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shmaptainwrites · 3 years ago

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Episode 4: Hotchner Spousal Support

Pairings: Aaron Hotchner x fem!Reader, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau x Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan x Penelope Garcia

Characters: Aaron Hotchner, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau, Penelope Garcia, Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan, the kids (briefly)

Summary: After some sleuthing, JJ has some important information to bring to her dad and sister about all three of their spouses

Warnings: implied sex, mentions of sex

A/N: Here it is! Episode 4! I haven't started 5 yet so I can't guarantee it'll be out next week but it is planned :) Also, ignore that this is early because I have an exam today and no patience to deal with screwy tags

- Episode Directory -

Emily: So are we still on for lunch today?

Derek: Kids are at school, wife is at work, I’m good as gold

You: Perfect! I just have to come up with an excuse and tell Aaron. Same place as usual?

Derek: You know it mama

Emily: See you guys there!

“Who are you texting?” Aaron asked, trying to peek over your shoulder before you hid your phone screen.

“Just an old work friend,” you lied. “But I was just going to head out and do some window shopping, do you need anything?”

“No, I think I’m all good,” he nodded.

“Alright, I’ll see you later,” you smiled and pecked his lips before hopping out of your chair and making your way to the grange with your keys and purse in hand. “And you know, I think Penny and JJ are on their lunch breaks soon, maybe you guys should go grab a coffee or something,”

“That’s not a bad idea actually,” Aaron hummed and you smiled at him before giving him a final wave goodbye.

When you arrived at the restaurant, Emily and Derek were already sitting at a table and waiting for you and you let the hostess know you were a part of their group before she led you to the table.

“And yet another successful escape,” Emily grinned. “It’s been a while since we’ve done this,”

“I know right,” you nodded with a chuckle. “So any news? New problems?”

“Well, Penelope’s newest kick has been making rules but then making me enforce them,” Derek explained. “I’m not entirely sure how she can be a teacher if she can’t be the bad guy every once in a while,”

“You know JJ’s a little similar,” Emily noted. “With Noah, she’ll say one thing then break her own rule the very next minute,”

“Other than that it hasn’t really been that bad,” Derek shrugged. “I wanna say I can’t complain, but clearly I can,”

“Don’t feel guilty about it,” you waved your hand. “That’s the whole point of these lunches, sometimes we just need to vent you know? We love them but life as a Hotchner spouse?”

“It’s tough work,” Emily nodded and you all agreed. “What about you (Y/N)? Any trouble in paradise recently?”

“You guys know recently Aaron took a bit of a vacation to spend some time with the kids right,”

Emily and Derek nodded while you sighed just thinking about what you were going to share.

“Well, when Aaron can’t be in a courtroom regularly he brings the courtroom home,”

“Oh no,” Emily shook her head.

“Oh yes,” you nodded. “Just yesterday when someone finished all the expensive soft cheese he bought he sat me and both of the kids in the living room and grilled us like we were on the stand. Turns out Dave ate it when he came by for a visit after Aaron offered it to him. Sometimes he has the memory of a goldfish,”

“You did marry the oldest one, not too sure what you were expecting on that front,”

“I know, me too,”

A waiter had since come to your table and recognizing you, passed around some more informal greetings.

“So what can I get you all today?”

“Just the usual for me without the drink,” you nodded.

“Same from me and Derek but with the drinks,” Emily chuckled and he nodded, scribbling down the instructions in his notebook before running off to the kitchen.

—

“Hey dad,” JJ smiled as she entered the coffee shop, giving Aaron a hug and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“Hi honey, you look particularly motivated today,” he chuckled, noticing that fire in her eyes she would get when she was onto something.

“I am, but I want to wait for Penelope to get here before I tell you guys,”

Aaron nods his head and instead passes her the drink he ordered for her.

“How did you know I wanted this?” she asked surprised after taking a sip.

“Call it father’s intuition,”

“Hello, hello, I’m here!” there was a cheery greeting after the bell of the shop rang and Penelope hopped over to the table her sister and dad were sitting at, giving JJ a hug and a kiss on the cheek before doing the same for Aaron and sitting down.

“This one’s for you,” Aaron handed her a mug and she grinned while taking a large sip.

“Caramel macchiato with whipped cream, cinnamon, and soy milk,”

“Okay, you can’t have just known that one,” JJ pointed out.

“No, that’s memorized, she gets it every time,” he waved his hand dismissively. “Now, what’s this thing you’re so motivated about,”

“Oh that,” JJ grinned. “Well, I have reason to believe that our spouses are secretly getting lunch together,”

“Really? What makes you say that?” Penelope asked.

“It started when Emily would say she was going out, around once a week and it was always for the same thing,”

“Which was?” Aaron raised a brow.

“It’s probably better if you don’t know. Anyways, one day I was a little lonely and I knew you and Penelope were at work so I called (Y/N) to see if she could spend time when she said she was out doing something I didn’t think much of it at first, just kind of brushed it off. Same thing when I called Derek,”

“How did you connect it then?” Penelope inquired.

“It happened again one or two more times…”

Aaron gave her a look and she elaborated.

“And I turned on the location tracking features on their phones and it says they’re all sitting at a restaurant right now,”

Penelope gasped and Aaron looked slightly surprised.

“Why in the world are they getting secret lunches without us?” Penelope asked, clearly offended.

“I don’t know, but so took the rest of the day off work to confront them about it,”

Aaron almost face-palmed. Somehow he’d raised a detective and now she was probably going to go full-prosecutor on all three of their spouses.

“Well I’m coming too!” Penelope said emphatically. “I’ll just call and say a family emergency came up,”

While she did that JJ looked over at Aaron.

“So are you in?” she asked and Aaron nodded with a small sigh, he knew there would still be no way to escape it so might as well join the bandwagon.

—

When you, Derek, and Emily entered your home you did not expect to see Penelope, JJ, and Aaron all lined up in front of the door.

“Guys,” you started carefully, “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on with us?” JJ asked. “I think the real question is, what’s going on with you guys?”

“Yeah! Why have you been getting lunch without us!? And in secret!” Penelope added.

The three of you looked wide-eyed at each other before looking back at your loved ones.

“Go on,” Aaron pressed. “What’s the big secret?”

“There is no big secret,” Derek tried to cover for you all. “We just like to get lunch alone every once in a while,”

“No there’s gotta be a reason,” JJ shook her head, unwilling to accept what he had said.

Emily simply sighed and threw her hands up in the air.

“Fine, you really want to know why we eat together?”

“Emily!” you exclaimed and tried to cover her mouth but she was too quick.

“We do it so we can complain about you guys to each other,”

“You what?!” Penelope looked so betrayed as she placed a hand over her heart and Derek was quick to rush over to her and soften the blow. “Chocolate thunder, why don’t you love me,” she bawled, not even attempting to hide the tears.

“Baby girl, no, no it’s not like that, I love you, so so much,” he assured her.

“Then what the hell do you have to complain about?!”

“Well, you guys are Hotchners, you know,” he shrugged. “Sometimes you can be…”

“Can be what?”

“Controlling,” he finished and Penelope gasped again, slapping Derek multiple times in the arm.

“I am not controlling! I just need everything to go the way I planned otherwise it’s ruined!”

“Ow! Ow! Baby girl, watch it! The rings!”

Next off JJ and Emily were staring each other down,

“You didn’t even try to hide it from me,” JJ scoffed.

“Try? JJ you tracked my phone, what was I supposed to do? Lie?” she asked and JJ rolled her eyes.

“You could have at least pretended that you weren’t going to complain about us!”

“JJ, I love you but you are really annoying sometimes! A girl needs an outlet!”

“Annoying? An outlet? Say that again to my face I dare you!”

And on your end, Aaron had completely turned away from you and you were quick to run around so you were facing him, holding his arms in place so he couldn’t move without you.

“Aaron, babe,”

He turned his face away from you so you pulled him down and kissed him, over and over and over again, not even trying to hide behind some reasoning, only apologizing for what you had been doing.

“Aaron, I love you,” you kissed him again. “It’s just you know, sometimes,” another kiss. “You can be-,” another kiss.

“Are you sure you want to go there sweetheart?” he asked you finally and you shook your head, planting your lips firmly on his, effectively shutting yourself up and kissing him long and hard even though he wasn’t kissing you back.

The arguing went on for a while longer but when the kids got home from school (it was Friday so most of the time Penelope and Derek’s kids would take the school bus with Jack and Julia and come to your place for dinner) you, Derek, and Emily sat on one side of the living room while Aaron, Penelope, and JJ sat on the other, just quietly looking at each other.

“What the hell happened here?” Peter inquired and when everyone looked over at the kids who had just entered the house, something seemed to click, for all the adults.

“Oh my God,” you started.

“Did we-,”

“Forget Noah at daycare?” JJ finished. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

She and Emily quickly put whatever grievances they had aside and rushed out to get their son while the kids piled into the living room.

“Anyone gonna answer Peter’s question?” Jack asked, but the four adults were back to being silent.

“Forget it you guys,” Tamara waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll just order pizza, I know where Papa keeps the spare cash,”

Aaron made a mental note to change the money’s hiding spot but didn’t move from his seat and neither did you.

Not even when Julia came and planted herself on your lap, trying to see if it would do any good to move your eyelids around.

“Gigi, go do this to my daddy, see if he moves,” she instructed Giselle who then ran up to Aaron’s lap and began to do the same thing and before long you both couldn’t take it anymore and Penelope and Derek gave you each a hand by pulling the girls away.

Dinner was awkward, to say the least, that night and after everyone was gone and the kids were tucked in bed, you and Aaron sat in your room, just staring straight ahead at the wall.

“I just thought, maybe you might understand,” you said. “Sometimes it’s-,”

“Hard, I know,” he assured you. “I don’t make it easy a lot of the time,”

“S-So you’re okay with it?” you asked and he nodded his head.

“Sweetheart, I’ve known about the lunches for a while,”

“Then why the hell were you shunning me!” you quietly exclaimed.

“I couldn’t be the only one not surprised,” he noted and you rolled your eyes. “Plus, the guilt sex was always amazing so-,”

You slapped him lightly on the arm and he simply chuckled and pressed a kiss to your cheek.

“One thing I don’t know is how they started,” he said. “Why did you need to make this Hotchner Spousal Support group?”

“It started when I was pregnant with Julia,” you explained, leaning into his side and bringing the memory to mind.

. . .

“Aaron, stop worrying! I’m going to call someone to come over and be with me, I promise,” you insisted.

“Are you sure? Because I don’t have to go on this trip, I can call in sick? I-I can quit-,”

“Aaron, get out of the freaking house before I lose my mind, go!”

Aaron left you with a kiss and he was finally out the door when you pulled out your phone and created a group text.

Within half an hour you, Emily, and Derek were sitting at your kitchen table, drinking tea and talking about how you were on the brink of insanity.

“Every single time I breathe he is right in front of my face asking me if I’m okay, I’m carrying a child, not jumping out of a burning building,”

“You know what helps,” Emily suggested. “Distract him, I do it with JJ when she gets hover-y, just ask him to do something for you and send him off,”

“You know what, that’s not bad Emily,” you hummed. “Has she been like that recently?”

“More like every single day since she quit her job,”

“Man, I’m sorry,” Derek patted her back. “At least you’ve got a system, things have been chaotic with us since we had the baby and I have no clue how to deal with it,”

“Come on, hit us, I’m sure it can’t be that hard,” you insisted

. . .

“So this was all my fault?” Aaron asked and you nodded.

“Kinda,”

“Well, that ought to put things into a bit of perspective,” he sighed.

“But we haven’t gotten lunch in a while,” you said. “But… I asked for this last get together,”

“Why?” Aaron frowned. “What did I do,”

“Nothing, nothing,” you shook your head, “Well, maybe not nothing, but um we don’t always talk about you guys when we have lunch,”

“Sweetheart? What’s going on?”

. . .

“Without the drink? Isn’t that half the point of lunch?” Derek asked and you chuckled.

“That’s actually why I called this little circus, we might have to start making meetings more regular again,”

“Wait, you don’t mean-,” Emily’s jaw dropped and Derek’s eyes went wide.

