#i also tried avoiding making him look like ghost rider

[littlemoonglow]

I really liked the idea of half-ghost Jason, so I did my take on a design for him 😀

Unlike Danny, Jason's halfa mode is closer to Vlad since the death and rebirth didn't happen at the same time.

It looks more like what the person wants to project as vibe?

The spectral cloak was initially there look more ghostly, but then my brain cooked up the idea that it acted almost like a bunch of whiskers, sensing ectoplasm or potential threats around him (like an octopus, idk if it's funny or cursed 😅)

Jason would probably use (maybe abuse a bit) of his ghostly powers after Danny somehow purified the Lazarus waters in his system (Danny, head in his hands : I didn't mean to perform accidental halfa creation).

- - -

The Bats are not having a good time. There is someone killing off criminal left and right in Crime Alley and the culprit is extremely efficient and clearly trained.

No sign of entry at the crime scene. Not even a spec of dirt left behind.

Crime Alley has become suspiciously calm recently.

They whisper about a boogeyman, a red ghost.

(I honestly really want to continue this ❤) Edit: Here is Part 02!

[turquoisephoenix]

Ghost Roaster Headcanons

Okay, since that last post/backstory got a lot of people interested, time to post some headcanons on the Roastmeister instead of answering a bunch of asks.

Yes, there’s a Read More. This got long. Again.

*Original name: Olav Ingle Ahlstrom. (for now, this is a work in progress, but something vaguely Scandinavian)

*Original species: Frost Elf

*Age before death: Early 30's, a rising star in the culinary arts.

*Sexuality: Grey ace demisexual. If you asked him directly, he'll shrug and be like "I'm mainly into food". Will joke that he's a little fruity because food humor.

*Before he turned, he was a famous celebrity chef in direct competition to Chef Pepper Jack and the two of them were rivals. Olav saw the rivalry all in good fun and regularly teased Chef Pepper Jack; Pepper Jack hated his ass and thought his methods were the work of a drooling imbecile.

*Olav's style of chef was a Guy Fieri type who regularly traveled the weirdest parts of Skylands and was sampling all sorts of funny dishes. He was an affable and funny weirdo who could make something edible out of ANYTHING and his books were a hit. His sheep wool pizza was actually amazing, even if it was hard to get exactly right.

*Olav and Chef Pepper Jack's rivalry was so strong and public that it's been often rumored that Chef Pepperjack KILLED Olav to explain Olav's sudden disappearance. To make matters worse, Chef Pepperjack has lied a couple times and flat out said "Yeah I killed that loser, he couldn't handle the heat!" just for the lolz.

*He knows that his name is Olav. Ghost Roaster tries to lie and say that he's not sure if he's the famous Olav because Olav is actually a somewhat common name for frost elves, but he has a horrible feeling deep in his stomach that he is that famous guy with all the young budding chefs that looked up to him and has been directly avoiding connecting himself to Olav because he feels guilty and ashamed. So any attempts at returning to the culinary arts is under his Ghost Roaster alias.

*Ghost Roaster doesn't remember all of his previous life or what happened after he transformed. He just remembers pain. And hunger. And ripping things to shreds. But the memories are starting to come back.

*Master Eon met Ghost Roaster because he was told to come down to the Land of the Undead and destroy a ravenous chained up ghoul that was being held in captivity. Instead, Eon took pity on him and made him a Skylander.

*Olav and Ghost Roaster are actually pretty similar in personality, just that Ghost Roaster is more likely to slip into dark humor and joke about eating people. This is another reason why he's avoiding reclaiming the Olav name; he doesn't want to find out about any family or friends that will just see him as a gross monster.

*He's rapidly rising in the ranks in the Undead culinary art world and now has a new rival in Batterson. Thankfully the two of them are way friendlier to each other.

*Ghost Roaster is one of those prickly types where once you push back all the thorns and befriend him, he'll move the very rocks and earth to help you. And send you memes at 3 am with a "this you?".

*Master Eon purposefully avoids sending Ghost Roaster on a mission that involves Chef Pepper Jack because while an encounter with him might regain all of Ghost Roaster's lost memories, it might also cause him to have a Bloodborne-esque rampage as he tries to END Chef Pepper Jack.

*No one except for Master Eon and Hugo have connected the dots between Olav that famous chef that disappeared and Ghost Roaster and he's very reluctant with sharing that information because he feels like if word got out, his old self's reputation would be damaged forever.

*Best Skylander friends: Ignitor, Fiesta, Funny Bone, Grim Creeper, Hex (ironically), Wrecking Ball, Fright Rider, Stealth Elf, Slobber Tooth (who samples his food)

*He's the ultimate in "I tell jokes to mask the pain" silly guys.

Best Friends, NPC edition: Eon, Batterson, Flynn, and Mags.

*Worst Skylander match ups: CAMO, Food Fight (is a tasty food), Shroomboom (same), Sonic Boom (regularly makes tasty foods he can't have), Jet Vac (same), Krypt King (won't let him crack him open and eat the tasty ghost inside like a lobster tail)

[goldendaydna]

Bruh all these takes are VALID, some stuff that I agree with and some stuff I do not.

I think Robbie's mind is like his car, it is very fast, it is very loud, and it is very reactive. There is so much going on in there that if someone where to look in they would describe it as something like white noise or the hum of a car, or of it were an internet browser he'd have so many tabs open, it's just an amalgamation of visual, emotional, and verbal thoughts.

The comic at times almost feels like it doesn't want to show us what Robbie is thinking through thought boxes, which might also be due to a shift of just seeing less and less thought bubbles in comics in general. His speech bubbles are interesting though, sometimes he talks or makes comments to himself when he's alone, he pauses when he talks to people a fair amount of times. Even when it doesn't feel like he's curating certain responses to them. Sometimes they're just pure ellipsis.

How we know he's a visual thinker as well is due to what happens on the night he dies, not when he dies but the night he dies because he visually sees where the actions of his consequences are going to take him. Which haven't even happened yet, he's just thinking that far ahead.

Let's be honest, the kid is neurotic. Robbie is constantly thinking of ways to make money. He doesn't trust adults but he is aware he needs them. He tends to avoid kids his age, he tries to avoid being a target. He is a parentified teenager with a job and is attending school, he chooses to listen to music at work. He is easily irritated, he's surprisingly impatient and impulsive and it blows up on his face like his initial desire to get out of Hillrock Heights fast. Plus, a busy mind means he sometimes has an easier time avoiding personal problems like medical or emotional ones. (Which is a one-way ticket to a panic disorder of a fear of the physical sensations of your own emotions if you ask me 🤘)

Another reason why I think he's just quiet despite all the noise going on in his head is because he's judgemental as hell, oh my god. With one look from the art we know Robbie judges Güero and his bully friends, he judge's the people in his neighborhood who are unfair and selfish. He has unintentionally judged Johnny who the same man who got him back in control of his own body, because it's just no brainer stupid to sell your soul away. Genuinely I think his quietness and having verbal restraint is something he learned the hard way. First impressions are very much so a thing for Robbie and if someone makes a bad first impression with him then they have have put in a lot of work if they want to change what ground they stand on with him. It wasn't until he became the Ghost Rider and Eli's involvement that Robbie actually started to manage his judgements, lol.

In conclusion I think this kid's brain is going a mile a minute and that is just as much a detriment as well as a blessing to Eli Morrow.

you know how some people dont have internal dialogue I feel like Robbie didnt until he got eli in his head and then suddenly he had to think with his words which I'm sure was a learning curve for him

[bokunoheroanalysisforthefuture]

Team Midoriya versus Team Todoroki! Who will win? (spoilers, that gets determined next chapter.)

I skimmed over the chapter, and the character sheet actually had me cackling. Can’t wait to get to it!

[No. 29 - Unaware]

We come back into the middle of the battle, with Kendo pointedly telling Monoma to not add insult to injury, and that there’s no sense in making enemies. Monoma agrees, saying it’s not very hero-like, plus you hear a lot about begrudged heroes getting payback from villains. Which, naturally, is him still doing his best to rile up Katsuki, which is working.

Katsuki is shaking from barely-repressed rage while Kirishima tries to talk him down. He warns that if Katsuki doesn’t keep his cool, the team won’t be able to get their points back. Katsuki slams a fist into his other palm, setting off an explosion, and then he tells Kirishima in his most furious voice to keep moving, because Katsuki is as cool as ice.

Yeah, totally cool as ice. Honestly, I still wonder how Monoma survived his introduction into the series. 

We get a nice cover spread for the chapter, featuring all the staring character of the chapter (from 1a anyways).

Not gonna lie, the horse really, really confuses me. I guess it’s a reference to the fact that this is a cavalry battle, and so the team has a ‘rider’ and ‘horses’? It’s still kind of weird and a bit creepy looking, since I don’t think the horse has pupils or irises or anything. Ghost horse. 

Anyways, we move on with the chapter, returning narrative attention to Izuku and the two teams targeting him. Tsuyu comments to Mineta on how teaming up with him had seemed like a good strategy, so how’d he lose his headband? Mineta says he doesn’t know, but now they have nothing to lose. He dramatically points at the other two teams, saying that their own team is out if they can’t steal the other teams’ points. Shouji himself swaps into an attack mode, abandoning the cover in order to have all his arms free to attack. 

Meanwhile, Izuku and Shouto are having a dramatic staredown - and it’s not even the last one of this arc! Tokoyami comments on how this likely won’t end without a fight, and how the other teams are really gunning for them. Izuku replies that they’re halfway through, so they have to keep moving, but there are… well, there are multiple teams incoming. 

At the same time as he’s noting that, Shouto tells Tenya to move forward, Yaomomo to prepare the defense and the insulator, and Kaminari to- well, Kaminari cuts in to say he’ll stay alert. We also see that team Todoroki all have roller blades on their feet, which have likely been helping with the mobility, especially with tenya basically making them speed on wheels. 

(Ka-chow.)

The insulator gets pulled out just in time, providing Shouto with a barrier against Kaminari’s Indiscriminate Shock that gets teams Minetas, Kendo, Rin, and Hagakure. Team Midoriya is just able to avoid being shocked because of Dark Shadow, but the poor quirk does not like it in the least and it’s obvious. 

Dark Shadow doesn’t deserve this. He’s a good birb. :(

We get a few more closeups of the teams being zapped, and then a scene of Shouto holding a long rods in his right hand, dragging it along the ground. Said rod is made from his ice, and allows him to send his quirk outwards and trap the unfortunate teams in place. While he’s doing this, he apologizes and tells someone to hang in there - probably Kaminari? Who to be fair does seem to have managed to restrain himself enough to not make himself brain-dead despite the immense power he just put out. 

Up in the announcement booth, Aizawa gives a quick play-by-play of what just happened: Shouto waited until the other teams were stopped by Kaminari’s attack before freezing them in place. He wouldn’t expect any less, especially if Shouto recalled how many competitors managed to dodge his ice during the obstacle course. Present Mic complements said play by play, and we transition right back into the action.

To add insult to injury, Shouto does take the headbands off of Rin and Kendo. For Team Midoriya, even if they avoided most of the electricity and the ice, enough got through that the jetpack is on the fritz, meaning no more escaping into the air. Ochako worries that the other team is too strong and that they’ll never get away. Tokoysami says he’ll create a diversion, sending out Dark Shadow ahead of them in a threat to attack. 

However, Shouto was one step ahead, with Momo pulling out her premade defense to block the attack. Tokoyami is annoyed, Momo is pleased, and… she just lets it drop the ground. Uh, Dark Shadow probably come have come in swinging for another attack there, you know. Just saying? Izuku calls her creation quirk a pain, but Tokoyami corrects him - Kaminari is the real problem. His sunlight(?) attack would have wrecked his defenses.

[I’m guessing here that it was a flubbed translation, and was meant to translate to a lightning attack.]

In order to clarify this statement Tokoyami made, we get a brief flashback to before the match started. Izuku is informing Tokoyami that he just needs to focus on defending, and that there’s no need for him to attack. Tokoyami considers the plan interesting, and lets Izuku know of Dark Shadow’s dual nature. The darker it is, the more ferocious Dark Shadow’s attacks - but also the harder it is to control. In daylight, Dark Shadow is easier to manage, but not much help in a fight. It’s not like Izuku knew, but choosing Tokoyami and his quirk for pure defense is not a bad choice at all.

We transition back to the present as the flashback concludes with Tokoyami telling Izuku to use him as best he can, and that he trusts Izuku. Izuku acknowledges Kaminari’s electricity as an issue, while Tokoyami tacks on that as long as Kaminari keeps it up, he doesn’t have a shot at doing anything. Dark Shadow, meanwhile, is sniffling and crying, asking why they can’t all just get along. Tokoyami calls his quirk fickle.

God, I love these two dorks. 

Izuku acknowledges that Dark Shadow has less offensive power now - but the other teams don’t know that, right? Tokoyami says that’s probably the case - the only one he told about his weakness was Koda, back at the USJ, and he doesn’t talk much. 

[Another translation flub here, wherein they call Kouda ‘Kuchida’ instead. Probably an alternative reading of the kanji in his name? That’s all I can really think of… or maybe the site I’m pulling from, despite posting the official translations on current manga chapters, might have been a bit less discriminating in the beginning. Hard to say for sure.]

Anywho, we get a brief panel shot of Shouto wearing a few of the other teams’ headbands around his neck, with an interesting little flare at his left shoulder, as if drawing attention to it. We shift back to Izuku, who determines that as long as the other teams don’t know, they can fake them out. They’ll be fine, and the ten million points will stay with them.

We shift back to Katsuki and Monoma’s teams, with Katsuki taking an explosion to the face. Monoma calls it neat, and complements Katsuki’s quirk as he shakes off the last of the explosion. Katsuki realizes it’s his quirk, as well as Kirishima, who hardened to take the blow. Katsuki throws his own explosion right back at Monoma, who blocks it with Kirishima’s hardening, stating that he’s better at it (which I guess refers to using the quirk.)

Kirishima is shjook, no doubt by what seems like another person with the same quirk as him. Katsuki corrects him - Monoma is just a copycat. Monoma acknowledges Katsuki getting it right, then undermines the ‘complement’ by saying any idiot could figure out that much. We then get a blurb on how his quirk, Copy, works: after touching someone, Monoma can use their quirk as much as he wants for five minutes. However, he can’t use more than one at a time!

As if team Bakugou wasn’t having enough issues, the massive guy with the oddly-shaped head from before swoops in and shoots out a massive amount of what turns out to be glue, surprising both teams. Bondo and his rider rush up, while Kaibara tells Monoma he can get away now - with that many points, he’ll be in the top four for sure. 

Kirishima struggles to get his leg out of the glue, since it’s already hardened. Mina tells him to hold up, and that her quirk will be able to melt it away. Sero tells her to hurry up, since they’re at zero points, while team Kodai and team Monoma rush off in the other direction. Of course, Monoma can’t leave well enough alone, and turns around again to give a mocking goodbye by flashing Katsuki’s quirk again. As he does so, he tells Katsuki to not be mad, since it brought it on himself, after all. And hey, what was that pledge he made earlier? Sees kind of embarrassing now… well, whatever, thanks for the points!

Seriously, how did Monoma not actually die? At this point, he’s honestly earned a death by murderous mobs. Katsuki states that he’s taking first place - but not just first place, no, it’s gonna be the first to end all firsts!

...and with that, we’re closing out this half-ish of the chapter. Monoma really just drains me to have to read / analyse. See y’all tomorrow with the rest of the chapter + the character sheet.

[welllpthisishappening]

Heyooo could you do 6 and/or 9 for kiss prompts please? If you’re still doing them that is. :)

Alright, well, this got long. Let’s all act super surprised. And because you are an absolute delight of a human being, this is Will and Belle. Set in the Blue Verse, obvs. And also because I keep reading these hockey rom coms, so I am in a mood™. They were real fun to write. Particularly on their first date. This is their first date! At the Museum of Natural History! Prompts were: hand kisses and kisses in the snow.

————

This was a bad idea. 

Exceptionally bad. Stupid, really. Impetuous and instinctual and no, no, that second one wasn’t right at all. Agreeing to Ariel’s set-up wasn’t instinctual, was just—

Idiotic, maybe. 

Throwing her head back, Belle tried to find cracks in the ceiling. To match the obvious ones in her sanity. Only the Museum of Natural History did not boast any cracks. Couldn’t, she figured. Something about the structural integrity of the building and, she imagined, the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt. Who would very likely emerge from his statue out front if he realized there was any sort of looming threat to the dinosaur bones stored inside this museum. 

He’d get, like—those horse riders, probably. God, now she couldn’t remember the name for those horse riders, just a mess of facts about San Juan Hill and the Spanish-American War and she’d nearly paced her way onto several people’s shoes already. 

He was late. 

This hockey guy. Will, his name was Will. Scarlet, Will Scarlet. Played defense for the New York Rangers and every article she’d read in the last two days since agreeing to Ariel’s wholly ridiculous suggestion also suggested that Will Scarlet, professional hockey player, was very good at his job. Not quite championship-worthy yet, but it had been close that one season and he was—

Cute. 

Real cute. Had that slight curl to his lips in his headshot and if Belle spent a few minutes that afternoon meticulously examining his headshot then that was between her and her desk and her internet history. Which she should probably delete at some point. Tomorrow, she’d do it tomorrow. First thing, even. 

Would walk into the library and make sure to take care of any lingering evidence detailing all the proof that she was fairly certain there was a hint of something unnameable at the edge of Will Scarlet’s eyes and that was insane. 

She was on a roll, really.

He just—

Well, she thought he was cute. Didn’t have any looming warrants for his arrest. Hit people on the ice with a fair amount of frequency, per several other articles, but that was to be expected. She thought so, at least. Hockey was still a potential project for her. If this worked. 

She didn’t think it was going to work. 

