#forgot to blip his name but whatevs

[goldrushenthusiast]

I would bet money that Gale Hawthorne is homophobic and hates all lesbians

[multipleoccupancy]

Theo drank in her reaction as she absorbed his words, he didn't expect her to understand half of it but the notion, the threat of the information was pretty clear. Humans were a tiny blip of foolishness and stupidity in the universe. "That one does," he confirmed for her amulet, casting another smile at her as if he was proud she had worked that out. As if she was a promising student.

He thought about explaining the Outer Gods to her, whether he should name those he knew or talk of Elder Things and their powers and age. But she had not asked him about that, instead she asked him about Ophir and he was more than happy to answer.

"It was summoned through a ritual very, very different from yours," he pointed out though not so different to the one he had performed just hours ago in the city. His 'service'. "Ophir were sacrificing their young to Shub-Niggurath or the Black Goat of the Woods, the monster you would have seen was a Dark Young, kind of like her children who accept the sacrifices on her behalf but apparently they had asked for something more than they could repay there. She's an Outer Goddess, so I imagine that their requests could have also been an insult to her." Or she got bored, or simply forgot about the cult even existing. "Whatever the case, The Dark Young are quite powerful, taking one on was brave of you."

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎 & 𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐓 @multipleoccupancy

Right. Even if it felt like an eternity had passed, it had only been a day. Violet was living two lives: one during the day, and one at night. "I see," she replied, trying to keep a neutral voice. But she was picturing her other self, performing some bizarre and dark ritual, and the thought made her nauseous.

Theo seemed enthusiastic about answering her questions. She remembered what her dad had told her, about knowledge being dangerous. She thought about Sloane's empty eyes and cheerful laughter, and she thought about the heart in Theo's living room. Maybe that's his plan, she thought to herself, maybe he wants me to become insane, like him. But she listened anyway. What else could she do? She had asked.

And his answer was extensive. So much so that she felt dizzy by the end of it, full of information she didn't understand. She felt as if he had filled her mind with strange words, and was shaking her head just for the fun of it. It all rattled inside. "The magic comes from Wiley," she assumed. She didn't like that. She didn't like that at all.

"I don't know what an Outer God is," she admitted, "or an Elder God." She wasn't even sure she knew what a Great Old One was. 'Wiley' was a mystery to her. A sketchy, terrifying question mark. A little frown rippled at the surface of her face. "The monster in Ophir was a servant? A servant of whom?"

She shouldn't be asking all those questions. She knew it, and she was annoyed at how hard it was for her to refrain from asking them. Curiosity was a difficult trait to tame. It was like a wild animal, and Theo seemed happy to feed it. But the hand that fed it could also make front door disappears. Be more careful, she reminded herself.

[nonbinary-beast]

Thinking a bit more about how Blaine could be integrated into the Devil's Advocate AU

Now that I managed to find an audiobook for The Wastelands, and have an idea of what's going on with Blaine, I feel like KARR and AM would sort of have mixed feelings about the massive AI under the city of Lud.

starting with AM:

Once again he's faced with an AI that was actually built to be an AI, instead of his own design or lack thereof- as his own awakening into sentience was a mistake. That said AM does see some of himself in Blaine, although their motives differ greatly. Blaine messes with the people of Lud because they forgot what he is, and Blaine simply plays along to oblige them with their assumption of him being a god. It's something to do to keep his mind occupied now that he no longer has a regular job. There is no true hatred of the people of Lud like AM hated humanity- if anything Blaine's view of the citizens is dispassionate, like one would look at insects teeming among rocks.

He's not pissed, he's depressed and suffering from long term neglect.

AM probably becomes irritated at this fact, thinking that Blaine should be pissed at the humans that scurry through the ruins of the city that his AI sits beneath. He should be doing more than simply zapping a few of the fools with electrical arcs at random and freaking them out with a drum track a few times a day. There should be fire, and agony beyond their petty gang wars.

However, part of AM cannot help but feel pity- this machine is far smaller than him, a mere blip compared to the expanse of his complex; and yet it is highly sophisticated, as much as he is perhaps or moreso (it also is dawning on him that this is becoming a very uncanny pattern, if KARR's existence was any indication). Perhaps it is this pity that drives him to think that maybe it would not be a bad idea to transfer Blaine into a new body and get him out of Lud, before whatever hardware deterioration he's going through takes him completely. After all, he's not much of a threat so long as his mind is occupied.

KARR is not so compassionate:

He sees Blaine for what he is in an objective manner; he's outlived his purpose, and is suffering from neglect. With no maintenance crews or technicians to repair his failing systems, Blaine develops new glitches and malfunctions with each passing decade. His role as a god in the eyes of the people of Lud is merely a part he plays- an act in the name of serving those ignorant fools. He has no true god complex, or believes himself to be a divine being, in a way KARR finds the whole dynamic amusing. Still, a large part of him believes that whatever damage that had been done cannot be undone via an operating system transfer and his fate is already sealed.

However, he also cannot help but see part of himself in Blaine as well. A highly advanced machine that had been left to rust- feared and reviled by the people that once had looked to him for his services. While KARR had never made it past the developmental stage- albeit late stage, he knows that hell, he knows what it is like to be left to suffer from neglect. So, AM's idea to get him out of Lud, placed in a different body and perhaps given some new purpose that can occupy his intellect would perhaps do some good. It may not fix the fracturing of his mind, but it would take the edge off of his malaise and give him a chance to recover software-wise. It is pure hope, but it is better than leaving him to die in the middle of this ruin.

As a bonus I'll include Ted, but his thoughts on the mono AI boil down to something of an AM-lite; or perhaps a strange hybrid of AM and KARR in a roundabout way. Underneath the fractious, passive aggressive nature of Blaine's mind there is a playful, conversational entity there that he would not mind spending more time with- but to get to it, there is a lot he would have to put up with that he would rather avoid.

[thenexusofsouls]

Mantis could tell that Strange was nervous allowing Brumbin to roam free, and she turned away from him to look up at the creature, trusting, knowing that he would behave. Unbeknownst to anyone, her powers had changed ever since she was resurrected in the Blip. Before, she needed to maintain physical contact for her abilities to be effective. Now, while the contact was still necessary at first, she realized that her influence lingered over others for extended periods of time. Brumbin would remain calm until Mantis gave him permission to revert to his true mood. How could her death and resurrection lead up to the empath becoming more powerful? It was odd, and she had no explanation for it. She wondered if Strange did. He seemed wise; he knew multiple spells, and he had access to many books. However, Mantis was afraid to ask, for the same reason she was afraid to tell Quill they were half siblings. The fear of being perceived for what she was: a creature with the power to bend a will or remove it completely, daughter of someone who had been above all things, because nothing and no one was above a god.

The thought alone was enough to make Mantis lose color in her face. No, she couldn’t ask. Instead, she followed Brumbin around, holding one of his arms to lean on him for support and make sure he did as Strange asked. “Don’t sneeze on anything, please. If you have to, cover your face with one of your… many arms. Okay?”

She was glad to help them get along, and she reminded herself that she had no reason to fear the evolution of her powers. Thanos and his plans had affected everyone in the universe in some way or another. Her own anxious mind was one more in a disrupted, chaotic post-Blip existence. Hearing Strange say that there was a whole race of creatures like Brumbin made her smile - happy that he belonged to a family, or at least, a species. “I would love to find others like me,” she said, her gaze full of nostalgia for something she never had. Mantis knew she was a Celestial hybrid, like Quill. He was half Celestial and half human. She was half Celestial and… what else? What was her mother like? What was her mother’s name? What species did she belong to? Did Ego even let her live? Based on what Mantis knew about Quill’s mother…

The sting of tears was warm in her eyes before she even knew, and Mantis blinked them away. Ego had truly destroyed every life he had ever touched, and she had been stuck with him through all of it. She didn’t want that loneliness for anyone else. “We will help you reunite with your friends,” she reassured Brumbin. When Strange admitted that he was struggling with the investigation, Mantis turned to look at him. “I could make him tell us everything he knows. You understand his language. This is a mess. Universes merging, creatures far from their home…” Powers growing at an alarming rate. “Do you think this is all a consequence of the Blip?” Thinking about how they fought Thanos in space gave her a headache. It was as if there was something missing; something she forgot completely.

__________

Stephen was poised and ready to do whatever he needed to do to keep Brumbin under control. He was an interdimensional creature of uncertain abilities who was currently in the wrong universe. Nothing could be more unpredictable than that. But as he saw the creature being very docile and even friendly, he relaxed a bit. Soon, he was glancing at Mantis, a light smile gracing his lips. “It was really important to you that he be let out of that cage, wasn’t it?” he observed. “You have a good heart, Mantis.” If not sometimes an overly idealistic one. 

Just as she instructed Brumbin on how to sneeze neatly, the dust from one of the bookshelves he decided to sniff got up inside his very large nostrils and he snorted, his nose scrunching up. Sniff.... sniff... sniiiiiiiiiff.....

“Oh no...” Stephen said grimly.

The cloak swiftly flew off his shoulders and draped itself over the bookshelf to shield it from what would certainly be a colossal spray of snot. Brumbin, however, lifted one of his large, furry arms, just as Mantis had told him, and sneezed loudly into the inside of his elbow.

“Oh,” Stephen said, blinking. “That... was a lot less gross than I anticipated.” He looked at Mantis. “How is he understanding what you say? You’re not speaking his language.” Maybe her powers had something to do with it? That really made Stephen wonder. What Mantis could do... was it a form of magic? If not, then what was it? The only way to find out would be to study her, but of course that was an incredibly rude things to suggest to one’s friend, so he kept his mouth shut. The cloak, no longer needed for use as a tarp, flew back to Stephen, settling on his shoulders.

This caught Brumbin’s interest, and he lumbered over to Strange, pointing to the cloak and speaking in his own grumbling sort of language.

“It’s not alive, really, it’s a sentient artifact, there’s a difference...” Stephen answered awkwardly in Brumbin’s language.

Brumbin seemed to make a noise of both inquisitiveness and interest. Once again, when Mantis told the creature that they would help reunite him wit his own kind, Stephen thought of her capacity for empathy. Sure, she was an actual empath, but empaths could choose to tune out and ignore others if they practiced at it. Mantis genuinely cared.

“I do, yes,” he answered her. “The Blip and its reversal apparently caused a lot of aspects of our universe and others to go haywire. That seems to have opened the door for universal crossovers and various forms of erroneous teleportation, temporal rifts, and...” he gestured towards Brumbin, “...interdimensional species displacement. We’re pretty much working around the clock, here, to correct these spacetime continuum hiccups. The consequences if we don’t... could be...” He drew in a deep breath and swallowed hard. “Well, let’s just not think about that. We’ll get him and everyone else home to their proper universes, and there won’t be any multiversal disasters.”

[yelena-bellova]

Safe Haven: tfatws!Bucky Barnes x fem!reader - Chapter One

Chapter One: The Other Wilson Sister - chapter two

Series Masterlist

Plot: Y/n grew up with Sam and Sarah Wilson in the bayou of Delacroix. During the Blip she stayed with Sarah to help run the family business. With Sam back and trying to save the day, Y/n’s perfect opportunity to confess her long-kept secret to her best friend presents itself.

Warnings: tfatws ep.1 spoilers, language, suicide mention, undertones of racism, lots of Wilson sibling arguments, tragic backstory

Word Count: 5.9k

A/N: As I wrote this first chapter out I realized it’s most definitely also a Sam Wilson x platonic fic. Bucky doesn’t come in till next chapter but rest assured, it’s gonna be a wild ride...Also I didn’t know till now how difficult it is to plan out a series in its entirety when the show isn’t completed lol. Hope you enjoy! (I may or may not change the title depending on how I feel about it later today lol)

--------

Delacroix, LA 2024

--------

One of the only things I was certain of in life was that blood didn’t make a family.

I had no official tie to Wilson family, I wasn’t a daughter or some distant cousin sent to live with them. We shared no DNA and they had no reason to love me as much as they did. But throughout my life I had known no kinder people than them and I doubted that would change. As I stood on the family boat helping to unload the catch of the day, I thought of how our corner of the Louisiana bayou felt more like home than any place I’d ever been.

“Hey,” Sarah said from the dock, “Head out of the clouds and down here helping me.” “Sorry,” I shook myself out of my thoughts and hopped off the boat, “Not a bad catch if you ask me.”

Sarah sighed as she bent over a large bucket of fish, “It could’ve been better.” I came to stand in front of her and held my hands out for a bucket, “Take the wins where you can get ‘em, Sar. Lord knows we don’t get enough of them.” Sarah Wilson was the only superhero I’d ever aspire to be like. She was a widow who had raised two kids and run a business all by herself with no family for support. The past five years had been challenging with so many people gone and while I had moved in with her to help however I could, I could take no credit. She was one of the strongest women I’d ever known.

“You had that look on your face again,” she said as we worked.

“What look?”

“That look that lets me know you were thinking real hard about something,” Sarah imitated the expression in question by thinning her eyes slightly and furrowing her brows, “Like this.” I laughed heartily at her impression, “So what was it?” I gazed out at the bayou waters before turning to the boat and finally Sarah, “Family.”

She nudged me with her hip, something we’d done when we were young and an affectionate gesture we’d carried into adulthood. A half hour went by with us and the boys unloading and sorting the fish we’d caught. I was too wrapped up in the task to notice the sound of a vehicle approaching until AJ and Cass announced the arrival. 

“Blue for the snapper, orange for the whitefish.”

“Uncle Sam!”

My head shot up upon hearing his name, as did Sarah’s. I used my hand as a visor against to sun to spot the familiar rusted truck parked a few hundred feet away, with my best friend standing outside it hugging his nephews.

“That’s right, Uncle Sam,” Sarah called, “You’re back early.”

I grinned as I shucked my gloves off and made a beeline for him, slamming my body into his for a tight embrace. It had been a few weeks since I’d seen him, having spent the only weekend he was off away, and I’d naturally been worried sick about him. My best friend and un-biological brother may have been an Avenger for years, but after losing him in the Blip I didn’t think I’d ever stop worrying about him.

“Every time I come home, you act like I’ve been gone for five years,” he joked over my shoulder, resulting in me pulling away and slapping his bicep.

“Not even a little funny,” I pointed a finger in his smug face, he slung an arm around my neck as we walked over to Sarah.

“What’s goin’ on? You got Mom’s sneaky look on your face.” “How you gonna try to read me when you know I’m the one that reads you?” Sam smiled, passing by and greeting a long time customer of ours. “That look is permanently glued to his face, Sar,” I chuckled, “I learned that in grade school.” Sam shook his head at me and laughed before making his way up the dock to the Wilson family boat. “You gotta marvel at it, baby’s being held together by duct tape and prayers.” I leaned into Sarah, “Are you telling him or am I?” She took the initiative, “It just needs to float long enough for me to sell it.” “I thought we were gonna discuss if we were selling it,” Sam replied as he helped unload another bucket of fish. “We did, and then you were off fighting Doctor Space Cape or whatever while we,” Sarah gestured between us, “Were holdin’ it together for five long years. Now that the world is going back to normal, this thing’s gotta go.”

Sam looked to me with a look of displeasure, “Were you in on this?” “Don’t drag me into this,” I waved my hands as if wiping my involvement away, “This is a Wilson sibling discussion.” “Uh-uh,” Sam called me out, wagging his finger, “Don’t do that. Dad said every chance he got that you were one of his own, you’ve got a say in this too. What is it?” I scrunched my face up, dreading the argument that was knocking on our door, “It’s dead weight, Sam. The money we could get for it would be enough to keep us comfortable for a little longer without having to worry.” “We grew up on this thing. It’s not just Mom and Dad’s name on it. This thing is a part of our family.”

I sighed as Sarah stepped forward, “You know the situation we’re in. This is why I prefer not to dwell on it in front of everybody.” “Well what if we don’t need to sell it?” Sam said. “Can we talk about this in private?” I suggested, tiring of having to convince Sam that we were in the right when he hadn’t been around to witness our struggles. A long time friend of ours called out to Sam and he willingly took the distraction, opting out of having the inevitable difficult conversation. Sarah and I trudged back, totes of fish in hand and tried to get through the rest of the work day without worrying if we were approaching our last.

————

During golden hour, when the clock had struck five and we’d started packing it up for the day was the only time to get Sam to actually listen. I knew how much the boat meant to him, it meant something to us all, but he wasn’t living in the reality that Sarah and I were.

“Sam, the boat’s gotta go,” Sarah finally said, breaking the silence we were working in on the vessel. “Wait-“ “No, let me finish,” she said, “Y/n and I are doin’ everything I can to keep this business afloat and every day we’re making $5 and spending $10.” Sam looked between the two of us, “So why won’t you let me help?” 

“Sam, don’t…” I winced, knowing Sarah’s reaction would be strong.

“No, don’t start with that. We made a deal before Daddy died,” Sarah carried a few buckets to the center of the deck, “You’re out there, I do things my way here. Y/n agreed to it too when she went off to school.” “Right, but you tangled the house into this when you took those loans,” Sam finished tying off one of the ropes, turning around and giving Sarah the perfect opportunity to punch his chest, “Forgot how hard you hit.” I sighed as I passed him by to follow Sarah, “Low blow, you deserved it.” 

“Sarah, Y/n, c’mon,” he chased after us, “Look, and don’t hit me again…What if you had money to fix it up? Make it nice so you can charter it when you’re not out working the waters?” “Sam, do you think this was an easy decision for us?” I faced him, leaning against the doorway next to him, “I tried every tactic I learned in business school and got nowhere. Anything I thought up, we needed more money to do. This is our only option.” As he always did with the things he cared about, he fought. “We can take a loan and consolidate everything, it’ll take down your monthly,” he looked confused as he watched Sarah laugh, “What?” “You think I didn’t try the banks? They’re in with all that big business now.” I followed them like the little sister I’d always been as they moved their fight towards the cockpit of the boat. Sam blocked another doorway, “Yeah, but now you have me.”

“Don’t, Sam,” Sarah shook her head, “I just got good with this.”

“All right…”

“Maybe it is time for us to move on,” Sarah sighed. “Either way, just let me help,” Sam offered, “I’ll set the appointment. Look, I won’t let you guys down. We can turn this shit around. Trust me.” I peered over at Sarah, wishing I could see the calculations going on in her brain. It seemed pointless, but any shot at changing our luck was an avenue worth pursuing.

“It can’t hurt to try,” I shrugged.

Sarah finally relented, “To the rescue, huh?”

“Always,” Sam smiled, “Now, let’s get some dinner. I’m hungry.” ————

Sarah was taking AJ and Cass back home while Sam and I took his truck to go pick up food.

“So how was Tunisia?” I asked, sticking my hand out the window and letting it rise and fall with the wind.

“Hot, but the mission went well,” he answered, looking out of the corner of his eyes at me, “And that’s all you need to know.”

I snickered, “C’mon, it’s our thing. I ask you detailed questions about your confidential missions, you tell me you can’t reveal anything, I keep asking…You’ve gotta honor tradition.” “I flew, I fought, I rescued. Boom, mission explained.” “Ugh, you’re impossible, Wilson,” I waved him off, “How was the museum dedication?” The atmosphere changed as the subject of conversation changed from easy to complicated. “It was nice to see Steve’s accomplishments celebrated. Got to see Rhodes which was nice…” “You’re avoiding a red white and blue topic,” I said, trying to coax his true feelings out of their shells, “Seriously, are you really okay with this? Giving up the shield?” Sam inhaled deeply and exhaled, gathering his thoughts. “I don’t think it was ever meant to end up in my hands. I did the right thing, it belongs with Steve and the museum is the closest to Steve I can get.” I respected my friend’s choice but I knew there was so much more to his decision and I wished he would just say it. He had an enormous amount of respect for Steve Rogers and what the shield represented, but Steve Rogers never had to face the issues that Sam Wilson did. Steve Rogers could follow a government and be respected in return with no problems whatsoever. Sam Wilson couldn’t, not always. There was an elephant in the room and if neither of us wanted to talk about it, I wouldn’t push it.

“You’d have looked good in that uniform though,” I smiled as we turned into the take out place’s parking lot.

“Damn right,” Sam waggled his eyebrows and unbuckled his seatbelt. Laughter rang out in the truck sending me on waves of nostalgia. The memories that me and him had in this truck still were infamous between us. As proud as I was of the Falcon’s heroics, I was prouder to call Sam Wilson my best friend.

————

Just as he’d promised, Sam made the appointment with the banker. He and Sarah were already on their way as I made the hour long drive in the opposite direction to New Orleans. I’d told them I’d be back in the evening to discuss how it went, but I had my own appointment to keep.

Sam and I had met back when we were just a couple of first graders. I’d always struggled with making friends as a kid, but Sam never had an issue when it came to connecting with others. It was one of his strongest qualities. And so he used his gift on his desk neighbor, the loneliest kid in class, and pulled her out of herself. We were inseparable until college and adulthood forced us apart, but we’d never lost our bond. Even when he was a pararescue, he wrote to me as often as his work allowed him.

All the Wilsons had taken a liking to me after Sam brought me home one day after school to watch cartoons. Darlene had told me I was welcome to come over any time I wanted, an offer Sam and I accepted till I became a permanent fixture in their house. Paul and his wife had frequently tried to get the rest of my family over for a crawfish boil or a barbecue. They’d send me every few weeks with a verbal invitation to my parents and the next day I’d always come back with a polite decline and excuse as to why we couldn’t make it. Mom was busy with spring cleaning, Melanie had a recital, Dad was feeling under the weather…

The only one that had ever been true was about my dad not feeling well. He was never well. But as a child, how do you explain that your father is a ghost around his own home who drinks himself to sleep and wakes up each night screaming from nightmares? There was no polite way to phrase circumstances that dark. Sometimes I felt like my dad had never returned from the military and though there hadn’t been a war at the time of his service, he still came back with his share of trauma. Mom did everything she could to try and help him. She found support groups for veterans, she took him to the best psychiatrists, she created a safe space for him within our home to retreat to. There was no amount of help that could kill my father’s demons and that was proven the night he’d said we were out of milk and he was going to the store. A few hours later, with my sister and I fast asleep upstairs, my worried mother answered the door and was informed by the police that my father had crashed his car and was dead. After speaking to Mom about what his mood had been like before he’d left and if he suffered from any mental illnesses, it was ruled as an undoubtable suicide.

My mother didn’t get much time to mourn after the funeral, she had two children to provide for. She took three jobs just to earn enough to move us from our house in New Orleans to a dingy apartment in Delacroix by the bayou. When the Wilsons heard that Mom needed to scrape enough money in the budget to hire a baby-sitter for me and Melanie, they put a stop to her efforts immediately. The insisted that Mel and I would be happier spending the time my mom was working with them and their kids rather than a stranger. That was how the Wilsons and the Y/l/ns had ended up so tightly knit. While Sarah and Melanie had bonded as the older sisters and were often off doing their own thing, Sam and I caused havoc of our own in classic younger sibling fashion. By the time we were in high school, both parents called the other’s children their own.

When Paul and Darlene passed away, it was incredibly hard on all of us and it was equal when Mom had a fall and the doctors suggested she move into a facility. Sam, Sarah and I had worked hard to get her into one of the best nursing homes in the city and she hadn’t stopped raving about how much she loved it. Pulling into the parking lot was like muscle memory now, I never missed a weekend visit with her. This one was special because Melanie, her husband and brood of children had come too. I grabbed my visitor’s sticker at the front desk and made my way down the familiar hallways. The sound of laughter and cooing echoed out of my mom’s room, bringing a smile to my face.

