#hes losing streak has also become an inside joke with me and me partner

[helahades]

HC: Natasha as a Mother Figure to Tony Stark’s Daughter

Request: “Hey, I really love your writing and like to request a hc :)

Headcanon where you're Tony's daughter (Peter's age), and Natasha has been like a mother figure to you, since she's been working for/with Tony.”

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A/N: I got carried away with this one. It’s angsty. Honestly Natasha is such a mystery to me so this was a nice challenge.

If you’re interested in more on Nat being a mom, check out @avengerscompound ‘s HC about her here. I read it a while back and again before writing this and I think she deserves your time. She understands these characters like no one I’ve ever seen!

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This is quite a situation.

I can’t imagine Tony having raised a child from birth to mid adolescence by the time he’s meeting Nat and the Avengers Initiative is kicking off. He matures a lot through his timeline, but that’s a rough time for him.

So I’ll imagine that not only are you Peters age, but similarly to Peter, Tony took you under his wing.

He adopted you around the events of Age of Ultron let’s say. (You’ll remember Nat vocalizes frustration with not being able to start a family in this movie)

You become a lot of the reason he becomes panicked about protecting the world, and make it easier for him to understand Wanda

Also, assuming Pepper is in the picture, you’d have a stable foundation as time went on, and a main mother figure.

BUT LETS GET TO NAT

Right off the bat, this reads like a Miles Morales and Spiderverse Peter Parker situation, wherein Miles already has loving parents and doesnt need Peter to be a father figure so much as Peter needs Miles as a son figure.

Nat wants kids. She hates that the Red Room stole that from her. (in biological and emotional readiness terms)

Depending on where we are in Natashas timeline though (if you don’t like my AoU suggestion), she probably is not stepping into the nurturing role right off the bat.

She’s not living a life that accommodates settling down, or where people aren’t looking for the first vulnerability they can use to hurt her.

When she first meets Tony, she does not trust him. He’s simply a mission.

Then it becomes bigger, and she sees complexity in him and his willingness to sacrifice and put the common good first.

When you come into her life, you’ve lost a lot. You’ve seen how bad the world, and things beyond it, can be, and you may even want to dedicate your life to changing it, in a similar way to the Avengers. Maybe you completely disagree with their way about going about it.

Whatever your ambitions, you remind Nat of her younger self. She tries not to harp on the past, lest it drive her crazy, but she always wanted to change the world. Those dreams became a privilege over time though, and her main goal became survival.

She has seen darkness and death and evaded it all, but some seeps into her in the dark hours. Upon meeting you, she feels something inexplicable, and vows to keep you safe from becoming her.

She respects you. You’re young and strong and quick minded and not afraid to speak your mind on, well, anything. (The last one is a trait Tony and Pepper help to cultivate, by listening to all your ideas and opinions, no matter how wild.)

Initially when she’s around, and she’s just only met you, she simply observes. You’re curious about how things work, and Tony’s partner in crime. Pepper has her hands full, because you love Tony’s terrible jokes, the obnoxious schemes, and every eye roller idea...most of the time.

Tony and Pepper are the most stable family you’ve had in a while, and you tend not to like any plans involving Tony going out into the field.

Sometimes, you and Tony fight. It can be ugly. He loves you, and wants to protect both you and Pepper, and sometimes struggles to understand why people can’t see things the way he does.

It’s the night before a big mission.

You’re sitting in silence in the common room at an unreasonable hour. Nat only came down for an apple, and tells herself to keep walking—the elevator is right there!

But youre crying. Apples be damned. When she comes closer to investigate (with her unintentional spy stealth), or comfort or whatever the hell, she gets closer, closer—an arms length away...and you turn—before leaping from the couch in surprise and smacking into the smooth, hard floor.

After some panic and and an awkward apology, she finds an ice pack for your bruised hip and maybe it’s the pain, but you cry again. You can’t stand the thought of losing your family. Suddenly though, you feel selfish, as you’re sitting in front of a woman who’s lost more than imaginable.

