#he can be a bit of a prickly guy and I won't ever say it to his face but that is my work dad and I look up to him

[pierswife]

Like I definitely wanna keep pursuing my EE degree, that hasn't changed. I like working with electrical stuff a lot. It's math and logic and figuring things out and troubleshooting things. But like... Maybe getting some formal coding classes would be fun too (instead of being self-taught + some small pointers from my boss)

[mochinomnoms]

What do you think would happen if Floyd were to meet Riddle's mother?! Cuz I just read your Mama/Papa leech Headcanons about meeting their sons crush. But what if it’s reversed? Riddle's mother Meeting Floyd? (I would also say Yuu's parents meeting Jade, but unfortunately, that won't be happening)

“Wow, I thought Lil Goldfishie was a stick in the mud, his mama has a whole branch up her—” *gets kicked in the groin*

I have very mixed feelings about Riddle's mother, in that with the context we have right now she's a bitch and if I ever see her it's on motherfucking sight. But she must love her son still, right? Is she harsh because he wants to set Riddle up for success, but only knows the way she was raised? Is she scared of her kid getting hurt or failing, and so she tries to shield him from all possible harm? Is she so hyperaware of all the dangers in society that she feels the need to keep him in a little bubble, knowing in the back of her mind that making mistakes and getting hurt is part of growing up? A good mother would never want to see their child ever get hurt if it were up to them. I mean, she must care for him in some way, but how? In the manga or novel (not sure which) they mention that she fought back against the school to keep him in, but was that because she wanted him to have the prestige of NRC in his background or because she wants what's best for him? She homeschooled him herself to the point that he's an immensely powerful mage already as a teen, so she could've hypothetically kept doing the same thing, right? Is she a mother that truly cares for her son but suffered the same childhood, but she “turned out fine” so it must be fine? Or is she just a bitch, lol. Either way, she is emotionally and affectionately neglectful and doesn't realize it at best, and emotionally and psychologically abusive at worst.

I have a lot to say on the topic of Mrs. Rosehearts, about her parenting, the cultural differences of child-rearing that EN players and JP players might have. This post talks about it in depth, but I can say more on the topic later.

In regards to Floyd meeting Mrs. Rosehearts, probably against Riddle's wishes or while he's distracted, the poor guy is set up for disappointment. While it's implied that Mama Leech is overprotective and that she calls very often, if not daily, to check in on her sons, they still had enough freedom growing up to get into shenanigans and hijinks. I mean, they beat up a sturgeon and took some of its scales to fashion into earrings like a trophy. And they both speak very fondly of her, so Floyd is going into meeting Mrs. Rosehearts with the expectation that she might be a bit stuffy. But, she raised Riddle, his crush and favorite human! He's strict and mean at times, but he cares a lot for his dorm and is super diligent, she must be like that too!

But she's so…critical. She looks at him unamused, very standoffish, but is polite. He guesses. He can see where Riddle got his strictness from.

“Hello. Who might you be?” She probably didn't expect to have some random student, not even from her son's dorm, come up to her. He was...tall. Towered over her, and based on the color of his hair and sharp teeth, most likely wasn't human.

“Huh, you're not as red as my Lil Goldfishie is.”

She blinked and frowned, resisting the urge to chastise the strange fellow for his informal tone and rube behavior. Not her son, not her problem.

“Pardon? Do you often speak to your elders like this?” she asked, eyeing him as she turned away to watch her son give orders to his dorm as they managed an informational booth.

“Yeah, why not? They're just people. Not like I'm being rude or anything” She would strongly disagree. “You're kinda prickly, like a lionfish.”

“W-what?” She changed her mind, someone needs to put him in her place. “Now listen here, young man, it's quite rude to call people anything other than their na—”

“They're real mean, ya know. Venomous, a nuisance, can't even mess with it cause it has a bunch of spines—oh! Imma call you Mama Lionfish.” The young man snapped his left fingers like he made a revelation.

Mrs. Rosehearts had learned to control her temper, but she still had her moments, Her face been bright red, her lips thinned, and she opened her mouth to start berating the young man.

“Floyd Leech! What did I tell you about calling people names?” A tall, slender women came up to them, pale skin and hair hue similar to the man in front of her. She wore a cream-colored dress and matching blazer, adorned with gold and pearls, and a matching wide brimmed hat. She was followed by Riddle, who looked a mix of anger and concern.

“Never do it in front of people, yeah, yeah.” The man named Floyd pouted, but brightened at the sight of Riddle. “Oh hey Lil Goldfishie! What's uuuup?”

Floyd jogged over to Riddle, halting him midstep as Mrs. Rosehearts noticed Riddle almost bristle, trying to sidestep and get around Floyd. He was failing.

“I apologize, you know how boys can be!” The woman in front of her also towered over her, though not nearly as much as her son did. “My Floyd doesn't mean anything by it, he just a silly boy.”

The blue haired woman laughed, then abruptly stopped, narrowing her golden gaze as she thinly smiled.

“You're the man's mother, I assume.” Mrs. Rosehearts replied, smoothing out her skirt and clutching her hands together. “He's very...spirited. He's from the Leech family? Is it safe to assume that your the Leech family matriarch?”

The other woman's sharp toothed smile grew as she nodded. “Yes. It's not often that I come to the surface. But it's wonderful to know that I'm as—oh—well-known, on the surface, as under the sea.”

Mrs. Rosehearts wouldn't use the word 'well-known' as much as she would infamous.

“Yes, well. I would just remind your son to not so blatantly call people names to their faces.” she said, clenching and unclenching her fist in an attempt to sooth herself. “I'm not sure what your customs are under the sea, but up here he would be considered a riffraff.”

For all her talk about politeness, Mrs. Rosehearts forgot herself at time and let things slip out of her mouth faster than she processed. She knew she pressed a button when Mrs. Leech's smile disappeared.

It was only for a moment, but with the blank face and the way her gold eyes bore into her, it felt like her body and soul were being grasped by something dark and violent.

Then that feeling was gone as Mrs. Leech smiled again and closed her eyes, tilting her head.

“He'll be fine, I'm sure he'll find his people. After all, it seems he's already found someone in your son.”

Both women moved their gazes to the pair, now bickering. Well, Riddle was, the one called Floyd, was just swaying on his heels as he grinned and make a comment here and there. Each one after the other seemed to fluster her son further, his cheeks growing in color as they spoke. Most people who knew her son would assume that the red was attributed to his rage, and it mostly was. But (fortunately or unfortunately, she couldn't decide) her son was much like her. It wasn't rage that made his eyes dart away each time their eyes met for too long. It wasn't rage that made him scuff his foot every so often. And it most certainly wasn't rage in his eyes.

Mrs. Rosehearts cleared her throat, turning away from Mrs. Leech and walking to her son.

“I don't know what you're implying, but I must be going now. My son and I still need to tour his dorm.”

Mrs. Leech watched the other woman walk away, sighing.

“Oh, what a disdainful woman. And her son is so lovely too…she really is like a lionfish.”

“Yeah, it's a good nickname for her, right Mama?” Floyd came bounding over, stretching his arms. “Is' too bad she's a stuck-up, gonna real annoying if she's my mother-in-law.”

“Hm, I'll just have to overcompensate then and be the best Mama for you and the little Riddle!” Mama Leech clapped her hands excitedly, sighing in bliss at the thought.

“Oh, it will be so wonderful to see the family grow big...oh! By the way, Floyd.” Mama Leech walked away, Floyd following after diligently. “I might have mentioned a little 'something' to him about your cute rambles about him. He was so cute, all red and flushed when I said you're positively infatuated, calling him cute and—”

“Aw what! Mama!”

[hauntedparadisebandana]

Another day, another assassin's creed hc (I'm trying to feed you guys this week)

Crazy enough, this one isn't about Desmond, but Shaun. I hc that Shaun likes to pick up new languages like Pokémon cards. It's one of his strong points and is fairly easy for him. He likes the sound and feeling of different words rolling off his tongue and how nice it sounds, which leads me to hc he has a mild case of echolalia or synesthesia.

In many instances while working, he'll listen to Desmond in the background, talking to himself in a different language. Shaun will then mumble the words to himself, repeating them under his breath while his eyes remain glued to his screen. He loves the way it sounds in his mouth, pure satisfaction. It would be weird to think of, a strong, smart, head-on guy like him to do that. He's been looked at weirdly by the others once or twice, being caught whispering to himself. He makes the excuse that he's simply trying to remember information.

Rebecca thinks it's just this funniest thing ever. Laughing when she finds out about it, determined to catch it for herself. One bright early morning, Shaun is already in the kitchen making coffee. The others trickle in soon after, and Desmond enters a bit later, mumbling in Italian.

"Care for a cup, Desmond?" He inquires, sliding a hot cup across the counter for him.

"I should probably start writing the shopping list for this week- ah, yes, grazie."

"Grazie," Shaun silently whispers into his cup, taking a sip. His face then curls up in disgust, he forgot the creamer. He makes quick work of getting some so his cup won't go cold. He glances up at the others for a moment, surprised when he sees Desmond with narrowed eyes, Rebecca sneering in the back, and Lucy chuckling quietly.

The silence and stares causes his skin and face to flush and go hot.

"And just why are you guys staring?" He lowers his brows, hand on his hip.

"Dude, we just caught you. Why do you do that? You know, repeat what he says." Rebecca's question puts him on the spot. Her eyes scrutinizing him.

"Yea, now that I think about it, I have seen you whispering to yourself after I talk. I thought I was just crazy." Desmond turns on his heels, walking back over to the counter where Shaun stands frozen in place.

He begins to talk and nothing comes out, his skin feeling prickly, no words leaving his mouth because he does know, well... maybe. But It would be weird to explain why he does it.

"It seems like echolalia," Lucy proclaims, "Maybe it just feels good to say, or it could be synesthesia."

"Echo... synesthe... what?" Desmond raises a brow.

"Echolalia is the repetition of words, phrases, or sounds. Synesthesia is when the brain basically routes sensory information through multiple different senses. So you'll experience more than one sense at the same time, get it?"

"Ah, ok."

Rebecca's hand flies to her phone, quickly looking up what this... echolalia and synesthesia is in further detail.

"mumble" common in speech development, "mumble" verbal stim "mumble" can occur in people with certain conditions "mumble" adhd "mumble" autism.... yada yada. Well, Shaun's speech is way past the development stage, and he's not autistic. Maybe he's just weird." An evil smirk crosses her face.

"YOU PISS OFF REBECCA!"

"Please don't get him worked up." Lucy mutters with an eye roll.

[thelikesoffinn]

Hello! I keep browsing the tavstarion tag and asks from you blog keep coming up, and every time they do I enjoy the hells out of reading them. All the Astarion asks got me thinking though, and as I'm in the process of writing a fic, I figured I'd ask your thoughts (out of curiosity).

First thing's first: I understand Astarion's trauma responses are very... prickly, for lack of a better word. My question is how you think he would deal with a Tav who has a very people-pleasing response. For example, focusing entirely on anyone else's problems and completely neglecting their own, or only being able to say "no" when in such acute distress that they physically cannot give any more.

The second part (because I am guessing his response, based on how he's reacted in-game and also from reading your analyses) is how he might react to learning that that people-pleasing response is because of trauma they went through, either in their teens or young adulthood. How might that recontextualize some of his earlier assumptions? Do you think he would have any mixed feelings?