“No way,” Derek whispered.

“Yes way, but guys I’m pushing 40 Aaron’s not going to let me leave the house when he finds out,”

“Don’t worry, we’ll sneak you out, it’ll be like a prison break,” Emily joked and you laughed. “But seriously (Y/N), congratulations, this is amazing,”

“And you know you guys have a free babysitter whenever you need it,” Derek added. “That kid’s got a lot of people who loves them,”

“Yeah, they sure do,”

. . .

Aaron was frozen in shock.

“Y-You’re…You’re-You’re-,”

“Pregnant? Mhmm,” you grinned, your hand unconsciously resting on your stomach.

“But I thought we were… didn’t we use-,”

“Guilt sex, Aaron,” you patted his shoulder as you shared your joke. “Don’t worry it’s not like we haven’t had a little happy accident before,”

“Oh my God,” he ran a hand through his hair before turning around in the bed and looking at you. It seemed to finally be hitting him. “We’re going to have another baby,”

You nodded your head and he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into his lap where he attacked you with kisses.

“I promise I’ll be better this time,” he assured you. “I won’t hover, I won’t be overprotective,”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, honey,”

That made him laugh and he brought his hands up to gently caress your face, brushing away a few happy tears.

“Have I ever told you why I adopted Penny and JJ?” he asked and you shook your head, it was one of the stories that had slipped through the cracks. “I adopted them because I thought I was going to be alone my whole life, and I desperately wanted to be a father, to do better than my own dad. And the second they put those girls in my arms, first Penelope then three years later, JJ, I knew I was going to spend my whole life taking care of them,”

“Then you met Haley,” you smiled softly.

“Yeah, then I met Haley, and I thought I got so lucky but when she passed away, I didn’t think I was ever going to get another shot. But then you came along,” the tears were clear in his eyes and you quickly kissed them away, ignoring the salty taste. “And you gave me a second chance, you gave me Julia, and now, another little one to add to our family,”

“I love you, Aaron,”

“Sweetheart, I love you, so so much,”

You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him in for a tight hug, you couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Taglist: @hotchwhore15 @kyleehotchner @ssavanessa22 @aynanasstuff @itsmytimetodream @sophneedsfandoms @bhruna2004 @slivermercy @averyhotchner @gspenc @hxchncr @zheezs14

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talldecafcappuccino · 3 years ago

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fic writer interview

tagged by @toast-the-unknowing! Thank ya, friend!

name: ShfiftyFive (ao3), talldecafcappuccino (tumblr)

fandoms (i write for): Ted Lasso, but I've written some stuff for Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Parks and Rec, The 100, and some one shots for various fandoms.

two-shot: Home Field Advantage is the my only two shot and it's only because I wanted to give Ted's side of Rebecca visiting him in Kansas. Anytime something goes from a one-shot to something longer it usually becomes a three chapter thing because I am committed to the three act structure. (Committed, trapped by--same thing!)

most popular multi-chapter: Based on kudos and hits, it's this multi-chapter I wrote for LBD about Lizzie and Darcy's day in San Francisco. I'm not totally sure why I wrote it as a multi-chapter since it's a one day event, but I think it had to do with the way they told that story over Twitter? I believe I wrote one chapter for each social media update or something. Idk, but it remains my most read and kudo'd fic which is so wild 😂

actual worst part of writing: When the excitement of a new idea fades. Oof.

how you chose your titles: Uhh with massive panic because I hate coming up with titles. As soon as something sounds okay I just commit and try not to overthink it.

do you outline: Yes and no. Generally I'm flying by the seat of my pants and that works really well for me. It's like that Anne Lamott quoting E.L. Doctorow quote, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." But I do need to know how the story ends before I can start writing. I wrote the third chapter of Onward, Forward before I wrote the second chapter to make sure I could make it work beyond a one shot. I outlined when we were young because I had so many plot points to track. At one point I over-outlined and realized I needed to "keep some room for the unimaginable" which made it fun again (butchering that Mary Oliver quote, but the point stands).

ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: I actually don't really have any? My brain is a sieve. Literal goldfish memory. Thoughts flying in and out. I do like to have two things going at once just to remind myself that I will have other ideas in the future. That keeps me from getting too itchy.

Callouts @ me: Could you...write the rest of the fic? I swear the number of comments I've gotten that are like, "...is that really where you're ending things??" It's part me being lazy and part being raised on romcoms where it all ends with a kiss and a camera pulling away from the camera with no further resolution. It's why I keep telling people about the Ted Lasso Remix Challenge 😂Maybe that will change if I get more confident about writing smut since that's where some of those stories would be heading next...

best writing traits: Idk. I like plotting a lot and I think I can do that pretty well? Most of my English teachers told me I was a funny writer which is always an interesting comment, but I guess jokes stand out when you're reading middle/high school fiction.

spicy tangential opinion: Oh gosh. Do I have any? Um...you do you? Oh, here's just a general opinion about fic (not specific to writing it):

Don't stress over leaving comments, but if you want to see more of a thing, commenting is a great way to get more of that thing. It's not spicy, but that's just advice that I personally follow. There are things I really want to see out of some of my ships, but I can't write it. And when I see someone who is able to write it, I like to show my appreciation via comments because a) I LOVE what they wrote and b) I'm not-so-secretly hoping they're going to write more of that in the future. When I get burned out or discouraged by a particular fic, it helps to know other people are still interested and want to read more. I assume it's motivating for other writers as well!

tagging people's whose writings I've read recently: @thesumdancekid @freetobegrace @andreasbayden @chainofclovers @m-a-salter @rebeccafuckingwelton

#toast-the-unknowing #fanfic

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pedros-mustache-main · 4 years ago

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tag your mutuals as different historical time periods

this took me a very long time because i went HARD so i put it under the cut to spare you the long post.

if i forgot someone, i am very sorry; i have the memory span of a goldfish. i also went with people i know well enough to place somewhere in history forgive me

keep sending in your history questions, friends!

@deacyblues: 1920s united states (and not just because she cut her hair to look like a flapper recently). i think pearl has this effervescence about her that is really characteristic of the age. she’s incredibly positive, despite what’s going on in the world around her. the 20′s sucked in the u.s. (the great depression being first and foremost a bummer) and they suck again 100 years later. but pearl’s got that joy and positivity that was typified by the flapper, so good on her! can’t relate!

@almightygwil: 1880s united states. you cannot tell me that ellie isn’t anything other than a farmer’s wife in the wild west at the turn of the century. first, she has the hair for it. second, she wants kids more than anything. third, i’m about 95% certain she gives the best hugs. those are the only qualifications for being the caroline ingalls of my heart.

@six-bloodyminutes: this is wildly specific but late imperial russia. mo is simultaneously in your face (in a good way!) but also mysterious. russia around the turn of the century and at the beginning of the great war is much the same. like, i feel like i know mo? but then she’ll say something and i’m like ???? and i have to process it for a hot second. (like the other night when her dorm room almost caught on fire and she was surprisingly chill about it?) at the turn of the century russia is trying to catch up with the modernization of the west but also trying to hold onto its own unique roots while also trying to gain more ground. russia just popped out of nowhere and surprised people, and i feel like mo does the same—only in a more positive light.

@archaicmusings: ancient greece. just hear me out on this one: not only does cal want to work with antiquity but she also really resembles the intellictual searching of that age. a lot of time of ancient greece and rome was spent just figuring out how to be a good human in society, and i think cal is an example of striving for that goodness? if that makes sense?

@ineloqueent: 17th century europe. i associate tina with the age of enlightenment. she’s incredibly smart, specifically in the area of math and science, and would have no issue hosting her own salon and debating the ideals of logic and reason long into the evening.

@joemazzmatazz: 1980s uk. literally self-explanatory. regan is too hardcore to be my friend, and i can absolutely see her f’ing sh*t up in the name of punk. if i saw her in the 80′s, i would be intimidated.

@im-an-adult-ish: 1940s united states. during wwii and until the mid-50s there was an all-american female professional baseball team, and you cannot tell me meredith wouldn’t have been on that team. also: the era is a very hearty one. because of the war and then the start of the korean war literally right after wwii, i think people during that era were incredibly tough. meredith seems tough to me (in a good way!).

@hijackmy-heart: honestly to be honest, when i think of nat i think of female pirates. i can’t explain it. there’s no set date for this because the few known female pirates spanned several hundred years, but if i had to pinpoint a date i’d say early 1800s. i think i think of women like cheng i sao and anne bonny when i think of nat because nat is not to be underestimated. like she could cut a bitch and smile while doing it—and i love that.

@kiwi-hardy: 1990s uk. i associate leah and regan with the roughly same era, but different contexts. while regan screams more pop punk to me, leah radiates the setting/era of “derby girls” and i chalk that up to her meme usage.

whew that was a lot!

#history rambles with jess and friends #mutuals tag game

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louhearted · 5 years ago

Note

Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did? and What do you wish for others for the coming year?

41. Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did?

oh oooh that’s a good one. i... don’t think so? but i just generally have problems with seeing myself as like.... a constant thing? like.... finding concrete changes in my personality? impossible when you have the memory of a goldfish and don’t accept your own person as valid 89% of the time dlgknjfh i.... hm. i might take the cop out answer and say: i didn’t think therapy would impact me as much as it did? but did it change me as a person? i don’t.... know

49. What do you wish for others for the coming year?

oh so much happiness. my entire heart is set to: love laser rays and they are pointed at you, liv @styleslouis and ali @myparentsdidnotplanthis as well as vic. and you guys are just the ones i can tag on here. This wish actually goes out to everyone in my life. But I can specify a few things for a few of you.

i am wishing for my sister to finally find someone who truly loves her and whose love she can accept as well. I am wishing for .... zufriedenheit (i have to use the german term. it just fits better than any translations) for my mum, that she can look at her life and see all the positives rather than the negatives and admit to herself that she can be content with her life and her achievments. I wish for my dad to be less lonely, I wish that my roommates will find happiness and will find a way to achieve everything they’ve worked for, especially sending out love for my one roommate who has recently lost someone, i wish that the next year will treat her kindly!!, i wish that Ali will get to go to her place of choice for her erasmus year, and i wish that she will get to live her FUNKIEST life abroad!! (we will be such professionals at long distance friendships man. like.... look at us dflkgnfh) and i wish that her mum gets to have a relaxed and happy and healthy year!! i wish that you, nina, get to have a year full of strength and love and excitement. Not anything particular exciting has to happen, but just that life excites you! I wish that life fucking EMBRACES you, and gives you back all the love and wisdom you put out into the world. I wish that Liv gets to come visit me again (is that selfish?dflkgnjh liv just say thats something you also want!! dflgknjdfh) and that she gets to pet more DOGS!, I wish that people around me will find happiness and love and will be able to take a deep breath and relax! That’s what i want. Let people find PEACE.

is this too soppy? and too personal? mayhaps. i apologise if anyone mentioned here thinks it’s too weird. send me a fist emoji and i’ll edit it jdfgnldfh

End of the year meme

#asks #about me #that second question really is a tricky one because i feel like.... idk its weird to answer that #especially because yeah the easy answer is love #but that sounds so..... empty #like oh yeah no shit sherlock #everyone wants that for their loved ones #but idk i hope you (and everyone mentioned) will know what i mean dklgjndlfh #pattern pals

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hellomehlo · 6 years ago

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Get To Know Me Tag!

It me - time for me to answer some questions!

