#how caleb becomes this constant and anchor | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zara-renata · 18 days ago

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Supernova | ao3 | masterlist

Summary: Caleb's POV of the events of the previous part. Non-canon compliant, as I started this fic before he was released, and it turns out Caleb and mc were in the shelter together after the chronorift catastrophe, whereas I have them meeting at their gran's house for the first time in this fic. I also wrote Caleb and mc only being one year apart, unlike in the game, where they seem to be 3 or 4 years apart. Otherwise, I've tried to incorporate everything we've learned about him so far into this fic. This story contains: obsessive, possessive, jealous behavior. codependency. angst. yearning, mutual pining. some sexual fantasy on Caleb's part. I lean fully into the yandere Caleb that infold gifted us with. i hope it's enjoyable!

He is a star, just on the edge of going supernova. His rage at his lack of control, the voice in his head predicting he’ll become as destructive as a black hole someday, the mass of his emptiness and the twinned want for it to be filled—always on the verge of crushing his soul.

You are his twin, his other, his only, in his binary system, anchoring him with your gravity—your pull, the defiance of physics, as your force on him prevents him both from careening out alone in the dark and from imploding into himself, collapsing into the black hole he knows his truest form to be.

He is an endless hole of voracious destruction, and you are the only thing that fills him.

When it becomes too much. When the feelings inside him feel too big for his skin. You have always been there, a steadying force, a constant companion as he burns through the universe, through life. He is shaped, contained, filled by you, as you are carved, eroded, sculpted by him.

One bright day, Gran brings you home. Introduces you to your new big brother. You look—naked. Exposed. All of your feelings, right on your face. Your fear, hesitation, pain, all clear as the bright sunny day for him to read in your big, bright, sad eyes. He doesn’t know why, but it hurts his heart, to see how scared you are of his reaction to your presence in his home, now yours.

He smiles wider, offers you his hand.

The moment you reach for him, big eyes never leaving his, and he feels your soft skin against his palm, he somehow knows it’s over, and just beginning.

Perhaps it’s his evol. The fact that he can bend, control, subdue gravity, gravity which is so closely linked to time. Because the moment that you touch his hand contracts and expands, stretches—everything narrows to his skin against yours, to this point in time. Perhaps his evol allows his future, past, parallel selves to infuse him with knowledge, because he somehow knows he will never escape you, the pull of you, no matter what the rest of the world says, from this moment onward, suspended in time—your hand in his, a butterfly smothered in sap, hardened into amber. Amber that he carries in his hand, when yours isn’t there to fill it.

Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Something in him, recognizing something in you. Your fear. Your hollow eyes. The anger, underneath the fear. You’re so, so pretty. Like a living doll.

You take his offered hand, despite your fear, the pain in your eyes, and Caleb feels for the first time like he has a purpose. Value. Something he can control, in a life that has spun out of his control more times than he can count. He’s not just a threatening black hole. He can look after you. Keep you safe. Remove that fear from your eyes. He can nurture, instead of only destroy.

He’s a boy, offering a gentle hand to a scared girl, who needs him. And in the offering, and her acceptance, his own need comes into existence, a bright flash in his dark universe.

He shows you around, friendly, earnest for the first time in a long time, chattering about anything he can think of to keep your eyes on him, you listening to him, your attention on him. It feels so, so good.

But he has to go to school. He has to leave you behind, during the day. He spends his days lying, pretending to listen attentively, pretending to be interested in the same things his friends are interested in. He mimics the laughter of his friends, smiles his empty, useful smile, as he thinks of all the ways he can alleviate the pain, the fear in your eyes. As he imagines your hand in his.

He finds you in closets, curled up on yourself, a tightly furled flower. He doesn’t want to pluck you from where you feel safe.

He just wants to change what makes you feel safe. A gardener, repotting a rose. A rose he knows that has thorns as deadly as his own.

He squeezes in next to you, in the dark. Puts his arm around you. Chatters again, telling you stupid stories, making stuff up, anything to help you relax, distract you from what haunts you, melt into his side. You eventually let him lead you from the dark, into the light. You curl up next to him, as he puts together a model airplane. Your eyes watch his hands as he fits the pieces together, as he carefully glues them.

He pauses, holds one hand up. When you just stare at him in confusion, he gently takes your wrist, and pulls your palm to his.

Already, his hands are bigger than yours.

I’m bigger than you. So I’ll always be able to protect you.

He gently sets your palm back into your lap. You snuggle closer to him.

He feels so, so good.

But there’s something wrong with you. Gran sits him down at the kitchen table, looks earnestly at him. She tells him about your heart.

It’s our job to take care of her. Can you help me?

He knows what she is asking.

He knows about her migraines. How hard she works. He doesn’t know why, or what she’s doing.

He just knows that she’s telling him what he already knew, from that first moment. He needs to look after you.

But she didn’t even have to ask. He has already been doing this, from the moment you took his hand. It is easy for him to nod in response to Gran’s question. Of course.

For the first time in his life, he has something of his very own, giving him purpose. He can nurture, instead of destroy. Is it selfish, if it gives him so much pleasure? Seeing you slowly unfurl, and come to depend on him.

You start seeing your doctor, taking the pills to stabilize your heart. You always come home exhausted, drained, from your appointments. He sits with you, sharing a thick blanket in his room with the big bay window, and reads to you. Books from Gran’s library. You rest your head on his shoulder, and he feels like he’s flying, like he’s finally not alone, for the first time in his life. The more time you spend reading together, the more you begin to speak, giving him your thoughts on what you are reading.

You give him the gift of seeing the world not only through his own eyes, but through yours.

The medication is horrible for you.

He understands what Gran was asking, the first time you choke on the pills. The first time he finds you vomiting, huddled over the toilet.

It feels like a part of himself is in pain, watching you in pain. He hates it.

He hates it, but he loves it.

Soothing you. Comforting you. Watching your face, drawn in a frown of pain, relax under the wet cloth in his hand, as you manage to swallow, under his palm on your throat.

As he cares for you, carries you to bed in his gangly, too long arms, he isn’t a black hle, destroying anything, everything. He’s nurturing. And he also doesn’t have to control his face, hide his feelings, pretend to be normal and interested in normal-people things. He’s just himself, taking care of what’s his.

Slowly, slowly, the medication is adjusted, you’re no longer sick all the time. He’s happy to see you regain strength, color in your face.

He takes you for walks, out in the sunshine, under the open sky, in the fields of wildflowers beyond Gran’s house. You cling to him, complain of vertigo, staring up into endless blue. There were no skies, in the labs where you lived for so long.

His heart aches. He thinks of lifting you into the air, letting you experience flight, the flight he yearns for, the only time in his life he ever feels free. Before you came. But now, having you at his side, feels like flying.

But he doesn’t want to scare you. He pulls you down with him, to the earth, surrounded by so many living things, so different from the lab that kept you caged for so long. He thinks such a lovely rose deserves the soil, the fireflies, all the growing things as companions.

He pulls you down into the wildflowers, and he tells you about his dreams of flying. He wants to share this part of himself with you. He holds your hand in his, index finger pointing, and names the types of airplanes that fly overhead.

Later, you’ll ask him to make you fly, and he will. Your body weightless, in a field of flowers, as you laugh, one of the few times you actually ever smile. A smile only he sees. A laugh, and a smile, that belong to him, only to him. In a world where he’s never had anything to call his own before, he now has your smile, and your laugh.

One night, he comes to check on you, as he often does when you’re sleeping. But you’re not huddled in your bed, long lashes sweeping across your soft cheek. The window is open, curtains whispering in the chill breeze. He finds you on the roof, shivering. He doesn’t know why you didn’t bring a coat. He just knows that you are cold, and he is big, and his body is warm, and already what’s his, is yours. He wraps himself around you, feels you melt against his chest.

He tells you about the stars. Again, he holds your hand in his, index finger pointing, and names the constellations, the bright planets that look like stars.

The night you begin dreaming about flying, high in the sky, amidst the stars, he begins to dream about you. His anchor. His north star. The point around which he revolves.

When you finally start school, he’s so excited. Helps you pick out your backpack, your school supplies at the corner store. But he can tell, from the moment you walk into the crowded hallways, how overwhelmed you are. You revert to that strange frozen stiffness you had, when Gran brought you home. He hates it. He looks around. Finds a quiet classroom. He uses his size, his presence, to wrap you in safety, resting his elbows on either side of you against the classroom wall.

