swimming in the stars. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It is,” Eadwulf admits. He’s not looking at the water.

[kiribakuficrecs]

What are the longest fics you’ve read?

my usual go to is one shots or like 6 chapter stories, but off the top of my head here are some of the longer fics i remember reading and loving!!!

quote love unquote by newamsterdam (135,781 words)

Sero nods. “It’s the chance of a lifetime, really,” he says. “We want you to date Bakugou, for the sake of his reputation with the press. Some public appearances, a few ‘candid’ photos. For at least a couple of months.”

“Bakugou sent you to ask me to date him?” Kirishima asks, baffled.

“Of course not. We, his people, are asking you to date him. He’s going to have to get on board, if he wants his career to survive. And in the bargain, Riot will get all sorts of publicity, because their lyricist will be dating one of the industry’s hottest stars. A win for everyone.”

When Kirishima Eijirou's band hits the big time, he's not prepared for his newfound fame. He's even less prepared to meet the actor he's been crushing on for years, or to start dating him as a publicity stunt. The closer Kirishima gets to Bakugou Katsuki, the more he realizes he's in over his head. But it's hard to stop, once his heart is in it.

- after i read this one, i was thinking about it for literally MONTHS. everything about it is really good, the pace is great, the characters are all well written and in character and interesting, and finding songs that apply to them in this story was really fun for me bc yeah lol. also i’m a sucker for fake dating read this if u haven’t already pls

roses are red and they taste like shit by unbreakable_red_riot (47,846 words)

Katsuki was really fucking sick of the smell of flowers.

- this is one of those fics i binged read from the second i laid down in bed, until like 5 in the morning because i couldn’t put it down and really wanted to know what happened. if i remember correctly i may have teared up at some cute parts in this one (but that very well could have been bc of how sleepy i was lol)

a heart swelled to bursting by eggstasy (49,644 words)

The summer training camp of Bakugou's second year at UA descends upon him with all the untamed fury of- well, himself, honestly.

PACKING CHECKLIST: ✓boyfriend (need to figure out how much he's willing to let him get away with) ✓people who claim to be his friends (deluded and in need of correction) ✓ptsd (that he absolutely doesn't actually have) ✓a healthy dose of denial (say it five times fast and that means it's true, right)

- this is one of (if not the very first?) kiribaku fics i ever read. it’s one of those fics that made me like them even more bc the fic was really good. this ones kind of a classic read that u may have read already but yk just incase

the beauty of a beast by starofjems (101,655 words)

Once upon a time a lonely beast lived in a manor deep in the forest. He dreamed of the day his true love appeared to break his curse... When a beauty finally appears in his life, it is not quite as he imagined. For who could have thought a beauty would be more of a beast.

Or

The beauty and the beast AU nobody asked for but here it is.

- ok this is coming from someone who literally hasn’t even watched the movie beauty and the beast, but i LOVED this story. i read it specifically bc i was told it was rly good n it was n its pretty lengthy so more content heck yeah

tonight, we’re at sea by idratherhaveyou (60,715 words)

Kirishima goes to a quiet seaside town to take care of his grandmother after she has a bad fall. There he meets Bakugou Katsuki and falls in love.

- good old fashion slow burn and good hurt/comfort content. this fic made me feel alot, another one of those ‘im reading this before bed but i cant sleep til i know how this ends’ stories for me

engraved in your mind by hejter (245,387 words)

Bakugou Katsuki lost his ability to recognize faces, so he didn’t know any of the people who stared at him, but he knew what dread looks like when he sees it, and as he looked around the crowd, every single person had exactly that written all over their face.

He looked down at the guy who was still on the ground, part of his uniform’s shirt burnt, his wounded face covered by his hands and his hair smoking slightly.

Katsuki glanced at his hands and finally realized something.

or

Kacchan is still a stubborn prick while suffering from face blindness. Also, quirk discrimination is a thing.

alternatively-

New quirk, who dis

- the concept of this one was so interesting to me, i hadn’t found a fic like this before n its so well written n interesting it does not disappoint. this one is a wip!

of ghosts and other inaccurate things by chezka (56,540 words)

A week before the sports festival found Bakugou walking back home in the late afternoon, sunset light making his scowl even more menacing and drawing a long shadow right in front of him.

Someone was walking by his side.

There was no second shadow on the floor beside his own to confirm this, but if he kept his focus on the street ahead and carefully avoided trying to look to his left, he could consistently make out black hair swishing in the wind and strong arms leading to hands sunk in pants’ pockets. The edges were blurry, but there was definitely someone at his side.

- i LOVE the writing in this one, and the plot is so good like this story line *chefs kiss* most of these stories i read when i should have been sleeping but had to keep reading to find out what happens next (this one is included) this one hurt but like in a good way ITS SO GOOD n rly interesting highly recommend

currently i’m reading a fic thats 600k+ words long and i’ve never done THAT before its wild. (not krbk tho before u ask) but i hope u like the list, sorry i didn’t have more!!

[wastelandlovingscenarios]

Hello, I’m so excited to see your new blog! Can I request on how the companions would react if they were looking through the drawers f!ss home and found a painting (by a ss whos VERY good at drawing) of them and the f!ss while shes sleeping?

my first request and it’s so cute!! i’ll make it preromance & crushing. also i’m really rusty with my writing bc i haven’t written in a while, so pls don’t mind! ❤️

he looked at her face with awe, wondering how someone could be so beautiful while doing something as simple as sleeping. he wanted to trace her face but resisted the urge to do so and decided to just explore the comfort of her home for the time being. ‘a little won’t hurt’, he thought as he rose from the chair, opening one of her drawers. who knows? maybe he’ll score and find a cute baby picture of her. he found some prewar books, along with some neat jewelry but as he dug deeper into the drawer, his eye caught a glint of something colorful hidden beneath all her belongings. he carefully pulled out the item, his breath hitching in his throat as he took in the full picture. it was a painting of him and sole, his arm draped over soles shoulders as she showed a peace sign. if it wasn’t for the rough texture and small little paint splatters on the canvas, anyone could’ve mistakened it for a picture..

Danse:

danse felt his face heat up immensely at the painting, feeling his heart beat against his chest. he wanted to put it back where it belonged but something in him was screaming to observe every inch of it. danse saw how his hands shook as he ran it against the painting, speechless. then it hit him. how was he supposed to face sole without bringing up the fact that he looked through her valuables? he had been denying his admiration for her for the longest time, merely shaking it off as a passing feeling. but now? he was sure that he had fallen for her. his gut turned at the realization and came to somewhat accept it.

looking back at soles sleeping form, he wondered how it would really feel to have his arm draped over her shoulder. how her skin would feel against his and how soft her lips looked- danse flushed, getting mad at himself for having such inappropriate thoughts. ‘get it together, danse!’ the next day as him and sole went out to a mission, she noticed how danse kept sneaking glances and complimented her more often. confused, she just shrugged it off and returned the affection with a smile. danse would never have the heart to bring it up to her, at least any sooner.

Deacon:

“and what do we have here?” deacon mutters, tracing the outlines of their figures on the painting. he let out a big grin as he fully took in the picture. oh, how he wanted to wake up sole so bad just to see the look on her face. but he resisted the urge and decided to settle with admiring the painting. deacon let out a low whistle, his eyes lighting up with admiration. he thought he knew everything about sole, but somehow, she always managed to surprise him with something new. he put away the painting right where he found it, almost making it seem untouched. he sat back down on the chair, closing his eyes as he let out a content hum.

when they returned to hq the next day, deacon was cracking more jokes than usual, often hinting at the painting to sole. sole, being the oblivious person she is, didn’t catch it and laughed at every joke, not sparing a single comment. as sole looked at the mirror to fix her hair, he put his arm over her shoulder, imitating the painting and saw how she shot him a confused look. with a shiteating grin, he boasted, “look familiar boss? almost like a painting, right?” soles cheeks reddened at the comment, her head snapping towards him, “hey! how did you-“ “i have my ways boss.” deacon pulled down his glasses and sent her a wink that would for sure linger in her mind.

Hancock:

for once, he was glad he didn’t fuck himself up with his usual dose of chems and jet. if he did, he wouldn’t get the chance to even admire the beauty of this painting. he let out a chuckle as he noticed how sole took in every detail of his face in her artwork. the leatherness of his skin, the way the dirt smudged on his clothes and how high he looked. god, sole made someone as ugly as him look fantastic in a piece of art. hancock put the painting on the counter and sat on edge of her bedside, a soft smile on his lips.

“geez, you really are something sunshine..” he whispered under his breath, that sweet nickname he’s always wanted to call her escaping his lips. he took a strand of her hair that covered her face and put it behind her ear. on the inside, hancock cheered, now knowing he may have even the slightest bit of chance to win her heart. of course, that was for another day. the next morning as sole wakes up, hancock wraps his arms around her as he hums happily. sole jolted in surprise, soon returning the hug with a confused tone in their voice. “hancock, what’re you-“ she stops midway, seeing the painting on the counter with half lidded eyes. now wide awake, she blabbers a bunch of nonsense as hancock smirks, “care to explain?”

Nick Valentine:

“heh, ain’t that a surprise.” nick chuckled, appreciating how sole had a talent that was definitely rare in the commonwealth. he saw sole painting the past few days, but everytime he came in to check on what she was doing, she yelped and hid the painting, shooing nick away. now that he’s able to see the painting close up, he understands her actions. all in all, nick meant no ill intent to look through soles items or breach through her privacy, but had no regrets in doing so. he put the painting against the wall and walked over to sole, taking in the view before letting out a breath. how could someone as perfect as her admire a bucket of bolts?

he let out a small smile, pulling the blanket over her body and allowing her to sleep peacefully. the following day, sole groggily made her way to the mirror as she rubbed her eyes lazily. as her vision slowly came back, she saw the painting through the reflection and a look of horror crossed her face. connecting the dots, she dashed outside her door, only to find nick leaning on the wall, lighting up a ciggerate as he smiled warmly at her. “morning doll, you look surprised.” “n-nick! you wouldn’t happen to see the-“ “-the painting? i apologize for looking through your stuff, sweetheart, but i’m more than glad i did,” he said with a spark in his voice, “do you mind if i hang that painting up in the agency? i’m sure my clients would love to see my amazing partner.”

Maccready:

maccreadys a big baby. his bottom lip quivers as tears well up in his eyes. he holds in a choked sob as he wipes his eyes furiously. no one has done something as amazing as this for him since lucy. he knew he was somewhat a part of sole’s life but never knew he was such a big enough impact for them to make a painting, a flawless one at that. “dang it sole. you’re making this harder for me.” he said, his heart fluttering at the thought of his crush on sole growing stronger. he was just thankful no one was there, especially sole, to see him tear up like a child. he grabbed a pen and a paper, sitting down on her desk and scribbling something down.

as soon as sole woke up and got ready for the day, she was confronted with a blushing maccready, who was shyly looking away. “morning mac, did you need something?” he let out a nervous cough as he fumbled through his pockets, almost dropping the paper he handed out to her. she took it and saw a (horrible) drawing of him and sole posing together with their guns, the words ‘best duo!’ written on top. “this is so cute! i love it.” she grinned childishly, clutching the paper to her chest. mac just let out a small grunt and spun, walking towards the exit of her room. he grabbed the door frame as he spoke in a low, shaky voice. “hey boss,” sole let out a small ‘hm?’ as she looked up at the nervous mercenary, “yours is far better than mine and uh.. i just want you to know that i love it. really.” he left the room, his heart pounding as he left a blushing sole behind.

[cross-d-a]

fic tag game

aaahhh @vishcount thank you for tagging me!!! These are so fun and I adored reading about your fic journey~!  ೖ(⑅σ̑ᴗσ̑)ೖ ❤

OH as a note!! For the ppl I tag at the end I don’t expect you to read all of this bc it’s A Lot!!! but I figured you might want to do this game yourself? haha :)

Name: cross-d-a shortened version of my first ever username. unfortunately stuck with it now haha but i’m fond of it :p wish it was cuter tho!!

Posting the rest of this under the cut so it doesn’t eat up people’s dashes!! 

(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Fandoms: 

oKAY YIKES there are....honestly too many too name. I’ve got a short and obsessive attention span so it’s either all or nothing with me usually. When I can stay in a fandom for a long period of time it’s a miracle. I’ll name the bigger ones that I’ve all written fic for! Even if I’ve never posted them haha

Right now I’m very firmly into Daomu Biji (dmbj). It feels like it’s both got a crap ton of content and yet barely anything at all haha. Maybe because the English fandom is so small. But at least there are a bunch of dramas and books!!! I really, really, really adore dmbj so much!! And a large part of that is the fandom!!! It's been a really cool and unique experience! Everyone in it is truly so kind and wonderful, and I’ve made some really incredible friends because of it (looking at you vish!! ❤). I’ve got a bunch of wips, but I’ve only posted two fics for dmbj!

Before this I was very into Guardian and mdzs. MDZS was my first foray into cdramas and Guardian’s Zhu Yilong really suckered me into watching more haha I also have fics for both these fandoms!

My very first fandoms were Fullmetal Alchemist, D. Gray-Man and Naruto. My very old ffnet account has fics for these and I’ve got a bunch of newer wips on my tablet. Then Star Trek, Twilight, BBC Merlin, Sherlock, Death Note, Harry Potter, How to Train Your Dragon, Battlestar Galactica, Avatar the Last Airbender and Marvel were a few of my main ones in high school. Plus a bunch of anime (like Fruits Basket! and Kuroshitsuji and Natsume Yuujinchou). 

Then college hit and I renewed my childhood love of Tolkien (mainly lotr and the Hobbit), and Star Wars. I also found Teen Wolf! Then after college it was Stranger Things. 

I find myself in a cycle of mild fondness and complete obsession with these fandoms haha I go back to Star Wars at least once a year!! Then I’m in the gffa hole for a few months. Marvel also reoccurs, depending on how interested I am in new content! Star Trek I always always always go back to. TOS is my comfort show and it will never fade from my heart ❤

But for now I’m stuck in cdrama hell and I love it

Tropes: 

Time travel, found family, whump+hurt/comfort, fairytale-like elements, resurrective immortality (thanks to a “Nine Lives” Hobbit fic), CROSSOVERS

I’m a slut for all these things so they often worm their way into my plots haha

I also just- love weird premises. I think that’s the anime influencing me haha

Fic I spent most time on: 

My series he leaves sand and stardust in my wake (main fic is hurricane on the edge of oblivion), I have...spent five years on now. I have done so much research for this fic it’s insane. 

The premise is force ghost!Obi-Wan getting shunted back into his tiny 10 year old self. I incorporate a shit ton of legends and I try to stay as canon as possible. I basically want this au to feel like it’s 1000% plausible while still getting all my gay shit. It’s chock full of whump, redemption, found family, minor characters turning into major characters, and I’ve got slavery uprising on the mind, too. It’s just- everything I could ever want to explore in the Star Wars universe basically. 

It’s my first big project. I started doodling and scribbling ideas in the margins of my notebook in my Scottish History class. I adore it so so so much. But, because of my hyperfixation and fleeting intense obsession with things it makes it- really difficult to consistently update. I leave it for months at a time and I am constantly guilt-ridden about it. Because it’s my baby and I have a lot of wonderful readers. I fear I’ll never be able to finish it. Especially since I’ve written so much and I’m still only in the beginning of it. ( ; A ; )

Also, I’ve spent so much time with Xanatos, Feemor and Bruck that they just feel like mine now. I can’t read any fics that involve them, it’s too strange. Which is a damn shame because I love them so much haha OH ALSO!! I think it’s the first really big fic to include those three?? So I’m very proud about that haha (I’ve had so many ppl comment about how they actually Give A Shit about these three and are Invested bc of me haha)

Favorite fic(s) you’ve written: 

hurricane on the edge of oblivion (with nowhere to go) (Star Wars)

My long-term passion project. My love-letter to Star Wars, I suppose. Reading it now I feel like a lot of it is clunky or long-winded, but I think it really shows the foundation of my writing today :) Main characters are Obi-Wan, Xanatos Du Crion, Qui-Gon Jinn, Bruck Chun and Feemor. Eventually we’ll get to Maul, Savage, Feral, Shmi Skywalker, (more!) Ahsoka, Anakin and a shit ton of clones ❤

things we hunger for (Guardian)

My Ye Zun self-indulgent fic. It’s a time travel amnesia Weilanzun! Honestly has some of my fav writing I’ve ever done. It’s so soft and really indulges in the hurt/comfort. It gives Ye Zun the friends and family I think he deserves. Also, he gets to grow into a (mostly!) functional person and I adore him.

the beast that slumbers within your soul (mdzs)

Jiang Cheng centric fic!! I feel like all my favourite fics I’ve written are love letters haha. This is one def my love letter to Jiang Cheng. This fic possessed me for two whole days. I wrote 16k in almost one sitting. I went to sleep at 6 in the morning bc I couldn’t stop writing. And when I drifted off I kept thinking of new ideas so I’d whip out my phone and write down lines and notes. I- have never ever ever felt that way about anything. It was- insane. It felt insane. It was so amazing. I’m still riding the memory of that high.

 Basically Jiang Cheng actually finds Baoshan Sanren and it turns out she’s a fox demon and Jiang Cheng is descended from wolves. It’s- okay I said the fic above this had my favourite writing?? That was a lie. This has my favourite writing I’ve ever done. It’s unfinished bc I am in dmbj hell but I am still excited about the next chapter which features Wei Wuxian’s pov!!

the whispers of spirits (dmbj)

My current passion project. In a way it kinda feels similar to hurricane? Bc multiple povs, incorporating different aspects of canon (we’ll get there!! I promise!), shit ton of research, etc. etc. I really really really love it for so many reasons. I’m basically taking all the things I was unsatisfied with in Reboot and Sha Hai and running with it. Found family and whump galore! It’s also a love letter to the women of dmbj who really deserve so so so much better.

Honourable mention to:

One Day (you’ll have given more of yourself than is meant to be taken) (Marvel)

This fic also kinda possessed me. I just- couldn’t get rid of the idea of a trans!Thor. And I mean a mtf Thor! It’s just? So many people look at Thor and go “that’s a Real Man.” Full stop. They never think there could be anything more, and it really really really bothered me. So I wrote out my feelings. I’m not trans. I don’t have that experience at all. I’ve had issues and confusion about my gender but nothing like this. I just wanted to do justice to this idea of Thor in my head. And I still feel a bit nervous having posted it. But I've gotten so many comments from people who really connected with what I’ve written? So I’m very very thankful I wrote it and it has a very special place in my heart. It’s a very cathartic fic.

Fic I spent least time on: 

Probably we rise (Star Wars) and I think it shows haha. I wrote it in response to Dave Filoni posting a drawing of Ahsoka and Gandalf telling her “People thought I was dead, too, and look how that turned out...” So I incorporated Ahsoka (and Din and Grogu and Ezra!!!) into the ending of Rise of Skywalker, kinda explaining how I think they could all still be alive. :)

Longest fic: 

hurricane is my longest fic (159k) but I’m kinda worried whispers will eclipse that.....

Shortest fic: 

Of my posted ones it’s The Five Moments it Took Tony and Scott to Admit They Were Best Friends (and the first time they ever did), currently clocks at 1.6k. It’s unfinished tho so maybe that doesn’t count.... otherwise it’s we rise which is completed and 2k.

Most hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks: 

hurricane overall has the most of all these. Though I don’t think hits counts as much bc it’s multi-chapter. If you discount multi-chapter stuff, most hits goes to my obikin smutfic Homecoming, bc people are horny af haha

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: 

If I had energy I’d like to rewrite the beginning of hurricane bc it feels so so wordy. I’d want to expand on One Day bc I really would like to write a whole series with trans!Thor. And like- I’d really like the focus to finish any of my WIPs.

Share a bit of a WIP: I really wanna share my Guardian/dmbj crossover that I started back in August. Bc I adore the idea of wu xie&shen wei&ye zun triplets! Plus time travel!!! I dunno if I’ll ever finish it tho ( ; A ; ) It just feels like a lot to deal with right now.

This scene takes place during the Mountain Awl arc. Guardian crew and desperado fam run across each other at the village! Wu Xie has recently found out that he’s adopted and he’s searching for answers in the area Sanshu originally found amnesiac!toddler!Wu Xie in :) Gonna pull two snippets bc I’m v excited and this might be the only time anyone else sees this fic haha:

“Oh?” Pangzi focuses on Yunlan now, lips twisting. “You think I’ve ‘got the wrong guy,’ huh?” He laughs, but it’s not a nice sound. “That’s rich! Are you that cocky or are you just stupid?”

Bristling, Yunlan drops his hands and scowls. “Excuse me?”

“Sir,” Shen Wei tries. “I think—”

Pangzi’s eyes snap back to Shen Wei, sharp and blazing. “How dare you fucking steal his face!”

What?

Automatically, Zhao Yunlan turns to Shen Wei, but the professor looks just as shell-shocked as Zhao Yunlan feels which- is seriously something. Since everything about Shen Wei is so carefully controlled, kept to the minimum. Except for those delightful little smiles that bloom across his lovely face, or the startled little bursts of laughter that fall from his lips. Or even when anger and frustration spark across his features, cracking his calm veneer open enough that he can see a glimmer of what lies beneath, the fire in those eyes. Zhao Yunlan delights in those moments, makes a game of making Shen Wei’s control slip.

He tells himself it’s nothing more than a game. Nothing more than trying to find out what makes Shen Wei tick.

Zhao Yunlan’s always been very bad at lying to himself. Or very good. Depending on who you’re asking.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yunlan splutters.

But before anyone can say anything else, a very familiar voice calls:

“Pangzi? What’s wrong?”

Yunlan can feel Shen Wei stiffen, and Yunlan himself is pulled to that voice like a planet in orbit, like the inevitable plummet to the ground.

Another shadow wavers in the doorway before it steps out onto the dirt. Light illuminates shaggy hair, limning it gold, sharply casting everything else in shadow. But as the figure nears, the contrast softens until Yunlan can see the newcomer’s face properly and- and—

“Wu Xie!” Pangzi growls. “We’ve got ourselves an impostor!”

