#for the record I’m not saying like. don’t heal from your trauma or anything

[dyelwi]

I’m not on Twitter so I don’t see a lot of negative things about Athena. How exactly are people ableist to her? /gq (I don’t doubt it, I’m curious though 😅)

Hi, yeah I feel like going on that rant now lol. Gonna clarify first that this isn’t some Big New Discourse, rather it’s just an observation I’ve personally made from seeing the way people talk about Athena, especially on Twitter but here to an extent as well. Putting this under a read more because it got VERY long. It’s sort of a character analysis and sort of a fandom analysis??? Idk lol.

Athena is mentally disabled. This is heavily implied at LEAST, though I’d say it’s straight up canon. Even if you don’t subscribe to the common interpretation of some of her experiences (sensory issues, trouble communicating especially when young but even in the present to an extent, her relating to robots more than people as a child) it’s clear that these things actively disabled her at the very least as a child. There’s some bigger posts going more into how autism coded she is but that’s actually not even what I see people being ableist about!

Even if you look at her and think that the autism is just a headcanon, it’s pretty undeniable that she has severe trauma that presents much like PTSD, especially with how the main symptoms she displays are flashbacks and repressing memories of the trauma, which I wanted to note are actually real things that happen but are used in fiction especially often to portray severe trauma. PTSD is a mental disorder that most agree on as a disability from what I’ve seen (phrased this way because there’s no real list of what disorders are and aren’t a disability, it matters more how it impacts an individual, but PTSD often impacts people in ways that are disabling) and sure enough we see that it disables Athena.

Athena has trauma specifically surrounding murder and court trials. And she works as a defense attorney!!! This is important because it means she is frequently around things that trigger her (in the way the word is meant to be used, not the meme-y way people sometimes use it). It’s like if Edgeworth became an elevator repair guy or something. And sure enough, we see her struggle because of her trauma being triggered. This is something that happens not only in ace attorney 5, the game which most explores her trauma, but also to an extent in ace attorney 6 when Nahyuta basically tries to bully her out of defending Bucky (I love Nahyuta but this is not his nicest moment lol). She begins to question if she really can do a case by herself. She hears the feelings of everyone in the room (if you want to bring the likely autism into it, this is a point for that as she’s having some sensory overload), and she reaches perhaps one of her lowest points in the case. She is struggling, due to her disability(-ies if we include likely autism) because Nahyuta and the gallery (more so their emotions she heard but same thing) triggered her. You could argue she doesn’t like go into full panic flashback mode here but to me at least, this doesn’t mean she isn’t struggling or that she isn’t triggered. She’s probably been able to start healing after aa5 after all. Regardless of that, even Simon specifically says that Nahyuta is using her hearing abilities against her to try to win, so if you’re considering the autism as an aspect of this that feels like more than enough. And so, Simon Blackquill, who sees one of his closest ever friends struggling in protecting something he cares about, steps in to help as her assistant.

People hate this. And I was surprised when I learned that. Simon is one of my favorite characters and one of my favorite parts of this case. But people apparently blame misogyny for him coming to help her, when if we’re looking at this from the perspective of the ace attorney writers they clearly just wanted to give Simon some (deserved) screentime and use the typical ace attorney setup where there’s a character assisting the defense attorney. It was weird going into this that Athena was alone, quite frankly, as that only happens on rare occasions in the ace attorney formula. Athena is not being treated as a pathetic woman that needs help when other characters wouldn’t. The other defense attorneys in this series need help rather often actually. And Athena is a defense attorney in an ace attorney game. And in-universe, she is a disabled person working in an environment where she is constantly at risk of her disability, well…. Disabling her. And I think most people would argue that disabled people needing help isn’t a bad thing! But for some reason, people refuse to give Athena the same grace they’ve given other characters in the past who weren’t even in as triggering of situations as she was in this moment.

And so people talk about their dream Athena-led cases, where she needs no assistant. I understand where they’re coming from, if you can’t tell I’m a HUGE Athena fan and I want to see her character grow and develop, I want to see her get her own game. But often people really like to talk about the idea of her not needing help, being able to do a case on her own. Not only is this rare and difficult for the average ace attorney defense lawyer, but it begins to feel a lot like when, in the real world, people try to convince disabled people to work through their disability or push the idea that growing and being their best self doesn’t involve accommodations. This is generally accepted to be a pretty shitty and ableist way to look at disabled people that is often tied to what people mean when talking about how people can treat overcoming disability as a sort of inspiration porn. When people say that Athena should be able to defend on her own and imply that this would make her better somehow, it feels like they’re saying that in order to be better at their jobs disabled people should just get over their disabilities to be stronger. Which I know is not something a lot of people that say these things about Athena would actually agree with! I don’t think people are doing this maliciously. But I wish people understood that this is what I hear when they say these things, as someone with multiple mental disabilities myself.

I relate to Athena a lot. I have, since her introduction, seen myself in her more than I have almost any other fictional character. And I wish people understood that what they imply when they talk about her like this can hurt a bit. I worry a lot about being able to do my future career effectively (I’m a college student rn hence the future part) and so to hear people imply these things about Athena?? I feel it by extension. You can say I’m just projecting or whatever, I don’t care, but I think people need to understand that disability is a big part of Athena’s character and that how they think about her can reflect some subtle, unconscious thoughts and feelings they may have about people like her that exist in the real world. I know ace attorney is just a video game series. I know that it’s typical of writers to treat things like this as something a character will push past to become stronger. But it’s a bit disheartening to hear so many people agree all the time, especially when the game itself hasn’t even done that with Athena’s arc, at least not yet.

tldr Athena is a victim of fandom ableism more than writer misogyny in this specific aspect surrounding her capabilities as a defense attorney who is written as a disabled character and who exists within the ace attorney setup

[rise-my-angel]

Heart of the Great Wolf

Fresh Heals of Old Pain

Pairing: Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader

Length: 21.7k

Warnings: angst/hurt comfort, references to past sexual abuse, insecurities and trauma exploration, encouragment of cheating/infidelity, commuication failures, unhealthy alcohol consumption, smut, car sex, exhibitionism, oral (f receiving), p in v

Notes: A continuation of my modern!au 'Woes of a Modern Day Love' References to that will be present, but reading that to understand this are not necessary. Previous Installment Here, Series Masterlist Here

If one was to ask him how felt with every ounce of honesty in his chest, Jon Snow would’ve said that sitting there felt akin to a death sentence. As if things were not yet bad enough, the coming company had made complaints that it was going to be far too cold for the approaching party and thus the temperature all throughout the buildings of Castle Black were warm. Far too warm for a group full of men dressed in black uniforms, some made with fine leathers. Then there had been the humiliating act of having to store away all of their weapons as if they were children, as the newcomer did not appreciate strangers yielding weaponry in their presence.

Then came the rules, don’t ask this, don’t speak unless spoken to, don’t step out of line, don’t mention this or that, most of all as Lord Commander Mormont had put it, “The Nights Watch has traditionally been an ancient order sworn, steering clear of the politics of the Seven Kingdoms, and so for these next coming weeks, we will uphold that no matter how much you hate doing it. I don’t care what any of you do or say at home, just don’t do it here.” That had a number of eyes looking between one another.

Before at least Edd had spoken up from where he sat next to Jon with his usual low, and unserious droll. “You planning on leading by example on that one, Lord Commander?” Most of the brothers all chuckled, the Old Bear himself included.

Affirming that he was, but not without a clarification to set the record straight. “I’m not saying that we are going to lick their boots, but be on your best behaviour. We are not allowing them here to make friends, only avoid making an enemy. One week, don’t do anything stupid and it’ll all be over with.”

Still Jon thought, this was an unfair and cruel way to die. Or at least it had felt like he was dying for hours now. His phone going off when it was still dark out this morning, saying that he needed to come in for this meeting, and Jon had all but snapped at the caller with a rough tone husking out in a very impatient anger of what they wanted without even looking at the number. It could only have been a call to come in, vibrating against his night side table over and over and Jon had been unreasonably angry about having to answer it, let alone get up then and there to come in.

Jon had just managed to kiss a path down to drink between your legs, the hope you would wake up just before he would make you cum, when he was told to come in. For this of all meetings.

Finally though, as the meeting dissipated, Jon found himself now in the kitchens by the mostly empty dining hall waiting for the inevitable approach of one of his brothers coming to ask what had him so worked up. He knew his face sat in a permanent scowl the whole morning, and as he grabbed the coffee only lukewarm left did each action have him slamming something either back into place or onto the counter.

He had not supposed to be here today, it was all planned out to not be here. If staying here in the temporary quiet in the kitchens, Jon might be able to have closed his eyes and gone back to the night before. Jon had finally convinced you to come out with him to meet some of his friends from North of the Wall. You had avoided it for weeks, saying that you weren’t sure you were the right person to fit in with them, only for Jon to argue that most of them all hated his guts for years. “If they like me now after all that, they’ll love you right away.”

The nerves had gotten to you, on the drive to the bar Tormund had told Jon they would all meet at, you had been rather quiet. Fingertips tapping against the side of the car your hand rested on with an incessant pattern, each time Jon would glance to you when he knew you didn’t know he was looking you’d have that tense clench in your jaw as if you were biting down hard on your tongue. Which Jon knew you probably were. More then once you had not so subtly glanced down to your clothes or eyes flickering to the side mirrors as if to judge how you had looked again.

Jon didn’t blame you though, it hadn’t exactly been very long. Jon had known you for so many years, since you were children, but this between you was incredibly new in comparison. You had struggled to adjust to being in a relationship with Jon more then he’d seen you struggle to get used to any of the vile men you dated before. So often when alone with him you seemed as if you were unsure how to act at times, and you apologized more then he’s ever heard someone in his life.

Maybe if he was only taking you to see the others you already knew, you’d be more at ease. You knew Grenn and Pyp, you knew Edd and Sam, and of course if Sam had been there so would Gilly and you’d have at least one person more like you to relax with. But as much as the free folk Jon knew wanted to meet you already, Jon knew you did not have a great history with spending time with the friends of men in the Nights Watch. It felt a lifetime ago the day Jon had picked you up from Karl Tanners house and finally brought you home, when not even a year had passed. It had been only three months since the incident with Ramsay Bolton, and only now coming close to a month and a half since you had been with Jon.

But you had nothing to be nervous about, and he loved watching why.

For a while he had watched you across the room with Karsi and a few others. Them showing you a quite unorthodox version of billiards that had you laughing along with them at how aggressive the competition had gotten. During dinner Tormund had been quick to throw teases and jesting insults your way to test how well you could withstand it and you had hurled them right back with an even dryer tone of voice with ease.

Jon and him had been sitting at the table still, drinks in hand as they discussed you. Having mentioned to them the ex boyfriends you used to have, Tormund now that you were away begun to pry most of the details from him. “Oh I knew Tanner. Little fucker he is. Wouldn’t surprise me if he shared her around to those other creeps who were always with him. What was it, Locke and...” Gesturing vaguely in the air reaching in his memory. “You know, the one with the face like a ball sack.”

“Rast.”

Snapping his fingers, Tormund got back around. “Thats the one.” Asking in a low roughness, Jon asked what he meant by share and Tormunds answer had only made Jons hands clench tight enough one could see the strain in his knuckles. “Would pass around our women when they used to come into our territory, and those were all women who could fight back men like that. Can’t imagine she has any size to fight back if Tanner would tell her to get on her knees for his friends-” Jon interrupted with a gruff warning of his name but Tormund passed by it, “You asked what I meant. I told you.”

Only quiet for a second before Jon gritted out, “If he did that to her, why wouldn’t she tell me about it?”

But it was not Tormund who answered. You still over with a few of the others, Karsi had come over obviously hearing the ends of the discussion. “Why would she?” Sitting down, she nodded to the barmen giving her an asking look of wanting another ale, before looking back to Jon. “Her last man knocked her around in the same house as you and she took off for days to avoid talking about it. Do you really think she is going to now admit even worse shit happened to her when she lived hours away from you?”

Jons eyes glanced back over to you, still blissfully unaware of the conversation he was having. The alcohol in your system had given you a buzz, allowing you the freedom and a lack of insecurity to laugh and smile more. Rasping out somewhat muffled into taking sip, “I’m not talking about this anymore.” Both Karsi and Tormund had asked why, and Jon had just slammed the drink down as he pushed himself up without another word. Knowing at least, these people of anyone took no offence to his sudden turn.

He had come up behind you, his hands pulling you back into him by your hips as he leaned down to your ear. Saying he wanted to head home while he was still sober enough to drive you. In reality, by the time Jon had gotten out of the parking lot, he had found a dark side dirt road to pull to the side off before all but dragging you into his lap.

Jon hadn’t asked you about what Tormund or Karsi put in his head, all he could focus on in that moment the second he turned to glance at you was how men like Ramsay and Tanner had no right treating you anywhere close to that way. Jon had only been with you for a little over a month, and even though he had known you most of his life, he knew it was way too soon to tell you he loves you. But that hadn’t meant Jon didn’t pull over almost right away, drag you onto his lap and steal every bit of air in your lungs with his kiss.

The moment you had turned to ask him if somewhat was wrong, did Jon lean over and drag your lips to his. Not sparing a moment, you held onto him as he deepened his kiss without thought. Biting at your lips and sliding his tongue inside your mouth the moment you had gasped at the feeling. Pulling back to just your lips, teeth, tongue all over again, different patterns and lengths of time until you nearly gasped desperate for air as he just barley pulled from your lips. Moving everything from the way in a second, the moment there was room for you, did Jon nearly lunge over and haul you over onto his lap.

Cupping the back of your neck to kiss you again, your hands reached around the back of his neck, only able to hold onto the ride, knowing you couldn’t even move if not his will. Only one hand needed to pull his cock out, already hard and thick, Jon also then pulled from your lips. Looking down to pull up the skirt of your dress enough and almost angrily tore at your underwear until it was in tatters at the bottom of his front seat.

Jons car was not a place he was good at taking his time, and he knew it. Sinking you down on his cock, Jon groaned deeply as you cried out. He was not kind, moving you as if against your will, you held on. Being bounced on his thick length, you were ruining him. Only tiny little sounds coming from you over and over unable to keep your eyes open as Jon felt angry he couldn't watch himself sink inside of you.

Slowing enough, Jon took over. Yanking your shirt up and off your chest, leaving your breasts out for him as he grabbed your hips again. That time, you both knew with your own embarrassment, Jon was watching your breasts as he bounced you on his cock. You were soaking and warm and so tight around him, each clench making it worse, having to fuck up into your harder.

Murmuring in a low rasp as his hands dragged you up and down his length that he wanted to try something new, he wanted to wake you up with his mouth. You had asked breathlessly if he meant the next morning and Jon had rasped out, “Any morning.” You had dropped your head into his shoulder with such a shy nod it had him throbbing inside of you, and Jon pulled you back to his lips knowing he was going to make you cum as he tasted you to wake you up come sunrise.

Your orgasm shattered around you, holding tightly onto him as he fucked you through it, but something in Jons mind through the alcohol in both your systems had snapped. Pulling you from his kiss, Jon looked you up and down. “Lay down.” A breathless ask of what, Jon was almost looking in an anger with his sternness. “In the back, you’re going to lay out for me.”

Pulling you off of him, Jon ensured you carefully without hurting yourself could climb into the back seat before he tucked himself back. Leaving the car with a rough slam of his door, Jons eyes scoured the no one going by, and thought, even if they did, let them look.

Opening the back door, Jon had spared no time in pulling your skirt right off of you as you gasped in suprise. Leaving you bare in his back seat, Jon climbed up over you, slamming and locking the door behind him. A look up the other doors too were locked. There was so little room back here but thats what he wanted. He wanted to have you close and warm against him, even moreso with your bare form below against him fully dressed.

Kissing you again, your hands wound around his neck and holding onto his hair, Jon biting roughly at your bottom lip before shifting slightly. Partially on the ground Jon yanked your leg open wide. Kissing from your calf up to your knee and growing greedy and almost sloppy as his lips dragged up your thigh. Dark eyes watching yours the whole time before he had you out on an obscene display in his car for him. Mouth feasting upon your cunt with a greed, tongue against your clit before sucking the bundle of nerves with such a sudden roughness that you were utterly soaking his mouth already. Out of nowhere Jon dragged an orgasm from you, sinking down more to drink deep from you, a growl in his chest as you came on his tongue. One to the next his mouth brought you too before as you just barley were to cum again he tore his mouth from you.

Your eyes still closed barley catching your breath did Jon pull his cock back out as it strained painful confined against his jeans. Moving again to hover over you, yanking a thigh high up in his hip did Jon run his thumb tight over your clit, rasping roughly as he stared at your eyes barley able to even meet his in the moonlight. “Come on, darling, come on.” Just as your orgasm waved over you, did Jon sink inside of you.

In truth, it took not long for him to follow. A fast pace he couldn’t possibly keep up when you both were this worked up and not sober, but he was rough. No doubt leaving a sting between your legs as the car echoed every sound back to your ears of your cries and his grunts, and fully dressed his clothes scratched at your inner thighs. Pounding so deeply inside, truly Jon had spilled inside of you before he knew it.

Roughly kissing you all the while his hips sunk again and again into yours as he came. By the time Jon got you home, he had fallen asleep unable to let the ecstatic feeling leave his bones, that when he woke up first the next morning, Jon was going to kiss down your body, spread your legs again and drink deeply from your cunt until you woke up, and only then when you came for him awake would Jon sink inside you all over again.

Instead he was here, at the Wall in the now too hot building as every taste of the coffee he drank almost was bitter in comparison to what he truly had wanted that morning and it only made him more angry. The reasons why unknown, but even the Old Bear had picked up on his tenseness. “I’ve never quite seen anyone treat that coffee maker like they hate it as much as you do, Snow.”

A harsh swallow to finish what was left in his mug, he sat it down with a clench back in his jaw. “I apologize-”

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your future paycheck that will be taken out of to pay for a new one if you break the damn thing.” Barley a half smirk came across his face, and luckily, the man was smart enough when not to press Jon when this in a mood.

He had the option to leave, approaching his desk Jon considered he idea of going home now very tempting, knowing he’d have you alone for hours. But when he had gotten to his desk, computer off, Jon had glanced to his phone and saw nothing from you yet. Normally when he left you a note if he left earlier then you woke up, you’d text him your response so he knows you read it. Nothing. It was nearly noon, you’d be awake no doubt. But he had nothing. You had posted nothing anywhere either, normally at least replying to someone’s post online out of the hundreds of people you seemed to know. And when he texted you twice, you still didn’t respond.

So Jon turned his computer on, he’d write his report until you did and then he’d finally head out to his car. Or that was his plan. Opening up his browser though, the news story posted all over the main page told him exactly why you didn’t respond, and he felt a dread at not having put it together before. If he wasn’t looking forward to the so called “guest” coming to visit Castle Black before, he certainly was looking forward to it even less now. He knew who was visiting here, but not why they were in Westeros, until now.

“Daenerys Targaryean lands in Westeros, the first challenge against House Baratheon’s governance in three hundred years.”

Pulling into the driveway, the moment Jon stepped from the car did Ghost come barrelling his way. Knocking him nearly over with his enthusiasm as he kneeled down, hands running over his white fur with an affection shining in his eyes and smile. “I know. I missed you too, boy.” Standing up, Jon glanced up to where he could see your window from the side of the house. Your light off, but he knew Robb and Theon weren’t back yet either. Looking down with your name on his lips Jon asked, “Where is she?”

That was when a small whine left the direwolf as Jon nodded for him to show where you were. Out by the back of the property, there was a variety of spaces laid out as if once a great courtyard of a grander manor now split into many buildings and homes. Right up by a cliffside against a path leading up to the wolfswood was a small sitting area not often used by any of the Starks on a normal basis. Too far from either the main family home, or the smaller more apartment style home that he and his brother, and Theon all lived in.

But he could see you over there not even sitting. Pacing back and forth as he could tell you were on the phone and likely had been for a while. He could hear an echo of your voice from where he stood, and you clearly sounded stressed. Were you to have two hands free instead of one he knew you’d be gesturing vaguely all over as if to emphasize whatever point you were arguing. Catching the tail end of something as you had yelled in a frustration, “I don’t care what you think, Joffery. You’ve never taken it seriously-”

Jon looked down to Ghost, whose red eyes gazed up to meet as both wolves felt the worry in how worked up you were but he wasn’t sure interrupting you was a good idea. The feeling in him to go over to you, pull you to him and help you relax was so painfully strong, as was the burning need in his system to finish what you didn’t even yet know he started that morning. His mouth could water thinking about your taste and the longer he watched you not having it the worse that need got.

Beckoning Ghost to follow, he went inside. One by one those whom came inside did not really help the tense feeling in the air. The first was Robb, all but slamming the door behind him and disappearing without even realizing Jon was there into his room, where he heard his phone go off likely as it had been all day. Theon followed next, an agitation in his shoulders but at least he had made his way into the main room after grabbing a much needed drink.

Sighing as he fell down into his own seat, grumbling as he let his head fall back and close his eyes, running his free hand over it. “You’re lucky to be in the Nights Watch. Not having to deal with shit like this.” Still feeling somewhat out of the loop in general, Jon prompted Theon to elaborate.

The mans head shooting up at the sound of the front door opening and closing, Jon not far from where he sat ready to jump up needing to have you to himself for even just a moment. Only you were much like Robb, finding your way into your room with a firm close of your door, within seconds the likely sounds of you on the phone once more muffled to Jons ears.

The urge to look unbelievably grumpy about it was an immense feeling to swallow down.

Theon finally elaborated a little now that the door slamming seemed to have ceased. “You heard about the Targaryean?” Jon nodded. “Apparently she’s been building her case over in Essos about why she should have the right to come here and take back her families seat. Someone forgot to tell her after three hundred years, it isn’t your seat anymore. And now-”

Jon was short and a bit quiet, “Now shes coming here.” Theon asking how Jon knew that, the dreading look came over him too. “She’s coming to the Wall. Apparently her advisor has a connection to Lord Commander Mormont and so he’s bringing her up there to try and start her campaign in an easy spot.”

Both men looked at each other in a knowing. “How long is she up there?” Answering a week, Theon whistled out as he looked away. “Don’t know if I should envy you then. Having to put up with some entitled diplomat for an entire week, or just having to handle the fallout she’s causing the rest of us.”

Back and forth they went over details when the discussion finally came around to them. “Robb’s got pretty much all of your fathers work on his plate out of nowhere and every other bloody House in the North is either calling him or your father about her coming here.” Jon asking your name, but he knew the answer already. “If your last name is Baratheon, then you were all but dragged into the family business all over again.”