Look at me. Look only at me.

So what, if what he wants is selfish, and gives him what he wants, if it helps you too? If its primary purpose is to calm you, soothe you, help you at school, in every aspect of your life?

Caleb is hungry, selfish. He knows this. As long as he can control it, it’s okay. As long as his selfishness aligns with helping you, it’ll be okay, right?

You calm down, as he tells you to look for him, anytime you’re overwhelmed. That he’ll be there. A promise he’ll always keep, forever.

He sees how the other kids respond to you. They see your unsmiling face, your quiet, ever-vigilant stillness, and they immediately recognize you as different. Strange. Their base animal instincts are to distrust anything that’s other.

Caleb is a star, the rage fueling his core, boiling. He still smiles. Charms. Draws people in with his wholesome apple boy mask. He learned this, long ago—to get what you want, to control what happens to you, means controlling other peoples’ perceptions of you.

He wears a mask, like he wears his school uniform. As easy as breathing, most of the time.

When he sees people bothering you, he flies to you. Smiling. Putting his arm around you, guiding you away. He will protect you from the entire world, including other children—they were simple props before. An unavoidable reality, to charm, neutralize, recruit to his side so ease his path to the future, his path to escaping this school and this youth where he has so little control. But now, he considers them hardly more than animals, as he watches them scent you, and begin to growl.

Are you his sister? Why do you walk home together all the time? What’s wrong with you?

He intervenes. Draws you into his side, pulls you close. No, she’s not my sister.

Despite how much he already loves you, how close he feels to you, he balks at the idea of you being his sister.

He crushes the soda can in his hand, no evol necessary, the first time it occurs to him that if he accepts that you’re his sister, like the adoption papers say, like Gran says, like the kids at school say, then one day he won’t be the most important person in your life. He’ll just be your brother.

He can’t stand it.

He has friends at school with siblings. They complain about their annoying little sisters, their jerk older brothers. They joke and laugh and pester each other, and also defend each other when someone else is doing the bullying.

Caleb could never, ever complain about you. He has never found you annoying. He already knows that he is prepared to crush anyone who would dare look at you strangely, let alone bully you.

He wants to spend all of his time with you. He wants to keep helping you grow. He wants to be the soil in which you flourish.

Even as a boy, he knows that he’s not satisfied with being just your brother. He wants to be everything, if it’s to you.

He knows that he hurts you, every time he denies that you’re his sister.

But you’re more. He can’t explain it yet, or claim it yet. He tells himself: he’ll tell you, when you’re older. When he has more control of his own life, and can do even more than just making sure your life is as easy as possible, as he cooks for you, cleans for you. As he helps you wash, care for your hair, his rose, his doll.

He hopes you can forgive him, in the end, for carving out this future for the both of you, where he’s not just your brother, and you’re not just his sister. Brothers and sisters part ways. Move into their own houses. Marry other people.

He tells himself that he’ll make up for every grievance you have against him, every time he hurts you when he denies you as his sister, when you’re both older, when he can actually do something about what he knows is his fundamental truth.

You’re not his sister. He’s not your brother.

You’re just his, and he is yours.

Time passes. Each day, he gets to walk with you to school, holding an umbrella over your head when it’s raining. Handing you his aviator sunglasses when it’s too bright. He gets to see you in the halls, across the meaningless crowds.

Holding your hand through it all.

One spring day, as you’re walking home from school together, you find a cat, mewling pathetically from the bushes. It has crawled underneath, hiding in the thick foliage in an effort to protect itself.

It’s hurt. Caleb is sympathetic, but he would have kept walking. He has his own injured creature to care for, after all. But you—you’re absolutely distraught. You beg him to pick it up, carry it home wrapped in his jacket.

You never need to beg. But he doesn’t mind when you do.

As he lifts up the scruffy cat, which doesn’t scratch or bite, seemingly resigned to its fate or too scared to resist, it reminds him of you, the first day you came home. Your pain, and your fear. Your rage, banked for fear of retribution.

He carries the cat home, wrapped in his jacket.

You consult Gran on how to care for it. You do so, diligently, getting up at all hours in the night to check on it. Which is the only reason it doesn’t manage to escape.

Finally, Caleb gets fed up with the ridiculous thing trying to slink away while it’s injured. Trying to avoid the care you’re so faithfully offering it. Foolishly rejecting what’s best for it.

He buys a collar with his allowance, and a bell. Slips it around the shivering thing’s fragile neck.

It occurs to him how pretty you’d look, with something similar.

He’d hear you, wherever you were. In the night, crawling onto the roof alone. Vomiting at the toilet, alone.

Walking in the halls at school, surrounded by so many people in the world who do not matter. Who simply present a barrier, when he’s trying to maneuver through their mass of bodies to get to you when he can see you freezing, withdrawing into yourself. When he knows you need him.

He wants to put a pretty collar with a bell on you, and listen to the tinkling, meant for his ears, and his ears alone.

Thanks to the bell, the cat heals. As it frolics away, free at last, Caleb watches it go, a twisting, painful sensation in his belly. He turns, looks at you. You’re not smiling, but your face is shining, your eyes bright. He can see that you’re happy with the work you both did for the cat.

He hates himself, for the feelings inside of him.

He wants to reach over, put his big hand around your neck. Loosely. Just to feel your heartbeat in your throat under his palm. To reassure himself that you’re still here. That you still need him. That you’re not going anywhere, and that you won’t be leaving him alone, anytime soon.

He’s so, so selfish. He is an endless hole of voracious destruction, and you are the only thing that fills him.

Time passes.

One morning, he finds you thrashing in bed, breathing heavily, an animal panic choking your lungs. He thinks it’s a normal panic attack for you, is prepared to help you breathe, to walk you through it, as he always does, but then he sees the blood in the sheets.

He’s read about this. He paid attention in health class. He needs to know everything about you, your body, how it’s different from his, and how to care for it, if he’s to look after you properly.

Gran isn’t always around. In fact, she’s away more often than not.

In her bedroom, with a migraine. Or working so hard, on something she can’t talk about.

You’ve had your first period.

He’s heard boys talking, joking, jeering at school. It disgusts him, how they talk about girls, as if girls aren’t people too. He looks at you, and all he sees is a person—pretty as a doll, but full of life. Of fear and dreams and the longer you’re with him, you feel safe enough to demand anything, everything of him. He hates how the guys at school talk about girls. Because you’re a girl, and you have a whole universe inside of you, one that he’s so happy to discover every time you open your mouth. Every time you discover something new that you like, or hate, or annoys you.

How can you, as a girl, and your body, experiencing something outside of your control, be fodder for a joke?

He strides into your bedroom, grabs your wrists. Look at me. Don’t look at the blood.

Your breathing calms, as your big, bright eyes stare into his own.

It feels so, so good, as you relax. As you look to him, for help, for comfort, for soothing all of your fears. He wants, needs you to know how good it feels for him, to be able to do this to you, with you. You’re so, so good.

Good girl.

Your face does something funny, when he says these words. He thinks that the look on your face right now mirrors the feeling in his chest, when you listen to him, rely on him, let him open the pickle jar, let him smooth the way of any obstacles you have. When you smile for him, and no one else. When you allow him to nurture, instead of just destroy.

He helps you with the laundry. Finds himself regretting dumping the stain remover on your blood, stuffing the sheets in the washer. Your blood is a part of you, as much as your beautiful hair, your soft skin, the sharp tongue in your mouth.

Caleb thinks there might be something wrong with him, with how much he wants to keep your sheets, just as they are, tucked away somewhere in his closet.

He resists the urge, just barely.

Later, after he’s bought you pads with his allowance. After you walk around the house with a strange gait, like you can’t stand to bring your legs together, he teases you. You throw the apple at him, eyes bright—defiant, annoyed. He enjoys watching you take the bite, because he told you to. He loves it, every time he tells you to do something, and you do it, no questions asked.

Proof of how much you trust him. How much you need him.

Just like he needs you.

Later, at school, he catalogues the boys who make jokes about girls, and periods. He watches, listens. Lies through his teeth, chummy and just a normal teenage boy himself, of course. He notes the worst offenders.

It’s unfortunate, how they trip. Down the stairs. On nothing. Rumors start going around the school that there’s a ghost haunting a particular flight of stairs, right outside of Caleb’s homeroom.

He loves you so much, it hurts. He enjoys passing the pain along, to others who also deserve it.

He is an endless hole of voracious destruction, and you are the only thing that fills him.