Dating professional athletes was not her. Didn’t fit with her personality, or her possibly subconscious and entirely unfair prejudices, but this guy got paid to play a game and he likely had expectations and fans and a variety of people who fell under the umbrella of antiquated categories with vaguely offensive naming conventions, and there was also Belle’s consistent tendency to self-sabotage because romance had never really panned out all that great, but Ariel had promised. Was so sure. Belle didn’t have a choice. 

Agreeing to this was—

Instinct.

“God damn,” she mumbled, halfway through another lap around the lobby. Twisting between tourists, most of whom were trying to figure out how to store the bags they weren’t allowed to bring into the museum because it appeared most of them had been required to visit Bloomingdales at some point that day, she very nearly stepped on a few more toes and definitely on the back of one boot hell. 

Who immediately cursed. 

Not under his breath. Right out loud, drawing a few stares and one gasp from someone Belle figured had to be from Iowa, or something. 

That was an awful thing to think. 

Only she couldn’t bring herself to feel too badly when her stomach appeared intent on taking up residence in her throat, so as to avoid the acid and the wholly imaginary butterfly wings and he turned around. To stare at her. With that specific glint in his eyes. 

“Hey, can you—oh,” Will sighed, shoulders sagging and that was not great. Bad, even. Real bad. Blind date disaster sort of bad. Belle’s smile made her cheeks ache. “Are you planning on killing me? You look a little crazed. This is a very public place.” “Agreed to so you couldn’t kill me.” “Would hurt my minutes.” “I don’t know what that means,” Bell admitted. “Is your foot alright?”

His lips twisted. She was staring. Appraising, really. Tracing her eyes across a head that was at a slight angle now, and she was having an admittedly difficult time coping with his shoulders. Sloped and clearly muscled, even under the fabric of a well-fitted leather jacket that couldn’t be providing much warmth. 

“It’s cold out.”

Will’s smile stretched. “It is, in fact.” He stuck his hand out, fluttering fingers that weren’t showing any sign of frostbite when Belle didn’t do anything except keep staring. Like a complete psychopath. “If Ariel set me up with a murderer, I’m going to be really annoyed, fair warning.”

“That would be fair, yeah.” “And strangely not an objection.” “I’m really worried about your Achilles tendon.”

He laughed. Guffawed. Threw his head back and wrapped an arm around his waist, seemingly unaware of the glances and the few prolonged stares because he was a professional athlete and other people were probably more aware of that than Belle was. Another finger flutter. “Will Scarlet,” he said, “not a murderer, only a little concerned that you might be—”

“—You were late.” “And I apologize for that, but you can blame Cap. Who missed a wide-open breakaway three minutes before we were about to get off the ice and Arthur lost his mind.” “Sounds dramatic.” “You’ve got no idea. Are you going to shake my hand because my arm is getting kind of tired.” Belle lifted her eyebrows. Kept smiling. More like a normal person, she hoped. A semi-charmed person. Who almost forgot where they were standing and how long the line to pay whatever you want at the Museum of Natural History always was. His hand wasn’t nearly as cold as she expected it to be. 

That probably wasn’t important.

“Belle French,” she said, “shouldn’t you have better upper-body strength?”

His smile was a bit softer, that time. Not quite resigned, but she was struggling to come up with appropriate syntax and neither one of them had tried to pull their hand away. “I’ve got incredible upper-body strength,” Will promised, leaning forward and he smelled a bit like soap, “you should what I can do on skates, though.” Flushing was ridiculous. Blushing, too. Any synonym. 

Still holding hands. 

“Do you think this is working for you?” “I’m trying very hard.” “Yeah, I can tell.” “Oh wow,” he chuckled, finally disentangling their fingers, and that was fine. Totally fine. Belle didn’t notice the absence of warmth, at all. Not instantly, or anything. “That’s kind of a knock to my self-confidence, honestly. Ariel didn’t mention you were mean.” “I’m not mean. What else did Ariel mention?” To suggest that his eyes actually had the gall to sparkle would be crazy. They didn’t sparkle. Were biologically incapable of doing that. 

But Belle swore something else happened, and it might have just been in the general region of her heart. Stuttering and restarting, at double time. As if it were intent on impersonating a hummingbird. 

“You’re very smart.” “That’s true,” Belle agreed. 

“Modest, too.” “Obviously, yeah, yeah.”

She wanted to keep making him laugh. Wanted him to keep smiling at her and leaning forward, even if his hair wasn’t quite long enough to artfully fall across his forehead. She wondered if his shoulders looked as good when he wasn’t wearing the leather jacket. 

So, insanity was fun to experience, then. 

“This is the part where you tell me what Ariel said about me, babe.”

Belle’s eyebrows jumped. Soared. Flew off her forehead. “You really do thinking this working, huh?” “My self-confidence is a sham, Ariel thinks I’m lonely, my teammates are dumb, and I’m willing to pay full price for this museum so we can also see the 3D movie about the giant monster shark.” “Megalodon is a real thing that was part of a mass marine extinction, potentially caused by a supernova that really messed up the rest of Earth.” “Telling me that is not going to stop me from calling it monster shark,” Will promised. Belle thought it was a promise. Sounded like one. 

She was admittedly a little hung up on the lonely thing. 

“I can work with monster shark.”

Will beamed. Did something passably ridiculous with his eyebrows and the slight shake of his head, and neither one of them mentioned the hand thing. How they reached for the other on what already felt like habit, twisting between bags and tourists and it took less time to get in when they paid full price. Plus twenty-nine ninety-nine for the monster shark movie. Per ticket. 

And they walked. Wandered. Took their time through exhibits, conversation that wasn’t exactly ground-breaking, but was just as easy, tilting their heads back in tandem to stare at massive fossils and partially-finished dinosaur structures. 

“So,” Will drawled, not taking his eyes off the Tyrannosaurs Rex, “tell me something.”

“About?” “You’re a librarian, right?” Belle nodded. “Not like—well, there’s not a lot of story-times. More research and entitled doctoral students who think the world revolves around them.”

“Bet you think athletes are super great then, huh?” “Ariel didn’t force me here against my will,” Belle pointed out, getting another laugh for her pitiful comedic efforts. Pulling his gaze away from the exhibit, Will didn’t quite smile, but he wasn’t glaring and her stomach hadn’t returned to its correct spot yet. “Why’d you pick Museum of Natural History?” “I’m more than just a pretty face.”

She rolled her eyes. Continued to be very charmed. “I did work in a small town once, but it didn’t end great, lots of drama, lots of dead mom, overprotective dad, bad relationships.” “How bad is bad?” “Thinking of dropping gloves with my ex-boyfriend?” Twinkling eyes were impossible too, she was sure. Will’s appeared determined to prove her wrong. “You looked up terminology.” “Sounds suspiciously like an accusation.” “Nah,” he shook his head, “a cautiously optimistic assumption.” “For the life of me, I cannot figure out what icing is.”

He ran his hand over the back of his head. That wasn’t the first time, either. Belle might have been doing research. Keeping track, more like. “Not many people can at the start,” Will said, “have you gotten to offsides yet? My national championship?” “You won a national championship?” Narrowing his eyes wasn’t an explicit challenge. Felt like one, all the same. One Belle wasn’t just willing to reach for. Wanted to reach. And that was—strange, actually. She hadn’t felt like that in a very long time, had been sitting at the same desk for the better part of the last ten months, waiting for something worthy of researching and figuring out and she wasn’t lying about icing. Sometimes it didn’t happen? And that frustrated people? 

On the ice, and in the stands. Based on the videos she’d watched. 

That sounded psychopathic too. 

“What happened with the ex?” “He wanted to get married,” Belle said, forced casualness that didn’t do anything to the thin-type nature of Will’s eyes. “Dad wanted us to get married.” “And you didn’t?” She shook her head. “I’ve got things to do.” “Like read up on my national championship?” “Google black holes are real things.” “Oh, you’ll get no argument from me,” Will grinned, another chuckle and she was starting to pick up on the variety in his laughter. Genuine, now. “But searching your name only led to your Columbia faculty page, most of which I knew already from grilling Ariel because I was worried about getting stabbed in public, I’m real famous you know.” “Hockey is not as popular as you think it is.” His hand was too big, Belle thought. Could wrap all the way around her fingers, warm and somehow almost comforting, tugging her away from this massive dinosaur toward a slightly smaller dinosaur that didn’t eat other dinosaurs several million years ago. 

She didn’t pull away. “Anyway,” Will added pointedly, “your faculty page left a lot to be desired, but a slightly older article from the York County Coast Star informed me that you did Kennebunk High School proud once by winning Best Delegate at a Model United Nation’s Conference.” She’d have to stop blushing eventually. As it was, Belle’s face was blistering and her mouth had fallen open at some point. Likely right around the time that the ends of Will’s lips also started to quirk up. 

“Stalking is a serious crime.” “Curiosity, however, is not. Plus, A didn’t know about Model UN. What was your position?” “A lacks a bit of creativity on the nickname front, don’t you think?” Belle asked, not totally desperate to change the subject.

Will lifted a shoulder. “Usually we like to add an r to last names, or a y. Depends on the last syllable, more than anything.” “Who is this we exactly?” “Hockey players as a whole.” “Right, right, so that would make me—” “—Frenchy, yeah,” Will nodded. “Doesn’t seem to fit, though. Also possibly offensive?” Belle laughed. Giggled, a little. Kept blushing and ignoring the unstable state of her heart and she hadn’t been expecting him to be so—

Charming. Legitimately and entirely charming. Full of simple banter, like it didn’t require any extra effort on his part. She was glad for that. He kept rubbing the side of his hip, too. Probably took a check during practice. She’d really spent a long time researching terminology. 

“I served as a judge on the United Nation’s International Court of Justice.”

Letting out a low whistle, Will actually widened his eyes. With legitimate awe. She was going to combust before this was over. This date. This going very well date. “I’m sorry about the ex.” “You don’t have to punch him in the face.” “Good to know.”

She hummed. Looked back at the dinosaur in front of them so she wouldn’t be so tempted to ask about lonely and what that meant, and that lasted for all of twenty-six minutes. Give or take. 

Belle hadn’t taken her phone out of her pocket once.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He didn’t totally stiffen. They’d moved off the dinosaur floor, standing in an offshoot of the lobby and another long line with more kids than Belle expected. She should have. No one appreciated long-extinct monster sharks more than kids. 

So, Will didn’t totally stiffen. His lips all but disappeared, though. Became a thin line on a head that was back at an angle, with a tongue that poked noticeably against one of his cheeks. 

“College girlfriend,” he said, voice turning gruff, “dated the entire time I was there, wore my jersey to the title game. All that cliche bullshit. Graduated, New York had my rights, and suddenly the world was our oyster, right?” “Rhetoric?” He lifted the other shoulder. Than the one from before. Keeping track of that was crazy, crazy, easy. “A little,” Will admitted, “because New York had my rights, but not an immediate need for a defenseman, and the AHL is a grind. Shitty barns of arenas and not much glamor on multi-state bus trips. Game after game, trying to prove you deserve the call that’s gonna change everything, only it took too long for mine to come. Least for Ana. She wanted—well, fuck if I know what she wanted, really. But it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t waiting and there were plenty of other guys in the league who started at the top. Who also thought she had the prettiest smile of anyone in the room.”

Jealousy was not a normal reaction. And wasn’t really what was happening. Not entirely, at least. 

Belle would tell herself that at least forty-seven times in the next twenty-four minutes. Because her stomach was flipping, making it difficult to take a deep breath when she noticed the resigned look in Will’s suddenly dull eyes and he was supposed to be an idiot. Was supposed to be a stereotype, unable to find anything interesting about the Hall of North American Forests, but he made jokes about stuffed birds and was serious about seeing the monster shark and Ariel was going to be absolutely insufferable about all of this. 

“What’s the deal with your shirt?” Will’s head tilted even more. “Because it’s team-branded?” “Technical term?” “Now we’re going in circles, babe.” “Get more creative nicknames.”

The spark returned. Fluttered in the very center of eyes that met Belle’s without a hint of trepidation of concern regarding her potential murder tendencies. Not that she had any. He’d looked her up, too. “I’ll see what I can do,” Will muttered, “and it’s a real problem for me. Get free shirt, have to wear free shirt, see no reason to buy other shirts.” “Or proper sentence structure, it seems.” “This is working.” “Is it?” He nodded, following the line as it started to move into the theater. “I think so, yeah. You ready to learn about this giant fish?” “Sharks are fish, that’s true.” “See,” Will grinned, lacing his fingers through his, “totally working.”

Neither one pulled their hands away. Even as the theater lights dimmed, and she couldn’t remember the last time she wore 3D glasses, but the effects were at least fairly good because she jumped no less than three times, Will’s soft chuckle echoing between her ears each time. 

His thumb tapped. Found a rhythm against the side of her wrist that stayed even after the movie was over, and his excitement rivaled the loudest and most sugar-filled kids, an unspoken agreement to spend at least thirty-four minutes in the gift shop. 

He bought her a stuffed shark. 

“For intimidation purposes,” Will explained, thrusting an arm toward the sidewalk. Belle didn’t smile. She tried. Sort of. And the cab stopped almost immediately. “You’re impressed.” “Keep telling me how I’m feeling, please.” “This is New York, danger lurking on every corner and whatnot. Requirements of a gentleman mean I have to deposit the fair lady back at her door.” “Or you lose your membership card?”

“Matching jackets, God, keep up.”

She slid into the backseat next to him. And it wasn’t like she was expecting a kiss, honestly. Wouldn’t have said no, probably. But this was—

New and a little exciting, and Ariel was going to be so annoying. 

So, they sat. Kept talking, which was still somehow effortless. Even with the cloud of potential kissing and lives that weren’t remotely similar, and Belle still had a lot of hockey-based questions. About teammates and their opinions because Will had mentioned that too, but she wasn’t a total snoop or willing to be that level of stubborn quite yet. Maybe, like, second date stubborn. 

They were at her building, anyway. 

Stumbling out of the cab was not the picture of cool Belle had been hoping for. Snow landed on her shoulders and clung to the ends of her hair, a storm that started somewhere between Central Park West and East 29th Street, and she knew Will did not leave anywhere near here. He got out, anyway. 

Stood on the sidewalk before trailing her toward the door, her stuffed shark safe from the elements in the bag hanging from her shoulder. “So, that was—”

“I had a really good time with—”

Her shoulders sagged. Dropped in tandem with Belle’s sigh and the stretch of her smile, refusing to let her teeth dig into her lower lip. Will dragged his hand over the back of his head. “A’s going to be so annoying about this.” Tension disappeared. Melted faster than the snow was capable of, Belle’s teeth only appearing when she smiled that wide. “Because you think it worked, huh?”

“Working on that self-confidence, you see,” Will said, hovering on the bottom step and her lips were tingling. With anticipation and hope and the knowledge of how much a cab back uptown was going to cost him. 

He surprised her, of course. 

Flipping his wrist, Will’s fingers fluttered once. Silent invitation hung between them, and Belle didn’t think. Didn’t consider options or potential blow-ups, no sign of a pro and con list. It’d be weird to find one on her front step, anyway. 

She dropped her hand into his. 

Still warm, still capable of holding all of hers, the soft pull at the end of her arm didn’t stop until Will’s lips grazed her bent knuckles and stayed there. For the next eight seconds. She counted. Timed it up with the solid thud of her heart against her chest and the propensity of her knees to bend beneath her. In order to accommodate everything she was feeling. 

Too much. 

Not enough. 

“I had fun, ma moitié,” Will said, leaving her brain whirring for a translation. 

“This might be working.” He scrunched his nose when he nodded. “Smarter than I look, that’s why. Keep the shark guy nearby, he’ll make sure danger stays outside where it belongs.”

Belle wanted to say something. Wanted it to be cute and passably witty, enough that there would be a second date so she could be more stubborn, only her tongue wasn’t functioning and she was so close to falling over it was honestly embarrassing. 

Will’s eyebrows jumped again. 

Before he did. Off the steps and back to the waiting cab, taillights not much more than a reflection of snowflakes before Belle was scrambling for her phone. Her fingers shook a little. 

“Ma moitié, ma moitié, ma moitié,” she chanted. It turned into a gasp. As soon as Google returned with its translation. 

My half. 

Whatever sound tumbled out of her was neither cute nor entirely human, heart turning unstable again and the shark looked especially good sitting between the pillows of Belle’s bed. The same one she dropped onto with a laptop propped against her knees so she could figure out how the hell icing worked. 

[alma-berry]

Timeless Horizons

A sweet little Kitty fic, with a special surprise! This is a collaboration with the amazing @toka-sketch​, who made two beautiful illustrations for this story. 

Here’s a little sneak peek of Dru and Ty! You can see the full illustrations of them and Kit down at the bottom, as they are filled with spoilers!

Enjoy ❤

Dru is hiding.

Yes, it’s practically comical by now. She’d spent far too much time trying to avoid closing herself from her family and be more present, but today… she can’t help herself. The institute is just swamped with people, with preparations, with the shadow of old ghosts. The only ghost she actually wished to see was Livvy, who by all means should have been present for her brother’s engagement party. Instead, she dreads of meeting the more corporal ghosts of her past… plenty of whom was invited.

Hens, the hiding. Dru wasn’t stupid enough to do it inside the institute, where early guests and the battalion of her siblings were probably itching to make her fold napkins or whatever if any of them laid eyes on her. She was hiding outside the sanctuary, running her bare toes over the sandy concrete stairs that lead to a road connecting the highway.

In a mundane scenario, this wouldn’t have been the brightest choice for a hiding spot, but everyone uses portals these days anyway… it’s not like Magnus Bane would make a road trip out of it and drive all the way from New York to Los Angeles. Dru was sure he doesn’t even drive to the grocery store, not that he even needed to when he could just snap his fingers and voila!

