#he would have died for saying no. horrific

[godhandler]

Different JJK characters understand ‘love’ differently. 

For Gojo Satoru, love must be terrible, like the memory of choking on food as a kid, or getting trapped by seaweed when you went swimming. Something that breaks through his supernatural divinity and crushes him straight onto the ground. People would not have hesitated using love or loved ones to hurt him all his life. There’s a reason he’s kept himself single, childless, relatively unattached (except for the whole thing with Geto, and you know how that went). Love makes him mortal. Makes him vulnerable. Weak. Every cell of his body resists it and yet he can’t stop craving for it. 

As Geto pointed out, you cannot separate Gojo Satoru (the human) from The Strongest (the divine). Can you genuinely love divinity? Will divinity even love you back? But if you say that you love the human Gojo Satoru, you’re still ignoring or rejecting the divine half of him, so you’re not actually loving him ‘as he is’. If you love someone you can’t fillet him open like a fish and pick and choose whichever parts you love. You have to love him whole. 

Can anyone even have that much love to cover his infinite vastness? Can Gojo be loved wholly? 

On some level, Gojo must himself believe that he is incapable of being truly loved or loving. Infinity on all the time. Just not made for it, he thinks. If simply being understood is an impossible task for him, how could he ask to be loved?

Suppressed appetite, his stomach should ache hungry. Starving. To be loved and cherished and cared for, the way he sees other people are. Sour grapes. Love is terrible. 

He can make do just fine without love, and he does. But goddamn if it doesn’t have him shaking and puking on the floor. 

Unlike him, Geto Suguru is constantly surrounded by love. Not just any love however, Geto begets ‘overwhelming, blinding love’. Loving Geto brings tragedy.

He was loved in his time as a jujutsu sorcerer, and those same people still chose to look the other way and loved him even after the horrific crimes he committed. Gojo, Nanami, Shoko, even Yaga– they loved him and their love kept him alive for an extra decade after his defection. People died because he was loved.  

Until his death he was loved by Gojo and Shoko, so much that they could not part with his corpse. Gojo was sealed, Nanami died, hundreds killed, all because he was loved. 

All his cult followers. The ragtag family he’d collected loved him and risked their lives to help his friends even when he was no longer alive. His daughters (who he taught to kill) died trying to revive him. Because he was loved. 

And even in the afterlife, he went back to a carefree time when he was loved. 

Adored, loved, cherished– could Geto even understand what it is like to not be any of those? How much of the same love does Geto give back? Not necessarily that he was loved more than he gave love back. It’s just that, other than Gojo, he’s always on the heavier end of the scale, the one with more power in the love-balance. Because when it came to it, he chose himself (and his perceived duty to the world) over love. And he continued to do that till the end, and he was still so loved.

As if he’s the hero of the tale, he’s the one with the spotlight on, he was made to be loved. It must feel so natural to fall in love with Geto, so natural for him to receive it. Like poisoned milk when you’re thirsty, it soothes you, fills your heart before taking away a chunk of it. His love is tainted. 

Noritoshi Kamo loves to the point of self-harm. He’s hollow inside– all his motivations to live on are wholly external, to bring his mother into the clan, to honour his position as a clan elder, to protect Maki in the fight against Naoya, to protect his family from the Shinjuku incident. He takes these things as his duties/responsibilities and does them to the best of his ability. 

He takes love to be a duty/responsibility and acts as is proper. He’s the traditional man of the house, the provider and the caretaker for his loved ones. You wouldn’t even realise how easily you’ve relaxed to being taken care of, how you glance at him for his approval before you buy something, how subtly dominant, in a non-sexual way, is his presence. 

Duties/responsibilities are tiring heavy pressures on him to perform, so he performs all through love. He won't complain because he doesn’t expect anything else. He takes what he gets and knows to stay content about it. He acts so perfect that even he doesn’t know where the act ends and he begins. It’s not that he doesn’t want to openly be himself, he just has no idea what that even looks like. 

Perhaps someday he’ll receive a love that will let him relax, be taken care of, be vulnerable, and not perform anymore. I sure hope he does. 

But it’s worrying that the second he has no further duty/responsibility, (eg. when they’re losing to Naoya), he doesn’t hesitate to commit suicide for the sake of others. As if he himself has no reason to keep on living. If he depends that much on his duties/responsibilities to be his reason to live, how much of that intensity would be projected into his love? How very heavy must be the burden of his love?

He has high standards for himself, his love too. It’s up to you if you can match it. 

Something about it would rub you the wrong way. And yet you’ll never leave because you know that despite everything, his love runs deep and solid as iron underground. Perfect on the surface, turbulent underneath but so very true at its core. 

[candy-fae]

Not to rant on a side blog but I just found out in mufasa they retconned scar and mufasa to NOT be brothers and like. That was my first hyperfixation so I am upset about this for a few reasons!!! Incoming rant.

I'm gonna call it the princess Luna effect. Scar is getting princess Luna'd and let me explain how.

Disney would never make a villain kill someone now. Maybe in the background have it be implied. Maybe IMPLY some degree of violence. But they would never put on a production of hamlet in a different font, because killing people is bad, and Disney doesn't WANT parents to be mad and not give them money. We already know this, and yes, it severely limits them giving their villains credible weight, thus struggling to make us engage in a conflict that isn't environmental. But aside from the fact that this is an OBVIOUS crab for cash and their copywrite, they've managed to try and make scar more palatable.