She’s surprisingly gentle. Easy to open up to because it’s her job to be. But theres something else in her eye, like she’s truly invested and maybe even distressed at the sight of your distress.

When you’ve calmed down, she starts to walk you back to your room, hand on your shoulder, but on the way you decide you need to see Tony. You do love him, and he’s the one risking his life. How must he be feeling?

You take a step with that intention, before throwing your arms around Nat. It’s only after you’re squeezing that you remember the infinite ways she can kill. Pulling back shyly though, you’re surprised to see her eyes are.. soft.

You get the sense she truly didn’t mind your company at all, with or without the tears, and that she’s pleased to see you going to resolve the fight. A beat of silence, and you’re off to the lab.

After that day—a week later, actually—She’s back. She insists on training you just a little bit and showing you how to get out of basic holds.

Tony had put you in self defense training before, but it was always with a man, and it always felt off. You find it easier to train with someone who knows what’s at stake, and even better, who uses the brute force of her enemies against them.

Fighting Natashas way was fighting with your mind, even when you were using your fists.

She taught you how to analyze weakness and store it like data, but she nurtured your excitement when you were thrilled after mastering a new move.

She taught you all she knew of making weapons of the terrain, your body, and your skills, without making your mind a weapon that would turn on you.

She let you complain when things hurt, because they’re allowed to, and you’re not a machine.

You vented about being ordinary and being caught in a world where extraordinaries were the norm, making you the strange one.

She assured you, without saying these words, that your kindness and hope are the only things worth having, that everyone around you would kill for.

She watches movies with you and learns to braid your hair.

When you get your heart broken by a trainee who made you feel special, she pulls up his entry essay and you laugh at the desperation of his tone. She tells you one day he’ll feel that desperate again when he realizes he’s lost you.

She sings in Russian something that feels familiar, like maybe she’s supposed to sing it, when you can’t sleep.

There are some parts of her that she struggles to relax. She was not emotionally nurtured in a way that people need to be at a young age, and love does not fall at her feet or come naturally.

It is hard for her to believe that people with pure intentions exist, and are not dead or on their way there.

It is hard to let go and love in a world that consistently tells you it is weakness and tries to pull love away.

She rushes to find you after the snap. Finds you kneeling with bloodied knees and a tear streaked face where Pepper’s coffee mug shattered on the floor.

She sits outside your door while you cry, still reeling from the loss of her friends.

She holds you close and pushes you away while looking for the other Avengers.

She cries, but never near you, because sadness is weakness if it is hers.

She smiles and tells you it’s like a crazy dream. Laughs and says everyone will be back soon.

She shuts her door and lets in the dark after you’re tucked in. Thinks of the sky that swallowed Tony and the void where everyone else may or may not exist.

She stares at the ceiling all night. Then wakes to breakfast and stretches like she slept.

She learns to initiate hugs. She learns to tell you the truth.

She learns to mean things.

She allows herself the privilege of inside jokes.

She pulls from within herself where she thought there was no more and offers you hope when your parents and Peter are all gone. Says she’ll die before forgetting them.

She reconciles not being the most important person in your life anymore when Tony returns.

She holds you and the both of you cry, both with hope, and with fear, when she tells you they’re going to try to jump through time. She also says not to worry, be strong. She’ll be back in a minute.

She’s not.

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i love u pls validate me tags: @threeminutesoflife @avintagekiss24 @jtargaryen18 @sapphirescrolls

[chargebeat-blog]

I know you mentioned denki as a teacher at UA before!! Tell us more ❤ what was his first day like? Does he have any favorite / memorable students? Has he ever messed up? What's the craziest thing he's done as a teacher? How does he feel being back at UA but in the position of mentor now and not mentee? What made him decide to become a teacher? And more whatever you think of marinya!!

oh sam,  you poetic land mermaid,  blessing me with headcanon prompts.  my angel.  my everything.   my father and my son  

    SO!!   in light of breaking it the fuck down right here right now,  i’m about to get fucking lengthy as shit with this,  so i’m tucking it under a cut to avoid clogging up the dash.   

ready steady go!!