Years pass.

You become accustomed to the confined chaos of school, interacting with so many people. You seem calmer, in the busy hallways. You snort, joke, even if you don’t smile at school, when he has to leave you for awhile, so he can continue his wholesome apple boy lie. Student council president, captain of the basketball team, MVP for the football team, medal winner in track and field. He lifts weights after school, is diligent about his diet, his protein intake, each week new gains bulking out his already tall body. He must do everything possible to lay the foundations for his future success, so he can provide for you. Be a constant pillar of strength for you. Continue giving you everything you need.

You come to him, when you’re upset. When everyone, everything begins to overwhelm you. He holds you. He jokes with you. He tells you stupid stories. He cooks for you. He feels satisfaction, deep in his blood.

And then, somehow, maybe while he wasn’t looking—although he’s always looking, so when would that even have been? He hasn’t stopped looking at you, from the first moment you came home.

But from one day to the next, you are a girl—pretty, cute, still, solemn.

And then—you are still all those things, but you are also beautiful.

Beautiful in a way that turns his brain into mush. A pretty living doll, but one that he wants. Not just to care for her hair, feed her, rock her to sleep. He wants all that, and more.

His heart races when you come close, when he can smell the scent of your skin, your shampoo, your sweat, your breath. You’re so beautiful, it hurts.

For the first time, he wants more than to hold you in his arms.

He wants to put his mouth on you.

He wants to put his hands all over you, not to check to see where it hurts, but to check where you feel good. Where you like to be touched the most.

The size of his want terrifies him.

He tries to control it. To laugh, and joke, to pat your head, mess up your hair. He wears a new mask, over his old one.

Wholesome apple boy, who has never once imagined putting his tongue in his sister’s mouth.

And then, one night, you have your first nightmare. About what, you never say. You tell him you don’t remember. He doesn’t know if he believes you. It drives him insane, not knowing.

He hears you, your hoarse cry, in his sleep. He jolts up in bed, hears it again. Gran will sleep through it, as she always slept through the side effects of the pills, slept through when you had the flu.

It’s up to him, to go to you.

He stands in the doorway of your room, and feels so big. A looming monster, his shadow stretching across your bedroom floor, blanketing your small body. You’ve always been small, but this time, the first time you reach for him in the night, body and nightclothes wet with sweat, you feel so fragile to him, in his big arms. He could crush you.

It terrifies him.

It turns him on.

He’s a liar, and he’s so, so selfish.

He is an endless hole of voracious destruction, and you are the only thing that fills him.

He clutches you to him, makes another selfish decision. Instead of stripping your bed, helping you put on new sheets, tucking you back in, he takes you to his own bed. Pulls you close against his body, under the covers. Blanketing you with his own smell, his own arms. His.

You fall asleep like that. He stays awake, his body aching painfully with want. If you notice how hard he is in the morning, tucked against your back, your ass, you never say anything.

Your worst nights are his favorite nights.

He’s so, so selfish.

After so many years together, you have fully come out of your shell, when you’re with him. Not only do you turn to him for comfort, reveal your smile, only to him, you also show him the full spectrum of your inner world, your feelings. From sorrow, fear, need—to frustration, rage. You hold it in at school, carefully blank, until you get home, and then you explode.

He loves it.

It’s a fireworks show that only he ever gets to see. He’s relieved that you have so much fire inside of you, after spending so long being afraid to express it.

He feels a sense of accomplishment, for being the soil in which you could flourish in all of your explosive colors.

Only he gets the privilege of watching your face, watching you throw things, screaming about your stupid schoolmates, your stupid teachers, the shit you hear people still saying about you.

He notes names. He catches the plates, the glasses, the vases. He absorbs it all, a gravity field pulling everything into him, into the hungry black hole at the heart of him. Whatever you have to give, he’ll take. He’s strong enough for the both of you.

After you seem to lose steam, he pulls you into his arms. I wish I could create a world with just the two of us. He savors how you melt into him, let him get so close to you, when you don’t even seem to be aware of anyone else in the world unless they draw your attention to them by being mean to you. You’re perfect just the way you are.

It occurs to him that he doesn’t like the fact that your attention is drawn to the people who say things about you.

So he’ll fix it. For you. And for him. He wants you to pay attention only to him.

He’s so, so selfish.

Do you feel better? He’ll ask, as your breathing slows, your heart rate lowers. You nod into his big chest, and it feels so, so good.

Sometimes, he pulls you to him too quickly, before you’re done exploding. You’ve bitten him, more than once.

The first time, you bit so hard that the mark lasted for weeks. Deep red marks from your cute, sharp teeth, buried in the meat between his thumb and forefinger.

He jerked himself with that hand, multiple times, every night, until the marks faded. Each time, he couldn’t take his eyes off the proof of your teeth in his flesh.

He wants to mark you in turn.

The size of his want terrifies him.

He is a black hole, and he is hungry. And you are the only thing that can fill him.

The kids at school who made the unfortunate decision of shit-talking you, of pulling your attention away from him, find items of contraband in their lockers that they never put there. They find themselves being accused of plagiarizing on extra credit papers that they never turned in. Their boyfriends, or girlfriends, break up with them, claiming they have a crush on someone new. Someone really popular, who unexpectedly paid so much attention to them that they felt like they were the only people in the world.

Sad really, that once they had broken up with their partner, he seemed to lose complete interest in them.

He is selfish, and he is a black hole, and he is hungry.

But once people learn not to fuck with you because of his efforts, your fits of fury become less frequent.

He misses them.

He wants you to explode all over him, like you used to.

He begins to intentionally provoke you, telling himself it’s healthy for you to be challenged, pestered, to face adversity, feel all your big feelings, and then safely let them go, into his gravity well, the deep well of his want.

When he eats your ice cream, he ends up hurting you much more than he intended. Denying you as his sister, again.

He hates it. He hates that he hurts you, every time.

He has to hope that you’ll forgive him, someday. That someday, you’ll understand why.

For now, he tries to soothe you with all of your favorite ice cream. A plan he already had in mind when he ate the last of the old stuff. You let him make you feel a little better, at least. He has to hope that someday, you’ll understand why he can’t fully make it up to you yet, because he has no idea what he’ll do if you don’t.

If you were to drift away, pull away from him, spin off into the universe without him, he would explode, collapse. The mass of his emotions—fear, anger, guilt, love, want, so much want—would implode, collapse, compound into the ever hungry black hole of his soul.

He would be lost without you anchoring him.

He’s so selfish. He hates himself. He can’t stop himself.

He is no longer satisfied, with you simply coming to him when you’re upset. Hugging him when you’re scared, and overwhelmed, recharging yourself like he’s a battery pack and you’re an empty little triple A.

He wants you to come to him when you’re happy. Because you’re as drawn to him as he is to you.

He always finds a reason to be in the bathroom at the same time you are, before school, or getting ready for bed. He brushes his teeth while you shower. He watches your blurry form in the mirror, and barely resists the urge to throw open the curtain, every time. To climb in with you, clothes on, and kiss your wet mouth. Get on his knees, and see where else you’re wet.

He hates himself. He can’t stop himself.

When he does pushups, he asks for your help. Your light weight on his back does nothing for his workout, but feeling your hands on his sweat-slick skin keeps him up at night in the same way your bite marks do.

He brings you the tiger balm, feeling so transparent, so pathetically obvious, insisting you help him apply it to his back.

He stares at your face in the mirror. Your little frown of concentration. The color in your cheeks again. He can feel your heartbeat in your fingertips along his skin. He wants to pull your hands from his back, place them on his chest, his big pecs. He wants to guide your hands lower, lower, past the hair beginning at his navel, down below the band of his basketball shorts. He wants you to take your hot little hands and wrap them around his big dick, tiger balm at all, make it sting for him, as he burns under your touch.

He is so, so selfish, and he hates himself.

He is an endless hole of voracious destruction, and you are the only thing that fills him.

He knows you’re isolated, that he’s all you’ve ever really had to fulfill any, every role for you. He knows you want him, that you watch him, that the color rises in your cheeks now when he’s close, but he’s so scared that it’s just a result of your isolation, of your dependence on him.

He’s so selfish, and he’s a coward. He’s so scared that if he acts, he’ll somehow be hurting you, exploiting you.

If you accept him, he’ll never know for sure if you love him for him or simply because he was the only one there. But you never show interest in anyone else.

He’s afraid that if you reject him, you’ll also end up hating him, and you’ll spin away from him into the dark velvet night.