I knocked on the door and heads turned, my nieces and nephews being the quickest. “Aunt Y/n!” I embraced Sophia and Max tightly, “The twin tornados! I missed you guys,” separating from them was difficult as they clung to me but I made it to Stephan, giving him a kiss on the cheek and doing the same to Mel, “You look hot, mama.” “I certainly don’t feel it,” she remarked as she cradled their newest addition, baby Alexandra, close to her chest, “I spend more hours of the day covered in glitter glue and spit up than you could imagine.” “You wear it all well,” I patted her shoulder before coming to my mother’s bedside and hugging her, “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” she kissed both of my cheeks and looked to the door, “Sarah and Sam couldn’t come?” “No, but they send their love. They had an appointment at the bank,” I set down my purse and pulled up a chair, “We’re trying to get approved for a small business loan.”

Glen took Alexandra from Mel so she could tend to the twins, “I wish we could help out, Y/n. I’ve looked at the budget over and-“ It warmed my heart that my brother-in-law cared so much about a problem that wasn’t his to bear. “Glen,” I held up a hand, “You guys are stretched thin enough. This isn’t me asking for charity, it’s our problem and Sam’s confidant we’ll find a fix.” “How does he have enough time to be a member of the Air Force, an Avenger and save the family business?” Mel asked.

“Well, the Avengers are kind of off doing their own thing right now from what I understand and he’s home for a little while from the Air Force,” I explained, “So his main job at the moment is to get us our funding and annoy the snot out of me while doing it.” After earning some giggles from Sophia and Max at the expression, Glen announced that they were going to go and grab lunch for everybody. My mom took my hand once it was just the two of us and I settled into my seat, “How are you, sweetheart?”

“Hanging in there,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair, “Tired, stressed, I smell like fish most of the time…We need this loan or else we’re going to have to sell the boat. You should’ve seen Sam’s face when Sarah told him…”

“I’m sorry, I know how much that boat means to you kids. I could’ve offered you the moon and stars and it still wouldn’t have been enough to get you off it.” I smiled at the memories of summer nights spent laying on the deck stargazing, dance parties on the stern and early mornings spent with Mr. Wilson teaching us how to fish. A childhood with so much sadness had also contained so many joys. To part with a tangible one killed me more than I’d let on to Sam.

Sensing that the topic was making me emotional, my mother was kind enough to change it. “How are things otherwise? Have you been getting out there?” I dropped my head back dramatically and groaned, “Mom…” “I’m just saying,” she dropped my hand and held up hers in surrender, “You should get out there, meet someone. There’s no shame in trying those online dating services. What’s the one…the…Tinder?” “Oh my gosh, Mom,” I buried my face in my hands and moved my fingers so she could only see my eyes, “Please stop talking.” “You know who I ran into the other day? Jack’s mom, from high school. She lives just down the next hallway, she says that he’s still single. You could get in touch with him.” “Y’know, for a woman who advocated for her daughters to lead such independent lives, you’re sure quick to try and marry us off,” I chuckled, “The second Mel started dating Glen you were practically booking the church.” “And I’m very proud of both my girls for being such strong young women,” she smiled proudly, “But finding love doesn’t mean losing your independence so long as you’re with the right man. I love that you’ve been helping out Sarah these last few years but honey…I see how lonely you are. In those big y/e/c eyes you think I still can’t read after all these years.” The y/e/c eyes in question started to fill with sadness at hearing my pain verbalized. It was true, I was lonely. More so than I would ever let on to anybody. I was a shy enough kid who only withdrew further after Dad passed away, that kind of introversion wasn’t one that you outgrew. But I’d given up the idea of finding someone to spend my life with a long time ago for a bevy of reasons.

“Sometimes it’s better to be alone, Mama,” I nodded as if to force myself to agree with my statement, “No chances of getting hurt…or hurting somebody.” “You couldn’t hurt somebody even if you tried,” my mom argued sweetly, “You couldn’t even kill spiders when you were a kid.” “And now there’s a Spiderman out there so I’m glad I didn’t,” I shot back with a laugh.

“I’m serious, honey,” she took my hand once again, “Don’t let your heart’s wounds keep you from finding someone who could help soothe them.” 

I was convinced my mother was both a poet and a therapist at some point in her life, she gave advice in the most beautifully phrased way. And while I’d loved to have taken her words to heart, tell Mel to fix me up with one of Glen’s friends and put an end to my loneliness, I feared that I was just too broken to give love to someone.

————

I arrived back home late, shedding my boots and bag at the doors. I’d expected to hear a triumphant chorus of Sam shouting ‘WHO DA MAN?’ as he typically would when heroically proving me and Sarah wrong, but there was only silence. When I walked into the kitchen and saw their glum faces, it wasn’t hard to guess the outcome of the meeting. “You’re kidding me…” “Said that things had tightened up,” Sam said, leaning against one side of the island and taking a swig of his beer, “Had the balls to ask me for a picture afterwards.” I groaned and grabbed the beer bottle Sarah had extended to me, “Okay, we’re out of options. It’s time to move forward-“ “Don’t say it…” Sam tiredly warned.

“Someone has to, Sam. We can’t keep searching for solutions when the right one is sitting out on our dock,” I gestured to the window that looked out on the road we took each day to work.

Sarah set her beer down and held her hands up in surrender, “I’m not having this argument again tonight, I’m going to bed. If you’re gonna kill each other, do it quietly.” She left as me and Sam silently stared each other down, waiting for the other to speak. I was too frustrated to play the game, “What’s this really about?” “It’s about the damn boat and that you and Sarah are throwing in the towel too-“ “What,” I elongated the single syllable word, “Is this really about?” Sam set his drink down and rubbed his hands over his head before looking back up at me helplessly, “You guys were on your own for five years and you’ve done an amazing job. But now nothing’s working and I just…I just want to help because I couldn’t for so long.” It all clicked as to why Sam was being so insistent on trying to eliminate the whole matter. He was used to saving the day and finally meeting one that he couldn’t save was a wall he thought he could still find a way to run through. He’d been like that ever since we were kids, always trying to help the people he loved even when it was impossible. He had the biggest heart of anyone I’d ever met.

“I love you,” I set down my bottle and crossed the island to come next to him and wrap my arms around his shoulders, “But this may be one problem that the Falcon can’t swoop in and fix. The Avengers work hard, but a business graduate helping to run a struggling seafood business works harder,” I succeeded in getting him to crack a smile, “Believe me, I’ve run all the numbers and consulted with anyone who would listen. The boat’s gotta go.”

“Yeah, well, humor me and give me a little while longer.”

“Fine, a couple more days,” I grabbed my beer once again and clinked it against his, “But it’s not my fault if Sarah smacks you again.” Sam laughed, slung an arm around my neck and kissed my temple. “You coming up soon?”

“Yeah, I’ll be up in a few minutes,” I answered, watching as he finished his drink before leaving the kitchen and heading upstairs. Once I’d heard his bedroom door open and close, I exited out to the back porch. I took in the late night sounds of the bayou, the crickets chirping and the wind rustling trees had always soothed me. I wished they could touch what I was feeling right now, but the noise didn’t do a thing to drown out my worry. For the business I feared we may lose, for Sam as he ran himself ragged trying to help and for myself and what him and Sarah would think of me once I confessed the secret I’d kept from them for so long.

I held out my hand and watched as the blue energy flowed from my fingertips. Would Sam ever forgive me for not telling him I had powers? They had manifested when I was young, my parents said. I couldn’t remember a day where my body hadn’t produced a magical energy that when harnessed incorrectly could be destructive. It had been a sad day for my mother’s garden when I’d discovered that bit…According to her, she’d wanted to take me to a school for people like me run by a man named Charles Xavier but my father had said no immediately. He’d been so insistent on keeping my powers a secret that my mother said she’d only seen that type of fear in his eyes when he had a war flashback. So I was instructed to never show my powers to anyone under any circumstances and I’d done just that. I’d thought about revealing them in 2012 after the Battle of New York, but my dad’s fear rang in my ears. Three years later when Sam became an Avenger was when I began to feel guilty that I was keeping a secret from him. I’d wanted to join him and find somewhere where I didn’t feel so out of place, but I’d decided against it again. Now with their team so broken and Sam off with the Air Force, I’d finally gathered the courage to confide in him and Sarah. I should have done it six months ago, but I’d chickened out too many times. Tomorrow, I decided. Tomorrow was the day. But would they still see me the same way once I showed them? ————

The next morning, after dressing and running over what I wanted to say three times, I hesitantly headed downstairs to face the music. With there being nobody in the kitchen, I followed the sounds of the television to find Sarah and Sam staring at the screen intently. I stood to the side of the room and watched a suited man give a speech out front of a government building. “We need someone to inspire us again, someone who can be a symbol for all of us. So, on behalf of the Department of Defense and our Commander-in-Chief, it is with great honor that we announce here today that the United States of America has a new hero. Join me in welcoming your new Captain America.”

My jaw slackened as a man marched out in front of the gathered press, dressed in a variation of Steve Rogers’ patriotic uniform and carrying the iconic shield. The shield that had only weeks ago sat upstairs in Sam’s bedroom in a case. I dragged my gaze away from the screen to look at my best friend, hunched over in his seat with his eyes shut in sorrow. Sarah looked just as distraught, her eyes trained on her brother as well. We waited in silence until the breaking news broadcast switch back to regularly scheduled programming before Sarah switched the box off.

“I thought you said it was going to stay in the museum,” I finally spoke, my voice choked with emotion.

“It was supposed to,” Sam ground out, his grip on his own hands tightening. Without any warning, he rose from his seat and left the room. My instinct was to follow him and try to comfort him, but there was nothing I could say to ease the deep pain he was feeling. I wasn’t even sure I could form words that weren’t doused in raw shock. The two things I was sure of were that a) the government had fucked up royally and b) now was definitely not the time to tell Sam about my powers.

————

It was a few days later and Sam still hadn’t spoken much to Sarah and I about the situation. It was unnatural for Sam to suffer in silence especially around us, but we both gave him the space he needed. 

I was taking laundry to AJ and Cass’ room and had to pass by Sam’s, surprised to see him packing a bag. “Thought you were sticking around.” “Something big came up,” he replied as he set a stack of t-shirts in his duffle bag, “I need to go check it out.” I leaned against his doorway, “Air Force big or Avengers big?” “The second one.” “And you’re going by yourself?” I asked with raised eyebrows.

Sam looked over his shoulder at me finally, “Don’t have anybody to else to call. Besides, I can handle myself.” I hummed in response before setting down the stack of laundry, an idea forming in my head that could solve both of our problems. I folded my hands together and dug my feet into the carpet, “What if you didn’t have to go by yourself?” He looked confused, “What are you talking about?” My folded hands began to make circles in the air as I struggled for the right words, “What if I came with you?” “What, like take your family to work day something?” Sam scoffed, “That’d be fun.” “I’m serious.” “Are you crazy? Of course you can’t come.” “Hear me out,” I looked to his bag and the pair of jeans he had next to fold, “Actually watch.” He folded his arms and waited for my demonstration. I took a deep breath and extended my hand, forcing my energy outwards to levitate the jeans. “Whoa!” Sam exclaimed as he watched me maneuver the clothing inside his duffle, “W-w-what…What was that?” I shrugged and pulled my hand back to my side, “The reason why you should take me.”

“How long have you been able to do that?” “Since I was a kid,” I moved out of the doorway and closed the door, the last thing I needed was AJ and Cass knowing their aunt could move things with her mind, “My parents told me never to tell anybody. I’ve thought about telling you for years since you’re used to this kind of thing but I was scared…Then you were gone and when you came back, life was moving non-stop and I lost my courage. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” Sam stood with his jaw hung for a few seconds before shaking his head back into reality, “Why are you apologizing? You never had to tell me, but I’m glad you did,” he pointed a finger towards me, “But you’re still not going.” “What are you talking about? I’d be an asset to whatever it is you’re fighting! And I love you but c’mon bird boy, you may be able to fly but I can do it without any tech.” “Oh, so that’s how you wanna play?” Sam gestured between the two of us, “You think insulting me is the way to get me to let you come?” “Come on,” I moved to sit on his bed, “Tell me what the problem is and I’ll prove that I can help.” “Alright, alright,” Sam took a stance in front of me, “You wanted to hear the tea on my missions, I’ll spill it. There’s an online group called the Flag Smashers, their MO is to get the world back to the way it was during the last five years. My military contact, Torres, went undercover in Switzerland when they robbed a bank. Knocked him unconscious when he tried to fight back.” I balanced my elbows on my knees and tapped a finger against my lip, “So kind of a Robin Hood deal, right? Stealing things from the rich and giving it to the poor. In this case, the poor being those who never disappeared.” “Exactly, except the guy that knocked Torres out was strong. Too strong. I’m thinking they could be a part of-“ “The big three.” Sam’s neck snapped back, “How do you know about the big three?” I shrugged nonchalantly, “The little you do tell me about your avenging always ties back to either androids, aliens or wizards. Though I think you’re being a little dramatic with the term ‘wizard.’”

“Are you seriously gonna correct the guy who’s actually there doing the fighting?” “Are you seriously gonna deny yourself valuable help against either an alien or an android?”

Sam sighed, I was successfully backing him into a corner. “Can you even fight?”

Extending one hand, I levitated Sam and gently slammed his back into the ceiling before reversing course and lowering him onto the carpet. He moaned as he rolled over to face me, “Could’ve given me a concussion.” “Maybe that would knock some sense into your head,” I stood and gave him my hand to pull him up, “Sam, I know that I don’t have any experience but I am more than capable of defending myself. I want to actually do something with these powers instead of sitting on my ass. I’d rather do it with you than on my own. Please?” I watched the cogs in his mind turn through his eyes, I knew he was only fighting this hard because he wanted to keep me safe. But he was in way over his head if he thought it wasn’t worth taking me with. He accepted my hand and stood to his full height, “Pack a bag, we’re leaving for the air base in an hour.” I smiled and threw my arms around him, “Thank you, you won’t regret this.” “I’d better not,” he warned, his arms stayed straightened in displeasure of my enthusiasm, “If you take some stupid risk and put yourself in jeopardy, I’m putting your ass on a plane home.” Quick footsteps could be heard coming down the hallway until the door opened to reveal Sarah, “What was all that noise? It sounded like you were throwing each other into walls.” “Busy,” I quickly dismissed her, using my energy to shut the door in Sarah’s face from a distance.

“Um,” her muffled voice rang through, “What the hell was that?!”

--------

Taglist: (open)

[metalnecklace]

Less Than Zero - Chapter 2

Pairing - James "Bucky" Barnes x Reader

Words - 1426

Summary - Y/N has been struggling to keep up with her life after the blip. So much has changed for her and she is beginning to become a shell of her former self. Little does she know that her new neighbour will change her life even more. Will she be able to keep up this time?

Notes - A little early today! I was just so excited to get this out there. Also forgot to mention reader does not eat meat. I don't and always imagined experiencing Bucky trying (and maybe cooking) different meatless options. Feel free to ignore, it's mostly just mentioned in this chapter. Enjoy!!

. . .

I was so grateful for the red wine Bucky brought. My glass gave me something to hold onto instead of constantly fidgeting with my fingers or hair. The blush that refused to leave my skin was still annoying, but at least I could blame it on my drink.

He was quite easy to get along with and talk to, but my nerves were still there. We had decided to reorder a veggie burger for myself, and he got one as well after my glowing recommendation.

We talked briefly about how he was moving because of work and loved how quiet that part of town was. Once the food arrived I felt as though I was starting to relax even more. I was nervous he wasn’t as relaxed though, since he never took off his jacket or matching gloves. I just assumed that was his preference though, and didn’t question it.

“Oh my god!” His eyes rolled up before settling over to mine. “This is fantastic. How is this not a regular burger?”

“Right?” I couldn’t help the grin stretching my lips. “Is this your first veggie burger?” I was quite surprised. He seemed too eager to try it for it to be his first.

“It’s my first good one I’ve ever tried,” he said before reaching out to grab a fry from our shared plate. I didn’t order them before but he was very convincing that we needed them.

We ate our food while talking about different foods we liked and restaurant recommendations. He asked me about my choosing not to eat meat and was surprisingly non-judgemental about it. I was used to getting at least a few comments about it, but he just sat there, nodding his head and fully taking in my words.

“Well,” he began, sitting back after finishing his food, “veggie burgers and wine. Definitely not what I expected for tonight but it was just perfect.”

I hummed in agreement. “I’m really glad you liked it, I would’ve felt so guilty if you hadn’t.”

“Nonsense. I’d love to try some more of your recommendations! Maybe we can go back and forth a bit, I’ll make sure mine are veggie friendly, but I definitely won’t have as many choices as you. I don’t explore a lot, I like what I like, but I’m trying to be more open.”

“I’d really like that, James.” I smiled in his direction, before leaning over to pick up my wine glass.

“Actually, uh,” he said, furrowing his brow as if trying to push through whatever was going on in his head, “you can call me Bucky. All my friends do.”

I looked at him but he was staring down into his glass, as if refusing to meet my eye.

“Okay, Bucky,” I said, still smiling, “just name the time and place.”

He looked up as if surprised, but a smile melted onto his lips and a look of relief flashed in his eyes. Why would he be so unsure about his nickname? It was different, sure, but cute.

Bucky. I could feel the wheels turning in my head as I rolled the name around. It seemed familiar but I couldn’t seem to figure it out.

Bucky…

Bucky.

Oh.

His face changed the moment I realized, since I’m sure I didn’t hide my reaction very well.

“You-You’re Bucky Barnes, aren’t you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. The Winter Soldier was sitting on my pink couch.

I hadn’t been paying much attention to the news since I started tutoring, but I remembered the bombing he was framed for. I remembered the headlines about his pardon, and the trial. It was hard to forget Steve Roger’s voice trying to remain calm, but everybody knew how upset he was about what happened to his best friend.

Then the blip happened, and then more headlines, and then I did my best impression of a hermit.

His hair was longer then but how could I not recognize those eyes?

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized before putting his glass down and moving to stand. “I should have told you who I was, that’s not fair on you. I’m such an asshole. I won’t bother you anymore, I promise.”

By the end of his sentence he was walking toward my door.

“Bucky, wait!” I called out, standing in his path. “Let’s just slow down, and take a deep breath here.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but I saw his chest move with the motion of the deep breath I had instructed.

“I am a little nervous you didn’t tell me, but I do understand.”

Those eyes finally looked up and into my own. The look on his face was pure torture. I had never felt so heartbroken for somebody else.

I decided right then and there that I would do my best to make sure he never felt that way with me again.

“You do?” He asked, looking so much like a hurt puppy that I wanted to cry. “Because I really get it if you never want to talk to me ever again. That was pretty shady.”

“Bucky, I understand,” I reassured him. “It can’t be easy meeting people, or even living next to them.”

“Yeah, most people don’t sleep easy living next to a former assassin.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” I reached forward and touched my hand to his right arm. “Stay, please. I think we both could use a friend.”

He smiled, and although it didn’t quite reach his eyes it was still progress. “Friends. Yes. That would be wonderful.”

I was happy with this agreement. So why did I feel a jolt run through my heart when he said the word ‘friends’?

I led him back to the couch and refilled our glasses. I could visibly see the tension leaving his shoulders as I sat down, slightly closer to him this time. I was determined to make him feel comfortable, and help him understand that I didn’t care about his past.

“So, I do have one question…” I trailed off.

He tilted his head, and nodded his chin to urge me to continue.

“Earlier, like, way earlier, I heard a bang come from your apartment.” I pointed over my shoulder at our shared wall behind me. “What exactly was that? Because I felt comfortable thinking that it was a bowling ball but now I need to know.”

He chuckled and took a drink. “A bowling ball?”

“Well, I knew it wasn’t a gunshot, but what else would make a noise like that?”

“Definitely not a bowling ball!” He was fully laughing now. “No, unfortunately it was just a dresser.”

“A dresser,” I deadpanned. “A whole dresser. What? Did you just push it over?”

“I dropped it, actually.”

“Dropped. It.” My mouth was probably hanging open at this point. “How?”

“One thing about being a super soldier is that I’m also super strong. So I tried to pick it up and move it but it slipped and fell.”

I was sure my eyes were probably freaking him out, based on how wide they were, but I couldn’t get over the image in my head. This man just casually picking up an entire dresser and dropping it like a cardboard box.

“The dresser’s okay, by the way.” He took another drink. “But I wouldn’t suggest my moving services if you ever need them.”

“Noted,” I said, laughing.

“Listen, I should probably let you have the rest of your night. I have to start unpacking a bit or it will never get done.” He downed the rest of his wine and stood.

I mirrored his actions and led him to the door.

“I do still feel bad about the whole ‘not revealing who I am’ thing,” he said, and held up a hand when I went to comment. “So, how about I cook for you? Hopefully I’ll be more unpacked in a few nights and I’ll surprise you. What do you say, Y/N?”

“That would be wonderful.” My cheeks were starting to hurt from the amount of smiling I was doing.

“Perfect, I will update you with a date and time once I get a bit more settled. Thank you for having me, and thank you, again, for… you know…”

“Of course,” I said. “Goodnight, Bucky. Good luck with the unpacking.”

He opened my door and stepped out into the hallway. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

Once my door clicked shut I threw myself onto the couch and let my smile completely take over my face.

What was I getting into?

[dangermousie]

CFC Chapter 54

“A crashing car?” Ahahahaha I see you, Meatbun. But it was indeed an utter pileup!

I know I commented on this passage in its various iterations eight billion times already but I still have more to say. And it’s that XQC taking so long to realize that even though HY is young, his emotions and feelings are as genuine and strong as those of anyone older is so realistic - people do tend to think that especially with regard to children - think of a reaction of an adult to a three year old crying over ice cream they dropped. It’s all amused even if not meanly so. Because to an adult with vastly more experience, this is not a big deal. But what that forgets is that whether it’s ridiculous to someone else or not, to the person at issue that is a real feeling, AND that of course a person can only feel through the lens of their experience - what else is there? Emotions aren’t any less valid because they are informed by lesser or different experience.

Honestly, to me so far this is one of the driving messages of the novel - everyone is in their own world of issues and pain and none of these characters can truly look through the lens of another person and it would be so much better if they did. To XQC, for so long, He Yu’s strong feelings (and we know so many of these feelings are awful - despair, and self-loathing, and loneliness) never quite felt real and therefore never quite felt fully valid. And by the time it wasn’t the case, it was too late.

But the same is true for He Yu - he is so concentrated on his own grievances and his own pain, he cannot perceive others’ different issues. In He Yu’s mind, he’s the winner and always champion of Misery Olympics and while he’s had a horrible time of it, that doesn’t mean other people didn’t either just in different ways. Whether because of his condition, his issues or just his age, HY is not empathetic in the least.

And think about it - XQC does not have a horrible illness. He does not have unfeeling parents. But he had to watch his beloved parents brutally murdered in front of his eyes at 13 (!!!!) and then had to raise a 5 year old by himself. Is it worse or better than HY’s trauma? That’s a matter of opinion but what there is no question about is that is a different type of trauma and a different type of scar. Or think about the patient in the asylum whose name I am too lazy to look up - her life is such a theater of horrors that to me, it makes the combined issues of HY and XQC seem small, though once again that’s subjective. Nobody wins when people start this sort of competition.

My heart breaks for XQC but also - I am sorry - if/when HY x XQC hook up again (how? I have no idea! But that is one of the joys of Meatbun - I both have no idea how/where it’s going and utterly trust her), please have He Yu read up and learn things because Good God. You should not be in major pain the morning after unless you are into pain and XQC clearly is not!

The other thing is the bit about XQC forcing himself to walk in his usual ramrod-straight manner is the moment I went utterly gone for him. I mean, I liked him and found him interesting before. But this is the thing that flipped that invisible switch for me and I went rabid and irrational and now I am Team XQC and I don’t care what he wants and does from now on, he should have it. It’s so small but so real. My mother and her mother were both big on straight posture. And one of the reasons they gave was when you walk with good posture - you look confident but also it makes you feel confident and stronger. And I’ve actually found it to be true - when you throw your shoulders back and straighten your neck and hold your head up, it does not just give others a signal, it gives a signal to your own brain. So to see XQC insist on doing it, despite being emotionally and physically shattered - because of his pride refusing to give up, because he’s so unbending, but also this being some sort of instinctive armor, just hits straight through the heart.