Dru sighed in frustration, she would have loved to be able to summon up some Carmel corn right about now… hiding is dull work.

A loud sound of something like crackling grew closer to where she sat.

Dru sprang to her feet, not intending to be caught in a welcoming party of any sort. But when she started to head back into the institute, a single dark figure became visible right in front of her.

It was a man, climbing down off his motorcycle. There was something familiar about the fluid movement of his body that made her stop in her place and stare.

Long, strong thighs wrapped in tight dark gear stretched as they lifted themselves off the massive bike. Dru arched her eyebrows and let her gaze linger over the soft leather of the rider’s jacket with quiet appreciation, and latched onto the strands of fair hair that peaked out of the helmet that still lay on his head.

A ring of recognition went through her, and it wasn’t long before she connected the dots. This was Jace Herondale.

She ran towards him, avoiding the questions that his abrupt appearance brought up - where was Clary? How did he bring his motorcycle from New York? And most importantly, was it the one that could fly?

Before she could call for him, the man lifted his helmet and a curtain of long, golden curls fell on his neck. Dru’s breath caught in her throat as long, elegant fingers pushed back the tangle of hair and made way for two lucid blue eyes.  

This was not Jace Herondale. This, Dru realized with a sharp pang in her chest, was Kit.

“What,” her voice pitched, “the hell are you doing here?”

The shock made her words sharp and shrill. She blushed with sudden guilt, and it was a moment until she remembered she was more than entitled to be upset to see Kit Herondale.

Dru wasn’t supposed to be so surprised to see him. Jem, Tessa, and their cute little peanut, Mina, were already there, but when they said Kit would probably be joining them later, Dru assumed it was just an excuse for Kit to bail on them. Again. She was angry with him, for leaving them, for lying to her. And above all, for leaving Ty.

She cleared her throat and sharpened her gaze on his eye, but the look she found in them silenced her. Kit looked at her like he was afraid she’ll put a blade between his teeth. He also looked like he would have let her. Maybe that look, of a convicted criminal, was what made her soften her expression… and when she did, Kit visibly relaxed, but kept his distance from her all the same.

“I was invited,” Kit said. His voice was husky, hard, but his body was all discomfort. He looked at his boots, his hands twisting down his front like a complicated pretzel.

“I didn’t want to come, I know you probably don’t want to see me,” Dru could feel the acid, eating away the iron of his voice. “But Emma threatened to shave my head while I sleep if I missed this, so… yeah. I didn’t have much choice.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Said Dru.

Kit’s brows rose alarmingly high, his body closing in on itself. Dru knew animals from years of watching her older brother bringing all sorts of creatures inside the institute, so she had seen her fair share of cornered animals. Kit looked like one, so Dru schooled her face into a soft, neutral expression.

“Listen I’m, I’m sorry about-“ He was panting, fighting so hard to get the words out. From his expression, every syllable was a knife to the chest.

Dru silently took back every bad thought she had about Kit. If even after all of this time he reacted like this to the mere sight of her, he couldn’t have been so cold and indifferent like she convinced herself he must be. She hated the times when she caught herself doing the things she criticized most in others, like twisting the truth into an opinion. Like ignoring facts, knowledge, experience, and boxing them into a mold born of hurt.

Searching Kit’s half-shut eyes, Dru let herself remember the boy who lied to her only to keep her brother’s secret safe. The boy who lied only because he had to, not because he wanted to.  

“I’m sorry I ditched you and-“, Kit’s voice was small and his face was a patchwork of pale and blotchy. Dru couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s okay, Kit. I know why you left, it’s…” Dru swallowed hard. “I understand.”

“You do?” Kit paled. He looked honestly startled before his face settled into a frozen non-reaction.

“Yeah… I know about Livvy, and how it, umm, didn’t work out.”

Kit’s blank expression didn’t change, it was as empty as the desert’s sky. Something pulled up Dru’s stomach. She opened her mouth, but between one blink of an eye to another, Kit’s stone face washed under by a strange reservation, and he mumbled “Yeah, okay. Umm, thank you.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He was scanning the institute behind them so intensely she wondered for a minute if someone was approaching, and then she realized - he must be thinking about Ty.

Kit radiated with coiled-up energy, tense and unforgiving. Dru wasn’t sure if he was afraid, expectant, or both.

“He’s not here.” She said in a small, soothing voice.

Kit stayed still, but Dru detected a slight tightness in his jaw. Was he disappointed? It must be confusing for him, being here after so long, in his hometown, in the first place he learned about being a Shadowhunter. He must be completely overwhelmed. She remembered how pained Kit seemed to be when he tried to apologize to her just a minute ago, and it was just her. He probably would’ve had a fit if it was Ty here in her place.

“He’s still at the Scholomance.” She said into the silence. “They have this super-secret, highly sensitive, just for elected few stupid mission.” Dru let out the exasperated mixture of pride and annoyance her brother’s stories usually made her feel, and although Kit has just nodded once, she was sure his lips had twitched upwards a tiny bit.

“So... a motorcycle, huh?” She smiled at him. “Very Herondale of you.”

Kit let out a full-fledged smirk at her comment, and Dru felt a familiar tap on her heart. This was the Kit she remembered, and the feeling made her push a little more. “I knew they called it Grand Theft Auto for a reason. I can’t wait to hear what else you managed to steal from the head of the New York institute.”

Her taunt was a downright success. Kit barked a laugh so genuine, Dru felt thirteen all over again. She would poke him some more if it made him this cheerful. “It’s not considered theft if it was given you freely... just don’t tell that to anyone. I don’t want people to think I lost my touch.”

Dru felt her eyes widen in surprise. “So it is Jace’s motorcycle? I knew it!”

“Yeah…” Kit rocked on his heels and glanced over at his bike lovingly. ”He gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday.”

That is one legendary gift, Dru concluded. She wouldn’t mind a cousin that gifts sexy automobiles, but the thought of Julian approving to let her near a thing like that was less likely than her becoming the youngest consul in Shadowhunters history.

“So... how did you get it here?” Dru asked. “It’s not exactly a short ride from New York or Devon.”

“Magnus,” Kit answered with a shrug. “He portaled us and then just... did that thing he does where he poofs things out of thin air, like chocolate-chip cookies or... tents. Magic is so...”

“Yeah.” Dru sighed in agreement, thinking about that caramel corn.

“So where were you?” They began to trail back towards the institute. She could feel Kit tensing up with every step. She didn’t know if it was just because it brought up memories, or if it was something else. She still debated herself whether to pry into that subject, while she pried into others.

“Umm... I just,” Kit’s fingers roamed through his long curls in a somewhat nervous gesture. “I thought I’d check out my dad’s old place. See if there was anything left.” His sky blue eyes seemed clouded with memories, and from the little she knew or remembered, they weren’t all good. “I didn’t really get a chance last time, after, umm,” Kit cleared his voice. “After he died.”

He sounded stiff, and a bit drained. She almost forgot he was an orphan, like her. Of course, she had Julian, which was an amazing brother-father, and Kit has Jem and Tessa. She didn’t know Johnny Rook at all, but from what she heard, the Carstairs were definitely an improvement.

“And did you find anything?” She asked, carefully.

Kit took a long moment to answer her. They were already at the sanctuary’s doors when he finally answered.

“No. There was nothing left.”

*

Kit’s appearance didn’t make her want to join the herd of party planners all of a sudden, and by the looks of him, Kit wasn’t up to a large reunion yet. So she offered him to go practice in the training room and was pleasantly surprised when he agreed.

Kit wasn’t a regular Shadowhunter, in the way that he didn’t have to endure rigorous training for his entire life the way Dru was. So when she picked up her favorite misericord and gotten into a fighting stance, she felt rather confident that she could give Kit a run for his money, even with all of his bulging muscles and chiseled arms.

She was absolutely, painfully, wrong.

Kit might not have been raised as a Shadowhunter, but whatever it was they were feeding him in Devon, it made him a beast in a fight. Well, maybe not so savage as it sounded, but he whooped her ass in a matter of seconds, flipping her on her back without breaking a sweat.

“Damn it, Herondale.” She gasped. “Aren’t you supposed to be inexperienced? Why are you so good at this?”

Kit’s face lit up like a campfire. “Am I?”

Dru blew out a whine. “Don’t get all modest on me, you’re ruining your brand.”

There was nothing modest in the grin Kit shot her back. He flashed his teeth wide, like a Cheshire cat, and ran up to climb the training room’s pitched roof until he balanced himself lightly on the highest of the rafters. He didn’t pause to look at her and just jumped gracefully, somersaulting in the air like he was a goddamned acrobat.

Right before he straightened up, his black shirt, which had a Deadpool logo, a fact that made her enormously happy, having it being another thing that looked like the Kit she knew, rose up a little and flashed the tip of a black pattern that was inked into his lower back. Dru wondered which rune it was, and who put it on him. It was such a strange location for a rune, not somewhere you can mark yourself. It must have been Jace, but that left the question of which rune Kit needed Jace to mark him with, that he couldn’t do himself?

“Was that sufficiently Herondale?”

She stared at him, completely dumbfounded until she caught herself and shut her gaping mouth. “I’d say so… yeah. You caught in quickly, haven’t you?”

Kit brushed the dust off his gear pants and shrugged.

“Jace. That man is… relentless.” Kit flopped on one of the training mats, making a loud poof when he did. “You know, he almost threw me off a tree once, when I refused to jump? Twisted my ankle three times. He said if I won’t make it, he’d disown me. Still not sure what I was supposed to be disowned off, his rusty collection in the armoire?”

He had a British lilt to his voice. The way he pronounced certain words, round and elongated, was something he didn’t used to do back then. It was charming, Dru thought. He was charming. A bit self-conscious, still, with the way he occasionally tugged down his shirt or bite his lower lip, scrunching it to one side.

Dru always thought that if she ever met Kit again, she’d let him have a piece of her mind. But he was so… Kit. Quiet, sarcastic, familiar. The things about him that felt foreign to her weren’t really foreign, but more of an enhancement of what he used to be. There was something bright about him, almost luminous. He wasn’t particularly happy at the moment, so she couldn’t blame it on his mood. But there was something in his features… they were fine, delicate. He was all muscle, but the way his hair fell on his skin, gold on gold, felt fragile, almost monochromatic.

Kit must have sensed her staring, and his eyes narrowed at her in a silent question.

She put the misericord back on its hanging and placed her hands over her hips.

“So, wanna sneak down to the beach?”

*

The infinite stretch of water in front of her was shining bright like there was a blanket of diamonds spread all across it. The sun was low, and every ray hugged the waves with bright whispers.

They weren’t so sneaky as she hoped. Giving Kit a sideways glance, she hid a smile, remembering how Emma crushed him in a tight embrace.

“You are so big, Kit! I haven’t seen you in a year and you became Godzilla. I do not approve, Jem. He’s not allowed to be stronger than me.”

Kit choked out a bruised laugh. “You don’t have to worry about that, Em. Just… lay off with the hugging, you’ll crack a rib if you won’t let go of me.”

Mina’s answering giggle was more than enough to break the two apart. She reached her arms for Kit and he tugged her to him without a second’s hesitation.

He reminded her of Jules so much, of how he used to hold Tavvy when he was her age, nuzzling his baby hair and murmuring soft words to his ear.

There was something so vulnerable about this Kit, but when he was with his baby sister, she could see how he simply glowed. The love that he felt for that little girl was so evident, so undeniable, it made Dru’s heart play a low, painful beat.

He seemed troubled now, his brows screwed together, as he stared into the sunbathed horizon.

“How is he?”

It was almost a whisper, but Dru heard.

“Alright.” She answered. “Tall. Taller than Julian.”

Kit’s shoulders hunched inwards, and the grip on his arms was so tight, she could see his knuckles whitening.

“But, how is he? With Livvy, and,” he choked on the last word. “With everything.”

Of course he wanted to know about that. She almost forgot he knew at all. Dru was so accustomed to having to keep the slight shifts of Ty’s attention to herself, knowing he must interact with Livvy in a way that was reserved to them alone, even after death.

“He’s okay, she’s… okay.” She said. “Not that I could really say for myself. He doesn’t say much about her. He’s better now, with me.”

Dru loved her brother fiercely. All of her siblings, but Ty… Ty was something else. She didn’t love him more, but she loved him differently. In him, she could sometimes see her Livvy, and wondered whether it’s a twin thing, or was it just her presence, revealed and kept only by him. They were better, now. There were things he only said to Dru, like the story of how they found his Lynx.

“Oh, he has a cat! Well, she’s not really a cat. She’s a Carpathian lynx. Scary as hell, doesn’t like anyone other than Ty.” Dru said with her nose screwed. She liked cats and didn’t appreciate Irene’s snobby attitude, even if she gave her the creeps.

Kit muffled a laugh. “Sounds like Church. That cat gives all other cats bad reputation, devil creature.”

Dru’s hands flew to her mouth. “Church! Awww I miss that furball!”

Kit snorted. “You can have him.”

Dru let herself look at Kit’s eyes. The smirk on his lips didn’t reach them.

“And you? How are you, Kit?”

Kit seemed startled by the question. For a second, the guard he kept up slid off him, and an endless sorrow spilled away from him like ink, staining his face with shadows. It didn’t linger, but it didn’t really keep away.

“I’m okay, Drusilla.” He put a calloused hand on her arm and squeezed. “So are you, it seems. I’m happy to see you again.”

The smile Dru gave him was wide, silently trying to convey that so was she.

She patted his arm and rose to her feet, dusting sand off her black velvet overalls, which were an unfortunate choice for the beach.

“I’ll head up to see if they need some last-minute help. Can’t pull the hostess trick for much longer, I suppose.”

Kit only nodded and fixed his gaze back onto the sinking sun.

*

When Dru was halfway to the institute’s doors, she noticed a tall, dark figure headed her way. Her breath caught in her chest, and she ran towards him, blessing the sand for muffling the sound of her feet.

It wasn’t long until she reached him, her eyes tingling with excitement and apprehension. Ty reached for her shoulder, grabbing hard. He didn’t even look at her, her face set ahead, on the black and gold figure sitting a breath from the water.

“Ty! When did you get here? I thought you weren’t coming, Jules and Em almost called this thing off!” She was jabbering, she knew it, but she wanted to distract Ty so she could wage his mood, see if he could handle Kit’s presence.

“The mission was over,” Ty answered. “I texted Julian a few hours ago. When did he get here?”

Dru stared at her brother until she realized he was talking about Kit.  “Oh! Umm, a few hours ago? We trained together a bit and then we just… hung out here. I was just heading back, do you…” she hesitated, “do you wanna come with me?”

Ty averted his gaze to his left hand, which was when Dru noticed the agitated movement.

“No.” He said. “Did he, umm,” Dru wasn’t used to seeing her brother so hesitant, one of his hands fluttering, one clutching her shoulder in an iron grip. “How is he?”

His tone, his words, the exact mirror to what Kit had asked her moments ago. Ty didn’t try to mask his feelings, Dru guessed he wasn’t aware enough of her presence to try.

So she weighed her words carefully, before answering. “Sad. I think he’s sad.”

Ty’s breath hitched, and for a moment, she thought it was a reaction to her words. But when she looked into his stormy eyes, she saw that he was looking down at the waters again. At Kit.

Dru turned to see Kit has risen to his feet. He was chucking his jacket away, unbuckling his pants. She’d never seen him swim when he was staying with them, but the salty smell of the ocean and the light breeze was intoxicating enough for her to understand the urge to plunge inside the ocean.

Kit reached for the hem of his shirt and started to lift his shirt up. Dru tensed, suddenly remembering the rune she glimpsed back at the training room. She straightened her back, readying her eyes to catch the mark from the large distance. But when Kit’s shirt rose up over his neck and his fair hair slid sideways, she could hear the air escaping her lungs, echoed in the stunned gasp that came from Ty’s direction.

Kit’s entire back was inked with an intricate pattern, looping from the nape of his neck, down his shoulder blades, and all the way to his lower back. A beautiful arrangement of vines, tracing the dips and ridges of his muscled back, the black, thin shapes draping his skin like skeleton feathers. It wasn’t a rune at all, it was a tattoo.

“Thorns.” She whispered, disbelief marking every syllable.

“Blackthorns.”

She turned back to look at her older brother and was startled to find a fierce smile blazing through his lips.

His hand left her shoulder, and he was walking slowly towards Kit, who had already lost his gear pants and was paddling through shallow waters.

Dru just stood there, her thoughts an incoherent tangle inside her head. She watched Ty making his way towards Kit, and found that her heart understood before her mind did. It was unexpected, to say the least, but it also wasn’t.

Memories washed over Dru as she watched Ty closing the distance between them, three years worth of distance, and felt the past washing over her at once. It was the way it was always supposed to be, the two of them together.

With one last glance towards the strange painting of past and future, Dru turned her back to the sunset and headed back home.

[roscoe-dream]

End of the Line [ 2 ] || Stiles Stilinski

A/N: part two is here! there isn’t much stiles present in this until the end because.. he’s erased.. rip.. but I hope you read it still! STYDIA turned STILESxREADER. Some other scenes are changed around too. italicized text are memories.

word count: 8,239

WARNINGS: lots of angst and tears! but your heart will be mended at the end.

Inspired by this song and this song. Highly recommended you listen on repeat while reading!

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ [ Part One ]

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

You couldn’t tell if the reason the aching was due to your heart cracking in two or not, but you didn’t give it much thought as tears rolled down your cheeks. As you stood in front of the pack, your eyes darted over each one of their solemn faces that stared back at you. Your mouth was agape, opening and closing like a fish out of water as you tried to form a sentence. But you couldn’t, your body was frozen in place as you tried to process the utter betrayal of your friends.

‘Stiles can’t be her son.’

