#he doesn’t need to hit shiv to get her in line though just one of them

[avatar-state-kate]

Has someone already made the side by side of Connor in “Prague” telling Kendal that “dads philosophy was that you sent the weak dog away and the others would fall in line” to Roman getting hit in “Argestes”?? Because yeah those scenes are berry important to each other

[ghostbustermelanieking]

Jmart with 1?

so i made this prompt entirely too complicated. i've kind of had this idea for a while and used this prompt as an excuse to write it lol. i need to put more safehouse fics out in the world, right? also can be found here on ao3

1. things you said at 1 a.m.

It's too cold, after leaving the Lonely. It shouldn't be this bloody cold in London in September—it feels like it's below zero—and Martin's teeth are chattering as they walk back from the Institute. His fingers are freezing. Jon's shivering, too, clutching Martin's hand with both of his, leaning towards Martin as if he is a heater. It feels like they need winter coats, hats and scarves and gloves to block the wind, but the wind isn't blowing at all; Jon Knows, without even trying, that it's really just 10°C outside. 

Martin hasn't completely shaken off the remnants of the Lonely yet. He's out of it, taking long moments to respond when Jon says anything; his eyes are still a faded gray. And he's shaking so hard that Jon can feel the vibrations all the way up his arm. He's tired. He keeps swaying into Jon's shoulder, unsteady on his feet. Hold on, Martin, Jon keeps saying. We'll be home soon. He squeezes Martin's hands. Numbly, slowly, Martin squeezes back. 

They go to Martin's flat, because Jon doesn't have one and the Institute isn't safe. Martin's fingers are numb with cold (Jon Knows without trying), fumbling around his key without getting a good hold on it before Jon reaches for it and asks if he should do it. Martin nods, quiet, and Jon lets them in. 

It isn't any warmer in Martin's flat. Not surprising, as deep as the Lonely had seeped into Martin, but it still hurts Jon a little to see, the cold seeping into his bones. They sit on the couch, vaguely speaking of dinner; Jon isn't hungry, but he knows Martin needs to eat, and so he presses the issue, thinking only of all the times in the beginning that Martin had pressed him to eat or brought him tea. He makes the tea this time, makes it the way he remembers Martin making it once, before the Unknowing, and brings the mugs into the living room. They never do make it to dinner; Martin is quiet, responding numbly, or not at all, to questions, and Jon isn't doing much better. Martin talks of moving to the bed—well, really, he tells Jon to take the bed and Jon says absolutely not, thinks It's your bed and I won't leave you alone —but it never happens. In the end, Martin falls asleep on the couch, his head tipped back against the back of the couch, his mouth half opening, shivering violently in his sleep, his tea going cold on the coffee table. 

Jon finds every blanket in the flat that he can and piles it over Martin, practically cocooning him in them. It's clumsy work; Martin's comforter keeps sliding off, and the afghan from the couch gets tangled in the extra quilts. But it looks warm, and that's all that matters, that Martin is warm. 

(There's fog in the flat, just a little, creeping over the floor. The Lonely is here with them, seeped into both of their bones, but it's sunk deeper into Martin, and all Jon can think is that he won't let him go. He won't let Martin be lost, not again. Not if he can help it.)

There are no blankets left. Jon pulls his own coat over himself, and then—trying not to feel too entirely pathetic—Martin's. It's large and warm, warmer than Jon's own; it smells like Martin, too, Jon's nose pressed against the collar. But Martin isn't gone this time, isn't off somewhere cloaked too heavily in fog for Jon to reach him; Martin is right here. Jon can hear his deep, shaking breaths, feel the comforting weight of him on the opposite side of the couch. 

He fumbles through the layers of coats and blankets and finds Martin's hand again. It is the warmest part of him, as he's falling asleep, his hand in Martin's. 

---

Jon and Martin sleep on the train to Scotland. They're both exhausted, both worn out, and both, somehow, still freezing. They shouldn't be this cold. Jon Knows they shouldn't be this cold. 

Martin's brought blankets, and he insists Jon take one; he's been better today, more there, more… Martin, and he wasn't happy that Jon didn't leave any blankets for himself the night before. Jon's so cold—even in a jumper and a coat, and with the sun coming through the window—that he doesn't argue. (Well. Only a little, only to see Martin's face screw up in mock irritation in a way that might make Jon melt a little inside.) He takes the blanket. It smells like Martin, too. 

They sleep, and Jon wakes up still cold, fingers still freezing, bones aching—except on one side, where he and Martin have slumped against each other, Jon's head on Martin's shoulder, and Martin's head against Jon's. The warmth seeps through the layers of blankets and coats and all of it. 

Jon stays there, leaning heavily into Martin, for a long time after he wakes up, not ready to move away from the warmth.

---

There aren't enough blankets in the safehouse. 

There is only one bed, which helps. One large bed—Daisy must have liked her space. But still: it makes the discussion over blankets easier. (They argue a little over who will take the bed; Martin tries to take the couch, and Jon tries to take the couch, and it begins to get ridiculous. It just makes sense, in the end, to share the bed.) Between the two of them, they pile the sheets, three quilts, and the blankets Martin brought on the bed. It still isn't enough. The bed stays freezing, and Martin stays freezing, too. He's been layering jumpers, scarves, even wooly hats, and pushing the same towards Jon; he looks like someone braving a blizzard, or sick with a cold, and Jon tells him so. He worries, afterwards, that he's crossed the line, made a joke about something distinctly unfunny (reverted back to a version of himself that he'd rather forget), but Martin just laughs a little and says, "If I'd known this would be the effect of working for Peter, I might've invested in more winter clothing." Jon laughs, too, and accepts the scarf and hat when Martin pushes it his way. 

There's a box of firewood out by an old shed. Jon doesn't bother speculating what it might be for. They build a fire in the hearth, that first night, and that helps. Read books they've both packed on the couch, their knees touching through the layers of blankets, and it's the most peaceful Jon's felt in a long time. 

The cold creeps back in, though. Even with the blankets, even with the ancient heating system in the house turned on, even with Martin in the bed with him ( Martin, who Jon has missed tremendously for seven months now). The cold and the fog and all of it; it creeps back in while they are sleeping, when Jon is too distracted to notice. 

He wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, shivering, teeth chattering. There is a quivering in the blankets, a sort of shaking, and Jon knows that Martin is shivering, too. The fog is creeping back in; somehow, the Lonely hasn't left them yet. Jon reaches out and brushes his fingers over Martin's arm; he hisses a little at the contact. One or both of them are as cold as ice; he isn't sure who anymore. 

His mind immediately begins racing, searching for any sort of alternative to the blankets and the jumpers and the socks and scarves. More jumpers in the suitcase, he thinks. The coats. Maybe they can conserve some warmth with the curtains, or some ridiculous thing like that. Anything to keep Martin warm. Somehow, two of the blankets have ended up on his side—Jon isn't sure why—so he attempts to rearrange them, pushing them over to Martin's side, and slides to the edge of the bed, ready to retrieve more things from the suitcase. But Martin's voice, rising blearily, sleepily from the other side of the bed—"J'n?"—stops Jon in his tracks. He hadn't realized that Martin was awake. 

Martin yawns, twisting in the covers, his teeth chattering a few more times. "What… what time s'it?

"1:07 a.m.," says Jon automatically. He shivers hard a few times on instinct, wraps his arms around himself. "I-I'm sorry, Martin, I-I… didn't mean to wake you."

"Mm, wasn' really sleeping anyway…" Martin yawns again, rubbing at his eyes. They look bigger, somehow, without his glasses, dark and soft in the dim light of the room, and Jon loves him so much. 

"I… I wanted to get you more blankets," Jon says, forgetting for a moment that there aren't any others—he revises, "O-or… something else to keep you warm. Something… y-you looked cold, I mean."

Martin blinks a few times in disbelief. Looks out at the blankets at the bed and pulls at the two knit ones from his own flat, like he can't believe they're there. "Jon, you… gave me the blankets back," he says, voice stiff thick with sleepiness. 

Jon chews at his lower lip, shudders all over as another wave of cold hits. "Y-yes, well, they'd… ended up on my side of the bed, somehow, and you… you were cold, as I said, and I…" 

"Jon, I g-g-gave them to you for a reason," Martin says, sounding more awake, and maybe a little fauxly put out; he's clenching his jaw as he talks in an attempt to keep his teeth from chattering. " You're cold, Jon. You were sh-shivering in your sleep!"

It's Jon's turn to blink in surprise now, caught off guard by Martin's words. "Yes, b-but you… you need the blankets more than I do, Martin… th-they're your blankets, and you've been freezing since the Lonely, a-and…" He looks out at the room. He can't see the fog anymore, but that doesn't mean it's gone. "I don't want to lose y—" he starts, stops. Martin might not be his to lose. Amends: "I-I don't want you to be lost, not again, a-and I…"

Martin makes a faint sound of what might be disgust. "This is ridiculous, Jon," he says, and Jon allows himself to worry for a second (Has he gone too far, saying I don't want to lose you, assuming Martin wants this kind of contact, when Martin only said he loved Jon, not love?), before Martin continues: "W-we were both touched by the Lonely… we've both been alone for so long, w-we…" He stops, rubs a hand over his face. Jon can feel him shivering from here, all the way across the mattress. (King sized. Why does Daisy need something this big?) 

Martin lowers his hand. His eyes are wet; Jon can see, and he worries still that he's gone too far. But then Martin's reaching across the mattress, his hand extended towards Jon, and saying, "W-we should just… it'd be warmer if we, um…" 

Jon slips his cold fingers through Martin's; Martin squeezes his hand, so gently that Jon's chest aches a little. He says, his voice soft and sleepy, "... C'mere?" 

Tentative, Jon slides across the mattress, through the nest of blankets towards Martin's broad, soft chest. And then Martin's arms are sliding around him. Martin's embracing him, hands soft and just as cautious against Jon's back. And Jon can't help it anymore; he melts into the embrace. Winds his own arms around Martin, pressing as close as he can physically get (arms around his shoulders, face pressed into his neck). It's easy, too easy, because Martin has been gone for so long and Jon just only now got him back—he's thinking of the tapes and Martin slipping away down the hall, Martin being taken into the Lonely, Martin's voice saying he wouldn't be coming back, and it's all too easy to cling to Martin hard as he can. They're both still freezing, skin chilled to the cut, but… Jon can feel it dissipating. Something warm is growing between them, he thinks. Something. 

"How did neither of us think of this?" Martin whispers. There's a quiver in his voice, just subtle enough that Jon can't tell if he's laughing or crying. "Two days we've been freezing, bundling up, a-and throwing blankets at each other like we're jumping onto a grenade… a-and neither of us thought of this?"

"I missed you," Jon whispers. He hears a sharp gasp from Martin, like he might cry, and it only makes him hold on harder. He's never held Martin like this before, never. (They hugged, before the Unknowing, but that was quick and awkward and over too soon, and Jon had foolishly thought there would still be a chance for this when he came back.) He's never held Martin like this before, but he knows he never wants to stop. He presses his nose against the hollow of Martin's neck and says again, "I missed you, Martin. So much. I… I don't think I can begin to tell you how much." 

Martin takes a few trembling breaths. Ducks his head to press his lips against Jon's forehead—Jon leans into the affection of the touch, the warmth. "I've… missed you, too," he murmurs. "So much, Jon, I… staying away from you, a-after you came back… I thought I'd lost you, a-and it… it almost killed me."

"I'm here," says Jon, "I'm here, you're here," and he kisses Martin at the soft spot under his jaw. Presses closer into the bubble of heat they've created, threads his fingers through Martin's hair and adds, silently, I'll keep you warm. 

When they wake, the next morning, the cold is gone, and so is the fog. Like it was never even there in the first place. 

[hageny]

Succession Thoughts: Gerri x Roman

1. Whipping Boy.

I had a Tumblr user, @mumi-things​, request that I write a bit about the scene where Logan hits Roman, so I thought I’d take the time to honor that request, and credit them for the idea. 

There is so much about the panel discussion in Argestes that could be picked apart. One of the things that is striking is that Roman, typically so full of exuberance and humor, is mostly silent during the discussion, but the two times he chooses to speak up he delivers lines that are not overly damaging, but sly enough that they can do harm. He uses the word ‘catastrophe’ to refer to the cruises situation, a bold move considering both Shiv and Kendall up to that point are attempting to mitigate the damage. He watches silently for a few moments while his siblings volley ideas for how to combat things, and then leans forward and says, “We’ll do whatever it takes, we’ll do whatever anyone wants”. The reason Roman chooses to say what he says is up for debate; certainly, he is not truly concerned about the cruises situation, not motivated by some sudden increase in morality, but it would be hard to argue that he--having proposed to Gerri a team up--would not have had in mind the benefit of Waystar being dissected by outside eyes, making his move to replace Logan and take over that much easier. Roman manages to appear to be merely glib and inexperienced in this situation, but I believe he knew full well what he was doing and said what he said at the moment he said it because he knew it would have the full, intended effect. The moment that Logan strikes Roman is interesting, as are the reactions of those around him. It’s hard to argue that Logan’s ire should be directed toward both Kendall and Shiv, but, as we see before, that is never where it lands, and Logan striking Roman is merely another stone on a house of abuse that Roman occupies, it’s foundations laid in his early childhood. We see Kendall jump very quickly to Roman’s defense and Gerri--who usually doesn’t combat Logan--is also quick to speak up, not in the way Kendall does, but in arguing that Logan needn’t be angry at all. Up to this point, Gerri has volleyed for Roman in more subtle ways, as she does in the beginning of Argestes when she persuades Logan that Roman could handle convincing Eduard to assist the family in taking the company private. While her reaction to the actual violence toward Roman is lowkey, it is what she does at the beginning of the next episode, Return, that highlights how Gerri really feels. Up to this point, she has been mostly going along with Roman’s ideas, feeding into his interest and indulging her own in their sexual relationship. Her great motivation was in making Roman into someone that he was not yet, as she slowly molds and influences him over the course of the show. But in Return we see a fire in her we haven’t seen before. Though Roman suggested only an episode earlier that they team up and take over Waystar, Gerri comes to him very prepared, with a plan for navigating the tetchy Roy family reputation--as well as Roman’s own--in a way that is honest enough but not so bruising that it could destroy his chances at taking the CEO seat. We see her buckle down and dig into his background a few episodes later, trying to pre-empt any rumors and accusations they may need to prepare defenses for. It could be argued--and will be here--that the moment that Gerri sees Logan hit Roman is the moment her loyalty to him is broken forever. Certainly, she has, in Season 1, conveyed a willingness to oust Logan--as she does to Kendall--but when the time came to actually back Ken up in the boardroom she evades responsibility and leaves him to hang himself. The idea of taking power for herself has likely always existed in Gerri’s mind, and she’s certainly experienced and cunning enough to do just that, but the actual drive and motivation to see the idea through comes to fruition only when she sees Roman hurt by Logan. This is Gerri’s true reaction to the violence dealt to him by his father. While she was unwilling to even live up to her promise to Kendall to assist him in voting out his father--at a time when that decision was not entirely illogical given Logan’s health--she is willing to indulge in a relationship with Roman that could get her fired, and team up with him to take over what she may believe is rightfully his. The defense of Roman that others manifest only through words she shows in her actions. What better way for Roman to get even with the father who abused him than by usurping the throne? The slap to the face that Logan delivers Roman in the presence of others can be righted only by Roman doing the same to Logan in a metaphoric sense, and Gerri has not only realized this, but is more than willing to help him succeed. 

[yespolkadotkitty]

First off, I LOVE you to bits. Second, I LOVE being in the Dave York pit with you guys. Thirdly, a random Dave request if possible. Dave is finishing a job and ends up saving a young woman who was in the process of being attacked by a mugger. He escorts her home and mayyyyybe she shows him some appreciation for saving her life 😍

I LOVE THAT YOU ARE IN THE PIT

Safe With Me

This amazing gif made by @beccaplaying - THANKYOU!

Warnings: violence, smut, unbeta’d writing.

3am.

York balls up the blood-stained t-shirt he’s yanked off, pushes off the thin latex gloves. A random dumpster in an alleyway catches his eye, and he glances around. It’s a good few feet from any of the streetlamps. Perfect.

He tosses the clothes; pulls a new t-shirt out of his go-bag, shrugs it on. The night is balmy and now he looks like any other tourist after a night propping up one bar or another - plain t-shirt and jeans, big backpack. 

He’s learned how to dissemble his MK12 silently, and wraps it in spare clothes to bulk out the backpack. He ruffles a hand through his hand, pulls a souvenir bottle of whiskey from his pocket, douses himself in it. Now he smells like he’d been propping up a bar, too.

The streetlamps shine pale halos on to the pavement as he walks, his mind carefully blank. He never thinks about his kills afterwards. What’s the point?

It crosses his mind that he didn’t get injured this time, so he won’t need her. Florence.

Their relationship - is it a relationship? - confounds and humbles him.

York doesn’t kid himself that she probably wouldn’t look twice at him on the subway; or at a speed dating night. Theirs is a connection born out of necessity, but even so, he’s reached for her more than once after a nightmare jerked him upright in bed; jacked off to the memory of her soft skin when he’s alone in the shower.

So when he hears her voice, he’s almost convinced that he’s dreaming it.

“Stop. Stop!”

York rounds the corner on silent feet - years of training have taught him to move without being seen or heard.

And there she is. Florence, but not as he knows her. She wears a light sweater; a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Two guys cage her in - both taller, way broader than her. One looks like he’s holding a shiv. York would’ve snorted in disgust if it didn’t put him in danger of being given away.

He assesses the scene for a moment.

“Please,” Florence is saying. “Please. You can take anything I have.”

Over my dead body, York thinks. Florence has saved him, and now the universe has seen fit for him to receive a chance to return the favour.

He reaches into the waistband of his jeans, palms his little Beretta. Aims; shoots the side of the dumpster to the left of Bozo #1.

The asshat yelps; and from this angle it looks as if he pisses himself. York smiles without humour. He settles in behind the postbox, watches, waits. 

“What the fuck was that?” Bozo #2 yells, and grabs Florence by the throat. 

She gasps.

And that’s enough.

York shoves the Beretta back into his waistband and rounds the postbox. Bozo #1 never sees him coming and with a flick of York’s wrist, the man is out for the count, dropping like a stone to the tarmac. He’ll have a hell of a headache come tomorrow.

Bozo #2 sees his buddy fall and yanks Florence against him, the pathetic little shiv half a foot from her neck.

“Who’s there?” he demands.

Florence stays perfectly still. She knows, York thinks. The doc has been working with black ops soldiers for three years; she’d recognise one anywhere.

There are no streetlights in this alley, so the darkness works to York’s advantage. He presses himself against the wall, regulates his breathing. He could fire another warning shot, but this wannabe gangster’s hand is shaking so bad that a jerk of his arm might harm Florence.

And hurting Florence is a hard line that York will never, ever cross.

He slides a hand slowly into his jean pocket, feels for the little knife; it’s there. He palms it, breathes in and out, slow and steady, and aims. He can see just peachy in the dark thanks to all that murder training.

York hurls the knife. It slams into the meat of Bozo #2’s thigh. No artery has been hit, but he’ll probably have a scar.