01.    what was his first day like? 

his very first day teaching at UA was the first and last time he was ever punctual in his entire career.   

he didn’t sleep at all the night before,  something he would continue to do every year thereafter since he gets way too excited about the first day  (   he’s excited to see all the students!   excited to see all their new quirks and watch them grow throughout the year,  even if he’s got a very little part to in it himself.   )

he was about 25 when he started teaching,  so still fairly young and baby - faced to his previous teachers aizawa,  present mic,  and midnight when he ran up to greet them in the teacher’s lounge.   despite being a full - grown adult who’d long since grown into his body at that point,  they all still very much saw him as the sporty kid who was always falling asleep or playing idol games on his phone in class,   being loud,   asking dumb questions,  pulling pranks on those who should never be on the receiving end of them;  their sparkplug troublemaker.

he ended up eating lunch with aizawa his first day as a means of calming his nerves,  and it just sort of become a regular thing after that  (   this is also the last time he actually remembers to bring a lunch  ).   seemed aizawa still had a lot to teach him at his adult age;   mostly things that he’d already been trying to teach him for ten years now,  like not skateboarding in the hallway and remembering to actually put some food in that motormouth.

02.    does he have any favorite / memorable students? 

i had actually joked around with @praisemade about this once,  but    —    since denki’s terrified of spiders,  i figure one year he walks in on the first day to find that there’s a girl in his class who just    …    has a giant spider for a head,  legs and all.   and he proceeds to lose his everloving goddamn mind every day thereafter.

she’s very polite and very timid,  despite her grotesque appearance up top,  although denki just seems to find that all the more unnerving when he’s lecturing and looks over to see her giant fangs twitching sweetly in interest.   he’s so fucking scared every time,  like.   he isn’t mean to her or anything,  of course,  but every time he shoots his gaze over to her desk or she approaches him during office hours with a question about the homework,  he does a noticeable little jolt and seems to suddenly procure a light stutter.

BUT!   besides our sweet little spider girl,  there is one other student that stands out to him,  and that is,  of course    …    KAMINARI SEI,  his baby sister that he’d kill everyone in the room and then himself for!

denki started teaching at 25,  so by 27,  he ended up getting his own little sister in his class,  who would be freshly 15 in this verse and who applied for the general studies course.   she doesn’t have any intentions of becoming a hero herself,  but rather follows in the interest of becoming a medical professional like her mother one day.   denki,  being lightly trained as a medic himself,  fully supports this,  as he would with anything she decided to do with her life.   

sei grows up to be just as quiet as she had been as a child,   and kind of a super sleepy girl,  too;   eyes always half  -  lidded,  voice low like it’s on the verge of a yawn every time she opens her mouth.   most people would not ever believe she and denki were blood related were it not for the matching streaks of black in her light blonde hair.

he invites her over frequently for dinner since he knows that their parents aren’t home very often,  which she takes him up on about 1/3 of the time.   unlike her big brother,  sei doesn’t mind the silence at home and actually prefers it so that she can study in peace;  denki used to lose his mind in those four walls whenever no one was around with him,   which was often,   hence why very little studying ever actually got done as a kid.   

his bias for his sister isn’t largely obvious to the rest of the class,  since routine leaves him kinda dry most days and that just ends up matching her everyday personality   —   so it’s not to say that he’s outright smothering her or anything.   if they’re being cute,  it’s kind of through a secret language that they’ve always had between themselves,  which is just more intuitive than not.   despite being years apart,  they still get each other.