1. what is your full name?: Emily (that’s all I’m gon’ share :D) 2. what are your nicknames?: Em 3. birthday?: november 2nd 4. what is your favorite book series?: A Court of Thorns and Roses series 5. do you believe in aliens or ghosts?: ghosts kinda sorta maybe? 6. who is your favorite author?: Sarah J Maas for ever and ever 7. what is your favorite radio station?: i don’t listen to the radio ha 8. what is your favorite flavor of anything?: Mint - spearmint, peppermint anything is yummmm 9. what word would you often use to describe something great or wonderful?: noice 10. what is your current favorite song?: the entire les miserables 10th anniversary dreamcast soundtrack 11. what is your favorite word?: yeet 12. what was the last song you listened to?: Prologue from Les Mis 10th Anniversary dreamcast soundtrack 13. what tv show would you recommend for everyone to watch?: Brooklyn Nine Nine and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt 14. what is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down?: Barbie movies (don’t judge me pls) 15. do you play video games?: yes 16. what is your biggest fear?: losing someone I love 17. what is your best quality, in your opinion?: uh, I’m optimistic? 18. what is your worst quality, in your opinion?: Perfectionism. 19. do you like cats or dogs better?: Don’t make me pick (but dogs probs) 20. what’s your favorite season?: summer 21. are you in a relationship?: nope. 22. what is something you miss from your childhood?: Being little enough to sit on my dad’s shoulders 23. who is your best friend?: One girl from my dance class - we’re both huuuuge theatre nerds 24. what is your eye color?: blue 25. what is your hair color?: reddish brown 26. who is someone you love? My ma 27. who is someone you trust?: see 26 28. who is someone you think about often?: see 26 29. are you currently excited about/for something?: I get to move interstate for university in a few weeks and I’m v excited 30. what is your biggest obsession?: Musical Theatre 31. what was your favorite tv show as a child?: Hi-5 32. who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone?: My dad, I guess 33. are you superstitious?: A bit 34. do you have any unusual phobias?: what counts as unusual tho, idk probably not. Spiders are a pretty normal phobia? 35. do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it?: in front of the camera 36. what is your favorite hobby?: singin’ 37. what was the last book you read?: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare 38. what was the last movie you watched?: Moonraker - James Bond 39. what musical instruments do you play, if any?: Piano, Violin, Guitar and Voice 40. what is your favorite animal?: Llamas (duh) 41. what are your top 5 tumblr blogs that you follow?: @gerbits @allieice @darlingimmafangirl @lemonywaffles @suddenlycowplants 42. what superpower do you wish you had?: The ability to manipulate rainbows 43. when and where do you feel most at peace?: On a holiday I went on recently to Indonesia, watching the sun set on a beach 44. what makes you smile?: The Trixie and Katya Show 45. what sports do you play, if any?: I dance :) 46. what is your favorite drink?: fruit smoothies 47. when was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody?: this morning - had to remind my brother to check his phone ‘cause I went out while he was still asleep 48. are you afraid of heights?: I’m not afraid of being up high, but I’m afraid of falling 49. what is your biggest pet peeve?: PEOPLE THAT USE INCORRECT GRAMMAR 50. have you ever been to a concert?: yes 51. are you vegan/vegetarian?: I’m like...a selective vegetarian. 52. when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?: A pop star, just like Hannah Montana 53. what fictional world would you like to live in?: Either Prythian from ACoTaR, or the Overwatch universe. 54. what is something you worry about?: EVERYTHING 55. are you scared of the dark?: yes 56. do you like to sing?: I do indeedy 57. have you ever skipped school?: Never by choice - but doctors and dentists love scheduling appointments in the middle of the school day grr grr 58. what is your favorite place on the planet?: in a theatre 59. where would you like to live?: Melbourne, or LA (I know it sounds cliche, but like kinda) 60. do you have any pets?: I used to have a fat goldfish but he died, aged 11 years old ;-; 61. are you more of an early bird or night owl?: night owl 62. do you like sunrises or sunsets better?: sunset 63. do you know how to drive?: Well I can legally and physically drive a car, but uh - I’ve been too busy in life to take my test, so I guess I’ll be on my Learner’s forever -_- 64. do you prefer earbuds or headphones?: depends on my mood 65. have you ever had braces?: yeaaaah, back in middle school 66. what is your favorite genre of music?: MUSICAL THEATRE 67. who is your hero?: my mum 68. do you read comic books?: no 69. what makes you the most angry?: PEOPLE USING BAD GRAMMAR 70. do you prefer to read on an electronic device or a real book?: real book 71. what is your favorite subject in school?: music, or the school musical 72. do you have any siblings?: yeh, one younger brother 73. what was the last thing you bought?: Online: a phone case that says ‘oh honey’ on the back (Trixie Mattel where u @ gurlllll) IRL: Oats 74. how tall are you?: 5′7 75. can you cook?: not to save my life, but I need to learn before i move away fml 76. what are three things that you love?: musical theatre, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Overwatch 77. what are three things that you hate?: stress, homophobia, the fact that they cancelled Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt after 4 seasons ;-; 78. do you have more female friends or male friends?: female 79. what is your sexual orientation?: straight/heterosexual 80. where do you currently live?: Australiaaaaaa 81. who was the last person you texted?: My group of theatre nerd friends 82. when was the last night you cried?: like a week ago when I went to a production of Les Mis starring heaps of my friends and I was so proud I cried 83. who is your favorite youtuber?: vixella/heyimbee 84. do you like to take selfies?: yeah! 85. what is your favorite app?: snapchat, youtube or netflix, can’t pick. 86. what is your relationship with your parent(s) like?: my mom is the best, and so is my dad! 87. what is your favorite foreign accent?: American, but that’s cause I have to use one for just about every musical I’m in 88. what is a place that you’ve never been to, but want to visit?: HARRY POTTER WORLD IN LA 89. what is your favorite number?: 8 90. can you juggle?: kinda, but not well enough to brag 91. are you religious?: idk at this point, kinda but not fully idk 92. do you find outer space or the deep ocean to be more interesting?: ocean - space scares me 93. do you consider yourself to be a daredevil?: fuck no 94. are you allergic to anything?: dust 95. can you curl your tongue?: mhm! 96. can you wiggle your ears?: no 97. how often do you admit that you were wrong about something?: I should more often than I do 98. do you prefer the forest or beach?: beach 99. what is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?: You do you, girl. 100. are you a good liar?: I think I am, but my friends disagree 101. what is your hogwarts house?: Ravenclaw 102. do you talk to yourself?: yep 103. are you an introvert or extrovert?: ambivert 104. do you keep a journal/diary?: i’ve had one since I was 7, but I only write in it like once every 2 years 105. do you believe in second chances?: depends 106. if you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do?: turn it in 107. do you believe people are capable of change?: yes 108. are you ticklish?: absolutely, but don’t do it 109. have you ever been on a plane?: yeah 110. do you have any piercings?: my ears are pierced 111. what fictional character do you wish was real?: RHYSAND FROM ACOTAR, GIMME GIMME 112. do you have any tattoos?: no, and don’t plan on getting any 113. what is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far?: moving dance schools 114. do you believe in karma?: yes 115. do you wear glasses/contacts?: no 116. do you want children?: haven’t decided, probably tho 117. who is the smartest person you know?: my teachers 118. what is your most embarrassing memory?: tripping up the stairs onto a stage on my way to receive an award 119. have you ever pulled an all-nighter?: no 120. what color are most of your clothes?: navy blue, burgundy, black 121. do you like adventures?: sometimes 122. have you ever been on tv?: i’ve appeared on the news in advertisments for musicals I’m in, but I’ve never been interviewed ;-; 123. how old are you?: 18 124. what is your favorite quote?: “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times...you’re a fucking idiot, change off widowmaker, I don’t wanna be sniped anymore.” - Muselk 125. do you prefer sweet or savory foods?: savoury

#non sims #hoooo boy this took me so long #enjoy

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sumigakure · 7 years ago

Text

Well Then

To: @arrowsbane

From: @pwnie3

Title: Well Then

Rating: M

Wordcount: 8520

Prompt: In an AU where Orochimaru never took Danzo up on his offer for labs, Sarutobi dumps a trio of genetically-altered brats on him and hands him a ‘Teaching for Dummies’ book, which is not appreciated. Turns out, Orochimaru is pretty good with kids, but thinks he isn’t. Nobody else is buying that lie though.

Warning/Notes: I never thought I would have to tag a six-year-old for suicidal ideation but here I am. Friendly reminder that I love Kakashi and I wish my fingers didn’t know how to type independent of my will.

“Think about it,” Danzo says, then shunshins out of Orochimaru’s front garden.

The old man’s offer is tempting. A set of labs all to himself, all materials provided, not on paper anywhere. Sarutobi, ever Orochimaru’s moral compass in the absence of Jiraiya and Tsunade, has vetoed almost all of his ideas without even reading the full hypothesis. And he knows as well as Orochimaru does that if he had labs and materials, he would go ahead with his projects whether the Hokage gave him permission or not.

It’s one of the things Sakumo always said was the mark of a good shinobi– not following unjust orders, although he probably didn’t mean it to be used quite in this context.

Orochimaru traces the snake curled around his neck absently and his eyes remain fixed on the wall just to the side of where Danzo had been when he made the proposal two weeks ago. Sakumo, now three months dead by his own foolish, selfish hand, wouldn’t approve of this. Orochimaru may not know Danzo very well personally, but he knows enough about the man to figure out that the kind of experiments Danzo wants him to do won’t be the experiments Sakumo could be proud of.

When did this happen? When did he stop thinking in terms of what benefitted him and start using Sakumo’s approval as a benchmark for right and wrong?

There’s a knock on the door. Orochimaru snaps back to reality and gently reaches out with his chakra. He’s no sensor, he can’t track someone’s chakra footprint a hundred miles, but he can recognize a familiar signature ten feet away.

“Oro?” Kakashi’s voice is muffled, both by the door and his scarf. “You home?”

In a flash, Orochimaru opens the door. Kakashi is there, and judging by his clothes it’s a hot morning. His short sleeves show off the tattoos on his arms, and what’s visible of his face is flushed. Orochimaru makes a note to buy something thinner so Kakashi doesn’t pass out from the heat.

The boy doesn’t tell Orochimaru where he wants to go, but it’s easy enough to guess. Where else would he want to go with Orochimaru than Sakumo’s grave?

The majority of their walk to the cemetery is silent, punctuated only by a brief stop at a flower stand. Orochimaru picks spider lilies. Kakashi picks asters.

It is, perhaps, too late for Orochimaru to remember how terrible he is with children. When Sakumo was alive, it was easy to think of Kakashi as a small, grumpy version of his father, but with the man gone all Orochimaru can see is the five-year-old who’s lost his father.

Orochimaru clears his throat and hopes it doesn’t sound as awkward as he thinks it does. “How have you been, Kakashi?” It takes all of his willpower not to call him ‘Cub’, seeing as how, along with many other things in Kakashi’s life, the nickname likely died with Sakumo.

Kakashi makes a quiet noise. Orochimaru assumes it means something along the lines of ‘I’ve been okay’, as that has always been his answer to the question.

“How is your aunt?” Ah yes, the fifteen-year-old aunt Kakashi has been living with because Orochimaru doesn’t trust himself around children. “Is her team doing well?”

Kakashi grunts. “I guess. I think Mikoto is engaged now, but I’m not sure anyone else is supposed to know about that.”

With a faint sound of acknowledgement, Orochimaru files the information away. He can’t think of any occasion where the marital arrangements of the Uchiha clan will ever be of use, but intel is intel.

Just as the pair is about to enter the graveyard, there’s a shout from behind them. “Hey, Orochimaru!”

“That’s the guy Auntie has a crush on,” Kakashi supplies, murmuring. “Minato.”

Minato comes to a stop a respectful distance from Orochimaru. He pants a little from the exertion of, presumably, running around doing D-ranks all day. “Lord Sarutobi wants to talk to you.”

Orochimaru looks back at Kakashi, who’s eyeing Minato with something like scrutiny. “Is it urgent?” he asks like he doesn’t already know the answer.

Minato nods. Orochimaru is disappointed, no, angry. Angry at himself for not being able to put aside even this small amount of time for the boy who, for all his ineptitude, he loves with every ounce of his being.

Another glance at Kakashi. The boy shrugs. “It’s okay, Oro. I’ll be fine.”

He lays the bouquet of lilies in Kakashi’s arms with the asters. As Orochimaru is walking away, he hisses quietly at Minato. “If you wish to remain in Kushina’s good graces, you’ll keep an eye on Kakashi.”