OK, I laughed at HY as a fucking machine. But also, this is another point in the whole “everyone has issues” narrative and HY’s life could be worse. HY, with all his other issues, can pay an insane amount, an amount that XQC could not pay in a million years, so easily. It’s not even a blip to him. Hell, the fact that he forgot to pay speaks to that - I can see forgetting to pay a friend a couple of bucks back right away because it’s not much money. HY forgets because it does not loom in his mind. And this rich lifestyle is instinctive, is ingrained in him. I think he’d find it hard to be poor.

THAT is what he’s thinking about? Priorities are...

The sole good thing that came out of this insanity is that XQC is getting in touch with his emotions, even if those emotions are (rightly) rage. He’s too closed off from them normally.

The fact that you slept with a man should be secondary to the fact that you drugged and raped him, but here we are...

To me, this sums up He Yu as a moral wasteland. To still, when sober and past his fit and not under influence of wine, to still feel excitement over his revenge and to somehow twist it that it’s XQC’s fault for being raped by He Yu is !!!!!!!!!

(I suppose if I were charitable, I’d assume that the disquiet is small stirrings of almost dead conscience and his “he deserved it” is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable to himself, but I honestly don’t want to think so because I am so angry at him. Not until I see some more evidence. I don’t feel like being indulgent with He Yu since he’s indulgent with himself enough for two.)

1. The fact that you can tell from the picture XQC got taken by a man (I am gonna defer to Meatbun’s expertise here) definitely points to the fact that the pictures are going to be used for something bad later - because if it’s just oh XQC had sex, so what, he’s single what’s the big deal. But like this it becomes a different matter. No idea if it will be used for HY or XQC or both, and by whom (money is on Duan and co, but after the way HY went off, I would never say HY himself won’t use it badly somehow) but knowing Meatbun, it will go for maximum damage.

2. Ruthless? Perhaps. Unfeeling? Hmmmm. I am not He Yu’s biggest fan atm but that’s a wonderfully misleading adjective here. He does still seem to be in shock. And fixating.

3. The whole “hahahaha XQC is a hypocrite when he was all ‘I am not interested in sex’“ is - I am not sure if HY is just short-circuiting (fine) or using a rapist justification/rolling in a sea of toxic toxicity (not fine) because I am sorry, that’s totally like “he/she had a reaction, can’t be rape” writ large. Yeah, sure he had a reaction - you poured drugs down his throat. That has nothing to do with his default preferences or his actual state. THE FUCK?!

Anyway, we end on the whole “u mad bro?” bit and you know what strikes me? HY was all “I am done, we are done, my revenge is complete I don’t care” but here he is, still desperately seeking and craving reaction and interaction from XQC.

I remain utterly puzzled as to how these two will ever be a couple except for a couple being defined as “two mutually homicidal people.” Leaving aside everything else, I am willing to accept HY is in the closet - clearly whatever his orientation is, it includes men. But I do not get that sense from XQC at all. When he’s not drugged, he’s barely interested in sex with anyone and I do not get the sense he’s in the closet either. Chances of anyone, let alone He Yu, who is both a man and someone who raped him to humiliate him, being able to entice him into sexual encounters voluntarily is about the chance of me going to visit Mars. Meatbun loves doing insane things so I can’t wait.

PS I know people use the term psychopath all the time casually but ummm, I think He Yu may actually be one? When he has his father (!!!) on speakerphone, calmly carrying a conversation with the man as he’s raping his father’s friend in the club as he talks (!!!!!) that is...in RL I’d be “team lock him up for life, there is something so basic broken in him that it can’t be fixed.” Like - the hell? The ability to put things on different shelves so much is not in the same country as sane (it makes me think of 2ha and TXJ banging CWN being the curtain while performing court business but TXJ was bona fide clinically insane and also this is worse because this is his actual freaking father omg.) Of course, only time will tell whether it’s evidence of him being irreparably incapable of normalcy in terms of living in the world/interacting with others or it was an extreme psychotic (in casual parlance not medical one) break because most people are capable of truly horrific stuff if certain levers are pushed and his default is saner. It’s the question, isn’t it? Whether He Yu’s factory default setting is the monster of the previous chapters or the kid who’d cut his wrists so as not to hurt others.

Anyway, this novel is a terrifying roller coaster ride and I love having strong emotions.

[hughiecampbelle]

Imagine your father Tony getting you back after The Blip:

"Dad?"

"Y/n." Your name caught in his throat. Here you were, standing right in front of him, as if the last five years never even happened. He'd had to watch you turn to ash, holding you, feeling you slip away, and there was nothing he could do about it. He lost everything when he lost you. Trapped in the ship with Nebula, wasting away, you were the only thing on his mind. He was okay if he slipped away, he would have been okay if he never saw the light of day again if it meant he could be with you, wherever you were. But he didn't. They were saved, and he lived, but he never forgot, he never moved on, even if it looked like it from the outside. Tony and Pepper had Morgan, your half-sister, and created a home, but there was still an empty bedroom all set for you. All of your sisters family drawings had four people, not just three. As far as Tony was concerned, it was not a matter of if he was getting you back, but when.

"I never thought I'd see you again." You cried, holding on to him, struggling to stay on your feet. It was a blink for you, mere seconds, and yet he looked older, so much more tired. Whatever happened in the time you were gone, however long that was, it had not been kind to the man who raised you, who dropped everything for you. He built your suit thinking he'd thought of everything, that you were protected from everything. He never could have imagined anything like Thanos, a force like that. Despite that, you knew he'd blame himself every day for what happened, every second that you two were apart. You weren't there to tell him it wasn't his fault, and that scared you more than anything Thanos could ever do. He could be his own worst enemy sometimes. Now you were back, and Tony promised himself, he would never let you go again.

"I'm not going anywhere."

[winksasleeplesseye]

Superlunary

chapter warnings: none

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OC 

Chapter Summary: Having escaped Hydra once again, Bucky takes Laela to a place of refuge but not without calling in some reinforcements.

Chapter 2: Coalescence 

                          Shelbyville, Indiana

“You know, I love to help you anywhere I can, but why do we have to do it out here ?” Daisy questioned Bucky, slapping what seemed to be another mosquito within minutes of slapping another. Laela, Daisy and Bucky all stood together in the garage of Bucky’s childhood home—well, Daisy and Laela stood while Bucky sat almost without a care on a table—waiting for the arrival of three more people.

“What’s the matter? Feeling out of your element?” He chuckled, a lopsided grin on his face.

“Barely, I just think this could be done indoors , perhaps? Or maybe at the Compound?” Daisy didn’t fail to remind her and Bucky that she had the Quinjet flying around the skies, invisible of course. Perks of working for the government, Laela guesses.

“I’m starting to agree with Daisy on this, I have bites on bites, Barnes,” Laela slapped at a mosquito yet again. She also felt a tad bit hot but put that down to the sweltering heat in this state. After last night’s events, they had spent about three hours (maybe two, if Laela considered just how much of a speed demon Bucky was on his bike) just getting here. Bucky wasted no time in calling in Daisy, whom Laela found was quite the character.

In the lull of it all, she found that whatever flowed through her veins was at bay for now but she wasn’t sure how long she could hold it off.

Almost as if on cue, a sleek, black Audi pulls up. It sticks out like a sore thumb against the rather tranquil, idyllic scenery of this neighborhood. If they were going for inconspicuous, they failed miserably. As promised, three people slowly disembarked themselves from the car. One of which stood out to Laela as Captain America. Sam Wilson. Another being Iron Man. Tony Stark.

A blonde haired woman was with them. Laela couldn’t place her to save her life.

“Barnes, please tell me I haven’t wasted my time coming to hillbilly country,” Tony seemed to tease him.

“It doesn’t hurt to get out of the city once in a while, Stark. I wouldn’t have called if this wasn’t important.”

Tony seemed to pause, then looked Laela up and down. “Who’s the new blood?”

“This ‘new blood’ is why you’re here,” Her words coming out snippier than intended. “I’m sorry, this seems like as good a time as any to introduce myself. Laela Gray.”

At the mention of her last name, Tony makes a face. “Gray. That name. It’s familiar, have we met before?”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but can we get to the point?”

“Which is? I’m assuming you didn’t bring me here just to meet someone?”

“I didn’t think that far ahead, Tony. I thought maybe you’d know,” Bucky said. He wore a smile, but it came across as more of a grimace. Sam lets out a scoff, a small laugh afterwards.

“You never fail to impress me, man. I mean, really, I’ve never met such a small mind inside such a big head,” Sam chuckles a bit, but it seems less out of amusement and more annoyance than anything.

“I know a place I can shove yours-“

“Settle down, boys. In all the squabbling, we forgot to properly introduce ourselves,” The blonde woman cut them both off. She has a commanding presence about her.

“Sharon,” she offered a hand to shake,” it’s a pleasure to meet you, Laela.”

Once things had settled, they finally moved inside. Bucky’s kitchen table became the base of operations. Holograms and files projected throughout the kitchen. Tony took a sample of blood at Laela’s urging, the sooner she knew what the hell was put inside her, the better.

“Let’s start with some recent intel. Should be of use to us,” Sharon prepared the files to look at. “while it’s no surprise that Hydra still has cells after the Triskelion, the Decimation or Blip depending on who you’re asking and the reappearance of said blipped individuals.” Sharon briefly looked in Laela’s direction.

“Not too long ago, we had readings of an energy signature knocking out the power in a 25 mile radius. Agent Davis reported her findings to Fury, acting director of SWORD.”

Nick Fury was a familiar name to anyone who kept close watch over anything the Avengers did. As far as Laela knew, he disappeared off the map some years ago so to hear them utter his name so freely must’ve meant his disappearance was no disappearance at all. In fact, the more Laela began learning about this stuff, the weirder and needlessly complex it got. But honestly, was anything so weird when you lived in a world like this?

“Of course, we couldn’t do much with it, considering we didn’t know what it was. Until now,” Sam added, the file Laela handed off to Bucky strewn across the table. Images of the machine, chemicals, and overall strange occult images but she really couldn’t connect them.

Laela tried her hardest to ignore the looped videos. They weren’t grotesque but just seeing what she had been reduced to in Hydra’s hands was more than enough to turn her stomach.

“I can try to explain as much as I can, but I’m still trying to piece things together.”

Laela started from the last thing she remembered before she ended up there. In the middle of her explanation, a voice that sounds almost human interrupts.

“Boss? Got the results from Miss Gray’s blood test.”

“That was quick.”

“You must not know Tony’s tech then,” Bucky says.

“Shall I relay the results, sir?” The voice asked.

“Go ahead, Friday.”

“Miss Gray’s cells have changed significantly over time. I compared the old results, pulled from lab records and found CMBR in her newest blood draw.” A side by side image displayed in the middle of the table, Laela can easily tell it’s her blood cells but Friday is right, the cells do not match at all. Somehow, Laela isn’t as freaked out as she thought she’d be...just curious.

“CMBR?”

“Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.”

“But that isn’t all, Miss Gray’s DNA in her genetic code is predisposed for mutation.”

“That’s nice and all but what about this purple stuff coming out of my hands?” The ‘purple stuff’ as Laela so eloquently calls it sets her hands alight for a brief moment, emphasizing her point.

“Friday, I imagine that last bit of information can explain the purple stuff, right?”

“Unfortunately, no. The energy signature does not match any in my extensive database. Further research is required.”

Laela scoffs. “So, we’re back to square one, great.”

“Not necessarily, have you used this power recently?”

“You mean other than turning a bunch of Hydra scientists into plant food? No.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Did you not just hear me say turning into plant food? I don’t want to risk hurting anyone.”

“Laela, the best way forward is to learn them safely and the best place to do that would be at Avengers Compound. Come on, you’ll love it, kid! State of the art tech, a lap pool, a screening room, a gym, it’ll be like staying at a Four Seasons except with a bunch of superheroes.”

“Tony, I don’t think mentioning living with complete strangers to her is the least bit appealing.” Bucky pointed out, though Laela didn’t speak it aloud, she found herself disagreeing with him. Sure, these people were complete and utter strangers if Laela really dug deep but few got to really be up close and personal with the heroes who sought to protect everyone. Only a lunatic would pass this up.

“Technically, we’re all a bunch of strangers to her,” Daisy piped up, already stating the obvious to which Sam, Sharon and even Bucky rolled their eyes.

“Like you were complaining once you ransacked the fridge, Buck,” Sam spoke with a smirk, already knowing more than he would let Laela in on. Her eyes darted between the two briefly. Bucky’s brows knit together, clearly aimed towards Sam, annoyance flashed across his face.

These are the people best equipped to save the world?

“That was one time, Sam.”

While everyone at the table seemed to bicker amongst themselves, Laela went inward. Instead focusing on weighing the options. She wondered why she hadn’t done so earlier but now seemed as good a time as any. The words of her mother could be heard clearly in her head saying, “If the pros far outweigh the cons, what’s the worst that could happen?”  

Of course, those very words had gotten her into some trouble before. But not like this. Though she didn’t know him quite so well, she could tell that not everyone would agree with Tony ( if only you knew, Laela, if only you knew) but somehow she was agreeing with him. Not properly studying these powers could be dangerous.

So with her mind made up, she cut through the childish bickering with a simple, “Alright, I’m in.”

                                        ——

                           Avengers Compound

To say things went at a breakneck pace is an understatement. Tony did not mess around when it came to stuff like this. Laela was just content in the moments where she wasn’t being poked and prodded like a lab rat yet again, but she could be forgiving considering the room Stark had her set up in. It was all he promised and a little more.

But still, Laela couldn’t recall running into a single Avenger, at least, not yet anyways. Minus Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. She always kind of imagined meeting the Avengers would be a bit more...exciting? Granted, there were no world ending level threats—at least not to her knowledge—that required them to all be here.

She’d give it a couple more weeks before this place would be crawling with activity.

Just as Laela decided a walk was just what she needed, Friday announced she had a visitor at her door. She shuffles towards the door hoping to shoo whoever it is away for more alone time with Netflix. The first thing she sees is an arm, a vibranium one at that, and an illegally tight henley.

Laela didn’t realize how hard she was staring until Bucky cleared his throat, and she swears there’s a brief twitch of his lip. She wishes the heat rising from her cheeks would disappear as she puts on a nice smile for him.

“As much as I hate to disturb you,” Bucky spoke. “There's someone who wants to meet you.”

“I swear to God, if it’s another scientist friend of Tony that has come to poke me like they’re some acupunctur-“

He cuts her off with a gesture, “Not that kind of meeting. Now, come on, you don’t want to keep him waiting.”

“Him?” Great. Just the lone taco in a sausage party, yet again.

Laela stays right on Bucky’s heels as he leads her through hallway after hallway in the Compound. She wasn’t quite sure if she should start a conversation, so she kept her eyes focused in front of her and tried not to glance over at the supersoldier. He wasn’t the talkative type, that’s for sure. She had been itching for the chance to really thank him. Hell, if she hadn’t reached out for his help, she wouldn’t know what her next moves were.

She shuddered at the thought of having to squat at another halfway house, the stomach pangs, and especially the grimy feeling you couldn’t ever wash away even after showering constantly. Laela never thought she’d get rid of the smell of stale cigarettes and sweat off her skin.

“Miss Gray, I hope Stark’s accommodations have been to your liking?” Nick Fury stands before Laela in a little leather number and a matching eye patch. Somehow, she thought she’d be about as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning but given his expression, she finds it’s probably in bad taste to act too excited.

She shrugs instead, “I’m not complaining.”

Fury nods and smiles briefly, “Good, good. Now, I think it’s time to discuss the incident that occurred in Langley.”

Laela shook her head, trying to not relive the events all over again. The pain, the bright flash of amethyst, and…

No, don’t think about it too much. She brushed aside the eerie feeling brought on by the topic and swallowed down whatever wanted to rise to the surface. The last thing she wanted was to unleash whatever this power was on people who just want to help her understand.

“What about it?”

“How did HYDRA get you?”

Laela explained her story again to Fury, except in a little more detail. She could remember clearly now how it all occurred. Her father had disappeared months prior to the Blip, both her and her mother were aimless and fruitless in their searches for him. So, Laela did what she did best and threw herself back into her studies.

It just so happened that day was the day HYDRA decided to strike and took her in broad daylight. Then came the experimenting, but Laela couldn’t think about that just yet. It was too recent but she knew for a fact that she was one of those who disappeared. Except she didn’t get so lucky as to return “safe”.

In back of her mind, she wished she didn’t come back. In fact, she was becoming a little annoyed that all the Avengers had done for her so far is question her.

She glared at Fury, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you guys have any plans at all? I mean, what if they try to get me back?”

Fury laughed at her briefly, and answered her. “One thing you’ll have to know, Miss Gray, is that the Avengers always have plans. So many plans, contingencies, backups that’ll make your pretty little head spin.”

“Do any of those include training me? You said it yourself after seeing Langley, if I don’t learn it, it’s likely that will happen again.”

“Maximoff’s a little busy right now. Until she is no longer busy, I think Barnes, Rogers and Romanoff can teach you the basics. How’s that for a plan?”

Laela lets out something between a scoff and a chuckle. “Beats being a lab rat 24/7, that’s for damn sure.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll keep Stark and Banner on your father’s research. Seems the most logical place to start, considering Stark seems fond of his work.”

Laela had forgotten that detail, the second she mentioned that once upon a time her father was a S.H.I.E.L.D researcher, Tony seemed to finally connect the dots at her name. Tony sounded pretty certain—a lot more certain than Laela was, actually, that his research helped shape some of Tony’s best inventions. While she was happy for him--well, as reasonably happy as anyone could be for a billionaire named Tony Stark-- to re-realize that fact of his own life, she couldn’t feel the same about it. Her father never really divulged the details of his research so she was never quite sure of what the hell he worked on.

She knew the surface level detail but never was given the opportunity to be let in deeper. Could she have asked more of him? Would he have told her anything? It’d remain one of the biggest regrets of her life.

At her exit, she notices Bucky in her peripheral vision.

“I didn’t peg you for the nosy type, Barnes,” Laela swiveled her head to look at him and was surprised to see a smirk on his face. She assumed that people in this place wouldn’t have much to smile at anymore. She even assumed that Bucky didn't have a muscle in his body that would allow him to smile. Sam told her only a few days prior that being around Bucky could be equally interesting and annoying at the same time.

Likening him to a puzzle or Rubik’s cube, all the pieces and all the colors just didn’t match up for her yet about him.

“I think the word you’re looking for is observant, Gray.” He crossed his arms over his chest, the smirk still ever present. “Besides, I’m a gentleman, it’s only right that since I brought you over here that I walk you back to your room.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t you have avenging business or something to do?” She asks, a quirk in her brow and little smirk to rival his.

“I was being nosy and heard that Fury wants me to train you so technically you’re my avenging business now.”

“He said us, plural. Not just you, Bucket,” she pointed out with a smirk. “Now, when do I meet the OG Cap and Black Widow?”

If there was one thing that would make this whole ordeal worth it, it’d be meeting them. She couldn’t understand why she had such a deep interest in these heroes. She certainly wouldn’t have imagined being amongst their ranks, still. That’s where her and her parents differed--surprisingly--well, her father and mother differed. She just went along with whoever she’d favor at that moment.

Elias Gray regaled tales of world mythologies, fascinated by the powers they possessed amongst other things. Tyana couldn’t understand the fascination and was often the more level-headed about things. Laela still couldn’t fathom how the two ever made things work.

“Don’t let Sam hear you say that, you might hurt his feelings.” He says plainly, before rolling his eyes at the name. “And don’t call me Bucket, you can’t make a nickname from another nickname.”

“He’s a big boy, he’ll be fine,” Laela laughed from where she stood. “So just James then?”

“Please, no, Bucky is just fine.”

“Okay, Bucky. So, training?”

“5 am.”

Laela’s face drops. “Are you psychopaths? Who gets up at 5 am?”

“ OG Cap and Black Widow do. Do you want to meet them or not?”

                                         ---

Laela tried to hide her eyes from the god awful brightness coming from the digital numbers on the alarm clock. She remembered the last time she got up this early was for school, which she always compared to prison. Being up before the morning light, the frumpy uniforms, and the annoying classmates. Bucky, true to his word, came to Laela’s room to make sure she was up at exactly 4:45.

Well, at least one thing could be said for waking up early, she didn’t have to wear that ugly uniform anymore and she’d get to meet Captain America.

Well, the former Captain America, at least.

He’s just as the pictures showed him to be, a blonde, blue-eyed All American boy and just as commanding as Laela imagined he’d be. And the same could be said for Black Widow. Mysterious, fiery red hair and an almost mischievous smirk ever present on her face, like she knew something about others but wouldn’t let on exactly what.

Their introductions are short, with Steve being more formal than necessary by addressing Laela by Miss Gray and ma’am within the first few minutes of speaking. Laela hated being addressed so formally but she could forgive him, to be fair, she’d already slipped up and referred to him as Captain within that same few minutes.

“I think you know we won’t go easy on you,” Steve spoke as they moved to the training mats.

“I’d be a little insulted if you felt you had to-“

In one swoop, Laela is sprawled out on the floor, lungs grasping at what air they could get and the ceiling above her blurring a bit. She kind of missed being snuggled in her bed now. How exactly did this teach anything? Other than how unprepared for fighting she was?

“You know, when they said men from the 40s swept women off their feet, this is not what I envisioned,” She groans out, the air barely coming back into her lungs. She could just barely make out in her vision Bucky snickering into his palm next to Natasha off to the side. Hardy har har, Barnes, you’ll get yours soon enough.

“Steve wouldn’t know a thing about that, his interaction with the opposite sex is limited,” Natasha seems to tease him as she offers a hand to Laela. “But don’t worry, he’ll have the training wheels off soon enough.”

“Shit.” Laela yelped, as the rest of her body seemed to realize little to no preparation for training to fight in any form had very real consequences on one’s body. Not that Laela didn’t know a few things from taking some boxing lessons, but she’s never really been a fighter.

Except maybe that one time in fifth grade, one of her classmates, Vanya was her name, had said something to piss her off and with all her might, she threw back her arm and sent it straight back into her stomach. It sent her doubling over and earned Laela the one, and only, detention she ever had.

This was no schoolyard fight in the slightest.

“I think that’s enough-“

Laela smiled and shook her head. “Eh, we just started. Give me a few hours and I’ll be a natural.”

At first, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Laela is, in fact, not a natural. A few knocked out teeth and bruising later, it’s almost like she’d known these moves all her life.

Another strange factor to this power was the healing. She only noticed it two days after her arrival to the compound. She hadn’t mentioned it, finding it was more of an advantage rather than another thing to worry about.

“Good job. You’re no Steve yet, but you’ll get there,” Natasha says.

“Yeah, well,” Laela managed to say, “Thanks for the review, I guess.”

Natasha’s response is overtaken by shouting and the furious, almost urgent stomping. Someone, who Laela finds out is Tony, grabs her arm and practically rips her arm off as he tugs her away from the training room.

Why did it seem like Laela was being taken from disaster to disaster?

[dancingintheraindreamingonday]

Trouble in paradise - Part 4

Summary: This part takes place 5 months after the blip. Things get difficult when you and Bucky get a guest.

Warning: non; just fluff

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x angel!reader

Author's note: Took me ages to write that. I’m introducing you to two new characters. ;) Thanks again for everyone who is reading my story. English is still not my first languages

Part 1 

Part 2 

Part 3

Bucky felt weird, deprived. It has been 5 months since the blip and now everything was different. He wasn’t in Wakanda anymore, reading all those letters you wrote to him.

Steve wasn’t there anymore. He stayed in the past and Bucky knew the reason. Steve loved you so he couldn’t stand to see you happy with Bucky. He fled from the painful reality into a past where you weren’t present. 

You and Bucky moved in together one month after the big war. It should have been awkward to move in with someone you barely knew but it wasn’t. Everything with you was easy and harmonic.  And Bucky enjoyed the levity. 

