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zaelous · 3 years ago

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The noble and most ancient House of Black was both a family and a cult. A cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. In the case of House of Black, this philosophy and its subsequent goals were a form of magical eugenics focused on the supremacy of so-called “pure blood.” Establishing these basic principles is important at the outset in order to demonstrate how these beliefs and the House of Black’s implementation of them are what make them not just a family of extreme beliefs but a cult whose practices affected Bellatrix’s sense of identity, self esteem, and motivations, effectively forming her personhood.

I. PRINCIPLES BY DEFINITION

Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged; for example, the reproduction of the intelligent, the healthy, and the successful. Negative eugenics aims to eliminate, through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or morally undesirable.

Pure-blood supremacists believe that only pure-bloods were real witches and wizards, and were often inclined to consider themselves as the elite of the Magical world; a place in which they believed that Muggle-borns did not belong. More militant subscribers of this philosophy even consider themselves to be akin to royalty. Elitist pure-bloods even believed that it was a sign of weak magic to enjoy non-magical company. Those who are pure-blooded but do not ascribe to supremacist ideologies are considered to be blood traitors and are shunned.

Shunning can be broken down into behaviours and practices that seek to accomplish either or both of two primary goals:

To modify the behaviour of a member. This approach seeks to influence, encourage, or coerce normative behaviours from members, and may seek to dissuade, provide disincentives for, or to compel avoidance of certain behaviours. Shunning may include disassociating from a member by other members of the community who are in good standing. It may include more antagonistic psychological behaviours. This approach may be seen as either corrective or punitive (or both) by the group membership or leadership, and may also be intended as a deterrent.

To remove or limit the influence of a member (or former member) over other members in a community. This approach may seek to isolate, to discredit, or otherwise dis-empower such a member, often in the context of actions or positions advocated by that member. For groups with defined membership criteria, especially based on key behaviours or ideological precepts, this approach may be seen as limiting damage to the community or its leadership.

Concerted efforts at influence and control lie at the core of cultic groups, programs, and relationships. Many members, former members, and supporters of cults are not fully aware of the extent to which members may be manipulated, exploited, or even abused. While there is really no standardized diagnostic tool with which one can definitively say whether an organization qualifies as a cult, some social-structural, social-psychological, and interpersonal behavioral patterns can help to assess a particular group or relationship, in this instance the House of Black.

II. PATTERNS OF CONTROL & DIVISION

The group displays an excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. This is a trait more difficult to illustrate than others, since there is no one individual leader of House Black; however, it is the root of the House Black philosophy that their ideologies and beliefs are passed down generationally, presumably from medieval times (given their family tapestry). We do see a lengthy history of the family’s current patriarch (whoever it is at any given time) enforcing these ideologies on other family members by excommunicating anyone whom they deem to have fallen out of line with the House of Black doctrine. The fact that excommunication from the family is even a thing that exists and that it furthermore is seen as the ultimate form of punishment emphasizes two things:

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. There is no room in the House of Black to politely disagree or hold any sort of discourse on ideals. Even at the tender young age of sixteen, Sirius was summarily blasted off of the family tapestry and considered a traitor by the Black family for expressing his malcontent and running away to the Potters, a blood traitor family. Any member of House Black is obliged to conform to their ideologies or be expelled, which is seen as the worst possible outcome.

The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave—or even consider leaving—the group. In a normative, healthy family situation, being formally dismissed from the group usually only occurs under dire circumstances and often even then doesn’t fully occur at all. The implementation of characters such as Sirius and Andromeda prove early on that the family’s dogmatic beliefs are non-negotiable and that deviation has consequences.

The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and control members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. This might be considered to be a more headcanon-y than explanatory point, given I don’t readily have any examples of shame or guilt being utilized directly, but given that these other points exist and are true within the narrative, it would be impossible for those things to have occurred without the use of shame and guilt to manipulate family members, even in occasions when it isn’t intended to deliberately. The peer pressure aspect of control is an especially pointed aspect of the situation, given that they are a family, having one’s entire family ascribe to certain beliefs and practices makes it a given.

The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (e.g., members must get permission to date, change jobs, or marry—or leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live, whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth). This is a point easily illustrated by again referring to the tapestry blasting incident(s), as it was up to the Black patriarch what should be done about betrayals, and he even further punished those who continued to support Sirius in violation of his ruling. However, it’s also common for House Black to arrange marriages between family members to those families whose ideologies align with their own, and if a suitable match cannot be found, to keep the blood pure by arranging marriages within the family itself. These marital practices tie in with other notable behaviors (elitism, polarization, isolation), but most importantly, they illustrate an aspect of positive eugenics, which is the practice of selective breeding.

III. GENDER ROLES

The whole point of this excessively lengthy essay is to explain how and why selective breeding is canon and thereby explain my headcanons for Bellatrix’s relationship to her beliefs and her gender and why the two are inherently linked. The entire concept of supremacy and eugenics relies on the continuation of the genetic precepts that the supremacists view to be superior-- that is, there is an inherent obligation within these beliefs to carry on the pureblooded genes and to provide the future generation of supremacists. The brunt of this endeavor obviously falls upon women, as they bear children, but given the patrilineal and patriarchal nature of the family structure (and that of English culture in the 1950s), the implication is that rather than wanting women who can bear these children, the desire is for male heirs to carry on the family name and the family bloodline, which is their most sacred duty.

Having been born a woman in the House of Black was to have been born with a form of original sin in that Bellatrix had already failed to be a male heir. Her only recompense for this initial transgression is to go on to provide male heirs, especially given that her mother died trying (and failing) to do so. While there is very little personal information available about Cygnus Black, we do know that his wife provided him with three daughters rather than a son, and died giving birth to Narcissa and left him to raise these daughters alone. Without a doubt, Cygnus would have viewed his failure to provide a male heir as a shortcoming, and given that his wife was dead, there was no way for him to vent his resentment on her. This is where we cross over into headcanon territory because I can’t prove anything about who Cygnus Black was as a person from the original text; however, it stands to reason giving the existing evidence and narrative structure (and how his daughters each turned out) that he was not a well man and that subsequently Bellatrix’s childhood was not a healthy or happy one as a result of that.

As the oldest child, Bella had little in the way of protection from her father’s dictatorship, although she did her best to shield her sisters from it once she had sisters. She always took the brunt of her father’s expectations, and his wrath should those expectations fail to be met. This is why, of all the Black sisters, Bellatrix held her supremacist values and mission the closest to her heart, and why I believe she and Narcissa held such a close relationship despite the onset of Bellatrix’s very obvious descent into madness. I also believe this is the key difference between Bellatrix and Sirius: although they both came from House Black, they grew up to be polar opposites. I think it was Rowling’s intention here to illustrate that no matter where you come from, you choose your own beliefs and destiny and you can choose to be good rather than evil or some shit, but I don’t think it’s necessarily as clear as simply choosing a different set of beliefs. I think that Sirius and Bellatrix were raised in very different conditions that instilled the same beliefs differently, and therefore had a different effect. Then one might point out Andromeda, but there’s a difference there, too-- not only did she have Bella to provide a barrier between her and their father that Bellatrix did not have, but she also experienced love outside of the family, which is a whole other set of variables I won’t begin to get into. Suffice to say that falling in love is an external catalyst which can’t be accounted for, and it certainly didn’t happen to Bellatrix.

As an adult, Bellatrix would have had a clear duty to take a pureblooded husband and provide him with male heirs. I do have a whole headcanon (which frankly deserves its own post but I digress) that she was first engaged to her Hogwarts sweetheart, but that he died early in the first war before they could be married, and as a result, her father arranged her marriage to Rodolphus Lestrange instead. This was not just to fulfill the whole get-married-have-babies mandate, but also because Bellatrix went mad with grief after her fiancé's death, and it’s really her first tangible, visible detachment from emotional stability. Her father’s solution to simply replace her fiancé might have been fine, had the couple not experienced infertility issues and been unable to produce children.

Infertility is not so surprising when one takes into account the rampant inbreeding in both the Black and the Lestrange families. Generations of intermarriage in the name of blood purity is guaranteed to give a myriad of health issues, certainly not all of which might be cured through magical means. However, an inability to fulfill her duties as they relate to Bellatrix’s personhood would be, to her, an absolute and unmitigated failure on her part. Fertility issues are already an enormous strain without the added pressures of a bloodline to preserve, but especially given that Andromeda essentially defected from the cause, the responsibility lies solely with Bellatrix and Narcissa, and as the older daughter, the responsibility is once again heavily on Bella. Her inability to conceive disallows her from adhering to her most sacred principles, which Bellatrix views as a failure on her part and results in a definitive rift in her self esteem and identity that she could not repair. She is desperate to be good and pure by the standards in which she was raised, and to fulfill what she views as her destiny, but she is unable to, and this destroys her.

IV. SYNTHESIS & RELEVANCE

Having been raised into these conditions, Bellatrix was conditioned into holding House Black and its doctrine at the forefront of her being. Because she held these beliefs so firmly and from such a young age, being a pure blooded witch is a part of Bellatrix’s identity and her self esteem. This is why any affront to these beliefs upsets her so much; it is a personal betrayal not just of these ideals but also of her wholly as a person. What made her turn on family members who had been burned off of the Black family tapestry was how personally she took their choice to leave. It was a personal betrayal, it was a publicly humiliating snub by someone who ought to have been on her side. Who did she have to rely on but family? The word family carries with it an expectation that they would die for the name Black and subsequently anyone who bore that name. Betraying the family was the same as a personal betrayal to Bellatrix, and was essentially spitting on everything Bella believed to be the most sacred and important obligations they held.

These circumstances create the perfect candidate for an offshoot of the pureblood supremacy cult, the Death Eaters. In the context of the House of Black, Lord Voldemort would have been the obvious escalation and clear apotheosis of pureblood supremacist ideals. Since Bellatrix had already been raised in an environment where the ends justifies the means and violence was an acceptable and omnipresent tool (she had ancestors who literally tried to make muggle hunting a legal sport so it’s not a stretch to think that House Black implemented casual violence elsewhere), she was an ideal fit for an extension of that ideology that placed more emphasis on negative eugenics and moving into the extermination of those deemed unworthy of their society.

V. AZKABAN

Following the conclusion of the First Wizarding War in 1981, Bellatrix was incarcerated at Azkaban at the age of 30, when she still had time to conceive a child. Her fanatical religious devotion for her cause convinced her that she would not be in prison for very long, but as she passed the decade mark, it would have been very clear to Bellatrix that if she were having fertility issues in her twenties, having aged past forty would make it very nearly impossible to get pregnant once the dark lord finally came to rescue them. Perhaps her belief in his infinite power led her to believe that Voldemort could magically fix whatever was the impediment to conception, or perhaps, having long given up on conceiving a child, Bellatrix viewed this failure as a reason to prove herself, a reason that she had to be the most dedicated, the most accomplished of his followers-- because she had failed in all other aspects and this was all she felt she had left to contribute to the pureblooded cause.

Either way, her spent youth would have clearly marked her failure in what she viewed as perhaps the most important endeavor in life, and one might suggest that her regression to a child-like state of mind following her traumatic incarceration in Azkaban could be an unconscious response to her desire to return to her youth in order to fulfill this expectation of her; or a desire to return to a time when she was not a failure but instead could still be of value to the ideologies in which she was raised and through which she viewed her purpose in life.

One could also surmise that Bellatrix’s recklessness in battle and her willingness (and possibly eagerness) to die for the cause of her pureblooded messiah might be due to this failure and the hope that at least if she died before the onset of menopause, it could be said that she was murdered before she could fulfill her duty, rather than being accused of having failed at it altogether. It’s also worth mentioning that her father had died while she was in Azkaban, and with his death, she lost any opportunity to finally earn his love and approval.

#meta ❝𝚆𝚁𝙰𝙿 𝙸𝚃 𝚄𝙿 𝙴𝙻𝚃𝙾𝙽 𝙹𝙾𝙷𝙽❞#this is SO LONG #but it's SO IMPORTANT #this post includes all of my most relevant hcs for bella #and my interpretation of so much of her canon #it took me over 4hrs to write #and I know I promised it like 2wks ago #but here it is finally

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khangowrites · 4 years ago

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Is it a Complaint Essay or is the Workplace Unsuitable?

Ah, what am I writing today? Oh, well I suppose it’s almost 12am. Seems like a good a time as any. I wanted to just jot down a few re-occurring experiences I’ve had in the workplace and sometimes in other social spaces, and attempt to analyze them.

CW: mild mentions of abuse and bodily ailments.

A bit of forward: I tend to mask myself heavily whenever I am in any social situation; whether it be at work, at home, with friends or online (although I’m getting better at being myself on Discord at least. I owe a lot to my friends who accept me and whom I care so much about.) What this means is I often plan out what I’m needed to say in advance of a situation. I have an arsenal of about 5 minutes of small talk before I tank and several small greetings/placations I can cycle through on any given day if I’m not overloaded. I also limit my natural inclination to movement.

It’s called unprofessional/unsightly to sit with your legs folded under you, or to sway and shake your arms and legs back and forth in time to music in your head. But it’s okay if you tap your pencil. Everyone does that.

I have to wonder how noticeable my ‘masked’ self is. How real or fake it appears.

There have been a few trends I’ve seen with the way people treat me as an employee in the time I’ve been in the workforce. For clarity, I am a 23 year old 5’1” AFAB person with a face that looks like it stopped aging when I was 12. I’m non-binary, but I’ve seen that many have a hard time using a different pronoun for me because I look ‘so feminine’. I had one old man repeatedly tell me that my body was too pretty and that I shouldn’t hide it and ‘pretend’ to be something else. I was and still am quite unsettled and disgusted by that comment.

I haven’t used my full preferred pronouns at work simply based in fear of being fired or discriminated against further. Same thing at home- I haven’t told all my family out of fear. I may look back on this at some future date where I fully respect myself and I’m confident. I look forward to that day.

Oh, and I’m autistic.

Perhaps it is one of these things or all of them that cause people to treat me certain ways. I’d like to find out.

I worked outdoors at an Orchard for a season. They called me Cinderella because of the way I looked when I cleaned. They gave employees gloves and heaters. Only not me. When I asked, I was given a broken one and told to fix it. A coworker who had intellectual disabilities and poor eyesight was not offered a heater at all. I did not renew for the next season. Kim and I stayed in touch though.

I worked next at a gift shop at a historical site. I loved the history and the old buildings, but the cashier work was admittedly difficult. Most of the employees were kind, retired old ladies who treated me gently, like a child. Sometimes too much like a child. The assistant manager seemed wary of me, and she often avoided me. I don’t know why. I’m not good with eye contact, and I always fear that people will mistake my zoning out as being creepy or disrespectful; maybe it was that. She never brought her kids with her on days I worked.

The head manager was courteous, but always called me Special. We had an older man work in the last 2 years I was there who had a strong inclination to associate with the children at the shop, and in turn, me as well. He would always want a hug or pat me on the back, but ignored the other workers. I told the managers my uncomfortable feelings about him, but it went mostly unnoticed.

When it was found that I was decent with computers, I was tasked with entering jewelry into the system and creating labels with number associations. I enjoyed it, and they promised me a decent raise. My pay was raised a dollar several weeks later, and I found myself being tasked with more and more computer work, to the point of becoming an office manager myself, earning a grand total of 9 dollars an hour while my counterpart who started a year earlier owned a home on the same work.

I left that job after 4 years to be the music director at a local church. I love music and was excited. Maybe too excited. I developed acid re-flux and was hospitalized the week before my start day due to a panic attack. I realize now it was from stress. I also had an ovarian cyst removed a year later- it took up my entire pelvis and its formation was also attributed to stress. I’ve since been diagnosed with generalized anxiety, and I continue to have ever changing digestive issues, muscle problems and panic attacks.

After realizing I was autistic and also non-binary, so much of the stress of life started to make sense. The past few months I have been making life changes, and working towards finding a workplace that is accommodating and safe for me. My stress has lessened.

I worked at the church for 2 years. My last day is actually at the end of this month. As is the trend, I was not treated with respect when it came to my job. My pastor started choosing the hymns over me, and would make comments about me during services. His favorite was to say that my music made him fall asleep, and wait for laughter from the congregation. He had no musical knowledge, and forced me to play every song as fast as I possibly could. He didn’t believe I could do my job. Any attempts at mutual work failed to manifest. I unfortunately was groomed by a member of the hiring committee there as well, a type of abuse I didn’t even realize I had fallen into until several months after it was too late.

I currently work at a high school as a choir accompanist. I use she/they pronouns there, but no one uses they and I’m too worried to be fully they like I am outside of work. I am wary of soiling my relationship with the director further. She’s quite religious in the ‘gays don’t have rights’ way, so I have my fears.

The director is kind, but sees me as this innocent child that happens to have natural piano abilities, and the mutual respect that I’ve come to dream of just isn’t there again.

The director has the key to the doors and lets students in without fail, but conveniently forgets to let me in almost every day. At one time, I was in physical therapy and had a hard time standing and walking for any period of time. I almost went home because she didn’t answer any communication, class started 20 minutes previously, and it was 90 degrees outside and I needed to sit down because my legs were cramping. She plans the music weeks in advance, but doesn’t give them to me until the day the students get it, despite my repeated asking for time to prepare.

One day I was on zoom and she and the student teacher greeted me and then ignored my presence and played the piano herself for class. She struggled with the parts and commented to the choir that, “wow, Ms. Khango is actually pretty dang good at this- that little girl can play!”, but didn’t listen to me when I offered to play. I left the zoom after an hour.

The online students seemed to share my surprise at least, and I am grateful to them. They kept me grounded and reminded me that I matter and should have the same respect as everyone else in the room, zoom or not. They talk to me about not being heard and their chats not being read during class. It bothered me, too. The next week I brought it up to her in the form of making sure the zoom students were heard and she quickly dismissed it, like it was a puff of smoke. The students online now ask me questions directly and I relay them. It’s met with annoyance by the director.

They have voices too.

One of the scariest moments of my life was last week- I wore my ‘disability rights are human rights’ shirt to school. (Okay, maybe not scary to some, but it very much was for me.) After class, one of the students came to me and asked if I could help him find a way for his grandfather to get a seat at the concert, as he was disabled and he didn’t know how to proceed.

It filled me with joy to help him, and it filled me with rage when the teachers asked if his grandpa could just get out of the wheelchair instead.

My overall conclusion to all of these things is that people simply don’t understand, or don’t want to because it makes their lives harder.

Is discrimination and ignorance really easier than respecting people?

I’m not sure if this is all just one big complaint essay. I guess it is. What I needed to do was write it all out. All the things that make me uneasy or feel like lesser of a person. And I wanted to know why.

I note that at every job I am perceived as a child, or as someone naïve. I am not treated the same as another adult employee. I was ostracized for my way of moving and talking. Taken advantage of. My needs were not accommodated.

Even now, I feel guilt for writing this, like I’m just playing the victim for attention or something.

I want to be strong enough to stand up to it and ask to be treated with respect and have it follow through.

I want to unmask myself more and let myself move and talk naturally, and use my real pronouns.

My respect for myself and for others must become a powerful force.

My friends on discord- my real, genuine friends, have become monumental in my life. Most of my life I did not have true friends. Without them and their unconditional love and support, I would not be where I am right now. We are all equals. I want to embody that strong respect and bring it to others.

It’s getting late. 1 a.m. now. Well, I have tomorrow. Plenty of time for Star Trek.

#workplace problems #actuallyautistic #essay #nonbinary #figuring out life

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floriswrite · 4 years ago

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Even stilled when Lauriam held a red rose out to him. "I thought you couldn't make these anymore."

"I cannot. I visited the World of an old friend and they were kind enough to let me take one." Lauriam explained.

Even slowly took the rose from him. "An old friend?"

"A World I saved long ago."

"Would you take me there some time?" Even questioned and brought the rose up to his face to smell it. It felt too real in his fingers.

"He's trying to get better about guests, so I should be able to manage that." Lauriam gave a small nod. "We should put it in water."

"He?" Even felt his stomach tighten. Had Lauriam given him someone else's token of affection? "I could freeze it."

"The prince of the World. Apparently Organization XIII tried to give him trouble years ago. From what Belle said it sounds like Dilan's Nobody was there." Lauriam stepped a little closer to him. "Save your magic, Even."

“Belle?” Even questioned and looked away. “/You/ told me to work on my magic, Lauriam.”

“I do not believe they have gotten married by this point in time.” Lauriam explained and reached up a hand to place on Even’s cheek and draw his attention back to him. “A touch too honest of a memory, is all. It was an ill chosen gift.”

“Right, the whole past future matter.” Even frowned down at Lauriam. “You want it back?”

“Right.” Lauriam gave a small nod. “No. It is yours. But I should have thought it through better. My intention is to build foundation on who we are now. To give you a gift that is so thoroughly Marluxia was ill chosen.” Lauriam swallowed and withdrew his hand. “But I found I could not help myself.”

Even grabbed his hand and held it awkwardly before him. “Once then. For old times sake.”

“You’ve never been one to stop at once.” Lauriam whispered. “Perhaps I should take it back.”

“Experiments need proper testing.” Even whispered back and leaned down. “No, you said it is mine. Perhaps we could use it as... closure.”

“Closure?” Lauriam hummed. “We’d need to set it on fire afterwards.”

“How did you die?”

“Exhaustion, mostly. Desperation. Sora would have done such a lovely job if only his rage had been directed properly. But it does not matter now. Pieces are back where they are meant to be.”

“It has been... odd, getting to actually know Riku.”

“Seeing Ienzo socialize, you mean.” Lauriam laughed a little.

“Yes.” Even sighed. “So. Fire.”

“Full closure.” Lauriam nodded. “And then, we go on a date. Just us. No cloud of Vexen and Marluxia.”

“Do you forgive yourself then?”

“Oh, never.” Lauriam shook his head a little. “But I don’t have to forgive myself to move on. So let’s set up our little experiment.”

“Set up?”

“Fire, Even, Fire. Unless you learned fire magic after Esuna?”

“...Don’t make fun of your elders, Lauriam.”

Lauriam hummed and turned away. “Only you.” And then he smirked over his shoulder. “Besides, I’ve technically existed longer than you.”

“You’re terrible.” Even laughed.

“You knew that already.” Lauriam laughed back. “Fire. I have no idea how to work your lab, Even. I am much more used to synthesis.”

“Right. The Moogle like you.” Even walked past him. “I’ll teach you how to work a Bunsen Burner. Actual science.”

“There is plenty of science behind synthesis.”

“There is more magic than science.”

“One and the same at the core.” Lauriam held a finger up to silence Even’s next complaint. “Are you a scientist or a mage? You are both, Even.”

Even heaved a sigh. “You are correct, but my original point still stands.”

“Science. Yes. Show away.”

Even lead Lauriam over to a table with said Bunsen Burner along with various flasks and test tubes. “Lauriam?”

“Hmm?”

“You truly want to forget?”

“I never said forget. I want to move on. I want to feel like I am living my life. Not a shadow of Marluxia’s.” Lauriam sighed. “I recognize that the division between Vexen and Even was slim. That Vexen allowed you a moral slip that this life does not. But I am not Marluxia, and I refuse to act as if I am.”

“Okay.” Even gave a small nod and finally coated the rose he held in ice. “A date?”

“We can go wherever you like.”

“Where- where would you have gone before?”

Lauriam stared at him, eyes slightly wide. “Even you know my home world is destroyed.”

“You can travel to other Worlds I-” Even heaved a sigh. “No. Of course you would want to stay in familiar territory. I’m sorry.”

“Tact has never been one of your strong suits.” Lauriam gave him a small smile. “There’s a few Worlds I have not explored fully yet. I thought we could just walk around and find somewhere nice.”

“That would be nice.” Even agreed. He set the rose to the side and turned the flame on. “Tell me about back then. Your thought process.”

“Vexen had shown that he could not be loyal to me. Axel wanted to prove he could be. I was foolish enough to believe that Axel’s motives and mine would work together.” Lauriam explained softly. “I think about it frequently, Even. What would have happened if I had never told Axel the truth. That mission was not supposed to have causalities.”

“You blame yourself and not Lea.”

“The more I learn about Axel and Lea the more I understand he has always followed his heart. Axel’s loyalty, just like Vexen’s, was never Marluxia’s to hold.” Lauriam picked up the ice covered rose. “But more than anything else. I regret not doing it myself. Deep down I did not expect Axel to go through with it. I was not aware of how strong his conviction to Saix was, nor how much he wanted to see Roxas again.”

“I forgave you.” Even stated. He had never truly cared about the politics. He had been mad with Marluxia because that castle should have been Vexen’s. But the more he heard about what happened after the more it sounded like a trap. Like they were sent to slaughter.

“I know.” Lauriam sighed and held the icy petals over the open flame. “How did it feel? I remember the feel of death. That feel of unraveling. Of your emptiness finally being set free. Of your soul leaving.”

“Dreadful.” Even whispered and watched as normal fire tried to melt magic ice. Their plan might have had a hole in it. But that might have been the point. They could never let go. “I remember the smell, mostly. I remember feeling betrayed. I remember Sora looking confused. And who could blame him?” Even placed a hand to his chest. “I remember being worried. And then Axel did have the Riku Replica kill Zexion...”

“Vexen’s dying thoughts were Zexion?”

“Even’s had been Ienzo.” Even’s voice was small. “In the end I should be thankful, but the scars make it challenging.”

“Understandable.” Lauriam drew the flower away from the flame. “Perhaps we could put it in the freezer instead.”

“Not working?”

“Not in any capacity that is satisfying.” Lauriam turned the flower, a small bit of ice was gone, but the point was for their to be flames.

Even turned the fire off. “Soak it in water and put it in the freezer it is. Do I only get that date after it is gone?”

“It does sound like this experiment will need to be picked up tomorrow. But I think you still deserve a date today.” Lauriam hummed a little. “For talking.”

“Good.” Even smiled and took the flower from him. “Tell me about the World you want to go to.”

“It’s called San Fransokyo. It’s a very technologically based world. Tall buildings. Curious transit system. And apparently it’s own team of heros.” Lauriam leaned against the table while he watched Even.

“I think some version of the Riku Replica went there. I tried to keep track of where the vessels got to.” Even waved a hand at him. “But at the same time did not truly care.”

“Where do your loyalties lay these days?”

“They’ve always been to Lord Ansem and Ienzo. /My/ king and prince.” Even dismissed his magic and turned the sink on. The rose only looked sad as he ran it under water. The freezer would only make it an awkward chunk of flower. Nothing of the intricate designs Vexen had practiced only to impress Marluxia. But that was for the best.

“Right.” Lauriam looked away. “And me?”

“What about you?”

“Are you loyal to me, Even? Can I finally hold your loyalty?”

Even looked at Lauriam’s fragile expression for only a second. “We’ll see after our date.”

“Fair.” Lauriam let out a heavy breath. “My loyalty has never been to you, after all.”

“No, you are only loyal to yourself.”

“No, I once had many people I was loyal to. But times change. Marluxia’s loyalty was Larxene. I sent her to her death as well. You are far from the only death that is heavy on my heart, Even.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Even questioned as he turned off the sink and walked the dripping red rose over to the freezer. He’d put a note on it later. Ienzo would ask.

“No. Not at all.” Lauriam shook his head. “Only stating facts and reminders.”

“A reminder to never forgive yourself.”

“That is correct.”

Even sighed and closed the freezer. “I understand.” He walked back over to Lauriam and placed his hands on the table behind him, pinning him in place. “I want dinner and dessert.”

“Of course, Even.” Lauriam gave him a small smile. “Anything you want.”

“I want you to forgive yourself.”

“Anything but that.” Lauriam turned his head away.

“Then I want ice cream.”

“That I can manage.”

#*Even #*Lauriam #MarVex

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touchmycoat · 5 years ago

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book reflections: Confessions by Minato Kanae

Confessions

The heart of this book deals with revenge. It's a familiar theme: when a heinous crime has been committed, are criminal justice procedures ever enough? To what degree is revenge, personally exacted, justified?

Confessions complicates this question by throwing the spikes of tension between children and adults.

Children are such a fascinating subject of study—not to go too far into it, but “childhood” is very much a socially constructed phenomenon (my formative understanding of this is Kathryn Bond Stockton's The Queer Child, which narrates a history of adults-depicting-children, and the values and anxieties that reveals). Confessions asks the question, “what happens when children commit heinous crimes?”

The book begins with a monologue by middle school teacher Moriguchi on the last day of the semester. What first seems like philosophical rambling lays out a multi-layered social phenomenon.

Layer one: social inclination to believe that children are always the victim, never the perpetrator. This is outlined in the story about the teacher who was called out by a female middle school student seemingly in need of help one night, then accused of sexual assault. The student later confessed it was because she wanted revenge—the teacher had scolded her for chatting during class. The teacher was forced to reveal, under these circumstances, that she's trans, and that she had no designs on the student in question (which is certainly a narrative choice to think further about—the quickness of the anecdote and the inherent logic it's meant to convey, that simply by proving herself a woman, the teacher convinced her coworkers that she's exonerated of all suspicion. At least trans identity isn't being inherently linked with deviance?). The teacher was still fired, and the school instituted a new policy that should students ever call teachers for help after school, only male teachers can go to male students, female teachers to female students, etc.

(The narrative, in its determination to gesture to the incapability of institutions to fulfill human needs, uses this as the ignition point for Naoki's unhappiness with Moriguchi.)

Layer two: children receive public anonymity in the court of law, meaning punishment is dealt in secret, and presumably, they can return to society afterwards carrying none of their criminal history. This is outlined in the “Lunacy” case, where a young girl kills her own family with cyanide, after conducting a series of experiments on what poison was most effective. The case got plenty of sensationalist press coverage, but where is the girl now, Moriguchi asks. Has she gotten her punishment? Was justice ever exacted?

Layer three: sensationalist press coverages without embedded moral value only teach children the outliers. At worst, it teaches children that this is the way to get attention (which is precisely what Shuya and Mizuki took from the Lunacy case). Moral outrage loses ground to morbid fascination, becoming worse than an empty gesture; like the teacher who replaces Moriguchi, posturing as some beacon of moral justice is merely for self-satisfaction.