Minato, who is most certainly recognizable as the ‘pretty boy’ Kushina referred to him as the last time Orochimaru found time to sit down with her, stands stock-straight and meets Orochimaru’s gaze– but only for a moment. Still, it’s better than most people manage. “Of course, Lord Yashagoro!” Then he runs over to walk behind Kakashi.

It takes little more than two minutes to get to the Hokage’s office, and inside Sarutobi has the audacity to be leaning back behind his desk and puffing on his pipe like he didn’t just take away precious time to be spent with the last part of Sakumo Orochimaru has.

Orochimaru stands in front of his old teacher and waits. After a few seconds, Sarutobi opens his eyes and sits up. “Ah, Orochimaru. I didn’t expect you here so soon. I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything?”

It’s been a long time since he wanted to punch something, as it’s never been his strong point, but in this moment there’s nothing he wants more than to break Sarutobi’s nose. Besides, why else would he have come in through the window, if not because he was annoyed? Even if it’s not Orochimaru’s preferred method of entry, it does happen to be one of Sarutobi’s biggest pet peeves.

“Of course not, sensei. Your messenger told me it was urgent?” Orochimaru asks, hiding his anger behind a thin smile.

“Not nearly as urgent as Minato made it out to be, but it is somewhat time sensitive.” Sarutobi pushes a file across his desk. “These are your new orders, effective tomorrow.”

Orochimaru takes the file and opens it, expecting some kind of long-term information gathering mission having to with the war effort, and his eyes widen when the papers enclosed are the ones given out to prospective jounin teachers.

“Sensei, is this–”

“I am not mistaken. That is the correct file. I am assigning three children to your tutelage and, if you’ll be willing, your care.”

The assignment hits Orochimaru like a fist to the face. “I’m not sure if you recall, sensei, but while I have many and impressive talents, handling children is not one of them.”

Sarutobi smiles. “Orochimaru, believe me when I tell you that you are uniquely suited to this team over any other mission I could offer you. Do you recall the organization Root?”

Why yes, in fact your long-time friend recently offered me a very nice position within that very organization. “Yes. You disbanded it when you took office.”

The smoke from Sarutobi’s pipe circles the ceiling. “We discovered Root to very much be alive and kicking last week, under the coordination of Danzo Shimura. After a raid on their various locations, we found four children in a lab there. One killed himself when we tried to remove him from the laboratory, but the other three are currently in rehabilitation in the hospital. They are being entrusted to you, as several experts have assured me that putting them into the Academy would be counterproductive.”

Briefly skimming the mission file, Orochimaru finds it giving him that exact information under about five more layers of official jargon and emotionlessness than Sarutobi normally uses during these briefings.

“Until further notice, you will be off the active duty roster. Your first and foremost priority is acclimatizing these children to life outside of a laboratory.” Orochimaru nods along with Sarutobi as he translates the purple prose of the file. “Oh, and you’ll probably need this.”

Without thinking, Orochimaru takes the thing his teacher passes him and when he looks at the title, in a move he must have learned from Sakumo because he’d never done it before they started dating, he absolutely bristles with fury.

Well, if there was one thing being best friends with Jiraiya has taught Orochimaru, it’s self-control, and it happens to take every last ounce of that carefully-honed control not to put Teaching for Dummies through Sarutobi’s skull.

Sarutobi, for all his old man-ish airs, is no fool and does not have the memory of a goldfish, so he must recognize the calm detachment in Orochimaru’s face as the kind of thing he used to wear just before Jiraiya became best friends with the business end of Kusanagi.

“Meet me back here tomorrow at eight. You are dismissed.”

Kakashi is already out with his team by the time Sarutobi releases Orochimaru to his own devices– Kakashi’s fourth team in as many months, if Orochimaru’s impeccable memory serves him correctly– so he returns to the graveyard alone.

As much as he loves the boy, Orochimaru is glad to have the opportunity to visit Sakumo’s grave alone, and something tells him that maybe Kakashi feels the same. The grass is pressed down tight against the ground in front of Sakumo’s uniform headstone, and a few yards back there’s another spot where the ground is just as disturbed. The flowers have been rested carefully below the deep lines that form Sakumo’s name.

Orochimaru sinks to his knees fluidly. “I had an important meeting yesterday. I wore the blue yukata, the one you always said compliments my eyes.”

It’s a common enough practice for shinobi to talk to their dead loved ones, even if not quite the healthiest. Any passing civilian won’t question Orochimaru talking to the departed quite as much as they’ll question his choice of Sakumo Hatake, and it’s not the kind of thing any coincidentally present ANBU will feel the need to report.

But Orochimaru’s reluctantly-assigned Yamanaka psychiatrist says it’s a good way to grieve (and while she doesn’t outright say ‘I know you’re still mourning the absence of Jiraiya and Tsunade’, he hears it all the same) and he knows that ANBU Panther has been told under no uncertain terms that he’s to make sure Orochimaru talks to Sakumo a little bit. Though as with all things unfamiliar, the Snake Sannin takes to it with a fair bit of caution.

“Sarutobi has assigned me a group of children to train.” He shakes his head. “I suppose my only relief in this is that Jiraiya isn’t here to see it.” A pause, the kind he used to leave for Sakumo to say his piece. “It’s summer now, he’s been gone nearly nine months.”

Orochimaru has never believed that the dead linger, but when he closes his eyes he’s willing to pretend the wind playing with his hair is a tanned, scarred, calloused hand with the most gentle touch in the world.

He stands and brushes a few blades of grass from his clothing. He walks home in silence.

When Orochimaru sits down in his kitchen with a cup of tea in hand, he finally looks over the file Sarutobi gave him.

The first student, Akira Senju, age eleven, was kidnapped when small and her eyes were replaced with a set of stolen Sharingan. She was then pumped full of bijuu chakra siphoned off Lady Mito Uzumaki to see if the Sharingan could control bijuu as easily from within as well as without.

Orochimaru’s second pupil, Akane Uchiha, age twelve, is a half Inuzuka who was tattooed with some beautifully– the report on her doesn’t say it quite like that, but art is art no matter the canvas– elaborate seals that, according to the file, give her the ability to use the Mokuton.

The final child is Hikaru, age eight, was grown in a surrogate, and is the finest example of what happens when an Uchiha member of Root and a Senju member of Root both give over DNA for identification purposes and the DNA is instead used to make a baby. Heavily tested, very intelligent, not very emotionally stable, the boy is implied to be the “problem child” of the three.

Orochimaru puts down the file. From what he can tell, both the people giving the order and the researchers who worked on these children were clumsy. It seems like multiple, independent projects were being run of each child without regard for how the effects of the other experiments would skew their results. What’s Tsunade’s favorite saying? Too many cooks in the kitchen?

What’s done though, is done, and Orochimaru can’t do a thing to remedy the errors of fools. He stands from his chair.

The house is older than even Orochimaru’s parents, and it takes ridiculous effort to keep it in good condition, but if it has anything going for it then it has to be its sheer size. The Yashagoro clan has never been large, definitely not large enough to warrant a house so big, and for the last twenty years Orochimaru has lived here alone. He has no wandering relatives who drop in on a whim to see how well he’s grown up, no drunk friends taking over his house at ungodly hours, no quiet bedmates who wake him up with fluttering kisses and a laugh like rolling thunder. Not anymore.

There are spare futons tucked away in a closet, and while it’s hardly the kind of thing his mother would approve of using his abilities for, Orochimaru is pressed for time and hardly hesitates in using– this is the kind of play on words both his father and Jiraiya would find amusing– a fuuton jutsu to air out the bedding. Perhaps, if Sarutobi doesn’t come to his senses and reassign the children, Orochimaru will find sturdier, more permanent bedframes for them.

He doesn’t sleep. Instead, he wanders the many halls of the house and tries to memorize the silence, the solitude, the way this is the one place where he lets his footsteps echo into the night. He listens for the faint memory of his father’s laugh, his mother’s admonishments, and his old grandmother’s refusal to avoid the nightingale floors when she wandered in the middle of the night.

He wonders if these children will know any better.

Orochimaru shows up early to his old teacher’s office, and is not disappointed. Sarutobi is already waiting for him, sharing a cup of tea with three children who probably shouldn’t be as small as they are.

“Ah, Orochimaru!” Sarutobi exclaims. The three children turn around sharply, even the tiny little boy.

The files hadn’t included photographs. There hadn’t been time to get the photographer out to see them, nor would he have had clearance to do so if he’d tried. But aside from the activated Sharingan, the extensive tattoos, and the multitude of poorly-hidden scars, the children don’t look like anything special. The Senju girl looks like how he would expect a little Senju girl to look. The Uchiha-Inuzuka girl looks like how he would expect an Uchiha-Inuzuka to look. The Senju-Uchiha boy looks like how he would expect a Senju-Uchiha to look.

This is good, he thinks. The tattoos and scars are normal enough, not the kind of thing most people would glance twice at. The Sharingan will be easily hidden. At least they won’t have to grow up with the look of a half-dead pixie with too much purple eyeliner and a frankly unrealistically dark head of hair and all the stares that come with.

“These are your students,” Sarutobi continues. “Akira, Akane, and Hikaru. Children, this is to be your guardian.”

The half-Inuzuka girl, Akane, stands. The other two follow her lead. Though Orochimaru knows that these children have been kept apart until now, as per ANBU policy about test subjects, they have easily fallen into something like a pack formation with Akane at the head.

Orochimaru bows his head slightly, not breaking eye contact with Akane for a second. After a long pause, she does it back. Again, Akira and Hikaru follow her lead.

Sarutobi looks between the four of them and nods. “It seems my work here is done. Orochimaru, I’ll be by later with some paperwork.”

He takes this to mean that he’s been dismissed, and so Orochimaru gestures for the children to follow him. The whole way back to his house– on foot, using the not-yet-crowded streets to travel because he hardly remembers trusting himself on rooftops when he was their age and most certainly won’t put that faith in three strangers– they trail behind him at a respectful and regular distance. Though they haven’t spoken a word to each other, the three of them instinctively fell into a standard, if rough, team formation. Akira is at the center, keeping a careful eye on Orochimaru, and on either side she is flanked by Akane and Hikaru in some kind of bodyguard position.

The first two steps inside Orochimaru’s home are nightingale flooring, and while he treads lightly and with a certain kind of speed born of practice and watching snakes go across the boards silently, the children don’t know the house. As soon as Hikaru hears the first tremulous chirp of the floorboards, he jumps back and pulls the girls with him.

“Come now. It’s just a noise the floors make. Nothing to be scared of,” Orochimaru says in what he hopes is a teasing voice. “They’re not going to hurt you any more than the grass out there will.” Though, thinking about it, the grass (or rather, what the grass hides) will actually hurt them more than the floors.

Eventually, Orochimaru gets them into the kitchen, and only then does it occur to him that he only owns one chair and his table is too small for four people. He also owns a meager set of dishes that can only hold enough food for one, maybe two people if they have appetites as small as Orochimaru and Kakashi (how old is the food in his fridge? And come to think of it, is bread supposed to be blue-grey?). Well, those bowls are probably small enough to count as cups, right?

“Perhaps,” Orochimaru starts slowly, “a trip to the market is in order.”

Orochimaru hasn’t been a child in a long time, so he doesn’t know what they like to eat. When he went out shopping with Sakumo, it always fell to Orochimaru to keep Kakashi occupied, and thus he was never really sure of what Sakumo bought for Kakashi– not to mention that Kakashi is significantly younger than Orochimaru’s students and also likely has very different preferences.

Orochimaru himself is a simple man. He buys spices when he runs out and a dozen eggs every week, ham when he can get it, and everything else comes from his mother’s garden. His parents raised him to eat what was put in front of him without complaint and that mostly carried over into his adult life.

So what do children like to eat?

“What would you like?” he asks them. All three heads jerk towards him simultaneously. “To eat.”

For a long moment, there’s silence from the three of them, but then it’s Akira who answers first. “One of the researchers in charge of me used to bring dango when I was cooperative.”

“One time someone brought me pretzels,” Akane says.

“They let me have strawberries once.” Hikaru rounds out the bunch.