Bozo #2 yelps as his leg collapses under him and he crumples to the dry, dirty concrete. The shiv drops to the ground too, clattering.

Florence surges forward and without thinking York grabs for her, wraps his arms around her. She’s fine. She’s fine.

“It’s me,” he murmurs when she jerks in panic, and when she turns her face up to look at him, he’s struck by her beauty, her eyes flashing in the nearby gleam from the blinking lights of an ATM.

“David.”

God, he loves it when she calls him that. No one else does. It’s like their secret language.

Uncaring about what happens to Bozos #1 or #2, he takes her hand, leads her away. “What were you doing out here, so late?”

Florence gives him the side eye. “Patching up under-the-table guys isn’t my only job.”

“Right.”

“I was leaving the hospital. Pulled a double shift.” Her fingers clench in his. He should let her hand go, but he doesn’t.

“And you didn’t think to drive?” he wishes he could bite the very father-like comment back.

“I like walking at night.”

He gets it. People like them thrive in the darkness. It’s how they justify what they do. Florence, not so much, but York, yes. He belongs in the dark, doesn’t deserve to see the light after the lives he’s taken.

“I’ll walk you home,” he says into the balmy night air.

She doesn’t disagree. She doesn’t ask where he’s been; she probably knows.

Five minutes later, they reach her building, a modest mid-century brownstone with what York supposes is good-enough security. Perhaps he’ll come by one night and replace the camera with a better one.

Florence digs her key from her pocket. “So, this is me.”

York shakes his head. “Uh- uh. I’ll come in, clear your place.”

He can’t see, for sure, but it seems like she rolls her eyes just a little, but she doesn’t argue.

They take the steps together.

“I’m not sure you knowing where I live is part of the arrangement McCall made,” she says, a bit breathlessly.

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“I know it is, David.” She thumbs through the keys and selects the one for Number 12, offers it to him.

He slides it into the lock soundlessly, pockets the little curve of metal and then plucks the beretta from the small of his back, holding it ahead of him.

Florence is silent behind.

When he’s cleared her small apartment, she closes the door, looks up into his eyes. “Thankyou. For what you did.”

Her gratitude makes him uncomfortable. “No problem. Those jerks gave me an opportunity to clear the red in my ledger.”

Florence’s gaze goes soft. “David-” She lifts her hand to his cheek. Her lips part, slightly.

And then he’s on her like a starving man being given a taste of food after too, too long. He shoves his backpack off his shoulder as Florence’s arms wind around his neck, and he licks into her mouth, desperate. Wanting to show without words how fucking delirious with happiness he is that she’s here, alive. He tucks his hands under her ass, lifts her up, backs them into the door, as she winds her legs around his hips.

His name falls from her lips like a supplication to whatever God is listening as he starts to ravage her neck, using his tongue and teeth to pull moans and sighs from her. Her hands tunnel into his hair and he thinks I need her more than I need air, and he bucks his hips into the sweet softness of her, and even though they’re both clothed, he feels the tingle of an orgasm start at the base of his spine.

“David…”

He looks up.

“You smell like whiskey.”

“Decoy,” he mutters. 

“Shower,” she says with a raised brow.

He grunts a response; doesn’t bother putting her down, but carries her through the apartment. The bathroom door is open which makes it easier. He begrudges it but he sets Florence down gently, as if she’ll break if he treats her like anything save fine china, and then she blows that image away by falling on him, tearing at his clothes, yanking his t-shirt over his head. He fumbles at her clothing, feeling like a man who has won the lottery and is cursed all at the same time. He has been inside this woman, but not like this. Not skin to skin, not like they’re about to be, with the hot water rushing over their bodies.

Florence shoves his jeans down and then kneels, unlacing his combat boots. He steps out of them, meets her gaze, sees the fire dancing in his eyes.

Naked, he pulls her into the shower as she turns the water on hot. The spray slicks their bodies, and Florence mouths at the hollow of his throat, her tongue laving his skin.

York explores the curves and valleys of her eagerly with his hands; he knows they’re gun-calloused, rough in places, but her cat-like mewls tell him she likes it. When one of her small hands slides down to cup him intimately, he feels himself jerk in her grasp, and she purrs.

Who knew Dr Nightingale could be so naughty? Fuck, it’s hot, she is hot, and he’s going to lose it like an untried boy if he isn’t careful.

Florence kisses her fingertips down the scar on his chest; the one she stitched just before the first, and only time, they made love, when she rode him carefully, so slowly he thought he’d die from the tension in his balls.

“David.” She then kisses the scar, and his knees go weak for a moment. New wetness streaks down his chest - different texture to the shower, and he realises with horror that she’s crying.

He cups her face, looks into her eyes. 

“Don’t cry. Sweetheart, don’t cry.”

“You mustn’t put yourself in danger for me,” she hiccups out, pressing her face into his neck. “What happens when the music stops?”

York swallows hard. I don’t know how many songs I have left. That’s what he’d said to her, that first time. Maybe he wishes he could take the words back.

“I would put myself in danger for you every second,” he rasps into her ear. “For you - anything. Everything.”

She is silent for a moment that stretches; the only sound the rushing water. Then, “Please. Please.”

And he kneels down, bracing his hands on her hips and makes love to her with his mouth, for how long, he doesn’t know. Time ceases to matter. He drinks in the taste of her, licking and sucking, learning just where to use his teeth to make her fist her hands in his hair, sob his name brokenly. When he stands up, holding her to him, her legs shake, and she kisses him fiercely, desperately, breaking apart only to fill her hands with strawberry soap. When she wraps her palms around him, stroking, taking her time to learn every move that makes him gasp, every twist of her fist that has him gulping him, she wrings an orgasm so powerful from him that he swears he blacks out, just for a second.

They dry each other off gently, silently, and when Florence leads him to her bed, he should say no. He should go home. He should get as far away from her as possible. She isn’t a killer, shouldn’t be tarnished by the blood on his hands. So much blood.

But he lets her wrap herself around him, and he holds her tightly, so tightly he might leave marks, but her hair smells of strawberries, and she might be the only pure thing he has left in this world.

He holds her all night long.

Another AMAZING gif by @beccaplaying !

Tagging people who I think will like this: @songsformonkeys @buckstaposition @alldatalost @abuttoncalledsmalls @knittingqueen13 @dornish-queen @agirllovespasta @winters-buck @heatherbel @holographic-carmen @the-green-kid @pajamasecrets @lannister-slings-and-arrows @engineeredfiction @restingnurseface @mrschiltoncat @lackofhonor @emmy-dandiliom918 @opheliaelysia @poenariuniverse

[siren1song]

Merman Dee AU, Anxceit, shell

Me, lover of mermaids: OH WORM??

Taglist: @acanvasofabillionsuns, @emo-disaster, @greenninjagal-blog, @jungle321jungle, @demidork84

Sea Life

Virgil didn’t like being on land too much. He preferred the open sea, the rocking of a ship under his feet and the salty air blasting his face as he moved around on deck. Preferred hearing his shipmates laughing and singing and working as they sailed, looking for a rich man’s ship to raid, or a village to plunder.

He supposed land had something to offer though, with its pretty greenery and… shops? Maybe?

Listen, Virgil hated going on supply runs when they couldn’t find another ship to raid and take their stock. Like sure, he was good at figuring out how much they’d need to last for a while but being on the sea was so much better than the unsettling stillness of the earth under his feet.

At least he was done with scouting where they needed to hit. He’d taken a week, only spending money on his Inn room, and he was packing up now to get back to the ship so the rest of the crew could pillage and have their fun while he recovered from being on land for too long.

Virgil was shoving clothes into a burlap sack he carried with him everywhere when he went on land, not really caring about being neat or careful with how he got them in there until he heard a thunk and his heart dropped.

Was that..?

He dropped the sack, getting on his knees to dig around in the clothes still on the floor. There was a frantic search for a moment, Virgil holding his breath until he moved a dark colored shirt and a flash of pale cream caught his eye.

Sagging in relief, he picked up the frog shell, fingers brushing over the brown spots decorating it.

Virgil remembered getting this, remembered the man who had given it to him. He wished he could see him again, wished he could give him the kiss he’d always wanted to.

“I want you to have this.”

Virgil looked up from the shell, more confused than he had been when Dee had handed it to him.

“What? It’s just a shell, Dee.”

Dee frowned at that, shifting on the rock he’d chosen to rest on while Virgil sat cross-legged in the sand of the small island next to it.

“No, it’s… important. In ways I doubt you can understand. I won’t try and explain, but if you really think we won’t be able to see each other again I want you to have it.”

Virgil looked back to the shell, turning it over in his hands and admiring the strength he could clearly feel.

“I do really think that. I wish it wasn’t true, I l-” he stopped, clearing his throat for a second as he closed his eyes, “care, about you. I enjoy your company quite a bit. But my captain grows suspicious of my constant leaving of the ship, especially with my usual hatred of being on land.”

Dee was quiet for a moment, then he slid off the rock, tail curling under him in the sand. He put his webbed hand on Virgil’s jaw, gently directing his head towards him so he could look the mer in the eyes, stark yellow and pupils slitted unnaturally.

“I care about you too.”

“Virgil!”

Virgil jumped, nearly dropping the shell in his hands as he whipped his head in the direction of the door, seeing Patton standing there with a bright grin and heaving chest.

“Are you ready? The captain is getting impatient, he wants to set fire to the town and you’re still here with the information for which shops have the best quality supplies!”

He huffed out a laugh, carefully setting the shell into his sack before shoving the rest of his clothes in on top of it.

“Yeah I’m ready, sick of being on land,” he said, pushing up from the floor so he could follow Patton out of the inn.

They ran through the empty dirt cobblestone streets, the bottoms of their shoes (or feet, in Patton’s case) slapping against the stone as they made their way to the docks.

Virgil’s excitement grew when he saw the sea, and then more as he clambered into the boat that would take them to the Mind Palace, a ship that wasn’t yet recognizable but would be, under Captain Sanders’ command.

When they were next to the ship, Patton got ready to call for being brought up, stopping only when he saw the look on Virgil’s face.

“Sometimes, Virgil, I think you love the sea more than anyone else who has ever chosen life on the water,” he said, smiling as Virgil laughed.

“Quite literally born on the water, Pat, I think my love of the ocean is warranted. Come on, let’s get us up on the ship, I’m ready to share my information and then sleep for a fortnight.”

Patton laughed himself, calling up for the two on the ship waiting for them to raise them up to lower the ropes.

“Two days for every one you were on land, as usual. Honestly, Virge, I’d think you were siren yourself if I wasn’t so thoroughly acquainted with your mother.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, helping Patton get the boat ready to go up. It was still weird for him to think that his friend knew his mother so well, especially since Virgil barely remembered her.

It wasn’t much longer until he was back on the ship, taking a moment to cherish the rocking under his feet, breathing in the sea air and the wind blowing through his hair.

“You belong on the water.”

Virgil jumped, turning towards the unfamiliar voice and yelping when he saw the man on the edge of the boat he was standing in.

It was clear the man wasn’t human, with his webbed fingers and finned ears. What was catching Virgil the most off guard was the glowing yellow eyes, pupils sporting a cats eye slit. 

“What?” he asked, confused by the jumble of feelings in chest. 

He couldn’t tell if he was afraid or in love, but his heart was pounding in his chest and this mer was beautiful.

The merman smirked, tilting his head to the side as his eyes went from the unnatural purple hues in Virgil’s hair, down to his torso where thin lines he was born with decorated his ribs under his shirt (how he knew to stop there, Virgil was unsure), then down to his legs.

“I suppose I should rephrase. You belong in the water.”

Virgil gave a disbelieving laugh, sitting back down as he stared at the mer.

“Are you a siren after my heart and life? Or simply a mer after my flesh?”

The man scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“I am a siren, but I hold no interest in feeding myself with you.”

“I’m not sure whether to be relieved or offended. Am I not to your tastes, siren?”

The siren lifted an eyebrow, looking over his body again.

“Tell me, pirate, have you ever wondered why you naturally had a shade of color in your hair that other human’s never had?”

Virgil hummed, removing the shiv he had hidden in his boot so he could play with it between his hands. A simultaneous warning and fidget. 

“I have, but it’s never been something that’s bothered me. I know how to hide it, whatever it may mean, and it does nothing but look pretty.”

The siren nodded, resting his chin over his arms as he watched Virgil.

“I suppose, if it doesn’t bother you, I won’t push,” he commented, earning a look of befuddlement from Virgil.

“I wasn’t aware there was something to push.”

The siren shrugged, but didn’t give Virgil any more than that.

With a sigh, Virgil let it drop. He was sure he didn’t want to know anyway. Sirens were known for telling men what they wanted to hear to lure them to their deaths, so it was for the best anyway.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, cleaning the dirt from under his nails with the shiv, glancing up only when the silence after his question stretched just a bit too long.

“I do. Are you sure you want to know it, pirate?”

Virgil hummed in thought, pressing the tip of the shiv to the tip of his finger.

“I think I do. You’re a beautiful man, siren or no, it’d be a shame not to at least learn your name.”

The siren lifted his head, staring at Virgil with wide eyes the unnatural glow they were giving off in the dark seeming to get brighter as his face began to glow a soft yellow.

“…My name is… complicated to share, in its entirety in human languages. But you can call me Dee.”

He smiled, looking up at the stars.

“Dee, hm? My name is Virgil.”

“Virgil? Are you okay?” Patton asked, waving a hand in front of Virgil’s face and making him jerk back in surprise.

“Huh?”

Patton’s concerned expression deepened, looking at Thomas who Virgil only just realized was standing in front of him with an equally concerned look.

“You haven’t been responding to us for the last few minutes, and Thomas here has definitely been trying to talk to you.”

Virgil flushed, rubbing at the side of his neck and avoiding looking Thomas in the eye.

“Sorry Captain, just relieved to be back on the water.”

Thomas nodded, though he didn’t look like he believed the lie. Which was fair, Virgil wouldn’t have believed it either.

Dee would be disappointed.

“Alright. I just need the list of locations, Virgil, and you can rest, though you’ll have to stay on deck, Logan played with something that made him sick again and Roman is taking care of him so they can’t keep watch like usual.”

Virgil nodded, listing the places he found that the crew should focus on raiding, already eyeing the railing on the far side of the ship where there was rope coiled for him to sit in.

It took an hour before Virgil was alone again, sitting against railing of the ship and staring up at the stars.

He missed looking at the night sky with Dee. The siren often had something interesting to say about whatever new thing he found that fascinated him. Virgil had fun, misleading him about whatever he’d shown him, laughing when Dee would catch on that he was lying through his teeth about the use of a fork he’d found or a rusty candle holder, likely retrieved from a shipwreck.

“I see you still stare at the stars as if you want to join them,” a familiar voice said, making Virgil straighten from his slouched position, turning towards the voice with wide eyes and-

“Dee!” he shouted, a grin spreading on his face that quickly dropped in concern as he looked around the ship.

Logan and Roman may be below deck, but Virgil still worried about the siren getting caught.

Dee rolled his eyes, heaving himself up until he was sitting on the ship wall, tail leaving a puddle of water on the deck beneath him.

“Oh don’t worry so much Virgil, I can take care of myself.”

Virgil looked back at the siren, letting out a small laugh because yeah, that was true.

“Yes, I remember watching you take on a massive shark for fun. Still, what are you doing here? It’s been years since we’ve last seen each other, I’d figured you’d forgotten me by now.”

Dee went quiet, looking up at the stars- a habit he seemed to pick from Virgil, since he himself did that whenever he needed to think.

“I could never forget you, Virgil. You may be a pirate, but you’re still... I still love you, even if I never told you that to your face.”

Virgil’s breath hitched, unable to respond as he looked at Dee with wide eyes.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why now. Well...” Dee looked down at him, smile soft, “would you like to learn something new about yourself?”

Virgil hesitated, standing from the deck so he could be level with Dee’s eyes as he thought.

“If you’re the one showing me? I suppose that couldn’t be a bad thing.”

Dee snorted, rolling his eyes as Virgil grinned.

“You’re a sap, Virgil.”

“I’m a romantic, Dee. Though don’t tell anyone. My crew mates will get insufferable if they learn that.”

Dee smiled softly, holding out a hand, an offer for Virgil to take.

Why did Virgil feel like if he took it, his entire life would change?

“Kiss me, Virgil. Let me taste you.”

Dee’s voice was soft, and Virgil felt as if his heart would burst from his chest at the request.

He didn’t even think twice, taking Dee’s hand in his own and surging forward, pressing his lips to the siren’s in a passion he wasn’t known to give anything but the sea.

Dee wrapped his free arm around him, his hand shifting to his wrist as they kissed and he held Virgil close.

And then they were free falling to the water, Virgil not even able to hold his breath before he was submerged.

Honestly, he hoped Dee had a reason for this. He hoped he wasn’t being betrayed someone he loved, not again at least.

“Relax, Virgil, I promise if you open your eyes you’ll see that you’re fine.”

How was he able to hear Dee’s voice so clearly?

Why weren’t his lungs burning? Why wasn’t he drowning?

“Open your eyes, love.”

Virgil opened his eyes as Dee asked, first seeing the siren’s apologetic face.

“Sorry for the shock, it needed to happen for the change.”

“Change?”

Virgil had spoken without thinking, and it had taken a moment for him to recover from the shock of water filling his throat. But it hadn’t hurt and it was gone with a bizarre push coming from his ribs.

“Look down, Virgil, really,” Dee teased, laughter ringing in his tone.

He always did find Virgil’s confusion amusing.

Virgil looked down.

At first, he didn’t know what he  was supposed to be seeing. There was Dee’s pale yellow tail, swishing lazily in the water, skin shimmering in the moonlight reaching into the sea. It was something Virgil loved to look at.

And then he saw the dark purple sheen underneath him, fear spiking until he realized it was connected to his waist.

He had a tail.

[dweetwise]

How do the other survivors react to cheryl? uwu

we love cheryl <3

Cheryl & other survivors headcanons

Dwight is used to getting so many incredulous comments along the lines of “You’re the leader?”, so when Cheryl just shrugs when Ace introduces him as such, he instantly decides to try to befriend her. The two bond a lot over having been outcasts and without many friends during their time before the fog.

Meg and Cheryl get off on the wrong foot. Meg reminds Cheryl of the popular girls who used to give her the cold shoulder in school, and she brings out the snark, to which Meg’s hot temper is quick to respond to. They eventually bond after Cheryl opens up to the camp about the murder of her father.

Claudette is a little bit intimidated by Cheryl. She’s impulsive and not afraid to speak her mind and Claudette is a lot more reserved. However, Cheryl starts seeking her out, making an effort to get to know her. “I’m sorry if I seem rude, I just never really knew how to make friends,” Cheryl awkwardly explains. Claudette almost wants to cry, relating wholeheartedly and the two become good friends despite their contrasting personalities.

Jake is pretty rude to new survivors in general. He likes listening in on Cheryl talk to the others about her past, and ends up respecting her a lot despite never having talked to her. Once, he saves her during endgame. “I thought you hated me,” a surprised Cheryl says. “I don’t hate you, I just can’t stand people,” he explains. Instead of calling him out on his rudeness, Cheryl just says “Mood” and they bond over being edgy little shits.