The man wearing Shen Wei’s face steps up to them, brows furrowed and mouth pulled down into a sharp frown. He glances between them, eyes landing on Shen Wei. His scowl deepens. He opens his mouth, but then—

“Wu Xie?” Shen Wei breathes, all trembly and lost and hopeless.

Heart in his throat, Yunlan turns to Shen Wei again. Turns and flinches at that stricken look upon Shen Wei’s pale pinched face.

“A-Xie?” Shen Wei chokes. “Didi?”

and

Pangzi snorts. “Professor?”

“I-it’s true!”

Startled Yunlan swings his attention over to Jiajia who clenches her backpack to her chest, face screwed up in admirable determination. “P-professor Shen took me and Xiao Quan on a field trip to investigate an archeological site around here!”

“Oh?” Wu Xie drawls all slow and amused. “Well, what a coincidence. We’re archeologists, too.”

“With guns?” Yunlan bites out.

Wu Xie raises a brow, grin full of teeth. “Well, you can never be too prepared.”

“Right,” Yunlan drawls right back. “Are you a professor, too, then? You come here with your students?”

Wu Xie outright grins. “You could say that, I suppose.”

Out of the corner of his eye, one of the men rolls his eyes. He’s the one with sharp features, glasses and looped earbuds. Does he think it’s appropriate to listen to music at a time like this? Yunlan admires the man’s gall.

aahhhh vish thanks so much again for tagging me!! This was so fun to relive my fic memories!! I’m gonna tag @alwaysaslutforshakespeare @jockvillagersonly @tehfanglyfish @lichelleme @undyingsunshine @humanlighthouse  @thewindsofsong I’m curious about your guys’ writing and fandom journey!! As always, no pressure to actually complete this!! I just thought it was fun ❤

Wow if you read all of this I am very humbled and impressed, thank you!!

╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

[jilyandbambi]

Hey gang, so a couple of days ago @padawanlost brought up an old SW fic of mine that I’d only posted to my old blog, not my AO3 as it was only an off the cuff thing that I meant to turn into a full fledged multi-chapter, but bc I was working on so many projects at the time the fully realized idea I had never fully got off the ground. 

Anywho, there were some people in the replies to padawanlost’s post who asked me if I wouldn’t mind reposting it. So I did some digging and actually did manage to find my old Word docs. The person who I mention in the original Author’s Note user @/TheMooseJTM isn’t on Tumblr anymore, so unfortunately I can’t link to her old post, and I’m also not sure if suzukiblu is still on here or, in actuality, which post of theirs’ inspired Michi’s fic, which inspired mine. In any case, mine can be read as a standalone. Everything is under the cut. Feel free to reblog/let me know what you think in the comments, etc. 

Fair warning, I haven’t touched this thing since probably summer of 2016/2017 at the latest, so apologies for my older, less “polished” writing. 

Shout out to @celestialily and @alabasterswriting this is for you :)

The One Where Padmé Spills the Tea   Pt. 1

Inspired by this post by suzukiblu and this follow up ficlet by themooseJTHM. Also, Anakin being epileptic is in reference to this post. I didn’t come up with it. But I find it very fitting. I just want you both to know, this is all your fault. You two have no one to blame but yourselves. 

In which, I take things a little farther than Michi does bc what can I say I’m 95% angst, 5% bacon.  : ) : )))))))

Trigger warning for child abuse 

=================================

It all starts when an unusually grave Obi-Wan returns Artoo to her, charging port and all. Right off the bat Padmé can feel her intestines clench and constrict into hard stone as he explains that, as apart of an intensive spirit cleansing ordeal recommended by the Temple Healers, Anakin must relinquish all of his material attachments. Especially those that were given to him as gifts from outsiders. 

“But what will you do about his seizures?” she asks him. Trying her best to keep her voice even despite the frustration and worry bubbling up inside as she remembers the first time Anakin told her about them. Their wedding night, when he’d had one in front of her, and he hadn’t even been able to put a name to it. It was just a thing that happens to me every now and then when things get to be Too Much, Padmé. No need to get all fussy over me. 

And she’d hated it. Hated that he’d had such a poor grasp of proper mental health. Hated that he’d been conditioned by his upbringing to see his own well-being as tertiary if not altogether immaterial. But knowing that Anakin oftentimes had trouble distinguishing when people’s negative emotions were directed at him or for him, Padmé had tempered her righteous fury by giving him Artoo as a service droid. Just a friend, to watch over you for me when we’re apart, Ani. And he’d been delighted. Problem solved. 

But Obi-Wan’s brow furrows and his lips tighten into that patented Obi-Wan grimace that crops up on his face whenever he knows some new and dreadful information is about to be unloaded on him. 

“What seizures?” 

And the stone in Padmé’s gut grinds to dust, and she thinks it might have also been whatever remained of the restraint she’d been grasping at since this whole ordeal began. Because the next thing she knows, she’s hauling a panic-stricken What seizures, Padmé? What seizures?! Obi-Wan out the door and back to the Temple, demanding to see her Ani.  

His room still has a window, so she can’t call it a prison cell. But Mother of Mothers…

Everything is gone, everything. The room is completely barren save for the cot, the sheets, and the thin, shabby-looking carpet. Anakin’s workbench and all of the droid parts and little side projects he’d been working on had been taken away. Along with his single podracing poster that had been hanging on the far wall. 

Padmé has long been respectfully critical of the Jedi philosophy of no attachments, knowing that as an outsider, that there were aspects of their culture she could never understand. But this? This was just cruel. 

Anakin looks up when she enters, and oh the dullness in his eyes and the weary slump of his shoulders make him seem at least three times his twenty-two years. His entire body seems to sag with misery and resignation.  

He doesn’t get up to greet her, and he barely reacts at all when she sits down on the cot next to him. It’s been a week since she’s seen him last, thanks to the new restrictions the Jedi have put on their visits. Does he feel she has abandoned him? Stop it she mentally slaps herself. This isn’t about you! 

She reaches up to run her knuckles along the back of his neck, and he immediately jerks back and bats her fingers away. Then turns to look at her—really, look, as if seeing that it’s her for the first time—and is immediately remorseful.  

“Sorry,” he says. His eyes are painfully wide, weighted down with dark circles. Has he slept at all in the time since they’ve last seen each other? 

“Sorry…” he says again. “Sorry. I’m…I’ve been…remembering things.” 

“Don’t apologize,” she tells him, gently taking his hand in hers’. She starts to bring their joined hands into her lap, then reconsiders and places them on the cot in the space between them. Neither of them say anything for the longest time. And that’s just fine. She didn’t come here to talk, or to force him to talk. She came to make sure he was doing alright (and he’s not. Oh, he’s so far from alright. What is she going to do?). 

The silence stretches on and Padmé can do nothing but stare at the dreary grayscale walls of the room Anakin’s been trapped in. Is this what every Jedi’s room looks like? The younglings included? Do the infants in the crèche go to wake from nightmares with nothing but gray spackled walls to comfort them? Can the Jedi think of no way to breed order and conformity than to stamp out anything that could encourage creativity and color? 

Anakin clutches her hand suddenly, and she’s brought back to the present. He opens his mouth and pauses. Then clenches his jaw and tries again. She runs her thumb along the back of his hand, coaxing him through his distress. 

“Padmé,” he croaked. “Do you think maybe if I were a proper Jedi, if I had been able to adapt to the lifestyle from the get go—if-if I weren’t so needy, Sidious wouldn’t have been able to…?”

What was left of Padmé’s stomach plummets to her feet. “Ani…” she says slowly. “Is that what they’ve made you think?”

“No!” he says defensively. Retreating back into himself. “It’s just…the other day when the Healers recommended that the Council take Artoo and the rest of my things they said…” 

“What? What did they say?”

“They tell me Sidious was able to get to me because of how easily I latch onto people. How susceptible I am to attachments. That the reason I didn’t say anything to anyone about what was going on is because—“ 

“He took advantage of you,” Padmé said heatedly. Anakin recoiled, and she brought her hands up to cup both of his cheeks. Stroking her thumbs along them, so that he knows it’s not him she’s upset with. “He was an adult. He was in a position of authority. He manipulated you, Ani. That isn’t your fault.” 

“But—“ he gasped. His breath coming out harsh and heavy. His words choking on the edge of them. “but I-I should’ve…”

“Shhhh…” she whispers, drawing his forehead down to touch hers’. “You’re not to blame, Ani. You didn’t do anything wrong. None of this is your fault. Do you hear me? None of it.” 

And he just looks so relieved, even as tears begin to leak from his eyes and a sob stifles in his throat. As if this is the first time anyone’s told him this explicitly in the month since the truth has come out. 

It lights a fire inside Padmé over the dust of her long-held restraint. 

And the next thing she knows she’s pulling Anakin up by his flesh arm, and dragging him out of his cell and through the winding halls of the Temple. Without any labels on any of the doors it’s either by pure luck or fury fuelled instinct that she finds the Council Chambers on the first try. Caution thrown completely to the wind, she bursts through them. 

“We’re married.” 

She tells the group of scandalized Masters, before they can even open their mouths to rebuke her lack of decorum. Scandal quickly morphs into shock. And surveying the varied looks of surprise and indignation on each of their normally stoic faces, Padmé feels dark satisfaction water the embers of her rage. 

Master Windu is the first to recover. 

“Excuse us?” he says tightly. 

“We’re married,” Padmé says again. Plainly and proudly. Code be damned. Careers be damned. Enough with the secrets and hiding. Enough. “For going on three years now. Since right after the war broke out. We’re married.”

Now that it’s out there, Padmé finds she can’t stop saying it. Mother goddess does it feel good to say those words out loud. She wants to shout them from the top of the tallest skyscraper on Coruscant. Rife with rebellious attitude, she turns behind her and smacks her lips against Anakin’s. And if the way he just melts into her doesn’t convince the Masters that she isn’t making this up, nothing will. 

“This is ridic—“ 

“Unbelievable!“

“How dare—“ 

“I’ll produce the marriage certificates tomorrow, if you like,” she says over the voices of the hysterical Council members. “But right now, I’m taking my husband home. Consider this his resignation. Good evening, Masters.” 

And with that she links her arm through Anakin’s, and and they walk briskly through the doors of the chamber, just in time to here Obi-Wan’s “Wait! Padmé, Anakin! You’re making a—” before the doors slam behind them. 

The reality of what’s just happened doesn’t hit her until they’re back in their apartment. Anakin’s left the Order. She just resigned him from the Order. Is she even allowed to do that? Did he want to leave the Order? Is he very angry with her? Is he going to leave her now and go crawling back to them? Oh, blessed Mother of Mothers curse her impulsivity, what did she just do?

“You were amazing!” Anakin shouted. She turned around to see a huge grin plastered across his face, and what a difference it makes. Gone is that hollowed out prisoner. He’s himself again, and he’s scooping her up in his arms, kissing her and spinning her around, saying over and over again. “You were amazing! You were amazing! You’re so” kiss “kriffing” kiss “amazing!” 

A long, deep kiss against her lips. He holds the back of her head, bringing her in deeper. Then pulls away, giggling now. Oh, she’s missed that laugh. She’s missed that smile. Oh, Anakin…

“I’m so lucky to have you,” he whispers, clutching her to his chest, and tangling his flesh hand in her curls. They stay like that for an eternity, swaying back and forth on his heels; her, several inches off the ground, buried in her husband’s arms, and him, nearly delirious with renewed hope, holding her tighter, tighter, tighter as if she’ll float away from him if he lets up. 

“What happens now?” he whispered in her ear. Softly, hesitatingly. As if daring this to somehow be only a dream. 

“Now,” Padmé grinned. “I’m going to pack a bag. You’re going to change out of this,” she fingered his ratty tunic and scowled at his too-small pants. “And the two of us are going to leave all of this behind, like we always talked about.” 

Anakin’s smile is so wide she’s afraid he’s going to pull a muscle. Instead he pulls her in for another deep, hungry kiss. 

“Sounds like a plan.” 

He changes quickly so that he can help her pack. As is their routine, she pulls dresses and pants and tunics from their hangers and hands them to him to put away. He’s such an efficient packer. Somehow able to fit half her closet into one mid-sized suitcase without rumpling anything. He’s so careful with her things, taking special care to fold and arrange them perfectly. Treating them as lovingly as he does her. And he says he’s the lucky one. 

They’re just about done when Threepio comes in to tell them that Obi-Wan has arrived. Unnecessary, as he is right on Threepio’s heels. And just as quickly as it set in, Anakin’s good mood is snuffed out like a dying flame. 

“Anakin, Padmé, I—“ he stops himself when he catches sight of her open suitcase. 

“You’re leaving,” he says flatly. 

“Yes,” she answers, daring him to challenge them. Obi-Wan swallowed thickly. 

“Please, just hold on a minute. Hear me out,” he says carefully. “Don’t do anything rash. Please.”

He looks to Anakin, who is uncharacteristically silent, sitting on the chaise lounge at the foot of her bed with his head bowed away from his master. Padmé steps in front of him. 

“We’ve already made up our minds, Obi-Wan,” Padmé says forcefully. Lie. She’s made Anakin’s mind up for him. But in her defense, he was all for it…

Right? 

I’m so lucky to have you! 

Right. 

“Padmé,” Obi-Wan scolds. Scolds, as if she were a simple child! “I’m surprised at you. You’re not usually so reckless. Please, just take a minute to think about this. Think about what’s best for Anakin.” 

“What’s best for Anakin,” Padmé seethed. “Being shut away in that room like some criminal? Being stripped of all of his personal possessions and any sort of stimulation? Being cut off from the only person who cares for him? Is that what’s—“

“You’re not the only person who cares for him!” Obi-Wan shouted. “You’ve got some nerve! We’re doing everything we can think of to help him through this! And then you just swoop in and—!” 

“Whatever you call yourselves doing it’s obviously not enough!” she exclaimed. “Obi-Wan he was miserable in that room. You had to have seen that! You have to know that being isolated like that would crush him! You know how much he needs other people!”

“That’s precisely what got him into this mess!” he cried. “He’s always just been so…attached! Palpatine saw that and was able to prey on him because of it. I know being cut off from everyone is difficult for him now, but he’ll come out of this a stronger, wiser Jedi. He’s a grown man, Padmé not an infant. He doesn’t need you coddling him!” 

As a general rule, Padmé hates violence. Especially when used to resolve an argument. But right now she wants to throttle every self-righteous bone in Obi-Wan’s body. 

“How can you say that?!” she screamed. “Palpatine preyed on him because he was lonely and traumatized! And then you go and make him worse!” 

“Oh so it’s my fault that that…disgusting maniac was buggering him for twelve years?!”

“Must you be so crass? I never said anything like that!” she bellowed, incensed. “But yes, while we’re at it? Where were you during those twelve years? What were you doing that you could be so willfully blind to what was being done to him?!”

“Willfully--?!” Obi-Wan spits out through clenched teeth. His face redder than a setting sun, and twice as huge. Like it’s going to just burst open from rage. She’s never seen him so furious. Good. Finally getting some genuine emotion out of Mr. Model Jedi. “Where were you? Now that we’re pointing fingers, where were YOU? He was married to you during three of those years? Clearly sharing more with you than he was with me, what were you doing that you missed something this huge?”

“How dare you imply that I--!“

“STOP IT! JUST STOP!!” 

They both turn to find Anakin hunched over and stricken. His hands clutching at his scalp. A high-pitched keening noise—like the garbled whirring of a broken droid—begins to sound from his mouth as he started to convulse. Oh no. 

“Ani…?” Padmé said softly, stepping closer to him. He didn’t look up. She deflated. All of the anger and bitterness and contempt flowing out of her at once. She didn’t have to look over at Obi-Wan to know the same was happening to him. 

“Anakin,” he said, getting down on his knees so as to be eye-level. “Anakin, shhh…Stay with us.” 

He reached up and began to tug at Anakin’s arms, trying to pull his hands from his hair. They didn’t budge. He pulled harder, yanking at them. 

“Anakin…Anakin let go.” 

“Stop,” Padmé comes down beside them, and gently pulls Obi-Wan away. “Leave him. It doesn’t last long.” 

“He’ll pull his hair out!” 

“His muscles and joints go stiff when he’s like this. If you pull on his arm too much like you were you could dislocate his shoulder.” 

Obi-Wan makes a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. “Padmé—“ 

“Stop!” Anakin croaked. His speech slurred and gravelly. “Please…” 

He brings his arms down, then. But his eyes remain bleary and unfocused. They both reach for him, but Padmé gets there first. She pulls him into her lap, bringing his head to rest against her chest and carding her fingers through his hair to soothe any scratches he might have left. 

“Shhh…” she soothes, as his breath hitches and he begins to tremble. “We’re sorry. We’ve stopped. We’re so, so sorry, Ani…” 

The room goes quiet and still as Anakin calms and his breathing returns to normal. Then, Obi-Wan asks

“Anakin, did Palpatine know about your seizures, too?”

She could slap that man. She could. She really, really could. 

A noise comes out of Anakin’s mouth that is halfway between a shriek and a sob. She shushes him again and rubs his back, glaring at Obi-Wan who glares back. 

“I’ve been…remembering things,” Anakin whispered. 

“Shhh…” she says again. “It’s alright. You don’t have to—“ 

“No, let him get this out,” says Obi-Wan. 

“H-he used to…when I was younger…afterwards, he’d have me sit on his lap,” he made another noise. “He’d lift up my tunic and rub my back…like Momma used to. Except he’d go lower...” 

“Oh, Force,” Obi-Wan said, dropping his head into his hands. Sounding as though he were going to retch. 

“Sorry!” Anakin whispered. “Sorry! I’m sorry! I should have…” 

“You did nothing wrong,” Padmé says vehemently in his ear. “Remember what I told you before, you did nothing wrong.” 

“She’s right, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, just as emphatic. Bracing a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “You have nothing to apologize for.” 

He waited for Anakin’s breathing to regulate. Then pulled him up from her arms. Anakin went to him like a marionette being repositioned. 

“Look at me,” Obi-Wan said. “I want to hear it from you. Do you want to leave the Order? Truly?”

For a moment, Anakin doesn’t answer. And Padmé gets the sinking feeling that she’s made a terrible lapse in judgment. But then he says

“I want to go with Padmé, Master,” with all of his trademark obstinance. But all the same, it’s a question, a request. As if he needed the other man’s permission. As if Obi-Wan would force him to stay against his will. 

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” he pleads.  

And Obi-Wan just looks so defeated, so desolate. Padmé can’t help but want to take back every single one of her earlier words. But before she can even begin to, he hangs his head, and leaves them with a quiet, “So be it.” 

Anakin falls limply back into her arms. They don’t leave for another two hours. 

==================================================

The Tea ‘Verse Pt. 2

(Palpatine is a nasty space hipster that wears ugly robes and plays chess) Trigger Warning for graphic abuse

---------------------------------------

Their first couple of days on Naboo are like something out of a dream. A second honeymoon, only better. 

Before, whenever they visited the Lake Country they’d been confined to the house and its surrounding lands for fear of being recognized and outed by locals. But now that they’ve revealed themselves there’s no more need for subtlety and sneaking. They can be as gooey and shameless and public as they want, without fear of reprisal. And they take full advantage of it. 

(It turns out, actually, that they had nothing to worry about all along, at least as far as the townies are concerned. The inhabitants of the Lake Country are far too consumed with their own day to day lives to care anything at all about the “vacationers” canoodling in the middle of the town square. Padmé and Anakin happily make a note of that.)

They cook breakfast together every morning, then take their food back up to bed and feed one another by hand off of a shared plate. She purposely drips syrup down Anakin’s chest so that she can lick it off. He doesn’t mind one bit. 

They waste an entire day making love. Languishing in tangled limbs and tender touches. Exploring and relearning one another’s bodies the way they always do after a lengthy separation. Finding new and creative ways to make each other ache and writhe in pleasure, until they are too sore to do anything more than listen to one another breathe, as the sun sets just outside their bedroom. 

They have dinner by candlelight—both at home, and at restaurants in town. The wait staff at one is so taken with the two of them and the way they feed each other bits of their dessert between kisses, they end up getting two more on the house. 

They picnic out in the fields, and watch the wild shaaks graze. And when Padmé teases him about that time he tried to ride one and ended up falling flat on his face, Anakin does it again, just to see her laugh. 

They pop popcorn and watch live coverage of the Pixelito Classic on Malastare, and she listens attentively as Anakin savagely rips apart every contestant’s podracer. (“I built a better racer than that at nine, what is Kolbron even DOING?” he rages. She chuckles, kisses him, and shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth.)

They take her father’s old speederboat out on the largest lake in the region for a day. While she tans, he lies halfway over the edge of the deck and drags his arms along in the water, grinning and laughing like a little boy. And Padmé thinks that if she loves one singular thing about Anakin, it’s his wide-eyed wonderment at the simple things. 

Going to bed on a full stomach. 

Clothes that fit properly. 

Water. Fresh water. Unlimited fresh water. (“that you can just…drink and sail in and swim in, Padmé. Drown in, even. Anytime you want. It’s just there!”)

Her smile. 

And she wonders, for perhaps the millionth time, how anyone could ever want to break her Anakin, the way Sidious and the Jedi almost did. How anyone could see his passion and think it something that should be stripped away or perverted. 

Thinking about what they almost did to him makes her want to tear millennia old institutions down to the ground with her bare hands. 

Anakin catches her brooding, and against all her protesting scoops her up and tosses her into the water, tumbling in right after her. When they finally come back onboard, she’s missing her bikini. (She never sees it again.)

Later that night, as Anakin trails butterfly kisses down her belly, muttering nonsense words of praise and adoration between every nip and suck, Padmé finds herself feeling so very grateful to this provincial little corner of her homeworld for being so good to the love of her life. For helping him heal. For washing the gray from his skin. Lifting the hunch in his shoulders. Spilling light back into his eyes. For slowly bringing him back to himself. For proving to Padmé without a shadow of a doubt that she made the right choice in taking Anakin away from the Jedi and bringing him here to their sanctuary.  

He’s home. He’s safe. He’s loved. With her, as he should have been all this time.  

--------------------------------------------------

Honestly, now that he’s finally free, Anakin can’t fathom why it took him so long to leave. Or rather; why it took Padmé getting fed up on his behalf and literally dragging him out of the Temple for him to realize that that is what he should have done years ago. Thrown up his hands and stormed out. Kriff the Council and their scorn and distrust, Obi-Wan and his endless criticism, and three years of endless, pointless war. 

