#he tried broaching the subject before (albeit not in a way that she could very easily understand) and it went nowhere

[jimlingss]

Sugar and Coffee [4]

Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 4.5 OR Chapter 5

➜ Words: 4k

➜ Genres: 99.5% Fluff, 0.5% Angst, Pâtisserie school!AU

➜ Summary: It isn't hard to be a pâtisserie chef, but it's not a piece of cake either. It seems like for you in particular, life keeps throwing in one wrench after another. It always finds ways to make your sweets bitter. The cherry on top is Jeon Jungkook — a rival with a sensitive sweet tooth who always finds ways to complain about you.

cr.

You miss Seokjin.   You know that you shouldn’t, but in the middle of the night while you’re unable to sleep, you pick up your phone again. And you send him a text.   2:03 am. Y/N: hey   The bright screen stares back at you, illuminating your face and blinding your vision in the darkness of your quiet dorm room. Your messages are lined up in a row, the same exact text left unanswered. Ones you sent from a week ago to two days ago.   The radio silence makes the realization sink in — he broke it off. Jin really has no plans of communicating with you again, of giving you an explanation other than telling you that it’s run its course and that you’re not the one at fault.   It doesn’t sit well with you, so your thumb moves, quicker than you can list the consequences for. You call his number. It dials. But instead of hearing the tone ring, you hear an automated message.   Seokjin changed his number.   //   It’s morning while on the way to class with you hiding beneath the hood of Jin’s sweater that you end up catching sight of someone familiar walking towards your direction. It’s your only strand of hope, but you step forward before the opportunity is lost. “Hani?”   “Y/N?” Hani stops and greets you with a smile. She’s a friend — well, Seokjin’s friend. But she still regards you with the same warmth as she gave to you for the past two years, albeit the atmosphere is awkward.    The both of you know what happened, know it’s looming over your heads. But no one speaks about it, no one dares to broach the subject. “Hey, how are you?” And her question is asked at a higher pitch, cautious as if you were a wounded animal that she was afraid of scaring.   “I’m...fine, how are you?”   “I’m okay.” Hani nods and gathers the courage to approach the issue that you’re skirting around. “I...heard about what happened. It’s a real shame. I hope you’re holding up well.”   “Trying.” You muster a smile, shrugging your shoulders.   Yet in spite of her friendliness, you can still feel it — the distance.    Like you thought, they sided with him. They’ve chosen him with no plans of getting between you two and involving themselves in the conflict. “Well, I should go. I might be late. I’ll see you around, Y/N.”   You nod and she brushes past you. But then you twist on your heel. “Hani?”   “Yeah?” She spins around.   “Did,” you hesitate, “Jin say anything about me?”   “No, he didn’t,” she says, quietly and sadly.   You bob your head again, meeting her eye. “How is he?”   “He’s okay.”   You wonder what that means — if he never really cared, if he’s already over this. But you’re also glad that he’s okay. You’ll never have any ill wishes against Jin. You still love him.

Jungkook and his friends have a system, if one could call it that — a shitty system of crashing each other’s dorms. Sometimes they’re crowding around Taehyung’s gaming consoles, other times it’s Jimin’s computer. Or Jungkook’s flat screen that he spent his entire summer job’s savings for. Or even going to Hoseok and Yoongi’s apartment to raid the fridge and be as loud as they want without getting noise complaints.   Hoseok and Yoongi didn’t like the dorm life, so they were willing to raise their living expenses and pool their money together for an apartment off campus. And that’s where Jungkook finds himself this evening.   They’re watching a soccer game, but the only person invested is Taehyung who actually knows the teams and who is who. Hoseok is preoccupied pigging out on the snacks, Yoongi sipping his drink, and Jimin is playing a game on his phone.   “Can I ask you something?” Jungkook asks out of the blue, smacking his lips after taking a swig of the beer. He can’t wait till Taehyung gets curious and drinks some — he’d probably gag from the taste.   Yoongi looks up. “What?”   “It’s not about me, but I have a friend of a friend and this friend of theirs was...dumped pretty badly and now they’re depressed and not talking...at all….and they don’t really have friends anymore because all their friends were my friend’s friends, so it really sucks for them.”   “Uh-huh.”   “So what would you hypothetically say to my friend’s friend to make them feel better or like what would you do?”   “Well, for one, I’d take Y/N out,” Hoseok pipes up while chuckling.   Jimin lifts his head and Taehyung looks over. The two of them exchange expressions and burst out laughing. Jungkook sighs in irritation. “Who said this was about Y/N?!”   “We’re not total idiots, dude.” Jimin grins. “Sometimes.”   In the meanwhile, Taehyung leans down to give a punch to Jungkook’s arm and winks. “Trying to slide into her DMs now that she’s single, huh? I see you, Kook. Still got game. Can’t say I’m not impressed. Go get that puss—”   “As if.” Jungkook scoffs. “I just feel bad, alright? Forget I asked. Whatever.”   But Yoongi isn’t ready to drop the subject quite yet. His cat-like eyes narrow in on him as he sips on his drink. He puts the bottle down on the coffee table with a clank. “Since when did you start caring about her?”   “I don’t—”   “You don’t have to get defensive,” Yoongi deadpans boredly. He isn’t that interested, merely stating a fact. “I’m just surprised.”   “She’s going to be my internship partner whether I like it or not in a few months.” The youngest sighs. “I don’t want to make it awkward. And I thought it would be better in the long run if we become friends now. It would be nice to have each other’s backs. Or at least be civil enough where she’s not trying to rip my head off every other second.”   Yoongi appears mildly understanding and nods. “So it’s a diplomatic thing.”   “Yeah.”   “Invite her to our game night,” Hoseok says from the kitchen.   “Don’t do that.” Yoongi scoffs, expression wrinkled like he bit into a lemon. “It’s our thing.”   “Are we ten? Boys only?” Hoseok argues, “We already have our thing every single night anyway. Plus, it might be a nice change since Jungkook always wins.”   “Fine.” He rolls his eyes. “Do whatever you want.” �� “That actually sounds kind of fun!” Taehyung grins, tearing his eyes away from the soccer game. Jungkook’s amazed that he had half a mind to pay attention to the conversation. “But I wonder if Y/N is any good at board games or if she even plays.”   “Is everyone cool with me asking?” Jungkook looks around — Hoseok and Taehyung are enthusiastic about the prospect while Yoongi is passive aggressive at worst and apathetic at best.   It’s Jimin who looks uncertain.   “She’s….intimidating,” he mutters. “But….I think you’re right. Y/N looks like she’s having a tough time and if we can help, then we should. At least then we know we tried.”   He nods. There’s only one issue left. “I don’t even know if she’ll even accept…”   Knowing you, you might just laugh in his face and then spit at him for even making such a suggestion. Then again, with how you’ve been acting lately, you might just start crying from gratefulness and freak him out. Both scenarios are equally horrible.

The pair of you bake alongside each other as the teacher watches for technique and the order of the procedures done. Jungkook works on the dough while you focus on the custard filling. It’s surprisingly perfect teamwork — you’re in sync with one another and assemble the final cake together.   And when the teacher returns to eat it, he’s astounded that it’s been exactly replicated. From the taste to the presentation.   You leave the room with a ninety percent grade, having absolutely aced the midterm.   “That was pretty good, huh?!” Jungkook grins, putting his hand out. You muster a small smile, and high-five him back.   “Yeah.”   “Man, all our hard work paid off! Did you see the look on Mr. Chu’s face?”   He was over the moon, especially considering that napoleon cake isn’t all that easy to make under strict time constraints. But when Jungkook glances at you, you don’t seem very happy over it. Your eyes are on the floor with your downcast head.   “Hey.” The doe-eyed boy pokes your shoulder until you look up at him. “Do you wanna…”   “Pardon?” Your brows furrow. His voice became so quiet, you couldn’t hear him.   Jungkook clears his throat noisily. “I asked how you were holding up?”   You shrug. “Fine. I don’t know. Do you really want to hear about it?”    You doubt he would trouble himself with your problem, but what catches you off guard is that he stops in the middle of the hallway and nods. You stop with him too. “Sure. Shoot.”   “Really?”   “Yeah, I don’t see why not. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”   You inhale a deep breath. It catches in your throat. Your fist tightens, nails digging into your skin. You swear you wouldn’t cry again. “I texted Jin, even though I know it wasn’t a good idea and yeah, it wasn’t. He changed his number.”   “Oh….shit.”   “And I talked to one of his friends yesterday and she said he’s doing fine. He hasn’t really talked about me. And I don’t really know what any of that means. I haven’t seen him around either. I think he’s avoiding me and I can’t help thinking about what I did that was so wrong for me to be treated this way. I don’t….I don’t think I deserve this.” You exhale a shallow breath, eyes stinging painfully.   Jungkook suddenly plops his hand on the top of your head. You frown at him and he realizes what he’s doing and withdraws his hand awkwardly. “That really...sucks.”   “Yeah, thanks, I know.”   “Sorry, I don’t really know what to say.”   “You don’t have to say anything,” you tell. “Thanks for not laughing, I guess.”   “Why would I laugh?” Jungkook asks, genuinely confused. You shrug.    You always thought Jungkook would be the first to applaud your misery — he’d goad you and cheer you when you’d cry. You guess you severely misjudged him. “Are you free tonight?”   “Why?”   “My friends and I are doing this thing.” Jungkook scratches the back of his neck and diverts his vision elsewhere. “We meet up to play games sometimes. It’s really Taehyung’s thing cause he’s the one who likes games, but if you’re free, then you should come along. We’re in need of new players actually, cause it gets boring when it’s the same people over and over again….”   “Would they mind?”   He swallows hard, taking in the way your head is quirked to the side, your eyes big and glimmering with hope. It seems like you’re taking him up on the offer or at least considering it and he’s pleasantly surprised. “No, no, they wouldn’t.”   “I don’t want to make it weird or anything…”   “No, you wouldn’t. Trust me. They’re just a bunch of lame dorks, and you kind of already know Taehyung and Jimin. They’re nice guys. So if you wanna come, you should. No pressure whatsoever though.”   “Sure.” The corners of your mouth lifts.   “Really?”   “Yeah. That’s….okay, right?”   “Totally. Yep. I’ll text you where and what time.”   You never knew one day you’d be going off campus to some random apartment for a night of game boards, much less with Jeon Jungkook. Part of you is skeptical about his offer, envisioning that he’s catfishing you somehow, that there isn’t actually anything happening and he’ll text you ‘sike’ after making you wait hours.    But then you remind yourself that he hasn’t been exactly an asshole lately and that you’re not in the cruel world of High School anymore. Jungkook would have to be sick to prank you in this state.   You can already hear the boisterous noise on the other side of the door before you even knock. But after some hesitation, the sounds taper off when you do.    The door swings open and Jungkook greets you with his doe eyes and messy dark hair flopping in different directions. He’s in a black shirt and loose, gray sweatpants, casual unlike how he usually dresses for class and the kitchen.   “Hey!” He reaches in to give you a quick hug. You stiffen and he lets go. “Come in!”   “Finally, she’s here!” Hoseok stands from the couch with his beer and moves to the table Taehyung’s setting up.   “Sorry, am I late?”   “Right on time actually,” Jimin says with a gentle smile.   “Beer or cooler or wine?” Yoongi suddenly asks, twisting around from the fridge.   “A-Any.” It’s fast paced, but they’re welcoming. There’s not a moment for awkwardness to settle in. Yoongi comes over with a beer can, tosses it, and you catch it with both hands. “Thanks.”   “We usually start with a game of good ol’ Janga.” Taehyung grins from his spot at the table. “Usually the person who goes before the loser gets to pick the next game, but since you’re our guest of honour, you can pick. There’s a whole shelf of them over there.”   He gestures towards the living room and you head over to look at the boxes that are accumulating. There’s a ton of boxes stack on each other on the shelf — The Game of Life, Risk, Twister, Battleship, Monopoly, Connect Four, Snakes and Ladders, and even CandyLand.   “What’s this?” you ask, pointing at the bottom shelf with a huge bin. There seems to be small bags inside, place mats, and books too.   “It’s stuff for D&D,” Jungkook clarifies with a sigh, popping a can of beer open to drink. “Dungeons and Dragons.”   “Taehyung’s been wanting to get us to play,” Jimin tells with a smile.   “I’m a great DM,” Taehyung chirps, “It would be so much fun, but we don’t really have time for a whole campaign. Otherwise I’d pull together official content and stuff from Unearthed Arcana and run a module from Wizards of the Coast—”   “Alright, nerd.” Yoongi sighs after a swig. “I’m not trying to re-virgin myself and remain abstinent for the rest of my life, alright? You can do that by yourself.”   “Don’t hate on my game, bitch,” Taehyung spits as Jimin and Jungkook laugh. A smile comes to your face and it isn’t one you have to muster for once. “Wait till the day you come to me and ask me advice on what kind of spells a halfling bard should have at level six.”   “Over my dead body.”   “Okay, can we not argue for once? We have a guest.” Hoseok intercepts with his hands out, literally standing between them. “Let’s try to not scare her off?”   You go back to looking, but you can’t seem to decide what game to play. “There’s a lot.”   “It’s not ours,” Yoongi pipes up again, wearing a friendly smile that is more like a smirk. “This is Hoseok and I’s place. Taehyung just always finds a way to put his shit here too.”   “Hey! That’s cause no one else has a big table like this at their dorm, plus my place is too messy to store my precious games there. They’re expensive, you know.”   “All I know is that somehow I always come home to furniture and clothes on my bed that I swear I didn’t purchase….”   “Alright, alright.” Hoseok intervenes for the second time, having enough of this nonsense. “Is the game done being set up or what? Y/N come sit, you can choose the game later.”   You gather around the table with Jungkook beside you. He leans in while the others are figuring out who gets to start and what direction to go in. “Sorry about that.”   “No, it’s okay,” you say and mean it too. “Your friends are a lot of fun.”   Yet the moment the game begins, there’s a shift in the atmosphere. It goes quieter, less fooling around as it intensely dials down. There are half-lidded stares across the table, snarky remarks exchanged. They’re a competitive group and you feel a lot of pressure to perform well.   Jimin seems to go for the easy blocks. Hoseok tries to make it more difficult for the next person. Yoongi is the designated asshole, going for the second top layer while Taehyung argues that it isn’t even allowed. On the other hand, Jungkook somehow flicks the Jenga block with his middle finger and thumb. He’s cocky about his technique, leaning back as his arm drapes over the back of your chair. He runs his tongue on the inside of his cheek with his brow lifted.    You remember why you fucking hated him now. He’s so unbearable sometimes.   “What?” He looks at you when he finds you staring.   You frown at him. And for a second Jungkook gets a glimpse of the bitch he remembers — the one he misses. “Why do you have to be so extra about it? Who are you trying to impress?”   “Right?!” Taehyung stands up and the entire stack of blocks nearly topples over. “I keep trying to tell him that! It’s so goddamn annoying! You won’t even believe it!”   “Watch it,” Hoseok shouts, “You’re going to make it tip over.”   That’s when you become fired up. You’ve never felt this kind of motivation surging between your veins before. But it’s not a thirst to win — it’s a ravenous hunger to beat Jeon Jungkook.   And you do.   After playing to Hoseok’s tactic and being an asshole, you risk it all to remove an important block and it collapses on Jungkook right as he tries to remove another.   Then there are screams — hoots, hollers, like your country won the damn world cup. You stand up and everyone cheers. Hoseok chest bumps you. Taehyung lifts you up and spins you in a circle. Jimin starts to record the moment on his phone and even Yoongi pats you on the back.   “God, why are you guys making such a big deal,” Jungkook moans, still seated at the table, embarrassed from all the teasing.   “Maybe because you’ve never lost anything in your life!” Taehyung laughs in his face, rubbing his loss where it hurts.   “Say something for the camera.” Jimin sticks his phone right between Jungkook’s eyes, and dodges with giggles when Jungkook tries to slap it away.   “Hey, send me that.” Yoongi points. “I’m going to post it on facebook for my grandma to see.”   “Has Jungkook really not lost any game we’ve played before?” Hoseok questions, the realization finally hitting him and the gravity of the situation sinking down onto his shoulders.   “I don’t think so,” Jimin says after sincerely contemplating for a long moment.   “Oh shit. You’re our lucky charm!” Hoseok slings his arm over your shoulder, giving you finger guns and winking.   It’s ridiculous but you’re beginning to believe it too — especially when the game you pick is Uno and it ends up with a similar outcome.   Somehow, someway, Jimin, Taehyung, Hoseok and Yoongi finish their cards and the only people who are left are you and Jungkook. The tensions are high and you see the sweat accumulating at his hairline. It’s apparent that he’s never even been second last in a game before.   You’re so close to victory, you can taste it. You’re down to a single card while he has three more.   Jungkook slowly places down a wild card. “What colour do you want, Y/N?”   “Hmmmm.” You rest your chin in your palm, arm propped up on the table. You glance at your card before looking straight at him, locking your gaze together. “Would you even choose the colour I pick?”   “I just want to hear what you want.”   “Fine. I want yellow. Please?” You bat your lashes. “Pretty please, JK?”   The ass smirks. “Red.”   “I knew you’d say that,” you sigh. Your fingers reach down to the pile to grab another card, but then your other hand slaps down — slamming a red four onto the pile. Your arms shoot in the air. Again, it triggers cheers. “I win!”   Jungkook throws back his head and groans. He tosses his one red and one blue card left onto the table. What’s worse is the way you gather with all his friends — the five of you huddled together with arms around one another, like you’re preparing for a football game. But instead, you’re all hopping and cheering while belting out the national anthem.   You’ve stolen his own friends from right under his nose.   But despite how the loss is rubbed in his face, Jungkook’s happy that it seems like for a moment, you’ve returned to yourself again.   Eventually, the games go so much into the night that you have to bid your goodbyes. You didn’t know Jungkook’s group of friends were so easy to get along and get comfortable with. You weren’t sure what you were expecting, but the time passed so quickly and you’re sad to leave.   Hoseok and Taehyung hug you until Yoongi has to help you pry them off.   “I’ll miss you so much,” Taehyung fake cries. “You and the way you absolutely demolish Jungkook.”   “Oh please.” Jungkook rolls his eyes.   “I’ll come back...if you’ll have me again.”   “Are you kidding? Of course!”   “You have to come back,” Jimin insists with a sheepish smile like it should be obvious. “You’re good at Monopoly, right?”   You shrug. “I’ve been told I’m decent.”   “You better be.” Yoongi grins. “I’ll expect you to win against Kook.”   “I’ll try my best.”   “Let me walk you back,” Jungkook says as you grab your coat. You look at him and he elaborates, “It’s a long way back to the dorm and I’m tired too. Gonna call it an early night.”   “Oh, okay.”   The two of you get ready to leave, and at the doorway, you turn around one last time. “Thanks for having me.”   “No problem.” Hoseok smiles. “Come back soon.”   You think this is the longest time you’ve been without crying for the past month. It went by too quickly — you wish you could do it all over again. But you consider how lucky Jungkook is. He has great friends and surrounds himself with great people. You’re jealous.   The night is silent except for the sound of your shoes against the cement of the sidewalk. You’re illuminated by the lamp posts above you and you watch your shadows alongside Jungkook’s.   The air is cold enough that you can see your breath as you exhale. Jungkook’s own hands are dug into his pockets, but the chill makes you feel alive.   “Sorry about them. I know they can get a bit much.”   “It’s okay. They’re really nice actually.”   “Yeah, they are.”   “I had a lot of fun.” You steal a glance at him.   Jungkook’s doe eyes widen, the corners of his mouth quirking. “Really? I’m glad.”   “It was a lot of fun destroying you.”   “Wow.” He laughs. “Okay.”   It makes you giggle too.    You know what he’s been doing. From him listening to everything you have to say and doing more than necessary during the midterms. From that time he called you over in the dining hall to sit with him to tonight, bringing you over to play games with his friends….   “Thanks, Jungkook.”   “Hm?”   “Thanks,” you repeat, looking at him, and he meets your eye. “For helping me. I don’t think I’ve said it yet. But I really appreciate it.”   “Yeah, it’s not a big deal, really.”   “It’s a big deal to me.” Your gaze softens. At the moment you had no one, he was there. You didn’t know you would find such an unlikely friendship during such a hard time, but you don’t mind at all.   Jeon Jungkook is your friend.