Nea vibes with Cheryl’s chaotic, rebellious energy. She brings out a playful side of the normally serious girl and eggs her on to to dumb shit in trials, to the annoyance of the other survivors.

Laurie has sen that same look in her own eyes and knows Cheryl has been through some shit. They share a quiet solidarity, more often than not sensing each other’s auras in trials. Sometimes they wordlessly exchange shivs by the campfire and put the others on edge.

Ace finds Cheryl to have a dry and dark sense of humor that he loves. Cheryl is quick to adopt father figures in her life and kind of latches on to Ace at the start, since his lighthearted banter and shitty jokes make her feel welcomed to the group.

Bill’s initial reaction is pretty much “Just another kid to protect”. He ends up eating his words when Cheryl shows just how capable she is despite her young age. He even gives her honest to God compliments for teaching him how to tank a hit after recovering off the ground.

Feng is thinking strategically right off the bat, skipping any greetings and demanding “So, what can you do?” and trying to figure out how the other’s skills will benefit her the team. Feng takes a shine to Cheryl because she’s kind of a tryhard in trials and they almost always end up escaping if they’re together. And there’s nothing Feng likes more than winning.

David is irritated at the injustice of another survivor, and a kid at that, getting trapped in the realm. He ends up taking it out on Cheryl, blunt and rude in their interactions, until a pissed off Cheryl confronts him with a “Dude, what the hell is your problem!?” and David realizes he could stand to be a little more friendly.

Quentin and Cheryl? Near-instant besties. They’re the same age, have a similar vibe and share similar hellish nightmare trauma. Even though the others have also sen Some Shit ™, Quentin feels like Cheryl is the only one who understands having a fucked up childhood and constant nightmares. They have a whole bunch of inside jokes and most are extremely morbid.

Tapp reminds Cheryl of Douglas and she tells him as much. When Tapp is, unsurprisingly, concerned about the whole cult thing she lets slip, she ends up opening up to him more than any of the others about the events of Silent Hill. Tapp never speaks a word of it to anyone and makes it his mission to get between Cheryl and Pyramid Head every opportunity he can, as Cheryl says the killer reminds her of the monsters she faced.

Kate immediately jumps into a big sister role and Cheryl is a little taken aback by the sudden, hearty affection. Kate doesn’t let up and Cheryl begrudgingly accepts the hugs and Kate becomes the nice, if a little overbearing, aunt figure.

Adam, at first glance, resigns himself to the fact that he has nothing in common with the rebellious teen. Cheryl surprises him by being hungry for knowledge, listening intently to whatever tidbit Adam shares. He actually blushes when Cheryl says he’s a great teacher and if the ones in her schools had been like him she probably never would have flunked.

Jeff swoops in to save Cheryl every time the others are being a little too insistent asking about her past or requesting to be taught her perks. Jeff distracts her from life in the fog, asking about what kind of music and movies she’s into and what she used to do in the real world.

Jane can tell Cheryl is troubled by her past and tries to get her to talk about the events of Silent Hill, but Cheryl pulls away and only wants to share with someone she’s comfortable with. Jane pushes a little too hard and Cheryl starts avoiding her, having some unresolved issues involving female authority figures that she needs to work through.

Ash makes bad dad jokes and is secretly pleased when Cheryl shows an interest in the mechanics of his prosthetic. There’s a certain kind of ego boost that only comes from a teenager genuinely saying that his arm is “cool”.

Nancy’s first impression is that Cheryl was that weird kid in school who everyone avoided for no reason. So, like with Barb and Jonathan before her, Nancy makes a conscious effort to get to know Cheryl and ends up appreciating her weird little quirks. Cheryl, in turn, often calls Nancy a nerd, but it’s affectionate and their friendship is a wholesome one.

Steve tries to befriend Cheryl a little too eagerly because something about her reminds him of Robin. They have an awkward confrontation where Cheryl says she’s not interested, and Steve is confused for a whole minute before panicking. “Shit, I wasn’t trying to hit on you! I just wanted to be friends because you seem cool af!” In the end they laugh it off and become friends after an awkward start.

Yui loves how independent and badass Cheryl is. She develops a small crush and is always uncharacteristically quiet and flustered whenever Cheryl compliments her skills in trials.

Zarina is skeptical of Cheryl because of her young age. She ends up appreciating how resourceful the girl is, but sticks to admiring from afar as she doesn’t feel like she can relate to her struggles.

[demonkidpliz]

Things I learned while re-watching Star Plus Mahabharata (Part 16/many):

1) As ever with Duryodhan, I cannot disagree with anything he says.

2) Oh god. This scene. Panchali’s curse. Her walking away as Arjun looks on. Gold.

3) Not sure I like this new version of Krishna seekh.

4) Also we have not seen Krishna fight once in this battle of Dwarka vs the King of Shalva.

5) I also don’t like crying Krishna. Not saying he can’t. But I can’t take him seriously when he cries. I need him to be infinitely more chill than SRJ is being right now.

6) Ah, Arjun swearing at the Kurus. A+ 10/10.

7) Oh my fucking god, Subhadra’s opening line to Arjun: how could you let this happen? I expect nothing less from her.

8) Madhav is back now, after chilling in his war. He’s still in a self-driven chariot.

9) Wow, he’s so pissed at the Pandavas and rightfully so.

10) Draupadi telling Krishna that she’s become impure. And anyone who comes near her would also become impure. No. NO. Every woman in the world knows this feeling.

11) Okay, first of all, Krishna, you moonlighting feminist, the first thing you should tell Draupadi is that she has not become malin because of what Duryodhana and Dushasan did. This is on them, not on her. I cannot but compare StarBharat with BR Chopra Mahabharat, the comparisons come very easily to me. And the truth is, they just did some things better.

12) Draupadi’s now fallen at his feet. Krishna is just like, Lord give me strength.

13) This scene is important because I feel like for once Krishna is putting his grand plans on hold for one second to give Draupadi back her peace of mind. Because first and foremost, the Lord is kind to those who follow him.

14) It’s so nice that StarBharat has shown this sort of sisterly solidarity between Draupadi and Subhadra, which is so important.

15) Draupadi is not even remotely impressed by Yudhishthira’s theatrics.

16) Draupadi’s pratigya makes her sound like Bhishma. Intentional or unintentional.

17) I cannot imagine Subhadra watching idly by as the Pandavas and Draupadi walk to the forest. I’m sure she put up a fight against her brothers to be allowed to go.

18) Speaking of, where is Balaram in all of this? His cousins are heading for vanvas and he is still chilling in Dwarka? Unrealistic.

19) Oh nice, Abhimanyu hasn’t even been born yet but somehow Krishna has managed to name him.

20) That scene where Arjun stops Subhadra from touching his feet. Some of StarBharat’s dialogueless scenes are just as touching.

21) Krishna’s glare as Shakuni enters the Indraprastha palace lmaoo.

22) A well executed scene but the watering hole scene happens only towards the end of the 12-year vanvas period.

23) This is hilarious. Yudhishthira is basically like Krishna is going to whoop my ass if I let something else happen to Panchali.

24) Oh god. Everyone loves Arjun the most. But I think Yudhishthira loves Bhim the most.

25) It’s time for Yudhishthira to meet his bio daddy!

26) Arjun doing tapasya for Shiv is my jam.

27) Bhim is such a cutie.

28) This Hanuman story is different though, right? Something to do with some lotus for Draupadi.

29) Is Hanuman a Yadav? He wears the same tilak. Or is this some Ram/Krishna connection we don’t quite know about.

30) I love Hanuman’s character! He’s so playful. And also the Hanuman Chalisa in the background score.

31) Oh so Hanuman knows that Krishna is Ram/Vishnu avatar and says he will chill on the chariot that’s being manned by God.

32) Oh no they never told us about the magic bowl Draupadi had that was gifted to her by Surya Dev which gave them unlimited food.

33) Also, do the Pandavas and Karna ever realise that they are all ‘gifts’ of Durvasa.

34) Krishna creeping in the background like some mega creep 😂

35) This is a conversation for another time but some day we need to talk about the incessant whitewashing of our gods such as Ram and Krishna in modern mythological serials. Also of Draupadi/Dhrishtadyumna/Arjun—basically anyone who’s described in canon as dark. There is some modern fetish for fair-skinned gods that just doesn’t sit right. I miss the dark-skinned Aruns and Nitishs.

36) Durvasa is still not impressed by Krishna. This man is literally god.

37) Arjun is fishing.

38) Oh nice, Indra is also here. Old gods and new.

39) Not sure whether I like this Shiv. Shiv in general I love.

40) Aaaand Jayadrath is here. Can’t wait for this guy to die in tomorrow’s BR Chopra Mahabharat episode.

41) Duryodhan low key throwing shade at Jayadrath is my jam.

42) Really, what does Dushala see in this man?

43) Kaun ho tum? Really? Draupadi doesn’t know her own brother-in-law? That seems highly unlikely.

44) Why is Arjun wasting time with all this trash talk?

45) Arjun is having a lot of second thoughts about keeping Jayadrath alive for Dushala’s sake but this is going to change very quickly during the war. Also Nakul rightfully points out that this man will give grief to Arjun later on.

46) This is by far the worst and most inaccurate map of Aryavarta to ever exist.

47) Oh no Jayadrath’s hair makeup is so not on point at this moment.

48) Mamashri Shakuni is literally fortune telling at this point and this is my jam.

49) So it’s canon that both Shakuni and Krishna are Slytherins, right? Yet they are the two most diametrically opposite Slytherins we have ever seen.

50) Also I want to see Dushala but these shows never give me what I want. When I make the Mahabharata I will make sure the women get equal and opposite screen time and character development as the men.

51) Yudhishthira is getting on my nerves.

52) This Draupadi is infinitely nicer than BR Chopra Mahabharat’s Roopa Ganguli who used to give it to her husbands every opportunity she got.

53) I also have lots of complaints. They didn’t show Dhrishtadyumna taking Draupadi’s sons home to Panchal to raise them.

54) They didn’t show Arjun chilling with his bio dad in heaven! They didn’t show Urvashi hitting on him and him rejecting her advances! Then she curses him, causing him to lose his manhood. And then she reverses the curse after Indra begs her and she limits it to lost manhood for one year of his choosing. That’s how Arjun uses the Brihannala guise for a year during agyaatvaas!

55) Shakuni training himself to think like Krishna. Looool.

56) Nakul bullying children is my jam.

57) Clearly this sattoo ke laddoo business is some sort of secret code amongst the Pandavas.

58) At least Uttar and Uttara are aptly shown as young teenagers.

59) My fav is back! Brihannala! 😍

60) Also what is this face covering nonsense by Sairindhri?! Women in the Later Vedic Age did not cover their faces or their heads behind purdah!!!

61) The Pandavas meeting together after a long time is giving me hope! This is what it’s going to be like when lockdown is over and I meet my friends 😭😭😭

62) This Keechak guy looks evil but I can’t take him seriously because his voice makes him sound like a prepubescent boy.

63) What is this casual classism from Keechak? Like Jesus, what a dirtbag.

64) Again there was no ghunghat back in those days?!?!

65) But iss Keechak ne toh consent ki maa behen kar di.

66) How happy the Pandavas are to see Panchali! Arjun the most, perhaps 😍

67) Virat making a dig at Dushasan. I’m here for this tea.

68) I can’t take Keechak seriously because of his voice.

69) This logic whereby if Draupadi has five husbands so she can have one more—like I will never understand this! She consented to five and no more???

70) Brihannala, my one true fav, is back!

71) Keechak vadh is my favourite episode, behind Shishupal vadh and Jayadrath vadh. Do you see the pattern?

72) Why is Draupadi here? I wanted to see Bhim’s giant form hidden as a lump under a blanket, enticing Keechak.

73) Bhim is here! 😍 Seriously, no one loves Panchali as much as Bhim does. Arjun toh is smitten by our Yadav homegirl.

74) Now Arjun is going to do his tandav dance. This should distract the others from the noise nicely.

75) Oh nice. Nakul and Sahadev are also participating.

76) Predictably, Jyesth Bhrata, Yudhishthira, is not invited to this Keechak vadh party.

77) King Virat is like oh no what a loss.

78) Yudhishthira looks pissed, as always, when his brothers have done something good.

79) Haha. Duryodhan has caught on to the fact that Bhishma is trying desperately to stall so that the Pandavas are not found out.

81) Now Duryodhan is now accusing Vidur of partiality. Again, he is not wrong. I’m so impressed by how well his character has been written. Not one word he says is incorrect.

82) Nice. Duryodhan has his father wrapped around his little finger. He knows exactly how to manipulate him so that Dhritarashtra rises to the bait.

83) After all these centuries Bhishma realises that Shakuni is after the destruction of Hastinapur.

84) Shakuni is admitting now that all of this is revenge for Gandhari. Oh man. Do you think Bhishma knew that the Mahabharat was the result of his poorly executed actions (intentional or otherwise)?

85) King Virat is so smart. I like him. I’m going to be so sad when he dies.

86) Brihannala is going to stay behind. Great. It’s so interesting to see this story in retrospect (which is how it’s told to Janamajeya and Vajra) in the first place.

87) I like Virat with open hair.

88) What the hell is this? I cannot be attracted to Pitamaha Bhishma and Mama Shakuni with their open hair and battle armour?! Adharm!

89) Oh what a cool sundial!

90) I’m glad they showed Uttar as nothing more than a teenager.

91) Mama Shakuni is so fit.

92) Do you think Bhishma recognises Arjun as Uttar’s chariot?

93) Poor Uttar is probably shitting his pants.

94) Arjun praying to Agni Dev to return his Gandiv. Old gods to the rescue.

95) This background score! It’s my absolute favourite! Parthasya Dhananjaya! My fav song on my fav, Arjun 😍

96) Bhishma looks thoroughly pleased. He recognises the sound of the Gandiv’s twang.

97) Now they will fight about the authenticity of the calendar. They should go to a calendar expert.

98) Bhishma looks proper chuffed at Arjun. How on earth will they fight against each other in the Great War?

99) Oh man, Karna is here. Ugh.

100) Karna is here to trash talk as per usual. Oh god both these men are useless. Fight no instead of talking so much.

101) Oh man, the charioteer’s son has been thrown from his chariot but not before taking a shot at Arjun.

102) Ah Karna’s divine armour makes an appearance!

103) Oh shit, this just got real! They’re calling on divine weapons!

104) Bhishma steps in. Of course.

105) Duryodhan’s hah! 😂😂

106) Arjun crying that if he is responsible for Bhishma’s death, it will be hell on earth for him. Oh, Arjun. You must still suffer, a lot.

107) Arjun’s threat, that all the Pandavas will come to avenge Draupadi’s insult. Yes. 100%. I hope in this yug even if men are not punished for their crimes against women on earth, they will suffer forever in hell for their misdeeds.

108) The Pandavas and Draupadi are ready. It’s time for the Great War. It’s time for Mahabharat.

[mermaidsirennikita]

That succession finale omg!! tell me all of your thoughts!

UGH YES OKAY.

I think it was SO GOOD first off.  

People are kind of deluded, in my opinion, if they think this was all some Grand Master Plan of Logan’s.  Firstly, he is definitely kind of proud of Kendall and has more respect for him at the end.  Kendall may jumped out as the potential successor, even if his resentment will override his logic and he won’t move forward with it.  (Conventional wisdom, and Roman’s showing in the finale, would say that s3 will be the season of Roman+Gerri.)  But people vastly overestimate Logan’s abilities and see this show as like, a Game of Thrones type piece in which everyone is trying to outmaneuver each other in chess.  No.  Logan is a good businessman, and he is smart, but this season more than ever has hammered home that he needs to step down.  He is overly protective of himself; he would have looked better had he just copped to his own issues and stepped down willingly.  He showed real fear after that phone call in which he was told to step down, and there was no one for him to act for there.  He’s an old man, outdated yet still in power, which is one of those things the show is trying to make a point about.  I feel that Logan thought that Kendall was past his sell-by point; he’d given him chances to bite the hand, but he hadn’t...  So he assumed that he wouldn’t.  There’s no way Logan knew that Greg would flip with the documents.  

But all of this has been seeded.  I don’t think Kendall had a master plan; I think that he decided to snap in the moment as he realized that this accidental killing he’d been wracked with guilt over never mattered to his father.  His father would literally not respect him unless he became an even worse human being, and Kendall has been trying to be BE A BETTER PERSON lmao.  So he went all in.  You want me to be a killer?  CHILL.  His metaphorical deliberate murder of his father paralleled, of course, his literal accidental killing of an innocent.  I also feel that when we saw Kendall beg Shiv to look out for him, that seeded it to.  That was his one request, and she would have been smart to keep him on her side--he has value.  Shiv’s fatal flaw is that she deludes herself into thinking that she’s sO DIFFERENT, so much smarter than her “dumb brothers”, but she’s not.  All the Roy kids have their strengths and weaknesses and probably work better together a a cohesive unit, as seen when Shiv and Kendall teamed up to make Rhea look bad.  But Shiv wanted to keep Tom close, as he was slipping away, more than she wanted to keep her brother, someone who is much more potentially dangerous, in the fold.  Tom would have taken the hit and walked away.  In fact, I think it would have borderline been something of a relief for him to have an excuse to leave.  Shiv knew that, and in a sick way she does love him--though I also think that it’s about control, about needed that “safe” person with her. Tom has so much less power than Shiv, and she likes that.  Shiv’s downfall of the season was in this blunder, and in the fact that she revealed herself to be a daddy’s girl through and through.  Please save him, getting all emotional right before Kendall motherfucking axed her lol.  Her downfall was not as dramatic as his, but when you see her watching Logan, you know that he couldn’t be less impressed with her in that moment, and more comparatively impressed with Kendall.

We also, of course, had everything seeded with Greg.  Greg is a somewhat normal-ish person still, and he can see, like any outside person can, that Kendall is being abused in the worst way by Logan.  I think he could also see that Logan was probably going to feed him to the wolves, and almost did...  Whereas if he gets in good with Kendall from the start, he may have more longevity.  Now, I am a believer that Greg will Bran Stark this shit and win the long term, but I’ve also thought that a beautifully complete arc would be Kendall shadow mastering Greg’s reign on a level.  Like, for whatever reason he can’t be the public face, but he’s lost his soul completely and is maneuvering shit from behind the scenes for Greg.  Similar to Logan with Kendall, tbh.  This only solidified this being a possibility, which I loved.  Kendall knows that Greg has the documents; Kendall has also, intentionally or not, done things over the season to draw Greg in.  He may have thrown Gatsby parties in Greg’s penthouse, but he’s still casually letting him stay there.  He and Greg probably do coke together now lol.  It lines up.