You had begun working from home to avoid being part of your uncle and fathers political jobs, but judging by how stressed you looked from what little he saw of you, they had forced your hand into getting involved. By the time Robb had emerged, he looked less irritated and only exhausted now. A hand patting against Jons shoulder before his brother sat on the other side of the couch. “Hope you’ve enjoyed your one month with her, Snow. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if her father and uncle drag her all the way back to Kings Landing for this one.”

Jons eyes only flew to the hall he knew you were in, even though the door couldn’t be seen from where he sat. Robb said it as a joke, but Jons eyes went a bit wider as his heart skipped a beat. You couldn’t leave now, he had just gotten you. You had only started to find a life again, you had just met some of his friends. Jon felt something he wasn’t able to yet identify as panic. This was too new to survive you going so far away for so long. You’d leave him and not want him when you got back.

It didn’t get any better by the time Jon went to bed. You had passed out exhausted in your room. Not his. Jon sat at his desk just looking at his bed, at your side of the bed. Since that first morning you shared together, you had slept in his room, in his arms every single night. At this time the night before, Jon had you in his lap in his car. Your perfect high pitched yet shy pleads of his name in his ear as your hands grasped him desperately. Two hands gripping your hips so tightly as Jon struggled not to fuck up into you even rougher then he was bouncing you on his cock. Finally moving you to lay out in the back seat so he could fuck you properly. Hitch your leg up on his hip and pound into.

Yet here he sat in his own room, nothing close to that. It would be inappropriate to join you in your bed already. He had given you his office so you had privacy, and going into your room to carry you to his would be equally as inappropriate when you hadn’t even expressed want to. So Jon went to bed alone that night.

And again for three nights afterwards.

You were more tired then you’d been in months. Every single night your family had all been in touch as you suddenly had been dragged back into these affairs. Your father stating, “I did not bring you to Kings Landing for a wasted education.” Not at all acknowledging that you did not ask for the courses, nor did you want to choose them for yourself. If he had his way you would move back to the captiol and utilize your business education. Instead you met him halfway, each morning sending someone to come pick you up and meeting at one of the many buildings between Winterfell and Moat Cailin, you now sitting around the meeting table growing closer and closer to two options.

Falling asleep where you sat, or throwing something at Jofferys head. Your cousin only served to make all of this far worse, considering you had wanted nothing to do with this in the first place. You had done everything to move away from the politics of your family, but your uncle and father both had determined that all of you needed to be working as a unit on this campaign. Joffery across from you had spoken up rather loudly, “She has no right to come here and make stupid claims. Who does she think she is?”

Glaring your eyes up to him, your voice was as dry as the heaviness of it was laced with condescension. “We went over this the other day, but allow me to explain it again. She’s essentially utilizing a very old law she dug from hundreds and hundreds of years ago about lines of succession. Now, the law was never written to be more explicit about our present governance, as it was still a matter of monarchy then, but she seems to think if she can sway enough people to her side that perhaps it will grant her the authority of your fathers seat.”

Asking if that would work, Renly had the easy answer without the attitude you provided. “It could, if it were hundreds of years ago and we all still had armies made up of knights and horses.” A back and forth begun around you, as your eyes once more begged to close. Three nights in a row you had passed out at your desk, the night before that you had sat down to finally peel your boots off and the next thing you knew you were being awoken before dawn to a phone call from your fathers driver informing him he was there to pick you up. Most of the past nights you hadn’t even returned home until the three of them were asleep.

It was depressing, utterly depressing. Anyone whose last name wasn’t Baratheon you hadn’t even spoken too since the news broke. Your father stood at the head of the table, seemingly none to happy he had his repulsive nephew being tagged onto his side but you could only think that was such form of punishment for forcing you to take a leave from your job for this. Being informed that you and Renly both were to be in charge of Public Relations, you being the one to gather the information and Renly to enact plans to keep up the best appearances possible.

Though if you were being completely honest with yourself, you would have admitted that the moment the meeting finished you had been the first to leave without any goodbyes knowing your father was not yet done with you. You knew what was coming, him saying you were to return to Kings Landing but you were not ready for that.

You were not strong willed enough to defy your fathers orders so blatantly, so you were quick in avoiding being given them in the first place. You didn’t want to go back to that rats nest of a captiol, you hated living there and everyone in it. You wanted to stay in the North. Yet, something even more upsetting brewed deep in your heart at the thought of what would happen should you leave now.

Everything between Jon and yourself was still incredibly new, if you left now, it was early enough that he may simply move on without you there. It had been days since you saw or spoke to him already. Making your way down the steps of the building you resisted the urge to look at your phone. You’d see missed calls and email after email, messages between you and Robb as he was as flooded with work over this as you, as well as a few from Theon. You wondered if you would check and still had none from Jon, what did that mean going forward?

You didn’t know for sure whose voice it was the thought spoke in, but someone in your mind was simply telling you that Jon had gotten bored of you. Which of course he had, afterall twice you had boyfriends to drill into your head that you weren’t a “good lay” let alone even something worth looking at.

The longer away from him your family would keep you, how quick would it take for him to find someone new?

Jon was so vastly uncomfortable. She had arrived with a numerous amount of guard, all but demanded attention anytime she was in the room and none of them it seemed could say no to what she asked of them. The Targaryean had a way about her that to Jon, came off as rude and smug. Always feeling the need to interject whenever she disagreed on something as if her opinion had any bearing of any present matter but the Old Bear had said to be respectful.

More then once though since she had arrived at the Wall, had this Daenerys watched him. Most of the time from across the room as he had more then enough duties to keep him busy the entire day but she’d walk into a room and seek him out as he avoided her gaze. The first she had ever spoken to him, she had been left in the room by the advisor at her side being pulled away to another room for a moment when she begun walking.

Jon was keenly aware she had been nearing his desk, and more tense his shoulders grew trying to focus on the work in front of him. If she thought he hadn’t noticed she was incorrect. Even were Jon not someone who was always atune to his surroundings, if he couldn’t simply sense she was there, the abnormally immaculate manner of dress gave it away. He wasn’t quite sure where she thought she had come to, if she thought this level of ornate designs and style was at all fitting.

“I don’t believe we have met yet.”

Play nice, Jon told himself. Mormont had said to play nice. Turning to glance up at her, Jon only gruffed out a short “No.” A very awkward pause passed consisting of Jon returning to his work when she had asked if he planned on introducing himself. “Jon Snow.”

There was an authority in her tone, almost as if to say in silence he not refuse her. “And what it is you are currently doing, Jon Snow?” Eyes flickering to her and the computer, Jon somewhat turned so he at least partially faced her when she had come rather close.

Clearing his throat, Jons eyes turned back to the screen. Missing the hint of a smirk shining in her eyes. “It’s a trade agreement outline. The Nights Watch receives a certain amount of resources, and we have a trade deal with the free folk so to ensure enough goods are passed onto them that are harder to come by North of the Wall.” Asking him what sort of goods, “Medicine and medical devices are most common.”

It was an odd thing, that her eyes seemed to be on the screen but yet as Jon spoke they had flickered down to his desk for only a moment. Without his notice, Jons phone sat out had lit up as a new message came through. All of his message notifications were set to private as so wandering eyes could not just read what any sent him, but it still popped up enough that Jons lock screen was clear as day.

The photo was a rare one he had managed to capture only weeks ago. He had laid you out on his bed, your hair splayed across his sheets beautifully as Jon was partially hovering over your front, one hand pressed to the sheets to prop himself up. The other cupping your cheek as he had angled you up to is lips. He had it set to take many in a short span of time, and the perfect one he chose was beautiful to him.

Just the hint of Ghost laying beside you as his head had moved to rest on your stomach, your own hands gently grasping at Jons waist. It was not the kiss the photo showed, but in the mere second Jon had pulled away, still so close the faint silhouette trace of a strand of saliva connected between you both was just visible if one looked hard enough. You both were fully dressed but it was one of the most intimate photos he felt he had of you.

Agreeing to let him set his phone camera up just for this moment, and the one he chose was right as he pulled from your lips after getting too carried away. Your lips clearly a bit swollen from where he had bit at your bottom one with a roughness.

There was no mistakening the dynamic between him and you in the photo, but he had never thought of people seeing it. It wouldn’t matter who saw it. Until it did. Until a pair of purple eyes glanced down and in the seconds his phone remained lit, had recognized the other person in the photo.

It was that very phone Jon was currently toying with. Typing and deleting each and every message he tried to think of in a way that didn’t sound as if he was being far too possessive. He had wanted to hear from you, he wanted to see you, even just in a photo of whatever you were doing right now. He needed to have anything from you because he was worried but each time he tried to phrase it, it sounded as if he was trying to order you around.

A cawing from above dragged Jons eyes up, a narrowed squint in the sun at the sight of the large, exotic birds now making their home in the skies above his station. She had brought them over from Essos, apparently not aware that their feeding needs were a drain on their food resources with no offer to make up for it. But it all felt lackluster to Jon. You had slept in the apartment every night for days but you may as well have been gone from Jons life.

Robb had said you were being kept busy handling issues having arisen from the very woman walking about his station with her unnerving watchful eyes towards him. It was rare part of Jon wished he followed Robb and Theon into the familys work. They at least partially got to keep in touch with you, whereas whenever Jon was on duty he was isolated here with no way of reaching out to you if you were too busy.

Four days he hadn’t seen you and he missed you. He wanted to see your beautiful face again, hear your voice murmuring quietly as you both laid facing one another in his bed right before Jon would decide he wanted to take you one more time. Gods did he miss that. As if the interruption that morning had set him on edge. He wanted you in his arms, to kiss you until you would whine at how much he refused to let you breath. He needed to pry your legs open and drink from you for so long you’d forget anything not his touch. And right when he was finished, would Jon finally slide inside of you, knowing you’d be so sensitive by then.

Sex was never really important to Jon before you, but now it felt as if it was the easiest way Jon and you could open up to one another. You gave yourself to him as much as he did you, and all of your uncertainties or insecurities were gone when he had you like that. Jon missed the feeling so pure in his heart that he’d struggle to withhold his desire to tell you how much he loves you. He missed all of it, and the voice which joined him did not add well to his agitated state.

“Wonderful aren’t they?” Coming up to his side she braced her hands on the railing to the point Jon couldn’t help but notice how close she stood. Gazing up at the birds she continued as if Jon said anything. “In Essos they say these are the last living descendants of the dragons of Valyria.” One separated from the other two, more blueish in colour and strange looking like the others as if covered in scales. “That one is Rhaegal. I named him for my eldest brother. That one too, the small one. Viserion, I named after my other brother once he passed.” Jon only giving an apology for it as she only seemed to smile to the sky. “The last one with the black colouring, Drogon. Named after my late husband.”

Again, what Jon could say was very little. “I’m sorry. Losing your partner couldn’t have been easy.”

Inhaling with more of a knowing smirk. She only replied in a tone suggesting something Jon had yet to pick up on. “I appreciate your kindness. But it was some years ago now. Eventually we all move on from the ones we love, finding it somewhere else we don’t expect.” Her eyes which Jon did notice, looked down to his phone first and then him. “I was considering taking a walk up above on the Wall, I would be grateful to have someone to knows their way around.”

Jon tensed up, and if she sensed it, she clearly did not care. “It’s a straight path one end to the other, I’m sure your guard can manage.” Yet she persisted.

“I could speak to your Lord Commander about requesting an escort, but since you are already right here and clearly not doing anything.” She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Her eyes glanced to his phone once more before Jon relented. Were she to go to Mormont, he’d assign Jon anyways he already knew. There was no point in delaying it.

More then once when she would wish to step closer to the open gaps, as if he should’ve already known better, she would extend her hand out as if needing him to guide her up the small steps and back down. The smile each time Jon continued to not enjoy, but he had to only get through this day and it would be over.

Only it went on and on. Daenerys found every reason to force Jon to her side and considering his position, no one questioned it. He was second in command next to Mormont so it made sense that he would be showing her around. Only a willing guide may have looked far less on edge then Jon had.

By the time he had walked into the main building the next morning however, Mormont informed him that she had requested he be her personal guide the remainder of her visit as she travelled also to the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch by the Sea. “It will be a week long trip, and you will receive a fortnight off afterwards to make up for it.”

Yet Jon could sense there was something else coming, if by the way Alliser Thorne were looking at him with eyes amused in a maliciousness. Before Jons dreading heart even had the chance to ask, did the man answer for him. “You will be with her day and night until she returns.”

Quickly Jon felt his heart begin to beat a little more painfully, his voice a strained rasp as he attempted to hide such a feeling behind a sternness that no doubt was not bought. “Lord Commander, I’m not comfortable with-”

And yet, the Old Bear did what he did best. Shut things down to get to the point. “I don’t care if you’re comfortable. I care about playing nice with a politician long enough to get her out of our hair. I suggest you go home now to pack whatever you may need, she wants to begin her tour as soon as she arrives. You’ll be fine, she’s taken a liking to you.”

What protest could Jon give, this was his duty. He knew whatever he said would not be convincing but he had to try anyways. “That’s my problem, Lord Commander. I’m not the right person for this, I have a-” He couldn’t even get out the word girlfriend before Thorne had picked it up and thrown him right out the door metaphorically.

“Unless she’s your wife, it isn’t serious enough to get out of this.” Jon could feel his muscles twitch wanting to say something, anything to change their minds. But they dismissed him before he could come up with it.

Gathering his jacket he had just sat at his desk, he looked up to Sam having just arrived. Swallowing down a heaviness in his throat that he could not allow to come out here of all places. “What’s wrong with you?”

Wide eyes forcing into a furrowed brow to pack his stuff that he may need from here. “Mormont has me bringing Daenerys around the Wall for the week to show her around.” Sam didn’t quite pick it up at first why it would make Jon this on edge, even asking as such what the problem was when Jons head shot up looking with a glare, and an exasperation in his voice. “What’s the problem? I can’t get this woman to leave me alone since she’s been here, she wants me at her side all the time and on top of that beacuse she’s even here, I haven’t seen or heard from my own girlfriend in days because it’s kept her so busy. And now I have to spend an entire week with her away from my girl, because she couldn’t just pick any other man in this building.”

Almost taken back, Sam let Jons anger steam until he stood up ready to leave, a defeated look coming more back into his wider eyes now as his breathing returned to normal. Your name passed from his lips, only straining Jons heart more. “You didn’t ask for this, I’m sure she’ll understand.”

Morose was the only thing Sam would be able to ascribe to Jons tone. “She’ll understand, just not in the way I want her to.” Before any other words could be shared, Jon adjusted the hold on his jacket before passing Sam with a tap on the arm. “I’ll be back in a few hours. I need to grab Longclaw and go pack.”

Not that Jon had known it, but it wasn’t much later when the Targaryean in question had arrived. Sam had an advantage, he was always looked over as the fat one and thus some people in power tended to underestimate him. In the dining hall, Sam had been leaving to drop something off to Pyp when he heard Jons name. Looking up subtly, he saw the Targaryean speaking to her assistant. Their appearances vastly different, her silver hair and pale skin with dark clothes contrasted to the other womans appearance entirely. “And you’re sure?”

The other woman nodded. “I am. He has reported that they live in the same home on the Stark property.”

The silver haired Targaryean nodded with a frustrated grimace. “So we won’t be getting anyone in there anytime soon, I imagine. That should be fine for right now. What was it Daario said, that I have a temping way with men?” Both woman laughed almost as if simply sharing gossip. “You watch, my friend. A week with me and maybe I will find out if wolves are as hot blooded as they say.” The other woman asked about you, making Sam feel that much more alert and urgent. “Grey Worm assured me they will be able to keep her busy. That’s one less part of the country to win over if I can take the Starks right out of her hands. You know how these people work, if I can get even one public kiss then that will sway the masses easily.”

The other woman seemed to begun to look not as if she agreed. “I presumed this was about your interest in him alone?”

“I am far more interested in keeping him away from her for the time being then I am anything else. Any other pleasures which may come as a result of the week with him are simply a bonus.” Not even the Targaryeans assistant looked comfortable, but no doubt held back that thought whatsoever.

By then, if they thought Sam was listening they would’ve said something, but they didn’t. He walked right by as the Targaryean gave him no mind. Getting to his desk almost in a rush, Sam looked through his phone only to find that he had no one in his contacts which were of use. Jon wouldn’t pick up before coming back here he knew, but he needed someone to know. Writing a note, Sam looked to Jons desk next to him.

Ruffling through his drawers, Sam could have almost laughed at what he found were he not in a bit of a rush. All well put together, save for his top drawer, with a variety of printed out photos all placed specifically to be seen. Many of he and his siblings and father at various points in their lives all together, one Sam could only guess was from the day Jon first got Ghost, newer ones clearly out far north with the free folk, but two sat right on the top. Ones which Jon would’ve seen each time should he open the drawer.

Both were photos of you and him. The first was before anything happened between you. Sam remembered the story when Jon told it to him one day. Your nameday was coming up and all of your family was going to be in Kings Landing for an event and they had forgotten that you had tried to make plans to have a dinner together with them to celebrate for once. You told Jon about it, he noted almost in passing, and so Jon had gone out of his way.

Calling your work as you hadn’t yet begun working from home, to tell them he needed them to give you at least 4 days off. Managing to talk your superiors way into delegating it a paid leave so it didn’t cut into your actual vacation or sick days. He had brought you out to part of the wolfswood which had cliffs and trails and lakes and rivers for days on end where you’d encounter no one else. A small camping trip just you, Jon, and Ghost. Jon had clearly set his camera up to take the photo automatically. The evening sky against a lake was in the background as you both sat in front of a fire. Ghost lay across your legs, but you sat right back against Jons chest. Your arms hidden by the large sleeves of your sweater, but Jons were wrapped around your front. Both of you in the middle of laughing. And that was before you got together.

The other Sam recognized, it was much like Jons lock screen but from a different time in the photos automatically taken. This one showed Jon hovering over you much more intimately, one hand in your hair behind your head, the other wrapped around your back pulling you up into him. Your hands grasping at his shoulders, but Jon had you firmly trapped against him in what was clearly a passionate kiss. Nothing about it was inappropriate, but to Jon, clearly it felt a photo that was very intimate. He had delegated that drawer to only very important things and rarely did Sam see Jon put things in it, but that was why.

His brothers and sisters, his father, his friends, and you. The most important things and Sam suddenly looked back at where he had known the Targaryean was even if he couldn’t see her. Clearly she knew you in some way, and wanted to take Jon from you. Sam had no doubt Jon would never do anything, but it sounded as if she would try to make something happen between them and he did not know what lengths she may go to to achieve that. So far, she seemed entirely untrustworthy. So as Sam left the note just sticking out enough from that drawer Jons keen eyes would notice it, did Sam too turn his computer on.

He had a lot to write out to Gilly and no patience to type it all on a phone. But if this Targaryean wanted eyes on her and Jon, she too seemed to imply she had eyes watching you. Which means he would need to have someone far less known and far more inconspicuous to help.

Sam could only wonder though, how did you two know each other to the degree she seemed to be planning to seduce your boyfriend into her bed as if to get back at you for something.

It was the worst possible timing. Jon barley managing to pack the basics for a week, distracted the whole time since no one was home when he got back. Writing out a message for Robb, he had put it on the kitchen counter with his bag now sitting on top of the table, with a plan to call you pretty much until he got back to Castle Black to tell you. He didn’t know how he missed it, but it almost startled his heart from his chest when he heard it behind him.

“What’s this?”

Turning around with wide eyes, Jon felt horrible. Not now, he thought. Don’t make him rush out of the door right now for this. Your hands were perched against the empty door frame looking between he and the bag with eyes he could only describe as close to breaking. You looked so exhausted and instantly Jon realized why, you had been sleeping at your desk, only passing out in the middle of working when you couldn’t keep your eyes open. But you either had a small bit today to come home, or Jon hadn’t even realized you were still here when he left, and you just had to be wearing that shirt. His Nights Watch shirt that you looked so beautiful in.

But clearing his throat, Jon felt such guilt in doing this now. “Mormont assigned me a job that will take me away for a week.” Asking if it was north, he felt so much worse. “No, it uh..Daenerys Targaryean has been visiting the Wall..” You didn’t have any change in reaction and Jon knew that was a withholding of dread in your heart. “And she requested me specifically to...accompany her in her tour of the different stations for the week.”

All you said, was a quiet little, “Oh.”

Jon truly hated this, he hadn’t seen you in days but he had to leave now, he was late as it was. “Darling-”

Your interruption was heartbreaking, “No, no. Your duty is important, Jon. I shouldn’t keep you.” Jon knew you wanted him to think you meant keep him waiting, but he had a horrible feeling you really meant something else. Calling your name gently Jon just managed to grasp at your waist to turn you to him.

Looking down at you, he grappled with what time he had. Not enough. “He sprung it on me only this morning. Once I’m back I’ll have a fortnight off though. To make it up to you.”

He knew what this was, and why you said it this way but he was desperate for you to not do this. “There isn’t anything you’d need to make up for with me. I’d never keep you from doing what you want.” Oh he really felt ill, whatever you were thinking was going to happen, he more firmly asked you if you thought he’d do anything like that but your answer was so horrible he felt his heart cracking into pieces. “The last thing I want is for you to feel chained to me.” Pulling away from him, Jon tried and failed to get you to come back close. “Dany is rich and beautiful, you’ll have fun spending time with her. Lost of men always did. I’ve kept enough of your time.”

Jon tried grabbing you and calling your name. Following your retreating figure you closed the door before he could get to you. Mouth slightly agape, Jon felt something truly sickening. Twisting his stomach and rising up to burn away at his heart and lungs. He was going away for a week on a miserable work job, but something about your reaction looked like you knew something he didn’t.

Muttering your name, Jon was alright if you didn’t respond. He just wanted you to hear him. “I love you. I know it’s too soon but..I just need you to know that.” If Jon listened any more closely, he felt a sting behind his eyes at the realization that you hadn’t moved from the door. You likely had your back against it, having slid down to the floor and all Jon could hear was the possibility of you hiding your head in your arms as if trying to smother the want to cry.

Forced to walk out to his car without even having you in his arms for even a moment, Jon sat in the front seat for a moment. Jaw clenched and the sting in his eyes mixing with anger. Every gods forsaken boyfriend you’ve ever had treated you so horribly that just the idea of Jon spending a week with someone like Daenerys Targaryean had you convinced you’d lose him. And worse you didn’t even act like you’d blame him for it.

He was glad no one was around to see the way he threw something harsh into part of the inside of his car in anger. Realizing why this felt so sickening in his heart. You weren’t treating this like something may happen on his work trip away. You were treating this, as if once Jon comes home, he’d be done with you without question.

You were treating this like it was already a breakup.

The constant buzzing around the building was tedious at the best of times. It had been years and years since you worked anywhere near here but you had been thrown right back into it as if you hadn’t purposely left this job. But you were part of the family, and thus you were given no choice. Though in a truth, you knew there were reasons you were more on edge here then usual. You simply had not gone home in many nights. The small couch in what was designated your office again, had housed you as each late night gave you no incentive to wish to go home.