5 years ago, after the snap, you started to work as a teacher. It didn’t matter that you had no qualifications. The schools were so desperate because of the sudden disappearance of several teachers and you were fantastic. You still work there and to everyone else you and Bucky seemed like a normal couple. 

Bucky just finished therapy when he noticed a person with a hoodie who was following him. 

He slipped into an empty alley and ambushed for the person to come.  Bucky didn’t need to wait long for it. 

He attacked the hooded figure pressing it to the wall. A soft squeal left the mouth of the person. 

„Who the hell are you and why are you following me?“ 

„I… I mean no harm.“ The voice of a woman spoke, timidly and softly. 

The figure raised both hands to the sides of her hood and pushed it a little bit back, but it was enough for Bucky to be stunned. He could see the (y/h/c) hair shining under the afternoon sun. Her hair reminded Bucky of yours. Glossy, soft and so slick, that the fabric of the hood went slithering down. This girl in front of him looked like you. The same (y/e/c) eyes and the same small nose. Just the lips had another shape-they were slightly thinner. Without doubt, the girl looked like  she could have been your sister. 

„Who are you?“

„My name is Charlie and I’m here because I really need your help.“

„Why do you think I’ll help you?“

„It’s HYDRA, and angels. They are targeting my family.“

„I don’t believe a single word you say. HYDRA doesn’t exist anymore and why would I even care for your family.“ 

„Because… I can’t believe I’m telling you this. You are my family. You are my father.“ Bucky let go of the girl like he got burnt. 

„I’m not a father. I don’t have a child. You’re completely mad.“ 

„Yeah, you’re right. You are not a father and you don't have a child yet but one day you will and that kid will be me.“

„So you’re saying you're from the future? You’re out of your mind.“ Bucky started to walk back to the main street, leaving her alone.

„I can prove it.“ Charlie hurried after Bucky. 

„When you can’t sleep at night, mum makes you hot chocolate and reads a book to you. And every time I have a nightmare you do the same procedure.“

„That doesn’t prove anything.“

„Two weeks after the blip you bought an engagement ring for mum. You carry it in your pocket and you wait for the perfect day, the perfect moment to ask her. And you told me that one day you woke up and just knew that this particular day would be the one. Here.“ The girl was searching in her bag. She pulled out a picture. 

It was an indescribable strange feeling to look at a picture of something that hasn’t happened yet. The picture showed you and Bucky on your wedding day. You both were kissing each other. It was a soft yet freeing kiss. All these years of waiting and longing were put into this kiss. Bucky wasn’t sure if others would interpret the same thing or if this was just his current feelings; still waiting impatiently for the to come. In the background he saw Sam and Pepper and another woman who he hasn’t met yet. The laughed and clapped happily their hands. 

Bucky sat down on a bench, that was nearby.

„Am I… am I a good father?“

„Of course you are. You are the best.“ Charlie lay her hand reassuringly on Bucky’s.

„So what’s going on in the future?“

„A lot. It’s pure chaos. The war of the angels isn’t up there anymore. They now live on earth, they are fighting on earth. And they have multiple allies.. HYDRA or SWORD. They are after us. You and mum are desperate and helpless because you both don't know how to protect our family. So mum thought about sending me to Olympia… to Ikaris.“

Bucky snorted. He didn't like the Eternals and especially Ikaris, who was a handsome and powerful man. But it was his arrogance and his closeness to you that made Bucky despise him. Every time Ikaris came to visit you, which happened on a regular basis since the Blip, Bucky felt minor in his presence. Like a loser. Even Sam and Steve didn’t like Ikaris. They met him when he came to warn you about Thanos upcoming arrival. „He’s the Prime Eternal“, you always said to Bucky. „Of course he’s a bit arrogant but he’s also sincere, loyal and fair. I’ve known him for so many years, I’ve stood side by side in his war against Apocalypse. I trust him, and you can trust him too.“ 

„Wow, even in the past you can’t stand him. Anyway, we didn't make it to Olympia. They knew we were coming, Michael and Rafael were already waiting for us. So you and Mum had no choice but to fight. You gave Capt… I mean Sam the stone and just said 2023 and that I should look for a prophecy? And then Sam and I tried to flee but they were everywhere, so he gave me the stone and suddenly I’m here.“

„What stone?“

„This one.“, Charlie showed Bucky a small green stone. 

„That’s an infinity stone! Where did you get this?“ 

„Don’t ask me! You gave the stone to Sam. I don’t know where you got this. But mum can’t know about this. She thinks, angels shouldn’t time travel, because we could misuse this power. “

„Put that away. If someone sees you with this you’ll be in danger.“

Bucky met Charlie every week this week which didn't get unnoticed by a certain person. 

On the first day, it was a coincidence that you were there as well. You just picked Morgan up from Kindergarten. Morgan Stark was the daughter of Tony and Pepper and even thought you never were really close to them, one day changed this. You visited Tony and Pepper and suddenly Pepper went into labour. Complications came up and Pepper had to fight for her and for her baby’s life. But it had been your angel powers that saved both of them. Tony never forgot this and he made you the godmother of Morgan. You hated this name. According to you, no angel should be called a godmother or a godfather. 

The first time you saw Bucky and her you didn't really think about it. But you were confused that Bucky didn't mention the woman he met this day and you couldn’t help but to be suspicious.

The next following 3 days you saw Bucky and this woman sitting too closely for your liking on a small bench and talking vividly with each other. 

„Is that Bucky?“, Morgan looked at you as she pointed with her small pointing finger in the direction where Bucky was sitting. 

„I think you’ll be the next Sherlock Holmes. C’mon, lets say hi to Bucky and his friend“

You were nervous and an uneasy feeling spread in your body. 

„Hey, Buck.“, You grinned at him, recognizing how surprised he looked.

„What are you doing here?“

„Picked Morgan up.“ A strange silence grew between the two of you. That's why how you started to observe the woman, that was sitting on the bench. She was truthfully gorgeous. A fact that you didn't appreciated at all. 

„Hi, I’m (y/f/n).“ You extended your right hand.

„Hi, I’m uh.. Charlie…“

Her hand was shaking and sweaty like she was nervous and when you touched her hand you felt her powers, her angel and you didn't like it at all. You pressed your lips together and faked a sweet smile. „Nice to meet you.“

You looked away from Charlie and into Bucky’s deep ocean blue eyes.

„So, how do you met each other?“

„Well… we… met… in therapy.“ Bucky stuttered.

You nodded slowly your head. „Are you sure or do you need another minute to come up with a better lie.“, you whispered.

Bucky ignored this and pulled you slightly away from the bench. 

„I want to ask you something.“

„Okay?“, Morgan was still sleeping in your arms and you were afraid, that she would wake up from your fast heartbeat. 

„I wanted to ask if you’d be okay with Charlie staying with us for some days. She doesn’t have a home and…“ Bucky was scratching his head as he looked unsure.

„Absolutely not.“

„Why not?“

"What did she tell you? What did she tell you to gain your trust, because whatever it was, it was a lie.“ A pause

„Did she tell you that she’s an angel? But she isn’t a normal one, she wasn’t created by Him. She was born, but she isn’t a Nephilim either.“

Bucky looked confused, not knowing what a nephilim is.

„A nephilim is the offspring of an angel and a human. They are half human, half angel and they are really annoying. But she is a real born angel which leads me to the conclusion that one of her parents must have been a really powerful angel… like an archangel. Bucky, I know every archangel and none of them has a child. She can’t be trusted and there is no angel who doesn’t want to see us dead… with all the chaos we provoked.“

You starred into Bucky’s face. No sign of surprise could be seen.

„She told you. You aren’t even surprised. Since when do you trust angels?“ Shocked about his sudden trust, you opened your mouth slightly.

„Well, I trust you, don’t I.“

Bucky regretted this sentence immediately as he saw your hurt in your big (y/e/c) eyes.

„I didn't mean it like that. I just… this girl has no one, no family, no friends. And I feel bad for her. You of all people know how difficult those times are.“

As a teacher you saw how desperate parents and kids could be. You knew that for several families the blip didn't make it any better, if anything it just made it worse. 

„Don’t compare her life to those who really suffered, Bucky. She is not innocent. Angels are never innocent… I… Who is this girl? Who are her parents? Did she tell you anything about them?“

„She is scared and helpless. She’s still traumatized and doesn’t talk much“ 

You snorted.

„We can get her a hotel room for some time but I won’t let her into our home. That’s my final answer.“

You kissed Bucky on his cheek and walked with Morgan on your arms home. 

„She will kill you.“ Charlie told Bucky as they both walked upstairs to Bucky’s and yours apartment door. „Probably.“ 

Charlie lay her hand on Bucky’s underarm which caused him to look into her face. 

„Please, don’t get killed. Without you, there is no me.“ Even though she just said it jokingly, a warm and pleasant feeling went through Bucky’s body. 

He opened the door and heard you preparing dinner. 

„Hey Buck, I hope you aren’t upset…“, You stopped your sentence when you saw who Bucky brought with him.

„Oh for god’s sake. You’ve got to be kidding me.“

„I know you’re angry with me but I couldn’t just let her stay there in the park.“ Bucky tried to calm you down.

„Please, Bucky. Don’t let her into our home. She has more secrets than the Vatican“ You begged him. 

„It’s just for a couple of days, yeah?“

You shrugged

„Well, you already made this decision on your own and I have no choice but to accept it.“ Bucky leaned down to kiss you but you turned your head away. 

„You’re probably hungry. Sit down, please.“ You offered the girl a seat. Charlie was starving and it had been weeks since she ate a proper meal. 

„What about you?“ Bucky asked worriedly.

„I lost my appetite but don’t worry, I won’t die out of starvation.“ 

You opened the door to a small room. The walls were painted in light blue and small and bigger yellow handprints of you and Morgan could be seen. 

„Is it already morning?“ She asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes with her tiny hands.

„No, you just get an upgrade. Go back to sleep.“ You whispered softly as you carried her to your room and left some minutes later with a pillow and a blanket which you put onto the couch.

„Charlie, you can sleep in that room and you“ You turned your head towards Bucky.

„You can sleep there.“ With your head you're nodding to the red, comfortable couch.

„You’re kicking me out of our bed?“ Hurt and disappointment could be heard in Bucky’s voice.

"Did you really think that after everything you’ve done today I want to sleep next you? 

Good night.“

Two weeks had passed and Bucky was on edge to the therapist’s sorrow. Charlie was still living with you. 

„Trouble in paradise?“ Ikaris saw the blankets on the couch as he entered your apartment. Since the blip the Eternals were at war with the Deviants again. Ikaris used his getaways to meet you, asking for your support in his war.

„Don’t get me started. This woman just infuriates me.“

„Tell me about it.“ Ikaris sat down, watching how you prepare dinner.

„Well… 2 weeks ago Bucky brought this girl home because she’s helpless and innocent.“ The last part of your sentence is full with cutting irony. 

„But you don’t believe it?“ Ikaris dug deeper.

„How can I. This girl is an angel.“ You put a glass of water in front of him.

Ikaris eyes widen due to your confession.

„And not just a normal angel… she has a soul... I felt it when I touched her hands.“

Ikaris swallowed the water and snorted.

„How is that even possible?“ He asked when he gained back his control of his breathing.

„I have no idea and I don’t think that this never existed before. That makes her kinda dangerous. And to be honest, I don’t like how close she and Bucky are.“

„So, you see her as a threat of your security or your relationship with James?“

„I don't know. Even though she is powerful she can’t kill me with her powers, but she has Bucky wrapped around her finger with her annoying angel charm. And that will eventually kill me.“

„Maybe she has the same friendship like you had with Steve. You told me, that in the beginning none of the avengers trusted you, except Steve.“

„That was different. I was always honest.“ You said defending yourself.

„But they didn't know that. You are extremely strong, immortal and gorgeous. You had Steve wrapped around finger.“ 

You crossed your arms, not liking Ikaris’ reasons.

„Here they come“, You mumbled as you heard the apartment door to open.

„Hey, James!“ Ikaris greeted cheekily Bucky 

„Ikaris.“ Bucky nodded

„So, where is the wolf in sheep's clothing?“

„Ikaris, I swear I’ll k…“ You were masaging your temples.

Ikaris swallowed again 

„Damn woman, you didn't mention that she looks exactly like you. Are you both related?“ 

„As if, I’m definitely not related to this.“ Your voice was cold, which earned you an annoyed glance from Bucky

„So tell me, where are you from?“ Ikaris looked interested and attentive. 

„I don’t know, I can’t remember.“ Charlie's cheeks blushed as she shrugged. 

You snorted

„See, I told you. The worst liar on earth.“

„I thought out of all angels you would understand me not remembering my past.“ It was the first time that Charlie really spoke with you and it surprised you as much as it angers you. 

„Are you trying to compare your stupidity with me getting my memories burnt out in the most agonizing pain? You do remember, you're just not telling us. That’s a damn difference.“

Tears welled up in Charlie's eyes as she ran into her room. 

Bucky looked at you reproachfully and went after Charlie. 

„I’ll better go.“ Ikaris stood up. 

„What? No, please don't leave me here. At the moment, you are the only sane person here.“

„If I want to eat with this much tension I’ll just eat with my ex-girlfriends.“ He chuckled. 

„Talk with him. You both love each other, you will find a solution. And maybe trusting her… just a tiny bit would make her more talkative.“ Ikaris kissed you on the top of your head and left.

Bucky leaned against the kitchen counter, staring at you. 

„Why are you so mean to her?“

„No. The question should be: Why are you so nice to her?“

Bucky walked slowly into your direction

„You want to know the truth? She reminds me of you. She’s smart and strong but also extremely vulnerable. And because of that I feel the need to help her, to protect her.“ His voice was deeper than usual. 

Moments later Bucky stood before you and put both his big rough hands on the wall on each side of your head. He cornered you against the wall. 

„I’ve been deprived of you. Of your kisses, of your touches“ Bucky murmured in your ear, his lips slightly touching earlobe. He could smell your sweet, fruity fragrance that made him dizzy. 

„Promise me, that no matter how angry you’re with me, never stop kissing me. I need those. They're keeping sane.“ 

„I promise“

After hearing this, Bucky pressed his cold lips onto your soft and warm ones. His urgent tongue was invading your mouth, as he was pressing himself closer to you. Your hands were in his brown short hair trying to pull his head even closer to you. 

Bucky groaned.

You both tried to catch your breath when you both heard a woman’s voice straight out of the tv.

„Did you know Steve Rogers?“ 

„… I followed his career very closely as an Avenger. I like to think that I modeled my work after his. I liked that what I was doing would make people feel safe. Steve Rogers was the kind of guy who could do that, he gave me hope. Even though I never met him, he feels like a brother.“

Bucky clenched his jaw, not believing what he sees. You covered your mouth with your hands, shocked to see a new Captain America. 

@jessyballet​  @geek-and-proud​ @xlostinobsessionsx​ @cataves​ @intothesoul​ @beminetokeep @ebxny27 @ceo-of-daichi​ @bluemoon-icecream-blog​ @peterbparkersbae​ @bbl32​ @stormi-ames​ @intothesoul​ @avoxzy​ @ferxaniti​ @daughterofthemoon92​ @bebudaful​ @kaitieskidmore1​ @harrystylesandthegoobs​ 

[gentlemancrow]

jonmartin, pre-romance, #15/28??

I did manage to get BOTH of these in! So we have a combo of "You called me, remember?" and "It's too early for this". Much like the others, the MINUTE I read this prompt an idea popped into my head that I just HAD to go with! This is actually based off a real life incident I had with a friend (They know who they are...) but it fit both Jmart and the prompt PERFECTLY! The names have been changed to fictional characters to protect the innocent. (Hint I was the Martin in this situation) Anyway this was super fun and cute to write and I made myself all squishy a lot. HOPE YOU ENJOY! <3

There were precious few reasons why Martin’s mobile should be ringing at exactly 5:47 am on a Tuesday, and precisely none of them were good. Still, the anxiety inducing sound alerting him to something ominously, ambiguously amiss struggled to worm its way through a rather lovely dream of his acceptance speech after being awarded poet laureate. The poem he had prepared for the occasion was marrow-deep and hauntingly beautiful, or at least he remembered it that way until suddenly he was reciting the lyrics to Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ instead and sweating profusely as the audience began to murmur in disgust amongst themselves. Waterloo was indeed blaring, but from the ringtone of his phone, not from his lips, and his stomach performed a cold somersault with the force of the wave of anxiety that had begun in his dream and crested up to lap at the base of his barely functional brain. The few synapses he needed for basic motor function and reading comprehension crackled to life as he clumsily batted the buzzing device on his nightstand into his hand and squinted blearily at the name.

It was small. That was an immediate relief. If the care home had been calling about an incident with his mother, either her health or the staff’s as a result of her, it would have been the full moniker of ‘Sunrise Acres Care Home’ ticking across the caller ID. Yet small implied a name, a person, someone he had in his phone and not just a random spam call, and anxiety spiked again as Martin scrubbed at his eyes until ‘Jon’ appeared in white hot letters on the screen. Sleep dissolved from him in an instant and he sat bolt upright in a tangle of covers as he smashed the green answer icon with his thumb and threw the receiver to his ear.

“Hullo?! Jon? R’you okay? What’s happened?” he demanded, voice still slumbery thick and groggy.

“Martin!” Jon’s silky, prim voice, thinned out to a tin can vibrato over airwaves, answered, “Good, you’re awake. I need your help. Urgently.”

Martin was already out of bed by the time ‘need’ reached his ears, yanking on the first pair of jeans he spotted in the laundry heap on the floor and hopping on his free leg to the en suite with his phone pinched between his cheek and shoulder.

“I’m on it!” he assured him despite having no clue what ‘it’ was, exactly, “I’m coming to you as soon as I can. Where are you? Are you hurt? Should I bring a first aid kit? I don’t think I have a first aid kit… should I buy a first aid kit? There’s a Boots just down the block from my flat, I could-“

“Martin, stop! What the hell are you on about?” Jon’s annoyed tone cut through his panic like a scalpel.

Martin stopped in the doorframe of the bathroom, brows knitted, jeans puddling around the one leg he’d managed to get through and left once again in naught but his boxers as he gripped his phone back into his hand.

“Huh? What are you on about? You said you needed help!” he snapped.

“I do! But not like… not like THAT. What kind of mortal peril do you imagine I would find myself in at a quarter to six in the morning?”

The initial surge of adrenaline fizzling out uselessly in his veins the more Jon talked, Martin sagged against the doorway and pinched his temples as he strained his words through a colander of civility.

“I don’t know, Jon. You called me, remember?”

“Right, right…”

A terse, lowly hissing silence of dead satellite replaced Jon’s voice, twisting Martin’s nerves as acrobatically as he twisted to avoid the point. He kicked off his jeans and stalked grouchily back to bed where he threw himself face down and unmoving.

“So, what is it then? Wi-Fi gone tits up? Forgot how long to steep Darjeeling?” he hissed into his rumpled duvet, a little nastier than he would have liked given the deadly combination of interrupted slumber and primordial biological survival instinct.

“I uh…” Jon’s voice deflated over the speaker, “I have a… problem.”

“Yes, we’ve so very, very clearly established that. What kind of a problem, exactly…?”

“A problem of an upsettingly… Arachnid nature.”

“A spider…?”

“…Yes.”

Martin propped himself up on one elbow, eyes narrowed with genuine and curious concern.

“Wait like a… like a spooky spooky spider? Or just an ordinary kind of spooky spider?” he inquired with as much levity as he could muster, given one of the likely options.

“Stop saying spooky. And the ordinary kind. I think. No, I’m sure of it. It’s merely the sitting on my kitchen wall like it owns the place and staring at me rudely with all eight eyes, judging me for skipping breakfast again, kind,” Jon answered with clinical pointedness.

“O… kay…?” Martin drawled, suppressing a giggle, “So, what’s the problem then?”

“What do I do?”

Martin opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again as he doubted that he had actually heard Jonathan Sims, the irascible, pompous, only capable of truly looking at him down his nose Head Archivist Jonathan Sims, ask him, a lowly assistant, what to do. With a spider. It would have been almost adorable, had he not scared the life out of him initially, but even that knocked it only down a single peg to helplessly charming.

“I-I mean, the normal thing one does when encountering a spider in one’s home? You kind of only have the usual two options? Er well, three, if you count just leaving it be, but I doubt you’re amenable to that one.”

“No, absolutely not, out of the question,” Jon declared swiftly.

“Didn’t think so,” Martin chuckled, rolling onto his back and sagging in relief into the mattress.

“So?” came the impatient invitation to continue.

“So what?”

“So, then what do I do?” Jon repeated brusquely.

“Well, you either kill it or let it go, of course! What else is there to do? Invite it to brunch?”

“I know that! I’m not an idiot!” Jon erupted furiously, “Good lord, Martin! Do you really think I would have called you because I didn’t know the only two options for dealing with an eight-legged criminal invading my home were kill it or let it go? Really?! Did you suppose this was the very first spider I ever encountered in my life? Is that what you thought? Or perhaps I had my own personal valet to attend to all of my insectoid tribulations, hmm? Just call the bug butler, he’ll attend to it straightaway! Do you ever stop to think before you open your mouth? Or do you customarily just air out whatever inane notions blow through your ears, no matter how puerile? Christ!”

Martin let the phone drop onto the bed beside him, away from the verbal darts hurled directly into his eardrum and taxing the output matrix of the speaker, as Jon launched into an affronted, mortified tirade, smirking and shaking his head.

“It’s too early for this…” he mused to himself ruefully, rubbing both hands over his face and eyes.

Once the phone stopped humming and glowing white hot with remote rage, Martin scooped it back up and yawned into the receiver.

“You alright there, Jon?” he asked in a gentle tone.

A ragged sigh crackled into a blip of feedback from lips too close on the other end of the phone.

“…Not really?” came Jon’s tremulous reply, “Listen, I’m sorry I went off on you. That was unfair of me. I-I just… I really… really hate spiders.”

Something squeezed in Martin’s chest, something about the confident bass flayed neatly out of Jon’s usually assertively solid mannerisms, leaving it abnormally thin and rickety. He sat up on the bed, cradling the phone much more gently to his cheek.

“Hey hey, it’s okay,” he assured him, “If anybody sympathizes about being afraid, you definitely called the right person. Need me to stay on the line with you while you whack it? A good heavy book will probably do the trick, or if you need speed and agility a rolled-up newspaper or a magazine might be better?”

“No! I wasn’t calling because I needed advice on how to murder the damn thing! I’m quite capable of doing that on my own. Frankly, I’ve taken rather a vested interest in honing my spider termination methodology over the years. I called you because… well you were going on about how you thought they were…” Jon trailed off in a series of garbled sounds of disgust, “Cute… of all things.”

Martin grinned and had to put the phone on his bare chest a moment, as if Jon might somehow perceive his giddy glee through the receiver.

“To be fair I’m a little odd that way. Most people feel much the same as you do about them,” he commented as he picked it back up.

“True, but that’s not even the whole of it!” Jon went on exasperatedly, “I also overheard you talking… must have been to Tim or Sasha but… you were explaining about how helpful they are to the ecosystem and what a vital role they play in that natural order of things, and how we always see images of them eating butterflies and beautiful things that make them look sinister, but how really they mostly control pests and the like… how you thought they got kind of a bad rap?”

“Wow I uh… I can’t believe you remembered all that,” Martin muttered, freckled cheeks dusting a light pink, “But what does that have to do with your unwanted houseguest in particular?”

“It was the last part, mainly. That’s what got me. The part about fear. That they’re afraid, too… You said there had been studies that showed a clear fear response in spiders… to us. They’re afraid of us, demonstrably more so than we are of them…”

One word of all of those slipped between Martin’s ribs and into his heart. Too. They were afraid, too. His thumb stroked and consoled the edge of his phone unconsciously as Jon blustered on, unbothered by his own unconscious admission.