03.    has he ever messed up?   

depends on the context!   in terms of grading,  he’s definitely either marked things incorrect that were actually correct or accidentally entered a student’s grade in wrong to give them a much higher score than they earned a couple dozen times.   knowing this,  he tries to be more careful and go a little slower,  but,  y’know.   reading the same thing over and over and over and over again tends to make you wanna hurry up and pile through it,  especially when you’re a high school teacher living in japan and especially when you’re also a pro hero on the side and especially especially when you’re KAMINARI DENKI,  chaotic adhd  /  dyslexic angel.

if he has a partner living with him in this time,  he might occasionally bug them every couple of minutes to proofread something for him or double check to make sure he’s reading a word on a student’s essay correctly,   and even then he only does so if he’s really been struggling for a while,  as he hates to feel like he’s being a bother.  (  he tends to come with a lot more anxiety at this age,  if you can even imagine.   like    …    john - mulaney - accidentally - getting - a - prostate - exam - trying - to - get - on - xanax  levels of anxiety.  )

04.    what’s the craziest thing he’s done as a teacher?

denki had a bad habit of smoking throughout his college years and still does so every so often when he’s stressed.   one time he came to class with a cigarette tucked behind his ear unknowingly,  and when pointed out by a student,  he proceeded to go “oh”,  pull it out,  and straight up eat it without second thought.

05.    how does he feel being back at UA but in the position of mentor now and not mentee?

it feels   …   good.   like,   really  really  good.   like the kind of shit where it doesn’t hit you right away that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be,  and when it finally does,  it’s kind of in the middle of doing something super mundane,  like grading papers or buying a milk out of the school vending machine and it’s just   …   an overwhelming sense of relief and satisfaction in the fact that you actually did something super right with your life,  and for denki,  that means everything.   getting to feel that for the first time after his lifelong struggle to find where he fit in actually brought him to tears.   luckily no one was around to witness this,  but i can say with ease that even as hard as his job might be,  denki is very complacent in his choices and wouldn’t change a thing.

also,  he likes getting to boss kids around now and throw chalk at their heads for sleeping in class.

06.    what made him decide to become a teacher?

simply put,  a 2 AM revelation in the living room of his college apartment,  sprawled out on the couch whilst staring idly up at a waterstain on his ceiling that was just barely being highlighted by the salt rock lamp across the room.   that sort of depression vibe.

as i stated before,  denki struggled a lot in his first few years of college.   time management was nonexistent as ever.   close friendships were distanced and a little awkward due to an overwhelming amount of anxiety.   cooperativeness slimmed down to near - nothing;  he started off on a high,  partying often and enjoying all of college to its fullest,  but that gradually sloped down to him barely ever reaching out to people anymore as he started failing what bare minimum class he was taking.  adult life was terrifying him,  and he felt like he was being held underwater at every single point of the day;  compared to the rest of his friends and classmates,  he saw himself as a failure.   

he began smoking heavily    —    especially after quitting the soccer team he captained in lieu of trying to catch up with his schoolwork    —    and became much more erratic and short in personality.  didn’t joke around as much and ghosted people more often than not,  which was a huge red flag coming from a guy who couldn’t bear to leave anyone on read.   

ended up skipping most of his classes in the mid - semester,  and what very few he did pull himself together to go to,  he slipped out of halfway through.   everything was heavy and he was too depressed to actually focus anymore.

spent a lot of time off campus to avoid being seen by friends,  going to the city to fuck around for an afternoon,  or just hopping on a train with no real destination in mind and staying there til it looped back around and spat him out back home.

needless to say,  he was stuck.   and it stayed like that for a good while.

only in the middle of his second year,  exhausted from having to retake all the classes he’d failed in the first year,  did he ever try to actually do something about it.   only because the anxiety had already run him threadbare to the point of just   …   feeling absolutely nothing,   not even fear anymore.   empty space.   like he was both the jar and the thing locked inside it.

so he had a long sit with himself in the wee hours of the morning,  textbook open across his chest while he lay half - dead on the couch,  not processing a single word of what he’d been reading and re - reading for twenty minutes.   he thought about what few accomplishments he had in life:  graduating high school and just barely managing his quirk for the first time.   he thought about his family,  who he’d been uncharacteristically cutting off to spare them from seeing what he’d melted down to.   he thoughts about how much he missed his friends and how he genuinely couldn’t remember what his own laugh sounded or felt like.   he thought about all the people he wanted to help as a pro hero one day.   he thought about UA.