I wanted to write a Tav that's internal and solitary, who thinks they're "over" the trauma that happened to them. I thought the dynamic of someone who's been coping for years and has distance in comparison to Astarion who literally only just got out of his situation was interesting.

Hiya dear!

I'm happy you like the asks, haha, although I must admit hearing that they're very noticeable amongst the Tavstarion things is making me self conscious! 🫠

When it comes to people pleasing - or fawning, as it's also called - I think we can all sort of guess how Astarion would react. The boy isn't secretive about his displeasure regarding all things "noble" and I'm sure that, at first, the respect he holds for your Tav will be very low.

The thing is: When we see someone whose initial response is to fawn, we don't automatically default to trauma. Most people are far more likely to just view them as a really good and kind person or, especially in work settings, as a suck up. It takes time to realise that, hey, maybe Jeff from accounting actually just can't say no.

I don't think it will be different with Astarion. (In fact, out of all the companions, Wyll might actually be the most likely to notice that your Tav is having a hard time saying no.)

Depending on your Tav's general attitude, Astarion might default them to yet another kind hearted do-gooder that runs around the world with childish naïveté and that? That is a sitting duck.

To act 1 Astarion, kindness relates to weakness.

And weakness is something he can exploit easily.

As we all know, Astarion craves safety, which is why he latches onto Tav to begin with. And if Tav's someone who others listen to AND who seems easy to manipulate? Fuck yeah. That's an in if he's ever seen one.

If Tav is prone to saying yes to anything and prone to avoiding conflict, he won't even need to do much to get them to do his bidding. The right words, some puppy dog eyes and a hint at what he wants done, and they'll go and do it without protest. Add a couple of compliments, and he'll have them wrapped around his finger. That is exactly what he needs to be safe, and he'll not be shy of making use of it.

And I think it would be somewhat amusing to him, to see Tav try that hard to make everyone happy because he, quite plainly, doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why someone would care that much about others because to him, his own survival and happiness is what matters the most. Everyone else be damned if necessary.

(Just a tad bit presumptuous, seeing as he himself tends to salute and follow orders at the cost of his own personal boundaries if the person he deems the leader demands it - i.e. the Araj Oblodra bite - but let's let the poor guy have his delusions.)

Once he grows closer to Tav, his former amusement will likely quickly turn to frustration. In Act 3, we learn that Astarion is extremely loyal and, apparently, rather protective.

Part of why he insists on ascending for so long is not just for him - he wants to be able to protect Tav, and he thinks his spawn self is not enough to accomplish that. (This is highlighted by the fact that romanced Astarion is much more insistent on ascending than one you're only friendly with.)

Tav is important to him. They're his person and watching them bend over backwards for everybody and their mothers prostitute before thinking of themselves is probably not going to sit well with him.

He doesn't care about other people, but he cares about them, so he wants them taken care of.

BUT Astarion is not versed in the art of caring for others, not the best at communicating - he's trying, we can see that over the course of the game, but it'a process that takes time - and he is very prone to frustration, so I wouldn't be surprised to see his worry mostly expressed through sniding remarks, sarcasm and arguments.

Once he realises WHY Tav is the way they are...well, that is a bit difficult to pinpoint down, because it has a lot to do with his own mental state at the time. How he views himself and his trauma will reflect on how he views them.

An act 1 Astarion who is still very raw, very afraid and very much in pain might be somewhat disgusted and deny the very obvious similarities between the two of them.

Tav was hurt. People had hurt them and yet they're still trying to appease everyone. They're always doing whatever anyone asks of them without hesistation, even when they clearly shouldn't. How much of a pushover can one person be? Don't they have any self respect? It's pathetic.

It sounds cruel - it is cruel - but, in th end, he's not truly talking to Tav here. He probably sees part of himself, the part that jumped when Cazador said so, the part that listened to every order just so that he wouldn't have to suffer. He sees the part of him that grovelled, the part that gave up.

The part he hates the most.

(Fun fact: My least favourite state of healing to work with, because clients can actually be really difficult during that time.)

A more stable Astarion, however, could actually reevaluate a lot of Tavs behaviour. He might see them less as a naive child and more for what they are: Someone, who's trying to live.

They don't want to get hurt again, so they try to not offend anyone. They'd rather be stressed and tired and overworked than suffering again. They're not uselessly kind, they're not stupidly selfless - they're scared.

What he does with his body, they do with acts of service. They're protecting themselves in the only way they know how.

That realisation could somewhat mellow him and, most prominently, it can give him a sense of community.

It's a bit difficult to explain, but people who have experienced abuse and are now in the process of healing might start to experience a sense of community with those who had similar fates. Not in the sense of: "Let me bare my soul and dump my trauma onto you now - so when I was 12, my dad..." but in a very specific, comfortable way.

It creates a sense of understanding, if you will.

It means that the other person understands, even when you don't say anything. You don't need to fight; to explain yourself - they understand. They might not understand all of you, but they understand enough not to let it cloud their judgement. You'll be alright and they understand.

So Astarion won't need to tell Tav every little thing, he won't need to explain every reaction, every misbehaviour, every slip up. He won't need to fight for his right to be quiet, sad, angry or sulky.

He won't need to explain because even if he doesn't, they'll know that he has his reasons, and they'll be there when he's ready to talk.

Anyway! Those two options are really just a few of all the reactions he could potentially have, because, as I said, it's so hugely dependant on where he is mentally and how he views Tav, himself, his past, etc... It's really difficult to narrow down properly.

The dynamic you have chosen is really, really bursting with potential - both for drama and healing - and I hope it's as fun and rewarding to write as I imagine! ✨️

[animentality]

same as the 7 habits hookup question but this time with revs + roman. (one day, when motm has blown up, ppl will scour this blog and come across this ask and say, thank god this bitch asked. to those ppl: you're welcome).

Yeah...I wish Memoirs would ever blow up, lol.

Anyway.

Ten: It'd be nigh impossible to hook up with him unless he knew you very, very well. no one night stands from him! you'd better put a ring on that bitch! but if you had sex, it would absolutely be unhinged. he is so touch starved and desperate for affection. i'd honestly see him being really gentle, though. very scared of hurting someone he cares about. wouldn't even kiss you too hard or touch you anywhere you didn't explicitly and eagerly ask for. i also don't think he's the type to ever lose control during sex either, he knows it's not safe. as a result...bottom energy.

Roman: That little loser... he'd be a little puppy dog chasing after a car. he likes flirting and pushing, but when it comes to sealing the deal, he'll be very, very shy and silly. kind of an attentive partner, though. and unlike ten, he DOES hookups. he's just also the type to fall in love with you after fucking you. also, he's a vanilla baby. the most he'll try is new positions, but...nothing kinky from him. he's not rough, he won't spank your ass, he won't tug on your hair. he's not good at giving head, but he could GET good if you gave him the practice.

One: She's cold and impenetrable and offputting initially, but if you're persistent without being too pushy, she WILL come around initially, and then you're in for a ride, because she's very forward in bed. Very demanding. Very... "takes what she wants." Likes to be on top, physically at least, maybe not necessarily on the penetrative side. She likes leaving marks, so...beware of hooking up with her in the summer.

Two: He's kind of like Rey in that he's down to clown, in any circus. But his default if he doesn't know you that well IS aggressive. Flirtatious to the point of adversarial. Kind of comes on mega strong, always. As you can guess, he's so easy to hookup with. His standards are low and his thirst is high. He's also default rather rough, definitely the slam you around kind of guy, but all in good fun. I also think he tends to go for positions that'll mess up your hips, because again...rough. Needs leverage. :P

Three: Ahaha not an easy hookup at all. Very proper, likes to go on multiple dates first. I for some reason don't see her that sexual, though...I also don't think she'd be interested in penetrative sex, just a lot of rubbing, foreplay, head, maybe some fingering. Kind of just doesn't care for the high cardio of full PV sex. She'd be pretty good at giving head though, just from experience :P

Four: Prickly. Kind of not much of a sex haver, a sex enjoyer, if you will. Hooking up would be kind of hard because he's really not that interested in people...i guess if he was to hook up, it'd be very rushed, impersonal, and he wouldn't really care if you got off...so...hard avoid. no second hook ups ever.

Five: She's down to hookup, but only if she's immediately into you. Like if she's not into you at all...fuck off. But if she's into you, she'll let you know within ten seconds, and then you're in for a wild time. Not an exhibitionist exactly, but she is definitely not terribly shy about PDA. She also might surprise you because she's very grabby, very touchy. Loves dancing up on you. Kind pushy in bed, though, so. Might be a bit of a pillow princess too. You're not getting a word in edgewise with her. kind of doesn't care if you get off either, lol.

Six: He slaps you immediately for daring suggest you might be interested in sexual intercourse out of wedlock with him. He might spray you with holy water and put a cross on your forehead too.

Seven: she's probably the easiest person to have sex with, and I don't mean that in like a...she's slutty way. I mean more...she tries to be friends with people before she has sex with you. She absolutely will not just do random hookups. She only fucks people she finds funny. people she could have dinner with. people she could play smash bros. and she's definitely the type to laugh during sex. work through any awkwardness. just make sure you're both having a good time. she's bad at roleplaying and is very goal-oriented. out of everyone...also most likely to actually check whether or not you're having fun...like every five minutes.

Eight: you know...you shouldn't hook up with this man.

Nine: He's not having sex because it's a lot of work, but he might like a super quick blowjob in a public bathroom somewhere. do not have sex with this man either, he's also too lazy to give head AND to fuck, so....

[finneander]

Nexus Mods has taken a shit so I have time to write something up I suppose. [This ended up being longer than I meant. Oops. Cringe oc thoughts ahead]

I made Ferris with the intent of "What if there was a guy who was kind of a jackass and also incredibly unqualified" and fleshed him out from there. Guy who's kind of a jackass but he doesn't know how not to be. He's prickly and aggressive and brash but its a defence mechanism because underneath it all he's just a scared kid, just barely an adult, and all of the sudden he's been saddled with the responsibility of being a Grey Warden. Maybe it wasn't so daunting at first, when Duncan recruited him. He saw the chance to get out of the alienage, and the chance to prove himself. And then everything went wrong at Ostagar, and he's one of the last surviving Grey Wardens in Ferelden. And he's more scared and confused than he's ever been, but at least he's scared and confused with the only other Grey Warden left. He hasn't had much reason to trust humans throughout his life, but he's got no other option, so he concedes. So he trusts Alistair, and he might just be the kindest person he's ever met. The sort of kindness he's not used to. He's always had to look out for himself, always expected everyone else to have the same attitude, so Alistair just sort of comes in and shakes his entire world view. Once, he would've called him naive and foolish, said that he had no idea how the world works. But now? He'll do anything to make sure Alistair never changes, that nothing ever hurts him like he got hurt, if only for the most selfish of reasons. And Alistair may have had the most profound effect on him, but thats not to say nobody else did. Morrigan, Leliana, Sten, Zevran, Wynne, Shale, all changed him for the better. He found friends. He found family. And he wasn't so scared anymore. Learned to be nicer, even if he was still a bit of a little shit. But for once, even with the Blight looming, he felt happy. And he was ready to sacrifice himself. For his family, his friends, for Alistair. And then Alistair goes ahead and dies in his stead. And all of a sudden he's been proven right about his entire life like it was some twisted punchline. What kind of a world is this, where good people, better people than he could ever be, die instead of him? Where he gets remembered, gets the accolades and the glory, when he's not the one responsible? Why does he deserve any of this? Why does he deserve to be Warden-Commander? Why does he deserve to be the hero of Ferelden? I think it mirrors how he felt when he first became a Warden, like he wasn't fit for it, except now it's so much more raw and personal than he could imagine, and he never expected praise to hurt this bad. How can you carry on, in the shadow of everything you lost? He doesn't feel like he deserves to be Warden-Commander, but he'll stick it through. He feels like he has to.