Hmm. Let's see. I want to be a king. I was born the spare, to my stronger, prouder older brother. I now have to wait for him to die to rule. But I can't fight him. He's too good. Oh! He has a son. GREAT. now I'll never be king. Unless the little hairball dies. Hmm. And he'd do anything for his son. I know! I'm going to kill my son by putting my nephew in danger, then when he's dead, just for SHITS AND GIGGLES- I'm gonna tell him it was his fault. I plan to kill him anyway. But I'm just such a devious asshole and don't wanna get my hands dirty, it would be easier to send him the wrong way, then send my guys on him.

And so he does. And was it jealousy, horrible and churning an corrupting that did it? Absolutely. And is it mufasas fault? Not at all. People hate you because you are loved by others and that a shitty of them. Scar is a murderer, and responsible for one of the greatest betrayals of animation.

What I'm having the issue with is- there's old canon that I'm pretty positive straight up gives them canon parents. They are blood related and surprise!! Siblings look different sometimes. Hamlet was a stage play and animation is like a mask. They drew the fucker like a snake because he is one.

And secondly- I get the feeling they did it so we could empathize with him. But he doesn't need empathizing!!! He has one purpose in the story and that IS to be horrific!! It's FUN to think about "what if the bad guy...... WASN'T the bad guy!!!"

But he is. And attempting to add more depth by retconning and making it so mufasa STOLE the throne in someway- just weakens his original betrayal. We are suppose to be horrified. We are suppose to cry when mufasa dies. I saw some people saying it's to set up love and Kiara but- kovu is stated in the lion King 2 to NOT be scars son. So the only thing I can think here is "oh. They want to make scar palatable. That's stupid."

What do you think?

"You are my blood brother I've known since I was born. But I will kill you and my nephew if it means I get what you have."

Or

"This thing was SUPPOSE to be mine and you STOLE it from me. I'm taking it back!"

Scar is no suppose to be justified. He's just suppose to be cruel. Let your bad guys be bad. I'm so sick of watering down evil. Makes the story much less about overcoming it.

[k1d1c4rus]

thinking about how armand was turned bc he was dying from being stabbed by a scorned grown man who was in love with him. he nearly died from rejecting unwanted advances. its such a key explicit detail of his origin that teaches him yet again that what he wants is utterly unimportant and even deadly in the face of survival. everything about his character is informed by the fact that he adapts entirely to the situation he is forced into because that's the only way he can survive. he adopts the satanic doctrine for 200 years not because he believes in it but because he knows that is the only way he'll survive and as soon as lestat arrives he knows he can abandon it. for half a millenium he believes he can't get what he wants and also survive, he has to choose one or the other. God.

[baphometsss]

if i see one more post about how solas/mythal/elgar'nan had a weird love triangle thing going on i'm gonna scream

[s0fter-sin]

when midoriya punches the zero pointer at the entrance exam, all might says “show who you are, embody what it means to be a true hero, nothing is nobler than self sacrifice” do you think aizawa heard kill bill sirens

[dullahandyke]

Sidenote I was never her biggest fan but whenever I see someone talk abt dahlia hawthorne as if she's some evil seductress who breaks hearts for fun I feel the intense urge to hit them with hammers. Fucker can you read????

[swdgf]

certain qidian authors shld start a side hustle writing dnmei actually 🙂‍↕️

[sinecosinewheel]

i finished reading the 489 page transformers essay just now and i watched the first three movies over the last couple days. cinematic garbage. but it compels me

[nomaishuttle]

the two rules of sweeney todd cast recordjngs is 1. theyll never be better than 2012 london cast talk to the hand 2. theyll never be worse than 2005 broadway cast talk to the hand

[mooniyuta]

i don’t think a book has ever broken me like mdzs did with the nightless city arc. the grim hopelessness and dread i felt watching everyone turn against wei wuxian just because he defended the wens. the absolute heartbreak of yanli’s death. the utter shock of jin zixuan’s accidental death when everything went wrong. like when wwx asked the wen siblings what to do and broke down crying i genuinely never cried so much with a character before

[woodlandscab1n]

Man. I'm glad I have Bishop as a character, they were a character that I used to beat the shit out of myself for what I considered my "bad traits", a complete extreme of this side I didn't wanna touch even with a stick.

But then I did. And, it's just...wild? I guess, I never thought I would even come close to redeeming this character, or making him any more sympathetic than what I established as the base. And it ended up happening anyways.

Through out the writing of their character I put myself the rule of never, ever change his core of being...because I wanted to make them irredeemable, by them never wanting to truly change, they'll never be redeemed but, I was wrong.

Redeeming him wasn't about changing his core, about making him more human-like, making him love and feel like other people do, completely overhauling his way of thinking. It was just... accepting it, and that doesn't mean you're doomed to be a bad person and hurt people just because of how, what you are.

I still have a long way to go to fully accepting those parts of myself, as well as seeing it on other ppl, but this character has given me a perspective I honestly didn't even know I needed, or even know it was a possibility for me.

[absolutedestinyapocalypsse]

i love how as you read more into tlt, the ninth house seems more and more normal. Like if i'm at an immoral evil government competition, and i use human fat as soap and animate skeletons to do menial labor, i'm gonna LOSE if my competition is the third house, represented by ianthe "who HASN'T eaten human flesh and fucked a corpse" tridentarius. My weird skeleton thing seems normal, suddenly. Well-adjusted, even. It's recycling. They're using resources in a sustainable way. Normal and regular and productive for a post-climate change apocalypse universe.

People go on and on about how Muir drops you into gtn hearing from the person who knows the least about whats happening, and does not hand hold the reader through the crazy shit that occurs, and that's all true. It truly is a crazy writing decision to make your first pov character come from the universe's equivalent of amish fundamentalists. But the reader is actually done a huge favor being dropped into the ninth house first, because we already understand that space is cold and what catholic nuns are, and what goths look like, and what lesbians are. Very little time is wasted in the first chunk of gtn ripping hair out of your head wondering what the fuck is going on, because for all of its strangeness, the ninth house is already the most familiar thing we're gonna get.