Lydia’s voice echoed through your ears, the words tumbling from her lips in defeat. You refused to believe them, though. From the night you woke up gasping for breath, the name ‘Stiles’ being the only thing you said, you refused to believe that he wasn’t real.

“We-” You stammered, bottom lip quivering as you locked gazes with the leader of the pack. “We have to keep looking for him. We have to keep looking for Stiles.”

Scott’s face fell, his heart aching as he watched his best friend break over someone none of you could remember. Although he was silent, it spoke volume to you. “What about a relic?” You tried, eyes darting to both Malia and Lydia desperately. The strawberry blonde sighed, her hand grabbing onto the wrist that was roughly handled not too long ago. “There’s no relic of Stiles-”

“We don’t know that!” You shouted at her, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth and looking down at your shuffling feet to avoid their bewildered gazes.

Malia’s blunt voice was next to speak, “It doesn’t even sound like a real name.” She scoffed, her arms crossing over her chest while glancing over to the other two wary teens. “We’re fighting the wrong battle, Y/N.”

Your vision grew blurry with tears, and while you tried your best to make sure they didn’t fall, a few escaped in the process. “We’re trying to bring Stiles back.” Your voice was weak. The thought of your best friends abandoning someone so easily made your heart ache. “He’s out there, and we need to help him. We need to-”

“Enough!” The alpha’s voice suddenly boomed, making your heart stutter. You stared at him with bulging eyes, jaw dropped in shock at the volume of his voice. “The ghost riders are back, and we have no way of stopping them.” Scott spoke sternly, his eyes narrowed at you. “And whatever they are, they’re real. We can’t keep chasing after someone who isn’t.”

Malia instantly agreed with him, her head bobbing up and down. “We have to move on. He didn’t leave anything behind.” She said, the pair of them turning away from you and making their way towards the exit of the hospital. When you looked to Lydia with your bloodshot eyes and wet, flushed cheeks, your bottom lip began to quiver again.

“The only thing he left behind, was me.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

Your fingers massaged your temples in attempt to soothe another one of the piercing headaches you’ve been getting since a couple weeks ago. You knew it had to deal with Stiles, it was the only explanation. For the past three months, up until a couple weeks ago, you never thought of a Stiles or felt as empty as you did now without him.

“Why don’t they believe me?” You croaked, letting your tear stained face fall into your hands as your shoulders raked with sobs. They didn’t stop, even when Lydia placed a gentle hand on your shoulder. “He’s real, Lyd. I know it.”

“I believe you.”

Your hair stuck to your stained cheeks as your head to snap up to her direction. “After everything we’ve been through, I believe you.” Her words were soft, but sincere, and it was all you needed to pull her into an embrace you so desperately needed. You two held each other in silence, and you thought back of the event that took place a few days ago with the pack at the hospital — of them giving up on Stiles. Lydia pulled away when the shrill sound of the bell rang throughout the hallway, her hands coming up to your face to wipe at your cheeks and fix your makeup. “Let’s get to class.”

“Stiles, seriously, I need to get to class!”

Your laughter was loud as it bounced off the walls of the hallway. It was empty, just you and Stiles in it as he grabbed a hold of your wrist tans tugged you close to his body. Whipping around to face him, your laughter died down as you stared into his whiskey eyes, your lips curled into a soft smile.

“You have a bathroom pass, you’re okay to stay here for a few more minutes.” He assured, his bottom lip jutting out into a little pout to persuade you. With a playful roll of your eyes, and a cheesy smile, you sat back down on the stairwell.

“Okay, Stilinski, but you’re the one failing history. Not me.”

And once again, your giggles could be heard throughout the empty hallway as you watched your hazel eyed best friend do a victory cheer.

You inhaled sharply at the sudden ache to your head, a whimper leaving your lips as you squeezed your eyes shut. You haven’t felt a pain like that for a few days, why is it starting again now?

Ignoring Lydia’s lingering concern, you adjusted the strap of your bag and quickly scurried off to AP Biology. Fortunately, you shared that class with Lydia, but you also shared it with Scott. Your bag made a small clattering sound when you plopped down in your assigned stool, your head falling into your folded arms. Your position stayed this way for pretty much majority of class, up until you felt a nudge to your side. Pulling your head from your arms, you turned to look at Lydia with furrowed brows, lips parting to ask what was wrong before she silently pointed outside the window.

Slowly following her gaze, you stared straight at what appeared to be an abandoned powder blue jeep.

“What if we gave it a paint job?”

You asked aloud as you leaned down to soak the large sponge in your hand with water from a bucket by your feet. Plopping it onto the hood of Stiles’ jeep, you bit back a smile after glancing at the spastic boy’s bewildered expression.

“No!” He gasped, sounded deeply offended. “I love this jeep. Rust, dents, and all. Plus, it was my mom’s and she never changed the color.”

Your lips pulled into a frown at his words, loosening your grip on the sponge and let it sit on the hood of the jeep, rounding the front of the vehicle to meet Stiles on the other side. “I’m not saying we change it, Sti, just.. make it look nicer. It’s like the homeless person of cars!”

You fell into a fit of laughter at his horrified expression, not missing the ghost of a smile he held on his freckled face.

“That’s it, you’re walking home!”

Your eyes grew wildly as you continued to study the jeep, ignoring the stinging to your skull as you turned to face Lydia, shaking her out of the daze you found yourself in seconds before. She quickly blinked back to reality, her eyes eagerly searching your own. “We need to get to that jeep.” You whispered, watching as her strawberry blonde hair swayed with the bobs of her head. She opened her mouth to speak, but was very soon interrupted by another voice.

“Ladies, is there something outside that’s more fascinating than the structure of the human mind?”

“No.”

“I don’t think so.”

You grimaced at the woman’s pointed gaze at your answer, quickly giving her an apologetic smile before she turned back to the rest of the class. As soon as her attention was off the pair of you, your eyes traveled back to the rusty jeep in the parking lot. “Now, many people credit the corpus callosum for giving us sense of intuition, gut instinct, even we ourselves aren’t aware-”

Her lecture was cut short by the screeching of stools. The sound made the class of teens divert their attention from the biology teacher to you and Lydia, who were looking around with a similar absent look in your eyes. You opened your mouth to speak, but no words came out, only tears forming in your waterline. Thankfully, the teacher noticed, and with a labored sigh, she nodded towards the door. You quickly exited the classroom, faintly hearing an ‘I’ll be right back’ from Lydia and an ‘I’m going to go check on her’ from Scott. Your swift pace didn’t slow at the sound of another pair of clacking heels and thudding footsteps. Pushing past the school doors, you ran towards the man attaching his tow hook to the front of the jeep.

“Hey, wait!”

The man turned in your direction, an eyebrow raised with curiosity at your frantic behavior. “You can’t tow this jeep.” You spoke between pants, looking behind you to see Scott and Lydia walking up to your sides.

“Paperwork says I can. It’s been reported as abandoned.”

Your eyes rolled, and you pushed past the man to slap a hand on the hood of the vehicle, eyes narrowed up on his taller figure. “There. Now it’s not.”

The man opened his mouth to protest, but with the menacing glare Scott was giving him, he unclasped the hook from the hood of the car, and pulled out of the parking lot. The three of you looked between each other, clearly stumped as to why you went out of your way to stop the tow man. “Well, now we have a jeep- Scott, you okay?”

The teenager had his head cocked to the side, eyes squinting in concentration as he slowly walked towards the door of the jeep. You took a step back, too curious to interrupt what Scott was doing.

“There you guys are!”

All three heads snapped towards Malia, who’s dark brown eyes were eyeing the jeep intensely. “You heard it too?” Scott asked, pulling his face away from the window of the jeep. “It’s coming from inside.”

“Break it.” Lydia ordered, stepping closer to the group, “The jeep’s abandoned anyway, nobody’s going to say anything. Break it.”

Scott hesitantly nodded at her insisting, guiding the three of you away before smashing the driver’s side window. The ringing sound that the two werewolves could only hear grew, making it loud enough for you and Lydia to hear as well. “Is that a radio?” You asked, stepping forward to peek inside the jeep to find a police scanner installed into the vehicle. The four of you swiftly shuffled into the jeep, eyes locked on the device that kept its consistent ringing noise.

Then suddenly, it stopped.

And honestly, it felt like your heart might’ve too.

“Why’d it stop?” asked Lydia.

“It doesn’t matter,” you sighed, reaching out for the glowing on/off switch to shut it down. From the passenger seat, you turned to look back at Scott, who held that same perplexed expression from outside the jeep. “What? Did you catch a scent?”

Both teen wolves nodded at this, their noses twitching while they inhaled deeply. You were soon met with Scott’s dark eyes, confusion swirling in them. “Yeah, uh..” He shook his head in disbelief, eyeing each person inside. “Mine. Lydia’s, Malia’s. Yours.”

“Especially yours.” Malia added, slouching in her seat with scrunched brows before asking, “But how? I’ve never been in this jeep before.”

“Neither have I.” Scott said, propping his elbows on the back of the two fronts seats. You turned to face Lydia, who’s lips were twitching into a small smile. “Yes, we have.” She said quietly, and you were quick to catch on. “We just don’t remember it.” You finished quickly, your eyes searching both Scott and Malia’s desperately.

“I thought we were done with that.” Malia deadpanned, glaring at Lydia for getting you riled up again. The three of them continued their quarrel while you let yourself grow distant, a faint ringing in your ear that grew louder instantaneously.

The grip he had on your face readjusted as he licked his lips nervously. "Remember... Remember that I've been in love with you since the beginning of our friendship, and that I didn't even realize until middle school." He chuckled humorlessly, swiping at the few stray tears that sprung from your eyes.

You shook your head in his hold, the faint memories of your blossoming friendship since diapers flashing before your eyes. "Stiles." You wailed, sucking your bottom lip into your mouth to silence your cries.

The boy's eyes flickered past you, his heart stopping at the sight of a Ghost Rider just outside your window. He released a steady breath, leaning into your face.

"And remember this."

“Y/N!” You heard Lydia shout, pulling you out of your trance-like state. You sniffled, glazed eyes looking to hers before letting them wander to the rest of the group’s concerned stares. “I’m sorry I, uh, was just thinking of something. I’m sorry.” Your words were rushed before you bowed your head down to avoid anymore prying eyes.

“We found an address..” Lydia said gently, almost as if she were to speak any louder, you would break. “It’s 129 Woodbine Lane.”

Exhaling slowly, you lifted your head up, a small sound of disbelief tumbling from your lips. “That’s the Sheriff’s house.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

“Girls, is this about Stiles again?” The Sheriff’s voice was stern as he looked between you and Lydia from across.

When you announced that the address was home to the Sheriff and Claudia, you and Lydia booked it to her car, rendering both Malia and Scott speechless. After being there for about fifteen minutes interrogating them about their apparently ‘stolen’ jeep, the two adults eventually caught on to your persistence. “Y/N,” Claudia called out to you, a soft, yet worried smile on her face. “Don’t you think it’s time to let this go? Talk to somebody about this?” She asked, shifting her attention onto Lydia as well. “Maybe it’s a good time to talk to your mothers about this..”

You stared at her blankly, worried that if you thought about nobody understanding what you and Lydia did in the slightest, that you’ll break. That you wouldn’t be able to put yourself back together this time.

“I’m sorry, you’re right.” Lydia said, collecting her things from the floor before she stood up from the lounge chair. The three of them conversed a bit longer, but it was all just background noise to you. You were too lost in your head to notice them make subtle glances towards you. Suddenly, you stood up, alarming both Claudia and the Sheriff. You could feel your hands shaking, so you held them, twiddling your thumbs rapidly. “Do you mind if I-” You choked out, resulting to just nodding your head in the direction of their restroom. Once granted permission, you rushed to the hallway, not caring that the three awaiting bodies could hear your pained cries. Your grip on your bag faltered, and you let it drop onto the floor. You stared at the wallpaper that Lydia had told you about peeling, and you found yourself gently rubbing the paper. Pressing your back to the very same wall, you slid down the wall with your head in your hands.

But what you didn’t know, was that the teenage boy with the unforgettable whiskey eyes was doing the very same thing.

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

As you sat in the driver’s seat of the rusted blue jeep, you let out a wince while your stomach churned, unable to fathom the familiarity the vehicle brought you. You just couldn’t remember where it came from. You sat there in silence with Lydia, waiting for Scott and Malia to return from wherever they ran off to after hearing a faint roaring in the distance.

“We’re gonna bring him back, you know.” Lydia’s voice broke the silence, attempting to ease your visibly distraught state. Although it didn’t work, you appreciated the effort. “How are we going to do that when we’re the only two people who believe he’s even real?” You asked, your eyes begging for an answer from your best friend even though she was unable to give you one. Just when Lydia’s jaw dropped to speak, footsteps approached you both quickly. You looked over to find a huffing Scott, his right hand clutched around something as he stopped by your window. “Where’s Malia?” You asked, looking past Scott briefly to see if she would turn up, but didn’t. “The roar,” Scott panted, eyes squinting as he recalled the previous event. “It was Peter’s. Peter Hale’s. H-He got out from where the Ghost Riders are keeping people, and he gave me this.”

Before you could ask more questions, a set of keys were in front of your face, hanging off of Scott’s index finger. You eagerly snatched the set from him, looking over them while Lydia climbed into the back seat for Scott to sit in the passenger. Giving the two of them another glance, you slid the key into it’s ignition, a laugh falling from your lips when it was a perfect fit. Turning the key, you heard the engine begin to roar to life, making a smile appear on your lips. Not soon after, there was a loud clunking noise, before the engine died down. “God! Stupid thing..” You grumbled, turning the key again while pressing down on the gas.

“Don’t flood it.” Scott warned, making Lydia cock her head at him with raised brows. “Do you even know what that means?” She asked, chuckling as Scott looked at her with a pained face. While the two engulfed themselves into a small bickering match, you managed to start the car, a squeak of excitement coming from you as you watched the lights inside the car come to life.

“Hello?”

The voice was faint behind the static being from the police scanner, but that was all it took for your heart to skip a beat or two. “Guys..” You mumbled, voice going unheard by Scott and Lydia as they continued their argument. “You guys!” You shouted, eyes looking between the two of them when they silenced, huffing out a breath before gesturing to the active police scanner. “Listen.”

“Hello? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”

And just like your own, both the boy and girl’s eyes grew to the size of saucers. Scott barely hesitated, snatching up the mic and putting it to his lips. “Stiles?” He asked tentatively, like he was waiting to be wrong. When the name fell from Scott’s lips, your body went rigid. The possibility of Scott actually believing you now made your eyes well up with tears, a hand reaching up over your mouth. You watched as Lydia grabbed the mic and put it to her own lips, “Stiles, is that you?”

The silence between the three of you was agonizing, the only thing you could do was wait for the familiar voice to ring through again.

And then it did.

“Scott, Lydia, is that you?”

The gasp you let out was muffled behind your hand, the tears in your eyes trickling down your face while you stared at your two best friends in awe. This was real. Stiles was real, and he’s alive.

“Oh my god, Stiles.” Lydia wailed, a tearful smile jerking at her lips along with Scott. “We can hear you.” He confirmed, making a glance at you before looking back at the small wired mic.

“Oh my god, you know me? You-you remember me?” Stiles asked, his tone showing evident disbelief. “Okay, okay, um.. Where’s Y/N? Is she there?”

Your eyes fell from Scott’s to the handheld device, only to look back to him. He gave you an encouraging nod, giving you the mic and staring with Lydia as you held it to your lips, asking quietly, “Stiles, is this.. is this really you?”

From the other line, you heard a slow breath of relief come from the radio. “Yeah, listen to me.. Do you remember the last thing I said to you?”

Your mouth fell agape, looking to the mic as if it had all the answers, while Scott and Lydia stared, expecting one from you.

“Remember… Remember that I’ve been in love with you since the beginning of our friendship, and that I didn’t even realize until middle school.”

Your eyes closed briefly, the blurry memory growing clear as your face scrunched up in concentration. Then it hit you. Moments before Stiles was taken. His love for you. And the kiss. Putting your lips back up to the mic, you spoke breathlessly. “You said.. You said ‘remember I’ve been in love with you, since the beginning.’ and then-” your bottom lip was worried between your teeth, a small sob escaping you. “And then you kissed me.” The words came out weakly, tears rolling down your face just as much as the night he was taken, but that was the only thing you knew from the distant memory. Scott took the microphone from you, knowing that you wouldn’t be able to talk in the state that you were in. “Where are you? We’re coming to find you.” Scott asked hurriedly, knowing that his best friend was out there was putting him on edge.

“No, no. You can’t. You won’t be able to find me.”

He sounded so defeated through the radio, and god, did it break you. You thought that him talking to the three of you might be doing more harm than good to you right now. What if you wouldn’t be able to get him out?

“Stiles, what’re you talking about? Just.. Just tell us where you are and we’ll come, we’ll come.” Scott pleaded into the mic, eyes filling to the brim with salty tears, same as yours. In the distance, you could hear loud rustling from Stiles’ end, making you involuntarily lean towards the mic. “Just, just remember this. Canaan, okay? Remember Canaan.” His voice sounded panicked, and the rustling only grew louder. Stiles was in danger. Ripping the device from the tan boy’s hands, you cried into the mic, “No wait, Stiles, don’t go! Stiles!”

You were too late.

He was gone.

But, you were determined to bring him back.

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

You looked between your pack in the dinning room of the McCall house, you felt as though you were stuck right at the beginning. Scott face was blotted with tears, his cheeks glistening underneath the light as he stared blankly ahead, repeatedly calling a disconnected phone number.

Your attempt to get Sheriff Stilinski on your side after hearing Stiles through the radio fell straight through, as he shot you, Scott, and Lydia down almost instantly. After looking through the underground tunnels, you managed to find a riff, but it was destroyed by the hellhound — who was being controlled by a supernatural Nazi from 1943. You could almost relate to how Stiles felt right now — uou were stuck, and you didn’t know what the next step was or if it was even worth it.