I’m excited to see where Roman goes.  He’s fully with Gerri now--I was impressed to see him throw down the gauntlet for her, which I didn’t fully expect.  Roman is still too close to his father, and too vulnerable, to really have that “killer instinct”.  I think that he’s a creative guy, a big picture guy.  The interesting thing too is that he is the only one who really stood up for Kendall--which BROKE ME, those two really do love each other--but Kendall kinda fucked him, and knew he would, I think, as Roman pushed against “killing” him.  Roman just got a promotion from Logan, and he’s more in this company now than ever, just as Kendall puts a dagger in its heart.  So though Kieran gives Roman a bit of a smile as Kendall flips, it’s bittersweet.  He’s happy that his big brother DID SOMETHING, and deep down all the Roy kids know their father deserves it.   But they’ll be adversaries on the business end of things, for sure.

Other little things--beautiful moment between Shiv and Tom as he expressed how little her love really made him happy.  It’s toxic.  He’s a pet to her.  She’s leaning on him, he’s a crutch, but she doesn’t care for him.  A lot of people don’t seem to realize how abusive their relationship is, and Tom finally called that out.  “You told me you wanted an open relationship on our fucking WEDDING NIGHT”.  That was so calculated and emotionally abusive.  Matthew was amazing with his material in this episode.

Marcia really is fucking pissed, huh?

I really have no idea where Kendall goes from here.  The show has opened the door for a lot of possibilities.

Shiv could definitely rise from the ashes, like Kendall, but this was a huge blow of an episode for her in a way I don’t think people get.  Like.  She basically looks like a clown in front of her father right now, and is very much in his power.  But what does his power even mean anymore?  She backed the horse that got shot crossing the finish line, too--what now?

[rotzaprachim]

the closest to heaven that i'll ever be (Kanej Guardian Angel AU)

From @elorcaning‘s prompt of Kaz just being an idiotic human getting in trouble all the time and inej is his guardian angel just trying to keep him from dying while doing stupid shit, which I thought was a BRILLIANT idea and kinda ran with. At 1 AM while on jetlag so I Apologise. 

Props to @kettvrdams for not killing me when i sent an incomprehensible WIP for her to beta. All accidentally unfinished sentences and spelling errors are entirely My Own Fault 

On AO3 - 1816 words, Teen

In her illustrious career as a guardian angel, Inej has learned several things. The first is to believe in the fundamental good of all people- well, almost all people. Almost. But really, she likes to think the best.

The second thing is that no matter how hard she tries- and damn, she really tries hard- humans will still find ways to screw their own lives over, and even if her role is supposed to be more hypothetical or spiritual than anything, she always finds herself getting involved in more practical ways.

But still she thinks, as the poor Dutch farm kid tries to eat fertiliser from the container for the third time, only to be shooed away by his older brother, that this is going to be a challenge.

--o0o--

“Organised crime? Really?” sneers a figure in the corner of the precinct station with their dark hood pulled down low. Kaz glances around. There isn’t anyone else around aside from the beat cop who’s just let him out of the holding shell with a glare and a kick to his good shin.

The figure pulls their hood down. It’s a girl about his own age. Looks like a university student, with a purple jacket and a rain slicker.

She holds out a plastic Albert Hejn bag. Ah. So this is what it’s about. Per Haskell, Pekka Rollins, whoever the fuck it is this time, want him to move something. Cash, drugs, fucking tulip bulbs for all he knows. He doesn’t really care, as long as he’s alive on the other side of it.

But it isn’t really heavy enough to be either of those things.

“You haven’t eaten anything in over twenty four hours.”

He doesn’t know how she could possibly know that, but when he looks inside, what he finds is a cheese sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. Sealed, so it would have been goddamn hard to hide a USB or whatever it is Pekka wants out of the country inside.

“Who sent you? Pekka? Ferry Bouman? Sonny Castillo?”

“Are those the only things your mind goes to?” Now the girl just sounds annoyed.

“I’m not in the habit of beautiful girls meeting me in police precincts without having some other angle they’re working. So what is it? Who do you work for?”

Beautiful girl. He didn’t mean to say that. He’s a lot of things, but a flirt isn’t one of them. Yet even in the yellowy light of the precinct, he can tell that's what she is, with her heart-shaped face and the fan of her oil-dark hair.

“Eat your damn sandwich” she says, and is gone before he can say anything else.

--o0o--

“Don’t get too involved,” says Zoya.

“The job description is guardian angel, ergo, I guard.”

--o0o--

Organised crime. Really. Perhaps not in the highest echelons, and it’s fucking Amerstedam, but still, organised crime.

Sometimes she really doesn’t think he’s organised enough to get mixed up in organised crime.

--o0o--

“Genuine Givenchy. Also got Rolex watches, Hugo Boss shirts-” he offers the middle-class housewives out on a girl’s trip to Amsterdam. The back of the florist’s he’s operating out of is packed with genuinely decent-looking fakes. It’s also on Sonny Castillo’s territory.

“Best space brownies in Amsterdam,” he promises a group of tipsy Erasmus students from Manchester with a smile that’s the image of sincerity. The coffee shop is on Ferry Bouman’s territory.

“Now this is a real Vermeer,” he tells the new-money-oil-don looking for a bit of old-school, Cultured, flash for his new penthouses in Dubai and London. The art gallery is on Pekka Rollins’ territory.

--o0o--

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Inej tells her boss.

--o0o--

“You think I can’t smell a rat, Brekker? You don’t fucking think I can’t tell when some bastard ratfuck tries to fuck me over?”

There have been many points during which Kaz thought his ass to be well and truly cooked. Almost drowning in the harbour in Rotterdam when he was twelve was certainly one of them, but it was also far from the last.

But now he’s got a gun to his temple and there’s no more talking he can do, not one more trick more trick up his sleeve or one more secret he can leverage into five more minutes, ten more minutes, another day to make things right.

There’s just him and a dark alley at the edge of the city and the freezing rain, pelting down and soaking him to the bone. And the angry hands slamming his face into the alley wall, over and over again, until blood runs down his face and chest and the rainwater tastes salty.

“Please. A week. No, a day, I’ll make it up-”

“Like last time you promise me, huh? Promise me twenty thousand? And then I find out you shelling out ten thousand Euros to Ferry Bouman to keep selling on Pekka Rollin’s turf. He ain’t gonna forget this, boy-”

“Ten thousand. I can get you ten thousand, you know I can-”

He sees the flash of a gun being raised, can almost feel the air change as the man pulls back the trigger, and then-

Like a flash of lightning, the moment after the fireworks go off. Light everywhere, the snap of sound of thunder, condensed, and then-

In the moment after the light, Kaz can’t see a thing. And then he can: the three grunts Pekka sent after him, lying in an alley, and the remains of several guns, incinerated to crisps. And the flash of something, a person maybe, going around the corner.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU?” He screams into the pouring rain, but no response comes back.

--o0o--

Sometimes, Inej wants to scream at him so loud he can hear it.

“And what were you expecting, exactly? Why can’t you just. . . .” she thinks of the words she hears people using, these days, “stay in your darn lane? You waste your mathematics scores dealing. You waste your German scores on conning tourists. You just . .. you waste your life.”

He’s had the pinched face of a businessman, and an older man, since his parents died. Since his brother died, and he spent his youth pinballing between foster homes and getting increasingly involved in things that the Korps Nationale Politie tend to take a rather dim view of. In all that time, though, she’s rarely seen fear on his face like this. She almost wants to reach out, across the train, tuck the edges of his carefully slicked-back hair back behind his ear, but she doesn’t.

“Why couldn’t you have just . . . stuck to selling overpriced marijuana to tourists or designer knockoffs from behind a tulip stand? Forging Vermeers? Stealing actual Vermeers?”

--o0o--

It’s only when he gets off at Utrecht Centraal that he notices an unfamiliar weight to his jacket pocket.

A neatly folded wad of cash. He flips through it gingerly. Twelve thousand euros.

--o0o--

“You can’t save his ass every time. Otherwise, he’ll never learn, and he’ll go beyond the point where you can save him.”

“But if I don’t save his ass now, he’ll die before he can learn.”

“Ah. That’s the eternal conundrum, isn’t it? Of the teacher and of the guardian angel.”

--o0o--

It’s not a particularly big country, but every time the train ride seems to last all day, and stretch into the night. Inej, at least, doesn’t need to buy a ticket. He buys flowers at Amsterdam Centraal. Changes trains at Maastricht and then again to a rural line, until he gets off at a station that’s nothing more than a strip of concrete alongside the track in a rain-soaked wheat field. There’s no taxis, no buses, only a long road through the countryside and the remainders of a life he’s tried to forget about at the end of it. He unfolds his walking cane and gets a move on.

On a hill, on a farm where the apple orchards have gone to seed and the roof of the house fallen in:

Annemarie and Jawad Rietveld. And a scratched out stone for Jordaan Rietveld.

He leaves the flowers, not particularly giving a fuck about the fact that he could be shot, right here and now, by Pekka Rollins, because this is Pekka Rollins’ land, even if it was Jawad Rietveld’s land first, and then Albert Rietveld’s land before that, even if, on a day so far removed from Kaz’s present life that it feels like someone else’s life entirely, Kaz thought that it would be Jordaan Rietveld’s land in the future.

He feels, in a way, her presence before he can see her.

“I know you’re there.”

She sighs and makes herself visible.

“It’s you. The girl on the train.”

“I don’t think so-” she says, taking on a heavy Flemish accent just in case he remembers her from the police precinct in Groningen. “I’m from Ant-”

“You. Your face.” I could never forget you face, he thinks. The police precinct, and then the train to Utrecht Centraal. A rare sunny day in this pit of gloom and rain, and the way that the sunlight hit her lashes, the curve of her cheeks, the splash of her dark hair, made him think that it was impossible there wasn’t something divine and benevolent in this life, and this world. “Police precinct up North. Gronigen. Train. Amsterdam. Everywhere i go you’re always-” He thinks about pulling the shiv from his pocket. Anyone so interested in following him certainly has ulterior motives, and yet-

“What are you? Why are you always- there?”

“I don’t think, Mr. Brekker, that your . . . theological opinions would permit you to believe me when I tell you what, exactly, I am.”

He shrugs. “Grandson of lapsed NHK’ers and Javanese Sunnis. No god helped them a whit. I don’t think God, if they ever existed, ever looked at this drowning spit of dirt.”

“I think there are many who wouldn’t disagree with you. Some of them, like myself, being of a divine persuasion.”

“Why are you here?”

She doesn’t answer, just turns towards the graves. A light rain has started to fall.

“Do you think you’re following the path they’d be proud of?”

--o0o--

“You know I count as a fucking mature student? Mature.”

Even she has to laugh.

“I’m fucking twenty three. Twenty three. I got carded trying to buy a beer yesterday.”

“But now a student.”

He flashes his new, shiny plastic student card at her. The photo on it still looks like a mugshot.

“What are you studying?”

“Politics. International Relations. How different can the European Council be from the mob, really? Common Agricultural Policy, pay off Europol, work some backroom deals to get shit done.”

Inej resists the urge to burrow her forehead in her jacket sleeves. There are, it turns out, many, many ways for a human to get themselves killed, on this world.

[comicgirl08]

Supergirl recap: Lena and Supergirl go all caged heat

One day has passed since the world believes it saw Supergirl attack the White House, and Kara is horrified to realize how sharply public sentiment has turned against her. President Baker himself addresses the nation to announce a sundown-to-sunup curfew and to urge Supergirl to turn herself in.

Even though she’s America’s most wanted, when Supergirl hears someone calling for help from a burning vehicle, naturally she flies to lend a hand. But her efforts are interrupted by a man with a gun trying to make a citizen’s arrest. Her attempts to deflect the bullets end up causing an explosion in the car and even the man she pulls to safety says his daughter was crushed to watch Supergirl turn into a terrorist.

To rectify things, Alex and Lena set out to help Supergirl in their own ways. For Alex, that means subverting Lockwood’s demand that the DEO turn over the signal watch and any weapons that could capture Supergirl. Haley sends him away to secure proper presidential approval, but while he’s gone, she sets about gathering the goods he asked for because “orders are orders.”

Alex hands over the watch and instructs her to press it twice to summon Supergirl. (Ah, but once summons Supergirl; twice is the Akbar warning.) To get her chain-of-command-loving boss fully onboard, Alex asks for Kelly Olsen’s advice on what to do. Kelly tells her that you can’t change people, but you can appeal to what they care most about.

So Alex tries to convince Haley that following an immoral order makes you complicit and begs her to think of her daughter. Haley is furious at having that bit of personal information leveraged against her. Also, she knows that Alex lied and it’s actually a single press to summon Supergirl.

Brainy, too, is facing a conundrum after he and Alex agree that Lockwood’s next step will be to use the alien registry to start rounding up aliens. Declaring that “no one is more clandestine than I. NO ONE!” Brainy sets out to delete the registry, relying on the subterfuge techniques of Ethan Hunt, “master of the impossible mission.”

But when the time comes to delete, he realizes that there’s a 50/50 chance that deleting it will cause more harm for the alien community if he’s discovered. He freaks out and finds Nia at CatCo, even though they haven’t spoken since their “incredible yet devastating romantic encounter at the hospital.” Since he can’t use logic to decide, he asks her to dream the future to find out what he decides so he can just do it.

Then she plays him by pretending to dream that he doesn’t destroy the registry. He says that’s ridiculous, and she explains that she tricked him into listening to his gut. But that night, she for-real dreams that he’s apprehended by the Children of Liberty for destroying the registry and calls him in a panic to warn him not to do it. Too late, though; he deleted it but downloaded a copy of his brain, calling the potential danger “the cost of being a hero.”

Okay, now, to Supergirl and Lena, who follow up on Lilian Luthor’s tip that Lex has been coming and going from his prison cell for months. They strong-arm the Stryker Island warden to let them toss Lex’s cell by promising to keep his husband out of his Lex-related legal mess. He agrees, and Supergirl takes the long walk past a row of penned inmates chanting her name and calling her a terrorist, with a supportive Lena by her side. Lena, after all, knows all about how awful it is to be a good guy accused of being bad.

In Lex’s cell, Lena declares his Hannibal-crossing-the-Alps etching pretentious and solves his puzzle to unlock their childhood chess board to reveal stacks of Lex’s journals, including one recording all of her faults and mistakes since she was four. What a monster he is. Lena settles into the painful task of reading her brother’s journals, even though just looking at his handwriting is like needles in her eyes, while Supergirl talks to his cell neighbor, Steve Lomeli (Willie Garson, a welcome presence in whatever show he pops up in).

Steve, who’s locked up for stealing classified DOD documents about illegal drone warfare, calls her a malignant narcissist, taunting that, “Everything you touch, you ruin.” Then things get worse when Otis shows up to kill the warden and free all the inmates from their cells to help capture Supergirl.

Knowing that Otis has Metallo’s powers, Lena gives Supergirl a Kryptonite shield for her S-insignia. Wait, so Lena made a K-shield and brought it with her on the off chance that Supergirl might need it? That’s certainly thoughtful of her.

Then Supergirl turns to fight her way through a long line of inmates, none of whom stand a chance against her, and honestly, Supergirl effortlessly batting around a cellblock full of numbskulls is exactly why I watch this program, so thank you every so much, writers.

Then Otis appears to sneer, “if it isn’t Lee Harvey Supergirl.” They blast each other through walls and hit each other with prison gym equipment, but eventually, his Kryptonite blasts destroy her shield, and Supergirl’s forced to change into Kara Danvers. In her human guise, she tells Otis she saw a red blur going that-away, and for a second, Otis looks suspicious. C-could he possibly be…?

Nah, he just wants to know what a woman’s doing in an all-male cellblock. She tells him she’s a journalist doing a story on prison reform. But he doesn’t care to give her a comment: “I don’t trust the press. They always parachute into crises like this without any context for the larger systemic issues at play.” Y’ALL. I may be a little in love with Otis now because, by God, he’s not wrong.

When he heads out, Kara recharges in the sun and then bumps into Steve, who turns out to be the editor of Stryker’s one and only newsletter. He’s delighted to meet the famous Kara Danvers, who writes the Aliens of National City column, and apologizes for having his muscle pull a shiv on her.

Then the National Guard pulls up outside and makes plans to come in shooting if Supergirl doesn’t give herself up. Steve predicts that the prisoners are acceptable collateral damage in this scenario and drops to the floor, placing a comforting hand over the trembling fingers of his scared bodyguard, which was a nice little character moment.

To minimize the casualties, Kara changes into Supergirl again and uses a super-clap to knock all of the rioting prisoners off their feet and out of the line of fire.

Then she races back to Lex’s cell, where Lena has discovered that the etching isn’t of the Alps, but the mountain peak where a young Lex promised a young Lena that he’d build a house to keep them both safe forever. (Is…is that a touch of humanity, or another long-ago Lex trick?) When she touched that section of the drawing, the wall lifted to reveal his secret prison lab.

But before the women can explore its secrets, Otis steps into the cell as he talks on the phone with Lex, who directs him to the center of the room. Once he’s there, Lex engages a device that revs Otis’s Metallo implant and causes him to explode. It destroys the lab, and Lena and Supergirl barely escape thanks to Supergirl punching through the back wall.

But the danger isn’t over yet; Lockwood arrives at the DEO with the proper presidential order and starts handing out big guns to his men. He tells Haley to summon Supergirl, and Haley. presses. twice. Heck yeah, scary boss lady!

A frustrated Lockwood realizes that Supergirl’s not coming, so he takes all the big guns with him and leaves. Haley tells Alex that she didn’t do the double-tap for Alex but for her daughter, who’s scared of the martial law and is sad that her favorite alien teacher has gone into hiding. Suddenly, the complicit thing didn’t look so appealing, huh?

Also unappealing? The president allowing Lockwood to deputize the Children of Liberty, which should make everybody’s blood run cold. Oh, and Eve’s able to put Humpty-Otis back together again after his detonation.

Finally, when the news (but not CatCo, of course!) spins the Stryker Island visit as Supergirl’s attempt to free prisoners, Supergirl realizes she’s doing more harm than good right now and flies away to lie low. And in her Kara Danvers duds, she heads back to Stryker to interview Steve, who’s honored to help bring Lex Luthor to justice. He slides her a jump drive with the contents of Lex’s secret prison lab hard drive before it was destroyed.

“The pen is mightier than the sword,” he says, and she replies, “Maybe even mightier than a cape.”

Snaps of the cape

Tonight’s important Olsen development: James is suffering from something more than PTSD. Although the therapist he’s working with teaches him about bilateral stimulation, a widely used calming tool, his eyes and veins turn black when he’s upset, giving him super sight, strength, and hearing. Stay tuned for the possibility of a turbo-charged, midnight-eyed Guardian.

Not only did James fill Kelly in on what’s going on, but didja catch that smiley little moment she shared with Alex? I bet they’re both glad she stuck around National City.

My word, but Otis is a pop-culture quip machine: It’s easy being green, his heart growing three sizes, heeeeeere’s Otis. Supergirl is killing it with the recurring villains this season!

Gosh, remember when both Alex and Lena were not at all Supergirl’s biggest fans? And then Supergirl won them both over through her bravery, loyalty, and friendship? A million heart emojis forever, show!

[plotbunnyshipper]

Visitation - [Draft/WIP/Missing middle and very end]

So I started writing two short fics at the end of Season 6, just little one offs, then a massive case of writer’s block and real life stress hit, so I haven’t worked on any of my in progress works. 