Because THEN we learn that this whole universe's medieval chivalry system is designed to groom people from CHILDREN to not only be exploited and used as human batteries for necromancers, but to LIKE it. to wax poetic about it. to confuse it for love, to write fucking academic papers about it! Then we learn about planet flipping, an act so horrific and violent it turns the planet's soul into a massive vengeful monster capable of killing GOD. Like what do you MEAN the animals "change"? Is this why noodle has six legs? I would MUCH prefer to wear skeleton makeup and repent forever if the alternative was to witness my family dog grow TWO EXTRA LIMBS because the planet he lived on fucking died. Suddenly, living in the asscrack of a planet where no light gets in seems like a sweet deal when the whole solar system is lit by a sun that MAKES YOU GO CRAZY. The ninth house's WORST sin, killing 200 babies to make Harrow, a waste of resources and an act so terrible it haunts Harrow for the entire span of her life, is like a BLIP compared to the death count Jod's empire. God even hears about it and he's like, no big deal! The cohort probably kills that amount of people in a DAY.

And its ALSO tragic because you realize that all of this trauma and abuse that Gideon goes through is not really because of the ninth house at all. It's really just an individual skill issue that she wasn't treated with compassion. Nobody hated her because she's jesus or a bomb, nobody even KNOWS she's a bomb. It's just Priamhark and Pelleamena being deeply guilty and scared people that motivates her treatment, and absolutely nothing else.

They did something bad, and they know it, and Gideon survived it, and they can't kill her to cover it up, and that's IT. They killed themselves for pride, because they were afraid of the consequences of their actions (both the baby killing and Harrow opening the tomb) coming back to bite them. You can argue this is the catholicism of it all, and I wouldn't say you're wrong, but compared to the cavalier system, where exploitation is in the very lining of the house's institutions, the ninth house is really removed from the space empire's blood factory. This is compared to the fourth house where they have tons of children to be CANNON FODDER to join the cohort at fucking 14, compared to the eight house uncle nephew fuckery, even the fifth house which actually does seems nice to live on but also seems to have the fourth house in some sort of fucked up political bear hug??? (maybe the fourth house has so many kids in order to fight the fifth's battles? which is EXACTLY what jod's whole empire is about; politely stirring your tea and acting nice while you destroy everything) compared to ALL OF THAT, the cruelty that Gideon faces is really more a bug of the ninth's system than a feature.

There's nothing baked into the culture and everyday life of the ninth house that necessitated that cruelty; in fact, for such a pragmatic and resource-scarce place, it's WEIRD that a strong able-bodied young person was treated like a waste of space and resources. It could just have easily not happened, if Harrow's parents had been different people. Maybe they were products of their environment, but so was Harrow, and she values Gideon's life SO MUCH that she'd literally rather carve out parts of her own brain than exploit her. Gideon grows up knowing really NOTHING about cavaliers, so remote from the horrors of the empire that she develops an idea of what the cohort is from porn magazines. And in a lot of ways, that upbringing was desolate and terrible, and in a lot of other ways it literally DID NOT HAVE TO BE.

Gideon's MAIN THING is that she wants to be useful, to be needed, to be loved and it SUCKS that she couldn't even get it in the one place where she was actually an invaluable resource, where the death empire had the weakest reach. Gideon can't even blame her lack of love on the fucked up chivalry system like everyone else can because it JUST WASNT REALLY RELEVENT!?!?! This is like if i rolled up to the trauma competition and everyone else was raised in a nuclear warzone by wolves or something and i grew up in like, the suburbs and was raised by teachers and i somehow STILL WON. truly what the fuck guys.

[charafansmile]

Asriel could easily be like the god of familial love, of hopes and dreams, partnerships (friendships, companionship, puppy love if you must) and children/youth and then when he's flowey he could be the god of betrayal and spite, ala nemesis and eris. Still rooted in the ideas of love but twisted into what happens when love turns sour. Still a god of youth but also a god of lost time. Actually making him a minor god of time would also really work to tie into his character. Him being Pandora and the box at the same time would be interesting.

Transcript: ooh are we talking about reapertale? okay time to bring flowey into it because i was actually thinking about him recently—

first off, unrelated tangent, i think they did chara pretty decently? like, they used to be kind, but they were betrayed by monsterkind, etc etc. i like that, it honestly brings up what i think is a tragically unexplored part of their character. they hate monsterkind in some way for being so nice, and i think that’s why we can drive them to support genocide so quickly. i do think they shouldn’t have been evil right off the bat, of course, but hey! they’re a mythological figure. that stuff happens a lot in mythology, and more importantly it works in tangent to undertale.

flowey, though. god. amnesia does not suit him. they stripped him of character and expected him to still be flowey. it’s illogical. really reflects the early fandom’s perception of flowey and asriel as entirely different people. like being a flower makes you want to kill people or something. smh.

sorry i turned the topic to flowey but like. does he have to be the embodiment of despair. him being obsessed with chara is in-character i guess but he does it in such an out-of-character way. honestly that’s a big problem with every au! they make him a sweet little guy without actually addressing the roots of his canon problems. i mean, that or they make him the living embodiment of evil. they gave him the chara treatment, seriously.

he has so many layers though. it’s hard to fit him into one category. personally i’d make him some kind of pandora’s box thing. like an embodiment of the world’s pestilences where he used to be a closed box. helps highlight that he didn’t change, the box was always there, dying just opened it.

that might not make any sense. but man i’m tired of people making flowey chara’s lapdog. when in genocide he clearly sees himself as a partner in crime, at least until the end. (and then he defies them and ruins the whole killing humanity thing. so.) and don’t even get me started on pacifist. he tries to kill you repeatedly because he thinks you’re chara.

flowey is driven by (platonic!!) love. but it’s not the soft love you see on greeting cards or tv. it’s angry love. aggressive love. he’d do anything for the person he loves. even kill them.

honestly, maybe flowey would work better as a god of love. (yes i headcanon him as aroace but still.) “asriel” is soft, caring love. hugs and kisses and warm blankets and all that. “flowey” is the kind of love that slaps you in the face to get you up in the morning. he’s possessive, angry, passionate.