Maybe, more accurately, the book wants to know, “how do you punish a child?” Some, like Moriguchi's not-husband, like Moriguchi insinuates the juvenile criminal justice system to be, answer, “you don't.” Children are products of their environment, so the ones who should be punished are the teachers (as posited by the “Lunacy” case and the chemistry teacher who got all the public blame for giving the child access to cyanide). Alternatively, children are still learning and growing. Moriguchi's not-husband was quite the problem child himself, but he turned things around and became the most truly moral figure of this entire book. He believes in the capacity for change in children.

But Moriguchi doesn't care much about that. Shuya and Naoki plotted to and killed her four-year-old daughter. She wants revenge.

What makes her fascinating as the central figure of this book is her clarity of mind. She isn't someone who's lost herself to vengeance; she systematically identifies the flaws (or what she thinks of as flaws) in the juvenile criminal justice system and then chooses her own revenge. On one hand we have the empathetic response to a mother losing her child, and the willingness to let a fictional character play out, for emotional catharsis, something we might not necessarily endorse in real life. On the other hand we have the unease of her turning this calculatedness toward children: Boy A and Boy B, middle school students.

(Cue comparative cinema studies of the 2010 Confessions film and 2007's Boy A. Oh, apparently Boy A is based off of a novel as well?)

Oh, and then she does take her revenge. She says she's laced Boy A and Boy B's milk cartons with HIV-infected blood.

And now, in what is the true brilliance of the book, Confessions starts to give us other perspectives. We get Mizuki the perfect student, who is first victimized by the hoard of angry classmates (and it's such a consistent literary and real life theme I guess, the cruelty of a mass of children). We get a peak into her questionability in a somewhat tender moment though: why does she just have a poison-testing kit lying around? In this section, we also get a protagonistic portrayal of Shuya; it's not that we doubt Moriguchi's version of the psychopathic-child-inventor Shuya, but now he's the martyr (as per the title of the section). He quietly suffers the bullying of the class, tells Mizuki his negative blood test, and becomes “genuinely” happy at Mizuki's compliments, saying all he's ever wanted was that acknowledgement.

Mizuki also bares her teeth against the new teacher, accusing him of being the cause of Naoki's mother's murder. At this point, it was almost narratively heroic, after we've suffered the annoyance (through her perspective) of the self-important teacher. But afterwards, in Shuya's section, we hear her confess to wanting to poison that teacher for “ruining Naoki's life.” She's killed by Shuya before we hear more, but might that have played out? How much do we fear the mental criminality of children?

We also get Naoki's sister and mother's perspective. We get a doting mother insistent on the innocence of her child, making excuse after excuse for Naoki, even when Naoki's fully confessed to throwing Moriguchi's daughter into the pool. How much responsibility does a parent have toward her child? Does she hold ultimate faith in him, stand staunchly at his side in support of him? Does she do right by the society (and in theory by her kid) by turning in her own child? We were meant to be annoyed by her cruel insistence to blame everyone but her son, but we see in Naoki's section right after that his sanity relied so much on this idea that his mother unconditionally loves him. He believes that, once he's gone to jail for his crimes, he can do his time, reform and return to society as long as his mother is there to love and support him.

Of course, that's when his mother decides to kill both him and herself—a murder-suicide for her failure as a mother.

(It really does haunt me, thinking about Naoki and his stymied possibilities. He killed Moriguchi's daughter in a moment of callous spite, motivated by a desire for revenge against Shuya's dismissal of his overtures of friendship. He lived in such a tortured state for a long time, a child grappling with the terror of impending death by himself, terrified of infecting those who love him. His instincts, when he emerged into the real world again, was to weaponize his “infected” blood. Yet he ended up on such a hopeful incline—mother's love with save me. All this happens as his mother spirals downwards, coming to terms with her own child's monstrosity. The book seeds Naoki's redemption, but takes the sprout away before we can see whether or not it carries infection.)

Finally, we get Shuya's story. I fully bought into it, as I was expected to. The book gestures multiple times at his ability to pen a convincing narrative of innocence. Or at least, a narrative of the anti-hero. He walks us through his absolute love for his mother, the engineering genius. She gave up her career for him, but then turned that dissatisfaction into abuse. Abuse turned back to gestures of love when she was found out, divorced, and forced to move away, and Shuya held deeply on to his faith that he will be reunited with her again. The desire of a child for his mother's love motivated the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, the planting of a bomb at the school festival. It ended up killing Mizuki as well.

Moriguchi bookends this tale, tying up loose threads. Yes she absolutely put the blood in their milk, but it was her not-husband that swapped out the infected cartons. Yes, she wanted to destroy Shuya and Naoki's lives; it won't bring her joy and it won't bring her daughter back, but nonetheless she wants her vengeance on the two boys. The possibility that she was only scaring Naoki and Shuya, that she threatened to but never did anything actually immoral, is completely swept away. She tells Shuya she visited his mother and told her all of his crimes. Baiting Shuya with what his mother said, she instead tells him that the bomb he planted had been deconstructed at the school and reconstructed in his mother's lab instead. Making the bomb and detonating it had both been Shuya's choice.

Shuya had killed her daughter. Now she's killed his mother.

(But did she? I have no doubt she did, but this book doesn't deal in absolutes.)

So—what are we left with? A psychopathic child inventor-slash-murderer motivated by a desire for maternal love? A girl who admired another murderous young murderess and wanted a turn of her own with poisons, murdered before she could prove herself either way? A cruel and reactionary accomplice who came to the conclusion that he had done something wrong but that he could repent? A mother who refused her son's criminality until the very last moment, and believed they were both beyond salvation? Another mother who took justice into her own hands by ruining the lives of two young boys who killed her daughter in cold blood?

...Is there such a thing as cold blood in this novel? Every “cold” act was done with passionate motive: Shuya wanted to prove himself to his mother, Naoki wanted to prove himself better than Shuya, Moriguchi wanted to give her daughter proper vengeance. HIV is the symbol here of criminality, first given, then saved from, then weaponized by both boys. There's so much, with the blood! Naoki coming to terms with the infection he didn't have made it possible for him to confess the truth, to start himself on the path toward salvation (even if it only lasted a few pages). Shuya embracing the infection right away because if he were dying his mother would surely come back; losing that possibility of death led to him befriending, then of course in the end murdering Mizuki.

Shuya plotted the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, but wasn't actually responsible for the cause of death. Naoki was the accomplice, but at the last moment, made the choice to actually extinguish her daughter's life. This murky twist of motion and motive (Kathryn Bond Stockton!) would prevent them from getting the full punishment of homicide in a juvenile criminal justice court, as Moriguchi explained. Now, because of the blood, they've both committed an inarguable murder with their own hands. Naoki loses his mother and his entire world order that revolved around her unconditional love for him. Shuya's murderous inventions are never allowed to succeed, and he never gets to “prove” his genius, until it was used to kill his own mother, the one person he wanted acknowledge from and to live with. The punishments are incredibly cruel—but are they justified?

#kanae minato #confessions #confessions (2010)#this is really an insane book lmfao #i loved every construction of it and could probably #spend a lot more time constructing an academic essay bout it #comparisons of it to gone girl are fucking right #the same complicated treatment of women and criminality #but this one is a lot more haunting tbh cause it deals with children #in such a full and complicatedly emotional way #spoilers

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iwatchanimeoccasionally · 5 years ago

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My Beetlejuice Academia

It’s finally done. Sort of. The first draft is done. I am actually fairly happy with it, though I am super exhausted and can’t make myself stay up long enough to read it, so this is unedited, I will come back tomorrow to edit, and then the revision process will start for transfer to AO3. Therefore, I’m not expecting a single soul to read this, but I want it out there in the real world so it doesn’t can’t keep taking up all the space I have in my brain.

If you do want to read it, ABSOLUTELY read this warning first. This is based off Beetlejuice, meaning there are themes of death throughout, major character deaths, and themes of suicide and suicidal thoughts/actions. I think that’s all the triggers this needs. Oh yeah, and heavy themes of child abuse. Not BJ’s fault this time Endeavor can burn in hell.

(Also, I took some liberties with characters to fit better with the plot)

A trunk slams shut on the outskirts of a small town no one has ever cared about before, signaling what should be the beginning of a perfectly normal vacation. A boy and his mom piling into the car without a care in the world, having no clue that this will be the last car ride they ever have together. No one ever told them that just down the street, before they even leave town, the brakes will give out in the car and they will both die in a crash, avoiding hitting a small dog who’s owner always leaves off leash because no one could ever get hurt because of a small dog roaming free in a small town.

Hours later, the duo stumbles into their house, cold and confused but seemingly ok.

“I’m sorry we had to miss your convention, Izuku,” Inko apologizes for the first, but probably not the last, time, breaking the silence.

Izuku turns a blinding smile on his mom and, without any hesitation replies, “Don’t worry about it! I’m just glad we’re ok, that was scary. I thought we were going to die for a second there.” A shiver racks his body then and Inko is quick to the fireplace, wanting to warm her son before he catches something.

Within moments, a fire is going and the two huddle next to it, Inko stating, “Please don’t say things like that. I don’t like thinking about you being hurt, let alone anything worse.”

Humming his recognition, Izuku leans closer to the fire. His brow furrows when he doesn’t feel any warmer, but that’s when he realizes he doesn’t feel particularly cold anyway. Even though he knows he should be, they got soaked from crashing into the river earlier. Even though it’s summer, the sun has gone down and it’s chilly outside so he has to be cold. “Hey Mom,” Izuku starts, unsure of what to even think anymore, “why isn’t the fire hot?”

It takes a second for her to answer, as if she’s just realizing that herself. “I… I don’t know, honey. But I’m not very cold,” she replies, voicing his thoughts. “Do you remember coming home?”

Her question stirs something in Izuku’s brain, but he’s not sure what it is quite yet. What he does know is that he can’t come up with those memories, either. “Did we…” he trails off, not sure how to continue, but one look at his mom makes him think she’s having the same thought.

“You sure did,” a new voice drawls, making both mother and son jump. They whip around to look at the intruder, Inko pushing Izuku behind her instinctively as they do. When they find is a boy, about Izuku’s age if looks are anything to go by, sprawled across their couch. His spiky red hair is hanging off the front and his orange and black boots are kicked up on the back. “Took you a long time to realize you were dead.”

Despite the obvious annoyance in the boy’s voice, Inko steps forward and demands an explanation. “Who are you and what are you doing in our house?”

Red eyes narrow at the pair before he pastes on a fake smile on his blue tinged lips and flips over so he’s sitting up and facing them properly. “The name’s Katsuki. I’m here to teach you guys to be ghosts, or whatever.” By the time he’s finished speaking, the friendly act is already over and Katsuki is already back to scowling at them. “You’re Inko, the kid’s Izuku, and it’s only a matter of time before this house sells. No one will know you’re still here, the living tend to ignore the strange and unusual and all that garbage. And you’re not going to be happy then, seeing as you’re trapped here for the next hundred years. So stop acting like I’m this big bad guy and let me help you keep people out of here.”

“No thank you, Katsuki,” Inko dismisses, “I think we’ll be fine. We don’t need to chase people out, anyway. I’m sure whoever buys the house will be lovely people and we can coexist if need be.” Izuku keeps a careful eye on Katsuki as his mom talks, not liking how the boy’s eyes narrow and his fists clench like he’s already prepared to get in a fight. If he’s being completely honest, he’s glad his mom said no, he’s nervous about this angry looking boy.

Katsuki takes a step forward and, just for a moment, Izuku swears he sees blood on the boy’s temples before it disappears when Katsuki heaves a deep sigh. “Whatever you say, losers. Just say my name three times when you change your minds and I’ll see if I still want to help you.” Turning to leave, Katsuki casts one glance over his shoulder and, with a smirk, points out, “By the way, your son’s on fire.”

Izuku jumps and looks down at himself, panicking when he realizes that to be the truth and both Midoriya’s frantically pat his body to put the fires out. By the time they finish, Katsuki is long gone.

“Please never call him back,” Izuku requests once they are a little more settled. “He’s kinda creepy.”

Inko smiles and nods, “Of course. He could be dangerous and you’ve already been hurt enough.” Izuku doesn’t like the hurt that flashes across his mother’s face before she excuses herself and goes upstairs.

“Mom?” he calls after her, wanting to make sure everything’s ok.

She pauses halfway up the stairs but doesn’t turn back toward Izuku, “It’s ok, Izuku. As long as we’re trapped here, we might as well just act like we’re still alive.”

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

It’s all slamming doors and raised voices when the Todorokis move in. Shouto wouldn’t normally react so violently, scared of how his father might react, but he was just ripped away from the only family he’s ever known and he’s furious.

At least when he yells, “I hate you for bringing me here! I’ll find a way to get back to Mom!” before running upstairs and slamming his door with all his might when they first move in, the movers are still there so he knows there won’t be repercussions for a few hours. By then maybe he’ll have slipped out and be on his way back home.

One glance out the window tells him otherwise. Enji is back outside, pretending to supervise the workers when, in reality, Shouto knows he’s just watching the window of the room he assigned Shouto to make sure there are no escape attempts. Feeling bold, Shouto almost wants to try anyway, but all his fight is slowly leaving his system. As hopelessness sets in, Shouto collapses onto the floor, at least taking this opportunity to sleep before punishment arrives.

He’s awoken what must be hours later, judging by the low light from the moon coming in his window. When he does wake up, he’s up in an instant, even though he’s not sure what woke him. But then he hears it. The steps stomping toward him. Threatening pain behind each one.

Fear floods his system. He knows what Enji is capable of, but he’s never had the full force directed at only him before. He clearly wasn’t thinking earlier, not considering the fact that he has no form of protection or even distraction anymore.

Shouto refuses to make himself small, though, standing with his back straight and his arms at his side by the time his door is flung open. It doesn’t take much for him to realize how furious his father is. He definitely doesn’t need the quiet but menacing, “Downstairs. Now,” thrown at him as if words can be used as deadly weapons.

Smarter now than when they first arrived, Shouto ducks his head, averting eye contact, and follows Enji. He doesn’t bother looking around as the walk, knowing that this house isn’t for living in. It’s just a place to sleep and train, that’s all Shouto’s life is. And he uses the word “train” lightly. It’s not like his life is leading up to a black belt championship in anything. No, he’s supposed to take Enji’s place as a realtor, buying entire towns to ruin by selling them to the rich like Enji plans to do with this town. He stops himself from thinking what the training really is, though, not wanting to dwell on it when it’s so close to happening.

He’s not sure why, but Shouto’s surprised when Enji leads him into a fully prepared training room. Though it makes sense, of course Enji would make sure it was set up first thing, he needs to make sure Shouto knows what he did wrong today.

That surprise is his downfall, though. He doesn’t even see the first hit coming until Enji’s fist is in his stomach and he’s doubled over, already unable to breath and needing to puke. “You should’ve avoided that, Shouto,” Enji scolds, nearly spitting on his son in shame. “I’ve trained you better, you can’t be taken down by the first hit.”

Even as he’s scolding him, Enji keeps hitting Shouto, never giving him a chance to recover. First it’s an elbow to the spine, knocking Shouto to the floor when he’s already having trouble staying on his feet. Then it’s a kick to the ribs when he slowly pushes himself up onto all fours, knocking him back down. Shouto almost wants to just stay down, but he knows that would just infuriate Enji even more. So he keeps trying to get up and Enji just keeps knocking him down, scolding all the while that Shouto should be better than that.

It’s only when Shouto can’t keep pushing himself back up that Enji gets to the real heart of the matter. He puts his foot on Shouto’s wrist, putting enough pressure down to hurt, to threaten, but not enough to do any real lasting damage. “Never embarrass me like that again, do you hear me, boy?” Enji growls and Shouto wants to cry out from the pain in his hand, but he knows how dangerous it is to show weakness to his father. He forgets to reply, though, which is another big problem. Enji steps down harder and Shouto’s sure somethings got to give soon. “I said. Do. You. Hear. Me.”

Shouto drags in a deep breath and then says in his most convincing voice, “Yes sir!”

The pressure is finally relieved and Shouto sees Enji walk away out of the corner of his eye. “Good,” the man grunts as he leaves, “you have more training tomorrow. Go to bed.”

It takes an hour for him to drag himself upstairs back to his room, and he’s so exhausted by that point that he doesn’t even process the voices trying to talk to him before they remember that he can’t hear them.

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

“We have to do something to help him!” Izuku cries, desperate for this boy that he doesn’t even know.

Inko nods and paces the attic, the only space safe from the new family in their home. “I know. But they can’t see us, so I don’t know what to do,” Inko agrees, just as lost as her son on what to do with these frantic emotions.

Izuku’s mind instantly flashes to the blonde boy from before, wondering if Katsuki could help them. But he shakes that thought away, sure that anything Katsuki would do would only make things worse for Shouto. “We could try haunting them. Maybe we could distract his dad enough that he won’t hurt Shouto anymore?” Izuku suggests even though he doesn’t have the slightest clue how he’s supposed to go about haunting people.

The night is spent trying to figure out haunting techniques, even occasionally going downstairs to Enji’s room, only to return minutes later when there is absolutely no reaction from the sleeping man. Maybe being able to wake someone up comes later, they’ll just have to wait and see.

The next morning, Izuku starts relatively small. He just waits around until Enji has his breakfast prepared and is sitting down to eat, Shouto trying to silently gather breakfast in the kitchen and not draw his father’s attention. Seeing the boy trying to eat, Izuku deliberately waits a minute to give him a chance to get something gathered, and then. He just knocks Enji’s cup of orange juice on the older man’s lap.

“What the hell!” Enji yells as soon as it happens, jumping up and tossing the newspaper he was previously perusing onto the table. Enji looks around furiously, but Shouto fled the area as soon as he heard his father yell, escaping unseen and free of suspicion of somehow being behind the prank. Enji kicks the table in rage, muttering something about it being crooked, and stomps out of the dining room to go shower.

Pride wells in Izuku’s chest when he goes to tell his mother of his success.

His trek is stopped on the second floor when a hand stops just shy of landing on his forearm. Izuku nearly jumps, even more shocked and confused when he follows the arm upward, eventually seeing Shouto looking directly at him. “I don’t know what you are, but that was probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” Shouto says, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Yo- You can see me?” Izuku questions, even though the answer is already clear. Shouto simply raises an eyebrow and nods in response. “But. How? The living aren’t supposed to be able to see the dead. Something about not seeing the strange and unusual?” Izuku racks his brain for Katsuki’s exact words, but Shouto shrugs and glances away before Izuku can explain further.

“Perhaps it’s because I, myself, am strange and unusual,” Shouto mutters, a furrow deep in his brow and his hand finally pulling back to himself.

Down the hall, a door slams and both boys flinch away from the noise. One glance at Shouto tells Izuku he doesn’t just want to leave him alone so, without thinking, he invites him to continue their discussion in the attic.

The moment they step into the attic, Inko greets Izuku, “How did it go? Oh, you brought a friend?” Inko’s eyes widen a little when she looks at Shouto and Izuku blushes at being called his friend.

“It went well. He’s furious. Turns out though, Shouto can see us. Or me?” Izuku looks back at Shouto and sees him waving politely at his mom so he amends again, “Us. He sees dead people.”

Izuku thinks his joke is pretty funny, but Inko doesn’t even acknowledge it and Shouto simply nods along. “I suppose I do see dead people,” Shouto agrees and Izuku wonders if he even understands the joke Izuku tried to make.

“Well, honey,” Inko starts, clearly not wanting to dwell on the fact that she and her son are dead, “we’re not planning to haunt you. We just wanted to teach your dad a lesson for hurting you. No child is going to be abused on my watch.”

Shouto snorts then, glancing over his shoulder as if he’s expecting his father to come stomping up the stairs at any moment. “Good luck with that. Nothing can stop Father from training me to be the ‘perfect son’. Even the fact that my face will always look like… this,” he gestures helplessly at his scarred eye, “He thinks I can still be what he bred me to be.”

Inko doesn’t know whether to be furious or so sad for Shouto, then, and Izuku knows that because he feels exactly the same. “You’re a human being, Shouto. You weren’t ‘bred’ to be anything other than yourself,” Inko argues, though her tone is soft like she’s just reminding Shouto of something he should have known all along.

“Shouto! Get down here now!” Enji commands, his voice seeming to carry all the way from the first floor. Jumping Shouto waves at the two ghosts and runs out of the room and down the stairs, not even saying any parting words.

The two share a look after he leaves and the seem to reach the same resigned decision at the same time. “We need that troubled boy, don’t we?” Inko asks with a sigh and Izuku can only nod.

“Katsuki,” he starts before Inko cuts him off.

“If anything bad comes of this, I don’t want it to be your responsibility,” she explains. “Katsuki. Katsuki. Katsuki.”

A poof of smoke fills the attic, dissipating quickly and leaving the boy with spiky hair, now blonde, leaning against the wall next to the window. His arms are crossed over his chest, but he seems generally less pissed off than his did the last they saw him. “I told you you’d need my help,” he says with a smirk.

Izuku cringes at the idea and shares a look with his mother, unsure if he’s ok to explain what they need help with. “It’s not what you said, though. We don’t mind sharing the house,” he argues, locking eyes with the demon. Katsuki raises a brow in disbelief before kicking off the wall with a scoff.

Stalking over to them, Katsuki gets right up in Izuku’s space before asking, “So what is the problem?” He circles around, coming to a stop behind Izuku and resting his chin on the shorter boy’s shoulder. Izuku winces at the smell of burning and iron, but is kept in place by the demon pressed against him. “You just that desperate for someone to show you what a real ghost is capable of?”

Cutting in, Inko pulls Izuku toward herself and leaves Katsuki watching them with a self-satisfied smirk. “We just want to stop an abusive situation. Whether that means driving the father away or making him stop what he’s doing,” Inko fills him in easily.

That puts a grin on Katsuki’s face and he twirls around, already starting for the stairs. “Answers simple. Let’s kill that fucker,” Katsuki says all to gleefully.

Izuku runs, putting himself between Katsuki and the door. “No. We don’t want to kill anybody!” Izuku cries, holding his arms out and grabbing the door frame so Katsuki can’t just push him out of the way. Katsuki does come to an abrupt stop, but his smile drops and his hair starts to bleed red from the tips, dripping down toward his scalp.

Whirling around, Katsuki paces toward Inko, stopping inches in front of her with his face entirely too close to her for comfort. “Is that so? What is the point then?” he demands, practically yelling in her face.

Taking a step back, Inko raises her hand placating. “You said you’d teach us to haunt, is that not still an option?” she questions and Izuku doesn’t need to see Katsuki’s face to know he’s not calming. The vibrancy of his now fully red hair says all Izuku needs to know.

Luckily, Katsuki is apparently above hurting other ghosts and he just turns and kicks the nearest object, sending a chair flying against the wall for one leg to fly off. “No! Of course not! Why would you waste everyone’s time doing that when the answer is so simple?” he shouts, not even looking at either of the other ghosts as he rages. “If you’d just let me kill the guy and get his son to say my name, we could be done here. That simple.”

Izuku’s brows furrow and he momentarily forgets about the danger and clarifies, “Say your name? We’ve already done that, why do we need to get Shouto to say it?”

He doesn’t even see Katsuki coming, he just knows that the next second, all he can smell is smoke and he can practically hear a gunshot in the distance. “It doesn’t matter if you say it, Deku. I need someone living!” Katsuki growls against Izuku’s throat before he rips away and stomps off. Izuku nearly loses his balance when the demon is no longer pressing against him, but he barely manages to right himself before Katsuki turns around to stare at him again.

Chest heaving on a deep, yet unnecessary, breath, Katsuki’s hair slowly drains color and he forces himself calm. “Whatever. You ever watch a ghost movie?” Katsuki asks, his voice still stiff with barely contained anger. When both Izuku and Inko nod, Katsuki waves a hand dismissively. “Just do that shit. The only thing you can’t do is make the breathers see you. It takes a lot of concentration for newbies like you guys to make them hear you, but it’s possible. I’ll be back in a few days to see if you’re ready for me to kill him yet.”

With that Katsuki grabs Izuku by the shoulders and moves him away from the doorway. As he’s walking out, Izuku calls after him, “Wait, Mr. Katsuki, sir. Don’t you have any more advice for us?”

Katsuki pauses on the top stair to throw a disdainful look over his shoulder. “I’d want to die all over again if I watch you practice. You can figure it out.”

Then, he’s gone.

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

Over the next several days, Shouto grows closer to Izuku until they’re practically inseparable. Shouto has never had as much fun as watching the ghosts haunt his father in his life and he has to hold back laughter every time they knock something out of Enji’s hands or hide something immediately after he sets it down. One time, Izuku took Father’s phone hid it under a cupboard, only taking it off silent mode hours later when Father had lost his mind throwing things around and yelling about his stuff continually going missing. Then, there was the day when Father didn’t bother Shouto at all, exhausted from a night of getting woken by strange noises every time he started drifting off. The best part, though, were the times Izuku simply kept Shouto company when Father left the house.

The were joined at the hip. Except when Izuku goes to whatever ghost places Shouto can’t follow him to, that is, and Shouto is left home alone.

This was one of those times.

“Pack your things, I’m selling this house.”

The words still buzz around Shouto’s brain, said so nonchalantly as Father passed him on the stairs that morning. Of course, Shouto had simply uttered a “Yes sir,” and continued on to his room. There was nothing else to be done at the time. There’s no going against Father’s will. Shouto wishes more than anything that Izuku were here to talk about it, but the ghost boy is missing and Shouto wouldn’t know the first thing about finding him.

But that sure is an idea, isn’t it?

Father can’t rip Shouto away from his happiness and only friend if Shouto is left to haunt this place, too. All it takes is one second of consideration for Shouto to decide that’s the best option. The only option.

So he scribbles out a note quickly, before Father returns home from his trip into town and stop him, leaving it on his desk as to be found later.

I don’t know how you discovered that this place makes me happy, but you can never make me leave it. Tell Mother I’m sorry. If she ever speaks to you again, that is.

And with that, he’s off running for the attic. He glances around on his way through and, for the first time ever, he’s happy to see the Midoriyas are missing. They would try to stop him and the sad look on Inko’s face when she realizes there is a suicidal child in her home might just be enough to change his mind.

Clambering out to the room, Shouto rushes to the edge. First, he checks to make sure Father’s car was still missing before moving on to find the best place to jump. He doesn’t know enough about physics to know if the height alone would be enough to get the job done. Which is why he finds the bird bath. If nothing else, impaling himself on it would probably do the trick.

He’s just about to jump, the note tucked safely in the breast pocket of his flannel, when someone calls out. “What’s happening here?”

Whirling around, Shouto sees a boy with purple tinged hair eying him curiously. Which doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons. The first one coming to mind being that the boy is only wearing a black tank top, ripped jeans, and orange and black combat boots even though it’s going to be winter soon and Shouto is chilly in his flannel and sweatpants. The second being, “Who the hell are you?”

The other boy smiles then, walking forward carefully, clearly conscious of how close Shouto still is to the edge. “I’m who you apparently want to be. I think I can help you, though. How ‘bout you let me kill your dad and you stick around a little longer?” the boy bargains and Shouto wonders how he even knows that Father is the problem.

Shouto stands his ground, watching the other boy with his eyes only, not willing to move his body at all for fear of giving the other boy and opening to pull him further onto the roof. “No thank you. I’m fine with my current arrangement,” Shouto comments, edging backwards ever so slightly.

Purple hair shrugs, though Shouto can see in his eyes that the indifference is feigned. “Alright, kill yourself. That won’t stop him, though. You realize that? He made you for a reason, what’s stopping him from doing to some other woman and child exactly what he did to you and your mom?” the boy asks and Shouto hates that logic.

If ever a time to be selfish, though, now would be it. “I guess that’s something I’ll just have to live with. Oh wait. I won’t, will I?”

Purple hair gets darker, and Shouto finally realizes that he must be another ghost with the way his hair changes color like a mood ring. “Don’t you want your dad to suffer? I can bring him so much pain. Make him pay for what he’s done. All you need to do is say my name three times.”

Shouto shrugs and turns around, leaning forward dangerously. “I don’t even know your name,” he points out and a small smile crosses his lips at the idea of finally just being done with it.

All at once, Shouto hears the ghost shout, “NO!” and then arms burning like hot coals wrap around his waste, tugging him back.

Thrashing around Shouto starts yelling, “Let go of me you ghost jack-ass!”

Then he hears the one thing he didn’t think to expect, “Please don’t kill yourself. I don’t want to do this whole being dead thing without you,” is murmured against his neck in Izuku’s voice. Twisting his head around to look over his shoulder, Shouto’s nose buries in familiar green curls and he’s met with the scent of wet, caught between stale water and a rushing river right after rain. His entire body burns where he’s pressed against the heat of ghost who’s probably never been so earnest before.

Inko’s voice cuts in just ask Shouto shuts his eyes and relaxes against the warmth that would probably be painful if the source were anyone or anything else. “Katsuki! We agreed no murder!” Shouto’s suddenly glad that Inko’s never had a reason to seriously scold him before, dreading the idea of having the tone turned on him when she finds out that ‘Katsuki’ wasn’t the one attempting to kill him.

Izuku’s grip lightens and he pushes Shouto up until he’s sitting. Turning, Shouto makes eye contact with Izuku for half a second before he sees his truth reflected in the ghost’s eyes and he has to stand and walk away, toward the window this time.

The new ghost ignores the scolding he just received, though, looking only at Shouto. “Now you know my name. How ‘bout it?” he offers yet again.

Shaking his head, Shouto refuses to look at anyone else on the roof. “These two clearly know you. If they thought that asking you for help would be a good idea, I would have done it by now. I trust Izuku’s judgment far more than I do yours,” Shouto mutters, just wanting to go back inside at this point and hopefully get away with pretending this didn’t happen.

“Who cares what a worthless Deku has to say? I can help you and that’s all that you need,” Katsuki argues. He doesn’t even see the stormy look blow into Shouto’s eyes before he’s being kicked off the roof, falling to what would be his death if he weren’t already deceased.

“Shouto!” Inko scolds, rushing over to see if Katsuki’s ok, even though the boy has already vanished. “That’s dangerous! Someone could’ve been hurt!”

Shouto shrugs and looks at Izuku, who’s trying to hide his giggles behind his hand. “He was already dead. I don’t see the problem,” he points out before slipping through the window and down the stairs to his own room.