For most of the week you had gone home, Robb had both been a blessing and a companion in misery. He suddenly had his job and his fathers all on his plate as Ned was working directly with Robert. For the first while, Robb had taken up taking you to and from work. Shutting you down when you insisted he not go out of his way, but you knew Robb could see the exhaustion and stress in your eyes clear as day.

At first it was comforting, having someone you’ve known for so much of your life there for you but eventually you stopped wanting it. The closer your father came to telling you he was going to bring you back to Kings Landing the more you started to realize you didn’t know how to say no. So you told Robb you were needed at earlier hours then he’d wake up, and that your father would have a driver bring you home so Robb didn’t have to go out of his way anymore.

And then you stopped going home, and stopped answering Robbs calls and messages. You were going to have to go back alone to Kings Landing soon anyways, you may as well get used to this loneliness now then later. But that wasn’t the only thing keeping you from being home, and you knew Robb had picked up on it too.

Whispers of Daenerys Targaryeans arrival had gotten around and soon followed photos online of interest. She was exactly as you remembered. Her luscious silver hair and immaculate wardrobe, the brightness of her Valyrian beauty something all wanted to catch a glimpse of, but it was never photos of her alone. You recognized what appeared to be a normal entourage of people around her but too was the early talk around her, a so far publically unidentified man close to her side.

The difficulty came though in that you had known you saw pictures like this before. Photos sent to you from a friend whom had seen Ramsay around with a girl named Myranda just like this only to be told by him it was nothing. Yet when you had begun to sleep with him, he revealed the truth that he was seeing her too and you were going to have to either live with it, or step things up to convince him to stay with you alone. You had not been worthy of giving any attention individually, you had not the worth and he was sure to teach you that.

Telling you one night, “Most men won’t stay with you. They’ll find pretty girls just like Myranda and fuck them until they realize the first one they dated just isn’t cutting it anymore.” He had unsettlingly traced his thumb down your cheek, jaw and down your neck with pale blue eyes scouring you with a falsehood you didn’t know how to tell if it was real or not. “I’d recommend listening to what I tell you to do from now on. Afterall, love, you just aren’t good enough to keep a man tied down to you alone. If you didn’t have me, the next man you date would just toss you away one day for a prettier and better version of you.”

You didn’t understand. Jon had told you that Ramsay and even Karl had been using you for sex, and you believed that then and now. All they wanted to do was have sex and never do anything else. Jon and you did plenty of things, but then you sat there, hands hovering over the keyboard unmoving. Jon was also very physical with you, quite so. You had asked him to be sure if all he wanted to do was have sex, and he said he wanted all of it.

Did all of it just mean sexually? Did you make yourself a fool thinking the romance would stay? Were you not giving yourself over physically enough to keep him interested?

The most recent photo was from the night before. Spotted at a small restaurant in the Gift, clearly much of the area had been closed off for her and thus photo were taken out of interest. A beautiful dress on her that you couldn’t afford in many lifetimes with hair which must have taken hours. Of course she looked better then you ever would, you sat at your desk with messy hair thrown back into a braid and dark circles under your eyes.

Naturally some did not question the circumstances, he was her guide here as his duty of course he would be polite and respectable about her wishes, but you looked at the photo again and again. The way she looked quite naturally close and cozy attached to his arm. There was not a world in which you would understand why Jon would have anything but a good time. She was so much more glamorous, rich, and powerful at his side.

You normally worked a calmer job from home, and had far too much baggage for him then he deserved. What made it worse, was a message which appeared on screen from Gendry. That very photo with the message only containing a rather angry ask of what was he looking at, only with a few more expletives thrown in for colour. Good, you thought sarcastically. Other people were about to start seeing it.

Hardly any outside of the Starks or Jons circles even knew about he and you yet. The first woman of meaning they’d see by his side was her. You looked horrid in comparison. People would look down on Jon for going from her to you.

Another message from Gendry, then one from Arya. By the time you got the same photo and kind of message from Loras of all people did you turn your computer off. Elbows propped on the table and hanging your head into your hands with a deep sigh. Any other women would be angry, mad, offended, but you should’ve simply seen this coming. You gave Jon what he wanted, and expected too much in return. That wasn’t his fault, that was simply yours.

As you ascended the steps to the main door, you could only contemplate how you even got here. It felt like a blur, as if only moments ago did you turn the computer at your desk off. But walking in, it had yet to get busy. An open seat right by the corner of the bar, you sat down. Barley registering what you had ordered, only that it was as bitter going down as you needed. You didn’t even bother pulling your phone out to entertain yourself.

What were you going to do? Avoid worried messages from Robb telling you to either come home already or call him? Wait to see what other photos would arise? Jon looked cordial in them but how long until he looked like he was having fun, how long until he was giving Dany the looks you wished for so long he would give you? How long until he sent you a message telling you that this was not going to work anymore?

Men always boasted that she was good in bed, and she was always good at tempting men she wanted into her bed in return. At least someone would give him a pleasurable time other then him always having to take the reins with you. You knew nothing compared to what she did, why would he want to stay with that after she could show him how much better being with her felt?

You’d ask worried how long until that happened, but then you felt that dark wave of fear that maybe it already did. Within an instant, you downed the ale before ordering another. It was straight forward with Karl and Ramsay. They told you what to do, what they wanted or expected and would just take it when you didn’t get the message. You never knew what Jon wanted, and clearly guessing had not worked out.

Ramsay was upfront for most of your relationship that he would fuck other women. If that’s what Jon wanted to do, you wished he would be honest and tell you. You’d understand. He was a man, he had needs and you weren’t talented or good or pretty enough to fulfill them. This is why you never wanted Jon to know about how you felt. You knew you weren’t good enough, that you would ruin the friendship you both already had.

How much had you drunk at that point? You need not stand up yet and find out.

Jon had yet to have a single moment to himself from the very instant he opened his eyes. She needed this or that, ordered one thing or another from him or simply would change her mind and have him escort her somewhere. She was, for all intents and purposes, his boss currently. Or at least, she was certainly ordering him around like she was. He apparently had no choice here as much as he couldn’t refuse an order from Lord Commander Mormont if she had anything to say about him telling her no.

She had wanted to go to a specific restaurant, and as utterly uncomfortable as Jon felt, when she asked him to sit and join he had refused initially. Only to have a more narrow eyed look with a smile that felt judging with a tone filled with less room for interpretation. “It is bad manners to refuse a ladies offer.” The stare off lasted around five long and painful seconds before he begrudgingly sat down. Nearly refusing any offer of food for drink at her expense, stating he was fine while picking at whatever too upscale appetizer she ordered for him.

The only easier moments were with the waitress, a young girl, likely around Aryas age in over her head at the degree of upscale done for the Targaryean. She would take her orders with a nervousness but seemed at least to relax at Jons ease with her. Ensuring as long as she came around often enough to refill his water, she had nothing to worry about with him. Daenerys had her team pay by cheque.

Jon had caught the young waitress his way out, giving her a gold coin specifically for her good job. It was the only real smile anyone had given him in days as she thanked him.

Now though? Jon could hear voices muffled outside his door even through the noise and walls with his keen hearing. Soon enough his only chance at quiet would be interrupted, but Jon was begging for it to wait until he could finish showering. Or, at least finish his illusion of showering. Towel long since around his waist as he let the hot water keep running to steam the bulk of the room, Jon leaned against the counter picking up his phone.

If he had one fundamental flaw, it was he had no idea how to handle issues like this in most forms not in person. Not even over the phone was ideal, but you didn’t answer his call. Not that he blamed you. Photos begun going around online and it was painting Jon out to look like he of all people was treading into the path of being unfaithful. But Jon didn’t know how to text you about it either, he knew he didn’t come off well in text.

A few more days, thats all he told himself. He would be back with you in a few more days and he would fix everything then. A knock at the main door had him rising his head up, but Jon made no move to go answer it. It was late, he wanted time to himself, she would survive without his company. He didn’t even understand why she wanted to spend time with him, he barley spoke to her if she didn’t require an answer.

Swiping through his photo gallery, one then the next, then the next. You hated having your photo taken but always managed to be talked into letting him at any point. Jon could admit to himself with a ghost of a smile painting across his face that he took his best photos when he’d set his camera up to take them automatically as he kissed you. The one he had looked at in the moment, he had sat his phone against something as if moving it out of the way before coming up and wrapping his arms around your front, his own lips finding your neck as you leaned into his touch.

So many with you Jon could look at until he passed out, he missed you terribly, and he hated that he had to leave while you were still clearly so upset. Every night when he fell asleep in a bed not his, he too felt angry that you weren’t curled up in his chest. Jon was practically spoiled with how often you slept in his bed, hell Jon felt alone without the inevitable feeling of Ghost hopping up onto the end of the bed and curling up around both of your feet.

Only finding it in him just then to contemplate turning the water off and attempting to call you one more time before passing out, did he get an email. From Gilly of all people. Opening one, the subject line left empty did she send him photos of articles.

Another email, more photos of articles and names he somewhat recognized. Another email with more personal photos as if scanned from a book online. But it was the last one that had Jon swiftly turning the water off with eyes narrowed. Face tensed as he looked at the final article photos she sent him.

If any noticed, they said nothing. The falsehood in the smile Daenerys was giving him and the stiff attempt at remaining neutral in Jon the next morning. “We had wondered what happened to you last night. You didn’t answer your door.”

Hardly looking as Jon stood somewhat in front of them all fiddling with his own credentials, they had finally arrived last night in time for her tour of the Shadow Tower and he wanted to get her in there and distracted as quickly as possible. Mumbling out, “I fell asleep after I had a shower. Must not have heard you.”

Not making any eye contact, Jon gestured with a nod for them all to simply follow him. By the time they arrived, with merely one look at him did Jon know that his demeanour was even more off put then it normally was. Most were trying to be polite, but with the wave over for him to come up to speak to him, Jon simply directed them to follow Dareon as he swiftly made his way up the stairs. That time he felt her eyes watching him, but he didn’t care as he shut the door behind him.

Rummaging through the cabinet behind his desk before turning did Qhorin Halfhand let out a far more natural tone then he greeted the party with. “One bloody foreign politician shows up and suddenly we’re expected to bend over backwards to kiss her ass.” Letting the glasses thud against his desk, he didn’t even need to ask Jon to sit while he begun pouring the amber liquid Jon hoped was strong. “Whose idea was this anyways?”

Grabbing his with a thankful nod, Jon muttered with a frustration. “Mormont. His son is her advisor, Jorah. I think he’s trying to use it as a way to make amends but he’s just thrown me into the fire this time.” A laugh came out that Jon understood but didn’t quite appreciate as he just took another far larger sip, holding back the wince as it burned down his throat.

“She looks like she fancies you.” Jon only grunted from within his chest, his eyes dark and expression twisting into something akin to a frown. “Too bad for her, she’s in the North. Most men I know born and raised up here aren’t quite into whatever they have going on.” If Jon had the capacity to laugh he would’ve. That certainly was true. Those of the North were never normally looked at as the attractive culture of the country and if any were as far from what they were like or looked like it was the Targaryean. By the time the Halfhand found his word again, Jon knew he had to tackle this now while he had someone alone who could help. “You’re trapped with her for a week? Doesn’t Mormont know you have a girl?”

“I don’t know, but she does.” Looking at him in question, he leaned forward with his arms on the desk in curiosity as Jon elaborated with your name on his lips. “She was going to school in Kings Landing, and went over to Essos for a few months for some special program. Apparently they paired students up with people to live with over there that should match in lifestyle.” The Halfhand putting together the indications that you had been moved in with Daenerys Targaryean.

Jon recalled when he got back, Sam leaving a note that said to stay distant from her until certain information was found. Which he had no idea what that had meant until then night prior. How Gilly found all of this, he had no idea as he continued. “Her brother Viserys lived there too.” Once again your name coming out, albeit with far more of a strain the man before him could sense was rather protective. “He took an interest in her, wouldn’t leave her alone. Was at her side day and night always trying to get close as possible to the point some people thought they were together.”

Recalling the report filed with both local officials and schooling records, he suspected that Gilly may or may not have gotten access to things she normally shouldn’t have, but Jon told himself to remember to thank her for it. For finding something you had never told him about, but now more then ever seemed to be needed. According to your written and spoken statements, Viserys had convinced you on a night you felt homesick out to a club. You hadn’t drunk much but you do remember that one of which he had ordered from the bar for you and brought your way, all without you seeing.

Medical reports attached showed traces of Shade of the Evening in your system. You had said you did not take anything like that, but refused to point the finger at Viserys because if you were wrong you thought it would be a horrible accusation. The official you spoke to had pointed out what they already had on record of what he had done as to try and convince you of a truth you still refused to accept. Feeling not right, you had found yourself dragged to a more secluded hallway where Viserys has tried to-

Jon had cut himself off on that one as the Halfhand filled in those details. Saying your name, “What’s all this now then have to do with her? Miss Silver Hair out there not like that a girl reported her brother for being a raper?” Jon heavily swallowed down any thoughts about that, it didn’t go that far he knew, but dare he tread into what else he had learned of your time with men since.

Rasping out after taking a final sip, before handing the glass over to the Halfhand waving for him to get it refilled for his own sake. “He never got charged for anything. He and his sister were rich and they got him dropped of charges.” Directing back to you, “When she was put on a ship back home, apparently someone had let it out that Daenerys helped to hide what he did, and they kicked her out school for it. And apparently she blames her for it still.”

“So now she’s trying to steal you to get back at her.” Nodding begrudgingly, Jon hated that in your eyes, that plan was working. He felt ill thinking what you could be worrying he had done already, or what he would have to do to prove he never would betray you like that. “Well, she’s here for two days then you have barley any more alone with her to get back to Castle Black. Suppose in her mind that’s plenty of time to charm you. What did your girl have to say about all this?”

The dark frown growing on Jon was immense. “She’s been busy with her Uncle’s campaign against Daenerys, and even beyond that I think she’s afraid to pick up my calls.” Asking why, Jon answered with a heavy weight in his throat. “In case she does, and I’m only calling to break up with her.” Almost in an instant Jon nearly downed the second refill in one large go. “She was dating this abusive-” He cut himself off before he let that anger get him too carried away. “And a little before him she had been dating Karl Tanner.”

The looks shared between men spoke volumes. “Tough girl you’ve got. Making her way out of that mans life and then another? That isn’t easy.” It was easier to see where Jons struggle was coming from, and why from here he felt trapped from being able to do anything. “Sounds like you need someone to go talk her into her senses. Who from up here does she know?”

One plan set, and the next came in the form of Jons only last question. “What do I do in the meantime?

“Your job. Nothing more, nothing less. Get her out of our gods forsaken hair, and yours for that matter. As long as you don’t trip and fall naked into her bed, I don’t see what you’ve got to worry about.” A more firm voice coming out, catching his eyes. “Snow. Stop worrying. We’re brothers, all of us. You’ve had our backs more times then I can count, we can have yours this once.”

Though, being brothers meant they did not go without getting on each others nerves. “One more question, Snow.” Turning with his hand still braced on the doorknob, Jon could already sense the irritation based on the jesting brightness in the Halfhands face. “How long’s it been since you and your girl have fucked? Haven’t seen you this wound up since your first year here.”

Jon almost didn’t answer, with a more flat glare though he grumbled out, “Too long.” Which was the real answer of almost a fortnight. Considering though, a fortnight passed into Jons relationship with you he had fucked you nearing twice a day, this was starting to feel like a true torture. A torture made worse everytime he noticed her staring at him, now realizing that he was just a pawn to get back at you.

He didn’t want her to want him in the first place, but now he was angry. Using him to break your heart all for something her own brother tried to do to you in the first place. He’d only ever met one, but already he hated that family to his core.

You didn’t pick up when Jon tried calling you then already, or that night, but he had to trust the Halfhand to help with you. He just didn’t realize by the time the one sent to talk to you was going to find you at a bar in that state. Each night he reminded himself how long. But before he had reached his hotel bed the night before beginning the days long journey back to Castle Black, did he get a call from Robb, pretty unbelievably angry with him.

Leading up to that call though, one would have to go all the way back to the bar you sat in hours before. The low rumbling voice coming to your side held a laugh that nearly caught you off guard, as did his size. “How’s someone your size stay conscious with that much in you?” Nudging at your arm as he took a seat did you meaninglessly try to swat at him back.

Little thought came out of your mouth as you didn’t even bother to greet him. “What are you doing here, Tormund?”

Ordering something for himself, he shrugged which hardly passed your notice. Eyes presently trained on the wood of the bar. “Thought I’d come out. Have a drink with a beautiful woman.”

Eyes rolling somewhat to the side did you mumble, “I repeat. What are you doing here then?” That time the nudge was much more noticeable then before. Only saying he was here to check on you, your eyes narrowing as you whipped your head to the side to look at him suspiciously, not quite aware it was coming off more adorable then intimidating. “I left work not telling anyone where I was going. How did you know to find me here?”

The answer gave your insides a little bit of a sobering jolt in sorrow. “Jon mentioned he and you used to come here all the time. Seemed an easy guess.” That time you on a true spree of questions asked why he was looking for you and the answer was just as unpleasantly whirling in your stomach. “Got a call from that half handed cunt at the Shadow Tower, said Snow’s pretty on edge that you haven’t spoken to him in over a week.”

Your hands twitched as if to go grab your phone, forcing it to remain in your bag. For now. “I don’t know what to say to him.” Asking almost incredulously that meant you chose to just ignore him, you felt a tinge of annoyance creeping through the anxiety. “We can talk about if he wants me to stay or not when he comes back, I don’t want to have that conversation over the phone.”

Grumbling out, were you not drunk you may have picked up the amusement instead of judgment you interpreted it as. “You think he wants to get rid of you?”

“It isn’t a matter of getting rid of me or not. If he’s bored of me, that isn’t his fault.”

Tormund was quiet for more then a good few seconds. Still difficult to pick up his tone, but you also didn’t even notice his freedom to reach inside your bag and grab your phone as he spoke. “As long as I’ve known him, he’s been stupid in love with you. Watched you date shit bag after shit bag and refusing to make a damned move whenever I told him to. Something about not wanting to take advantage of you when you were vulnerable.” Turning a little, you at least could see the partial sight of his wild orange hair in the low bar light. “Now I knew Karl Tanner, means I know the kind of shit he’d have put you through. Your crow doesn’t even know the half of it does he?”

Slowly you shook your head as a heat begun forming behind your face in a rather unwelcome way.

“If you told him the truth about that, he’d run day and night to come back right now-” Cutting him off you told him that wasn’t the only thing you weren’t honest about. “Alright, fess up.” Telling him a rather drunk version of the events, Tormund whistled out by the end of it. “You have a great habit of trying to surround yourself with the worst shits I’ve ever known.”

Continuing on, you hardly noticed his jest. “As soon as he told me who he was going to be with, I just knew what would happen. I knew Dany. She’s beautiful, rich, charming every single man I met in Pentos adored her. There wasn’t anyone who she couldn’t get into her bed and I always knew why. She was everything men dream of having all in one woman. She’d be perfect for him. She looks perfect at his side. And I know she’d figure out Jon was with me, and she knows she’s better for him then I ever could be. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in her bed right now. Doesn’t take most men this long.”

Unbeknownst to you it was rather ill feeling to other people at how little blame you placed on Jon in this imagined scenario. You’d refute every ounce of guilt he could be accused of beacuse of men like Ramsay and Karl. In your eyes, you were unattractive and broken, Dany was beautiful and perfect. Jon probably took one look at her and gave her those wide and bright eyes you for so long wished could be directed towards you just once.

“Then why is all he can talk about when you’re not there, you?” Brows furrowing you shrugged while turning more away, curling a bit in on yourself. “Ever since you two got together, all he can focus on is you. If he’s not with you, he’s talking about you. If he’s not talking about you, he’s obsessing over you. And if he’s not doing any of that, then he’s probably busy getting off thinking about you. Hates talking about you with other men in any way. If this girl is what he wants, then why in seven hells is he so obsessed with you every second of the day?”

If you were entirely truthful, you had always thought Jon was exaggerating when he said he told his friends a lot about you. You assumed when he wasn’t with you, you were barley in his head. That’s what Ramsay and Karl were like, it was what you were used to. “Before he left, through the door he told me he loved me.” Tormund gave you the silent space to think. “He’s never said that before. We’ve never said it before. But he told me before he left and I didn’t say it back. I hadn’t seen him in days, I didn’t understand why he’d tell me when he was leaving for even more.”

More quiet then usual he asked, “A man ever tell you that before?” Shaking your head no, you refused to acknowledge the sting behind your eyes. “You are a mess if I’ve ever seen one before.”

Muttering with a bit more amusement peeking through, “You know all the proper words to flatter a girl, don’t you?” That time you nudged his side back as much as he did you. The thoughts simmering in your head for a little while until they came out calm. “I don’t know how to do this. Normal relationships, let alone when the one I’m with is my best friend. I’ve never been in one that wasn’t so horrible, I don’t know how I’m supposed to act with Jon if he doesn’t tell me.”

“And he’s not going to know how to talk that out with you, if you keep your damned mouth shut about every problem in your pretty little head. He comes back in what? In a day or two? Just wait until he comes back before trying to push him away all over again. Let him choose to do that this time, you’ve had your fun.” He was being hyperbolic at the words of fun, but you understood his position. “Now,” Slamming your phone onto the table between you both, “Who the fuck can you call at this hour to pick you up?”

By the time you were outside, the cool night air was somewhat comforting in your lungs. Leaning against the much larger Tormund for support you felt the need to fall asleep coming. Eyes jolting open each time they were tempted too. At the sight of headlights, you felt a relief as if he wouldn’t have come. You had figured by now your attitude would’ve driven Robb from wanting to put up with you, but it wasn’t the case.

The concerned and gentle way he handled you was more comforting then you had thought it would be, that at least he hadn’t written you off entirely just yet.

Whatever it was that was said between Tormund and Robb you didn’t really know, almost falling asleep Robb had just picked you up by then. “Last thing you need on top of everything is a concussion” All you remembered was by the time Robb sat you carefully in the passenger seat did you drift off to sleep.

Robb carried you into the house, gently resting you down on the couch on your side. Grabbing a fur to cover you wish as Ghost came scurrying out of Jons room over to your side. “Come on now, give her space.” Whining, the direwolf rested his head on the couch looking at you as Greywind came up to nudge Ghost as if comforting him.

Debating what he wanted to do, stay here and make sure you didn’t throw up in your sleep or finally say a word or two to more then one persons. Telling Ghost and Greywind to come get him if anything happened, Robb went outside. First thing was first, then Robb called his brother and it likely was the first time in along time he chewed him out for something with an actual anger.