WHOO this got long.

[onthecrescentofthehill]

it’s funny when ppl talk about the harpy omelet scene and say things like “why did he do all of that? he didn’t need to. JUST doing that for laios???” (seen these nearly verbatim on posts i’ve made.)

i don’t really get how you can hear his backstory & not understand that every decision he makes within the dungeon is fueled by a profound trauma borne out of horrific, structural negligence. of course he would do fucking anything to enact his plan? if he computes “getting in laios’s favor = proxy control of the dungeon” and he has very limited time to do so, he will jump at the chance. he’s already DIED for this.

kabru has maybe the clearest possible motivation that a character can have. he has a Protagonists Motivation, and it guides him forward in a very coherent way in the beginning of the story. things get more complicated in later acts that directly address how that motivation manifests itself/gets contradicted, bc ryoko kui is great at exploring this, but it’s still extremely present.

and as a labru fan i strongly dislike the implication i see from some ppl that his interest in laios is mostly personal or romantic (posts that range from pure joke to actual ship meta.) even when taking the “confession” at face value, where i think he was telling the truth, there’s still a lot more to it than that. i think at first kabru does see laios as a means to an end in a way that’s impersonal, partly because he tends to keep everyone in his life at arms length. but that “end” (preventing history from repeating itself) is something foundational to his psyche, and we should consider that potential sense of safety getting mixed in with his warring fascination/apprehension towards laios. he’s drawn to him for visceral reasons, and his stated motivations are so intertwined with his sense of self that untangling this push-pull is much more interesting than boilerplate Yearning, to me.

it’s just confusing when any meta or basic discussion of kabru diminishes the weight utaya has on his inner world and i’m really surprised every time i see it? like i understand that different types of meta will put other lenses on things intentionally, and in most cases i think it’s an interesting tool to work with. but it’s a massive disservice to his character to put the most foundational experience of his life on the back burner ESPECIALLY when it’s in favor of shipping. dissecting character relationships, romantic or otherwise, is at its best when you have their full personhood in mind!!

[not-neverland06]

Hey! Love your writing and love Flux!! I was hoping to request a kind of angsty/fluffy fic with the worst!wolverine where the meet her in the void and maybe Logan knew her just not very well and he’s finally letting himself open up and be close with her (likewise with reader/flux towards logan) and they get into an argument or maybe logan has a nightmare and he ends up stabbing her with his claws and maybe the aftermath of him beating himself up and sabotaging the new relationship until reader finally snaps him out of it and says it was an accident and she still loves him?? Thanks!!

mistake

Logan Howlett x fem!reader

a/n: I want to thank you for this request because I've been having the worst writer's block in the world. I was worried about having to go into another unofficial hiatus, but this made something in my brain click together and I knocked it out in two hours. my life is yours 🙏🙏 Summary: You know him. Or, you knew him. And you never blamed him for what happened in your world. It wasn't his fault that everyone you loved died and you barely escaped with your life. But you never actually thought you'd have to see him again. You don't know what to do when all these feelings resurface with his appearance.

No one truly knew who you were back in your universe. After the horrific incident at the mansion, you had run. You’d run as fast and as far as you could from the slaughter of your friends. You’d barely escaped with your life, and from the amount of blood and gore they’d left behind, most people just assumed you were dead. 

It’s not like anyone cared about you. Scott, Ororo, and Jean had been the real heroes. But it didn’t matter because they were still mutants at the end of the day. It didn’t matter how many people they saved. How many lives they positively changed, no one would ever see past the fact that they were mutants. 

Being one of the newer members of the recently disbanded X-Men gave you enough anonymity to get through daily life without being recognized. It did not, however, protect you from being sucked into the shit fest that is the multiverse. 

You’re not sure what it is about you that just attracts bad luck. You don’t know if it’s some hidden power that’s a part of your evolution. You’re just apparently perpetually fucked. The TVA had determined that you were interfering with the proper flow of your timeline or some bullshit. 

Now you’re here. Stuck in the void with nothing but decay and drunk former superheroes. If you have to watch one more Captain America ‘rally the troops’ you’re gonna kill him yourself. You’ve considered switching teams and joining Cassandra Nova at times. If only so you don’t have to deal with Johnny Storm and the rest of the dipshits. 

You get along with Laura, at least. She likes to tell you about her Logan and you like to dodge her questions about yours. She doesn’t need to know that not every version of Wolverine has a golden heart and story worthy of tears. Yours was a fuck up, plain and simple, but you never thought the incident was his fault. 

As much as others tried to push the blame on him. The people who raided the mansion were determined. There was no other way that day was going to end up. You’d just have one less X-Man. But people always love a martyr more than a victim. 

After a couple of years, you get used to the monotony. Your days are only occasionally broken up by dodging Cassandra’s henchmen and trying not to get sucked up into the soul destroyer. Other than that, you spend your nights getting drunk with Gambit and pretending you know whatever the fuck he’s talking about. 