[blossattic]

Bad mood Ignis

✦ Ignis Scientia x Carmen Mirabile (+ Chocobros & Honey) . : Word count: 1636 . : Warnings: SFW. Romance. Original Character.

Summary: Ignis is terribly stressed out after a rough week. His cure comes from a special lady that arrives just in time at the camping site.

The motorcycle's engine could be heard from a long distance. Honey liked it that way, but Carmen preferred it only purred instead of announcing their coming so scandalously. Perhaps she could ask Cindy to look on that, she mused.

That day, the growling of the motorcycle seemed to be a cause of relieve at camp. As Honey tapped on her stomach and pointed somewhere, Carmen noticed Prompto celebrating and pulling on Noct's sleeve before pointing back at them. Through the polarized shield of her helmet, Carmen's eyebrow arched in confusion. Had something happened?

As soon as they parked near the camp area, Carmen removed the helmet and shook her head from one side to the other, combing her hair out of the way before she heard Prompto's noises of happiness.

"You are back at last! Yes~!"

"Hahaha! That bad, huh?"

Honey laughed even louder as Prompto hugged her tight, lifted her from the ground and turned in a full circle with her. Noct scratched at his head with a small smile and immediately stopped when Carmen's eyes moved from Gladio's silhouette on top of a rock to him. Her questioning and sharp gaze didn't need any words to voice her concern. Noctis sighed.

"Specs is in a bad mood.", he said simply.

"That bad, indeed", Carmen repeated adjusting the meaning behind her words. "Did something particular happen or-?"

Noctis shrugged his shoulders, thinking for a moment as he helped Carmen get a couple of bags from the motorcycle's storing compartment. Carmen waited patiently but attentively, watching as Prompto warned Honey about "Ignis the demon" and joked with Gladio as they reached the top.

"Too many things went bad... Not the smoothest of weeks. He is really stressed out- and grumpy."

The look Noct gave her spoke volumes on how enduring it had been hard at what could have an easy fix. Carmen smiled sympathetically, stilling a snicker.

"I'll talk to him."

Noctis nodded and worked quickly on storing the necessary things into the Armiger while Gladio moved to save other items into their bags.

Carmen looked over the campsite for the man that was embodying Ifrit's passionate bad mood. She found him nursing a cup of coffee, barely enjoying the magazine in his hand. His expression was sour, his eyebrows pinched in a hard line like he was offended by the text he read. So it was that bad-

Her steps were careful but with confidence and she made sure to not startle him as she touched his shoulder and let her hand drift to his bicep.

"Good afternoon, love~"

Carmen immediately noticed how his eyes searched for hers and his shoulders, albeit tight with tension, dropped in relieve, his posture becoming a little bit more open and welcoming.

"Carmen...", he murmured first, sounding tired yet happy for her long awaited arrival. His hand took one of hers and through the leather of the gloves, Carmen could feel his warmth as he took it to his lips to kiss it. While the gesture was sweet, Carmen could sense the stiffness on it. Better broach the subject already than skirt around it.

"Darling, I've missed you these past couple of days. Think we could spare some time to talk and perhaps do some catching up?"

"I-"

The invitation was very kind and Ignis understood right away how the others had outed him. Carmen was the last resource to melt the tension accumulated on him, a weak spot they surely knew when to use to their advantage. She waited as patiently as she did with Noct a few minutes prior, but as soon as hesitation and stubbornness began making the first appearances on both his expression and mind, she intertwined her fingers with his and tugged at his hand firmly.

"Come."

* :· ✧ ·: *

"What do you think is her special technique to calm down the wrath of Specs?"

Prompto spent a good few minutes quiet, but as soon as they caught movement of Carmen guiding Ignis smoothly to the tent, his interest on the matter sparked anew. He was even more hyped when he caught Honey and her barely concealed eyes following their steps.

"It must be an amazing technique. Look how he doesn't even protest.", Honey piped in, taking a sip of a juice pack and kicking on Noct's boot to get him to comment. Noct just huffed a laugh.

"She just talks some sense into him.", added Gladio, not distracting himself much from his book as he did so. It was quite clear to him, but the younger ones had more fun creating a whole theory behind it.

"She is taking him to the tent.", Honey pointed out in a teasing manner, making Prom smirk but get a pink blush on his face.

"Privacy.", Gladio grumbled, cutting out her remark and falling for the teasing as she giggled. He groaned.

"Boring~", sang alone both Prompto and Honey, making Noctis snicker and fetch his phone.

"Up for some King's Knight in the meantime?"

"Heck yes!", came two pair of voices. Gladio shook his head, amused, and resumed his reading.

* :· ✧ ·: *

The sound of the zipper closing behind her made Ignis sigh and roll his head in a wide circle, feeling his neck stiff and uncomfortable. Talk. How could he even begin to disclose all the mishaps that had occurred when she was away with the blonde. He groaned as his muscles complained and gasped in the next second, as Carmen's arms circled his neck and a pair of lips he had missed so bad met his. The movement made him moan and get a hold on her hips as she tipped him back to lie flat on his back. She kissed him smoothly, not letting him resist her and yielding just a bit as he started melting by her touch. As soon as he was the one controlling the kiss, she put a hand on his chest and hummed as she tried to pull back, distracted by how their pendants had tangled together.

Ignis tried to reach up for more contact. Carmen didn't let him but didn't pull away, her gaze fixed on his in a sultry but patient way. She studied him quietly while her fingers carefully dislodge the complex weaving of chains that made his skull charm touch so intimately the pearl on her necklace. When he didn't pursue her, equally patient to see how it all will unfold, Carmen closed her eyes to kiss him just a second more before pulling back, pleased to see him exponentially more relaxed than a few minutes before.

Ignis laid there, regaining his breathing and staring at her through heavy eyelids. He closed his eyes and let her take off his glasses, enjoying the little trail her finger did over his nose bridge as she got comfortable on her side beside him.

"You were so tense, Kitty. What had happened to you make you feel that way?"

Ignis looked at her and sighed, shaking his head.

"It doesn't matter now. I cannot even remember."

Carmen laughed quietly and kissed his cheek, deciding to lay down as well and enjoy a few minutes of rest with him. He could use it more than her, and definitely would help the others relax as well.

Her hand found a few hairs that were left in disarray and carefully tucked them behind his ear. A simple chat started, easily prompting her to share the ladies' experiences on the road while he added a few bits on his own messy days with the other men. It had certainly been a rough couple of days for them and Ignis, being the one to always worry a touch more, shouldered the heavy weight of everything.

After a while, a comfortable silence settled between them. Ignis was at ease, simply staring at the vinil roof of the tent. Carmen watched him, his profile making her fall in love all over again, but she too noticed the lines on his face, the ones that showed how much he worked, how hard he did so. She let her lips come closer to that ear of his that was closer to her and despite being in a place far away from the others, she murmured something in it.

Ignis turned to look at her not saying a word. Then he simply held her hand to take it to his lips for another kiss.

* :· ✧ ·: *

By the time Carmen and Ignis walked out of the tent, the sun was low on the horizon, casting a warm glow on the places of the campsite. Prompto and Honey were in the middle of an impromptu photoshoot near a rock, being a little silly in their free time, and Gladio and Noct were busy with a short spar session.

"Look who are out, finally.", Gladio made his sword disappear in a flash of blue and smiled as he noticed the relaxed look on Ignis' expression and body posture. Carmen walked by his side with a pleased look too. Ignis fixed his glasses with a hand and nodded at Noct, who nodded back.

"Hey! It's nice to see you again! Any chance we are getting supper soon?"

"Prompto!"

The blond only whined as Honey, riding on his back, squeezed at his cheeks for being so rude. His mouth stretched over the words that probably said "but I'm hungry!", and made everyone laugh.

"Alright, if you help, it'll be done faster. Any suggestions then?", commented Ignis, his nonchalant pose made them all smile.

The ruckus in the campsite became lively once more with everyone moving around to help in one way or another. They just needed to keep up the peace.

"Don't forget is not your job to carry the world. Take care of yourself, less you'll end up hurt."

* :· ✧ ·: *   * :· ✧ ·: *   * :· ✧ ·: *   * :· ✧ ·: *   * :· ✧ ·: *

[akkeyagentofhelheim]

Agents’ Imbalance

[1071.03.24 -  02:00]

Trips to the Jaw were kept to a minimum ever since the Rebellion took their residence there. Akkey and Liam had begun experimenting semi-regularly with his newfound ability, but other than that one instance where she went to him--it was perfect timing, truly, seeing Yun and Nala’s spar--, she would ask him to come to Yrus instead, to the cove. Tonight, however, she had a different purpose for visiting. A question that nagged her at the back of her mind for the past few weeks.

A portal stretched open in a place towards the far north of the old god’s bones, where the stronghold was the thickest and most isolated from people other than the scheduled entries. It was well into the night, not a cloud to be seen, swathing the landscape in light.

“I swear to Hel, you’re getting more and more difficult to find.” Akkey grumbled, one boot planting firmly into the bare ground, her arms crossed as she regarded the tall, lean figure that stood underneath a lone tree, perfectly in the guardtowers' blind spot and hidden from sight.

“Language,” Juro turned to give her his usual crooked grin. His scarf fluttered at both the motion and the wind that decided to blow in that moment. He returned her gaze properly, “Is that how you speak about your divine mother?”

“Oh, shut up.” 

He let out an annoying chuckle, before sombering slightly. Particularly since they were on the topic of maternal figures. He asked quietly, “How’d that day go? The 13th...” Her mother’s death anniversary and her original birthday was extremely recent after all.

She was slow to reply, but when she did, there was cautious satisfaction in her voice, “...better than usual, actually. Shadowing’s been helping a lot, I think.” Her eyes were cast to the side when she said that, always a little iffy on the subject.

A leaf crunched as his foot shifted, amber eyes watching her carefully, “That’s good to hear.”

“Yeah…”

Their gazes met once again, locked between colleagues that could’ve been friends, but there were too many layers to uncover, a gap between them that couldn’t meet. Physically, Akkey was older, but Juro had an ancient aura around him that seemed to keep people at a big, unreachable distance from him, despite both of them entertaining their childish side more often than average. Two powerful agents contracted under Helheim.

The wind blew again, and her long dark hair and his light fringe moved in simultaneous waves. There was a shift in energy as Akkey opened her mouth in careful question, finally deciding to break the silence, “Why are you here, Juro? Is there something wrong?”

The Bookkeeper raised his brows, smile pleasant on his handsome face despite being in shadow, “...merely enjoying a moment of solitude to myself before returning inside. What’s with the sudden interview?” His tone was low to match her caution.

She shook her head, "No. You know what I mean. Why are you here? Now?” She raised her wrist slightly to motion towards the Jaw, and Juro followed the movement with his eyes. The quiet tension between them remained.

“The battle against the Conclave was progressing. I needed to witness it for the Library.”

“By risking life and limb to save Yun?”

The mutual apprehension tangibly heightened when she asked that, and the wind dropped with it in contrast. Juro blinked. His face remained unchanged, lazy grin and calm regard towards her, but Akkey knew she had hit something. That was why she came here in the first place.

“...no.” His reply was even.

“I saw you, Juro.” She wasn’t letting it go. Unlike their last conversation as agents, when she finally understood timelines and alternate souls, and broached the topic of his neutrality. She let it slide then, but the inconsistency and sheer strangeness of it wouldn’t let her this time.

There was an effort to keep himself steady now. She didn’t miss it, as his smile became stiff. Her ears picked up on something, although she couldn’t put a pin on what it was exactly. 

She continued anyway, “I felt your portal. You intentionally opened Virion beside the construct, that was no accident. The sword. The stun. You screamed…” She pressed forward with a step, and Juro involuntarily reacted, taking his own backwards. 

“When the construct was finally defeated, you were right beside me. I know what you were up to--I was doing the exact same thing. Every decision you made leading up to that point was for the purpose of rescuing the time jumper, even ignoring Stonegit, who was just as fucked up as Yun was.” 

His breath was shallow as his cadence faltered, "I didn't…"

“No help, no harm. For twenty years, you keep preaching that obnoxious mantra to me. Neutrality, and whatnot,” she jabbed a finger in the air, pointing towards the construct that peeked over the canines, “None of that was neutral.”

The sound became clearer. It was metal against metal, linking then pulling at intervals, like they were adjusting and positioning themselves. Juro was becoming visibly agitated, and Akkey could tell he wanted to teleport away. She understood. She would have as well, if it were the past. That’s why she had to be quick.

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it. For fucking once you helped without me having to beg for it with a story. But you don’t get to break your oath, your Bookkeeper code, something that I know for a fact that you follow with every will and breath you have, so much so that you would let innocents die before your eyes--” Akkey grit her teeth at the memory from their old days, but she pushed it away, and went on, “--and then now that suddenly doesn’t matter because Yun was trapped?”

His hand had come up to his chest. Akkey saw it tremble once as the space behind him bent out of invisibility and into Virion’s physical form. Its wings were raised slightly, bristling. Juro shook his head, almost desperately, “It does matter!” 

“Then why did you save him? I was right there for Stones! I could have helped him for you, and you fully know that! I don’t go by your dumb rule! What is so special about this kid that you would do that?”

Akkey was less upset and concerned now, and just more confused as she thought out loud, albeit aggressively, “He’s… he’s… we barely know him! Sure, he told us about the Conclave in the first place. And now he’s here to fight Frigga, don’t get me wrong, I‘m grateful, I’m hopeful, I’ll be supporting him any way I can, but other than him and Milae having the same soul, he’s noth--” 

Wait… she stopped short upon the realization.

Her head swiveled to look at him, “...Milae.”

Juro jolted at the name, “Don’t…” Virion flapped its wings threateningly, hovering slightly off ground between both agents. The air from the movement blew outwards, and the wind picked up, hair and clothing beginning to flutter wildly.

“It’s because he’s Milae, isn’t it?” Akkey pressed. She eyed the golem with caution, but she was certain now, “You knew that from the beginning. With Milae… you are super--” her hands waved slightly panicked as she tried to settle on a word, “--I don’t know, weird about him.” 

She paced as she put two and two together, the breeze turning into a gale with her, “I thought I was imagining things. It may not be by a lot, but I know you better than a lot of people on Aidorin. You don’t stick around one person for very long other than me, and that’s only because of work. It gets in your way.”

“But you did that favour for him, with Frigga, and ever since then I saw you with him more often. Like--like a curious kid. Following him around. You went to the Fallfeast and--” She squinted. The festival was a little hazy, she was drunk, but even then… “--every time I think back to seeing you there you were with him, talking, laughing. And here… after the mass teleportations. He was worried about you. He stayed by your side.” 

“Akkey, please--” It was unmistakable now. It was the scrape of chains that filled the air, coming from nowhere yet also everywhere. A raucous cry came from the golem, training all six of its eyes in anger towards the nix. But Akkey didn’t stop, instead her brow creased further in her need for an explanation.

“You like him. Not like Dario does, no, but you--Jin Juro, Agent of Helheim, Bookkeeper of Neutrality… are no longer neutral. You’re attached to Yun Milae. A friend.”

The rush of air, clinking chains, and animal screeching that had continued to build in waves over the conversation suddenly ceased, like the world had stopped to take a breath, going completely white like it was covered in snow. Then like a dam, it broke into a torrent of magic, the golem bending out of its form in streaks of grey-blue and white, twisting in the space between them as Hel’s given magic surged above, before collecting, shrinking, and drawing itself into Juro’s staff that had appeared in his grasp.

The Bookkeeper held the stick in both hands like a sword, in a form with which Akkey was familiar, but only from him, as it morphed into what looked like a mirage of a different weapon, the base staff still in his grip but giving an illusion of a long, sharp, slightly curved blade with dancing cranes engraved into it, and a simple, squarish hilt peppered with golden flecks in the black canvas. 