The bakery sells five kinds of pretzels and strawberries are in season, and by the time the four of them make it to the dango shop Hikaru has eaten almost half the container and Orochimaru has reminded him three times that eating the strawberry hulls isn’t something people generally do.

As soon as they enter the shop– which is abuzz with people as always, seeing as how Shouta Mitarashi makes the best dango in the village and everyone knows it– the place hushes significantly. Civilians are always put off by Orochimaru’s presence no matter where he goes, and while it’s a trifling matter to be invisible in a crowded marketplace that same innocuity becomes impossible in a small, enclosed space.

Akira, Akane, and Hikaru fall into battle stance at the attention. Their shoulders square, their limbs relax, and Akane has two fingers on the kunai in her belt. Orochimaru says nothing; he just strides forward– the crowd shies away from him like he’s diseased– picks up a few boxes of sweets, and hands the money over to the owner without speaking a word.

He, and the children too, are silent the whole way home. They do not step on the nightingale floors a second time.

His three students eat their food quietly, and Orochimaru makes himself a pot of tea. When he has finished his first cup, he speaks.

“The first thing you will learn in this village is that no-one is going to be kind to you. I do not know what conditions you were in before or how they treated you there, but it will be different and worse out here. You will be feared, and that fear manifests as anger, and you may have to deal with the outlet of that anger. Strangers will hate you for no other reason than your association with me. If you wish for me to find you a different caretaker, tell me and I will do so.”

Akane crunches on another pretzel. Hikaru carefully separates the hull from the rest of his strawberry and sets it on a paper towel. Akira puts a whole skewer’s worth of dango in her mouth at once. They say nothing.

Orochimaru pours himself a second cup of tea. “Very well then,” he sighs. “It is my job to teach you how to interact with other people. I will not be lenient with your training. Starting tomorrow, you will wake at dawn and training will last until I say it stops. Do you understand?”

They nod, and if Orochimaru has the barest hint of a smile on his face, then no-one has to know.

The next morning, though waking the children by way of snake messenger was fun and he’ll never let himself forget Akira’s screams, Orochimaru faces a certain problem. After watching the children make a mess of training ground 6, he decides to pit them against each other and quickly finds that watching Akane and Akira go at it is something like how he imagines a timid Tsunade would approach Jiraiya if Jiraiya didn’t know how to control his temper and also thought he could take on Tsunade at full strength.

In short, it’s giving him a headache.

Akira has a certain kind of inhuman strength that tends to show itself in anyone with more than a drop of Uzumaki blood, and Orochimaru is quickly realizing that there’s no way she’s not at least one quarter Uzumaki– maybe it’s a byproduct of Lady Mito’s jinchuuriki chakra?– but the Senju in her negates the red hot Uzumaki blood in her.

Similarly, Akane has exactly the temper Orochimaru would expect from the offspring produced by an Uchiha and an Inuzuka and the control over her anger to match. Like most Uchiha her age she has all the musculature of a finely-carved twig, but more than enough dramatics to make up for it.

“Come on, I can take it!” Akane shouts from the proper battle stance Orochimaru just corrected her on. “Come at me already!”

Akira looks to Orochimaru with something he thinks is a question on her face. He nods minutely at her. “But…” she trails off.

The other girl makes a very loud, very frustrated noise that only reinforces Orochimaru’s belief that Jiraiya is dead and his soul now exists in the body of a twelve-year-old girl. “Come on!”

Akira flexes her hands and curls them into fists. She pulls back one arm, then throws an undercut–

Which connects just under Akane’s ribs and throws her against a tree twenty feet away. She collides with a sickening crunch which sounds suspiciously like bones breaking and it takes everything in Orochimaru’s power not to flinch at it.

Ah yes. Definitely reminiscent of Jiraiya and Tsunade’s earliest interactions.

Hikaru crunches down on a strawberry flavored biscuit stick louder than necessary and shoots Orochimaru a look he can catch out of the corner of his eye. With a sigh, Orochimaru stands and walks over to check on Akane.

She coughs, then lets out a long, painful groan. “Sensei, am I dead?” She whines.

He hums. “Not yet.”

“Can you make me dead?”

To his own surprise, Orochimaru laughs. It’s small, barely more than a chuckle, but it’s there and it surprises Akane just as much as it does Orochimaru himself. “Only if you want me to.”

For two full seconds, she’s quiet, then she reaches up with one arm and lets slip a thready “please”.

The next morning, if it can even be called that yet, Orochimaru wakes to the incessant tapping on his window. The hawk sitting on his sill has a message tied to it’s leg. He lets the bird in and takes the scroll from the leather tube, letting the hawk back out as soon as he does.

It’s a summons for tea from the Hokage. Orochimaru huffs out a breath and briefly considers whether or not he could get away with killing Sarutobi, and when he figures that now probably isn’t the best time to contemplate murder he decides to just get ready for the day. He sets out breakfast for the children– all three still asleep in their rooms– and sets one of his summons by each bedside to keep watch.

Sarutobi is waiting for him in his office with a pot of Orochimaru’s favorite tea already sitting out. It burns Orochimaru in places he can’t describe to think that after ignoring him for so long and then dumping three children even more socially stunted than Orochimaru himself, all Sarutobi can do is set out tea and play

“Ah, Orochimaru. Sit down, I’m glad–”

Orochimaru does not sit. “Spare me your pleasantries. Why have I been summoned here?”

Sarutobi sets down his cup with a sigh. “How are the children?”

“They are making progress. Considering how long I’ve had them, they’ve adjusted well, though I’m certain that they would do better under a different teacher who knows better how to deal with children. Given time, I believe they will become a strong team for almost any kind of mission.”

The Hokage nods. “Very well. If there is nothing else to discuss…” he trails off to give Orochimaru space to say something more. When he doesn’t, Sarutobi continues. “Then I believe you are dismissed.”

Orochimaru leaves.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Sarutobi looks down at the reports on his desk from Panther and Bear.

Subject’s methods are unorthodox, but effective. Advise that the team remain in his care and assign the Subject a second team upon current team’s graduation.

Subject interacts well with charges. Likely extenuating circumstances contributing to camaraderie. Advise not to assign a second team to the Subject.

Fox drops down from the rafters silently. “Sounds like he doesn’t know himself too well, huh?” she says.

Sarutobi steeples his fingers. “Perhaps it is because he knows himself too well, and it is blinding him to his own strengths.”

“Perhaps it is because he’s never had to interact with children.” Crow quips.

Goose hesitates. “…Perhaps it’s because no-one has ever trusted him with children before.”

“Sakumo did,” Fox mumbles after a moment. “Sakumo trusted him and Kakashi loves Orochimaru to death.”

“I think we can all agree that Sakumo Hatake is a special case in many respects, and his son follows closely in his footsteps,” Sarutobi says. “But in this, I too will follow Sakumo. Orochimaru is better with those children than he thinks he is.”

Crow hums, disinterested. ‘They day Orochimaru realizes that children follow him like lost puppies is the day I retire.”

Hikaru, Orochimaru finds, is like Kakashi. He rarely smiles, but when he does it’s all the more precious for it. He likes to disappear at odd hours, but can always be found napping peacefully in the grass by the Naka with empty cartons of fresh fruit stacked neatly next to his head.

Akane is happiest when curled up by a window on a rainy day. She prefers hot tea and a thick blanket and a good book over training in the cold any day, and every last one of Orochimaru’s summons agrees with her (he finds them sleeping once, in front of the fireplace and curled close under the blanket to Akane, though to protect her or for her body heat is unclear). But on the hot days where the sun is too bright to look at she can’t be pulled away from the fields for anything.

Akira is the outlier. She wants to be good, wants to be better. She has bright ambitions but hardly has the means to do so. She trains with Kakashi, who outstrips her in talent at every turn but is no match for her spirit. She is the one who asks to learn the obscure jutsus, the one who practices seals a thousand times before even trying to pump the chakra through them.

They have been in Orochimaru’s care for five months, and have not mentioned leaving once.

He finds himself stopping by the dango shop every three days, it seems, and the longer he shows up regularly the wider Mitarashi smiles at him. He has a regular order and everything. More and more, Mitarashi’s little daughter Anko– who can’t be much more than three years old, but Orochimaru’s never been good at pinpointing the ages of children– decides to talks to him about his day. In twelve years or so, she’ll be an excellent saleswoman if she doesn’t follow through with her interest in the poisonous flowers Hikaru likes to braid into Orochimaru’s hair.

It’s not just Mitarashi and his daughter that have taken a shining to Orochimaru. Vendors in the marketplace have gotten increasingly familiar with his larger purchases of meat, bread, and most importantly, fresh fruit, romance novels, and pretty yet practical clothing for a six feet tall fourteen-year-old girl.

It all comes to a head the day jounin start coming to him to ask if their teams can train together. The first one, Sabe Tachibana, is a large man, taller than Akira and twice as broad, who looks like he could crush Orochimaru’s head between two fingers if given the chance.

“My team is made up of three strong-willed boys that just graduated from the Academy on their first try,” he says. “They think they’re all that and a bag of sealing scrolls. I think they need to be put in their place before I can teach them anything, but for the life of me, I can’t get them to listen. They’ve been like this for all three weeks since graduation.”

Orochimaru smirks. “Oh, don’t worry, Tachibana. They’ll be at your beck and call before tomorrow is done.”

He pretends that he doesn’t notice the five other jounin watching the inter-team practice, where all three of Tachibana’s genin show up late while complaining loudly about the hour and not giving one whit of attention to the other team on the training field.

“Sensei, are those girls?” one of them asks, his tone about as demeaning as it can get. “I thought you said we’re gonna train with the best genin team in the village, not that you wanted to get in their teacher’s pants.”

“And we are, Koushi. This is the best genin team in the village,” Tachibana responds evenly. He doesn’t acknowledge the boy’s second statement.

Orochimaru makes sure his hair swishes as he turns to face the three boys and hopes he looks more male and less androgynous than usual today. “And I thought I was pitting my team against worthy opponents. I look forward to you trying to prove me wrong.”

Tachibana gently resumes control of the conversation. He gestures to Orochimaru. “Boys, this is Orochimaru Yashagoro. He’s got the finest first-year genin I’ve seen in a long time, so keep your guard up.”

“Don’t go too hard on them, you three. Leave at least some of their dignity intact,’ Orochimaru instructs as he turns to his team.

One of the boys scoffs. “Like we need them to. What harm can two girls and a baby do to us?”

Orochimaru sees the immediate shift in the way Akane, Akira, and Hikaru are assessing the situation.

“Sensei, are you sure we have to hold back?” Akane asks, sickeningly sweet. “I would hate for them to think we’re not giving our all.”

“Dignity is useless. All that matters is skill. If they have it, then we don’t need to go easy.” Hikaru looks up at Orochimaru. “Right, sensei?”

At Tachibana’s direction, the two teams settle themselves at opposite ends of the training field. Orochimaru’s team falls easily into battle formation and move away from each other. From his place at one edge of the field, Orochimaru can see Hikaru reaffirm his grip on the hilt of his sword, Akira flex her fists, and Akane finger a tagged kunai. Conversely, Tachibana’s boys are too relaxed and hold their kunai like toys– and they’re all only wielding kunai.

“It’s a miracle they graduated, with form like that,” Orochimaru mumbles to his fellow teacher. “What kind of test did you give them?”

“I put an apple on my head and had them throw kunai at me to get it off.”

“Were you at least moving?”

Tachibana’s flush is answer enough. He clears his throat. “You fight until incapacitation or surrender. On my mark!” he shouts, raising one hand. The instant his arm drops, the three boys are off towards Orochimaru’s stationary team.

The first one to get in range is closest to Akira. She throws a punch. The instant it connects, the boy realizes his mistake, but by then it’s too late. He flies fifty feet before he hits the ground and then skids another ten before coming to a stop.

She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Sorry!” she calls after him.

The second one thinks it’s a good idea to go after Akane, who is, admittedly, tiny for her age and looks like an easy target. But the moment he steps into a three-meter radius, he freezes in place and all Akane has to do is walk up to him and push him over.