“Laura! I managed to find some chocolate!” You run into the hideout looking for the girl. It’s rare to find good food that isn’t already a month past its expiration date. You weren’t planning on sharing the candy with her but you figured she’d smell it on you and it’s not worth the fight. 

Instead, you stop short as the familiar blue and yellow uniform you’d always try to force on him comes into view. He’s stealing Gambit’s liquor and you know that’s not going to go over well. What you don’t know is why you are so sure that this is your Wolverine. 

You’ve never had a Wolverine in the void. Not once. This could be any one of the hundreds of thousands of variants. But you see that look in his eye. That familiar watery gaze shows just how much he hurts, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. 

“Logan?” You breathe his name out in disbelief. Bypassing the Deadpool standing nearby. You’ve dealt with enough of those in your time down here. He takes a step back, fixing you with a distrusting look. 

He keeps the bottle of alcohol clutched close to his chest like he thinks you’re going to take it. You track the movement and you scoff. “Right,” you shake your head and stop short. “Of course, the only thing you care about is still getting fucking drunk.”

He glares at you, taking a step forward like he thinks it might actually intimidate you. “Do I know you, bub?” He reaches forward, probably to jab his finger in your chest. You drop your gaze to his outstretched hand and narrow your eyes. 

The material of his suit fluctuates, pulling back and rippling over his arms like liquid and not spandex. He doesn’t notice the manipulation of matter until it's his skin you target. It melts off his adamantium bones and he stares down in horror. 

You know he's scared because he’s watching his body dissolve but he’s not feeling any pain. You could make it hurt, but that’s not what you want. You just want to see if he’ll remember you now. If there’s anything half-decent left in that alcohol-rotted brain of his.

“Flux,” he grits your X-Man name out through his teeth like it hurts him to say it. 

You nod and his skin and suit go back to normal, like you’d never tampered with it in the first place. “You do remember me, then?”

“Thought you fucking died with the rest of them.” Your face drops before you feel an astonished smile on your face. 

“You know, it’s a comfort to know nothing about my world has changed. You’re still the same spineless dick that left us all to die.” You shake your head and storm out of the hideout. You don’t know how long they’re planning on staying but you pray they leave soon. If you have to deal with him longer than a week, you’ll just kill him. 

You step outside just as Laura’s coming back from the bonfire. She greets you with a stiff smile and you wonder what’s got in her in a mood. It only takes a glance over her shoulder to find the reason.

Logan is sulking by the fire, nursing yet another bottle of whiskey. He’s drinking it like water and even with his healing, his liver should have turned to mush by now. “I can see why you didn’t tell me about him,” she mutters as she passes by you. 

You know she tried to be quiet but you can see the way Logan’s head tilts slightly towards you. He’s heard her and you know it has to sting just a little.

You glance down at the leaves under your feet, eyes glazing over as you feel the guilt sink into your stomach. You shouldn’t feel bad, you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t hurt him, technically, just reminded him who you were. But you still feel bad for what you said. 

You’ve never blamed Logan for what happened. And if you did, you would be a hypocrite. Because you survived too, and you left them all behind. You ran like a coward. You could never blame him when you failed to save them just the same. 

You take in a deep breath and steel yourself. You’ll just apologize, walk over there, and explain to him you didn’t mean what you said. You know he’ll be a dick about it. Claiming he doesn’t want your apology. You’ll just leave him alone after. 

You’re about to step forward when he barks out a gruff command, “Don’t fucking stare at me like that. I don’t want your company.” He turns back to the fire and takes another swig from his bottle. 

You roll your eyes and walk towards him. “You can be as miserable and self-pitying as you want, just let me say one thing.”

His head whips towards you so quickly you’re surprised you don’t hear it snap. “I’m not fucking pitying myself,” he grits out. You quirk your brows in amusement, glancing towards the bottle in his hand and the clear way he’s sulking. He turns his attention back towards the fire, intent on ignoring you again. 

“I don’t blame you for what happened,” you tell him. You ignore the warning look he shoots you, taking a seat beside him even if he doesn’t want you to. “I-” you choke on the words, struggling to admit to yourself what you’ve never wanted to. 

“Don’t.” You know it’s meant to be a warning. But when you look at him and see how completely broken he is, it sounds more like a pathetic plead. 

But you need to say this. As selfish as it is, you need to say this to someone., Need to unload this guilt you’ve carried for so long. “I was there, Logan. I could have saved them and I didn’t. I fucking ran.”

“Kid, don’t do this-”

“Jean was still moving,” you blurt out. You feel the way your heart speeds up at the admission. Your fingers shake and the air around you stills. 

His face drops and he slowly turns towards you. You’re afraid to look at him. You feel like a bunny staring down the snout of a wolf, there’s no escaping this. You’ve created this trap for yourself. 

“What?” He demands. His voice has lost that tremor of vulnerability. Instead, he sounds like he did when he first found out what had happened to you all. That same deadly level of calm that makes you want to bolt again. 

“She,” you stare into the fire until your eyes burn. You don’t know if it’s from the light or the smoke but the pain focuses you. “She was shaking on the floor. There was blood everywhere and she could barely breathe. They had gassed us with something. None of us could use our powers, it’s the only reason they got a one-up on us.”

You can feel yourself slipping back into that moment. You feel the warmth of the blood on your skin. It seeps into your suit and makes the material cling to you. Your gut is split open and the only thing holding your intestines in is your hands. 

Jean is in front of you. Her hands are twitching by her sides. There’s blood pouring out of her lips, dribbling down her tongue and cheeks. Every breath is a rattle so deep you feel it in your bones. 