Kriff it all. Let the transistors fall where they may.

He endured them for entirely too long. Let them push him around for entirely too long. Let them take away all of his things—his posters and his droids and Artoo—when he already had so little to call his own, when they’d already forced him to relinquish so much. Let them lock him up like a rabid dog. Let them pick apart his mind like he would with a busted engine, trying to discern if there were parts of it that could be salvaged, or if it would be better to just scrap the whole thing and move on. 

That’s all he ever was to them, wasn’t he? A piece of machinery. Another droid they could program and push around and possess. That’s all he’d ever been to anyone. Even…

No. Don’t think about that. Your mind always ends up going to the wrong place when you think too hard about that. 

But… 

Shut up…

But—

Shut up shutupshutupshutupshutup—

You don’t know for sure. You never actually did get the chance to confront him. 

Shut up. 

Obi-Wan took that from you. 

He was defending me. 

Really? When has he ever done that?

Shut up. 

He was your friend. He was always there for you. How do you know—

Shut up.

 —that he was really out to hurt you? Obi-Wan’s been wrong about things like this before. 

Things like what? Obi-Wan’s never wrong. Shut up.  

He never did like the Chancellor. Maybe…

Shut up. He was right. I was wrong. I’m always wrong. Wrong and cocky and stupid and—

(“That couldn’t be farther from the truth, Anakin! I never want to hear you say anything like that about yourself ever again. Am I understood?” “Yes, sir…Thank you.”) 

See? Why would a person who wanted to hurt you treat you with such kindness?

That’s a stupid thing to ask. 

But did anything he did ever hurt? They keep saying he hurt you, but did it, actually?

Shut up. I remember. I remember…

What do you remember?

Hands…and touching…and—

Hands and touching. People touch each other with their hands. That’s normal. You were right. You so stupid. Why do the people in your life even bother with a socially illiterate imbecile like you? How can Padmé and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka even stand—

Shut up! Just shut up! 

Anakin rolled roughly over onto his side and stuffed his face into his pillow. Hoping to quiet the annoying voice in his head telling him that maybe this was all terrible a mistake. That maybe everyone had been exaggerating. Maybe…

“Ani…” Padmé’s sleep-thick voice called out from behind him. “Are you alright?”

Kriff. She’s awake now. She’s not going to let this go now that he’s woken her.

“Fine,” he mumbled into the pillow. 

She pressed into his side, stroking cool fingertips down the nape of his neck. That wasn’t fair. That was the opposite of fair. She knows what that does to him. 

“Ani…” she said again. 

He buried his face farther into the pillow. If he looked at her he would have to tell her everything, and she would look at him with That look. The only expression on her face that he could honestly say he detested. The one that was pitying and saddened and outraged all at once. The expression she always wore when he said or did something that was normal for him, but not Normal. When he reminded her of where he’d come from. Where she’d met him. 

But she was awake now. She was going to have it out of him one way or another. Best to just rip it off. Like a bandage. 

“Padmé,” he said slowly. Taking his head from the pillow and turning on his side so that they were now face to face. “What…what Sidious did to me. I…I know it was wrong. But why was it? I mean I know why, but why, you know? Why is it such a big deal?”

Why does it hurt me so much, when it didn’t actually hurt? Is what he doesn’t say. But he thinks Padmé gets it. He hopes so because he knows the words won’t make any sense if said aloud the way they do in his head 

And sure enough, there it is. Her drooping eyes pop all the way open and she’s staring at him—at him, but not at him. Now seeing cruelty and hardship and oppression instead of her husband. And she is so very sad for him, he can feel it swelling around her in the Force. She is heartbroken and furious with people who are long buried in his past. Her lips twist into a scowl that then quickly morphs into an even sadder smile when she remembers that she was scowling at him. Her mouth opens. Then closes with a disquieted hum. She’s silent for a moment, then says.

“Ani, do you think it might be good for you to talk to someone…else about these thoughts? A professional, I mean. To help you sort through it all?”

And Anakin—

(“Anakin, listen. The Council has decided you are to spend some time with the Temple healers after…this whole business with Palpatine.” 

“For how long, Master?”

“Until they clear you for active duty, I suppose.” 

New clothes, dark and coarse. Too loose and too tight. Then later a new room, bare and cold and alone. 

“It’s just to help you clear your head, Anakin. This isn’t a punishment; I swear to you.”  

Cold and bored and alone in the dark. No Artoo. Nothing to tinker with. No visitors. No Obi-Wan or Padmé or Ahsoka. Where are they? Why don’t they come? Why did Obi-Wan have to take everything away and leave him like this? 

“This is for your own good, Skywalker.” 

“It’s only to help you, Anakin.” 

“We’re doing what we can to undo the damage Sidious did. But Skywalker’s not cooperating.”

“As usual.” 

“Perhaps a more aggressive approach is necessary.”  

It’s just to help. It’s just to help. It’s just to help you, Anakin. The more you work with them, the easier this will be.)

—Anakin thinks, Palpatine never hurt me, the Jedi did. Except he says it out loud, and Padmé looks absolutely crushed. Fuck, fuck, fuck what was he thinking saying that out loud?! 

Before she can say anything else, he whispers 

“This is where I belong, Padmé,” into her neck, as her arms wind around him and she clutches him in a quivering embrace. “I’m happy here, with you. Finally, after so long. I’m finally happy. It was just a thought. Please…” 

Don’t send me away to another dark room. Don’t let anyone lock me up again. Please. Please…please. 

Padmé doesn’t say anything more, just continues to hold him tight and stroke his hair. And Anakin tells himself that that’s the end of it. That he’s safe now, with the only person who’s ever cared about him. He has nothing to worry about with being stuffed away in isolation while someone new tries to “help” him. Padmé’s not going to do that. She loves him. She’s the only person who does. 

He repeats that to himself again and again as he drifts off to sleep in her arms. 

And that night, for the first time since this whole thing began, Anakin dreams. 

He opens his eyes to find himself walking through a familiar hallway. Aides and staffers bustle around him, casting furtive glances his way, but upon realizing who he is return to their work. Some nodding at him in polite greeting. 

Eventually, he comes to a familiar door, and passes through it without a moment’s hesitation.  

Palpatine looks up from whatever it is he was working on as soon as Anakin enters his office, an eager smile stretching across his face. 

“Anakin,” he says as he stands up from his desk to come over and greet him. “It is so good to see you again, my boy.” 

“You as well, Chancellor,” Anakin says, bowing his head respectfully. 

“Come, come, sit down,” Palpatine says excitedly. Looping his arm around Anakin’s and leading him over to one of the couches in the sitting area of his office. Gently guiding him into one, and sitting down next to him. 

“So…” he says, that eager smile on his face getting wider and wider. “What brings you by today, Anakin?”

Anakin faltered. 

“I… I, uh…”

What was wrong with him? Why had he shown up at the Senate building today? He couldn’t remember… 

“Did you have something to discuss with me, dear one?” Palpatine prodded. “Is everything alright between you and Obi-Wan? Do you have some concerns about the last mission you went on that you’d like to share with me?”

“I…” 

Did he have something to share with him? He did. Of course he did. There had to have been an important reason for coming here. He wasn’t so arrogant to think he could just show up at the Chancellor’s office for no reason at all. 

“You seem troubled, Anakin,” Palpatine said. Smile gone. Lips pulled down into a thin frown. “Are you certain nothing’s the matter? There’s nothing going on that I should know about?”

Anakin shook his head, trying to clear his mind. What was going on with him? He thought he had been bad off before, but this was on a whole new level. He was seriously losing it. 

“No. No, I…I just…” 

“Are you sure?” Palpatine said. Mouth twisting into another fond smile. He gave him a knowing look. “Trouble in paradise, perhaps, between you and Senator Amidala?”

Anakin’s head shot up. 

“H-how…How did you…?”

No one knew about him and Padmé. They’d been so very careful. How could this be?

“Are things a bit…awkward between the two of you right now? What with all of those awful things they’ve been saying about me in the HoloNet?” 

Anakin froze. The blood in his veins turned to hard, steely ice. He turned to look at the Chancellor. He stared back. An expectant gleam flashing in his gold-rimmed eyes. He smirked. Anakin’s gut rose up into his throat.  

“This isn’t a dream,” he whispered vacantly. The horrifying realization slowly creeping up on him. “This is really happening.”

Palpatine’s grin widened, and his cold, weathered hand came to rest against the back of Anakin’s neck, attempting to comfort him with gentle, placating strokes. Anakin stiffened. Palpatine’s touch stilled, and his fingers wrapped around the base of his neck. He felt a faint tingling sensation shoot down his spine, and slumped against the couch cushions. 

“What do you want?” he said in a strained voice. 

Palpatine chuckled fondly. “I think, Anakin, the question is, what do you want? We are in your head, after all.”

“You’re in my head,” Anakin said, his voice shaking with anger and barely suppressed fear. “You’re using some kind of Sith magic on me!” 

The Chancellor laughed again. This time with far less mirth. 

“Anakin, not even I am powerful enough to invade another being’s mind like this. Especially not now that my true identity has been revealed and the Jedi have pushed back my influence. Me being able to enter your mind means that you have to have given me permission, young one. You must have called me here for some reason. What could it be, I wonder.” 

Anakin took a minute to stew on that. What he was saying did make some sense…maybe. Obviously, he wasn’t well versed in what was and what wasn’t within the realm of a Sith’s capability. But with Sidious’ true identity revealed didn’t that mean that the shroud of the Dark Side that had been clouding the Force for so long was finally lifted? It had to, didn’t it? Obi-Wan and the Jedi have finally triumphed. They had to have. 

(Maybe he would know this for sure if someone had bothered to update him on what was going on during all that time he spent in isolation.) 

He turned back over to Palpatine and, with more bravery than he felt at the moment, stared his (former?) mentor straight in his eyes. 

“You’re a Sith Lord.” 

“Yes.” 

Anakin swallowed thickly, looking back down at his lap. 

He knew how he should be reacting to this. He should feel outraged. Violated. His entire being should be responding to the alarm bells sounding off all around him in the Force. He should be doing his damnedest to wake himself up. To fight back. To alert Obi-Wan and the Council that—even if Palpatine had been driven to whatever far corner of the galaxy he was contacting him from—he was still a powerful enough presence to manifest himself in another’s dreams. He should pull himself up, throw off Palpatine’s hand and get himself out of this “office” as fast as he can. 

And yet, Anakin finds himself planted right where he is. Paralyzed by the only thought currently running through his head. 

“All this time,” he choked. His heart hammering away furiously in his chest. “All this time. You’ve been using me. You never cared about m—“ 

“That’s not true, Anakin!” Palpatine cut him off, raising his voice ever so slightly in reprimand. Anakin flinched and ducked his head. Palpatine resumed his stroking. 

“If you believe nothing else,” he began softly. “Believe that all of our interactions over the years have been genuine on my part. You have always been very special to me, dear one.” 

Anakin shook his head, doing his best to shake off Palpatine’s hand. It tightened again, and another twinge shot through him. He relaxed. 

“You just wanted to use me,” he whispered. “This whole time, you were—“ 

“Trying to guide you,” Palpatine said forcefully. “That’s all, Anakin. Just trying to offer you the guidance and affection I knew you craved. You were so lonely during those first few years after you came to Coruscant. Don’t you remember?”

Anakin drew in a shaky breath. And without letting that one out, took another. Yes, he remembered. Of course he remembered those early years in his training. Before he learned that Obi-Wan’s aloofness was his own way of showing he ‘cared’. Before he had completely given up on making friends with the other padawans in his class. Before he had resigned himself to never earning the Council’s acceptance. He had been so utterly alone back then. And who had been there for him during all of that? 

He nodded. 

Then, remembering who—what—he was talking to, he shook his head again. 

“You were trying to turn me…” he whispered harshly. Furious that he needed to remind himself of this. “You wanted me to be your apprentice.” 

“I still do,” Palpatine said plainly. “Were you to wish it, were you to embrace my teachings, Anakin, you could be the most powerful Sith in millennia. I have foreseen it. I have always foreseen great things for you. In spite of your confounding insistence on wallowing in mediocrity.”  

“You’re everything I’ve spent my life fighting against,” Anakin gritted out between clenched teeth. “I will never join you.” 

“No, I suppose not now,” Palpatine sighed regretfully. “But nevertheless, Anakin. I still consider myself your friend. You called me to you for a reason. I’m here to help you. Whatever it is.” 

His hand drifted slowly down Anakin’s neck and spine in slow, soothing circles until it stopped at the small of his back. It reached around his waist, urging him closer to his side. 

Blood pounded in Anakin’s ears. The rhythm beating in time to the Force’s warning. Saliva, stale and sickly sweet pooled in the back of his throat. He swallowed and swallowed and swallowed until his mouth went dry. 

“You’re lying,” he said. “I wouldn’t have called you here. I don’t want to see you. Not after what you—not after…After—oh you know!”

Palpatine hooked a finger under his chin, tilting his head so that Anakin was now facing him directly. 

“No, I’m afraid I don’t, Anakin.” 

“What you did,” he fumbled. For some reason unable to even think the words, much less voice them aloud.  

“What did I do?” 

“You…” Anakin croaked over the lump in this throat. “…Hurt me.” 

“Did I?” Palpatine frowned in genuine confusion. “When?”  

Anakin breathed a long, ragged breath. When? When? 

Yes, when. When did it all start? He thought back through all the old memories that had been cropping up recently. After Obi-Wan had sat him down and explained to him that what had been happening during his and Palpatine’s meetings all these years had been wrong, he’d thought back over everything. Every touch. Every hug. Every pat on the head or the cheek or the back. Which one was the bad one? Which one had made him feel dirty? Used? Manipulated? He couldn’t tell now. Palpatine was looking down on him, expectant, and just a little bit hurt, and Anakin found that he honestly couldn’t say for himself when the Chancellor’s touches had begun to bother him. 

If they ever did. 

They did, didn’t they? 

Because what he was doing was wrong. 

Right?

“I-I’ve been…remembering things?” he said, closing his eyes and turning away from the Chancellor. 

“Really?” Palpatine said. Bringing his head back up with an insistent jerk. “Such as?”

Anakin shifted his eyes to the floor—tried to, but Palpatine’s glare was firmly holding him in place. He couldn’t bring himself to look away. 

“Things.” 

“Like?”

He shuddered. His whole body began to tremble, much to his embarrassment. Palpatine brought his hand from Anakin’s side, and cupped both of his cheeks in his own. They were cold and clammy against Anakin’s hot skin. He sank into them before he could stop himself. 

“It’s alright, Anakin,” Palpatine said. “I understand this is difficult for you. But you’ve always been able to talk to me, and I’ve always been able to set you right. Don’t shut me out now, when you’re clearly in so much turmoil.” 

“Y-you…touched me,” Anakin mumbled. His eyes stung and he shut them again. Willing the water building up beneath his lower lid to stay where it was. 

“Yes,” Palpatine said, running his thumbs along Anakin’s cheeks. “Just as I am now. Does this hurt you, Anakin? Do you want me to stop?”

Anakin thought about that. Did he? He should. He feels like if Obi-Wan or Padmé saw this happening they would tell him he should. But why? It wasn’t hurting him. It made him feel…the opposite…

“No,” he whispered, with a slow shake of his head. 

“Has anything I’ve done ever made you feel unsafe?”

Again, Anakin shook his head. “No.” 

“I see. Then, do you want to know what I think, Anakin?” Palpatine asked softly.

“Yes…”

“I think—and mind you this is just my own personal observation based on what I know of you and your Master. But I think the only reason you feel this way about our relationship now is because Obi-Wan and the Council told you you ought.” 

Anakin’s eyes snapped open. No…No! That wasn’t…right. Right? Right. Obi-Wan was his Master. His teacher. His friend. He was always right. He would never lead Anakin astray. Anakin opened his mouth, ready to jump to Obi-Wan’s defense. 

The Chancellor hushed him before he could even make a sound. 

“Just hear me out,” he implored. “I’m not saying they did this maliciously. Far from it. You’re Obi-Wan’s former padawan, Anakin. He would never do anything to deliberately cause you pain. But think about it, how often has he shown you any sort of physical affection over the years? How often are any of the Jedi ever affectionate with one another? Not very, am I right?”

“…yes,” Anakin said reluctantly. This was true. It was one of the biggest culture shocks of coming to the Temple. He had been so used to hugs and kisses before bed or before departing for the day’s work or just because. There had been none of that with Obi-Wan. Especially not in the beginning, when they were still so new to each other. It was one of the reasons why his meetings with Palpatine had meant so much to him…

“So perhaps, then,” Palpatine said quietly. “It’s all just a horrible misunderstanding on their part.” 

He dropped his hands from Anakin’s face, and reached into his lap to take his hand. Giving it a prompting squeeze. 

“You know that Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi just don’t understand things like this. They view any kind of affection as dangerous and corrupting. Of course they wouldn’t understand how we are when we’re together. They’ve never understood you and what you need.” 

He drew tiny circles over the back of Anakin’s hand. And a familiar coldness spread through Anakin’s gut.  

“They’ve never even tried,” he muttered angrily. 

“No,” Palpatine agreed. “But I have, Anakin.” 

Anakin nodded.

“You’ve always been there for me,” he whispered. Waves of shame and guilt coursing over him with each swirl of Palpatine’s thumb against his hand. He tried to look away, but Palpatine’s glare burned. His hand tightened. Anakin felt another spasm shoot through his bones. 

“I have,” Palpatine said quietly, his voice taking on a pained edge. “Which is why I can’t understand why you’d let them say all of those horrible things about me in the media, Anakin. Do you have any idea how devastating this has all been for me? How mortifying?”

Anakin’s throat hitched. His cheeks burned.  

“I-I’m sorry, Chancellor,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry I let this happen to you. Everything just went so fast after Obi-Wan and I switched back. He came to get me and brought me before the healers, and I—“ 

“Shhh,” Palpatine hushed him with a finger to his lips. “That’s enough, dear one. Of course I don’t blame you for all of it. This isn’t completely your fault. I know how the Jedi can be with you. I bet they didn’t wait a single second to hear your side of the story, did they?” 

Anakin shook his head mutinously. “They locked me up,” he said. “For weeks.” 

“Surely Obi-Wan couldn’t have agreed to that.”

“He did!” Anakin said, voice rising as familiar pangs of betrayal hit him as he recalled being packed off into that room to ‘heal.’ “He said it was for my own good.” 

Palpatine tutted disdainfully, as he continued to stroke Anakin’s hand. “There’s more, isn’t there? I can see it in your eyes, Anakin. There’s more you want to tell me.”

Anakin hesitated. He knows he shouldn’t. Again, he remembers what he’s talking to. And he knows, alright? He knows how dangerous it is to put his trust in a Sith Lord. Knows what fate awaits him should he let himself sink too deep. But this isn’t just a Sith Lord. This was Palpatine. His friend. His confidant. He could tell him anything. Had always been able to share anything and everything with him. And he had forgotten over these past few weeks how much he missed the Chancellor’s open ear and paternal wisdom. Forgotten how good it felt to come to him and just get it all out, without fear of judgment or reproach. 

“They took away all my droid parts. And Artoo, too. And they locked me up like a prisoner. No one ever came to see me, to update me on what was going on or to tell me when it would all be over. Not even Obi-Wan. They even tried to keep Padmé away!” 

Palpatine mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, ‘those fools. Those insipid, unbelievable fools.’ Then let go of Anakin’s hand to spread out his arms welcomingly. 

“Tell me all about it, Anakin,” he says, pleadingly. “I can see there’s still so much you need to get off your chest. I know they’ve made you doubt me. I know they’ve tried to turn you against me. But you know who I am. And you know that your thoughts and worries are always safe with me. Let them go, my boy. It’s alright. It’s all going to be alright now.” 

Anakin looks at this man, his mentor, whom he has known and trusted and confided in for more than half his life. And now knowing who he is and what he has always wanted from him, tries to find some hint of malice. Some trace of deceit or cunning. Any small seed of treachery. 

He finds nothing. Except Palpatine. His friend who has always wanted nothing more than to guide him, to give him the esteem and the security he has never gotten from the Jedi. 

If Palpatine has always been the one to make him feel accepted and cared for, when he was supposedly evil, and the the Jedi have always made him feel alone and unwanted, when they were on the side of good, then…

No, he can’t think like that. He can’t allow himself to…

But still…

Was it so bad? Was it really all that bad? 

Palpatine, seeing the reluctance and yearning warring in Anakin’s eyes, spreads his arms wider, reaching for him ever so slightly. That same old welcoming smile spread across his face. 

“Come to me, dear one,” he croons. 

Anakin goes. 

Well 

After ignoring the outside world for a solid week, it was high time Padmé got back down to business. There are messages she needs to return. Meetings to reschedule. Bills to review. And new speeches to write, as she has yet to personally address the news of her relationship since its reveal.

She had made sure to have her publicist leak the story of her and Anakin’s secret marriage to the press the night they left Coruscant, in order to beat the Jedi to the punch. And upon checking the Holonet the next day she had been pleased to find public’s reaction was even better than she’d anticipated. 

By the time she and Anakin had reached the Lake Country, every tabloid, gossip rag, and talk show in the Republic was abuzz with talk of the forbidden love affair between The Hero With No Fear and the beloved Queen turned Senator of Naboo. As Padmé hoped would happen, the general public was so enamored with the melodrama of her and Anakin’s torrid romance, the scandal of a Jedi being romantically involved with a senator was less than an afterthought to them. Neither had anyone made the connection between Anakin and “Minor A,” the Chancellor’s unnamed victim in the Senate Sexual Abuse Scandal. 

But there were still people she had to answer to. 

The Queen and her advisors had not been pleased at the news of one of Naboo’s most respected politicians engaging in such unseemly behavior. But given Padmé’s previously spotless record, and that her approval ratings were higher than they’d ever been, what with the public’s obsession with her relationship, she’d been allowed to keep her seat in the senate. Though she knew that she would have to work hard going forward to regain the monarchy’s full confidence.   

And then there was her family.