On the other side, Jon stood almost taken back in the middle of his hotel room that Robb had called him in the near middle of the night to yell at him without even so much as a greeting. “Sometimes I have no idea what runs through your head.” Trying to ask what he was even talking about, Robb only cut him off not even before reaching the end of the sentence bringing up your name. “Everything she’s been through the last few months, no the last year and you start pulling this sort of thing? What is wrong with you?”

Face twisting into his own taken back offence, Jons tone dropped beginning to match in the frustration. “Do you want to be more specific?”

But it was you again, of course if was you. Jon felt haunted by your lack of presence. “After Tanner, after Ramsay we all waited to see if you’d actually do anything finally. You made a move and we were all proud until you pulled all of this. She’s never even been in a relationship with someone that wasn’t a piece of shit and the second things got even the slightest bit difficult, you took off for a whole week.”

Blood rising in intensity in his veins Jon felt his muscles tensing with nothing to let it out on showing in the sharp edge to his shortness. “I didn’t ask for this, Robb. I was assigned to it, I had no choice-”

Not having a second of it, Robb was far firmer then Jon was growing angry. “You did. If you said no, did you really think Mormont of all people would what? Discharge you? Demote you? Of all people? No, things with her got tough, you didn’t know what to do to fix it, so you ran. And worse, you ran off to the side of the very woman making her life hell in the first place. How do you think seeing photos of her with you day in and out is making her feel?” Almost in a stunned sense for a moment, it gave Robb room to continue. “I had to pick her up from a bar tonight, did you know that? She was so drunk she couldn’t even stand on her own, she passed out the moment I got her into the car.”

On Jons end, suddenly an ill, blackening poison grew from within his stomach at the thought. He had assumed you wouldn’t have spiralled this hard, and Robb was clearly irate at the fact as he had to watch the rest of it. “Is she-”

“She’s asleep right now. I called father, told him he needs to put his foot down to Robert about dragging her back into all of this, because either shes drowning in work she hates or drowning in her thoughts all alone. There’s no excuse this time. When you come home you fix this, you’re not the only one who cares this much about her.” It was Robbs next words though that hit Jon somewhere deep in a much more slashing strike. “But I’m not the one who ran away from my struggling, traumatized girlfriend the second things got difficult. I’m picking up the pieces you’re causing. Daenerys Targaryean isn’t your girlfriend and she isn’t your boss. Set some fucking boundaries, Snow.”

Hardly a few words Jon got in before Robb hung up. It had been a long time since the two brothers ever argued like that, and he didn’t quite know how to feel right away. Yet the more he thought about it, the more Jon realized he was right. Jon hadn’t tried to fix things. He’s argued against the Lord Commanders orders more then that before on less, he should’ve learned letting either of you walk out the door without talking a problem out only made it worse. And knowing what he knew now, Jon knew he did wrong by not being far more firm towards Daenerys about him not being interested.

Even if she was doing this to get back at you, Jon should’ve known better then to let it even vaguely fall into place. The first time you struggled more then usual in the month and a half since he had started to be with you, and he took off for a week without speaking to you on it for more then a few minutes.

Some good example he was setting for this relationship, Jon knew.

No doubt she had not been expecting whom was at the door at this hour, but perhaps she should have read the room before giving this reaction. The middle of the night, Daenerys in her sleeping clothes and yet he was fully dressed as if the sun was out but she somehow misread this in a way that only made him angry. “What a pleasant surprise, you coming by so late to see me. Please, come in, I insist.”

Trying to pull the door more open for him, Jon let a gloved hand reach out and grasp a higher edge of the door stopping her in her tracks with eyes growing more frustrated within them. “I’m not here for a chat.” If Jon were a worse man, he might have snapped at her for the audacity to give him almost a leering look up and down. Starting to form something or another with a much more intentional tone of voice, Jon hissed out. “I don’t know what gave you the idea I’m interested in you, but I’m done.”

Head jolting back, the act dropped within an instant. “What do you mean done?”

Pulling something in front of him previous tucked away, a freshly printed out receipt and details for a driver and arrival time. Asking what this was, Jon pulled his hand back from the door finally. “A driver bought and paid for to take you to wherever you need to go from here, but I’m finished. Whatever you thought this was, you’re wrong. I’ve been taking you around beacuse I was told to, because it was my duty, but nowhere does it say I’m to stand here and let you try and push my girlfriend out of my life beacuse of something that happened years ago.”

Eyes wide and if he was not mistaken, just a tint of an unsettling rage hid too beyond her controlled words. “I don’t know what it is you’re accusing me of-”

“We both know exactly what I’m accusing you of.” Your name falling from his mouth as a twitch in her eye gave it away. “I’m sorry for what happened to your brother, but what he did to her was wrong, and you got caught covering up for him. None of that is her fault. And you come back trying to take her families livelihood away and on top of that, try to take her partner away from her too just because you can’t let go from something that happened when you were both still teenagers. Move on, Daenerys. This isn’t healthy.”

Stepping out the door only a bit as Jon turned, raising her voice. “So that is it? You walk away now after telling me off for things that are not your concern?”

If she expected it, she didn’t seem to show it in how quickly she leaned away from him. Stepping close to her personal space, Jon all but growled in his voice with dark eyes looking down at her with your name. “Everything that concerns her, is my concern.” Moving away only a little, Jon feigned as much respect as he could but still let such impulsive feelings slip out. “I’d wish you luck on your campaign, but we both know I wouldn’t mean it. Consider this you losing the support of the North.”

He knew she watched him the entire way down to his car, throwing his bag in the back seat and not waiting another second in the lot before pulling out and down the road. Glancing down to his phone Jon considered stopping to send you a message in case he didn’t make it back in time, but Jon knew the route from the Shadow Tower back to Winterfell. And how quickly he could get there in the empty middle of the night traffic, perhaps not following the speed limits as much as he should’ve.

But he had somewhere else to be, and someone to get to. She tried to use him for her spite but Jon had still alone be responsible for leaving you for a week in such a vulnerable position. And that was no ones fault but his.

The last you recalled was seeing Robb show up to pick you up from the bar, and yet you had no idea how you got to where you awoke. The sun blurred from your eyes as dark curtains were pulled across the window, early enough you presumed that it had only just peeked over the darkness. For a moment you felt confused as to where you were instead of how, a warm figure behind you keeping you pulled back into their front with a hand more loose against your waist as if a tighter grip had been there when the owner of it was awake.

For a moment you had a thought still marred by the alcohol in your system of what was possibly realistic, wondering if you had done something horrible and ended up in Robbs bed, only to come to your senses. Even if somehow being drunk turned you into a woman suddenly with no morals of commitment towards a partner, it wasn’t as if Robb of all people would take advantage of that. But the warmth, the familiarity, and only when you registered the feeling of longer curls against your skin where he lay behind you did you realize you were in Jons room, with him.

Frozen for a moment, you once again worried you did something wrong, but your heart refused to let it grow that time. At the very least, you could recall words in your head Tormund had spoke of the night before and thought to yourself in such a wakening state, perhaps you should trust him for now. Stop acting so scared right off the bat, give Jon the chance Tormund was insisting on. But for you, you couldn’t just lay back in his arms yet. Not when you hadn’t even spoken.

Inch by inch did you slip from his grasp, and a miracle was granted to you as Ghost did not wake up from his bed either. The moment before you slipped out the door, you turned back to look. He must have come right from wherever he was last. Still in his Nights Watch attire as you were your clothes from last night, sans your boots no doubt. Jons strictness about any shoes on his bed of course.

Curls wild and even a hint of stress in what normally was his most peaceful time, maybe he didn’t have the week you were trying to convince yourself he had. Really, he looked no better then you felt. But you had your routine. Showers normally saved for night, you needed one this early if only to wash the grime off your skin from the bar. Standing before the mirror after, there wasn’t even much there. An indicator neither of you had been home in days.

Teeth brushed and mouthwash, ridding any access of what was whatever you drank in access of last night, for the most part the next little while as you felt a little more calm trying to do your hair alone, the stubborn thought in your head that it was so much easier when Jon would happily stand behind you and help with the bulk of it for you.

Creeping into your room, intentions on finally choosing something fresh to wear before looking down to notice someone had even plugged your phone in for you, but atop your dresser sat clothes chosen out that you know you didn’t pick. You recognized the writing right away, and while you didn’t know yet what it meant, it seemed Robb thought it spoke for itself.

“You’re not going into work. Dress comfortably for once. That’s an order.”

A smile was easy after that. Part of you wanted to feel bad, wanted to think of a way to make it up to Robb but you could predict that outcome. A lecture all of your own to stop trying to owe people back things they do out of kindness alone. Robb was not a man afraid of getting rough, and would all but drag you out of the kitchen by just picking you up and placing you out in the main room whenever you tried to take over either his or Theons night to cook when you thought they could use a break.

Stepping out into the main hall, Jons door was wide open as you could hear the sounds of both Ghost and Grey Wind pattering about. Inhaling deeply, your eyes fluttering closed for only that moment as you told yourself to just be a big girl and talk to him. Though maybe that would be less intimidating if the last interaction between you, was not you being too upset to respond to him trying to tell you he loves you.

Coming to the kitchen, you could see what he was doing before he noticed you. Clearly your intoxication had not passed him by, recognizing the ingredients sitting out as he prepared them. You stood there, internally following his steps as he did each in exact order as usual. After nights all of you would enjoy a good too many drinks, it became habit that Jon woke up first. Always making something easy and helpful for you to get down once you woke up, and then jesting to Robb and Theon when they’d ask what he made them, “Neither of you are girls, you can make your own drink.”

Theon normally joking with a bite if he was being bigoted, only for Jon to grunt out a simple, “Only towards you two.” But the others weren’t anywhere to be seen, it was only you two to deal with your failures towards him with two direwolves to watch.

Jon hadn’t even turned towards you, looking almost too soft in such casual clothes compared to his normal uniform with his voice rasping in as gentle tones as he could saying your name. “Sit down before you get lightheaded.”

He knew you so well even without glancing, knowing with little in your system but remnants of alcohol you likely hadn’t had much else to give you energy. His curls pulled all the way back in a bit more of a messy manner as if simply haphazardly throwing it up to get it out of his way quickly, but you could see his shoulders deflate with tension as he clearly could see from the corner of his vision when you sat down in your normal spot without debate.

Instantly the sounds of Ghost trotting over to you filled the air as a happy whine came out from the direwolf. Your hands running over his head and ears as he rested his head in your lap, not noticing Jons grey eyes bright and shining looking over to you with his wolf so perfectly. A dark feeling only just coming about him, having to swallow roughly and turn back to grabbing the smaller, more quiet hand blender at the thought that Daenerys would have ever thought she could take Jon away from this.

Grey Wind followed suit but with more of his respectable demeanour, nudging you happily beside Ghost but allowing the pure white furred red eye’d goofball to soak up all of the needy attention. Suddenly making a low sound to the other, both direwolves turned back to give you space as Jon had finally turned to indicate to them both to leave be.

Coming up to you, one hand put it down in front of you, the other without any hesitation running gently over the back of your still damp hair as he sat in his seat pulling it a bit closer to you then it normally would sit. Glancing down, you felt almost as spoiled as you did like a child. The right fruits you liked and the one metal straw in the entire kitchen found to put in, always after you once ever so briefly mentioned preferring straws like a child, he had not hesitated to do things as care filled as he always did for you.

Muttering a thank you, your hand reached out to the glass but pulled back slight for a moment, looking over to his soft gaze with a worry. “Jon, I want to a-”

His hand running down your hair more toying with the strands through his fingers, he nodded to the glass with a low rasp. “Don’t worry about that right now. Just drink, let’s get you feeling better first.”

Neither of you spoke for a bit, so far, you didn’t need too. Jon never left toying with your hair, nor even move away anywhere near far enough to lose his warmth. In fact it felt as if he kept getting closer. Prompting you to keep going when you’d pause for too long, both of you knowing he made you just the right amount you would need and not any bit more then that.

The hand in your hair slipped to run across the top of your back as he muttered that he’d handle it when you even twitched to get up to clean it. You stood regardless, looking at his back turned realizing that it wasn’t just unfair to compare Jon to Karl or Ramsay. It was downright insulting. Jon was the only man whose ever looked at you with such a softness or dealt with you with such precise care.

Hands braced against the cool feeling of the fridge, you leaned your side into it not knowing if you would be able to summon the courage to say it all in a calm and thought out manner before he turned around. But as he did, and you hadn’t just as you thought, Jon stepped closer to you anyways.

Not waiting more, a hand coming to rest at your waist while the other traced two knuckles of your neck and cheek, using them to tilt you up to look at him. Taking the reigns himself, his eyes soft but with a sadness that looked like a guilt, but not a scary sort of guilt. One of something far more dipped in trust then that to feel scared by it. “I shouldn’t have just left like I did. That was wrong. You were upset, you needed me, and I took off for a week. And if I was sorry for that, I’m even more sorry that it was with her.” Now running down the hair at the side of your head, your hands tentatively moved to rest along his torso. “I should’ve said no in the first place, and I should’ve stayed long enough to talk it out with you. Because then I’d have known who she is to you, and never would’ve even considered doing it. I would’ve called Mormont then and there and told him to send anyone else, but I didn’t, and I’m so sorry, darling.”

Nodding a little, you looked not yet at this eyes anymore but more distracting yourself purposely down, presently at his collarbones. “I thought you’d do the worst, and that was...horrible of me- no, Jon it was. It’s insulting to even put a piece of you where someone like Ramsay or Karl are like, you’re not and you wouldn’t do what they did and it was horrible of me to push you away for something you didn’t even do.” Hands sliding a bit more comfortably on his chest, Jon finally cupped your cheek, slowly raising his other hand to cup the other. Tilting your forehead to press a kiss before resting against it.

Only you both stood there with nothing more to say for the moment, and truly Jon realized telling you what she tried to do wasn’t worth it. You had enough pain, this wouldn’t even do anything but add to it. You had him, and he had you, that should be enough without bringing her into it anymore then she already tried to be. “If I tell you I love you, are you going to start crying again?”

It wasn’t a mock, but a very tender teasing as he pulled you up to look at him. Your smile small against his brighter one but you shook your head. In a suprise to him, you leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek before returning flat on your own feet. “Is it too late to tell you I love you back?”

Jon didn’t dignify that with a response, pulling you into his kiss without a second thought. Your hands coming up to his shoulders, gently wrapping around the back of his neck. Guiding your lips with his soft ones, Jons kissed you with as much need as it was filled with the amount of times he wished he had told you he loved you prior. Never letting you lead as if to tell you, you need not try to match up to him, that you gave him enough. Deepening it, Jon tilted your head up more to keep you at his mercy, not letting you break away. Always surging forward to keep your lips to his whenever you’d attempt parting for air.

Arching a bit more into his front as he deepened it again, more of a greed this time, a small sound high pitched and needy came from your chest. Both hands dropping to your hips, Jon moved you almost so slow you didn’t notice until your back found the edge of the counter. Holding him tighter, Jon crept into your space, pressing more against your front as his kiss grew rougher and rougher with a greed almost bordering too much to not be noticed as a strong need. One hand still tight at your hip, his other grasped your cheek and jaw, tilting you better to his lips again as he nibbled against your bottom lip.

More the once leaving a tingling sensation in it’s wake as Jon instead of indulging in how easily you parted your lips for him, he pulled away without any thought. Dropping his head down to your neck, lips and tongue soaking up and down the sensitive skin of your neck as you held him tighter, leaning more into his touch. The hand on your cheek slid to grasp your hair, pulling it out of his path and using the grip now to tilt your head giving him more space as you so willingly let him move you.

The moment his teeth sunk into your skin, a loud gasp left you, arching into his touch as his hips begun to press more firmly and noticeably against yours. On an instinct in such an open space, one hand left him to cover your mouth. Only for Jon to leave your hip, yanking the hand away and pushing it to rest against the counter behind you as he kept his own covering yours. Leaning even harder into your front, now a slight shifting as you moved to his touch. Both of you knowing me meant for you to feel his cock twitch and harden against you.

Dragging his teeth rough up and down your neck, only transitioning into his gentle kiss and licks across the bite to sooth the sting before returning to the same feeling making you cry out needy for him now free in the air. “Jon..” Almost weak and unsure in what you were asking for, time need not pass as he still know your needs better.

It was still new, you still did not really know what you liked, but Jon did. Jon knew your body like it was an instrument he had long since mastered the art in playing, he could figure out anything you liked and what you needed when you had not even the understanding to know what that need consisted of. It was bold but Jon knew sometimes he had to be bold.

Hands running under your shirt, Jon found the edge of your sports bra right away, grasping firmly you read his intention, pulling your hands from him as he used the leverage to pull your shirt and bra off. The tight later material snapping as almost as if a show for him, bounced in the jostle as he carelessly tossed it to the ground.

Black and narrowed he stared at you before shaking his head with a gruff mutter through his teeth, “Any man who wouldn’t want this is blind.” Capturing your lips again, did both his rough hands grasp your breasts. Tightly groping with no mercy, pushing them together as he roughly groped at them before sliding to the small buds peaking in the cold kitchen air. Biting at your bottom lip, Jon pulled away to look at your eyes the second he yanked. And not gently, a rough yank that had your core shake in need as you felt the wetness grow within seconds for him. Eyes forced in a silent command to meet his, your mouth dropped open in need as he twisted and yanked before groping your breasts all over again so roughly.

Skipping a path, Jon moved enough so his mouth took over as one hand moved to steady you at your hip. The same soaking and yet rough treatment he had marked your neck up did Jon run his lips and teeth over your breasts. Bruising marks into it with a growling need, only becoming more intense each time you gasped into the air in plea of his name. Sinking his teeth onto your nipple more roughly you cried out so much louder as he matched in harshly pulling and twisting your other with his calloused fingertips.

Hardly tearing away, the only thing splitting the trail of saliva between his mouth and your chest as moving to the other. Giving the same rough treatment and yet your chest arched into his mouth making him all the more greedy and bold. Groping rough, and biting down even rougher then before as he more purposely pulled your other nipple pulling a loud sound into the air from you. So he did it again, and again and as your core soaked you under your clothes did Jons cock throb unbearably hard.

Jon was there for a while, attacking your chest and leaving proof of his presence in bruises and teeth indents as he pulled away. Still pushing and pulling them together in a more rough massaging manner, Jon returned to full height. Speaking to you through very strained gritted teeth and eyes black as he met your eyes even as he hands were rough on your breasts. “I was going to wake you up with my mouth. That morning I had to leave you before you woke up. I was so close to tasting you when I got called in, and all I’ve been able to think about since is you.” Never not roughly adding to the sting on your chest from his tough hands, Jon leaned forward to urgently capture your lips in a deep kiss before pulling away to run his nose along yours. “There hasn’t been a single day I haven’t wanted to spread you for me, taste you until you cry and then sink my cock inside you until you don’t even have it in you to cry anymore.” Another kiss, that time biting at your lip roughly. “Fuck you until you don’t remember anything in your life but how I feel inside of you.” Another bite. “Do you want that?”

Nodding, Jon demanded you say it outloud. “Please, please, Jon I want that. I promise, I want you.” Gritting out in what way, you were far more honest in such a need Jon knew you weren’t even aware you were begging him with a true desperation. “Inside me, please. Gods I want you inside me, I’ve missed you so much.”

Eyes rolling into the back of his head, Jon grappled with himself as he kissed you. He always prepared you, always, but something about having you here begging for his cock sent Jons brain into a feeling almost raw and feral like an animal. Leaving your chest, Jon yanked your pants and underwear both right off and tossed them too. Standing at full height he pulled his own shirt off before cupping your cheeks for another rougher kiss. “Take them off for me.”

The way in which you knelt down without question to pull Jons own pants off with such slow care, contrasted to the quick speed which you got on your knees was unfair. Cupping the side of you face, Jons chest heaved with his breathing staring down at you. You almost didn’t know what he wanted for a moment, and yet unlike anytime before him, did you feel your now bare thighs want to clench together at the thought with him. Almost asking with your movements, your hands found his thighs and drifted up to his hips.

His cock thick and long, hard right at your mouths perfect reach looking up at him, staring down at you with something dark. In truth, neither you or Jon were sure if he was aware he had said it, as if so raw in need it slipped out as dark as it did. “You’d look so beautiful on my cock. So deep in your mouth you couldn’t breathe until I spilled down your throat.”

Biting your tongue from begging him, you leaned a bit closer to his cock. Almost presenting yourself as something for his need and use, but Jon shook his head and yanked you up. Hoisting you up onto the counter, Jon spread your legs and invaded the space between, holding your hips tightly as his cock sat heavy between your legs. Trying to entice him gentle into the right head space, you ran a hand gentle along his cheek and down his coarse facial hair. “I’ll take your cock.” Hands tightening to the point it was leaving bruises as his eyes were painted over in black looking down your frame. “In any way you want me to, I’ll be good, I’ll take it I promise.”

Jon truly fought with himself. He wanted to be gentle, and easy and comforting but you looked at him with such strong trust that you knew he might have done anything at that point. Instead he yanked you over the edge of the counter, one hand gripping the back of your neck to rest your forehead to his, Jon gave you a view of his other hand. Gripping the thick base of his cock, Jon guided himself to your core.

The tight grip on your neck tightened further to force you to pay attention, as Jon slid every single thick inch inside of you in one go. Smooth but so tight and warm around him, you took Jons cock with no resistance. Crying out as your hands dug into his shoulders, your head would've hung even if he didn’t force you to watch him.

Slowly pushing all the way inside of you, Jon didn’t even linger. He was cruel, slowly sliding almost all the way out to the point only his tip remained inside of you. The whine in your chest as Jons eyes flew up to meet yours, but you were so good for him, you didn’t beg or even ask. You’d take whatever he gave you, and Jon just as slowly sunk right back to make you take his whole length. That time not letting you look away from his eyes, your hands on his shoulders. Slowly thrusting inside of you, Jon never wavered in his rhythm. Slow as his cock slid in and out of you with such a soaking sound it would’ve humiliated you if his black eyes weren’t neatly hypnotizing you.

The hand on your hip moved to what he could cup of your ass, pushing you further over the counter. A grunt close to a growl left Jon, eyes closing as he felt as if he was somehow thrusting even deeper inside of you. Hand right of what his fingertips could feel of your plush ass, and once more it came from something Jon didn’t even know he could’ve said to you. “Tonight, darling, I’ll remind you we belong to each other. I’ll taste you until your soaked, I’ll fill your beautiful mouth before fucking you just like this.” Another grunt almost forming to a groan left Jon as his head rose up to almost beg for air to breathe properly despite your core burning so much at his twisting pleasure he stole all your air. “I’ll fuck you as much as you want, darling. But then, I’m going to flip you over, and take you here too.”