and then he got around to thinking about aizawa.   aizawa,  who denki witnessed not once,  but twice immediately sacrifice himself for the safety of his students firsthand.   aizawa who,  even in the mess of the world tearing itself down around them,  held strong for the sake of protecting his class and fulfilling his role as their teacher.   aizawa who made every student his personal responsibility in and out of school hours.   aizawa who denki never saw anything special in for so long and often quite feared,  now coming to him in mind as a completely different side of the moon.  

denki spent a long part of his teenage years being kinda pissed off at UA for failing its duties to protect them,  for watching them undergo that trauma and proceeding to do   …    well,  really nothing about it,  in his eyes.   he wanted more closure than what was given.   he wanted healing,  not just an apology and a promise to do better next time.   they were just supposed to get up and move on because that’s the way of heroes,  and in that regard,  UA disappointed him heavily.

for a long time,  he didn’t see any reason to forgive the staff for that negligence.

only when he thought about aizawa again did it occur to him that his teacher had done everything in and out of his power to change the future that was almost ripped out of their hands every time they faced a villain.   how aizawa had been an unexpecting personal hero to him the entire time,  a revelation that sort of began to connect a lot of dots that had been floating in denki’s empty headspace all those years.   things made sense where they never used to.   aizawa’s personal goals were never concise,  and suddenly denki found that they never needed to be;   his goals were stated in his actions of reaching out to his kids where others didn’t.   he went above and beyond what was ever expected of him as a teacher.   

to denki,  aizawa stood out in his mind as the true plus ultra UA had been training them to be the entire time,  albeit 2 years too late.   and he wanted to emulate that in his own life.   he wanted to help people in whatever way he could,  and perhaps that didn’t just mean saving people from burning buildings or giving a thumbs - up to a passing camera;  he wanted to help young minds especially,  save them from everything he and his classmates went through growing up,  be one of the hands that guided them to a safe future,  someone who never turned his back on anyone ever again.

he wanted to be a teacher,  and he wanted to be a teacher at UA.   he wanted to be everything aizawa was and then some;  the plus ultra of plus ultra.   

so,  that was a good start.

it was enough to get him out of bed for the first time in a long time and actually start to reach out and seek the help he desperately needed,  which was only the first step in his personal healing process,  but a big one nonetheless.   everything from there on was just tiles finally falling into place;  changing his major,  studying long hours,  finally attending and actually passing the correct courses.

denki may not have ever ended up telling aizawa this    —    or at least he hasn’t found any real reason to just yet     —    but that man really did end up saving him over and over again in ways he wasn’t even aware of.

and thaaaaaaaat about covers it for the general questions there,   so all i really have left is these small tidbits and whatnot!

07.    denki still very much skateboards in this verse.   sometimes he will actually skateboard into the school and down the hallways if he’s running late  (   but,  like,  casually.  not in a hurry   ) and aizawa has to repeatedly reprimand his thirty-year-old ass for it.

08.   given the hectic schedule japanese teachers are subjected to every day,  denki handles most of his patrols as a pro - hero at night.  7th period ends at 4:10 and most students are gone by 4:30,  but he stays until about 5:30 - 6 for open office /  tutoring hours.   if he doesn’t have any papers to grade or weekly lessons plans to write up,  then he’s usually ready to go by 8 pm after a light dinner and keeps his patrol up til midnight  (   or later if there’s trouble   ).   gets home within the hour,  showers,  and is hopefully in bed by 2 am,  only to have to wake up for school again at 6:30.

as you can imagine,  he sleeps in on most days simply because he’s so exhausted all the time;  also the reason for him being late to class almost every single day.   his homeroom students are used to it by now and the class rep usually knows to start the morning without him by taking attendance and opening up the lesson plan he keeps out for them since,  well.   he’s at least a little self - aware.

this is also why he tends to only wear his hero costume on the very first day of the new school year,  because it takes too long to gear up in the morning when he’s sleeping in.   he also just prefers the comfort,  despite his adult costume looking fresh as fuck    —    so he usually rolls in wearing a loose v - neck under an oversized cardigan,  floods,  and high tops.