He has to wait. Until you’re older, until you’ve seen more of the world. So that you’re sure you want him, after experiencing other things and people.

The idea makes him want to go supernova.

But no matter how selfish he is, he has to offer you the opportunity to know more than just him. And he needs to know your feelings for him are real. Maybe that’s a form of selfishness too, as he watches in satisfaction as your want for him, his big body, makes you pant, lean toward him as if pulled by gravity, as your brow furrows, and the yearning on your face is obvious for only him to read as your frustration grows when he doesn’t act.

It turns him on, seeing how much you want him.

It infuriates him, seeing how much people want you.

And you can feel it. He can see how your body tenses, how you begin to freeze, being the object of so many gazes.

It’s the worst at track practice, when you’re wearing those tiny as fuck running shorts. It boggles his mind, how they’re part of the standard track uniform for the girl’s team.

His teammates, the other guys, openly gawk at your long, beautiful, naked legs. At your easy, graceful gate around the track.

He wants to use his evol to yank their eyes right out of their skulls.

Instead, he focuses on your needs first.

Jogs over you, blocks your view of their leering.

You look up at him, your big bright eyes calming as he looks down into them. He lets his hands wander, like they always want to do. Fingering the hem of the shorts. Touching you, where no one else can. Where no one else will ever be able to.

Just because he wants to let you experience the world, does not mean the world gets to touch you. He’ll make sure of it.

You agree to put on his compression shorts.

His dick is rock hard in his own shorts, as he helps you change, as you lift your legs, one by one, as his barbell-roughened hands drift along your soft thighs, clutching the slippery material in his fingers, as he inhales the scent of your body, as you stare down into his eyes with your desire filling them like unshed tears. Tears he wants to make you cry.

You’re so fucking sweet. He loves you when you’re furious, spitting and biting. And he loves you when you’re like this, trusting him with your body, your needs, pliant and docile.

All for him. Only for him.

After, you seem calm, comfortable in your own skin again. You run so fast, your hair a flag behind you, as if you’re declaring war.

He turns to the guys who were ogling you, endures their stupid fucking jokes and sleazy comments. He bides his time. Waits until practice is over, and they’re in the boy’s locker room.

He pulls an apple from his duffle, floats it in the air.

Hey.

His voice is low, serious in a way it rarely is. It echoes through the mostly empty locker room, bouncing between the metal lockers, the tiled floor. It pulls their attention, the jarring disparity between his current tone and how he normally sounds.

Their eyes widen as they see evidence of his evol for the first time. Everyone knows he has it. But he doesn’t use it at school. He doesn’t need it to stand out. He saves its tricks, its delights, for you, and you alone.

About the bullshit you were spouting on the track. She’s not my sister. And you don’t look at her.

They glance nervously at each other, the obvious, imperious order rankling their juvenile egos.

One of them pipes up. What’s the big deal? If she’s not your sister, why do you care who looks at her?

This asshole isn’t entitled to an answer from him. Doesn’t matter. You just don’t fucking look at her. He forces calm authority into his voice. Forces himself to smile, to wear the lower part of the mask, the part that doesn’t reach his eyes.

One of the guys, the one who always says the most disgusting shit about girls, about guys he doesn’t think are masculine enough, scoffs. What’re you gonna do to us, huh? You gonna chew my ass, like you chew your dumbass apples?

The other guys exchange nervous glances, nervous chuckles.

I’m not interested in your ass, bro. He grins. It probably looks wrong, based on their reactions. I’ll just… he begins, casually. He flicks his wrist.

The apple explodes, as if crushed by hammer—the pieces of the fruit spatter the faces and chests of the guys standing around him with wet, fleshy impacts. The pieces that would have hit him fall to the ground with heavy-sounding splats.

He smiles cheerfully into the ringing silence. We good?

The fuckhead still doesn’t seem to have quite gotten the memo. He swats the apple sticking to his face, sneers. You’re so full of shit. A golden boy like you with your entire future ahead of you wouldn’t commit murder over a piece of ass.

Caleb sighs. Leans back. Shrugs. True. Killing your dumbass outright isn’t worth being sent to prison. But you know, he says thoughtfully. He spreads his legs wide on the bench. Talks like he’s just shooting the shit, waves his hand leisurely. Accidents happen, all the time. You’re throwing a baseball, and suddenly something snaps in your shoulder. It would be a shame, if you could never throw a ball again. Or say, you’re about to cross the finish line, and you step funny, you know? And you never do walk right, after that. Or you’re playing basketball, and suddenly, poof—burst aneurysm, bleeding out, right in your brain. That shit can happen to even the healthiest of athletes. Just, bad luck, man. The human body is so fragile. As fragile as the skin of an apple.

The guys stare at him in silence. A droplet of water drips from a showerhead, splashes onto the floor. Even the biggest idiot seems to be at a loss for words.

He smiles, smiles, smiles.

Don’t look at her ever again, and you won’t have to worry about all that. He gets to his feet, slings his duffel over his shoulder. Puts his hands in his pockets. Whistles, as he meanders out of the locker room.

Later, he’s doing the household’s laundry. He’s lifting dirty clothes out of the combined dirty clothes basket from the bathroom, and your little slippery running shorts fall out of the handful he’s trying to stuff into the washer.

He stares at them on the floor. Slowly puts the stuff in his hand in the machine, thinking.

He’s a black hole, and he’s so fucking hungry.

He squats down, lifts the shorts. They’re tiny, in his big hands. He sits quietly, listening. You’re upstairs in his room, doing homework. Gran’s at work. He’ll hear you, if you come down. You tromp through the house like an elephant. It’s adorable.

He lifts the shorts to his face, shoves his nose in them. Inhales.

He’s squatting at your feet again, in the locked bathroom at school. He’s looking up at you, your chest rising and falling with your rapid breath. He can smell you, the intensity of your excitement at the proximity of his face to where you want him the most. As he opens his mouth, as he extends his tongue to the built-in underwear of the little slip of fabric, he imagines that he’s back in that bathroom, leaning forward, bringing the flat of his tongue between your legs. He imagines that you thread your pretty hands in his hair and pull him closer, urging his tongue deeper into you. He imagines, as he fills his mouth with as much of the fabric as he can, breathing through his nose, that you come on his face, with your soft noises of pleasure echoing through the tiled bathroom.

He comes in his pants.

He hates himself, as he pulls your shorts out of his mouth. As he places them gently into the washer. He hates himself, but he can’t stop himself. He knows he’ll do this again, and again, until he can have the real thing.

That was towards the end, of everything.

Even as he was packing his bags, he didn’t see it coming.

He made you so many promises that he, in all of his youthful hubris, believed he could keep. About how often he’d be home. About how often he could be in touch. About how close he’d still be able to stay to you, through time and distance.

He lifted you with his evol in a field of wildflowers, watched your lovely hair float around your beautiful face, and he came so close to losing control, and kissing your soft lips.

He made you so many promises, and he broke one the first day he was gone.

Because when he arrived for basic training, they took his phone away, and didn’t give it back for six weeks. Something about fostering camaraderie with his fellow cadets. Bullshit.

It got worse from there. Basic training. Specialized training. Combat missions. Flight missions. He was either out of range, or the op required radio silence. He was determined to reach the highest ranks. To be able to best provide for you. But that required confidentiality, restricted security clearances. More and more things he couldn’t talk about. More and more important holidays and events he was forced to miss.

And then one day he came home, after having been away on a longer-than-usual undercover mission, and instead of his still, quiet girl with the serious face, who only smiled for him, who crawled all over him, and treated him like her personal servant, who blew up at him, bit him, screamed, threw shit at him, and was the sweetest little thing, soft and pliant in his arms, only for him, waiting for him, he found…

You. Wearing a mask so obvious that he could see its ribbon tied through your lovely hair.

By the time he finally made it home again, he had already lost you.

You smiled at him, and it didn’t reach your eyes. You smiled at Gran. You smiled at the checkout boy at the corner store. You smiled at random fucking strangers on the street.

You smiled, smiled, smiled.

You smiled, and it looked wrong on your lovely face. Not the smile of when you’re flying, when he would make you fly.

Something artificial, and empty. Your smile was a pot, filled with a plastic flower instead of a living rose.

You talked about your friends at school. Your sudden, numerous extra-curricular activities.

You smiled at him so politely, with such empty eyes, he wanted to flip the fucking table.

You treated him like a stranger.