Sola and their mother, especially, were understandably incensed that it had taken three years for them to learn of Padmé’s marriage, even more so that they had had to find out through the HoloNet instead of from her directly. Her father, for his part, hadn’t said a word while his wife and daughter ranted for a full forty-five minutes. But the look of abject heartache on his face hurt Padmé more than her mother and sister’s tearful raging. 

She’d borne all of their resentment meekly and penitently. Knowing that there was nothing she could say in her defense. She has been selfish all these years, keeping Anakin a secret from them for her own convenience, and she wasn’t going to disrespect her family more than she already had by trying to reconcile her selfishness to their betrayed faces. 

But when they demanded that she bring Anakin home to them, and introduce him as Anakin her husband, not Anakin her bodyguard, Padmé had refused point blank. And no amount of cajoling or pleading or guilt-tripping on any of their parts could make her change her mind. 

When asked, bitingly, why she would deny them this one small request, after putting them through so much, Padmé had cringed, reigned in the tears and exasperation threatening to spill out of her, and told them that she and Anakin were keeping a low profile for right now so as to avoid the paparazzi, until they were ready to give interviews. 

Lie. 

Like the general public, Padmé’s family doesn’t know the real reason behind Anakin’s resignation from the Order, and she intends to keep it that way. It’s his secret to reveal. But if they don’t know, she can’t tell them about how moody and skittish he’s been lately. About how he stares off into space for hours on end. About how his seizures have started becoming more frequent. About how at night he wakes them both, shaking and screaming from night terrors, with no memory of what they’d been about once she gets him calmed down again. 

About how he was backsliding, in spite of all the progress he’d made during their first week here. And that he wouldn’t talk to her about any of what was going on in his head so that she could help. 

Padmé knows there’s no way she can reintroduce him to her parents while he’s like this. She—

“Miss Padmé,” C3P0 called, interrupting her thoughts as he came into the study. “Miss Padmé, I’m so sorry to interrupt your work, but I’ve made lunch. Shall I fetch Master Ani?”

“No, that’s alright Threepio,” she smiled at the droid. “Thank you, but I’ll go get him myself. We’ll be down in a minute.” 

“Yes, of course, Miss,” chimes Threepio, and with a slight bow, heads back to the kitchen. Padmé follows him through the door. 

She hasn’t checked on Anakin all morning, but finds him in the first place she looks, their bedroom. 

Surrounded by… sheets of flimsi?

They’re scattered all over the floor; from the foot of the bed to the dresser, from the doorway of the ‘fresher heading out the opposite way to the entrance to the balcony, from the closet coming up to the hallway. Many of the pages were blank, save for a few illegible scribbles. More were filled with strange drawings of irregular shapes with words and equations written next to them. There were run down pencils abandoned all over the floor, and erasers chased down to ragged nubs. In the middle of this mess sat Anakin. One page held in his hand. His head lolled forward, his chin was touching his sternum. A low murmuring whine squeaking out from between pursed lips. 

Artoo was at his side, dutifully monitoring his vitals. He beeped in greeting as Padmé came further into the room. 

“How long has he been like this,” she asked him. 

Three minutes, seventeen seconds he told her. 

Longer than normal. Padmé bit her lip and went into the ‘fresher to wet a washcloth under some the cold tap, then came back out to sit on Anakin’s other side, and began dabbing at his forehead with the cloth, as she and Artoo waited for him to regain full consciousness. 

It’s another five long seconds before he comes back to them, collapsing into Padmé’s arms with a loud groan. 

“You’re alright, Ani,” she soothed. Shifting him so that his head was pillowed in her lap, and laying the cloth across his forehead. 

“P’dmé,” he mumbled groggily. “’rtoo?” 

Artoo beeped in affirmation. 

“We’re right here,” Padmé assured him. Bringing his hand up to press a kiss to his knuckles. “We’re right here.” 

The three of them sit in silence for a long moment. Before Padmé remembers all of the flimsi laying around them. 

“Ani what is all this,” she asked him, taking the page he was holding from his hand to get a better look at it. 

Her jaw practically unhinges once her eyes register what she’s actually looking at. 

“I was…bored,” Anakin said weakly.  

And Padmé, she just has to laugh, because Mother of Mothers is he really going to write it off as just that? 

“Ani—this…this is…” 

A blueprint. A full-scale, impeccably detailed blueprint for what appears to be an original concept design for a starfighter. He did this. In the span of one morning. Because he was bored?

“Ani this is incredible,” Padmé breathes once she finds her voice again. “You just did this on the spot?”

“It took me a few times to get it right,” he shrugged. Weakly gesturing at all the flimsi around them. “I wanted to build something, but I don’t have my tools anymore.”

Her heart hurts for him. Faintly, because she’s still so caught up in her amazement.

“So you designed a starfighter.”

“Yeah…” 

So nonchalant. Like this was normal. A thing everyone just up and did whenever they got sick of returning messages and filling out paperwork. 

“Ani this looks—please, don’t take this badly—but this looks like it could actually fly.” 

“In theory,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure if my math is right, but it’s based off of the Actis-class. With a few tweaks.” 

He brought up a finger to point at the different areas on the ship’s model. 

“I added room for a built-in hyperdrive, and stronger laser cannons,” he explained. “Thicker wings to accommodate a full sized astromech. And better shielding.”

Padmé is right back to being rendered speechless. There’s so much she wants to say to this. She wants to tell him to sell his design to Kuat Systems Engineering. Then she thinks that he should keep it to himself and start his own ship-designing firm. She wants to tell him to enroll in university and pursue a business degree so that he can start his own ship-designing firm. Then she remembers that he has had far less and far different formal schooling than most university students, and wonders if that might be a setback. Mostly she just wants to kiss him all over, and tell him how amazingly talented he is and how proud she is to be married to someone so gifted. 

But first, she smirks and says

“Is this what you’ll do from now on? Spend your days drawing starships?”

He frowned. Clearly not getting that she wasn’t putting his work down, but asking a semi-serious question. She does quick damage control before things get out of hand. 

“You could, you know,” she said lightly. “You could take some classes, hone your skills a little more. Submit your sketches to a firm, and maybe they’d hire you on to oversee the projects.” 

Anakin pulled himself up from her lap, and spun around to face her. 

“Do you really think that could happen,” he asked. His jaw clenched doubtfully, but his eyes shining and hopeful. “I mean do you really think that I could really…do that…ever?”

Padmé smiled, pulling him down in for a kiss. 

“You’re free, Ani,” she promises against his lips. “You can do anything you like.” 

Anakin pulls away suddenly. His face a puzzle of wonderment, as though he’s watching an entire galaxy form right before his eyes. It takes Padmé a second to get it. But when she does she finds herself looking not at a galaxy, but a road. 

Winding and expansive, full of forks and curves and hills and pitfalls, making up endless paths and possibilities. All of which were, until very recently, cruelly held out of Anakin’s reach. But no more. For the first time in his life, Anakin has no master prodding him along, demanding that he follow whatever path they set out for him. Those chains called Destiny and Prophecy that for so long have shackled him to them have all been cut loose. At last, Anakin is free to go his own way. 

Having finally gained some perspective, Padmé realizes suddenly that she’s been indefensibly remiss in not doing more to help him explore the many options now available to him. 

She resolves to remedy that, immediately. 

  This is an old game from a very ancient and long-dead world. It’s boring, and Anakin’s terrible at it. And yet still, every once and a while, Palpatine will insist they play a round or two. 

I so seldom have any company to play with, Anakin, he would say. I know this isn’t a game you enjoy, but please, indulge an old man, won’t you?

And Anakin will roll his eyes and groan good-naturedly as Palpatine pulls out the faded black and white checkered board, lines up all the strange looking pieces, and makes the first move. 

It didn’t seem fair, though, that if they were in his head, and he was the one calling Palpatine here, that he should still have to endure this. Couldn’t they do this in a workshop? He chuckled inwardly at the thought of the Chancellor with his sleeves rolled up, fiddling around with nails and bolts. 

“Something funny, Anakin,” Palpatine mumbled absently, not looking up from the board. 

“No, nothing,” Anakin lied. “I was just thinking.” 

“About…?”

“Nothing.” 

Palpatine sighed, in that disappointed way that he knows Anakin hates, and looks up from the board. 

“Anakin,” he scolded. Crossing his arms and raising a chiding brow. “Remember what we talked about.” 

Anakin flinched, and folded under the weight of the Chancellor’s heavy glare. 

“I did a sketch of a starfighter the other day,” he said quietly. “Padmé really liked it. She thinks I should go to school to become an engineer.” 

“Really,” Palpatine said. For once sounding genuinely surprised. He leaned back in his seat. “And what do you think about that?”

Anakin shrugged. “I think it could be fun, I guess. It’s certainly never anything I considered before.” 

Palpatine “hmmed” thoughtfully, turning his attention back to the board. 

“What?” Anakin said. Suddenly feeling very anxious. 

“Nothing,” said Palpatine. “Just considering my next move.” 

He moved one of the little pieces that looked like a tower one space to the left. Then looked back up at Anakin.  

“Forgive me for speaking candidly, Anakin,” he said. “But I can’t imagine you’ve ever given much thought to a future outside of the Order.”

Anakin dipped his head, staring fixedly at the board. “Not really…” 

All those years ago, when Master Qui-Gon came to Tatooine, the choice he had presented Anakin with were either become a Jedi, or stay a slave forever. Obviously, he’d chosen the former. But that had been it, as far as career exploration was concerned. From the day he became Obi-Wan’s padawan, he’d devoted himself entirely to being the best Jedi he could possibly be. And while yes, at times he’d considered leaving the Order—especially after his marriage to Padmé, his fantasy of chucking his lightsaber at Master Yoda’s head and storming out had always stopped there. It’s probably why he didn’t have the strength to leave on his own after the scandal had broken. No matter how chafed he felt by the Order, realistically, Anakin could never envision himself doing anything else. 

Only now that he’s actually done the impossible and left the Jedi, was he starting to see that maybe there were other things out there for him. 

The Chancellor tutted softly, and then stood and came over to Anakin’s side of the table, sitting down beside him. 

“Well at your age there’s certainly nothing wrong with considering a change in career path,” he said judiciously. “Even one as drastic as this.” 

Anakin nodded. 

“Of course,” he went on. “You’ll want to keep in mind that the world of academics is an entirely different setting than what you’re accustomed to. Not to impugn your intelligence, dear boy, but let us be frank, your formal education was uneven at best. The students at the schools Padmé no doubt has in mind for you have spent their entire academic careers being educated at the galaxy’s most elite institutions. And you, well…” 

“Haven’t,” Anakin said bluntly. Remembering the trouble he used to have keeping up in lessons at the Temple. The instructors had put him in remedial classes when he first arrived because of how far behind he was. In the beginning, he did try his best to catch up to his peers, but it didn’t help that he was always being taken out of classes to go on missions with Obi-Wan. Although the workload did eventually get easier for him, by that point he had already given up on catching up with the more advanced students in his class. It had become enough for him to just get by. He’d learned to read and write and do advanced arithmetic, which was much farther than his mother or any of his friends back home had ever gotten. Farther than he ever thought he would get. For him, that was something to be proud of. And besides, even as a padawan he was a better pilot than most knights, and he could build and fix just about anything. Who cared if his marks were just average when everything that actually mattered came naturally to him?

But he isn’t a Jedi anymore. He has to find a job in the outside world now. What if whatever meager amount of knowledge his instructors had been able to beat into his belligerent adolescent brain wasn’t enough? His place had never been in the classroom, true. But he’d have to be trained in something if he wanted to build a life for himself outside of the Temple, right? 

“Maybe I could, I don’t know…” 

“A career in engineering requires years of intensive study. Not to mention, a strong background in mathematics and the sciences, which I’m sorry, Anakin, but that you just don’t have. You’ve never exactly been the studious type.” 

Anakin nodded, eyes downcast. The Chancellor was right. Raw talent aside, he couldn’t just jump right into a fancy university program and expect to be able to hold his own against the galaxy’s best and brightest when he’d been an average student at best. He needed to think of something realistic, not let himself get carried away by idiotic fantasies. 

“It was just an idea, anyway,” he mumbled. 

Palpatine laid a hand on his thigh, and squeezed it reassuringly. 

“I don’t mean to discourage your desire to explore new paths, dear one,” he said softly. “I know you need to search for something more, now that you’ve left the Order.” 

“I just…,” Anakin whispered. “There’s so many different things I can do now that I’m not a Jedi anymore. Things I never even considered doing.”

“You’re worried about not taking all your options into account.” 

“Yeah…” 

“Well,” Palpatine said, patting the inside of Anakin’s thigh. “Let’s do this then. Let’s say you have the power to do anything you wanted to do, right now. No certifications or justifications required. What would it be?”

Anakin thought about it for a moment. 

“Explore every planet in the galaxy.” 

He looked at Palpatine to gauge his reaction. If he didn’t know any better, he would almost say the Chancellor looked put out by his answer. 

“And that’s it?” he said, his lip curling ever so slightly. 

“What do you mean,” Anakin said hotly. A tiny spasm shot through his leg. He softened his tone. “It’s a stupid idea, isn’t it?”

“If I’m being honest, Anakin,” the Chancellor answered. “Yes, I am a little disappointed. I would have thought you’d have a nobler answer for me.” 

“Nobler?”

“You’ve always been so mission-driven, Anakin,” Palpatine said. Stroking the inside of his thigh. “It’s one of the things I admire most about you. You have this…innate drive to improve the world around you. To make things right.” 

“Fix things,” Anakin said to himself. 

“Exactly,” said Palpatine. “Going on a tour of the entire galaxy sounds wonderful. Enviable, even, for those of us banished to hiding out on one planet in the far corners of the galaxy. But—forgive me if this sounds harsh, dear boy—but it would also be a very big waste, in my opinion.” 

“A waste?” 

Palpatine smiled, wide and prideful. “You have so much talent, Anakin. So much power inside you. You could do so much good with it. Especially now that you’re not bound by the Jedi and their dogma.” 

Anakin’s eyes narrowed. “Good like what?”

Palpatine wrapped his arm around Anakin’s shoulders, pulling him closer. He resisted at first, not liking where the Chancellor was going with his suggestion. But a faint pressure in his shoulder blades relaxed him and he went without further protest.

“Anakin,” Palpatine said gently. “What has been your dream, ever since you were a small child?”

He didn’t even have to think. “Freeing all the slaves.” 

Palpatine gave him a pointed look. “So…?” 

Anakin looked away. Ashamed at having forgotten the promise he made to himself and his mother all those years ago for even one moment. Palpatine pulled his head back up so that they were now face to face. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten where you came from.” 

“Never!” Anakin said fervently. “It’s just…a lot more complicated than I thought it was when I was a child.” 

“How so?”

“There’s just so much politics involved. The places with the highest concentration of slavery are all outside of the Republic’s jurisdiction. There’s nothing anyone can do.” 

“But do you think they would if they could?” Palpatine argued. “When have the Jedi ever shown you that they cared about ending slavery?”

“They care,” Anakin said. Not completely understanding why he was defending the Jedi, when he has thought this for years. “They just… “ 

“Won’t do anything about it,” Palpatine finished for him. “Innocent people being tortured and exploited doesn’t threaten the status quo. So it’s not a pressing concern for anyone in power.”

 “You’re a Sith Lord,” Anakin said. Not sure if he was calling Palpatine out for his hypocrisy, or reminding yet again himself of this fact, as the Chancellor’s reasoning was sounding more and more rational.   

“And that means I can’t believe in justice?”

Anakin scowled. “This Sith manipulate the will of the Force to execute their own agendas. They use their power for their own selfish reasons. They act only out of self-interest.” 

“And the Jedi don’t?” Palpatine said rhetorically. “Which is more self-serving, cloistering oneself in a ziggurat to meditate and pontificate about the evils of emotion and attachment, or actually using the powers you’ve been gifted with to institute real change in the lives of those who need it most.” 

“The Jedi do help people.” 

“Is that why you were born into bondage, then? Is that why they never allowed you to free your mother? Is that why they only intervened in Zygerria once the war broke out and the slavers became enemies of the Republic?” 

Anakin can feel a familiar, aching rage writhing inside his stomach. He has thought all of these things before, many, many times throughout the years. The Jedi warned of the suffering caused by fear and anger and attachment. But what of the indignity of being stripped naked and muzzled for a slave auction? Of having your rations cut because your Master blamed you for their business losing profit that month. Of having no water to wash with because there was currently a shortage and it was too expensive to waste on slaves. What of that kind of suffering? How could that just be meditated away? And how could a body of powerful beings touting themselves as guardians of harmony and light turn a blind eye to it? Claiming the abuse and exploitation of innocents to be out of their hands, but then having no problem with diving into a war driven by politics and corruption? 

“It’s complicated.” 

“It always is with hypocrites,” Palpatine mused. “But think about how easy it would be to un-complicate it, Anakin. Slavers and pirates and smugglers care nothing at all for politics or rule of law. They respond only to power, to brute strength. And you have that in spades, my boy. Think about how easy it would be for you to use your natural talents to deliver justice unto those who need it most, the way the Jedi never have. After all, you’re born of the Force itself. Who could have a better sense of how its will should be exercised than you?” 

It has always made Anakin burn with satisfaction whenever the Chancellor spoke like this. It still does. In spite of the Force burning back, just as fiercely. It’s warning bright and clear. 

(Remember who he is. Remember who he is. Remember who you are)

“It’s not the way of the Jedi.” 

“But you’re no Jedi. Not anymore.” 

Anakin’s gut twisted. (Remember. Remember. Remember.) He did remember. He remembered being shut down and shut out whenever he tried to bring up his past. He remembered how good it felt to have just one person listen to him. How good it felt to have the most important man in the galaxy be that person.

The Chancellor’s words sweep their way into him, settling inside his heart and igniting a fire over years of stored up kindling. 

The frustration he felt at being seen as irrational and immature for wanting to free his mother. His despair and guilt at how he’d left her to rot in that hellhole. The resentment he carried with him like an extra limb for every single Jedi who had ever made him feel foolish for being unable to leave his pain in a vacuum. 

Hatred. Pure and nurturing and vindicating raged like wildfire within him. His entire being sang with it. If only for a moment, before it was tempered by the Force’s warning. 

(Remember) 

Yes, this was a Sith speaking these thoughts into his ear. He couldn’t forget that. But even so, they weren’t lies or half-truths. They were his own words, being repeated back to him by the only real friend he’d had for so many years. 

(Remember, remember…) 

Making Anakin sick with confliction. 

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he muttered. “Can we go back to the game?”

“Of course, dear one,” Palpatine smiled. And with a final pat on the leg, stood and went to sit back over on his side of the board, and waited for Anakin to make his move. 

Padmé, in a not-at-all subtle ploy to get him out of the house, had insisted they have a picnic lunch down by the lakefront today. Truthfully, Anakin hadn’t been in the mood to do anything but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. But that’s all he’s done for the past three days, and he can tell Padmé is getting frustrated with him. 

Force, he is frustrated with him. 

Here he is, in the most beautiful place in all the galaxy, with his favorite person in all the galaxy, and all he can do as of late is mope. It’s disgusting. Anakin is disgusted with himself. He wants so badly to stop. To go back to being as happy as he’d been when they’d first arrived on Naboo. But he can’t. And he doesn’t know why. 

He wishes there was a way to just wrangle it all back in. Everything that’s come out since Obi-Wan told the Council all that stuff about him and Palpatine. He wants to put it all back the way it was. He wants the Chancellor back in power. He wants the Holonews to stop spreading the lies put forth by the Council. And he wants them to stop obsessing over his and Padmé’s marriage, as if they weren’t real people behind all of the holos and romance and gossip. He wants it all gone. 

But most of all, he wants to stop the visions. Or flashbacks. Or memories. Whatever you want to call them. They’re annoying. And they’re wrong. Or, well…maybe the way he’s remembering them is wrong. Skewed. Because of the Council and the Healers and what they made him think about the time he and Palpatine spent together. It’s wrong. And it’s dirty. He’s been set straight. Nothing happened back then. Nothing. So Anakin shouldn’t be remembering his friend this way. It’s shameful. And he wishes he knew how to make himself stop. He wishes he knew how to make everything stop.  

Palpatine would know. He always knows what Anakin needs. But he hasn’t come to see him in several days, which has Anakin feeling worried, and a little abandoned. Though their last conversation ended on a bit of an awkward note, overall it has been so good having his mentor back. No one’s ever been able to get him the way the Chancellor always has—except Mom. But she’s gone. Like Palpatine was almost gone, thanks to the Jedi. It seemed to be a common theme with the Order, taking away the people who cared for him the most so that they can control him. 

He hates them. Force, does Anakin hate them for doing this to him. 

“Hey,” Padmé says, reaching up from her position in his lap to stroke the side of his face. “What’s that look for?”

She wouldn’t believe that it was nothing. But he can’t tell her the truth. She wouldn’t understand.  

“Can I tell you something?” he asked tentatively. 

“You can tell me anything,” she said, sitting up to give him her full attention. “Always.” 

“I…” he shifted, looking down at the ground and nervously plucking up blades of grass. This wasn’t really something he wanted to bring up, either. But it would go over better than the other thing. “I don’t want to be an engineer.” 

Padmé cocked her head to the side, looking puzzled for a moment. And then started to laugh. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…you looked so guilty when you said that. I was gearing myself up for something awful.”  

He grimaced, pulling chunks of grass up by the handful. “But you had so many plans in mind after I drew that sketch and I didn’t want—“ 

“Ani,” she says firmly, grabbing his wrist to catch his attention. “It was just a random thought I had. A suggestion. I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do. I can’t do that. That’s the beauty of freedom, love. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what you want out of life.” 

Anakin nodded, a small smile returning to his face for the first time in days. 

“I know what I want to do,” he said, emboldened. “I want to free all the slaves.” 

She blinked. Her brow furrowed. Why did she look so bothered by that?

“All of them? Everywhere?”

“Yeah,” he bristled. “Why do you make that sound impossible?”

“It’s not impossible,” she said carefully. “Just…it’s a tall order, is all. The places with the highest concentration of slavery are—“ 

“Outside of the Republic’s jurisdiction, I know. That just makes it easier then, if there’s no law and order in place there to begin with.” 