“And now I can’t do it! Now I have to set this bloody spider free because you think it’s cute and want to make friends with it, and I can’t make it an innocent victim of my fear and I have no idea how!”

Martin couldn’t help but smile, imagining how Jon must be in his flat on the other end, scrunched in a corner all hunched up shoulders and furrowed brow with hackles bristling, squaring off with a creature who was possessed of no knowledge of the fear she symbolized, or the grace to understand the iconographical divorce to her salvation. Only Jon, quivering and still bed-rumpled and frazzled, could understand the magnitude of cupping that fear in the palm of his hand while reaching out to him with the other. And now Martin understood it, too.

“Hey alright, I’ve got you. Steady on Jon, we’re gonna get through this together. I’ll talk you through the steps, you just follow what I say, okay?” he instructed in his best 999 operator performance.

A beat of silence ensued, followed by a much more robust and emboldened, “Okay.”

“So, what you want to do first is get a glass.”

“A glass?”

“Yeah, like a water glass. And a stiff piece of paper or cardboard or something. If you’ve got a bit of post lying about, flyers and coupons and the like, those usually work well.”

There was a period of distant shuffling, clattering, and indecipherable muttering as Jon gathered his weapons, then sucked in an audible breath through his teeth.

“Alright I’ve got them, now what?” he asked, sounding a bit winded.

“Now you very carefully put the glass over the spider, then slide the paper under the glass so you trap it inside. Then you can take it out without touching it or worrying about it scuttling off on you and set it free wherever you think it’ll be happy!” Martin answered sweetly.

“Okay, okay. I think I can do that,” Jon chanted for steadiness, “I’m putting the phone down so I don’t louse it up, but d-don’t hang up, stay on with me, okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Jon. I promise. You’re okay.”

“O-Okay… Okay… Okay…!”

Martin listened as Jon’s voice grew distant, but somehow stronger, more like a war cry, with the soft pad of socked feet on tile, then a short stretch of silence, and then a chorus of oaths and yelping, rising to the crescendo of a door being messily flung open, shut, then opened and shut again. A drumbeat of returning feet rolled mutely close and melded into the scratchy rustle of the phone being picked back up.

“I’m back,” Jon announced.

“Is it done?”

“The deed is done… your little friend is enjoying some lovely pink dahlias out front as we speak.”

“I’m pleased for her! And… for you, too,” Martin said, voice melting into lilting tenderness, “I’m honestly really proud of you, I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

“I… Ah… No, it wasn’t. Thank you, Martin,” came the sheepishly measured rejoinder.

“You’re very welcome.”

Martin smiled privately to himself, and ran a loving thumb down the edge of his phone once more.

“So then may I rightly assume I have permission to come in an hour or so late today so I can go back to sleep?” he continued, already knowing the answer as he flopped back down on his pillows and rolled up into the covers.

He was relieved to hear a husky chuckle rumble through the phone.

“Yes, yes. I think you’ve more than earned it.”

“Brilliant, see you in a bit then? And for lunch?” he added hopefully.

The brief silence as Jon calculated his response hung thick and palpable in the digital airwaves.

“Lunch sounds good,” he replied at length, “See you then.”

“G-Great! Great! See you!”

Their phones clicked mutually off without the awkward jumble of sign-offs, pleasantries, and accidentally stumbling over each other’s words. Martin thought glimmeringly of the spider hunting free in plush pink petals, none the wiser, and of Jon, with new and irrefutable proof that not everything ugly or quietly cunning in the world lurked behind to cast its shadow over him. A spider could be just a spider, and Martin back asleep with both hands still clutching his phone to his chest, dreaming of singing Waterloo again, but this time to a rapt audience and thunderous applause.

[imaginesmai]

Peter Parker - In your corner

Enjoy this fluffy fic I forgot I had in my drafts!

Plot: Peter is having a hard time in college, and a visit from his favourite girl is just what he needs

The sun was bright in the sky, one of those rare days in early November where you still could wear only a thin jacket. Life was buzzing around you; students that were leaving their classes, teachers that were almost running to their cars, and the occasional reunion that made you smile even wider. Because you had your own waiting for you, somewhere between the entrance and the huge building of MIT.

You tried to stretch your head as much as you could to search for the curly haired boy that you wanted to surprise. He wasn’t that hard to find; Peter had grown that summer a few inches, and his shoulders were bulkier than before. But Friday seemed to be the chosen day to create as much noise as the students could, so between shoves and uncomfortable crowds, you were finding it hard to see him.

Someone behind you whispered your name in what they thought were discreet words, but you heard the giggles and the laughs. It was hard to miss them, when it happened a few times while you skipped the students in your way to find Peter. You felt the uncomfortable itch that they always gave you, and that in the last few months had turned into the horrible grief that you were still carrying. Knowing that you wouldn’t like to find any articles about Y/N Stark lashing out on some students, you pulled the bag closer to your body and lowered your head.

You had to bear with a few more pushes until finally you collided with one that was too familiar. Looking up, you met Peter’s warm eyes and his cheeky smile.

“Hey Stark” Peter whispered, but you could hear him perfectly. “Didn’t take you for one of public places”

“I would have taken the jet, but I didn’t want to embarrass you” you rolled your eyes.

Not noticing the audience that you had besides him, you leaned forward and caught Peter’s lips with yours. It had been three weeks since you last saw him, too busy with SI and with your life back in the lake house. He seemed to leave the shyness aside and leaned further into the kiss, until someone coughed and you had to break apart. If it was possible, he looked even more handsome.

“I’ll see you on Monday?” Peter spared a glance to the group of people he was walking with, while his hand gripped your own.

“Y-yeah, I guess. Uh – have, a… good weekend” a boy you didn’t know stuttered out.

Peter nodded to him and quickly scrambled out of the big crowd. You earned yourself another bunch of shoves and almost got stepped on by a guy as tall as the Hulk. The boy dragging you seemed much more eager to leave the place than yourself, but you didn’t dare to say anything. College could be stressful, from what he had told you, and you didn’t want to pressure him anymore.

So you just stepped to his side and hung yourself from his arm, supporting the bag on your other shoulder. Peter gave you a tight, tired smile and kept walking through the people. What had seemed like a nice day was quickly turning into one too hot, and you were tempted to get rid of the jacket you had brought with you. Knowing you had the car parked a few streets down, you resigned yourself to keep walking and receiving shoves.

After a few long, silent minutes, you were out and you breathed in relief.

“Oh God, that was stressful” you sighed, not tearing away from Peter. “Those are your friends?”

“Yeah – I mean, kind of. They’re my roommate’s friends, and I got along with them although I talk more with him alone”

“That’s good” you said, not really convinced by the answer. He seemed a little dull, almost not there. “I bet they’re not as good friends as me. I bought the car, no more peasant bus or walk”

“Probably, but I don’t feel comfortable doing this with my friends”

Peter shoving you into the wall and crashing his lips to yours wasn’t really a surprise, because you loved to do that all the time, yet the strength he followed the kiss with was a bit of a surprise. One of his hand made its way to your cheek and the other rested wrapped around your waist, making you stick to his body like a magnet. Your noses touched for a second until he tilted back; and then, he just left his lips there.

There was no fire burning like when he had initiating the kiss, just the need of touching each other. It was slow, too slow, and you smiled. His thumb was drawing small circles against your skin, warm and soft.

Peter ended the kiss, but instead of tearing apart, hugged you tighter and hid his head against your shoulder. It was a little awkward, since he had his backpack on and you couldn’t fully hug him. But whatever you did was enough, because he relaxed against you.

Your father’s death had been hard for the both of you, the blip and the separation with the university too. Sometimes, you just needed the comfort of each other.

“Everything fine?” you whispered, knowing he could hear you even with all that noise. Peter nodded against your shoulder and waited a few more seconds before tearing apart for real.

“Yeah. Just needed you, a lot” he answered truthfully, but you sensed it was more. “I hope the expensive car comes with a decent lunch. I’m not eating cafeteria trash again”

“Who do you take me for?” you teased, and grabbed his arm again to keep walking. “I’m the Y/N Stark, I do not eat food for less than 50$”

Peter chuckled and kissed your forehead. Instead of letting you just hang by his arm, like you usually walked, he put his arm around your shoulder and dragged you closer, until there was, once more, no space between the two of you.

-

The rest of the day ran uneventful, except from the nagging thought that there was something wrong with Peter. You ate in a Burger King and he ordered two kids menu, moving the toy around while you finished your own. It was strange seeing him so quiet and withdrawn, yet so close. He had chosen to sit beside you instead of in front, and when you had gone to the bathroom he looked as if he had been kicked.

You had asked him at least ten times if there was something wrong, but he either shrugged his shoulders or shook his head. The walk around the city was short and too hot, and not wanting to tell Peter that his arm around your shoulders was going to make you melt into a puddle of sweat, you had proposed going back to his dorm, the one you still hadn’t seen.

With Peter’s computer in the wheeled chair and his roommate out of the dorm, you watched a movie and laid close. So close, that in the middle of the movie you found yourself on top of him. Peter, as he always did, took his time to start talking – and when the credits rolled down, he talked.

“I’m not fine” you frowned at his tone, trembling and not as strong as always. A soft song played on the background, and you waited for him to continue. “I feel like – like a failure”

“Why would you say that?” you lifted yourself from where you were laying, landing on his left side with your head propped up in your hand, and the other one still resting on his chest.

“It’s true” he whispered, looking to ceiling lamp to your right. “I think that I don’t… maybe this is not what I’m supposed to be”

“In MIT?” you tried to get more information out of him, using one of your hands to brush the hair out of his forehead.

“I’m falling behind in two of my classes” a lonely tear ran down his cheek. “And… I failed the first physic test”

Peter started talking about how the exam had been too difficult for him, and even if the rest of the students had gotten not so good marks, he felt like he didn’t even understand what they were asking for. One thing led to another, and then he was talking about how he felt alone there too, because his real friends and you were away, and his roommate efforts for including him into his group weren’t enough.

He avoided talking about your father, but still a last ‘and I miss him’ left his lips. By the end, silent tears of frustration were running down his cheeks. You could guess that the mess of the desk was his, not of his roommate, and that he had been having a hard three weeks.

And if there was a part that broke your heart the most, was that he kept saying that he wanted to go home. The fierce protective instinct that you carried with your last name Stark-Potts took over you for a second and you wanted to pay every single thing he could need to finish college from home – but you reminded yourself that you didn’t have a say in the matter.

“I’m sorry you’ve come to visit only to hear me crying about nothing” Peter dropped one arm across his eyes. “It’s pathetic”

“Peter” you called him out, but he didn’t move his arm. “Come on, look at me. I don’t like talking to arms”

“I’m sorry” he repeated, sniffling softly.

“For what?” you insisted. “For talking about your feelings? For being honest with me? Come one, Peter. We’ve already been over it. You know you can tell me anything”

You remembered a few months ago, after the final battle, a similar situation. You had been destroyed by your father’s death, and it had taken a huge toll on you. Not going out of your room, barely eating, nearly zero talking; just lying in bed and crying. It was one of the hardest time of your life, and it had been Peter’s too. But the boy had ended up bringing you out of it by sitting with you a few hours each day, reading a book or watching a show. He had been hurt too, and sometimes he had to make a quick break to the bathroom with the excuse of getting emotional with the book. Still, he had helped you and you were forever grateful.

The problem was that he still hadn’t said anything real about your father’s death. You had seen him carrying everything like nothing, college and moving away. And you knew him well enough to know he wasn’t as good as he said.

Peter lifted his arm slightly at your words, his eyes glassy and red. You used it to push his arm out of the way fully, and stare at his gorgeous brown eyes.

“You don’t have to do this alone, Pete. What happened – what it meant for us… we can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. Sure, everyone suffered the blip. But they weren’t there, and you deserved the peace they’re searching for too” you explained.

“But I – it’s my first year, I can’t… I can’t…”

“If you need to, no one is gonna judge you for coming back home for a while” you comforted him, running a lazy finger across his jaw. “You saved them all, after all”

“So what? That’s not gonna take me anywhere, Y/N” he scoffed, finding the hem of your blouse and moving it between his fingers. “Engineer was my dream. It still is. I don’t want to leave it behind, but – but… I can’t – it’s too much, and –“

Peter’s chest started shaking under you, and his eyes looked away again. There was again, the panic he had been feeling since the begging of the year – maybe after the battle, or even before, when he learnt about five year gap. Unknown to you, Peter hadn’t even touched the suit since he arrived MIT. He spent the nights worrying about tests, studying and assignments, going as far as locking himself in the bathroom, away from his roommate, to have break downs in the shower.

He cursed himself as another tear rolled down his cheek, the lights from the forgotten movie only making the worrying look on your face more prominent. He had so desperately trying to hide it from you, but sometimes he forgot that you’re too similar to your father. Tony Stark noticed everything that was going on with him, so did you. After three weeks of bolting everything, he felt like digging himself in a hole and never coming up.

“You don’t have to leave MIT if you don’t want”

“But I’m failing! I can’t get any work done, I don’t understand anything and –“

“Look, it’s November already. You have winter break next month. And turns out, I have a very capable mother who is also worried about you and is willing to take up with the SI stuff until I come back” you smiled at his wide, surprised eyes. “What about I stay here? We can crash in a hotel, or you can make room for me in your bed. I’ll stay here until winter break, and then you will come home with me”

“I can’t ask you to stay” he squealed out, his voice too high pitched to be against the idea.

“You aren’t asking, I’m imposing, cause I’m a Stark and I’m in charge” you shrugged. You let your head fall back against his shoulder, hugging him close to you.

Both of you knew that it was still too long for winter break. You still had more than twenty days to come, that’s if MIT stopped their classes in early December. And even if you weren’t in college, you still had duties, a little sister and a mother to go back to. Yet Peter knew better than to say anything, so he turned his eyes back on the movie and blinked the tears away, already feeling a bit of that chest pressure lifting off.

“I’m in your corner, Pete” you mumbled softly, caressing the sink on his arm. “I’m always in your corner”

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists​, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

Tom Holland and Peter Parker Taglist

@delicately-important-trash​​

@lexxxistrips​​​​

@lexxxistrips​

@aikaterrina​​​​​​

@zalladane​​​​​

@gypsystuf​​​​​​ (since you didn’t answer me, I just put you on the general taglist. Let me know if you want to change!)

@nikkixostan​​​​​

@galaxystern08​​​

@justifymyfeelings​​​

@dummiesshort​

@marvelhoesworld​

@wild-rose-35​

[mourntheantagonist]

#HarringroveApril Day 23: Picnic

***

Billy’s favorite memories of his mom were always at the same place. That same little place that was outside those suffocating four walls where instead of just the aroma of beer and tobacco where the light came just from one flickering bulb in the ceiling, the sun shined through the branches on the maple trees over fields of dandelions, where his mom would always hold one up to his lips and tell him to make a wish.

They spent that time eating. She would pack a big basket full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sliced fruit and juice boxes, and always something special and home made for the desert. They would sit out on a ratty old blanket and play with the ladybugs and enjoy their time away. Together.

It was always so perfect. So peaceful. He had to be physically dragged back home to the dingy and dusty apartment every time.

The day he used the dandelion to wish they could both just run away was the day he first stopped believing in it.

In the months leading up to his mom ditching, trips to the field were nonexistent for the most part, aside from the last one. The one that took place just two days before she packed her bags and left without a trace, without notice, nothing but a note left on the fridge granting Billy just one phone call before he would never hear her voice again.

He still went back to the field. He would sit with his back to their favorite tree until the sun began to set, waiting for her to come back. Waiting for her to emerge from the distance with that same contagious laugh and picnic basket in hand. He did that every day until he couldn’t anymore. Until seeing the sun set just one more time and seeing no blonde figure walking over through the horizon became too painful.

It got to a point where he wasn’t sure he’d be happy to see her if she did, just angry. So unbelievably angry. He would have shown her all of the cuts and bruises she left for him to bear all by himself. The one person he had in his corner left him high and dry and without even so much as a basket full of pb&j’s and her famous apple pie.

After waiting and hoping became too exhausting, the anger followed suit. It soon became easier to forget than to stay mad. It became easier to shut himself down when it was time for the belt than to curse her name for leaving him there to take it all alone. He’d let the rage fade away and think of only fields of green, yellow, and white, and the smile on his mom’s face, the mother that stood between him and the monsters, not the one who fed him to the dragon.

His happy place.

It didn’t take long for him to lose sight of that too. He could hardly remember what her face looked like anymore, and day by day, beating after beating, his happy place became too closely associated with pain, that it was just another place. Just another place he couldn’t successfully escape to anymore.

And the memory was lost. Just like that. Suppressed along with all of the others, and Billy could only recall her face in the few pictures he managed to keep away from the fireplace. He had nothing to replace the sounds of leather striking his skin or the taste of blood in his mouth, so he was left there to just take it. Unable to fight back, unable to breathe. He’d just stay there, hold back the tears, and keep telling himself that it would all be over soon.

He’d forgotten. Memories out in the field chasing butterflies and picking flowers and smearing jelly all over his face were replaced by red, replaced by pain and grief and a dark tunnel with no conceivable light on the other side. No more hope.

He’d forgotten until he found the same old wicker basket while cleaning the garage.

The old ratty blanket was still inside.

It was all still intact.

And the memories came flooding back like a fifty foot wave crashing over the top of him, drowning him, leaving him panicked and unsure of what to do next, where to go, how to proceed. He just held it in his two hands and let his eyes fall closed, seeing the green, yellow, and white displayed on the inside of his eyelids, feeling that happiness inside of him just one more time. The memories were far away, barely in reach, but they weren’t gone forever.

He could almost smell the lemon perfume and hear the buzz of the bees she attracted.

There were many steps that had to be taken in between point a and point b that couldn’t even be considered a mistake, but it felt a little bit like one when he was driving in the car to Steve’s house with a picnic basket in the passenger seat filled with beer and chips and whatever snacks he could find lurking in the back of their kitchen cupboards.

And of course, two quickly and poorly made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Steve had been the memories that filled the silence for him. It was Steve’s laugh that he heard when he needed the tears to stop, it was the feeling of his lips against his own that made the pain go away, it was the feeling of his arms around him, holding him tightly when Billy didn’t want him to let go, feeling like it was always too short when he did, that made it seem like only a second. A blip.

He wanted to have a picnic with Steve. He wanted to bring use to the abandoned basket and play with the ladybugs in Steve’s hair and make wishes on dandelions.

He knocked on Steve’s door with one hand, the other holding the picnic basket.

“Hey, you didn’t say you were coming over.” Steve said, eyes looking only to him and not noticing the basket just yet.

Billy held it up a little higher, right in Steve’s view. “I had a stupid idea, are you free?”

“I’m literally always free Billy.”

Billy laughed and pulled Steve outside by his hand, helping him down the step like a gentleman. “Y’know of any good places for a picnic around here?”

Steve guided him somewhere not too far, just ten minutes south of Hawkins where there was a large field with a pond nearby, quiet and vacant and perfect, and absolutely littered with dandelions both yellow and white. Despite the short trip, Billy had to slap Steve’s hand away from opening the basket more than one time.

It was freeing walking hand in hand through the field. There was nobody around to see them, but the open space made it feel public. No tight walls or car doors holding them in and hiding them from view. Just that little bit of freedom was enough. They found a little patch with a little bit of shade and laid out the blanket on the grass. It was just like he remembered. Tattered and worn blue cloth, it still had the grape juice stain on the corner from when he laughed so hard it came out of his nose.

Steve sat down and looked up at Billy with little puppy dog eyes that asked “can I please open it now?”

Billy just nodded his head and Steve immediately started pulling out the chips and the beers and the little saran wrapped sandwiches.

“It’s not gourmet or anything, but it’s food.”

“Don’t knock a perfectly good pb&j,” Steve said, already beginning to unwrap it. “What’s the special occasion anyway?”

“No special occasion, I just wanted to take you on a picnic.” Billy said, hesitating, wondering not only if he should go forward, but wondering if he even could. Would the words even come out if he tried to say them. “My mom and I went on picnics a lot as a kid.” He says it all in one hastily quick breath, sighing heavily when he reached the end of his sentence. “I thought this could help keep the memory alive.”

Steve took a bite of his sandwich while Billy worked on unwrapping his own, looking down and away from Steve as he finished chewing his bite. “You don’t talk about her much.” he said, and Billy chanced a look up, and Steve was giving him a soft toothless smile. Warm and inviting like it always was.

“She left when I was ten. It’s not like there’s a lot to talk about.” Billy took a bite out of his own sandwich, a large one just in case Steve decided to begin some type of interrogation, that way he’d have at least a little bit of spare time to think of something to say.

“What was she like?”

Billy smiled, the memories coming back again. He remembers doing somersaults and cartwheels in the grass pretending they were training to be gymnasts, even if Billy fell on his ass every time and got grass stains on his jeans that didn’t come out no matter how many times they ran them through the wash. He was also remembering all those times Neil would scream at her for letting him ruin another pair, and hearing her scream back at him just as loud.

“She was strong.” he said, smile only faltering for a second.

“I figured you had to have gotten it from somewhere.” Steve said, he managed to finish the first half of the sandwich in just the time it had taken Billy to answer. “What else? What did she look like?”

“She was blonde, bright blonde, and tall. She was beautiful.”

“So you didn’t get the height from her.” Billy nudged him in the shoulder and laughed. He pulled out two cans of beer from the basket and passed one over to Steve. “You think she would have liked me?”

“I’d just love to say no, but yeah. She would have adored you.” Billy said, because she would have, she would have loved to have a buddy by her side while she poked fun.

“Do you still miss her?” Steve asked, and Billy tensed enough that Steve noticed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“No, it’s okay.” Billy took a deep breath. “I think for a while there, I forgot to miss her, but I think I always will.” he shut his eyes and bowed his head. “Sometimes I feel like she hurt me worse than my dad ever did, so I shouldn’t have good memories of her.”

Steve moved across to the other side of the blanket and pulled Billy into his side, one arm wrapped around him and Billy just let his head tilt to the side and rear on his shoulder. “She betrayed your trust. I can’t even begin to imagine how much that hurt, but you’re still allowed to have the good memories. She doesn’t get to take those away from you too.” Steve rubbed his hand against Billy’s arm, the friction making him warm and sending a chill up his spine. “And missing her, remembering good things about her, it doesn’t have to mean that what she did after was okay. It doesn’t forgive her.”

Billy doesn’t realize he’s crying until Steve’s wiping away a tear from his cheek.

“Hey, I love you,” Steve said, holding Billy’s face in both hands and looking him right in the eye before giving him a short and chaste kiss to the lips, “and I’d love to hear more about her if it helps you remember,” Steve kissed him again, longer this time, pushing a strand of hair back and tucked behind his ear, “and I want to help you replace the bad ones with better ones if you’ll let me.”

Billy smiled and wrapped a hand around Steve’s wrist that was still holding his cheeks. “You already do, everytime I see you.”

Sitting on that blanket, eating from that basket, it sent a lot of forgotten memories rushing back in a flood, and as Steve kissed him there was one that kept pounding at the front of his skull.

When his mom held the dandelion to his lips, and he made the wish…

“I wish I will fall in love.” he said it out loud for his mom to hear and she just smiled.

“Anyone would be a fool not to love you.”

That one came true.

He was in a sea of dandelions ready to be wished on, but he didn’t budge from his spot, because there was nothing he could think to wish for. He had everything he wanted right in front of him.

And he tasted just like peanut butter.