But then the trailer came out and kicked me in the “get this one written before you see anything that makes you feel the need to change it so it fits with what is out there” nerve. Thankfully what I saw already fits with what I’ve got. I need to finish up the middle and very end of this, but by posting what I have I’m less likely to change things.

There is no clock, only shift changes, meals, and what little sunlight that comes in through the window to track the time. Every other day, when not in lockdown, I get a scant hour of the ability to walk around the small fenced in area they generously call the yard, followed by an optional shower for a few minutes. The monotony makes the days blur and time feel like it’s slowing. Only the tally of soap marked on the wall gives me a record of the days passing.

It’s not safe, I know it’s not safe, to get visitors, or at least the visitors I want. A couple lawyers wrote, wanting to file an appeal for me. They were not added to my approved list. I had a flood of mail for the first month, as many letters from fans of The Arrow as haters. The guards comment on the ones that are deemed not conductive to my rehabilitation and don’t make their way in, especially the rather explicit pictures of the fans. I only read the fan and hate mail to make sure they’re not coded, letters I wait for, hope for, the ones that don’t come. Eventually a single one does. It holds a photo of Felicity and William from home, and a short line of text stating that they’re safe, written and sent by John.

Drinking a handful of tepid water from the bare sink I mentally catalog the contents and space of the dark cell as my eyes linger on that one picture.

I don’t really know what I expected when making this deal, other than the fact that I was sacrificing my privacy, right of choice, and freedom to protect everyone I cared about when I couldn’t do it myself. I had been imprisoned before, but the boredom that leaves me dwelling in my thoughts is the worst of it. Nearly the worst. Not knowing how they were doing, replaying those last few days, every missed or foiled opportunity to end things and try for the life we wanted. Over and over they play out, while I sleep, while I read, while I pace and push myself to exhaustion using my own bodyweight to strengthen muscle.

No stranger to lack of privacy, I kept to myself at first, trying to block out the sights and sounds of the inmate across from my cell as he made baited comments and jerked off during lights out while the guards made their rounds...a few weeks went by before it really got under my skin and made my self control itch for a better outlet than my workouts.

The first fight was anticlimactic. One idiot, dangerous to be sure, but he thought he could take me on and win? By himself? I had him on the ground, incapacitated while I walked away before the guards could even notice a disruption.

That didn’t go over well with the pecking order of those who thought they deserved a bit of revenge for my putting them here. It also didn’t help that as I started getting more frustrated, more bored, more angry, I started baiting them and picking fights, especially the ones who thought they were untouchable. The pain felt better than worrying for a few minutes, aggression a razor focused distraction, even if I lost privileges for it, even if they sent me to solitary a few times when my restraint was gone. No one died, but the challenges grew fewer, further between, and with a larger ratio of them verses me.

It’d been over a week since I got a real shower, stuck in my cell after leaving someone unconscious after John’s visit. He couldn’t tell me much, he didn’t know where Felicity and William were, but Lyla said they were still checking in weekly and were “doing fine” in their faked identities. No word from my sister, the threat of Richard Dragon still looming over Star City, and just the other day apparently someone in a costume that looked like mine decided to make themselves known, which would explain why I got the extra attention from the guards between standard counts. I had instigated the next fight, pressed a few harder than they could let drop and just broke someone’s face through a tiled divider when a trio of guards entered the showers.

The only reason I didn’t end up in solitary was due to the fact that it had the appearance of an ambush. After all, it’s hard to look like the guilty party rather than self defense when the others were fully dressed and had a few well made shivs while I didn’t have so much as my towel within reach. I still ended up with two weeks loss of privileges and by my count I was slightly over halfway through.  But a cage is a cage, losing a couple minutes of sunshine wasn’t going to break me, and damp towel scrub downs at my sink to keep the grime and stink of sweat away to make up for the lack of antiperspirant.

I stare out into the dark, too bored to sleep, which is the only reason I see it, the emergency lights flicker to life once as an alarm somewhere starts to blare. I am on my feet as a different red glow enters my cell. Instinct has me starting to twist the thing that grabs me into a throw before my mind catches up and I recognize the voice from right beside it.

“No! Oliver wait!” That voice that is a dream and nightmare at once and the strong familiar scent of her perfume has me stopping myself from the instinctive urge to stop anyone from touching me in here as the glowing blur lifts from the floor.

My voice is barely a whisper, “Felicity?”

Barry wheezes out, “Choking me-,“ before my hand drops and I take a step back. He slows enough to come into focus and lose the glow of speed.

The bright colors are glaring in contrast to the dull monotony of beige and gray, even in the shadows. “Get out!” I don’t know why the alarms haven’t continued, why the raucous attention of the other inmates hasn’t started, but they need to get far away from here before they’re caught. Barry doesn’t let go of his grip on my wrist and there isn’t enough room in the cell to get out of range. “You can’t be here, it’s trespassing, they’ll-“

Felicity ignores the warning, reaching towards my face, “Oh god, Oliver, what happened to you? John’s message said you were looking rough but your face…”

Shame or embarrassment, something I haven’t felt in nearly half a year, burns under my skin as I duck away ever so slightly out of her reach despite the urge to lean into that attempted contact. The thought is quiet but slips out as I think it, “You should see the other guys.”

Barry’s grip is tight on both of us, but if I let her touch me…I haven’t seen her other than the single picture since that news conference, and even in the near dark I try to reassure my mental image of her is still correct. It’s too dangerous for her to be here, for her, for me. I can’t let her work through the protective mask I’ve put around myself, “Flash, get her out of here, get yourself out.”

She has no such qualms, launching herself at me. I fight with myself, free arm wrapping around her, taking a deep breath as my chin bumps the top of her head.

Her voice is muffled against my chest, “I cashed in all my favors when I heard about the new perk of his powers, this shared ‘Flash Time’ that he didn’t bother to tell me about himself!”

“You’re in the middle of nowhere!”

“I had to read about it in the future time-traveling-daughter’s, who use you also didn’t bother to tell me about, notes!”

“Possible, future daughter, you know how the timelines are. And don’t say time-traveling like you’ve forgotten about the Legends.”

“They need a ship to do it.”

The scolding banter is something I didn’t realize I missed, “You both need to leave before you’re caught.”

My wife scoffs, “We can’t exactly move you out of here if you’re not coming permanently. Their security factors in metas like Vibe, and magic, but they haven’t figured out how to factor in for him.” She nods over at Barry. “Not even a fraction of a second has passed for anyone else, it’s Flash Time, and if you think I’m just leaving without clearing a few things off my chest then you sir have taken too many hits to the head in your stupid prison brawling!”

I spare a glance at Barry, he nods, “Yeah, as long as I’m touching someone I can push the speed force to manipulate time around them, it sticks for a little bit. The best we were able to practice at earlier was getting a relative half hour in a single second by repeated contact, though it hit her hard as soon as she dropped out. It’s not much for uninterrupted conversations, but as long as I recharge the focus every, again relative, few minutes I don’t need to be touching you constantly.

“That’s-“

There is a snap, and Felicity points at him then the door, “Your cue to leave speedster.” She laser focuses on me, ignoring that fact he hasn’t left yet, pulling out a phone and angrily pressing buttons. “I’m so angry with you right now! Not only did you make a decision that dramatically altered our whole family’s lives without any hint of consultation, now I find out you’re apparently picking fights, because there’s no way all this is from some accidental altercation!”

It’s not a question, I nod as the streak of red lets go with the glow of lightening, and vanishes from the cell.

I can hear the ringing, but she doesn’t stop talking, voice is tight, pained, “For you to get like this…I’ve seen what you can do one-on-one, one-on-five, one-on-a small army of professionally trained killers, No one would be stupid enough to keep going after you, why would you-?”

“I could have stopped Dragon. I could have, I should have killed him, ended this. I didn’t.”

An automated recording states to leave a message and she curses under her breath about having wasted time dropping the signal blockers on the way in if the mountains are just going to keep it from going through. “You’re not a killer, we’ve-“

“I’m not taking that risk, I’m putting the fear of me into these guys so they and theirs won’t go after any of you while I’m in here.”

“I’m so angry with you!”

“I know.”

“I hate that you always go it alone and sacrifice yourself, always, instead of letting us figure out…”

“I know.”

“I had to break ties with the company. You outing yourself as the Green Arrow meant investors either think I’m stupid, or the more familiar comments were along the lines of, ‘Your husband’s plea deal may keep you from being prosecuted for lying under oath, but that is not an investment risk we’re willing to take.’ The threats, the bounties Dragon put out on all of us…He’s still fucking livid. Then we can’t even visit, can’t even call because they keep reminding us it would make us easy targets, traceable, vulnerable.” The bitterness is not hidden from her voice. “Even at super speed I hacked into the system not to report faults, he’s obscured the cameras, we took down every sensor that could be taken down from outside the prison and will get everything back to ‘normal’ before we leave.”

Her fingers skim over my head, “Now, explain what your thoughts behind this hair so short I can’t get a grip and growing out this hipster beard at the same time?” She pulls me down into a kiss and my hands instinctively cup her face. It hurts, I’ve missed her so much, wanted to know she was safe, how they’re doing, everything and to have it, here, it’s like heartbreak. The feeling doubles down when I feel the tears sliding down her cheeks to hit my thumbs.

She shakes her head, not breaking the kiss as I try to swipe a tear away. Dragging my hand down, a startled noise escapes me as the fabric of her leggings parts and my fingers meet slick heat. “You’re not forgiven! I’m pissed at you, but I’m not stupid enough to waste these few minutes.”

I can feel the surprise showing on my face, “What- what are-?”

“It’s called easy access.” She rubs herself against my palm, “I may be furious with you but I’m not stupid and not in a patient mood. You know how hard it is to get yourself off when you're sharing a room in a crowded safe house?“ I look at her and the realization dims the frustration in her eyes. Replacing it with sorrow. She steels herself. “I was trying in the shower and apparently one of the guards...at least she knocked, but I was being as quiet as I could and still…

We spent about 6 hours in one place, then had to move to a different one, but company was waiting, so we tried one more option, then William and I split off to the ass end of nowhere so they couldn’t find us in yet another ARGUS locale. They haven’t found us since, but that meant losing the support, so now it’s the two of us in a one bedroom apartment, he gets the bedroom and I get even less privacy.”

[The middle stuff that isn’t revised enough to post, so mental image a couple small arguments and sexytime to be included later, and awkwardness on Barry’s part]

Felicity sighs, snuggling as tight as she can under the cover, “How bad is it here?”

There are a lot of questions insinuated with that, but she doesn’t need to know the answers to most of them, “Not as bad as the prisons in-“

That earns me a frown, “I’m serious!”

I play with the ring on the chain around her neck. “So am I, it’s not the worst, being away from my family, not being able to talk to William about his day, or hold you while you ramble about whatever runs across your mind.”

She rubs her head on my pillow and I give her a questioning look. “I know you noticed the perfume. I went heavy, I’m trying to get it embedded in here so can smell it and have good dreams.”

“How’s where you are?”

“Well if you like slower than dial up from the early Aught-y Naught-ies, cell coverage in exactly half the town, muggy stifling heat with mosquitoes the size of your fist, than it’s great!” The false enthusiasm fades from her voice, “But…I guess it’s better than in here. Oh! I should try him again!” She reaches for the phone on the ground and hits redial. “Five months, and I couldn’t even get a job at something like Tech Village because they were certain I’d be too easy to trace. The first week I went through three positions. Menial, repetitive, boring, and crappy hours. I didn’t even make it an hour making drinks at a the only club in driving distance before…walking out.” The ringing goes to voicemail again and she huffs out a frustrated noise. “William is doing self study at home in the evenings because he has to do the standard level classes because of the tracking concerns….he’s having nightmares.”

I close my eyes. There’s nothing I can do about that. Nothing I can do to help. “How bad?”

“Most nights. I’m not the mom he wants when he wakes up not knowing what’s real and not. Some nights he doesn’t sleep at all. Went through a bad stretch where he swiped a couple of my Ambien and tried daytime functioning with them. He ended up having a pretty intense hallucination and a blackout.”

My Ambien? “You’re having nightmares.”

“Don’t act like that’s new!” Half teasing, half morose, she continues quietly, “I just don’t have you as a security blanket, swooping in with snuggles because of your uncanny ability to notice when my breathing changes...What about yours? The usual?”

Nodding I try to shrug it off like she did. Her arms clench me tighter and I mimic the action.

“But maybe this little rendezvous will help us both for a few nights, right?”

“Hopefully.”

Felicity presses her lips quickly against mine, “Everything’s…everything will be fine. It’s just a rough patch.” Our foreheads lean against each other. “I just really needed your lips to be the last ones that kissed mine, and now th-” Stopping mid-word, she cringes as her mind catches up to what she was saying.

“You…kissed someone?”

“No, someone kissed me.”

The discomfort in her features…her insinuation earlier…I ask as gently as I can, forcing the words out as I both dread and need to know the answer, ”Did someone hurt you?”

Her hand touches over my heart as she quickly shakes her head, “No, but I chipped her tooth after I reacted with one of the moves John had taught me, and dropped her aggressively drunk self to the floor. I told you, I didn’t even finish the shift as a bartender.”

Logically I should not feel the level of pride I do that she took the instinct to protect herself and applied the training without hesitation, but she’s watching my face and I can’t hide it from her.

“Did you just give me your ghost smile?”

“Does that sound like something I’d do?”

Her hand leaves my chest to fingerbrush through the hair that’s fallen from her ponytail, a few strands tug away. “Yes, husband, that sounds exactly like something you’d do.” She kisses my palm, then circles my ring finger with the hair just tight enough that it won’t slip off. Tying a small knot with the ends, she laces her fingers with mine, “There, that’s better.”

It’s nearly invisible but I can feel it, like a promise, a reassurance, and it soothes a raw part of me. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well if they wouldn’t let you keep wearing yours on your finger, they definitely wouldn’t let you wear it on a necklace like mine. Whole new identity has me playing as William’s aunt, and with it being such a small town if I wore it wear they could see it they’d never stop asking about who gave it to me. Meth has taken enough parents that they don’t ask much about family taking care of relatives, but they’re still gossipy into the rest of people’s business.

[Again, not tightened up end will be finished later]

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: Becky

Photo courtesy of Keri Anderson and Quiver Distribution

BECKY— 3 STARS

The tale-of-the-tape of Becky is as preposterous as the promised twisted violence that follows. In one corner, you have the middle-aged comedian Kevin James taking a dare for his first “dramatic role” as the escaped Neo-Nazi criminal Dominick. He’s hulking, tatted-up, bearded, and armed with stern rhetoric and an itchy trigger finger.  In the other corner, you have the titular Millennial 13-year-old played by Lulu Wilson of The Haunting of Hill House. She’s angry, mournful over the passing of her mother, and, due to the home invasion circumstances than transpire, motivated for every hell-raising level of vindication possible. Before Bruce Buffer screams into a microphone, who do you got in this cutthroat clash that hits VOD June 5th?

To introduce this unlikely showdown in Becky, the slick editing of Alan Canant (Hellion) builds an establishing parallel between the two future opponents. A prison yard fight is spun against a bully’s skirmish in a school hallway. The ordered lineup of convicts mirrors the packed spacing of desks in a classroom. Her cutoff jeans and combat boot fashion choices figuratively match the ankle shackles being placed on him. They practically snarl into the confines of their respective transportation traps in the form of a minivan for her and a paddy wagon for him.

LESSON #1: BEING THE INSTIGATOR OR THE WITNESS— In the cross-stitch of this opening, inferences can be drawn for which characters act and which ones react. Both Becky and Dominick witness their settings with eerily similar emotionless indifference. He provides shivs for killings. She shoplifts without a care in the world. Who will bring the brouhaha and who will boil it? It’s damn fun to find out.

Becky is a passenger on a forced lake house vacation with her widower father Jeff (fellow funnyman Joel McHale, also playing it straight). He has also invited his future fiance Kayla (Amanda Brugel of The Handmaid’s Tale) and son Ty (Isaiah Rockcliffe). Meanwhile, Dominick, and a trio of his follows (former wrestler Robert Maillet and TV actors Ryan McDonald and James McDougall) orchestrate an escape and descend on the rustic getaway looking for a MacGuffin item (a trinket key Becky holds dear from her mother) that requires them to keep witnesses alive who may know where it is.

The anarchic and amusing part is Becky doesn’t have that need whatsoever. Like Kevin McAllister before her and with far deadlier intent, she’s on her home turf and will just f–king kill you for even thinking about harming her family, teenage innocence be damned. Once the fight for survival is on, the violent obstacle course of wild encounters and jarring kills written by The Devil to Pay husband-wife team of Lane and Ruckus Skye and the debuting Nick Harris takes over set to the pulsating and edgy electronic score of Nima Fakhrara (The Signal).

LESSON #2: ANGER CAN BE USEFUL— Jeff implores Becky that she “can’t be angry forever” for losing her mother to cancer and watching him find a new love. He adds “you can’t take things that aren’t yours” and “stop before someone gets hurt” warnings. His non-doting daughter’s icy answer while munching on her five-finger-discount gummy worm prize? “Obviously I can.” This is anger Becky is not letting go anytime soon, and it’s going to become mighty useful in her life for a few hours. Screw measly angst.

LESSON #3: THE LETHAL RESOURCEFULNESS OF SCHOOL SUPPLIES AND OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT— What does a kid have against hardened cons? Just a bunch of knick-knacks, art supplies, and garage junk. Want to see what ingenuity and injury this girl’s anger can apply to such items. Pull up a chair. At the same time, taste the salt grains that matches a line in the movie that states “sometimes someone does something so stupid you have to stop them and ask WTF.”

LESSON #4: GIRLS ARE MEAN— If you must know, “girls” and “grisly” share five common letters where the extra “y” stands for “yowzers.” Eventually, Becky self-declares going from “bad” to “horrid” in the face of her crisis. That bedazzled denim jacket and backpack over Becky’s shoulders might as well be hidden wings for the Angel of Death.

LESSON #5: KILLING IS A STAIN— Murdering kids is hard. Combine a kill-or-be-killed scenario with that pent-up anguish of Lesson #2 and you have a bloody barrage in Becky. The idyllic is broken by the insane. Violence seen is dark damage done on the mind and and heart. Violence committed is even worse. That is the height this movie rises too above simply a cheap slasher.

For most clicking play on Becky from Bushwick directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, they were likely drawn by Kevin James playing far against type. He embodies this intimidating menace decently considering the material. James doesn’t overplay the part as a loud screwloose, favoring maybe two too many sermon monologues instead. They work when they need to, though sometimes his snake oil carries too soft of pleasantries to be fully and fittingly evil. The real evil is cuter, louder, and shorter.