Lydia was the first one to break the fifteen minutes of silence. “Scott,” She sighed, placing her hand over the cellphone in the tan boy’s hand, slowly easing it down onto the table. “Your mom’s gone, but she’s still alive.”

“What do we do now?” asked Malia, her dark eyes looking to the three of you expectantly. She was never really one to follow rules or plans, but this was different — it was all you had left.

“We can’t hide from them.” You murmured, looking to your fingernails as you picked at them to avoid eye contact. “What about Lydia? The Ghost Rider was scared of her.” Malia pointed out, making you sigh and simply shake your head at her.

“No, it wasn’t fear. It was more like.. reverence.” Lydia said.

“It doesn’t matter!” You snapped, the weight in your heart only seeming to grow heavier with each breath you took. “The rift is gone. We’re the only ones left.”

Then it was silent.

Until it wasn’t.

The backdoor of the McCall house opened abruptly, creaking as Sheriff Stilinski stepped through. His light eyes looked to each of you while you stared back at him, confusion clear in the four of you.

“I have a son.”

And that was all it took for your hope to be restored.

Looking up at the older man with glossy eyes, your expression mimicked the three of your friends — hope and confusion.

“His name is Mieczyslaw Stilinski. But we called him Stiles.” Noah’s eyes drifted to yours, an apologetic smile gracing his features before he cleared his throat. “I remember.. when Stiles was a little kid, he couldn’t say his first name. Not sure why, it pretty much rolls of the tongue. But, uh, the closest he could get, was ‘mischief.’” This time, the Sheriff’s eye’s drifted to Lydia, who was giving him a tight lipped smile to match with her green eyes.

The man pursed his lips, a dry chuckle rumbling from his chest as he looked to the four teenagers. “I remember when, uh.. Stiles first got his jeep. It belonged to his mother, she wanted him to have it. The first time he took it for a spin behind the wheel, he went straight into a ditch. I gave him his first roll of duck tape that day.” His lips curled into a smile as he thought back on the memory, and you couldn’t help but do the same because finally you could see it — you could see the end of the line. “We’re here tonight because my goofball son decided Scott and Y/N, two of his greatest friends in the world, into the woods to see a dead body.”

You blinked up at him, your jaw slacked while you tried to form a simple sentence in your head. “How.. How did you remember?” You asked, blown away at his ability to remember someone he so blatantly told you didn’t exist. Noah nodded towards Lydia, and you quickly whipped your head around with a watery grin on your face. “It started with Stiles’ jersey. Then I found the red string for his crime board. Finally, his whole room came back and all the memories.”

“Then the strangest thing happened.” The Sheriff scoffed, looking to Scott when his eyes furrowed curiously. “I thought I saw him.. Something opened, right in the middle of the room, just for a moment. Then it was gone.”

“A rift.” You mumbled, eyes growing in realization as you looked to the group. “I thought there was only one left? We saw it disappear.” Malia asked, referring to the portal that was now destroyed by Parrish — in his hellhound form. “You remembered Stiles, and that opened a new rift.” Lydia pieced together, pointing to Sheriff Stilinski who looked among you all with a lost look on his face.

Scott bowed his head, the ends of his lips twitching into a smile. “If the Sheriff can do it.. maybe we can too.” He proposed, looking to you with hopeful eyes. You grabbed ahold of his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze and nodding to him. “The rift closed, but we can open it again.”

“How?” asked Malia.

“By remembering Stiles.” You said firmly, “we have to remember everything.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

“How will we know when it’s working?”

Your question was muffled behind your fingers, your teeth gnawing on the nails and turning your skin soft. Lydia looked over her shoulder at you, eyes narrowed with pursed lips, and you immediately shut your mouth. You were in the Argent bunker, watching a locked Scott McCall travel through his own mind in some sort of cooling machine.

With Malia and Lydia on your side, you watched a Scott stood still with seeled eyes, waiting for further instructions from Lydia. “This isn’t working..” Lydia whined, her voice wobbling with panic as her eyes grew at the way Scott thrashed around in the machine. “You said he needs an emotional connection, right? Like what the Sheriff did?” Malia asked, stepping closer to Lydia who was pacing on the other end of the room. The strawberry blonde nodded, looking to the taller girl with glazed eyes. “He wasn’t just remembering someone, he was remembering his son. His family.”

“Whatcha thinkin’ about, Stilinski?” You asked, crawling your way between him and the McCall boy as you all laid on the floor of his cluttered bedroom. Both of the boys shifted about on Stiles’ floor, making room for you before cozying up again.

“I don’t know, I just.. I don’t know.” The whiskey eye boy sighed, his tongue darting over his lips as he stared at the ceiling. You looked over to him, brows raised in concern as he struggled to find the words. With your bottom lip worried between your teeth, you let your closest hand reach out for his, giving it a small squeeze of reassurance which he returned almost immediately.

“It’s just.. ever since my mom died, and my dad being in the station majority of the time,” He mumbled, exhaling shakily before sitting up from his position. You and Scott both mocked him, sitting up with crossed legs in a small circle to see each other. “You two are my best friends, you know? You’re all I have left. Besides my dad, but he doesn’t risk his life nearly as much as we do and-” He paused, his eyes filling with tears that caused your own to prick with them. Looking to Scott, you watched as a small teardrop rolled down his tan cheek.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if something happened to either one of you. You’re family.”

“Scott!” You called out to the boy, gently tapping on the glass window of the machine in attempt to catch his attention. “Listen, I remember something. During our junior year we were with Stiles, okay? And-and he was talking about how.. how after his mom died, we were all he had left.” Your eyes welled up with tears, blocking your vision. You sniffled, not caring if the tears shed or not.

“He said that he wouldn’t know what he would do with himself if he lost one of us, that we’re family. But he’s lost right now, Scott. He’s lost and we need to remember him, we need to remember our family and find him.”

Your words seemed to strike a cord with the alpha, his thrashing stopped and he was mumbling things underneath his breath. But it stopped, and as soon as it did there was a deep rumbling sound, causing you and the girls to jump and stare at the flashing light coming from the window. As soon as it appeared, it vanished, and was replaced with a loud beeping sound coming from the machine. You were quick to act, pulling Scott out of it. Malia rushed over with a blanket she found lounging around and guided him to sit as you glanced at him.

“It was working, why’d you pull me out?” Scott asked incredulously, eyes bulging as he looked between the you and Malia. “You were going to die in there.” You said simply, catching a glimpse of Lydia who was already staring at you.

“How do you get Scott to do that?” She asked, tone almost accusing, as if she were piecing together some sort of puzzle.

You blinked at her, eyebrows scrunched together as you thought of the now distant memory. “When, uh, when you and Malia were talking about family, it triggered a memory of Stiles.” You mumbled, but it was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “For the past few weeks, I would get these headaches.. and whenever the headaches came, so did the memories of Stiles. As soon as I remember though, it gets blurry — I forget. But I know they’re from him.”

You never looked up from your locked gaze on the floor, but when you did, you were met with three stunned stares.

“It’s you..” Lydia said quietly, her heels clacking faintly on the concrete floor as she made her way towards you. She grabbed ahold of your wrists, her sea foam green eyes boring into your own. “It’s all about connection, and you’ve had one with Stiles since the Ghost Riders took him.”

“It’s true.” Scott agreed, his teeth chattering slightly while he cuddled into the blanket around his shoulders. “When I was remembering him, I was also remembering the two of you together. I would also tease him for making it so obvious,” he chuckled, staring off distantly before he locked eyes with you. “Nobody had a connection like you two.”

You were speechless, staring between the three of your best friends with soaked cheeks. “Okay.. okay, so, what do we do?”

Just as you spoke the words of agreement, smiles appeared on their faces, which only made you mirror them. “We have to do it the old fashioned way.” Lydia stated, grabbing ahold of your shoulders and guiding you to an empty stool propped up next to the metal table. “We’re going to have to actually hypnotize you.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

You were in a classroom. A single desk occupied by you whilst you sat in front of a television, a remote settled on the wooden desk by your right hand. As you looked around cautiously, a ghost of a smile appeared, genuinely excited about the fact that you were actually hypnotized.

“Weird..” You whispered, your eyes darting around the empty classroom and to the television that displayed a static channel.

“Y/N? Are you in the classroom? Do you see the TV and remote?” Lydia’s voice echoed throughout the room, causing you to jump slightly in your seat. Your focus drifted to the remote, picking it up and inspecting it. “Yeah.. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Good. Now, the remote gives you access to all of your memories. Find the memories of Stiles.” Lydia’s voice directed, and your thumb hovered over the power button, thinking of the missing boy before clicking play.

You heard the faint patter of footsteps approach you, it was a boy about your age, six years old. He had freckles scattered across his face, a shaved head and a sheepish smile.

“Hi. I-I’m Mi..Mie-Mieczy...” You watched as the boy sighed, his face heating up with embarrassment. When he looked back up to meet your eyes, you offered him a friendly smile, holding your hand out for him to shake. “Hi, I’m Y/N.. your name is Stiles? Your dad said so!” You asked, beaming happily when the boy, Stiles’, face visibly perked up at the fact that you knew his name. A small giggle escaped your lips as he shook your hand enthusiastically.

As you conversed animatedly with the younger version of Stiles, you could hear Sheriff Stilinski speak to your mother faintly in the background as they watched the two of you together. “Something tells me they’re gonna get along just fine.”

You gasped, no longer reliving the memory of the young version of yourself and Stiles. Now back in the empty classroom in front of the TV, you looked between it and the remote in your hand, a laugh of disbelief erupting from you and echoing throughout the room.

“Stiles..” You whispered, longing evident in your tone. In your trance, the three of your friends watched you intently as you whispered his name, making the flame of the candle flicker lightly. Lydia then cleared her throat, taking the lead once again. “Y/N, look for another memory of Stiles.”

You did as you were told, flickering through the multiple channels the television had to offer.

“You’re too pretty to be crying, Y/N.”

“No! You can’t go, it’s too dangerous!”

“Sometimes the person we’re looking for isn’t in the search at all. Maybe.. maybe they’re just right in front of us.”

Stiles’ voice echoed loudly around the room as you clicked through every memory, each one being passed by because none of them fit — none of them felt like what you were looking for. You landed on a channel, pausing briefly your rushed clicking and letting it play.

“I’m with you, ‘til the end of the line.”

It was Stiles’ voice again. No memory being played, just his voice, but you could somehow remember the exact moment of the conversation took place. “Is that a Marvel reference, you Star Wars nerd?” You heard your voice this time, echoing just like Stiles’ had been. A smile grew on your lips as the memory began to restore itself in your mind. “Yeah! But, you’re so into that stuff so.. it could be our thing! What do you think?”

“I think..” You found yourself whispering the same response you said in the memory, “I think it’s perfect. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, Sti.” You murmured in your trance, confusing the three teenagers once again. “Y/N.” Lydia’s voice called out to you again, “Find the memory that you and Stiles made a connection.”

You furrowed your brows, looking over your shoulder suddenly. There was a door, but it wasn’t there before. Setting the remote down, you picked yourself up from the wooden desk and made your way to the door, slowly pulling it open. You found yourself in the Sheriff’s house once again, but you weren’t alone. You were in a memory. This memory was different though, and you knew it as you made your way to where the memory was being played out. You always relived them, never watched them — but this one, you were exactly that.

You watched your eleven year old self sit down next to a boy around the same age, who you knew was Stiles, and place a hand over his. He had tears in his eyes, and his face was vacant of emotion. You watched as your younger self looked at him with sorrow eyes, and your heart broke when you realized what memory was being played.

“This was the night his mom died..” You mumbled, tears clouding your vision and you quickly wiped them to watch the memory continue being played out. No words were being said between your younger selves, but none were needed to be. You observed Stiles placing his head in your lap, tears rolling down his face at a quicker pace as his expression finally broke. He released heartbroken sobs as your fingers ran through his hair, your younger self staring ahead. If you didn’t know that this was a memory, you would’ve thought she were staring right at you.

It didn’t take you long to figure out why this memory was being played, and your jaw slacked at the realization. “That’s when it happened.” You whispered in shock, finding yourself slowly being pulled from the trance.

“That’s when what happened?” You heard Scott’s faint voice ask. The vision of three of your best friends were blurry as you were snapping back to reality, and they all were looking at you expectantly as you cried.

“The night his mom died, when I was there.. H-He was crying with his head in my lap. That’s when it all changed.” You spoke while staring off at the candle, who’s flame was now burnt out. “I-I didn’t realize it until now, but that... that was the night we fell in love.”

At this point the tears trailing down your face were relentless, only growing worse when you painfully gasped. “I was there! I was there the night he was taken.” You sobbed, hands covering your mouth while Scott, Lydia, and Malia’s faces contorted with shock. “When the Ghost Riders took him, I was there.”

As you stood up from the stool, the ground shook beneath your feet, a bright, zapping light took over the room before disappearing behind the door. You glanced back to the three teenagers behind you, taking a step forward and carefully opening the door, revealing a blinding white light at the end of the tunnel.

Stiles turned his body to face yours, using both hands to grab onto yours with need. “Y/N, I’m going to be erased, okay? Just like Alex. You’re gonna forget me.”

“No. No, I won’t! I won’t. I won’t.” You promised, your sobs escaping at every chance they could.

“You will.” He whispered calmly, tears rolling down his own freckled cheeks as he gave you a small smile. “Remember… Remember that I’ve been in love with you since the beginning of our friendship, and that I didn’t even realize until middle school.”

“I never told him,” Your voice croaked at you spoke aloud, walking closer to the white light. “I never told him how I felt before they took him. That I love him. I never said it back!” You shouted, the feeling of Scott grabbing ahold of your arm to keep you from walking towards the light making itself present.

Then suddenly.. there was no need to walk towards the light.

Because there was a figure standing in front of it.

You let out a cheerful laugh, tears bunching at the creases by your eyes as you stared at the familiar shadowy figure, gasping out it’s name.

“Stiles.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

“Where is he?” You whimpered, feeling your knees buckle at the thought of failing Stiles yet again. Gripping onto the stool, you looked to Lydia and Malia, who were staring at you sympathetically. “We didn’t see anyone.” Lydia spoke gently in attempt to keep your emotions from spilling.

Scott had left you with both Malia and Lydia to keep trying to bring Stiles back and to be here just in case he comes here looking for any of you.

“I saw him. It was working, I know it.” You mumbled, mostly to yourself, but with Malia’s supernatural hearing ability, she heard you loud and clear. You stared at her blankly as she hopped up to her feet, pulling open the door and beginning to step out. “Um, where are you going?” Lydia asked from where she was next to you.

“To go find Stiles,” Malia stated as if it were obvious. “Listen, Stiles isn’t coming here. If he were, he would’ve, but he hasn’t, so he’s not.”

You blinked at her, deciding to disregard her last sentence before standing up yourself. “You believe me?” You asked her, and when she silently nodded her head, you were quickly on her side. “Okay well,” You trailed off, turning to Lydia who was still sitting on the stool. “Stiles is out there, I can feel it. So please, Lyd, help us bring him home.”

You watched as the strawberry blonde pursed her lips, lifting herself off of her own stool before strutting over to you. “Let’s go find him.”

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

“Y/N! What are you doing here?” You heard Scott yell from the end of the hallway of Beacon Hills High. Stumbling over the train tracks that were magically built into the floor, you grunted as you fell into his chest. “I’m looking for Stiles.” You answered with a shrug of your shoulders, watching Scott’s eyes grow with an emotion you really didn’t have time to decipher. “I’m going to places he’s most likely to show up while Lydia and Malia look at where the other train track lead, but his jeep’s gone.. So I won’t be able to look anywhere else but here on foot.”

Scott eyes darted around as his mouth opened and closed, trying to find something to say. “I, uh, took it? Yeah, Liam needed me so I hotwired the jeep and drove to the hospital.” He explained, a sheepish smile on his lips. You nodded slowly at his explanation, not really seeing all the pieces fitting together. “Okay.. so where is it now?”

“What? Oh! It’s still at the hospital. I, uh.. ran.. here.”

You rolled your eyes at his painfully awkward replies, pulling away from him and beginning your journey down the hallway. “Well, I’m going to the lockerooms.” You announced, peering back at Scott who was now conversing with Lydia, who appeared out of absolutely nowhere. “Take Lydia with you! There are Ghost Riders everywhere.” Scott shouted, giving Lydia a shove before dashing off into the other direction.

“He seems a little.. off.” You said to Lydia, chuckling softly. The two of you walked side by side through the eerily silent school, occasionally checking over your shoulders in case you needed to defend yourself. “Yeah, but that’s Scott McCall for you.” She laughed nervously which you furrowed your brows at.

“You know, you’re acting just like hi— Lydia, look out!”

Your words quickly caught her, and the Ghost Rider’s attention. “Cover your ears.” Lydia warned, her voice low but stern and you quickly did as you were told, squeezing your hands to your ears as Lydia released one of her banshee shrieks, sending the Ghost Rider flying into the set of lockers. It was silent, and you slowly pulled your hands away from your ears, stepping closer to Lydia to see the damage done.

But when you did, you felt your heart stop. All because were staring straight into a pair of whiskey eyes, and while you did, you felt all the memories with those eyes come rushing back.

“Lydia..” You heard Stiles’ voice say with relief, a smile appearing on his lips at the sight of his best friend. Deciding to come into better view, you shuffled to the side of Lydia, and the scuffling of your feet surely brought attention from the two other people in the room. “Y/N..” He mumbled, his voice holding a whole new different emotion as his hazel eyes filled with tears. In the background you could hear the clacking of Lydia’s heels fade away, giving you two your moment.