Which brings us now to Awakening. He's sort of back where he started, except much more pessimistic and jaded. And maybe he'll work through the guilt, see what Alistair saw in him, let himself move on. Or maybe he won't.

Time for Awakening now! :) i will have to write up some posts about Ferris's development going into Awakening later. Or in 5 minutes. We'll see

[luimagines]

In lieu of what happened yesterday with Wolfie... may I raise you with Bunny Legend?

He despises the form. Why, of all the things he could have been, had to be a bunny? A tiger or even a dog would have been better than that a fluffy, weak... pink mammal! It's not fair that Twilight get a cool one instead of him, which is completely stupid since he is one of the oldest, and far more seasoned in salt of the group. On top of that, how dare he stealing your attention like that!? How is he supposed to make a move if Twilight is always hanging around you as Wolfie? He wants you to be the only one to hear how he feels about you...

...And, maybe, is also because he is terrified of you turning him down, the ache in his heart would be worse than a stab with Twilight watching him get rejected...

But this is why he have been named as the "Veteran" and not something else; he has dealt with a lot of situation before with far less objects at his reach to help him, but he always manages to get through it. He's very cunning and is quick to think on his feet...

...Or at least, almost all of the time he is. Erring is most common when you aren't at your most calm, isn't it?

Legend admits that he acted out of desperation: you had him at his wits end! But it's hard to feel frustrated with himself when you are nuzzling your face on top of his head, little squeaks of happiness and a high pitch voice while you baby talked to him, gussing about his very soft fur and really cute vest. You even called him handsome! You never do that when he is in his human form, you don't even spare him a glance when he rolls his sleeves, making a big of a show of flexing his arms, stretching out and pushing out his chest and arms back, all so you can see how muscular he, too, is. But the only thing you do is oogle at Twilight-- as if he isn't enough of a menace to him-- and that idiot of Mr. Captain when they wrestle together, shirtless. He just wants your pretty eyes on him, those plump lips, cherry from how you are bitting them, shamelessly devouring the two men with your gaze...

...Ugh, just pay attention to him, okay!? He will shower you with all the love and adoration you deserve and more! So please, direct that intensity to him, and only him.

A poke to his furrowed brows broke him out of his mind. Legend cautiously looks up at you. He mentally kicks himself as he is met with your worried eyes, the last thing he wanted was for you to feel any type of negative emotions, so that glint spurred him on rubbing his furred cheek on your free open palm, wanting to change the expression out of your face. It seem to work, you opened your eyes more and even giggled a little before scratching under his chin with two of your fingers.

"Got lost for a second there, buddy?" You whisper. Even if your tone was soft, the vibrations travelled from your chest pressed against the back of his small form engulfing it in a warm and pleasant feeling.

Legend closed his eyes and let all of his weight rest on you, not that you minded, of course. Being the sunshine that you are, you giggled cutely once more and tugged him closer to you, to the point of almost being curled around him. It was a rare sensation; he felt protected for once instead of being the one providing said feeling, he must admit that it was quite comforting, but Legend will forego ever feeling like this again in exchange of you being safe forever, you will always be his priority.

"Hmm..." you pecked his head. "Y'know, you remind me of someone that I like a lot"

His long ears fell flat on either side of his head as his heart stilled.

Like a lot...?

You... already have someone that you hold dear?

You seem to miss how his body grow stiff between your arms as you continued in drowning him in affection. What used to be a delightfull experience, now, it hurts him more than any wound he have ever sustained in his life, more than any burn from fire lizards or the cold, prickly bite of exhaustion of his tired body as he dragged himself through every and more corners of Hyrule.

Your hands played with the small tuff of fur on his head, but Legend's mind was far too gone to properly feel the touch. In its place, his heart dropped and shattered, somehow still beating as he felt the fastening Thumping in his stomach. How foolish and naive of him, to ever believe that he got an opportunity with you. Even the people that you two are travelling with can barely stand him, and they are supposed to be the same person.

Is he really that despicable?

"It's actually funny."

Funny how stupid he is, isn't he?

"He came back a few nights ago, very upset."

Well, that guy clearly doesn't now a thing about suffering. He isn't the one getting his heart demolish while in the arms of the love of his life like him.

You pinched the tip of his left ear and softly lifted it up. "He came back with his hair the same shade of pink that you have! In my opinion" you lean down a Little, as if you were about to share a secret "He looks very cute like that. A shame He will never let me say that to his face..."

Pink? Like the rose tinted glasses he have been wearing all this time-- Uh? Hair?

Are you... Please, don't give him hope like that. He can't take another loss in his life, because if you don't mean it, he would be devastated for good.

He felt your body shifting a little before you let go of him to instead hook your hands under his armpits, slowly lifting him up then turning around his body so now the two of you can be face to face. His tiny nose twitched as you leaned in a poked the tip of your own nose to his pink one, rubbing a little before you leaned back again. Legend layed his pawns on top of your chest, eagerly following your movements when he saw you opening your mouth to continue, he didn't want to miss anything that you are about to say:

"He is a big dork, with an even bigger ego. Very handsome too and... Ugh, Legend, why you have to be such a cactus all the time?" You finished with a tinge of frustration in your voice.

In a normal scenario, he would have argued about that last statement, but he couldn't because of two good reasons: one, he is still in his dark world form, it would be very weird if this bunny you found in the Forrest acted as if it was personally insulted by your words. And second...

You actually like him.

Him, With all of his flaws and bad attitude, you still found and assigned a space in your heart for only him, Legend.

Just as how down he got, his spirit raised up again with vigor, his heart soared from the dark pit of grief that held it a couple of minutes ago taking its rightful place at the peak of the shrine dedicated to your whole being. He didn't even noticed that his skin was ice cold until a burst of heat shot from his feet to the tip of his ears that acted as a catalyst as he threw himself towards your chest, his body felt light as a feathe, he tried his best to fight off the desire to laugh or shout out this waves of overwhelming energies.

Oh, how your chuckles were like the tunes from the most rich instrument in the entire universe being played by the goddesses themselves, more revitalizing than any potion or fairy pond.

"Do you think I should say something, buddy?" You returned his hug.

Legend furiously nodded his head, not think if it will appear weird that he could understand you. You squeezed the tiny bunny between your arms before putting him at arms length:

"Thank you, buddy. Somehow, now I have the confidence to talk to that prickly bitch--"

"--A PRICKLY WHAT???"

...Uh oh.

Even the common noises of the Forrest fell silent at his outburst.

Legend didn't had a second to try and amend his mistake as, suddenly, his vision was thrown into a spiral; everything looked blurry and the wind on his fur was a clear indicator of how hard you launched him away from you. He felt slightly proud at you quick reaction time but...

...No amount of fur can soften the crash on the hard forrest floor, just his luck that he didn't fell on the conveniently batch of dry leaves right beside him. It hurt, not as how bad his heart was hurting, but painful nonetheless.

He just really hopes you won't tell the group about the weird, pink bunny that can talk, or else he won't ever heard the end of it from Sky and Twilight.

-----------

AND IT'S DONE CKSKFJEJCUC IT TOOK ME A LOT OF TIME JUST TO SAY "Legend tried to pull a Twilight and got yeeted out of existence"

I think that Legend has self esteem problems! With what happened in A Link to the past, it's hard to overcome a whole nation hating your guts when you only wanted to help.

You really just said "If no one will provide me with Legend simpage, I'll do it myself"

I'm grinning so much right now. I ended up biting my lip a bit harder than I intended to because I almost screamed at the end when he finally spoke up.

The whole time I was like "But Legend can speak? Why is that not- Oh that's why."

Also, describing how Legend tries to peacock as he stretches to catch the Reader's attention *chef's kiss*.

[winterskywrites]

:) 2nd prompt…Tim saves Damian from his declining mental health due to the loss of Alfred and dick now being ric…Tim is really the only one around enough to notice his lil brother breaking at the seams :(

If too angsty really just Tim & Damian being bros

Fair warning, I haven't read any comics from this era, so this might not entirely match canon.

Let it be known that Tim still doesn't particularly like Damian. The little gremlin tried to kill him multiple times, after all. They're not close, and Tim doesn't think they ever will be.

But.

But Damian is still his brother, and Tim still cares about his well-being, and he can see that Damian is falling apart.

It makes sense. They're all falling apart a little bit. Alfred is gone, and Dick still doesn't remember them, and everyone is dealing - or not dealing - with that in their own way. Tim has learned by now that he can't save Bruce from his grief, even if he wants to, which means that Bruce has been withdrawing. The others are pulling away too, and Tim can't help but wonder if this is the thing that will break them altogether. Dick and Alfred were always the glue that held the family together. What will they do without them?

But it's worst for Damian, Tim thinks. He's always been the closest to Dick, their relationship sometimes closer to father and son than two brothers. And back when he was the Robin to Dick's Batman, the two of them lived with Alfred as a little family. They were the ones who taught Damian what it was to be a family. And now, they're both gone. Honestly, Tim isn't surprised to see that Damian is breaking at the seams. He's not sure what he can do to help, but there's no one else here, and Tim has always been a fixer. He'll figure out something.

As a start, he figures, he can go on patrol with Damian and Bruce. He's not sure how much they're really patrolling together, but in name, it's still been Batman and Robin out there as a duo. Red Robin doesn't quite fit in there - to be honest, Tim is still figuring out where exactly he fits in now - but someone has to do something, and Tim knows Bruce well enough to know that he won't. It's not that he doesn't care, but Bruce has never handled grief well, and he's been hanging on by a thread ever since KGBeast shot Dick in the head. With Alfred gone too, there's no way Bruce is going to step up on his own, so Tim will do it instead.

"What are you doing here, Drake?" Damian demands as soon as he sees Tim enter the Cave in costume. To an outsider, he might appear as prickly as ever, but Tim can see the difference. He's tense, and he's sharp, and if Tim says the wrong thing, he's worried Damian might shatter.

"I figured I'd patrol with you guys," he says, purposefully keeping his voice light. "If that's okay with you."

Damian's mouth twists slightly. "If you must. You can stay with Father."

"I thought you two patrolled together," Tim counters.

"Occasionally," Damian says. "Not often."

"I could go with you, then."

"I don't need your help," Damian spits, and he turns and marches over to the bikes. Before Tim can say another word, he's climbed onto his and left the Cave.

Well, Tim definitely isn't going to let him leave like that.

He goes over to his own bike and checks Damian's tracker. He's headed towards the highway, which is strange; he'd only go that way if he were heading out of Gotham, not into it. Tim's not sure why he would do that, unless-

Oh. Tim checks the tracker again, and he closes his eyes against a wave of grief. Damian is going to Blüdhaven.

It's easier than it should be to follow Damian without Damian realizing he's being followed. His grief has made him less focused than usual. Tim follows him all the way to Blüdhaven, then he ditches his bike near where Damian does and takes to the rooftops. Damian doesn't go to Dick's old apartment; they both know he's not living there, even though Bruce has made sure to keep it available for him. Instead, Damian goes from rooftop to rooftop until he finds one with a suitable view into a bar window. And through the window, Tim can see a familiar figure, one who will always be familiar even if his body language is off and his hair is shorter than Tim's ever seen it before.