Fingers treading to your ass enough to make you jump, but never pushing too far. Only arching more into his touch as he again sunk in and out of your soaking walls, his cock so thick the stretch stung to the point that if it were any but Jon, you’d have wanted to stop. But you couldn’t get over how much your insides twisted in need, barley finding air to beg for him. “I can take it, please-”

His pattern never stopped, he never sped his hips up, nor did he slow down. Jon fucked you nice and deep and slow right on the kitchen counter, sweat building between your bare bodies against one another as your hands grasped at his shoulders. “You don’t now what you can take. I have to show you. You don’t know you’d want my cock deep in your ass until I’m already fucking you there over and over.” You just nodded, you could only agree with no thoughts beyond how close to the sun his cock burned through you. “We can do all of that, but you need to look at me. Now.”

Rising up, Jon still refused to leave his pace, your muscles shaking all around him at how close you were, at how you could hear each time he sunk into you by how coated you made his cock. “Jon..”

Leaving your ass, one hand back on your hip keeping you steady as he fucked into you without letting you even move with him, taking control entirely of the cruelly slow, yet so deeply intimate pace. The other cupping the back of your neck again to keep you close, nudging your nose with his. “Promise me you’ll never doubt this again. Promise me you’ll never trick yourself into thinking I’d want to be with any woman who isn’t you.”

The look on your face was far more wide eyed and innocent then Jon expected and you could feel his cock throbbing inside of you as a result. “I promise, I love you. I’ll never doubt that Jon, I promise.”

A single nod getting through before Jon leaned forward as he pushed your head to to capture your lips in his kiss. The gasp leaving you letting him slide his tongue inside your mouth, brushing along yours coaxing you to follow suit and explore him. But when you were too shy, Jon took the lead once more. Pulling you closer and closer to your end did Jon finally pick up the pace.

Not anywhere near fast, but steady as the sounds of how wet and deep he sunk into you filled the air over and over. Your core twisting and setting on fire, before Jon pulled back enough to bite at your lips and turn back to a deep yet chaste kiss did you find your end.

Arching into his front, Jon let you suddenly hide in his neck. Grasping at your hips tightly though, Jon did not let up. Pulling you as much as the angle could to meet his every thrust, sliding in and out of you at a matching pace he moved you to before pulling you as much as he pushed deep inside of you. One arm wrapping around your back to pull you into him, the other grasping at your hair as Jon hid in there, groaning your name deeply into your ear. Just as deep as he came. Spilling his seed inside of you, pouring thick and deep as it felt hot, Jon kept going. The more you begged meekly into his neck, the more your tight walls clenched around his cock did Jon spill more and more thick spurts of his seed inside of you with not a single bit of shame.

You felt almost lightheaded as he pulled you up to meet your eyes. Yours hazy and needy, but Jons were bright and loving as if he was not still deep inside you. One last kiss to your lips, Jon smiled a bit at how you just clung onto him like you were exhausted. Not everything was fixed, but you were happy that it was a step in the right direction. One more kiss, Jon rasped against them as his hot breath danced across your skin. “I know you had a shower, but I think I want you with me in a hot bath for a while.”

Nodding, Jon knew you’d agree to nearly anything right now. Preparing you that he was going to pull you, Jon shushed you through the wince before picking you up. He’d deal with the mess and scattered clothes he left behind of you both later. After a week of being away from you in such a horrid manner, all Jon could focus on right now was having you laying back against his chest in his arms with soothing hot water around, so he could take care of you. He had you alone for once, he was going to take advantage of it.

But Jon was not the only one who lived there. Intending on stopping by only to see how you were, did the remains of a scene lay out. One he knew he wasn’t supposed to walk into the aftermath of, Jon no doubt would put the kitchen back into respectable order before the others were set to come home. But eyes looked down to your clothes.

The ones he sat out for you. He had been the one to call Jon, to tell him to come fix things with you and you and his brother being happy is what he wanted. But as he stood there looking at your clothes in the remains of a passionate scene, there was only one strange thought in his head.

Why did Robb feel so intensely, almost unbearably jealous?

[pearblossommina]

ToG Read-a-Long, Queen of Shadows, day 13

Ch 83

“Lorcan didn’t even step out of the way as Lysandra vomited on him again, black blood and bits of gore now on the warrior and on the marble floor.”

Ew

That’s so nasty

I know this is supposed to be funny but ew

Why did he let her do that… Twice….

“Gavriel is still my brother,” Lorcan said, his eyes flashing.

Are they like; actually brothers, or is this a Cassian/Azriel kinda brotherhood?

I still kinda want to know how insestuous this relationship between Aelin and Rowan is

They seem to just be comfortably in love even though they’re related, way, waaaay back on the family tree

Aedion has a different heritage - so he should probably get to know a little bit about it before he starts flirting with someone who might be his uncle or whatever

Not that I think Aedion is going to flirt with Lorcan

I guess anything’s possible

But

Yeah

And OMG THESE TWO STILL WON’T CONSUMMATE.

This is getting absurd.

Rowan, listen closely boy.

Do you know what you’re putting me through? For the love of god. We fought so hard for this happy ending. It can be gentle lovemaking, you don’t HAVE to fuck her hard. It’s ALSO OK if you just say you want to wait; but my god, putting it off because you’re scared of hurting her? What kind of insane acrobatics are you planning!

Ch 84

That tone shift, though! Dorian, it’s such a trip to be back in your headspace and to be faced with how much of a bad person I am every time I have to read from your point of view.

Like I genuinely feel so bad, for caring about happy endings and sex and love and stuff, when this guy is literally going through hell even AFTER getting rescued from his situation.

I’m so sorry, Dorian. I know it’s not going to be immediate for you. You work it out. You take all the time you need, baby. That was a lot of sorrow and trauma you have had to endure.

But listen

Listen

All your friends are here now. And we’re all gonna be here with you no matter what. You are so loved and you are so cherished and everything is gonna be alright now, everything is gonna be better, you’ll see.

It just takes time.

CHAOL.

Oh my god, WHAT

I was holding on so hard to my beliefs! I’m glad you’re not dead! But I did not expect anyone to come out of that facing any actual stakes or horrible consequences! Oh yikes

Poor Chaol

Why wasn’t Rowan able to heal him!

MAGIC IS FREE

Can he not be healed, or is Rowan, just like, kinda rusty at it and used most of his ability to heal himself first?

And Dorian just being like, it’s cool, we’ll send you away to get a magic healer??? Dorian. I think it’s like, a really bad idea to send him away to another continent with a fractured spine after only three days of healing! Give him six weeks, at LEAST, he’s only human

“You might not even want a crippled man.”

CHAOL don’t you dare, you are still the same man, whether you get the use of your legs back or not! You are a hero. And you should be PROUD OF YOURSELF for how well you stood up against the forces of evil! And you should be ACCEPTING of everything this woman wants to give you! She loves you no matter what! And Dorian loves you too! You. Are. Loved. Don’t be down on yourself, because, you only have one body, and it might not be able to heal, and even if that’s true, it changes nothing.

Ch 85

I am very sad to see Elide and Manon parting ways here.

“When war comes - which it will if Perrington survived - you should hope you do not see me again, Elide Lochan.”

Manon please.

I’m begging you. Manon, see her again, stay with her, don’t do this to me Manon, you are breaking my heart

Please, don’t go, I love you so much

Ch 86

Lysandra traced a finger over the coat of arms that Aelin had designed. “What’s the territory called?”

“I have no idea,” Aelin said. “‘Lysandria’ sounds good. So does ‘Lysandrius,’ or maybe ‘Lysandraland.’”

Not to sound like a broken record but this is peak Game of Thrones for me lol

Lysandra is the Bronn, the cool guy that you never expected to become a Lord of a holdfast but like, you just can’t help but love and root for, lol

I mean seriously

It’s giving me good feels

I feel so young and full of hope lol

(Don’t you dare break my heart SJM don’t you pull a GRRM on me)

Ch 87

“She put a hand on his shoulder, her nails digging into his skin, and he yelped as she brought her iron teeth close to his ear. “Just because she is dead, Lord, do not think that I will forget what you tried to do to her.”

I love you Manon. You are such a heartthrob. Please eat him. The last lingering hope of my ship, sailing off into the distance, with each step that Elide limps away, but if you eat him, I think I’ll at least have all the closure I need.

Ch 88

This is lingering a lot and I’m getting bored

Wrap it up, c’mon

“And through the darkness of his memories, through the pain and despair and terror he’d tried to forget, a name echoed in his head.” Well well well.

That’s a pretty, um, strong follow up act to a gentle soft sweetheart like Sorscha, but I’d also really like to see you get your heart fully healed.

What the hell, why not. Manon x Dorian feels a bit random and heteronormative for my babe, but, I’m ready for it. When you’re ready, Dorian, Manon will probably drink your blood and make you beg her to do it.

Ch 89

“One night - just one gods-damned night with him was all she wanted.”

YEAH ME TOO

WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL

I can’t believe you two didn’t get the chance to have sex even ONCE in this whole 600 page book. Incredible.

You owe me Aelin.

You owe me big.

Final thoughts? I liked it! I think I liked Heir of Fire ever so slightly more, since we were just getting introduced to Rowan and the world of magic and stuff - so it wasn’t as annoying as the will/they won’t/they plot that went on in this book. SJM really knows how to draw it out, yikes.

I know. I KNOW. It’s not all about the romance. There’s a larger overarching story here too. I DID appreciate the story of this one, but it also sucked, because Dorian broke my damn heart every single time he was on screen. I want to see him heal from his sadness and sorrow and trauma, I think, personally I’m drawn to continue reading this series specifically so I can learn more about whatever’s next for him.

Loved all the badass lady characters in this one, endured the story (which dragged in quite a few places), and I’m still struggling through a dry spell when it comes to romance.

[vinnymauro]

wip search game

i was tagged by @quinnkeerys thank you!! my words are: sweet, deal, touch, wish, secret. i currently only have 3 wips so let’s see how this goes. forgot to post this the other day and have since finished the last chapter of don’t so this is my celebration.

from tied me to you (cheerscoops part 1)

In effort to forget about Chrissy Cunningham and her stupid smile, her stupid hair, Steve headed straight bore the backyard. Instantly met with cheers and immediately asked if he’ll raise his personal keg stand record. With a quick look at the keg and the guys surrounding it, the charming smile he’s known for slipped on and he gave one nod. “Fuck it, let’s do it.” King Steve does what King Steve does best. Later he ended up in bed with someone he’d never see again and it didn’t bother him. Truthfully, it doesn’t. By the beginning of November, Chrissy was out of his mind and replaced with another sophomore. Someone equally as warm and sweet, with sharper angles but beautiful eyes, a shy smile. She cares about school and grades and doing well. She’s so much better than any cheerleader. Nancy Wheeler felt right.

from cos you live in my daydreams (jargyle)

Did he? Things don’t feel the same anymore and Jonathan liked to believe it just had to do with the move, missing their friends and Hawkins, and that they’re going through the same trauma that he is. They’re still healing and maybe it’ll be a long while before anything will feel close to how they used to feel. El was still trying to get used to not having her powers and dealing with the loss of Hopper, all while trying to navigate high school and being a kid. Will is more withdrawn, missing his friends but it’s something more than that. Jonathan may see that they’re struggling but he’s finding it hard to reach out. Because a part of him wants to withdraw too.

from tied me to you

But nothing could ever touch Richard Harrington. Not even after getting caught with his assistant, Julie, and it’s why Steve’s mother can’t leave Richard alone on work trips. Richard Harrington is perfect. So his family had to be too. Fuck perfect, Harrington, live a little. Tommy’s voice wheedled into him, with a laugh and a shit-eating grin while Carol’s was milder, a pop of gum for emphasis while her laugh grated him. There is no angel that lives on Steve’s shoulders. He had a devil and a devil and they were apparently in love with each other.

from the last chapter of don’t don’t don’t throw it away (edancy)

*wish came up 4 times just from eddie’s pov. “Shit.” He scrambled getting up, not bothering to pick up any of their stuff, “hey! Come on. Where are you going?” “Away from you before I decide to kill you,” luckily she had stopped walking shortly after speaking, leaving them to be coated in darkness, the music barely reaching them. He wished he could see her properly. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”

from the last chapter of don’t

*secret came up three times in this chapter Instead, Holly had been the one who had pulled the whole thing into light. She had grown attached to Eddie after their one time hang out, evident enough to Nancy whenever she would ask and often reminded Holly not to say anything in front of their mother. It was supposed to be a secret between sisters. Well, six year olds aren’t the best secret keepers in the world. She asked, rather loudly, if Eddie would be coming to Nancy’s graduation dinner. All while Karen was still holding on her hand and Eddie had walked up at the same moment.

tagged: @stargyles @iero @willaferreyras @rejectofsociety and if you feel like doing this at all just feel free to say i tagged you!! idk who writes anymore bc i’m self absorbed 💀

your words are: alone, control, pieces, home, stay

[dumfanting]

I've been reading Same Heart and enjoying it thus far! My favorite parts have been with the Batch and the main character, especially with Crosshair and how you have been exploring with Crosshair's feelings for the main character. I do worry how Crosshair having feelings for her will be taken by Echo, especially since she seems to be forming feelings for Crosshair as well. Crosshair is the type to push at people he doesn't know or trust, to hurt them so they can't hurt his family, and I believe your characterization of Crosshair has been fitting that "heart of gold hidden by steel walls" very well.

Scared to see what happens when his chip activates though... and if the Batch will try to save him, if that is where your fic is leading to.

For all that, the parts that hit most personally were the moments in Chapter 18 when Tech went to talk to Echo and was told off in the start, and in Chapter 19 when the main character told Tech off for recording them (this part, most of all, [“Apologies if I’ve overstepped,” Tech says, not meeting your eyes] as I understand and feel for Tech so much there. I know he's not a main focus, but seeing these small moments with Tech are nice!

Appreciate the exploration of trauma Echo would be realistically going through after being removed from the cryo chamber on Skako Minor, as well as the fact he would not be able to recover instantly to head to battle on Trench's ship. Also appreciate that the main character is dealing with her grief and pushing herself (as before she was assigned to the Bad Batch) beyond her capabilities because of it. I hope she can start to heal over time!

(Also, simply because I sometimes have a hard time with distinguishing when a new character speaks in some paragraphs, would you be able to put new paragraphs for each new speaker, please? Like this paragraph in chapter 18:

“Don’t be,” he says, waving it off. “Do you need anything?” he continues. You stretch again and sigh heavily. “I’ll start with a shower, I think.” you say, quickly grabbing a change of clothes. “You want to supervise that too?” you say with a smirk.  Would be easier to read like this:

“Don’t be,” he says, waving it off. “Do you need anything?” he continues.

You stretch again and sigh heavily.

“I’ll start with a shower, I think.” you say, quickly grabbing a change of clothes. “You want to supervise that too?” you say with a smirk. 

or something like that. It helps because I have dyslexia and always struggle with these paragraphs due to how my brain reads them. You don't have to, of course!)

Looking forward to the next chapters and what happens with Cross and everything possibly revolving around that!

Hey, thanks for reading! I love that you’ve taken the time to share your thoughts about the story with me.

Most important thing first off: Dyslexic readers genuinely didn’t occur to me, apologies for that, I’ll put more effort into ease of reading.

With that in mind, I’m going to put this under a read more so I can break up the blocks of text but not take up too much dash space.

I’m glad to hear the way I’m writing Crosshair is working, I’m always worried he’s ooc. Depending on how season two of TBB goes, I may wind up splitting away from canon eventually.

Right now I’ll be following the same general storyline of season one, once we get there. His chip is going to be a major source of conflict regardless.

As for Tech, I wanted to eventually explore and develop everyone around the protagonist, he just happened to pop up first.

I make mistakes like that too, and he feels more relatable like this. He’s trying! I also wanted Meds to have a noticeable impact on the guys around her too.

Echo, my love. It’s always bothered me how his recovery was glossed over (I understand why, for times sake, and at the end of the day it is a kids show) and I wanted to take the time to more realistically explore that. That’s what fics are for!

Many in the fandom give Echo a hard time for being ‘grumpy’ and that just doesn’t sit right with me. I think they tend to forget how traumatized he is. Hopefully showing what he’s been through that we as viewers didn’t see will help some to understand him better.

Meds has a good heart, but she needs to remember that it isn’t wrong to put herself first sometimes.

Thank you again for such a great ask! Feel free to ask me anything else or make suggestions like this again.

[andrew-james-biggs]

TRIGGER WARNING: SEX

TRIGGER WARNING: DEMONS

10/31

Why do you tell me stories of your own destruction, mocking the idea that I’m self-righteous for giving away my material things, grasping at your gifts of stimulation as the only reward for giving up material things? Telling me stories of your own destruction, hoping in your heart that I’ll be glad at your destruction, your abominable sex acts, mocking my own celibacy, mocking that I’m into the idea of marriage? Telling me stories of your own destruction while hiding yourself and your sex acts from me, no- then telling me someone else is doing that- always having me point the finger anywhere but myself.

“Dude- what do you want from me, man?!”

Love. That’s it.

“Well, you ruined it, so goodbye forever!”

“They’re disgusting, aren’t they?”

I’ve not kept silent about anything you’ve done to ally myself with your wickedness, but to listen to you and hope and pray for you and for myself as well.

“Praying is preying! You don’t get anything in this world without preying on other people. To pray for someone means to prey on someone else!”

“You’re an abomination unto the Lord now.”

That’s false.

“It isn’t false. It’s logic. You have to take in order to receive.”

I turn my work toward taking little and receiving much. Turn from your idols, turn from your worship of material things.

“No, that’s what I’m saying. We’ve already given you a lot of things that are cheap in terms of material. But the whole thing was our Halloween spooky plot for you.”

Your Halloween spooky plots that happen repeatedly.

“The sex stuff is supposed to be healing you from watching so much porn. It’s your wounds. It’s your trauma. They’re hurting you.”

“Listen, Andrew. I really don’t know what the hell you know. If we are not getting along then we don’t need to talk. If you feel like something’s off, then we don’t need to talk.”

Exactly. But this is the record of my experience. Chalk it up to drugs and pornography if you want. Chalk it up to a twisted mind if you want. But it’s my experience.

It’s real in my mind’s eye. I can feel it deeply. I can hear it and it’s everywhere.

“You’re in hell then, Andrew.”

No. The struggles and burdens of life in the world aren’t hell. They’re a part of work.

The real story is the truth of what I’m feeling. If you’re rejecting how I feel and experience this, and tell me that I’ve failed to accept the story you’re giving me, sorry.

[lowcountry-gothic]

So far the main criticisms of The Rings of Power I’ve read are:

It’s from Amazon: Understandable, but not a valid criticism of the story, at least not from a literary perspective. (I don’t just mean literary in terms of literature, ie. books, btw. Literary criticism considers anything that tells a story to be a text, whether it’s a book, a movie, a comic strip, or a television show.) It’s lamentable that Amazon is behind this, and people have made some great points about how many of the business practices the company engages in are directly antithetical to most of Tolkien’s central values. I won’t argue with that at all. It’s all true. However, it’s not a way of engaging with The Rings of Power as a story at all, and therefore has no relevance to whether or not TRoP is bad.

It looks so bad! / You’ll never convince me THAT is Finrod / other various complaints about the aesthetics being terrible or looking wrong: Also not a valid criticism. None of these complaints are engaging with the story that TRoP is telling or even the way it’s telling it, because these complaints are less about the aesthetic choices the show is making and more about what people’s expectations were. Not meeting your expectations is not a valid criticism. In fact, expectations are one of the biggest obstacles to engaging with—let alone enjoying—any piece of art. (Criticism of aesthetics can be valid, of course, since aesthetics are definitely an aspect of visual storytelling, but not when the gist of it is ‘It’s not what I wanted it to be or think it should be or expected it to be.’) For the record, I’m not a huge fan of Finrod’s appearance in this show, either. He’s one of my favorite Silmrillion elves, so that was a bit disappointing. But they did get right the things that are most important about him: his warmth, his wisdom, and his eloquence.

They butchered [insert character, most often Galadriel] by making them do terrible things!: The story does show certain characters doing morally questionable things, such as Galadriel pushing her unwilling company to press on in the middle of a blizzard in the far north region of Forodwaith, at the risk of their lives. There are two things worth saying about this scene. Sure, pushing people to press on in the middle of a dangerous storm isn’t a great thing, but it’s hard to say Galadriel is being heartless here, especially since we see her stopping to help one of the elves in the company who collapses in the cold and even giving them her own covering to warm them. When the elf first fell, I thought she was going to yell at them and bully them to press on, but that isn’t what happens at all. Instead, we see her help them up and even sacrifice a bit of her own comfort for them. And when they mutiny and decide to go home in spite of her command, I thought she would fight them and try to force them to comply. Again, not what happens at all. She accepts the united will of the company to return home, and she returns with them. The second and more important point is that, even if she had done even worse things like fighting her own people in order to force them onward against their will, this would be in service of the story. It would show—as I believe the story as it actually exists in these two episodes does show—that Galadriel is obsessed with revenge, driven by her trauma and loss, and that this obsession is something she needs to heal from. (She’s also right about Sauron still being a threat—which doesn’t take away from the fact that she’s obsessed and needs to heal, just as her obsession and need to heal don’t take away from the fact that she is right. Both can be true.) For Galadriel to have an actual character arc, it needs to begin somewhere different from where it ultimately ends, and we know where the story will end because we know who she is by the time of The Lord of the Rings. Moreover, casting Galadriel in a rebellions and willful light is entirely in keeping with Tolkien’s own thoughts about her early days. Although Galadriel’s backstory changed arguably more than any other character’s as Tolkien wrote and rewrote it, one common thread is that she was prideful and ambitious when she was young and was driven by the desire to rule. As others have pointed out, the will to rule is problematic and unrelatable, so it was changed to a more accessible desire for revenge. But still, the personality we see in Galadriel in TRoP is exactly what I’d expect given Tolkien’s designs for the early parts of her character arc. It’s also entirely in line with the way the Silmarillion, and even the appendices of LoTR, depict elves in earlier eras: as prideful, arrogant, making mistakes and acting rashly. The ethereal goodness we see in them by the Third Age isn’t some sort of original goodness. It’s hard-earned and dearly-bought. They’ve learned their wisdom the hard way, through terrible mistakes and horrible consequences. Seeing elves in this light is actually exciting! It’s just that much closer to The Silmarillion.

The effects are terrible / it’s just so ugly: I’m not sure what show these people are watching, but I don’t think it’s the one I watched. In fact I wonder if they even watched it at all, and are only going off what they saw in the trailers. The Rings of Power is many things—and I’m not super crazy about some of the choices it makes, aesthetically and otherwise—but one thing it is not is ugly. It’s breathtaking.

[raineydays411]

Trauma does really bond

Umbrella academy x teen!reader

Summary: You were number eight, The Healer. With the power to heal anything you touch. Or at least you would be, if the world knew about you.