You didn’t know what to think as you slowly stepped towards the boy, almost as if you were to rush towards him any quicker, he’d disappear. A face you haven’t seen in months was finally in view, and the gaps in your memory were finally being filled by the boy you loved — it all made sense again. It was that moment where all the tears, all the fighting, all the heartache- it felt worth it. It felt like the world finally made sense again.

“Is this real?” You croaked, a weak sob eliciting from you when your hands reached out to cup his cheeks, all while staring into frantically into his eyes. The brunette quickly leaned into your touch, his tears rolling down his cheeks and onto your hands as he greedily soaked up the feeling of you touching him — deprived of it for what felt like an eternity. “It’s real, I’m here. I’m here, I’m real.” He repeated to you, eyes fluttering shut before he held the back of your head to his chest, nuzzling the tip of nose into your hair.

The moment, however, didn’t last long before you were thrashing in his hold. “I never said anything back,” You wailed, bottom lip quivering as you recalled the last memory you had of him. “You told me you loved me, and I never said it back. I never told you how I felt.” You panicked. You felt the heat rush to your neck and cheeks as Stiles gripped onto your face as a way to snap you back. Fortunately, it worked, and you were staring at him wide eyed while he simply looked at you with his same beautiful, lopsided smile.

“You didn’t have to.”

Was all he said before his lips were slanted on yours, involving you in a kiss that was completely different the first one the two of you shared. The first kiss, it was frantic, rushed. Stiles kissed you because at the time, it was the last time he would ever see you again. This kiss, however, was slow and it said everything that words couldn’t. You felt your breath hitch, your body melting into his as you kissed him back with love and longing — two emotions that overwhelmed your body more than any other. You felt the grip he had on your face tighten, pulling you even closer to his body as he pushed as much passion as he could into the kiss. Finding yourself holding onto his flannel overshirt, you couldn’t help but shuffle your feet closer to close any existing space.

He was the first to pull away, his forehead pressed to yours once more while he inhaled deeply to catch his breath with you doing the same. Your eyes were open, scanning over his face and looking over each freckle and beauty mark that littered his face gracefully, bringing a small smile to your lips.

And as the boy in front of you slowly peeled his eyelids open, revealing the beautiful whiskey color you found yourself in love with, you knew this was it.

He was back in your arms again, more real than ever. Not a pounding headache of a memory. Not a faint dream that had you gasping for breath in the middle of the night. Not a figment of your imagination. He was real and this was it.

This was the end of the line.

[switchbrainedholylime]

A little more Renga for @emmettspeakz

Sitting next to Reki in English class was beyond awkward. Any kind of harmless small-talk Langa tried to bring in was shot down like a submarine missile. The worst part was that Langa barely knew any of his other classmates, so there was no one to turn to at school. 

Their teacher, an American woman named Ms. Boyer, was stood in the front of the class, “Kyan Reki!”

Silence. The American woman walked closer. “Read pages 23-27 of The Chronicles of Narnia.” 

“Oh, sure,” And with one mutter, Kyan Reki had just made Narnia out of to be the most boring place ever. He stood up, nearly tripping over the legs of his chair. He mumbled through the reading and then sat back down. 

“Langa Hasegawa, pick up where he left off.” 

“Right,” Langa looked down at the pages. “Edward followed Lucy into the wardrobe. He thought he was better than his siblings.” 

Langa continued to read the portion assigned out to his class and then sat back down. He looked over at Reki, “Hey, you did a great job.” 

“Hm,” Reki looked away. 

----------

After everyone was shuffling to go home, Ms. Boyer halted Langa from skating down the hallway. Her arms crossed. “Be real with me, what’s going on with you and Reki?” 

“Is it really that obvious?” 

“Yes. Now are you gonna tell me or not? Because I might know a person who could help you.” 

“Really,” Langa blinked. “Sure, what’s their name?” 

“They’re a middle school teacher. Follow me,” 

“A middle school teacher?” Langa asked. What could they know about me?  

------

In the staff room, Langa spotted a bound book with his name on the spine sitting on his English teacher’s desk. Curious, the Canadian picked it up and began to flip through casually until he came to a startling conclusion; it was a book about every detail of his life up to that point. 

It started off with his upbringing in Canada as as snowboarder and move back to Okinawa with his mother after his father’s death. It described him meeting Reki, working at the shop. It described his race with Shadow, Miya and ADAM to the T. It was the most in-depth analysis of it he’d seen. 

“Hasegawa, right?” A gruff voice interrupted. “My name’s Mr. Tsuchigomori. I see you’ve found your book.” 

“Y-Yeah, where did you even GET this?” 

“I run the 4pm library. One of the 7 mysteries of the old school building. I’ve only seen the description of those books change once in a hundred years; and it wasn’t pleasant.” 

“They tell the future, too?” Langa flipped through towards the back. He hadn’t seen much left to go after his challenge with ADAM. He turned to the last page that read: “DIES CUTTING HEAD ON ROCK WHILE RACING WITH ADAM”. 

Langa almost dropped the book on the floor. He was going to race with Adam in a week’s time. He was going to die in it? 

“I’d make up with that Reki kid while you still have time.” Mr. Tsuchigomori blew into his cigar. “You can try to prolong your life, but again, this book never really changes that often from what it originally predicts.” 

“But I’m terrible at smalltalk. Is there anyone you think could help me?” 

“Well, there is one person, and he also happens to be the only one who’s ever changed his fate. If anyone can help you, it’s him.” Mr. Tsuchigomori turned back to Langa. “Since you don’t have much time left, you’ll probably be able to see him, too.” 

“’Him’?” Langa asked. 

------

 Langa went into the old building that served as its middle school section. The blue-haired skater looked back and forth to make sure no one was looking. 

“Alright the coast is clear,” Langa bit his tongue and bolted into the girls’ bathroom. He was met with a green-tipped girl who was mopping the floor and a floating boy in an antique uniform. Was that from the 50s? 60s? Why was there a boy in the girls’ bathroom? 

Then again, I’M a boy in a girls’ bathroom. I shouldn’t judge. Langa breathed deeply. “Are you Yugi Amane, the one Mr. Tsugomori spoke of?” 

“Yep! I go by Hanako, now though...,” 

“I have one week left to prevent my death. I’d like your help to, uh...not do that.” Langa stated. 

“Wow, that’s a huge hurdle you’ve just thrown on me! I don’t know your name here, buddy! You didn’t even knock on my door or anything.” Hanako laughed. 

“I’m serious. The man I’m going up against has touched more underaged boys than a Catholic priest.” Langa sighed. “My name’s Langa Hasegawa.” 

“Well, if you say so I’ll have to oblige. Let’s see what I have,” Hanako reached into his pockets. “I mean, I’ve killed before, but right now I’m working on repenting for my sins.”  

Langa’s eyes widened. “Okay...,” 

-----

Hanako began following the blue-haired skater around the school, and it didn’t take Langa too long to piece together that no one else could see him. He chalked it up to him being a ghost.

“So this is your boyfriend?” Hanako poked Reki who was still ignoring Langa. “He’s a cutie!” 

“Hanako, leave him alone. Reki didn’t ask for you to touch his hair like that.” Langa ordered him. Reki then looked over at Langa in confusion.

“What’s going on with you?” Reki asked. “Did you hit your head?” 

“I tried the Hanako ritual all the girls talk about. Y’know, knock three times on the third stall in the bathroom, summon the ghost of Hanako, get three wishes.” 

“You went into the women’s bathroom, you perv,” Reki pouted.  

“He started following me--he’s right behind you!” Langa pointed at Hanako who was making a funny face behind Reki, sticking his tongue out. “No one else seems to see him!” 

“You’re really freaking me out here, bro.” Reki looked at him. “You gettin’ enough sleep here?” 

“I promise I’m not making this up.” Langa insisted. “Look behind you!” 

“I don’t see anyone.” Reki peered over his shoulder. 

“Dude, is that Canadian kid alright?” One of their classmates gossiped. 

“Maybe he bumped his head?” Another classmate whispered.

Langa hid his face as Hanako floated around him and began to play with his hair, pulling it into a ponytail. “There we go!” 

------

Bringing Hanako to S was...surreal. A schoolboy in a 1960s uniform floating around the abandoned factory.

“I think I remember when this place was active. I knew some classmates whose parents worked here!” Hanako looked around at the shell of a factory. “So whadda do ‘ere?” 

“We skate, but I’ve got to come up with a good excuse not to go up against ADAM.” Langa held his skateboard. 

“Hey, SNOW!” Miya and Shadow came up towards Langa as he was talking with Hanako. They were utterly confused. 

“You can’t see him, either?” Langa pointed at Hanako. 

“Ah, no. You’re talking to air.” Miya chuckled.

“Look, I got a ghost from school attached to me.” Langa explained. “He followed me here. His name’s Hanako. Hanako, the 7th of the 7 Wonders of my school.” 

“A ghost?” Joe blinked. 

“How foolish a fantasy.” Cherry scoffed.

“Do yah think SNOW got his head bashed in?” SHADOW asked. 

“Look, I have to come up with a good excuse never to skate against ADAM ever, because I read a book that has my entire life in it, including the future...and I die this Saturday night.” Langa pulled out a copy of his book from the 4pm library. 

“Whoa...this goes way back,” Miya flipped through the pages. His eyes widened as he got to the end with the skate with ADAM that would result in Langa’s death along with the dismantlement of S. “What...?’  

The sound of a familiar skateboard rolled past. Its rider was a hoodie-wearing Reki with a sullen-looking face. 

“Reki!” Langa put his hand on Reki’s shoulder. He looked up. “I’m not going to skate ADAM. I’ll stay home Saturday night to avoid him. Please, I miss you. This ghost is not substitute for your cheerful smile in my life! Please!” 

Reki’s eyes lightened. “So you won’t skate with ADAM?” 

“No, I promise.” Langa embraced his boyfriend in a long, close hug. “I’m sorry for being so selfish. I won’t take your love for granted anymore.” 

“Same. You’re my best bro, SNOW.” 

“You can call me Langa.” 

-------

That Saturday, Langa and Reki sat at home and watched some hilariously bad movies on Netflix. They ate popcorn and Hanako made the duo some plain, good ol’ fashioned homemade donuts. 

“So you wanna watch 50 Shades of Grey next or The Room?” Reki sat in Langa’s lap with a donut in his mouth as his boyfriend flipped through Netflix. 

“I wonder if ADAM’s noticed we stood him up yet.” Langa grabbed another donut. “Oh well,” 

“Man what I wouldn’t give to see that idiot’s face.” Reki laughed.

“Hey I got some candy from the Mokke, want some?” Hanako offered. 

“You mean those pink bunnies that pull pranks?” Langa took one of the candies and popped it in his mouth. “That’s good.” 

“I know I probably shouldn’t mention this, but I have a twin named Tsukasa and he asked if he could be let out of the school just to see what this ‘ADAM’ guy is like.” Hanako mentioned. 

“What’s your twin like?” Langa asked. 

“He’s...um, psychotic.” Hanako replied. 

------

Langa and Hanako slept over at Reki’s house. 

The following morning, they woke up and the newspapers read: Diet Member Ainosuke Shindo found stabbed to death in abandoned factory. Suspect still unnamed and unidentified. If you have any information, please contact the Okinawa Police Department. 

“Yeah, I figured that’d happen with Tsukasa.” Hanako shrugged. 

“So ADAM just got stabbed by a ghost.” Langa asked. 

“Well, I think my job here is done.” Hanako yawned.      

[sillyteecup]

Sunflower

Scott McCall x black!reader

Warnings:

Mentions of death

Death

Literally one mention of sex

And my bad writing. Enjoy❤

Sunflower

Sunflower

My Eyes

Want you more than a melody

Let me inside

Wish I could get to know you

Scott's breakup with Allison had been tough and he had no plans to move on anytime soon. He found himself intrigued with the new dark chestnut skinned girl with the rich afro tied up into two huge puffs with sunflowers in them. She wore a short sleeved, lemon and white stripped button up shirt with a lemon rouched tank, long paperbag jeans with yellow sunflowers on the left pantleg, silver framed reading glasses and lemon and white custom Nikes. Scott approached her and sat across from her with the intention of being friends with her. For a second he watched in adoration as she smiled at the whatever she had just written before clearing his throat to catch her attention.

Sunflowers

Sometimes

Keep it sweet in your memory

I was just tongue tied

She looked up him, her eyes questioned Scott and he knew what they wanted to know. He would've answered much quicker if he didn't get lost in the hazel orbs that gazed at him at that moment. "Uhh..." she said snapping him out of his thoughts. "Oh uhm my name is Scott. McCall, captain of the lacrosse team," he mumbled. "Okay. Can I help you Scott McCall, captain of the lacrosse team?" she asked with an inquisitive eyebrow raised. "Uhm I noticed that I haven't seen you before and a friend of mine told me that you're new, so uhm you-uh wanna be uhm friends?" Scott mentally facepalmed himself for stumbling over his words so hard. 'Nice going McCall, she probably thinks you're a dork now,' he chastised himself. She giggled softly and Scott swore he had never heard anything as beautiful in his life. "Name's Y/N. Sure. We can be friends." He let out a sigh of relief and chuckled before diving into conversation with her.

And I dont wanna make you feel bad

But I've been trying hard not to talk to you

My sunflower (sunflower)

He introduced her to his pa-friends and they loved her instantly. Well Stiles was a little wary at first but he grew to like her too. She and Scott had a lot in common and became really close, hell she was giving Stiles a run for his money in the best friend department. Her favourite thing in the world was sunflowers. His favourite thing in the world was her. Scott always saw her as soft and fragile and he found himself falling for her, so he kept her away from all the supernatural drama by not telling her at all. He felt bad for keeping such a huge secret from her but he also felt better because he was protecting her. Little did he know that he wasn't the only one keeping secrets.

I couldn't want you anymore

Kiss in the kitchen like its a dance floor

I couldn't want you anymore tonight (tonight, tonight)

It was the night when the music teacher was killed. Scott ran to look for Lydia and told you to stay behind but her stubborn ass wasn't having it. He was fighting Jennifer Blake when Y/N ran into the room. "Y/N get out!" he yelled through a mouth full of canines. "Scott," she gasped. Everything after that was a blurr. Jennifer had thrown Scott into a table and stalked towards Y/N like she was some kind of prey. Scott tried with all his strength to get up but he was just too weak. He kept yelling for Jennifer not to hurt Y/N to no avail. Imagine his suprise when Y/N began to move at inhuman speed as she fought Jennifer. She fought long and hard but in the end she fell to her knees with a knife in her abdomen. Scott ran to her through his weak state. Everything around him shut down, all he could do was focus on her heartbeat as it slowed. He pleaded for her to stay with him as he held her. "I love you Y/N. Please. Don't," he sobbed. "Relax Scott I'm not dying," she groaned as she pulled the knife out. Everyone around them watched in awe as the wound underneath the grey t-shirt healed. They started flooding her with question after question, but not Scott. He just had one question. "What are you?" "I could ask you the same thing," she chuckled. "I'm a werewolf. What about you?" he asked. "Werewolf," she said as she flashed her eyes golden. "I love you too," she whispered as she pulled him into a passionate kiss.

Wondering headshake

Tired eyes are the death of me

Mouth full of toothpaste

Before I got to know you

It wasn't long before they actually got together. Nothing much had changed though, other than the kissing and sex. And as much as she was a great fighter, she was still his little sunflower. She stuck with him through everything. She was there when he became a True alpha, she was there when he, Stiles and Allison had to get rid of their darkness, she was there when Stiles was possessed and she was there, in his room, holding him as he cried in her arms hours after Allison died in his. Y/N didn't cry that night. She just wasn't the type to. Intead she was unusually quiet. "I should give you some space," she said as she got up to leave. "No. Stay. Please," he whispered.

I've got your face

Hung up high in the gallery

Out of this shade (sunflower, sunflower)

There was one instant where Y/N was jealous. Kira. Scott was jusy far too friendly with her and it made Y/N feel insecure. Maybe he liked Kira more than her. She came up with several reasons why: her hair, her skin, her body, her face. Kira was just better than her and it tore her apart. She wasn't mean to Kira about it though. How could anyone be? She's a whole ray of sunshine. Another reason for Scott to like her more. She started cancelling dates and plans because of it. She never cried about it though. She never told Scott she had anxiety because she didn't wanna seem like she was burdening or anything. At some point she stopped answering his calls and texts, and avoiding him all together. Not because she didn't love him anymore. But because she was afraid he didn't love her anymore. Oh how wrong she was. One afternoon as she was getting into her car, she felt someone gently grab her wrist and turn her around. "Y/N talk to me. You haven't been responding to my texts or calls. Are you okay? Have I done something wrong? If I have, how do I fix it?" he rambled. "You...I...I dont know," she whispered. "I'm sorry," he said, tears welling up in his eyes. "No! Its not your fault. I just got a little insecure," she reassured him. "Of Kira," she added quietly. He didn't say anything for 5 seconds before pulling her into a soft, loving kiss. "I love you." And he did. Hell so did she. She loved him more than sunflowers.

Your flowers just died

Plant new seeds in the mellody

Let me inside

I wanna get to know you

I don't wanna make you feel bad but I've been trying hard not to act a fool

My sunflower (sunflower, sunflower)

Y/N had only ever cried once in her life since she turned 5. "Scott! Scott no! NO! Mason who did this!" she screamed as she ran towards the stairs. She had an entire emotional breakdown at the sight of the lifeless corpse of the love of her life as Melissa tried her best to revive him. She would've helped if she had the strength but she didn't. Just the thought of living without Scott shattered her. Mason tried to comfort her but it was just all too much for her. The emotion was far too overwhelming and had come down on her harder than a tsunami on a single sunflower.