He was right up at Akkey in a sudden burst of speed before she could blink, and she only managed to throw up an elemental blade of her own right on time. Weapon clashed with weapon in an explosion of energy and ice as Juro bore down on her, using his height and raw power to make up for his lack of comparable combat skills. Akkey grunted at the effort to keep herself upright as the pressure from above increased. Virion’s grey-blue and white energy pulsed once, casting Juro’s face half in shadow and half in light. It was a dull amber that stared back at her, lifeless and lacking his usual spirit, his face blank.

It sent a shiver up her spine.

A portal opened below her and she slipped through, causing Juro to lose his balance as she appeared behind him, arms raised high, ready to slash downwards in an attack from above. But he turned at the nick of time, meeting her blade of ice in a wide arc up. Again, magic collided.

The surge of Hel supplemented power blew their hair back violently, whipping Akkey’s dark locks wildly in the air. An olden, intrusive memory of another swordswoman Juro knew that looked like her crossed his mind in barely an instant, but it was enough to intensify the sound of scraping chains. 

They were locked in the struggle for another breath, before Akkey twisted her grip and sent out two shards flying from her makeshift weapon. They caught the Bookkeeper on the shoulder, slicing skin in quick succession. The pain shifted his grip and both blades slipped, and they pushed off each other in the momentary lapse, increasing the distance between them once again as power levels continued to rise, sending forceful gales in opposite, outward directions.

“Juro!” Akkey called out in agitation. This was a Juro she had never, ever seen in her life. They had sparred many a time, absolutely, but he always approached it with humour, amusement, a teasing grin pulling at his face. But this… this was nothing.

His hold on the sword became slack for a moment, letting it almost touch the ground as he trained his gaze towards her. Red began soaking the torn fabric on his shoulder as he bled, but it was short lived. Light shone from the wounds, magic pouring from it but in blues and golds instead, until it stitched the cuts close. The dark splotches of blood stopped growing.

Akkey started at the display of energy, uncertain if it was controlled or not. It definitely didn’t look intentional, but the colours and the power from it were familiar… and it wasn’t Hel’s.

“That’s yours,” she breathed, almost nervously, as she recognized it only due to recent events, “That’s from before, you used that on Yun. After the construct…” He lifted his head, and his face was finally illuminated properly by the moon, still completely void of emotion. The scars on his jaw caught light and seemed to glow unnervingly, casting a strange, unrecognizable aura on the blonde man.

Akkey clenched her fist as she approached him again, gradually picking up speed, unable to quell the annoyance in her at his refusal to give any type of straight answers,  “You said you didn’t have any! Since when did you have your own magic? Has it always been like that? Why have you never used it before?!”

Juro predictably had no reply. Instead, his enforced weapon slipped into the belt of his pants and out the side, mimicking a sheathed sword, his stance widening as his right hand hovered above the handle, eyes watching Akkey’s approach quickly closing the distance, waiting for the perfect moment. 

It came in a flash of silver and a water tendril, shooting out in a dangerously fast streak of light when Akkey threw her left arm forward like she would a ball, but much quicker and much more easily missed. But Juro met it head on. His staff unsheathed at lightning speed, swifter than any sword movement Akkey had seen before, and cleanly knocked her attack away.

But Helheim agents would as agents always would, as both twisted in a second attack hidden behind their first. Akkey threw her right arm up at the exact same point and time that Juro swept his sword arm around and willed his golem to open at the end of his weapon.

Portal collided against portal.

The characteristic hums turned into a high pitched, ear grinding whine, two frequencies twisting, looping, turning into one, then booming into a massive roar, deafening with the sound of chains that continued to scrape against the back of their heads. Agents strained as gravity and dimension warred against each other in immense tension, churning, curling, each unwilling to give in, contracting smaller and smaller into a disc as it pushed into the other, surging and fighting in a nauseating twist of magic. It crawled against skin and bone and muscle, bending, warping, pulling space and water unnaturally to its extremes in their struggle for power, building higher and stronger and bigger over the other in suffocating layers--until it could no longer hold itself in.

It exploded.

The pressure that contained it fractured, an eruption of energy flooding from between them. There was an outpour of light and colour many meters high into the darkened sky, splashing against each other then cascading with a perfect split in the middle-- blues and golds towards Juro, purples and bluey-greens to Akkey. It was bright, blindingly so, as it shattered the landscape and blew them apart, sending them flying fast and far, bouncing and rolling painfully against the cold, hard ground as the air was knocked out of them, bruising and scratching their skin.

Akkey cried out as she landed heavily on her side, covering her head while the force of the detonation of energy kept her down, a cacophony of chaotic magic that gushed across the flats of the Scrublands and crashed against the side of the Jaw like a wave of ocean water on the shoreline, but immediately dissipating upon impact. It was many seconds before it died down, the wind calming itself and the overwhelming light finally fading back into darkness, leaving only the moon and stars behind. 

The sounds of the sudden short battle disappeared, and she got to her feet painfully, cautiously observing her surroundings as it cleared, searching for her colleague. Juro was nowhere to be seen at first, but finally she saw him in the far distance, his prone figure on the ground.

Shit--! “Juro!” She immediately appeared a few feet away from him, running as quickly as her thin legs would take her.

But she couldn’t reach him before Virion burst from the weapon he used, which had fallen out of his grip and returned to its mundane pen form when the impact rendered him unconscious. It rose to its twelve foot form and surged forward in a blur of feathers, catching her torso and arms cleanly underneath one talon and dragging her into the ground, dirt piling up around her as its weight had her completely trapped. 

“Gah!” She grunted as her back hit soil once again. Virion bent its head down, six beady eyes glaring into hers as his wings bristled in anger at the provocation the nix had brought onto its master.

“V-Vir.... Let her go…” a rough voice strained to make itself heard from behind the golem as it screeched its vexation over her head. Virion twisted its long neck around to regard its master questioningly, as Juro stirred, carefully picking himself up. It bristled again in disagreement for a few seconds, but relented soon after, lifting its leg off her and sweeping its wings to land beside him, helping him up to a sitting position. He shook his head, a tiny smirk slowly creeping its way back onto his face, “I was the one who attacked first…”

Virion could only croon in dissatisfaction, nudging him to lean against it as he caught his breath. The Bookkeeper obliged, without the energy to put up a fight, as he turned inwards for some introspective examination.

The initial attack was a haze to him, in similar fashion to the incident with Sylar's body. The barrage of questions as Akkey had gotten closer and closer to the truth placed an intense amount of pressure on him, and her realization regarding Milae finally voiced things he had been denying, ignoring, finding loopholes around, and it escalated into that uncontrolled surge of emotion, forcing him to turn all senses off and let body take autonomy. 'Friend' echoed unwillingly in his mind and he threw it aside in a panic, hurriedly bringing his attention to the seal instead.

It was dangerous for a while there, but it seemed intact, starting with the Modern Bookkeeper first, his direct opposite yet the closest copy there could be that wasn't an offshoot from his timeline. Lines to several broken and jittered timelines had unfortunately snapped a little early, snuffing out their Bookkeepers' lives, but frayed threads like those were due for fracturing soon. Every time his seal was threatened, especially as of late, they were the first to go, to keep all other unbroken, stable threads unharmed. It would have ended much more disastrously if this happened to anybody other than Akkey. It was a close call.

He sighed in relief to find everything still in place, then slowly turned his head to face her, who was sitting up with great care, feeling where she would expectedly be sore in the morning. She groaned and cleared her head, “What the fuck, Juro…”

Green locked with amber, and it was a tumultuous range of emotions, anger, shock, confusion, and concern--but it was all one sided. Juro’s break in character was expectedly temporary. His mask had returned, with a lopsided grin and a raised brow, and Akkey let out a long, annoyed exhale at that, "My confusion is valid, alright, if I have to work with you until one of us dies--probably me--and you've begun acting like this, with magic of your own, then I deserve some sort of explanation--"

“My answer hasn't changed, Akkey...” he interrupted. His cadence was even once more as he referred to their conversation up in the rafters, "My Helheim contract, the Library and the Bookkeepers, my neutrality… I still won't explain. Even if you ask."

She felt a wave of unexplainable sadness wash over her when he said that. The light in his eyes went empty for a moment, a deep loneliness crossing in them, resigned to his fate of solitude and silent suffering. 

Resigned? To describe it like that was slightly incorrect, but she couldn't place it as accurately as she would like to. Intensely dependent… Unhealthily so…

Her brow creased in further worry, "Juro--"

He shook his head, wincing slightly as pain flared up down his back, yet firm in interrupting her thought, "There's a disturbance on the timelines right now, and my involvement in the battle was in the interest of that. Hence why I'm here, why I appeared near the construct." That was only half the truth, and both were highly aware. That's why Juro said it almost forcefully, unarguably the end of that conversation. 

It was several moments of stubborn egos that played tug of war, but she huffed in eventual surrender. Still, not before Akkey added a final thought, "Fine. I'm sorry for prying. I won't ask anymore," The slight insult at being kept in the dark remained, but only temporarily as she softened, regarding him with care and worry that was almost motherly, if the nix were even capable of instincts in that vein.

"But suppressing it and running away like this will only bring you greater pain later on, and you'll end up regretting it," she said. They both knew she spoke from some experience, "There is no comfort in living like this, faltering, wavering, walking the neutral line. You'll hurt a lot more people than you want to."

Her eyes bore into his this time, and he took it, unchanging, two souls who end up finding each other sometime, somehow, across timelines, in a ripple of cause and effect. 

The moment was interrupted with a shout from above, and they broke their gaze to see several guards and their dragons flying towards them, as they had noticed the explosion of power from their positions. Their fight wasn't exactly subtle, no matter how short.

"Ah shit," Akkey cursed, feeling the familiar wash of meek regret at the constant consequences of her impulsive actions. There was barely any physical damage, thankfully, but it was light and sound that definitely was not inconspicuous, "Lila might kill us…"

"And this is where I take my leave," Juro cracked a wider, cheekier grin, the previous tension forgotten, "The Commander will have my head before yours." Virion immediately swirled into a portal for a place Akkey knew she couldn't follow.

"Hey! You bastard--!" she whirled around in indignation as the Bookkeeper escaped, "Don't you fucking dare run!"

She stomped up to him, standing taller than where he sat, when his smirk lessened slightly as his tone became serious, "I am not. I think I might have some more information about Frigga, but I have to research a little more. If anyone asks… I'll be at the Library," he tilted his chin up to meet her eyes again. Akkey paused, then nodded in understanding, "Alright."

It was another heartbeat before he split his face into that exasperating smile once more, and fell backwards into the open portal, "See you later, Chief." He disappeared from sight as the dragons landed behind Akkey, who was massaging a temple in annoyance, left to deal with the aftermath by herself.

[gra-sonas]

The Roswell, New Mexico Abortion Storyline Is Just As Timely As Ever

Showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie and actor Lily Cowles 'had to fight' to bring Isobel's raw narrative to TV screens

Make no mistake: Roswell, New Mexico is, in many ways, a fantasy. But in the story of three humanoid aliens finding a new sense of home after being abandoned on earth, and of the people they love and who love them, there are plenty of opportunities to tell real-world stories, too.

Take the character of Isobel Evans (Lily Cowles): In the CW show’s second season, she learns that she is pregnant by her villainous ex-husband, but feels like she has few options available to her. She can’t go to a doctor, she reasons, because her body is not of this world and doing so would risk her discovery. And she opts not to confide in her family, or anyone else she knows. Instead, Isobel decides to take a poison specifically designed to shut alien bodies down, despite receiving cautionary visions from her late brother Max (Nathan Parsons) warning her against it. What results is a self-induced abortion with potentially disastrous consequences — and a story that showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie, who co-wrote the episode in response to the so-called “heartbeat bills” that conservative lawmakers tried to pass in states like Georgia and Ohio, hopes will resonate with viewers in a particularly timely way.

In telling this story, Roswell, New Mexico joins at least 43 other TV shows that featured abortion storylines in 2019. Isobel’s experience includes a particularly rough set of barriers, albeit fantastical ones, that complicate her ability to receive medical care. In that way, she mirrors the people who live in abortion deserts, or in states that mandate restrictive waiting periods and other invasive hurdles that many individuals living paycheck-to-paycheck simply can’t afford to broach. In March alone, lawmakers in Texas, Ohio, and Iowa have tried to use the current coronavirus pandemic as cause to ban abortion care by deeming it an “elective” and “non-essential” procedure. But how can a service that has the potential to change the trajectory of someone’s life forever be defined as “non-essential?”

The Roswell, New Mexico team kept the people who might be denied choice-affirming care in mind as they worked on what would eventually become the third episode of Season 2. MTV News spoke with Adly MacKenzie and Cowles about their supernatural allegory for the issues at stake, how it feels that this episode is airing at a time when abortion access is visibly under attack in the United States, and science fiction’s legacy of tackling controversial topics.

MTV News: How did you and the writers decide to tell this story?

Carina Adly MacKenzie: There wasn't a plan in place last season for Noah impregnating Isobel. This was something that was really born out of wanting to speak to what it looks like when someone feels like they have to take desperate measures to save their own life, whether that's their actual physical life or the kind of life that they're choosing to have. That's the story that we're trying to tell with Isobel. It's really about her being unable to access the care that she needs through medical professionals, and doing something very, very dangerous and very, very scary to protect her own bodily autonomy and her own agency, which has been taken from her for a very long time.

Lily was the first phone call that I made, and she was at first a little bit freaked out by it. I was like, “I'm not sure that this is something I want to tackle. I'm thinking about it and then I want to put it in your head and see what you think.” She circled back to me later and was like, “Let's do it.”

Lily Cowles: I remember this moment so well. She called me and she's like, "Listen, I have an idea for Isobel and I want to run it by you because it's no small thing." And it knocked the wind out of me when she told me. For a moment I had this resistance because I knew what it was going to take to go there as an actor and to put your character through that. But Carina was very sensitive about it and told me, "I want you to think about this and take some time and tell me what your thoughts are." It was really intimidating, but I knew that it was extremely important. And so I called her the next day and I said, "We’ve got to do it."

MTV News: That Isobel tries to self-induce an abortion because she can't access care is an allegory in a sci-fi setting, but it has very real world parallels, and very real world stakes. One report from the Guttmacher Institute found that the number of attempted self-induced abortions may be on the rise, likely because people feel like they have few resources or options. With that in mind, how did you draw the line between fantasy and reality?

Cowles: It is absolutely allegorical with Isobel. She's an alien, and she can't get medical help because she has a different biology. And yet this is the reality that so many women have faced in a very real way. There are so many women who face this and I think that was the reason we felt we really needed to tell this story.

Adly MacKenzie: I think it's a very real story. We have Isobel taking alien poison but the metaphor is right there. It's not a leap to imagine a woman in this situation and what measures she might take. The story is about an alien who can't go to a normal hospital, but it's also about a woman who can't afford a $400 procedure, or a teenager who can't tell her parents, or someone in Texas right now where abortion is being halted because it's considered an elective, non-essential surgery during this pandemic, which could go on for months and months and months. Anybody in any of those scenarios could become desperate.

Cowles: There's a real stigma around this subject and it's such a hot-button political issue for so many people. Ultimately it's the most personal situation that someone can be in. In my opinion, it's absolutely the business of the person that's just going through it and it is not something that the nation needs to be commenting on.

Adly MacKenzie: We did try to make Isobel's story mirror reality. There’s a lot of blood involved and we had to fight to be able to show that on TV. We wanted to show the ugliness of what it really looks like on TV because we wanted to make sure that we weren't telling a story that sugarcoats the experience in any way or that makes it seem like it's safe to try this at home without medical help. Were she not in a sci-fi situation, she says, “I would be a statistic.”

Cowles: We felt an obligation to tell this story hopefully so that we could say “you're not alone” to people who have had to go through something like this, who are facing this.

MTV News: The fact that Isobel tries to self-induce without medical supervision is important to distinguish, because statistically, a medically-supervised abortion is one of the safest procedures there are. How did you make sure that you were telling a story about a dangerous situation as responsibly as you could?

Cowles: We're taking on a very real story that many women face and deal with and an issue that still feels dangerous to touch. I think the story that we're looking to tell here is that women’s bodies are their own bodies. We're investigating the consequences of what happens when you take away female autonomy. And it's not pretty.

Adly MacKenzie: One in four women have gotten abortions in one way or another. She is doing this in an unsafe way and I think we're really clear about that in the episode and we make sure to drive home the idea that poison is not the method, but also that it is a very real story about what happens when people get desperate.

Cowles: This is a reality that we face as a consequence of putting restrictions on female reproductive health. This is the consequence. What will happen as the people will get into situations where they have unwanted pregnancies that maybe threaten their lives, threaten their futures in some way, and they have no opportunities to manage it because of restrictions that other people have put on them?

Adly MacKenzie: We're not telling the story for shock value. We really tried to avoid glamorizing any aspect of it. There was a point in which I was asked if I could make the blood glittery. I was horrified by that. I hope that people see the ugly side of it and understand the story that we're trying to tell.

MTV News: What was it like to work with each other on this episode specifically?

Adly MacKenzie: Lily is a person who puts a lot of care and a lot of thought into her work. She comes prepared. We had a lot of conversations. I think the thing that she brought to this was fearlessness. It's a very vulnerable story to tell. She's lying in a nightgown while people are applying fake blood to her inner thigh and she's crying and she's trying to get into this space of being in a lot of pain. It was a very solemn day on set and I think that Lily took it very seriously, but she approached it ready to be completely vulnerable.

MTV News: How did you make sure that Lily was supported throughout all the filming?

Adly MacKenzie: Jeff Hunt is a director I've worked with before and who the whole cast knew pretty well. He was somebody who our cast was comfortable with. I was also on set the entire time, and Deirdre, the other writer, was on set as much as she could be.

Cowles: I came into it already feeling I was in a very safe place. I think the way that Carina handled it in general, having called me and asked me to think about it, it was always something that I felt I had a certain amount of say in. It wasn't like, “You're doing this so good luck and have fun.” It was very much a collaborative experience where I got to feel like I was really at the helm in a lot of ways.

Adly MacKenzie: I'm very serious about making sure the actors are always feeling safe and feeling comfortable even when they're portraying unsafe and uncomfortable situations. I think she was surrounded by a lot of love and a lot of feminine energy. We asked her, “OK, what do you think Isobel would be wearing in this situation? How much do you think we should be seeing? How much are you comfortable with the positioning?” When you're shooting those difficult angles, you want to make sure that the actor has the choice. She definitely guides the situation.