09.    following this,  he also has a pair of readers that he wears often!   they’re thin - wired and circular,  like this.   he hangs them off the neck of his shirt when not in use,  but occasionally slips them onto his head and very legitimately thinks he’s lost them after that.

10.    he keeps in contact with his graduating class from highschool!   every single one of them.   they tend to run into each other on the field a lot anyway,  but he also tries to set up drinking or dinner plans with a few of them each week even though he himself isn’t too heavy on drinking.

11.    he’s very spacey as a result of long - term brain damage over the years of literally frying his brain.   the more minor side of that is that he forgets important assets most days,  like his wallet or lunch or keys,  or leaves the faucet running all day and jacks his water bill.   sometimes he doesn’t know where new scars or bruises came from.   sometimes he buys himself a strawberry milk,  only to walk into the room and see that there’s already 2 unopened strawberry milks on his desk that he forgot he’d just purchased.

he manages to be as chipper as he can be throughout it,  but it’s hard to pretend something that challenges your everday life isn’t doing exactly that.   it takes him a couple extra seconds to process anything being said to him and he ends up repeating himself often.   his conversational skills are a bit of a mess and he tries to keep himself short and concise as to not only avoid irritating  /  confusing the other person,  but also just to make it easier on himself since he stumbles over words a lot where he was once much more verbose.   this especially leaves him very reluctant to be interviewed by the media,  which is again a shame,  since he used to love the limelight.

a lot of these symptoms aren’t horribly unlike those of someone with early onset dementia.   luckily they don’t seem to be worsening,  as he’s since learned to controlled his power and hasn’t had an instance of short - circuiting in years,  but every so often  …

[theblacksirenx]

Time Can’t Erase The Memories

Who → Laurel Lance

When → July 4th, 2018. ~ 4:30pm.

Where → Laurel’s bedroom

Notes → Another self para from me bc I have no self control and I just need to write. Contains current time stuff and flashbacks in the form of memories. Italicized pars are the flashbacks. Gives you a bit of insight into the real Laurel and her life, rather than the stuff she tells everyone about the Laurel she pretends to be.

Staring up at the photo hanging on the wall across from her bed, Laurel sighed. Nowhere else in the house did she have any pictures. Just the one. The shot of her with Matt and James warmed her heart, and it made her happy being able to look up and see it every day. It was a good memory, a happy one. It was a picture she could look at without feeling any type of anger or sadness.

It was easy for Laurel to say that she just didn’t have any pictures of her life before Amsterdam. But much like her life, and who she claimed to be, it was a lie. She had pictures. She had plenty of them. But hanging them up would never do any good. It could give away the lies she had told, and it would only bring her sadness. Laurel looked back at her life before Amsterdam, hell, even before going to this Earth, and it made her feel awful 

Leaning over from where she sat in bed with her legs crossed, she tugged open the drawer of her night stand. Beneath a few books, she had hidden a small stack of pictures. Some of them were worn and faded, small tears obvious along the edges. Some of them were in better condition, the newer ones that she had from her time on this Earth.

On the top of the stack sat a family picture. It was her, her mother, and her father. Laurel was wearing her pajamas still, but her parents had set up the camera with a timer to surprise her with a stack of waffles with syrup, chocolate chips, whipped cream, and a candle. It was a traditional Lance family thing to do when it was someone’s birthday. She clearly remembered that day. 

“Happy birthday, Dinah!” her parents chanted as they set the plate in front of her at the table.

She leaned forward, blowing the candle out before picking up her fork and knife.

“This.. is the best tradition I think our family has,” she told them, shoving a forkful of waffle into her mouth.

“We’ll go out for dinner later,” her mother said.

“And that’s not all,” her father said. “I’ll be picking up your favorite this afternoon. Yellow cake,” he said. “With chocolate glaze,” he said, as she chimed in along with her father to finish his sentence.