Dick is smirking, and he's playing pool, and Tim wants to burst inside and hug him so badly it almost feels like a physical ache.

"I know you're there, Drake," Damian says after a moment. "You can come out."

Tim steps out of the shadows and stands next to Damian. "I miss him too, you know. We all do."

"He's right there," Damian says. "I could go into the bar and see him. But it's not really him. He's just as gone as-"

He cuts himself off before he finishes the sentence, but Tim knows what name he was going to say.

They stand on the rooftop in silence for a few moments. Dick effortlessly sinks three balls in a row while his opponent's face falls. He's still smirking, and Tim thought he'd seen all of Dick Grayson's smiles, but he doesn't think he's ever seen this one before.

"Dick may never remember us again," he finally says, his voice just barely loud enough to cut through the quiet. "And Alfred may never come back. But Damian, that doesn't mean you're alone. The rest of us are still here for you. I know Dick and Alfred were the first of us to treat you like family, but the rest of us will too. You're my little brother. I'll always be here if you need me."

Damian is silent, and Tim wonders if he said the wrong thing. His alarm only sharpens when he sneaks a look at Damian and sees tears slipping down his cheeks. He reaches out with one hand, then he freezes, not sure if touch is something Damian would want or something Damian would hate.

Damian makes the decision for him when he turns around and throws himself into Tim's arms.

Tim stumbles back half a step, arms tensing as he waits for the knife, but it never comes. Damian clings to him, and he's shaking, and slowly, Tim hugs back.

"I miss them," Damian breathes, so quietly Tim can barely hear it.

"I miss them too," he whispers, and he dares to press a soft kiss to the top of Damian's head. Dick used to hold him like this sometimes, complete with the kiss in his hair. Maybe he did the same for Damian, because the second Tim's lips brush Damian's hair, Damian shudders and makes a soft, broken noise. Tim holds him tighter.

Dick should be here. Dick should be the one holding Damian and supporting him. But their Dick is gone, and that leaves Tim.

"I've got you," he whispers to Damian. "You're not alone. I'm here."

Maybe, he thinks, Damian isn't so bad after all. Maybe they will be close. Maybe they can get along.

But no matter what, Damian is Tim's little brother, and Tim is going to be the best big brother he can be. If that means holding Damian, if that means helping him through his grief...

Well, Tim can do that.

[burningcowboyhoagietaco]

A Way to Learn a Lesson

written by:

@burningcowboyhoagietaco

illustrated and edited by the amazing, the one and only:

@lenle-g

Before I publish the story id like to thank @lenle-g from the bottom of my heart for being patient with me, being nice to me the whole time, and for making my story even better and more exciting. Without her I would have stayed in my normal, not that good English story. so thank you for everything!!! <3<3

And here's my part at @tagminibang submission:)

☆☆☆☆☆

Scott, no!!! No way! I am not going to give any lectures to anyone." John's voice comes out tight. "Especially not in front of a crowd. No way."

"Why not?" Scott raises a brow, his voice honeyed with ‘big brother wants something’. "It's not like you're gonna get executed by some children just for talking space at them, right? You love talking about space. It's all I've heard since you were, like, seven."

"No, that's not it." There's a sharp shake of the ginger’s head, "Scott, come on!" John knows for a fact that his oldest brother knows he's the most socially awkward person to have ever lived on Tracy Island (and maybe the entire planet). "You’ve lived with me long enough to know how much I hate social.... anything." John complains. "Why would you ever think I'd want to do this?""

"Well, yes, I know that," Scott shrugs, "I've seen that look you get on your face when there's a lot of people around." He’s well aware that his brother is an introvert who hates socializing with anyone, so he quickly changes the subject to try and make his younger brother feel a little more at ease. "But hey... everyone knows how much you like it when anyone talks about space or anything about astronomy. You'd be amazing at it."

"That's a different thing." John says flatly. Flattery, it seems, wont get Scott very far. "It's like, whenever you guys ask me anything about space, I like to answer them for you, but from random people…? And in huge crowds? I just simply can't." Surely he doesn’t have to explain himself much more than that?

"Oh trust me, everything is going to be fine." Scott was a flippant hand around, talking without really thinking, because all he wants is for his brother to get out of Thunderbird 5, to visit Earth for a little bit, to mingle with people a little. It can't be that bad. "If anything happens, Gordon and Alan'll be in Thunderbird Five doing Space Monitor duty, me and Virgil are gonna keep an eye on everything, and you’re in safe hands with Lady Penelope and Parker. It's all set up, so please go have some fun for once and teach the children something cool."

"My answer is still no." John says persistently, without hesitation. He's pretty sure it'd be worse than being in the middle of a hurricane, or testing one of his Grandma's new cooking experiments. It’s lucky Scott misses his involuntary shudder.

Scott, though, is so done with him at this point, that he's pretty sure there's no choice but to use plan b and hope that that works instead on his unwilling, stubborn, red haired brother. They've got to get him down from orbit and to that lecture somehow. Scott's just not going to stand for anything else.

"Are you sure that's your last answer?" Scott asks, with a heavy sigh, already planning the best way to call in the big guns.

"Yes," John scowls, arms folded. "Yes, it is."

They'll see about that.

...

"Is everything ready?" John adjusts his sleeves, smoothing down his vest and putting the last touches on his collar. Neat, simple, formal. Can't go wrong. "My presentation papers, laptop, and my mini simple dimple?”

"Yes, all in the bag." Scott calls back, rapidly checking everything, "But do you really need that little fidget thing of yours?" He picks his younger brother's old toy up between forefinger and thumb to examine it, remembering the day John made their Mom buy it for when he gets stressed.

"What fidge- oh, yes I need it." The look on John's face leaves no doubt about that. "I've used it ever since Mom bought it for me."

"Hey… Mom would've been proud of you, you know?” Scott tells him, in a quick flash of brotherly pride. “For, you know, going out of your safe zone for a little while and teaching the children and all that."

"Yeah, I know…" John finds him a nervous smile, "But I'm not doing this voluntarily, you've forced me with that plan b of yours."

The second John says that Scott's cheeks dimple, the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he grins victoriously, his teeth a bright white in the earliest rays of morning sun.

“All I had to do was make a call." He shrugs, "Lady Penelope did all the talking and somehow convinced you to go." Scott got a little more excited. He took a couple of steps forward, slightly standing on his toes reaching John's level asking"How did she convince you?" Clearly waiting teasingly for an answer to come out of John's lips

"Huhhhh." John exhales loudly, a little despairing. "She promised me we'd go to the Pagasa Astronomical Observatory after I finish the lecture with the children." He shrugs, keeping his eyes down, embarrassed.

"The what now?" Scott stares at him, thoroughly confused.

"The Pagasa Astronomical Observatory in the Philippines.” John says, like that was obvious, “It's equipped with a 45-cm computer-based telescope. It's so powerful that astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts can now conduct effective observations of stellar bodies and other distant space objects! Scott, it’s been my dream to go since I was, like, 17."

Scott always knew how much of an astrophile his younger brother is; he never cared about his physical appearance, nor his poor eating habits and he always used to make excuses to read his books alone, yet no one has ever interfered in his personal life.

"Okay okay space lover boy,” Scott grins at him. He'd expected Penny to be persuasive, but resigning herself to hours stuck with John in full excited-about-space mode would hardly be in his top ten. Either he's gonna owe her one, or Penny's more resilient than him. “You can go, no one is holding you back."

The short silence between them was broken by a ringing sound from a nearby table, which John answers.

“...Mhm, yes? Oh, the lecture." It must be Penelope calling, "Yeah, I'm ready, I'll head out now." John grabs his bag, wandering toward where the FAB1 must already be idling on the Tracy runway. "Time to go."

"Mhm,” Scott makes an agreeable noise, watching him go. “Please stay safe and please don't make an idiot of yourself." He's teasing… mostly.

"Yeah yeah," John waves at him over his shoulder, not even looking back. "I won't."

…

"Are we there yet?" Despite the consistently amazing views out of FAB1’s windows during the flight, John’s found himself mostly looking down, fidgeting with his fingers. He’s worrying, just a little, about what awaits him in the Philippines - a whole different tropical island to his own, though still in the South of the Pacific Ocean.

"Just give Parker ten more minutes, darling,” Her Ladyship smiles at him, “We'll arrive in no time."

There’s a moment of silence before, unexpectedly, it’s broken by a call flashing up from, of all places, Thunderbird Five. There’s a prickly sense of discomfort as John realises that, of course, it’s not him calling. Gordon must be trying to reach them.

"Heeeeey Lady Penelope,” The kid greets, as Penny flicks it on, seemingly a lot less bothered by the change than he is. “Oh, and Mr. Tracy.” There’s a huge smirk on his face. “How's our newest teacher holding up?"

"Firstly, my name is John.” John points out, flatly, “Second, I'm not your teacher so please don’t call me Mr. Tracy ever again. Thirdly…” He concedes, quirking an eyebrow, “Yeah, I'm good for now, but fourth… How are you holding up, up there in my Thunderbird? She’s not much like Four, is she?"

"Ooooooooo that's a good question,” Gordon looks half like he’s considering it, half like he’s really missing his own ‘bird. “I'm holding up pretty well thanks to Alan. He’s taken all the Monitor duty stuff, so all I gotta do is keep an eye on you guys." He sounds a bit… sarcastic about that. “It’s pretty boring, honestly. How do you survive up here without a pool?”

"Young Master Gordon, are you quite done talking?" Parker glances, unimpressed, at the little floating hologram of John’s brother in his rearview mirror, "Because we're about to arrive at our destination."

"Huh… oh yeah,” Gordon doesn’t seem too bothered about that, but he waves merrily at them all the same, “Okay bye and John, please have fun, you too Lady Penelope, okay bye guys."

It’s only a few moments later that Parker opens his mouth to tell them that they’ve arrived at Chino Roque Theater, pulling up out front to let them both climb out.

John's eyes widen: it’s nothing like what he saw on the internet. It was more enormous, more luminous, more spectacular than anything he’d seen or read online. All he remembers reading is that it's a sphere shaped building located in the Philippines, in Anilao Hill, but the pictures on the webpage didn’t do it justice like being there in person does.

The building was smooth and round; the auditorium shaped like a massive egg nestled in amongst the other buildings. They were early enough that the sun was just cresting the horizon, colouring the sky with reds and oranges, visible through the geometric front of the building - where giant triangles of glass intersect together to give the people inside an amazing view of the sky at night.

"M'lady, you and John can go ahead. I'll park FAB 1." Parker said, before going to the parking lot - unaware just how tiring and long his journey to find a place to park is going to be.

They both head inside the building, admiring the sweeping glass fractals of the roof high above them. It’s incredibly beautiful, really a feat of engineering. So much so, that John almost forgets why he’s even there, until he spots a couple of buses arriving on the other side of the building, and the panic sets in. He was expecting to be a little bit anxious, but this feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest. He presses a hand hard against it, trying to calm his racing pulse and stop the sudden shake of his fingers, and Penny must notice, because a little hand settles, ever so lightly, on his shoulder, drawing his attention to her.