Izuku stops long enough to tell his mom not to follow before he’s trailing after Shouto. The door’s barely shut before Izuku’s asking, “Were you really trying to kill yourself?”

Flopping face first onto his bed, Shouto simply fishes his note out of his pocket and holds it out to Izuku. There’s a moment of silence before the paper is slid from his fingers and then even more silence as Izuku reads what Shouto wrote.

The silence drags on for too long, making Shouto uncomfortable. Eventually, he just has to flip over and face Izuku, who he’s sure must be crying. Shock settles in when Shouto’s met with silent fury rather than the tears he was expecting. “I’m sorry, Izuku,” he apologizes, his voice quiet but no less sincere.

With a shake of his head, Izuku makes the note vanish is a quick burst of flame before he drops onto Shouto’s bed and holds him tight. “Don’t apologize, but never do this again. That was really scary and I don’t want you to die. I promise I won’t let your dad take you if you just promise to talk to me in the future instead of jumping to… jumping,” Izuku says, his voice steel even as it comforts Shouto’s shaken nerves.

“I can do that,” Shouto offers and he’s never felt so relieved as when Izuku’s temperature drops to something more reasonable and he relaxes to a more comfortable embrace. “Can I sleep for a while, it’s been a draining day.”

Izuku nods but doesn’t let go, letting Shouto fall asleep in his arms just like Shouto was hoping for.

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

It’s now or never, Shouto needs to find a way to stay in this house, with out without his father, and if he doesn’t have it sorted out by the end of the day, Father’s going to make him move. They have a plan, Shouto thinks. Izuku has been working on possession, but he’s not willing to practice on Shouto so he’s not really sure what kind of progress the ghost has been making.

He trusts Izuku, though, so he’s sure it’ll work out.

When it comes time for dinner, Shouto is excited to go downstairs for the first time. Father notices this, commenting, “I see you’ve come around to the idea of moving.”

“Yes, Father,” Shouto responds quietly, looking at his plate and decidedly not at Izuku hovering in the corner.

“It’s truly too bad you couldn’t attend the school here, even for a day. There will be an even better school at the new house. Maybe I an even pay Aizawa to transfer so he can still teach you,” Father continues, ignoring Shouto continuing to get more tense the longer he’s able to form his own sentences. Of course, Father wouldn’t know that’s going to stop soon.

Over time, Shouto begins to tune Father out as he goes on and on about where they’re supposed to be moving to. He simply hums in all the correct places while he eats, thanks to years of practice listening for the intonations in Father’s voice requesting a response. All the while, Shouto only occasionally glances at Izuku, where the boy F

Finally, about halfway through the dinner, Izuku pulls it off. Father cuts off in the middle of a sentence, his body seizing up and just freezing, as if he’s suddenly unsure of how to control it. Eyes immediately flying to Izuku, Shouto sees him pumping a fist in the air with a massive smile splitting his face.

Looking back to Father, Shouto speaks quickly but clearly, refusing to lose this chance. “I’m going to be very clear with you, Father. You are going to leave, but I’m not going with you. There are people here I refuse to lose and they refuse to tolerate your abuse any more.”

Shouto watches Izuku’s face tighten as he focuses on loosening the reigns just enough for Father to answer on his own. When he’s able, Father growls, “You don’t make the rules, boy.”

Instinct makes Shouto flinch in his seat, that tone typically meaning pain is coming for him. All that happens this time, though, is Father is jerked back in his seat so hard his chair rocks and his mouth snaps shut.

“Change of plans, then,” Shouto mutters, pulling out his phone and opening the camera. He nods to Izuku as soon as he has a recording started.

Izuku and Enji start speaking simultaneously, though Shouto knows only one voice will be heard in the recording. “My name is Todoroki Enji. I am coming forward to admit to some crimes that I know most of you will never forgive me for. For as long as I have been married, I have abused my family. My wife did not choose to marry me, nor did she choose to be committed to a mental institution after I drove her to hurting our youngest child. Said child, Shouto, did not choose to move away from his family with me. I tore him away because they were in the way of my abusing him into being the child I wanted to create. I am a coward of a man, but I would like to change that. I’m starting the process now by admitting my crimes to you, the public, and letting my family go to live their lives as they please without me in it.”

As soon as Izuku stops speaking, Shouto stops the recording and levels Father with a look. “I am holding all the aces here. This is your last chance to leave me in peace, or I will release this video to the public. It would go viral in minutes and you know it,” Shouto reasons.

Father lunges forward then, his hands on Shouto’s throat before Shouto can even realize what’s happening. “You hold all the aces? Yeah, that’s how this looks,” Father mocks, his grip tightening to the point that Shouto can’t breath.

The next second, Father is ripped away and pinned to the opposite wall. He slams against it so hard that plaster cracks and Shouto’s sure he has a concussion.

Izuku’s on him then, hands fluttering around and tears in his voice, “I’m so sorry, Shouto! I meant to just release his voice again, but I accidentally dropped to much. I’m so sorry!” Father must fight against him because Izuku’s hand flips back and Shouto hears the wall creak under Father’s weight.

Shouto shakes his head, hope leaving him quickly, and he waves Izuku off. “It’s not going to work. Nothing we do will be enough,” he admits, hanging his head. “I can’t keep living like this, though. Forgive me, Izuku.”

It takes Izuku a moment to figure out what Shouto means, and by then he’s already started. Ignoring Izuku’s pleas that they can figure it out, Shouto chants, “Katsuki, Katsuki, Katsuki.”

There’s another puff of smoke and then, there Katsuki is, his hair bright violet in his excitement. “Hey, old man,” he greets, grabbing Father with a single hand and holding him back from rushing Shouto again, Izuku apparently having released him. “Time for you to go.”

“Don’t kill him,” Shouto requests, not really caring what else happens so long as he doesn’t have his father’s death on his conscience.

Rolling his eyes, Katsuki shoves Father away from himself and looks over his shoulder at Shouto. Father tries to move past him, but Katsuki freezes him in an instant, turning him around to run full force into a cabinet. “I can at least rough him up a little, right?” he requests, as if he hadn’t already started that process.

Shouto shrugs, beyond caring too much. “No worse than he’s done to me,” he limits, though it’s honestly not much of a limit.

It’s with a grin that Katsuki turns back to his prey. It becomes apparent very quickly, though, that Katsuki either can’t or won’t outright harm Father, he only turns his own force against him whenever the man tries to get to Shouto instead of just giving up. Which Shouto is honestly fine with. He doesn’t necessarily want Father harmed, he just wants him to leave him alone. Whatever it takes.

Luckily, it doesn’t take too many redirects for Father to lose his temper and leave. He storms out of the house with Katsuki hot on his tail, throwing taunts as they go, just for Katsuki to stop short at the door the second Father is through it.

“Thanks, kid. That was fun,” Katsuki turns with a grin, his hair magenta with glee. “There’s no way he’s coming back here after that.”

Shouto shrugs, turning to go back to his room. “I wouldn’t count on that. He’s a stubborn man. Thank you for getting rid of him, though. Do whatever you want down here, I’m going upstairs.”

Izuku follows him silently, holding his tongue until they reach Shouto’s room. The second the door shuts, though, the dam breaks. “Is that what you wanted? Your father beaten in front of you? You never mentioned wanting revenge before. Though I guess Mom and I wouldn’t have understood it, so it makes sense to keep it to yourself,” Izuku rambles, and Shouto can’t even tell if his tone is accusing or not.

Rounding on him, Shouto feels frustration bubble in his throat. Finally free after years of abuse followed by an absolute numbness as he watched Father try to hurt him again and again without being able to reach him. “That not what I wanted!” he bites out, wincing when Izuku flinches away from his harsh tone. “I’m sorry,” he utters, running a hand through his hair and taking a deep breath to let out some frustration. “I didn’t want to hurt him. I truly wanted our attempts at a peaceful separation to work. But you saw him, that wasn’t working. And there’s nothing on this planet I want more than to be free from him. So I’m not sorry that I did whatever it took to get him out. I’m only sorry that you seem to be scared of me now. I guess I’m no better than him after all.”

“That’s not even close to true!” Izuku argues, hesitating for the barest of moments with his hands hovering nears Shouto’s shoulders for the living boy to lean into his touch. Shouto shuts his eyes and relishes in the warmth there, letting the words sink in at the same rate as the temperature indicating that Izuku believes them to be true. “You’re nothing like him and I’m not scared of you. I just wish it didn’t come to that. Plus, I’m concerned about what Katsuki plans to do from here. Something tells me he won’t be satisfied just living here with us.”

A glance at the door doesn’t provide any answers, not that Shouto truly believed it would. Thinking back to the encounter with Father, Shouto wonders aloud, “He seems to be bound by some kind of rules. Partially whatever I command, I think. I don’t know where the other part comes from, but there seemed to be something holding him back from harming Father unless Father initiated it. So I don’t think he’s as dangerous as he led you to believe.”

Izuku ponders his words for a minute before nodding. “I think you’re right,” he agrees. “I was more focused on making sure you were okay, so I didn’t watch them that closely, but that makes sense with what I did see…” He starts mumbling to himself then. Shouto would love to hear his thoughts, but he’s too quiet and talking too quickly for Shouto to understand so he chooses to just go relax until Izuku comes to a conclusion he wants to share.

That never happens, though, and Shouto drifts off to the sound of Izuku muttering to himself.

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

The next two days pass far quieter and more peacefully than anyone could have anticipated. Katsuki entertains himself with scaring anyone who comes to the house, but he never actually hurts anyone so Shouto isn’t too concerned with it. For the most part, as long as the residents of the house leave him alone, Katsuki is content to just do his own thing. On the rare occasion that they do cross paths, Katsuki is his annoying self toward Izuku but he gets along well with Shouto. He listens to whatever the breathing boy tells him to do and even tries to joke around with him or, if Shouto happens to be downstairs when someone comes to the door, Katsuki even tries to get him in on the pranks.

On the third day, Shouto decides that Katsuki is just another kid in a situation he didn’t ask for and is mostly harmless. Once he reaches that conclusion, his family passes through his mind and he wonders if they’d want to join him here.

So, on day three of living with an actual demon, Shouto starts preparing to save his family from his Father for good.

“I’m going to be gone for a couple days but I’ll make Katsuki promise to be nice to you,” Shouto says, already packing a bag and barely looking up when Izuku comes into the room. “And I don’t know how quickly he’ll come back for me, but I’m sure Katsuki will keep Father out as well, so you shouldn’t have to be worried about that.”

“Where are you going?” Izuku asks, unsure about being left with Katsuki. But Shouto seems excited about whatever he’s doing, so Izuku can deal. Surely it won’t be that bad. Katsuki will probably keep himself busy terrorizing the neighborhood and Izuku’s sure he can keep it to a minimum.

When Shouto looks up and Izuku sees his smile, he’s sure that he’d do whatever it takes to keep it there. “I’m going to get Mother and my siblings. They’ll love it here and Katsuki will protect us from Father. Mother has always wanted to live in a small town and I just know she’d love you and Inko.”

Izuku nods along, happy to see Shouto so happy but then he realizes, “Are you sure Katsuki will allow them in here? What if he just chases them away like he did your father?”

Zipping up his back and hoisting it onto his shoulder, Shouto’s easy response is, “And lose a new audience to tell him how great he is? I doubt it. But even if he does, I’m the one who made him visible. I can undo it just as easily.”

“Oh, is that so?”

Izuku jumps at the new addition, flying away from the door and turning to see Katsuki sauntering in.

“It’s almost cute that you think you’re in charge,” Katsuki smirks, strolling forward and getting right in Shouto’s personal space. “You act like I’m your new ghostly pet or something but it’s the other way around, kid. I make the calls and you can’t do any more than jump when I say jump.” Right on cue, Katsuki possesses Shouto and makes him jump. The look on Shouto’s face is a mix of fury and sad betrayal and leaves Izuku wondering if he should feel bad for him or be scared of him. “Now why don’t you just relax and wait for your next command?”

Shouto’s muscles strain as he fights against Katsuki making him sit on his bed, and he jumps up the second the possession is lifted. Unfortunately, by then Katsuki is out of the room. “I thought I summoned him to chase Father away, not replace him as my tormentor,” Shouto grumbles, clenching his fists like he wants to chase Katsuki and fight him.

“There must be some way we can get rid of him,” Izuku says, though he doesn’t have the slightest clue where to start looking for that. “He must have some kind of weakness.”

Izuku’s heart falls when Shouto barely glances at him, shaking his head. “There’s no way. I thought he’d be different but he’s just like Father. He has no weakness and all he cares about is himself. I’m sorry I trapped you with him,” Shouto apologizes, shaking his head mournfully before dropping face first onto his bed.

Excusing himself quietly, Izuku starts to leave the room, not wanting to invade Shouto’s face when he’s sad. He just knows that soon enough he’ll be pacing and muttering to himself in an attempt to find some way to thwart Katsuki, and Izuku’s sure Shouto doesn’t want to listen to that.

Crossing the room, though, Izuku kicks something on the floor. Which is weird, Shouto is the least messy person he knows, there’s no way he’d just leave a book on his floor. Picking it up, Izuku inquisitively reads the title aloud. “Handbook for the Recently Deceased? Where did this come from? I don’t know that I’d count Mom and I as ‘recent’ anymore.”

Perking up, Shouto swings around to look at Izuku like he just found gold. “That must have an answer!” Shouto rushes over and Izuku hands the book over easily. As much as Izuku’s going to help, Shouto will feel better if Izuku lets him be in control. However, Shouto’s brow just furrows and his almost hopeful expression turns to annoyance as the book doesn’t open. “Is this even a real book?”

“It looks like a real book,” Izuku replies, confused and Shouto’s troubles. The other boy hands it over then, and the ghost has no problem cracking the cover. “Maybe it’s because you’re not deceased.”

Glancing at the title of chapter one, The Netherworld, Izuku decides maybe he doesn’t want to read the book right now. After all, he’d rather just stay hanging out with Shouto than go somewhere with a name like that. So, he hands the book over and watches to make sure Shouto can turn a page before handing over the reigns officially. “I’ll read it when we’re done with the Katsuki problem. Until then, it’s all yours,” Izuku offers and Shouto just looks between him and the book.

“Are you sure? This probably has some helpful information for you. Have you and Inko even gone to the Netherworld before?” Shouto asks, reading out what must be the first line in the book when Izuku shakes his head, “All ghosts must proceed directly to the Netherworld.”

Izuku shrugs and waves him off, “It’s fine. This is more important. Mom and I can do that once we’ve fixed all this.” Izuku doesn’t mention that he just doesn’t want to leave his best friend. Shouto seems to accept that answer for now and he moves over to his desk to hunker down with the book. Izuku’s not really sure what he should be doing, though. He doesn’t really want to go to the attic and tell his mom that he found information that could help them but he’s keeping it to himself for selfish reasons. So he just flops on the bed and plays with the little plush rabbit Shouto’s been keeping by his pillow ever since he and Izuku found out that it was still hiding behind the bookcase in the living room.

A few hours later, when the sun starts fading in the window, Izuku asks, “Have you found the chapter on exorcism or anything like that?”

Shouto’s silent for a few seconds before he hums. “I think so. I’m just trying to figure out if it’ll work with a demon.”

Popping up onto his elbows, Izuku’s about to stand up when Shouto brings the book to him. Izuku skims it quickly before shrugging, “I don’t see how it wouldn’t work.”

They meet eyes briefly and Izuku doesn’t need him to speak to know that it’s go time.

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

The two have a brief meeting before they go downstairs, Shouto deciding that maybe Izuku and Inko should be out of the room just in case. Izuku doesn’t love the idea, but he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make Shouto happy. After all, he’s the one who couldn’t scare Enji away before Shouto felt like he needed to turn to Katsuki.

It feels lonely, though, when Shouto walks down the down the stairs by himself. He has to shake away the feeling of going downstairs to “train” with Father. Unlike Father, though, Katsuki barely looks up at Shouto’s descent.

Not wasting any time with negotiation attempts, Shouto jumps straight into reading the exorcism. “Hands vermillion, start of five.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work the way you want it to,” Katsuki cuts in, not even looking at Shouto.

Ignoring him, Shouto continues, “Bright cotillion, raven’s dive.”

Katsuki actually reacts then, standing up and taking a couple steps toward the stairs. “Seriously, stop it you idiotic breather.”

“Nightshade’s promise, spirits strive. To let the living let now the dead come alive.”

Finally, a reaction Shouto expects come, but from the wrong place. That screaming definitely isn’t coming from Katsuki.

Looking up, Shouto follows the sound toward the kitchen. “Inko?” he asks, voice breaking as he stumbles down the stairs. Inko floats in the doorway, her head thrown back and a green glow surrounding her. She hasn’t screamed a second time, but her limbs are stiff and her face, what little Shouto can see of it from his current angle, is twisted in pain. “What happened?”

When Shouto reaches Inko, he hestitates to try to hold her, unsure if it will cause her more pain. Instead, he rounds on Katsuki. “What happened!? This was supposed to be you!”

Katsuki smirks and comes forward, flicking the book out of Shouto’s hands. “You shouldn’t mess with things you don’t understand, kid. I even tried to warn you,” Katsuki says smugly.

Looking back at Inko, Shouto grows desperate. He hears a gasp from the stairs and in an instant, he’s being replaced at Inko’s side by Izuku. “Please,” Shouto pleads, not even caring about his pride or the fact that it’s been years since he’s let himself beg, “save her. I know you can do something. I’ll do whatever you say, just please fix this.”

Another scream cuts through the air and Shouto flinches. He can’t look at his best friend, he knows only hatred will be looking back at him. So he just stares at Katsuki, the other boy rubbing his chin as if he’s thinking about the offer even though Shouto knows the demon already has his mind made up.

After what feels like an eternity, Katsuki grins and nods. “Alright, I’ll help her. But there will be a cost,” he offers, a dark look on his face that would make Shouto backtrack if this were literally any other situation.

“Anything,” Shouto breathes at the same time Izuku lunges forward, crying, “No!”

It’s too late, though, Katsuki sweeps Shouto into his arms and whisks him out of Izuku’s reach with a smirk. “Marry me,” Katsuki commands and Shouto’s not sure what he thought the price would be, but it certainly wasn’t that. All things considered, it could be worse.

Izuku clearly thinks otherwise though, pounding on an invisible wall that Katsuki must have thrown up to prevent any interruption. “Katsuki, that’s too far! You’re making him marry you just to spite me? I’ll leave. Save my mom and we’ll go to the Netherworld. You never have to see us again. Just don’t do that to Shouto!” Izuku yells, fury in his tone even as his words sound like pleas.

Katsuki laughs then, dropping Shouto onto the couch before perching on the back of it himself. “This isn’t even about you, Deku. It’s more of a greencard thing. I want to be alive again and marrying a breather is the only way I can do that. You losers can have this house for all I care just as soon as I’m allowed to leave it.”

Shouto holds up a hand toward Izuku when the ghost looks like he wants to argue further. “You heard him, Izuku. What’s the problem if it’s just a greencard thing. Let him save her. Please.” All of the fight leaves Izuku when Shouto tacks on the last word.

Looking around with satisfaction, Katsuki asks, “So we’re all in agreement, then?” When he gets no further resistance, he waves a hand toward Inko, the woman falling to her knees and gasping in breathes that they all know she doesn’t need. Izuku rushes to her side, checking that she’s actually ok, and Shouto’s busy watching them so he doesn’t even see Katsuki’s next move.

All attention is drawn back to the blonde when he knocks three times on a wall. “Alright. I know Shouto won’t follow through with his end of the bargain if that useless Deku is here to talk him out of it, so I think it’s about time you two head to the Netherworld.” Slowly, a door appears behind him and creaks open, bright green light flooding out of it. Shouto watches Izuku and Inko get dragged toward it, gears turning and anger bubbling under his skin.

“You said they could stay,” Shouto argues, his voice quiet under the sounds of wind unfelt by the living dragging the two ghost to the other dimension.

Katsuki hears him, though, and he shrugs with a smirk. “I lie. Get used to it,” he says by way of explanation.

Invisible bonds hold Shouto to the couch so he can’t even try to get up and save the ghosts from the fate he made for them.

An idea hits him when they’re almost at the door.

“Can I at least say goodbye? Don’t I deserve at least that much?” Shouto questions, locking eyes with Katsuki. Izuku and Inko’s progress halts for a second while Katsuki thinks, and then Shouto’s bonds are gone.

“Fine, but make it snappy,” Katsuki relents, walking away from the door, surely not wanting to hear whatever sappy things Shouto’s going to say.

The ghosts wrap Shouto in a tight hug as soon as he gets close enough. “I promise, I’ll fix this,” he murmurs in their hair as he hugs them back. Adrenaline buzzes in his ears so he doesn’t even hear what they have to say, but the hug is over too soon, the ghosts being dragged away from him again.

Izuku goes first and Shouto doesn’t know if it’s fear or Katsuki keeping him still, but there’s a split second where he can’t move.

But then he is. He doesn’t think he’s ever moved faster in his life than when he surges forward, shoving Inko back into the living room and throwing himself through the door in her place.

The door slams shut behind him and Shouto is left in absolute darkness.

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

It’s cold in the Netherworld. The chill bites down into Shouto’s bones and he hates that his first thought is wondering if Izuku feels it. He shouldn’t be concerned with whether or not Izuku could use a sweater, the gaping emptiness before him is bound to be more uncomfortable for Izuku than any temperature change could be.

Shouto shakes the thought off, or maybe that’s a shiver, and starts walking. He has no clue where he’s going, there’s only darkness surrounding him, but it’s not like there’s still a doorway for him to turn around and go back. Not that he would if that were an option. He came to save Izuku and he’ll be damned if he’s not successful.

He will admit, he wasn’t expecting to somehow be deposited in an entire other part of the Netherworld, but that’s not the point either. He doesn’t let himself think that maybe he’ll never see Izuku again. Instead, he skips that part of the journey entirely and starts wondering about what to do when he does find Izuku and they go home. He ponders over what to do with Katsuki the entire time he walks, never quite settling on a stellar plan.

Eventually, when his fingers are just starting to go numb despite being jammed into his armpits due to a lack of pockets, he sees light. He wonders briefly if this is the light they talk about seeing when you die, but then he hears a voice that makes all thought lose his head. He’s too far still to hear words, but that’s definitely Izuku’s voice talking to someone, or possibly arguing, and Shouto is sprinting toward it as fast as he can.

The light seemed so far away at first, but now it’s so sudden. Almost as if it was rushing toward him even as Shouto ran toward it. The idea makes no sense, but then again, neither does anything else in the Netherworld.

When Shouto comes crashing in, he nearly trips over his own feet trying to stop so suddenly. But he doesn’t even care, he’s just so relieved to see Izuku.

“Shouto!” Izuku gasps, and it’s as if everything else just disappears in that moment for the ghost. “How did you even get here? And do you know where Mom is?”

Izuku rushes to Shouto’s side and wraps him in a hug immediately. “I followed you in,” Shouto breathes out, then pausing to catch his breath. Izuku holds Shouto at arm’s length away then and Shouto sees the million questions on his lips so he simply holds up a finger, needing a second to catch up before he can handle that. He must be smiling, though, because Izuku slowly starts grinning back at him. “I couldn’t just let Katsuki send you away like that so I stole your mom’s place. She’s still at your house,” he finally explains when he gets his breath back.

He can’t help himself then, Izuku starts laughing and he has to pull Shouto in for another hug before it turns to crying. Shouto is so hot everywhere they make contact, and that just makes Izuku cry even harder. “Why would you do something like that? We would have come back for you,” Izuku questions even though he’s so happy that Shouto came for him. Thrilled that the boy cares enough to save them both.

Shouto shrugs, and the minute drop in temperature tells Izuku that he does know exactly why he did it, but Izuku will save pressing it for later.

“This is touching and all,” a woman cuts in and when Shouto glances over, he sees a girl with long black hair, green skin, and a sash reading ‘Miss Argentina’ watching them in confusion, “but what, exactly, is happening right now?” Shouto doesn’t even have a chance to answer, too distracted by the fact that somehow, he’s now in an office of some sort. Or a reception area at the very least, judging by the chairs opposite the counter that the woman’s standing in front of. Only one chair is occupied, a boy in glasses ignoring all the ruckus to read a book tucked away in the corner.

Izuku pulls away and blushes before bowing toward the woman. “I’m sorry, Miss Argentina, this is Shouto. He moved into the house Mom and I were haunting and I guess he’s the reason Mom’s not here. I apologize for trying to argue with you that she was earlier.”

The woman seems to stop listening to Izuku halfway through, her brows raising as she takes in Shouto. “This is a breather, you said?” she questions, coming closer to inspect him better. When Izuku nods, she almost seems to jerk away. “You need to get out of here right now. If Mitsuki sees you, you won’t be breathing for much longer. And you’re far to cute to die so young.”

“There’s a breather here?” another voice asks and Shouto looks over at the boy, now noticing glass and metal protruding from his body like he was just in a car accident, jump up and run over to see the two. “That’s trouble. Listen to her. You’re in serious danger here. Why would you come in the first place? Did either of you even read the Handbook for the Recently Deceased?” The boy holds up his now closed book and Shouto almost wonders how he was supposed to read a book he’s never even seen before.

Izuku nods quickly and steps in before Shouto can challenge the boy and ask that. “We’ll gladly be on our way back home now. There’s no need for trouble.” He fumbles then to pull a piece of chalk from his pocket and Shouto will need to ask him later where he even got that.

“Thank you for keeping him safe until I got here,” Shouto says to the woman while Izuku hastily starts drawing on a wall.

Before Miss Argentina can even respond, let alone Izuku being able to finish drawing the doorway, a woman yells, “Has anyone seen my useless son? What is he up to now?”

Shouto has no idea what’s happening, but the two Netherworldly beings freeze. Then they look at each other in fear. Then they’re hastily trying to hide Shouto from whatever woman just yelled and is clearly on her way to the room they’re in now. Shouto doesn’t know where she’s coming from, but he guesses he should stop trying to make sense of this place.

When he’s roughly grabbed and shoved toward Izuku, Shouto finally looks toward where he was standing and he sees a door right behind where he just was swing open. Striding through is a woman with spiky yellow hair, red eyes, and a gash that’s hard to ignore going across her neck. Shouto can’t help but think of Katsuki when he looks at her and he wonders if Katsuki is the ‘useless son’ she just yelled about.

He can’t get any answers, though, as suddenly he’s being yanked through the door and then he and Izuku are standing in the attic of their home. They share one look before they’re hugging again, and Shouto revels in the feel of the cold boy in his arms, even as the rest of him is tingling from warming up too quickly.

“I’m happy we’re home,” Izuku utters after a moment’s peace, “but what are we going to do about Katsuki? He won’t let you live if you don’t marry him, but I won’t let him kill you, either.”

Shouto pulls away just enough for Izuku to see him smirk and he says, “I have a plan.”

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

“Oh, Katsuki!” Shouto calls, making his voice soft and inviting. He first focuses on making sure Katsuki is looking at him, then he looks at the demented carnival game he has Inko trapped in. She seems suspending in some sort of dunk tank, but Shouto is sure that whatever she’d fall into when Katsuki gets bored of playing and hits the mark will hurt a lot more than water.

Descending the stairs, Shouto walks straight up to Katsuki and throws an arm around his shoulder, leaning against the slightly shorter boy. “What do you want, Half ‘n Half?” Katsuki scowls, shoving Shouto off of him immediately. Shouto makes sure to hold his attention, though, refusing to look over Katsuki’s shoulder to where Izuku helps his mom escape the dunk tank.

Shouto frowns, feigning a pout and holds his hand up, palms out, to try and placate Katsuki. “I got a chance to think when I was in the Netherworld. And during that time, I realized that you are actually pretty attractive. So I would like to marry you.”

Katsuki scoffs and stomps toward Shouto, stopping inches away from his face. “Stop the bullshit,” he growls, giving Shouto a hard shove in the shoulders and making him stumble back, falling on his butt.

Rolling his eyes, Shouto stands back up and dusts himself off. This clearly angers Katsuki, but that will just make it easier. “Fine. I realized that Izuku actually is useless. But marrying you could give me the power I need. It’s a win/win.”

“And why should I believe you?” Katsuki sneers, but he doesn’t make a move against Shouto, so they must be getting somewhere.

Shouto shrugs and takes a step toward Katsuki again, testing him. When there’s no reaction, he says, “My dad will be back again. I need a way to keep him out. You know I don’t need any motive other than that and you’re the only one who can help me do that.”

Katsuki seems like he’s almost swayed but then Shouto throws in, “Plus, wouldn’t you just love to prove that you’re better than Deku? He could never convince a living person to marry him, yet you’ve got me here practically begging for it.”

That’s all it takes. Katsuki nods and snaps his fingers and just like that, they’re in bright red tuxedos that could not be more uncomfortable and a small gargoyle looking creature is emerging from the woodwork. Katsuki doesn’t even give the creature time to speak, simply snapping out, “I do,” and looking expectantly for Shouto to do the same. Shouto says it back and, with another poof, the creature is gone again, along with all the contraptions Katsuki created when he was waiting for Shouto and Izuku to return.

“Did it work?” Shouto asks, looking expectantly at Katsuki. He looks more alive, his face actually pink instead of blue tinged white, but that could mean nothing.

But then Katsuki laughs and it’s not the sarcastic sound Shouto is used to from him. No. This sound actually joyful. “Oh yeah, here we go!” Katsuki cheers and he’s so excited, Shouto almost wants to call off the rest of his plan. Would it really hurt anything to just let Katsuki be alive? “I forgot how it felt to… feel,” Katsuki says then, the grin still on his face.

Izuku steps forward then, a smile on his own face, and Shouto can tell just by looking at him that he’s having the same doubts as Shouto. “I’m glad it worked, Katsuki,” he congratulates but the second Katsuki looks at him, the smile drops and he practically snarls at Izuku.

“No one asked you, Deku. Why don’t you just go to the Netherworld?” Katsuki snaps and, oh yeah, that’s why Shouto doesn’t want to keep him around. “I know how to send you there, you know. The fact that I’m alive now changes nothing.”

All it takes is Katsuki prowling a single step toward Izuku. In and instant, Shouto is reaching for the fireplace poker and surging forward all in one motion. Katsuki either doesn’t hear him coming or doesn’t have time to respond, but either way, the poker is soon sticking out of his back as he falls forward.