“But there is law and order there, Ani,” Padmé argued. “It’s just a different kind than what we have in the Republic.” 

“An immoral kind.” 

“True,” she said evenly. “But one we need to respect and abide by regardless.” 

“Why,” Anakin growled. “Why do we need to respect laws that allow people to be oppressed? Why do we need to respect laws that make sentient beings the property of others? How is that fair? How is that just?”

“It’s not,” Padmé said. “But we can’t breach the sovereignty of the Outer Rim planets, Ani. Not if we want them to one day join the Republic willingly. I know you want to see change happen. I want it to. But change is a process. It happens gradually. I know you don’t like it. I don’t either. Not one bit. But the situation is complicated.” 

“It always is for hypocrites,” Anakin grumbled, turning back to the grass. 

Padmé caught his wrist again. Her eyes narrowed. 

“Are you calling me a hypocrite?” she said lowly. 

Anakin wanted to slap himself. How could he say something like that? Of course not! Of course he didn’t—

“No, no! I didn’t mean—what I was trying to say is—it’s just—the Senate. The Senate is full of hypocrites.” 

“I’m a senator. Bail and Mon are senators.” 

“No, I know that. I just mean—as a whole,” he fumbled. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy. Like, we can start a war to bring planets who don’t want to be in the Republic back in, but we can’t make outside planets stop having slavery?”

“I understand your frustration, Ani—“ 

“How could you possibly understand?!” he roared. Furious, all of a sudden. With her, for not seeing it his way. With himself for making her flinch and draw away from him. “You have no idea—” 

“You’re right,” Padmé loudly cut him off. “I don’t share your experiences. I can’t understand it the way you do. But I want slavery eradicated too. So do a lot of my colleagues. But we’re politicians, Ani. Not magicians. We can’t make change happen overnight.” 

“You should, though,” he seethed. “You should have the power to make change happen overnight.”   

Padmé glared at him, snuffing out the fires of his rage with the ice in her eyes. Anakin winced, knowing how much it upset her when he talked like this. But this was how he felt. She said he could tell her anything. He was just being honest…

He should apologize. She’s hurting. He can feel it seeping out of her like puss from a wound. She’s angry and hurting because of him. He hurt her. She was just trying to do something nice for him, trying to cheer him up and pull him out of the funk he’s been in, and he’s paid her back by insulting her, her friends, and her life’s work all in one go. He needs to apologize. He needs to take it all back. But he can’t. She’ll know he doesn’t really mean it. That if he had the power he would run his lightsaber through each and every slaver in the galaxy. Right now. She’ll know that that is the real truth. She is better acquainted with that part of him than anyone else. But it’s a larger part of him than even she knows, and he spends a lot of energy hiding it from her. Except sometimes it breaks free and comes bursting out of him. And then this happens. And he doesn’t know what to do.  

Cursing his big mouth and stupid temper, Anakin reached into the picnic basket and grabbed a pastry. Popped it into his mouth and—

(“Have you ever had a muja-fruit pastry, Anakin?”

“No, Chancellor.” 

“Ah, well I have a few extra left over from a luncheon with some delegates from Ganthel. Would you care to try some?”

“Well, I guess. If it’s alright, with you, sir.” 

“By all means, dear boy. I insist.” 

The Chancellor beckoned him over to his side of his desk, and pulled out a white box from one of the drawers. He set it on the desktop, and then to Anakin’s surprise, lifted him into his lap to give him better access. 

“Go on,” he said, gesturing to the box. Anakin opened it, picked out the smallest piece he saw, and began to nibble at it. Hoping to make the treat last. 

“You seem troubled, my boy,” the Chancellor said thoughtfully. “May I ask what’s the matter?”

He placed an encouraging hand on the small of Anakin’s back and began rubbing small circles, just like Momma used to. Gods, he missed her.  

“Master Obi-Wan hates me,” he murmured. 

“Whatever would make you think that?”

Anakin flinched. He shouldn’t be talking about Master Obi-Wan like this. It was disrespectful. Not to mention ungrateful. The Council hadn’t even wanted to let him be a Jedi, but Master Obi-Wan had stuck up for him. So what if he was mean sometimes. He was just trying to make Anakin better, right?

“He’s always fussing at me, ‘cause I’m always messing up. Everything I do is wrong.” 

“I’m sure that’s not true.” 

“It is, though!” Anakin cried. “I’m lousy at meditation. I’m still having trouble reading big words. I can’t remember all my katas. And I’m trying so hard, but I can’t stop thinking about my mother!” 

He sighed. 

“I’m never gonna be a good Jedi.” 

“I see,” Palpatine said sympathetically. “Do you want to know what I think, Anakin?” 

“Yes, Chancellor.” 

“I think Obi-Wan’s just a little bit intimidated by you.”

“Intimidated, sir?”

“Anakin, if the late Master Qui-Gon’s suppositions were true, you are the Jedi’s Chosen One. Training you is a great honor, but it is also a huge responsibility. Obi-Wan is a newly-minted knight. If I had to guess, I’d say he is under an enormous amount of pressure to be a Master worthy of you.” 

“Worthy?” Anakin repeated disbelievingly. Unconsciously squeezing the pastry in his hand and “Oh no!” 

Purple splotches ran all the way down his tunic and onto his pants. Oh no. Oh no Oh no. Master Obi-Wan was always scolding him for being dirty and unkempt. He was going to be so mad if Anakin came back to the Temple looking like this! Oh no! 

“Don’t worry, Anakin,” the Chancellor soothed. “I can have my dry cleaning droid take care of that for you. Here, let me…” 

He tugged on the hem of Anakin’s tunic, pulling it up over his head. Then reached for Anakin’s leggings, removing those as well. Anakin wasn’t sure about this. The Chancellor shouldn’t have to go through so much trouble just because he’s a messy eater. But he knew better than to refuse when someone important tries to do you a favor. 

A droid came by and collected the soiled clothes from them. Anakin shivered. Freezing now, without his clothes on. The Chancellor tightened his hold around him. 

“Would you like another pastry, Anakin? Go on, have one. I insist.” 

Not wanting to be rude, Anakin took another small one from the box. 

“Now, as I was saying…” 

But Anakin wasn’t listening anymore, because the Chancellor’s hands were now moving all over him as he continued to speak. Down his back and along his arms and legs. Pulling him closer. Closer. Closer. All the while Anakin remained completely still, his Momma’s words coming back to him (“It’s just a body, Ani. Let them do what they will. It’ll be over quickly if you don’t fight.”). Right. It’s just a body. It’s just a body. It’s just a body. Just lie there and be good for them, Ani and I’ll give you and your mother double rations for the week. 

Anakin’s not surprised that this is what the Chancellor wanted from him after all. And to be honest he doesn’t really mind. The Chancellor is the only person who’s been nice to him since he’s come to Coruscant. Anakin doesn’t see a problem with giving him something in return. 

But then things start to get fuzzy. Like an incoming transmission from an old, outdated comlink. The picture grainy and the sound choppy. He can still hear the Chancellor’s voice coming in and out in spurts, talking about the Jedi, and occasionally offering Anakin more food. And he can still make out the office around him through his blurred vision. The Chancellor is still…doing that. And it hurts. But distantly. Like when his leg falls asleep and he gets that prickling feeling, but throughout his whole body. And his head. His head is the worst. It’s so heavy he can’t hold it up. But light at the same time. As if he wasn’t even in there anymore. As though he, Anakin were being pulled out of his own mind and replaced with static…  

…

…

…

What?

He’s sitting upright on the Chancellor’s lap, fully clothed and alert and a little bit dazed. 

The chromo on the wall shows that an hour has passed since he’d arrived. Wow. The time sure has gone by fast. Anakin can’t even remember what they’d been talking about. He’d been telling him about his troubles with Master Obi-Wan and then…nothing. Could he have dozed off while the Chancellor was talking. How rude! He hopes the Chancellor at least didn’t notice… 

The Chancellor has stopped talking now, and the box of muja-fruit pastries in front of him was now empty. Had he eaten them all by himself?

(“Have another Anakin. Go on. Keep eating… Have another… Have another”)

He must have. The Chancellor’s hands were clean, and his were sticky with purple filling. 

“Anakin, I’m afraid I have another meeting coming up in a few minutes that I must prepare for. I’m going to have to ask you to—“ 

“That’s alright, Chancellor,” Anakin said quickly. Embarrassed at having overstayed his welcome. “I get it! I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time.” 

“Not at all, dear one,” said Palpatine, patting him on the shoulder. Anakin flinched involuntarily at the touch. He hopes the Chancellor didn’t catch it. “We really must do this again soon. I do so enjoy our visits.” 

“Me as well, sir,” Anakin said earnestly. 

He hopped off the Chancellor’s lap, and stumbled a bit, before regaining his footing. Noticing for the first time how sore his legs were. Why did it hurt to stand on them? He took another step, and his belly lurched. He wrapped his arm around his middle, and continued walking. This is what he gets for being greedy. He shouldn’t have had so many pastries.

He turned to wave a final goodbye to the Chancellor, then passed through the doors to the outer office to meet Master Obi-Wan. 

He spends the rest of the day throwing up, and ends up missing his evening meditation session. Master Obi-Wan is not pleased.) 

—gagged. Clapping a hand over his mouth. He tries to swallow, but the half-chewed bit of pastry gets lodged in the back of his throat. He retches and retches, and his eyes well up. He can’t breathe. 

“Ani?” Padmé’s sounds frightened and far away. “Ani, are you alright?”

She pats him on the back and helps him move onto the grass, as he continued to retch. The mashed bits of pastry roll around in his throat, mixing with saliva and bile. He gags, and gags. But keeps his mouth clamped tight so that the wet, mushy bits of food don’t spill out. (Have another, Anakin. Have another. Go, on, don’t be shy.). Padmé tells him to breathe through his nose and he does. He inhales and exhales and accidentally heaves what was once the pastry as well as the rest of his lunch onto the grass, while Padmé rubs his back and whispers soothing words in his ear.  

“Anakin,” she says urgently. Helping him sit back on the blanket, and dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. “Are you alright?”

He nods. Then, to prove it, he grabs another pastry and shoves it into his mouth 

(Have another, Anakin)

He swallows it after two bites. Then he has another. This one too goes down without a struggle. 

Padmé still doesn’t look convinced, even after all that. But Anakin can’t eat any more. Not for the rest of the day. His stomach hurts. 

Anakin won’t talk to her. And that’s fine. 

No really, it is. The holobooks and sites all say that every survivor processes their trauma differently. That all their family can do is be there for them and validate their pain as they work through it.  

And Padmé thinks she’s doing a pretty good job at it. She hopes she is. 

It’s just… what she wouldn’t give to have someone else to talk to about all of this. Someone to reassure her that she’s doing the right thing by Anakin. 

Like Obi-Wan? that annoying “I-told-you-so” voice in the back of her head that sounds suspiciously like the Jedi Master says. But Padmé knows she can’t com him. He’d gloat (Obi-Wan doesn’t gloat) and admonish her (Obi-Wan would understand) and tell her to take Anakin back to the Temple (Obi-Wan respects your and Anakin’s decisions). She can’t have that. 

Besides, Anakin is going to be fine. It’s expected that people who’ve experienced a severe trauma to have ups and downs. He was in a slump now, but he’d come out of it soon. Especially with her here to help him through it. 

Padmé has done a lot of research since finding out the truth of what Palpatine had been doing to Anakin all these years. She knows all about triggers and flashbacks, and has already scratched muja-fruit pastries off the list of foods to have Threepio prepare for them. But she needs more. What is it about them, specifically that set him off? The taste? The smell? The texture? Does he not enjoy sweets anymore? Or is it only just pastries? She needs to know, for Anakin’s sake, yes. But for her own as well. It’s fine that he doesn’t want to talk to her about any of this, really it is. It’s just—she needs him to. 

He doesn’t say anything after his episode, but his body goes lax and he falls into her arms, dead weight. She gathers him up and rocks them both back and forth. Pressing kisses to his brow and running her knuckles along the base of his neck. He stuffs his face into her shoulder and there are no tears. He doesn’t make a sound. And she doesn’t press him other that to ask one more time if he is alright. He is. And she leaves it at that. He’ll let her in when he’s ready. 

Which is fine. Perfectly fine. But also.

I’m right here, sweetling. I’m right here. Please just talk to me. 

-

[spearxwind]

OOF... i dont even have a theme for the major extinction characters sjlklfdhk. i dont.. i dont have most minor characters planned out even 

I WILL GIVE YOU HOWEVER, a song that’s been inspiring me for certain worldbuilding things (though i cant say much bc idk if itll end up showing in the story at all but you can have it!) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XciV8HuNQLw  [it’s realm breaker, by mechina]

Oh man, im influenced by a bunch of art and comics but i couldnt pin down specific inspirations for those haha

as for the more broad sense, i also have a bunch of things! significantly, physics and space. it might not look like it but i think a lot about the logistics of things and whatever rules would exist in my universes etc. it does suck sometimes bc it prevents me from doing things just for the hell of it, but i love applying knowledge to things. and space has always been something really close to me, my dad’s an astrophysicist so ive been exposed to all sorts of cool knowledge about it since i was a wee bab 

i also really really love metaphors and symbolism, but rather than take inspiration from things i just use my own personal symbolism x) i put a lot of myself in what i do. which.. i guess could be said for many artists too so its not too special haha

and also as with many other artists, i AM fueled by spite significantly. specifically 1. for the people who once thought or who still think id never be good to do art, or that id never get better at what i do. 2. for people who draw wings wrong (especially professional people? what’s wrong with you. im begging you to look at a bird) 3. for people and companies that make terrible designs with terrible decisions (they fuel me to do better than them) 4. for people who believe that the only way to be good at art and design is to make overly complex and visually charged, detailed designs with many colors/hues (all my ocs are fairly simple and have the most limited colors kffhk) 

im sure there’s a lot more but ive spent a lot of time writing this out already and i cant really think of anything else so i hope this is a good enough answer!! 

god i do NOT have enough knowledge for this but what the fuck was up with the volturi lol. like fuckin, vampire goth club over there did nothing to change over hundreds of years, all of them still stuck in their medieval ways. i remember a plot point that was touched upon was that they had a specific person lure in a bunch of lost tourists through the sewer entrance so that the volturi could drink them and like ?? bro. how is this not investigated at any point, ever. like a shit ton of tourists just disappear ??? all the time?? and no one gives a fuck?? no investigation?? what do they do with the bodies?????

also, they were willing to blast the carlisle family into fucking orbit over Turning A Child (tm) into a vampire, but they had absolutely no qualms about vampire wars/soldiers where a lot of people were irresponsibly turned into neophytes for their strength (like jasper) or people who turned others just for the fuck of it or bc theyd have sickass powers (like benjamin. that was the sole reason for benjamin being turned. bc the dude could feel that benj would have cool powers and he absolutely did... he was a fucking avatar. controller of the elements. and he did absolutely jack shit in the books. im still so mad) 

but yeah anyway the volturi are big hypocrites. got nothing to say about their lifestyle and aesthetic tho bc italians just be like that

his horns and the spikes on his forearms and tail are rly solid and rly pointy so theyre about as dangerous as a solid, pointy big thing can be

the spikes on his neck and back are a lot softer though. theyre flat scales and are probably bendy, but still sturdy. they don’t have edges or anything so you wont be sliced up if you touch them but touching them is probably not too comfortable

alex would probably be a crocodile tbh! it’s one of the things i based his dragon form off of for the latest iteration, and i just think it fits him a lot (also its funny that crocodiles are water creatures but alex has a Big Dislike of water)

also i literally cannot see adri as anything other than a snake sklhfsdk. its what he is!! this is like asking someone’s favorite color but not letting them choose their actual favorite. do you want me to lie? do you want me to say something not true??

Honestly i always loved deer but refused to acknowledge it, especially to myself, and much less thought about having one as a sona bc “prey animals are lame” was rly prevalent in my circles for the longest time. everyone was a dragon or a wolf etc bc they wanted to be cool and so did i but i never vibed with it it took me a rly long time to just accept that i rly liked deer haha and i think what made me decide on it in the end was ‘well i can make a deer more monstery if i wanted to, i have that power’ and so i did  then later i tied the whole ‘wrong deer’ aesthetic to my own personal symbolism of always being picked on by many until i got sick of it and learned to stand up for myself. my sona is something that’s not for people to prey on anymore, and so am i c:

honestly? ive never thought about it. im not too knowledgeable about dnd still so i dont think id be able to do them justice

ive thought about making dnd encounters based off of my ocs thought (like, how their powers would work turn/mechanic wise) but if i ever did i dont think id use them or talk about them :’) 

jkdg gosh thats so sweet thank you sm!! im so happy you enjoy my stuff :’DDDD 

WELL, in no particular order: 

1. several glass bottles 2. bei’s pet golem sierra (they got her back though) 3. a knife or two probably 4. an air conditioning remote 5. do sewer rats count? sewer rats. besides all the other rats i mean 6. homeless man who tried to rob his store at gunpoint 7. the gun  8. drank a bottle of cyanide once 9. a motorcycle (as collateral damage) 10. tbh he will eat any creature he finds while walking around that’s small enough to fit in his mouth and no one can rly stop him

DISGOSTING!!! not even bc of the flavor i rly dont care abt that but bc like... warm pineapple... that’s the real crime 

oh my gosh that’d be an honor tbh!! I’m not sure if i’d be a big help since i might be tied with school stuff at the time, but id definitely love to try!! ty!! 

[persephonescat]

Birds and Other Supernatural Phenomenons

Hiiii! This is… long. Probably the longest chapter I’m going to have, but it’s all only one scene and I just couldn’t cut it in half. Thank you for your comments! They make my whole week! Some of you pointed out a few mistakes in the last chapter, I hope it’s all good now! ^^ And please tell me if there are any weird sentences or typos or anything. Multiple people told me that the last chapter’s storm came very suddenly, so I re-read the sixth chapter and as it turns out, the sentence about the weather was lost in the editing. It all looked very dark and moody in my head, so I didn’t notice there was no description of it. Thank you for telling me, I’m definitely going to correct that.

(I think we should call this fic BaOSP in the future when we’re just talking about it in the comments or on Discord or just in general, bc this title is really long… The title and the tags will stay the same of course, it’s just that from now on, BaOSP is the official (???) shortened version of it.)

Damian meets Marinette, I REPEAT, DAMIAN MEETS MARINETTE.

Ch. 1    Previous    Masterpost    AO3 

________________

Ch. 8: Lord Annoyance

It was Monday night and Damian Wayne already hated the week.

Tim finally passed out on Saturday and did nothing but sleep all weekend, so on one hand, now he was capable of speaking in full sentences. On the other hand, all of his sentences were about the process of etching and nobody knew why, so it wasn’t any less problematic.

Dick came home with several holes in his shoe and refused to speak about it.

Jason didn’t eat anything but pork for a week straight and this morning he swore to go vegetarian.

Bruce was in the process of finding new hobbies - Tim said it was midlife crisis, Jason said the old man was finally going crazy and Cass was out of town, so she just yelled at them via video chat. Barbara and Steph laughing their asses off every time the topic came up didn’t help either, but after seeing the anvil in the living room while going to get breakfast, Damian was starting to agree with Jason.

On top of it all, some idiot under the name of Dark Nomad killed a chicken, painted obscene pictures on the walls of one of Bruce’s apartments with its blood, then for some reason, they stole some garden interior and part of the fence. Just fantastic.

And guess who had to track him down and arrest him? Robin. Because his family was a bunch of freaking sadists.

On top of it all, when he finally arrived on the rooftop where the petty villain was spotted two days in a row, the idiot wasn’t alone.

Robin landed quietly, hid behind a metal staircase leading the upper parts of the building and stopped to listen to the conversation going down between the two shadowy forms. He was already planning revenge in the back of his mind - it would’ve been ridiculously easy to poison at least two out of his three brothers. Not too badly but enough for them to have an unpleasant couple of days.

“Did you manage to sleep during the day, or should I be worried about you suddenly falling down from here because of exhaustion?” one of the forms asked flatly, a young girl sitting on the edge of the roof. She looked tiny compared to the Nomad sitting beside her, but she didn’t seem to be afraid at all. Her body language was taunting and open, her dark hair shimmered in the light coming from the streets below as she turned her head towards the boy. She had a slight French accent.

“Nah, I had double English in the afternoon, so I’m good,” the Nomad said, playing with a stray thread on his hoodie. “You?”

“I slept on the bus…” the girl started, trailing off. She tilted her head, concentrating on something. “Could you give me a minute?” she asked, standing up. For a moment, Damian felt relieved. She was already leaving.

Then she turned towards him.

She could’ve just heard something. She could’ve just checked out the area. It could’ve been a coincidence, but she was staring right at him, even though he was sure he wasn’t visible in the dark.

She walked towards his hiding place with no hesitation or fear. He was standing there motionlessly as she got closer. He studied her form, looking for weapons and weak points. She was wearing a warm cardigan with jeans and dark boots. He eyed her scarf and gloves suspiciously. It wasn’t that cold, but he didn’t see anything hidden in them.

Her red lipstick matched her scarf, her hair was tied into a loose braid coming forward at the side of her neck, dancing gracefully when a light breeze caught it. Her body language was still way too open and she foolishly grabbed the railing of the staircase before peeking behind it, leaving her torso even more vulnerable.

If he was ever planning on confronting her, he would’ve changed his mind after that. She was clearly harmless when it came to physical combat.

What the hell was she doing here, then?

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking at where his mask covered his eyes. Her voice was toneless and her accent was gone. Robin wondered if he was just imagining it earlier. Maybe he was too deep in his thoughts to pay attention.

It happened a lot nowadays. Him, getting lost in his thoughts and not paying attention. At first, it annoyed him - and scared the living daylight out of him, not as if he was about to tell that to anyone. Now he knew it was part of being human. It meant he was getting healthier, as Alfred put it. Making mistakes was part of life and he wanted to have a life, right?

Yes, he did.

Sometimes he looked at Bruce and his sorry brothers and realized that he already had a one. It made him feel weird. Happy, probably, but it was a new kind of happy. It made him want to smile at the most random times and help Alfred with chores. It made him have this… desire to go after Bruce when he disappeared to his garden to calm down, to bring home some donuts for Dick every time he passed that shop he liked, to take Jason to Disneyland on his birthday, to make Cass smile more often, to pull up the security footages from the Cave on his computer, so he could check on Tim without him knowing.