"Hey John," Lady Penelope looks him steadily in the eye, projecting warmth and reassurance. "They're just a small, mixed group of children and teens. They can’t possibly hurt you, now can they? They just came to have a small lecture because all of them like space and astronomy just like you. Imagine yourself at their age, meeting a real life astronaut.” John tries very hard not to remind her who, exactly, his Father was, as she goes on - trying to visualise being a kid that didn’t get ‘take your son to work days’ at NASA’. It’s a pretty horrifying concept. “Most importantly,” Penny adds, “it's only for an hour or so, so you don't need to worry so much." She had to smile just to reassure him. “You’ll have filled their heads with space facts and be out before you know it.”

"O-okay,” John takes a deep, steadying breath, “I don't know if I'm supposed to trust you on this, or whatever, but I really don't have any other choice." He also wants to add that they forced him to go, but at the last second he remembers that they never forced him - he agreed to go because Lady Penelope promised him a trip to the observatory.

It seems like a pretty weak reason, now that he’s outside the stage door, knees shaking.

"Mhm, I think it's time to go inside.” She nudges him callously in the right direction, and John’s palms meeting the solid metal of the double doors is the only thing that keeps him from following gravity’s call and landing on his face. “Again, if anything happens, I'll be at the back of the room and I have a plan b if things get too much." John, pretty shocked by just how many plan b's the Lady Penelope might have prepared for the day, can only shake his head, bemused. “So stop worrying and get out there!”

She vanishes off into the atrium, and John can’t help the loud exhale that escapes his mouth before he musters up all the courage he can, and enters the room.

Bright lights startle him for a moment, and he’s pretty sure he does an awful, awkward impression of a blind baby giraffe as he stumbles out onto the stage and freezes as he notices the first smatterings of audience are already taking their seats.

The moment he placed his foot on the smooth wooden floor, his heart had started to beat faster, his hands began to sweat, the more steps he took forward the more he felt anxious. It was, he’ll think later, one of the toughest moments of his life, and he’s been to space. Multiple times.

Come on John. He tries to straighten up, shake off his anxiety, This can’t go worse than your first EVA.

Taking another deep breath, John waits patiently for all the attendees to take a seat inside the room. Waiting doesn’t help his anxiety levels at all, and he can feel them increasing by the second, but, determined, John doesn’t let it stop him from starting his lecture.

"H-Hello everybody,” He starts, incredibly conscious of the hushed silence that falls across his audience. “I'm John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons,” he rattles off his credentials, his nerves almost blurring them together, “I worked with NASA as an astronaut for three years before going… uh… solo in my astronomical studies, and I'll be your guest lecturer for the day.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, as a ripple of hushed oohhhs and ahhhs goes through the crowd. John’s pretty sure his face has gone bright red. “Thank you for having me at the Chino Roque Theater,” He goes on, before his embarrassment can bet the better of him, “I hope everyone’s had an amazing day so far. We'll be spending the next hour or so talking about astronomy and space physics, so shall we get started?" John thought it was a good opening, and yet his back was really wet from all the people's eyes on him. Glancing offstage, Penelope throws him a thumbs up, and he feels a little better.

"Um,” He blinks. “So does anyone here know how old the universe is?" John ventures, only to be surprised as almost everyone answers at once;

"Almost 13.8 billion years!"

"Yes,” The edge of a smile works its way onto John’s face. Clearly this was going to be a shout out the answer kind of lecture. He can work with that. “That's correct, now does anyone know how the universe started?"

"The Big Bang!" Most of them answer, and John feels a surge of relief. These guys really are into space.

"Okay, okay, not bad at all." He nods affirmatively at them, and the screen behind him lights up with an artist’s rendition of the Big Bang happening. "Now if I were to go and search ‘how old is the universe’ in, say, Google, the answer would be 13,772 billion years. It’d be the same thing if we looked at NASA, or even Wikipedia - so how did people get to know the age of the universe? How do you even start calculating something that old? Well I'm going to explain it for you in two ways: the good, nice way, and the kinda not that good and not that scientific way." There’s a bit of an awkward pause as John wonders whether or not he’s explained that well. When only silence greets him, he very quickly realises he needs to press on.

"So, uh, the good way.” He folds his fingers together behind his back, trying to resist the urge to fidget. “Well, in the middle of the previous century, as telescopes developed, we noticed something strange. We found that stars in very distant galaxies tend to look red… Umm, which is something that’s not supposed to happen.” A chuckle escapes John and, to his relief, the audience laughs with him. Scott never gets his space jokes. “So why’s that?” He asks, “See, if a chemical element gains or loses energy it’ll emit light in certain frequencies, thereby creating certain colors.” A small movement of his hand signals the slide to change, and a picture of the visible section of the electromagnetic spectrum appears, colouring the room with rainbow light. “For example,” John goes on, bathed in blue and violet, “Consider something like… a desk lamp, as like an element. If you give a lamp electrical energy, it’ll release that energy in the form of heat and light, yeah?" There’s a murmur of uncertain understanding in the room. “Electricity goes in, the bulb gets hot, and it gives off light. Well, we know stars do pretty much the same thing - only powered by nuclear fusion rather than a nine volt plug.”

"From studies of the sun and stars that are near Earth, we know that they’re made of helium and hydrogen, yes?” There’s another murmur of agreement in John’s crowd, “Well, hydrogen and helium can create red light, but they don't have the ability to create these shades of red that we see in deep space." The slide behind John clicks to a comparison of the two shades, on two different stars - making the difference clear.

"So, if stars are made of helium and hydrogen then why do distant stars have different colours? Are their compositions different?uh, well It’s possible, but not likely. The strongest explanation is that the color difference is due to the movement of the stars." The room gives a soft gasp at this news, and John knows he’s onto something good.

"So there's something called the redshift and blueshift phenomenon that says that if an object radiates light and approaches you, the color of the light begins to turn blue, and if the object is moving away from you, the color will turn red. This happens because the wavelength of light contracts and expands with movement meaning that something stretching equals red and contraction equals blue."

"And the strange thing is,” John adds, his audience listening raptly, “That most, if not all, stars show the same behavior, so, if we think about it, if all stars are moving away from us, that means that they were close to us at some point, and if we follow their path, we find that everything in space meets at a point named ‘singularity’."

"It was believed, in the past, that everything in the universe, or at least in the visible part that we have observed, that is to say,” John flicks to a graphic on his next slide. “All the galaxies, planets and stars, were all gathered at one point - the singularity. The theory is that this point exploded in what we call the ‘Big Bang’, and from that time onward, the universe has been in constant expansion.”

"So it’s with data from this knowledge that we can calculate the age of the universe:” With a wave of his hand, John puts a series of bullet points up on the screen behind him, then reads them aloud.

“One, the universe began as a very small, single point.” He reaffirms, “Two, the universe is constantly expanding outward from that point, and three, from these we have the ability to calculate the expansion rate of the universe, by calculating the speed of the stars that are moving away from us. If we take the furthest accelerations and enter them into this equation,” John’s board merrily does it’s thing behind him, “Then, we get the age of the universe."

"And, so we don't forget, all this talking was about the good way. There is another way to calculate the age of the universe, the, uh, not as good way, or, more specifically, the less scientific way.” A ripple of laughter goes through John’s audience - and he relaxes a little more. Maybe Scott was right. Maybe these are his kind of people. Scott’s never laughed at a space joke for sure. “There's no problem with it,” He quietens them again with a gentle gesture, “and it does support our theory and calculations, so I guess we should talk about it."

"Since ancient times, humans have been looking at the sky, watching the stars, and giving them names like Cygnus, Canis Major, Orion.” All names any young astronomer in the Southern Hemisphere would recognise, and be able to enthusiastically point out in the night sky. “In those days, there wasn't the internet so they were looking up at the stars instead.” Much like John himself, when he’d been a boy.

“As a way of calculating the age of the universe, astronomers set out to search for the oldest celestial bodies in space.” He goes on to explain, “The idea was that if we find a star whose age equals X, then the age of the universe must be greater than the number X. So we pointed our telescopes up there and started trying to find out their ages from birth, to youth, to their old age until their end."

"Can anyone guess the age of the oldest star we've found?" A lot of answers were guessed, some of them were pretty close, but some, amusingly, were way too far. "Ok, ok…” John puts his hands up to pacify his excited crowd, “Umm I see there are a lot of answers, but the oldest star people discovered was actually estimated to be 13.5 billion years old. The HD-140283, or as you might know it, the Methuselah Star. That number is very close, you’ll notice, to our estimation of the age of the universe."

"But if we found a star that is 13.5 billion years old today, then we could find an even older star next week and that would ruin all of that,” He chuckles, mostly to himself, “We also should note that this method alone isn't suitable for determining the universe’s age, but as long as we have two methods with corroborative results, we can be reassured that the estimate is correct.” He pauses for a second, “So, does anyone have questions?" A couple of hands raised, and John found himself suddenly answering a lot of questions - but he managed all of them despite his fear of the huge crowd.

He’s starting to feel more than a little overwhelmed.

"Umm… W-well that was a lot of questions,” John tries to pull it back in, his allotted lecture time ticking away on the big clock at the back of the hall. He feels a little panicky from the bombardment, and his palms have gone sweaty. “We’d better move on.” To distract himself from the people, as much as anything, “Our next topic is the theory of relativity, so l-let's get started on that."

Lady Penelope, from her fold-out seat at the back of the room, frowns. It’s clear John’s terrified and she wants to use plan b, but as long as he’s still standing on his feet, and giving the lecture, he's probably fine for now. If anything, it’d cause more of a disruption to drag him away now.

"Umm,” John takes a breath, trying to centre himself in the science of it all. “Let's start with a supposition, a hypothesis if you like, and consider it together. Okay, you’ll have to bear with me on this one, but let us suppose that we were all asleep, and the universe suddenly inflated by a thousand times.” There’s a murmur in the crowd at how odd everything abruptly getting that much bigger sounds, “Your bed, your pillow, your desk,” John extrapolates, “even the meter we measure stuff with. If humans became a thousand times bigger, when we woke up would we feel something strange? Would we even notice anything had changed? You’d think so, but no.” John’s settling back into his rhythm now, “So why is that? Because the bed and everything became a thousand times more inflated and our bodies also inflated a thousand times, with everything scaling in parallel relation to each other so that this percentage, this scale, was preserved throughout the room. You’d never know the difference."

"Henri Poincaré, the well known mathematician and theoretical physicist, says that we will never be able to discover that something like this has happened, even if we use all the mathematics and calculations ever invented.” John drives the point home with another illustrated slide, “This hypothesis is called the Poincaré hypothesis, and simply, because the meter with which we measure things will have also expanded a thousand times, there’s never going to be any equation or calculation or any analysis possible that could lead us to the truth, because the ratio is preserved in all parts."

"Now, this is important, because the same thing also happens with time. If everything suddenly got a thousand times faster, we’d still never feel anything different. Why’s that?” He asks, rhetorically, “Because time is also a thousand times faster, your heartbeat is also a thousand times faster, your body would function a thousand times faster to keep up with it all. As long as everything is increased by the same amount, the ratio is preserved, and none of us will be able to detect any change."

"So Poincaré asked the scientific community; is there no way to know that time increased or that things inflated?" John tells the room, "Well, it was Albert Einstein who answered him, deciding that the one and only way to tell, would be to have someone observing what happened to the world from another galaxy, from another world, lightyears away. For someone to point a telescope in our direction, and look through it at us, and say what happened to the Earth? Why are humans walking a thousand times faster than in the past? But this person who realized the situation,” The astronaut waves a flippant hand, starting to feel much more confident again, “would have to be a person standing on a fixed external platform in a different world, so that what happened to us was not also happening to him."