Lulu Wilson is frighteningly voracious. Appalling as the acts are, somewhere underneath that flaxen mop so often lit and framed by The Half of It and Light From Light cinematographer Greta Zozula lies a twinkle of creativity in Wilson. The actress out there roughing it with stunts even did her own art (now how about that) featured in the sets and credits of Becky. As Lulu Wilson poetically taunts “There was once a little girl…” before marking her quarry, we can only help but be impressed by the brazen energy. Well, this little girl chopped our feet off with the socks still on. No blowing was required.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#883)

Permalink

from REVIEW BLOG – Every Movie Has a Lesson https://ift.tt/3dy6sZS via IFTTT

from WordPress https://ift.tt/36SysVe via IFTTT

[danickzta]

then the ice runs through her veins

/6/ then the ice runs through her vein summary: The Ice Nation takes Bellamy hostage in an effort to learn Clarke’s secrets. Or — Azgeda tries to get at Wanheda through her greatest weakness, but Clarke’s not about to just let the Ice Queen send her Bellamy’s head in a box. Diverges during {3.04}.

the general context is: after her fight with Roan, Lexa doesn’t kill Nia, and shit hits the proverbial fan

Ao3 FF

Clarke had always pictured Azgeda as some cold, desolate place.

But as she’s hauled forward by her bound wrists, the goosebumps running up and down her arms have less to do with the chill in the air and more to do with the adrenaline pumping through her veins, the icy pit of anxiety making her legs feel like lead and her head cloudy with panic. With the bruising force of Prince Roan’s grip on her upper arm. She shivers as she runs through all of the options at her disposal; she doesn’t know the Prince well enough to understand what makes him tick, to persuade him to undo her bonds and let her go.

But she has to try. “I thought you dishonored your people when you lost to the Commander. Do you really think this will make them take you back?”

Roan doesn’t bother to respond—just quickens his pace so that she has to struggle to keep up.

She was supposed to be safe in Polis (under Lexa’s protection—which hasn’t meant much in the past, but Clarke only has so many options), so she wasn’t expecting it when a cloth soaked in some sort of sedative woke her in the middle of the night. When she opened her eyes again and found herself in a barren prison cell, stone floors covered in faded stains and distant wails saturating the stillness in the air. She’d screamed herself hoarse, everything an uncomfortable reminder of the quarantine ward at Mt. Weather.

It was only when she heard footsteps outside her cell bars, launched herself and her handmade shiv at the door and was summarily disarmed by a smirking Prince of Azgeda (“up to the same tricks, i see”) that she realized exactly where she was (just how much danger she was in).

Now, she’s being led down what she assumes is a hallway, the coarse bag thrown over her head just as suffocating as it was when she was in this exact situation barely a week ago (except, this time, she knows that the first face that greets her when she can see again will be far less sympathetic). She shuffles after Roan in silence for a couple more minutes. Like before, she’s no match for him physically, and goading him into freeing her certainly didn’t seem to work, so she settles on appealing to the same humanity that spared Bellamy (sort of) what seems like forever ago.

She’s about to give it a shot when Roan is suddenly yanking her to a stop. He removes the sack from over her head and, for a moment, Clarke is blinded as her eyes adjust to the light. But then her vision is dissolving into cracked tiled floors, austere white walls (so different from the muted browns of Polis), furred tapestries hanging next to ensconced torches. And in the center of it all is someone she hoped she’d never have to see again.

The Ice Queen.

The serene look on her face is a shock when, last Clarke remembers, the Queen was storming away after Lexa’s trial by combat, vowing retribution in such a brazen way that her words alone would’ve gotten her floated on the Ark. She laces her fingers together in front of her and takes a step farther into the light.

“Hello, Wanheda,” she says.

(Clarke can feel it deep in her bones.)

“Have you been enjoying my hospitality?”

“Why am I here?” Clarke snaps.

“Not one for small talk, are you?”

Clarke pulls herself up taller. “Lexa won’t stand for this. You can’t just kidnap a political ambassador.”

Nia raises an eyebrow. “Oh? But I just did. Besides, the way I see it, you’re no more an ambassador than you are the martyr you pretend to be. Lexa will bend over backward to give in to Skaikru, no matter how much it alienates the rest of the Coalition.”

Clarke knows that she’s right—she hasn’t been involved with Camp Jaha (no—it’s Arkadia now) for months, doesn’t understand the intricacies of their tenuous alliance or what they really need. The other envoys have been nothing but antagonistic toward her, their shared animosity chasing her every step, and the unpredictability of the forests she’s called home since she left her people behind is starting to seem safer than the political intrigue of Polis. But, most of all, even though Lexa’s reaffirmed her powerbase (for now), no matter what she promises, Clarke trusts her about as much as she trusts Murphy on a good day.

But she’s not about to tell the Ice Queen that.

“She spared your son. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“She shouldn’t have. It’s why she’s weak—why’s she always been weak.”

“I appreciate the concern,” Roan says.

Clarke ignores him and suffuses her glare with all the disdain she can muster. “If that’s what you call weak, then you’re a coward.”

Nia cocks her head. “Semantics. Now let’s get to why I really brought you here.” She unsheathes the sword at her hip and runs a finger idly along its edge, tilting it so it catches the light just so, and Clarke can see that it’s mottled with fresh blood.

Ice begins to creep through her, stiffening her limbs and clogging her throat until her breath feels shallow and all she can taste is the metallic tang of fear—she doesn’t want to know where the Queen’s just been, who just met with the other end of her blade. Why the Queen hasn’t cleaned it yet. Intimidation, Clarke tells herself. Nothing more.

Clarke’s never thought of herself as prey, but the Ice Queen is like no other predator she’s ever encountered. There’s something vile in the lazy smile playing across her lips that Clarke has never seen before (not even when Cage strapped her Mother to that table, when Lincoln was half-mad with bloodlust or when Emerson left Camp Jaha with nothing but a ripped suit and hate-filled eyes). And it absolutely terrifies her.

But she won’t beg—she won’t show how frightened she is. She won’t.

The Queen’s fingers still when she finally looks up at Clarke. “Our legends say that whoever cuts down one who holds great power receives great power in return… But lately, I’ve been wondering—wouldn’t it make more sense to keep you alive? At my side, striking fear into all who would defy me?”

Clarke’s glare doesn’t waver. “I’ll never help you.”

Nia sighs. “Shame. But hardly a surprise. Which is why I’ve decided to provide you with a little incentive. We have someone here I think you’ll be happy to see. I have to warn you—we’ve had to keep him entertained, so he might be a little worse for wear.” At that, the pit of unease works its way further into Clarke’s gut, simmers there as she watches Nia clap her hands and turn to look at an archway at the far end of the room.

The Queen’s Second parades in, head held high (Clarke struggles to remember her name until it comes to her in a rash of memories—black blood and a poisoned blade and a deadly ultimatum—Ontari). A figure stumbles in behind her, legs unsteady, an indistinct mass of ripped clothes covered in matted blood. Clarke can’t make out his features as Ontari shoves him forward, and by the time she’s wrenching him to a stop in front of the Ice Queen and taking up sentinel behind her, Clarke isn’t sure she wants to. She stares desperately at his bare feet, the tattered material of his pants, as a horrible voice starts hissing in her ear, taunting her with images and truths that she wishes she could just will away.

As Nia grabs his collar and thrusts him forward, Clarke sees that his hands are shackled in front of him, bloodied nail beds reminiscent of that day they found a delirious Murphy roaming outside of camp. She rakes her gaze from his wrists to his chest, the length of it decorated with a map of crisscrossing lacerations and grisly welts. Her eyes follow the rough lines of them, creeping upward until they stutter to a stop and linger at the bruises coiling around his neck.

Everything about him is familiar, and she doesn’t want to look up at his face, doesn’t want recognition to knock the wind from her because she knows that the sight of him is going to break her. She knows that it’s selfish of her (that she’s the one who antagonized the Queen, who set this entire series of events into motion), but she wants to avoid the wreckage she’s left in her wake at any cost. With a mounting dread, she finally drags her eyes upward, and when they alight on black curls and dark skin and freckles (indistinguishable from smatterings of blood, so much blood—), she goes cold all over.

Bellamy.

“No,” she breathes.

Nia’s answering smile drips with condescension. “Yes.”

And then all rationality flees Clarke.

She sees red, yanks against her bonds and struggles to loose herself from Roan, lurching forward and twisting her arms and jerking from side to side. But the Prince’s hold on her is firm, and she finds that all she’s managed to do is add another layer to the grin on Nia’s face. The cruelty in it almost doesn’t seem possible, like she’s some caricature of a person, a villain Clarke’s only read about in stories. But this isn’t some nightmare, some horrible dream that Clarke can just wake up from. It’s real. All too real.

“You bitch! What did you do to him!?”

Nia only laughs. “Guess.”

And then Bellamy is moaning and lifting his head, and the blankness in his expression is like a blow to the gut. His eyes are glazed over and unseeing, and a bolt of pure panic is shooting down Clarke’s spine until she feels almost as unsteady as he must. But then he’s blinking back his grogginess and his lips are moving around the shape of her name, once, twice, until it’s filling the chamber, its edges hoarse, ragged.

“Clarke?”

His face is covered in bruises and sallow skin, features gaunt, dried blood caked into his hairline. His entire body is quaking, as fragile as she’s ever seen him, and it looks like it’s taking all of his energy to not crumble into a heap on the floor. It’s as if he’s a hastily drawn sketch of himself, blurred at the edges, lines jagged, no care taken in his making (unmaking). And that terrifies her. Bellamy has always been the strong one, stalwart and unbreakable in the face of all that they’ve fought against, all that they’ve done (when she’s done nothing but run away). To see him reduced to this, to what looks like days of torture at the hands of someone as sadistic as the Ice Queen, is making her sick to her stomach, nausea winding through her and a coil of fury coursing through her veins.

Nia’s mocking voice pierces through the rushing in Clarke’s ears, sets her blood boiling. “My son told me all about your weakness. And when we found this one roaming our territory dressed as one of our warriors… Well, you can figure out the rest.”

Clarke snarls, positively feral.

Nia cocks her head, the smile on her face hiding none of the depravity behind her mask. “You know, your precious little Lexa once stood in the same spot you’re standing now. Because of her own weakness. What was her name again?”

Ontari speaks up from over her shoulder. “Costia, my Queen.”

Nia’s smile morphs into a sneer. “If you say. But it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

And then she kicks Bellamy in the back of the knee, shoves him down until he’s kneeling on the cold ground, hands braced against the floor. Bellamy grits his teeth, but when he tries to rise up through his pain (he looks like he’s in so much of it that Clarke can feel it like it’s her own), Nia brandishes her sword, lowering it until it rests on the back of his neck. And in that moment, Clarke imagines it swinging down just a little faster, cleaving into his skin and spraying the floor in red and no—

Nia angles the blade until it catches the light. “I always hate this part. They never beg—too much pride.” She fixes Clarke with a malicious grin. “But you’re different, aren’t you? Skaikru is weak. That’s why they’re so easy to kill.”

Clarke surges forward again, jerking to a stop only when Roan reins her back in. “Please… please! I’ll do anything!” she cries. “I’m begging you—take me.”

Bellamy’s head snaps up (Clarke can see blood dribble its way to the ground as skin meets blade). “Clarke, no!” He looks frantic, a mirror of herself, his eyes wild and pleading in a way she’s never seen before. She’s never seen him so unhinged, so distraught, and she wonders how many times he’s looked exactly like this in the past few days (while the Queen beat him, tortured him—) before she slams the door on that line of thinking.

Despite the gravity of the situation, she distantly wonders what sort of luck they must have for them to be reenacting the same roles they played in a cave not so long ago. (no—please! please don’t! i’ll do anything! i’ll stop fighting, just please don’t kill him.) When he brushed her hair back from her face and it was like she was home again, and that smile, that smile—

But then Nia is shoving his head down, and Clarke can only catch a flash of gritted teeth before all she sees is black curls and matted blood and all-consuming terror again. Nia barks out a laugh. “What happened to that golden tongue of yours? Don’t know how to talk your way out of this one?”

Now tears are sliding down Clarke’s face in a way that they haven’t since she hardened herself all those months ago. She rarely ever lets anyone see her this weak, this vulnerable, but she doesn’t care because it’s Bellamy. “Please, just… just don’t. I’m the one you want,” she sobs.

But it’s like Nia is only feeding off of her hysteria, letting it fuel her until Clarke sees nothing of this woman besides her unfettered hubris. “You’re more use to me alive than dead. The great Wanheda. Subdued and mine to command at last,” she purrs. “His death will serve as your motivation. You will not cross me. Because there are plenty more where he came from.”

“No, I—if you kill him, I’ll never do what you want. Never.”

The Queen appraises her and Clarke thinks that maybe she’s getting through to her, maybe she’ll let Bellamy go— But then Nia is sighing in annoyance. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Enough of this.” She fists a hand in Bellamy’s hair and yanks his head up, shifting her sword to his throat. “Any last words, boy?”

His eyes are closed (in pain or acceptance, Clarke can’t tell), and she can’t help but think that that’s what they’ll be like when he’s gone for good, when he’ll never open them again. She wants to beg for that to never become a reality, to get down on her hands and knees and grovel at the Ice Queen’s feet. But Roan’s hands on her wrists and the image of the sword at Bellamy’s neck are freezing her in place, clogging her throat and narrowing her field of vision until all she can see is a man who means more to her than anything else. A man she owes so much to.

A man she can’t live without.

Bellamy opens his eyes and lowers his gaze from the ceiling until it settles on Clarke. And for that one furtive moment, it no longer looks panicked, frightened. Instead, it looks resolute. When his voice (full of one last desperate plea) finally rings out and Clarke hears what he has to say, her heart stops beating and plummets to the floor.

“Run.”

And then he jerks out of Nia’s grip, the metal edge of her blade digging into his skin, cutting a slit across his throat (that looks entirely too deep). He sways and nearly collapses, but he manages to just scramble out of the way when her sword chases his movement.

“No…!” Clarke screams.

This time, when she lurches forward through the chaos, it’s surprisingly easy to escape Roan’s grip. As she staggers forward, she doesn’t have time to wonder why her hands are suddenly unbound before a blur of dark hair and palpable rage is intercepting her. Ontari tackles her to the ground, a solid weight preventing Clarke from tearing into the Queen and saving the one person who matters most—

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Nia rear her leg back and kick Bellamy in the head, sees him hack red onto the tile. When he tries to push himself up through his daze, she traps his chest under the heel of her boot and raises her blade above her head, about to plunge it downward. Clarke wants to cry out—she can see the next moments play out like a silent film, grim and terrifying, leeching all color from her surroundings. But she can’t because Ontari’s hands are at her throat, digging into her windpipe, blurring her vision in and out. Clarke claws at her arms, bucks her hips, but Ontari is a trained warrior and she’s been fighting since she was a child and Clarke knows that she has no chance against her and—

And suddenly, Clarke hears the sound of metal clanging against tile. Ontari’s grip loosens and Clarke thinks that maybe she hears her shriek in outrage, but she’s not paying attention because when she finds the strength to turn her head and drag her eyes up from the ground and the instrument that would’ve been Bellamy’s death, she sees an arrow protruding from Nia’s shoulder. The look on her face is murderous, but Clarke doesn’t have time to cower away because she’s focused on the Queen’s sword, lying useless at Bellamy’s side (he’s not moving, oh god he’s not moving—).

Clarke doesn’t care how it happened. She’s about to run to him, to do whatever it takes to keep him breathing, when out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ontari lunge for her again. But then the Queen is biting back a scream as another arrow finds its way into her thigh. Clarke turns to look at its source, and a wave of confusion barrels through her when she finds Roan still standing where she escaped him only moments ago, this time with a bow and arrow in hand and disgust marring his features.

“Move an inch, and I put one through her eye,” he tells Ontari.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Nia hisses.

“Don’t think I won’t, Mother.”

He cocks his arrow and the three of them stare each other down, an eddy of tension whipping around the room and coiling Clarke’s nerves into an even more tightly wound ball. She spares their standstill one more second, waits to see if any more arrows will go flying, and then her attention is snapping back to Bellamy. She doesn’t wait for Roan’s okay; she scrambles to her feet and barrels forward, stumbling over herself, frantic. (the distance between them suddenly seems staggering, and for every step she takes, Bellamy’s crumpled form seems that much farther away.) She finally skids to a stop on her knees beside him, pushing her hands into the bloody mess of his neck, blanching at all of the red that coats her fingers.

But when Bellamy groans, when she blinks back the haze of panic, she sees that it’s not as deep as it looks, thank god. His eyes are fluttering open and darting up and down, back and forth, until they finally settle on her face and soften. There’s pressure at her elbow, Bellamy’s trembling fingers flitting across her skin, and he’s scanning her face, her arms, her shoulders. And it just kills her because he’s checking to see if she’s injured while he’s covered in bruises and lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor.

The sudden urge to laugh (in a deranged sort of way) wars with all of her worry and lingering terror, all of her frustration because why does he have to be so goddamn selfless all the time—

Everything else falls away until it’s just the two of them, dumbstruck with relief, his name a breathless sob on her lips. He tries to return the favor, but blood only bubbles up from beneath her hands; he gags until Clarke snaps out of her reverie, turns his head while rivulets of crimson wind their way toward the floor. She rips off the end of her shirt (she doesn’t have time to worry if it’s sterile or not) and threads it under his neck, knotting it at the side. Blood immediately begins to dot the makeshift bandage’s surface, but it’ll have to make do for now.

She lifts a shaking hand and brushes the curls from his forehead, runs soothing circles over his temple with the pad of her thumb until his breathing steadies and he’s turning back to look at her. When his eyes meet hers, she laces her next words with a courage she hasn’t felt in months—because nothing has felt quite so important, so fundamentally right, in months.

“I’m going to get you out of here, Bellamy. I promise.”

Bellamy’s bound hands find her knee and squeeze, and the look on his face reminds her so much of that day they first opened up to each other, when he called himself a monster: raw and vulnerable and lost. In need of a lifeline. Some hope. Her. As she watches the awe wash away the hopelessness, she stares in awe right back. She hopes he knows just how much she needs him, because as many times as she’s told him, shown him, she doesn’t think he believes it.

Roan’s gruff voice cuts through the calm. “Time to go, Wanheda.”

Clarke takes one more second to bask in the rightness (amidst all the wrong) of this moment, and then she nods. She leverages an arm under Bellamy and tries to readjust when he hisses in pain, but it’s like no matter where she touches him, it hurts. She throws all of her strength into lifting him up, doing her best to shoulder his weight as they slowly struggle to standing (she’s trying, but she can tell that he’s still doing most of the work). When they finally make it to wobbly legs, he slumps into her side and chokes down heaving breaths, skin slick with sweat and body shaking like a leaf.

Each tremor sends a new wave of determination coursing through Clarke, sharpening her dread and uncertainty into a steely resolve until her willpower alone is dragging Bellamy farther and farther from the Queen and her bloody blade, from Ontari and her bared teeth. They stumble to Roan’s side and the refuge afforded by his still nocked arrow, and only have a second’s rest before Roan is shuffling backward and ushering them behind him.

“Traitor,” Ontari spits.

Roan doesn’t slow his retreat. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Lexa was right to banish you,” Nia sneers. “You are no longer my son.”

“Can’t say I’m too broken up about it.” (but Clarke can see the way his jaw tightens.)

She thinks that Nia snarls something else, but she barely registers it because as soon as they clear the room, Roan is veering sharply to the right, leading them down a narrow corridor. As they rush ahead, Clarke hears shouts coming from the throne room behind them, and it’s like they can’t move fast enough. They make another right and come to a dead end and Clarke wants to scream at Roan because isn’t this his palace? doesn’t he see that Bellamy can’t go back there—?