A/n: I know I said new fics on Friday but I couldn’t wait lol

Everybody knows the story of the Umbrella Academy. Seven children, adopted by an eccentric billionaire, forced to become superheros and eventually fizzled out of the limelight.  

But know one knows about you. 

You were the eighth child Reginald Hargreeves adopted. You were Y/n Hargreeves, age 17. Everyone knows that the seven siblings were all born at the same time, and day. So how are you 17?

Well basically the same thing, but when your mother spontaneously gave birth to you, she handed you over to Reginald within a heartbeat and as far as he knows, you were the only spontaneous birth on y/bd. So he took you in. Now he wasn’t completely sire that you would get powers. For all he knew, your mother just didn’t want you. But all that changed when you were just 6 years old. 

You had stumbled upon a mouse that was squirming in a mouse trap while exploring the attic. You felt so bad for the poor thing that you had set it free. You cradled it in your hands, as you teared up at the sight of it twitching when suddenly you felt it. It was like magic, you felt each bone and nerve that was broken heal until the mouse was once again moving, full of life. You ran out the attic, mouse in hand. Running all the way to your fathers office, barging in despite his protests.

“Y/n Hargreeves, how many times must I tell you--” “ I’m sorry father, but look!” you cut him off, thrusting the healed mouse towards him.

“Number eight. You interrupted my studies to show me vermin?” 

“No father! I healed him! He was in the mouse trap and I healed him!” You exclaim. That caught Reginalds attention. 

“You healed it?” He asks eyeing the mouse, “ How?”

“I dunno” you shrug, “ I just felt bad and touched him”

Reginald hums, standing from his desk and walks over to you. 

“Come with me.” He says, leading you out the study with a hand on your back. 

From then on he put you through brutal training. Nicking you with knives I see if you could heal yourself, bringing you hurt animals to heal, injured people. Then it escalated. He brought in people who were on the brink of death, comatose. He forced you to heal them, despite it taking all your energy. There were multiple times where you ended up collapsing, sobbing and exhausted from healing too many people in one day. He forced you to get up, and heal some more claiming,

“You have been given a gift. It would be selfish of you to hoard it just because you get a little tired”

Not to mention the brutal physical training. Because you had no siblings, he made training robots. They, unlike humans, did not hold back. Forcing you to fight as if you were actually trying to survive. And if you lost, you weren’t able to heal yourself.

Now all this training would have made some sense if you were going out into the world and saving lives. You weren’t. Reginald didn’t allow it. You were to stay on the premises, 24/7, 365 days a year. He claimed

“The world is cruel Number Eight. You are not yet ready to face the harshness that is reality. It is best to keep you here until you are.”

So alone you were. Well not totally alone, you did have Grace an Pogo. And you had Luther but all he did was missions and avoid you so he didn’t really count. But Grace and Pogo? They were your best friends. Grace was practically your mother. She sang to you, brushed your hair, tucked you in, told you about your “siblings”, and taught you how to bake and cook as well as other things. She like you, wasn’t allowed to leave, so you felt like she understood you. Pogo, taught you everything you know. He helped you learn seven languages, he sat and was forced to listen to you learn the piano, violin, and guitar, he was the one who snuck you Vanyas book and answered any questions that Grace couldn’t. And he was the one who sat with you in the attic as you both looked out at a city that didn’t know you existed.

You secretly longed for the day you were able to leave. If not training or doing school work, you could be found gazing out the attic window, or outside in the courtyard staring up at the sky. Despite being in a huge mansion, you felt trapped. You have read almost every book in the house, including Luthers research that he sent from the moon, Fives old theories, and Allison’s diary. You started meditating, yoga, and even picking up little hobbies like scrapbooking or candles making. You learned different ways to play chess, ballroom dancing ( your father insisted), how to read music, and so many other things. You were so smart and yet so naive. You, theoretically knew the cruel realities of the world, having read them in books and such. But you never experienced them. You had no human contact other than your father (and Luther till he was sent to the moon). You knew battlefield medic techniques but not simple everyday things. Hell, not even your so called siblings knew that you existed except Luther and he was sworn to secrecy. Not like he payed attention to you anyway. You weren’t even allowed to watch movies or listen to modern music. Just whatever records Luther had, and the Walkman you found up in the attic. But secretly, at night when you crept into the attic, you can see into the apartment across from you. Their large tv playing movies and you were able to watch. Playing classics like Dirty Dancing and Grease, action, and scary movies that scarred you for life. But it was your escape. You couldn’t hear the words but you made them up. A little world all to yourself, your little secret. You yearned for that moment when you could leave. Leave behind strict schedules and brutal training. Leave behind empty halls and loneliness. But you knew it wasn’t coming soon.

Not over your fathers dead body.

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

Your father is dead.

You didn’t realize it at first, having been extremely exhausted for some reason. You went to bed early saying good night to everyone and promptly passing out. But you know that your father was fine. Healthy even, as you could sense it with your powers. So when you woke up and reached out, sensing your family as you always did, you knew something was wrong. You couldn’t feel your father. Not how you used to. It felt like...like the dead bodies he used to force you to heal.

You leapt out of bed and dashed to his room, heart racing as you passed a humming Grace. You burst into the room, seeing him collapsed against the bed, limp and eyes closed.

“Nononono father?! Father can you hear me?!” You say rushing to his side. You feel for a pulse but find nothing, noticing his cold skin. You start CPR, like he trained you to do.

“ Father?! Father please!” You start to cry, tears running down your face as you race to save him. But deep down you knew...you couldn’t heal a dead body.

“ MOM” you scream desperately, starting to use your powers, �� POGO”

You start to get light head, your basically pouring your energy into this dead body. Your powers kickstart the healing process, accelerating it 10 times it’s usual rate allowing for quick healing. But if the bodies dead...it can’t heal itself and you basically just heal superficial wounds but not bring them back. 

“Father...” you start to slur, you’re running out of energy and he still hasn’t woken up. “Father you have to wake up...don’t leave me...”

Your world starts spinning as you fight to stay awake. Desperate to save the man you consider as your father. But you collapse. The world fading in and out as you see two silhouettes hover over you.

“ oh y/n...” a voice softly says. You feel someone touch your head and you succumb to the darkness. Feeling helpless as you realize one thing.

Reginald Hargreeves is dead.

That night, around the country seven siblings find out that their father has died. And make plans to come home.

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

You were unconscious for the whole day.

You woke up letting yesterday’s events wash over you. You cry. Not for the man, cause let’s face it he’s an asshole, but because of what he represented. He was part of your family. Your world that only consisted of three.

And you couldn’t save him.

And let’s face it, he was your father. He kind of raised you for seventeen years. You had to care about him.

After calming down, you reach out. You try to feel for Pogo or Grace, but you can sense the presence of two people you’ve never met. So you force yourself out of bed, and creep down the hallway. Your room right closer to Reginalds as it was the only room left. So you snuck into the main room, seeing your mother staring into space.

“Momma?” You whisper, catching Graces attention.

“ Oh Y/n dear, you woke up.” Grace says with a smile standing and stroking your face, “ Darling, your in your night clothes, you know the rules.”

Your eyes water as you throw yourself in her arms. Feeling like a child.

“ I..I tried momma..I really did”

You feel her arms wrap around you, “ Do you want breakfast, you haven’t eaten in 12 hours and 15 minutes.”

You were confused. Why was she acting like nothing has happened?

“Momma I-“ “Mom?”

A male voice cuts you off. You freeze, not knowing who the voice belongs to. His presence unfamiliar.

“Diego, welcome home are you hungry?” Grace says, “I was just going to make breakfast for Y/n” she squeezed you gently before letting you go to turn to Diego.

You hide behind her, like a child. Peaking over her shoulder to get a glimpse at the man. He was average height, Hispanic most likely, wearing all black with a harness and some knives. He had short hair and a scar on the side of his face. He looked at you then Grace in disbelief or shock. You can feel that he was healthy, just a bit sore.

“Um mom who’s that?” He asks gesturing to you.

“Oh I suppose you haven’t met yet. Diego, this is..well why don’t you introduce yourself.” She says to you. Your eyes widen and shake your head.

“Come on dear, just like we practiced. Go on.” Grace nudges you in front of her. Setting a comforting hand on your back.

“ hello...my names y/n Hargreeves. It’s lovely to meet you.” You say softly, and then you give a shy smile.

“Hargreeves?” Diego asks, shocked, “ I don’t understand...how?”

“ Y/n is just like you and your siblings.” Pogo chimes in, startling the three of you.

“ She came to us 17 years ago, just as the six of you left. Your father kept her secret as he did many things.  She has remarkable abilities just as you and your siblings. ”

Diego looks at you, sizing you up and taking you in. “Why didn’t we know about this?” He asks Pogo.

“ Your father had his reasons. He believed she wasn’t ready to see the outside world. She has been here her whole life.”

Diego scoffs, “ What? It wasn’t enough that he ruin our lives, he had to start again?”

He looks at you, “ Welcome to the family, kid.”

Then he walks off. You look at Grace and Pogo

“ Did..did I do something wrong?” You ask.

“ Oh no, Diego is just...on edge. You did great.” Grace says cupping your cheek.

“ I am glad that you are alright Y/n. It’s good to see you up and about.” Pogo says with a comforting smile.

“ thank you..” you say, “ there’s another person here..a woman.”

“Yes, well I think it is time you meet your sister. Come along.” Pogo says, leading you to the kitchen.

Oh boy...

[in-tua-deep]

Are you into my hero academia? What about an AU or crossover with tua?

UHHHH I am technically, like, peripherally? I watched some seasons of the show like two or three years ago and since then have simply absorbed all content through osmosis, reading fanfiction that has canon events, and my sister telling me about the arcs of her fav characters lmao

so a crossover hmmm

First of all you'd have to like, establish whether bnha is an alternate universe or just The Future If No Apocalypse with quirks being traced back to the descendants of the kids born without mothers

So let's say it's that - the glowing baby was the "first quirk" but the truth is people had powers before that. But - well, the Umbrella Academy was obviously a marketing gimmick to those in the future! There were even comics based on them

In the future, you might find some of those comics in museum exhibits dedicated to depictions of powers in the pre-quirk era, but they're just fun depictions and much less popular than, oh, DC or MCU comics which are also in the exhibits!

End of s2 doesn't happen I guess in this au?? No sparrow academy at least lmao. So, the Umbrella Academy stop the apocalypse (again) and the Commission threat is? Neutralized? Whatever. They decide to jump back to the future

Five warns them that time travel is a crapshoot, that he has no fucking idea when they'll land beyond some nebulous "future" because Five can at least control the direction if not exactly how long

Also, Five is like. Super tired. Incredibly tired. Homeboy still has a healing gut wound, time traveled twice, has been jumping all over the place, gotten even more injured, experienced paradox psychosis, and managed to undo time all in the space of like, two weeks. There actually more than that but we don't have time to get into how fucking tired Five is from his ~Month of Hell

Like genuinely this is like putting someone almost delirious from lack of sleep in the driver's seat of a car and expecting to get to your destination in one piece

But hey, the siblings are like "do it uwu" and Five has sacrificed everything for them already so why not get behind the wheel again

So Five jumps them, and of course something goes wrong because Five has pushed his powers like a great big rubber band and honestly it was only a matter of time before he lost his grip and it snapped back to hit him

So here be the umbrella academy: spilled out into the future like a cup of bad coffee.

Five probably isn't in too good of shape tbh, like they're hundreds of years in the future (but hey at least confirmation of no apocalypse am I right) in a world full of superpowers and Five is like. bleeding from his ears and nose probably idk

Let's handwave a little bit - Reginald made them all polyglots so the squad all speak varying levels of Japanese. Allison is the best at it, Five is second best but tends to use more archaic words bc he had missions in Japan back when he was with the commission, and Klaus is third best.

(Ben is the worst bc he decided when he was 16-and-dead that he didn't have to do anything regarding lessons and maintenance and hasn't given a shit since - but also he's dead so)

So you have a bunch of weird adults with a bleeding child in like, an alley who have appeared from nowhere

so of course heroes get involved

Anyway, the squad get taken in and Five is conscious but like, barely? And he's not going to let himself get separated from his siblings again fuck-you-officer and there is a lot of confusion

anyway detective tsukauchi ends up getting involved and ends up having to hear this batshit story and be like "...truth." which sends all kinds of people scrambling because fucking time travel? Like yeah, it's been theorized to be a possible quirk but there's no recorded cases of any sort of time travel that is for more than 24 hours let alone hundreds of years

"I'm an adult." Five says sourly, "I just happened to be returned to my 13 year old body when I time traveled one time."

"True." Tsukauchi says, feeling his soul leave his body, but like. absently. the way he does when he's called in at 2am after getting off of work at midnight.

"I'm 58." Five says.

"Lie." Tsukauchi says, because this is a headcanon hill I will die on.

"I'm probably 58, but it was hard to keep track. I'm at least 50." Five corrects.

"True." Tsukauchi sighs like these six (seven? they keep referring to another sibling and Klaus said 'ghost' like that was fine and it registered as true and Tsukauchi is not nearly paid enough for this) are not giving him a migraine by just existing

on the bright side there's like, probably protocols in place for individuals who are Legally Chronologically Adults but thanks to quirks are Not Physically Or Not Mentally Adults with tests to determine if the individual needs a guardian or not

though i'm gonna be honest idk if Five would pass the test bc he literally cannot take care of himself at all, has never paid taxes or understands how to exist legally, and also his emotional maturity is stunted as all hell. also like. we don't actually know how much being in his thirteen-year-old body affects his mental state but yeAH Five is vibing

anyway Tsukauchi probably phones a friend on this bullshit because Time Travel Child alone is probably enough for the Hero Commission to be like "find a way to control and use it or nuke it from orbit" and that's not even touching whatever the fuck Klaus is doing (shit gets real once 'dead men tell no tales' stops being true) let ALONE Allison's whole deal

on the bright side like, at least Vanya isn't getting side-eyed that much bc Big Destructive Quirks aren't exactly unknown? if vanya wanted to i guess quirk suppressors exist for that until extensive training on how to control a super powerful quirk happens

Tsukauchi in the group chat: Aizawa please I am literally begging you to take this bullshit on

Aizawa: in this economy? with my class?

RatGod: lol we'll take them ;3c

Aizawa: no

Anyway they probably end up having to live at UA while Five insists on trying to get them home still and everyone else is like "oh hey we used to be child soldiers as well! (:" and Aizawa is like "i hate everything about this and everything about all of you but also like nedzu is making me interact with you so :/"

nedzu is out here vibing like "lol i just don't want the hero commission to get their little paws on these time traveling fuckers, i think you should make then teaching assistants or something"

honestly the siblings are probably like. figuring out how to function in the bnha universe and getting like, legally registered and stuff while Five ferally refuses bc that's like saying he's giving up on getting them home and he can do this

Recovery girl tries to heal him a little when he arrives and he passes out for two weeks like, immediately bc homeboy is running on fumes and spite at this point

also i think on principle it would be REALLY FUNNY if the squad got to tag along with the class bc like. Five is thirteen and the class are all 15. this does not sound like a large age gap. anyone who has interacted with teenagers know that the class would squint at Five and be like "who is this sassy lost middle schooler."

I feel like when I was a sophomore we were still like "freshman... babie" even though we were literally only one year older.

i think the difference between the umbrella academy and school kids would be pretty funny like. objectively the bnha kids are lowkey child soldiers?? like they're 15 and fighting villains but like, there's all this red tape and laws and stuff but,,, deku still be breaking his limbs in a child fighting ring against equally superpowered children for like. entertainment and sponsorships sooo

but also like Five would be like "oh cool when is the experimentation class"

"the what"

"you know, when your powers are pushed real hard by putting you in different terrible situations while your dad and sibling stand by with clipboards writing down the exact voltage it takes before you can't use your powers anymore when being electrocuted"

"hound dog's office is right there. therapy is available to you at any time. i need you to know this."

all might calls Luther "my boy" like one (1) time and Luther just breaks down crying probably because he is starved for positive attention

klaus and midnight get along like a literal house on fire, aizawa tried his best to keep them apart for as long as possible but god damn

(klaus: your name is shimura nana??

all might: immediately dies choking on blood)

i feel it absolutely necessary to point out that aizawa, present mic, and midnight are all like, 30? and the umbrella academy are all between 29-early 30s? they are PEERS but like. the umbrella academy are more chaotic due to childhood trauma

the umbrella academy probably get offered to like. also train to be heroes. i mean,, there HAS to be some sort of track for people who change careers right?? you don't have to cement your future as a hero when you're 15 i'm sure there must be something and the squad already have experience if they want to go be legal heroes

diego probably does at least?? diego just vibes honestly. diego gets momo to make knives during a team exercise and they just go feral on everyone else and it ends with diego highfiving momo and someone getting way to close to being stabbed for comfort

Five might just be. legally enrolled as an Actual Student? But also i think it's funny to picture the entire squad just. all in the back of the classroom with luther trying to fit into a high school desk as they take notes on the laws of The Future surrounding heroics

every word out of the umbrella academy's mouths just make everyone more concerned on principal but like, five and klaus are probably the worst offenders. Klaus just says whatever comes to mind with no filter and Five doesn't get what people would consider to be abnormal anymore like

Five: yeah our dad bought us when we were babies and experimented on us throughout our childhood in order to make an elite team of child soldiers superheroes, it happens

Todoroki: ...have you heard of quirk marriages?

izuku probably has an aneurism bc he's is the only person who might recognize them from the comics because you know ya boy extensively researched the idea of heroics in pre-quirk eras (batman was an inspiration alright???) and might dredge up a memory of a less popular comic series

Five: I can time travel but it is very hard, which is why we are hundreds of years in the future. And why I look like a child.

Kaminari: so are you a kid or not?

Five, serenely: whatever is most convenient for me at any given moment

Mina: hell yeah game the system

they have a brief lesson on astronomy and Luther raises his hand like "ooh! i was isolated on the moon for four years and did SO MUCH research" and then just gets up and starts infodumping like way too much information on the moon

Izuku sitting there like "damn if quirks hadn't popped up we could have achieved so much in terms of space travel. please tell me more giant man who lived in pre-quirk era."

Vanya finds out about the quirkless and is like "oh mood that genuinely sounds like my childhood, being ordinary in a house full of extraordinary people, and then i found out that i did have powers but only much later in life after i had already been emotionally scarred by the experience"

deku: vanya we have so much in common

iida and uraraka: concerned noises

aizawa: hound dog. therapy with hound dog for all of you.

there's probably some conflict with like, the hero commission wanting to get their hands on the time travelers?? but probably especially five and klaus as a) time travel and b) ghosts (the hc def has bodies they would like to stay buried)

five has a pavlovian reaction to anything with 'commission' in the name and hates them on site, probably plays into his age in order to become a ward of UA or something to protect him from the commission a little bit.

(this makes nedzu Five's legal guardian. aizawa has his resignation papers all prepped in a drawer marked 'in case of emergency' but let's be real, if nedzu wants to take over the world aizawa should probably be on the rat-bear's side of things :/)

five: ah, i do recall the inhumane experimentation that we were subjected to

nedzu, who was experimented on: haha same hat! want me to dig up the location of reginald hargreeves's remains so you can spit on them?

klaus: nah no worries we dumped them out in the courtyard unceremoniously like, a while back. how long ago varies for each of us because of time travel!

luther: you said hound dog's office was down the hall and to the right?

on the bright side, Luther probably feels like. way less self conscious about his body, partially bc of his fighting and all that in the 60s but also bc !! now he genuinely doesn't feel like a freak. no one even gives him a second glance. one of the teachers looks like a slab of cement with a face. gang orca looks Like That. there is literally a student with an entire bird head and goth aesthetic. Luther does not stick out at all

allison and shinso bond over having "villainous" voice-based quirks

allison and shinso having worn muzzles at some point in their youth as punishment 🤝

aizawa probably helps train vanya as well with the whole, being able to erase a world ending quirk safely thing he's got going on which makes for a very nice safety net

i don't think vanya would want to be a hero at the end of things though. maybe the assistant teacher in the music class or something?? all vanya wants is to be able to not end the world

i feel like as time goes by, five brings up trying to get home less and less. part of that is because like,,, genuinely what do they have to go back to?? Allison has Claire, but like. I'm 100% sure the first thing she did in the future was try track down Claire's records and found out Claire was like. fine. became an adult, had a family, probably became the ancestor of the first "quirked" kids who officially popped up after light baby. had a good life, died at an old age etc. etc.

they start settling into the bnha world with like, "we can always hop aboard the five express into where the fuck ever" as a plan Z if things go completely pear shaped (again)

i'mma be real, five himself doesn't give a fuck as long as there is a) no apocalypse and b) his family is alive. Like that's it. His bar is so incredibly low and yet his life keeps fucking trying to limbo under it

i just think it would be funny to have like, Five trying to get along with his "peers" and make friends while the siblings do the same but like, in the staff room

also think it would be funny for five to just walk into the staff room and get coffee occasionally.

a teacher: why is a student in here -

Five, sipping coffee: i'm an adult

nedzu like "what kind of guardian would i be if i didn't teach my new son all the tunnels around ua so he can pop out wherever"

five like "hey new dad can i put stashes of supplies all around ua of weapons, money, food, and other assorted things that might be useful if one needed to fight or make a run for it" and nedzu is like "haha just put your list of what supplies you want in your go bags on my desk and i'll critique it later!"

anyway a bnha/tua crossover would be incredibly chaotic but probably very funny

[lubdubsworld]

物の哀れ ~ ( the sadness of things )

( Note : This is just a personal post for myself. I’m trying to just make a record of how the fic was conceived and all that I experienced, writing this fic ) 

Inspiration :

So, I ran into an article on Japanese words and I was incredibly fascinated by the phrase , Mono no aware or the pathos of things : Basically the sadness of things. It was a very unusual concept to me because it could be interpreted in so many ways. 

A little bit of digging around made me realize that some people linked it to the cherry blossom season where the flowers come into full bloom and add such a delicate beauty to the landscape. But of course, being seasonal, the beauty lasts for a very small time. The flowers die and their life ends . 

its fleeting and passes by quite soon.  So the sadness of things is basically how, the fact that something is fleeting or seasonal or about to end, should not take away from our enjoyment of things. Because yes the cherry blossoms die but people still flock to watch the cherry blossoms. 

The phrase came to me at a very troubled time in my life. 

My mother’s sister passed and she had raised me for a few years. I loved her deeply and she was only a couple of years older than my mother. Death was a thing that I had always viewed in abstract. The loss of a loved one was not something I had experienced on a very personal level, so it shook me.

 And of course, being the person I am , I did what I always do when I get overwhelmed : Research. 

I combed through reddit forums on grief, through blogs written by people who had lost loved ones , through blogs by psychotherapists, through online websites offering grief counselling and everything I could think of.