MTV News: During the moments Isobel is imagining her brother Max, she tells him that her desire to induce an abortion isn't really a matter of motherhood. Can you walk me through why you decided to include those lines?

Adly MacKenzie: It wasn't about being selfish and it's not about whether Isobel wants to be a mother. It's about having agency over her body right now and about choosing the way that you want to become a parent if you do want to become a parent. We wanted to tell a story about choosing how and when your life takes big turns.

Cowles: I truly believe that Isobel wants to be a mother. I think she wants to have a family. If Noah hadn't been a psychopathic, serial-killing alien, she probably would've wanted to have kids with him. She might've been trying for a baby, but the way that her marriage turned out… Consent almost became a question for her.

Adly MacKenzie: She's reacting to something that she never really had a say in. Now she does have a choice, and she's making it. She's just in a situation in which making that choice isn't easy, when it should be.

Cowles: Being pregnant and having a child is probably one of the most wonderful things that a human being can do. And it is conversely maybe the most terrible thing that can happen to someone when it threatens their life or their future or their personhood. And I think that's what Isobel is facing with this is, “These are not the terms that I want. This is not how I want it to be. It’s not that I don't want to be a mother, but that I want to be a mother on my own terms.”

MTV News: This episode is airing concurrent to the fight to protect abortion access in states where lawmakers are trying to argue that the procedure is “non-essential.” Given that this episode was written in response to the Georgia bill that was eventually blocked, how do you feel about the continued timeliness of the issue?

Adly MacKenzie: It's always under siege. The people who want to ban abortion are always looking for a new reason. I also was shocked when I thought it was being considered a non-essential medical service. But then that shock turned into, “Of fucking course, the world is falling apart right now and this is what some people are thinking about.” It is a life-saving procedure always, every time. Sometimes it's about literally saving the mother's life. But it's also about protecting the lives that they're choosing and protecting the lives that they want to lead.

Cowles: We live in an age when particularly white men are trying to make decisions about female bodies. It seems like something that should've been resolved a long time ago. You can decide that you would never want to have an abortion and that is absolutely valid. Or you might need to have an abortion and you should absolutely be granted the ability to do that. It's sad at this point that we're still fighting this fight, but we have to keep fighting for it because having autonomy over one's health and one's body seems to me a very basic fundamental human right.

Adly MacKenzie: It's frustrating. When the heartbeat bill in Georgia didn't pass, I felt this immense sense of relief. But what's the next thing? And there's always something. With the Supreme Court as it stands right now, I don't know that we're going to see the end of this fight in our lifetimes. It seems like there's an endless battle against women having control over themselves and their own medical care.

MTV News: A lot of people believe that certain television shows shouldn't be political, but many elements in Roswell, New Mexico are really political. What responsibility do you think the show has to wade into the more obviously political waters?

Adly MacKenzie: I don't think the show is more political than our daily lives are. I just think it's more political than other shows are. I think other shows avoid the politics that we face on a day-to-day basis and we're just not doing the acrobatics to avoid it.

Cowles: It’s a responsibility to shed light onto all the different parts of the human experience. Some of them are really not pleasant. They're ugly and they're scary and they're raw. They make you uncomfortable. It is part of the work to represent that just as much as you represent how good it feels to be in love and to triumph over your woes. It's equally part of the human experience.

Adly MacKenzie: I don't necessarily think the show is there to push any agenda except for humanity — ironically, because we're literally dealing with actual creatures from outer space. But it's not about the politics, it's about the humanity. That's where we try to live in our storytelling.

Sci-fi, for as long as it's existed, has been about metaphor, has been about telling human stories in a fantastical way. Anybody who's a sci-fi writer will save that they're telling you a story that's a metaphor for real human emotion. The difference between that and what we do is that we are telling a story that's a metaphor alongside telling the story that's real life. Here, we’re telling a story about what it feels like to be an unwelcome alien on earth, and also telling a story about what it feels like to be an undocumented American in a border state. And we’re trying to tell it with compassion as opposed to spectacle.

~ MTV

[roominthecastle]

Ok so since you’re a believer/supporter of Agnes Gate I have this question. Lizzy’s memories were wiped, but how do you explain Red? What does he know/suspect? How do you explain his behavior? Where does he stand in all this? Hope you got my point because I’m sick and I’ve lost my ability to think clearly and transform thoughts into words 🤒😂

*cracks knuckles*

Yes, you’re coming across clearly, anon, these are all valid points/questions, and I hope you’re feeling better.

Now “believer” is a strong word but I do believe there’s enough wiggle room in current show canon to accommodate this theory. In other words (bc I really don’t want anyone to misunderstand me here): there’s still enough story space for this idea to emerge but there is no direct, overt proof that it is there or that it will.

So consider what follows NOT a proof post but a simple, albeit long AF - thought experiment that presupposes two things:

Liz and Red slept together while on the run (canonically that’s the period when Agnes was conceived)

Liz’s memory of this has been either altered or removed by Dr. Krilov

Now, behavior was, in fact, the one thing that initially put me off this theory bc I didn’t think Red would be willing to just step aside if he suspected he might be the baby’s father. BUT the following seasons revealed a couple of good reasons why he would not speak up (Kirk and the never-ending list of other hostiles, Liz’s “I hate your guts” phase, Liz clinging to Tom, Liz’s selective memory - courtesy of Krilov, fake-DG & the issue of the suitcase, an illness).

They also continued to show just how apt both Red and Liz are to not deal with stuff that’s not an immediate threat (e.g. Liz’s ‘I love you’ which they both willingly continue to just not address), and the thing is: despite not contesting paternity in any overt way, Red never actually stepped aside.

I think this paternity issue and its various complications - from Red’s perspective - can be separated into 4 major time blocks:

S3B

S4

S5A

S5B–present

Even if there’s a reason for Red to think he might be Agnes’ father, I don’t believe he works off anything more than mild suspicions in the S3B–S5A period.

During this time, his relationship with Liz is rapidly unraveling and several other roadblocks and threats emerge that likely discourage him from openly broaching this issue. Then he gets to raise Agnes for 10 months, which provides the perfect opportunity to safely run a paternity test and maybe even another genetic screening (they made a point of telling us that baby Agnes was getting a standard one back in S3 + it was emphasized how having the correct info about her parents’ medical history is crucial for accurate testing - info Tom couldn’t provide). The beginning of Red’s collaboration with Dr. Stark roughly dates back to the time period when he had Agnes with him. If Red has a hereditary (late-onset) illness, he could have been driven to seek a cure once the tests confirmed his suspicions, and he’s now testing it on himself to make sure it works and is safe before giving it to Agnes.

IF.

– more on all this behind the cut – (apologies, mobile users)

- [ S3B ] -

Confirmation of the pregnancy is a wedge between Liz and Red, and it’s Red who screws up first when he rejects the baby right off the bat and tries to bury himself in work. It understandably hurts Liz and the tense tone of their interactions begins to snowball. The main issue concerning Red’s behavior in S3B, right after Liz tells him that she’s pregnant and he bounces back from his initial rejection, is that he becomes “suffocating” and more committed than ever to keep her and the baby in his orbit (which also alarms and later sets off Mr. Kaplan). Red has little sense of boundary, he starts isolating Liz, and he barely tolerates Tom’s presence. When he makes an effort to tolerate him, that’s bc he is trying his best to respect Liz’s choices/wishes (just like in “Ruin”) regardless of his own feelings, but it doesn’t prevent him from repeatedly trying to push Tom out of the picture. He saves him from going to prison but he still has a hard time dealing with Liz having a close relationship with him. This also echoes his original plans for Tom: being there for her but also keeping his distance. This, in turn, echoes his original “invisible benefactor” role he cast himself in (and both of them clearly crossed these lines as the years went by – more on this later).

Despite telling her that he’s known about the pregnancy for some time, Red does not act out until after Liz doesn’t deny that Tom is the father. Red knew about the pregnancy already, he had weeks to vent and get used to the idea, so his spiraling is kind of puzzling unless it’s not the pregnancy itself that sets him off. The only thing he wasn’t sure about was paternity (why?), so the only emotionally logical reason for his weird spiral is that part of him was still hoping that the baby was not Tom’s (tho, in theory, nobody else was in proximity other than the two of them + a more closer look at the timeline reveals that Tom was, in fact, nowhere near Liz when the baby was conceived).

But when Liz didn’t deny it, that’s when it became too much for Red: he didn’t want to have a child (for several reasons) but what he wanted even less was Tom to be confirmed as the father. Then his entire outlook on this subject changes by the end of the episode (after reminding himself how Katarina, too, dreaded having a baby but changed her mind completely). This also brings that Samar/Aram conversation to mind where she tells Aram how being around him changed her attitude towards having children, but now she cannot raise one bc of her condition.

But back to 312 and the “I’m pregnant” moment:

This whole conversation is just weird. Red is tense from the moment he sees Liz at the Post Office, then feeds her the answer to his own question, presenting it as a statement: “I assume Tom is the father.” Why not just give her the opportunity to name him? What this feels like is him giving her an out instead, and his closed-off, prickly, I-am-being-very-inconvenienced-by-this behavior (and Tom’s enthusiasm) is practically willing Liz to take it. And she hesitates for a moment, then instead of saying “yes” she just says, “I haven’t told him yet.” And this is where Red’s barely civil behavior veers into total assholery rejection, then he does a 180 at the end of the episode. By then Liz is sufficiently pissed off and is already pushing him away and sliding back into Tom’s arms. So in many ways ep 312 is where things truly turn and then get worse, and it all happens over Tom, essentially.

After this fallout, we get the episode where Red is thinking back to Josephine who was maneuvered into marrying an abusive scumbag for strategic reasons (as usual, we have parallels too). It was all arranged by a third party, which reminds me of Mr. Kaplan referring to Tom as her “confidant”, which makes me wonder about the extent of their off-screen interaction. Mr. Kaplan was doing everything to tear Red and Liz apart bc she saw that bond as fatal to both and a danger to the baby. Maybe she arranged that 2nd session w/ Krilov (who might have planted images that switched Red and Tom like he did w/ the fire memory where the roles were switched around), then she tipped Tom off, urging him to rekindle his relationship w/ Liz (his proposal was so out of the blue, I still don’t know what to do w/ that).

When Liz wants to give up the baby for adoption, she is told that she has to discuss this with the father, too, as his consent is also needed. Liz says the father is busy with work, then she has 0 conversation about this w/ Tom and goes to Red who, now being very pro having the baby, tries to talk her out of it. He also sabotages Tom’s teacher job and, at the same time, swoops in and presents Liz with a trust fund he set up for the baby, insisting that it’s for the child. As far as symbolic actions go, this one is screaming “I am the provider, not him”. And if it’s not clear enough, he also spells it out by telling her Tom’s not worthy of being her husband and of raising the baby. But it’s too late. Liz rejects him and clings to Tom. She even re-watches the video of Tom being interviewed as a potential adoptive father, which we saw in S1. Liz has been show to chat with potential adoptive parents, so her watching Tom’s adoption agency interview kinda makes it look like she picks Tom to “adopt” Agnes.

S3B is the time period when the threat from Kirk starts emerging. Mr. Kaplan also begins to view Red and Liz’s bond as sth to sever and Red himself as a threat to Agnes, saying that the baby hasn’t even been born yet but is “already paying the price for her association” with him. Then Liz kicks Red out when he asks to see the newborn baby, and soon after Liz’s “death”, Tom tells him that Agnes would only need protection if Red remained in her life. The three of them manage to gaslight Red to such an extent that he completely breaks down. He begins to contemplate ending it all and wanders around, cataloging the reasons.

And that episode-long contemplation is where we get to see (his version of) Katarina in this exact position, her pain at losing the man she loved at a time when there was so much anger and tension btw them, at not being able to raise her daughter, and all her reasoning for committing suicide (all paralleling Red’s). We can also glimpse Red’s innermost thoughts/feelings regarding Liz, Agnes, and Tom. He says “her mother is dead. All she has is the father.” Somehow he cannot bring himself to call Tom “her father” and this is reflected in future real-life interactions w/ Tom as well, when he switches between calling Agnes “Elizabeth’s child” and “your daughter” in his presence. Liz similarly switches btw calling Agnes “my” and “our” around Tom, and initially she refuses to refer to Agnes as anything but “my baby” even after Tom corrects her. It’s almost like both she and Red need some time to adjust. She does. Red? not so much.

Dom further adds to Red’s crushing guilt by reminding him how his choices doomed Liz like they doomed Katarina before. But then he also reminds him that he still has a reason to live as there are others out there who depend on him (“God help them.” - I LOVE Dom). So Red returns to make sure Agnes is safe and to exact vengeance for Liz’s death, two goals which are tied in his mind as he claims that the only way to protect Agnes is by killing Kirk who’s responsible for Liz’s death. He makes a deal with Tom: he lets him participate in the hunt in exchange for being allowed to spend time with Agnes. Again, this whole exchange has a vibe of negotiating visitation rights.

And Red’s interactions w/ Scottie give us a feel for why he will not argue much in the future when Liz decides to pick her to look after Agnes: Red calls Scottie “a brilliant strategist” who - despite Red’s visceral dislike of her - is a suitable “guard” as long as she believes Agnes to be her granddaughter. So not giving any reason to undermine that belief is in the little girl’s best interest (for now).

- [ S4 ] -

This is a period dedicatedto the overarching theme of “truth vs. appearances”, and we have afew interesting ideas and info snippets introduced that can help furtherexplain Red’s behavior if (he suspects that) Agnes is his.

First of all, we meet Kirkand gain some insight into the relationship dynamics of the past - dynamicswhich reflect those in the present.

Mirroring is a curiousfeature that’s utilized right at the beginning, in 401. It’s briefly touchedupon (here) but what makes the Red-Kirk-Liz scene especially interesting isthat the mirroring btw this exchange and the Red-Tom-Agnes one in “CapeMay” is not merely visual but also verbal, giving some weight to thesuspicion that they are linked by design. In both scenes we have the“designated dad” in a room with his daughter while the real father(Red is not Liz’s father but in 401 he “stands in” for real Reddington) is separated and looking in from the outside. On top of that, the dialogues are verysimilar, too:

Red (401): Are you okay? || Red (319): She’ll need protection.Kirk (401): Unlike you, I’d never hurt my own daughter. || Tom (319): Only ifyou are in her life.

And to push it even further,Kirk’s words (“What I desire is to raise my child. To watch hergrow.”) reflect Red’s innermost wish he voices in 319: “ I’d giveanything to be a part of that child’s life […] see her, hold her, watch hergrow.” And this also echoes Liz’s fantasy she shares with Red when theyare on the run. And Red’s retort to Kirk in 401 (“She was never yours toraise.”) also matches Red’s dance around the issue of Agnes’ paternity in319 where he refuses to directly call Tom her father, paralleling Katarina’s pain that she feels due to being separated from her daughter.

So I think what we can statewith certainty here is that there is confusion around paternity inboth scenes.

As the season unfolds, we dolearn that Kirk was a “cover dad”, designated as such by Katarina formultiple reasons (that happen to match Liz’s reasons for wanting to“escape” Red in S3 and be with Tom instead):

best chance at a normal life: Kirk did not work as an agent or any kind ofoperative, he had a (relatively) stable life in Russia. Katarina wasmarried to him and they lived together until real Reddington, believing Mashato be his daughter, took their daughter back to the US.

safety: asRed put it, “Your safety was guaranteed because Kirk believed you to behis daughter.” This belief was cemented in by a fake DNA report andentries in Katarina’s journal where she writes about their relief that Mashawon’t be exposed to the genetic illness that plagues Kirk’s family as it canonly be inherited by sons.

“no other path”: despite loving Reddington, Katarina accepted that she was never gonna endup with him. The circumstances were forever against them. This is why she began distancing herself from him and this is why she didn’t want to know ifhe was Masha’s father.

If Katarina had written apro/con list for her baby, I bet it would have looked a lot like the one Liz wrote, exceptit would have said “Kirk????” instead of “Tom????” But, as Redtold Liz, being Katarina’s husband didn’t make Kirk her father, which is apotentially relevant observation given how Liz kept trying to marry Tom at allcosts to force a “normal family” into existence that was never more than anillusion + how she was trying to distance herself from Red.

Those three main reasons abovealso provided the motivation for a cover-up that Kirk refused to acceptas the truth until multiple tests confirmed it when he fell ill and needed agenetic donation from a blood relative. As Red pointed out, “You saw whatKatarina wanted you to see.” This also echoes Mr. Kaplan’s words to Red atthe end of S3: “You saw what we needed you to see.” which might godeeper than “merely” faking Liz’s death and could be a hint at Kaplan’srole in arranging the 2nd memory manip session with Krilov.

In this season, Red alsostruggles with appearance vs. truth, with the cost/benefit ratio of deceptionsand false assumptions. This happens indirectly when he “auditions” hisnew cleaners in a pristine white apartment where one of his friends wasmurdered. He is both upset and marvels at how clean everything looks –“your cleaners removed even the memory of his blood”.

This practicality takes on asymbolic meaning as it carries over into Red’s relationship with Mr. Kaplanwhom he calls his confessor: “every trespass I committed, expunged.Cleansed as if it never happened.” Mr. Kaplan claims that Red betrayed Lizand held her “emotionally hostage”. These are rather extreme accusations… unless Red and Liz slept together while on the run and Redconfessed this to Mr. Kaplan. Now that act could be easily and understandablyconsidered trespassing by her, a crossing of a line that never should have beencrossed (= a betrayal). Red felt rage when he learned that Tom had become intimate with Liz. He considered this a betrayal, too, and Tom an immediate threat. He went about correcting the situation the same way Mr. Kaplan goes about correcting Red’s behavior in S3B-S4. Perhaps the trigger was the same type of trespassing too.

Mr. Kaplan makes it her mission to separate Liz and Red,and it all begins back in S3, around the time somebody hired Dr. Krilov to takecertain memories from Liz. Red is very close to directly confessing his feelings for Liz in 302. If he ended up confessing that he’s in love with her and they ended up in bed, that can be considered “a truth” about him that Liz uncovered – a truth that someone who doesn’t want them to be together would definitely object to.