No matter what he did, no matter how much he poked you, teased you, tried to corner you and interrogate you about your sudden change, you slipped away, with a false, cheerful laugh.

He wanted to crush his own eardrums, instead of hear that fucking fake laugh again.

And then he had to go back to the DAA.

He had to keep leaving you, and the visits in between became fewer, and fewer, as his training intensified, as he failed psych eval after psych eval, despite his perfect marks in everything else, his perfect mask that drew people to him like flowers to the sun.

You stop responding to his calls, his texts.

He can’t get you to respond, but he can use his newly acquired hacking skills, his new security clearances, to keep track of you even if you won’t even say hello.

When he gets back from one particularly grueling, strange mission in the Deepspace Tunnel, he reconstructs your movements of the past few weeks based on your phone’s location, your socials. He sees that your phone spent the night at an unfamiliar address. It’s not one of your new friend’s places. You’ve never done that before. You stay at your dorm. You stay at friends’. You stay at Gran’s.

He breaks so many security regulations, civil rights laws, identifying the person who lives there.

Some random guy, who is built just like Caleb. Big, tall. Handsome, dark hair.

Caleb sits on his bunk, his hand over his mouth.

He feels like he needs to vomit.

He has never vomited after the highest g-force training required by the DAA, but he needs to vomit imagining you letting someone else touch you, exposing your most vulnerable self to him, while wearing your fucking mask.

Caleb wanted your first time to be soaked in pure, overwhelming love. To be with someone who’d watch every single fleeting expression on your beautiful face, who would kill himself to make you feel cherished, to make you feel as good as physically possible. To feel safe enough to wear your real face, the whole time, safe enough to tell him what you want, so he can give you everything you deserve.

And Caleb knows that he is the only person in the universe who could give you that, in the way that you deserve. He was built to protect you. His purpose is to love you. You are his anchor, his twin star, the only thing keeping him from exploding into blinding supernova light, collapsing into his own devouring dark. He knows you best. He knows everything about you, and he would use that knowledge to make you feel like you were flying as he made love to you.

What if that fucker hurt you? What if he made you cry?

Caleb rushes to the toilet, vomits for the first time in years.

While Caleb was hallucinating about the past, present, future, lifetimes that haven’t happened yet, reliving strange memories of being in a lab, observed through glass, as he was adrift in deep space during his last mission that so quickly went sideways, dying from oxygen deprivation, you were having your first one-night stand.

You fucked a guy that looked just like him.

The only thing that prevents that motherfucker from suffering a terrible, unfortunate accident, is the fact that you ghost him, after.

Caleb knows, because he tracks every fucking thing you do, after that, every time he is within range in Skyhaven.

He forces himself to check, to look at your socials, to see who’s posing in pictures with you. He forces himself to know, when your phone starts to spend time at random peoples’ places, almost every weekend.

Each time, a different guy. Each time, they look like Caleb.

Each time, their lives are spared because you ghost them.

He tells himself that there’s still time, a chance, to salvage things. To make up for every single grievance you have against him. To make up for every promise he didn’t mean to break.

Your fake smile tells him that he is no longer your safe space. But he can rebuild himself for you, turn himself into what you need to feel safe, protected, cared for, cherished. He did it once, when you came home for the first time.

He just has to do it again.

You’re an adult now. You’re a Hunter now.

He comes home on a break. You politely pour him water. He smiles at you with his mask, and you smile at him with its twin on your face. He did this to you. But he will make it right.

He’s going to tell you. This visit. Before he goes back to Skyhaven. He’s going to tell you, how much he loves you, not as a brother, but as a man, and always has. How he’s finally in a place to care for you, as an adult, without the restrictions of childhood, of societal expectations. He’s going to tell Gran about how he has never felt like you were his sister.

He almost loses his shit, when he sees the scratch on your arm, when you insist on sending him to the store instead of letting him back you up while you investigate the alert on your Hunter’s watch. So desperate to show him how much you don’t need him anymore.

He breathes deeply. Says something stupid, out of frustration, about hiding your bloodied sleeve from Gran.

You say something biting to him in return, your own mask slipping a little, as your genuine frustration, your anger at him slips through. He cherishes it, feels triumph rise in him.

Yeah, he’s gonna make things right. He’s going to tell you that he loves you, and that he’s yours, and always has been. He’ll beg, if he has to, for you to say that you are his in return.

He goes into the house first.

On a bright, sunny day, filled with determined hope for the future, Caleb Xia dies in the bright, supernova flash he always knew had been waiting for him.

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace caleb #caleb x reader #caleb x mc #my fanfic

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moderndaybard · 4 years ago

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2020 Critmas Fic Day 25

Take a Chance…Catch ‘Em all (CR C2/Pokemon Crossover Ficlet)

It’d certainly been a turbulent Pokemon Challenge season, leaving many convinced the Wildemount Pokemon League Championship would have to be called off (reigniting the debate about whether the Menagerie, Dwendalian, and Xhorhas regions ought to separate out with their own regional leagues, given the near-constant tension and strife between them), but peace had been secured (for the moment) and the biggest tournament of the year was about to commence.

Seven entrants in particular were creating quite a stir during the tournament lead-up and opening ceremonies—as they had since emerging from seemingly nowhere early in the season. To some, they were nuisances, to others, heroes, still others saw them as loose cannons, but all could agree that they were powerful trainers with loaded teams. (Seriously, how did they get into the kind of shenanigans that ended with each of them having a Legendary Pokemon anchoring their teams, along with the now-standard Mega-Evolving or Gigantimaxing Pokemon?)

They’d traveled as a team; they’d trained as a team; they’d triumphed as a team—perhaps the only thing giving anyone else a chance in the tournament was that hey could not compete as a team, but would have to stand on their own. (But then again, each on their own was a force to be reckoned with for sure…)

…

There was Veth, who seemed to sing rapidly between ‘Team Mom’ and ‘Trouble-Maker-In Chief’, and her eclectic team: Buttons, her Klefki was her oldest partner; Whiskey, her Spinda was unpredictable—useful in a pinch, but he caused nearly as much trouble as he prevented; her Thievul, Rogue, made up for a lack of brute power with her blinding speed; River, the Gigantimaxing Lapras, seemed to make even her own trainer wary; likewise, Nott, the Sableye, had taken a long time for Veth to come to terms with, to work with; and the Legendary Zapdos, Motherhood, dared anyone to even think of messing with her family—blood or no.

Caleb had been traveling with Veth long before they’d met up with the other five of the Nein, and his Delphox, Wizard, had been with him even longer, as had his Mega-Evolving Blaziken, Fireball. Frumpkin, the Meowstic, had been the next, beloved, addition to the team, followed a little later by the Gigalith, Transmuter’s Stone. As a battler, Caleb was well-known for his creative tactics when employing Polymorph, his Ditto, but speculation abounded regarding how he’d come to have Atonement, the Legendary Shaymin, on his team. (Truthfully, even he could not say—though he’d sought it for so long.)

There was some debate and discussion of whether Beau was officially affiliated with the Ioun Academy for Trainers or not—at first, she’d seemed to be a runaway student, but now she appeared to occasionally be running missions for them as a kind of faculty member—but there was no denying that she was a skilled battler and a keen strategist. Her first partner had been a Snivy (now Serperior), the iconic Pokemon of her family, named Lionett. They two had struggled to work together at first (apparently), but they had come to develop a style that was uniquely theirs, unconnected to her family, and in that, partner and trainer had found their bond. Likewise, Monk, her Mienshao, and Cobalt Soul, her Mega-Evolving Lucario, had taken some getting used to as she navigated her relationship with the Academy. All she would say about her acquisition of Tarot the Xatu was that he was ‘a gift from a friend’; while her back-and-forth sniping with her Noctowl, Professor Thaddeus somehow (no one watching from the outside could quite say how) led to a decent win record for them. And guarding them all as Beau guarded her friends’ happiness and well-being was Sentinel, the legendary Zamazenta.

The bubbly trainer from Nicodranas, Jester, had quite the varied team that leant itself to a very unorthodox battle style. Trickery, her Mega-Evolving Banette, seemed quite the dark and spooky partner for someone so fond of pink and pastries, while Ruby, the Ninetails, had all the elegance and grandeur of her namesake. The Inteleon, Gentleman, was a recent addition, but kept a narrowed eye on anyone that got too close to his precious trainer; while many marveled that such a battered- and haggard-looking Zangoose as Sprinkle was still alive, much less still following his trainer’s coaching. While many dismissed Smeargle as a ‘gimmicky’ Pokemon, Jester proved time and again that her Paints could be useful if only one was clever…as clever, say, as the Legendary Hoopah, her beloved Traveler….