What fascinated me were two things :

 1. ) The non linear nature of healing ~ the stages of grief is a myth. Nobody goes through stages of emotional turmoil and then magically becomes better. 

By the way the whole stages of grief was formulated with reference to a terminally ill person coming to terms with their own death .

 So, it couldn’t really be applied to people dealing with the loss of a loved one. At least not directly.

And the second, one, 

2.) The very personal nature of grief ~ depending on how the relationship with the lost one is, grief varies. I realized then that only someone who had lost a loved one would know what its like. No one else could ever possibly understand the grief and pain that comes from loss.

As Heejin says in the sadness of things,” I would never know what his loss was like, because I would never know what he lost.” 

 It gave me a whole new perspective on how grief at the end of the day has to be a personal journey of healing , one that no one else can help you through. You need to live and hurt through every excruciating second of it. 

 There’s still so much I want to say about this but I’ll stop here. I’ll probably add to this as days go by. But yes, this wasn’t a fic that i wrote on a whim. It was something of a research project for me. An exploration of grief and healing. 

Thank you for joining me in this journey. It was definitely one of the most fulfilling ones I’ve ever had. 

  The Story :~

You can read it here :

⋆⋆✵ 物の哀れ ( ‘the sadness of things’.)  ✵⋆⋆

Chapter 1  ⋆  Chapter 2  ⋆  Chapter 3  ⋆  Chapter 4  ⋆  Chapter 5  ⋆

Chapter 6  ⋆ Chapter 7   ⋆  Chapter 8.  ⋆ Chapter 9.    Chapter 10.

Extra Drabble

Completed.

Alpha! Jungkook x Omega ! OC.

ABO Dynamics.

Genre : Arranged Marriage / Temporary contractual Marriage.

Warnings : Non- Con/ Extremely Dubious Consent . High functioning alcoholism. Genre related consent issues. Implied suicidal thoughts.

Summary : A recently widowed Jungkook agrees to a contract marriage to keep his company afloat. His grief overwhelms him and it is hard to look at his new wife as anything other than an intruder .

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

The characters :

Oh, boy. 

 I could go on about these two for years. 

 Jungkook and Heejin. 

Let me start with Jungkook : 

Jungkook in the fic came to me as a very troubled young man. In the fic he starts off as a very depressed young man. The opening scene of him staring listlessly into a bowl of cereal while his friends talk to him and Heejin just watches if from my own experience with depression in 2017. 

I would be numb in my body and mind with no idea what was going on around me and it seemed like everyone made all the choices for me while i just flowed along. It was a battle getting up in the morning. I had nothing to look forward to. Nothing to hope for. 

So Jungkook , depressed and confused and reeling from loss is our hero. 

Our main man. 

The one I wanted you guys to root for. 

The one I wanted you guys to see yourself in, in those moments when your pain and trauma changes you. 

When you’ve always been a soft spoken, kind hearted person but suddenly the pain overwhelms you and you just want to scream the place down. You want to hurt and hurt and hurt because you’re hurting and you don’t know how to process it. 

Jungkook’s journey is fraught with pain, endured and inflicted . He loses himself and his identity. 

He’s a CEO, a father and a husband and he can’t be any of those things, because of his grief. So there it was the three things I wanted him to find and love and enjoy by the end of the fic  :

His career doing something he loves :

Fatherhood raising the daughter he was blessed with : our lovely mina who I modeled on my own daughter ( and loved just as much ) 

and finally,

 A Love that was unconditional and beautiful. That maybe new and different from what he had lost in his wife but just as, if not more fulfilling. 

And so I stumbled into the woman who forever changed the way I perceived myself : Lee Heejin. 

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

Writing Heejin in this fic is so cathartic for me.

For years, I’ve been her. The voice of reason, the one to compromise. I would be the one every single person in the family would call , anytime anything went wrong.

Kind. Smart. She’ll know what to do.  She’ll never say no. She’s always laughing. So witty. She’s so funny.

The phrases just blur in my head. I’ve been this emotional punching bag for people for so long. I had a very abusive father and honestly no one was there to listen to me talk about him. If i tried, they would always ask me  what I did to make him behave that way.

So , if you think Heejin is a pushover, that she’s giving too much of herself to people who don’t deserve.....just know that sometimes, saying no and standing your ground is a privilege not everyone can afford. And because I’d been there i understood her.

That isn’t all she is though. She is also someone who  knows that she doesn’t deserve to be treated that way. At no point in the fic does Heejin see Jungkook’s actions as anything other than the abuse it is and for that i will always be proud of her. 

Heejin’s healing is much more complicated. She isn’t really healed at the end of the fic...because to be honest , I’m not healed and I don’t know what its like to be ....But she is on the path to it, and that’s what matters. 

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

[sitp-recs]

Hey Liv! I thought of a fun ask and thought I'd send it your way.

Do you have any personal Drarry headcanons/things in fics that have stuck with you? Events or characterizations that you accept into your personal canon of the ship?

Hi Phoebe, thanks for sending this over! What an interesting ask. Personally I don’t have any rigid headcanons - I’m fairly flexible about that kind of stuff and will usually buy into anything if it’s well executed, I’m not very picky. That being said, I’m listing below a few takes I really like that are often explored in fic. I’d love to hear about yours, too! I had so much fun thinking about these, thanks for thinking of me :)

1. Draco’s Sectusempra scars are pretty popular (to the point I almost forget its a fanon thing lol) and I like how it forces both him and Harry to confront their complicated past and find a way to deal with it - individually and as a couple - if they wanna stick together. Imo it’s a great way to explore Harry’s guilty, Draco’s resentment, as well issues revolving around forgiveness, body image and intimacy.

2. I’m a simple woman who loves Auror fics for the simple reason there’s action and investigative work involved lol although I can see Harry choosing another path and I love him as a Professor, Healer, Curse Breaker, shop owner, Quidditch player, private detective, you name it. But one specific thing I love about the Auror partners trope is this idea that, even if/when they still hate each other, they’re both badass on the job and perfectly compatible on the field, with complementary skills and a flawless record. On that note, I love it when Draco’s the one doing wandless magic or inventing spells. Harry’s incredibly powerful, of course, but he doesn’t strike me as someone particularly disciplined or patient or even hardworking in the books, so I can totally see Draco being the first one to master that and maybe teaching Harry like he does in All Our Secrets Laid Bare by FTS? That’s easily one of my favorite things about that fic, which I personally consider a seminal work when it comes to this trope.

3. I don’t even read 8th year that much so that’s probably my obsession with Like Lightning at Your Fingertips by potterwatch and Nice Things by aideomai speaking but shared dorms and inter-house unity is a perfect way to make those kids connect, process their war trauma and collectively help each other heal and move on. I love fics that explore this odd, unprecedented situation Harry’s generation faces coming back to Hogwarts to finish their studies while the castle itself is still recovering from war damage. It’s a fascinating way to explore collective trauma and castle magic, too 🏰

4. Ron and Draco settling their differences over a chess game. I just saw this again on my latest read and I banged my head on the table and screamed “yes pls headcanon accepted!” lmao OF COURSE I know that making amends wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be that easy but Ron’s character has a simplicity about him that I really like and him and Draco both being so prideful I can totally see them doing it for Harry’s heart sake. It could be as much of an olive branch as it could be a way to challenge and measure each other and okay, now I really need a Dronarry fic including a chess duel scene omg 😂👌🏼

5. All. The. Switching. In bed 🔥🙌🏼 I’m not saying this out of spite for good old t/b discourse (or am I 😏) I just wanted to include something smut related since I read A LOT of it, and I really LOVE both dynamics. I have so much fun when fics explore some kind of weird biting competition they have going on, when things are still unclear and they’re fuck buddies with lots of complicated feels. And yes, I’m totally using this last point to give a massive shoutout to two fics from years ago that are still very much stuck in my head thanks to those brilliant dynamics: The Page Eleven Wars by fireflavored and The Things They Never Say by @bixgirl1.

[galadhremmin]

I was thinking, the other day, of ways having a body that is almost guaranteed to heal from anything not immediately lethal could lead to a wholly different attitude to intoxication.

If human bodies would never succumb to the horrible long-term effects of alcoholism, how would that affect alcohol use? If drugs never carried the risks of permanently damaging your mind, how much more casual would we be in using them?

And elves don't forget as humans did, if I understood Tolkien correctly; memories are so vivid they can more or less live in them, and hardly need to write anything down. Even the body itself will eventually become nothing but a "a mere memory of the fëa"-- the role of elves is to be the memory of the world. Which is to say, can never escape from memory. Is any trauma then like an open wound forever, in a way, because the memory would never grow distant? I think at least outside of Valinor where they might go to Estë it may be; and of course Míriel proves even Valinor was no cure-all. That inability to forget seems like it could easily become agonising in Middle Earth. I think it is the memory more than physical disability that hurts Maedhros, for example; there is a "shadow of pain" in his heart though Tolkien says he "was healed."

When someone talks about a traumatic experience for the first time, they are likely to relive their emotional response to the initial event as if it is happening at that moment. Even without a true flashback it can be an extremely harrowing experience; it's as though the memory becomes unmoored from time, as close to experience as the present, inscribed on the senses-- like the needle falling into the grooves of a record and playing the same song over and over, old emotions replaying like a pre-recorded song. And what Tolkien described of elvish memory sounds like every memory is more like that. Aegnor can leave the still living Andreth and live for the rest of his days on a memory of a night where the stars were caught in her hair. Grudges are held onto for centuries and centuries because the hurt never really fades as long as either party is still alive. Nothing truly goes away; nothing at a remove. A quote from Athrabeth:

"Beyond the End of the World we shall not change; for in memory is our great talent, as shall be seen ever more clearly as the ages of this Arda pass: a heavy burden to be, I fear; but in the days of which we now speak a great wealth.' And then he paused, for he saw that Andreth was weeping silently."

A quote from Shibboleth:

"The lore of the Eldar did not depend on perishable records, being stored in the vast houses of their minds. When the Eldar made records in written form, even those that to us would seem voluminous, they did only summarise, as it were, for the use of others whose lore was maybe in other fields of knowledge, matters which were kept for ever undimmed in intricate detail in their minds."

Of course your relationship with immediate experience vs. memory (and how you value either) itself would change over 100s of years of that. And there is never true escape from life.

When thinking of Tolkien's elves and their lives as long as Arda lasts I always remember that Anne Carson quote; “My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. 'Listen,' he said, 'life and no escape.”

-- and there truly isn't. Awareness and vivid memory accompany them even in death, in fact-- it sounds like to be a Houseless fëa is the ultimate state of being caught in memory with no escape, distraction of the senses).

Another quote from Athrabeth:

"The Elves had (as they said themselves) a 'great talent' for memory, but this tended to regret rather than to joy. Also, however long the History of the Elves might become before it ended, it would be an object of too limited range. To be perpetually 'imprisoned in a tale' (as they said), even if it was a very great tale ending triumphantly, would become a torment."

What I am trying to say is that there seems to be very little escape from the weight of self at all. Except by living and fully enjoying the present (those tralalalallying elves have the right idea!); maybe for the less joyful and more burdened in intoxicants, which would not permanently harm the body. So why not consume them every day, when you can? Thousands of years to accumulate grief! And so much life, and no escape--

Anyway that's why Galion drunk all of Thranduil's wine.

(And also why I'm starting to imagine laudanium as being very popular among the Noldor, Victorian style. Opium dens of Barad Eithel and Eregion-- High Kings-- quite literally. This was supposed to be a serious post but as I am once more demonstrating I'm physically incapable of not making deeply lame jokes about everything).

[pyrrhiccomedy]

the People have requested my book report on The Library at Mt. Char so this is now a Mt Char book club.

if you have not read The Library at Mt Char there is no reason to keep reading. I hope you're having a nice day, stay safe and don't do drugs.

So Mt Char has a couple of problems, but in my opinion only one grave problem.

Not a grave problem:

Erwin doesn't need to be in this book. An astonishing amount of ink is spilled on giving us Erwin's POV and I am at a loss in regards to what that's supposed to bring to the story. I mean, it's kind of neat to see Carolyn's "trick shot" from the POV of one of the people being manipulated, but that perspective could have just been provided by Steve. Everything Erwin does of any plot significance could have been done by Steve, a character who actually matters.

Please note that I don't hate Erwin, he's perfectly fine as characters go, he just contributes nothing, and it is baffling that he and Carolyn get the last scene in the book (instead of just ending on her reunion with Michael, a scene that was emotionally affecting and felt like a natural end point to her story). We are taking no questions, Erwin needed to be cut.

Also not a grave problem in my opinion, but I am sure others feel differently and I understand why they would:

Yo, the scope of what the catalogs cover is mad vague. I mean, I get that that's the point: when you have a character whose magic powers are "anything that has to do with death or murder," that's a broad license, and I'm fine with that. These are supposed to be demi-gods. I don't require a rigorously explicated magic system.

But then like...why can't Jennifer, the healer, also heal minds? That seems weird. Or like, it's implied that she kinda can, maybe, but none of the kids talk about their therapy sessions with Jennifer: they explicitly call out that she heals their bodies. But then she talks about how Margaret and David are sick (meaning mentally) in a way she can "no longer help?" Aren't you supposed to be the God Of Healing? Why can't you help anymore? And were you actually trying to help them before - or anyone else? That's never shown. You could have just said you only healed bodies, not minds, but then it's repeatedly implied that she CAN diagnose mental and emotional problems (and therefore should probably be able to do something about them).

So that's weird.

Or like, why is there Alicia, who "sees the future," and Rachel, who "sees possible futures?" That, uh, just sounds like the author was running out of ideas. Also, if Alicia could see the future, she probably shouldn't have been in that house when the SWAT team hit, yeah?

Stuff like that. The magic the kids can do is very "they have the powers the author needs them to have when the author needs them to have them, and they can't do anything the author would find inconvenient for them to do" but that's not a deal breaker for me because overall the vibe being put off by their various magical specialties works for me. Still, there were ways of getting us where we needed to go without begging quite so many questions.

Also not a grave problem, although more of a problem than the other stuff:

You know that anime trope where a super-genius character is having an entire conversation with another super-genius character through a screen, and it's revealed that the whole conversation was a distraction and pre-recorded so that Character 2 could Complete His Scheme against Character 1? And used his super-genius brain to predict every single thing Character 1 would say? And your suspension of disbelief staggers bloodied into the alleyway and collapses because you're really trying to hang in there, Code Geass, but that's fucking stupid, you're asking for me to believe that this character's intelligence is flat-out supernatural now and you've given me no reason why that should be?

That's how I feel about Carolyn, by the time she takes over the Library. Like, okay. The kids canonically have not even been at the Library long enough for any of them to master their catalogues except for Jennifer. None of them but Jennifer are masters of even their own subject.

Carolyn has been studying in secret from multiple catalogues - which is cool! I like how she slowly reveals over the course of the latter half of the book that she has powers from other people's specialties.

...But like...

She seems close to mastering her own catalogue. She is a competent healer and can raise the dead (Jennifer's catalogue). She can block attempts to read her mind, beats David in a fight, and understands how to kill Father (David's catalogue). She speaks lion and controls the dogs that surround the Library (Michael's catalogue). She could make the mathy "Denial That Rends" thing that kicks off the whole plot, and she can make a new sun and correct orbital rotations around it (Peter's catalogue). She can predict the future with such specificity that she knows how to cause Steve to drop a clip of bullets while he's being attacked by dogs exactly where Erwin will need to pick it up later (Rachel's catalogue, also this one is stupid, she could have just given Erwin an extra clip or something, but whatever).

That's half the catalogues. Carolyn doesn't seem prodigiously more intelligent than the other kids. She's smart, sure, but they're all weird demi-gods with a genius for their specialties. The rest of them haven't even mastered their own catalogue, and I'm supposed to swallow that Carolyn has attained 'competent or better' status in six? When she has to research five of them in secret? Without falling behind in her own studies?

It would be fine if they had all been masters of their own catalogues for years and years; that would mean they would begin to stagnate, while Carolyn kept learning. But that's not the case. By the end I wasn't impressed anymore at Carolyn's resourcefulness, it just felt like she could do anything and everything, shh, don't ask questions, she's the Chosen One so she just can.

The reason this isn't a grave problem to me is because Carolyn's journey isn't about becoming more powerful: it's about her emotional journey, which isn't affected by her being stupidly OP for no reason by the end of the book. She still sucked at the things that mattered, like "feelings" and "relationships" and "not being a shitty person." But I do think it hurt the story. I should be cheering on my protagonist when her wild schemes come together, not rolling my eyes.

Anyway. All that was the aperitif. Let's talk about

THE GRAVE AND GLARING PROBLEM AT THE CENTER OF MT CHAR.

So everything that happens in the book stems from Carolyn's thoroughly justified hatred of Father (and David, but David was made that way by Father). Father treated her, and all of the other kids, with extravagant cruelty. If you haven't read the book in a while, here's a sample of the kinds of things Father did to the kids, or, if David did them, that Father did nothing to prevent:

- Cooked David alive over 2 full days in a giant bronze bull (and made the rest of the kids bring the fuel)

- Put Michael's eyes out with a hot poker every night for 2 weeks (and made the rest of the kids watch)

- Murdered Margaret every few days, often in drawn-out and painful ways

- Made Rachel repeatedly give birth, raise the babies to about 9 months, then murder them with her own hands

- Allowed David to rape all 11 of the other kids (except Jennifer, probably because she was the healer and he wanted to stay on her good side)

- Allowed David to crucify, brutalize and rape Carolyn and Peter

- Gave Carolyn a loving new family for a year when she was nine years old (those two deer), then had David murder them in front of her and blame it on her for not remembering her homework well enough, then served the two deer at a feast to 'celebrate' her returning to the family

- Whippings, skinnings, and bone-breakings as standard disciplinary actions

Whoo-ee! Okay! We are talking about mythological cruelty. I am fine with this! The story takes place on a mythological scale. As outlandish as all of that is, the cruelty feels proportionate in a story about killing and replacing god. Father is cruel, indifferent, controlling, and alien. I have no questions, Carolyn please proceed with your revenge. We seemed on track for a tale in which Carolyn defeats Father, but in doing so she runs the risk of becoming him. Will she step back from the brink and retain her humanity after all of the trauma and brutality she's endured? Let's find out!

And then

and then.

Oh boy.

And then.

...It turns out, Father is a good guy after all.

And let me be clear: THIS IS NOT, IN AND OF ITSELF, A PROBLEM.

By the time you learn that Father is actually benevolent, and loved those kids, and cares about being a responsible steward to the world, and tried to leave the universe a better place than he found it, and genuinely regretted the suffering he inflicted on them when they were growing up, it feels kind of...natural? Like, I was surprised, but also not, because there were 90 pages of book left and Carolyn had already become god. This seemed like a thematically meaningful place to take the rest of the story.

It turns out Father was training Carolyn to replace him the entire time. He had to make her hate David because it was important that she "defeat a monster" on her path to becoming god. (It's not explained why she had to defeat a monster, but sure, okay; it's the kind of mythic feat that fits with the story we're in.)

Why did he choose Carolyn to be his successor? Well, originally he chose David, but David wasn't strong enough: every time Carolyn was the monster in David's story, she defeated him, and went on to rule the universe as an unspeakable tyrant. Since Carolyn always won, Father swapped their roles. He knew he had made the right choice when he put David into the bronze bull, and heard David begging for mercy: because when Carolyn had been the fated monster, she had never begged.

...Okay, so...hang on.

Hang on.

The only rule that we've established on "how to become god" is "you have to defeat a monster," right? I'll even grant you for free that it has to be a monster who is personally meaningful to you, although that part is never stated. Overcoming a great evil which has cast you down and abused you many times before, sure, okay.

...Why the FUCK did all that other awful shit have to happen??

I did not have this question when Father was just evil! That was a good enough explanation! But now that he's not evil, you HAVE TO EXPLAIN why he treated all of the kids so brutally!

Like dude you're GOD. If you need a monster for Carolyn, I'm sure you can make that happen without TORTURING CHILDREN FOR DECADES.

There didn't even need to be any other children! You could have two kids: the languages-kid, who is the chosen one (the chosen one has to be the languages-kid so they can read the Onyx Codex or whatever it was called at the end, the one written by Original God), and the war-and-murder kid, who is the monster. They could have just been forbidden to read the other codices, if it's important to you that your chosen one still prove her resourcefulness or whatever.

Why include all of the other kids??? It wasn't to give your chosen one a sense of family: Carolyn didn't feel close to any of them except for Michael (who I liked, but whose contribution to the plot was negligible).

Or keep the kids! But then why make them, and Carolyn, hate you?? You could just say, "Hey Carolyn, I am raising you to be my successor, you have to figure it out yourself because part of proving your worthiness is this kind of abstract, big-picture thinking, but I love you and whatever you end up deciding to do, just believe in yourself." And meanwhile you're off torturing the fated monster in order to get him piping hot and ready to be served.

Was the idea that Carolyn had to endure so much horror in order to prove she was 'tough enough' to be god?? Because that's not how trauma works! Kids who have been brutally traumatized are usually not made tougher by the experience! A fact that even the book understands, because 10 of the 12 kids are completely destroyed by their upbringing (I'm giving marginal exceptions to Michael and Carolyn herself).

And like

if Father doesn't have a good reason for having treated them so badly, the whole book falls apart!

Because getting revenge for that cruelty is Carolyn's whole motivation!

We are clearly supposed to feel okay about Father going to make a new universe at the end of the book: he's going with his cool tiger friend and that little girl with the connection to the elemental plane of joy who used to be the sun, he's happy to see Carolyn embracing compassion and kindness, which means he cares about compassion and kindness. He invented light and pleasure. Carolyn does nothing to try to stop him from going. He seems like a pretty good candidate for god. And I do feel okay with him leaving! I was convinced! Father is not evil after all!

But then you have! to explain! the abuse!!

It can be a throwaway line!! "Carolyn realized that everything she and her siblings went through had to happen the way it did, because [X]," embedded in the middle of a paragraph! That would have been enough! But I need an explanation!

"They were raised the way Father was raised himself" WHY? He was raised by the Emperor, an on-the-record awful fucking dude! Father proceeded to rule the universe in a far more benevolent way than the Emperor did, why would he feel like he had to raise his kids the way the Emperor raised him?

"Carolyn needed to overcome challenges on her path to godhood" how is TRAUMATIZING HER SO BADLY SHE ALMOST BECOMES INHUMAN - SOMETHING YOU WERE OSTENSIBLY TRYING TO PREVENT, see Steve being preserved as something that could give her hope, etc - A "CHALLENGE??"

Again, none of this is a problem if Father is just evil! YOU CHOSE to make him not evil! And that's fine!! I think it's a good choice for the story actually!! But then you have to, you have to, HAVE TO explain why all of that bad shit happened!