The third is perhaps the most foolish, because under any circumstances it’s a bad idea to approach a child holding a sword, but Hikaru is especially dangerous. It takes all of a second for Hikaru to strike out with his lead hand, drawing a thin red line across his opponent’s face and sending strands of his hair fluttering to the ground. The boy’s hand shoots up to cradle his cheek, but before he can even get it high enough Hikaru drops down low and sweeps the boy’s legs out from under him.

His head meets the hard-packed earth with a crack. With that, Tachibana steps out onto the field and ends the match.

“I hope that you remember this day as the day you got your collective asses beat by two girls and a baby. Got it?” Akane sneers. “And next time you assume our teacher needs to use his team to get access to dick, I’ll make sure you won’t have to worry about yours anymore.”

Other fresh jounin teachers almost start lining up with their teams.

The childrens’ first mission is small. He gives the missions room a collective heart attack when he enters and requests a C-rank with his team in tow. They must strike quite the image, he thinks. The Hidden Leaf’s own double-edged sword, accompanied by the unholy offspring of an Uchiha and an Inuzuka, an eight-year-old who carries himself like the most weathered of jounin, and an otherwise nondescript girl with brown hair and a set of blazing Sharingan.

The terrified chuunin behind the deck passes Orochimaru an assignment for a message run to the Fire Country capital.

“We have hawks for messages,” Hikaru states, but in the month since he came into Orochimaru’s care he’s learned to read between the lines with Hikaru.

“A hawk is faster than most shinobi, that’s true. But hawks are easier to intercept than we are. If time is of the essence, the village will send a hawk. When security is valued over speed, they send shinobi,” Orochimaru says.

Two steps out of the gate, Akane trips over thin air and nearly sprains her ankle. This is the worst injury of the mission.

Orochimaru himself has been to the capital a scant few times, and the children have never left Konoha’s walls so while it’s always a treat for the Snake Sannin to see the city it’s nothing quite like the identical look of amazement that crosses all three of his charges’ faces.

The buildings in the capital are by far taller than anything in Konoha but the trees, of which there are few here. The marketplaces are more bountiful, full of all manner of things that just don’t make it to Konoha in large enough quantities– expensive teas imported from across the sea, delicate sheer fabrics that have no place in a shinobi village, household items imbued with seals that draw chakra from the environment to cook food faster or heat beds in the winter. The fresh flowers Konoha prides herself on can’t be found so easily here, replaced commonly by shining metal or fine Suna-blown glass replicas. The sturdy weapons the children know from their home are almost nonexistent, though Orochimaru does know where to get them if the need arises. Instead, tiny shops sell decorative knockoffs that won’t hold up for half a second in the field but look nice and shiny hanging on a wall.

“Can we come back someday?” Akira asks, once they’ve delivered their message and set off back to Konoha. She has three new shawls and a set of beautiful emerald jewelry in her bag, among other baubles.

“I certainly hope so!” the other girl exclaims. Akane’s found no less than five Uzushio fuuinjutsu scrolls sitting in a secondhand store and paid less than a quarter of what they’re worth.

Orochimaru smiles despite himself, looking at Hikaru. The boy is happily munching on some blackberries and has more cartons of fruit sealed away than Orochimaru cares to count.

“I don’t see why not.”

The next time Orochimaru has the opportunity to see Kakashi is on the boy’s birthday. He is six, and after the small celebration at Kushina’s apartment– complete with gifts Hikaru, Akane, and Akira had bought in the capital, because after their first meeting with the younger boy they had all become rather attached– Orochimaru takes Kakashi to visit Sakumo’s grave.

It’s not something he would ever do with his team, simply because they wouldn’t know the significance of it and he’s not in the mood to explain why his single best bonding activity with his kind of stepson is visiting Orochimaru’s ex-boyfriend’s grave.

Dust has formed on the headstone, so Orochimaru carefully brushes it away with one blessedly pale grey sleeve before setting down the bouquet he brought today. Orochimaru’s yellow camellias look nice with Kakashi’s white roses, and they look even prettier against the grey stone.

Neither one of them says anything until halfway back to Kushina and Mikoto’s apartment.

“I miss him,” Kakashi says, his voice painfully small and muffled by the mask Orochimaru just gave him. “Sometimes I wish he took me with him.”

Orochimaru’s blood runs cold. His heart stops beating for several seconds. His mouth is hanging open, and when he gathers the brainpower to realize he isn’t breathing, his next inhale shudders in his throat. Before he knows what he’s doing, Orochimaru drops to his knees and pulls the boy to him. There are tears leaking from his face into Kakashi’s silver hair.

He can’t say he hasn’t had the same thought. He wasn’t much younger than Kakashi when he lost his own parents, and both when they died– his father from sickness while his mother was on a mission she never came back from– and only a few months ago when Sakumo took his own life, the same idea plagued his every waking moment. Why didn’t I die from the epidemic too? Why didn’t Sakumo kill me as well as, instead of, himself?

“Kakashi, I’m sorry,” Orochimaru whispers. “I’m sorry the world had made you think that way.”

He remembers being six and being left alone in that big dark house because there was no-one to care for him. He remembers being thirty-one and watching as Kakashi was left alone in his own big dark house because his clan laws– the precious clan laws the village had to accommodate for fear of clans rioting– wouldn’t allow anyone outside his clan to do it. He remembers going to visit Kakashi every day for a month and getting turned away by ANBU at the door every single time until Kakashi finally told Orochimaru to stop coming.

Kakashi’s hands clench in Orochimaru’s hair. “Sometimes I wish I had died with Mom.” He’s quiet for a few moments. “You told me once that Dad killed himself because he was ashamed of how his choices were affecting me. So he would still be alive if I had died in the Massacre, right?”

Orochimaru had told Kakashi that about Sakumo so that he wouldn’t think that Sakumo hadn’t loved his son. What possessed the gods to twist Kakashi’s mind to misinterpret it so badly?

“Oh cub, I never meant for you to take it like that. I miss him too, but I never, ever wanted you to think like that.

“What your father did was foolish and wrong, and every day I wish that someone had been there to talk some sense into him. I wish that I hadn’t been out of the village that day. I was too kind the last time I spoke of your father. He thought that by taking himself out of the equation, the village wouldn’t project their hate elsewhere and that you wouldn’t be affected. In his haste to right what the village perceived as wrongs, he forgot that he was all you had. His actions were selfish and shallow, no matter how honorable his intentions happened to be. Don’t let yourself be dragged down by the choices of kind-hearted fools.”

Kakashi sniffs, then pulls away and wipes his eyes with one overly long sleeve. “Okay. That means to stop listening to Aunt Kushina then, right?”

Orochimaru chuckles low in his chest and ruffles Kakashi’s hair. “Don’t you go twisting my words, little one.”

“Then don’t give me words to twist,” the boy shoots back, a gentle smile in his tone. Orochimaru is sorry he can’t see it.

As with all things, it comes crashing down around his ears eventually.

It is either late at night or early in the morning depending on which child Orochimaru asks for the time, and all four of them have been summoned to the Hokage’s office.

“You asked for us, sensei.” Orochimaru states as he rises from the crouch he landed in. His children straighten up too behind him.

“Danzo has escaped captivity,” Sarutobi says. It’s unlike him to be so short, to use four words where he could make it boring with twenty. “I am confident in both your abilities and those of your team, but until Danzo is captured I am placing ANBU outside your house. It is likely he will come after the children and try to leave the village with them.”

Behind him, the air goes deathly still, and for one horrifying moment Orochimaru thinks that the children have scattered just from hearing Danzo’s name. If any of the reports he’s read– many of which he didn’t technically have permission to know about– are true, it’s a wonder they didn’t run for the hills.

“You are dismissed. ANBU Crow, Fox, and Goose will meet you at your home.” Sarutobi goes silent, looking down into his telescope jutsu’d crystal ball. Orochimaru stiffens at the names.

“Sensei, is there any significance to those three ANBU being assigned to our case?” Hikaru asks halfway back to the house in his attempt to break the tense silence– something he’s gotten better at in the past months.

Orochimaru nods gravely. “ANBU Crow, Fox, and Goose are the Hokage’s personal guards. That he’s reassigning them means Danzo is more dangerous now than he was before.”

“What was lesson fifty-one again? A desperate man is a dangerous man?” Akira supplies.

“And a dangerous, desperate man is a cornered man and cornered man is unpredictable,” Akane finishes, uncharacteristically somber.

“Sarutobi-sensei never told us stories about Danzo from his youth, but I think we all know there’s a reason why he of all people was the leader of Root. Be cautious,” Orochimaru warns. He feels like he’s being watched and he hates nothing more than being watched.

The instant he sets foot on the property, a shiver runs down his spine and he drops lower to the ground. He draws Kusanagi from its sheath. When he enters the house, he does it slowly and deliberately. The children follow his footsteps exactly.

The nightingale floor shrieks. Instantly, Orochimaru extends an arm and pulls his children behind him and brandishes Kusanagi.

Danzo looks worse for wear, like he’s probably been tortured. Whoever helped him escape T&I– because there’s no way he got out on his own, not on Itsue Morino’s watch– must have had some kind of medical knowledge, because the aging man’s injuries look half-healed.

“Don’t cause a fuss now, Orochimaru. Just give me the experiments and I’ll disappear,” Danzo says, just as calmly as if he was ordering lunch, but there’s a low hum of killer intent in the air. “This doesn’t have to be messy.”

Orochimaru bristles and bares his teeth. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s killer intent, and Danzo just doesn’t have the same dark, oily chakra that makes people shiver when they face Orochimaru on the battlefield. “Over my dead body.”

The elder scowls, but he draws a bloodied kunai from one tattered sleeve and leaps forward.

Orochimaru catches the blade with his own, and it doesn’t take much to force Danzo back. He may be older and more experienced, and the chuunin guarding his cell may have been weak, but Danzo’s been atrophying in a cell for six months while Orochimaru’s been training three energetic kids in how to fight and kill.

“I will be dead and buried before you lay another finger on my children. Do you hear me, Shimura?” Orochimaru snarls. He parries away the kunai again. “But don’t you worry–” a quick slice and a dull thump– “you’ll be gone before you get the chance.”

It’s a gentler death than a man like Danzo Shimura deserves, but Orochimaru is in no mood to play with delusional old men. He has no energy to call the Hokage and tell him of events. But if the three ANBU arrive not two minutes later and find nothing of the old man, well Orochimaru can’t control his snakes all the time. They are among the more fickle of summons, after all.

As if to show just how shitty his life is, Jiraiya gets mugged a scant two miles from Konoha.

He’s been away for three years, and before he can get home to his favorite bath house– full of his favorite patrons who he used to swear could smell him coming from a mile away and still hit him dead-on with their shoes– he gets jumped. And not just jumped, but jumped by three kids.

That’s it. He’s done. He just flops down on his face and pretends to be dead. Maybe all they’ll take is his money.

But the kids climb off him and don’t even go rummaging through his things.

“Are you sure this is him, Hika?” says a decidedly female voice. “Because he doesn’t exactly strike me as Sannin material.”

“Yes. He matches the photograph in the Hokage’s office perfectly,” a child replies. “I would also like to make you aware that I am hurt by you questioning the information I gave you.”

A second girl groans. “Hikaru, when Dad told you to be more apparent with your feelings this isn’t what he meant.”

“If Dad was displeased with my actions he would tell me so himself,” the child says.

“He didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” the first girl speaks again. “He knows you’ve been working hard at opening up to other people and just because Akane can’t appreciate that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t.”

“Thank you, Akira,” Hikaru says with a smile in his voice.

“Can we get back to the old geezer on the ground? I think he might be dead.” Akane’s voice is closer now. Did she kneel?

“You’re the medic. And I should remind you that if you call this man an old geezer, you’re saying the same of Dad,” Hikaru snarks.

Akane snarls again. “I swear to every god above and below, Hikaru, if you don’t shut up–”

“Children!” comes a harsh cry. A harsh cry that Jiraiya recognizes. His head jerks up and one of the three– Akane, probably– trips backward and falls.

“Hikaru, Akane, Akira, what are you doing?” Orochimaru demands, his hands firmly placed on his hips.