There was one other trainer from the Menagerie Region: Fjord, originally from Port Damali, whose own diverse team marked quite the convolute path he’d taken to get to where he stood now. He’d started after receiving Warlock, his Malamar from unknown sources—and it was that mystery that’d set him on this journey. Along the search for answers, he’d found Crystal, the strange Carbink, and Uk’otoa, the menacing Spiritomb, in short order. But whatever he’d learned seemed not so satisfy what he’d truly been looking for and, after adding his disciplined Kingdra, Captain, he seemed to change track altogether with his Mega-Evolving Kangaskhan, Paladin, and the Legendary Zacian, Star Razor. But whatever had prompted the changes, there was no denying the comfort and confidence he now battled with.

Caduceus originally hailed from outside of the three regions, and had joined the others after an unexpected confrontation with an Evil team had turned deadly, early on. He’d come to their aid, then come along, with his gentle Meganium, Cleric, Graveyard, his deceptively-spooky Trevenant, and his Polteageist with the on-the-nose-name of ‘Tea’ (apparently it was an old family joke?). Speaking of the rest of his family, he had been using this journey, at least in part, as a means of finding what had become of them, finding Decompose, his Shiinotic, and Gorgon, the Gigantimaxing Copperajah, and finally his parents, aunt, and siblings—thankfully alive and (now) safe. All the while, guiding, guarding, and anchoring his team was the Legendary Lugia he called Melora with warmth and reverence.

Yasha, the one member of the group from the Xhorhas Region, (if the wilder, southernmost part of it), was an undeniably intimidating sight—as were her first two partners: Barbarian, her Mega-Evolving Garachomp, and Orhpanmaker, her foul-tempered Hydreigon. But there was a softer, gentle side to the woman as well, clearly demonstrated in her tender care for the Comfey she called Zuala with an odd, sad smile. Bone Harp, her music-loving Alolan Marowak perhaps best embodied the duality of his trainer, even as Angel Wings, the Togekiss, best exemplified the hope and the light that she strove for, despite her painful past. But less any opponent be tempted to forget the sheer power at her command, the team was anchored by Strom Lord, the Legendary Zekrom.

…

Yes, the Mighty Nein (as they were called for reasons no one in the watching crowd fully understood) were certainly the center of attention as the opening ceremony of the tournament unfolded—stories of their convoluted and dangerous journey to this point had spread on ahead of them, even ridiculous rumors that they’d single-handedly stopped the latest war and brought peace to the regions; and many were curious to see what they could muster as solo battlers, rather than the unit that they had operate as for so many of their adventures. Then, the final entrant of the tournament was introduced and his team revealed, and a ripple went though the stadium crowd and home audience alike—could this contender be the one who could upset what had looked to be a sure sweep for the Nein?

He was introduced simply as ‘Matt’, but there was nothing simple about his team: Pumat the Oranguru was a formidable tank; Kiri the Chatot hid some surprising tricks while her gimmick distracted attention; his Gigantimaxing Drednaw, Orly, was fearsome in battle despite a generally friendly disposition; crowd-favorite Essek, the Weavile, was no above using shady tactics where necessary, while Yussa, his Kommo-o tended to rely more on overwhelming power. But a pall hung over the arena as his own Legendary was revealed—what did it mean that he had a Guzzlord, and why was it called ‘The Eyes of Nine’?

…

As the ceremony drew to a close, one man turned away form the large screen outside of the stadium—he’d seen as much as he needed to, what he’d come to see. He looked to his own team of three—found along a path of a life anything but simple: Bloodhunter, the Grimmsnarl whose terrifying appearance belied a selfless heart; the colorful and fun-loving Oricorio, Carnival; and the solemn Chandelure he called Death while still smiling). Mollymauk nodded to the three of them with a friendly wink as they made their way from the stadium.

“Don’t they all look impressive now? Hardly recognize ‘em. Let’s put old Luci down once and for all and heave a heartfelt reunion—Whatdya say?”

(Also on AO3, with my other fics)

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analisegrey · 6 years ago

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Februwhump Prompt:

“Who would the whumpee take a beating for?” (Read on AO3)

Caleb’s always been goal-oriented.

He likes having something to strive for, a box he can mark off when he’s accomplished something; that inclination is honed when he gets to Soltryce- each new spell he learns, every milestone of knowledge, he goes after with fevered abandon. His time in the country with Master Ikithon doesn’t exactly dampen the tendency. The desire to please combined with the need to hit the next goal, do the next thing, pressing ever forward- it’s a terrible and heady combination that Trent utilizes ruthlessly.

And still, after all that, after breaking and reforming, after traveling alone, after finally finding new companions, he’s still goal-oriented. He has one large, overwhelming goal, and it’s always in the back of his mind, waiting, but sometimes it gets overshadowed, pushed temporarily to the side by immediate need.

For instance-

The cell they’re in is cool and damp, moisture dripping down the walls in shining rivulets. Jester’s out cold when they’re dragged in, but Caleb’s awake, if only barely, and so catches pieces of conversation, taunts and threats. He’s known jailers like this before, had suffered extensively under them in the jail where he met Nott. He knows the type- overconfident, cruel, inclined to go after the weakest, softest target, because they don’t want a challenge so much as a reaction.

Caleb weighs his options as he waits for Jester to wake up. They’re both spent from the fight before they were captured, and he knows that especially without his components, they’re on their own until help arrives. He’s moved her so her head is pillowed on his lap, and he absently cards his fingers through her hair as he thinks. He knows this type of people, knows what they’re capable of, how they react, who they’ll likely go for once they’re ready to start. He knows, and he refuses to let that happen.

There’s a rustle of fabric and a shift of movement as Jester starts to wake up, groaning as her eyes slit open.

“What- what happened, where-”

Caleb gently squeezes her shoulder. “I am afraid things went rather poorly, Jester. We are in a cell.”

Her brow crinkles in confusion before her eyes go wide and she jolts up to sitting, Caleb barely leaning back in time to avoid getting knocked in the chin. She’s scrambling to her feet and heading for the door before Caleb can stop her, her fingers digging into the edges where the frame and the door meet, looking for purchase, for a catch, anything, as her tail lashes behind her.

“We need to get out, we need to get the door open, we have to leave- ”

Caleb gets up and moves to her side, catching carefully at her wrists and tugging. He knows he has no hope of moving her if she doesn’t want to allow it, and is relieved when she lets him.

“Jester, you must be calm.”

She turns to him wild-eyed and pale, her skin washed out to a sickly light blue. “Caleb-” Her voice wavers with panic, and his resolve only strengthens as he gets a more secure grip on her and pulls. She goes with him as he leads her back to the far wall and sits, bringing her with him; her skirts pool around her, and he puts an arm around her after only a moment’s hesitation. She’s shaking, her breathes quick and hitching, and he’s familiar enough with the sounds of panic and terror to recognize it. He gives her a squeeze.

“Jester, I know this is frightening. It’s not a great situation, but we must believe the others will come and get us out. We have done it before, and they will do it again.”

“I know, I know , it’s just, what will happen in the meantime? I can’t- I can’t do that again, Caleb, I can’t- ”

If his plan’s going to work, he needs her calm, needs her strong. He feels for her, he does, but he needs her to get herself under control.

“Jester.” He keeps his voice soft, calm, soothing, and takes her by the shoulders, turning her to face him. “I know this is a terrible situation, and while neither of us wants to be here, this is especially hard for you after everything you have been through. I can’t guarantee everything will be okay right now, but I believe- I have to believe- that the others are coming, and we just need to be strong until then.”

She sniffles, eyes red-tinged and wet as she looks up at him. He knows how strong she is, physically and emotionally, but right now she looks small, frightened, and he’s reminded how young and sheltered she is, and he feels the protective urge he normally feels for her surge. He will not let them hurt her, not if he has anything to say about it.

“I need you to listen to me, Jester, you can do that, ja ?”

She nods, though she doesn’t look very sure, and he smiles.

“The men who brought us here are going to come back.” She freezes under his hands, her breath starting to pick up again, and he squeezes, trying to ground her. “They are going to come back, but I have a plan. I will not let them harm you; but you must work with me. I can only do so much, so you must be strong. I need you to look fearsome.”