Each inhale sounds like someone dragging glass through the membrane of her lungs. Her chest rises and sinks shallowly as she gasps for air. She’s practically convulsing, eyes twitching every which way.

The gas has faded from the halls. The people have left, satisfied with the carnage. You’re alone, surrounded only by the blood and bodies of your friends. None of the others are moving. Some of them are so mangled you can’t even tell who they are anymore. 

Jean’s eyes lock onto yours. The only anchor she has. And you can see it, the frantic, wounded animal gaze on her face. She knows she’s dying. She knows there’s nothing she can do about it. 

You can only stand by and watch as your friend dies. You could be her comfort. You could be the last face she sees before she dies, distracting her from the sight of her dead fiancee behind her. 

But what do you do?

You hold your guts in your stomach and you run. You can’t look at her. You can’t look at any of them. You can hear her croaking behind you. And even when you’re out of the mansion, when you’re in a hospital somewhere getting repaired and Logan’s on a rampage, you still hear her. 

You feel something heavy on your arm and it’s like you're being forcibly dragged out of a trance. Logan’s looking at you with something you’ve never seen before. But it’s something you’ve always desperately craved. 

It’s like he’s seeing you, really seeing you. For the first time in a long time, you feel that ache of guilt ease away ever so slightly. It doesn’t disappear, but you’re sharing the burden with someone else and it’s a relief you’ve desperately craved. 

“You’re not a bad person for leaving, kid.” He swallows roughly and you place your hand over his. He doesn’t look completely comfortable with the touch, slightly flinching away from it, but he doesn’t move. “If you hadn’t, you would be dead.”

You squeeze his hand, forcing him to meet your gaze. “I never blamed you for what happened.” emotion is so thick on your tongue and in your throat that the words come out a whisper. “Their deaths weren’t your fault, and what happened after wasn’t.”

He clenches his eyes shut and jerks his hand out of your grip. You sigh, knowing you’ve lost him. “I slaughtered them.”

You scoff, “They slaughtered us!” You nearly shout, anger bubbling hot in your gut. When you heard about him killing those who had hunted down your friends, you’d celebrated. And when you heard the way the public was crucifying him, you realized that no matter what you did they would never love you. 

You would always be nothing more than a mutant to them. 

“And the people who didn’t hurt them? The innocents I killed?” 

You don’t have anything to say to that. You just stand up, placing a hand on his shoulder as you pass by him. “I never blamed you, Logan.”

You don’t see Logan again after that. At least, not while you’re in the void. What was left of your little resistance was sucked up into the purple cloud of death. Only you and Laura are left with the carnage. 

Logan and Wade have disappeared to who knows where. It stings, to be on your own again. Sure, you have Laura, but she’ll never understand the pain of what happened to your universe. 

As much as it hurt, at least with Logan, you had someone to share the pain with. You could share your burden with him. You feel lonely and cold. Like there’s a part of you missing. You finally figure out what that ache is when the TVA comes to collect you and you see him again. 

He’s standing behind Wade as he enthusiastically tells you and Larua all about his world. But you can’t take your eyes off Logan, or the tentative smile on his face. Whatever had happened during that fight with Cassandra Nova had changed him, for the better. 

You smile back at him and it feels like taking a breath of fresh air after years. 

Apparently, whoever this world’s Flux had been, she was fucking insanely rich. And dead, which sucked for her but was great for you and Logan. 

It’s not hard for you to fake some government identities and explain that you’d been mistakenly marked as dead. It’s apparently pretty common in this universe. Superheroes are blipped out of existence all the time. You couldn’t get all of her assets as some had been liquidated, but you did get her giant ass house. 

You let Logan and Laura stay with you until they decide where they want to go. It’s better than living with Wade and his coke-fiend roommate. Laura finds her groove pretty quickly, it is her world after all. But you and Logan struggle to figure out what to do with yourselves. 

Neither of you has an interest in being X-Men again, and it seems like they’re not incredibly present in this world either. You also hadn’t been the best of friends, even before everything went wrong, back home. 

You’re not strangers, you’re not friends, you’re that awkward place in between. Each day is another opportunity to get to know each other. The progress might be slow, but you know that you’re getting closer to something real. 

It’s why you don’t feel any qualms about running into his room when you hear him shouting. You burst into his room and the door slamming against the wall isn’t even enough to wake him up. 

He’s writhing around in the bed, sheets twisted around his waist while sweat beads down his forehead. The noises he’s making remind you of a wounded animal. There’s something heartbreaking about this. 

He doesn’t get peace even when he’s sleeping. It makes you hurt for him. You want to smooth over the aches and pains he carries and burden yourself with them. 

The thought snaps you out of your reverie and you’re shocked by the revelation. You’d been growing closer to him, but you hadn’t thought you were growing this close. You feel so strongly for him, but you’re not ready to put a name on what it is that you feel for him. You just know that right now you want to make him feel better. 

You approach the bed cautiously, taking a seat beside him. The bed ripples and jolts underneath you as he tosses and turns. You place a gentle hand on his arm and shake, “Logan,” you whisper. You don’t want to startle him too bad. 

But he’s not responding to anything. It doesn’t matter how much you shake him or call out his name. Finally, you can’t handle it anymore. You get on your knees, sitting over him and bringing your palm down across his face as hard as you can. 

In a second he’s shooting up. You don’t even notice his hand until you see the way his vision clears. The visceral panic fades and something is aching in your gut. “Oh god, no no no,” he says the word so many times it stops sounding real. 