The taller girl stands stock-straight and seems to shrink under Orochimaru’s piercing golden gaze. “Nothing, Dad.”

He rounds on the other two. “Hikaru? Akane?”

Akane points an accusing finger at the ten-ish-year-old next to her. “It was his idea.”

Orochimaru hums. “Was it now?”

“I heard through secure channels that the Sannin Jiraiya would be returning to the village via this path today and, given the emotional shambles you were reportedly left in when he disappeared in Ame three years ago we decided to wait for him and make sure he wouldn’t hurt you again,” Hikaru rattles off. “Was this not appropriate?” For a moment, Orochimaru says nothing and Jiraiya prays for the kid’s safe passage into the Pure Lands. Then, he huffs out a sigh and smiles.

“Go home, all three of you. We’ll talk later.” The children– though two of them look to be fifteen and up– make off towards the village, Akane muttering about stupid gossipy gate guards with the wrong loyalties. Once they’re out of sight, Orochimaru looks to Jiraiya and his smile wanes. “So you’re back.”

“So you have kids,” Jiraiya retorts as he stands. “Who decided to give you kids? I haven’t been gone that long.”

Orochimaru extends one arm towards the village. “A lot has happened. I’ll explain on the way to tea.”

If you enjoyed this piece, why not take a look at other pieces written by the same author on AO3.

#rated: M #Sumigakure Winter Wishes 2017 #rank: a #submission #sumigakure #pwnie3

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fountainpenguin · 5 years ago

Note

M and Z

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

One mini-series I haven’t mentioned is my little collection of “Spellementary School kids spend holidays with extended family” one-shots, aptly titled “House Tours With Plot.” One chapter focuses on Poof staying with Big Daddy and trying to socialize with his Lialia-speaking cousins (magical parallel of Italian), one where Foop stays with Anti-Mama Cosma for a week or two and she pushes him to train his physical body as much as he trains his intellect, one with Sammy in Muckledunk, one with Finley in Pixie World, and one with Goldie and the will o’ the wisps. I’ll probably be working on these over the next few weeks since I’m in a holiday mood… I love magical holidays.

I also have a Timmy-centric piece (“See That Dust Fly") about Timmy visiting his Ustinkistan grandparents for the holidays and hanging out with his mom’s extended family. Apparently there’s a real thing called turnip lanterns (precursor to the more common jack o’ lanterns of today?) which are said to keep supernatural beings away. You literally could not have a more perfect excuse for weakening Cosmo and Wanda around Timmy’s family than that.

I’ve been playing with the idea that Kimmy (Timmy’s female lookalike from “Stupid Cupid”) is actually his cousin, so I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of including her in this story. I probably will, with the idea that her family recently moved to the area in “Stupid Cupid” and she was trying to introduce herself to her cousin by citing “I have three goldfish” as something they have in common. And then Timmy straight-up walks away.

Another story I’ve been working on that I off-hand mentioned the other day is a Cosmo-centric piece that looks at aspects of a godparent’s life that are more work than play. In this case, it’s the personal self-care routine Cosmo goes through after a long evening spent helping Chloe through anxiety attacks. Watching him unwind has helped me tap into his calm, gentle attitude and connect with him as a character. I never knew I wanted a story about Cosmo and coloring books, but I’m really enjoying it. The working title for this piece is “Hyggekrog,” but I’m expecting to change it before I’m done.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

I love major character death as long as it makes sense for the story, but I HATE having it spoiled, which means the only way it crosses my path is if it’s in a novel, an untagged ‘fic, or someone sent me a ‘fic with the tags removed to hide the fact there’s major character death in it. I love AO3s tagging system, but I wish there was a way I could toggle certain spoilers off.

Since I usually write backstory ‘fics, my hands are tied when it comes to most major character death. The first two drafts of Frayed Knots called for me to kill Mona/Anti-Saffron in the end. I convinced myself it was fine because she dies thousands of years after Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda get together (ergo, I didn’t kill her to remove her from the relationship), but… it still never struck me as the appropriate end to her character arc.

In Riddleverse canon, Anti-Saffron is alive and involved in politics (you don’t just fade out of the public eye when you’re no longer queen!) Anti-Cosmo visits her sometimes out of a consuming need to repent for all he’s put her through. Since Cosmo’s pregnancy was hidden from the public and no witnesses were present when Foop was born, some of the Anti-Fairy population suspect Anti-Saffron is Foop’s biological mother. Anti-Saffron is an awkward addition to the anti-family tree, and I’m enjoying this way more than killing her off.

Death, coping, and political succession are major themes of my endgame FOP ‘fic Devil’s Backbone, so there will be major character death in that story. I have a one-shot about the funeral of a sort-of major character. I like telling stories at different points in characters’ lives and dealing with death is part of that.

I think only one 130 Prompt references major character death… I cried. Not because I can’t write that character any further in the timeline, but at another character’s raw emotion when they found out. That got me.

As for deaths I can’t stand, I talked about my feelings on Youngblood’s deaths in ‘fics HERE.

I’d be more okay with Youngblood dying in so many ‘fics if he was actually a major character in them, but to the best of my memory things would just happen to him in the background, like getting kidnapped with all the other ghost kids, but he gets 0 screentime and is the only one who gets tortured to death. Also his skeletal assistant didn’t mourn him. That’s what I don’t like.

His assistant was traveling with Danny at the time iirc, so they never got to say good-bye and this poor child didn’t have any loved ones with him, which would have been an awesome angst scene if it was shown. But it wasn’t. If the first time in a massive ‘fic Youngblood gets screentime is the final chapter and he shows up dead… Ooh, don’t like that.

This kid’s a master of psychological warfare and the plot of his debut episode literally revolves around him commending respect from everybody because he’s an absolute mastermind despite being like eight years old. The only thing stopping him from climbing higher up the ladder is that his ship can’t fly without Ember’s help. He’s really the only ghost happy to hang out with skeletons (the implied mortal enemies of ghosts since they’re really only seen in Pariah Dark’s evil army). Canon heavily implies Jasmine killed his shapeshifting assistant in “The Fenton Menace” because Youngblood’s eerily without him every episode after that. If you like bonus material, there’s an official comic revealing his Ghost Zone parents are dragons. How is that a character you want to shove to the background?

If you want to kill him, please give him a death he deserves… I crave more Youngblood content and will accept his death as long as you treat him right. I am currently accepting Danny Phantom ‘fic recommendations… but please don’t send them unless Youngblood gets more screentime “alive” than “dead.”

Fanfic Ask Meme

#Anon #asks #ridwriting #Long post #Apparently most of what's on my backburner is fluff b/c I finish non-fluffy things #FAIRIES!#Going ghost!#YOUNGBLOOD!#Stupid Cupid #Timmy Turnip

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ask-artsy-oncie · 7 years ago

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I guess it’s time to overshare again...

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 92 truths about you. At the end choose 25 people to be tagged. tagged by @duckybeth99

LAST: Last drink: It was probably grapefruit juice lmao Last phone call: Mama Last text message: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQZ70ttAsjM I love you I love you I love you"  (to my girlfriend) Last song you listened to: MapleStory’s Sleepywood Theme Last time I cried: I’m pretty sure a couple days ago...

HAVE YOU EVER:  Dated someone twice: Nah, I mean, kinda? Me and my gf took a break a couple years back but it wasn’t like we weren’t planning on coming back to each other... Been cheated on: No. Kissed someone and regretted it: Not as far as I can remember... Lost someone special: Yes...  Been depressed: :) Been drunk and thrown up: No, I haven’t even had an alcoholic bev outside of a few sips.

IN THE PAST YEAR HAVE YOU:  Made a new friend: Yes...!! A few..!! Fallen out of love: Depends on what sense you mean that in... I’ve fallen out of love with certain media, a few people I used to call friends, a creative inspiration... but not with my girlfriend...! Laughed until you cried: Absolutely. I drown my sorrows in YouTube comedies. Met someone who changed you: Yeah. A few people, and in a few ways. Found out who your true friends were: I... guess...? I mean I went through that song and dance when I graduated high school so not much has changed... Found out someone was talking about you: Yes.

GENERAL:  How many people on tumblr do you know in real life?: I don’t know if you mean “outside of tumblr” (like an extensive social time on skype or discord) or literally I have physically met them. I’m just going to leave it to “I can count the number on my hands” because either way that’s true. Do you have any pets?: I have had a lot of pets over the course of my life. My family loves animals and we need a cat to take care of the rodents. It’s mostly been cats, I’ve known... like five cats in the years I’ve been conscious..? We currently only have one left... and then we’ve had four dogs (three at the same time at one point) and currently only have one left. We also currently have a goldfish named Dimples. (who used to be a classroom pet in Mama’s classroom) Do you want to change your name?: Nah, I was named after my grandmother and I value that... The name means a lot to Papa and my family. I do have a masc./neutral name but I don’t consider my legal name my dead name?? Pls don’t be afraid to use it. What time did you wake up this morning?: lmao like 4:30 AM bc cramps are the worst. What were you doing last night?: I drew something right before I went to bed, but other than that, I got my hair bleached and dyed, and was in the process of dyeing some fabric.  Name something you cannot wait for: halloween halloween hALLOWEEN HALLOWEEN HALLOWEEN!!!!! (+ Halloween at Disneyland lmao) Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yes my cat’s name is Tom and I have to yell at him all the time.   What’s getting on your nerves right now?: If menstrual cramps and acne could both just stop existing I’d be really happy. Blood type: I don’t know, I got my blood tested recently and they wouldn’t fukcing tell me. All I know is that Papa is an O type so maybe I am too...?? Nickname: Fina/Artsy Relationship status: *inhales* I LOVE MY GF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Zodiac sign: Cancer Pronouns: he/him/she/her  Favorite tv show: I’ve got a lot of favorites... too many favorites, really. I’ll have to compile a list someday... College: SF State. Hair color: Most of my hair is brown, but my bangs are pretty much the bisexual flag. Do you have a crush on someone: I mean....... @duckybeth99 is pretty damn cute~~ But I also have a long list of fictional character crushes too. What do you like about yourself: I guess... I.... like that I have really vivid, lucid dreams...? It’s entertaining, at least...

FIRSTS:  First surgery: I had to get a baby tooth removed because it refused to fall out. First piercing: I am a virgin in that regard... First sport you joined: I guess ballet/tap, but if you want like a non-performing arts sport, then basketball (which I ended up playing for like 8 years) First vacation: My family went to visit my grandmother in Warshington a couple months after 9/11 so like that was pretty wild... First pair of sneakers: Again like I don’t know how you expect anyone to remember that unless they had a vivid childhood memory concerning their sneakers. Dude, I remember the first time I ate a pack of instant ramen better than I remember my first sneakers. If I had to make an educated guess, they were probably Velcro sneakers because I had an abhorrence for tying my shoes.

Eating: I should be eating breakfast it’s like 6:55 rn... Drinking: And I’ll have some grapefruit juice with that breakfast I’m sure... I’m about to: Make breakfast fuck I’m hungry.... Listening to: The world waking up, birds chirping... and idk the sound of my keyboard is pretty nice too... Want kids: Yes. Get married: Absolutely. Career: Listen I would adore spending the rest of my life as a comic artist, storyboarder, or character designer... I really, that’s what I want to do with my whole entire life. But just... the way things are, doesn’t really feel like I’m going to be able to get there.... So I’ve set myself up a path of getting my credentials to become an art teacher at my local high school and replace the godawful one there now...