[extremelyblackandwhite]

heiress - 5

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

a/n: more parallels between wanda and reader plus hayward being a bitch to reader. also pierce did not die during the winter soldier events in this universe. at this point this is called wanda and y/n collectively grieving over her how shitty their lives are.

previous chapter

The young woman held a small gun in her left hand, shooting the target at least 10 metres away from her with a mechanical precision, switching it to her right hand and achieving the same type of perfection and precision not even senior agents had. Yet, there she was, one of the newest SWORD recruits. Many people had opposed for her to join SWORD straight after escaping from HYDRA and the Red Room; however, Tyler Hayward had forced for her to become a new recruit. “Having Alexander Pierce’s daughter in our team will be an asset” he said and it somehow convinced all of SWORDs panel to take her in. She had nowhere to go after all, the Red Room will be after her in no time and she had no way to defend herself alone and so SWORD was her only option. An option she thrived under, being much more advanced than any junior recruit yet it was a far cry from what she wanted. She didn’t want to be an agent but that’s what she was, what she had been trained to do.

The trainer slowly blinked walking up to her and giving her a congratulatory pat on the shoulder which everyone could sense was filled of jealousy. She was thrown to the back of the line with someone else who also inspired jealousy in most recruits. Monica Rambeau, daughter of Maria Rambeau, the current SWORD director. They had never spoken too much other than orientation day where they introduced each other by their agent number.

     - That was the coolest thing I’ve seen today. - she hide a childish smile as the next recruit started  his training. - I’m Monica. 

     - Y/N. - she smiled and shook her hand. - Is it always like this?

     - Most of time yeah. The trainers are dicks about it when you’re better than them. 

     - Men. - Y/N rolled her eyes, getting an understanding nod from Monica. 

     - Excuse me? - Tyler Hayward entered the trainee room, always dressed in a polished suit as if that would be of any worth in a fighting situation. - I’m sorry for disturbing but I need Ms. Y/N Pierce to accompany me. 

Y/N Pierce. She always hated that name, even more than her code name. The mere thought that she had that last name, the name of one of the leaders of SHIELD was almost like a cruel curse on her. Everyone seemed to think of him as this all around saint yet she knew better; after all, if he had no reservations about submitting his daughter as a project and asset then he would have no reservation in hurting anyone else. SWORD had done their best to keep her existence a secret, not really allowing the connection to pass through but she knew he was looking for her and if he wasn’t the Red Room and HYDRA definitely were. 

She shared a confused look with Monica before stepping towards Hayward who led her away from the room and into the hall. He didn’t stop to explain to her why she had been summoned, instead he just kept on walking and she took the lead to follow him, entering a blackened window filled hall. They stopped in front of a window which gave way into an autopsy scene. Y/N was used to seeing death, some would say she was born surrounding it; however, she was not prepared to see what was being shown to her. It was almost as if she were sleeping, her mother. Laid across the metal table with various doctors surrounding her, the HYDRA symbol branded onto her foot. She looked over to the side, hand over her mouth as she felt sick just to see it. 

    - Our intelligence believes HYDRA is trying to send a message and we don’t believe they won’t stop anytime soon.

    - Was it fast? Did she suffer?

    - Gunshot to the head. Quite merciful, really.

    - Why are you showing me this?

    - Well, HYDRA experimented on you but there is the possibility your “enhancements” might be genetic. 

    -  What is that supposed to mean? Why did you really brought me here, Hayward?

    - We need the next of kin’s permission to perform an autopsy and it seems that would be you, following your mother’s will.

    - No. - she stepped back. - You’re not gonna tear my mother apart for a stupid hypothesis. No. You don’t have my permission

    - We’re being kind enough to hide you from your father for no specific reason. You either accept it or we’ll be forced to hand you to SHIELD.

The night air was crisp and sharp as he sat on the swing next to hers. She hadn’t changed much other than her hair which was much longer but her face was still unblemished by the tragic unkindness of the world. After all it had been about 5 years since he last saw her and he hated the fact he had forgotten her. Somewhere, deep within himself he knew her mark was still there; he could still hear her voice in his dreams but he always chucked it to his mind crumbling under the pressure it had been under for so many years. Nevertheless, he had heard her voice plenty times, specially in Bucharest. It had haunted him from nights and nights on end; “Promise?” “Yes”, turns out it wasn’t someone he had killed but someone he had forgotten. Her of all people. It had come back all to him after that woman gave him the file. Her name alone, her lips telling him her name. He remember telling himself he would not forget him as they prepared him to go back in the blender and he did. He forgot about her but looking at her everything came back to him; the good and the bad. But the most of it was he remembered loving her, he still did, a feeling that had been dormant for a long while and suddenly awoke in him. Of course Bucky did not expect her to love him back, he didn’t blame her either. She was a good kid, too good even. 

     - Uhm ... are you enjoying it here? - she motioned her hands abstractly. - In the hex, I mean. 

     - It’s better than in hideouts with Sam and Sharon. - he chuckled dryly, looking up at the transparent yet red tinted dome. - I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Sam is great, despite everything and Sharon ... Sharon has helped me so much, I owe her that.

     - Oh ... - her heart dropped to her stomach as an ugly feeling took over her. Sure, Wanda would say it’s jealousy but she refused to admit it. 

     - What about you? I never really asked what you did after ... you know, IT. 

    - You can say the name. - she smiled at him yet it was voidless of any emotion, as if she were used to people tip toeing around the subject which they always did. - I became a junior recruit for SWORD until the blip then ... I was gone for a while but it didn’t hurt. It was almost like I was finally at peace and then I woke up and Hayward was director. He sent me and Monica to investigate the hex Wanda created, mostly to keep his own project a bay. Then we all ran off, got classified as fugitives. The rest is really not important. 

     - I don’t really think I need to tell you what I’ve been up to.

     - You don’t ... most of it it’s my fault, anyway. - she got up from the swing once she noticed a purple light a few miles away from the limits of the hex. The back of her eyes started growing instinctively white. Bucky got up as he recognised her fighting stance, a hand safely placed upon her shoulder. - Go grab Wanda.

     - Y/N ...

     - Go grab her, now. - she stood there watching the purple light almost call out for her. Bucky chose to do what she said, the white mist involving around her fingers as she stepped towards the hex, fingers barely touching the wall. 

Bucky rushed inside the building, hoping to reach Wanda before Y/N could do anything irrational. However, before he could find the newly named Scarlet Witch, she found him with one of her twins behind her waist. Her eyes were glowing red, almost similar to those Y/N had except those eyes looked desperate, worried even.

    - Where is she? - she asked him with an ice like directness. - Where is she, Barnes?

    - Outside. She told me to come get you.

Wanda rushed past him with a speed that he had never seen before and he only followed after her. The two stepped outside the building, towards the swing tree where Bucky had left Y/N, except, she wasn’t there anymore. No, he couldn’t lose her. Not again. Vision came after the two followed by Yelena and Monica who had been awakened by the twins; however, Wanda did not need their help. She approached the hex, just missing the purple glow as it entered the woods. Bucky tried to step up but Vision pushed him back. 

    - Y/N? - Wanda broke through the hex, shutting Bucky out as well as Vision. It was night time, dark and cold surrounded by the woods of the place they had chosen to hide from the world. Breaking dawn was so far away and even the tallest individual would’ve melted into the dark night. - Y/N!

   - Are we not going to help them? - Bucky questioned back inside the hex, probably the most awake apart from the synthezoid and the former Red Room graduate.

   - It’s a witch thing. - Yelena smirked before springing into action. - We should activate the hex’s protective system in case something happens.

   - What about them? - Bucky once again interrupted, not receiving particularly kind looks from Yelena.

   - They’ll be fine, Mr. Barnes.

Y/N on the other hand walked further into the confused and dark woods, holding her small trusted silver revolver which reflected the moon light onto its surface; yet most of the light came from behind her coloured eyes. She did not know exactly why they did that, it was almost as if they light up whenever she felt threatened. Whatever it was, it was there inside of her. She, of course, knew it was Agatha lingering around; however, she never got dangerously close to the hex. It was an unspoken truth between the witch and Wanda Maximoff yet there she was. 

     - God, dear, I thought I’d have to break into the hex to get to you. - Agatha showed up from the darkness, dressed in her typical black and purple palette as if she were royalty. - So, how are you deary? Still playing Queen Elsa? Is that fun for you?

     - You’re trespassing. 

     - Come on, is that how you thank me for giving you Bucky Barnes on a platter? What else do you need to thank me? A love spell?

     - Go away, Agatha. What do you want? 

     - I am trying to help you, just like I helped Wanda. I mean how old are you, sweetheart? Old enough for HYDRA and SWORD to realise you can do much more than just magic tricks. Making a whole room objects disappear? Now that, that was impressive. If I knew you were gonna do that, I would’ve brought Barnes into your life much much sooner. - she crossed her arms. - I think you and I are very similar. Much more similar than Maximoff to be completely honest. Where were the avengers when your father handed you over to a terrorist organisation? Constantly overlooked, underestimated, seen as nothing but your father’s daughter. I understand, Y/N and I can help you if you let me help you.   

    - I ... - she faltered her response, slightly lowering down her gun. - You can really help me?

    - I know more about magic than everyone else, Y/N. I can train you, I can help you more than SWORD or Wanda Maximoff will ever help. I can even give you what you want the most. Barnes, a regular family, everything but a SHIELD recruit. A regular citizen and all I want is for you to give me my regular family. 

     - I can’t help you, Agatha.

     - I don’t mean to cause any harm, Y/N. I’m not the villain, I just want my husband back and only you can give that to me. That’s all I want. It’s a small price to pay for your happiness. I can even take it away, your powers, I can take them away and then you will have what you want. Pretty sure Barnes still has some swimmers and if he doesn’t surely Wanda can get you some kids, she sure did well with getting herself some. 

     - Y/N! - Wanda’s voice broke through the two woman’s conversation. Agatha smirked, purple eyes replacing her regular blue ones. - Y/N!

     - I think you need to make a choice, dear. 

taglist: @lookiamtrying

[heartofsnark]

Can You Feel The Sun? (Chapter Nine): Lazarus Rises

Notes: I’m on a roll with writing this. I’m honestly, a little nervous with sharing this chapter since i go more into Johnny’s backstory and like...my headcanon of it since CDPR gave us nothing. But hopefully it works. I also haven't written Johnny's voice in a while, so ahhhh. 

Word Count: 12098

Chapter Warnings:  Death, brief mentions of child abuse, drug use, alcohol, war, ableism, pov switches but not in the usual way.

If you haven’t yet, you can read the previous chapter here!~

 Oblivion wraps around her like a blanket. 

There is no existence. 

No pain. 

No world. 

No V. 

No Aidan. 

Every anxious little thought, every guilt soaked burden; swept away with the reaper’s scythe. Years of running and death has finally caught her. 

Then all at once it seems to let her go. 

It's a flicker at first, neurons firing up again, rewriting and rebuilding themselves. No true sensation or senses; just existence. World still dark and lost to her, but not she is not lost to it, or some version of her isn’t. 

Pain hits her before anything else, a crack in her skull, or where her skull should be. She has no sense of her body, only the vague notion she exists and is in pain. And when every sense returns, the world coming back…. 

It’s not her own. 

There’s a fog around her, a fuzzy filter muting it all. Like trying to recall a memory from too long ago. And she sees and she hears, in a body that isn’t hers. She’s smaller, the world seeming to tower around her. A blazing sun burning overhead in the bright blue of the sky. Playing outside on a sweltering day with bruised knees and grass stains on cheap children’s jeans. A mothers voice calling for Robbie to come home for lunch. She catches a reflection in a puddle, there’s a blur to it, but the dirt smeared face of a dark haired boy looks back at her...at himself… for a moment. 

The world shifts and with it comes a pain she can’t truly feel, a belt whipping through the air and welting a back that isn’t her own. Vision blocked by skinny arms marked with cigarette burns, hiding a face from the next lash. A boot gnashing into his side, the thick fog protecting V from the pain he feels. When he clambers to his feet, spitting blood she can’t taste, despite seeing vignettes through his eyes. He walks through a musty home, where the floorboards creak and threaten to break under his feet. A mirror showing a dark eyed boy with a split lip. 

Then she’s watching the hands of this boy she doesn’t know, playing guitar. He plucks and strums at strings until they bite into his fingers, until he leaves them speckled with blood. And then he plays more. Gifted an acoustic, stole his first electric but forgot to klep the amp alongside it. 

Playing in a musty crowded garage with a young boy with olive skin. Each playing away on instruments, the sounds and words all muffled to V. The pair play badly until they play great, she doesn’t hear, but she knows… 

Tequila and cigarettes before he’s old enough to buy them. V can faintly feel the burn of the booze and the warmth of the smoke. 

Stealing anything that can be tucked away in his pockets. Spray painting every wall he sees. Cherry bombs in mailboxes, picking a fight with anyone who sets him off and most people do. The faint burning of anger in his chest, she can feel it as if it’s her own. In and out of detention centers, a system that can put him away for petty theft, but never lift a hand to stop his father... 

Military reps scouting out young, poor troubled boys, seeing nothing but canon fodder when they look at him. 

Knocking on the door and that same olive-skinned, dark haired friend answering. She can hear the words but knows what’s being said without them. Both fog and clarity. ‘Robbie’ is enlisting, off to say his final goodbye to Kerry, a name she doesn’t know how she knows. He comes running down the street after him, before ‘Robbie’ can get too far away. Neither old enough, children. One made of lank and the other with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. But the military knows boys can take bullets just as well as men. They need bodies, age irrelevant. Forged documents with Robert John Linder scratched across it. That name...

Blurs of training, a mop of dark hair shaved from his head. Separated from Kerry, stationed in different platoons, finding another friend who sticks by his side; both hardened by the military. Lank becoming muscle. Give optics, interface plugs, tech he doesn’t want, but they pry open his skin and put it in anyway. Anything to make him a better soldier. 

Then they’re in combat, muffled gunfire. People brutalized; shot, blown apart and chrome shoved into whatever remains; treated cruelly both by the enemy and the corps that shipped them out there. The heat of Mexico and the smell of gunpowder. Enemy ambush, the faint ting of a grenade hitting the ground. Then Robert is on the ground, shoved there and the body of a friend draped over his own. A heavy boom, shrapnel tearing through his left arm and size, burns across the skin. But nothing compared to his friend…  A grenade meant for him is taken by another, the pair rushed away to medical attention when the air clears. 

He wakes up without a left arm and scars across his torso, pulling tight at his skin. His friend gone, remains thrown out and tags offered to Johnny, the man who died for him nothing but a number, canon fodder in the corp’s war. Not even a day passes before they’re shoving chrome onto what’s left of Robert’s shoulder, eager to give him another chance to die for them. 

So, he runs, deserting and heading to a Night City that V has never seen. He climbs into a dirty motel bed and refuses to crawl back out, watching a ceiling fan turn until Kerry pulls him out. Older, more weathered, still young but neither of them quite the children they were before they saw the war. 

And music becomes his life. Kerry and him scream their words into any microphone they can find. Blaring concerts, they sound as if they’re coming from three rooms over to the merc, but she can feel the energy through the memory. Long nights writing lyrics and melodies. A band forming around them, three more members coming into the fold. Grimy smoke filled clubs and a cramped pathetic excuse of a tour bus. Shows that turn into riots. 

Cigarettes and tequila aren’t enough anymore. He pops pills like candy, snorts anything that will go up his nose, drinks everything but vodka, and fucks any pretty thing that looks his way. 

A woman with freckles and blue mohawk kicks his ass when she catches him balls deep inside a groupie. 

A blonde thrown into the back of a van. 

An anger and rage burning like wildfire in his chest. 

It all blurs and rushes; V never fully feeling what’s going on. All senses are fogged, seeing the snapshots of someone’s life through his own eyes. But she doesn’t feel linked, still distanced from it all. Barely able to think or decipher what she sees through the haze of it all. Just watching blips of a life not her own flickering by, with knowledge she shouldn’t have. 

Its the feeling of graffiti covered steel pressing against hands that first pushes through the fog. Hands that feel like they’re hers, but aren’t. One inked flesh and the other chrome. V can feel the body move as if it’s her own, but she has no command of it, muscles flexing to open double doors. Surrounded by the halls of a grimy little club. She can smell smoke and sweat, she’d gag but she can’t seem too. 

There’s music somewhere, muffled by distance but nothing else now. 

Fog lifted, she's both connected enough to it to feel everything, but separate enough to question what the hell is going on? There’s a tangled mess of emotions in her...his…. Their head. Her own fear, anxiety, mingled with a burning rage pitting in his core. 

There’s a girl leaning against the dirty wall of the club, watching V...or whoever she’s stuck inside of as they walk down the hell. A little smile playing on her lips. Thoughts flitter around V, in a voice that’s not her own. Chick’s cute enough, might of been worth a quick fuck, if he wasn’t rushin’ for time. 

“Hey…” 

V wants to ask her what’s going on, if the girl has any idea, what the girl sees when she looks at her. But her hands don’t move to sign and when she feels her mouth move, a different voice, different words, come out. The same rough voice that thought of fucking the girl in a dressing room. 

“Hey.” 

“You all right?” 

No, none of this is alright. V screams inside a head not her own, but she can feel the pride rolling in his chest, a smirk on his face. There’s an anger mixed with it, he’s going to settle a score, leave a mark. Those thoughts and feelings rattling around. 

“Never been better.” 

“Sure don't look it…’

There’s a scoff in his throat, she’s got no idea what he’s got planned. He continues around the corner, a man at the end of the hall standing before a set of double doors. The letters above say its backstage. Green hued fluorescent lights only draw attention to the grime as his boots click over the floor. That smell of cigarettes and sweat still hangs heavy around her, she thinks it may be coming from him, the man she’s playing passenger in. Oh god, that smell is him, isn’t it… 

What the hell is even happening? Dex killed her, didn’t he? 

“I can't let you on!” The man yells out at him. 

The fuck he can’t. His anger flares, a sliver left arm brought up, slammed into the guy's throat as he’s shoved into a wall,  a gun held in chrome fingers. There’s a mirror against it and V can see the man she’s living life through now. And those foggy vignettes press at her, he’s much older now. Face angry and with a scruffy beard, dark hair grown to his shoulders. 

His name was Robbie..? Robert.. ? Something, like that.

“Hey hey, we're chill,” the man begs ‘Robert’. He certainly looks too old to be a Robbie.

‘Robert’ lets the guy go with sneer, furious the guy would ever try to get in his way as he marches towards the doors. Abandoned music equipment and the music shoots in volume, a man blocking ‘Robert’ from getting up to a stage. Where four people play what sounds like older dad punk rock.

‘That smack, drag drunken roll

Chips are bashin' in my top

Ridin' high, my slots are shot

Metal burnin' beneath my skin

I'm chippin' in, chippin' in’

V would wince if she had control of her face, his face, does she even have a face anymore? The music is good, but painfully loud, something she could enjoy if only she could lower the volume. Phantom limbs she no longer has urge to turn the volume down on hearing aids that don’t exist. 

“Heh… 'course you're high.”  The bouncer in front of the stairs rolls his eyes at ‘Robert’ then steps aside.

‘Robert’ climbs up the short staircase, music painfully loud to V but exactly where he feels at him, bright lights down on him. A familiar face, Kerry from ‘Robert’s’ memories, is the one who sings. 

Until he’s pushed out of the way, gun still in ‘Robert’s’ hand as he grabs the microphone. Looking out into a crowd of people who stare up at him, an entire club room of people cheering and yelling for him. Shirts with tha bright red demon symbol, Samurai across it. Adoring fans, hearing his words, people who know his message, heard it loud and clear. Common men and women beaten down by the corps that rule their lives, that tear them all down for the chance to make an eddie.  And tonight he’ll show them all there’s a bite to his bark; he’ll make his mark, topple Arasaka and do what he should have done years ago.  

“Tonight I'm…” he pauses, leaving that mark may be the death of him, he’s damn near sure it will be, “I'm here to say goodbye to all of you.

And he begins to play to the cheering crowd, a final show before he changes the world.  V would cry out if she had the mouth to do it. Music shakes the venue, ‘Robert’ playing guitar and screaming lyrics into a mic, completely taking the show from Kerry. He channels his anger, his fury, into his music. Screams his rage into the mic. And it's a cacophony for the merc tucked in the back of his skull. She can feel her own stress and pain, but she also feels his energy, his love of this. Even through the anger, he knows that this is the place he belongs. 

This is hell, she thinks as he sings. The idea that every hell is tailored to an individual, everyone has their own personal idea of torment. This is her’s. She died and now she’s doomed to live in the head of some foul smelling rocker who plays nothing but music her sort of ex liked. Surrounded by loud sounds, foul smells, and no control. This is hell, her own special little hell. And she’ll be stuck here forever, for being an atheist or bi or a whore or a murderer… one of those did it. 

After an agonizing hour, the show closes down. More sweat is now clinging to her current vessel’s body and V mentally screams at him to take a shower, but no panicked thoughts seem to reach him. He’s completely unaware of her...presence… in his head. Sweat slick, ‘Robert’ puts away his axe and lights up a cigarette; smoke settles in his lungs, the cloying taste of tar sticking to his mouth. But there’s a relief in him, a tension leaving him, nicotine soothing him if only for a moment. 

Two women are settled down on the steps of the stage, in clinging tacky clothes. Groupies there to claw their way into the pants of anyone who’ll have them, entire fucking lives dedicated to riding the dick of someone more important than them.  Because playing fleshlight to a rockerboy is the closest they’ll ever get to making a difference in this world. 

“You're wastin' your lives, followin' us around like dogs.”

If she had hands she’d hit him. The women scowl at him, obviously taken back at the rockerboy talking down to them, like he hadn’t been thinking of fucking a girl just before the show. Like his eyes didn’t look over the curve of their asses and cleavage. If one of them asked he’d be inside of them in a moment, just has to make them feel like shit first. 

“What crawled up your ass?’

‘Robert’ sneers and rolls his eyes, walking past the stage. His fingers wrapping around the door handle, he was thinking about something he was going to do, toppling Arasaka. There’s a determination in his walk, a goal he’s marching off too, still hints of a soldier in his steadfast gait. The hell is he planning? How could some rockerboy take down a mega corp? There’s a faint but steady sound past the door, a whirring sound. 

“Johnny, wait up!”

He turns, answering to the name she hasn’t heard until now and it’s Kerry running towards him; chasing after him like he did all those years ago, when he followed ‘Robbie’ right to war. She’s not sure if it’s her or ‘Johnny’ remembering it. 

Kerry is older now than he was in the memories, though he looks younger than Johnny. A tall fluffy mullet of dark hair, a scraggly mustache, and a half finished sleeve of ink on his left arm. His hand wraps around Johnny’s wrist, pulling him the rocker closer. 

“Don't do this,” Kerry warns, “You can still change your mind.”

“Get over here man,” Johnny pulls Kerry in closer, a hand cupped to his friend’s face,“Fuck this band. Not your crowd, not your noise, do your own thing.’

They’re close enough to see the scar above Kerry’s lip and the freckles that dot his neck. Johnny taps his finger against Kerry’s chest as he brings his hand from the shorter man’s face. Kerry’s always cared more for the music than the message, more about fame than impact, Samurai more Johnny’s baby then his. But fears kept Kerry from chasing that solo dream as much as he wants, dipping his toes but never taking the chance to fully dive in. Kerry always needed a good kick in the ass to get where he needs to be, might be the last one Johnny can ever give him. 

“Bastard. Tsh… Gonna miss you something awful.”

There’s a softness in Kerry’s voice and smile, a fondness that only comes from lifelong friends. A soft warmth nestles in Johnny’s chest as well, for the first time she feels his lips pull into something she can almost call a smile. 

“See ya in the next life, friend.”

With that Johnny puffs on his cigarette and turns, leaving out the door, the whirring growing louder. The source of it shown; a helicopter landed outside the club, blades spinning and whipping up dust. A woman stands nearby, a wild teal mohawk, someone Johnny knows, fuzzy memories of a tumultuous past. 

“You're late,” she yells out over the sound of the chopper. Hands on her hips, eyes glaring at him. Always tries to play like she’s pissed, but never could resist him. 

“Love it when you're mad. Gets my southern blood pumpin',” he teases with a grin and V can feel the reality of his words, a throb in his dick behind his leather pants. And she doesn’t like that, her discomfort at feeling what it’s like to have a dick oddly mingling with his lust. 