You look down and see the blood dribbling down his palm, the claws buried in your stomach. It’s almost funny, how perfectly aligned they are with the scar that already lived there. The reminder of your friend’s death being erased and reformed by Logan’s hand. 

He pulls his wrist back and you quickly snatch it up. “Don’t!” You shout, jaw clenching against the pain. “Don’t pull them out, I’ll just bleed out.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” You know he’s worried, that’s why he snaps at you. But it doesn’t help the way you feel yourself fighting back tears.

He sees them drip down your cheeks and his face drops. His other hand, the one not in you, comes up and cradles your cheek. “What do I do?” He whispers, and he sounds more desperate than you do. 

You know he doesn’t want another death on his hands. But there’s something beyond that. He doesn’t want to be the reason you stop breathing. There’s a startling clarity when you’re slowly dying. 

He cares about you. Just as deeply as you do for him. You can’t make him go through this pain again. Can’t let him suffer alone, not when he’s made so much progress. “Slowly,” you tell him, guiding his claws out inch by inch. 

It’s hard not to black out. You’d barely felt it when he’d gotten you the first time. You think it’s because of how fast and sudden it was. But this, having them oh so slowly slicing through your insides is the worst form of torture. 

But you don’t heal like him. You have to close your eyes, focus on the pain, and forcibly reknit your skin back together. It’s a clever manipulation of your powers, but it’s a slow one. You could never take serious damage on the field because you wouldn’t be fast enough to repair yourself. 

This is easy to repair. But that doesn’t make it hurt less. It feels like an hour before he can safely draw them the rest of the way out. The second he does, you’re sinking into his arms with a pained sob. 

He clutches you so tightly to his chest you worry your back might snap. He keeps muttering apologies into your hair, hands desperately grasping at every inch of you he can hold. You’re too tired to say anything. 

You realized you should have. You should have told him you don’t blame him. You were the one who snuck into his room. You should have been smarter. But it doesn’t matter how many times you tell Logan not to blame himself, he always will. And you were too tired to try anyway. 

You only realize what’s happening two days after the incident. You figured he might need some space to process what happened. And honestly, you did too. It was awful and incredibly draining. You’ve felt fatigued ever since. 

But when you try and approach him and he just brushes past you like you weren’t even there, you know something is wrong. You watch his retreating back with a disturbed glare. You connect the dots quickly, already knowing what he’s doing. 

He doesn’t want to be responsible for hurting another person he loves. He can’t handle a loss like that again, even if it’s not by his hands. He wants to make sure you don’t want him, that you don’t care for him. Like that might ease the pain and guilt. 

But it wouldn’t. It would just make him feel worse. It would make you feel worse. 

You don’t waste a second, following him up the stairs and barging into his room before he can slam the door shut. It bounces off the wall and he lets out a deeply irritated sigh. He doesn’t turn to look at you, just walks over to his nightstand and rummages around through the doors.

You know he’s not looking for anything. He’s just trying to ignore you long enough for you to give up. It’s not going to happen, he should know better. 

You take a step further into the room and the smell of chemicals slams into you. Your nose wrinkles in disgust. It smells like he pumped Lysol into the vents. Your eyes dart to the bed and you sigh. 

Your blood, you’d completely forgotten. He must have been cleaning it up the morning after. You can’t blame him for wanting to get rid of the remainder. But this seems excessive. 

“Strong nose,” he mutters. You hadn’t realized you’d spoken aloud and you glanced over at him. “I can still smell it, even after cleaning.” He takes a seat on the bed and you hate the way his shoulders are slumped. 

He’d seemed so much more comfortable with himself lately. It’s like one accident has undone all his progress. “Logan,” you start, taking a step towards him. He holds his hand up, still not looking at you. 

It’s driving you insane. You wish he would just meet your eyes. You feel like you could change his mind if he would just see you. Maybe that’s why he won’t. He won’t let himself be happy. 

“Look, that night just made me realize what a huge fucking mistake this was.” He gets up and slides something out from under the bed. It takes a moment for you to register what it is. A duffel bag, packed with all his essentials and what little clothes he owns. 

He’s going to leave.

You act without thinking. Pure panic making your powers surge out. Logan grunts and the bag falls out of his hand. “Quit it,” he snipes, bending over to pick it up. But he can’t because it’s so heavy it’s making the wooden floor splinter and crack under its weight. 

“You don’t get to just leave when things get hard, Logan.”

He stands up, hands propped on his sides. There’s a challenge in his eyes that makes you nervous. “Fuck this,” he scoffs and brushes past you. 

It’s beyond manipulative to use your powers against him. But sometimes, someone is such a fucking idiot, they need a little outside help. You slam the door closed and the handle disappears, locking you both in his room. 

He turns towards you with a fierce glare on his face. “Open the goddamn door before I break it down.”

“You can try,” you taunt, a nasty tone to your voice. You’re sick of this. You’re sick of running from what you want. You’ve been miserable and alone for years. You want to be happy. For the first time in forever, you want something. 

And you want Logan to be happy with you. You can’t force him to feel the way you do. But you can stop him from actively preventing this. “Stop acting like a goddamn child and just talk to me!” You shout at him. 

There’s a disbelieving look on your face. You don’t understand why he won’t let this happen. Why does he have to fight so hard against any semblance of happiness in his life?

“I’m going to hurt you. That is all I do. I hurt the people I love and I cannot hurt you too.” Your eyes widen in shock at his outburst. Beyond anger, there was so much fear in his voice it was almost enough to make you miss what he’d said. 

“You love me?” You can see the realization dawn on him. The fact that he let slip why he’s so hesitant to be around you. You know he wants to leave, his eyes are darting around the room for an escape route, but you’ve blocked them all. You can’t let this go, not now. 