Shouto barely hears Inko’s gasp, clearly not completely up to speed with the plan, and he pulls the poker out of Katsuki’s back even as his attention is already turning toward Izuku. “You almost wanted to just go with it too, didn’t you?” Izuku asks, his eyes still on the blond boy on the floor.

Shrugging, Shouto tosses the poker to the side and takes a few steps away. He knows this is his own plan, but now that he’s done and he sees that Izuku clearly feels some sort of remorse, he can’t help but feel guilty. “How am I different from my father?” he asks, his voice low and he’s not sure if he even means for other people to hear him.

“Shouto!” Izuku gasps, rushing forward and stopping just short of putting his hands on Shouto’s shoulders. Shouto doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s ok to touch him, but he also doesn’t move away. Izuku closes the gap then, still giving Shouto a chance to pull away, and when he moves forward into the touch he just reenforces Izuku’s suspicion that Shouto doesn’t know how to ask for physical affection, but he will be clear when doesn’t want it. “Your father hurt people for no reason. Katsuki is a literal demon. If you didn’t do what you did, it would only be a matter of time until he did much worse to a lot of innocent people. I’m so-”

Supportive words are cut off by a bang and fog pouring into the room. Izuku and Shouto both jump at the sound, immediately looking to Katsuki, who’s still laying on the floor. Though, they don’t really know if his body will stay there or not. No one really warned them what would happen after they killed a demon that they brought back to life. Will they have to dispose of a dead body somehow?

“Excuse me,” Inko starts, dragging the boys’ attention back to the origin of the fog, where blond woman from the Netherworld is walking through. “Who are you and why are you in my home?”

Red eyes narrow and the woman completely ignores Inko, instead sweeping the room until they settle on Shouto. “You,” she snarls, finger pointing as she stomps over to him, “You’re the breather who came to the Netherworld. That’s not how things work, kid. If you want in the Netherworld, you’ve gotta be dead.”

The woman doesn’t even notice Inko stepping forward then, and she crashes directly into her when Inko plants herself between the woman and Shouto. She turns her glare on Inko and she’s opened her mouth to turn her rage on her as well when Inko cuts in. “I still don’t know who you are but you can leave now. There is no way you are going to be harming a single hair on either of those boys heads.”

At Inko’s harsh tone, the woman blinks in confusion before smirking. Shouto doesn’t understand how she’s still so confident, he’s terrified of Inko in this moment and her rage isn’t even directed at him. He’s also happy that he can’t see her face, but her hair is writhing around her head like a mass of snakes and she’s a feint green color is emanating from her body.

“I see you learned how to haunt. How cute,” the Netherworlder taunts before reaching out to push Inko to the side. That is, she tries to before she gets distracted by the body on their floor. “You killed my son? He got some sucker to bring him back to life just to get himself killed again?”

Finally, a groan sounds from Katsuki’s direction and Shouto spares a glance to see that he’s pushing himself up, as if summoned by his mother noticing him. “You stabbed me in the back?” he asks, exasperation dripping from his tone. He turns to look at his killer only to get distracted by the newest addition to the group. “What are you doing here, you old hag?”

“Katsuki, you brat! Get yourself to the Netherworld right now!” his mother snaps, Shouto apparently forgotten in her rage at her own son.

Katsuki just scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest. “These guys are pretty entertaining, even if they did kill me. I think I’m gonna hang out here,” he challenges and Shouto can’t not notice the way he flinches back when his mother easily side steps Inko to stalk toward him. It reminds him a little too much of himself and Father.

There’s no thought process, Shouto’s just moving the next second, trying to get between a boy and his abusive parent like he wishes anyone would have done for him.

Inko beats him there. She’s floating now so she’s the same height as Katsuki’s mother and the glow around her body is a lot brighter now. Not to mention the light shining out of her eyes that would surely blind someone if they looked straight at it. “Get. Out. Of. My. House!” Inko commands and just like that, the woman is shot back like she’s being pushed by a strong gust of wind. She just barely manages to catch herself in the doorway to the Netherworld, but the door slams shut before she can get a single other word out.

Just like that, the glowing is gone, and Inko drops to the floor and rounds on Katsuki. He balks when she puts her hands on each of his cheeks, stopping him from moving away while she inspects him. “You will have to shape up a little and be nicer to my boys. But if you would like to, you can stay here and I will make sure that woman never hurts you again,” she promises, her eyes locked with Katsuki’s. “If you’d rather move on, you’re welcome to do that, too. There’s no pressure, but my offer will always be open. As long as you promise not to kill any more people.”

Katsuki rips his face out of her hands and looks anywhere other than at any of the people in the room. “One of your boys literally just killed me,” he mutters, but he clearly realizes the fault in pointing that out when Inko’s gaze hardens and they all flash back to moments before that when Katsuki threatened Izuku’s existence. “Fine. I promise.”

With a smile and a nod, Inko stands up and looks at Izuku and Shouto. “Quite an exciting day we’ve had, huh? Why don’t we all just get cleaned up and reconvene for dinner?”

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

“Hey, Izuku, can I talk to you for a second?” Shouto asks after he cleans up in his room, seeing Izuku going downstairs to meet his mom in the kitchen.

Smiling up at him, Izuku pauses on the landing. “Of course, what’s up?”

Shouto hurries down the stairs to stand with Izuku, suddenly more scared of this conversation than anything else that’s happened since he moved into a haunted house. “I’m going to ask you a question. It might be crazy or dumb or something that’ll make you hate me, but I need to know the answer,” he starts, trying to steel his nerves.

Izuku laughs then, grabbing Shouto’s hands, making Shouto look at him. “Nothing could ever make me hate you. Now, what’s got you so worked up that you’re practically on fire?”

“If getting married brought Katsuki back to life, do you think it could bring you back?” Shouto asks, his nerves showing through in a cracked voice even though his eyes never leave Izuku’s and his hands are steady where they’re connected to the ghost’s.

Izuku jerks back in surprise, his hands nearly losing form for a second, only staying real from the heat emanating from Shouto. The surety in that heat shocks Izuku and he starts shaking his head before he can even think of words to say. Shouto’s eyes stay firm, though, and he patiently waits for Izuku’s explanation before pushing the matter. “You can’t marry me!” Izuku finally cries. He can’t believe this is even happening, especially since Shouto still seems so sure of his choice, his hands squeezing briefly like he’s reminding Izuku that he’s gonna need more than that if he’s going to be dissuaded. “You’re alive, Shouto! And you’re 15 years old. Don’t throw that away on a ghost. I can be here for you just like this, I don’t need life.” The words hurt Izuku to say and if he could cry, surely he would be by now. He has to look away, the intensity in Shouto’s gaze is making it hard for him to stand firm here.

“You said it yourself the other night,” Shouto says, “if we had met when we were alive, you’d have a crush on me. I know I like you, Izuku. And you don’t have to stay with me forever, but can’t you at least take another chance at being alive?”

Izuku’s heart breaks because he knows Shouto’s being serious, he always is. But still, “What happens when you get bored with me?” The words come out in a whisper, but they feel so much louder when Izuku never meant to say them at all.

The warmth leaves Izuku’s hands and he almost wishes he could cry now that he is alone. Utterly alone. But then it appears on his cheeks and he’s being forced to look at Shouto.

“I will never be bored of you, Izuku. But you deserve the chance to get bored of me.” The truth of that statement burns and Izuku wonders if that would be painful if he could still feel things like physical pain. “Besides, you heard what Katsuki said, it’s a green card thing. If you don’t want to be with me romantically, the marriage isn’t even legal for the living world anyway.”

Finally, Izuku hiccups a laugh and he begins to think this might actually be an okay idea. He’s just about to nod, about to give his consent to a lifetime of being tied to Shouto, when he hears a creak behind him and both himself and Shouto jerk their gazes to the creaky floorboard in the living room. Looking up at them is Inko, and much like Izuku, she looks like she would be crying if they should.

Shouto looks back to Izuku and he sees the conflict raging in him. He’s not stupid, he knows that Izuku feels guilty for his mom’s death. He wouldn’t be surprised if Izuku chose to stay dead just for his mother’s sake, even though Shouto knows Inko would never approve of that choice. He resigns himself to the rejection even before Izuku looks back to him with heartbreak in his eyes but a shaky smile on his face.

“I’m sorry, Shouto, but I can’t.” And with that, he’s gone. When Shouto looks back down the stairs, Inko is gone too.

Slowly, Shouto trudges his way to his room. He knows he’s being selfish, but he can’t help being upset. All he wants to do is repay Izuku for all the help he’s given him in the last week of living together. Plus, it wouldn’t be terrible to have an actual friend for the first time in his life when he starts school in a few weeks. Shouto crashes into his bed, not even bothering to change out of his wedding tux, and soon enough he decides he deserves the discomfort of the outfit. After all, it’s got nothing on how he must have made Izuku feel, trying to shove his feelings onto the boy. After all, Izuku already has so much of his own troubles, not to mention how much he’s already taken on for Shouto, he shouldn’t have to take that on too.

That thought process can only go on for so long before Shouto has to drag himself out of bed and toward the stairs. There is a single moment when he reaches them and Shouto almost goes down. In that moment, he wonders if it’d be for the best to just leave the Midoriyas and not burden them anymore, even with something as seemingly simple as a goodbye. But then he thinks about how sad he would be if he never saw Izuku again and he knows he has to at least tell them why he’s leaving. So up he goes.

When Shouto reaches the attic, the Midoriyas aren’t even there. Not that he should have expected them to be. He’d probably hide from himself if he were in their position. Looking around, Shouto wonders if he should just wait for them to come back or if he should write them a note to find when they return. Time works differently for them, so leaving a note is probably the smart thing to do, but he really wants to see them one more time.

Voices drift into the room, ripping Shouto from his thoughts. He can’t tell what they’re saying but he knows them. He follows the sound to the window, which he finds to be slightly open, and there he sees Inko and Izuku on the roof. If he didn’t know them better, Shouto would even say they were arguing.

“-eason to turn him down. I love you, Izuku, and I will always love you. You don’t need to be stuck here with me for that,” Inko says, tears in her voice even though Shouto knows she can’t produce them anymore.

“Why should I get another chance at life, Mom?” Izuku asks, his voice so broken that it brings tears to Shouto’s eyes for the first time since he got his scar. When he speaks again, his voice is muffled and Shouto looks back up from scrubbing away the tears to see that it’s because Izuku’s face is buried in Inko’s shoulder. “I’m the reason we died, Mom. If anyone should live again, it should be you.”

Inko pushes Izuku away and holds him at arm’s length by his shoulders. “Now, Izuku, I never want to hear you say that again,” Inko scolds, her voice almost as firm as it was when she was telling Mitsuki to leave Shouto and Katsuki alone. “You are not the reason we died. Just as much as I didn’t kill my baby by choosing to leave the house that day. I know it’s hard to accept, but this is just what the universe had in store for us and nothing we do can change the universe’s plan. But now it’s offering you another chance and if you turn it down because of me, I could never forgive myself.”

It’s obviously difficult for him, but Izuku slowly nods at her before collapsing into her arms for a hug. “But what if Shouto was just caught up in the moment and doesn’t mean it? I really like him, Mom, what will I do if he was just being nice?”

Shouto has no doubt that Inko knows the right words to fix it for Izuku, but he has to step in before she needs to. Climbing onto the roof, Shouto says, “I wasn’t just being nice, Izuku. I’m sure this is strange or unusual, but I would really like a chance to date you.”

Izuku jumps when he hears Shouto, but Inko just smiles at him and Shouto wonders if she knew he was there all along. “Are… Are you sure?” Izuku asks, wringing his hands and looking back and Inko like he’s asking both of them for permission one final time; asking Inko if he can really be happy and Shouto if it can really be with him.

Shouto smiles and steps forward, reaching for Izuku’s hands with both of his. Izuku knows if he reaches out for them there will be fire waiting for him, but he reaches anyway and relishes in the burn. “I went to hell and back for you, Izuku. I’ve never been more sure.”

Izuku laughs at that even though he knows Shouto’s not joking and finally. Finally he says with a certainty he doesn’t think he’s ever had before, “Ok. I’ll marry you.” Just like that, the fire is gone from his hands. With the intensity leaving so suddenly, Izuku misses the more gentle warmth and bursts into tears, thinking it was all just some massive joke the universe was playing on him.

But then, he feels the wetness on his cheeks and oh yeah, that’s what it feels like to be able to cry, and what’s that roughness on his cheeks. Opening his eyes, Izuku sees Shouto looking at him with concern flooding his eyes and a frown tugging his lips down. “I didn’t know you had so many callouses, too,” he says, reaching up to cup Shouto’s hands where they work at wiping away his tears. Just as suddenly as he came to life, a smile bursts through his tears and he beams up at Shouto.

The frown is wiped from Shouto’s face in an instant, a small smile of his own replacing it, and he leans closer to knock his forehead against Izuku’s. Izuku tries to keep looking at Shouto, but he’s forced to close his eyes when he can’t focus at such a close proximity. “Your voice sounds different now. More solid.”

“I was scared it didn’t work,” Izuku admits quietly, now that he can’t see whatever expression Shouto is making and he’s sure everything is real.

Shouto huffs out a laugh and nods, “Me too.” It takes real effort to pick his head up, and Izuku whines when he does, but he needs to see Izuku for real. Know that he’s really there. Dragging his eyes over him, he thinks he looks more real than before, but he also doesn’t really know how he expects him to look. It’s not like Shouto thought he looked dead before.

But then Izuku opens his eyes and they are so vibrant that Shouto can’t believe he ever thought that dull green from before was how they were supposed to look.

“So,” Shouto asks, and he can feel the dopey smile on his face that matches the one beaming right back at him, “what do you want to do now that you’re alive?”

#my beetlejuice academia #i'm thinking of changing the title to 'my hero beetlejuice'#because that's funnier #i'm so tired dude #this took so much from me

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bardofv0id · 6 years ago

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Meat vs. Candy: Meat

Here’s the thing.

I’m hearing two main arguments online... a lot of people saying the epilogues are Terrible, for various reasons, and a few people saying they're Good, with a smaller but vocal subset of those people arguing that if you don’t like them then you’re obviously just expecting to be spoon-fed a fluff ending in which the Character You Like gets a wish-fulfillment storybook epilogue.

There are probably some people who are mad about not getting that. However, I think misrepresenting the range of anger various parts of the fandom are experiencing as being purely some kind of childish knee-jerk tantrum at not getting the toy they wanted is disingenuous, at best, and parallels some of the mistakes of the epilogues themselves. Note that this in no way excuses or justifies people sending the writers or anyone else death-threats or whatever the hell else has been going on.

Honestly... the Meat ending was pretty good writing, in my opinion. It wasn’t comfortable or happy or flattering in any way to a number of characters who I recognize people care deeply about, but it was nothing really worse than I expected from Earth C, based on the fundamental narrative of Lord English’s giant closed-loop system. The loop had to close, in order for Homestuck proper to occur at all. That means that Earth C is where Calliope and Caliborn hatch and grow up, far, far in the future. And that means that universe, like the others, will be destroyed by a SBURB session one day. Sorry, folks. It was never meant to be a 'happy ending'.

Meat was deeply metatextual. It was gristly and greasy and discomfiting. It raised questions about what it means to have a narrator, and whose biases are implicitly included--and I think those are very interesting questions to raise, whether or not they are particularly satisfying to someone who is also reading for the characters.

Spoilers beyond the read-more, for obvious reasons.

That said, there were elements that did surprise me. The removal of the other kids from different points in different doomed timelines, to fight with John against LE, rather than being his teammates from Earth C--but from John’s perspective, it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference. Either way, they’re not fully ‘real’ to him (and barely feel real to us, as quickly as they appear and then die). He’s from the Game Over timeline, he’s battling depression, and nobody in the retcon timeline is really quite authentic to him, either--just as to many fans, they didn’t feel quite authentic, when the retcon happened and we had to suddenly let go of the characters we'd watched grow and change, replaced by funhouse mirror reflections and could-have-beens.

I’ve also seen some reasonably interesting arguments that a lot of Dirk’s narration, in the Meat route, either sounds eerily like Vriska talking or flips back and forth between Vriska-mode and Dirk-mode, well before alt!Calliope ever gets involved. I’m prepared to believe some Serket element (whether that is potentially Vriska, or the Aranea who was abruptly displaced from her attempt at wresting control of the narrative by John) was involved there, and Dirk was not acting entirely of his own accord. I’m also prepared to shrug and say “okay, maybe it was just a narrative parallel--Homestuck does that a lot”. Some narration, especially when Terezi is involved, doesn't sound at all how I would expect a Serket-influenced narrator to sound with regards to her, in particular. It doesn’t particularly grind my gears to think some version of Dirk, in the right environment, might make a series of choices that leads him to behaving like this, entirely on his own. I recognize that it’s upsetting to DirkJake fans in particular to see their favorite pairing written like this, but it doesn’t feel wholly out of character to me for either of them to develop in these directions, given the right (or wrong) pressures and external situations. This Dirk is the culmination of a very wide multiplicity of Dirks, including at least one if not more who ended up directly subsumed in Lord English and/or under his explicit influence.

I’ve heard that some people were attacking the Meat route on the grounds of transphobia, which... I think is a rather weak argument, given that it’s recognized in the text itself, as pronoun changes are handled respectfully by one narrator-character and inconsistently by a second, who is being set up as the villain of the story. That seems like a pretty solid metatextual rejection of the action, no? Like, if a villain does a bad thing, in a story, while the hero is fighting them, do you argue that the story itself advocates for that thing? There has to be some kind of distinction between ‘character does X’ and ‘author of story advocates X is Morally Correct’, or we would never have any villains at all. Dirk's dismissiveness toward Roxy's agency grows, the further toward 'villain' he slides.

Were there some things I liked, in Meat? I guess. From a sociopolitical and cultural standpoint, the shitty repercussions of the way the retcon gang set up a planet, dumped a bunch of chess people and clone grubs, then left them to do all the work of creating its society and waiting for their eventual 'godly' return... were pretty logical. I'm actually happy that it was acknowledged, instead of just brushed off as inconsequential. It was interesting, too, to see some of the kids playing with notions of gender identity as they grew, and how their companions adjusted. It was telling (in terms of Dirk's character development) how he thought of Roxy and Calliope's gender explorations as something he could choose to 'allow' or not. Also, with how truncated most of the gang's personal development (and plot development) was in Homestuck proper ('thanks', retcon!Vriska), I think it kinda made sense how stunted and incapable of like... dealing with regular life in a functional way a lot of them seemed. Jumping straight to teenage 'godhood' didn't make them experienced or smart. It's sad that all of them just kind of... stagnate there, but Earth C has always felt incredibly stagnant to me.

Retcon!Vriska getting swallowed by the black hole was at least thematically fitting, though I'm wondering why she is using such Seer-themed language, suddenly. I also like that the wallet is finally back in play. Rose and Dirk's philosophical debate about individuation and free will is delightfully creepy, given the themes of the story. There are moments, within the story, that the turns of phrase and the humor just hit me full in the teeth and remind me this is Homestuck, and I do love those moments. And of course, my xenobiological worldbuilding interests enjoyed that apparently, earth onions are quite toxic to trolls.

Were there things I didn’t like in Meat? Yeah, of course. I don't particularly like that John, an Heir of Breath--one who is innately positioned to awaken Breath, freedom and motivation in the people around him--callously shoves an unresisting teenager he's barely met into a refrigerator and just leaves him there, apparently convinced he deserves it.

Did some of the things I disliked relate to the storytelling itself, rather than just how characters were characterized, or what actions they took? Yeah. Why are we still out here queer-baiting with Dave and Karkat? Years have passed. They have spent literal years sitting 1.5 feet apart so it's 'not gay'? I sincerely don't think this pairing is actually healthy or beneficial to either of them, the way it developed in canon, but come on. Then, they still balk and drag their feet unless it's being narratively pushed on them by someone else. It's just painful to watch.

I also take a certain level of personal offense as a Tavros fan when the narrative goes out of its way to repeatedly harp on Tavros being useless and no one giving a shit what he's doing. Ghost Tavros was awesome, okay, and was personally responsible for gathering the ghost army, so fuck you, Vriska-coded narrator. You have bad judgment. But that is not a crime of writing, if it is an intentionally biased perspective and not just writers taking cheap shots at a character they don't happen to like. I'm just incredibly tired of it being done habitually and collectively, as a fandom, to that character in particular. Furthermore, I'm really discomfited by the way Tavros's development (am I the only one who remembers him dancing and telling Vriska to suck it?) is completely ignored and de-legitimized by having him immediately fawning on her, trailing around after her, hiding against her shoulder, etc. Tavros was a victim of emotional and physical abuse, at Vriska's hands. Can we just agree to stop narratively forcing victims back into contact with their abusers, period? It's not a good look.

Moreover, there's the whole misogyny angle. When does a story about misogynistic characters (and narrators) doing misogynistic things while misogynistic shit narratively happens start being a critique of misogynistic tropes rather than a tired old rehash? Every step Jane (allegedly a strong, independent woman, though also stepping into her dictatorial role as 'Heiress') takes is either dictated by Dirk, sent into a complete tailspin that upends her confidence by Jake, or verbally decried as factually wrong and/or stupid by Dave and/or Karkat. Rose and Kanaya both have their agency overwritten and end up separated from each other through the actions of Dirk, and Rose becomes an extension of Dirk, losing her very selfhood. Jade is treated as an accessory to the DaveKat trainwreck, simultaneously discounted as actually emotionally relevant and blamed for its ludicrous problems. She, of course, also ends up having her agency overwritten as she's plunged into a coma and possessed, prevented from actually having reactions to the things that are going on, or taking action for herself. Borrowed!Rose and Jade are KO'd almost instantly in the fight against Lord English, and become either literally erased, or dead weight for a male character to drag around until it's no longer convenient. Terezi admits to wasting a huge amount of time trailing around after Vriska--who was an emotionally abusive gaslighter to her, on the retcon!meteor. (And we're back to victims being constantly evaluated according to their proximity to their abusers again.) Then, she's on to redirecting herself into some quest on John's behalf, instead. She's still not living for herself. Finally, you show me an Aradia who would ever, ever be concerned about 'saying more embarrassing stuff' around Dave, or thinking of him as an ‘outrageously cool dude’, and I'll show you a bridge I'd like to sell you. That ain't any Aradia I've ever seen. So who’s narrating there, Dirk again? A third party?

Other weird things: apparently Jane's kidnapping in the snapchats just... never gets explained or referenced again? I went back to reread those, and they connected to Meat even more than I realized at first. I guess Jane grew up to be... exactly what she was raised/groomed to be, which is *uncomfortable* but not particularly shocking. I feel bad for people who were hoping for happier endings for the human kids, but I don't think I ever really expected Homestuck to serve up happy endings. I don't buy that things in the snapchat were just thrown in at random, though. Those elements were there for a reason, and arguing that everything in the snapchats were connected to the epilogues EXCEPT that one major extended plotline doesn't make sense. Especially when it visually and narratively seems to be a direct link to the events of the Meat storyline.

Also, where the fuck are the sprites? We never see or hear from Jasprosesprite, Gcatavrosprite, or the Nannasprite(s?) again. I’m not sure anyone cares, but. Uh. Yeah.

I have other thoughts regarding the classpect-coded language that crops up pretty frequently in the epilogues, but I think I will devote a separate post to that, if I get around to it, given that this *is* at heart a classpecting blog.

So anyway, Meat ends, it's depressing and futile and grim, I get it. I don't like every element, but it hangs together as a story with a narrative, overall.

Then we get to Candy.

Hoo boy.

I’ll tackle that one next, but as it was considerably more upsetting for me to read, rereading it for fact-checks and commentary is going to be a lot harder for me. I’ll get through it here sooner or later, though.

#homestuck #upd8 #upd8 spoilers #homestuck epilogue #epilogue spoilers #spoilers #tw: abuse #tw: misogyny

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bevioletskies · 6 years ago

Text

across the universe [2/8]

summary: Peter, the son of the Chancellor, has lived among the stars for the first ten years of his life. Gamora, the future Commander of Terra, has lived on the ground for the first ten years of hers. Though it’s finally time for the last survivors of the so-called apocalypse to return to Earth, they might not be prepared for what’s waiting for them. But when Peter and Gamora meet and find their worlds irreversibly tangled together, titles, obligations, and the impending war may be the very last thing on their minds.

a/n: The premise of this fic is very loosely based off of The 100, the television show more so than the book series. However, no previous knowledge is required, as I only used the basic concept and language, and none of the storylines or characters arcs from the show.

Fic title is from the song Across The Universe by The Beatles. Prologue can be found here. Warning for injuries, blood, and bad parenting.

word count: 11.4k | ao3 | tag

Gamora felt as if she looked a bit strange to anyone who happened to be nearby - hopefully, nobody - sitting under a tree, tapping one foot impatiently as she sharpened her favorite blade. Logically, she knew it would be safer to hide at the top of the tree in case she came across the wrong clan, but there was a sort of nervous energy pulsating through her that needed to be expended, different to the kind of energy she felt during a training session (or a real fight).

While she waited, her mind wandered to earlier in the morning when she was at breakfast with Nebula. It was hard to look at her sometimes, to see the pieces of her that were no longer her, the pieces that glinted in the sunlight and echoed with a metallic clang when struck. To their father, a broken leg meant a replaced one, an offhand complaint about being unable to hear something meant a complete overhaul of her sensory system. To him, a lost fight meant everything. Gamora looked down to her own arm, watched the silver twist and turn underneath her skin like new veins. They still burned sometimes.

“Gamora?”

She quickly drew her arm behind her back and looked up to see Peter standing there, a boyish grin on his face. He was dressed differently than when she saw him three weeks ago, his hair longer and curling slightly over his shining eyes. The most notable thing, however, was the glow of his hands, and in his cupped palms was a crudely-made rubber ball. “Hapotei.”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“Happy birthday,” she sighed; she could’ve sworn she’d taught him that last time after they agreed to meet on his eleventh birthday. They’d been meeting in secret for six months now, starting off as her simply teaching him some basics of the language and the planet, then quickly developing into tentative, but hopeful friendship. She also conveniently left out the fact that she was a daughter of Thanos. In all fairness, he spoke fondly of his mother and sister but didn’t speak of his father, either, and they left it at that. She knew it was risky for both of them to be spending time together, but she found herself genuinely enjoying his company, found that she felt just a little bit less like their great and terrible world was waiting for her to lead the way. He was the only person in her life who didn’t know her predetermined fate.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she got to her feet and went to join him, stashing her blade as she did. “I think it’s weird that your people remember what day they were born.”

“I think it sucks that your people don’t,” he shot back, though not unkindly. “But c’mon, isn’t this cool? Made it myself!” He held out his hands, proud. She poked the ball gingerly, leaving a permanent fingerprint on its surface. “Okay, so it’s not the best thing ever - ”

“It’s...better,” she said slowly, thinking back to the time he’d presented her with what looked like an approximation of a deflated balloon. She had asked him about the light the second time they met since she never got the chance during their first encounter, and ever since then, he’d been far too eager to bring deformed creations along with him. “You’re getting better.” Her eyes flickered upwards to his shoulders, taking in the shiny red leather. “Your jacket...it smells new.”

“You can smell - yeah, okay,” Peter chuckled. “Yeah, it’s a birthday present from Yondu. Oh, and my mom gave me this!” He unhooked something from the belt loop of his jeans and held it out to her, some rectangular device that looked positively ancient compared to all the technology they both had access to. She carefully took it, turning it over in her hands as if it would magically explain itself. “It’s called a Walkman. Plays music.”

“My people don’t have music,” Gamora said. Peter looked scandalized. “What do you do with it?”

“Do? Nothin’. You listen to it. Or you can dance.” He shrugged.

“My people don’t dance,” she retorted, sullen.

“No birthdays, no dancin’...your people really don’t know how to have fun,” Peter grinned. “You gotta dance with me sometime.”

Gamora looked at him dubiously. “...no.”

He only laughed, bright and notably cheerful, even for him, and ambled on down the slope toward the stream, gesturing for her to follow. She huffed impatiently - honestly, she gave him one orienteering lesson and suddenly he was acting like he was the expert - but followed him regardless.

The weather was idyllic, far nicer than it had any right to be. Last night had been another night of war, the kind that raged on until sunrise, when blood seemed brighter and bolder and ridden with guilt. Thanos and Ego had been attacking each other from afar, still having never met in person, and every day it seemed like there was at least another name or two or ten that both sides were left to mourn. Gamora had grown numb to it; Peter had not, holding his breath every time his father had another announcement to make. It was something they never talked about.

“I don’t wanna learn nothin’ new today. Let’s just...sit.” Peter plopped down unceremoniously beside the stream, his legs sprawled out across the pebbles, not caring for the way the water trickled between them, dampening the underside of his jeans.

“If it’s your birthday, how did you get away from your family? Don’t they want to spend time with you?” Gamora asked, sitting neatly beside him. She drew her knees into her chest, away from the water.

“Parents are working, sister’s with her friends. They didn’t even see me leave,” he said, shrugging. “Mom said she’s gonna make me a cake later.”

“Your mother sounds so perfect whenever you talk about her,” she said wistfully. Peter perked up.

“You wanna meet her?”

Gamora was startled by the question. It had never crossed her mind that she and Peter could exist outside of the space they’d created for themselves. She knew she certainly didn’t want Peter to get anywhere near her world, still remembering the awful way he’d looked at her when she mercy-killed one of her soldiers on the night they met. She didn’t want him to look at her like that ever again.

“Maybe,” she hummed, hoping she sounded more nonchalant than she felt. The idea of a parent who loved their children was not something she’d ever entertained. There were plenty of loving families within Sanctuary’s walls, sure, but it was mostly parents adoring the children who were strong enough to become warriors, and disregarding those who weren’t. Her mind went to Drax again, how he used to sit by himself at meals until Gamora (and a reluctant Nebula) decided to join him. Losing his parents so young had done him no favors in so many unfortunate and unforeseeable ways.

“Then come back with me.” Gamora had been so lost in her own thoughts, she nearly forgot what Peter was talking about. “You can have cake and meet my family! Or I guess, my mom and my sister.”

“Not your father?” she asked.