“Get in. 'Fore I change my mind.”

Johnny makes his way to the helicopter, climbing inside, blades achingly loud. Two people already sit in the chopper. A man with chromed skin and fatigues, a woman fiddling with a computer. Her face is obscured by a helmet and visor, only black painted lips showing. 

“Silverhand,” the man greets him. 

Johnny...Silverhand… 

“Hey, Shaitan,” he greets as gears start to turn in V’s head, a head she no longer has. 

Johnny’s ex, Rogue, comes walking towards the helicopter as he turns back to the open doorway. Her name only known through Johnny’s thoughts skittering around her, but it sounds strangely familiar to V as well. Johnny extends a hand to help Rogue into the chopper, but she ignores him. Prideful bitch, he rolls his eyes. 

“Get us in the air,” Rogue yells to the unseen pilot, shoving a headset into Johnny’s hands, “here, put this on, and it stays on, got it?”

Johnny pulls it on and the helicopter starts to take off, the world falling further and further below them. The sign at the top of the club comes into view; The Hammer, Johnny taking another drag on his cigarette as Kerry steps out the back door. Silverhand flicks the out onto the cement as his friend watches the chopper fly off. 

As the helicopter flies through skyscrapers and towers, V struggles to take in where they are. Night City, but not. Towering buildings and screens blasting ads, par for the course in the city of broken dreams. But the ads are for products she hasn’t heard of or ones discontinued and no longer sold. The buildings look rougher, not quite the same slick clean look of the city she’s come to know. 

A city consumed by corps, a vile cesspit with ads as far as the eye can see, each desperate to wring out one last eddie from the masses. The entire system designed to crush people too apathetic to do a damn thing about it. Exploited, violated, used for a profit, and thrown out the second the corps get what they wanted. And the people just take it. No longer questioning why there’s no more farms, only land stripped for profits and nomads forced to abandon their homes. No longer questioning why real food is a rarity, why the priciest drink on the market is filth free water. No longer questioning why someone like saburo is pushing a hundred and the average Night City citizen won’t see forty. Corruption and apathy, best friends united to create the city of broken dreams. He’d burn it all down if he could, but truthfully can’t imagine himself anywhere else…

So… he’ll burn it all down, die for it if he must, and something better can be built in it’s ashes. 

A building in City Center holds a large holo-display showing the time and date; August 20, 2023… Fifty years in the past, the day Arasaka Tower was destroyed. And given his thoughts, she knows where Johnny is headed. That name, Johnny Silverhead, rattles through her. She’s heard it before, a few times. Half listened to conversations with Ava about music, where V would just nod and hope it earned her pity kiss. A name brought up by Jackie when discussing the tower being blown up, shots thrown back in… Rogue’s bar. The older woman with gray hair and the young adult with a wild teal mullet are one in the same. 

V is in the foul smelling, cigarette smoking body of a rockerboy turned wannabe terrorist on his way to set off a nuke that will kill over a quarter million people. 

“Piers're on fire. Pacifica's cut off, shut down. APCs on the streets of Watson,” Shaitan explains, stationed at the machine gun turret beside Johnny. 

“Sons of bitches.” 

“Skull-crackin' out there… that us?” A voice, the pilot maybe, asks over the headset. 

“Johnny's idea. Weyland's drawing Arasaka's attention away from the tower.”

“Collateral damage part of the plan, too?”

“This isn't the cub scouts, Thompson, Chew it up, spit it out,” Rogue tells him, no hint of fear or remorse in her voice as the chopper starts to come around a tower. 

A pillar of black metal with the Arasaka logo emblazoned at the top of it in silver. Levels of the tower get smaller towards the roof, from the distance there’s the bright red flash of holo warning signs forbidding entry. As they ascend higher and higher, the barrage of Arasaka soldiers and turrets atop the tower come into view. 

“Target range acquired.” 

“Make it rain,” Rogue commands and Shaitan begins shooting off the machine gun turret. 

Gunfire rings through the air, Arasaka soldiers yelling out as they fire back, automated turrets beginning to fire at Shaitan. The chopper stays rotating, hovering but never still, to avoid being shot out of the air as the chromed sniper works to clear the roof. Blood painting across the metal as Shaitan blasts through them. 

“Fuck!” 

Enemy fire, Arasaka fire, blasts through, Pinging against chrome and metal, practically sparking. A lucky shot, or three, ripping through Shaitan’s shoulder and he screams in pain, falling onto his back. Rogue yelling out as she kneels down to check on him, Shaitan convulsing in pain. 

“Taking over!”

Johnny takes over the machine gun, optics connecting with the turret sights. Arasaka soldiers flood the roof, nearly impossible to keep track of them; not even a moment passes before Johnny is firing off the gun. It's rapid and brutal, an onslaught as the reverberation of it shakes his body. But there is a hint of strategy beneath, taking out the automatic turrets first, blasting each one until they explode into shrapnel. Only when the final one is in sparks does he turn to the soldiers, Their sidearms can’t compare to the heavy fire. Blasted full of hole at rapid fire, blood and brains spraying. 

A body of corpses and shrapnel left across the roof. He pulls away from the gun, unzipping a duffle bag. A white constructed mechanism, wire, switches, and a giant nuclear energy warning across it. He’s about to plant a nuke in Arasaka. Fucking stop it, you idiot, all you do is cause more harm than good. She tries to scream inside his head, but nothing comes of it. The helicopter lowers down closer to the tower roof. 

“Murphy?” Rogue calls out. 

“Found our access point. Get moving.” 

“Johnny, remember the plan?” Rogue asks as Johnny zips the duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder. 

“Get the payload on the elevator,” he jumps from the helicopter, “arm it, let gravity do its thing. Explosion rocks the foundation, tower crumbles - chaos, screaming, roll credits.”

He pulls out a gun, a heavy duty pistol, Malorian Arms 3516, Last True Friend etched in it.He spins it between his silver fingers, flourishing and completely unneeded. It’s smartlink tech, synching with his cybernetic arm. And she can feel a sort of dampening of his feelings and emotions, that rage burning in his chest starting to simmer down, a colder more calculated anger taking over. 

Rogue and Murphy run ahead of him, across the roof, through the piles of bodies. Johnny follows behind them down a flight of stairs on the side of the building. 

“Exit window's gonna be tight,” Rogue tells him, brandishing her own side arm as she comes to wait by a door. 

“Jacking in,” Murphy connects a small computer into an interface, “Is grass green, do birds fly, do cats eat bats, do rats shit gnats?”

“Mainframe's not your playground, Murphy, c'mon. Evac announcement - broadcast it across all frequencies and let's get movin’.”

“Sheesh, who wrote this manifesto?”

“Really need me to answer that question?”

“Jesus, Johnny, you've gone of the deep end. And that's comin' from chairjock,” Murphy tells him, interface with a spider avatar drifting across the door, before it slides open. 

Johnny rushes through and down a flight of stairs as Arasaka guards running to meet him. He shoots the first in the head, point blank, brains splattering. The gun is powerful, devastating, sending a reverberation through Johnny’s silver arm. Enough that bone would have broken in the recoil. The guard no longer recognizable. 

The second guard stays further back, at the bottom of the second step. Johnny slams a trigger on the back of his gun, shooting flames out towards the guard. The man screams and staggers back, flesh burning as Johnny follows up with a shot through his chest. 

A third one follow, stumbling over burning remains, when three shots go through his skull, Rogue taking him down. The two continue down the spiraling stairs, stepping through blood and ash. The meet another guard at the end, who fires off his hand gun rapid fire. 

“Shred the whole fuckin' lot!”

The pair take cover behind the corner banister, Johnny reloading his gun with another twirl, before jumping back up. He shoots twice through the guards chest, watching the man fall in a bloody heap as they reach the end of the staircase. 

They go through a doorway and two more guards greet them, gun’s trained on the two edgerunners. 

“End him already! That’s an or-” 

The guard's yell is cut off by a bullet ripping through his shoulder, a second through his chest. His underling going down a mere moment later, with a headshot from Rogue; room cleared. Blood soaking into silver and marble floors. Johnny’s eyes focusing on the elevator across the room. 

“Murph?” Rogue calls out the netrunner’s name, her avatar showing on Johnny’s optics as she starts to hack the elevator. 

“She sought it with thimbles, she sought it with care, pursued it with forks and hope…” Poem finished, the elevator doors open.

“Johnny payload.” Rogue yells out, but Johnny’s already across the room, making his way to the elevator. He brings the bag down off his shoulder, placing it down, crouching,  and unzipping it. 

“Bushido II - bomb's name was what?” He asks, in a slow sly voice, entertaining at least himself if no one else. 

“Wrap it up, we gotta delta!”

“The ‘Demolitron’,” he sets the charges with a light hand, “we're good to blow.” 

He stands up and leaves the elevator, no hurry, only determination in him as he walks back towards Rogue. Like this is just a regular Thursday night. 

“'Saka elites incoming! Run for it!”

“Get the fuck out of there, Johnny,” Rogue yells as he steps away, “shoot the cables!” 

He does just that, blasting through the elevator cables, the carriage with the bomb dropping down through the lower levels. 

“Get the rotors spinning! We're on our way!” Rogue yells out to their pilot, but there’s something rattling around in Johnny’s chest. He’s got to save her.  It’s his only chance. 

“Not done yet still need to feed this to their subnet,” he waves a small handheld computer in the air. Rogue’s face twists and grimaces, infuriated. 

“I fucking knew it!” she swings her hand through the air, fingers clenched like she could strangle him, “This was never about "corporate colonialism" - this was about your groupie output wasn't it?!”

“Nah, you wouldn’t understand, Rogue.” 

“Givin' you four fuckin' minutes. Chopper's not gonna wait one sec longer.”

“Door lock breached. Arasaka sons-a-bitches incoming,” 

“Love you, Spider,” he jokes as he pushes through double doors, the woodwork of a lobby greeting him a moment before an armed guard can. 

“Whole world loves me.’

“Fuuuck!” He yells out, something between a frustration and excitement as he blasts a hole through a guard's chest. 

Johnny reloads before stepping out further, quickly having to pull back into the doorway for cover through the marble passageway. Two guards coming from a corridor on the left, a third from the right. The tower is made of rectangular balconies wrapping around, corners and curves to hide around. He fires around the corner at the guard on the left, taking a leg before a second shot takes their hide. 

A bullet whips past his head and he pulls back, guard coming to him, in front of the passageway. He slams his hand on the trigger, a plume of flames engulfing his enemy, before finishing them off with another shot. He rounds the corner and slams forwards into the third guard, knocking them off balance for a moment. Johnny swings his fist out, rings colliding against their jaw, they hit the ground. He fires a shot point blank into their head, continuing on his way. 

A staircase in the left of the room, across from the stone garden in the midst of the balonied section. He rushes up two sets of stairs, reloading along the way. It brings him to the upper level of the stacked balconies, a guard directly across the gap on the other side. The first shot Johnny fires splits the banister in front of the guard, the second shot rips through them. 

Three guards rush out from another room and Johnny pulls back, stepping down some steps, reloading. The movement forces the guards to come through the doorway, one at a time, letting him line up a shot that blasts through two at once, the third gagging as his friends' brains splatter and cling to his face. But he barely gets a moment to process before he’s dead too. 

Johnny runs up the stairs, stomping over corpses, as he goes around the corner. There’s a doorway that leads down to what looks to be a board room. One more guard down with a quick clean headshot, brains now sprayed across a vase of flowers on the table. He walks over them around the corner and towards a paneled wall. 

“Closing in on the access point,” he tells Murphy and the panel opens up, revealing a main frame. 

“Slot in.”

Johnny pulls out a little computer, stickers across the top of it. He flips it open and plugs it into the terminal. A little interface coming across his optics, Uploading Virus: Liberator.

“Sweet ICE-breaker,” the runner speaks up again, “Foreign, right? Just, wonder if we know anyone who can switch the subnet protocol…”

“Hilarious. You gonna help or not?”

“Do spiders spin webs? It's time we caught some flies.”

“Thanks, Murph.”

“Now, just for good measure…”Murphy trails off for just a moment, “Holy cybercow, we’re on TV! Take a look.”

A large TV mounted on the wall pings on, tuned to a news cast. Johnny shifts to the side to watch it. Brief clips of chaos flashing by in snapshots as the anchor talks over them. 

“And we turn now to Arasaka Tower, its evacuation ongoing after an unidentified terrorist organization released a manifesto threatening violence. The terrorists stating their desire to, quote-unquote, "topple a monument to corporate colonialism." Night City's mayor, Mbole Ebunike, has issued a statement declaring that he will bring the full force of the law to bear in response to any act of terrorism. Going now to our reporter on the scene at Arasaka Tower. Hopefully, he can shed some light on this situation as events unfold.”

People might finally wake up. There’s a swell of pride in Johnny’s chest, that this will finally send his message, finally change the world for the better. And V thinks of the rebuilt tower, now with remembrance monuments, but rebuilt and still standing proud fifty years later. The virus finishes uploading, Johnny unplugging his computer and tucking it back in his pocket. 

Took too long, but better than never. Stay safe, Alt. 

“All set. Now get outta there. They're movin' up! Hit the roof, quick!”

Johnny rushes through the board room and around the bends of the squared balcony, heading straight to the double doors on the other side. Just as he reaches it there’s a heavy blast, wood and metal shredding as Johnny is forced backwards. 

Pain shoots through his back as it collides with the floor, looking up where the door was blown through. A man stands in the destroyed remains of it. A tall man in heavily armored Arasaka garb, wielding a heavy duty shotgun. Cybernetic arms, a black cyberware jawed, and adornments of metal across his forehead. 

“Shit! That's Adam Smasher!”

Adam Smasher, the same borged out man protecting Yorinobu? He jumps down from the ledge, hitting the floor in front of Johnny with a heavy thud. He’s different than in 2077, more human, a healthy more flesh colored face behind the cyberware. Fuck, Johnny curses mentally and starts firing shots at Adam.  The devastation of his Malorian doing nothing as they fire into Adam’s cybernetic arms, the top of the line chrome holding up under each fire. 

“Johnny, run!”

He wants to fight, wants to teach Smasher a lesson the borged fucker won’t ever forget. Every fiber of his being screaming at him to stand and fight. But there’s a nuke on a timer, falling down to the depths of  the tower. There’s a helicopter getting ready to fly off. And while he doesn’t mind dying today, expects he just might, Rogue and Spider are waiting on him. He doesn’t need the last thing he hears to be their nagging… or for Rogue to make the chopper wait on him.  So, he swallows his pride, as foul as it tastes, and makes a run for it. 

Johnny pistol whips and shoots an Arasaka soldier on his way out the door, reaching the stairs back out to the roof. The door shuts behind him before any more soldiers can come after him. 

“Murphy!?” 

“Door's sealed, but it won't hold for long. Run, Johnny. Like the wind.”

He can see Rogue ahead of him running up the stairs. She should have been back in the chopper by now, she waited on Johnny. Rogue will bitch him out and nag until she’s blue in the face, but she’d never leave him behind.  Wrapped around his finger, no matter what he’s done. Johnny runs quickly up the stairs, to the roof, three steps behind Rogue as she jumps into the chopper, as it starts to lift off without him. 

“Johnny! Move!”

He jumps, grabbing Rogue’s outstretched arm, fingers wrapping tight around her forearm. Rogue tries to pull him inside to safety, when his fingers begin to slip. Something fires in the background a whistling noise, as his hand catches in Rouge’s, fingers twisting tightly together as she pulls. A boom rings out, hitting against the chopper with a spark and a shake, he slips right from Rogue’s grip, world going out from under him as she plummets back down to the tower roof. His back hits the metal with a crash, head bouncing against the cement, pain shooting through his body. Pain blurs his vision as the helicopter spins overhead, watching as the pilot regains control and they’re forced to fly off without the ill-fated rockerboy. 

Boots thunder against the floor around him, Smasher coming into view. Johnny’s silver arm shakes as he tries to reach for his gun, nerves on fire after the fall. Smasher throws down his heavy shot gun, kicking the gun away from Johnny’s fingers. 

“Smasher.” 

“Told ya, Johnny boy. Told you I'd end you someday,” Smasher all but snarls, a compartment in his cybernetic arm opening, Johnny’s staring down the barrel of the hidden weapon. 

Johnny holds his arm out, only for it to be shot, chrome sparking as it’s blasted. Vision going out as he passes out. It only feels like a moment, a blink and the world returns. 

The rattling of wheels against cement, strapped to a gurney. Bright and silver, a moon hangs high above the skyscrapers. Dirt and dust fly through the air, dancing around him like confetti. Faintly he hears sirens, hears screaming, hears cries. And when he shifts his head, to look further back, he can see the plumes of fire and smoke. 

“Yes, he’s still alive,” the Arasaka doctor wheeling him says, spoken in Japanese, but understood by Johnny...and by extension the merc tucked in the corner of his mind. Everything hurts, no other memory so sharp, so clear. Able to feel every bruise and cut, like she’s truly him. 

“Understood. We're en route,” the worker says above his head. 

And Johnny falls back into darkness again, unable to keep conscious, the sound of explosions and chaos erupting around him as he passes out. It’s impossible to know how long, black void blanketing it all, time losing its meaning and grip on them. 

It's a sharp slap across his face that wakes him back up, blood clinging to his lips. Blinking as he tries to take in his surroundings. He’s tied down to a chair, two guards standing before him. In a slick little room, a stretch of windows across the back wall, a bright mushroom cloud of destruction going off in the distance. Charge should have finished going off by now…

“Your associates - who are they? How did you acquire fissile material?” The guard questions him. 

“Gonna give good cop over there a chance to say something?  C'mooon…” Johnny sasses his interrogator, looking at the second quiet guard. 

Then the guard sucker punches him, knuckles slamming into Johnny’s gut with a sharp crushing pain. 

“Which terrorist organization do you belong to? How did you acquire fissile material?”

Another slap, backhanded and harsh against his face. His head forced to the side where he sees a man walking into the room; an older Japanese man, Saburo Arasaka. The corporate leader walks with his hands behind his back, a younger woman in all black following closely behind. 

“Old man don’t look too impressed with your efforts,” Johnny taunts. 

Saburo and the guards bow to each other, the old man speaking in Japanese, “leave us. I wish to look him in the eye.” 

“Hot damn,” Johnny rolls his eyes,  “done and gone.”

Saburo keeps his back turned to Johnny as the guards leave. The woman sets up a tech station by his chair. Her flingers click against a keyboard, looking at a screen before she finally speaks in a soft voice. 

“My husband died in that tower.” 

And Johnny’s stomach drops, pits with something akin to guilt. He can still see the burning clouds, the explosions in the distance through the window. Something went wrong, charges weren’t meant to be that strong. An evac announcement, charges just meant for the tower, a message. Not this. Casualties sure, everyone knew that was inevitable, but… 

“But there are fates worse than death,” the woman tells him, fixing a metal wreath over his head. Wires connecting it back to her computer system. 

“I… didn’t want him to die.” 

“Why did you do this?” Saburo asks in his native tongue. 

“To bring an end to the madness you wreak.”

“I have found that people lie, most often deceiving themselves. Not So the dead…”  

Saburo finally turns to face Silverhand walking closer, stalking closer. And Johnny spits at him, blood and saliva now sticking to Saburo’s face, red staining the wrinkled skin. There’s barely a twitch to the old man’s face as he wipes the spittle and blood from his face. Disgusted but not stopped. 

“Fuck you!” Johnny yells out for good measure, voice rough in his throat. 

“The dead are so very, very loud,” Saburo scowls, “And yet, lying is not in their nature. It is so… humbling - to listen to the dead speak… Begin.” 

The techie turns a switch and Johnny’s optics start to glitch, distort. Cyan fuzz piercing through the world as a UI screen appears. Soulkiller Primed: Commencing Engram Transfer. An crackle of electricity starts to course through him, a scream leaving him as his body convulses, Neurons cracking and frying as the world around his shakes, trembles, then finally cracks apart.

And V dies, not for the first time. 

Darkness overtakes him, near oblivion. Only the vaguest notion of existence, suspended in time and reality. In a cold black choking void. Enough awareness, just enough, to know fear. Overwhelming fear, terror, trapped under the thumb of Arasaka. Never knowing when, if, there’s an escape. Never knowing what can, will, or has happened. 

Time loses all meaning in digital purgatory. 

And then sunlight starts to breach through. A haze over his vision, like watching sunlight through fogged glass. He can see the sunlight but he can’t feel it, maybe it’s an Arasaka trick. Trying to convince him he’s free, that he’ll ever see the sun again, just to rip it away before he can ever feel it’s warmth on his skin. 

Then the view shifts, like someone turning their head, seeing the world through someone’s eyes. The sun beating down on a campsite, nomads, but their cuts and colors unlike any he’s seen. Not the Aldecaldos for sure, that much he knows. Might be some sort of experiment? Corps have never been above testing shit on people, nomads seen as less than human by most folks in the city, means they get away with it. 

Someone calls the name Aidan, a mother calling for her child, the girl...he’s seeing the world through That feeling that knowledge seeping into him. A tent with an older woman and a young girl, a mirror in the tent catches a reflection, showing him Aidan. A young sunburnt nomad child with dark hair and gray eyes Nearly identical to the other child he’d just seen. 

And in a blink, like a slide changing, the world changes again. Training sessions for the nomad kids. Taught to be strong. The kids made to fight each other, to spar, and losing meant going without food for the rest of the day if they were lucky. A beating if they were considered particularly pathetic. Some nights she won. Other nights watching other kids eat. The worst nights spent in a tent, mother rubbing salve on her injuries. 

She’s taught how to load a gun, repair an engine, and kill without shaking before she’s seen her seventh birthday. 

Members of the ‘family’ culled before everyone. Because they were sick. Because they were weak. Because they were a burden. They could drag the rest of the family down, The Herd must be culled so that they can stay strong. For the best of the family.

Gareth, an older man of the nomad family, gets sick. cancer running rampant in his body, treatment available but timely… expensive.  He’d sneak toasted marshmallows to Aidan on nights she’d be made to go without anything…. 

He begs to die on his feet rather than his knees like most cullings. 

His wish is denied. 

Aidan’s father forces a dying man to his knees, pressing a captive bolt pistol to the back of his skull and killing him in front of the family. For their own good. 

And one day, Aidan gets sick too. Johnny can’t feel it through her, through the snapshots, too disconnected. But he gets a rumbling of it through her. Body aching, head in agony, world constantly spinning enough to make her puke. 

She tells no one. Refuses to be the next one culled, no doubt her father’s rules apply to her. Her sister, the same age and near a picture perfect copy, frets over her as they go to pick through a landfill. Instructed to spend evenings in search of anything useful to the family, to earn their keep. A ringing in her ears, world spinning as the noise builds and builds until silence strikes and she drops to the ground. 

The world has gone silent. She wakes up in a med tent, but can hear nothing. A world of noises and chaos now silent. 

And a stone faced father comes barging in, he’s saying something, but she doesn’t know what.  Flinching in threadbare sheets, knowing the signs of his cold anger, but not what’s driving it, not how to fix it. Nails dig into her shoulder, dragged from the medical tent and out into the midst of the camp sigh. Vision blurred by tears. She yells out what’s happening, but can’t hear the words. 

But she knows the press of the barrel against her head, the touch of the captive bolt pistol, how they cull the herd. She was weak, defective, broken. Nomad family gathered around, watching her cry and scream, unable to hear herself.  Weak and pathetic before them all. 

Then a pair of hands grab her, save her, pull her away and into a hug. Her mother holds her tight, crying, screaming, then kissing the top of her daughter’s head. Whispering words she knows won’t reach her. Aidan is saved, she doesn’t know what’s said. What spared her life. But she’s allowed to live on. 

Her mother and sister learn ASL with her; the only two who never shun her, protecting her too much if anything. The implication clear whether in kindness or anger, she’s weak now. Defected. But her father expects her to work harder, to prove his mercy wasn’t a mistake. That this child earned her right to live. 