Mr. Kaplan urges Liz to “do what yourmother never had the courage to do: walk away from Raymond.” IF Red and Liz slepttogether and Agnes was the result, then Dr. Krilov’s 2nd memory manipulationdid what Red’s cleaner(s) did in the white apartment: the “trespass” got “expunged”. Even the memory of it.Truth became elusive and assumptions took its place (like “I assume Tom is thefather.”).

Red is trying to complete a white puzzle in the white apartment,which takes on potential relevance after we can hear him compare memory toa jigsaw puzzle in 514. The possible relevance? Maybe he’s wondering (puzzled, if you will ;) why Lizacts as if nothing happened between them on the run, as if her memory of it were wiped clean. And while it is undoubtedly simpler and safer thisway, and it’s best to leave that topic alone, it is hard for him to accept, esp with Tomin the picture and taking on roles Red wishes to be able to fill, roles Liz now rejects him in.

In this episode we can also hear Gale make a pointed, suggestive remarkto Liz about her time with Red in S3A: “What was it like on the run withhim? Did he charm you?” And all this happens while Mr. Kaplan is hell-benton tearing Red and Liz apart for the sake of all of their safety, claiming thatRed’s presence in their lives is a threat to Agnes, Liz, and also to himself.

Memory manipulation - or the presence of holes in one’s memory - has itsown “footprint” in the show. It usually manifests as images drifting outof focus and echoing voices. There are two instances where this happens to Liz with no apparent reason. One is in 308 when she is in a gas stationbathroom - already pregnant - staring at her reflection in the dirty mirror. The other is in 317when Red marches towards her in the church, calling out her name and interrupting her and Tom’s wedding -both are situations where her baby’s father and her husband are likely on her mind. In317 she even connects the two by saying she wants to build a life with thefather of her child and Red keeps pleading with her to not marry Tom.

We are periodically reminded that Red is a Proust fan, and Proustjust happens to be the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) - a monumentalexploration of the various connections that web reality, perception, and memorytogether. The concept of involuntary memory originates from this novel series,and we can see this in action on The Blacklist, too, when Liz’sburied memory of the night of the fire gets triggered in 222. It’s also possible that she was close to being triggered in those twoscenes mentioned above, and maybe she won’t even need Krilov’s help in regaining the memories she’s lost the 2nd time as they could also be triggered unexpectedly by the smallest, most random thing - a smell, a taste, a voice, a gesture.

The white apartment incidentalso coincides with Liz, Agnes, and Tom moving to a new apartment. Redhas a hard time adjusting to this change, to no longer being able to see Agneswhenever he wants (and he was visiting her regularly while they were in his safe house, always showing up w/ the request to see her in particular), which brings the downside of deception into focus: separation. And Redstruggles with this despite understanding the safety that lies in it and inhiding truths - something Katarina knew a lot about, as well.

It’s not surprising that he soon starts musingabout the importance of truth (in 412):

“You said something before. The truth doesn’t matter, that the only thing in this world that matters is just the appearance of truth. I fear you might be right about that. Lately I find that the truth has become… so elusive. Often imaginary. But in the end, it’s all that we’re left with, isn’t it? What is real, what you can taste and touch and feel. The words that pass between us as we look each other in the eye are… all we have to hold on to. The truth. I hold it dear.”

then he proceeds to make a cuckoo clock forAgnes in the following episode (x, x). His first remark on how he is no longercomfortable with the idea of dying at any second also pops up in 412, and itgets reaffirmed in 415, in the same episode where the bad guy of the weekexpresses the same sentiment: his reason for clinging to his miserable life is fatherhood andhe wants a family even if he is barred from being physically present in their lives.

Red faces this issue, too. Tom remains Agnes’ (designated)dad and Liz’s husband while he is now kept away. He stillkeeps prodding that family unit, though, keeps teasing Tom about his pastand keeps involving him in missions to strip away his thin veneer of “normaland safe” to prove to Liz that she is mistaken about him. (sidenote: Tom also“takes over” the sentiment of Liz - and Agnes - being his future; thisis Red’s “thing”, has been since S1)

Meanwhile, Red keepsflip-flopping between accepting Mr. Kaplan’s accusations and rejecting them (“Maybe I am the person you need protection from.” vs “She was wrong to think Elizabeth and Agnes were safer without me in their lives.”). Hecannot seem to make up his mind as others join the chorus of blaming him forhow badly things turned out.

This is also the seasonwhere Red has an awkward and out-of-the-blue exchange with Cooper about thelatter’s sick daughter (414), and in another ep (404) - one featuring a parentand child sharing the same disorder - Red is asked point blank if he has achild with special needs but he doesn’t answer.

His personal struggle with appearancevs truth, however, is temporarily suspended when Liz blindsides him with the DNA test in 422. Despite his visible discomfort, Reddoesn’t correct Liz’s false assumption because it happens to provide theperfect cover he so desperately needs to find the skeleton Mr. Kaplan unearthed.But this strategic move comes with the price of having to keep his silenceabout Agnes for the foreseeable future. Thanks to Mr. Kaplan’s parting gift andCooper’s (accidental?) “antidote” of running that DNA test and providing cover, Red is now backed into a corner where the only way topreserve his secret is by not challenging appearances.

- [ S5A ] -

this block is nestledbetween two high-impact turning points: the DNA test and Tom’s death. The DNAtest locks Red into a false role, that of Liz’s father, which holds throughoutS5 and to a lesser extent in S6. The only reprieve is the 10-month period duringwhich he gets to take on the role of father in Agnes’ life (=inhabiting thetruth). Liz spends this time unconscious, which I find quite symbolic, as well (her being not conscious of his true role).

The DNA test is both a curseand a blessing. Red undoubtedly enjoys the sudden warming of his relationship with Lizbut he clearly does not enjoy her referring to him as “father”. Everytime it happens, we can see him wince, cringe, or glare in silence. But it happensto be the perfect cover for him to keep searching for the skeleton since it preventsLiz from asking the very questions he doesn’t want her to wonder about.

So Liz confrontinghim with the DNA test closes the window of opportunity Red still had in S3B andS4 to contest paternity. This turn of events also forces him to prioritizepreserving his secret over almost everything else (he is only ready to give it up when he thinks Liz’s life is at stake), so the struggle we can see him having in S4 - the onebtw appearances and the truth - promptly takes a back seat as keeping upappearances becomes the #1 strategic necessity.

That being said, Red still onlydoes the bare minimum (= not denying it outright) to play father to Liz. And this time block brings some interesting remarks about geneticsand secrets, which may have more significance than simply serving as empty redherrings until the impostor reveal hits at the end of the season.

Smokeydrops some comments about being “just like daddy” and having “noway to avoid the family curse” because “DNA is what it is.” Onthe surface this ties into the (beyond grating) tendency of some characters to blame-shiftand refuse to take any responsibility for their shitty life choices. But what makesthis exchange stand out is the wording “family curse” becauseKatarina uses a similar phrase (“this accursed disease that has afflicted his family for generations”) to describe Kirk’s condition.In 506, Tom also remarks to Red that “family secrets” always comeout. And now Red is sick and is in need of a pioneering geneticist’s help to find a cure. Somehow I don’t believe this is all just coincidence. + judging from those (brief) (glimpses) we get at Agnes, she is already a lot like her dad. ;)

Ep 504 in particularhas some curious details because they don’t line up with Red and Liz’s pretendrelationship but they do line up with the idea of Red having “a familycurse” that puts Agnes at risk. In this episode, asoldier gives up her child to get him out of harm’s way, but when the child presentswith an incurable disorder, she takes him from his adoptive parents, thencommits suicide to provide the donor heart needed to save his life. Witnessing this,Red remarks that “given the same circumstances, I’d like to think I’d beas brave as her. I know I’d wanna be.”

And then Tom dies, Liz endsup in a coma, and Red is left to take care of Agnes. If she is his, this 10-month period gives Red the perfect opportunity to finally confirm it and, asI mentioned above, have her tested for whatever disorder he knows he - and thus she too -carries. The timeline is always tricky on this show but by my rough estimateRed invested in Dr. Stark’s gene hacking research around the time he still had Agnes or not long after.

- [ S5B–present ] -

In this period, Red shouldalready have confirmation about paternity, about whether or not Agnes is atrisk, and Dr. Stark is already working on the cure for both. However, theskeleton and all the threats attached are still out there, circling them, and Liz is stillunder the impression that he is her father, which Red cannot push back againstif he is to keep his main secret secret.

We’ve seen how far he is willing to go tokeep his identity hidden, so letting Liz believe he is her father is really notall that out there for this guy. Only life-and-death situations can push him to reveal certain things, so it might be unruly genetics that will end up forcing his hand this time around. If Agnes needs treatment, that’s gonna be tricky to administer w/o somebody eventually noticing.

Red is still in a false role for now but its confines have weakened since he realized that Liz now knows he used to be someoneelse.

WhenLiz decides to go away for a while and entrusts Agnes to Scottie, Red questionsbut eventually goes along with her decision. “It was what youwanted,” he tells her later on. Even locked in his assumed role hecould have dug his heels in and claimed that he had a say in this matter, but he letLiz make the decisions and respected them. It carried way more risk to let her disappear alone than to let Scottie take Agnes, yet Red did not argue and did notrepeat the mistakes he made in S3B when things got so out of hand, Liz began toresent him and he was genuinely worried he was suffocating her. So he did what everybody toldhim to do in S4: he let her - and Agnes - go. And then she came back to him.

But for now, it is best if Agneshas safe distance from both him and Liz. In 520, Red told Jennifer that she was notabandoned but protected. That’s Agnes, too. Red may detest Scottie but he doesacknowledge that she is an excellent strategist with the skills, insight,motivation, and resources to keep the little girl safe. Shebelieves her to be her granddaughter, which - imo - in Red’s book ensures her loyaltyno matter how he feels about her otherwise. And in ep 512, we can see that Redknows exactly where Agnes is and, knowing him, he has his own invisiblemultilayered security web in place, monitoring everyone in Agnes’ life 24/7 and sendingdaily reports to him.

Whenhe and Liz observe Agnes from a distance at the end of the episode, the topic oftruth once again emerges, making it the third time that Agnes and talk of“the truth” co-occur: one is earlier in this episode (“If I misseven one more day with [Agnes] than is absolutely necessarybecause you’re not being completely honest…”)and the other is the cuckoo clock scene in S4. Red tells Liz heknows how hard this separation is and that they want the same thing here, whichechoes his remark in S4 about how they are in lockstep where Agnesis concerned. It also reminds me ofhis stunned reaction when Liz shares her fantasy with him in S3 (“I’mwalking in a park with my husband. Inbetween usis our little girl. I’mholding her hand in mine… and Inever let go.”). They do want the same thing and they are on the same page about Agnes, but everything else is still in disarray. For now, there is safetyin separation and keeping up appearances, even uncomfortable and painful ones.

In 514, Red gives us and Liz areminder when he points out that in the criminal underworld you can neverreveal how important someone is to you without making them an instant target. Theshow continues to provide examples of this specific danger, and the cases thatdirectly touch upon this topic “borrow” elements from Red’s situation: in518, Mosadek’s son is abducted by business associates because they suspect himof being an informant, and in 610, criminals attempt to extort money from a fatherwhose daughter was born premature with a condition to which there was no cureat the time, so the father came up with one.

Ep605 is extra curious because it features the story of a guy who never knew hisfather and only learned about his identity when he was unexpectedly summoned to the readingof his will. Van Ness was fighting an illness, too, and decided to change hiswill to include his only son that nobody even knew about. His last written message to himwas: “I loved your mother but didn’t have the courage to stay withher.” Van Ness’ seat and vote in an international criminal syndicate are also automaticallytransferred to his heir, making him a target for various reasons. It’s also a reminder of what kind of dangerous entanglements thechildren of international criminals have to deal with once their family ties arerevealed. In this episode, we also get a reminder from Aram that “in arelationship, the truth always comes out.” and Dembe continues toplead with Red to be honest with Liz, tell her the truth and leave the rest to fate. Red, however, stubbornly keeps his silence.

Theparallels btw Red/Liz and Samar/Aram also continue in S6, and what Samar tells Aram in 613has potential relevance to deciphering Red’s perspective and reasons for not speaking up about Agnes. Samar says that she made peace with the idea that she was never gonna havechildren (back in S3, she told Liz she picked career over family) but meeting Aram changed everything. After that, she wanted nothingmore than to try and balance the two, to build a family with him. But now that she knows she has anirreversible condition, she cannot raise a child, and she feels he deservesmore than what she can give.

Ifeel all these sentiments also play a role in how Red evaluates the possibilities of hisrelationship with Liz (even if Agnes is not his). His initial reaction to the baby was rejection,remarking that a child would make their difficult work infinitely harder. But then he changed his mind. In 319, he confessed that hewould give anything to be able to raise Agnes but he was also painfully aware of the factors preventing him from realizing this wish.“Your baby deserves more than we can provide,”Mr. Kaplan told Liz right at the moment she decided to separate her from Redfor good. This idea also emerges in 614, when Red notices Liz staring at thephoto of herself with Katarina, and tells her that the photo represented everythingKatarina wanted but couldn’t have after she became a hunted woman. Being a fugitive himself, Red facesthe exact same problem. And now he alsohas an illness to overcome, so him having the same attitude as Samar - i.e. writing himself off as notbeing a suitable match and accepting not being with “the one” - feels right on the mark, imo. Katarina also shared in this heartbreak where realReddington and their daughter were concerned. She, too, had to let go of what she really wanted.

bottom line (bc it’s time to wrap this up): everything that’s happened since Liz confronted Red with the pregnancynews has been discouraging him from “coming out” as Agnes’ father:

initial uncertainty regarding paternity

Liz’s growing resentment towards him that culminated in a faked death

Tom + Liz choosing him over and over again coupled w/ Red starting to accept that Tom somehow makes Liz happy while he only manages to bring pain and hardship into her life

the constant threats and Red’s growing worry that he might indeed be athreat to Agnes and Liz

the unexpected DNA report that was also the perfect cover

Red’s emerging health issues

Liz’s missing memories (without which how would he even begin to explain it or have any hope she will not freak completely or worse?)

But we are in a period now where there is tangible improvement regarding these main issues. Red now knows whether or not he’s Agnes’ father, so that uncertainty is gone. Tom is dead. Liz’s resentment subsided and she knows Red is an imposter yet loves him anyway and told him so. He also knows about Krilov’s 2nd interference that explains some of Liz’s behavior. His illnessis being treated, too. But the risks and threats in their lives still remain. For now they are mitigating this by staying away from Agnes, but if theimprovements hold, hopefully the time will come when this issue of paternity - along with some other questions - can be broughtforth and sorted between the two of them.

[flamehairedwritings]

Queen of the Night

Characters: Steve Rogers x Plus-Size!Female Reader

Words: 3,111

Rating: M, 16+ ONLY

A/N: Hi, there. This has been written for @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan‘s Full Figured Fantasy Challenge with the prompt: ‘There is no wrong way to have a body’. 

It’s a very personal story so I hope you enjoy.

This story contains swearing and bad intrusive thoughts about your body.

Summary: At a Stark party, it’s up for debate who’s more uncomfortable; you or Steve Rogers.

EDIT: Read Part II here.

MASTERLIST

Please don’t copy, steal or repost my work; credit does not count. 

You should’ve known you’d regret it.

Yet you’d felt confident at the time.

Sexy, even, and that wasn’t something you often felt.

Oh my God, I look fucking amazing.

That had been two weeks ago when you were alone in your bedroom and the lighting had been warm and the mirror had been angled perfectly, as it always was.

Now, at Stark’s party, surrounded by bright lights, photographers and all the beautiful and elite of the city, you’re feeling very differently.

Why did I have to go with a fucking body-con.

The dress is gold, clings to you and stops just above your knees. You have no way of hiding and you so desperately want to. You can’t even leave; you’ve retreated to the furthest corner of the large room where’s it moderately quieter and where no members of the paparazzi are lurking. Even the thought of walking across the room, passing people, passing the photographers outside again, is making you sweat and your chest tighten; you have to keep switching the empty glass from one hand to the other so it won’t slip from your warm palms.

“Another one, ma’am?” 

Oh, fuck off.

The waitress has returned, a full glass on her tray. She’s giving you the same look as before which she probably thinks is coming off as kindly sympathetic but it’s just pitying. Sheer, fuck-off pitying. 

“Yes, thank you.” You smile politely, swapping your glass for the one she offers.

She gives the same chummy smile as before, then turns and leaves. 

You release a breath and take a long sip, your gaze flicking about the room. 

Everyone’s here tonight, all members of the Avengers, field agents and agents you work with in the offices, which should be comforting but is, in fact, the complete opposite.

You work with these people. You’ve all seen each other at your emotional best and worst. You’ve all seen each other without make-up, in sweats, greasy-haired, huge red spots on your faces, and no one bats an eyelid. 

So why is this different?

You know why. No one’s ever seen you in anything tighter than a pant suit.

Stop feeling like shit, it’s so ridiculous.

It’s not like they don’t know you’re fat, fuller figured, plus-sized, large, curvy, whatever word people want to use to define your body, it’s not like they don’t know. It’s not some great secret. It’s just different when you’re sat at your desk helping to save lives because that’s the sole focus.

Now, here, the focus is on each other. It’s a party; people go to parties to fuck, drink and dance. It’s the only chance you all get to relax a little and let go some what. The Avengers can’t, not at these things, they have to be ‘the face’ and act accordingly, but the agents can go relatively wild. You know they’ll all be gossiping about who fucked who tomorrow.

You wonder if they’ll gossip about you, too.

It won’t be cruel. You get on with everyone you work with; you’re never without a witty comment, you’re damn good at your job and you always bring baked goods in for Friday breakfast.  

It’ll be the same as the waitress, though. It’ll be pitying, grateful-it’s-not-them whispering about how brave you were to wear the dress, how proud they were that you did it. You’ve already had a few comments of ‘Yes, girl!’ and ‘Holy shit, look at you!’ from colleagues as you passed them to get to this safe corner, but it just sounded so false, too forced. Like they knew you needed the confidence boost.

Go home.