But then Roan is yanking aside a faded tapestry, revealing a hidden passageway carved into the stone of the wall. He pushes them through, and out of the corner of her eye, Clarke sees him set something on the ground. But she doesn’t have time to examine it because he’s suddenly shoving them down and folding himself over them. There’s a loud boom, and dust and chunks of debris rain down around them, caking her in a thick layer of soot and confusion.

All Clarke can hear is a ringing in her ears, and everything is blurry, out of focus (everything hurts). The only thing tethering her to reality is her arm around Bellamy’s back, his face turned into the crook of her neck. She doesn’t move until she feels him stir, his harsh breaths fanning across her skin, and then she fists a shaky hand in his shirt and drags herself to sitting.

When Roan shifts away, Clarke sees the entryway behind him, now blocked by piles of blackened stone and a cloud of heavy smoke. He catches his breath and readjusts his armor. “That should slow them down.”

“Where did you get a bomb?”

“Under the Mountain. The other clans wouldn’t touch any of the technology they left behind, but my Mother’s never been one to play fair.”

“Neither were they,” Bellamy groans.

Clarke’s attention whips back to him. “Bellamy! Are you all right?” (she knows that it’s a stupid question, because of course he’s not.) Her fingers run frantically up and down his arms, over his chest, and she finds herself wishing that her touch alone could heal him, wash away the blood and clean up the cuts and bruises until he’s as fresh-faced as he was that first day at the Dropship. When they were all so naïve. When the only casualty of her weakness was her Father (instead of the hundreds that litter the graveyards of her conscience now).

Bellamy lifts his still bound hands and wraps them gently around one of her own, stilling its frenzied movements. “I’m fine,” he whispers.

(she’s never heard a bigger lie in her life.)

She’s about to tell him as much, but then Roan is shouldering her out of the way. “You can fuss over him later.” He unsheathes a blade at his belt and cuts through the ropes binding Bellamy’s wrists together. She’s grateful, because why didn’t she think of that, but she can’t help but blanch at the mangled skin they leave in their wake.

Roan leans forward and slings an arm under Bellamy’s torso, grunting as he hauls him to his feet, and wastes no time in hurrying farther into the passageway. When Clarke stands to follow, it takes a second to get used to the sensation of no longer having Bellamy’s weight at her side (the sudden loss of contact is like a phantom limb; it’s been three months and she doesn’t want to stop touching him now—), but then she’s gaining her bearings and hastening after them.

As they make their way forward, she keeps one eye on the path ahead and the other on Bellamy’s hunched form, the arsenal of weapons strapped to Roan’s back. She distantly wonders how he can see so well when the only light comes from the occasional grate in the ceiling. “I spent a lot of time down here as a child,” he explains when he notices her stare. “These tunnels are a labyrinth—she won’t catch our trail until we’re long gone.”

“Not to sound ungrateful,” Bellamy says, voice so gravelly Clarke has to strain to understand him, “but if it was always your plan to escape down here… why did you wait so long?”

“You were always too heavily guarded. And then when they brought her in”—he shoots a look at Clarke—“I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone. Fewer chances to get caught.”

“But how did you know Nia wouldn’t have guards swarming the place?” Clarke asks.

“My Mother’s always been arrogant. I knew she’d eventually try something—slip up and think she could handle you by herself.”

Clarke grits her teeth. “I’ve been underestimated by more than my fair share of people.”

“If I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have made it out,” Roan says, matter-of-fact. “For someone who’s supposed to command death, you really aren’t all that dangerous.”

Clarke feels a pang shoot through her chest as she remembers just how useless she was (when it mattered most, when it was more than her life on the line, when Bellamy might’ve—). She mulls over his words, and even though they’re meant as an insult, she finds that they don’t bother her much at all. “Not in the traditional sense, no,” she sighs.

Roan glances at her out of the corner of his eye, expression rife with understanding and something else she can’t quite place, and then he picks up the pace and doesn’t say anything else. They make the rest of their way in silence, turning down crumbling corridors and dodging curtains of cobwebs until the darkness slowly fades into light and the sounds of a forest replace Bellamy’s choking wheezes and her rapidly pounding heart. They make one last turn, and then they’re outside, a single thought coursing through her and leaving a bout of renewed energy in its wake.

(freefreefree)

As soon as their feet hit packed earth and frozen grass, Roan eases Bellamy off of his shoulder and helps position him around Clarke: her hand wrapped around his waist, his arm thrown across her shoulders, sides pressed up against one another. He’s leaning heavily against her, muscles tense beneath her fingers, and he’s shivering so violently that it’s all she can do to keep hold of him.

“My Mother doesn’t know about this exit,” Roan says. “You’re in the clear for now.”

Clarke angles toward him. “Why? You must’ve been the one who told her about us in the first place.”

“I shouldn’t have done that. I wanted to get back in her good graces. I didn’t know she’d have occasion to actually do anything about it.”

“But she did. And she won’t stop trying.”

Roan appraises her for a moment, studying the blood trickling down the length of Bellamy’s torso and onto the hand she has wrapped around it. And as she follows the path of his gaze, the furrow of his brow and the stark line of his mouth, Clarke knows that he means it. She’s not easily inclined toward trust, but she recognizes something in his expression that screams sincerity.

“I haven’t agreed with my Mother in a long time. There’s no honor in this—it’s barbaric,” he says. “You and I have a lot more in common than we originally thought, Wanheda. You’re not the only one who’s lost someone you care about to my Mother’s schemes.”

Clarke is about to ask who he means, but then Bellamy is suddenly stiffening at her side. She jerks her head toward him, assuming the worst. But she’s only greeted with the sickly sheen of his skin, the gauntness of his cheeks, and she’s drowning in a new swell of guilt because she knows that standing around is only making his condition worse.

“We need to leave. Now.”

Roan nods. “Here.” He unlaces a pouch from his belt and loops it over her neck. “Medical supplies. Figured you’d need them after I helped you escape.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a cave not too far from here—head due east and you’ll hit a wall of ivy. It’s hidden behind. I don’t imagine you’ll make it much farther than that.” He shoots Bellamy a knowing look when another shudder wracks his body.

Clarke narrows her eyes. “What about you?”

“I’ll meet you in a couple of hours. I need to wrap up a few loose ends before we leave.”

Clarke searches his expression, trying to find any hint of a lie (that this is some elaborate ruse, that he’s planning to drag them back to the Queen to string them both up this time—). But then she remembers the pain in his words (someone you care about), and the last of her suspicion leaves her. She musters all of her gratitude, all of her joy at Bellamy being alive, and looks up at Roan. “Thank you.”

He simply nods and unsheathes the blade at his back. “Don’t thank me yet.” And then he turns on his heel and disappears into the black.

For a moment, she watches him ago, already missing the blanket of his protection and his cool-headed certainty. But then Bellamy groans. He’s barely conscious—head lolling onto his chest, eyelids fluttering open and closed. Clarke shuts out the incessant voice telling her that this is all her fault (even though it is, dammit) and instead focuses on the fact that, right now, Bellamy needs her. Because even when he’s angry with her, doesn’t agree with her, he’s always been there for her when she needed him most (when Dax’s body lay at their feet, standing in the shadow of Finn’s funeral pyre, in Dante’s control room, even after she abandoned him at the gates—), and it’s finally her chance to be there for him.

So she shoves aside her guilt, her insecurity and fatigue, and puts one foot in front of the other: left, right, left right. She focuses on Bellamy’s harsh breaths, the weight of his arm across her shoulders. The fact that he’s right here. That she’s never letting him go again.

“I’m getting you out of here, Bellamy. I’m not going to let her touch you again.”

“Us...” he mumbles.

Clarke furrows her brow. “What?”

“You’re getting us out of here,” he says. “Because if someone finds us… and you try to pull some self-sacrificial crap? I’m not leaving you… and then we’re both dead.” His words are halting, labored, but his intensity comes through all the same.

Warmth spreads through Clarke’s chest despite it all. “You’re starting to sound delirious.”

Bellamy makes a noise, and Clarke’s not positive, but it almost sounds like a laugh. “I’m still not sure if I’ve lost it… and this is all a dream.” And his voice is so quiet, she’s not sure if he meant for her to hear him at all.

They make their way east through the dawning light of the forest for a while, Clarke mumbling meaningless words of encouragement as Bellamy’s hold on her grows weaker and weaker, his faltering steps slower and slower. She finally spots a copse of ivy, the sight of it cutting through her exhaustion. They stumble through the vines and are greeted by a small cave, mossy walls lit by a natural skylight above their heads. When they clear the entrance, all of Clarke’s adrenaline leaves her and she deflates right along with it, both of them collapsing to the dirt in a tangle of heaving chests and tired limbs.

As soon as they hit the ground, Bellamy hisses in pain and curls into a ball, arms wrapped tightly around his torso and teeth drawing new blood from his cracked lips.

Clarke is immediately chastising herself and her useless limbs and her stupid fatigue and how could she be so careless— She darts forward until she’s hovering over him, hands just shy of landing. “Shit. I’m sorry, I—let me see—”

“Just gimme… a sec,” he moans.

He lies there, trembling and trying to bite back the pain, looking more vulnerable than he ever has before. She places a hand over one of his and squeezes, lending him all the strength she wishes she felt. When the tension finally leaves his body, he rolls onto his back and Clarke scoots forward so that his head lands in her lap. His eyes drift to Clarke’s, and they stare at each other in disbelief, a burgeoning sense of relief overriding all of Clarke’s anxiety and her single-minded drive to escape.

They drink this moment in until Bellamy raises a hand to the blood on his neck. “It’s funny…”

Clarke frowns. “What is?”

“Jasper.”

“What?”

“A few weeks ago, Ice Nation slit Jasper’s throat too.”

Clarke stares at him, incredulous. And then her mouth betrays her, quirking up at a corner. “I’ve never met anybody with such a morbid sense of humor.”

Bellamy’s answering chuckle dissolves into a fit of coughing and culminates in a “… fuck, that hurts.”

“Shh—shhhh. Stop talking, Bellamy,” she chides. “I need to take a look at your neck. It’s not that deep, but Nia—”

At that, he suddenly lifts his arm until he’s squeezing her elbow, grip tight in spite of how unsteady he is. His eyes dart frantically between her face and the mouth of the cave, and he looks as panicked as she’s ever seen him. “No—no. You need to get out of here. Before she finds us.”

Clarke flinches in surprise. “What?”

“She can’t—I can’t… god… What if she takes it out on you and—”

(Clarke knows that the blood loss is starting to disorient him, and in his eyes she can see what remains of the hopelessness he’s been fighting for who knows how many days.)

“Bellamy, no—”

“You need to leave. I’ll be fine on my own. I always am, so—”

Clarke lays a palm firmly on his cheek, willing him to calm down. “Bellamy. If you think that’s even an option, you really are delirious.” And she expects it to be a battle—for him to tear his eyes from hers while he works out an argument, to challenge her on this like he always does. But he doesn’t. He just stares at her in a distant sort of way that confuses her because she can’t quite tell what it means (because if there’s one thing she knows about the two of them, it’s that they’ve never needed words to communicate). His sudden hysteria is leaving him, his features softening, and when he speaks, his voice is almost as unguarded as his expression is.

“… I wonder about that myself sometimes.”

He holds her gaze, and for a moment, it looks like he’s going to say more (like he wants her to understand). But then he sighs and shuts his eyes, his breathing leveling off as exhaustion finally wins and he succumbs to sleep.

Clarke knows that it’s just the shock winding through him that’s causing the rapid swings in his emotions, that he’s not really making sense and probably won’t remember a thing he’s said since they escaped. But, sometimes, she thinks about the things she’d do (has done) for this man, and she can’t help but wonder the same thing.

For a moment, she revels in the steady rise and fall of Bellamy’s chest, and then she steels her nerves and channels all the medical training she’s avoided since she slid a knife in between Finn’s ribs. She needs to remove the tattered remains of his shirt because that’s where the worst of it will be, but she’s afraid to wake him up from what might be his most restful sleep in days (afraid to see all the damage that lies beneath). So, instead, Clarke turns to his most recent injury. She removes the pouch from around her neck, rifling through it for supplies. When she finds what she needs, she gingerly removes the fraying cloth from around his throat and sets about re-cleaning the cut, wiping away the drying blood and packing it with some sort of medicinal herb. It really isn’t as deep as it seemed, but as she takes in the state of the rest of his body, she knows that it’s too soon to be thankful.

Once she’s done, she starts on the rest of his visible wounds—on the mangled skin of his wrists, the cuts littering his face, the open sores of his bloodied nail beds. With each dab of her medicine-soaked cloth, each layering of gauze, she dives deeper and deeper into her own guilt—now that she’s no longer running on anything but adrenaline, now that they’re safe (for now), it all comes crashing back over her, dragging her down into its depths until it’s all she can taste, hear, feel.

The last three months have done nothing to dampen it, the burden of so much death, so many lives extinguished by her hand (i am become death, destroyer of worlds). Ever since she pulled that lever all those months ago, incinerated an entire army of Grounders, she’s been the linchpin of so much destruction and suffering that “Wanheda” seems less like a stranger and more like an old friend. She’s like a ticking time bomb: wherever she goes, she detonates, decimating the people around her and leaving only rubble in her wake. Bellamy is only the latest victim to be buried under the consequences of her good (selfish) intentions, but somehow, seeing what she’s done to him hurts worse than anything else has.

Clarke brushes the curls from his forehead and tries to find the man beneath all of the blood and bruises, tries to focus on the constellations of freckles that paint his cheeks, the chronic downturn of his brow, the scar on his upper lip. If she pictures it hard enough, it’s almost as if she can see through all the marks the war(s) carved into his skin, the unwanted burdens this world has dumped on his shoulders. And it takes her back to a simpler time, when Mt. Weather was nothing but an abstract idea, when whatever the hell we want was their greatest enemy. But then she remembers what she told him then (we don’t decide who lives and dies—not down here), and she can’t help but sneer at the irony of what she’s become. She’s not sure if she wants to go back to that time or if she wishes they had never made it to the ground in the first place.

She blinks back the sudden wetness in her eyes and is surprised to find Bellamy staring back at her.

“Hey,” he breathes.

Clarke tries to smile down at him, but all she can manage is a slightly less severe frown. “Hey.”

“I fell asleep?”

“Not too long ago.”

Bellamy swallows. “Are we…?”

“Safe as we can be. Roan said he’d meet us here in a few hours.”

Bellamy cocks an eyebrow. “And you trust him?”

“Right now, he’s the only option we’ve got.”

Bellamy looks like he maybe wants to argue (Clarke distinctly remembers when Roan was the one holding a sword to his throat barely a week ago), but then he’s nodding his head and struggling to a sitting position.

“Easy,” Clarke mumbles, laying a hand on his shoulder for support, the clinical part of her cataloguing how his muscles twitch and shudder, which parts of him seem to hurt the worst. She bites down on everything she wants to say to him in an attempt to appear rational, level-headed. Bellamy doesn’t need a sniveling mess of tears and apologies—he needs a doctor, and right now, she’s as close as he’s going to get.

“I’ve already taken a look at your face and arms, but I need to see what else they did.” She swallows the dread coating her throat. “Can you lift your shirt up?”

Without meeting her eyes, he starts to raise his arms, but then he winces and jerks to a stop. When he tries again, he makes it only half as far before he shrinks back again and grits his teeth in frustration. “I don’t think I… fuck—”

Clarke digs her fingers into her thighs, tries to redirect all of her anger at the monsters who did this to him. But if the concern in his expression is any indication, it’s not working.

So she releases her tension on an exhale. “Here. Let me.” She rises to her knees and grabs the back of his shirt, slowly draws it over his head and down the length of his arms. When she finally tugs it off and casts it aside, comprehends the full extent of his torture, all her attempts at rationality desert her and she can barely contain the bile that rises in her throat.

Bruises of various shapes and sizes mar his skin, painting him in a macabre array of purples, blues, and blacks. There are lacerations scabbing over with dried blood, sores and masses of ruined skin where it looks like he’s been burned (blistered and oozing like the bodies in Mt. Weather, and she doesn’t even want to know how—). Over top of it all is a maze of gashes and whip marks that bleed into one another until she can’t tell where his injuries begin and end. She tries to concentrate on what little of him remains untouched, but the patches of clear, tan skin are so few and far between that she can’t help but remember that day she slid a knife into Atom’s broken body a lifetime ago—except, this time, her role is not one of mercy, but of fault (she may as well have slit Bellamy’s throat herself).

She knows that what she sees is only a snapshot of the agony Bellamy must have felt (must be feeling), and it sickens her, sends nausea roiling down to her very core. She wants to do nothing more than rush out of the cave and suck in mouthfuls of fresh air, bury her face in her hands and scream at the sky about how unfair it all is (about how he doesn’t deserve this and how it should’ve been her—why couldn’t it have been her?).

But that won’t solve anything.

So she raises an unsteady hand and lets it hover just shy of a burn on his abdomen, tracing the space above it with her fingers.

“How are you not dead?”

“Strong-willed,” he grunts.

“I need to clean this before it gets infected.” Clarke clenches her hand into a fist. “It’s going to hurt.”

Bellamy just shrugs and breaks eye contact, shifting his body so that she has easier access.

But Clarke is still riding the wave of emotion threatening to overtake her. Even though she knows that he needs her to keep it together (that she’s failing, miserably), she doesn’t want to hear his groans, the sounds he must’ve made while the Queen laid into him. She doesn’t want her hands to be yet another architect of his destruction. And maybe that’s selfish of her, but she can’t cause him any more pain—because she knows that, ever since she sent him into the Mountain all those months ago, watched his face fall and his gaze harden, that’s all she’s done.

(iwasbeingweak

it’sworththerisk

ibearitsotheydon’thaveto

maywemeetagain

i’msorry)

“I’m serious, Bellamy. I—I don’t want to hurt you any more than you already have been.” She starts rummaging through Roan’s medicine bag at her side. “Maybe there’s something in here that can knock you out for a few hours. At least then you won’t be awake while I—”

Bellamy catches her wrist in his fingers and lowers it between them. “Clarke,” he breathes. “It’s not the same.”

Shame wells up inside of her and radiates outward until it feels as tangible as the air around them. “I may not have wielded the blade, but it’s me they were after.” He can’t argue with her, because they both know it’s true.

But Bellamy only tightens his grip on her and runs a thumb over the erratic beat of her pulse. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

Clarke hears the lifeline in his words, hears how badly he wants her to just grab hold and believe him (how much it reminds her of a quiet homecoming, of the shadow of the Ark over their heads, of a quavering voice and a heartfelt plea—please come inside). But she also hears the hoarseness in his voice, scraped raw from god knows how many days of screams. She hears the sound his body made when Nia slit his throat and he crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.

She hears her silent screams when she thought he was dead.

She knows that she doesn’t deserve his forgiveness, not when she threw it away so easily last time; not when, were it not for her, he’d be whole and safe and leading his people far away in Arkadia. Where he belongs. Where he thrives. Not bleeding out in a cave in the middle of nowhere. She fixes her gaze pointedly on the fingers he has wrapped around her wrist. “I should get started so you have time to rest before Roan gets back.”