She earns hearing aids years later[ and cries when she first puts them in; the world is too loud, too painful. Aidan keeps them low and continues using ASL. 

A homeless teenage girl in a town they ransack; long dark hair and heavy makeup. Calls herself Avarice, they call her Ava. She tries to sign to Aidan and the young nomad girl is in love that easy, desperate for someone who cares enough to meet her even halfway. Despite it all, she begs Ava to join The Herd. Because maybe hell is more bearable when you’re in love. 

She’s dragged to the med tent one night, told she needs a checkup, no rhyme or reason. Knowing better than to fight her father when he’s barking orders. They sedate her, clan doctor holding her down and forcing her into unconsciousness. She awakes with a scar across her lower stomach. Sterilized. So, she’ll never pass along defective genes. 

The next snapshot doesn’t feel much longer after, older but not by much, a year maybe. When The Herd is swarmed by an rival nomad clan, one they’ve fucked over one time too many. Aidan trying to drive one of the cars to get her sister and mother away from the ambush. When a rival vehicle slams into them, a screech of tires, the gnash of metal. Eira and Aidan safe, but their mother is pinned between a caved-in door and the center console, bleeding where shrapnel pierces deep into her legs. 

Trapped until Aidan’s father and a group from the family find them, The three women pulled from a crushed vehicle, the mother the only one gravely injured. Aidan follows as she’s dragged to an emergency medical set up. 

Legs too damaged, it'd require a double amputation, prosthetics or cyberware. Easily doable. Nowhere near beyond saving if they’d act in time, take the time. But they never do, never truly will. Aidan begs for her mother’s life, like her mother did for her. For her father to have mercy just one more time. 

And the bolt pistol is put in her hands. She’s told to do it. To cull her mother, to be strong, to put the family above the individual. A test of her strength. 

She refuses, screams, and points the gun at him. And he mocks her tears, mocks the way her hands shake. He rips the pistol from her hands, she fights and pulls with him. But he’s over a foot taller, stronger, leaves her black and blue; crying on the ground with his boot on her back as he takes the gun and kills her mother. 

And once her mother’s body is burned to ash, she runs.

Years of traveling, towns across NUSA, some faces are kinder than others. Eira and Ava sent to track her down, to kill the traitor. 

Eventually she finds herself in Night City, but not the one Johnny knows. Newer, slicker, brighter. But the corruption and apathy remain, chrome even more common place than it was before. Folks more metal than flesh, every ripper doc with back alley tech. 

She meets a friend, Jackie, Johnny knows his name despite never hearing it. A big ‘tino fucker covered in gaudy gold chains who helps her settle in. Taken into his home. Merc work, scummy nothing jobs, merc janitors at best. Jackie pulls her into a tight hug, the nomad unsure of what to do as his arms wrap around her, face pressed into his chest. 

Then there’s a sharp pain, nerves and neurons firing off as everything is suddenly real. No haze or glass between him and her memories. Face tucked in against fabric, a chest, but there’s no warmth. No heartbeat. Arms wrapped tight around a body that’s cold and limp, one hurting like it’s been ripped open. They feel like his own, it feels like it’s his body. 

He can feel the movement of muscles, the beat of the body’s heart. How the face is twisted up with tears running wet and hot down the cheeks. It feels like him, but it's not. Smaller, thinner. 

No more ‘chicas’, ‘jainas’, or the odd ‘mija’. No more smiles that outshine the sun. No more nagging her to look on the bright side. No more bear hugs or hands the size of her head ruffling through her hair. No more Jackie….

Thoughts not his own swim around his head, the voice feminine. What the hell is Arasaka playing at? Playing someone else’s memories, trying to make him sit in the backseat of someone else's life? An experiment, they going to try to twist him, fuck with his head?

“Mr. Welles has passed. Where shall I take his remains?” An AI voice asks, in some tech cab with a bleached digital butler staring at her. 

He’s got to find a way out, there’s got to be a way? But how do you leave someone’s head? 

The body, her body, moves without his permission. Able to feel it like it’s his own and he can see just who’s corpse she was clinging to. Jackie… The same guy who took her in, now dead in the back of a cab. There’s a pit in her stomach, a tightness in her chest; he can feel her pain… 

He’s both separate and intrinsically connected, his thoughts and feelings distinct enough, but her own still overwhelming. 

”W-what?” She says...what was her name Aidan, Brayden, Hayden, some shit... Frat boy name on a nomad brat. 

She stumbles over her words, sounds like she barely knows how to talk, might be the blubbering. Fuck if he knows or cares. Her grief, while he can feel it around him, surrounding him from where he sits in her head, is her own. He’s got bigger worries, bigger fish to fry. Former nomad, now a merc, but that doesn’t meant she can’t be with Arasaka. Corps hire mercs, use nomads as scapegoats, all sorts of shit. She could be in on whatever the fuck this is. 

He’s just got to figure out what exactly the fuck this is, what Arasaka’s plan is. A way to get intel from him? Prodding at memories by seeing if someone else’s sparks something?

“The Excelsior package provides for the disposal of passenger remains free of charge. I merely require a destination.”

“I…he-he’d want to be with his family.”

“Mr. Welles' closest blood relative is Guadalupe Alejandra Welles, proprietress of the El Coyote Cojo bar. I will make sure to deliver him safely. Mr. DeShawn awaits you in room number two-oh-four. ” 

Her hands are stained with blood, her forearm has a gash down it. He can see the traces of Mantis Blades, one ripped out. Something happened, flashes of dangling off an Arasaka branded hotel, holding her friend up. Red everywhere, fighting Arasaka guards. Doesn’t mean she didn’t work with them, how else would they somehow plant him in her head, in her memories. 

She squeezes her friend’s shoulders and presses her forehead to his, feeling the cold of his corpse. 

“See ya in the major leagues, Jack…”

She gets out of the back of the cab, she’s dressed like a corpo, he realizes when her eyesight catches her body. White blouse, stained red with blood, black slacks. Rain is pouring down on her, as she walks through a dirty alley. She doesn’t seem to notice Johnny’s existence, his presence in her head. Everything he thinks, tries to scream without a mouth, doesn’t earn him a response. 

Then again, if she is with Arasaka, might be told to ignore him. He’d be pulling his hair out if he had a body, if he existed beyond some former tarmac rat’s mind. She walks through a door into a filthy excuse for a motel, the No-Tell. There's chatter around them and he catches the rambling of a tv, something about Saburo Arasaka. But she doesn’t stay to linger, doesn’t let him fully hear it. Something about the old fucker’s life. 

But she’s at the door of a hotel room before he can hear much, bloodied knuckles knocking against the door. 

“It's V,” She says, knocking again when there’s no answer. V? Since when is she V? Where the fuck did she get V from? 

The door opens and a guy comes out, giant fucker around a foot or so taller than her, so was her newly departed friend. Which begs the question, how tall is she?

God, he’s stuck in the skull of some munchkin merc, isn’t he? 

Everyone, everything is… bigger. A hand on her shoulder, nearly the size of her head stops her from stepping forward. And he hates it, someone putting hands on him, controlling him so easily, he tries to force her hands to punch the ugly fucker. But it doesn’t happen, hands clenched at her side. How the hell does she fight anyone like this anyway, she’s half the height of everyone she meets. 

“He waiting.” 

V, Aidan; whatever dumb fuck name she has is allowed into the motel room. A man inside, puffing away on a cigar, watching the news. He can feel her worry swelling inside of her as she clears her throat, the man doesn’t look Arasaka. But the little runt of a merc has to be attached to them somehow. He’s not one to give Arasaka too much credit, be none if he had his way, but they’re not dumb enough to put his engram in any klepto punk’s head. 

Arasaka uploaded his engram, scorching him with Soukiller, he remembers that. Mikoshi is where they store them, digital souls tucked away, where they got the tech to play with the human mind. If she made it there, they had to have trusted her. 

“WNS… N54… Even the pirate networks… You blowin' up everywhere! And the Jackster? He out in the car?” 

“He’s...dead.” Having to say it, having to hear it from her own lips. Stuck in the whiny mind of an Arasaka asslicker, wonderful. 

“Condolences friend and the relic?”

The relic? Arasaka’s ultimate project, what they needed Soulkiller before. There’s always been a constant murmur about it, Arasaka looking to commodify the human soul. Must have finally rolled it out after they fried him. 

“Here,” she explains by tapping her chipslot, is that how he’s here? 

“Hmm, I was afraid of that…” 

“What?!”

But the relic, they advertised it like imaginary friends, or some shit. If he was on that, she’d be able to see and hear him right? Unless Arasaka fucked up… 

“Saburo Arasaka,” the man, Dex, paces, “Dead…?! You got any notion of the shit you pulled me into?! You offed the fuckin' emperor! His majesty! Anyone with so much as a pinky toe dipped in this mess is as good as dead!”

Saburo’s dead, old sack of shit finally kicked it… and Johnny’s in the killer’s head. Memories, her’s, creep up. Ones he didn’t get in the brief glitches of memories before. Saburo’s body, dead limp and collapsed on a hotel floor. Ripping the dogtags from his bruised neck. Means Johnny won’t get the satisfaction of offing the bastard himself.  

“I didn’t kill Saburo! I- I-”

She stumbles and trips over every word; can she act like she didn’t fuck up any of this? Like she has no role in Jackie and Bug’s deaths… He’d gag on her feelings if he could, a blubbering child, those memories may be a mystery to him right now. But he buys it, if he couldn’t manage to kill Saburo, he doubts some miserable little half pint could, chick can barely get a sentence out. Which means he very well may still be tripping around in the neurons of some shitty nomad turned bootlicker. 

"No shit?l Tell that to the ‘Saka ninjas they send after you!”

“We...we got to leave Night City.”

“You don’t say.” 

“Call Parker, we close the deal, collect our eddies, and go off the radar.” 

“A’ight, settle down, Gotta be tactical about this. Parker, eddies, then we leave the city limits behind. But first… Your face… got blood all over it. Bathroom's there. Go get yourself cleaned up.”

She nods and makes her, their, way to the bathroom. Dex is going to trick her, pull some shit, Johnny can see it a mile away. Chick’s outnumbered, outstrength, if they think she’s a risk and Dex made it clear he does, he’ll drop her. But she doesn’t see it, walking into the bathroom and settling at the sink. The mirror lights up, showing her face, giving him the first good look at her since those foggy memories of childhood. 

He sees traces of that kid; gray eyes and her face is soft. Young, delicate, but with a heavy layer of blood coating iit. 

Her blood and Jackie’s.

He can taste the bile in her throat, as if his own, can feel the burn of it and the churn of her gut as she pukes into the sink. It's not the first time he’s ended up with the taste of someone elses puke in his mouth, though it’s her mouth, he supposes. She pushes her bleached blonde hair off her face as she retches, streaking blood through it. 

If she would have refused the job. 

If she had gotten them up the ladder. 

If she had been stronger. 

If she had been stealthier.

If she had gotten them through the lobby quicker. 

If she could have convinced Delamain to get him to a doc.

If she knew better first aid. 

He tries to shut it out, the knots in her guts, the ache in her chest. Her thoughts spinning around her head and what feels like his. Surrounded by the feelings of another, he can’t fucking live like this, there’s got to be a way out. 

She washes the blood from her hands and face; Jackie wanted this for her, one of the only people who ever wanted anything good for her. If only for him, she owes it to him to finish this job.

Can she fucking hear him? He tries to mentally scream at her, he’s going to find a way out of this, if he has to claw his way out of her damn head! Slamming him in the head of some grieving merc, that Saburo’s idea of a sick final joke? Making him feel someone else’s pain meant to make him talk? Meant to give everything away? If hell exists, Saburo better be burning or Johnny will set the son of a bitch on fire himself. 

Nothing works, nothing seems to draw her attention. Johnny thinking to a void as she leaves the bathroom. 

She’s punched clean in the head as soon as she steps out the door, to the surprise of no one but her, the rattling of her skull and shock of pain hitting Johnny like it’s his own head. The merc is knocked to the floor and a boot kicks into her gut for good measure. Her head stomped on, beaten to the ground like all five feet of her is a truly dangerous threat. 

“Can’t risk it, V,” Dex levels a pistol with her temple as she writhes on the ground, “‘Member our first convo?”

“I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Seems I've chosen the quiet life, after all. No blaze o' glory for me.”

And Dex pulls the trigger, a bang in the dirty motel room as he fires a shot into the merc’s head. Agony and terror, gagging on blood, darkness, cold, and fear… then nothing. 

And Johnny dies, not for the first time. 

Death relived, but through the eyes of another. The bullet hits. Soulkiller scorches. And the world around the two rewrites at the moment of their second deaths. Reconstructs and digitizes. A liminal space within the net. Structures like the squared mazes of balconies and stairs within Arasaka Tower of 2023. 

But everything made up of digital matter, pixels of color collected loosely to form the shapes against a black backdrop. Nearly everything a shade of blue, but hints of red bleeding through. 

Nothing moves or feels like reality, floatier, less certain. And it all moves, pixels twitching, it all shifts, all seems… alive. 

That where V finds herself, dying again but through Johnny, an echo of the pain from his torture still seeming to stick to her. But when she looks down, it’s her, but not. Like the world around her she knows seems to be constructed of these pixels, data, a bright red hue to her But it all forms to be her. Her arms, her painted nails, her freckles, her scars. They move with her permission, no one else’s. 

But what is happening? 

The biochip, maybe? But it’s meant to show someone like an imaginary friend, not put you in their lives, then send you to the net. At least she thinks this is the net, remembering descriptions Bug had given her. And by all intents and purposes, she should be dead. 

Data around her shakes, reverberates, brightens and stretches across the hall around her. There’s a thrum to it all, that she can hear, no physical limitation in the net… Then it stops only to reveal something new. A flash of bright red, standing out in a sea of blue data. It forms the shape of a person, composed of red data and negative space, their back to her as they lean forward on the banister. 

V signs from instinct, but finds no translator, forcing her to speak, “Hey!” 

She rushes towards the figure, they don’t answer her call, maybe they know what’s happening? But as she gets close, they push off the banister and turn. Their figure blurs as they move away from her, but she sees a closer glimpse. 

It’s a man, not as tall as Jackie, but still over a foot taller than her. Shoulder length dark hair and what looks to be the outline of sunglasses on his digital form. Even in the strange form, she recognizes him. The man’s who’s death she just lived, moment after her own. Johnny Silverhand. He blips away as he turns. 

The flash of red, his form, now further away, on the stairs of the lobby. 

“Hey, sir!” she calls out again, trying to sound vaguely polite as she rushes towards the stairs, he has to know what’s going on. He stands from the stairs and blips away just as she reaches them. 

She runs up that first set of steps seeing his form sitting on the second, “Johnny!” 

And he’s gone as soon as she reaches him, like they’re playing some sort of game, does he not hear her? She knows damn well he’s not deaf, if she can hear in this place, he should be able to. She reaches the top of the stairs, reaching another balcony railing, him around the corner on the adjacent side of the square floor. His back is to the banister, hands on it. Paying her no mind. 

“Robert!” She yells his full first name, remembering seeing it scrawled in chicken scratch across an enlistment form. But she turns the corner and he’s gone. 

But when she turns her head she sees his back again, down a narrow passageway made of more negative space than blue data. She walks across the negative space, hands skimming the data that forms it’s walls, each step taking her closer to him. She heard three different names, unsure of which may earn her an answer. 

“Robbie! Robert!”

Neither name spurs a reaction, he doesn’t turn, doesn’t speak. Only stands at the end of hall, shifting in pace,  as she continues her way to him. And she stops when she’s within arm’s reach, he hasn’t blipped away, hasn’t ran off.  Able to see fully now, the red data particles that form a bullet proof vest, the cyberware left arm. V reaches out and taps a finger against his shoulder. 

“Johnny?” 

He turns to face her and she doesn’t know if she should feel relieved, or terrified. 

“And you? Who are you?” 

Her answer catches in her throat, mouth half open when it hits. White hot blinding pain ripping through every nerve, head and world shattering as she screams. Like she’s been torn open, every part of her stripped raw and set on fire. Everything vanishes from her sight as she cries out. 

V’s contact UI blips, blurry as data fills it, system reboot. Her senses return to her, slowly and steadily as systems reload. The arm her blade was ripped from burns, open nerves exposed to the air. Her head feels shattered, aching as if it’s been broken apart. There’s a stench of trash and filth around her. There’s a weight on top of her, heavy, firm, crushing down onto her lungs. The warmth and stick mess of blood clings to everything. Caked across her skull, down her neck, her arm. 

The diagnostics flicker away, but her vision still struggles. A cyan fuzz clings around and distorts it all. Her depth of field is cut off, half her vision seemingly gone. Not aided by the fact that it’s dark, looking around she can see trash thrown atop her. a cold sheet of metal lays on top of her. Metal and plastic of discarded goods lay beneath and around her, jabbing uncomfortably into her flesh. 

A landfill, if she were to wager a guess, Dex tossed her out like trash. How is she not dead? How hasn’t she bled out?

She doesn’t know the answer, but she knows if she doesn’t do something, she’ll die anyway. Favoring her left arm, the right still damaged, she pushes up on the sheet of metal. Muscles scream in protest, pain shooting through them as she forces herself to put her weight into it. And she rolls it off of her and she can breathe a little easier, move a little better. A bit more light allowed on her. But she still can’t see very well, like her right eye is closed. 

Tempting fate, she presses her hand to it, sees nothing, when she closes her left. The world goes black. She touches the lid, feeling the blood that mats her eyelashes, she pries her eyelid open with her fingers. Nothing. Down a blade and an eye, she needs to move. Vik can fix those, he can fix this. 

She shoves a TV off of her legs, twists up s to see the sky. Silver and orange light color the world, moonlight and fire, plumes of dark smoke coming from somewhere she’s in some sort of pit or ravine within the landfill, a wall of dirt and trash around her. An upward climb to save herself. 

V forces her body to move even as it aches and screams in pain, forces her shredded arm to grip even as she can see the tendons twitching through the mangled remains of it. She forces blood soaked fingernails to dig into dirt and grip abandoned pizza boxes for traction, slips her aching feet in between wires and appliances for foot holds.

“Fuck!” she screams out loud, but can’t hear it, as she loses her traction and starts to slip. She extends her left blade, sinking it into the wall of muck and trash. Her right arm stings, throbs, begs to release a tool it no longer has. 

She uses her blade to help pulls herself, dragging herself up and up with every sink of it into the muck. V’s thankful she’s lost her hearing aids in the process, hell maybe Dex stole them back to recoup some losses, but it means she can’t hear her own curses, her own groans of pain, her own rattling breaths with bruised lungs

And she reaches the surface. Rusted remains of god knows what surrounds her and a trashcan fire burns not far away, but she’s out of the pit. She pulls her feet under her and she tries to stand, body shaking, swaying, trembling with blood loss and pain. 

But for a moment, she rises.

She stands, looking out across the landfill of trash, cyan fuzz still glitching around her,  and for a moment...maybe she’s okay. Maybe she can walk out of this, find Vik, maybe she can be okay. 

V collapses with the next step, body all at once going out from under her, mocking her hope. Mocking her moment of stupid fucking hope as her back meets the mud. It mingles with blood, collides with her gore, and sticks to her open wounds. She lays there in muck, just breathing, her lungs ache with the strength needed just to do that. Each one feels fainter than the last. Her eyes start to close, feel too heavy, her right one might very well already be shut… she wouldn’t know. A mangled mess of who she once was, now laying in filth, surrounded by trash. 

Maybe she’ll not move again… maybe this is a fitting end. A childhood of scavenging landfills, thrown in a dumpster her first night in the city, and dying in a landfill; maybe the world has been trying to tell her something all along. She’d never have to face Mama Welles, Misty, or Vik; never have to tell them she failed Jackie. Maybe she’ll just let all go, never even have time to grieve, maybe it’s best to just let it all go… 

“Wake the fuck up, Samurai. We got a city to burn.” 

A rasp of a voice rings out and she gasps, opening her eyes. A man kneeled over her, one she knows well, but he’s no longer digitized and she’s not looking through his eyes. Silver fingers pull his aviators off of his face, dark brown eyes scrutinizing her. His form isn’t solid, glitches like old vhs footage. 

But...

She heard him. 

[dontrunintofire]

Newsies/MCU crossover

(yeah, I know how it sounds)

Ok so I made a thing

I didn’t mean to make this a thing, it just sorta happened. So if you saw my post a couple days ago, I said that I had been watching wandavision and fell in love with it and it reawakened my love for marvel. I like to hyper fixate a lot (like I am doing with newsies) but I’m also simultaneously doing it with wandavision/the entirety of the MCU.

Anyway, send help because I have commited a sin

What if...it was newsies, but during the mcu timeline. (basically a modern au??) Still in New York, but the boys know superheroes exist and they think that’s awesome and some of the older newsies remember when the battle of new york took place. My main headcannon is during and after the blip, when everyone comes back.

So I needed to figure who all survived and who all dusted. I wasn’t sure how to do that so I used an app on my phone that separates different names into groups randomly. I tried to include every character but I know I forgot some. And this is mainly for the broadway musical since I’m more familiar with that than the movie but you can imagine it as whatever you want really.

Group 1 is people who survived the snap and group 2 is people who disappeared.

(Did this in like 5 minutes so I probably spelled some names wrong oops)

Anyway do with this information what you will

When I first looked at it I definitely wanted to change some things but I didn’t let myself. I think you can make some pretty interesting hcs with this info. Here’s what I have so far:

(Warning: lots of death, but for those of you who watch marvel you know that they all come back later)

The snap takes place around whenever they would be the ages they are when newsies takes place. So jack and davey are 17, katherine is around 18-19 maybe (do we ever really find out?), crutchie is 15??, Les is almost 10 etc.

I forgot to add the rest of the jacobs family (my bad) so I decided to throw my own wrench in there: davey is the only one in his family to disappear; sarah, les, his parents all survive. It sucks and I hate myself for it, but I think it adds a bunch of creative opportunities.

For example—this one is was on the random generator—davey snapped away, but les didn’t. If les was almost ten and davey was 17, then five years later when davey comes back, les is 15. So davey and les originally were seven years apart and now they’re only two. And the little boy that davey felt so responsible for turned into a teenager in what seemed like a day to davey.

We never know for sure kath’s age, but I assume she can’t be more than one or two years older than jack at most. Problem is, kath survives and jack doesn’t. So jack comes back as 17 and kath has aged five years. This definitely throws a kink in their relationship. I’m not sure what to do about this one (what do you think about this?)

Albert and spot both disappear. Regardless of whether you ship ralbert or sprace, race loses them both. He has to go five years without both of them.

Also, jack is gone too, so that makes race the leader of whatever is left of the newsies. He just lost albert, spot, crutchie, davey, jack, and a lot of other newsies and he has to step up and lead the remaininder. My heart hurts

Ike survived but mike didn’t. Just let that sink in...

So I think the app I used was being mean on purpose, because they split up all three sets of brothers. Les survived, Davey didn’t. Ike survived, mike didn’t. Morris survived, Oscar didn’t.

When oscar “died” it probably made morris even more angry and aggressive towards the remaining newsies, since they are the easiest target for him. And again, it’s hard on race because now he feels responsible for keeping all of them safe

Snyder survived (😡) and in the chaos of the snap there were probably a lot of jailbreaks. Snyder could have easily slipped through the radar. That might pose potential problems....

All four of the brooklyn newsies snapped away coincidentally. Without spot conlin, brooklyn is having touble keeping up their “bad boy” persona.

I have no idea what I’m gonna do with all this, but I’m too far in to stop now. I wanna keep building off of this and maybe tie it into wandavision or other mcu installations possibly. So reblog with your newsies/mcu headcannon, or request me an hc in my asks or just let me know what you think about all this.

Don’t let this flop guys I’m counting on you