How, though? You’ve led high-risk missions on the other side of the world through an ear-piece and helped negotiate with one of the most temperamental crime lords in the world but you can’t walk across a damn room, order a damn cab and go home.

“Hey.”

Oh, thank fuck.

Turning at the quiet voice, you are welcomed by the sight of the only person in the room probably more uncomfortable than you; Steve Rogers.

And you’ve never felt more relieved.

“Hi,” you answer, matching his smile as he stands at your side, hands in his pockets and his eyes on the steadily escalating dance-off in the centre of the room; Agent Barton’s still winning.

“Not gonna show everyone how it’s done?”

“I will when you do.”

He exhales a laugh, one corner of his mouth rising higher than the other. “I’ll let you know when hell freezes over.” 

Silence falls as you sip your drink and he continues to watch his team members dance, Sam Wilson literally throwing his hat into the ring and becoming a strong contender for the winner, and it’s wonderfully comfortable.

You’ve collaborated with Steve on nearly every single one of his missions outside of the Avengers Initiative, and over that time an easy, what you dare to call friendship has formed, one born from the trust you’ve both earned from one another and the respect in your logical, like-minded way of thinking. You were also one of the few who didn’t lobby hard to collaborate with him when he joined SHIELD; sure, you’d made the application, same as everyone else because who wouldn’t want to work with Captain America, but you hadn’t gone out of your way to ‘bump’ into him during training or sent him a hand-written, 13 page letter detailing how he had inspired you to become an agent. 

You were nervous before your final interview, having made it to the last three applicants, but you knew you wouldn’t think it the end of the world if you didn’t get the job. Then you’d entered the room and found you’d be having a one-to-one interview with Captain Steve Rogers.

You’d never spoken to him before, only seen him in halls and meetings, and as he rose from his chair and shook your hand, you’d tried very hard to ignore the fact you were shaking hands with a living legend and icon. Albeit a tired but very polite living legend and icon.

He didn’t want to be there but you weren’t offended; this wasn’t how he was used to doing things. He was used to being given information, being dropped into the mission zone and figuring out for himself how best to work through it. He probably wasn’t thrilled at the notion of having someone with less experience in his ear giving him updates every few minutes, making sure he ticked boxes and advising what would be best to do.

In fact, you’d told him that. That had been your opening introduction. You had no idea where it had come from. You weren’t usually that bold with superiors unless it mattered, but something in you had told you this was a time when it mattered. You’d told him that and more, saying you would guide when guidance was needed and advise when advising was needed.

He had blinked in surprise then sat back in his chair and smiled.

Since then it had been the easiest of partnerships. You trusted each other’s judgements, rarely, strongly, disagreed and you both actually, genuinely got on very well. He didn’t mind in the middle of a mission if you started talking about a TV series you were watching, and you didn’t mind that he often called you ‘Hepburn’, a nickname born from when, a couple of months into your new role, he’d told you you’d reminded him of Katharine Hepburn with your assertive opening statement.

At times he’d had to defend you to your superiors for not bringing him in when they’d advised or not reporting him when he’d done something they’d prohibited, and you had got him out of more situations than you cared to count. 

You could read each other irritatingly well, so there is no doubt in your mind he knows how uncomfortable you are and the reason for it.

Great.

Drawing his eyes away after a few minutes as Sam is seemingly declared the winner, though Barton seems to just be calling a time-out, Steve looks to you.

“You seem to have done the impossible in this place and found a quiet corner.”

Oh, fuck, is he going to broach the subject now? Why did I wear this fucking dress?

You raise your eyebrows as you nod at the small table before you with an obnoxiously large floral arrangement on it which you’d been using as cover, though he’d still found you. 

“I can’t take all the credit, that’s doing most of the work.”

Then, beyond the flowers, you spot a middle-aged couple whispering to each other as they near, one of them trying, and failing, to subtly either film or take a picture of Steve.

“Oh, don’t look now, we’ve been spotted, Captain,” you murmur, glancing up at him.

He exhales a quiet sigh as his teeth briefly graze over his lower lip. “I’m sorry, I’ve ruined your peace.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it, I was thinking of leaving now, anyway.”

Once I’d stopped being a child and made my legs work.

“Yeah, me, too.” Gazing over your head, you can see the plan he’s forming. “Come on.” 

Gently tapping a finger tip against your hand, he then passes behind you and opens the door to your left.

Oh my God, that was unlocked the whole time?

Holding it open for you, he gestures with his head for you to pass through. 

You don’t need telling twice. 

“You memorised the layout of the place, didn’t you?”

He glances over at you, looking nowhere near as sheepish as the situation probably demands. “Well, it makes for an easier exit.”

The wind carries your laugh. 

He’d taken the lead after you’d passed through the door and had known every turn to take, almost as if he’d spent the night before planning various escape routes. 

Thank God.

You’d eventually come out behind the building and you’d just arched an eyebrow at him as you spotted his car parked across the street.

Again, thank God.

Then, as you’d gotten in to the car, he’d said something that was even more amazing than getting you out of there.

“You fancy getting pizza?”

“Am I ever going to say no to that?”

He’d laughed at your faux-incredulous response, but you had hesitated for a moment. Eating, in this dress, feeling as you were..?

But then you’d thought, Fuck it, I want pizza.

And that’s how you found yourself sitting on a bench with Steve, a box of pizza between you, gazing out across a lake.

“Do you want the last slice?”

You really do, but... Having had five slices, sat there in a gold dress that makes you stand out like a shining star in the night sky, you wonder for the first time what Steve thinks when he sees you.

You hate the thought as soon as it enters your head.

You’ve gotten this far without thinking it about him; you think it with nearly everyone else you see, but you’d been raised with the idea of Steve just being this golden boy who was kind to everyone, never had a bad or judgemental thought about anyone. It was rare you and Steve were really in front of each other, so much of your work was over the phone or earpiece or through video calls. Even in briefings you’d be sat at a table and you’d be carrying a pile of folders in front of you. It hadn’t crossed your mind to think about what he thought of your body, until now.

“You all right, Hepburn?”

You’re pulled from your intrusive thoughts by his question and shift your gaze over to him. 

“Hm? Yeah, sure, just in a bit of a food coma, that’s all.” Even you can hear how forced your laugh is. “You have it.”

He eyes you for a moment before lifting the slice and taking a large bite.

“Thanks for escaping with me, by the way. You really have been with me every single step of the way.”

Oh, God.

This is the beginning of his roundabout, old man way of getting you to open up, you know it is.

“Nearly every step,” you counter, unable to stop a smile from forming despite yourself.

“Oh yeah,” he muses through a mouthful. “Panama. Say, where were you again?”

“In Ibiza, holidaying for the first time in ten years. You ever heard of a holiday? You should try it sometime.”

“I think I have. Wasn’t that invented in the 60s?”

He wipes his mouth with a napkin as you laugh and, damn it, let your guard down.

“What’s going on, Hepburn?” he asks gently, dropping the half-eaten slice back into the box and wiping the grease from his hands. “What’s going on in that brain?”

Your smile falters as you look at him. A quiet breath you realise you’ve been holding leaves you. Looking down at your hands, you fiddle with a ring on your finger.

He waits patiently, keeping his gaze on you.

Just say it.

“Steve... What do you think when you look at me?”

It nearly kills you to say it. You don’t want to know the answer. You don’t want to listen to him. You want to be far away, back in your bedroom with three covers over you and your laptop balanced on your thighs, watching your new favourite show. You want to escape again.

Steve blinks. He hadn’t known what to expect but it certainly wasn’t that.

“I think you’re a very intelligent, debatably hilarious person who I like and I want to be around.”

Your hands pause. Your eyes flick over to him. “... That’s it?”

He blinks again, now feeling rather sheepish. “Do you want more? You are hilarious, you know, it’s not debatable and ─ “

“No,” you quickly cut him off before he gets too carried away. “Well, yes, no, I just thought...”

“You thought what?” he presses after you trail off.

Lifting your gaze to the night sky, you blow out a breath and a second after it, it all just comes out.

“My body, Steve, I thought you’d say something about my body because, you know, how could you not? I know you’re probably just being polite but, come on, it’s the first thing people see when they look at me, you know. It’s not exactly avoidable. I know how people think, Steve, even if they’re my friend they must think some bullshit sympathy thing every time they look at me, you know, people in this world can’t just look at someone for their personality and, I know, I know, I’m more than my body, it doesn’t matter what other people think, I know all that, I tell myself all of that and most days I believe it, I really do, most days I don’t care but sometimes it’s just, some days are hard, especially when I decide to wear a bright fucking gold dress that shows every part of my body and I don’t like it, I don’t like the way I look sometimes and I hate that, I hate that I just can’t... Get over it.”

Another breath rushes out of you, slightly shuddered, and you beg yourself not to cry.

Oh, God, please don’t cry, please don’t fucking cry now.

He doesn’t say anything and you can’t look at him.

Then you feel his hand gently settle over yours, seizing your hands from their playing with the ring again.

“Take it from someone who’s had two very different ones; there is no wrong way to have a body.”

You finally look at him, and it’s not pity you find in his eyes, but understanding. Real, genuine understanding.

“People are going to think bullshit things,” he continues as you stare at him, his hand remaining over yours, a gentle smile on his lips, “They’re gonna take one look at you and think they’ve got you all figured out. But none of that matters. I know it’s hard to not think about it, but they don’t know a damn thing about you, what you’re really like. Those kinds of people aren’t worth knowing, anyway. It’s never how you look but what you do and how you behave that stays with people. I know it takes some time to unlearn society’s ‘rules’ and start really learning to love yourself but it can be done.” He squeezes your hand lightly. “And I wasn’t kidding, you’re incredibly intelligent, you’re kind, you’re funny, and that’s what I see when I look at you. I see the person that you are.”

You have to remind yourself to breathe. His smile widens a little more as you squeeze his hand in return, your lips lifting into a smile that almost matches his.

“Thank you, Steve,” you murmur, afraid if you speak any louder that your voice might crack with emotion.

“Don’t mention it,” he answers, the pad of his thumb brushing over your knuckles. “I’ve been there.”

Clearing your throat, you feel real relief as you quietly confide, “I just wish I hadn’t worn something so tight and bright, you know.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m glad you did, Hepburn. Otherwise I would never have found you behind those damn flowers and I wouldn’t be here now with my favourite person.”

You feel your cheeks flush as you arch an eyebrow. “I’m your favourite person, huh?”

“Yeah, you are.” You think you see the faintest hint of colour rise on his own cheeks as he releases your hand and sits back. “I look forward to talking to you every day. Even when you ramble on about the Netflix.”

You laugh as he smiles, knowing that gets you every damn time.

“Y’know, now that you mention it, last night I started a show─”

“Okay, all right.” Steve closes the pizza box and wipes his hands on his thighs, feigning a sigh of resignation. “Before you start and I can’t get a word in, I think this calls for sundaes.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Always gotta have dessert.” Getting to his feet, he turns to you, then pauses, and a corner of his mouth lifts higher than the other. 

“Oh, God, what? Is there sauce on my face?”

“No, you’re fine, Hepburn,” he laughs as your hands fly up to your face. “Just look like the damn queen of the night is all.”

Your eyebrows shoot up as your cheeks flush again. “Oh...” Clearing your throat, you smile as you tilt your head. “That how you talk to all the girls back in the day, huh?”

He laughs as you get to your feet, holding out his hand to you. “No, that one’s just for you.”

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged or removed in my future work!

Tagged: @fearandloathing-in-missouri, @persephone-divine, @jobean12-blog, @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan

[afteriwake]

It Can Be As Real As You Or I (2/?)

And I’m on a roll! This one was a fun update as he doesn’t realize news of his marriage has been leaked to the tabloids yet, and so this is a quiet evening between the newlyweds before all hell breaks loose (with a dash of relationship history to boot). @simplyshelbs16xoxo I am sorry for making you wait so long for an update!

It Can Be As Real As You Or I - At the very beginning of a case to help Janine, it comes out that the very eligible and spectacular stud in the bedroom Sherlock Holmes has married local specialist registrar, Dr. Molly Hooper. Which would be fine and all, except it's a fake marriage. That Sherlock wants to make real by the end of the case. But Kitty Riley's constant hounding of him throughout the case, turning every tidbit she hears (always out of context) into tabloid fodder, is going to make that virtually impossible, he fears...though he might very well be surprised himself.

READ CHAPTER 1 | READ CHAPTER 2 | HELP ME SURVIVE? | COMMISSION ME?

“So tell me again why we had to go through the legal bit of being married?” Molly asked as they were getting ready for bed that evening. He watched the diamond on her wedding band flash in the light as she busied herself with brushing her hair. He was absolutely mesmerized by the action, as he usually was, and almost hadn’t realized that what she was wearing to be was far skimpier than what she usually wore.

Almost.

The black negligee was rather appealing and he admitted to not having seen it among her unmentionables when he’d gone through them while residing in her bedroom through her engagement. He had tried to behave himself, he had. He’d made sure to only go there when Tom wasn’t there, he’d made sure to leave early enough in the morning that there was no chance he’d be caught there by the fiancee, and he always cleaned up every trace of himself before he was gone. But then the night of John and Mary’s wedding...well, that had been a mistake.

He hadn’t gone back to Baker Street, thinking that if nothing else, the scene with the fork being stabbed into Tom’s hand would ensure that Molly would be home by herself, but they had both come to her home and it seemed to be the continuation of a row that had started in the car. He had been close to leaving through the upstairs window, climbing down the trellis, when he heard Tom call her a filthy whore.

That had been enough to enrage him, but he knew if he popped out of her bedroom the fight would get worse and she did not need that. So out the window and down the trellis he went, his mind whirring at how to deal with the situation…

...not that there was much cause to plot elaborate revenge because he was nearly back to Baker Street when Molly called, sounding as though she was going to cry, wanting to see if he was alright. He invited her to join him at Baker Street and to bring a few pints of ice cream while they nibbled on the non-medicinal brownies Mrs. Hudson had made a few days before. There was no ring on her finger that evening, and it never went back on. When he broached the subject a week later, she said he was welcome at her home anytime and didn’t need to worry about being interrupted.

Aside from the moment when he was high in her labs, they had been on some sort of uneasy truce of sorts. Not quite friends, not quite upset. The implication had been she was sleeping with him. Shouldn’t she have been angry? But aside from wasting his beautiful talents, she said not a word to him in anger.

Then the shooting happened and John and Mary’s first estrangement, the physical one, and the two of them had worked hard to take care of their friends, often meeting to discuss with each either the situation. These nights of takeaway evolved into nights of relaxation, and eventually, a kiss. The kiss led to more kisses which led to shagging and, albeit interrupted by his near exile to Russia, had continued much that way until now.

Except now they were married and if she walked out of his bedroom in the morning no one would bat an eye. Not that Mrs. Hudson had, but still. When they were on the case, no one would care.

“Because Lawrence is connected to the royal family,” he said, getting up from his spot on the bed and moving behind her, brushing her hair away and pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Not officially, and not legitimately, in the sense that he’s a recognized royal, but his lineage comes from some bastard offspring somewhere down the line and while he hadn’t known that exactly, only theorized, when his company made a show of presenting DNA kits as a Christmas gift, someone got their hands on his information aside from Lawrence. It could be the same person threatening Janine or it could be an entirely different person wanting leverage.”

“This is going to be a fun, complicated case for you, isn’t it?” she asked, turning to him, looking up with a grin.

“That depends on how you define ‘fun,’” he said, his voice almost a purr. “Getting to say you’re my wife will be enjoyable. And time spent with you away from the case where we don’t have to pretend we are just friends...”

“Yes, but it’s temporary,” she said, reaching over and tapping his nose. “Still, it will have its moments.”

“I know it will,” he said.

Molly laughed then, shaking her head and shoving him to the side lightly. “Sherlock, you’re incorrigible!”

“I try,” he replied. He straightened up and she went back to brushing her hair. “Do I get any other surprises during this case?”

“Oh, you mean this?” she asked, pausing to indicate her sleepwear. “Maaaybe.”

“Mary took you shopping once we finished our lunch, didn’t she?” he asked.

“We may have gone to a high-end lingerie shop, yes, but not because of us. It was for her to peruse. She and John are trying a few things and Mrs. Hudson said she’d give them a night alone later this week since Rosie’s favourite babysitters would be out of town. Mary thought John might enjoy something in red leather.”

“More than I needed to know about the Watsons,” he said, making a face.

Molly stood up, setting her brush down, and then put her arms around Sherlock’s neck and pressed herself against him as he let his hands slide along the sleek fabric to settle on her waist. “I went with red lace, myself. And if you are a very good boy, you can see it tomorrow.”

“And if I’m very naughty?” he asked.

“Well...we’ll see,” she said before leaning in to meet his bent head and kiss him. He savoured the kiss far more than he had any right to. She thought the marriage was to be temporary but more than anything he wanted it to be real. Still, it should be easier to convince her to say yes to a true proposal if she enjoyed being married for the case...he hoped.

[lobsters-on-their-heads]

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Chap. 5

This one’s mostly people talking.

Entire original work can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12116799

“Julian wants to know if we'll join them for drinks in an hour or so.”

Cosima looked over at Delphine, propped up on pillows in the bed. Drinks sounded fun, even if Julian could be a bit much sometimes, and it could be a good chance to learn more about Delphine. But. “I'm Skyping with Charlotte tonight,” she said. “I don't really wanna push that off.”

“Oh, that's right.” Delphine pushed her hair back and typed a reply to Julian. She was mostly under the covers, still naked except for her underwear. They had spent most of the afternoon in bed together, mostly cuddling and dozing but also talking about their upcoming trip to Monterrey and what they wanted to do when they got back to Toronto. There would be Christmas festivities, of course, and meeting Cosima's parents, but there was also Gemma's birthday just after New Year's, and Cosima would have a lot to do for her dissertation.

Cosima set up her laptop on the desk in the bedroom a few minutes before eight pm, making sure there was no underwear lying around where the camera might catch it. Delphine was back in the bed, propped up on all of the pillows and updating their clone notebooks and wearing another one of Cosima's shirts.