“Everyone says he’s not a ‘family man’,” he said dismissively. “Y’know, whatever that means.”

“I don’t,” she said, frowning. “Does he work a lot? You make him sound like a very important person.”

“He’s...uh...yeah, you could say that,” Peter hedged, refusing to meet her eyes. Gamora’s frown deepened.

“Is he part of your army?” she persisted. “Like a general? A captain?”

“Like...he’s kind of…” He scratched at a non-existent itch on the back of his hand, his gaze now fully cast downward into his own lap. “...the Chancellor.”

Gamora shot to her feet, her mind racing with possibilities, her heart beating with betrayal. Already, she could feel tears burning hot in her eyes, taunting her for letting trust overtake instinct. “Your father is the one killing my people?!”

“Your people started it,” Peter mumbled petulantly, cowering, though he knew it was only going to make things worse. “My mom and all them others, they just wanted their planet back. I don’t see why we gotta die for it.”

“I can’t - ” Gamora exhaled, resting one hand on her stomach, fingers splayed outward, willing herself to calm down. “There are orphans, Peter. Children who don’t have parents because your father wanted it that way.”

“You think we don’t got that, too?” His voice was rapidly rising; fists balled up in his lap. He didn’t want to give Gamora the satisfaction of knowing she’d angered him; Meredith had told him too many times before that he needed to be better with his temperament. “Everyone...everyone’s got dead people. ‘Cos of my dad, and...what’s his name again?”

“Thanos.” Gamora swallowed. “My father.”

Now it was Peter’s turn to have his blood run cold, to have his mouth fall open in a rather comical manner, though neither of them were laughing. “You gotta be kiddin’.” When she shook her head, he also got to his feet, shaking off the damp bits of grass that had stuck to his clothes. “Some birthday I’m having.” With that, he turned and ran off, ignoring Gamora calling after him, a voice he’d been so thrilled to hear when he first arrived, a voice that now made him feel vaguely ill.

“Peter, please!” Gamora shouted, even after he was long gone, and she groaned in frustration, collapsing back down onto the ground, not caring when her boots struck the water and splashed the hems of her pants. It amazed her how terrible everything had become so quickly, how awfully serendipitous it was that the one Skaikru she’d befriended was her equivalent in the worst possible way. She wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling them back into her chest.

Inhale, exhale, she told herself, trying to think of all the breathing exercises she’d been taught, the rules that had been drilled in her head. She could almost hear Thanos’s voice, paradoxically dull and menacing at the same time: “Your anger doesn’t feed you, daughter, it starves you. What you need is focus. You are a plangona, the future heda. Do not waste your breath on those who don’t deserve it.” Her eyes slid closed, her breath evening out, gentle. In. Out. In. Out.

In her peace, Gamora never saw the unfamiliar hands that reached out for her.

Peter returned to New Arkardia not too long after he left, his face and fists still burning with anger. He was instantly waved through the gates upon his arrival, weaving through the crowd of people who either reached out to greet him with far too much enthusiasm or looked at him with far too much derision.

He reached his house a few minutes later, a happy medium between his father’s lust for luxury and his mother’s desire for normalcy, built a mere two days after they landed on Earth. Peter had to admit, as much as he despised Ego’s over-the-top approach to just about everything, the New Arkadia settlement was something to be proud of. It was a small, self-contained town, with dirt roads winding and snaking along between the trees, houses and community buildings nestled along the way, running alongside the river. They had a steady stream of food and supplies, all the adults had settled back into the jobs they had on the original Ark, and the children had mostly adjusted to their newfound freedom, the ability to take in fresh air after a long day in the classroom. However, no one strayed too far from their territory, knowing that the other factions were still hunting them, waiting to chase them right off the earth.

“Peter, is that you?” Meredith called from the living room when he opened the front door. “Where’ve you been runnin’ off to, baby?”

“Followin’ Yondu around,” he lied easily, kicking off his shoes. He went to join her, still awed at the fact they had more than one couch, bookshelves that went all the way to the ceiling, thick pile rugs and quilted blankets and a crackling fireplace. It was a bit like the bigger apartment they’d had when he and Mantis were younger before Ego shuffled them off to their smaller place in favor of investing in their return to Earth, full of quiet luxuries he didn’t realize he’d missed so much.

“That’s odd, because I just left my graveyard shift at the medical center and Yondu was there, checkin’ up on that guard of his who got speared last night.” Meredith clicked her tongue to punctuate her point, though her eyes never left the book she was reading. “Don’t lie to me, Peter. You’ve been sneaking out on us, and as your mother, I have the right to know who, where, and why.”

Peter hesitated. “I made a friend.”

“What’s their name?” she pressed, flipping the page.

“Don’t matter,” he grouched. “We got into a fight. That’s why I came back.”

Meredith finally set her book aside, sweeping Peter up in her arms. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry. I’m sure things’ll smooth over eventually. They must be special if you wanted to spend your birthday with them. How far were you?”

“Outside the gates,” he mumbled into her shoulder. She instantly released him.

“Peter,” she exclaimed, the growl in her voice causing him to recoil. “Do you think your daddy made all them rules just because he can? Do you think I’m stitchin’ up wounds, day and night, because our guards just got a little clumsy?”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” He sank further into the couch cushions, ashamed. “I just...wanted to get closer to the river. The forest gets kinda boring after a while.”

“You only go outside the gates if you’ve got Yondu with you, you hear me?” She cupped his chin, tilting his head upward so his eyes could meet hers. “You promise me that.”

Peter muttered another apology, then curled into her side again, soothed by her warmth and her perfume. He didn’t want to think about how things had gone so wrong an hour ago, all the things he thought he understood about Gamora and their newfound friendship now soured by their respective truths. Of course, a part of him still wanted to see her again, but he had a feeling it wasn’t meant to be.

Gamora woke to a dull throbbing in her temples and an ache in her side. She pushed herself up into a seated position, taking stock of her surroundings, and her heart lurched in the realization that she was somewhere entirely unfamiliar. At most, she could tell she was in an underground cellar, with old-fashioned metal bars and sturdy stone walls, none of the advanced technology that Thanos used for the prisons on Sanctuary. An opposing faction, then. Can’t be Azgeda, she thought dizzily, prodding herself for broken bones, sprained joints and pulled muscles. They don’t take people alive.

It wasn’t long before two soldiers came thundering down the steps, leering at her from the cellar door. “Heda,” one of them said mockingly, threading his spear between the bars so he could prod her in the shoulder. He pressed deeply enough to draw just the tiniest bit of blood. “Did you sleep well?”

“Let me go - ” She banged her fists against the bars with a snarl. “I command you, shilkru. Let. Me. Go.”

“You are in no position to make demands. You are not our leader, wanheda is,” the other said; his voice was colder, more monotonous. “What business does he have, choosing a child as his successor?”

“Why do you care? You don’t follow him anyway,” Gamora retorted.

“It matters when we all live here, heda. It matters when your decisions could wipe out this planet, again. What is it about you that makes you so special?”

She faltered. Thanos always told her she was stronger, cleverer, fiercer than the others, but she didn’t feel that way. His army had children who were far more ruthless, and she could only imagine what the younglings of the rival factions were like. For people who had arrived here with some of the most sophisticated technology and weaponry in the entire galaxy, they’d all resorted to savagery far too quickly. “Let me go,” she repeated, gritting her teeth. “You won’t get what you want like this.”

“There must be something about you that wanheda prefers over his adult ‘children’,” the first one continued, tapping the spear against the bars, enjoying the way Gamora shivered with every rattle it made. “And if it means we should hold you here until he listens to our demands, so be it.”

“What could you want that you don’t have?” she asked. “I thought Boudalankru took most of our supplies during the first Conclave.”

The soldiers exchanged glances. “How did you know - ”

“You wear stones around your neck and waists, your cellars are made of stone,” she pointed out. “Who else would you be?” She felt an odd sense of satisfaction at their defeated expressions, though there was no time for celebration. “Wanheda will not come for me. He will not listen to you. So kill me, or let me go.”

The stone-faced one stepped even closer, pressing his face against the bars. She could smell his breath; he was close enough to see the sweat forming on her brow. “What did you say?”

“I said…” Gamora’s voice cracked as she reached out, trembling, to grip the head of his spear and pull it right underneath her chin, its tip pressing into the underside of her jaw. “...kill me, or let me go.”

The other soldier put his hand on his companion’s shoulder, tugging him back in warning. “Koken hainofi...tsa bants.”

“Heda, nou hainofi.” She shoved the spear back through the bars and into the soldier’s chest. Though her breath was still coming in short, her palms bloody and her knees buckling beneath her, she couldn’t help but smile as the two of them sprinted up the steps, a large wooden door hastily slamming shut behind them. “Bushhadas,” she muttered. She then turned to look at the cellar, how bare it was, how there was nothing she could to do to free herself. Well, she thought, rolling her jacket sleeves up, not yet.

Two days came and went, and Peter was still restless over what had happened on his birthday. The rest of the night had actually been kind of nice - they had an intimate family dinner at their house, with Yondu and Kraglin dropping by for cake. Even his father had been less moody than usual, though it was mostly because he’d been boasting about his recent “victory” over the Grounders, as the Arkadians had taken to calling them. Afterward, though, Peter moped around in his room, unable to concentrate on his studies or even his usual bouts of self-appointed mischief.

Then, on a miraculously quiet evening in which there were no deaths, no injuries, no war chants or cries to be heard, Peter and Mantis were doing their homework in the living room when she suddenly sat up. Her antennae glowered, casting an eerie light across her face. “Someone is at the gates.”

Ego, who was sitting opposite them, poring over his blueprints for a recreation center, shot to his feet. “Grounder?”

“I think...it is a Grounder child,” Mantis mused. Peter froze.

“Meredith!” Ego called while he pulled on his coat, not bothering to wait for her answer. “There’s an intruder at the gates, watch the children!”

“Dad, wait - ”

“No, Peter, you stay here. Be safe,” Ego insisted, sharply patting them both on the cheeks before sweeping out the front door. Meredith emerged from her private study and came down the stairs moments later.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“There is a Grounder child at the gates,” Mantis repeated. “They are by themselves.”

“Oh, poor darling. Must’ve gotten lost,” Meredith murmured, resting a hand over her heart. “I’m sure your daddy’s gonna help ‘em get right back home - ”

“He didn’t say that,” Peter interrupted. “He said ‘intruder’, not ‘kid’.”

“Peter, you know that don’t mean anything,” Meredith scolded lightly, gesturing for them both to settle back down. “Finish your homework now, you’ve got that big presentation tomorrow.”

Reluctantly, they followed suit, sinking back into the couch and picking up their books again. Meredith briefly went upstairs to grab her stack of patient records and bring them back down with her so she could stay close by, though her eyes flickered to the door every few minutes, tapping her foot against the back of her opposite ankle in restlessness.

Not ten minutes went by before the door burst open and Ego stumbled in, practically tripping over his own feet, breathless. “I need all of you to come with me. Now.”

It didn’t take long for them to reach the gates, Peter’s mind and heart racing the entire time. Mantis reached for him and squeezed his hand. At first, he thought it was for herself, that maybe she was worried or scared, until he felt the tension in his body slowly ease its way out. Her breath hitched briefly, followed by a shaky exhale. He turned to smile at her in silent gratitude.

The four of them made their way to the top of the watchtower, joining the two guards who were eyeing something apprehensively on the other side of the gate. Peter had to squint to make sense of what he was seeing, the darkness of the forest swallowing up everything from sight. Then, a silhouette of a child came into focus, short and lanky, but clearly trying to stand tall, to look bigger than they really were. His heart sank when he realized this particular child had no hair.

“She’s been talkin’ that nonsense Grounder talk since she got here,” Ego muttered, his eyes full of hunger. “At first, I thought she was just a distraction for the guards, but then I heard a single word, just one word that I recognized.”

“Ai ste lufa Petr kom Skaikru au,” she called. Her voice was monotonous, dull. “Ai laik Nebula kom Trikru, strisis kom Gamora.”

“Peter? Any idea what she’s saying?” Ego asked urgently.

He hesitated. Mantis, noticing the tremble in his mouth, stood on her toes to peer over the railing, straining her neck to get a better look. “She is desperate.” Meredith made a soft noise of sympathy, reaching to gently pull Mantis back in before she could fall.

“Ai laik Petr kom Skaikru. Weron laik Gamora?” All three of them turned to look at Peter, astonished. Before they could ask the dozens of questions on their mind, Yondu came thundering up the steps, stopping to briefly growl at the guard who stood post at the bottom of the tower and dared remind him of the watchtower’s weight capacity, and shoved his way to Peter’s side.

“You know this kid?” Yondu demanded, gripping Peter’s arm. “You been talkin’ to Grounders?”

“You!” Everyone jumped at Nebula’s sudden language switch, turning back to look at her in time to see her scoff derisively at Peter in a way that made him shrink into himself. “You are my sister’s friend?”

“Not really,” he said, hating the way his voice shook, hating the way everyone’s eyes were fixated on him - not just his family’s, not just Yondu’s, but all the Arkadians who had gathered near the gates, watching the spectacle of the Chancellor’s child, of all people, speaking the Grounder language. “She’s not talkin’ to me no more.”

“She is missing.” Peter’s blood ran cold. “She never came home after she left camp to see you.”

“Did she...did she tell you about me?”

Nebula smirked; it was the first expression she’d made that wasn’t entirely neutral. Somehow, it was even more unsettling. The fact she was quite casually staring down the guards who stood directly opposite her, pointing guns at her head, didn’t help matters, either. “She keeps a box under her bed with these odd...things in it. When she didn’t come home, I went looking for clues in her room and found it, with the word ‘Petr’ written on the lid. There is no Petr in Trikru.” Peter’s face reddened, both out of embarrassment and delight.

“Peter, what is going on here?” Ego said lowly, reaching around Meredith to grab Peter. Before he could, Yondu stepped sideways to block him, holding up his hands defensively. “Captain, step away from my son.”

“You let your boy be, Chancellor, clearly they got a lot to talk about,” Yondu countered, half-bowing his head out of respect, though it only seemed to infuriate Ego further. “And boys, can you stop pointin’ your weapons at the kid already? You’re makin’ me nervous!” The guards slowly lowered their guns, exchanging shameful looks amongst themselves. Nebula seemed unbothered either way.

“We were yelling at each other a bunch, and then I guess I just...left her there,” Peter said, turning back to Nebula, his heart sinking. “Do you think that maybe...someone took her? Like one of the other clans?”

Her chin tilted downward, casting her gaze to her feet. “Maybe,” she repeated, her voice hollow. Then, shaking herself, she turned to leave.

“Wait,” Peter called. She paused mid-step. “I can show you where we were, maybe it’ll help you find her.”

“No, you are not to leave Arkadia,” Ego interrupted firmly, finally managing to step around Yondu and make a literal attempt to shake some sense into Peter, his fingers digging welts his shoulders. “Can’t you see, Peter? This is a trap! Their men are waiting for you on the other side of the ridge.”

“But Dad, if somethin’ happened to her, it’s all my fault,” Peter protested. “I shoulda stayed - ”

“And whoever took that girl would’ve taken you, too. You think they’re looking to make the distinction?” Ego growled. “No, you’re coming straight home with us. Let Yondu’s guards take care of the little actress down there.”

“Ego,” Meredith warned. “Don’t you go after that girl. She’s just lookin’ for her sister, she’s not here to play tricks.”

“This is the first day in months that we’ve had no attacks, and suddenly she shows up, you think that’s a coincidence?” Ego snapped, gesturing wildly in Nebula’s direction. Still, she remained unmoved, arms folded across her chest and tapping her foot like they were mildly inconveniencing her. “You take the kids home, Meredith. Right now.”

“If I may, Chancellor, I think your missus has a point,” Yondu said, clearing his throat. “Now, you know me, I can smell a rat a mile away, and I don’t smell nothing right now. Let me take your boy to help ‘er, and he’ll be safe with me.”

Peter turned to Meredith with wide eyes. “You said I could only go outside the gates when I’m with Yondu, remember?”

She couldn’t help but chuckle, bending down to meet him at eye level, running her fingers through his hair, stopping to cup his chin. “I did, didn’t I? What kind of mother would I be if I went back on my word, hmm?”

“Still the best kind,” Peter said simply, smiling. Meredith laughed, kissing his cheek before straightening up. She then turned to Yondu, her expression hardening somewhat.

“You don’t go any farther than where he was with his friend. After that, you let her people, her sister, find her. You come straight home, you hear me?” Meredith ordered. Peter nodded eagerly while Ego let out a resounding protest that fell on deaf ears. “Now you two go and help bring her home.”

Peter could still hear his parents whisper-shouting urgently at each other as he and Yondu passed through the gates, could still picture Mantis’s tiny but brave face as she stood between them, wondering silently if taking their emotions would do her more harm than good. He reached out to grab Yondu’s arm, knowing he’d be embarrassed if he attempted to grab his hand. “Thanks, Yondu,” he said, grinning up at him. “It’s real nice of you to stick up for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I just don’t want no dead kids on my conscience,” Yondu grumbled. “Let’s go talk to her before she gets any ideas. I don’t like the funny way she’s looking at my boys.”

When they reached Nebula, Peter immediately noticed that, like Gamora, she was shorter than her demeanor made her seem. Even so, she was even more intimidating than her sister with her inky eyes, hardset mouth, and bits of metal seemingly dispersed all throughout her body - pieces in her skull, her neck, what he could see of her hands through her fingerless gloves. Peter had seen the occasional new glints of silver in Gamora’s face every now and then, but he was never sure if it was okay to ask. Looking at Nebula, he was certain it wouldn’t have been.

“You got some nerve comin’ all the way out here by yourself,” Yondu commented brazenly by way of greeting, his eyes flickering briefly behind her to check for any signs of movement in the forest beyond. “Your parents know you’re here?”

“We have a man who thinks he is our father,” Nebula said; that seemed to shut Yondu right up. “If you’re lying, Petr kom Skaikru, I will kill you.”

Peter swallowed. “Cool.”

It was a brief fifteen-minute walk to the tree where Peter and Gamora liked to meet, far from the battles and the bases, away from prying eyes. He thought about how he approached her just two days ago, excited to see her and talk to her and ask her all sorts of questions about what her life was like. He thought about how Ego was probably right - whoever took Gamora would have taken him, too. He shuddered.

“Tracks.” Nebula walked slowly beside the tread marks along the riverbank, taking a few steps back and then forward again, trying to judge the direction they’d come from and where they’d gone. “No extra footprints, no animal prints.”

“So maybe she just got lost?” Peter suggested, feeling rather silly. Nebula lifted her head to glare at him.

“No,” she said coolly. “Stealth ships don’t make any sound and only leave one set of tracks. There is only one clan who stole them from Father - Boudalankru.”

“Bow-dah-what?” Yondu repeated dubiously.

“You’ve been useful, Petr,” Nebula said, sounding about as surprised as Peter felt. “Now leave.”

“Wait, are you really gonna look for Gamora all by yourself?” Peter asked. “That don’t sound safe.”

“Nothing is,” Nebula said blithely. “Most of wanheda’s army was sent to look for her in Azgeda and Sangedakru. It will be too late by the time they get to Boudalankru. It has to be me.”

“I wanna help,” Peter volunteered. Nebula looked at him incredulously, though before she could say anything, Yondu grabbed him by the wrist and unceremoniously yanked him aside.

“Hey, I promised your mama I’d take you straight home,” Yondu reminded him. “I know you feel bad ‘bout your little friend, but there ain’t nothing we can do. We don’t know nothing about this boh-dal - ”

“Boudalankru,” Peter repeated, remembering the time Gamora had tried and failed (on his part, that is) to teach him all the clan names. It seemed so long ago. “There’s gotta be something I can do, Yondu. Please?”

“No,” Yondu said firmly. “We’re goin’ home and you’re goin’ straight to bed, or your mama’s gonna skin me alive.”

Gamora’s palms were scraped raw, her fingernails broken, her skin cracked. She’d torn a strip of fabric from the bottom of her shirt, then ripped it in two and wrapped it around her hands to suppress the bleeding. Her throat burned from the lack of water, her stomach ached from the lack of food. It had been at least a day since she was taken, and the guards had refused to relieve her of any of her discomforts for her insolence. Now, she was sat cross-legged on the floor of the dirty, damp cellar, contemplating her next move.

Think, Gamora, think, she muttered inaudibly, running her hands over the length of her body for the thousandth time, checking to see if they’d somehow left something sharp on her person, and somehow she hadn’t noticed until now. Then her thumb snagged on the zipper of her jacket, and oh, she thought, there it is. With a quick jostle and a sharp yank, she broke the zipper head clean off its teeth.

She crawled toward the cellar door, then flattened herself against the ground so she was eye level with its bottom hinges, silently assessing the size of its screws. Grimacing, she got back to her feet and began pacing the length of her tiny confinement, running her fingers along its stone walls. She startled a little when she felt a sharp pinprick on the pad of her finger, enough to draw blood. Gamora stepped closer to examine the spot in question, how invisible it was, even to her enhanced eyes, then lifted the tiny zipper head to its surface. Slowly, but surely, she began to file away at its edges.

Long, arduous minutes went by as her shaking fingers moved back and forth, sometimes catching her skin instead of the metal, sometimes slipping from her hand and clattering to the floor. Once she was satisfied with her handiwork, she knelt back down and slotted the sharpened metal into the slot of the screw, turning it ever so slightly. She stretched upwards to reach the top hinges, too, straining with every last bit of strength she had. She stepped back, taking a moment to let her breathing slow to something that wasn’t threatening to swallow her up. You will not die in here.

Gamora stepped forward and rattled the bars. “Chek ai au, bushhadas!” she hollered. “Ai laik yu heda!”

It took less than a minute for the guards to return. “You’re a noisy little thing, aren’t you?”

She merely glared at them. “I’m hungry,” she said, her tone that of an impatient child.

The soldiers exchanged glances, then laughed. “We already told you, you are in no place to make demands, heda,” one of them sneered. He pushed his spear between the bars like he’d done earlier, its end hovering mere inches from her nose. “Why don’t you tell your father we have demands to make of him?”

“He is not my father,” she growled. With that, she gripped the head of the spear and yanked it towards her, jolting it right out of the soldier’s hands so it hit the cellar bars with a loud clang. Using her momentum, she then shoved forward, both her hands braced on either end of the spear, and the door collapsed onto both guards, the hinges shrieking precariously as it fell. They both cried out in shock, their hands scrabbling desperately to get a grip on her somewhere - her hair, her wrists, anything they could use for leverage - but she had them pinned down, the door weighing heavy on their bodies. “If you have demands, you tell them to me.”

The only noise that escaped either of them was an awful, guttural choking sound, sputtering and spitting as the metal bars and the spear laid perfectly across their necks. Gamora got to her feet, pausing to stare at them, swallowing down the acid burning in her throat. They will live, she thought urgently, her heart racing. You didn’t kill them. Not this time.

She sprinted up the stairs, finding herself in a small entryway that seemed to branch off into a whole series of stairways that led to other cells. There, she found her utility belt and weapons tossed aside, and she quickly gathered them up and slipped them back on her person, staying alert to the sights and sounds nearby. When she was ready, she took a deep breath, then pushed her way out of the prison entirely. She was greeted by the blindingly bright sun and the sound of a dozen soldiers’ war cries descending upon her.

“Can’t believe you talked to me into this nonsense,” Yondu grumbled. He, Peter, and Nebula were hidden just outside the vicinity of the guardsmen quarters, where the vehicles were stored. While the Grounders used all manner of technology, as old-fashioned as horses and as high-brow as cloaked ships, the Arkadians kept close to their base, and therefore never needed much more than a few ships and a fleet of armored cars, courtesy of Ego’s limitless powers. “If we don’t die out there, we gonna be dead when we get back. Your daddy’s gonna spear me like an Orloni, then he’s gonna whoop your ass into shape ‘til you’re his age.”

“Do you people ever shut up?” Nebula hissed before Peter could protest. “Why are we hiding from your men?”

“Some of my men are more loyal to the Chancellor than their captain,” Yondu said begrudgingly. “Now get in there ‘fore they see us.”

Their initial take-off was a bit of a tumble since Yondu hadn’t flown since they arrived on Earth - it certainly didn’t help that Peter was trying to push all the buttons on the console in a futile attempt to make himself useful - but then they were airborne, heartbeats pounding rapidly in their ears as they watched the ground get further and further away. Nebula shoved Peter out of the co-pilot’s seat to assist Yondu, grumbling under her breath about his poor steering. Peter then situated himself in the passenger’s seat directly behind her, peering over her shoulder.

“You know how to fly a ship?” he asked, awed.

“Yes,” she replied shortly, though she almost sounded proud of herself.

“Does Gamora?”

Nebula huffed. “How did a goufa like you become friends with my sister?”

“By being awesome,” Peter grinned, leaning back into his chair.

Now it was Yondu’s turn to snort. “Alright, buckle up, kids, I ain’t responsible for you two flyin’ out the window if you don’t.”

Meanwhile, back in New Arkadia, Mantis was curled up by the large bay window at the front of their living room, her face and hands pressed against the glass. She watched as the telltale lights of the underside of Yondu’s ship soar up into the night sky, then peel off into the darkness. “Baby, I thought I told you to go to bed.”

She let out a startled squeak, turning to see Meredith standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. “Sorry, Mama,” she mumbled. “It is just...Peter is not back yet.”

“Your daddy already sent some guards to go looking for ‘em. Nothing we can do not but wait and hope for the best,” Meredith said soothingly, moving to sit beside Mantis by the window. She reached over to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, smiling when Mantis nuzzled affectionately against her hand. “You want me to tuck you in tonight, maybe read you a book and take your mind off things?”

“I do not think I can sleep,” Mantis admitted. “My stomach hurts.”

“I know you’re worried,” Meredith nodded, clicking her tongue sympathetically. “I won’t pretend I’m not worried, too. I know you can see right through me. But we have to take comfort in the fact that Peter isn’t alone. This isn’t like that night, okay? This isn’t like when he ran off trying to protect us.”

Mantis shuddered in memory of that fateful night, the night where the Grounders made themselves known to the Arkadians, storming their camp and chanting their war chants, crying their war cries. The night where Peter was there one moment and gone the next, leaving nothing but a trail of light behind him. He had returned with a sort of haggard look in his eyes that no one ever expected to see on a child. He’d collapsed into Meredith’s arms, mumbling about how tired he was, reached out for Mantis’s hand so he could squeeze, so he could know she was still there for him to look for. In that moment, Mantis felt everything he felt - shock, guilt, disgust, and oddly enough, the tiniest glimpse of hope. Now, she wondered if that was the night he met Gamora, if she was the one who helped him feel just a little bit less like that night was the worst night of everyone’s lives.

“Mantis?” She shook herself out of her thoughts to see Meredith staring at her, brow furrowed in concern. “I asked if you wanted some tea for your stomach. I don’t want you on any medication of any sort unless you really need it.”

“Yes, please.” Mantis turned back to the window while Meredith went into the kitchen, silently pleading for the lights to come back, to bring her brother back so she would know he was safe. She closed her eyes, antennae glowing faintly, trying to see if she could detect Peter above all the noise of the thoughts and heartbeats of their people.

“Mantis?”

She turned again, only to find herself looking up into Ego’s face. “Mama is making me tea before I sleep,” she said before he could ask. “My stomach hurts.”

“Worried about Peter, huh?” Ego sat in Meredith’s place, clapping her on the shoulder. “Well, you heard me back there. I made it very clear to your mother that letting him go off wasn’t a good idea, but unfortunately, she’s about as stubborn as I am. We all are. So let’s just hope Yondu makes good on his word because I’m certainly going to have a few for him if they come back.”

“If?” Mantis repeated.

Ego’s face softened. “I meant ‘when’,” he said quietly.

“And what about everything else that is out there? Those bad men who took that girl’s sister?” she asked.

“That’s what I'm trying to protect you from. All of you,” he insisted. “Because they aren’t men. They’re animals, trying to keep people like your mother from getting their planet back, from taking back what’s theirs. And I’ll be honest, I don’t like that Peter decided to be friends with one of them. Not one bit.”

“But she is a child, like him and me,” Mantis said defensively. “She needs friends, too. Maybe she does not have any.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Ego said, chuckling derisively. “They may inhabit a planet of humans, but there is no humanity left in them.” He got to his feet as if to leave, only to stop when he saw Meredith approach them both, holding two steeping hot mugs of tea. “Meredith.”

“Ego,” she replied. “I thought you went to bed.”

“It’s hard to, when our son is out there, possibly dying or dead. I’ll be surprised if any of us get any sleep tonight.” His voice was low, dark; he didn’t wait to hear Meredith’s response, turning and sweeping up the stairs to their shared bedroom without a backwards glance. She stared after him for a moment, then carefully rearranged her expression into something that resembled a smile and rejoined Mantis by the window.

“Sorry, baby,” she murmured after they’d taken their first few sips. “I keep tellin’ myself not to fight with your daddy in front of you, but we both got tempers we ain’t proud of.”

“I am used to it,” Mantis shrugged.

Meredith shook her head adamantly. “No, Mantis, don’t get used to it. It’s not healthy, for us or for you and Peter.”

“I am trying to listen for him, but it is so hard.” Mantis pressed her palm against the glass once more. “I can only hear our people. They think about him.”

“Don’t let those powers of yours take over your life, baby,” Meredith urged, reaching to gently pry Mantis away from the window and pull her against her chest, Mantis’s head resting over Meredith’s heart. “What you need is to drink your tea, go to bed, and when you wake up, Peter will be home. I swear it.”

“Can you stay with me?”

Meredith’s heart simultaneously broke and swelled at the same time, pulsating so sharply she was sure Mantis heard it. “Of course, baby. Always.”

It was pitch-black by the time they reached Boudalankru territory, but Peter was still wide awake, perhaps a little too wide awake. He’d spent the last half hour of their trip trying to formulate a plan for how to find and rescue Gamora, and was promptly shut down by Nebula every single time.

“Leave it to me, Petr kom Skaikru,” she insisted, twirling one of the many blades she had on her utility belt, something that reminded him too much of Gamora. “Stay here and don’t get in my way.”

“Finally, something we can agree on,” Yondu commented as he brought the ship down to land.