"But, as Einstein commented, this hypothesis is impossible for a simple reason and it's that there is no fixed platform in the universe - the entirety of it is in constant, turbulent motion. For example, the Earth rotates at a speed of 460 meters per second, revolving around the sun at 30 kilometers per second, and at the same time, the sun and it’s planets and dwarf planets and moons and asteroids, all revolve around our galaxy, The Milky Way, at a speed of 300 kilometres per second, and so the whole universe revolves. That's,” John takes a deep breath, finding himself out of air after so much explaining, “why it's impossible for us humans to completely accurately judge the motion of any astral body."

"Because there is no fixed berth, we can only offer relativity. This is the first part of the theory that Einstein came up with, in summary; it cannot be said that the monotony of a body is absolute motion."

"Another thing he said was that, because of the vastness of the universe, it’s impossible to synchronize, what does that mean? Well, I will give you an example.” He flicks his slide, “Say I’m a person in the Philippines, and I'm talking to someone from the United States. We synchronize, and hear each other in real time, because we have a method of fast communication. I can hold my device and say; hello, how are you?” John holds up the slim, sliver slice of his phone to show the audience, “How’s the weather there? And they’d answer me with something like; I’m fine thank you, it's night here so it’s a bit hard to tell what the weather’s doing! What’s the weather like there? And I’d answer them; it's daytime, and maybe ask them something like, what are you eating? They’d answer me; a burger, and then I’d tell them that I'm eating kaldereta, and it’s much better than a burger."

In the audience Penny quietly hopes that Gordon, who's probably listening in with the rest of his brother’s, missed the fact John was making jokes on stage. The poor little bugger’ll never live it down otherwise.

"These two events, each person talking to the other, are compatible.”  John goes on, absolutely oblivious, “It’s possible because the two wireless devices, be they mobile phones or more sophisticated comms systems, are on the same globe, creating a fast means of communication.”

"But,” John postulates, “If I was talking to someone from another galaxy and I used the same means of communication to make a call, do you know how long it would take to get to them? It would be about five to six thousand years until my signal reaches the phone of our friend, and they’ll have married, had children and died, and their children would have married and had children and died, and so on, for thousands of years before then."

"And that's why it's impossible to synchronize between the ends of the universe,” John balances his palms like he’s weighing two invisible ends, “It rather puts a damper on our chances of finding and communicating with extraterrestrial life, for sure, but at least it’s possible to synchronize within one system, like the system of the Earth. "

"This is a thing that also applies to light, for example: any star you could look up and see now, the light emanating from it may be coming from thousands of years ago. This means that it’s possible that the star you see shining could have exploded and disappeared, and hasn't existed for a long time. Why? Because it takes a couple of thousand years for the light from that explosion to reach us."

"There isn’t any proof for the hypothesis that the universe is linked by time, but the thing that happens that we’re sure of is that the universe is made up of, sort of, separate islands of different times that have no connection between them. The connection between movement and time in space is something we all know about, for example, a day on Earth equals twenty-four hours, yes?” There’s a chorus of agreement from the audience, “But on Saturn, a day is ten hours because it rotates faster. Astonishingly, a day on Mercury is the same as fifty-eight whole Earth days, which, infact, is also a Mercurian year, because the planet revolves around the sun for the exact same period as it revolves around itself."

"Okay, so, to what extent is movement related to time?” John asks, well and truly into this whole teaching thing now, “Well, Einstein was the first person to discover the connection between them and suggested that; suppose you’re on board a very fast rocket, 100,000 miles per hour for example. The mechanical watch on your wrist would be delayed over the flight, but you wouldn’t feel like time is being delayed. Why’s that? It’s because the rhythm of your heart would slow down - all of the vital processes in your body that are inside the rocket will slow down."

"As you move more, something called the dilation of time will happen.” He steps to the side, as if to illustrate the point, only to find himself stumbling a little, like if the ground beneath his feet had moved. “T-Time slows down,” John tries to recover it smoothly, but everything’s starting to feel, weirdly, like it’s shaking, and he doesn’t think it’s the anxiety anymore, “and that's-"

John doesn’t get to finish his sentence because there’s an abrupt shift and a loud cracking from under him, and getting off the stage suddenly seems like a good idea. Someone screams outside, and the volume in the room skyrockets as the children start panicking. John’s one hundred percent sure this wasn't anything planned.

He knew he shouldn't have come.

Earthquake? He wonders first, then; Tsunami? Ground slip? Hurricane? Whichever it is, John has to prioritise calming the people and evacuating them out of the building. The giant glass panels above them are trembling with the force of the shaking, and, as a professional at this sort of thing, Thunderbird Five’s Space Monitor doesn’t like the look of it one bit.

"Everyone calm down,” He has to shout to make himself heard over the roar of people, even with the microphones pointed his way, “This is a normal thing. All we have to do is evacuate immediately, as calmly. as. possible. I don't want anyone crowding the exits, do you all understand what I just said?" The front rows, white faced with fear, nod encouragingly at him, and he watches as they begin to lead the way toward the glowing green signs that signal the emergency exits. Immediately after making sure the crowd is moving, John pulls up his comm to contact Gordon.

"Gordon, are you on the line?” John’s a little breathless and he climbs down from the precarious stage, into the throng of terrified bodies, “We have a situation in here."

"Let me guess, you caused it?" Gordon seems so excited to hear something other than his brother's boring lecture that humour has outweighed his professionalism.

"Gordon,” John grits his teeth, “I'm being serious right now, there was a huge movement in the ground beneath the Chino Roque Theater, and it's still ongoing. Tell Alan to do a check on what's happening beneath us using the Ground Penetrating Radar." He orders.

"F.A.B." Comes the far more serious response, before Gordon clicks off the line to do just that. Squashing down any fear he’d about the now swelling, shuffling crowd, John opens his arms wide and walks toward them, the motion sort of like he’s trying to herd sheep, as he tries to evacuate the people safely out of the building.

He’s not exactly an expert at being on the scene during rescues.

"John, there's a landslide going on right now,” Alan’s worried little voice comes ringing out of his comm speakers, “Right next to the theatre. You’d better get out of there. I’m monitoring the situation, but it’s looking like you’re going to need International Rescue to get you and the people out of there. The debris field is spreading fast." John would do almost anything to be up there instead, at his own screens. “I've contacted Virgil and Scott, I’m patching them through now.” Alan clicks Scott and Virgil, both clearly just finishing their suit up sequences, into the conversation. It seems important to keep them up to date with John's developing situation.

"Hey Mr. Tracy, how are you holding up?" Scott jokes over the roar of his launching Thunderbird, the sound filling the background of the call with white-noise, "Oh, and how was your lecture?" John thinks he sounds far too casual in contrast to the impending danger all around him.

"Oh my God, Scott, is now really the time?” John groans, and a kid with mousey blond hair not dissimilar to Alan’s looks up at him, very confused, before the astronaut waves him on, “You are an adult person,” He reminds his big brother, “Please don't be like Gordon right now. He’s practically still a child."

"Hey!” Gordon had clearly overheard the conversation between his brothers, and springs up to defend himself. “I'm only two or three years younger than you!" He complains, not about to do the math.

"Gordon, we don't have time for arguing about that now,” John frowns, “and Scott, I'm holding up alright at the moment. Please don't ask me anything about the lecture until I get back home." If his voice cracks a little on that last bit, he’ll never admit it.

"Okay, okay I won't ask anything about that,” Scott reassures him, his amused, big brother grin very much in place, “Keep on evacuating the people safely until we arrive John, you’re doing great. It won’t take us that long. ETA at 15,000 mph is sixteen minutes.” He reassures, “We’ll be there before you know it."

"F.A.B. Scott." He reluctantly signs off. Now that he’s finished talking with Scott, John’s pleased to see that a lot of people have already made their way out of the atrium’s three sets of double doors, evacuating the building to get as far away from the landslide as possible. His fingers itch to pull up the schematics from Thunderbird Five on his comm, no matter what the people around him might think. He quickly caves, and it feels worth it to be able to see the incoming tide of slipping land.

They don’t have much time.

“Let’s go!” He shouts, chivvying. He’s a little breathless with the tension, so he keeps things short. “Come on! Let’s move guys!”

From his vantage near the crumbling stage, John can make out Lady Penelope and Parker by the main doors, ushering people through, and the sight of them fills him instantly with immense relief.

“Okay, that's a good amount of people out.” John has to jog to catch up with them, skirting around a little old lady with a zimmer frame and taking a second to correct her course, “Lady Penelope, Parker, I think you should go and check on the people who’re out. They could have minor injuries from the stampede, and International Rescue are still ten minutes out. I'll make sure the last few stragglers exit safely."

Penelope just nods, pale and worried. Her blond brows are all pinched in together, nervous and Parker looks practically haggard as he claps a reassuring hand on John’s shoulder, her faithful old companion following her pink shape dutifully out the doors. Hopefully they’ll go make sure that no one was badly injured in any way.

Turning back to the slow cascade of cracking rubble behind him, John finds the stage area has been all but obliterated, and his heart aches for the patrons of the Chino Roque Theater who’ll have to rebuild from scratch when this is over. He imagines the Tracy fund can contribute a significant amount toward that though. They often do for worthy causes.

John pushes the damp curl of his slightly sweaty bangs out of his eyes and climbs over what looks like a twisted piece of ceiling girder toward the sound of people, possibly trapped stragglers, who are calling for help.

"I miss Thunderbird 5 so much,” John mutters, keeping it under his breath so that no one hears him, as his palms are scraped raw against the concrete he’s trying to clamber around. There’s a rippp of fabric on a jagged piece of metal and the knee of his previous pristine brown jeans meets much the same fate as his poor, scuffed hands. “Oh, come on!” He’s having no luck today, “I'd so rather be assisting the situation from space. I can’t believe I’m stuck here." John grumbles, to no one in particular. He’s just not built for this kind of thing. Heavy labour and getting sweaty pulling people out of scrap heaps is what his other brothers do. At least rescues in space don’t have all this… gravity to contend with.

"John?” The crackle of a comm cut’s across his complaints, “What’re you still doing in there?” Gordon’s voice breaks him from his thoughts, little brother’s tone heavy with concern. “The building could fall any moment! You're so lucky the landslide isn't moving very fast, but it’s not gonna stay that way forever." Gordon was really worried about the fact that his older brother was still inside. “It could engulf the building! You need to hurry it up, bro.”

"I'm evacuating the people as fast as I can,” John gets both hands under the armpits of a boy who couldn’t be older than seven, and swings him above a pile of rubble toward safety, “I'll be out in no ti- Ah!"

John’s voice gets cut off with a startled cry, and it takes Gordon a second or two, time John might not have, to remember how to breathe so that he can yell in any way coherently into his comm. His eyes are wide, his anxiety levels through the roof as he tries, and fails, to rouse his brother on the other end.

"SCOTT! You need to get there now.” Gordon’s aware that he’s totally losing his cool, panic creeping in over his weak layer of professionalism, “I just lost contact with John.” He gasps, “He was evacuating people and I heard him yell and now he’s not responding! And- and it's not just him. There were other people he was trying to get out."

"Hey Gordon,” Scott tries to keep his voice steady to inject some kind of stability into the conversation, “Don't lose your cool yet. I'm sure nothing that bad happened to John. Just stay your positive self, okay? I’m arriving right now and Virgil isn’t far behind me."