“Logan,” you snap, demanding an answer from him. 

“Fuck you,” he mutters, something vicious on his face. 

He’s going to hurt you. He’s going to lash out and say something cruel so that this doesn’t happen. You know him because you’ve been him. He will take every possible route to get out of this if it means he doesn’t have to face his feelings. 

You roll your eyes and take a step forward. You jerk him towards you and throw yourself on him before he can say something stupid. The kiss is brief, just enough to snap him out of this ridiculous headspace he’s in. 

When you pull back he looks dazed, but he’s relaxed in your hold, sinking towards you. You grin up at him, “I love you too, dumbass.” You lean up to kiss him again but you dart back at the last second, a mean glare on your face. “Pull some shit like this again and I’m going to melt your dick off.” 

You kiss him before he can respond, but you feel the smile against your lips. You can taste the defeat on his tongue as he wraps his arms around you and tugs you into his chest. He’s not going to push you away and you’re not going to let him. 

end. — I do not own the characters or the comics/movies Wolverine/X-Men, but this writing is my own all rights reserved © not-neverland06 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

General Taglist: @evasmlp

Logan Taglist:  @nonamevenus @smexy-bucky-waifu @wh1sp @peony-always @corvusmorte  

@mrs-ephemeral  @wolviesgirl @allllium  ♡ 

[spacelazarwolf]

a year ago, i was celebrating simchat torah when my rabbi interrupted the services to let us know there had been an attack on israel. we didn’t know how bad yet, but we prayed everything would be alright. the rest of the service went on as planned, but there was a chill in the air, like we knew something had changed. something big. but we didn’t quite understand it yet.

a year ago, i watched people i’d followed for years celebrate a gruesome massacre of over a thousand human beings before we even really knew what had happened. i watched anons pour into my inbox, demanding i condemn israel even though israel hadn’t even retaliated yet.

a year ago, i talked to my nonna on facetime for her birthday. she was in her 90s and wasn’t as present anymore, and i could barely focus because my thoughts were thousands of miles away. i promised her i’d call her the next day but my next day became scrolling past horrific photos and videos i didn’t want to see, posts celebrating the attacks, posts telling people that if they didn’t celebrate the attacks that they were bad people. she died two weeks later and the same people sharing the posts celebrating the massacre sent me messages telling me it was good my nonna was dead, or extremely crude and disgusting messages about what they wanted to do to her dead body because she was “probably a zionist.”

a year ago, i worked at a synagogue that started getting dozens of calls and emails from people, across the spectrum from neo nazis to evangelical christians to radical leftists saying the most horrific things, telling us it was our fault, that we had to do something, that it was on us. we were responsible. an anon told me i was a zionist because i had a zionist language on my blog (hebrew) and worked at a zionist institution (synagogue).

a year ago, i started losing friends one by one after many of them started to share posts justifying or celebrating the massacre or memes created by neo nazis, some of which didn’t even bother to sub out “jews” for “zionists” but they shared them anyway. i was pushed out of an activist group after months of begging them to stop using antisemitic language because i had the audacity to tell a white gentile in the group not to say racist things about a black indigenous jew behind her back, and said gentile told me he didn’t have to listen to me and that he could “claim” the holocaust too because his ancestors were from eastern europe.

a year ago, i watched in real time as the world i thought i knew, the world in which jews had a future and safety in the united states, crumbled day after day. people that previously went out of their way to take care of me and support me decided that because i didn’t feel comfortable marching alongside pictures of hitler i must be a zionist and therefore no longer belonged. the person processing my government aid didn’t want to approve me because i worked for a synagogue part time and argued that the synagogue should just pay me more because “they can afford it.” my synagogue, which has been involved in social justice since its founding several decades ago, along with its rabbis who have been just as involved, were abandoned by the communities they had put their blood, sweat, and tears into advocating for when they had the audacity to grieve for the dead of october 7th.

a year ago, i learned the hard way that we are not special in this time. antisemitism is a river that has ebbed and flowed for thousands of years, and i felt like a fool for thinking a dam could be built overnight.

a lot of people say that every day of this year for them has been october 7th, but for me every day has been october 8th. the day after the initial shock, when reality started to sink in. the realization that all the people who had shared “happy rosh hashanah” posts or complimented my kippah or pretended to care about harry potter goblins were quickly dropping the facade. that my token minority card had expired and now having a jew in their group didn’t look diverse, it looked “sympathetic toward israel.” every day has been a painful reminder that no one else is grieving like we are, and a large number of those people are angry that we are grieving. they don’t understand that we’re not just grieving the lives lost and the hostages. we’re grieving for the world we thought we knew, a world where we might have a chance to thrive like we did in the golden age of spain. but those golden years are ending. and that is one of the things we are grieving.

a lot of people also say that they wish they could go back to who they were on october 6th, but i don’t. i’m glad the illusion was shattered, that i can see more clearly who will stand with jews even if they face backlash, who will challenge their antisemitic biases and do the hard work to unlearn them, and who did not have to be asked twice to share literal nazi rhetoric if it meant feeling like a hero. i’m glad the masks are coming off because it means you can’t gaslight us anymore and tell us it’s all in our heads. we can see you for exactly who you are now. and we will not let you break us.

i don’t want to be living forever in october. i don’t want the blissful ignorance of october 6th, but i also don’t want the bitter anger of october 8th. i want to stand up for what i believe in, to celebrate my culture and my people, and no amount of intimidation or harassment will keep me from loving my jewishness. you have shown me i can no longer live in october 6th, but i refuse to let you keep me in october 8th.