WHICH IS BETTER:  Lips or eyes: Don’t make me choose between that. I love both of those things.... Hugs or kisses: Same. Shorter or taller: Really depends... I like taller guys and shorter girls... (or... I mean... I could BE the taller guy too I am 100% A-OK with that.) Older or younger: Yeah this makes me uncomfortable, so I’m gonna pretend this is a general life question and I gotta say adulthood is rather underrated if you can keep your childhood interests in your heart. Basically I have money now and that’s pretty baller. Romantic or spontaneous: Romantic. Sensitive or loud: Sensitive... Loud is fine but I like when people are emotionally open... Hook up or relationship: Mama always said not to date anyone I couldn’t see myself marrying... Troublemaker or hesitant: Idk I’m chill with both, but I guess with hesitant people you got yourself more of a chance of staying alive haha

HAVE YOU EVER:  Kissed a stranger: No.  Drank hard liquor: Nope. Lost glasses/contacts: Of course, I do that all the fucking time, all the FUCKING TIME. Sex on first date: ...I am a virgin in that regard, as well... Broken someone’s heart: Yes, I know for sure that I have. Been arrested: No. Turned someone down: Yes, and the entire situation was unpleasant as fuck please do not ask me to elaborate on that ever. Fallen for a friend: My girlfriend is my friend ;)

DO YOU BELIEVE:  In yourself: Complicated, next question. Miracles: To a degree, yeah. Love at first sight: Yeah, but I’m a goddamned romantic *shrugs* Heaven: ehhh.... another Complicated.

TAG: I don’t know 25 people to tag. I guess some mutuals would be @tisbubb, @xxthederptorxx, @lastoneout, @ilananight, and @chanditoys (only if you guys want to!) other than that uuuuhhhhhhhh if you reading this and you wanna, go ahead lmao I can’t stop you.

#tagged #tmi...??

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hillywooddestiel · 7 years ago

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Walls Chapter 3

Characters: Sam, Dean x reader, mystery characters

Warnings: Death, angst, language, mentions of torture and kidnap, implied smut (sort of)

Word count: 2.1k

Description: The search for the reader continues, a shocking discovery is made, the reader is still trapped in her cell, more is revealed about the mystery kidnappers…

A/N: This took a little while because I was a little stuck for how much to include. Not too much happens in this part really, everything just continues. BUT, there are a couple of details in there. ALSO, I have a MASTERLIST so check that out. If you want to be tagged just asked. Enjoy xx

Catch Up! Part 2

Flashbacks and thoughts are in italics

Story:

Your POV With a jump, you swap from the nightmares plaguing your sleep to the harsh reality of the nightmare you’re currently living in. The soft mattress provides small comfort in your situation. Running your hand across the cotton sheets, you ponder for a moment. How do you keep ending up back in the bed? Is someone coming in and moving you? The mere thought of the sick bastards behind this touching you makes you gag.

You’ve been so lost in your own thoughts, you didn’t notice Dean at first. He’s sat on the edge of the bed on his side. At the moment, he’s alone. Breathing a small sigh of relief, you slide off the bed and go up to the wall. While a little agitated, he seems peaceful. At least, he’s much calmer than every other time you’ve seen him in this cell.

Seeing him this way, it reminds you of why you first started having feelings for him. When you admitted to yourself to seeing him as more than just a friend.

He never spotted you; you’d made sure of that. With nothing on your feet but socks, you snook around the bunker undetected. You had only wanted a sandwich from the kitchen. But, on your way back to your room, you’d stopped outside Dean’s door. His favourite radio station was on and, though he may not have realised himself, he was humming along.

‘When I look into your eyes, I can see a love restrained. But darlin’ when I hold you Don’t you know i feel the same’

It was November Rain. The words had always resonated with you. But, until this point, you’d never quite understood why. Watching him at his desk, carefully taking apart, cleaning, then reassembling his guns, you’d felt a longing feeling inside. A longing that you’d only recently come to understand. A longing for Dean.

‘If we could take the time To lay it on the line I could rest my head Just knowin’ that you were mine All mine. So if you want to love me, Then darlin’ don’t refrain. Or I’ll just end up walkin’ In the cold November rain.’

His hands worked expertly around the guns. A voice in your mind asked you what else they could do. Quickly, you brushed it away. You shouldn’t be having those thoughts about your best friend.

Those lyrics seem like a cruel taunt now, reminding you of how you wish that you could confess how you feel. And have Dean hold you, look you in the eye, and tell you he feels the same. But the reality is, he’d break your heart. He’d laugh at you, thinking it’s all a joke, a silly prank. And you’d have to choke back the tears and laugh with him as your heart breaks in two. You shake your head, bringing yourself back into the room. These feelings will pass. You think. It’s been a few years now but they’ll pass. They have to.

Dean’s POV “So get this, there’s about two minutes of footage missing from the motel footage. Watch,” Sam points to the corner of the screen where the time is displayed. Pressing play, I watch the time move forward. The lights are off in both motel rooms. “There!” Sam exclaims. He’s right. The time skips by two minutes. That’s not much time but, for a professional, it would be enough for a kidnapping. My stomach begins to churn. Poor Y/N.

After making yet another pot of coffee, I turn my attention back to my own laptop with the locations of abandoned buildings in the area near the motel. It’s a long shot, assuming that the kidnappers stayed close, but it’s all we have for now. So far, all I have is an ancient barn, a closed-down school and a burned out apartment block. None of which have any reports of disturbances or anything note worthy. Great! We’ve been searching for almost two days now and we’ve got fuck all to show for it! Slamming the screen down, I storm down to the shooting range; I need to blow off some steam on my own.

At the range, I pick up a trusty sawn-off shotgun and aim at the target. Each shot echoes loudly, but they don’t reduce my anger. If anything, they stir me up even more. All I can think about, when I’m not worrying about Y/N, is shooting the sons of bitches responsible for this in their faces. After firing the last shot, I check the target for my aim. There’s just one large hole in the centre of the target. “Hey, Dean! You might wanna come take a look at this…”

Your POV You feel like you’ve been watching him for hours. Staring at him through the clear wall like a kid watching the sharks at the aquarium. Observing the shape of his muscular arms. Taking note of his darting green eyes. Suddenly, you spot the glass of white milk-like liquid on a tray the floor. So does Dean, as he gets up to inspect it. It’s understandable that you didn’t notice it at first; it blends in with every other white object in the room and Dean’s dashing good looks are very distracting. He holds up the glass to the light, giving you another good view of his biceps. Hesitantly, he sniffs it then takes a sip.

It doesn’t hit you at first. The realisation that, in all your time here, you’ve never seen any food. Not a scrap. Definitely not a glass of milk. Now confused, you continue to watch Dean as he gradually drinks more and more. Maybe the freaks keeping you imprisoned were feeding you through a tube as you slept? Or, maybe you had eaten and they’d erased your memory? Whatever the answer was, all you know is that you don’t feel hungry now.

Dean coughs a little, causing your heart rate to quicken. He coughs again, raising his hand to his throat as though there’s something stuck there. “Dean?” You ask tentatively. For the third time, he coughs. Then he relaxes again. Letting out a small relieved sigh, you resume your thoughts. You keep feeling drowsy, maybe there’s a chip or something that’s feeding you as well as knocking you out and waking you back up? Out of the blue, Dean breathes in sharply as his body becomes tense. He shakes uncontrollably, foaming slightly at the mouth. You sit stunned on the floor, not believing the horror unfolding before your eyes. There’s nothing in there to hurt him! All he did was drink the… Shit! He continues to convulse, falling off the bed onto the solid floor. Mouth opening and closing like a goldfish, you’re speechless and you feel like crying. But, you can’t. You’re eyes remain dry. As the masked men come in and take Dean’s body before your drooping eyes, you vow to never drink anything these psychopaths give you.

Dean’s POV “What, Sam?” I ask a bit too harshly. Sam doesn’t take notice; he too is very on edge lately. “I was watching the bar footage and I think I may have found something. And Dean, you’re not gonna like it,” he begins, turning the screen to me. The video is zoomed in on the bar itself so all I see is hands and drinks. “What is this Sam? What am I lookin’ at?” I snap. Sam remains calmer, zooming in further onto a man’s hands. “Look at his cufflinks, Dean!” I do as he says, they look fancy but nothing important. “Sam, this is stupid. They’re just cufflinks. They’re not anything- HOLY SHIT!” I clasp my hand to my mouth as I spot it, my blood begins to boil. Meanwhile, Sam just gives me a concerned look. How are they still around? We got rid of all of them, didn’t we? But there’s no denying from the engraving, we’re now dealing with the fucking Men of Letters. Again.

Your POV A small surge of electricity jolts you awake. Eyes wide, you can’t see a thing. “Oh my God I’m blind!” You murmur. As though they’re activated by your voice, all of the lights simultaneously switch on. Jesus Christ! Your eyes sting a little while adjusting to the addition of illumination. Slowly, the blurriness fades away leaving you with clear vision again. What the fuck?!

In front of you, only half of the room is white. The other side, beyond the red line, looks like a motel. Like the motel you were taken from. Leaping out of bed, you go up to the red line. Reaching a hand out, it stops mid-air, unable to move any further. So the force splitting the two rooms is still there. But now, the other room is a completely different room. You nearly jump out of your own skin when the door suddenly opens. Dean enters with his back to you, two unfamiliar arms around his waist. He keeps stepping backwards, approaching the bed. You catch a glimpse of blonde hair. Is that… Is this… Oh no! This must be what happened with Dean in his room the night your were kidnapped. It’s the same blonde slut he was eyeing that night. Their lips are locked in a battle for dominance, their hands are roaming all over each other. You don’t want to watch but at the same time, you can’t stop. After all, this is the kind of situation you’ve always dreamed about with Dean. With you being the one with him obviously. Not some drunk, meaningless, serial one-night-stander. He probably never knew her name. Not that you could talk- you hadn’t the first clue what to call that guy you’d slept with.

It was like watching a twisted version of some cheap porno. The twist being the man you’d fallen in love with banging the fake blonde. You couldn’t help but retch at the sight. In many ways, this is worse than seeing Dean dying over and over. This is a reminder that Dean wasn’t, isn’t and never will be with you.

This isn’t real Y/N, it can’t be real! You thought, had to remind yourself over and over. “Hang on, I have to ask. Who was that girl you were with?” The blonde bitch asks, causing you to snap your head up, intent on hearing this. “Who? Y/N? She’s no one!” No one. The words echo in your head. You weren’t no one to Dean. You were best friends. How could he be so mean? “Good! I thought she might be your girlfriend or something.” She giggles. Dean laughs loudly. “Girlfriend? Y/N? Not a chance in hell!” He laughs again. Staggering backwards from the line, you feel like you’ve been stabbed multiple times by each of Dean’s words. You mean nothing to him? And there’s ‘not a chance in hell’ of the two of you being together? Whatever is in your stomach comes out on the floor and your knees give out beside it. It’s not real! You chant it in your head as the darkness takes over once again.

??? POV “Showtime everyone! Doctor, shock please,” I instruct. He pushes the small red button on the control board. With our night cameras on, we see her jump up awake. Success! “Right everyone, we’re trying something different remember. These readings should look strange so don’t worry. Lights please!” Someone complies and the cell is flooded with light. “Sir, her adrenaline is quite high.” One of the techs announces from behind. “As to be expected. All these American hunters are the same. They see everything as a threat. Continue,” I speak into my mouthpiece, hands curling around the metal rail in front of me. The simulation continues and the Winchester comes in with his little slut. “Her norepinephrine, oxytocin and adrenaline levels are up, sir.” “Fascinating. Angry, full of lust, ready to fight. I’d say she’s jealous, wouldn’t you doctor?” I say amused. The doctor nods slightly, busy observing the girl’s every move.

“Somebody contact the cleaners,” I sigh. While disgusting, it’s a very interesting result. Definitely the kind results we need. She’s not been in here long but we need to speed things up if we want to keep to Ma'am’s schedule. Also, the sooner we progress, the sooner I can redeem the family name. But, not one to dwell, I turn my attention back to the girl. “Doctor, that’s enough for now, initiate the serum!” He turns the dial and she luckily falls to the opposite side of the puddle. “Thank you for your work today everyone! Excellent work on today’s simulation, very convincing. I think we can all agree, we’re getting close. From now on, we’ll be increasing things further so I expect to see you all present in three hours. Don’t be late!” I keep my speech short and to the point. Everyone nods and leaves in complete silence.

Part 4

Tags:

@dslocum89

@spectaculicious

Published by @hillywooddestiel 11.07.17

#supernatural #spn #dean x reader #dean and reader #spn fanfic #angst #dean winchester #walls #hillywooddestiel

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