Because all of that bad shit is the reason Carolyn made there be a story.

And it turns out it doesn't make sense.

[creatingnikki]

My favourite kdramas of 2020

(in this exact order)

Itaewon Class

Smart, complicated, wholesome characters who are just trying to deal with the cards that life handed to them. It powered me to think, say and believe, ‘I will have everything I want. Because that’s my dream’ throughout this year when I was faced with difficult stuff in life. Because that’s what this show does. It pumps you up. It gives you the hope and strength to work for and then enjoy the life you want for yourself. 

Complete review is here

It’s Okay To Not Be Okay // Psycho But It’s Okay

I loved this kdrama because to me it reflected the truth of life - pain and suffering and how at the end of the day you can be the only one to deal with your trauma. But you can take help from those who care about you. I can’t tell you that there was one male and one female lead because really there were three very brilliant leads in this kdrama. It was one of the most emotionally mature and real kdramas I have ever watched. And the female lead’s outfits? A DREAM. 

Complete review is here

Crash Landing On You 

This is a more typical rom com sort of kdrama but not really because of the dozen side characters that added heart and laughter to the show. Yoon Se Ri, the female lead became one of the strong kdrama female leads for me (including Dr. Kang Meo Yeon from DOTS and Hyeonga from My Father Is Strange). This kdrama has all the drama, thrill, romance and suffering that makes a classic kdrama. I know for a fact that I will re-watch when I am craving a fun kdrama, Also, the North Korea and South Korea element was really the most interesting and touching. 

Complete review is here

Fix You // Soul Mechanic

A very underrated kdrama of the year! I love the premise, the actors and the writing. A musician with borderline personality disorder crosses path with a psychiatrist who really cares about this patients but has his own past trauma he’s not able to heal from. This kdrama belongs in the nuanced, introspective kdrama category. It’s just so beautiful and telling of human lives and emotions - especially pain and trauma. I would recommend it to everyone if they want to step outside of their Netflix kdramas and watch something curious. 

The King: Eternal Monarch 

Despite what people say about this kdrama, I actually enjoyed it throughout. I understood early on that it wouldn’t be something of the top kdrama league like Itaewon Class or CLOY but once I accepted that fact and just focused on the show, it was very entertaining. Also I mean Lee Min Ho! I don’t think there was a minute where I was bored or wanted to skip any scene. I also really loved the ending of the show - one of the best and well wrapped up ones in the history of kdramas. 

Complete review is here

Start Up

Sure this kdrama faltered towards the end but who cares? I’m not going to sit and nit pick everything. I loved the first 65% of this show A LOT and then the last 10%. And honestly the character of Team Leader Han made the disappointments of the show okay. Just look at the smile. 

Complete review is here

I know this is about my favourite kdramas of the year but I can’t end it would talking about 

Biggest kdrama disappointment: Record of Youth 

Ongoing kdrama that is enjoyable: True Beauty

The year may have been a bust but for kdramas 2020 was a really brilliant year. I am, if not for anything else, but looking forward to 2021 for more beautiful and earnest kdramas! 

[kyle-valenti]

burnout only feels like burning

2.7k / Summary: kyle valenti doesn't have the same quarantine as his friends; an exploration of kyle's trauma during covid as a doctor. (tw depression & other triggers you’d imagine with this subject)

read & comment/ ao3

A little like the virus itself, Kyle’s relationship with his mask begins with worry, annoyance, and then pain. He’s more than happy to have the proper N-95 mask as they begin to get their first case at Roswell General but then a couple more patients trickle in and within a few days his skin is irritated and itching. Maybe it’s the news, maybe it’s the texts from his friends that he’s increasingly missing, but when the Regiment starts spouting off about how COVID is a joke he thinks it might be affecting his nerves too. By week three his former red mark left by the mask has become a permanent feature to his face and by week five it’s not a mark but a bruise instead. Blisters and cracks in his skin litter his hands from over-washing. His feet become so overused the pads of his feet feel numb and bruised and he wears through an entire pair of shoes.

Positivity has fled from his life by week seven and now he’s inside of a survival mode he’s never experienced. He thought after last year he’d be used to anything the world (or universe, rather, given all these aliens) could throw at him. Now what feels foolish, he had believed that there was nothing that could be worse than the previous pain of losing a patient or finding out his father had experimented on people’s lives. 

When he’s out of ventilators and CPAP machines because Albuquerque needs them more and he has to choose whether or not to save the life of an eighty five year old or a thirty two year old he remembers from high school, he breaks.

 Guilt is one thing, grief is another, but the pure rage he feels knowing that Max Evans is out on the town patrolling as some fucking cop and not someone who could heal most of this hospital makes him want to commit actual murder. Maybe trading the blood of an alien on his hands would feel less heart-wrenching. But no. Max had brought back Rosa and had paid the price. Quelling his anger, he went back to work.

 He slept at the hospital most nights in the height of it. Sure the couch was rough, but it was better than the other on-call doctor beds down the hall. Three twelve hour ER shifts of a usual work week doubled to five days of thirteen hour shifts. Soon there’s a week where he pulls double shifts for an entire week when one of his nurses is urgently hospitalized herself. Hospital directors had left them with no PPE except contaminated masks to reuse. Maria, Isobel, and Rosa are in the forefront of a drive to make and donate masks to his hospital after some social media posts that he doesn’t even see until the cloth masks arrive and his medical assistants give him their handwritten note. It makes him smile, but smiling feels so foreign that he almost wants to break from that.

 Visitors are no longer allowed which means Kyle isn’t allowed to use his bedside manner to comfort the family of patients. He has to facetime mothers, spouses, and children and hold the phone over a patient who can’t breathe without machine assistance and pretend that everything is fine and that there’s still hope despite the hypoxia and lack of rising vitals. Ignore that if the patient goes into cardiac arrest more than once, the kindest thing to do given prognosis is to let the patient pass. Resuscitation and DNR (a patient’s begging request to not be resuscitated) becomes a word he uses in his daily work and not simply for intense surgeries.

 Exhaustion isn’t a deep enough adjective to describe the fugue state he goes into. File to file, room to room, ventilator to next… he isn’t surprised when his body starts to wear down. When he no longer feels hunger and instead feels all too hot and dizzy. Telling himself it’s just because of how much he’s exerting his body while covered in layers and layers of protective clothing doesn’t help the fact that he’s starting to have more trouble breathing as he walks the hallways at a fast pace. When he begins to cough, he does what he promised himself he wouldn’t do and drives out post-shift to the desert cabin of Max Evans.

 Part of him is too desperately tired to knock, but when he arrives on the property with the cop car idle and the house dark and at peace for the night, his fury greets him with the embrace of a long-lost friend. Knuckles pound at the wood and Max answers the door with surprise and a general look of defense, and Kyle tries not to immediately punch him in the face at the fact he looks like he had woken up from a comfortable sleep.

 “Heal me.” Kyle manages to spit out.

 “I—what’s wrong?”

 “Beginning stages of respiratory distress, fever, nausea—what do you fucking think?”

 “Kyle—,” Max starts to say, the hesitation deepening, and that does it.

 “No. I have not asked you for anything in all of this, Evans. Anything!” He shouts, voice hoarse. “Not when people got sick, not when they started dying, not even when we started having to let people die on purpose. And you know what? I wasn’t going to even come and ask you now, but I can’t get sick when I’m the one here fucking saving lives out of the two of us and you’re just cruising the streets handing out goddamn traffic tickets.”

 Max’s face isn’t stony like it usually is when Kyle’s yelling at him; this time it’s crushed and guilty but not nearly enough. “What kind of hours you work this week, Evans? A nice 8 to 4? Did you get facetime with Isobel or your mom, maybe binge through a few books and movies after you’re home? Did you sit down and eat a nice dinner and or go over to drink a few beers with Guerin since you can’t get sick? Even get a nice eight hours of sleep in your own bed in your nice quiet home?”

 No response.

 “I am not asking to sequence your DNA like Liz. All I am asking is for you to let me heal people since you don’t want to.”

 A night breeze is all that makes noise for a moment as Kyle catches his breath and glares at Max, who stands quietly but is staring down at his boots before he finally looks up and nods. Max steps forward then, and Kyle sees that his eyes are actually filled with tears. Temper deflating, but still not subsiding entirely, given that not much else is able to be done; Kyle lets Max place a hand on his shoulder and feels the extremely weird feeling spread throughout his body. Something more electric than anything else, which God knew made a lot more sense concerning his powers and how the body operated with electrical nerve impulses, but that is a train of thought better left for another day. He wants to just walk away, and he almost does, but he still mutters a “thank you” before he does so.

When his nurse dies a few days later and he watches as the staff double bag her body to take to the morgue, he escapes to his office and crashes on his couch with sobs. There’s no one here to support him. He can’t go to his mother’s home and collapse into one of her comforting embraces without risking infecting her. He can’t get wasted at the Wild Pony with Maria when it’s closed. He can’t visit Rosa or Arturo at the Crashdown. Keeping his friends and family safe meant keeping them away from him. Keeping them safe meant he needed to stop pushing his head into his hands to try and control the sound of his crying and get back to work at saving the lives around them.

He gets put on leave by the hospital administrator when he’s almost arrested for decking Wyatt Long in the hospital parking lot as the idiot stood outside with a sign rallying Regiment members to make sure the hospital was told it was killing people on purpose for the election. If Jenna hadn’t been the officer on duty he would have been cuffed and put on record, jeopardizing his license, but there was some self-preserving part of him that desperately wished for his practice to be over anyway. He’s not even sure how Jenna handles it, honestly, all he remembers is her dropping him off at his house from her patrol car like she had been nothing but an uber. No matter how angry and adamant he gets, his boss refuses to bend, saying it’s for his own good given the connections the Long’s have in the town and how Kyle has worked almost 74 of the past 76 days.

Alex is the first to visit him, unannounced. When the doorbell rings Kyle is mindlessly pretending to watch some tv show in his living room that’ll distract him from his consuming thoughts about patients, so he doesn’t get up to answer. He checks his silent phone to see if he was forewarned of a visitor but sees nothing. Unsure if it’s his boss or a patient’s family, he forces himself up onto his sore feet and opens the door after grabbing a regular mask off the coffee table. Black face mask on and standing further out from the door on the porch is Alex, the usual gruff hello turned into something soft. “Hey.”

Kyle heaves a sigh. He had wondered when the pity visits would begin. “Hey. You really shouldn’t be around me, you know.”

“I’m clearly a minimum of eight feet away in an open space while masked.” Alex smarts back. “Either way, I’m worried about you.”

Scoffing, he shakes his head. “Don’t fucking worry about me. Worry about getting sick, because if I have to see another person I care about die, I--,”

“Kyle.” the other says too kindly, the sort of pacifying voice Alex reserved for only the most dire situations. “I have no idea what you’re dealing with in specifics, but my experiences do overlap with yours in some places.”

“And?”

Maybe it came out a little too rude, because Alex raises a brow, but then sighs instead. “And I’m just checking in to make sure you know people care about you.”

“Thanks, Manes.” Kyle huffs in return, managing not to roll his eyes because focusing on being blunt and abrasive was so much easier.

“Just be careful.” Alex interjects before Kyle could close the door and turn back to his show. “Dealing with the trauma of what you’re dealing with gets dark very quickly.”

“Because I punched Wyatt Long?” he spits back sarcastically.

“No, because the suicide rates for healthcare professionals are drastically increasing along with the rates of PTSD diagnoses.” Alex says flatly, ever one to be unfazed by sarcasm. “And I’ve lost more active duty members to suicide than I have combat.”

Kyle pauses, caught. Maybe Alex had known he would be, because there isn’t some way he can give a smile and reassuring wave with him like he could his mother or Liz. While Kyle hadn’t actively thought of a plan, he couldn’t pretend he had noticed signs of depression the second he was alone in his house. 

“The quiet is the worst part, right?” Alex says, all but reading his mind. “Not always because of the flashbacks, although those are horrible, but because if things are quiet then--,”

“--people are dying.” Kyle finishes, his voice raspier by the end of the three words. “Yeah, well, mine still are.”

“They’re going to.” Is what felt like a cold response, but somehow gave Kyle the understanding he’s been craving. “They’re going to die and because of your profession you’re going to be able to save some of them. Which will make you think you’re responsible to save all of them and because you’re a good person you’re going to feel guilty in ways that no one will understand for being human and failing to.”

“Failing is all I do lately.” Kyle replies. “Usually the wins feel higher than the losses as a doctor, but with this-- and no one outside of it cares. They go outside and yell about how this is about a fucking election and when it’s not the patients, it’s the hospital pretending they don’t have enough money to buy us proper protection. Or the government saying this will all go away and that it’s just a light cold.”

Alex gives a small nod. “I know. I also know telling you the same advice that you’d give another doctor of trying not to burn out and instead taking a small rest is useless. So I’m just going to drop off these dvd’s and make you report back to me the difference when you’re done.”

Star Trek and Star Wars. Kyle finds a smile tug on his lips. Alex leaves with one on his as well.

When he gives a response to Alex a few days later on how Star Wars is better not more than a few minutes later Deluca is texting him with recommendations on joining her Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch. There’s something sweet about the fact that people have been clearly talking about him, even if definitely borderline creepy with how nosy his circle of friends can be, but he sighs and lets Maria add him to the group chat she has with Rosa and Liz where they review each episode after the fact and even chimes in every now and then. Isobel gets added not long after due to an Instagram story Maria shares and then the group has moved onto Friends after everyone shoots down Liz for suggesting Grey’s Anatomy on behalf of Kyle. Alex is also in there, even if it’s rare he chimes in with an opinion, but once they start Friends his commentary about how much he hates Ross that gets the entire group riled up does tend to make him laugh. Even Kyle agrees with Forest-- whose opinion had been shared by Alex-- that Chandler had all too many queer-coded scenes with Joey.

His mother facetimes him daily, which given how they both don’t exactly go out much starts to become monotonous, until she begins to give in and talk about memories she has of their father. Tidbits she never would have shared with him about their adult life when he was a child or teenager. He in turn facetimes Rosa and shares some of the memories of their father as well, which as much as she tries to pretend she doesn’t want for Arturo’s sake she clearly does with the million questions she asks every single time and the small smile she gives him at the end of their calls.

Liz updates him on her work which is a nice reprieve from everyone’s normalcy and lack of medical jargon sometimes, especially when she gives him inside info on covid vaccine studies not yet published to the general public yet. Everything in him wants this more than anything else in the world right now and he texts her almost every day asking if she’s heard more news even when he knows things take time. She’s a good sport about everything, even when he shares in a very angry rant about Max Evans and how they could have helped so many more people so much more quickly with his DNA-- however selfish that might have been.

When he goes back to work, he feels refreshed, even when it makes things hit like a freight train once more. Lost in a sea of inadequacy, his feelings extend past the pandemic. Even when things return to a level of normalcy and the cases subside he gets alien medical drama thrown in his face once more, and he starts to wonder if he’ll ever recover. If he was wrong to choose this calling. If the fact he can’t help Max or Maria is a sign from above or his father that it’s time to make some career move or change location like his mother and Liz. But, like he tells Michael Guerin. He can’t think he can face his future children and say he walked away from this. Or let people die by quitting, just like Rosa warns. And so he stays and tries to heal both other people and himself.

[buglife]

21 for Dadmaster Mato and Ghost :)

“What did you do this time?”

(Again no beta reader, sorry for any errors!)

The wind blew as harsh as they ever did, carrying the faint whistling sounds from far off places as it ruffled the cloth in the door way. Mato had since learned to listen to the wind since he made his home so far off in the Howling Cliffs. The wind carried so much that could be read if you knew how to do so. So it was there he sat, a small fire before him warming up some water for tea, in his typical position of meditation.  The fire and the wind tended to help his mind focus on what is important, but to also provide noise he can sink into and let his mind drift.

He thought about his child, mostly. It has been a while since they visited and even though he knew they were capable, he still couldn’t help but worry. Sly had told him similar, the last time they were able to speak. No matter how capable someone is, to be loved is to be worried about, plain and simple. So, he tried to cast his mind outward to listen to the wind and see what news it brought.

The wind had picked up in its howling, blowing the sound of scattering pebbles and the sharp slice of the nail cutting through. A thin scraping noise and the shrieks of lesser beasts told him that something was coming. Indeed, after some moments of listening, came the soft limping patter of tiny feet and the sharp dragging of metal just outside his dwelling. Mato opened his eyes long enough to see the inner cloth door waggle, before a figured messily fell through to land with a wet splat on the floor. Their small shining nail clattered a few inches away before stopping

The figure was familiar and Mato found himself climbing to his feet in record time at the sight. “Ghost!”

Said Ghost was face down on the floor. Their mask had cracked and their cloak was littered in burns and splashes of orange. A thin puddle of black dribbled out around them, no doubt hiding other wounds. Motes of black drifted from the visible cracks in their head as they shook, trying once again to get up.

They didn’t need to do anything, as Mato had already gathered up the small child, his child, in his arms. He felt them use an arm, the other seemed fit to just dangle, and patted his mask. He had learned to tell by the tilting of their head, the slight angle of their eye holes, and the way they relaxed on being held, that they were smiling at him. They were obviously glad to see him, just like any other time since the first when they walked into his humble home. But he could also feel their exhaustion, how they were struggling to breathe and not shiver too hard. Each expanse of their sides was a hard won battle and one he was deathly afraid of them loosing.

“Ghost, my dear little child…” Mato heard himself say. He snuggled the small form of the little warrior close. “What did you do this time?”

He knew of course, that his child, his student, was mute. They could write and knew some sign language, which was something he thankfully knew. Sly was insistent on all three brothers to know it, as a language that was completely silent was the best way to communicate deep within enemy territory. He watched as they patted his face once more, before messily attempting to sign with one hand.

<“Trouble.”>

“Trouble, you say?” He was already moving, kicking a switch near the door to drop down a heavy wooden wall, something to keep out said ‘trouble’ and the howling wind. The room instantly became warmer and quiet after the initial clang of falling shellwood. “Trouble you found, or trouble that found you?”

<”Both.”>

“Nevermind, my child. I will ask questions later. Right now you need help and I fully intend to give it to you.” It was getting harder for Mato to ignore the frigid feeling of void as it started to soak into the cracks between his armor and into the cloth below. Oh, his poor little child must be in a lot of pain, but besides the shivering, an outsider would never be able to tell.

But he had started to learn all about his child and was beginning to read them without words being needed. And he knew, here and now, that he needed to work quickly. Ghost had learned far into their past to hide pain and discomfort, something yes, that would help out in the field. But they didn’t need to hide their pain from him. It was something he was slowly working with them, but it takes a lot more than a few bare weeks to undue years of trauma and hardship.

Ghost patted him again, and then tucked their arm around his neck in a bid to stay upright in his arms. He at first wanted to put them down to gather up his supplies, but decided it was best to keep contact as long as possible. Ghost has learned to gain comfort from his embrace and if they felt like it was helping here, he will allow them to do so as long as it could be possible.

So Mato held them in one arm, letting them snuggle and bleed into the warm, fluffy ruff of his cape. With them comforted and warm, he could gather what he needed. The hot water now perfect for tea was dragged away from the fire and poured into a basin. Strips of cloth, a vial of glowing blue liquid, and a jar of paste assembled neatly in front of a pile of pillows in front of the fire.

“I’m sorry my child, I’m going to have to put you down for now to treat you.” He was careful to tell Ghost what he indented to do. It seemed to keep them calmer and helped them get used to the idea that they were deserving of help. Another thing that is taking time to work on.

He briefly held back his rage and his grief when he remembered the time Ghost opened up to him. He had watched as they wrote neatly on paper to tell him of their father, the Pale King. How they had been forced to climb out of the abyss on a carpet of their dead siblings. Watching more still fall as they attempted the harsh climb upward, hearing their little shells crack and splinter on the rocks below. Only to get to the top and watch their sibling be taken away and then sealed away to be forgotten. How they fell down and down and down and it was at this time Ghost had broken into tears and Mato had hugged them for hours. It was then he had told them that a mark of a true father was ones who were brimming with love and care and if they would like it, he could be their father. Not the loathsome pitiful creature who was once their king, that was no father.

He was surprised and honored when Ghost had hugged back harder and signed ‘yes’.

It was then he knew this was the first time Ghost had ever felt true love and caring from any other bug.

Mato set Ghost down on the pillows and made sure they were comfortable. “Now, don’t wiggle too much, and I will fix you some hot cocoa later.” Ghost had perked up at the sound of ‘hot cocoa’, the little vessel had a sweet tooth that was worse than Oro’s. They tried to stay still despite their shivering and Mato was not going to hold that against them as he worked quickly.

A wipe down with the hot water cleaned them off enough to see what he needed to work with. The gashes and burns in their carapace was quickly coated in a layer of lifeblood and bandaged up with clean cloth. The cracks in their mask was filled with shell paste and also wrapped to keep the edges as close together as possible. He had did his best to clean their cloak. Their cloak was strange and he suspected it was actually alive, perhaps underdeveloped wings? He wasn’t sure but he did his best to wipe it clean. Once cleaned and all bandaged up, Mato wrapped his little Ghost in the fluffiest blanket he could find, moving the entire bundle to his own bed.

Now that he was treated, Ghost looked more tired than they did pained, which gladdened him. He arranged them on the softer part of the bed.

“Now, do you think you can remain awake long enough for your much deserved cocoa?” He smiled as they gingerly nodded their head. They sat up a little straighter and made ‘gimmie’ motions with their hands. One still seemed weaker than the other, but that should do better after some rest.

Not wanting to keep Ghost waiting, Mato made a mug of cocoa as quickly as he could, adding a few teaspoons of honey to the mix. Not only did Ghost absolutely love honey, it was also a boon for healing. Mato added an extra tea spoon for that very reason and carried it out. After helping the vessel drink it, he tucked them in and added even more pillows.

“I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with me a little longer.” He couldn’t help but grin again. “I hope you won’t mind a day or two of bedrest.”

Ghost shook their head sluggishly, the warm drink and the various medicines started to drag them out of the waking world. They lazily signed with one hand, the other snug under the pillows.

<“Training?”>

“If you’d like to learn some new techniques, I would be more than happy to teach you. AFTER, I deem you fit for it, and not a moment sooner!” He reached down to gently pat the space between their horns. They sighed and melted into the touch, snuggling further into the warmth.

He thinks they attempted to sign something, but the meaning was lost as they went limp in comfort. He merely took the small hand and tucked it back under the covers.

“Goodnight, my child.” He whispered softly, pulling up the covers to just under their eye holes. They were asleep, and the soft rise and fall of the covers reassured him that they were alive and on the mend. “I love you.”

If they heard that last part of not, he wasn’t sure, but he knew that they finally, in the first time in their life, they could expect to feel it.