Thunderbird One is panning over the city, low enough to ruffle the hair of people looking up, but it’s not a problem until the usually so sure and steady pilot finds his hands nearly slipping off her controls as Scott catches his first, horrific glimpse of the building that he knows his younger brother is inside.

“What the…?”

The Chino Roque Theater is almost flat.

"Virgil,” Scott swallows hard to try and remove any of the tremor from his voice, “A-Are you seeing what I'm seeing right now?" He almost succeeds.

"Scott this isn't a joke, it looks like half of the building has come down with the landslide! John’s in there!" Virgil sounds more terrified than Scott thinks he’s ever heard him. What scares him the most is that the exit was on the side that has fallen in, which means that a lot of people are trapped under it, their John included. "Scott, we need to help them right now.

"Okay, here's the plan,” Scott’s hands tighten white-knuckled on the steering yoke, “You wear your exo-suit and go clear the debris out of the way so that we can save them, and I'll get rid of that roof with Thunderbird One and check for life signs. Remember that saving lives is our top priority, got it? No matter what’s happened to John."

"F.A.B." Virgil sounds incredibly tense. He lands Thunderbird Two as fast as he can in the crowded, limited space. Local people are beginning to make their way out of their houses to see what all the commotion is about, and the cramped city streets aren’t ideal for International Rescue’s four hundred and six ton workhorse.

Two’s pilot struggles into his exo-suit, rushing to get the Jaws of Life prepared despite Scott’s insistence that he focus and take things slow and sensible. It’s not long until he finds himself digging among the debris looking for buried people and, in the white rush of it all, Virgil’s not even sure how he got there.

"Scott,” he presses on his comm, “Please tell me you’ve got something?"

"Fortunately and thankfully yes,” It’s hard to find the hopefulness in big brother’s clipped Mobile Control voice, but it’s there to Virgil’s expert ear, drizzled in nervous relief. “I've got a whole cluster of life signs,” Scott reports, “BPM signalling in the green. "I think they’re just trapped under the debris." Alan’s echolocation report came back suggesting that there’s a big space under what could be folded sheet metal from the ceiling, that they’ve huddled in. I'm really sure there's nothing that bad, but still we have to continue otherwise it will take a bad turn for us and the people in there."

“I can use the grappling cables in Thunderbird One to take the strain off the roof,” Scott adds, “But I need you in there to get those people out.”

“Already on my way,” Virgil ducks under some rebar, skirting around the rubble and pulling away loose debris as he goes. His heart is loud in his own ears, and Virgil hopes the creak and groan of metal and concrete above him is Scott lifting the weight off the roof, keeping it from collapsing any further onto the people below, and not anything more sinister. Virgil gets peppered by a slide of small stones, but the roof holds steady.

He presses on until he catches sight of the cluster of around forty people, all huddled together around a tall, central figure with a shocking amount of rubble dust smeared over his face, and powdered through his ginger hair.

“John!” Two’s pilot makes a beeline for his brother, despite the fact three of the people are stuck under rubble. Clearly John’s in control of the situation here, and he’s never wanted a mission update from their Space Monitor so much in his life. He can’t help but hone in on the fact John's left arm is crudely wrapped in a piece of cloth from his sleeve, which he must’ve ripped off in order to tie it.

"You have to tell me exactly what happened,” Virgil drops the controls for the Jaws of Life, and grasps his brother’s biceps in both hands instead, resisting the very strong temptation to pull the spaceman in for a hug. “And what happened to your arm?!?" There’s a river of blood seeping from beneath the make-shift bandage, but John, it seems, isn’t bothered by it in the slightest.

"Not now Virgil.” His concerns get thoroughly dismissed, “We’ve got to get these people out of here, and then I'll tell you everything." Virgil didn't like the idea that something happened to his brother and he's silent about it, but after all John was right about saving the people first since his arm is under control for now.

John crouches by the nearest injured person; a pale, skinny teen with a sizable piece of rebar keeping him pinned.

“You’re gonna be out of there in just a second, Lito.” Virgil watches him reassuring the young man for a long moment, “Uh, Virgil?” John prompts. “Any time?”

“What?” He blinks, “Oh, yeah!” His brother is clearly waiting expectantly for him to use the Jaws of Life to get the poor kid out. "I’m on it, but you better tell me everything after we're done saving them." Virgil demands. “But, uh, Scott’s kind of holding the roof up right now, so you’re probably right.”

"Okay,” John literally rolls his eyes, busy stealing a pair of blue rubber gloves from the Med Kit Virgil brought with him, and snapping them on to protect his hands and the fine cuts he’d gotten from climbing over rubble. “I promise I'll tell you everything, but can we start actually rescuing them now?" Rolling his eyes right back, the bigger man uses his exosuit to heft the rubble off Lito, before John swoops in to apply pressure to his injuries.

“Give me the fold out stretcher from your sash.” He orders, hands bloodied “Then go get the next person out. Efifania, Sergio?” John beckons a pair of nearby dad’s in closer, clearly having singled them out as capable stretcher bearers. “Think you can manage Lito here for me?”

As Virgil starts removing the rubble from above the other two trapped people, a middle aged man and a younger woman, it becomes immediately obvious that both of them have more severe wounds than young Lito. They both need medical treatment immediately.

“I’ll carry one of them.” Without the three extra sets of hands he’d need, Virgil has to leave a couple of crowd members applying pressure to their wounds, as he moves back to where John is helping Lito unsteadily to his feet. “Think you can walk, young man? We’re gonna need that stretcher for the big guy.”

“I won’t let you fall.” John promises, and Virgil feels a real swell of pride at how well his brother is handling the situation whilst being outside of both his space station and his comfort zone. It looks like having a rescue and a job to do really gives him no time for anxiety. "I agree that that's our best plan.” He adds, nodding, short and sharp, to confirm it, then John turns, an arm around Lito’s waist and the kid’s arm slung over his shoulder, to address the crowd.

“Anyone not so severely hurt needs to help get the injured out of here.” John instructs, the small crowd listening raptly. The look on the faces of these scared people is one Virgil is all too familiar with, but he knows John has far less experience of in person. They’re really looking to him as their saviour. “Virgil here is going to lead us through the path he just made.” Which is news to Virgil, but does seem like the best plan. “International Rescue will then be able to take us all to the hospital to get checked out, and then I’m sure you’ll be released to go home to your families before you know it. Got it everyone?"

In that moment Virgil finds himself struck with amazement at how John seems to have become almost as fearless as Scott, as they started carrying the two injured people out to safety. It was really a new side to him that Virgil doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

"Virgil… I need you to check on Lady Penelope and Parker.” John’s keeping pace at his side, helping the boy they’d dug out along as he goes, “I told them to check to see if anyone was hurt."

"Hmm, yeah you're right.” Virgil frowns. If Penny and Parker have any more injured party members, even minor ones that just need a check up, Thunderbird Two will need to evacuate them to the hospital as well. “Have you got any idea where they might be?"

"Well, I told them to get somewhere away from the landslide,” John frowns, as their limping, shocky party stumbles out into the bright light of day, to be greeted by the roar of Thunderbird One’s engines high above them. “They should be near here.” He yells over the sound of it.

As usual, it turns out that John is completely right. Penny and Parker are waiting for them, but neither John nor Virgil find the look on Lady Penelope's face all that reassuring.

"JOHN!” She rushes toward the battered, bloodied spaceman, her arms outstretched. Virgil very quickly and carefully finagles poor Lito out of the way as his brother gets ambushed. “Are you okay?!?” Penelope demands, frantic, “What happened to your arm?” She reaches for the bloodied bandage, and John winces, “I'm so sorry,” All of John’s carefully constructed rules around personal space are shattered as she cups his cheek, inspecting his face for injury. It’s lucky that John is by far the most patient of the Tracy boys. “I shouldn't have left you there.

"She’d been so terrified, perhaps more than anyone else here. The horrific view she’d seen with her own eyes is going to haunt her for a long time yet. One second she was getting out of the building to reassure and check up on the people, and the next she was watching half the structure collapse completely, with John under the side that fell. She still feels a little sick.

"I'm so, so, so sorry John,” She repeats, before he can get a word in edgeways to reassure her, “Please, you must tell me if there's any way I can make it up to you. Ask me anything and I'll do it."

"Okay guys,” Virgil chuckles, “while you talk things out I'll go to get the injured people aboard Thunderbird 2. Make it quick though, we’ve still got people who need immediate medical treatment, got it?"

"F.A.B. Virgil.” John nods, “We'll be quick. Penny, I..."

“I’m so sorry.” She repeats again, and pulls his good arm over her shoulder as if to steady him as they make their way at the back of the crowd toward the big green Thunderbird.

"No no no, Penny, please stop apologising.” John’s fingers tighten for a quick moment on her shoulder, in brief reassurance, “I'm not going to ask you for anything because it was never your fault.” He insists, “It was just some bad luck, that's all. Fortunately I, and most people, got out safe with no severe wounds. These things happen.”

“Your arm.” She points out softly, hoping that all that blood looks worse than it is, “John I can’t believe you stayed behind like that, it’s so...”

“Tracy?” He grins, amused but very weary.

“Scott Tracy.” She corrects, scowling a little as she holds on just that little bit tighter around his waist as his adrenaline from the rescue starts to flag. “I thought you had more common sense.”

“Hate to disappoint.” She feels the warmth of him chuckling, “I’m lucky it was nothing worse than his cut from some shattered glass that fell on my arm while I was helping one of the guys who got stuck. I don’t think any arteries or anything have been damaged, but it is... kinda deep." And he might be getting a little lightheaded from the blood loss. Still, he really wants to reassure her, just like she had reassured him before he’d gone in to give the lecture.

"Hate to interrupt your moment, but are you guys done?" Scott pops up from who-knows-where amongst the crowd to yell at them. He’s clearly joined the relief effort. "Virgil’s just finished getting everyone aboard Thunderbird 2, and he's ready to launch." He adds, squinting at the pale, wobbly mess of his brother. "And you really do need to check your arm. That looks nasty.”

"Yeah Scott,” John wipes a tired hand over his dirty face, dislodging dust, “We're done. Don’t let Thunderbird Two wait for me, I'll hitch a ride with Lady Penelope, uh,” He turns to her, bashful, to check, “If that’s okay?"

“Of course,” Her Ladyship concedes, “Scott?” She is mildly concerned that big brother might want to have the injured member of his flock under his wing so he can smother him.

"Yeah sure, ride whatever you want.” Scott flip flops a dismissive hand at them, “You can ride a pod, I won't care as long as your destination is the hospital."

"How about you, Gordon?” John knows his little brother is still on the line, probably sulking. “Is it okay if I take the ride with Lady P?"

"W-what do you mean by that?” Gordon sounds confused and maybe a little embarrassed, like he’s been caught out. “Scott already said you should go, why’re you asking me?"

"Well, she's your girlfriend.” John grins, teasing, as Penny helps him into the back of FAB1. “Of course I have to get permission from her boyfriend.

"Penny swats at him for that, amused, but careful not to hit his injured arm. She doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do anything, but it is fun to see Gordon squirm - especially as Scott and Virgil both crack up, and even Alan in space starts teasing him.

"What?!?” Gordon’s face, bless that darling young man, has gone bright red. “J-Just go already." He ducks off the comm screen to try and hide his embarrassment, but it’s far too late for that.

He’s lucky that Penelope finds it incredibly endearing.