Her brows furrow again in confusion as she looks him over, her tail moving agitatedly behind her. “But how will you do that? They took all your stuff, Caleb, your components, your coat, your books- how are we going to fight back?”

He shakes his head. “My plan is not to fight, not with magic or fists. I plan to fight with this,” he says as he taps his temple with a finger. “I do not need to be stronger or have my components in order to out-think them. I am going to play a part, and I need you to as well for it to work. It will be scary, but I know you can do it. You are a very good actress, ja? They will not know what hit them.”

Her eyes narrow momentarily, and he worries she’s figured him out, but then her face relaxes and she gives him a tremulous smile, which he mirrors back to her.

“Okay, I think I can do that, Caleb.”

“I know you can, blueberry.”

She smile brightens at the nickname, as he’d hoped it would. Now for the hard part.

“I need you to promise me something though, Jester. This is very important.”

“What?”

“When they come back, I want you to try to get in front of me. I am also going to be acting a part, and it may be difficult to watch, but I need you not to interfere otherwise. Whatever you see me do, whatever you hear me say, just know that I’m acting, and it will be alright. Can you do that?”

Her lips press together, pensive and pinched, the dark blue of her lips paling before she nods, her expression growing hard and resolute. “Okay okay okay, yes, I can do this. We will get through this, and the others will come, and everything will be okay.”

He smiles at her, and he hopes it doesn’t look as much like a grimace as it feels.

They pass the time chatting about nonsense and when they hear a door clang open nearby they both tense. In the last few seconds before the cell door opens, he turns and whispers, “Don’t forget- you are fierce, blueberry, and I am just acting.”

The door swings open and Jester plays her part perfectly, straightening up and snarling an oath in Infernal, coming to her feet in front of him as he slowly gets to his behind her, feigning weakness.

One of the few benefits of being a self-confessed coward, of being afraid nearly all the time, is that when it matters, when it’s actually helpful , it’s no hardship to play the weakling. He barely has to try for the fear he normally keeps bottled up show readily on his face, for the near-constant dread to become manifest. When their jailers enter the room, Caleb presses himself back against the wall, shuddering as the cold and damp seep in through the thin fabric of his shirt. He hunches inward, makes himself look small, an easy target, and bless the two buffoons holding them captive, they buy it.

“Grab him. Let’s make ‘im squeal.”

Caleb’s eyes go wide in only partially-feigned horror, and shakes his head, pressing back further, though there’s nowhere to go.

“Nein , no, please- ”

Jester tries to stay in front of him but fierce as she is, she’s easily thrown aside. Their captors may be immensely stupid and easily manipulated, but they’re strong, grabbing him with ease and carrying him toward the door. He plays it up, yelling and pleading in a way that normally would fill him with shame, but he’s fueled by his need to keep them focused on him and their attention away from Jester. He gets a last glimpse of her as they pull him through the door and she looks utterly stricken; he hopes she’ll forgive him eventually.

He’s taken down the hall to a room that's bare except for a wooden chair in the middle of it. They throw him onto it, and one of them hauls back and punches him in the jaw, snapping his head to the side and setting his ears ringing. By the time his head clears, his arms have been wrenched behind him and his wrists tightly bound and anchored to the chair. He struggles and they laugh, each grabbing an ankle even as he tries to kick at them; they tie those to the chair as well until soon he’s completely helpless. He tries not to panic, reminds himself he wanted this, that this was his preferred outcome, but it’s difficult to remember when one of the men is standing in front of him grinning and the other is behind him with a large meaty hand clamped on his shoulder. The hand on his shoulder slides to his throat, gripping and pulling his head up and back and for a split second he feels a flash of real fear, thinks he's miscalculated terribly, but then the other man slams his fist into Caleb's stomach, and the fear is replaced with a calmer resignation. His body tries to fold over, but the ropes at his wrists and the hand at his throat keep him from moving, so all he can do is choke on a cry and shake. They work him over with the ease of long practice, moving in tandem and causing pain with little break between. He's quickly breathless, screams caught in his throat as blows rain down faster than he can process. At one point a blow knocks him sideways and the whole chair tilts precariously before it tips, taking him with it. He feels it as his left arm snaps at the forearm when his whole weight, chair and all, land on it; he's screamed himself hoarse but still finds voice enough to cry out. The men just laugh and continue, and throughout the beating the thought Caleb keeps firmly situated in his mind is, ‘At least it’s not Jester.’

The men start to slow down, tired and covered in sweat, and Caleb would breathe a sigh of relief if he could; his ribs scream at him when he draws breath, his broken arm a throbbing misery at his side. He hurts everywhere, bursts of pain so prevalent it’s difficult to tell where one begins and another ends. They untie his legs, then his arms, and his vision goes dim and watery as they pick him up again, heedless of his broken arm, and drag him back through the door and down the hallway to the cell.

He desperately wants to pass out, to get away from the pain if only for a little while, but he can’t yet. There’s still one more part of this to do before he can allow himself the respite of unconsciousness.

They slam the door to the cell open and toss him through it. He's unable to catch himself and lands awkwardly on his front, his broken arm hitting the ground with enough force that he thinks he does pass out, if only for a few seconds. The next moment he’s aware it’s to find gentle hands on his face, warm and careful as they feel around his cheeks and jaw.

“Oh, Caleb- ” That’s Jester, and she sounds anguished. He forces his eyes open to look up at her and she’s blurry, but he thinks that’s mostly do to his eyes being partially swollen shut than anything else. She looks like she’s been crying, her face crumpled in distress, and he reaches for one of her hands with his good one.

“Jester, it’s okay.” It’s hard to speak, his voice barely there, his throat burning with the effort.

Her face twists, grief and anger warring with each other for dominance in her expression. “Caleb, it is not okay.” Her hands flex minutely on his face and he winces at the pressure on the bruising he can feel painting his skin. “Do you even know what you look like? Look what they’ve done to you, Caleb, your arm, and your face, and, and-” She looks perilously close to tears, and while it guts him to see it, he holds tight to the fact that it’s him here on the floor beat to shit, and not her, that it’s him with the broken arm and ribs, not her. He remembers- because he always remembers, doesn’t he?- what she looked like when they found her and Fjord and Yasha at the Sour Nest. Dirty, bruised, tear-streaked and devastated, and there’s not a lot he’s proud of in his life, but this is one thing he can hold onto. He kept this from happening to her, from happening to her again. She may have experienced this kind of cruelty, but he’s had practice, and if there’s any benefit to the things that have happened in his life, it’s that it’s prepared him for this, has put him in a position to be able to spare Jester.

He manages to pull a smile out for her, squeezes one of her wrists in a shaking hand before letting his arm fall back to his side.

“It’s alright, Jester. It is- it’s better this way. You are stronger anyway, ja? If we need to fight to get out, it’s better that you be strong and healthy.” He’s trying to focus, to stay awake to keep her company, but it’s so hard. His words are slurring, and it’s probably not a great idea to fall asleep, but he doesn’t think he’s going to have a choice in a moment. “You were wonderful, blueberry. Du warst perfekt.”

His eyes slide closed, and he passes out to the feel of Jester’s hands warm on his face.

#analisegrey fics #februwhump #Critical Role season 2 #caleb widogast #jester lavorre #whump #Caleb whump #protective!Caleb

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years ago

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New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: REWIND REVIEW: The Lion King

(Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures via wdsmediafile.com)

For an occasional new segment, Every Movie Has a Lesson will cover upcoming home media releases combining an “overdue” or “rewind” film review, complete with life lessons, and an unboxed look at special features.

THE LION KING

Anyone who seeks to own this version of The Lion King is doing so with a “how did they do that?” curiosity. The technical brilliance is its biggest selling point. That interest is answered very well by this disc release. Unlike its Pixar and Marvel offerings, Disney compiled a legitimate look into this re-imaginings wholly revolutionary bells and whistles. This movie will look gorgeous on your high-end television at home.

ANTICIPATORY SET AND PRIOR KNOWLEDGE:

Jon Favreau’s The Lion King stands as the biggest test to all of that progress and the attached criticism because of how little beyond the pristinely pixelated exterior is actually “reimagined.” So incredibly and, dare I say, unnecessarily much is nearly a shot-for-shot duplication of Disney’s most popular and most successful film of their Renaissance era. Duplicated enjoyment may have been the goal, but that makes one question a tangible purpose for truly needing any such update. Luckily, the shininess, so to speak, is an undeniably impressive and redeeming feature to a lack of implemented originality.