It was terrifying and he wouldn’t have changed it for anything in the world.

“Robin?” the girl asked impatiently. Damn, he zoned out. He cleared his throat, trying to find the right thing to say.

“Errm… do you realize you are sitting with a criminal?” Good job, Damian, your brothers would be proud. Why not ask her her favorite color too, maybe that will help. He was prepared to hear Jason’s amused words through the comms, but surprisingly, his brother stayed quiet.

“Are you concerned about my safety?” The girl narrowed her eyes.

He straightened his back and cleared his mind.

“Actually, I’m here to arrest the Dark Nomad,” he told her, trying to sound professional. Not as if it mattered anymore.

“Why?”

“Damaging private property, theft, and vandalism.”

“Could you elaborate? Picking flowers in a park could be considered all three of those.” Her voice was mocking now.

Damian stared at her. She was at least a head shorter than him, with no weapons. He was Robin. She was either incredibly dangerous or very stupid, and he had a hard time believing in the first scenario.

“He killed an animal, draw obscene pictures on the street with its blood, did damage that’s repairing will take hundreds of dollars, stole garden interior… should I continue?”

“When did he do all that?” the girl asked. She didn’t seem surprised at all.

“Why would I tell you?” frowned Robin. “I’m here to arrest him, that’s the only important thing.” Harmless or not, she was getting annoying.

“Well, you can’t legally make arrests given that you’re not a police officer, which means that you have absolutely no reason to be here. You might as well go home,” she explained simply. Her voice was toneless again, she spoke as if she was just stating facts, - which she did, after all.

Damian’s blood was starting to boil. Did the psychopaths roaming this city have a right to murder people? No. Did they have any right to hurt civilians? No. Was any of the things they did legal? No.

Who was this kid to come and tell him about rights, when his family seemed to be the only ones protecting them?

The girl was looking at him as if she was staring into his soul, then suddenly, she smirked.

“Not as if that would stop you,” she said, and Robin looked at her quizzically. “But I have a feeling that you’re after the wrong guy, so if you told me when he did all that, it would clear a few things.”

He was lost. What did this girl want? She was too weird to be stupid. She let the railing go now and was standing with her arms at her sides, her head slightly tilted.

“Today, between two and three AM,” he told her finally, curious about her reaction.

She stared right into his eyes, even though his mask was hiding them and said, “He was with me.”

Robin didn’t see anything about her body language betraying her, but she must’ve noticed he didn’t believe her because she continued.

“We were talking about Tamás Vekerdy and Bruno Bettelheim. They’re psychologists who often write about children. He arrived around midnight, and when he left it was already past five in the morning, so there is no way he could’ve done anything unless he has an evil twin.”

He scoffed angrily. When he spoke again, he was hissing the words from behind his clenched teeth.

“These things don’t take long. He might’ve just slipped away for a few minutes and came back, unless of course if you were in the same position for five hours.” He might’ve also growled a little. He was standing only inches from her now, looming over her.

“That’s not too hard to check, your Highness.” She cocked her head and held his gaze fearlessly. “Where did all this happen?”

He was about to bite back but he stopped abruptly.

Okay, so he might’ve been a little wrong. If the girl was telling the truth, the guy should’ve disappeared for at least one and a half hours to get to the scene from here. Not as if that meant anything, she could’ve easily lied. He just didn’t notice it.

A voice saved him from having to answer.

“Marinette? Is everything okay?” The Dark Nomad was walking towards them. When he noticed Robin, a terrified expression took over his confused one. He was about to go and stand between the girl and the vigilante when she lifted her arm to stop him, not moving her gaze away from Robin. The Nomad looked like a caged animal but didn’t try to fight her.

“Lord Annoyance here states that last night, you cloned yourself between The Book of Diaries and NurtureShock, and went to draw booties and steal a bunch of garden gnomes.”

The Nomad opened his mouth to say something but Robin beat him to it.

“Okay, so first of all, it wasn’t just "booties” and they were drawn with blood, which makes it considerably worse.“ Jason, who was listening to everything he said trough the comms the whole time, chose that moment to burst out laughing. He did his best to ignore him.

"Second of all, a lot of things were stolen, not just…” yep, that sentence was a bad idea, “Garden gnomes.”

“Why do you think he did it in the first place?” the girl, - Marinette cut back.

“It was private property. There was a camera.”

“Whose?”

He took a second to consider the possible fallback of the answer. The existence of Bruce Wayne wasn’t a secret. Neither was the fact that he owned multiple buildings around the city. Maybe it was going to scare the villain enough that he confesses.

“Bruce Wayne’s,” he said finally. The girl’s undisturbed expression made him feel uneasy. “Have you heard of him?”

“Oh, you mean that’s who the big ass tower in the middle of the city is named after? I thought it was the ship name of watery rain or way of pain or something.” Her words were dripping from sarcasm.

‘Who are you talking to? What did they say?’ asked Jason like an excited child but Damian once again ignored him.

“Well, I’m sorry, but his alibi is pretty shaky, you know. Villains can be very convincing here, in case you didn’t notice.” He didn’t think this guy could convince anyone, but it was possible.

“Yeah, his ski mask really makes me shake in fear,” Marinette said flatly.

The villain finally got a chance to say something but his moment didn’t last long.

“It’s not a-”

“Yes, it is. Shut up.” Marinette pinched the bridge of her nose. “He is wearing a hoodie and a mask ever since… birth, probably. How did anyone recognize him?”

“He left his signature,” Robin told her. He wasn’t even angry anymore, he was just very annoyed.

Marinette froze. She almost seemed to forget about Robin as she finally broke eye contact and turned around.

“You… have a signature?” she asked the Dark Nomad, who was still standing behind her, ready to jump at any moment.

He opened and closed his mouth a few times. It reminded Robin of a distressed duck.

“Kinda,” he said quietly.

“Why would you do that?” asked Marinette, gesticulating wildly.

“It’s part of the aesthetic, okay?” he explained with a hurt expression.

“Hey, I’m accusing you of a crime here!” reminded them Robin. This was taking way longer than he wanted it to.

Marinette once again turned to him, let out a deep breath and arranged her face into a more professional expression.

Finally.

“Right,” she started seriously. She gave him a second to compose himself, then continued. “Boobs.”

The Dark Nomad snorted, but Marinette just gave him an unimpressed look and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Okay, so tell Mr. Wayne, that he should be looking for another idiot because I was looking after this one at the time.”

Before he could answer, he heard Jason’s voice in his ear.

'There is a robbery going down at Chucko’s. I’m going in.’

Damian cursed quietly.

“Don’t. Wait for me. I’ll be there in two,” he told him, placing his fingers on the comm so the two people standing in front of him knew he wasn’t speaking to them.

“I have to go,” he told them quickly, then took off before they could do as much as blink.

***

Marinette ran after the vigilante but stopped at the edge of the roof. She saw a dark form jumping over rooftops. After a few seconds, it disappeared and relief rushed over her body.

She was way too tired to think about how she just got into an argument with one of Gotham’s heroes.

She closed her eyes and turned to go back to her room. She needed to sleep. A lot.

“You’re kinda terrifying when you’re sleep-deprived, did you know that?” said Jeremy, coming out from behind the metal staircase.

“I always am,” answered Marinette, still not opening her eyes.

“Do you mean terrifying or sleep-deprived?” asked Jeremy confusedly.

Marinette gave him a small wave, then climbed back to the hotel without a word.

________________

*Quiet chanting* comments, comments, comments

*Chanting intensifies* comMEnts, COMments, coMMENTS

*Thunder*

*The flattering of wings and the sounds of scared birds*

*Chanting* COMMENTS, COMMENTS, COMMENTS, COMMENTS

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[reddeadmort]

Hey can I request an Arthur x female reader where the reader gets kidnapped by the O’Driscolls and they take advantage of her. Which then Arthur finds her a couple days later with John and takes her back to camp. The reader asks Arthur to help her forget about the last couple of days (smuttttyyyyyXD) and Arthur’s like really soft and slow with her but has his hand on her throat the entire time bc she’s is a kinky bitch! Btw your stories fucking SLAPPPPP they sooo goood gosh

Okay, this has been sat in my inbox for ages, sorry anon! This story is a bit different from the request as I really didn’t want to leave the reader alone with the O’Driscolls for too long and didn’t want there to be any actual ‘taking advantage of’. So, instead, the reader is *almost* taken advantage of, with some minor sexual assault (groping) implied as happening during the kidnapping. Obviously, big trigger warning, please don’t read if any of the guidance notes will make you uncomfortable.

This is my longest and most explicit attempt at smut, hopefully it *hits the spot*!

Arthur x f! reader | Safe places and words | NSFT

Guidance: Violence, threats of sexual assault, implied minor sexual assault (groping), almost major sexual assault. Smut, but unrelated to/separate from mentions of assault. Smut includes blowjob, choking, and biting. NSFW/NSFT

Words: 4k (this just kept on going).

“That’s great Jack, well done!” You patted Jack on the back as he carefully reeled in the small fish. “See I knew you’d manage it! Uncle Arthur’s been giving you some fishing tips hasn’t he.” Jack jumped up and down excitedly as you carefully unhooked the fish from the line to show to him. “Here, hold still, lift it up, I’ll take a picture for your parents before we throw it back.” You took the picture as quickly as you could – you were pretty sure it would be blurry, thanks to Jack being incapable of holding in his energy.

“Thanks Auntie Y/N, maybe this isn’t so boring!” Jack said as he threw the little fish back in the river. You were both watching it swim away when you heard a voice behind you.

“Well ain’t this…. Sweet”. You turned sharply to look at the three new arrivals, instinctively moving jack behind you, one hand resting on you revolver. Shit. O’Driscolls. What the hell are they doing this close to camp?

“Look, fellas, I don’t want no trouble. I’m just relaxing with the kid.” You wanted to back away further, but you were already at the edge of the water. Two of the men were moving slowly towards you, one on each side, blocking any escape; you were fast with your revolver, but not fast enough to take down all three, and you couldn’t risk anything happening to Jack.

“We can see that girly” the leader sneered, standing in front of you. “Tell you what, why don’t we help out? We can teach the lad a thing or two….” As he said this, the leader nodded to the man to your left, and before you could do anything he grabbed at Jack. You launched yourself at him, only to be grabbed from behind by the other man. He pulled your arms behind your back as you kicked and screamed, hoping desperately someone might hear. Jack had started crying; the noise of his sobs made your adrenaline surge even further.

“You really don’t want to do this, his dad and the others will come after you.” You tried to slow your breathing, bring your heart rate under control. The only way you were getting out of this was with words.

“Oh, we know girl, we know. That’s exactly why we’re doing this.” The leader smirked at you as your heart sank. “You’re going to go back to your little camp and tell Marston that we’ve got his precious little boy. Then you’re going to tell him to come to us, alone, tomorrow at noon. We’ll send a message tomorrow with a location, maybe with a bit of….motivation attached. If he doesn’t come, or if he doesn’t come alone, we’ll start using bits of little Jack here for fish food.”

“You bastards! They’ll kill you all!” you screamed at the man, unable to control your rage.

“No, missy, they won’t. Because if they try, Jack’s mother will be burying him as well as his father. Well, burying whatever is left of him anyway.” Jack was still sobbing, he didn’t really understand what was going on, but he knew from your reaction that you were in trouble. “Come on lads, let’s get going. Give her a clout, best if she’s out for a while.” The man behind you released one of your arms, drawing his pistol and raising the butt above your head, ready to strike.

“WAIT!” you yelled, breaking free and rushing forwards. Your mind was racing, you had to get Jack out of this situation.

“Take me. Take me instead, let Jack go back to camp.”  The men laughed at this, you were going to have to try harder. “I’ll be quieter than him. I won’t cause trouble.” The man holding Jack was starting to walk away, and you could hear the man behind you moving closer again. Think, think! “I…..you….. you could have some fun with me.” The words almost made you puke, the thought of these men touching you, but you’d do anything to save Jack.

That got their attention. The leader stepped closer to you, still grinning a horrible, evil, gappy grin. “Nah, missy, as tempting as that sounds, you ain’t as valuable. Dutch ain’t going to send one of his main men out looking for one of you camp bitches.”  

“I ain’t just one of the girls.” You were going to regret giving this information away, you knew it, but you had to convince them to make the trade.

“Well then missy, who are you exactly?” The man leered at you, moving even closer, so you could feel his breath on your face.

“Y/N. Y/N Morgan.”  That name had the desired effect, and the leader gave a low whistle.

“Arthur dead would hurt Dutch more” the man holding Jack grunted at him.

“It sure would, Peter, it sure would…..” Before you could do anything, the man in front of you had grabbed you by the throat.

“Right, girly, I think we’ll take you up on your offer. And I mean all of your offer” the man’s face was almost touching yours now, and his breath made you almost gag. “You’ll only scream when we want you to. And believe me, you’re going to need to scream. You ain’t getting out of this. We’ll make sure Mr Morgan sees us slit your delicate little neck, and we’ll make him watch as you slowly die.”

Your heart was racing, but you kept your face perfectly still; you didn’t want to give them the pleasure of seeing the fear you were experiencing.

“I’ll be quiet” you said, through gritted teeth. “Just let me put Jack on my horse and send him off, it’s too far for him to walk.”

“Fine. Be quick. And only because we need him to get back to camp to tell Mr Morgan where you are.” He released you and practically threw you at Jack. Shaking, you walked over and took a still sobbing Jack from the other man. You carefully placed him on your horse, and quickly started scribbling a note.

“Girl, what the hell do you think you’re doing” the man snatched at the paper, but you pulled it away from him.

“I’m writing down the instructions, you bastard. He’s only young, even if he does remember them he’ll be too upset to say anything” you snarled back at the man. He sneered at you, before calling out to his men.

“You two, check the note.”

“Hey, you know I can’t read.”

“Me neither.”

“Goddammit” the leader muttered. You guessed that neither could he. “Just hurry up girl, before I decide to send the boys lifeless body back on the damn horse” he snapped at you before walking over to his own. You quickly finished the note and handed it to Jack.

“Right Jack, I know you’re upset, but I need you to be a brave boy for me, okay? My horse should take you directly back to camp, don’t worry. You hold on as tight as you can, and when you get to camp you give this note to Uncle Arthur, okay?” Jack swallowed and nodded, tears still dripping down his face. “I love you Jack, remember that.” With those last words, you slapped your horse on the rear, sending it trotting off back up the path.

With your back to the O’Driscolls, you quickly and silently slipped a knife from the sheath strapped to your thigh and sliced the blade across the palm of your hand. You winced slightly, staying as still as possible, hoping they hadn’t noticed. Keeping your fist clenched, you turned just as they grabbed you, pulling off your weapons and knocking the knife out of your other hand.

“Nice try missy. Now, you’re riding with me. I want a little…..preview of the fun we’re going to have tonight.”

You said nothing, and let the man bundle you onto his horse, sitting behind you. One hand on the reins, the other gripping you tightly – and not by the waist – you set off. You held your cut hand out as far as you could, under the pretence of needing balance, and squeezed, feeling the blood run over your fingers. You just hoped you could keep it bleeding for as long as possible.  

——

John was the first to see Jack and your horse as they gently trotted back into camp. At first, he wasn’t too concerned, expecting to see you right behind; but as they got closer, he realised you weren’t there.

“Jack, what’s happened? Where’s Y/N?” Jack immediately burst into tears, and John quickly hoisted him off the horse and hugged him tight.

“There….was…..some…..men” Jack managed to get the words out between sobs. “I have a….” Jack held the crumpled note up to his father; it was slightly damp from his tears.

“ARTHUR!” John yelled, opening the note.

“John, what the hell do you want” Arthur grumbled as he walked over.

“O’Driscolls have got Y/N” John said, his voice cracking slightly, as he handed the note to Arthur. Arthur’s face paled as he read your hastily written instructions. “Any idea what those last two words are?” John asked before handing Jack to Abigail, who had been attracted by his shout.

Arthur looked at the two words at the end of the note. ‘Strawberry Doe’. You hadn’t dared write more than that. But Arthur didn’t need anymore to understand what you’d done.

“John, get your guns. We’ve got some killin’ to do.” Arthur growled.

“But Arthur, we don’t know where they’ve gone.” It wasn’t really a protest - John was already prepping the saddle on his horse -  more a panicked comment.

“She’s left us a trail. We’ll track ‘em down like the animals they are.” John didn’t think he’d ever seen Arthur’s eyes like this. They were cold, emotionless, like he’d shut down.

As the two men rode out of camp, pounding towards the fishing spot, Arthur finally felt something other than rage start to sweep over him. It was fear. The fear of losing you, the fear of not being able to protect you…….

—–

It was early evening when you finally stopped at an abandoned old hut. Stuck in front of this lecherous, disgusting creature of a man, you had basically frozen, letting your mind disassociate. The ride was horrible, uncomfortable, but nothing more than you’d experienced in many saloons; at least those drunk bastards got their comeuppance when they groped you.

You were pulled roughly off the horse, your hands tied behind your back, and led into the dark basement. You knew what was coming, you just prayed that you could endure it for as long as it took Arthur to find you.

To your surprise, the leader shoved you to the floor before turning to leave.

“Me and the boys are going to eat before our fun starts, sweetheart” he leered at you. “Need to make sure we’ve got plenty of… energy.” He paused, licking his lips, before shutting the doors to the basement behind him, leaving you in total darkness.

Finally alone, you let a little sob escape from your throat. All you could think about was Arthur. Would you ever see him again? Would he even be able to look at you if he did?

And so you sat, in the cold, in the darkness, waiting.

——

Arthur and John rode in silence, occasionally stopping to search for the next part of your trail. There was nothing to say; there was no plan, only anger and fear. These men were going to die, and not well.

“Arthur…. I can’t see anythin’.” It was early evening and the light was fading fast.

“John, just keep lookin’!” Arthur snapped. “There has to be somethin’. Has to be……”

John didn’t retort, he knew it wasn’t him Arthur was angry at. He looked around, and spotted something in the distance.

“Arthur! Smoke. Looks like it’s comin’ from a cabin. Might just be normal folks though.”

“It’s our best hope. Come on.”

——

You had no idea how long you’d been down there in the dark. You’d done your best to keep calm, concentrating on your breathing. Stumbling around in the dark, unable to use your hands, you’d found a chair and a table; you’d crawled under the table and sat in the corner, back to the walls. It made you feel a bit safer; you tried to pretend that it was Arthur’s chest you were leaning against, not this damp, slimy, old stone.

Eventually, you heard the creak of the basement door hatches, and a figure made its way down with a lantern. Very briefly, you let yourself pray it was Arthur; but no, he was too short, too fat. You swore at yourself for even thinking it; of course it wasn’t Arthur, you’d heard no commotion, no gunshots. You didn’t even know if he was coming. Had Jack made it back? Had your horse actually gone back to camp, had Jack managed to cling on? Had Arthur understood your message?

Your slightly panicked thoughts were interrupted by the man grabbing you by the ankle, pulling you out from under the table, causing the back of your head to slam into the floor.

“It’s playtime girly! Now you better make some noise for me you little whore.” He lifted you up roughly by the front of your shirt then grabbed you hard by the chin. He moved his face next to yours and slowly, disgustingly, licked your cheek. “Just pretend I’m your big, bad outlaw. But don’t get too excited, me and the boys will be taking turns all throughout the night. And we don’t want you passing out now… it’s no fun if you aren’t awake to feel it.”

You wanted to fight back, to do something, anything but you couldn’t. You were completely frozen.

“Not even going to beg me? Well you’re a nasty girl ain’t ya.” With that, he turned you around and slammed your face and chest into the table, bending you over. Using your bound wrists to keep you pushed down, he pulled at your trousers with one hand, pulling them down to your knees. You heard him fumbling with his belt buckle, and you could have sworn that you were suddenly looking down on the scene from above; you could see yourself, bent over, face completely emotionless, and him, pulling at his trousers, pushing them down.

Suddenly, a familiar crack of a gunshot sounded above you, followed quickly by a series of others. You could hear yelling and screaming mixed in with the gunfire. The man released you, scrabbling over to the chair where he’d put his gun belt, reaching it as the basement doors flew open. He’d just pulled his gun out of the holster when a shot rang out, shattering his hand and sending the gun flying. Deafened slightly by the noise, you tried to stand up, struggling, and turned just enough to see the familiar shape of Arthur smash his revolver across the man’s face, sending what few teeth he had left flying. You’d never seen him hit anyone that hard before; sometimes, his strength was almost scary.

Arthur’s heart almost exploded with pain when he looked at you, trousers roughly pulled down, struggling to stand up. He quickly moved to you, leaving the unconscious man behind him. One brief flick of his knife and you were free; the first thing you did was grapple with your trousers, trying to pull them up. You never wanted Arthur to see you like this, not with another man, willingly or not. There were tears in the corner of his eyes as he grabbed you by the face, scanning yours for any injury.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here sooner Y/N, so sorry” he said, choking on the words slightly.

Finally, with him stood in front of you, your adrenaline started to fade and a wave of relief washed over you. You threw your arms around him, breathing in his familiar, musky smell. You tried to say something, but all you could do was cry. In between sobs, you managed to explain that Arthur had arrived just in time. He held you tight, his arms and warmth seeming to form a protective bubble around you. After a few moments, he picked you up and took you up the stairs to a waiting John.

As soon as you saw John, your first thought went to his little boy. “Jack…. Is Jack okay? They were going to take him, John, I’m so sorry…..” As you spoke, Arthur gently let you down, standing you upright. John pulled you in for a hug, holding your face to his chest.

“He’s fine Y/N, he’s fine. Thanks to you. I’ll never forget this, you hear? Never.”

“John, you wait with her and the horses. I’ve got somethin’ to finish.” Before you could say anything, Arthur had grabbed some rope and walked away back into the basement. You thought about stopping him, but it only took a moment for you to decide the man deserved whatever was about to happen. John led you and the horses a little way off, but you could still see Arthur drag the man out by his hair, sitting him against a tree and tying him to it. You heard the man’s bloodcurdling screams as Arthur took his manhood from him, then begging as Arthur chucked what looked like bait on his bloodied lap.