Peter followed Yondu and Nebula off the ship despite their protests, looking around in awe at their surroundings. Boudalankru was more modern than its name implied; Yondu and Peter had expected old-fashioned stone huts and gravel paths, but instead were met with a micro-city juxtaposed against the impossibly tall trees that masked the horizon. Modern buildings made of limestone and glass were lined up in a too-straight line along the paved concrete roads, small passenger ships were parked neatly beside them. Metal signs were embedded with what looked like Kree language, and seemingly brand-new lampposts flickered overhead as they continued walking down the barren streets. The most jarring thing of all was just that - there was not a single person to be found.

“Are we in a horror movie or somethin’?” Peter whispered uneasily. “I don’t hear or see nobody.”

Yondu let out a low whistle, prompting his yaka arrow to shoot out of its pouch and hover by his temples. He gestured for both of them to get behind him, but Nebula ignored him in favor of walking up to the nearest building and pressing her face against the glass, peering inside for any sort of indication that they hadn’t just stumbled across a ghost town. Peter hesitated, then ducked into Yondu’s side, though he kept one hand extended, letting it glow faintly to lead the way while they continued on, the street lights getting dimmer the further they went.

The minutes dragged on forever, Peter’s heart beating so rapidly he thought it would collapse, until they finally heard something - suddenly a lot of something, the sounds of victorious shouts in alarming numbers. Yondu sprinted in the direction of the noise, the children following closely at his heel, and found themselves in proximity to what appeared to be an outdoor in-ground arena, the kind with endless rows of seats and blinding floodlights, filled to the brim with every last member of Boudalankru. The three of them quickly made their way to the edge, pushing their way to the front of the crowd, and looked down, astonished at what they saw.

In the middle of the whole spectacle was Gamora, blood streaked across her face, her torso, her everywhere (Peter was starting to become more accustomed to seeing her with blood than without, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing), thrusting her short blade above her head in the clear universal sign of victory. Lying at her feet was a boy who looked no more than sixteen, panting and heaving and wounded by more than just his pride. Around them, the crowd stomped their feet, clapped their hands, chanted: he-da, he-da, he-da…

“Yo laik ai kru,” Gamora shouted, her voice amplified by the device that was wrapped tight around her neck. “Ai laik yu heda!” Everyone roared back with vigor. Nebula recoiled.

“What the…” Peter turned to look at Nebula, speechless. “What’s goin’ on?”

“She called for a Conclave,” Nebula murmured. “And she won. As she always does.”

“She don’t look like she needs our help,” Yondu said, sounding half-impressed, half-terrified. “But alrigh’, let’s go get ‘er.”

They continued to shove their way through the throng of people, though Peter and Nebula soon found themselves constantly getting knocked aside due to their obvious height disadvantage, clinging onto the tails of Yondu’s coat before they could lose sight of him. Eventually, Peter’s impatience got the best of him, and he simultaneously let out a frustrated shout and a blast of light, startling everyone within a fifty-foot radius. They managed to sprint the rest of the way down to the arena ring without trouble after that.

“Sister!” Nebula shouted. She didn’t wait for Peter and Yondu, instead vaulting herself over the electric fence perimeter like it was nothing. Gamora’s eyes lit up with a different sort of elation upon hearing Nebula’s voice, and she ran to embrace her, much to Nebula’s chagrin.

“Nebula!” Gamora burrowed her face in Nebula’s neck. “It’s so good to see you, sister.”

“Do not - ” Nebula wrestled out of Gamora’s grip and shoved her back; she was now covered in blood, too. “You’ve been gone for two days, and suddenly you rule Boudalankru?”

“Something Father has never done before,” Gamora said gleefully, her face shining. “Do you think he will be proud?”

“Is that why you did this? Is that why you hurt their champion?” Nebula looked over Gamora’s shoulder to the boy, still crumpled on the ground, now being tended to by his people’s doctors. He blinked blearily up at them in a daze, though one of his eyes was swollen shut.

Gamora faltered, the light in her eyes starting to dim. “It was either a Conclave or my death, Nebula. I chose to survive.”

“Of course,” Nebula said hollowly. She nodded behind her. “Your lukot is here.”

“My - oh.” Gamora finally seemed to notice Peter standing there with his mouth hanging open, now that he could see her up close, see the story of her battle written out on her clothes, her skin, her face. “Petr...what are you doing here?”

“Nebula found me and told me you were gone, and I wanted to help.” He stepped forward, shooting her a strained, but hopeful smile. “I feel real bad about all that stuff we said to each other. Your people are just as important as mine, and maybe...maybe if your dad and my dad talked, all of this could just...stop. I don’t wanna fight anymore. Me and you, and my people and your people.”

“You don’t know our father,” Gamora sighed, though she looked relieved to see him regardless. “He does not want peace. He will not talk. He didn’t even look for me.”

“That’s not true,” Nebula interjected. “Father sent nearly his whole army looking out for his beloved heda.” Gamora narrowed her eyes at Nebula’s tone, though she decided not to comment on it. Instead, she glanced up at Yondu, who was stood firmly over Peter, staring down at her in mild perplexion.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Captain Yondu Udonta of New Arkadia, and Quill’s chaperone,” Yondu replied gruffly. “And you are the scariest little thing I’ve ever seen.”

Her entire expression shifted into something far more childlike, and Yondu found himself regretting his choice of words. “I do not want to be scary,” Gamora said, hastily trying to wipe the blood off her face; it only rubbed it in further. “I just wanted to survive.”

“Well, you did just that.” Yondu tried not to look at the Boudalankru boy, tried not to listen to the way he cried out when the doctors lifted him onto a stretcher, cursing heda to the heavens. “Let’s go ‘fore these boo-doll folk get any ideas about looking into me n’ Quill.”

“Boudalankru,” all three children said in unison. Yondu threw his hands up in defeat and motioned for them to follow.

Getting back to the ship was easy enough despite Yondu’s apprehension, with the crowd parting like the sea for Gamora, letting her and the others pass through. When he asked her about it, about the Conclave and the little things she and Peter had said about her father, she had a strange, far-away look in her eyes and merely said, “You still don’t know much about life around here.”

“An’ I’m guessing you won’t tell me,” Yondu had replied, getting an affirmative nod in return.

The walk back would’ve been silent if not for Peter’s incessant chatter, pestering both girls with questions until Gamora silenced him with a single glare. Once they were on board, though, she quietly took a seat beside him, gratefully accepting the medical kit when he set it down on her lap. He wordlessly began to help her dress the wounds she couldn’t quite reach while Yondu and Nebula sat at the controls, getting them back in the air.

“Thank you,” she murmured, craning her neck to watch as he placed the last bandage over the puncture wound in the small of her back. “And...I feel bad about what I said, too. I’m sorry. I’m not good with...words, I suppose.”

“You talk way more like a grownup than I do,” Peter countered.

“I mean like...how I say things, not what I’m saying,” Gamora explained carefully. Her face fell again, remembering what Yondu had said to her. “Do I scare you?”

“I guess...a little bit,” he admitted. “I don’t wanna lie to you anymore, so...yeah, a little bit. But that don’t change the fact that you’re my friend, and I want you to be my friend. Not just ‘cos you’re teaching me Trig and stuff, but ‘cos I like hanging out with you.”

“Ai lukot,” she said, smiling tentatively. “My friend.”

Peter smiled back, taking her less-bandaged hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Ai lukot,” he repeated.

“Father is calling for us.”

Gamora shot to her feet, instantly letting go of Peter’s hand. “What?”

Nebula held up her communicator, her mouth set in an even harder line than usual. “Maw heard of the Boudalankru Conclave and sent spies to find you, and now he knows you’re not alone. Father wants to meet with us...all of us.”

“Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me,” Yondu groaned. “This is already the longest damn night of my life, can’t I jus’ drop you two off and take Quill home?”

“If you don’t do what Father wants, he will kill all of your people, just like that.” Gamora snapped her fingers. Peter shivered.

“Is he gonna hurt us?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“If he is in the mood,” Nebula replied bluntly, scratching at the now-dried blood on the front of her jacket. Peter wasn’t proud of the whimper that escaped his throat.

An hour later, Gamora stirred, not realizing she had even fallen asleep in the first place, startled to find she had dozed off on Peter’s shoulder. All four of them had been restless the whole way, a tense silence filling the entire cabin, none of them daring to speak about what was ahead or what was already behind them. Even Peter had been too anxious to ask, because as much as he wanted to pester Gamora with a hundred questions about Thanos, he had the feeling that no answer would ease his worries.

They touched down outside of Sanctuary; the first thing Peter was thrown by was the sheer size of the ship, far outweighing the Ark, stretching far above the fences that were meant to contain it. The front gates were also similar to New Arkadia’s settlement, with watchtower guards waving them in, though their armor only reminded Peter of the night he and Gamora met and the young, dying soldier who looked a little bit too much like Kraglin. “Monin hou, heda!” one of them called.

“‘Welcome back, Commander’,” Gamora murmured in Peter’s ear. He watched in astonishment as every last person they passed bowed their head in her direction, muttering words of respect under their breaths.

“You’re the commander?” Peter asked, agape. “What about - ”

“He is wanheda, the commander of death. I am heda, to be wanheda someday.” She bit her lip so hard she drew blood. “Only some factions listen to Father and his generals. Boudalankru was one of our biggest enemies.”

“And now what, they like you or somethin’? I still dunno what happened back there,” he admitted.

Gamora smiled ruefully. “Neither do I.”

They were accompanied by two guardsmen through a winding series of hallways, though Gamora and Nebula seemed to know exactly where they were going. Peter could see Gamora was itching to reach for Nebula and take her hand, but Nebula had flattened her palms against her thighs in a very militant-like posture, her footsteps even heavier than Yondu’s. He took a moment to look around, amazed and horrified at how different Sanctuary looked from Boudalankru. It was far less friendly-looking than the original Ark, with wide corridors and tall ceilings, all dark and hollow and intimidatingly massive.

Finally, they reached a huge set of double doors; stationed in front were two alien beings who seemed impossibly tall, wielding weapons that stood higher than the top of Peter’s head. Unlike the other Grounders, neither bowed upon their approach. “Corvus, Proxima,” Gamora said tightly. “Is your army back?”

Proxima’s lip curled into a sneer. “We’ve called off the search for our precious heda, yes. And Father has heard of your victory in Boudalankru.”

“I had no choice.” Gamora glanced down at her hands, fiddling with the gauze wrapped around her left thumb, causing its exposed end to fray. “Their champion still lives.”

“Then it is not much of a victory after all,” Corvus drawled, keeping his head straight forward, refusing to look at her. He and Proxima stepped aside, allowing the guardsmen to open the doors, a rush of ice-cold air hitting all four of them in the face before they entered the throne room.

Like seemingly everywhere else in Sanctuary, it was dark and damp and unfriendly, devoid of anything that could make it feel remotely welcoming. There was a single long platform that led to the center of the room, where two thrones sat side-by-side. One was significantly shorter and unoccupied, and it made Gamora shudder when she saw it. She only ever sat in it once per year, on her birthday, a time when wanheda liked to remind everyone who his successor was and what she was capable of. The other throne was concealed in the shadows, but there was no doubt as to who was sat upon it.

Yondu and Peter stared dumbfoundedly at the impossibly large man as he got to his feet, turning so his back was to them, casting a darkness down the length of the platform and across their faces. “I’ve been told of your call for a Conclave, Gamora. Bold of you, considering they are only meant for the most dire of situations, for a threat to your title.” His voice rumbled, bouncing off every surface, shaking everyone’s ankles and knees from the vibrations in the floor.

“They were going to kill me to weaken you,” Gamora said evenly, bowing her head out of respect despite him not looking her way.

“And your first Conclave was to be when you turned fourteen,” he continued, ignoring her. “You could have died tonight, little one.”

“But I did not.” She tilted her face back up, held her chin higher; Nebula’s entire upper body seemed to slouch in contrast. Peter and Yondu still weren’t sure what to do with themselves, glancing around helplessly, but neither sister made any attempt to guide them.

“No, you did not.” There was a hint of a smile on Thanos’s face as he finally turned around, the full effect of his vastness overwhelming Peter, who took a few steps back, heart pounding rapidly in his ears. Though he wore simple armor, it was his face that caught them by surprise; the violently purple eyes narrowing in their direction, the mottled constellation of battle scars covering every inch of his skin, the sneer of a man who had looked upon gods and found himself wholly unimpressed. “This is the boy you’ve been meeting in secret? Petr kom Skaikru?”

“Yes,” Gamora murmured. “Ai lukot.”

“How did you meet my daughter, Petr?” Thanos demanded. “And how did you come by her in Boudalankru today?”

“I - uh - um.” Peter cleared his throat, fiddling with his thumbs in a failed attempt to stop his hands from shaking. Thanos looked bored already. “My camp was attacked by your army. I ran away so they would chase me, and that’s when I met - ”

“Why would they chase you?” Thanos interrupted. Maw and Cull, who were stood at the foot of his throne, turned to look at Peter, to really look at him, Maw’s gaze flickering up and down with clear distaste in his otherwise soulless eyes. Thanos gestured to the guards stationed by the doors, and they opened them for Proxima and Corvus to step inside, both of them lifting their weapons so they were pointed directly at Peter’s back. It sent a short, but clear message - impress me or die.

Peter inhaled sharply, then held out his hands, forming a glowing orb of light no larger than a piece of fruit. Then it grew bigger, big enough that it dwarfed his own head, obscuring his face from everyone else, causing Proxima and Corvus to stumble back, blindsided. He then pulled one hand away from the other, splitting the orb in two. The one in his right hand morphed into a light dagger, the other into something he had never been able to do before - a flower, fresh and vibrant and the exact same shade of red as Gamora’s hair. He turned toward her, holding them both out for her to take. Astonished, she wordlessly accepted them both, her heart thumping in concern when she noticed the wetness in his eyes from his concentrated effort.

He looked back to Thanos. His voice shook when he spoke again. “Once I stopped running, I was real lost. That’s when I met Gamora. I asked her to help me find my way back.”

Thanos sank into his throne, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “And today?”

“Nebula came to New Arkadia to find me ‘cos Gamora was missing. I took her to where I saw her last, an’ then we went to Boudalankru together. The Conclave was over by the time we got there.” Thanos nodded slowly, his brow raising in surprise at Peter’s somewhat-correct Trigedasleng pronunciation. He then waved for the Black Order generals to leave the room so only he, his daughters, Peter, and Yondu remained.

“You have strength, Petr kom Skaikru, and abilities I have never seen before in my countless years of crossing the galaxy,” Thanos commented. “You are no mere human, are you?”

Yondu, who had been mostly petrified (not that he would ever admit to it) throughout the entire encounter, finally moved silently to warn Peter, to stop him before he gave it away, but - “I’m half-Celestial.”

“You are the son of the man who is calling for the death of my people?”

“And you’re the one callin’ for the death of ours,” Peter retorted suddenly, clenching his glowing fists. Gamora let out a startled noise, barely noticing the way Nebula clutched at her arm automatically to brace herself for his retaliation.

Thanos merely chuckled, albeit in a very sinister way, and leaned back. “I like this one, daughter. He is too naive to know what to fear and too vulnerable to know how not to trust. Yet, he holds the powers of the universe in his hands.”

She stepped forward. “Father, I - ”

“You want this war to end, don’t you, Petr?” Thanos asked, silencing Gamora with a single raise of his hand. “You want to grow up in a world where you know nothing but full bellies and clear skies.”

“Don’t everyone?” Peter slowly unfurled his fingers, though they still remained alight. “Then no one’s gotta die for no reason.”

“And if there was a reason?” Thanos cocked his head to one side, seemingly staring right through him. “What then?”

“I - ” Peter faltered. “I guess...well, people die ‘cos of reasons, right? Like, when they get sick or hurt or just...old. That don’t mean it has to happen. It just does. And war makes it happen faster. Makes it happen to kids like me. Even if we don’t die, our parents do. My mom is a medic, and she has to tell families all the time that people didn’t make it. I don’t want no one to have to tell her that I didn’t make it, or someone to tell me that she didn’t. I want my mom to see me grow up. And...I think you wanna see your daughters grow up, too. You sent a whole army lookin’ for Gamora ‘cos you wanna see her become your heda. There won’t be no heda or Chancellor or nothing if everyone is dead.”

Thanos hummed, contemplating; Gamora and Nebula sucked in their breaths. “When you return to your father tonight, you tell him I will make peace with your people under these terms: we cease all fighting immediately, and neither of us are to pick up a weapon again for six months. Consider it a show of good faith. Then we meet in Polis to discuss the future of this planet and what is to become of those who live on it.”

Gamora made no attempt to hide her astonishment, glancing rapidly back and forth between Nebula and Peter with wide eyes. Even Yondu looked stunned despite being largely unfamiliar with what was happening, realizing the gravity of Thanos’s offer, the levity of its generosity. “I will,” Peter said, the light dimming entirely from his hands. “Um, thank you.”

“You thank me too early,” Thanos drawled, smirking. “My last condition is that you will not speak to my daughter until we convene in Polis. I can only imagine what sort of insights and intelligence she has shared with you in your time together. I will not let it happen again. The potential resumption of your companionship will be determined in my discussions with your father.”

“Wanheda, I never said anything - ”

“You keep interrupting me, little one, but I assure you, I will speak with you another time. Know your place,” he growled. “Now leave, and do not let me see or hear of you until then.” Peter shot Gamora one last pleading look before he and Yondu were promptly ushered out of the room by Corvus and Proxima, caught one last glimpse of her before they were taken back to their ship and told to never return. “Gamora, leave us.”

“I...thought you wanted to speak with me,” she said quietly.

“I did not mean now,” Thanos said, instead directing his attention toward Nebula. “I have words for this one first.”

Gamora’s legs felt heavy as she made the walk back toward the doors, trying desperately to shut out the continuing conversation behind her. “I have returned your heda, Father, something the gonakru could not do - ”

“You do not speak ill of those under my command, Nebula. In fact, you should not speak at all.”

Gamora was numb by the time Maw escorted her back to her quarters, thanks to what seemed like a never-ending night, barely listening to his non-stop chatter about “that funny-looking Skaikru child” or her “bushhada of a sister”. She felt like she only just managed to make her way through the motions as she bathed, finding it impossible to get all the blood out of everything, changed into her sleepclothes, and approached her bed. How she wished she had the chance to finish her conversation with Peter, all the conversations they’d been having since they met, about how her world worked, what it meant to be heda, what his agreement with Thanos really meant.

Instead, she knelt on the floor to pull out the box from beneath her mattress, setting it down and opening it to reveal all of Peter’s little misshapen gifts, still in their imperfect perfect condition. She put both the dagger and flower inside, surprised to find the latter hadn’t wilted in the hour that had passed since its creation, wondering if it was Peter’s doing. Smiling faintly, she put the box back in its place and turned off the light. As she climbed into bed and under her sheets, she had a feeling she wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight. Not when she could hear Nebula’s screams clear across Sanctuary.

a/n: Hey all, it's been a minute - sorry this chapter is so incredibly late, my semester had been going terribly and I barely had time to do much of anything outside of school. When I did have time for fic writing, I indulged in a little Scott/Hope (here and here if you're interested) since it was a lot lighter and less plot-heavy than this fic, but I promise I haven't abandoned this!

I know there's a lot of world-building going on right now but the next chapter will be more about character relationships - there hasn't been a ton of focus on Drax, and Rocket and Groot haven't even shown up yet, so that will get rectified soon. Also, I hope y'all enjoy Endgame when you get a chance to see it! I'll be going on vacation two days after it comes out so I'll be late to the post-movie fic party, but I'm very likely going to be posting at least three (I'm thinking Peter/Gamora, Scott/Hope, and Carol/Valkyrie, because yes) one-shots. In the meantime, thank you so much for reading, likes and reblogs would be much appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed :)

Trigedasleng translations: plangona - warrior woman / shilkru - guard / goufa - child Koken hainofi...tsa bants. - Crazy princess...let's go. / Heda, nou hainofi. Bushhadas. - Commander, not princess. Cowards. Ai ste lufa Petr kom Skaikru au. Ai laik Nebula kom Trikru, strisis kom Gamora. - I am looking for Peter of the Sky People. I am Nebula of the Forest Clan, little sister of Gamora. / Ai laik Petr kom Skaikru. Weron laik Gamora? - I am Peter of the Sky People. Where is Gamora? Chek ai au, bushhadas! Ai laik yu heda! - Look at me, cowards! I am your commander! / Yo laik ai kru, ai laik yu heda! - You are my people, I am your commander!

#starmora #starmora fic #peter x gamora #gamora x peter #gotg fic #myfic #myfic: across the universe #marvel #hello this is still happening!! sorry i'm so dang late #school has been wild and scott/hope has been comparatively light-hearted and easy to write

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 6 years ago

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Chapter Ten: the breather episode we all needed before it’s time for some Fae AU Original Plot(TM)

[Beginning] [Chapter Masterlist]

“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”

Phoenix does not look up from his phone, laboriously tapping out a text message key by key. He still uses a flip phone, one that looks older than Trucy. Apollo didn’t realize anyone under the age of 70 who wasn’t a drug dealer still used a flip phone. “It wasn’t necessary for you to know.”

“Bullshit it wasn’t,” Apollo says.

Phoenix raises one eyebrow. He is still focused on his phone. “It really wasn’t. You were able to put everything together without me telling you, weren’t you?”

Apollo doesn’t know whether it might be better to throw something or to punch him to bring his attention to this conversation that they are having in this here and now. “And it would’ve taken you two seconds to throw that part in – ‘hey, besides the curse on Vera, he’s also totally not human.’ What did you think, that him being one of the Fair Folk would be a step too far?” He remembers every time that Kristoph rolled his eyes at euphemisms for the fae. It makes more and less sense now. “That oh, the curses I’m not scared of, but no, that’s what’s gonna—”

“Maybe you’ve got bad experience with the fae – that magic is one thing, and fae magic is another.” Phoenix isn’t bothering to look at him and that’s pissing Apollo off more than anything else about this, not what he’s saying now, not what he didn’t say before, but the damned dismissiveness of it –

Apollo hooks his foot around the leg of the piano bench and drags it out. He thinks he’s going to be here a while. “And why the hell would that be my past experience?”

“I don’t know,” Phoenix replies. “I don’t know your whole life story.” Finally, he lifts his head, his black eyes studying Apollo’s face, and he leans back into the couch.

“Maybe it’s been a while since you wore this badge” – Apollo prods himself in the chest, next to his badge, hard enough that it hurts – “but it means something to me! It means I’m going to make my defense and find the truth no matter who I’m up against! Why can’t you just trust me to do my goddamned job? You’ve only trusted me with care of your daughter!”

Apollo hadn’t realized how much was pent-up, boiling between his ribs, until he started yelling.

“On your last point, lack of courage doesn’t denote lack of morality. And Trucy’s far from helpless – she’s got her own tricks, and she knows I have deals with friends in high places, if she’s really in a pinch.”

“You’d tell your own daughter to make a deal with the fae just because you can’t be bothered to supervise her?”

It isn’t that Apollo minds having Trucy as investigative partner, co-counsel, and something like an annoying little sister, all in one. He definitely would rather have not spent all night at a Gavinners concert, but that ship sailed long ago. Knowing about the Jurist System has at least given him an answer as to where the hell Phoenix has been while Trucy is running about investigating concert-murders and noodle stands, but it doesn’t cleanse him of that anger, anger on Trucy’s behalf, anger he doesn’t fully understand.

Phoenix’s face darkens. “I didn’t work out deals in advance for Trucy to have to pay the price.” He sits forward, elbows on his knees. “At any rate, that’s not what you’re here to talk about, is it?” His deceptively light tone belies the glower etched into his features. “This is not about me doubting your ability as a lawyer, Apollo.”

Apollo sits down heavily, feeling the thud of the hard wood bench jar through his entire body. “Just me as a person, then?”

Phoenix doesn’t sit back again, but he looks away, his stony expression twisting into something painful. He touches his neck, and Apollo thinks about how the first step to indicting Kristoph was to tear apart Olga Orly’s story by her habit of rubbing her neck. It seems to be the only tic that Phoenix has, that when he talks about curses, his hand goes to his neck, where through a magatama Apollo once saw black marks. “I made an assessment of you based on what I would have been capable of at your age,” he says.

“Which was – what, ‘magic okay, fae bad’?”

“Pretty much. I would have frozen from the start, had I known.”

That’s a sentence more than Apollo expected – that’s an admission he never could have imagined, not so much one of weakness – because Phoenix’s very name is synonymous with so many weaknesses and flaws – but of personal history. As far as Apollo knows, Phoenix might as well have coalesced in this office at age twenty-four and gone from there. “What happened to you?” Apollo asks, knowing he’s pushing it but unable to not.

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Little more than that.”

There. That’s the man Apollo knows, again. He hasn’t yet released his neck, but he is looking at Apollo again. “And I didn’t need you to be extra suspicious of Klavier, as you undoubtedly would have been if you had been told that his brother was of the fae. I needed you to be a little suspicious of him, to a point, but not to that point.”

“I’ve been suspicious about what he is since I met him,” Apollo says. “This is just more of the same. Doesn’t make me more suspicious, or less.”

He thinks of how Klavier practically begged him to leave employ of Wright’s office, how he had cold iron, heavily enchanted, on hand, to spare. Phoenix called him paranoid when they talked about the ring – Apollo wasn’t sure it was without just cause then, and now he’s even less sure. Precaution, protection –

-- Afraid of his own brother?

Something, if not Apollo’s suspicions, looks clearer now.

Phoenix raises an eyebrow. Apollo stops spinning the ring around his finger. “At any rate,” Phoenix says, with a lofty, half-dismissive tone, and this part of the conversation is over, anything about Phoenix, his choices of what to hold back and the magic that ensnares him, about the Gavins, about anything that Apollo, actually, really wants to know. He might as well just walk out now. There’s not going to be anything good in this. “Be proud of yourself, Apollo. No one else could’ve done what you did today.”

“That’s kinda hard to believe when you could’ve just plucked up any of the other junior associates working for Mr Gavin and put them through the same,” Apollo says. He rests his elbow on the cover over the piano keys and wonders if the instrument has ever been played.

“No, I couldn’t have.”

Apollo waits for him to elaborate. Apollo doesn’t know why he waits. Phoenix never elaborates. He gives up the truth only when it’s pried from him. “Why not?” Apollo prompts.

“It was always going to be you. No one else has quite the eye for the truth that you do.”

Something about that feels significant, like the words are three layers deep and the real meaning at the bottom, but nothing lights up red and Apollo has no hints for dissecting verbal tics. “Why can’t you just tell me things instead of insinuating everything?”

Apollo thinks he’s said this before. He’s definitely thought it.

“My mentor never in her life or after gave me a straight answer when a vague one was possible, and it helped me learn how to think and figure things out. Seems to be working quite well for you, too.”

Apollo knows nothing about Phoenix’s mentor beyond that she was one of the fae, and that simple fact seems to jive with this apparent teaching method that Phoenix prescribes to. Or maybe he’s just a douchebag, but Apollo doesn’t say that, because Phoenix might think that a slight against his mentor, and Apollo knows not to slander the dead, fae especially.

(Even living as fugitives in a ramshackle mountain shack, Dhurke taught him how to be polite.)

“If you want to take the day off tomorrow, I’m not planning to be in, and I won’t ask,” Phoenix adds, with a grin that isn’t as cold or sharp as most of his. “You’ve certainly earned it.”

And since Trucy has already gone home, Apollo has no reason to stick around at the office tonight; and even without Phoenix’s permission, he’d been considering it. He considers it even after he gets home before Clay does and crossing the salty threshold beneath an iron horseshoe doesn’t stop the laughter reverberating through his skull. Alone, it’s all he hears.

He expects to be awakened by a phone call from Trucy, demanding to know why he isn’t at the office and then arguing with her about what exactly her school schedule is anyway. He’s right that it’s a phone call, at 9:32 am – jarring him out of nightmares about red eyes and being late to work, and then he thinks he is late to work before he remembers that he turned his alarm off for the day on purpose with permission, and then he thinks he should answer the phone and the unknown number hailing him.

“Hello?” he asks, rolling over onto his stomach and trying not to let his voice get muffled into the pillow. “Apollo Justice speaking.”

There is silence on the other end of the line. Apollo waits for the beep of the call going dead, but then he hears a small voice. “Um? Mr Justice? It’s… it’s Vera Misham.”

“Vera!” Apollo pushes himself upright, pressing his phone to his face with a force that hurts. “How are you doing? Are—” He swallows his questions, tries to soften his voice, remembering how she flinched away from his loud outbursts when they met in person.

“They told me what you did,” she says, voice little more than a whisper. “That you… you won the case. Thank you.” Her voice cracks.

“Of course! It’s — I’m just doing my job!” He’s managed to keep his voice down, a little, and holds the phone a little away from his mouth. “I’m just glad we could help you, and that you’re okay!”

She goes quiet again and Apollo has to check to see that the call is still going. “Um,” she says. “Do you… have a number for — T-Trucy? I thought she might want to know, um, but…”

Calling Apollo has probably used half of her energy for talking to people. “I can call her for you, if you want?”

“Y-yeah.” Even as soft as her voice is, her relief is clear to hear. “If you could…”

“Of course!” The call will probably interrupt her in the middle of school, and Apollo doesn’t like to be encouraging her to interrupt her education more than she herself does -- but Vera is alive, against curses and poison, and they won, and that feels like something that deserves celebrating. “She might want to come visit,” he adds, because that seems like something Trucy, unerringly friendly Trucy who doesn’t know his home address because she has made clear she will turn up on the doorstep on Saturdays, will want to do. “Are you okay with that?”

More silence. Then, tiny, like the chirp of a mouse, “Y-yeah. If, um, if she wants to… knowing what I am.”

The doctors must have told her, or she overheard. “That’s not a problem for us, Vera,” he says, sure that whatever words he’s picked as reassurance will sound clumsy, but knowing he has to. “It’s nothing you should worry about.”

Then he calls Trucy, who picks up on the fifth ring and screams in his ear and tells him to meet her at the hospital as soon as possible, as he anticipated, so once she’s done yelling at him, he rolls out of bed and into some non-work clothes.