While she waited for Sarah to Skype her, Cosima checked her email. There was another from her parents, confirming travel details for their trip to Toronto in about a week, and one from her advisor in Minnesota. They'd set up a meeting in January, on campus, but he kept not-so-subtly suggesting that her work would be going better if she, like, stayed in Minnesota to finish it.

Normally, when she had her Skype dates with Charlotte, Sarah would appear first and they'd update each other on any pressing bits of news, but tonight Charlotte's face came up first. Her hair was down, as she wore it more often these days, and damp like she'd just showered. She'd had a growth spurt in the past several months, making her look stretched out and gangly. She'll be as tall as the rest of us within a year, Cosima thought with a slight pang. Hell, she might even get a little bit taller. Charlotte wore one of Sarah's old shirts, though Cosima was willing to bet that Charlotte hadn't been the one who cut the sleeves off.

“I didn't know you liked the Clash,” Cosima said.

Charlotte looked confused, then looked down at the shirt. “I don't. Do you know where Rachel is?”

“Rachel... Duncan? No, I don't know where she is. Why?”

On the screen, Charlotte deflated a little bit. “Does Delphine know where she is?”

“Uh, Delphine and I know the same things, so...” Just to be sure, she turned to her girlfriend on the bed behind her, who shook her head. “Yeah, neither of us knows where Rachel is. Do you need her for something?”

“No.” Charlotte looked down at the keyboard and picked at something there.

“Well, you must've asked for a reason. What's up?”

There was a long pause before Charlotte gave a dramatic sigh. “I just want to send her a Christmas card. It's not a big deal.”

Unable to help herself, Cosima grinned. “That's so sweet! I'm sure she'd like a Christmas card from you.”

Charlotte shrugged. “She probably doesn't remember me.”

“Aw, what makes you say that?” She knew that Charlotte had spent a lot of time with Rachel on the island, while Rachel recovered from her aphasia, before Cosima showed up.

Another shrug. “She's never done anything to show that she remembers me. I know she's been here a few times since we've been back, but she never sees me.”

Since we've been back. Since she and Cosima had stolen the boat and snuck back onto the mainland, some time ago. “Well, I know Rachel was pretty busy earlier, and...”

“Felix says she doesn't want anyone to find her.”

“Right, yeah. That's what I heard, too.”

Charlotte started picking at a spot on her cheek, not looking up, and Cosima wanted to reach through the screen to give her a hug. Out of all of them, Charlotte rivaled only Helena in the extent of her orphanness. Sarah had bounced around as a young child, but eventually settled with Siobhan and stayed there, forming a strong family bond. Alison, Cosima, and Beth all had parents who, while not perfect, were still always their parents. Charlotte had spent ten years with Marion Bowles, who'd been frequently absent and was now presumed dead, followed by a series of guardians that included a complete stranger and clone sisters with a mess of their own issues. Cosima didn't even know where to start.

“If we ever see or talk to her, I promise to tell her that you're thinking of her,” Cosima said. “Okay?”

Charlotte nodded. The spot on cheek bled now, making Charlotte frown down at her fingernails like they'd done the damage all on their own.

“You wanna go wash that?” Cosima suggested.

Charlotte's mouth scrunched up in such a Leda way that Cosima was both amused and embarrassed. “No,” Charlotte said. “It's fine. Are you still going to teach me to swim?”

“Teach you...?”

“You said you'd teach me how to swim.”

Cosima wracked her brain until finally landing on a shred of a memory, of Charlotte in a life jacket and winter hat, on a little boat with no land in sight, worrying that she couldn't swim. “Yeah, of course I'll still teach you how to swim. You don't have to wait for me to get back, though. I'm sure Sarah or Alison could find you some lessons...”

“You said you'd teach me.”

A small noice behind her made Cosima turn. Delphine sat on the bed with one hand over her mouth, obviously amused and trying not to intrude. Facing Charlotte again, she said, “Well, I'm still happy to teach you if you want. We'll find a pool close to Sarah's and get you some basics before Gemma's party, yeah?”

Charlotte's face remained scrunched, but she said, “Yeah, okay, I guess.”

“You don't believe me?”

She didn't answer, but found a different spot on her face to pick at. In the background, Sarah and Kira were arguing about some television show that Sarah found “inappropriate.” Cosima wasn't going anywhere near that conversation.

“What'd you learn in school today?” she asked, steering them back to their usual topic. From everything that Sarah, and Charlotte herself, reported, Charlotte was excelling academically, but struggling socially. She'd never been in traditional classrooms before this year, never had to deal with her own peers in this kind of environment. Aisha, back at Revival, had been her first same-age friend. During their Skype chats, Cosima tried convincing her that she could learn as much from her classmates as she did from books or lectures, but it was a tough sell.

Charlotte's face relaxed a little bit, which Cosima took as a good sign. “Jennifer has games on her calculator that she put there herself. She said she put in a code.”

Cosima had been amazed, early in their Skype routine, to learn that Charlotte was at a high enough math level to be using a graphing calculator in the seventh grade. Now she smiled. “Yeah, that's a pretty cool trick. Did she show you how to code your own?”

“No. She acted like it was super easy, like everyone knew how to do it.”

“And you didn't want to ask her about it.” This was also a pattern in Charlotte's peer interactions. As well educated as Charlotte was, her classmates knew a lot of things that Charlotte was clueless about, and she was too shy or embarrassed to ask them to explain. “Maybe Scott can show you how to do that for your own calculator. I don't remember exactly how to do it, but he probably does.”

They talked a bit more about Charlotte's classes, a history project she had to finish that week, and her after-school chess club. Charlotte's mood improved noticeably by the end of their conversation, when she took out the heavy world atlas she'd found tucked in the back of a bookshelf at Siobhan's house and now used to track Cosima and Delphine's progress through the world. Sarah was only half joking when she suggested that Charlotte (and Kira, who helped with the project) could join a geography bee after all the Ledas were cured.

“You're here right now,” she said, placing a translucent yellow sticker over Mexico City. “Where are you going next?”

“Monterrey. Tell me where that is.”

“That's up here.” Charlotte tapped the city on the map of Mexico. “Are you flying?”

“Yes. It would take, like, all day by bus.”

Charlotte didn't put a sticker there yet. She would do so once they were in the city and not before.

* *

The next day, after spending longer than they wanted dealing with the airport, Cosima and Delphine arrived in Monterrey and took a cab to the bed and breakfast that Alison had reserved, albeit reluctantly, for them.

“What's wrong with a regular hotel?” Alison had asked when she heard about their plans.

“Nothing. Delphine's friend recommends this place, though, and apparently there's a discount for recommendations.”

“A discount for whom? You, or Delphine's friend?”

“Both of us. All of us.”

After finally getting Alison to agree that the B&B would be fine for two nights, Cosima suggested to Delphine that maybe they leave Alison out of the travel planning process for the next leg of their trip.

“I can do it all myself,” Cosima said. “Alison's great, but I think we both know that it's better done by someone on the ground, who can make decisions immediately.”

“Mhm.” Delphine nodded. “But then Alison will feel left out.”

Cosima told herself she'd broach the subject with Alison in person once they got back, after Christmas.

The bed and breakfast was lovely, owned by a French couple who'd met at the university there and fallen in love with each other and the location. The building was an old colonial style house with lush gardens and a peacock who strutted around as Cosima and Delphine approached. Within minutes of signing in, Delphine had struck up a lively conversation in French with Marie, one of the owners. Cosima's French was very slowly improving, but she still missed most of the conversation until Delphine gestured dramatically at their luggage and Marie responded with “putain!”

So she knows Delphine lost her luggage. Cosima thought. At least I've got that much. She would focus on French more when she wasn't listening and speaking Spanish every day, so that, hopefully, she wouldn't look like too much of a fool when Delphine took her to France in late April.

Behind the check-in counter, a baby started to cry, so Marie excused herself to tend to it. A moment later, she re-emerged with a little bundle draped against her shoulder, its tiny little hand waving around. Marie tried to apologize, but Delphine's whole face broke into a smile. From a safe distance, Cosima watched her girlfriend coo over the baby, whose name was Marguerite, but who got called everything from Margot to Rita in the course of five minutes. Cosima didn't know very much about human infants, but by her guess this baby's age was somewhere close to 0, since she lacked the ability to hold up her own head and Delphine supported her easily with one arm.

“Cosima, come look!” And Delphine was so, so happy with this baby, the way she'd been happy with Helena's twins back home. Her face just glowed, showing her dimples off for everyone.

Cosima looked at the baby's head, nestled in the crook of Delphine's arm, and for a moment imagined that it was Delphine's own child there, just to gauge her own emotional reaction. The results were mixed, a strange combination of boundless love and desperate terror. She looked up at Delphine again. “She's so little,” she managed.

“Yes, she's only a few weeks old. She's brand new.”

“You want to hold her?” Marie asked, and laughed when Cosima backed up so fast she knocked over the umbrella stand.

“No, I'm, I'm good.”

Delphine said something in French that probably translated to, “Cosima's afraid of infants” or “Cosima ovulates sand and would rather cuddle a lizard.” But she was smiling and her eyes were shining and, in that moment, if Delphine had asked for a baby, Cosima would've done anything to give her one.

When they finally settled into their room, baby Marguerite safely back with her mother, Cosima wrapped her arms around Delphine's waist and nuzzled the back of her neck. She'd thought about leading into the subject gently. Instead, she just asked, “Do you want kids? I mean, like, ever?”

She felt Delphine's laughter before she heard it. “Did it look like I did? Down there?”

“I dunno. Maybe. It made me curious.”

“Hm.” Delphine finished getting her night time things from her bag and turned around in Cosima's arms, leaning back against the dresser. “I don't want kids right now. But some day? Maybe.” She cupped Cosima's face in her hands and stroked her earlobes. “I've never craved them, you know, the way some women do, but I like them. I like babies.”

“I can tell.”

“I always expected that I would have them, I think. When I was much younger, I expected that I would wind up with some man and we would have children together, but that was always a vague sort of mental picture. I certainly never met any man that I wanted to have children with. I was always very careful to avoid any, ehm, accidents, when I slept with men.”

Cosima hummed and nuzzled her cheek with the side of her face. “Not much chance of that now. Accidental pregnancy, I mean.”

Delphine kissed her cheekbone. “No. No chance. It's good, though. I really don't miss worrying about that.”

For a moment, Cosima let herself wonder what it would be like to be able to get Delphine pregnant. Would she want to? Before she got far with that train of thought, Delphine nipped her ear and started rubbing the back of her neck.

“What about you? I know you're not crazy about babies, but you're very good with children. Do you want them for yourself?”

She hadn't seen her face when she asked the question, so Cosima tried deciphering the tone of her voice. It was gentle, curious, not presumptive. “I've never wanted them before,” she said. “That doesn't mean I want them now, but...”

“But?”

“I never even thought about it before this year. It's not like it's really been an option, you know?”

She pulled out of Delphine's embrace to change into her shorts and T-shirt for sleeping. For some reason, she needed to distance herself from Delphine for a moment, to protect her own sanity in case Delphine said.... said what? If Delphine wanted children, was that really so frightening?

“Why not?” Delphine asked. “Just because you can't carry them yourself doesn't mean you can't be a parent.”

“Well, yeah, I know that. That's not the only reason. I mean, I haven't really been in a position where I could... parent. In any capacity. It's hard enough taking care of myself sometimes.”

Delphine cocked her head and watched her finished getting dressed. “Do you think you're in a position now? To parent, I mean?”

“Like, right now?” It was her turn to laugh now. “Hell, no. We're not even in one place for more than a week.”

Delphine smiled at her, her eyes narrowed, and Cosima realized she'd answered a question addressed only to her with a reply that included both of them. She wasn't about to amend it. Whatever her future held, children or no children, she wanted it to include Delphine. She took Delphine's hand and pulled her to the bed, and drew the duvet over them both.

“So you said you might want kids. Would you be upset if you never got pregnant?” she asked her. “If you never had a baby of your own to cuddle and coo over?”

Delphine pursed her lips. “Upset? No, I don't think so. Perhaps a little disappointed, but not upset. It would be like, if you told me that I'll never see the pyramids in Egypt. I'd like to see them, and I'd be disappointed if you told me I never will, but it would be okay.”

“Okay, well, first of all, we're going to Egypt, like, next year to cure the two Ledas who live there, so we can totally see the pyramids while we're there. More importantly, though, pregnancy is a lot different than visiting a foreign country. A lot more life-changing, I think.”

“Yes, but what I'm saying is that right now they're at about the same level of personal importance. And we might not see the pyramids! Who knows, maybe our schedule won't allow it, or there could be some political strife that keeps us away. Anything could happen.”

“Yes. Anything but accidental pregnancy.”

Delphine giggled. She held Cosima's hand in hers, playing with her fingers and kissing the knuckles softly. “And how would you feel if I never got pregnant?”

The question caught her off guard. “If you never did? It's your body, love, it's not my place to say. That's your decision.”

Delphine's eyes sparkled when she looked at Cosima now. “In the end, yes, but I want to know your feelings. Let me ask another way. How would feel if I did get pregnant?”

“I guess that would depend on how it happened. Are we talking about a quick fling with some Egyptian guy in a pyramid when you're off your birth control, or are we talking, like, a visit to a fertility clinic, and a sperm donor?”

Delphine laughed again, perhaps at the image of random pyramid sex. “The second one, I think. As handsome as I'm sure Egyptian men are, the only person I want to have sex with is you.”

Her tone was light, but the seriousness of the topic made Cosima's voice heavy. She'd wondered about this before, especially whenever Delphine gushed over Helena's boys, but she needed to know now, exactly how compatible she and Delphine were on this issue. She needed to know, and she was terrified about the answer, so she stalled. “How would I feel about you getting pregnant via IVF? I... I mean, do you want to?”

“Cosima, I asked you what you wanted. This is all hypothetical right now. We're not making any decisions. I'm not going to get pregnant any time soon, no matter what else happens. I just want to know your feelings.”

My feelings don't matter here, she thought. Tell me what you want, and I'll try to follow along. She'd never talked to any other girlfriends about having children together. She rubbed her hand over Delphine's stomach, flat and baby-free. “It's your body, babe. It's your decision if you want to carry a child, not mine.”

Delphine searched her face, her own expression difficult for Cosima to read. Maybe I'm not ready to see what's there, she thought. Because she probably does want a baby, and she wants me to say I'd be happy with that.

“Look. If you got pregnant,” she said, “if you had a baby because you wanted one, and it made you happy, I would be happy for you. Does that answer your question?”

The frown tugging the corners of Delphine's mouth said that it did not. “I'd only want a baby if you were there to support me,” she said after a while. “If you were there to....”

To raise it with you? Cosima couldn't bring herself to finish Delphine's sentence for her. Instead she kissed her lips, holding her pouty lower lip between hers for a moment. “I told you before, I always want to be there for you. That goes for all this, too. If you want to get pregnant, some day, in the future, once all this clone stuff is over, I will be there. Maybe even with bells on. However -” Cosima pushed herself up onto her elbows to establish her point. “-can we both agree to keep any potential babies, like, at least a few years down the road?”

Delphine agreed with a smile. Toying with one of Cosima's dangling dreadlocks, she said, “I think so. But you brought it up.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And I think it's bothering you.”

She sighed and stroked Delphine's stomach some more. “Maybe it is. I just want to make sure you... that neither one of us feels like we're not getting what we want out of life.”

Delphine's eye brows rose. “I'm getting more out of life than I ever expected to. Anything else, any potential, hypothetical children would be... I don't know. I have a hard time imagining what that would even be like. But I am very open to the idea.”

Open to the idea. Cosima nodded. “Okay.”

“Are you?”

“Am I open to the idea of parenting? I am terrified of the idea of parenting.” She laughed despite herself. “But, yeah, I guess I could be open to it if, like, the circumstances were right.”

“What circumstances would you need?”

“Well, first of all, not moving all the time. Finishing my dissertation, getting a good job that I love...” The rest of the thought, the part where she wanted to marry Delphine first, she left unsaid, for now.

“Those things will happen,” Delphine said. “Not this year, maybe not next year, but soon enough.”

“Yeah.”

“And when they do, we can talk about what we'll do next.”

[lokgifsandmusings]

Do you think Kataang might have worked better if it had happened earlier and had time to get complicated? It probably would have annoyed people who wanted to get on with the plot but it might have avoided the "hero gets the girl" final episode business.

Well, it was introduced in the pilot episode, so…

No, it was its scripting in Book 3 where I find it impossibleto track.

Like, to me it felt as though Zutara was the foregoneconclusion for the series when Book 2 was airing, and it made sense to me, albeitit was a tropey assumption. Then “Crossroads” hit and we had that amazing subversionof Zuko’s redemption arc (maybe my favorite moment in TV history), and alsoAang “giving up” Katara with the chakras and all, so I had no clue what tothink. I didn’t care enough about shipping to ponder it deeply, but it was likeAang was on this jedi-path, and I couldn’t imagine a situation where Kataracould work through her feelings of betrayal with Zuko within one season. Whichis still something I cling to. I could see ATLA ending on a trajectory headedfor a Zutara romance, but I think as presented it still wouldn’t have been thebest writing in the world.

Clearly they intentionally countered the whole “heroescannot love” thing (Iroh tells Aang he was smart to choose love, though theRock of Chakra Convenience is still just an atrocious way to go about it. Korrafound the inner strength to open hers…), and I’m happy for it. But how Brykewent about scripting the romance in Book 3 is nothing short of a headscratcherfor me.

Ya know what, I’m putting this below a jump-cut. Here’s the full account of whyI’m personally struggling to really feel compelled by this pairing, even though I adorethe complications of their adult lives and family, and would never trade Bumi,Kya, and Tenzin for anything. I hope we can all be friends after this? If you enjoy it, power to ya, and I’m happy you found this aspect of ATLA fulfilling.

First, off the bat, the ages do make me uncomfortable. Especially for afull make-out sesh, along with the panting at the end of “The Headband” dance.It makes me uncomfortable because it’s clear Katara is in a much differentdevelopmental stage than Aang. That’s just the animation and the scripting, andI’m sorry but I don’t see coming around on that. Keep in mind, I watched theseries for the first time as a teenage girl. Maybe it’s my own issue that Icould very easily put myself in the mind of a 14 year old girl going throughpuberty, and the idea of making out with a 6th grader that held atorch for me is just not an avenue I’d go down. I totally admit that this isall subjective taste here, so it’s not really an “argument against the ship” orany of that nonsense. It’s just one aspect that leaves me cold.