Arthur walked back to you and John, wiping his blood-stained knife with a cloth.

“You finished?” John asked. He’d not seen Arthur do anything like this before; beat a man, yes, threaten, of course, even kill; but this….. this was a whole other level of rage.  

“I’ve done what I needed. I’ve left the wolves to do the rest.” Arthur muttered as he climbed onto the saddle behind you.

The ride back was silent; no-one knew what to say. Arthur held you tightly to him by the waist, clinging to you as if for dear life. Occasionally he gently kissed you on the neck, but only after asking you if he could. He’d never asked before; you knew he was just trying to be kind, make sure you were okay, but you hated it. You just wanted things to be exactly like they were before; you were scared he’d never look at you in the same way again.

When you arrived back at the camp, everyone came to fuss over you. You entertained them for as long as you could before pulling Arthur away to your shared tent.

Arthur was surprised when you grabbed at his face as soon as he’d pulled the flaps down. You kissed him hard, hungrily, biting at his lips. He kissed you back, but more hesitantly, causing you to pull away.

“Arthur……”

“I’m sorry Y/N, I just…..I’ll go, you’ll want some time alone.”

“Arthur Morgan, you have never tried to tell me what I do and don’t want. Do not start now.” You didn’t give him time to reply before once again pulling him back in for a kiss. This time, he didn’t resist, and gently brought his hands up to rest on your shoulders.

You let your hands drop from his face as you slowly undid his shirt buttons. As your hands moved back up his chest, you let them brush lightly over his nipples, making him moan, before pushing the shirt off his shoulders. Once again, you moved you hands over his chest, this time down to his belt. He grunted slightly as you pulled at it, swiftly undoing it and the top button as his hips pushed forwards. You slowly slipped your thumbs under the waistband and gently pulled his trousers down, levering them forwards over his erection.

You knelt as you guided his trousers to the ground, and Arthur’s hands moved to the back of your head. He let out a little grunt as you licked the head of his cock, before you took him in your mouth in one swift movement. He groaned and gripped your hair as you slid him in and out of your mouth, soaking him. You moved your hand up to his on the back of your head, wrapped it around his fist, and used it to pull your own hair. Arthur understood the signal, and pushed his hips forwards, driving himself into the back of your throat, making you gag. He pulled out slightly, letting you recover, before using his firm grip on your hair to dictate your speed. Soon, the movement of his hips became slightly erratic, and panting, he pulled away from you. This was just the prequel, he wasn’t about to ruin the main event.  

You stood up, undoing your trousers as Arthur made short work of your shirt. You lay down on the bed as Arthur pulled your trousers off, pausing momentarily to stare at you, completely naked before him. You shouldn’t have worried; his gaze was just as it always was, hungry, desperate to touch you, mind blank save for the thought of you.

Arthur was quickly on top of you, one hand tucked under your shoulder, the other moving between your legs. You moaned softly as he gently rubbed you, spreading your wetness up and over your clit. As he massaged it with his thumb, moving in steady circles, he slipped a couple of fingers inside you, testing you. No matter how much he wanted you, how much he needed you, he always made sure you were ready. And you were. 

He shifted forwards, replacing his thumb with the tip of his cock, rubbing against you. He kissed you as he pushed in, all the way, making you gasp and shudder. He bit your neck as moved back a fraction, before pushing deep again. He enjoyed this bit the most; every time felt like the first time you’d ever taken him, your reaction always the same. He gently started to move his hips backwards and forwards, kissing you, building up a rhythm as his hand moved to massage you breast. Your hand moved from his back to his wrist, and gently guided it up to your throat. He paused, looking into your eyes, slight concern showing on his face.

“You sure darlin’?” You nodded and bit your lip.

“Arthur please…. I want to feel normal. I want to feel loved…. I want to feel safe.” To anyone else, safe would have seemed like an odd choice of word to use, with a large man lying on top of you, hand on your throat. But it was true; this made you feel safe. Arthur would never hurt you, was always guided by you; you were always in control, even if it didn’t look that way.  

Arthur delicately kissed your lips before thrusting hard into you. His grip on your throat tightened, just enough to restrict your breathing and blood flow slightly. You kept your hand on his wrist, guiding his pressure, gently pulling at it if he put too much weight on you. He always responded immediately. Every time he pounded into you, he’d stop briefly when he was fully enveloped, grinding himself into your clit, just like you’d shown him. It wasn’t long before you were both on the brink. You came first, digging your nails into his skin, gasping his name. As soon as you had, he removed his hand from your throat and you lifted yourself up, biting his nipple; this took him over the edge, and he swore as he pushed into you hard, almost uncomfortably deep. He collapsed onto your chest, and you both stayed there for a moment, not moving, just listening to the other’s breathing.

“Thankyou Arthur. I needed that. It might not make much sense but….I….needed to regain some control.”

“Darlin’ that don’t surprise me. Though, honestly, you don’t ever make much sense to me.” He grinned, before sitting up, releasing you. “Now, we best get some rest. I think Jack wants to spend tomorrow with his favourite Aunt.”

“He’s a sweetheart, he really is. I might stay in the camp this time though” you chuckled, sitting up and resting your head on Arthur’s shoulder. He kissed you softly on the top of the head, stroking your lower back.

“You do whatever you want darlin’. I’ll always be here.”

[shslstraws]

Hello! Hope your days going well, I’ve been looking around and see your ✨beautiful art✨, and I curious to see your ideas/headcanons of your dr ships? I always like to see people’s interpretations of them^.^ (also your valid for top Saihara cuz I’m a Power-bottom Ouma enthusiast and-)

Hello! My day(s) have being going wonderful, thank you for asking! I hope you are doing well too, thank you very much for this ?? Like I’ve always wanted to discuss my ideas and headcanons, so thanks for this,, a blessing,, 

I’m one hell of a multi-shipper but I’ll discuss my big damn ships. WHICH IS TWO, I REALIZED JUST WRITING ONE OF THESE, I WROTE SO MUCH THAT I CAN’T EVEN WRITE ABOUT MY TOP 5. SO HAVE TOP 2 

Oumota (my fav ship)

Reading some of golden-redhead’s fic; Nobody Said It Was Easy (one of my fav Oumota fics btw), I do like to confirm that Kokichi and Kaito moved into an apartment with each other. Basically, vr au, just started to live with each other due to the fact that they let each other see with their masks down at the end, and they seem to grow an understanding of each other. They eventually become friends then to lovers, I always love that trope. 

Kokichi bought a galaxy printed blanket for Kaito, on his birthday, and he thinks it’s an eyesore sometimes. But the look on Kaito’s face when Kokichi spots him snuggle up with it, Kokichi doesn’t ever regret buying it. (Kaito just really thinks of Kokichi when he snuggles up in the blanket btw, I drew them in the blanket actually!)

For a loooong while, Kokichi suffered from ptsd nightmares when they first moved in, Kaito just couldn’t leave him like that?? He invites Kokichi to like,, sleep with him in his bed, after a month of living together, and Kokichi just teases him. But he silently goes in that night, Kaito finds out in the morning, since he wakes up early, but says nothing of it for the both of them. (It just becomes a habit) 

Kaito is actually afraid of loud noises? Like, REALLY loud noises. Due to ptsd triggers to the loud slam of the press and the awful noises that was also with it. Thunderstorms are the worst. Kokcihi notices this and feels kinda lost, he doesn’t know what to do but wants to help. Kaito tries to keep it together during these times, but Kokichi can see right through him. At first, he’d try to joke around and tease at him, just to make Kaito feel normal and back to reality. It eventually doesn’t work and Kaito is stuck in that moment of time, so Kokichi silently starts forming circles on his hand to keep him grounded. Just like how Kokichi goes to Kaito’s bed after a nightmare, this becomes a habit and they say nothing of it. 

They don’t say anything to each other about these acts of kindness bc they don’t know how to react to it? Maybe still in the mindset that they HAVE to hate each other. But they get over it, and once in a relationship; Kokichi begins to make small talk as he rubs circles in Kaito’s hand. And, of course, they both decided to finally sleep in the same bed instead of separate beds in separate rooms. 

Of course, they tease each other and pick at each other everyday. But since they started dating, it’s just more in a loving matter?? Although Kokichi will be like, “ewww, Momota-chan is trying to flirt with me, disgusting” 

For my version of a VR AU,,, I kinda want to go a different route for Kokichi; career wise. I love seeing fitting jobs for him in fics like, actor and such. Excellent ideas and I love them! But I want to be different bc IDK I JUST DO BE LIKE THAT. And wanna make Kokichi a psychologist? Just once he recovers from his trauma, and helps Kaito deal with his, he just feels like he can be good at it? Which was laughable when he first told Kaito, but then he saw Kokichi was serious and was like, “oh shit, you’re dead set on this.” And Kaito becomes proud of him, so supports him through it. Kokichi is still a little shit but only to those that are not his patients, of course. 

I actually did concept art of Kokichi as a psychologist, since I got a request to have my take on older Oumota, I’ve been putting so much work into the concept so then I can make the perfect drawing, but here’s psychologist!Kokichi 

Yes, he gets glasses. He was so whiny about it when Kaito found out Kokichi’s sight wasn’t the best as it was before. So after FORCING him to go to an eye doctor, Kokichi pouted when he got his first pair. Kaito just found it cute. He normally wears contacts though, only wear glasses, “to look professional”, even then, he doesn’t wear them as much. HE REALLY DOESN’T WANT ANYONE ELSE KNOWING HE WEARS GLASSES. He hates them. Kaito gets very excited when he sees his boyfriend with them; he took a picture when Kokichi didn’t notice until the picture was taken, and the doof left the flash on, so Kokichi chased him around the apartment demanding him to delete it. And Kaito is laughing and having his phone in the air high so he can’t reach it. (But Kokichi eventually gets it off his phone, from a surprise kiss) 

Although Kaito HATES being what the game made him to be and what he thought everyone expected him to be, he was afraid to even consider to pursue being an astronaut for real. He was afraid that he fully lost himself if he were to “give in”. But he learns that he wants to be an astronaut, not because of the false memories given, but because he wants to in this life. His life. His decision. 

Both study hard in university when pursuing their chosen careers, both procrastinate a lot. But eventually one or the other will try and get them back to work. Or if Kaito is working too hard, Kokichi will try and lighten him up and get him to take a break. Very rarely, Kaito will have to do the the same with Kokichi. 

OH MY GOD OKAY, NOW ONTO THE OTHER SHIP 

Saioumota 

Shuichi basically had a crush on both of them, he didn’t know how to even confess. NONE OF THEM DID BC THEY’RE MESSES. 

So, going off VR AU again, afterwards Kaito just decides that they all are going to live together. And Shuichi was okay with that, Kokichi was like, “haha okay, since you can’t seem to get enough of me” but was honestly relieved inside that he had somewhere to go. 

Few months were awkward for Kokichi, especially since Shuichi and Kaito started dated. He just felt like “the third wheel” and wanted to move out, but he had no where to go. So he was in this cycle in his mind for awhile. 

Shuichi tries multiple of times to get Kokichi to join them on many occasions, but again, Kokichi didn’t want to be that third wheel. 

Kaito DOES have feelings for both Shuichi and Kokichi, but was most unsure,for the longest time, about how he felt with Kokichi. It took Shuichi’s talks to finally get him to understand and comes to terms, damn, he’s also in love with this rat. 

It was when Kokichi didn’t come home for about a week, that Kaito confessed when he just suddenly came back. Of course, he was shouted at  Kokichi and they got in an argument, and just everything that was buried blew up there and then. Shuichi just comforted them both after the argument with his gentleness. 

They ALL just started dated afterwards, although it was hard for Kaito and Kokichi to become closer. Kokichi easily warmed up to Shuichi first, since he just always felt closer to the detective? He was just on edge for awhile about if Kaito’s feelings were true. But he warmed up to him eventually. 

For a long while, Shuichi would be middle spoon (haha) since Kokichi’s and Kaito’s uncertainty. But once Kokichi warmed up to Momota, he just scooted himself between the two of them during one of their cuddling sessions. Kaito looked dumbfounded and then looked at Shuichi like he just earned the trust of a stray cat. Like, “LOOK, SHUICHI, HE’S TRUSTING ME” silently with a big dumb smile. 

After then, Kokichi loves being the centre of attention for both of them. He loves being middle spoon but also let’s Shuichi be middle too bc he loves cuddle him. 

Their usual dates are to a nearby park, mainly if they need a breather from any stress, one of them will suggest or just force them to go to the park. And they all know that it means that they just want to the best for each other. 

Shuichi is usually the one to come home and find a mess of the apartment from Kaito and Kokichi. And gives them a “really?” look as they point fingers at each other. 

Kaito eventually gets a job, Shuichi was the first to get a job to support them, but that left Kokichi alone. And he was so clingy when they got back, he demanded SO MUCH ATTENTION once they came home. And whined about being bored all day without them. 

When they all have their bad day, they just cuddle up together and take a nap and just relax. Although Kaito will be the one to try and cheer them up later in the night by stargazing. 

Shuichi loves talking about the novels he reads to his boyfriends even though they don’t know what he’s talking about most of the time or understand, Shuichi knows but really appreciate them just taking interest in something so small. It means so much to him. 

Kokichi is the last one to wake up in the morning, and Shuichi and Kaito always debate to wake him up before they go to work. He’ll whine if he doesn’t get a goodbye from them and he’ll whine just out of grouchiness of being woken up. So it’s always flip a coin and it’s always, “it’s your turn, Shuichi” “Kaito, it was my turn yesterday” 

SURPRISE THEY GET MARRIED AND MOVE INTO A NICE HOUSE LATER. And they also get a dog,, 

AND THAT’S THAT, IM SO SORRY BUT HERE’S ALL MY HEADCANONS, TAKE ‘EM 

[1nkweaver]

46, 47, 49, 91, 94 for all those babys

Damn you’re gunna make me work for it huh

46. Have they ever won a contest before? If so, what for? What did they win?

Pick: I guess it has to be his fights in the Zoo, huh? He was the ‘champion’ of the blood pits. So you know, congrats you killed all your friends better than they could kill you. And he won...not dying, I guess. And people clapped for him and like would throw coins or flowers and stuff at him yknow...or food...

Opal: Doesn’t really compete in things, but personally I like to think he’s winning the contest of life bc he’s the dnd character that’s living the happiest life for the longest LOL

Guile: He was a really good fisherman back on his island! Fishing was really what their community thrived on, and Guile was particularly fond and good at spear fishing- that’s why he’s so good at throwing darts!!! Meanwhile yes he’s won a couple dart throwing contests at his local Saltmarsh bar, haha!

47. If the world were to end in 24 hours, where would they be and who would they be with?

Pick: Would like to be with Anders in just some nice scenic natural place, a forest on a hill overlooking the horizon, probably. But he doesn’t think that’s realistic so he’d want to be with the party including Callie in waterdeep or neverwinter, a pretty city. Specifically holding Callie’s hand while squished between ida and kai

Opal: Wants to be where he is most needed, probably among people that are suffering or fearful of the end, easing them and spending time with them to make them calm and ready for it. Or...yknow out there trying to stop the end of the world, he’d do that to. He kinda likes the world you know.

Guile: Is conflicted. He wants to be home with his mother and family if he knew that the end of the world was coming, he’d want to see their faces. But on the other hand a different part of him wants to be alone on a boat, just heading towards the horizon as he watches the last sunset at the edge of the world.

49. If they could have an extinct animal for a pet, what would they have?

Pick: Does a dinosaur count? One because is it an “animal” and two they’re not extinct in dnd so...? Anyway pick wants to ride a velociraptor. OR OHHH A SABERTOOTH TIGER YEAAAA

Opal: Would love to just return the simple dodo. They were nice, and animals being extinct would really fuck him up pretty badly so he’d say all of them. He wouldn’t keep it as a pet though, he’d want it to be free. Maybe get some true resurrection to bring those species back yknow.

Guile: The Pinta Island Tortoise! Turtles and Tortoises are some of his favorite animals and they’re just nice and mellow and Guile is just a vsco bitch sksksksksksksksksk 

91. Do they have a place that can go and turn off their brain?

Pick: Not really anymore, I think his brain is like mine and it really just does not stop, but it also doesn’t bother him that much, he likes always being able to think. I think his brain turns off more when he’s really active and doing things rather than having a quiet place. In fact, I’d say his brain is the most quiet during battle, he’s just on autopilot.

Opal: Opal finds peace in most places, both natural and urban, quiet and loud. Zemtris is the “sound between the sound” so normally total silence is never possible. Zemtris is the whispered words in between the plucks of a bards strings, between the chirps of crickets and whistles of wind, between the lightning and the thunder of a storm. He walks through graveyards or forests, or in towns sits in bars and just listens to all the background noise until it becomes static and he’s at peace.

Guile: Honestly goes away while he’s writing, mentally. The only character of the three that I would say has a “mind palace” so to speak. He is very meditative in his private life, often in his home or away from people, but most commonly at the shores where waves are crashing against the sand and rocks. Mechanics wise when guile meditates to get his ki points back he has to imagine the ocean or waves, and controls his breathing to be like water. All of his monk abilities are very water themed so I would say that either writing or meditation on the shore he can turn off.

94. Do they take criticism well?

Pick: Inherently defensive for sure, I mean he’s the most like me, and I used to be really defensive. But I wanted him to be like that so that as he gets older and learns he calms himself and takes criticism a lot better. But he tries to just not do things that can give him criticism in the first place so I don’t think he’s had to face it too much. Depending on what someone is critiquing him on he could just as easily just own up to it.

Opal: His life is criticism, really nothing someone can say to him will really phase him, he’s more aligned to just agree with whatever anyone says about him and move on so that they can feel better about themselves, even if it wasn’t true. He’s non confrontational by nature and doesn’t really...care what people thinks of him, he cares what people think of themselves, so if they’re going to say that Opal has done something wrong he’ll just agree and then reflect on it himself later and decide if its true or not.

Guile: Criticism of his character he probably is going to let just slide off his back because a lot of his character is you know...fake. So if you’re critiquing him of something it’s probably something he wants you to critique him on anyway, he manipulates what people think about him, he wants to be forgettable or even untrustworthy sometimes so that people just leave him alone. Where you really get him is critiquing his writing (and eventually drawing I think...I believe painters tools proficiency is on its way) because he is much more “real” on the page and you could really help or hurt him by analysis of what he creates rather than what he is.

[sturmxundxdrang]

2 0 1 8 ;

so this has been something i’ve done for both 2016 and 2017 (unfortunately can’t find that one), so yeah, a little recap of my year. under read more bc nobody’s interested in a long ass text lol 

So since I can’t find my 2017 post, I’m gonna go from the 2016 and see what I have accomplished from the things I wanted for 2017:

To finally start learning German properly: in 2017 I went to German classes. They did help me a lot, but I had to quit for financial reasons and because I felt like it was slow.

Learn how to play guitar and piano: I did go looking for piano classes, but couldn’t go through with them. More on that below.

Finish my ‘wall collage’: I almost got to finish it! It was actually on my wardrobe’s door, and it was almost complete, but I had to take it down this year when I got a new wardrobe. Fortunately, I had glued the drawings to a sheet of paper, so I still have it.

Finish writing and editing as many books as I can: I did write a lot, I have over 200 poems just from 2017, but I, unfortunately, didn’t do much editing or finished books, haha. 

Watch at least 100 of the movies from my list: I feel like I focused a lot more on TV shows, so that is a no.

Start exercising more: This went as a complete fail, up until November haha.

Do more things by myself: definitely yes, I’ve been growing a lot.

Get a car: I learned that driving stresses me out, but my parents switched to a different car to make it easier for me to drive, so I’m good with that.

Other things from 2017: 

In 2016 I found both witchcraft and Hellenic Polytheism, and I started practicing, but being an ex-Christian, I didn’t talk about it. Out of fear of judgment, out of fear of being wrong and deciding to stop it, a lot of other things. But 2017 was the year I started trusting it more, and the way I felt welcome in this religion, and by my gods, was so warm, that in 2017 I was sure that this was exactly what I was supposed to do. 

I also completed 5 years sober. March 18 was not only my birthday, but also the day I marked 5 years being Straight Edge, something I looked up to achieve ever since I began, back when I was 14 years old and looking up to CM Punk. Back then all I knew was that it was going to be better for me, and inspired by one of my heroes, I claimed. Now I understand the depth of my choice, and how much it helped me as a person. I thank CM Punk for showing me this lifestyle, but I also thank my 14 years old self, that, despite being very young and immature, made a very important choice. 

So, now, we enter 2018. Right from the beginning of January, it was a roller coaster. I ended one of my longest friendships, with a person that had been my best friend since 2011. I'm not getting much into it, because it has ended and there is no use bringing it up, but although it was hard to think about going on without somebody that was very important to me at the time, it ended up being the best choice, and proved itself to be a big improvement to my life. All I have to say is that after the end, I was able to see how toxic it was and that moving on felt like a weight off of my shoulders. 

I think things started well on New Years Eve. We had a small party, only me, my parents and two of our family friends. It was fun, we all talked, laughed, played Just Dance. But a bit before midnight, I put Mehr - Rammstein, to play. It’s one of my favorite songs, and the bridge is my favorite part. It played right when it hit midnight, and we toasted to the New Years Eve right when Till yells ‘Mehr!’. I think that was me starting the year with the right mindset.

My first poem of 2018 was a contrast to everything I used to write. All those 200 poems from 2017? Most about heartache, suffering, about pain. But 2018 started with me writing about true love, about softness and being happy. And gods, was I happy in 2018. I didn’t write much this year, because my writing comes more from pain and as a coping mechanism. I’m slowly learning how to write when I’m happy too, I’ll get there soon. 

If you’ve known me for a while, then you know birthdays were really not my thing. It was usually a day I’d be very depressed, I don’t like getting old, I was too stressed about thinking that another year went by, it was all sorts of bad. One time my mom gave me a surprise birthday party because my ex best friend posted a message on my Facebook wall and talked about knowing I hated my birthdays. Mom invited my friends (a group of about 6-7 people at the time), only 2 showed up. But this year, man, it was different. I had plans to go to the Zoo and then to the Botanic Garden to have a picnic. So we invited a family friend (one that was there during the New Year’s party), and we went. We had a fantastic day together, and then came back to a family BBQ, that was equally as good. It was the first birthday in a LONG time where I felt truly happy.