Bellamy shoots her one last wary look, but then he sighs, releases her and lets his arms drop to his sides. She leans forward until she’s in the circle of his bent knees and gets to work. She dabs at his injuries, disinfecting them, wiping off the dried blood covering his chest, cutting away the dead skin and prodding his bruises for broken ribs. With every touch, he flinches away from her, but he stays mercifully silent. It kills her that it’s partly for her sake, and she wants to scold him for holding back, for pretending that he’s alright. But then she reminds herself that this is probably as in control as he’s felt in days, and she knows that she can’t take that away from him.

So she simply pulls out a suture kit when she’s finished cleaning away the worst of it and begins to stitch him back together. This time, he can’t muffle his winces or the way his breathing has picked up again, coming out in fits and bursts, a harsh staccato made worse by how feverish his body feels, how his skin throbs beneath her touch. She works her way down his torso until her needle lingers on a particularly grisly cut, lined with jagged edges and spanning the width of his stomach. She thinks that it must’ve taken a while to make.

“My guards got bored pretty quickly,” Bellamy says, voice so quiet she has to strain to hear him. “Moved from one… method to the next, but nothing ever lasted long.”

Clarke grinds her teeth. “What were you doing in Azgeda territory in the first place?” she asks, trying to distract him (both of them) from both the memories and the steady rhythm of her needle through flesh.

“Got intel that they had you.”

“You think it was a trap?”

Bellamy nods.

“And you didn’t take anybody with you?”

“No time. I was by myself when I found out.”

Clarke frowns. “Reckless.”

“Always have been.”

Unbidden, a corner of her mouth quirks up, but she quashes it down as soon as it comes and gets back to work.

For a while, only their breathing penetrates the heavy silence in the air, harsh and unsteady in tandem. When she finishes with his front, she crawls out from between his knees, studiously avoiding his gaze, and sidles behind him. And when she sees what awaits her, she gasps.

“Bellamy, your back…” she whispers.

Bellamy hunches his shoulders and scoffs. “They said they didn’t want to attack a man who had his back turned. That it was dishonorable.”

Clarke takes in the smooth expanse of skin, the only signs of his ordeal a fine sheen of sweat and stray smudges of dirt. She can’t reconcile how undamaged it is from the rest of him, how if he doesn’t turn around, she can almost pretend that there’s nothing wrong.

The harsh juxtaposition is what finally breaks her. She places a trembling palm in between his shoulder blades and sucks in a shaky breath that causes everything she’s been holding back to mutiny, rebel against her crumbling defenses. The words come tumbling from her mouth, shattered and miserable and rife with every emotion she’s been battling since it all began but hasn’t been able to voice until now.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Bellamy. I’m so, so sorry.” And she feels like she’s suffocating on it.

“Clarke…” Bellamy starts.

But she just shudders. Feels the shame down to her very core, clawing its way through her and taking root. Grounding her to a reality she wants nothing more than to be free of. Bellamy must sense the storm of her emotions because he’s suddenly softening his posture and leaning into her touch, the bitterness in his voice smoothing away its sharp edges.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ve already been through this—at Mt. Weather.”

Clarke is reminded of another time she sent Bellamy to his suffering. “I’m sorry about that too,” she whispers.

“No, Clarke… I didn’t mean—” He huffs out a harsh breath. “Stop apologizing all the time!”

She grits her teeth. “I told you you wouldn’t be by yourself, but I—I sent you into the Mountain to die. You came here because you were looking for me. How can you ever forgive me?”

But Bellamy just shakes his head. “That wasn’t your fault, and neither was this. I made my own decisions. I told you, I—” He cuts off, swallows and tries again, this time an undercurrent of levity in his words. “I told you before—I don’t take orders from you.”

But that just makes Clarke angrier. “Bellamy, stop. Stop trying to downplay this, it’s—” (why does he insist on trivializing his pain, why can’t he just be selfish sometimes?)

“It’s not that I’m downplaying it, Clarke,” he says quietly. “It’s just that… talking about it will just make it more real.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re the only thing I’ve wanted to be real for days.”

From her vantage point behind him, she can see the outline of his jaw as it twitches in that way that it does when he’s angry with himself, unsure. He’s clenching his fists to stop them from shaking, and it’s slowly hollowing her out where her heart should be, carving into her chest cavity and filling it with such dread, such knowing, that she starts shaking as well. She knows what he’s going to say next with the kind of certainty that comes when you’re free falling and you can see your end racing to meet you, the kind she’s become all too familiar with since they landed on the ground and we are apogee became we’re not alone.

When Bellamy finally speaks again, his voice comes out a tattered version of itself. “They said that they’d had you for days. That what they were doing to me was nothing compared to what they’d already done to you. That they—that they liked how you screamed.”

Clarke lets out a half-sob. She knows how he’s feeling (has been feeling the same since Ontari paraded him into the throne room and her imagination ran wild). The thought of someone hurting him instead of her, in front of her, is too much to handle, and she can barely contain the revulsion that threatens to overtake her.

She wants nothing more than to hold him and soothe it all away. To remind him that she’s still here. That she hasn’t been hurt in the way he has. To tether him to the physicality of her, of them together, both still breathing. Living.

So she does.

She threads her arms under his and wraps them over his chest where she knows he’s fairly uninjured, resting her cheek on his shoulder. He stiffens in pain, but when she makes to pull away, he stops her with a hand on top of one of her own.

“Don’t,” he breathes.

(his voice is gravelly, and it rumbles in her chest, centering and unmooring her all at once.)

“I’m sorry.” Her lips whisper along his neck. “I shouldn’t have stayed in Polis. If I had just gone back with you…”

But Bellamy just shakes his head. “No—you don’t understand, Clarke. You left me—everyone—and for the longest time, I resented you for that.”

Clarke lets out a watery exhale.

“But, if you had stayed, I’m not sure you really would’ve been there anyway. So I understand why you had to leave. I get that. But that didn’t stop the fear. Every time I looked out the gates, I imagined you out there alone. Cold. In danger… And these past few days, when they told me they had you… it was like it had all come true. Strung up while those bastards—” His shoulders start to shudder. “I can’t—fuck…”

And when his voice cracks, what’s left of her composure cracks right along with it. Tears slide down her face as her lips start to tremble, as her arms tighten their hold on him.

“I don’t want to lose you. Thinking about it made me realize… it doesn’t matter why you left. Why you stayed in Polis. I don’t care. All that matters is you’re all right.”

Clarke doesn’t have time to let that sink in before she’s suddenly releasing her hold on him. Bellamy grunts in protest, but then she’s crawling back in front of him until she’s sitting in between his bent knees and enveloping his clenched fists in her hands, catching his gaze so they can’t hide from each other anymore. His features are arranged in such anguish that the hole where her heart was is suddenly mending itself back together and shattering into pieces again all at once, buoyed on a cloud of grief and gratitude and regret and, most of all, Bellamy.

She leans forward until their foreheads are touching (slowly, so slowly), and waits for him to pull away, to maintain the undefinable distance that’s always been between them. When he doesn’t, she relaxes and breathes him in.

“You won’t lose me, Bellamy. I’m right here.”

He blinks at her, eyelashes fluttering like they do when he doesn’t believe her, when she tries to tell him just how much he means to her (ineedyou—can’tloseyou—knewyouwould). He looks so much like he did that day outside of Camp Jaha. When he asked her where you gonna go? and the desperation in his eyes nearly convinced her to stay.

“It was the same for me, never knowing if you were okay. Pulling that lever… if it tormented you as much as it did me.”

Bellamy disentangles one of his hands from hers and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, fingers lingering at her cheek. “I wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. You leaving? That killed me. It felt like… like I was missing a part of myself. I know we’ve only been on the ground for a few months now, that we led entirely separate lives on the Ark… but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”

Clarke nods her assent and lays a palm over the one he has on her cheek, needing to feel the warmth of him against her, wanting him as close as possible.

“You always say how much you need me, but… I don’t think you’ve ever realized how much I need you too,” he says.

She’s surprised when there’s no niggling feelings of doubt. When she sees the certainty, the weaknesslove, in the set of his features. Sometime over their time at the Dropship, her self-imposed isolation, the nightmare of the past few hours, what i did to get them here has truly become what we did. And while the guilt and grief will never entirely go away, she looks at Bellamy and she knows that she doesn’t have to bear the weight by herself anymore.

“I wasn’t ready to face my demons before,” she says. “I was scared that you would all look at me and only see a monster. That I’d look in the mirror and not know who I was anymore.”

“Clarke…” Bellamy says, “I know who you are.” (and his voice is soft, so soft.)

Clarke smiles. “I know you do.”

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

And instead of the response that used to come so easily (i bear it so they don’t have to), she leans deeper into the curve of their bodies and vows, “Neither do you. No more running away. Whatever happens next, we face it. Together.”

He nods. “Together.”

With that promise, Clarke thinks she could sit like this for hours, basking in their faith in each other, the knowledge that they’re both safe and here and real. Marveling at just how much she missed this. Them. Because for the first time since she escaped the Mountain and ran into his arms, she feels pure joy.

Bellamy’s voice is what finally breaks the spell.

“I guess this makes up for Roan stabbing me in the leg.”

Clarke lets out a half-sniffle, half-laugh. She reluctantly lowers his hand from her face, pulls back and wipes away the lingering tears (but she leaves her fingers clasped over his—she doesn’t want to stop touching him. she can’t, not when she was so close to losing him). “But he’s also the reason we were even there in the first place.”

“True. But it’s not like we can be picky right now.” He sighs. “So what now?”

“Now, we wait.” Clarke shrugs. “You can tell me what I missed. How everyone is doing.”

Bellamy fingers a lock of her hair, still pink with fading red. “Why don’t you tell me about this first?”

“I think I’m making up for skipping over my teenage angst phase.”

“Princess with a rebellious streak—all you need now is a tattoo. What will your mother think?”

Clarke snorts. “Nothing good.”

Bellamy winces as he chuckles, but the pang of guilt she expects is instead a pang of relief. She takes in his battered body, but instead of focusing on the pain carved into his skin, she focuses on the smile playing at his lips, the feel of his hands in hers, the steadiness in his gaze. They’re both broken, damaged in different ways. But no matter how many times they shatter, lose the pieces of who they used to be, she knows that they’ll always be there to glue each other back together. Instead of running away from their pasts and the responsibility chasing their every step, they’ll face it. Because you don’t ease pain—you overcome it.

Together.

For the first time in a long time, Clarke feels free. Centered. And as she looks into Bellamy’s eyes, she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt: Nia was wrong. Her friends—Bellamy—aren’t her weakness. They’re her strength.

And she’s not planning on leaving them ever again.

{fin.}

[the-connection]

Hi sidekicks! We’re back for the Are You The One season 7 chapter 3 recap, and I, for one, am on the edge of my seat. Will Zak continue to hit on every girl in the members of this house? Will my eardrums hold permanent injury from Nutsa’s voice? Will Bria skin Zak and wear him as a dres? Let’s find out!

We open on Bria screaming, and already I’m traumatized because I had a rough subway razz residence today. It also involved a female screaming “you can suction my dick! ” Although in her speciman, I meditate she was just trying to get me to grant her money. Bria is actually insane.

In the other room Nutsa is telling Zak he deserves better than Bria, and in the confessional Morgan is telling us that Nutsa isn’t right right for Zak. There is some major girl-on-girl misdemeanour going on here.

Asia decides to spare us all a reenactment of the blood-red bridal, and attempts to give Bria a pep talk. She tells her she needs to move on from Zak and will physically not cause her back in the members of this house until she calms down.

Bria is grunting and heavy exhaling like someone passionately in need of an exorcism as Asia contributes her back to the house. She crab steps right up to Zak.

Bria:* spokesperson dripping with hollow and sorrow* Listen to me, it’s done Zak:

Moving on to our second most f* cked up got a couple of the house, Tevin and Kenya. Tevin is sighing to Kenya, questioning what she did in the thunder boom office with Lewis. He says he’s moaning to prolong his utter , not because he wants to keep their sexual employs private or anything.

Kenya: We didn’t do anything Tevin:* mutters* You gave him head Kenya:* wails* I dedicated him head

It’s all highly baffling. They leave this conversation agreeing they are still into each other, but only one of them leaves with vocal chords that are fresh as a daisy.

Bria is icing her handwriting because she disabled it in one of her rage blackouts. She is also wearing Zak’s shirt although there is I Envisage WE WERE DONE WITH THIS, GOD! Samantha tells Zak that it’s mostly like a puppy urinating on something to distinguish its territory. Oh, Sam. I’m sure Bria did that extremely!

Okay now Sam "re talking" how she and Zak are similar and she thinks he are likely to be her pair. I’m starting to wonder what it is about this buster that obliges him female kryptonite? Is he actually a slice of pizza underneath his clothes?

Sam thinks they connect intellectually, and I’m wondering if they’re not showing us the parts of the day where Zak walks around performing Yeats from recall cause otherwise I DON’T SEE IT.

Now we transition to Andrew, who is declaring that everyone has made a contact and there are a lot of playboys there and he exactly doesn’t have that recreation. You mean the girls aren’t impressed by the diamond studs in each ear, Andrew? I am shook!

Andrew is applying the precious few minutes of screen time he has to talk about the weather with Asia. Apparently he got sunburned because it was overcast out and he “just didn’t think.” Well, Andrew, us fair-skinned tribe need to be vigilant about the daylight. Always wear sunscreen! Melanoma does not mark, although I’m sure it would pass over your diamond-studded soul if it had the choice.

I honestly never meditated I’d say this about person on this present, but Andrew obviously needs to devour more alcohol. This conversation is so awkward and the only way to get past that is by imbibing so much better your ability to feel reproach goes away.

Morgan is making Nutsa do her makeup even though they are both humbling on Zak. Morgan better watch out because Nutsa has a crazy look in her nose and a lip liner that gazes suspiciously like a shiv.

Morgan immediately moves from her discussion with Nutsa to tittle-tattle on her to Bria. She tells Bria that Nutsa is inessential but she is GREAT AND PERFECT AND WILL BE PURSUING ZAK. And isn’t it righteous that she’s telling Bria before she does it? In the confessional, Morgan lets us are also aware that she told Bria about her quash on Zak because she’s afraid of her. Same.

Morgan goes right over to Zak and accosts him vag first. He countenances with open arms.

Nutsa see this happen and is offended and upset. And I am affronted and upset by the resonates coming out of her cheek right now. My ears, they ooze.

Morgan tells Nutsa that she went to Zak to tell him to respect her. Then she tells us in the confessional that she lied. I’m particularly into Morgan’s use of the confessional. She knows what it’s about. Too she might want to avoid everyone from the evidence now that this is airing. Save yourself, Morgan!

Can I just take a brief minute here to discuss the living accommodations MTV provides for the shoot members? It’s literally mattresses thrown on the storey with a comforter on top. They look like they’re squatters. Did MTV even pay for this house or did they acquire the throw representatives break into a vacation home that wasn’t currently being leased?

Cut to Cali and Brett in some sort of khaki-colored hammock contraption. I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s going on now because everything is the same shade. The beings are tan, the hammock is tan, Brett’s shirt is tan. I think they’re making out. They seem to like each other. Cute.

Terrence J is demonstrated by. Is the J an extension of his first name, or is it his last name? Do we study I can drop it by now? Is Terrence very familiar for a mortal I’ve never met? Eh what the heck, let’s entered into with Terry.

Terry shows up. He prompts them that one week and seven hangovers ago they got three rays at the matching ceremony. Papa Terry was very proud. He shows off his beloved, the demise button, which will again pick the years this week.

The producers Fate pickings Nutsa and Asia as the women going on the time. For the second week in a row, Bria threatens the life of the fate button if it picks Zak. I really panic this this button is not long for this life. Luckily, the fate button is saved this week because it chooses Cam and Andrew. Don’t forget your SPF 50, Andrew!

So for this date they are zorbing. Zorbing is a word I merely became aware that entails reeling around in a plastic clod like a drunken hamster. How neat of MTV to send the cast to Hawaii and give them do something I could do at I Play America in center Jersey. Actually wasting the big bucks! I hope person suffocates.

Cam and Asia pair up for some time by the ocean, where Asia asks if his political deems affect his dating life. He is open and honest and so in return she tells him she detests him for his political beliefs.

Nutsa depletes the day telling the sons she’s not into them. Gentlemen, this is a favor. You don’t necessary that voice in your life.

Oooh now I meet what Andrew was talking about with his sunburn. That baby’s gonna rind. A pink-tinted Andrew tells Asia he would be interested in her if he saw her treading down the street. Asia says she thinks he has a wallflower identity and is leery of him because he seems reticent. Wow, I never knew reticent was a dealbreaker. So ladies, we’re into rampage controversies, cheaters, and unemployed losers, but we draw a line at balk? This is where we are now?

Andrew persuasions Asia that he would never be so disgusting as to be a shy dude, and she conceives him enough to think they might be a competition.

Back at the members of this house, Terry is there to announce who is going in the truth booth. Asia and Andrew acknowledge they’re feeling one another, and the house thought they might be too. They’re headed to the Truth Booth.

And it’s no equal! Ogles like Andrew was lying about being reticent and the experts really blew up his recognize, huh? They seem a little upset at first but then Andrew starts screeching “That’s information! That’s information! ” which is basically what I do after every late-night Wikipedia deep diving.

Post-Truth Booth, Kenya approaches Jasmine for saying she would pop off on her. I must have missed that component, but apparently it’s a big question. Kenya screams at Jasmine and then peaces out. Jasmine trying to mollify herself down right now is me after anyone has asked me to do a simple task at work. I ALREADY TOLD YOU TO ADD YOURSELF TO THE DISTRO LIST, LINDA!

Nutsa plucks Zak aside and questions him what he likes in a girl.

Zak: Seems don’t truly matter to me Also Zak:

He too mentions he demands a woman that’s steadfast. So steadfast like you were to Bria with Morgan and Nutsa and Samantha, like that kind of loyal? Nutsa munches it right up and says she thinks they could be a join.

Bria then be coming back and gathers Zak away from this sweet discussion and legit pulls him into the spurt spurt chamber and jump-start his bones. Oh so like this kind of loyal, Zak?

Nutsa then questions Samantha where Zak is.

Samantha: Yeah he’s f* cking Bria in the boom spurt room

Samantha! I miss exclusively good thoughts for you! My kindred spirit.

Before Bria makes Zak leave the boom boom room, she constricts his projectiles until he says she can trust him. I conceive Zak about as much as I conceive myself when I say I’ll come out but just for one potion.

We has at last attained it to the second match-up formality, and no one is dead yet! That’s how I’m setting success on this season. Who even cares if they get the million dollars this year? At this quality if they all make it out alive I’m calling it a make.

Tonight is ladies preference! So countless eligible bachelors, how will they ever judge?

Kenya picks Tevin Kayla collects Cam Jasmine selects Lewis Asia collects Brett Nutsa selects Daniel because they have “cultural backgrounds together” My number one girl Samantha pickings Zak, and the riot begins.