She is sitting on a bench out in front when he arrives, scolding him that she has been waiting for nearly twenty minutes, a timeline that doesn’t make much sense because he called half an hour ago and he gets the sense that Mr Wright is the kind of person who has never in his life taken a taxi when a bike or feet can get him anywhere for free and Trucy has adhered to that. Maybe she can teleport -- maybe Valant’s trick was no more than sleight-of-hand, but Apollo would believe Trucy has more real magic than she’s ever let on. They go in together, get directions and tramp down the sterile cold halls to find their client.

Maybe because of seeing Kristoph yesterday, his shifting faces and broken glamours, but Apollo is surprised to see that Vera looks like -- like Vera, wan and sicklier but otherwise the same person from the detention center. Visibly human, all the way. Her room is bare and empty but for a stack of DVD cases on the bedside table and a sketchbook in her lap, but she visibly brightens to look up and see Apollo and Trucy. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she says, blinking her big dark eyes furiously. “I…”

“Of course we did!” Trucy exclaims, plopping herself without hesitation on the foot of the bed.

“Of course we did,” Apollo repeats, feeling something burning behind his eyes. “Vera, I’m so glad -- that you -- I--”

“Hey, Apollo! Don’t start crying!” Trucy swats at him and misses, but there are tears spilling from her eyes too now. It makes for a silly picture in Apollo’s mind, him and Trucy blubbering and Vera there in the bed the only one composed, but when he looks at her again she is crying silently too.

“Thank you,” she says, scrubbing at her eyes. “Thank you, Apollo.”

“No, I -- I’m sorry!” There is so much that Kristoph said that is eating at him, and his laugh, but he wasn’t lying -- he couldn’t lie -- when he said that it was Apollo’s fault that she ingested the poison. “If I hadn’t -- scared you, and pressed you like that, then you wouldn’t have bitten your nails, and…”

And the curse would have stayed dormant, waiting? And then what?

Vera shakes her head. “No. You helped me, and I.... I…” She picks up her sketchbook and simply hugs it to her chest, like a shield, something to combat the vulnerability of this conversation, something to put between her and the two of them. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she whispers, her voice breaking on the first word and growing hoarser. “To visit me. To… to have anything to do with me.”

“What?” Trucy looks -- and sounds -- indignant. “Why wouldn’t we? We were cheering for you to pull through! Apollo was fighting for you! For your future! Why would we -- we just--” She turns her narrowed eyes on Apollo, like he might have some insight. He shrugs and sinks down in the chair by the bed.

“Because of what I am,” Vera says, ducking her head down to her chest, her hair hanging past her eyes. “I, I’m, um…” She seems to be have trouble uttering the word, whatever one it is she is searching for -- changeling? Fae? “And I know people are… don’t like, are afraid...”

Trucy shakes her head. “We aren’t afraid! Especially not of you.”

“I don’t think you could be scary if you tried,” Apollo says, before immediately deciding he should shove his foot in his mouth, but Vera giggles and lifts her head. Trucy is beaming. They worked a laugh from her. What a long way this has come.

“I guess maybe -- maybe you’re both more used to magic than others,” she says. “It seems so strange, now, that I… that I didn’t know.”

Trucy tilts her head. Apollo doesn’t move, doesn’t want to break this spell that is Vera finally starting to speak, to open up. “Like I can see now. Or like, um, like I know what I’m seeing.”

“Daddy says it’s all a lot of colors,” Trucy adds helpfully. “Colors and glowing.”

Vera nods. “And I thought… I thought that everyone saw like that. Because I didn’t go out, or know anyone who’d say… it wasn’t.” Her eyes are still black when she looks back up. Apollo keeps expecting something different.

“Prosecutor Gavin did say that changelings often don’t know.” Trucy taps her chin thoughtfully. “Although you’re the only changeling I know, Vera, and that’s not a very big sample size.”

He had guessed that Vera might not know — but where did he get information to make that guess? (Maybe he was repeating something he’d heard, like Trucy is now — but Apollo thinks he could trust Prosecutor Gavin to be thorough, to not bring uncorroborated secondhand anecdotes into a trial.)

“I thought it was normal,” Vera says. “I thought so much was normal, and I didn’t look to see, and I…” Her head falls again. “The other lawyer. Do you know where he is?”

“The other--?” Does she mean Klavier?

“They said he came by earlier,” Vera says. “And brought all those--” She tilts her head at the DVDs.

“Oh, do you mean Daddy?” Trucy asks. Vera nods. “Though he’s -- not exactly a lawyer anymore.”

“That’s my fault,” Vera says. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s--” The look Trucy shoots Apollo is wild-eyed panic. “No, no, I didn’t mean--”

“It’s okay.” Vera’s hands curl a little tighter around the edges of her sketchbook. Apollo wonders if those are claws, like Kristoph’s. “I hope I can look him in the eye and apologize, someday. I’m sorry, and I… I’m not going to look away from the things I’ve done anymore. I’m going to know what I’m seeing.”

“Daddy’s had the Sight for ten years and he doesn’t always know what he’s looking at,” Trucy says.

She must know that Vera’s was a metaphor, but some of the tension slips from Vera’s shoulders at it, anyway.

They spent over two hours at the hospital, talking for a while about the Steel Samurai before Trucy tells Vera some things she knows about magic -- which Trucy claims is very little that she really knows, but to Apollo it seems more than anyone else. Vera never takes her eyes off of Trucy while she is chattering, not even to watch Mr Hat dance around the room -- Apollo can’t take his eyes off the wisp, even when he tries, and he finally has to tell Trucy to make it invisible because he thinks he’s losing his mind.

“That’s what a wisp is meant to do,” Trucy explains later, when they leave and begin a search for lunch at some place that is not Eldoon’s. “Distraction. Misdirection. Lead people astray because they just have to follow it.” She goes quiet and then points out a soba place that looks promising. “That’s how I helped Daddy escape the courthouse. My real daddy, I mean. My first daddy.”

“You -- you helped him escape?”

Apollo stops dead in the doorway and Trucy smacks him in the shoulder with his wallet to get him to move again. His wallet. This immediately following a conversation about misdirection, he’s not sure he can be mad. He should probably have seen it coming, at any rate. “Yep! He didn’t have magic anymore, so I had to help. So if you need to disappear, you know who to ask.”

She does not hand him back his wallet as she flounces inside.

“But I always knew he was alive, because of it,” Trucy adds, when they are seated and she has proclaimed her intent to sample the most expensive things on the menu. “And because he promised he’d come back.”

And he didn’t -- not to her. He went to Phoenix and he died, and that was the warning that Klavier gave Apollo, what seems like years ago -- death follows him like a plague. And that was true, and Zak’s promise wasn’t. “Trucy—”

“It’s okay,” she says, and that is a lie; her smile lights up red, as though her sad eyes didn’t betray her enough. “I have another daddy now, even if he’s really bad at playing piano.” Her voice drops when she says this, like she’s letting Apollo in on a secret he doesn’t already know. “And you, now, too! Even if you’re really loud sometimes.”

And even if she’s probably only saying that because the waiter remarked on how nice it was for Apollo to take his kid sister out for a treat. He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t, and Trucy grinned at him like the cat that has just devoured the proverbial canary. He’s not sure what she thinks she can leverage this new relationship to get and he’s not sure he wants to know beforehand.

(He could tell her he knows what it’s like to be left behind by a father, that they have this in common, that they have this that could bind them into a makeshift family if they wanted, but he hasn’t told anyone, not even Clay, about Dhurke, and even now that he could empathize, the words don’t come.)

“I’m so glad that’s my one defining characteristic,” Apollo says, and Trucy laughs.

After lunch they bike — or Apollo does, with Trucy stealing his seat and providing backseat backwards-facing driver tips, which only makes him more anxious that they’re going to tip into traffic and Apollo will be magicked away from having a peaceful afterlife by Wright who’s pissed about his daughter’s death and knows who to blame — back to the office. Apollo barely has time to think that he’s never actually been here while wearing jeans before Trucy drags him off again, insisting that it’s a nice day and they should spend it at the park. They skirt the area of the noodle-stand murder and head north, up past the Kitaki Bakery storefront, currently undergoing renovations, and Trucy insists on ducking in to say hi. There, they learn that the store is having extra space built on because it’s proved to be so popular, and are sent on their way with two complimentary muffins.

“It’s weird to think that our cases started just weird but mundane like that,” Apollo says, “and progressed to… this. I miss those days with absolutely no magic involved.”

“You sound old,” Trucy says through a mouthful of muffin. “Like ‘ooh, back in my day we had none of this fae stuff’ — and besides, you do know the Kitakis are a family of kitsunes, right?”

“What!”

“Mhm. I don’t know how much magic they are anymore, but they are.”

Do kitsunes have the same rules of hospitality and debts that the fae do? Apollo stares down at the half-eaten muffin in his hands and remembers when he wouldn’t let Klavier pay for a drink because he was too afraid of getting locked into a regrettable deal. Funny that he trusted the Kitakis more when all he knew was that they were gangsters.

“Speaking of magic,” Trucy adds, reaching into her purse and pulling out the envelope that Phoenix had given them a few mornings ago, what feels like another lifetime ago, “I took a look at this last night.” She unfolds a paper with a torn edge and big loopy sprawling script. Apollo’s breath catches in his throat. Is that the diary page? The real diary page? “My grandfather left it to my daddy, and he to me. He gave it to Daddy the -- the night he died.” Her face falls but she keeps going without giving Apollo time to say anything. “It says it leaves to the holder -- my daddy, now me -- the source of his magic.”

“Which is…?” Apollo prompts, when Trucy is not forthcoming, rather just continuing to frown at the page.

“I don’t know,” she says. “He wrote that there is a map on the back, but…”

She turns the paper over. The other side is blank.

“There’s a trick to it,” she says, “there’s got to be, but I don’t know it.”

“Invisible ink? A magatama? A missing second page?”

“Not the last, but maybe one of the others.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon researching invisible ink on the office’s sluggish and ancient computer, Trucy digging through the drawers of her father’s desk for the magatama and coming up empty. “He usually keeps it in here,” she says, pouting, while Apollo takes notes on some of the more complicated chemical compounds that can reveal invisible ink, wondering whether they will have to rope Ema into this and if they’re even on the right track, because why would Magnifi use anything but magic to hide the trail to his magic? “I don’t know why it wouldn’t be.”

“He doesn’t usually keep it with him?”

Trucy shakes her head. “He says he’s not usually worried about being glamoured.”

Implying that whatever he’s currently up to, he is.

She leans over Apollo’s shoulder to look at what he’s written. “I bet Ema would be a good person to ask.”

Score one for Apollo’s powers of predictions. “I’ll ask Daddy tonight for her contact info. I’m sure he has it. And maybe on Saturday if we haven’t solved it, we can get her over to help. I bet she likes puzzles.”

“If she hasn’t had enough of that in her day job as, y’know, a detective.”

“More heads are better for figuring out stuff like this,” Trucy says, casting a forlorn look at the diary page. “Hey, your friend -- your roommate -- you said he knows stuff about magic, right? You should get him for this too. It’ll be like a treasure hunt!”

“Most of what Clay knows about magic is how to avoid it, and no, I am not asking him if he wants to spend his weekend trying to get a blank piece of paper to give up its secrets.”

Apollo spends Friday alone at the office until early afternoon; Trucy whirls in like a tornado and grabs his arm and tells him that their treasure hunt will commence with Ema tomorrow and now they’re going to visit Vera. He manages a cursory protest -- “How am I going to get any clients if no one is at the office to meet with them!” -- but he’s not sure he wouldn’t still be jittery from that last trial if he went back into the courthouse today or next week, so he allows her to steer the direction of his day again.

Vera doesn’t look quite as pale, and she doesn’t notice them come in at all until Trucy chirps, “Hiya!” Then she jumps, scattering the colored pencils that were resting carefully ordered in her lap. Sitting on top of the stack of Steel Samurai DVDs is another sketchbook.

“That prosecutor came by to visit earlier,” she says. She taps the pencil against her lips, like she’s trying to replace her habit of chewing her nails with something else. “He was much nicer than he was in the courtroom.”

“That’s good,” Apollo says. She had seemed afraid of him, right before her collapse, and then that was the last thing on Apollo’s mind.

“He brought me a sketchbook and the pencils,” she says. “He said he’d understand if I didn’t trust a gift from him, but they don’t look like my nail polish or anything… I guessed that’s okay, then.”

“What did you talk about?” Apollo asks. He doesn’t want to turn this into a cross-examination but he’s also desperately curious as to whether Klavier let slip anything that Apollo can use to try and figure him out.

Vera shrugs. “About… about me, mostly. And, um, adjusting to knowing what… what I am. He was really nice about it. He didn’t sound like he was… afraid, or anything.” Her thumb comes to her lips and she chews exactly once on her nail before she pulls it away, frowning even more now. “He told me I should avoid eating salt as much as I can. That I’ll feel better that way.” She lowers her voice conspiratorially, and both Apollo and Trucy lean in to listen. “He brought his dog with him,” she whispers, “but she’s not, um, a real dog, so the nurses didn’t know she was here.”

“Yeah, I was pretty sure she’s magic,” Trucy says.

“Pretty sure?” Apollo repeats. “You fed her chocolate! You’d better have been totally sure!” Not to mention how she has only been visible to a handful of people. Apollo was certain she was magic from the beginning.

“Her name is Vongole,” Vera says. “She’s kind of scary.”

“Really?” Trucy asks. “She just looks like a big puppy.”

“Her teeth are…” Vera shudders. “They’re all red and… red and oozy.”

“I don’t remember that,” Trucy says. It hadn’t occurred to Apollo that she might look different with the Sight, when so few of them could see her to begin with.

“But she is very fluffy.”

“Ooh,” Trucy says, “I bet.”

“Did he say what she is?” Apollo asks. “Or how he got her?”

Trucy glowers at him. His cross-examination voice must have kicked in. Vera shakes her head. “No. But she’s very gold, like both of them are.”

“Both of -- you mean Prosecutor Gavin, and, er--” Had Vera ever heard Kristoph’s name? He hired her to forge him evidence -- he nearly killed her -- and she probably still can’t recognize him by name.

“The devil,” Vera says quietly. “Yes. They both…” She twists her hands together. “I don’t know how I thought they looked the same. They’re both the same…” She flutters her fingers in the air in a vague circle, miming an outline -- maybe she means something like an aura, the way some of the colors through the magatama weren’t marked on Phoenix but surrounded him. “Gold. They’re both golden. But under that they aren’t anything alike.”

When they leave Vera, the sky is growing dark. Trucy showed her the diary page, the blank back, and asked her if she could see anything; Vera stared at her in confusion and told her, no, the paper was empty. “We’re not quitting on this,” Trucy tells Apollo as they dip between the brightening streetlights. “It’s the last thing I have from my family! We’re going to uncover these secrets, no matter who we have to ask!”

Apollo isn’t sure he wants to know -- this is what Magnifi asked Valant and Zak to kill him over -- this is what Valant tried to frame Zak over, that Zak disappeared over, that Zak reappeared and died over -- and he isn’t sure if it’s better for some things like that to stay buried. But he’s curious -- probably too curious, they both probably are -- and he can sympathize. If Dhurke had left him with anything -- if the bracelet from his mother could have held any tangible clue --

“What are you doing this weekend?” Apollo asks, kicking off his shoes and scattering some salt with them.

“Star Trek and cooking shows, probably,” Clay says. He has one leg hooked over the back of the couch and an unopened pack of Swiss rolls lying next to his hand. “Why?”

“Trucy has roped me into trying to solve a magical mystery,” Apollo says, already feeling stupid before he’s asked the question, “and she thinks more heads are always better, that we can use as many perspectives as possible whether or not someone is actually--”

“Dude,” Clay says, “are you asking me to help you with whatever-the-fuck you and your almost-Fair-Folk-fuckup boss’ daughter -- I mean he’s the fuckup, not Trucy -- are up to?”

“I’m asking if you want to help,” Apollo says, rubbing his eyes. “Which I know you’re the one who advises against stuff like--”

“Fuck it.” Clay sits up. He looks like a shot of caffeine has just kicked in.

“What?”

“Someone’s gotta be the one who says if your ideas are bad, so fuck it, dude, I’m in.”

“And if you can’t stop us and we all die in a horrible magical incident before you even get the chance to go to space?”

“Then I’ll be pissed at you sure, but ride or die, y’know? And besides” -- he grins, wickedly, and Apollo regrets everything -- “I bet Trucy’s the person I’m waiting for who can properly use all this middle-school-stories ammunition I’ve got saved up about you.”

#fic: the seelie of kurain #roddy fanfics #surprise! where's the plot going now? no one but me knows! it's gonna be fun!#next chapter is a treasure hunt except at the end it's just more of the gramaryes being terrible #posting this at 11 pm because in the spirit of clay: FUCK IT #sorry if you were about to want to sleep

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thebibliomancer · 6 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #202: This Evil Undying

December, 1980

Merry Christmas, here’s the Christmas robot here to punish the naughty. Protip: Everyone is naughty.

Okay but no, this isn’t really a Christmas story. Preponderance of red and green aside. But if I read this during December it would be a sweet Christmas gift of sorts from Marvel.

Aside from that, nothing much to say about the cover because this is kind of a generic Ultron cover. All I can tell from it is that this is during a time when Vision, Cap, Thor, and Wasp are on the team. Because that really narrows it down.

Last time: After the #200 debacle, the Avengers wanted nothing more than to clean up and just forget that #200 had even happened. Mostly nothing happened but then a robot broke into the Pym house, stole some important resins, and blew up the Wasp.

This time: The art looks weird. There’s a weird lifeless quality that I can’t quite put my finger on. I think its the inking, maybe.

Also, Jim Shooter once again gets a ‘based on’ credit. And since last post, I’ve actually discovered what that signifies. This two-parter was adapted from a paperback Avengers novel that Jim Shooter wrote.

I don’t know how much of it is Jim and how much was added making it into a comic and I couldn’t find out much about the novel. I imagine everything situating this within the post-Carol time period was an addition. Probably much of the domestic slice of life moments in last issue.

Also also, the window explodes and Cap logically assumes that they’re under attack because dammit they just got this place cleaned up!

Also also also, they’re all here late at night because Iron Man called an emergency meeting.

Lot of context to this splash page of a window exploding.

No further attack comes and Iron Man’s iron ear heard a tiny cry. Looking among the glass shards he finds...

THE WASP!

Jubilation, she lives!

I knew they wouldn’t kill off the Wasp! At least not until Secret Invasion!

.__.

Besides she’s on the cover and it would be a real dick move to put her on the cover alive if she died in the previous issue.

Anyway, surprise alive Jan tells the Avengers about what happened to her, in a surprisingly lucid fashion considering she just flew through an exploding window.

She has the facts down. None of this ‘says one ominous thing and then passes out’ biz.

Wasp: “I guess I should explain, huh? It seems longer, but it was only about an hour ago when I was awakened by a loud crash. And since my better half had already left for a scientific symposium in Tokyo -- I went to investigate, only to discover a huge robot carrying a pair of metal cannisters from Hank’s ‘impregnable’ security vault. And I guess the robot didn’t want any witnesses, because... it tried to kill me!”

Luckily, although she was stunned by a recent explosion, she possessed the wherewithal to shrink to wasp-size and escape.

And then she flew alllll the way to Manhattan from New Jersey because dammit she can do that if she wants to. She has endurance like whoa.

Still she was tired by the time she reached the mansion and lost control and was headed to thump against the window so she shattered it with one of her stings instead. Because crashing into a pile of glass shards is so much safer than hitting a window?

But after all of that, Wasp only has one concern.

Wasp: “Golly, I’ll be my hair is just a mess!”

Scarlet Witch: “You look fine, Wasp.”

Crisis averted!

Wasp always going to Wasp. I guess I don’t mind it because that’s just her character. It’d be a problem if Scarlet Witch were the same because then it would feel like Women Just Be Like That. But Wanda usually has different priorities going on.

Anyway, although the hair crisis is averted, there is still an attempted-homicide robot out there and the Avengers here an ominous clanking sound coming down the hall.

So hey all take defensive positions at the door so that they could hypothetically all be taken out in one shot.

“The ominous rattling grows, getting closer... until...”

Oh, its just good ol’ Jarvis with the early morning coffee and buttered muffins.

He interprets all the signs of imminent violence as the Avengers wanting breakfast later. Or maybe that’s just his droll Bronx/English? sense of humor.

Later, after the Avengers have affirmed that actually yes coffee and muffins will be lovely, Jarvis, Iron Man questions if the canisters the robot was stealing were labelled... “Ad Resin X and Ad Resin Y”?

Because, this just confirms Iron Man’s theory that he didn’t yet share with anyone, not even us last issue that Ultron has returned. BUT APPARENTLY he was chums enough to share it with the cover artist?

I feel slighted.

Hawkeye being Hawkeye says the dick thing.

Hawkeye: “Aw, geez, can’t we ever get rid o’ that tin-plated Napolean? Maybe your hubby’s lab deserved to get trashed, Wasp. After all -- Ultron wouldn’t even be around if Hank Pym hadn’t created him!”

Why do the Avengers like to spend time with this guy, again?

I mean Cap immediately tells Hawkeye not to be a dick but Jan’s response to that is just ‘well I think I would recognize Ultron if I saw him.’

Because the robot that attacked the lab wasn’t Ultron. As we see on the cover (too soon) Ultron is still looking pretty Ultrony. He has a pretty strong self-image actually.

Iron Man decides that this calls for him to explain to everyone (all of whom have fought Ultron and/or were created by him) how dangerous Ultron is.

Mostly because he’s made of adamantium and even though adamantium is a pain to store (once you mix the resins you have to keep it at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit and even then you only have eight minutes to mold it) once it has hardened, it can withstand a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb.

It was fairly long ago in another Ultron story in Avengers #66 when adamantium was introduced but one thing that sticks with me is the creator going ‘well shit this changes everything in a bad way.’

Its so indestructible that its a threat to the safety of the world. Very few counters to it exist. We haven’t seen a few yet like Rune King Thor or Antarctic vibranium which is the vibranium that kicks adamantium’s ass because its from space.

But one counter that we have seen is the reliable ol’ Scarlet Witch, most competent person on the team.

The way that a fully adamantium robot can even work is a molecular rearranger built into Ultron. And Scarlet Witch’s powers can make that rearranger malfunction and tear Ultron apart from the inside. Also, hypothetically, probability alteration should be able to just break adamantium or turn it into a less durable material. Its probability alteration. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Captain America: “That makes you, in Ultron’s eyes, the most dangerous of us all -- and the one he’s most likely to strike at first.”

So with Ultron out there somewhere plotting nefarious plans, this time the Avengers are going to be proactive by being reactive! Their plan this time is: protect Scarlet Witch!

Scarlet Witch protests though that she is accustomed to taking care of herself and really they should just track down Ultron and beat him up. Jocasta can track him, right?

But no, she cannot. Something is jamming her otherwise OP pls nerf cybernetic senses. She can’t find Ultron and heck she can’t even track Beast’s mutant energy like she did before to find Beast and Wonder Man.

Remember? They went to go tape Wonder Man’s show last issue but then Wonder Man got fired? Who knows what they’re up to now. Probably getting ruinously drunk.

Anyway, Vision offers a compromise. What if he takes responsibility for his wife’s safety? They’d be hanging around each other either way and she likes him already. A double marriage with a tree proves that.

She seems partial to the idea judging by that look she gives him.

And. I don’t even know whats going on with that side-eye Jan is giving them. I just. Do not.

Anyway, the rest of the Avengers are dismissed to go about their duties but also to stay near the mansion because WE ARE ON YELLOW ALERT PEOPLE!

I don’t think a color-coded alert system was ever explicitly established and have to believe that Cap just made it up this instant and everyone is just kinda going ‘ok Cap whatever you say.’

Hawkeye catches up to Wasp and apologizes for being an ass. He’s got that problem where his mouth is faster than his brain.

Wasp forgives him but only because he’s cute. That’s how she rolls.

Later, the sun is finally rising. Do these Avengers ever sleep?

We get a cute scene of Scarlet Witch and Vision watching the sun rise.

Scarlet Witch: “The dawn is beautiful, is it not, darling? Do you think it was meant to inspire us?”

Vision: “Actually, Wanda, the coloration you refer to is the result of the unique refractive qualities of the various airborne pollutants present in this vicinity.”

Scarlet Witch: “Wha--?! Blast it, Vision! Can’t you see that I’m looking for a little tenderness? A little compassion?”

Vison: “What would you have me do, my wife?”

Scarlet Witch: “I’d have you let go of me, that’s what! If you’re so blamed insensitive that you can’t tell when your own wife needs comforting --.”

Vision: “But I cannot let you go -- my job is to protect you. Would you like me to list the refractional indices of the chemical pollutants now? Perhaps in descending order?”

Scarlet Witch: “You do and I’ll hex you into plastic slag, you computerized --”

And then he kisses her. Because he was just teasing.

Is cute.

Apparently Vision’s ‘I do not understand human emotions and it makes me angry’ routine has evolved into ‘pretending not to understand human emotions except its foreplay.’

You’re an interesting guy, Vision.

“And the comfort that these two warriors and lovers find in each other’s arms gives evidence that the sunrise has, indeed, inspired them both.”

So yeah. ‘Beep boop what is love?’ is how Vision flirts now.

I wonder how far a gulf there is between this and Wanda dressing up in a Starfleet uniform and Vision asking Captain Wanda to explain this human concept of love.

Anyway, this page is sure to make the Seeing Red shippers very happy. They deserve it.

Meanwhile, in the basement training room, Captain America relaxes his own way. Through constant training.

According to Iron Man’s computer study, the Avengers typically face an average of four opponents in a typical battle. Presumably a typical battle against mooks and not against one superpowerful opponent that kicks all their asses.

So he sets up a training exercise with four targets and breaks them all with his shield. Its just a quick little one-page action scene.

In the event that he ever has to face four guys at varying heights, he’ll totally be able to hit them all with his shield in only a few seconds.

Skills.

In fact, he did so good that he gets positive reinforcement from thin air.

Thin Air: “Wheeee! Do it again!”

I josh. Its actually the Wasp.

In yet another new costume?

This is a very mercurial period in her fashion sense. It looks good though. Although it looks like she’s wearing yellow Saiyan armor. Actually she looks a lot like she was cosplaying Vegeta but maybe hadn’t seen a color image of his outfit. Because she’s got the bodysuit, the boots, the gloves, and the armor with shoulders.

Anyway, she was peeping in on Cap’s training routine and riding on his shoulder for a very important reason.

Wasp: “Sorry, Cap, I couldn’t resist hitching a ride. You’re so adorable when you’re concentrating.”

Cap: “I didn’t realize I was that easy to sneak up on, Wasp. Thanks for pointing it out -- I’ll work on it.”

Wasp: “That’s not exactly what I had in mind, Captain. Oh, what’s the use? It’s no fun flirting when Hank isn’t around to get jealous, anyway.”

... A really healthy relationship you have there, Mrs. Pym.

I do love Cap’s takeaway of ‘she must be telling me to work on my situational awareness!’

Hawkeye pops into the training room to report that Ultron’s robot struck again, stealing ‘secret materials’ from a British arms depot and wiping out an armored division in the process.

Hawkeye grouses that while this was going on, the Avengers were just sitting on their thumbs. Cap counters that they’re doing a very important job that nobody else can do by guarding the Scarlet Witch.

Wasp: “You mean you’re guarding the Scarlet Witch. I’m going back to the Cresskill to clean up the mess that drone made of Hank’s lab!”

Captain America: “Wait a minute, Wasp! We might need you!”

Wasp: “I doubt it, Cap. Let’s face it -- I’m the lightweight of the group. If the rest of you super-strong Avengers can’t stop Ultron, what good is a Wasp going to do? But don’t worry, I’ll stay in touch between loads to the trash bin. ‘Bye.”

... Its true but you shouldn’t say it.

Geez. Even the character is self-aware of how ineffectual she usually is. She’s not going on any Clint Bartony pity party about it but still.

I feel that if the writers were better at figuring out the non-combat utilities that shrinking powers were good for, Wasp would contribute a lot more. Maybe I’m just thinking this because I watched Ant-Man and the Wasp before starting this post and there was so much good shrinking action.

Later in the day, a weary hasn’t-slept-a-wink-all-night-probably Iron Man records a voice log.

Iron Man: “This is Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man... and this is the most difficult message I’ve ever had to dictate. I had hoped to speak directly to Thor, but he hasn’t responded to the summonses I’ve sent. I can only pray that he will before it’s too late.

For I’ve reason to believe that the man who reconstructed Ultron was... myself!

The fact that only a handful of men in the whole world could have done the job, combined with the fact that certain necessary components at Stark International were accessible only to me, can lead to but one conclusion -- that Ultron planted a post-hypnotic command in Tony Stark’s mind before last fighting the Avengers, ordering him to recreate Ultron’s form should he be defeated.

In other words, I was his ace in the hole -- though I’m sure that getting Iron Man under his control was something that even Ultron didn’t anticipate!

What worries me now is that I may still be subject to Ultron’s influence. Which means that when Ultron finds out my dual identity -- he could use Iron Man to fight the Avengers!

Which is why I constructed a tracing device last night, tuned to my armor’s energy mode. It’s locked in the basement vault in the mansion, and is to be used if I should become Ultron’s puppet -- used to track me down... and to destroy me!

Print one copy, seal it in an Avengers priority envelope addressed to Thor, than erase tape. Communication ends.”

Phew. A lot to unpack there.

One: So Ultron prepares for defeat a lot for a guy that never expects to be defeated.

Two: When did Ultron even get the opportunity to put Tony Stark under manchurian candidateism? Geez, I hope being brainwashed by villains doesn’t become a big thing with Tony.

Three: So I guess the invention he was working on last time that would cause his death at his friend’s hands was this tracking device. Hmm. Not what I expected but okay.

Soon, Iron Man finds Jarvis cooking a nice roast and asks him to give it to Thor when he arrives.

Iron Man: “But if I start acting unusual, acting like I’m not, well, myself, then get it into the hands of any Avenger immediately! And whatever you do, don’t give it back to me -- even if I threaten to kill you. I’m counting on you, Jarvis.”

Jarvis: “Thank you, sir. I promise I’ll not let you dow- kill me --?”

God. Jarvis puts up with so much. Double his salary and vacation time. He deserves more but thats for starters.