This part is probably one of the most important, I’d say. I can’t tell when exactly it was, but I know it was around my birthday’s time, but someone set up a Rammstein Discord Server. I joined it, not expecting much, because I’m always inactive in groups like that. But you, see, this person became a very important part of my life, because not long after that, there were her, me, and a few more people joking about setting up a Rammstein cover band. And what started out as only a joke, became one of the most important things for me this year: Roter Himmel. Stephanie, Leah, Karla and I. RH’s first year was a roller coaster too. Members that came and went, some that I wish weren’t even there in the first place, but life is like that, and some that will be missed - yeah, Lily, you. But life happens, and that’s okay <3

This band gave me three amazing friends, that now I consider family, made me even closer to someone that was already one of my best friends, and that will ever be the Paulie to my Richard, as we say, and is giving me the opportunity to work on dreams I’ve had as a kid, and of course, to put my dream of moving to Berlin into an actual plan. I’ve started learning the guitar again because of them, something that I’ve wanted since I was literally 6, but that I put aside for so long. And because of them, I’ll be going to Berlin next year, to finally see the place that I hope to call home in the future. Roter Himmel is now probably one of the biggest part of my life, and I cannot wait to be playing our music in crappy bars in Berlin in a few years. To Steph, Karla and Lee: thank you. 2019 will be Roter Himmel’s year.

Law too, is a big part of my life. Not only because it’s something I really love, but because, of course, that’s what I’m studying. This was my third year, so now I have only 2 and a half before I’m finished. I also got my first job in the field. I’ve been working since I was 13, but moving to something new is scary. And me, having terrible anxiety, you can just imagine. But I got the job, and it turned out to be better than I was expecting: my boss is a great person, my coworkers are sweethearts, and despite it being kinda crazy in there, I’m enjoying being there, and getting to learn every day. More importantly, I’m dealing with my anxiety of talking to new people, or going new places, or y’know, just being with strangers. And, y’know, just working with what I’m studying & what I like gives me a sense of ‘you’re doing good’. 

So, my religion. Like I said, I got started in 2016, improved in 2017, but 2018 has been the year where I really felt my religion. I’ve felt home ever since I got started, like this is what I’m supposed to be doing, like that feeling of coming home, and this year really showed me that, yes, I’m definitely where I’m supposed to be. I finally know what is like to experience a love so pure, that it can bring me to tears. I’ve always felt broken knowing Christianity wasn’t for me, always felt bad that I couldn’t feel what my mom felt for her God, for example. But now I do, now I understand that my mother’s God isn’t mine, and that this love I searched for was there, all my life, I just had to find it. I adore my gods, and I’m thankful for them all day, I’m grateful for them being in my life, I’m grateful for their love. That was also the highlight of my year: knowing they’re there for me.

This year was quite strange too, nothing is made of rose petals, of course. We had a terrible election in Brazil, and I fear for what will come after January 1st. I’m terrified for me, for my family, for my country. My 2 years old cat went missing weeks before my birthday, and still haven’t returned; I know he will tho. Some of the friendships I’ve thought would last me for life ended, or we got distant, but I know some things aren’t meant to last and I’m okay with that now. My grandma, just a few days before me writing this, almost died. She went through a very bad surgery, and I spent the night with my mom, aunt and uncle, at the hospital, praying she’d survive. She did, she’s doing better, she will get better, but that was probably the scariest experience I’ve had this entire year.

Also, I got one more cat. After Sonne went missing, I was awful. My dad found this tiny black kitten lost, and he brought it to me. Asche is probably the exact opposite of Sonne, who was this sassy little boy. Asche is a sweetheart, and is always in the same room as we are. Sonne will be back, I’m certain of that.

Back on friendships, I’m very thankful for the friends I made this year, for the ones that didn’t leave, and in special, my best friend of many years. We had a fall out due to my depression, but our friendship is back just how it used to be, and I’m very grateful for him for putting up with me and being there even when I’m a little shit lol. I’m grateful for Lily, and for how our friendship is strong as ever, for my bandmates, who are always there for me too, and for the friends that put up with me talking about Richard (and Ares @ Steph and Karla lol) all the damn time. 

About the piano thing, my dad got a keyboard, somewhere between mid 2017 and the beginning of 2018 (I’m really bad with dates, so) and I managed to play the first part of Für Elise, and I know it’s fairly simple and easy, but I love Beethoven, and being able to play it within two days of my dad getting that keyboard made me very proud of myself. I ended up not practicing anymore, and my dad’s friend borrowed the keyboard from him. 

2018 was definitely a year of growth for me, about learning, getting better, facing fears, about new beginnings and letting go of things that are not good for me. I cried a lot, but I was happy a lot. I consider it an amazing year, to be quite honest, and I know 2019 will be even better. 

As I did for 2016, here are some things I want to accomplish in 2019:

I hope to have at least intermediate German. I’m almost there, but not yet.

I’ll focus on the guitar, and won’t let my frustration burn me out.

Exercise more and get a better sleep schedule.

Focus more on college, this last semester was very tough.

Do more things I usually wouldn’t, like going out to do something on my own, and hopefully being to drive by myself.

Read & write more, or at least more than I did in 2018.

Watch more movies, strike a few from my list.

Meet more people, go out more.

Be more organized.

Focus on my religion & study more, try to keep a consistent schedule and all that.

Find a hobby that will help me relax, something that I can do without pushing myself too much, because I frustrate myself a lot.

And yeah, those are a few I can remember right now, might add some more in the future. Hopefully, I strike all of those out by the time I’m writing my year review of 2019 haha. It’s gonna be a good year, I can feel that, man.

[queerloquial]

1. First game you played obsessively?2. A game that has influenced you creatively? Writing, drawing, etc.11. Have you ever made new friends from playing video games?36. Have you ever shed actual blood, sweat or tears over a game?48. How long does it take your to customize your player character?50. If you were a game designer, what masterpiece would you create?69. In your opinion, best game ever made?

1. First game you played obsessively?

babys first video game and major special interest, skyrim. which i currently have roughly 1500-plus hours on between regular and special edition

2. A game that has influenced you creatively? Writing, drawing, etc.

the vast majority of my fic has been for dragon age. its just such a neat world and i love getting to play around in it, even though i dislike a lot of what biowares done with their own setting in later pieces and prefer to sandbox on my own

11. Have you ever made new friends from playing video games?

well first of all, dragon age brought me to the love of my life, so jot that down :>

second, aside from my darling datemate, video game fandom did land me some awesome mutuals, a number of whom are still around years later even though we share almost no interests and barely ever interact. technically quinns the only one who could be defined as a friend, bc we talk fairly regularly and stuff, but aside from the occasional reply to personal posts most of my mutuals are silent but still dear to my heart

36. Have you ever shed actual blood, sweat or tears over a game?

when i get frustrated i tend to slam my hand down beside me or on my knee but one time i misjudged the landing spot and caught my hand on the edge of my laptop and scraped my hand, does that count

48. How long does it take your to customize your player character?

chargen takes an hour, minimum, and thats if im familiar with the cc and have a character in mind already

50. If you were a game designer, what masterpiece would you create?

dudebruh, idk. the first thing in my head was ‘ace and aro friendly romance/qplatonic relationship arcs’ and ‘canon nonbinary characters’, so i guess thats a thing. ive never been particularly good at plots (hence, why all my fic is one-shot fluff...), altho i did once have an ongoing story in my head about a fallen god trying to get back to the overworld to stop the ruling goddess from destroying everything, and maybe in the process clear his name with the mortals who had hated and feared him for centuries if not millenia bc the goddess had warped the legends to reverse their roles and paint him as the callous self-centered destroyer instead of the literal author of life whose job had been to keep the record books of history so that no soul faded from eternal memory

maybe something with that

69. In your opinion, best game ever made?

uhhhh. shit. i mean theyve all got high and low points, and some i like more for the sandbox they gave me than for anything in canon. i like dragon age: origins and da2, but dao is tedious to replay and i feel like in order to get my ideal ending in 2 i have to trawl the wiki and plan out all my dialogue choices and party constructions for each quest before i start playing. inquisition is pretty and i liked the story i crafted with my lavellan (and also being a knight enchanter, even after the nerf its still super powerful with the right skills picked), but it doesnt really fit other ocs and the first several hours are a drag to play

ive enjoyed what ive played of andromeda so far, although it really couldve benefited from more development time and care from the parent company. i liked me1 and what ive completed of 2, though im terrible at combat, and dont often have the spoons for the level of concentration needed to pay attention to plot things (which is why i like exploration-heavy games, tbh)

fallout 4 is one of my favorites, id say. i tried new vegas, with two different characters,and just couldnt get into it. i think my biggest problem with 4 is that it kinda forces you into a specific character at certain points (ranging from having a nuclear family at the start and automatic attachment to your spouse and child, to being limited in good options in nuka world, down to the very trivial bit in the bradberton quest where you can only object to letting him live bc then you dont get cool weapons, and not bc /hes been living essentially in solitary confinement for 200 years/ and wants to rest, which i only remember so strongly bc i was going through my screenshots the other night and got grumpy about it all over again)

saints row is a series i like almost exclusively for the sandbox. my boss’ life follows maybe 10% of game canon; it might as well be an original work that just happens to have cities called stilwater and steelport and a gang known as the saints

dream daddy was cute and fun (and i Love damian and mary, and also amanda, best daughter), skyrim is my longest-running game and i enjoyed oblivion as well, starbound fulfills my need for mindless exploration and resource hoarding without the need for any plot or direction, stardew valley is adorable and lets me be a polyamorous bi nerdlord with a sweet farm...

i cant really pick a favorite tbh

[ocalaghan]

Hello, lurker who has always quite liked your writing. Sort of want you to do all the fanfic asks because I am nosy lol. But if you don't want to do that then 📊🖊️

this one made me all 🥺🥺 thanks yo i'll do all the ones i haven't done yet

😐 What embarrasses you most about your own writing?

ummm. i think... maybe how dramatic but also straight-up unrealistic some of my older work is? like rescue me is ridiculous.

👻 What is one WIP you think you may never pick back up?

ooooh. probably the half-finished baradine fics. partly bc i feel disillusioned by jack barakat as a whole rn and don't know if that will ever go away, and partly bc i don't feel the same way about the ship as i used to. it was a sweet fantasy for me for many years and i think aesthetically they would make a good couple but i've always been garbage at writing het fics and now i feel even less of a pull to finish them soooooo... they might never see the light of day.

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

i have died every day waiting for you, got forever to spend with me on a fool's holiday, and you could say that your demons excite me

✏️ Do you write every day?

LMAO. i actually haven't written in forever. maybe since pre-pandemic? no that's probably not true but i did write very little since the start of covid. i wrote a bit of a fic for the first time in sooooo long the other night. normally i would go through periods of writing one week and then not the next but this is probably THE longest writing break i have ever taken.

🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP.

😐😐 enjoy (this isn't really 'current' but whatever)

It’s hard to tell what John feels after we fuck though. Or even before. During, it’s different, but sex is sex and the high makes him clingy.

“We still on for Saturday?” John’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts of iniquity, and I look at him for a moment before it registers what he’s said.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah, man, Saturday’s still good,” I nod.

The edge of John’s mouth quirks into a smile, perfectly aligned teeth almost gleaming at me. “You ever gonna pass that back?”

I realise the joint is still burning away between my fingers, and I laugh, taking one more quick draw before I give it to him. Our fingers brush as I pass it, and I feel my skin tingling. Our eyes meet when he breathes in the smoke, and I know he’s picturing me naked.

Yeah. Saturday’s still good.

🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc).

the fact that i actually wrote anything at all lol

😈 Is there anything you enjoy doing that you think your readers hate?

using certain smut words that probably make some people cringe lol

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

i... do not know what those words mean

📊 Current number of WIPs

i'm literally not even going to count this bc i would need to go get my usb stick. i'm gonna say about 50.

👨‍👧‍👧 Do you tell people in real life that you write fic?

yes! a lot of my friends know and some have read them. some of my friends wrote fic years ago too. and my boyfriend's read some of my work as well.

🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?

the himym cast!

📝 What is one growth area you have for your writing?

good question. it's been so long that i'd probably say all of it. i feel a little rusty.

📚 Do you read your own fic?

yeah. i like to look back on it and i tend to re-read it several times after i've posted it at different points.

🌈 What inspired you to write [insert fic here]?

cannot really answer dis one, i need y'all to pick a title heh

🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic?

honestly? the filler parts. i get bored and just want to do all the exciting bits but it all needs to connect and make sense lol.

��� Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

definitely. probably on something porn-esque for kink fic ngl.

✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.

effervescent. peculiar. warm.

💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

uhhhhh. for a specific story? not really sure how to answer tbh. is it a headcanon if it's your own fic? lol.

🍰 Name one of your fave comfort fics (doesn’t have to be your all time fave).

for ages it was stuttering. don't know if i have one these days?

⏰ Do you spend more time reading fic, writing fic, or do you do both equally?

neither at this current moment lol. but overall, writing.

💋 [Freeform - what is something you want to know about one of poster’s fics?]

also would need y'all to specify on this one. but overall, thanku for asking me! Xo

fanfic ask game (the movie, the sequel)

[binarytinker-a-blog]

really  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY.     RULES.  repost ,   don’t  reblog  !    tag  10  ! good  luck  !     TAGGED.  @vrepit-sa     TAGGING. @shurimanisms, @flareforged, @greenestxpaladin and tbh i can’t be arsed to tag more after all th a t

BASICS.

FULL  NAME :  Katie Holt / Pidge Gunderson NICKNAME :   Katie / Pidge AGE :  fourteen BIRTHDAY :   unknown ETHNIC  GROUP :  caucasian (the holts are probably some complete disaster of lineage lbrh) NATIONALITY :   american. LANGUAGE / S : english, morse, binary if she thought about it, a scattering of several different programming languages (nothing low-level like assembly languages though), a smattering of altean quite literally scared into her SEXUAL  ORIENTATION :  asexual. ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION :  might be aro? tbh she’d be happy with just someone to sit and do tech/geek things with so yeah, aro makes perfect sense. RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :   nope HOME  TOWN / AREA :  is central northern america a thing because that’s the feeling i got from the little we saw of the holt’s plae. CURRENT  HOME :   the castle of lions PROFESSION :  general technologist? of the paladins, stealth and infiltration

PHYSICAL.

SKIN:  very pale, easy to sunburn but still a healthy shade despite how much time she spends indoors/out of sunlight EYES :   highkey amber, gold in the sunlight and almost brown along the inner edges. FACE :  it’s round and soft, but also thinly lined, easy enough for her to be mistaken as a boy (and used very well against the Garrison) LIPS :   they’re the kind that don’t reveal their curves until she grins, cheshire in manner in that they don’t draw attention away from her face. they’re thin but not to the point of not existing. COMPLEXION :  surprisingly, given her age and habits, pidge’s face remains pretty clean and clear. BLEMISHES :   any birthmarks she has are tiny and hard to notice unless you’re looking for them. for the longest time, she’d had one on the arch of her foot, but it faded away at some point during her childhood and almost none of her others have. SCARS :  she’s got a couple fine lines on her hands (old motherboards were notorious for having sharp solder points on the underside and pidge has torn her hands up on quite a few during disassembly). from taking apart tech on earth. she’s thus far managed to avoid collecting new ones since becoming the green paladin. TATTOOS :  n/a. HEIGHT :   5′2 ? i think WEIGHT :   she probably weighs 110lbs soaking wet. BUILD :   her build is slim, very nondescript. the curve to her waist and hips are easily hidden in clothing and any curve to her upper body disappears once she’s geared up. FEATURES :   glasses. round ones that perch on the tip of her nose and manage to serve as a way she can look severely at someone without being blind. ALLERGIES :   greening the cube doesn’t give any details, but i imagine pidge deals with quite a few allergies to outdoors environments; pollen from multiple sources, making it difficult, if not impossible, for there to be a season that affects her less than normal USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  she brushes her hair, but otherwise leaves it be, letting it be a slightly messy mop that hangs around her face. USUAL  FACE  LOOK :   n/a USUAL  CLOTHING :   if not in her armor, pidge prefers loosely fitting clothing for ease of movement, but doesn’t have much preference for the colors of such.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S :   she doesn’t have specific fears, mostly, but at this point in time, she’s scared to death of not being able to find her father and brother. scared of finding out that they died. scared of not being able to put her family together. scared of losing the family she’s made in the castle. ASPIRATION / S :   she wants to find her father and brother, yes, she wants to go home, but... she also wants to see the universe. she wants to explore. she wants to see what’s out there. POSITIVE  TRAITS :   intelligent | excitable | quick-witted NEGATIVE  TRAITS :   stubborn | irritable | insensitive MBTI :   Logician (INTP-A) ZODIAC :   gemini? i think? it fits, anyway, so i’ll keep it for now TEMPEREMENT :   melancholic. SOUL  TYPE / S :   thinkier | hunter | helper ANIMALS :   beaver. VICE  HABIT / S :    picking her fingernails, chewing on the ends of pens while thinking, absently picking at scabs or new calluses. FAITH :  theistic but not ascribing to a religion? GHOSTS ? :   until there’s proof, nope AFTERLIFE ? :   ^ see above. REINCARNATION ? :   maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, no one knows yet ALIENS ? :   voltron is literally an alien weapon piloted by five. POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  not the galran empire. EDUCATION  LEVEL :    probably took some college level courses for kicks and grins before getting into the garrison. probably lied about her age for the garrison; definitely dealt with college level classes there.

FAMILY.

FATHER :   samuel holt MOTHER :   colleen holt SIBLINGS :   matt holt EXTENDED  FAMILY :   unknown NAME  MEANING / S :    katie is diminutive of kate/katherine, most commonly means pure. holt comes from wold/wald, and means a small forest or forested upland. pidge is likely a borrowed slang word short for “pigeon hole”, a place for messages to be left for later/a home for a pigeon. gunderson is a patronymic name derived from several different sources, but “son of "gondri" or "gundric", a once common old French personal name from the germanic elements "gund", battle and "ric", poser” is the commonly accepted meaning. HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? :   old english for katie holt, norwegian/german/french for gunderson

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  she can’t just pick one. pidge had a library of books she left behind at home. it’s a combination of scifi, fantasy, and textbooks. she has a handful of in-depth guides for common linux/unix distros and for android in general. MOVIE :   again, she can’t just pick one. while her movies are as varied in interest as her books, katie didn’t keep nearly as much of a collection. 5  SONGS :  considering her music library spans several tens of gb, there’s no way to pick five to be favorites. it varies from month to month DEITY :   n/a. HOLIDAY :   she’s always loved christmas. snow outside, the windows frosted over, hot chocolate in hands. she and matt deep in concentration over some project or another MONTH :   december SEASON :   if she had to pick, she didn’t mind fall and early spring. her allergies kicked up a mighty fuss, but the weather was nice. PLACE :    green’s hangar. WEATHER :   even though pidge didn’t mind typical fall/spring weather, she much prefers the dark clouds and heavy rains. it’s soothing to ear the rain pouring down while she curls up with her newest project. SOUND :   rain on the roof over her head, the gentle hum of a computer well functioning, that single solitary bios confirmation beep. SCENT / S :    you know that smell when you first open a package of electronics? it’s crisp and almost burns the nose, but not quite, and quickly fades as you maneuver it into a system. a book freshly opened after being on a shelf for years, the dust, aging paper, and ink. petrichor. TASTE / S :    fresh strawberries, just red and not quite overly sweet yet, milk chocolate FEEL / S :   smooth and cold, machined metals emblazoned with coppers and plastics, faint vibrations under fingertips as a fan whirls to speed or a motor settles into a steady rotation. ANIMAL / S :    cats. felines in general. NUMBER :  she likes too many numbers, but to fall back on anything would be ones and zeros. COLORS :   golds and greens, dusk meeting a forest as the sky fades from orange to dark blue-violet. the stars shining in the sky.

EXTRA.

TALENTS :  hand to hand combat, computers and their defenses, stealth, understanding the gist of unfamiliar systems in moments. BAD  AT :  being sensitive of other people’s feelings, being tactful. TURN  ONS :  lmao what TURN  OFFS :   see above HOBBIES :    writing programs, modifying green, dissecting altean and galra tech to find out how they work, find out if she can make them work for her, and reassembling them to find out if she can make them work again TROPES :   deadpan snarker, hollywood hacking (something i’ll try not to overboard on bc i actually Hate it), motor mouth, military brat, teen genius QUOTES :     “I know.”, “That’s me.”, “Nice work, Tailor.”, “I got him! [beat] I don’t got him!”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?           A1 :  honestly? it wouldn’t be chronological. it’d be bits of life, scenes you’d see in passing. moments of bonding between her and her teammates, moments of family time, little background things. i love just seeing a peek into lives. not the whole life, just.... bits and pieces, parts of the whole that make the whole easier to understand. Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?           A2 :   it probably wouldn’t make much sense put together. a mishmash of anything and everything under the sun, from enigma to icon for hire to linkin park i guess Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?           A3 :   i got hooked on voltron. binged the first season. binged the second the day it came out. started rewatching it with the bf, decided to take the plunge Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?           A4 :   a tech geek. a tech geek that was, yes, still somewhat stereotypical but not made fun of. mostly just a tech geek. and then the girl bomb right as i decided ‘ok so pidge is a really girly looking guy’ and that was it  it was over i was caught Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.           A5 :   i actually.... like pidge just fine the way she is Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?           A6 :   too much. though she’s probably smarter than i am (i can bs a lot of her basic knowledge though..... soon. ) Q7 :   how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?           A7 :    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Q8 :   what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?         A8 :    almost any character. pidge will run her mouth if talking with fellow tech geeks, probably still will with people who aren’t tech geeks, tends to ask too many questions even of people she probably shouldn’t be too friendly with (sendak). Q9 :   what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?         A9 :   right now? everything. engima’s ‘the gate’ is what kickstarted it all, so there’s a lot of that in her specific writing playlist. Q10 :   how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?           A10 :   two hours lm a o i get easily sidetracked.