The maternal quality to their relationship…I can get overit. Katara is a caretaker personality, and I know first-hand that this mode ofoperation doesn’t sit in contention with romantic interest. Oh hey, rememberAsami? So, yeah the imagery at times is uncomfortable in this regards (like, nomatter what it’s just bizarre to have your crush role-play as your mom, right?),but this is kind of a “whatever” element and I can’t believe it’s brought up somuch in this dialogue.

Okay. ATLA Book 3. There was the Footloose episodewhere Katara seemed super into Aang, right? But then her ambivalence was made abundantlyclear for almost every other moment.

There was a conscious decision to have herlook not exactly on-board after the invasion kiss, and to have it be framed asAang putting it on her. Animation isdeliberate, at all. So what the hell was our take-away supposed to be? Thisonly gets heightened and much much much worse with “Ember Island Players” whereKatara outright tells Aang she’s confused, he kisses her anyway (which is atleast framed as not a good thing), and that’s more or less the last this topicis broached until that final scene. I asked questionsabout this yesterday that I thinksuper needed to be answered, but can’t we at least agree this is an exceedinglyodd way to go about scripting it since there was NO follow-up to this moment? Aside from last-minute tension, can anyone justify this?

Like…what is the takeaway at all? That Katara was confusedwhen there was a war going on and couldn’t parse her feelings, but the warended so now she had a chance to breathe and realize that yes, she wanted thisthing. That is a totally fine story I guess, and it is clear that Katara is,ya know, fond of Aang, particular given his empathy and pushes towards worldbetterment. But we needed this explicated! Especially since in the scene beforeAang had violated her boundaries.

This is for Aang’s sake too! He calledhimself “such an idiot” for doing that, but then doesn’t want to even be like “thiscool with you?” He clearly cares about hurting Katara since that handicapped his ability to learn firebending, so where was that mentality for him at all after he upset her?

Frankly, before Katara said she was confused because therewas a war (which sounded more like trying to evade an awkward topic), we had noindication of *what* was going on in her mind. None. One second she’d be dirtydancing, the next she’d be looking uncomfortable, the next she’d be snapping athim for protective paternalism. I’m not saying any discrete moment was OOC, butthere is something fundamental missing that connected these pieces. Which maybea 2 minute conversation with Suki could have cleared; even though it’dcertainly fail the bechdel test, it would have given us an important window,would have allowed for Katara’s assertion of her own agency in this narrative, and alsobeen kinda realistic to how teenage girls communicate. Again, I was one. I canconfirm this. Hormones are raging and it’s confusing even without wars.Remember when Korra sought out the advice of Jinora and Ikki? 

What it comes down to is that we just have to assume Katarawas into this, because that’s how things ended. What we’re shown is completelyinconsistent, and requires us to just shrug and say “I guess this is what shewanted.” I’m very hesitant to bring up Zutara, because this isn’t a comparison.But from the perspective of storytelling, it kind of would have been the exactsame thing had she and Zuko shared an end kiss. It’s not like it’s impossibleto track that narrative, but it would have boiled down to “well this happenedso therefore here’s how we should view those previous interactions.” Differenceis, of course, writers weren’t planning Zutara, so those interactions didn’t*need* to convince us of anything. Why would they? But for me, Katara’sfeelings for Aang felt told and not shown, simply because her feelings kind of adaptedfor the needs of an episode’s plot. 

So, okay, it wasn’t super organic. But where I really,really start to get not happy is with the messaging and take-away. Katara’s romanticarc sort of boils down to “I think I like this boy and I do.” Which is fine?What’s not fine is Aang’s romantic arc.

From the start he has a very idealized view of Katara, and that’s seriously whatever sincehe’s a kid and this is a crush. I guess that image of her kind of getschallenged when she lets some darkness show, but it’s also contextualized bysome distressing stuff. “Southern Raiders” is example prime: Aang *really*knows what Katara needs. Rewatching that episode is hard, because Aang comes across as incredibly patronizing. I’d say this was an intentional character flaw, kind of like Hermione in a way (SPEW is her haughty self-righteousness going very wrong), except that we’re kind of just supposed to agree that yes, Aang really does know best.

He’s also shown to be canonically possessive of Katara (his glare at Zuko when he hugs her in “Crossroads”, the whole “you’re myforever girl”) in a way that I assumed was going to go challenged. Isn’t itclear in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that dream!Katara is a bit of an issue? Andthat when he tries to project that onto her in real life, she’s not receptiveor happy? *She* certainly didn’t seem to feel she was his forever girl in “EmberIsland Players” and made that clear.

And really, it’s that episode that’s about 92.4% of theproblem. It’s almost unconscionable to me that there was no verbal follow-up,and unfortunately what it did was create a situation where Aang pulling thisshit:

Actor Zuko (on stage): Wait! You’rethe Avatar’s girl, aren’t you?

ended up being tacitly rewarded. Katara really *was* hisgirl all along! She just needed that confoozing cloud of war to clear up!

This gif actually makes me see white. And at the time I thoughtit was framed in a negative light, especially given Katara’s reactionfollowing. But then the finale endorsed this entire line-of-thought from Aang. Unlesswe go with “it was about Katara’s off-screen and unarticulated choice.”

I sound very very salty, I know, butthe Entitled Nice Guy is probably my least favorite of all the tropes. It’s apersonal taste here, and one that’s even ruined The Office for me. Plus the whole “oh she secretly likes you so just keep pushingand violating boundaries” thing is just not acceptable. And yeah, it’s notexactly shvarts un vays or anything, andwe can make arguments about “oh Katara leaned in so it’s fine” or whatever, butthe fact is: Aang’s view of the situation was challenged for half a second, only to then be staunchly endorsed.

I know shippers care about Katara. My guess is that they allow for a much more generous interpretation of this than I do, and put more time thinking about how this really is part of the narrative of her growing crush. For that reason, I see a ton of Watsonian arguments as a defense, but myissue is a Doylist one entirely. It’s the messaging, and it’s amessage that sits so oddly in contention in what is otherwise a very thoughtfuland rather progressive narrative.

Like yeah, sometimes guys like girls from thestart, and the girls come to realize their feelings as time goes on. Of course that happens. Just don’t have it happenwithout a fucking conversation that makes a point to showcase her perspective, becauseotherwise there’s unfortunate implications!

Though thankfully Bryke learned to watch out for those,slowly, but surely.

[randoreviews]

DAVE AND BEN WORK THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER BEAT

Sacramento, 1977      Dave took a long drag in the passenger seat of the Cutlass and I could hear the paper burn.      “You want one?” he asked. I always said no, but when we were working together he would always ask at least a couple times a day, as if it was a rhythm we were keeping.       “No,” I said. It was never “No, thanks,” it was always just no.      He smoked Pall Malls, the real cheap shit, maybe to put him in more of a pulpy mood for the job. I had once bought him a pack of fancy Swiss cigarettes for a birthday and he had enjoyed them, but the next day he was back to smoking the Pall Malls. He would have worn a detective’s hat if he could have, though it would have clashed with the plaid suits he wore. Today’s was beige and blue, a combination that almost didn’t make sense unless you saw it, and then it still didn’t make sense. I had my light brown corduroy blazer on, a green shirt, a yellow tie, and khaki bell bottoms.      Dave gave a little cough, which meant he was about to speak again. (Cough.) “You remember that part in Catcher in the Rye when he says he always stopped when girls said stop and that’s why he never got laid?”       “I think so?” I said. “I remember one of his classmates jumping out of a window and killing himself.”      Dave exhaled. “Fuck. Fucking Salinger.”      “What made you think of good old Holden?” I asked.      Dave rubbed his eye. “I don’t know, I guess just all this stuff that’s been goin on.”      “Ah,” I said. “Well you can at least take solace in the fact that Holden didn’t have it in him to break into people’s homes and hide in their closets and wait for them to go to sleep, tie them up, bind them with their own phone cords, and sexually assault them.”       “Dig, dig,” Dave said.       We had another routine of always getting our bad jokes out about the story before we interviewed people. Lighten the mood a little, disrespect the dead.      We cruised through the suburban neighborhood of Citrus Heights... palm trees, front lawns cut only a little higher than fairways... rose bushes... ranch houses. Not exactly Philip Marlowe’s San Francisco. And yet here in the East Area, in our little part of this vast Golden State, a serial rapist and murderer had had us hard at work and us and the cops thoroughly stumped as a tree stump.       “What if it’s a woman?” Dave said.      “He’s been I.D.ed as a man, that’s pretty much the one thing they know about him.”      “Let’s not rule it out though, let’s keep an eye on the big picture.”      “He’s been raping women with... with...”      “With his johnson, yeah, I know,” Dave said.      “Why do you have to misappropriate my last name like that?”       “It’s part of the lexicon,” he shrugged.      “Here it is right here, 114.”      We pulled up to the curb. Professional tip: you never parked in the driveway. You would never want to be presumptuous like that. Some might think it odd that snoops like us would be worried about such etiquette, but then they didn’t know anything about the job.      Dave tapped his pen twice on his notebook, another common occurrence.      Two knocks on the door. For a widowed mother like this, you wanted to stand at least a few feet back and not be the eager journalist. We also had to consider Dave’s plaid suit, which may have confused her mind if seen from up close right away. I was relieved that she didn’t have a little barking dog, who were predisposed to hating newspapermen.       The door with the three cubed, diagonally-positioned windows opened and we were presented with a woman in her mid-sixties wearing a nightgown and glasses.      “I’m sorry I didn’t get dressed,” she said, but offered no further explanation.      “Mrs. Lefforts,” I said, almost bowing at a natural inclination to her. “My name is Benjamin Johnson and this is my colleague David Tulis, we’re reporters from The Sacramento Bee. We spoke on the phone?”      “Yes, how do you do,” she said. “Come in, please,” shooing her hand down.       “How do you do,” Dave said quietly, almost as an aside.       It was always so nice when people didn’t slam the door on your nose. I almost felt like I was on vacation.      “I just ask that you please take your shoes off,” she said with her back to us, slowly walking towards what I assumed was the kitchen.      “Of course, ma’am,” I said.      I immediately had a flashback to the story we had done in the ashram, the last time we had to take our shoes off.      “Would either of you like coffee and if so, how do you take it?” she said from now what must have been the kitchen.      You learned to drink black coffee and to treat it like jet fuel. Even if they gave you cream and sugar to use.      “Just black, please, ma’am,” I called. Dave and I made a little choreographed show of him deciding and then I said, “Black for both of us, ma’am.”       “Black for both of you,” she repeated out of view.      We stood for a moment by the door with our shoes off. It was a nice, clean suburban house (not like my apartment, certainly not like Dave’s) with knickknacks to tell you it had been lived in. In the foyer, where we stood, right across from us hung a portrait of a high school girl. We had seen pictures of that face a little older.      She walked back out at the same deliberate pace. “Come into the kitchen.”        We followed her. On the kitchen table were two mugs of black coffee with steam swirling up from them and a big gray cat sprawled out on the far end. The cat didn’t look like it had any plans of moving for us or anyone else in the world.      “That’s Tabatha,” Mrs. Lefforts said. “If you’re allergic I can open a window. I’m afraid going in the living room wouldn’t help. She sleeps a lot in there too.”      “Allergy free, ma’am, happy to report,” I said, and we sat down, while Mrs. Lefforts stood by the stove.       Dave gave a little cough. “Does she like being pet?” he asked.      “Well yes, and especially if you’re gentle.”      Dave pet the cat a couple times and she closed her eyes at him in appreciation.      “Yeahh, you like that, huhh,” he said.      Mrs. Lefforts brought a red pack of cigarettes, the one with the two distinct lions on it, around to her other hand and pulled out a cigarette.      Dave then brought his pack out and put it on the table, and it was something like a bonding experience. Mrs. Lefforts had a table lighter, like a paperweight, and she brought it over to Dave and they lit up.      “You can ash into the cactus,” she said, which was on the table.      I tried to broach the subject of why we came, having a lot of practice with giving somewhat of a faltering start, to soften it. “Mrs. Lefforts, um, we first want to say we’re very... very sorry for the loss of your daughter. I can’t imagine what that must be like.”        “I won’t answer any questions about my ex-husband,” she said matter-of-factly.      Little cough from Dave. “That would be Susan’s father, ma’am?”      “... Yes.”      “And does he live around here?”      “No, he moved back east. But I won’t say any more.”      “Perfectly fine, ma’am,” I assured her. “That’s perfectly fine. You’ll have probably heard all of these questions before from the boys in blue.”      She took a drag. “You aren’t more creative than they are?”      “Meaning what?” Dave asked. “They left out some questions that would have been (little cough) pertinent to the case?”       “I don’t know. They seem to not know anything. Those women who have survived said the man wore a mask. He shined a light in their face. Obviously he wore gloves.”      We waited for her to say more.      “He’s fond of ropes and knots. Unfortunately we’re not near a port but perhaps he’s a Navy man.”      That had not been something we had yet thought of. I looked over and Dave was penning an anchor symbol into his notebook, surrounded by question marks.      “Any of your family members in the Navy? Anyone you know?” I asked.      “No,” she said. “I worked in an antiques store for the past, say, twenty years. Suzie’s father sold appliances... vacuums mostly. Her grandparents have been gone for quite a long time now. I have a brother who lives in Fresno.”       “And what does he do?” I asked, more out of due course, not sensing any sort of vibration from an uncle.      “He’s a farmer. And he doesn’t like to leave his farm,” she said.      Dave nodded and asked, “Mrs. Lefforts, did your daughter have a boyfriend?”      “Yes, Richard.”      “Richard,” Dave repeated.      “Richard Williams. He works in the city, some kind of junior businessman, I don’t know exactly.”      I noticed Dave write down, “Richard Williams works in the city.”      “He’s quite broken from all of this,” Mrs. Lefforts said, her cigarette held near her glasses.      “And how long have they been together?” I asked.       “Three years in May. I expect they would have married soon.”      As a reporter, the danger of really putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is it could scorch your mind, as in the case of boyfriend Richard. Someone doing that to the woman you loved. It was just a little difficult to negotiate any kind of truce with it.      Although here Mrs. Lefforts was able to stand, to receive guests, so soon in the wake of personal tragedy, albeit still in her nightgown. I looked over and the cat looked me straight in the face very cat-like.      It was already plain to see that the situation was exactly as it appeared.      Mrs. Lefforts put her cigarette out in the ashtray on the counter next to her. “My exasperation is, how can a person just be murdered and that’s it? No clues. No leads. Not one shred of evidence they can use. How is that possible? I’ve seen drawings they’ve done of him but he doesn’t look like anyone. It’s like he’s some alien creature. Or a fiction of our imagination.”      I wasn’t sure she wanted to hear my usual little speech but I said anyway, “Well that’s what we do, ma’am, as public servants of the community. We at The Sacramento Bee...” It seemed so hollow... “... We at The Bee try to do our part to help, as an organ of the city and our community, to spread information that might help find him, and give him a real human form.” I left out the part that had once crossed my mind about us being bees collecting honey.      Dave took a sip of his coffee.      “But what if he’s smarter than all of you?” Mrs. Lefforts asked.      The only way we could answer that would be with more saccharine little speeches, which I was not in the mood to give more of to a widowed mother. Sometimes it felt like our job actually wasn’t much different than working for a tabloid. Possibly we were turning the horror into spectacle.       Not smoking, she kept her hands holding her elbows.      It probably wouldn’t have encouraged her to tell her that, as things stood, even Einstein couldn’t have helped much, which may have spoken to her point. Notwithstanding that Einstein had been dead a while and his brain donated to science.       (Cough.) “Mrs. Lefforts, what did Susan do for work?” Dave asked.      “She worked as a waitress at The Brown Derby downtown.”      “What did she want to do for work?”      “Oh, I don’t know... She liked to paint things. She liked to read. She liked flowers and plants... These sorts of things. There’s one she did,” and Mrs. Lefforts pointed to the far wall where hung a painting of a purple flower not badly done. In fact it was quite good. She had made the stalk of the flower black, creating a stark, almost violent division on the canvas. We didn’t say anything, just looked at it as thoughtfully as we could, and were witnesses to it.      “She talked a couple times about becoming a flight attendant, although she had never left Sacramento. Once she and Richard went down to Los Angeles, saw the sign, all that. She said she saw one of The Bee Gees drive by. But she didn’t like all the traffic.”        “What was she like growing up?” I asked. “Did she play sports?” I had a cousin who always asked women if they played sports, and if they didn’t he wasn’t interested in them. It was a question I leaned on, easy to ask and easy for the person, usually under some kind of duress, to answer.       “She was in the color guard,” Mrs. Lefforts answered. “She was a baton twirler. I guess she didn’t like all the ra ra of sports, but she loved focusing on catching the baton on the high tosses. I can remember the face she made when she was really concentrating.”      She took another cigarette out of the pack, just to hold, it seemed, and she held it like this delicate thing that was supporting her, something for her hand to do.      For Dave’s clearest questions, he didn’t cough beforehand. “Mrs. Lefforts, when was the last time you saw Susan?”       “Last Tuesday. Tuesdays have never been good for much, right? She had come by because she had gotten a stain on her work shirt that she just couldn’t get out... I’ve tried to teach her these things but I guess it takes time. She and Richard were going to dinner that night.”       Still not lighting her cigarette.      “I’ve thought... I’ve had this thought about search parties... not to find her, obviously, but... or are they lynch mobs? Anyway, doing a sweep of the area on foot... through every house, every field... until the citizens found him.”       I looked at the designs running down her nightgown.      ... The doors of the Cutlass closed like a tank, about fifty pounds of metal. I started the full-throated engine and Dave lit his cigarette as a matter of course.       “Want one?” he said.      “No,” I said.       I turned the radio on for some distraction and The Bee Gees started playing.       “Nobody gets too... much heaven no more, it’s... much harder to come by, I’m waiting in liiine...”       “Want to bop down to The Golden Bear and get a drink?” Dave asked.      “Yes,” I said.