With around thirty minutes of extra marination here and there simplified by screenwriter and former steady Brett Ratner and Steven Spielberg collaborator Jeff Nathanson, the well-worn tale of The Lion King, with all of its hefty Shakespearean elements, is retold for a new generation. The habitat-sustaining balance of predator and prey on Pride Rock and the coming-of-age journey of an impatient young lion cub named Simba are derailed by the tragic death of his kingly father Mufasa (James Earl Jones). The pourer of snake oil and the engineer of this tragic royal coup is Mufasa’s rebuffed and cerebral younger brother Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his enlisted army of hyenas. Shamed to believing his idolized father’s death was his fault, Simba leaves the savanna and grows into an adult (Donald Glover) in a lush jungle far away under the practical tutelage and scrappy friendship of a meerkat named Timon (Billy Eichner) and a warthog named Pumbaa (Seth Rogen). When his former betrothed lioness (Beyonce Knowles-Carter) and a spiritual soothsaying baboon (John Kani) from his past discover Simba is alive, they urge him to return home and claim his birthright.

LESSON #1: KIDS, LET’S LEARN ABOUT FOOD CHAINS AND FOOD WEBS — Depending on your chosen educator in the movie, Timon or Mufasa, you either have a straight line (food chain) or a grander circle (food web) to describe linked survival. It’s like the duel between facts and “fake news” only sung as an anthem to help you remember. Everything that lives will die and become the ingredients to a future living thing. We all are the products of that matter ourselves. It’s just what order you observe or place you occupy in the chain or the web.

LESSON #2: CARRY NO TROUBLE OR PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE — Just as in 1994, the catchy “Hakuna Matata” comprises your specially packaged teachable nugget for the target demographic. The Swahili phrase meaning “no trouble” or “no problems” remains good advice for moving on from past mistakes and perceived failures with an attitude change to focus on the present and future.

MY TAKE:

The opening line of my review for Aladdin read “It is becoming increasingly tedious to both critique and enjoy these Disney “re-imaginings.” That hasn’t changed. Go back before that with Dumbo and I said “Audiences constantly question the values of duplicated enjoyment or tangible purpose for needing anything new and shiny made from something that worked just that way it was intended decades ago.” That hasn’t changed either. Now, when I go back two years to Beauty and the Beast and read my words of “Let them be different, whether that’s better or worse, because they are different. View them separately and independently. Judge them separately and independently,” I see where the situations have changed for me and for this line of movies. I can’t do that anymore.

It is the present entertainment landscape and the future dividends that have powered this 2019 presentation to an immense level of anticipation. There is no disputing this movie’s immediate and constant wow factor as a stunning visual and technical spectacle. The photo-real animation of The Moving Picture Company supervised by three-time Oscar winner Robert Logato, fellow Jungle Book Oscar winner Adam Valdez, and promoted top supervisor Elliot Newman add divine ethereal layers and qualities to every corner of Caleb Deschanel’s laboratory cinematography, right down to the wind, bugs, hair, and dust. The conjured natural beauty and animal physicality is easily some of the best-looking CGI work Disney has ever attempted of film.

The trade-off with the hyper-detailed realism is the loss of engaging and exaggerated personification of characters and performances from traditional hand-drawn animation. This happened for The Jungle Book as well. Nearly all of the expressive eyes, mouths, and other emotional facial features are flattened and reduced by limits of physiological accuracy. Cartoons, more often than not, will always do that better. It shows here and it is showmanship that is dearly missed.

Stellar voice work would supersede that weakness. However, this update lacks a standout showy performance, even with a “let’s do this” and “I got this” modern attitude sprinkled throughout the diverse casting. Now 88, the returning Jones has lost little timbre, but counts as another ingredient of replication rather than an opportunity for newness. Ejiofor is a less oily Scar than Jeremy Irons and his calculated line deliveries of sinister intent and ruthless edge are underplayed and too calm to a degree. Glover and Knowles feel like they are reading more than emoting and hitting high drama. The most zeal, naturally, comes from the characters with the most personality. The chicanery of Eichner and Rogen charms to embezzle each episode of their participation.

What gave 1994’s The Lion King its lasting importance is the trait of majesty. In my eyes, that always came from the music as much as, if not more than, the characters themselves. The songs composed by the famed Elton John with lyrics by Disney hitmaker Tim Rice brought magnetic appeal. Hans Zimmer’s percussive and choral musical score, which stands as his only Oscar-winning work to date, elevated the entire movie’s powerful presence for show-stopping impact. That memorable music, recomposed and reworked by all three men with the infusion and addition of Beyonce, is the smartest and, in the end, the most essential anchoring element of this carryover. That vital strength is successfully retained rather than lost. Now, the musical majesty has a matching and radiant visual one primed to stir both new and old amazement.

LESSON #3: BE A GIVING KING — The generosity of a ruler’s wisdom and actions gain more fealty among their subjects than any fear or oppressive control. Mufasa and Simba earned that loyalty. The other animals in their organic orb of influence genuflect in respect. Can the same effect be evoked from the watching audiences of Jon Favreau’s new achievement as they gain or lose trust in Disney’s reputation with these second comings? The regal resonance of this parable wins. No matter if the version of The Lion King being shown is sketched or coded, we too may bow to the grand splendor on display.

3 STARS

EXTRA CREDIT:

The centerpiece of this home media edition is 53-minute “The Journey to The Lion King.” The presentation is divided into three chapters with director Jon Favreau’s ever-present finger in every pie. This feature easily bests the miniature 5-15 minute attempts of its peers. Even the so-so fans for this remake will find creativity to be impressed by in the production process for this movie.

The first segment is a 13-minute portion documenting the return of composer extraordinaire Hans Zimmer to the project that earned his only Oscar so far in his illustrious career. With a second crack at The Lion King, Zimmer brought increases of drums and vocal force to the familiar. Hearing Zimmer speak on his creative process and goals is fascinating. To have him and Elton John return to curate the score and songs was a coup for the studio and filmmakers.

The middle segment is the best and is subtitled “The Magic.” Here is where we see the extensive shooting process, led by six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. The DP, the effects vendor MPC, and Favreau documented their “virtual camera” process. Ben Grossman of MPC built game engine technology where VR headsets rehearse and chart possible camera movements. Those shots are merged with the settings created by Andrew Jones and his animation team from the original animatic storyboards. All involved really go out of their way to explain this very new technique and the conversations are very insightful.

To see more of this outside of “The Journey to The Lion King,” viewers can peruse the “More to Be Scene” selections. Three of the major vocal set pieces (“Circle of Life,” “I Just Can’t Wait to be King,” and “Hakuna Matata”) are presented with side-by-side screen shifts of the four visual layers. Starting with the storyboards and animation to the virtual camera shooting and final finished product, the progression is amazing to see.

Last of the three chapters, “Timeless Tale” brings forward the diverse voice talents of these animal characters and personas. Favreau leads here to explain and defend how this cast of new performers were chosen. They, in turn, excitedly explain their connection to it all. Many grew up as ardent lovers of the original and feel the Favreau opportunity is dream fulfillment and a large honor. The smiles are shared by all around.

Jon Favreau’s feature commentary takes all of this and goes even further with scene-by-scene breakdowns. His complementary insights often emphasize the documentary and photo-realistic goals and desires of the movie and all those working on it. The goal from the beginning was less anthropomorphic emotion to avoid cartooning, which addresses the contention of many for the lack of facial expressions. Emulation came first, right down to the shot creations. According to the director, the more iconic the scene, the more the filmmakers adhered to the known memories without tinkering. Changes were easier to make elsewhere.

After that, the other bonus features are pretty short and simple. Entertainment is the chief goal where the movie itself can be played straight or as a sing-along version. For those who want to cut straight to the ditties, there is a Song Selection feature to pick any of the eight lyricized song scenes. Music video inclusions are given to the two new original song additions, “Spirit” by Beyonce and “Never Too Late” by Elton John. Expect one of those to get an Oscar nomination slot come the winter awards season.

The final minor bit is “Protect the Pride.” It is a tidy 3-minute PSA on lions highlighting the beneficial Lion Recovery Fund efforts supported with a bucks from Disney’s fat checkbook. The organization’s goal with this partnership is to double the formerly endangered lion population in the wild by 2050. Helpful and harmless, it represents a positive message and kissed ring at the same time.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#833)

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