I couldn't want you anymore

Kiss in the kitchen like its a dancefloor

I couldn't want you more tonight (tonight, tonight)

I couldn't want you anymore

Kids in the kitchen, listen to dancehall

I couldn't want you anymore tonight

As if the heavens had heard her cries, Scott roared. His alpha eyes went back to brown immediately when he caught the sight of Y/N crying in Mason's arms. "Y/N," he said as he reached out to touch her. "I'm not ready to lose you," she said softly. He wiped her tears and kissed her forehead. She cleaned his wounds and stayed with him until they healed. She was a little bitter towards the rest of the pack except for Mason, Lydia and Kira because they didnt abandon him. The latter were victims of circumstance. Stiles and Liam on the other hand, she couldn't stand them. She never spoke to them until the end of the Theo Raeken/Lu Bête saga. And even then, it wasn't like she was extra friendly. She spoke to them because she had to. Scott wasn't mad at them though, he was okay as long as his sunflower was okay.

Sunflower

My eyes

Want you more than a melody

Let me inside

Wish I could get to know you

The rest of senior year came and went with thw Ghost rider saga. She was actually pretty glad to have Stiles back. Then came college. Y/N was supposed to leave for New York when strange animal occurrences got in the way. "How the hell is any of this more important than my college education?" she groaned as Scott, Malia and Lydia tried to talk her out of leaving. "It could mean that everyone's in danger," Lydia sighed. "Liam and his friends can handle it. Babe you're supposed to be headed for UC Davis. Malia, France! Lydia, MIT awaits you and I gotta go to Julliard," she yelled. "Come on. Please, its just a week," Scott said as his hands made their way to her waist. "Fine." A week turned a gruesome month, battling with something that uses your fears against you called the Anuk-ite. A week turned into a gruesome month of war with Tamora Monroe and her merry band of "hunters", aided by Gerard Argent. A whole month of death. But just like every battle they fought, they emerged victorious. She had just kissed Scott to help heal his eyes when she collapsed to her knees. Blood began pouring from her mouth as Scott rushed to her side. He began searching for the wound like a madman, hoping he could heal it. "Scott, baby. Its okay," she whispered. "No, no no," he mumbled after finding the bullet wound in her side. She had been shot with yellow wolfsbane and it was too late. "Why didn't you tell anyone?" he asked barely over a whisper. "We were too busy fighting to keep everyone else safe," she said with a proud smile. He cradled her body and sobbed. "Hey. You know sunflowers die right?" she chuckled softly. That's when Scott realized something. She was wearing the exact same outfit she wore when they met. Only this time her hair was tied into one ponytail. The sunflowers were replaced with sunflower clips. "I love you. I always have and I-I always will," she whispered feeling herself getting weaker. "I love you too. More than anything in the world," Scott sobbed. "Promise me you'll go on and be happy. Get married, have kids or not. Just be happy," she said with a smile. Everyone else was a crying mess. He listened as her heartbeat got slower and more silent. Her last petal fell and she went limp in Scott's arms. He begged her to come back between chokef cries, but deep down he knew that she was gone. For good.

Sunflower just died

Keep it sweet in your memory

I'm still tongue-tied

Sunflower, sunflower

Sunflower, sunflower

Sunflower, sunflower

"And that was Sunflower vol.6 by Harry Styles from his latest album Fine Line. Great song, makes me wanna grab my girlfriend and dance," the radio presenter said. Scott turned the radio in Argent's car down as they got closer to the pack. The song started playing after he told Alec his and his pack's story and he couldn't help but let his mind wander. He knew how much Y/N would've adored the song if she were still alive. Two years without her and he still felt like a part of him was missing, but he didn't let it stop him from fighting the war. Her last wish was for him to be happy and he couldn't help but think about how the end of the war would not only make him the happiest man alive. But it would also make her smile proudly at him from her sunflower garden in heaven. That would send him over the moon. God, how he missed her. They pulled over in the parking lot where the pack agreed to meet up, and Scott couldn't help but smile at his pack. They supported him through thick and thin and stuck together because they knew how you got when they didn't. "What are you thinking about?" Alec asked. "How the death of a sunflower can come with the growth of an entire garden," Scott replied as he made his way to the pack with a proud grin.

[dzifasblog]

Chapter 4

Read from Chapter 3

It would be a bit of a stretch to say no one had ever rejected me . Yet, it did not happen often and it did not happen when I like like someone. Not only was I rejected but I was also friend zoned. Which is crazy because I usually did the zoning. Everything comes back full circle indeed. It had been a week since I had my ego bruised and I have to say, I was being a big girl about it. With Darcy's friend shooting the cheer "movie", she was left alone a lot of the time. Time she usually spent with me....because we're friends now.

Kill me now!!

Not that I don't enjoy her company. Au contraire, being near her all the time. Listening to her silly jokes, hearing her laugh and the way she would get pa Her boyfriend is one lucky bitch.

I was currently sitting in the house's common room, making use of the uncharacteristic quiet. Seemed like there was some party I was not invited to because the whole house was almost empty. It didn't bother me much; but as time ticked on and Darcy still hadn't made an appearance I became more and more curious.

Darcy did not strike me as a party girl. and her friend could not have dragged her because she had a meeting with Mimi today. (Yes I had learnt the schedule to see what times I could be with Darcy, yes I am a simp.) It took everything in me not to barge out and go look for Darcy: 1. We hadn't made any plans and 2. It would be plain weird. So I stayed my ass in the chair.

A couple of minutes after trying to focus of the copy of Shakespeare in my hand. The door to the common room burst open to reveal Kaitlyn, one of the girls in the opposite dorm. Putting her hands on her knees (thot shit), she tried catching her breath.

"Boys, " she panted. "The boys are here."

So this is why she ran?

All of a sudden it hit me. Darcy hadn't ditched me, she was busy with her boyfriend. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. On one hand, she hadn't ditched me and that gave me semblance of peace(??) And on the other hand she was with her boyfriend, someone who I didn't need to see to hate.

I was so engrossed in weighing the pros and cons of my love life. (if you can even call it that) That I hadn't realized Kaitlyn had been speaking until Darcy's name came up.

"What did you say about Darcy, sorry I'm hard of hearing" I needed to not come of as too curious.

"Her boyfriend came in a car and brought her a bouquet of flowers," Kaitlyn swooned.

"How do you know that?" It wasn't strange for guys to bring presents to their girlfriend. But I doubt Darcy announced it to the whole school.

"He came in a car, with his friends. He's like a year older," Kaitlyn spoke so animatedly. "He got out of the car with this huge ass bouquet and got on one knee and everything." After narrating the story complete with hand gestures. she fell onto the chair opposite me with all the drama of a Disney princess.

"How romantic," I deadpanned.

"I know right" Kaitlyn sighed completely oblivious to the sarcasm. "I wish someone would do that for me." Men would do the bare minimum and hetero girls would swoon. The bar was in the absolute pits of hell. Also, I doubt Darcy liked all the fanfare around the bouquet of flowers and their delivery. I needed to go see all this for myself.

Standing up I dusted imaginary dust of myself and moved to put the book back in its place. Kaitlyn was still sprawled in the chair with a goofy smile on her face. I do not know what would have happened if she been the one to get flowers. I wanted to say goodbye to her but I doubt she would have heard it over her self-excitement, so I made my way out of the room.

I had not made it far when I heard someone calling my name. I turned to find my longtime friend and partner in crime Robin jogging towards me.

"Where the hell have you been? I've been looking for your bitch ass everywhere." Robin and I had been friends for as long as I can remember. Our mothers had been bestfriends and roommates in the same sorority house. Our friendship was a given. We lived on the same street, went to the same school and did almost everything together.

We even came out together, him as bisexual and me, as lesbian. This broke our parents who had hoped we would end up together hearts but they got over it. Or at least I think they did.

Ignoring his question, I asked one of my own. "Why is my school crawling with degenerates from your school?"

"Wait you didn't know?" He furrowed his eyebrows in genuine confusion. "We're having some lame ice breaker. Never wrote to you cause I thought this was something you'd have been all over."

"I've been busy," I shrugged.

"Busy doing what?"

"You knowww....this and that" He looked confused. I wanted so desperately to share this whole Darcy thing with someone else but the thought scared me. I don't know what of, but the thought of another person knowing terrified me. Maybe it was the shame of being friend zoned.

"Is it a girl?"

"Wh..what...no" Hesitating and stuttering through your answer is never a good thing. I cast my eyes to the ground to avoid Nico's.

"Uh huh" Was all he said, not buying my bull.  "You know what I think?..." I didn't get to find out what he thought because just then the loud revving of a motorcycle cut through the air, demanding everybody's attention. I looked down to the park in front of out hostel to see one big motorcycle flanked by two smaller ones. I guess the big one belonged to the head honcho.

"Ghost riders," Robin said, coming to stand beside me. "Ninja name, trash guys."

I giggled at that. "I'm guessing they don't tickle your fancy." I teased.

Robin just rolled his eyes at me. "They are bad news, like really really bad news. Like gang shit, and not in a cool fun way but in an you could probably get killed way." My brows shot up at his statement. Gangs were nothing new but high schoolers in a gang would be pretty bad. Imagine being this hormonal and having the equipment necessary to kill.

"That sounds bad,"

"Bad? Try awful. I stay 5 feet away from them all the damn time, I will not be caught up in any of their shit. Not even by accident." Robin was usually very dramatic but something told me he wasn't exaggerating.

Suddenly, the girls seemed to burst out in cheers, I looked down to see the head honcho lip locking with Darcy.

My Darcy! My grip on the railing tightened hard, and I tried leaning forward to get a better look but I felt a hand pull me back. I turned ready to give Robin a piece of my mind before catching myself. Did I really like Darcy enough to yell at Robin?

Robin had one eyebrow arched at me. "I know I said some stuff but you look ready to end him"

I cast one more look at the park and grabbed Robin's hand and started dragging him to the common room where no one would see or hear us. There I spilled my guts about everything till now. Robin sat there quietly listening to me ramble on and on. It felt good to get it all out.  When I was done, he had a very Joker like smile on his face and for once I was grateful he would eventually have to leave.

"I've seen a lot of strange things in my day," he started. "But I have never seen anyone get under your skin so fast."

"You don't get it, she's just amazing" I argued.

"Look at you with heart eyes," Robin teased. I punched him in the arm. "Stop it"

"Ok, ok," he laughed. "Look, I know you think you've met the love of your life but you might want to pace yourself a little. I mean do you really know this girl? Like know know her? She was kissing one of the ghosts for crying out loud."

"I know her," Sort of. "I know she would never be mixed up in some illegal shit." Robin had raised some good points but I knew Darcy would never get mixed in any illegal activities. Or would she?

"How do you know?" Robin asked

"I....I just do, ok?" But did I?

"All things you know about Darcy are very surface level things-"

"I wouldn't consider knowing the way she looks when she comes surface level," I interrupted.

Robin shot me a look but continued anyway. "Why don't you take sometime to get to know her better, like where she's from and where she met her terrible boyfriend." He was right, I knew he was right and judging from the look on his face, he knew that I knew he was right. "Besides," he continued. "You and her are not together so use this friend zone wisely."

"Gah, fine." I hated playing the waiting game, I'm not known for my patience.

"Good," Robin pat my head. " Let's go, I need to get back to school as soon as possible."

"Alright" With that we left the common room and made our way downstairs. I walked Robin over to his ride, a 6'5 muscular guy I was 85% sure he was fucking. "See ya later, alligator." Robin yelled as the car took off.

"You're such a loser." I yelled back as the car disappeared behind the gates.

[brooke0297]

Little Songbird Part 2: All I’ve Ever Known

Part 1 | Masterlist

Chapter song is "All I've Ever Known" from Hadestown the Musical. I encourage you to listen to it if you haven't before because it fits perfectly for Luke and Julie. Enjoy my loves!

Julie couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t all that surprising to her, given the events of the day. It wasn’t every day she took down an evil ghost intent on stealing her soul and destroying her band and best friends. But she definitely thought she would be exhausted from discovering she possessed a supernatural ability to love and break curses put on her by said evil ghost.

When her and the boys had exited the Hollywood Ghost Club, the euphoria they had felt overcame them. Reggie and Luke had whooped loudly and grabbed each other in a huge hug. Alex had bent over and braced his hands on his knees, breathing in and out slowly. Julie wanted to comfort him, but she was in the middle of a busy street in downtown LA and her legs were shaking so badly she was worried they would give out on her. She pulled out her airpods and placed them in her ears as Luke and Reggie turned to her.

“How did you do that?” Reggie demanded gleefully. “I mean, did you see how terrified Caleb was? And how cool was your whole ‘you’re gonna leave my family alone or else’ speech? You’re like a hero from an action movie!”

Before Julie could answer any of his questions, Alex stood up and blew out a huge breath.

“As big of a fan of Badass Julie I am, promise me you will never go after an evil ghost by yourself again huh? I didn’t think ghosts could have heart attacks until I heard ‘Julie’s with Caleb and needs help’.”

“Oh, you should probably call Flynn before she sends out a search party.” Reggie added, “She was pretty worried.”

As if summoned, Juile’s phone rang shrilly and she winced at the volume in her ears. Sure enough ‘ Flynn the Great’ flashed on her phone, along with the selfie they had taken before Julie’s garage party. She swiped the answer button on her phone.

“Hey Flynn-”

“HEY? That’s all you give me is HEY?! You send me a 911 text that you are with some psycho evil ghost who tried to steal your bandmates who I then had to hope were in the studio so I could tell them to rescue you and all I get is HEY?!”

Julie winced. Partly because Flynn was right and partly at the sheer volume of the call. The boys winced and Reggie gave her a sympathetic look.

“I’m sorry Flynn, I didn’t have time to call you or explain more.”

“Are you okay? You still have your soul right? Are the guys okay? You have a gig in three days and it would really suck if we have to reschedule so we can rescue the himbos again…”

Julie giggled.

“We’re all fine. I’ll um…” Julie glanced at the boys and saw them looking at her intently, waiting for her response.

She was suddenly hit by a wave of exhaustion. She wanted nothing more than to go home, curl up under her blankets, and sleep for the next three days.

“Flynn, is it okay if I call you later? I’m waiting for the bus and it’s...not a great time…”

Flynn paused and Julie prepared to explain everything. It wasn’t fair to leave Flynn hanging like she was. But she also didn’t want to have to go into details about evil ghosts and sudden superpowers over the phone and around other bus riders.

Flynn sighed gently in her ear.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Jules. Call me when you can or I’ll hunt you down…”

A rush of love filled Julie and she quietly said goodbye to her best friend as the bus pulled up. She jumped on, seeing the boys follow her to the empty back seats.

By the time they had arrived home, the weariness had settled in Julie’s bones and Alex had to basically carry her in the house. Her dad was out at one of Carlos’ games, so they were easily able to get her up to her room.

“Are you okay?” Luke asked quietly. It was the first he’d spoken since they had left the club and he perched himself on the edge of her bed, eyes scanning her intently. Julie smiled sleepily up at him.

“I am, I promise. I guess discovering and using supernatural powers will really take a lot out of you.” she mumbled.

“So...how did you discover these supernatural powers?” Alex asked, sitting gently on her other side. Reggie placed himself at her feet and rested a hand on her leg.

“It was something my mom used to say to me. She told me that love was the most powerful feeling in the world and that sharing love would be my greatest power. And I remembered the night of the Orpheum, how all I could think about was how much I loved you guys and how much I wish I could save you and then…” Julie yawned lightly.

“And then the magical group hug to end all band circles.” Reggie finished proudly. Luke rolled his eyes fondly and Julie giggled.

“Yup. You know the rest.”

“So that explains how you saved us. But how were you able to fend Caleb off? He was going to stamp you and then it was like he was burned. I don’t understand.” Alex was thoroughly confused.

“I do.” Reggie said, his eyes watery. He rubbed Julie’s ankle comfortingly.

“It was our love for Julie that protected her. Like hers did the night of the Orpheum. It made her glow.”

The silence between the four of them stretched long. It wasn’t a new revelation that the band loved each other, but more of a realization of how deeply that love ran. Tears prickled in Julie’s eyes as she realized how grateful she was for these three ghosts that had dropped into her life and changed it irrevocably.

“I love you guys,” she whispered, the lump in her throat making it hard to talk any louder.

“We love you too, Julie.” Reggie murmured. The three boys simultaneously crawled into the circle of Julie’s embrace and cuddled close on her bed. Reggie rested his head on her knees and hugged her legs tightly while Alex pulled her into his chest and pressed her face into the junction of his shoulder. Luke curled into her back and tentatively rested his arm along hers. When she pulled him decisively closer, she felt him smile into her hair and decided to ignore the fluttering in her stomach for the time being.

She knew they would have to talk about what Caleb had revealed at some point. But the feeling of contentment that spread through her body at the feeling of being surrounded by three of the most important people in her life kept her from disrupting the moment.

They laid like that for hours, not speaking. Julie thought she would drift off eventually as the events of the day caught up to her, but her eyes refused to close. She felt Luke combing gently through her curls, twisting them though his fingers. Reggie would squeeze her legs gently every once in a while and Alex gently tapped a beat against her arm with his fingers. It was soothing, these little quirks from the boys. It wasn’t until her dad knocked gently on the door and informed her that dinner was ready that she extracted herself from the band and made her way downstairs. Carlos filled the usual dinner chatter and Julie excused herself as soon as the dishes were done to go upstairs and call Flynn back.

Her best friend was understandably astounded when she finished telling her what had happened. Julie had omitted the part where she had almost given into Caleb’s promises on her own volition. She hadn’t fully come to terms with that idea herself and she knew Flynn would absolutely freak out on her.

“Well damn girl. Are we completely sure you aren’t living in a supernatural movie? First three ghosts literally drop into your life, then you’re basically kidnapped by another evil ghost who wants to steal your soul, now you’re telling me you discovered some sort of super power that saved you from the crazy ghost man?”