"John,” She nudges him, as the Tracy’s all click off the line to go do their actual jobs. She’s a little concerned that he’s looking a bit spaced out, if you’ll excuse the pun, and it’s probably a good idea to keep him talking. “You know we're still going to The Pagasa Observatory, just like I promised you, right?"

"Wait really?” John’s head tilts, a little floppy, towards her from where it had been sinking into FAB1’s luxurious headrests. He’s looking a little grey, but it’s good to see his eyes open. “After all that happened?” A ginger eyebrow quirks, “Are you sure there's time for that?"

"Well, we’re on our way to the hospital now, but there’ll be plenty of time this afternoon.” As long as the medics give him a clean bill of health. “You can change your clothes after we're done checking your arm then there should be time for you to go see that big telescope you've been dreaming of visiting. After all, I did promise you we’d go there after we're done."

"Well, that sounds good to me!” John smiles like there’s a supanova fuling him, “Penny you’re the best."

They reach the hospital a little after International Rescue has dropped off the fourty or so injured people, and so there’s quite a wait for a Doctor to be free so that they can have a look at John’s poor, sliced arm. Penny seems to be doing a worried hover at his side, while he waits, shaky from blood loss, and though he’s not used to having so much company, John has to admit it’s nice to have a chance to catch up with his old friend with no rescue alarms blaring.

Alan reports in that the two worst injured in the landslide have been hospitalized as fast as possible, that they were stable - the doctors have said their prognosis looked good. He also tells him that Lito’s family had been asking after the redheaded lecturer who’d helped him out of the rubble, and that John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons, should probably expect a gift basket in the mail quite soon.

John gets quite flustered about that. He’d just been doing his job.

The spaceman's arm was eventually treated, and Scott calls in to ask what actually happened to his arm. It still hurts, a properly bandaged throb just under his elbow, but not like before. The painkilling injection and little bit of morphine they’d given him when they stitched it up had probably helped with that.

Alan’s reports dug up that the landslide had been caused by a water main leaking under the building, and destabilizing the soil. Over time, water can do a lot of damage, washing away vital infrastructure if it’s not been properly reinforced during construction.

As the Chino Roque Theater was a new build, there must have been a mistake in the installation of the pipes during construction.

Someone was getting a big lawsuit heading their way, and Tracy Enterprises will be more than happy to fund the lawyers for the theatre.

As Lady Penelope promised him, they found John a change of clothes and went to the Pagasa Observatory. Penny’s quite sure she’s never seen anything as wholesome as the moment John sees the telescope - his eyes went all shiny, and the smile on his face was massive.

"Lady Penelope, Parker come take a look at the stars!!!” He calls, over his shoulder, with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, “They’re really beautiful from here!" With such a high-powered lens pointed up at the cosmos, it rivals even his view from Thunderbird Five.

"Indeed, they are." Lady Penelope and Parker both step up to take turns, but John was the one to look through the telescope the most. With all the stealth her years as a secret agent offered her, Lady Penelope took a picture of him.

"Parker, come take a look." She whispers, beckoning her old companion gleefully over. "He looks so happy and innocent in this picture. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see his face like this always?"

"We still have some time before they close,” Parker points out, a sly grin creeping onto his nosey old face. “How h’bout we leave him like this for a little longer?"

"That, Parker.” she smiles, “Is an excellent idea.”

The End

[smileyoongle]

Come Back Home (A Kim Taehyung Mafia AU) // Part 10

Summary: You were dead. Or at least that's what Kim Taehyung thought. But love never dies. A myth, yes. And maybe that's why when he finds out that you are alive, he may have already lost you.

Pairing: Mafia!Taehyung×Reader

As the three friends stepped inside their humble abode, the heavy silence dawned on them. You quietly helped Minho carry Yoona up the stairs and into her room, her unconscious self mumbling some incoherent words that you didn't care about. Your body ached, your muscles tensing while you tried your best to pretend that everything was alright. 

But was it?

As Minho laid Yoona down on her bed, you stood with your arms crossed by the door, holding yourself back from spewing a number of questions towards the young man. You knew Minho could probably not answer them, but you just had to ask. You bit your lip, eyes darting around the room as you tapped your foot out of anxiousness. Minho seemed to notice, his eyes falling on your hesitant expression. 

There was a pang of guilt in his chest. The incident at the club made him question the things his sister was doing. Tonight, Taehyung had almost lost you again. As much as Minho liked you, he also respected the fact that no one will ever be able to love you like Taehyung. Everyone knew that. So with a sigh, he stepped away from Yoona's bed and made his way towards you, halting right in front of you and staring at you with the most serious expression he could gather.

"There's something you need to know."

You frowned, standing up straighter on hearing the tone of Minho's voice. Whatever he was about to say, he wasn't very pleased with it. You slowly exhaled, nodding reluctantly as Minho nudged you outside Yoona's bedroom. You swallowed thickly, trudging towards the hallway and massaging your temple. Your head was beginning to hurt now. Whether it was because you needed sleep or because of the overwhelming surge of emotions, you couldn't tell. You turned around to face Minho, only to see him walking towards your bedroom without sparing you a glance. "Hey." You called out, following behind as he pushed open the door and let himself in. 

"What do you want from-" you stopped mid sentence, eyes widening as Minho swiftly pulled out your diary from beneath your pillow. Your headache grew stronger, your heart thundering in your chest with your lips parted in surprise. Minho's expression didn't seem betrayed or anything, neither was he surprised. You wondered if he was gonna take this away from you. 

"I had come looking for you when you were in the shower. You didn't hide it very... nicely." Minho explained, the book dangling from his fingers. Your chest began heaving, your hands growing clammy with nervousness. Minho noticed your state and led you to sit down on the bed, crouching down before you as he placed the book in your lap. "Hey, it's okay. I won't ask who gave you this but I'm glad you got it." 

You looked at him, his lips smiling at you in an attempt to calm you down. The situation wasn't bad or anything, it was just about your mind being weak. Minho didn't want to send you into a spiral of panic attack because of something Yoona did. But he also had to tell you, no matter the consequences. 

Your words seemed to be caught in your throat. You just couldn't say anything at all, mainly because you didn't know what to say but also because you didn't have it in you to talk. You were really exhausted and you also felt like crying. Taehyung's distant voice echoed in your head. You had managed to tell yourself it's okay but it wasn't. You felt like you had been rejected for some reason.

"Y/N, how much have you read?" Minho asked gently, gesturing to the diary. You glanced at it, shaking your head in response. "Just a page."

Minho sighed, closing his eyes and pursing his lips. That meant he was gonna have to tell you without you having much knowledge about anything. Minho was praying that maybe you were suspicious about Taehyung but no luck there. 

"Minho, what is it? You're worrying me." You stated, placing a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at you with apologetic eyes and you knew something was very wrong.

"Y/N…Yoona lied to you."

💔🖤💔🖤💔🖤

The car was dead silent, Jungkook's occasional sniffles filling up the void. He couldn't see very clearly due to the tears brimming in his eyes again and again but he managed. The only thing on his mind was Taehyung. 

The fact that Taehyung was taking stupid decisions in the heat of the moment wasn't okay. Unfortunately, none of the members had any control over this situation, Taehyung had already made up his mind. Jungkook was the only one who got the idea of reaching out to you and bringing you back for a while. Yes, you didn't remember anything. But everyone saw that you still cared about the man who claimed to be your friend. 

Jungkook kept mumbling under his breath as he turned the steering wheel, navigating through the empty streets to get to Yoona's house. There were still questions about who those people were at the club but that was a problem for another time. 

The silence of Jungkook's car was cut off by the piercing ringing of his phone, his eyes flickering towards the illuminated object lying on the passenger seat. He quickly grabbed the phone and accepted the call on seeing Minho's contact flashing on the screen, putting the latter on speaker. He didn't actually want Minho's number but it was a precaution. For you.

"Hello, Jeon? I didn't know who else to call. Taehyung wouldn't pick-"

"What the fuck do you want? I'm coming over to take Y/N with me, by the way."

Jungkook snapped, eyes back on the road ahead. Minho's voice was a little off, strong vibes of distress coming Jungkook's way. Nonetheless, it didn't matter as long as it was nothing related to you.

"What? Wh- why are you coming to get Y/N?"

Jungkook clenched his jaw, assuming all sorts of things on hearing Minho's question. Did that guy actually think he was gonna keep you away from the people who cared about you?

"None of your business. She needs to stay with people who can actually protect-"

"Y/N ran away."

Three words. Self explanatory. Nothing too complicated. But words cut deeper than a knife. It's a saying that people don't believe unless they've been wounded themselves. Jungkook's blood ran cold, his foot hitting the break in a hurry. The car came to a halt, a little too abruptly, sending Jungkook lurching forward in his seat. His eyes were wide and hid breath was caught in his throat. With shaky hands, he brought the phone up to his ear. "What did you say?"

Minho gulped loudly before explaining himself.

"I told Y/N the truth about Taehyung. Sh- she ran away immediately. I don't know where she'd be going but I think-"

Jungkook couldn't listen anymore, his fingers tightening around the phone as he hung up and slammed his hands on the steering. A loud groan of frustration left his mouth, his teeth clenching in anger. Minho just had to mess this up.

Jungkook rested his forehead against the steering wheel in defeat, unable to stop the tears from falling.

"Y/N, where are you?"

💔🖤💔🖤💔🖤

"Taehyung is your boyfriend. You lived with him and not us. He loves you ...a lot more than Yoona or...me."

Minho's words were playing in your mind again and again like a broken record. Your lungs burned, as if you had inhaled too much smoke along with the prickly tears in your eyes. Your leg muscles felt weaker and weaker with every step you took. Certainly, running on the street in the middle of the night wasn't your ideal plan. 

A broken sob escaped your mouth as you stopped sprinting and held your diary close to your chest. You didn't even know where you were going, all you knew was that you had to go to see Taehyung. You could have waited until morning but Yoona's house was making it hard for you to breathe. The house wasn't the problem. Your inability to breathe was due to the fact that it was Yoona's.

The winter air nipped at your skin, goosebumps rising across the expanse of your skin as you caught your breath and continued to cry. You couldn't believe how many problems life was making you deal with, this definitely wasn't normal. Your heart ached when Taehyung's face flashed in your mind and you began to imagine how it must have felt to watch your lover go away with someone else. Taehyung was also on the wrong side due to how he didn't tell you the truth but he was the only one who could tell you the reasoning behind the said deed. 

Just as your breathing started to grow normal, a faint sliver of light fell at your feet, your eyes looking up to see a car coming your way in the distance. You narrowed your eyes when it came closer, the headlights blinding you to the extent of you having to avert your gaze. You brought your hand up to shield your face, unable to move from your spot in the middle of the road. Maybe you were just too tired. Or you had lost every essence of will in your heart. 

You spotted the red colour of the car, it's shiny surface catching your attention when it came to a halt right in front of you. You watched as the driver got out of the vehicle and slammed the door shut, his dirty blonde hair ruffling in the wind. He had striking eyes with a gaze so intense that you had to look away for a second. He was wearing a black shirt with a few buttons unbothered. Your breathing faltered when the stranger came to stand before you, a very confusing smile gracing his lips as he looked at you with sympathetic eyes.

"Hello, Y/N. My name is Eunho and it's so great to finally meet you."

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Obviously I'm unable to tag a couple blogs and that's totally not annoying. Also one of the blogs texted me that they were gonna start another blog but I don't remember the name anymore??FML.....AnYwAY, let me know if you wanna be tagged? Okay, love you!

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