“I can’t wait. You guys are the best.”

It was one of the worst days of her life.

“Where’s daddy?” she asked. “He’s been gone for a long time, it doesn’t usually take him this long to go out for the cake.”

“Dinah, sweetie..” her mother said, wiping wet streaks of eyeliner and mascara off of her cheeks. “Y-your father was in an accident.”

“He.. what do you mean, where is he?” she asked, her voice beginning to shake.

The moment her mother said that her father was dead, it felt like her whole world shattered. She and her father had a bond that was unbreakable. He was her partner in crime, the parent she trusted more, the parent she felt like she could tell anything to even when she had screwed up. And now he was gone.

“N-no, you’re lying to me,” she said, ignoring the tears falling. “He’s not gone, this is some cruel joke. It.. It’s my birthday,” she sobbed.

Her mother’s arms went around her tightly, but she pushed her away. She was thirteen years old, and her father was gone. On her birthday, he had died. She never thought that when she saw him before he left that it would be the last time. 

“His body is at the hospital. Dinah, we need to go,” Mrs. Lance stated, trying to keep herself together for her daughter’s sake.

“I’m not going anywhere!” she snapped, giving her mother a hard shove. “Just leave me alone.” 

She stormed off to her room, slamming the door behind her. The small brunette leaned against the closed door, sliding down it until she was seated on the floor with her knees tucked up to her chest. 

“Happy fucking birthday to me.”

A single tear rolled down Laurel’s cheek, but she was quick to brush it away. Eve since that day, she avoided doing anything for her birthday. It always became a day where she could be alone, and deal with the huge loss. Sometimes it’d become a day of anger, and acting out. But she made sure that she never had birthday cake, never celebrated, and she rarely told people that was her birthday so she could really avoid it all.

Setting the photo down, Laurel looked at the next one in the stack. Her and Oliver. 

“Do you have to go?”

“Have to? No. But I should. My dad and I don’t always see eye to eye but I know that he’s looking forward to the trip,” Oliver stated.

“I’m going to miss you, Ollie,” she told him.

Oliver pressed his lips to her temple, and tugged her closer. She curled up against him, running her fingers gently up and down his bare chest. She didn’t know it was possible to love like that. After losing her dad, she became so mad at the world, but Oliver was there for her. He stood by her, even as she began making some less than good decisions.

“I know. But it’s only a short trip, we’ll be back in a week. Promise.”

She leaned up and kissed him softly. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Her eyes glued to the photo, she felt a pain in her chest that she knew was heartache. They looked so happy in the shot, standing on the dock right before her boyfriend got on the boat with his father. Laurel was sad that he was leaving, but she had been sure that she’d have him back soon enough so they could continue their lives together. She never expected to be so wrong.

As the news flickered across the television screen, the words she read an heard were unbelievable. There was no way. 

“Starling City native and owner of Queen Consolidated, Robert Queen, and son Oliver Queen found dead after boating accident.”

“No..” she whispered. “No, no no..”

She tightened her blanket around her body, feeling sick to her stomach. She loved him. Oliver Queen was the love of her life, and she was never going to see him again. Much like her father’s death, she never could have seen it coming. Growing up, she knew that the family used the Gambit all the time. She didn’t understand what happened.

“Ollie,” she cried out, listening and watching as the news continued with the story. “No..”

They had plans. He was the only man she had ever envisioned a future with. They were so happy, they had everything figured out and suddenly it was all ripped away from her. She was crying, sure, but inside she felt completely numb. Her Ollie was dead. 

She was only twenty two. But he was dead, and she had now lost the two most important men in her life. There was no getting them back. They were gone. 

Laurel and her mother didn’t have what anyone would call a functional relationship. After her father’s death, it just got worse. Her mother didn’t know how to handle Laurel as she started to act out, causing trouble and becoming more and more angry and aggressive as the months and years passed. So when the news came out about Oliver, Laurel had nobody. She was on her own to grieve the fact that she had nobody.