Also, its evening. A full day! We started at night, then the sun rose, and now its night again.

And Iron Man has approached Jocasta with a solution to the sensor jamming. All she needs to do is plug into this console and the problem will be solved quite nicely.

I don’t mean to cast suspicion at the man who explicitly suspected he was under brainwashing (oh hey, a bit of minor karmic comeuppance for letting Carol waltz off while brainwashed. Weird.) but Iron Man comes off very ominous here.

What with the shading but also the random italics.

But that klak is the last bit of this scene for the very next page and mere moment later, Iron Man knocks (or rather ‘noks’) on Vision and Scarlet Witch’s room.

Where apparently Vision is helping Wanda with her hair? Cute.

Iron Man tells Vision that sensors have detected unusual vibrations in the bedrock below the mansion. Maybe Ultron is trying to sneak up through the floor?

Hey, since Vision can alter his density maybe go check that out? Iron Man will watch the Scarlet Witch.

Vision doesn’t want to leave Wanda (this is the most time they’ve had together in weeks and maybe months) but he goes off anyway.

Wanda questions why Ultron would attack so obviously.

Iron Man: “That’s simple, Wanda -- he wouldn’t!”

He then grabs Wanda and zaps her unconscious.

Gasp! The traitor is Iron Man!

-eats popcorn-

Iron Man places a call to Ultron, specifically identifying as “Tony Stark in Iron Man armor” which is technically correct but also an amazing way to weasel out of revealing your secret identity when you’re technically brainwashed. Outstanding, Tony’s subconscious.

Iron Tony reveals he has incapacitated Scarlet Witch and asks Ultron whether he wants her killed or brought to him.

There’s a second pause.

It would have been a good place for a beat panel.

To drag out the suspense.

And then Ultron tells Iron Man to bring Scarlet Witch to him.

But for the flip of a coin, imagine how things could have been. If Ultron had been more cautious and told Iron Man to kill Wanda. If Tony had come out of the hypnosis to find that he had killed a long-time friend and teammate. Even if Vision understood and didn’t kill Tony in his grief, I don’t think Tony would ever forgive himself even if it was something out of his control.

Now there’s some good fodder for a What If story. But its terrible and I never want to read it.

Anyway, Iron Tony blasts out of the mansion carrying Scarlet Witch but before he goes, he spots Jarvis napping in a chair near a window. With the important envelope on a table right in front of him.

“There, he raises a gauntleted finger -- and cybernetically activates a pencil-thin laser beam -- turning what could well be the most important envelope in the world into a cluster of blackened ash and shattered hope.”

Dammit, Evil Tony! Stop taking precautions against your precautions!

But at least he didn’t murder Jarvis. Small miracles.

So Iron Man flies off to Neville Island where an abandoned Davreax heavy metals plant hides an Ultronish secret.

Its Ultron.

That’s the secret.

He’s got giant bubbling cauldrons of adamantium set up and ready. Despite the high tech lasers and stuff, it gives it a real gothic vibe.

Ultron congratulates Tony on his clever thinking of dressing as Iron Man.

Iron Man: “I... feel the need... to serve you... Ultron.”

Ultron: “Yes, my psycho-hypnosis has seen to that. And you are but the first. For soon, all humanity will serve me. They will serve... or die!”

Oh. Good. At least he’s not trying to wipe out humanity this time?

Actually I’m very vague on what Ultron’s overall goals have been up until now. I’d go back and check but most Ultron stories are stupid.

But elsewhere, an electronic cry of human anguish.

Vision has discovered that Scarlet Witch is missing. Although in classic robo-angst fashion he immediately tries to dismiss his obvious display of emotion.

Captain America: “Vision! What’s wrong? That scream -- !”

Vision: “I apologize for that, Captain. My... vocal circuitry was misaligned. I merely wished to call the Avengers’ attention to an emergency.”

Just admit that you can feel feelings, Vision. You’ll be a lot happier if you do. Happiness, by the way, is one of those emotions you totally feel all the time and yet deny feeling.

But just as Vision is telling Cap that Iron Man sent him on a wild goose chase and tricked them, Hawkeye calls in on the intercom to say that he thinks Iron Man tricked them.

Because apparently when he said he was going to fix Jocasta’s circuits he meant ‘fix’ with scare quotes because when she plugged into that computer console, he scrambled her brain.

Weirdly, the book almost misleads you into thinking you were misled about the ominousness in the Jocasta scene. Iron Man has her plug into a computer to fix her cybernetic sensors and then moments later he’s upstairs going ‘hey something weird on the sensors.’

You kidnap one of the female cast, you turn another one’s brain into mush? Stop being such a dick, Iron Man!

Thor picks that moment to arrive because its the most dramatically appropriate time to arrive. He even says the equivalent of ‘then good thing I’m here!’ in Asgardian speak.

With Thor arrived, Jarvis tells him about the secret envelope Iron Man left for Thor but also that someone burned it while he was merely napping, only this and nothing more.

HOWEVER

Jarvis: “However, knowing the missive’s importance, I took the liberty of xeroxing the message -- without reading it, of course.”

Jarvis, you beautiful man! You beautiful boundaries respecting forethought having man! You deserve a dozen backup stories! Nay, a dozen dozen!

Thor reads the letter and immediately runs to the vault. Unfortunately, Tony welded it shut. Fortunately, Thor just WHA-KAMs right through it.

Which considering the letter was meant for Thor feels like the intended outcome. He welded it shut so that not even he could get in there. He took precautions against him taking precautions to his precautions! Tony, you magnificent bastard!

Inside the vault there is but the Iron Man tracer device that the letter spoke of. Although Thor says it traces Iron Man’s ‘energy aura’ because he’s gotta be fantastical about things.

But either way the device picks up a clear signal from the west so the Avengers Assemble their asses into a Quinjet and go looking for iron.

Or at least I hope that’s the tracer and that they’re following Iron Man’s signal because that device is clearly a cassette player and they may only be following Iron Man’s mix-tape.

... I kind of want to listen to Iron Man’s mix-tape.

Meanwhile at Ultron’s heavy metals plant, Iron Man is starting to come out of the hypnosis when Ultron reveals his plans to hurt the Scarlet Witch.

Apparently, he had Iron Tony bring her from the mansion because he personally wanted to kill her. And to do so in an ‘eye for an eye’ fashion. Since her power tore him apart last time, he’s going to do the same to her.

Iron Man won’t be standing for that and though he doesn’t know how he got here, he’s not going to let Ultron hurt Wanda.

Unfortunately, Ultron still has his Win Button from last time.

When Iron Man grapples with him, Ultron just instantly drains all of the power from Iron Man’s armor, leaving him... well powerless.

This scene would make a hilarious sequence animated. Just charge Ultron and then immediately get dropped to the mat.

It does mean though that the Avengers lose the signal. And without it, they have no choice but to set down somewhere and wait until daylight to make a visual search.

Uh oh. So much for the cavalry.

But back at the plant, Iron Man hasn’t given up. A scraping sound clues Ultron in that the dude is crawling across the floor trying to get to a wall outlet to recharge his armor.

I’m not sure how fast you can recharge a suit of powered armor from a standard wall outlet but I’ll give Tony props for determination.

Ultron decides to be smart and just kill Iron Man this time. Why take chances?

But a tiny but apparently painful and distracting tzzzing painfully distracts him.

The Wasp of all people has shown up out of nowhere and started blasting Ultron in the face.

The Wasp: “I knew I wouldn’t be much good in a frontal assault, so I hid away in Wanda’s glove, figuring I’d be more useful as a surprise!”

That’s that good shit! That is what I’m talking about! Good job, Jim Shooter and/or David Michelinie in having the Wasp use her powers in an intelligent fashion! Misdirection, stealth, and the ever distracting tiny energy blast to the face!

Please keep writing her this smart! Please!

Also, she was apparently in Wanda’s glove the whole time. And they’re not exactly roomy so Wanda knew the whole time that Wasp was there.

Anyway, Ultron threatens to crush Wasp like the insect she is because his superior robot intellect isn’t really great at one-liners but suddenly

SHRAK-OOOM

Ultron gets blasted through a wall.

It turns out that you can recharge an armor a lot in a very short time with a standard wall outlet. Who knew?

Humorously, when Iron Man thanks Wasp for the distraction, she replies that he can repay her with an autographed picture of Tony Stark. Oh, you!

Everyone involved is pretty clear that just blowing Ultron through a wall hasn’t significantly stopped him so the plan now is to grab Wanda and skedaddle.

But just as Iron Man scoops up unconscious Wanda, Ultron emerges from the wall hole and blasts at them. Its a near miss but it still knocks Iron Man off his feet and stuns him.

Ultron: “That’s right -- grovel in your pain! Rue that you are but flesh, while I am all-abiding metal! You shall die, but I shall go on forever! For there is not a single power in the universe that can stop me!”

Narration: “No, no single power... save perhaps the hammer of Thor!”

FRAKOW

I love it when the narration plays off the happenings like that.

So when Iron Man completely recharged his armor from a wall socket, as ya do, the tracer reactivated. So the cavalry has arrived after all!

Bursting through a wall like the Kool-Ade man because that's just how the Avengers roll.

While Hawkeye (really? Really??) distracts Ultron with concussion arrows, Vision and Cap run off to check on Wanda and Iron Man respectively.

Iron Man tells Cap to be careful of the liquid adamantium vats. Remember to remember the vats, he seems to be saying.

Thor scoffs at the need for caution because while Ultron has stomped mortal foes, now he faces A GOD!

And he throws his hammer hard enough that we need to zoom to the outside of the factory to show the impact.

Which is big ol’ lightning strike and the building and even ground cracking and crumbling from the force of uru striking adamantium.

But it is adamantium its striking.

I don’t know why Thor finds this so hard to grasp. Adamantium is really, really, really durable. Although, Thor at his strongest can break it. But we are talking Thor as All-Father or Rune King or whatever.

This Thor that we have right here is comparatively a baby Thor or perhaps a gawky adolescent Thor. He’s not there yet. He doesn’t even have a beard.

Ultron retaliate blasts at Thor but Cap jumps between them and uses his shield to angle the blast right back at Ultron. Because apparently when fusion blasts oppose his mighty shield, even they must yield. And also apparently, its the mirror shield.

Not that it does much. Again: adamantium. REALLY TOUGH.

Its funny though. The motion lines on the panel with Cap and Thor make it look exactly like Thor just grabbed Cap and put him in front of him as a human shield. Instead of the intended read that Cap jumped there.

It’d be way out of character but it made me laugh.

Thor decides that if he can’t just hammer time Ultron hard enough to break something, he’ll strangle him instead!

Okay. Okay. I’m pretty sure this is more of a grappling thing but he keeps pushing the handle of Mjolnir against Ultron’s throat. IT KEEPS HAPPENING.

Maybe it would make more sense to put him in an arm lock. It looks like Ultron designed himself with joints that work like a human’s would. And surely Thor could outmuscle him.

And then when his arms are pinned, I dunno, find a maintenance hatch or something and just start pulling wires.

It wouldn’t work because Ultron pulls powers out of his ass and could... electrify his carapace or something. But still.

I want to see Ultron in an arm lock.

Anyway, Thor’s attempts at grappling are for naught because Ultron just shoots blindness beams with his unlocked arm.

Because he has those. That’s just something he can do.

Then Iron Man calls him out on it.

Iron Man: “That was a dirty trick, Ultron! Let’s find out how good you are at going one-on-one with someone who’s onto your ploys -- like me! Or are you scared?”

Ultron takes the bait for bait it is and jumps over at Iron Man to smash him. Iron Man just flies away leaving Ultron confused and standing next to an adamantium vat that I hope you all remembered was a factor.

Hawkeye: “That’s right, motor-mouth! We humies have a few tricks of our own! Like f’rinstance, the ‘ol’ one-two’ -- in which Iron Man’s the one -- an’ I’m the two!”

And Hawkeye ziplines down at Ultron, kicking him into the adamantium chekov’ vat.

Surely breaking every bone in his foot but oh so worth it.

Then without missing a beat, Captain America and Thor throw their mighty shield and Mjolnir to destroy the lasers heating the vat.

And as the Avengers watch in trepidation, Ultron claws his way out of the vat screaming

Ultron: “No! I... must... sur... viiiiive... *”

And the adamantium cools, trapping Ultron in an unbreakable prison. And he’s powered by fusion so its possible that he’s conscious in there.

“And then it is done, like a tortured fly stuck in glittering amber, Ultron stands frozen, unmoving, unmovable. The threat of the evil undying is over.

For now.”

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving prick, I suppose.

This is probably one of the better Ultron stories.

I’ve said before that after Ultron becomes adamantium and thus unable to just be punched to death, each encounter with him becomes a puzzle. How do we get rid of him this time?

And although it would be easy to just have Scarlet Witch take care of him every time, that probably wouldn’t be as engaging maybe.

So the solution this time was fairly creative. The Avengers can’t kill Ultron. Or, well, they could. Scarlet Witch was conscious. She could have done her thing. But minus that, the Avengers can’t kill Ultron.

How then do you make him not a threat?

You dump him into adamantium so he becomes a vaguely Ultron shaped statue.

Its an obvious but creative solution that hadn’t been used yet.

And then hopefully you dig a hole and dump him in that hole and dump cement on top of him and then fill in that hole.

I can’t think of a way for this specific Ultron to get out of this but why take any chances?

Also and amazingly: this is the one Ultron story where everybody is smart.

Ultron was smart, hiding behind his robot drones until Scarlet Witch was neutralized. Not having Iron Man kill her was dumb but dude is petty.

Iron Man was smart... ish. Suspecting that he had been compromised, he set up some contingencies to ensure that the Avengers would be able to find him. Making that letter, making the tracer, welding the vault door shut. Smart.

Not telling anyone and relying on a letter to Thor to find its way was not as smart. I understand why though. Revealing he might be under Ultron’s control and may have rebuilt Ultron might lead into revealing his secret identity. Its stupid he has one but its his.

Hypnotized Iron Man: also smart. Came up with clever ways to neutralize Jocasta and get Vision out of the way so he could abscond with Wanda. Also, even hypnotized he protected his stupid secret identity. He also burned the letter without causing much of a fuss.

Jarvis: smart. Realizing from Iron Man’s weird ominousness how important the letter was, he made a backup. While respecting privacy.

Wasp: faked writing herself out of the story for her uselessness, instead proved how useful her powerset is.

Usually, everyone is stupid in an Ultron story. But here, everyone was smart.

They could have done more. Tony should have a team of scientists working around the clock to find ways to deal with adamantium generally and Ultron specifically. They shouldn’t rely on either the Scarlet Witch or having a vat of liquid adamantium available.

Still, way to use your surroundings.

Okay, so despite the story having ‘waiting for Thor’ as a minor plot point, he doesn’t really do much besides bust open the vault but its still something that his and Tony’s mutual trust is what made him the person that Tony entrusted the letter and Iron Man tracker to.

So the real contribution Thor made was not his muscles but his heart. And that’s beautiful.

Its a bit weird that Ultron just so happened to have brainwashed Tony Stark off-panel but that’s not the first time that’ll happen.

Actually, this story is like a much more condensed and much less stupid version of the Crossing. Iron Man turns traitor because he’s brainwashed by a long-time Avengers enemy.

You cut 90% of the fat and the part where Tony is replaced by his younger self and yeah, the similarities are uncanny.

I’m really not looking forward to the Crossing...

Anyway, I think being based on a book helped bump this story’s level of quality up.

I understand that writing a monthly comic means you can’t put as much effort into the story. There’s not time for extensive revising. But you had this apparently pre-existing Avengers novel where more time was spent on refining this Ultron story.

I suspect that the characters that got written out were not part of the novel. Jocasta, Beast, Wonder Man, and Yellowjacket. Also why you had Hawkeye stick around after the nonsense with Marcus. Needed to get him in here so he could kick Ultron.

If anyone knows anything about this mysterious and legendary Avengers paperback novel, please let me know. I’d be fascinated to see what changed and what was kept during the adaptation process.

But yeah. I really enjoyed this two-parter. Its funny that they apparently had run out of ideas for after #200 and had to adapt an existing story but it was good.

Keep it up, Micheline and/or whoever.

How ironic that a machine intelligence who hates humanity would end up the one who has no mouth and yet must scream. Also, follow @essential-avengers because you like me and think I’m rad.

#Avengers #Ultron #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #the Wasp #Iron Man #Hawkeye #Thor #Jarvis #Captain America #essential avengers #Essential marvel liveblogging #A Good Ultron Story #whoddathunkit?#special props to Wasp and Jarvis for being stupendously competent today #hell jarvis was more competent than some avengers #looking at you Thor

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thesportssoundoff · 6 years ago

Text

What a 23 page report tells us about Urban Meyer and sports in general

First and foremost, I'd absolutely recommend that anybody who has an opinion on the investigation without reading the investigation findings which can be found HERE (http://a.espncdn.com/pdf/2018/0823/ohiostatepdf.pdf) read it. Read it once, get any sort of emotional issues out of the way and then read it twice with a clearer head. Stuff like this, serious issues about morality and sports trying to co-mingle, often needs multiple lookovers. This one is a neat and tidy 20-some odd pages so it's not like it'll take too much time out of your day and by report standards, it's written clear enough that anybody can parse through it and get it. Also in the following bit, domestic violence is going to come up and while I'm not much for trigger warnings, I do think a fair and honest "HEADS UP!" is necessary for a subject such as this.

The outrage has simmered down. By normal read and react (or just react) standards, the Urban Meyer situation has basically come and gone. His three game suspension is known, we raged about it and people moved on as they often do. It's hard to stay mad at something for too long when social media is basically a treadmill of rage; by the time you get mad at one thing, something else is already coming up so you're never allowed to fully decompress. You can't "get it out of your system" so to speak. I feel like on issues like this when we're discussing potential/alleged violence against a spouse, it matters to read through the reports and try to find the best image possible. Reading through the report I have zero doubt that Zach Smith is an abuser in some form or fashion. If not physically then emotionally since chances are a guy with a severe drinking problem who seems to also have a severe anger issue and poor impulse control probably has no issue yelling or menacing somebody. The report wasn't about Zach Smith's indiscretions (not entirely at least) and was instead about Urban Meyer. It's what I have to assume (because otherwise why read it) a good faith assessment and report on the findings of what Urban Meyer knew, what he alleged to know and what we ALL now know about the Zach Smith situation and how Urban Meyer and Ohio State handled it. For those who wish to care, here are my own personal thoughts based just upon the findings:

1) For SOME reason, Urban Meyer's loyalty to Zach Smith is cast iron which makes zero sense

The 2009 arrest for a domestic incident is discussed and covered pretty clearly early on. Zach Smith brings home a drunk co-worker to sleep on his couch (because why else do you bring a female co-worker to your home to sleep on your couch after a party?) and his wife is upset. It's alleged that Zach Smith throws her against a wall, an allegation that ultimately leads to an arrest but not a charge from Courtney Smith. From there though and spanning two different universities, it sure seems like there's nothing but bad behavior from Zach Smith. From trips to strip clubs (which aren't illicit except for when you're doing it on the company dime/company time) to truancy in paying back bills to the school to other red flags amid the school. The biggie though is the 2015 investigation into more domestic violence allegations from Courtney Smith. At that point, Urben Meyer is faced with a difficult choice on a one v one issue. Zach Smith has to this point exhibited plenty of fireable behavior and now he's under investigation for domestic violence. For some reason Urban Meyer puts up with it, offering yet another warning. At this point Zach Smith continues to act like a problem (it's not illegal to sleep with a co-worker or to take dick pics but it's probably unbecoming for a dude in the middle of a domestic violence investigation to do it and to do it WHILE at work) until the restraining order is brought down in 2018. THEN and only then does Urban Meyer make the move to fire Zach Smith and the move is made, according to the information presented, because Urban was jumped on the news by the media.

For some reasons by which I simply can't comprehend, Urban Meyer's rope of trust for Zach Smith wasn't just long enough to hang himself but to hang Urban Meyer, Ohio State's Athletic Director Gene Smith, the Ohio State University and practically all of Ohio at once. For reasons I can't figure out, Urban Meyer decided that he would stake his perfectly crafted reputation as the guy who viewed this as more than football and who preached family and values and so on so so forth on a guy who ultimately would betray that trust time and time again is just unfathomable. Remember Urban Meyer had Aaron Hernandez on his football team at Florida and he somehow survived the eventual fallout of that with his reputation intact! He rode Tim Tebow and the Tebow-isms of Florida while having guys like Chris Rainey on his team. He left Florida citing health and family, took a year off for a major media gig and then bailed and went to Ohio State for the largest contract in history at that time. This was the world's most bulletproof built reputation and he somehow found a way to ding it over an assistant. Even the report seems baffled, speculating that it may due to Zach Smith being the grandson of a mentor of Urban Mayer's. Even THAT seems like a stretch and IF that's the reason then Urban Meyer got this point politically by accident because no smart man would be that loyal that far down the chain of command. Zach Smith wasn't his defensive coordinator or a close aide, he wasn't a guy in a high spot on the totem pole. He was the wide receivers coach for the love of God. He wasn't there for 15 years having a long track record of proven results. In fact even in 2015 and 2016, Urban Meyer was concerned about Zach Smith showing up late to work (!) and having a generally poor level of performance!

It's stated that Urban Meyer had never fired a coach before and that may have played into it. I don't know the veracity of that claim but if so I guess it makes a little bit of sense as to the apprehension. Still Urban Meyer has truly nobody to blame but himself for all of this because it's not like Zach Smith's character was sterling and beyond question. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a guy who values second/third/fifth/twelfth chances in life. You've probably seen me argue for dudes like Greg Hardy and company, acknowledging the right to be mad at those people for fucking up while also acknowledging the human right to be able to atone for errors and also the right to make a living (as other sports people have argued, what IS a guy accused of a crime supposed to do for the rest of his life? What is acceptable for him? Can he run a store? Can he cook your food? Clean your subways?). Zach Smith just keep making errors and Urban Meyer continued to put him on his coaching staff and the report offers no real solid reason for any of that.

2) "So I’m To Believe...”

My Con Law professor used to start a sentence with "So I'm to believe" whenever he was hinting that somebody was losing their end of a classroom debate. It's stated a few times in the report that Urban and Shelley Meyer had discussions about Zach and Courtney Smith. It was at least known to the couple that those two had problems, so much so in fact that when the 2009 incident between the Smiths occurred, the Meyers suggested a counselor to the duo. As such, I'm to believe is that Urban Meyer and Shelley Meyer had consistent dialogue about everything except for when Shelley was presented with texts of abuse and photos from Courtney Smith? And I'm to believe that Shlley Meyer contacted police about a domestic violence investigation but didn't tell her husband she was doing that? That at no point during this period of time Shelley and Urban NEVER talked about allegations of domestic violence in 2015? Even if Shelley Meyer thought that Courtney Smith was being less than honest about the Zach Smith situation, I'm to believe she NEVER mentioned that to Urban Meyer? It's a lot to believe, ain't it? Shelley Meyer is deemed as "supportive" of Courtney Smith but not supportive enough to say "Listen there's some shit going on, what are you going to do about it?" to Urban Meyer?

3) A three game suspension is worse than no suspension

Honestly there's no "Better than nothing!" here. There are three options here; 1) no suspension, 2) a lengthy suspension or 3) dismissal as the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. To offer up a three game suspension is a slap in the face of the concept of good faith. If he violated enough ethics to be suspended, it should be a much lengthier punishment than three games. A three game suspension is like saying "We don't necessarily think he did anything wrong but we hope you feel better about it!" He won't miss Penn State, he won't miss Michigan State, he won't miss Michigan hell he misses ONE Big 10 game and it's Rutgers! No disrespect to the fine Rutgers football squad but I think Ohio State should be able to manage without Urban Meyer. Again if you feel like he violated something in your code of conduct, suspend him for more than just a quickie three game set. Six games and you'd have plenty of people believing in you. Fire him if you're TRULY convinced he did something wrong. Three games just feels hollow and vacant, like an attempt to make this go away with a terrible placating tool.

4) It's only a problem when a) someone gets hurt by it or b) someone finds out about it

The response of Urban Meyer at the Big-10 press conference is covered but what truly matters are the responses of the people involved. Gene Smith advises Urban Meyer to be as scant with details as possible, Once the shit hits the fan about a potential media snowstorm on Zach Smith, Urban Meyer instructs his coaches to keep the focus on the team and the players. On one hand, sounds like a coach aiming to keep everybody in line and out of the way of what's to come but Urban himself seems to have no idea how to handle the situation either. In fact, he asks people in the organization for details on 2015 which suggests he actually may not have known about it. Now granted that in and of itself is compounded by Meyer's text from before August 2017 of last year disappearing entirely for whatever reason. Strange as that may be. Shelley Meyer expresses concern for the safety of some people (Zach himself? Her family? Courtney?) when she discusses and I quote here on page 12, Section A; "“I am worried about Zach’s response. He drinks a lot and I am just not sure how stable he will be. Afraid he will do something dangerous. It’s obvious he has anger/rage issues already.”" Everything after the fact paints a bad light on what feels like a cover up, even if the information presented seems to suggest something far less nefarious. It has that “It’s only a problem if” vibe to it.

5) Urban Meyer's memory loss is troubling

Urban Meyer is 54 years old and expected to the head coach at a major college university. At numerous times during the investigation, it's mentioned that Meyer either can't recall exact details or just flat out can't remember things. If we believe his texts, Urban Meyer genuinely had no recollection of the 2015 investigation. He did know about it but couldn't remember it per the investigation. In the same investigation, Urban Meyer claims to suffer from memory loss as well. If this is coincidence or an act, he's the most committed actor in history. If it's real? I think we need to ask if a coach who can't remember poignant events in time relating to his coaching staff is truly the best candidate to coach a football team going forward regardless of the ethical concerns.

At the end of all of this, there's some serious ethical issues we need to try and learn from here.

I hope this won’t be the case but I believe we’re all one day going to be in Urban Meyer's shoes. I can't speak for what Courtney Smith has gone through. It's an avenue of life I haven't had to walk and hopefully will never have to walk. Hopefully my sister will never have to walk it either and hopefully no sibling nor mother of anybody who reads this will ever have to walk it. I can only speak for myself when I say that I've known victims of domestic violence and I've known those accused of domestic violence. Domestic violence is a visceral and emotional act; it invokes emotion from those who deal with it and those presented with it. Urban Meyer may truly be a man who values women and abhors those who put their hands on a spouse, namely women who are more often than not the victims. What Urban Meyer may not have been prepared for is the likelihood that somebody close to him would be the accused. It's a lot easier to hate domestic violence until you know the guy who is accused and until you hear them plead with you that they'd never do that. It's harder for you to accept it because YOU want to believe it. Look at your average social media kerfuffle when somebody is accused of something heinous; the majority of the people lambasting them probably turn hat quickly when it's somebody they like accused. We all hate domestic violence until it looks us in the face with somebody we care about. We’ve all probably heard a joke about domestic violence and let it slide unitl it stops being funny when it’s someone you kno wwith bruises. When it's you/us/we, it''s never as black and white, no matter how much it is to everybody else. Even to the very end after firing him, Urban Meyer was telling his staff that Zach Smith needed their help moving forward (on page 11). Urban Meyer was presented on two different occasions with the belief that somebody close to him who he admired was in fault of violating a code of ethics he subscribed (or alleges) to have subscribed to. In those instances, he trusted a man who ultimately in the end betrayed him. Why? I guess it doesn't matter now but it definitely is something to consider. If anything, I suppose Urban Meyer's situation will force us all when/if that time comes to truly question what it is we believe about people and whether or not "*So and so* would NEVER do *such and such*" is really the best way to show faith in a situation as nuanced, painful and complicated as this.

This ethical conundrum of trust and who we trust is magnified with celebrities and athletes and people we THINK we know. Ohio State fans have poured out in support of Urban Meyer with the belief that he didn't know or did the right thing or whatever the case. Our society (and I imagine societies before this) believe we know the people we see on TVs, football fields, basketball courts or on our youtube channels. The star worship is strong and it's getting stronger in part due to the goal of making the world as connected on an individual basis as possible. Nobody wants to believe that somebody could make an error that grave because we "know" them. We "know" them because we see them on TV four months out of the year, follow their tweets and instagrams and believe in something they do to a borderline unhealthy level. We idol worship and just hope like hell we've picked the right idol to bandwagon on. For Ohio State fans, they "know" Urban Meyer's code of ethics because he tells us them and then wins football games. If Urban Meyer did the former and not the latter, would this whole incident just be a convenient excuse for some people to want him gone? We "knew" Bill Cosby because he was funny, right? We don't really know anybody outside of the persona they want us to believe in---and sometimes we all need to remember that before we grab pitchforks or take stances. At the end of the day, I hope this incident convinces people to either wait for a reason to believe one way or another and not allow blind faith and the belief we "know" people to convince ourselves to pick a side long before we need to take one. It's okay to let the facts play out; so long as you're consistent in who you're choosing to let the facts play out on.

And lastly, the biggest problem is one that I think we can all see happening on a day to day basis. That is "When is it okay to talk about somebody's alleged transgressions?" For Urban Meyer and the Ohio State Athletic Department, so much rested on whether or not Zach Smith was charged with a crime. On multiple instances, they admit that a large portion of their reaction was due to Zach Smith not being charged with a crime (that they knew of at least). Even in the end of the report, they state that Ohio State leaving it in the hands of the law was not the best idea in absence of an internal investigation. Ohio State was waiting for the police or a judge to give them some sort of clearance and they waited too long because these things aren't rapid action. They were putting their hands in the legal process to solve their issue for them which is a problem in 2018. It's a smart strategy, I suppose, in that they are the people best equipped to handle that. At the same time, you run the risk of putting somebody else in charge of a problem. "So and so has never been charged of a crime!" doesn't neglect the investigation or the arrest. It's a fine line to walk; being fair to due process while acknowledging an issue at hand. Ohio State relied on the legal system to solve their problems which in turn is the challenge for pro sports today. We acknowledge that leagues/teams aren't equipped to deal with legal matters and yet we want them to. Why? Because most people don't really trust the legal world either. What is due process in 2018 and how do we balance good faith with our emotions?

#football #Urban Meyer #thoughts #meandering rambles #too much words

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