People wondered why she always found herself involved with bad men. But she desperately wanted to be around that strong male figure and although her choices weren’t always ideal, it was enough for her. The distraction that came from being with them and working with them was also very welcome. She needed that.

As she set that one down, she sighed softly. She didn’t have a memory for that one, because even though it was her face, it wasn’t her. It still made her stomach twist though. It was Quentin, and his Laurel. She knew Quentin carried around the picture of the two of them after his Laurel died. She remembered when she saw it for the first time, but she could entirely remember how the picture ended up in her possession. Seeing it now, she wondered if it would have been better if it had stayed with Sara. Her doppelganger’s sister was a great woman, and Laurel could only imagine the pain of losing both her sister and her father.

When she moved to the next picture in the small stack, she had to take a minute to breathe. She felt like all of the air had been sucked out of her lungs. Laurel wiped her eyes as more tears fell. 

He was gone. Another person she cared for, taken away. She wondered when this cycle would stop. She knew she lived in a shitty world full of shitty people, but she didn’t think that Quentin was going to be the next person in her life that she’d never see alive again. 

“I’m so sorry, daddy,” she whispered.

Looking at the cold, lifeless body in front of her, Laurel didn’t know what else to say. Sara had left more than half an hour ago, but she still remained. She couldn’t seem to pull herself away.

“You didn’t deserve this.”

She pulled a chair over to him and sat down, taking his hand in hers. Her eyes stung with tears as she looked at him, wishing that there was something she could do to change this. 

Quentin’s death was so fresh. He died trying to save her. Diaz had the gun pointed at her, ready to shoot her. But Quentin jumped in front of that bulled for her. He wasn’t supposed to die. The doctors were optimistic, he should have made it through surgery. But he seized on the table and there was no coming back from it. His brain was without oxygen for too long. 

He wasn’t technically her father. He was Laurel and Sara’s father. Her died years before, back on her Earth. But it still ripped her apart inside. He died right before she left for Amsterdam. While he hadn’t been the one who raised her, he looked like the man who did. And sure, they had only known each other a short while, but he looked at her as if she was his Laurel.

Once they got past the initial rockiness of her kidnapping him, him shooting her on Lian Yu, all the other times she did shitty things to him and Team Arrow, he treated her like a daughter. He took her somewhere safe when she was shot by Dinah Drake, he tried time and time again to find redeeming qualities in her that she was pretty sure she didn’t have. He was the reason she finally stood up to Diaz. He was the reason she had begun seeing the light, and how did she repay him? By getting him killed.

At first, referring to him as her dad was just a way for her to ruffle his feathers and get under his skin. But eventually it was because he really was a father to her. She loved him as if he really were her father. He was such a positive force to have around. But now he was gone, and she entirely blamed herself for that.

The stack of pictures had a few more in it, but Laurel couldn’t bring herself to keep looking. Her little trip down memory lane was more than enough to make her wish she had just burned the pictures, or left them back in Star City. 

Deep down, she knew that even if she had destroyed them, or left them behind, she still had the memories engraved into her head whether she liked it or not. Going through that much loss could take a toll on anyone, and losing people she loved was something her mind would never be able to escape. She walked around with the grief of the losses every single day of her life.

Stacking them up neatly, she put the pictures back in her night stand. Her face was wet with tears, and she couldn’t seem to make them stop. She inhaled shakily as she looked up at the picture hanging on the wall. Her heart was so heavy and full of sadness, but looking at the smiling faces she, Matt, and James all wore was nice. That feeling left quickly though. 

So many men in her life, all the good ones, were dead. What if that was a sign?What if now, any man she got close to would end up dead? She didn’t want that. She hoped that she was safe their in Amsterdam, but there were no guarantees. There was no way to know for sure that she wasn’t going to be found by Diaz. There was no way to know whether or not she and the people she had grown close to would be able to live peacefully for very long. Fear was a powerful thing, and Laurel was full of it. 

No matter how much she wished she could breathe in relief, relax, live life to it’s fullest, and forget the pain she endured, she knew it was impossible.