“You’re telling me.” Julie had groaned.

Now, after telling Flynn goodbye almost two hours ago, Julie still couldn’t fall asleep. She knew she couldn’t just forget about Caleb’s promises and the reasons she had almost given in.

“I can’t lose anyone else that I love!”

“You won’t!”

“Yes I will! You’ll all cross over and I’ll just keep losing people I love.”

“No you won’t Julie. I know you. Even if one day we do cross over, we will always be with you. I will always be with you, right here. Right beside you. I couldn’t leave you even if I tried!”

Julie shook herself out of the memory and was out of bed before she knew what she was doing. Her monster slippers were on her feet and she blindly reached for a sweater before creeping out of her room. It was late enough that her dad’s light was off and the house was silent, so she avoided any creaky stairs and only opened the back door wide enough to slip through it.

Her steps became more determined. She knew what she needed to say. She’d been dancing around this for too long and Caleb had taken advantage of it.

She reached the studio doors and threw them open, preparing to shoo Reggie and Alex away when the scene in front of her stopped her in her tracks.

There were four ghosts in her studio.

Reggie and Luke were loosely grouped around Alex and the other dark haired boy. He had his hands braced on Alex’s shoulders and Alex had his on his waist. The boy’s long tresses were wild around his head, his dark eyes snapping to meet hers as she entered the studio.

“Julie?” he asked. Alex turned and Julie could tell by the look on his face exactly who he was.

“Hey Willie.” she smiled.

“You can see him?” Alex demanded. Julie nodded and Alex looked on the verge of a breakdown before Willie grabbed his hand.

“I had a feeling this might happen.” Willie said. Julie would have been more concerned if she didn’t catch the hint of a smile on his face.

“What do you mean? What happened?” she asked.

“You, Julie Molina, are the most powerful lifer I have ever met.” he laughed. He gestured for Julie to sit on the couch, where Reggie and Luke followed almost immediately. They sat beside her as Willie took the chair and pulled Alex to sit on the arm beside him.

“I wasn’t there when Caleb tried to trick you. But I definitely felt it when you broke my stamp,”

“Wait, WHAT?” Alex squawked. Willie chuckled, ever the picture of ease.

“I felt some kind of sting on my wrist that I haven’t felt since Caleb stamped me. Then I looked at it and it was like it floated off my arm and disappeared. And I felt...stronger. Like my soul had just been reconnected. When I went back to the club, I realized that I couldn’t get back in. You can only be allowed inside if you’re a part of the club or you're invited. And that’s when I knew I was free.”

“Wait, so you mean to say that Julie was able to save you just like she saved us?” Luke asked.

“It’s the only explanation I can think of since my stamp came off.” Willie shrugged.

“You did tell Caleb to leave Willie alone. Y’know, when you were being a badass and all…” Reggie interjected.

“You did?” Willie asked, suddenly soft. Julie nodded.

“You’re family, Willie. I wasn’t about to tick the evil scheming ghost off with my super cool powers and leave you to clean up the mess.”

He turned and met Julie’s gaze. The laid back attitude she somehow knew was his default setting suddenly melted into somber remorse.

“Julie, I want to apologize to you.”

Julie was taken aback.

“For what?” she asked incredulously.

“For getting the boys into that mess at the club. I honestly...I thought it was a great place. It was the first place I knew where I felt like I belonged. Caleb...I swear I never thought he could be capable of what he did. I knew he was difficult sometimes but he always offered me the freedom to do what I wanted. And when I met these really cool ghosts who could be seen by a lifer, I thought they would be happy at the club and could really learn to love it there, like I did. So I invited them to Caleb’s party

“And then Caleb stamped them--I swear to you I didn’t know he would!--and then I kept checking on them to see if I could maybe find a time to tell them what happened. I told them they would be able to cross over if they figured out what their unfinished business was. I know it wouldn’t make up for what I did, but then at least they wouldn’t be trapped somewhere they never wanted to stay. They never wanted to stay at Caleb’s club, they only wanted to be in a band with you. And I almost took that away from them. I will never forgive myself from almost taking them from you.”

Julie, after all the emotion and turmoil of the day, felt the tears brimming and Willie looked like he wanted to poof away. Julie stood and reached out for him, hoping with everything in her that what she was thinking would work. She was only mildly surprised when her hand went right through his and she sighed.

“Alex, can you please hug him for me?” she whined jokingly. Willie and Alex’s faces lit up before the blonde pulled him up and into his arms. Julie and the other two boys watched with excited expressions as Willie pulled Alex as close as he could.

Julie hadn’t been lying when she’d called Willie family. Despite what he had done initially under Caleb’s control, he had risked everything to help save her boys. He had sacrificed his own happiness with Alex in order to keep them from being trapped like he was. The least she could do was try and save him too.

She suddenly felt pressure on her hand and she turned to see Luke linking his pinkie finger with hers. When she met his gaze, he nodded to the couple still embracing and mouthed ‘thank you’. Julie nodded, smiling.

No question.

When Alex and Willie finally pulled away, Willie looked around and whistled.

“This place is dope! Can’t wait to hear what you guys are working on next.”

“We have a gig coming up in a few days! You should hear the new stuff Luke and Julie have been working on!” Reggie squealed eagerly. He suddenly gasped.

“Does this mean we have our own roadie now?” he asked, wide eyed. Luke snorted and Julie laughed. Alex just shook his head and muttered an “okay Reg”.

“Hey Willie! Let's go to the beach and moon the lifers down there!” Reggie suggested, jumping up from his spot on the couch. Alex rolled his eyes until Willie cackled and slung an arm around the bassist’s shoulder.

“I’ve always wanted to go for a midnight swim…” he crowed. He turned to Alex and raised an eyebrow.

“Y’comin, hot dog?” he asked mischievously. Alex couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face as he glanced over at Luke and Julie.

“I’ll pass on this one, guys. Just stay out of trouble please? I’ve already dealt with enough supernatural today.” she warned.

“Same here.” Luke said simply. The boys nodded before poofing out and Julie and Luke were alone.

Julie felt her heart stumble in her chest. What she had been banking on less than an hour ago was suddenly in her grasp. The determination she had felt earlier, before finding Willie, had evaporated.

Her and Luke had never been awkward around each other. From the moment he had stood in front of her and told her “we’re all a little crazy”, they had been two kindred souls. She’d found out he’d been the one who had written her favorite songs that had informed her love of music. They had both lost their mothers in different ways and found comfort in music. Even her mom, an enigma she never imagined, had somehow been connected to her boys as evidenced by the love and care that went into the bedazzled Sunset Curve t-shirt Julie had folded in the bottom of her drawer.

Everything in her life had somehow pointed her towards Luke. She couldn’t ignore the signs. They had always been there.

“Julie…”

Julie’s head snapped up to see Luke standing at the piano. He was leaning against the side of it, fiddling nervously with his rings.

“What happened today? Why were you at that club?” he asked quietly. Julie knew he wasn’t angry with her. She had felt his fear and later relief when he had pulled her from her trance.

“Nick called me. He said that he was in trouble and no one was picking up. He said he needed me and told me to go to the club. Caleb used him to trick me into coming.” Julie felt her ire burn when she remembered the lie. Poor Nick. She would have to call him in the morning and check on him.

“Oh.” Luke said simply.

Julie mentally quirked an eyebrow. Luke was many things, but he was not frugal with his words. When he was really fired up, he could go for hours until someone--usually Alex--shut him up by blasting Julie’s Spotify on the loudest volume. And even then he could sometimes talk over it and critique the music, much to his bandmate’s chagrin.

“Are you okay?” she asked, standing up and moving towards him. As she reached a hand out to place it on his arm, he abruptly jumped away from her. Julie watched, her arm still raised, as Luke began to pace the studio.

“How could I be okay, Julie? Do you understand how terrified I was? Caleb was this close to stealing your soul! What could have happened if we hadn’t gotten there in time? He would have taken you and we would have lost you. I would have lost you!”

“I’m sorry, Luke. I never would have gone if I knew what he was planning. He was putting some kind of spell on me and I tried to fight it as hard as I could.”

“But what about after?” Luke demanded. “You said it was the only way you could keep from losing us. You were well aware of what he could do and you let him try again. How could you even think that was an option?”

“Luke,” Julie murmured, moving closer to him. “I have never been more sorry in my life. I know it was wrong of me to even think about taking his deal. I never would have considered it before tonight.”

“So why did you?” he asked. There it was. The hurt and dread that had been just under the surface all night. Julie sighed.

“Because I don’t know if I’m strong enough to lose someone again.” she replied. Luke looked ready to interrupt but Julie held her hand up to stop him.

“I know you are about to say something wonderful and sweet about how brave I am and how you would never leave me. But the reality is, Luke, someday there will be a day that you three will cross over. Maybe it’s next week, maybe three months, or maybe it’ll be in ten years. And I will still be here. I won’t be able to follow you, no matter how much I want to. I will still have to live my life.

“So yeah, when Caleb offered me the opportunity to keep you three forever I thought about it. I’m not proud of it, but I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to not only save myself the pain of losing three of my best friends, but I wanted to hold onto the magic we make as a band.”

“You are not selfish.” Luke protested vehemently, darting over to stand in front of Julie. Julie smiled.

“All that and that’s what you take from it?” she teased. Luke grinned.

“Reggie called me the ‘number one Julie Molina stan’ or ‘fan’ or whatever he said. Just trying to live up to the title.” Julie giggled and Luke’s face melted into an expression of such softness that it made her heart flutter. She continued, aware of the electricity between them.

“And then you sang ‘Finally Free’ and I knew you were right. You will always be a part of me, no matter what happens. And I knew there was no deal that Caleb could come up with that would change that.”

Luke smiled softly at her, reaching out to push a wayward curl out of her face.

“What I said was true, y’know,” he murmured. “I will always find a way back to you, Julie.”

It was as powerful as if he had said the words he really meant. Julie could feel her heart expanding and bursting at the seams.

She knew. She knew that her feelings for Luke Patterson had grown and shifted and bloomed. It was undeniable. She found herself, like many times before, wishing she could run up to her mother and ask her the question that had burned itself into her mind day after day since that night on the porch.

Is this what love feels like? Is this what all the songs are about?

She felt the whisper of an answer.

Yes.

Julie smiled and grabbed Luke’s hand.

“C’mere. I want to play you something…” she said. He let himself be pulled over to the piano, where Julie sat down and shifted so there was room beside her. He gently took his spot, gazing at her.

“Whatcha got for me, boss?” he teased. Julie grinned and shook her head, before placing her hands on the keys and beginning to play a gentle melody.

“I was alone so long

I didn't even know that I was lonely.

Out in the cold so long

I didn't even know that I was cold.

Turned my collar to the wind

This is how it's always been.

All I've ever known is how to hold my own.

All I've ever known is how to hold my own.

But now I wanna hold you, too.”

Julie glanced over to take in Luke’s expression of awe and adoration that made the butterflies in her stomach flutter. He wordlessly turned in his seat so his legs hung off the back of the bench and his guitar landed in his lap. Tenderly, letting her lead, he began to strum the melody with her as her voice swelled with the music.

“You take me in your arms

And suddenly there's sunlight all around me.

Everything bright and warm

And shining like it never did before.

And for a moment I forget

Just how dark and cold it gets.

All I've ever known is how to hold my own.

All I've ever known is how to hold my own.

But now I wanna hold you,

Now I wanna hold you

Hold you close.

I don't ever wanna have to let you go.

Now I wanna hold you, hold you tight

I don't wanna go back to the lonely life.”

Julie let her falsetto carry the last note, closing her eyes. She had never felt this vulnerable, even when she had stood in front of the entire Orpheum audience and prepared to sing without the boys. But if the last year had taught her anything, she needed to open her heart. She couldn’t hide it away anymore.

Luke’s gentle, tenor rasp took over and she opened her eyes to see him gazing at her with a multitude of emotions in his eyes. She continued to play, never moving her gaze from his.

“I don't know how or why

Or who am I that I should get to hold you?

But when I saw you all alone against

The skies, it’s like I'd known you all along

I knew you before we met

And I don't even know you yet.

All I know is you’re someone I have always known.”

Julie felt the truth of his words wash over her. It was exactly what she had been thinking before she’d gone to the studio. Their connection was undeniable, even before they were even aware of it. Fate had pushed them together, two halves of a whole waiting for the other.

Julie joined him, her falsetto floating above his melody.

“All I know is you're someone I have always known.

And I don't even know you

Now I wanna hold you,

Hold you close.

I don't ever wanna have to let you go.”

“Suddenly the sunlight: bright and warm…” Julie began, inching closer to him.

“Suddenly I'm holding the world in my arms.” Luke finished. His guitar vanished from his hands at the same time Julie’s fingers left the keys and then their lips finally met.

Julie had always wondered what the big deal about first kisses was. When her and Carrie and Flynn would have their sleepovers back in elementary school, they would spend hours upon hours talking about what their first kisses would be like and how important it was to find the right guy. Julie had always balked at the idea that there would be a first kiss that could be that perfect.

Elementary school Julie had obviously never kissed Luke Patterson.

His lips were soft and gentle against hers, all of his burning passion he felt on a daily basis smouldering into a golden flame intent on her. One of his hands came up to cradle her face and Julie shivered at the feeling of his calluses caressing her cheeks while the other threaded through her hair. Julie let her own mould to his face and stroke the soft wisps of hair at his temples.

It felt as if her heart would beat out of her chest. This felt like the beginning of something incredible and of coming home all at the same time. When she had reached for his hand on her porch all those weeks ago, she had never imagined she would ever gain the opportunity to kiss him.

All too soon, Luke gently pulled away and rested his head against her forehead. He had his eyes closed and a beaming smile split across his face.

“I’m crazy about you, Julie Molina,” he whispered. Julie leaned forward and pecked his lips briefly, causing him to open his eyes.

“Te adoro Luke Patterson.” she murmured. He gently tugged her into his arms and she leaned against his chest, pulling his arms closer around her.

“I know you’re scared of what’s going to happen, Jules.” Luke said softly. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t too. But I don’t want to waste a moment of my second chance. You brought us back here and I believe I was always meant to know you. I will not let that slip through my fingers.” He pressed a light kiss to her forehead and it stole Julie’s breath away.

“I’ve always known we were connected somehow. I thought it might have been my mom. Maybe…” Julie trailed off.

“Maybe…” Luke prodded.

“...maybe it was something bigger than all of us.”

Luke hugged her closer.

“You mean like fate?” he asked. Julie shrugged.

“I don’t know, and frankly, I’m too content to care.” Luke chuckled and Julie reached up to kiss him again. It was slowly becoming her favorite pastime.

When they broke apart once again, Julie grinned.

“I have more…” she whispered. Luke beamed and gently pulled her up so she was tucked under his arm with all the range to play.

“Say that you'll hold me forever.

Say that the wind won't change on us.

Say that we'll stay with each other.

And it will always be like this.”

Luke squeezed her tenderly.

“I'm gonna hold you forever

The wind will never change on us

Long as we stay with each other…”

Their voices melded together perfectly, as if the universe itself had decided it. And maybe it had. But for the time being, they were just Luke and Julie.

“Then it will always be like this…”

******

Thanks for reading everyone!

[officialthiamlibrary]

Do you guys have any long slow burn AU fics to rec?

We sure have! 😊 Enjoy!

(Please not that this list only contains stories over 30k.)

Anchors by @thiamlife

Liam Dunbar has had enough of being out of control. So he decides to shut his wolf off for awhile… the only problem is it could end up getting him killed.

Theo Raeken had never been good with feelings. But he can’t fathom the idea of losing the little beta. So he makes it his personal mission to help Liam find his way back to the supernatural. Lines will be crossed and there may be no coming back from it.

[NR / 42.2k / complete]

Vargary by @lovelylittlegrim

Liam is worried everything will go to shit once the elder pack members leave Beacon Hills.

It does, of course, but he has Mason and Corey there to help him out.

He also, surprisingly, has Theo Raeken.

[TeenUp / 38.5k / wip]

Just too good to be true by @raekentheoryarchive

Liam has the worst luck when it comes to girls. Things just keep crashing and burning. Mason tries to convince him that maybe it’s time to come out, to date a guy instead, but his best friend won’t hear it. So he and Corey decide to find him the ultimate date, someone who’s exactly his type—snarky, tendency to punch people, and tough enough to put up with their volatile friend. Bad boy Theo Raeken is the perfect fit, despite his murky past and caustic personality. And the fact that he won’t do it for free. What could go wrong? // 10 Things I Hate About You AU.

[TeenUp / 56.2k / complete]

Midnight into morning coffee by @pettigrace

In an anger fit, Liam slashes his social studies teacher's tires. Enter Theo, who is an enigma surrounded by rumours, saving him. In return, he just wants Liam to pay his lunch. Easy, right? Liam would have never guessed the lane he starts walking by accepting the deal.

[TeenUp / 138.5k / wip]

On the same side by @teen-wolf-af

Liam is an FBI agent. Theo is an untouchable drug lord. There's a chase, some grudging trust, and finally the falling in love. It may seem unlikely, but in the end, they find themselves on the same side.

[TeenUp / 101.7k / complete]

Compared to the moon by @flyde

Theo Raeken is back in Beacon Hills. He is an outcast in a world where people show their true colors as actual colors beneath their skin, because Theo himself is a blank page. Joining the lacrosse team, he hopes for one last shot at finding a real place to belong. But things don´t start off too great, especially not between him and the team captain, Liam Dunbar.

[Explicit / 143.8k / complete]

Desolate by @glitter-cake20

Liam involuntarily becomes an Alpha. He refuses accept the new wolf and instead runs away, leaving Beacon Hills behind, and takes to a small cabin in the Colorado mountains for refuge, mostly from himself. He subdues the alpha wolf in him... Until one day when he has absolutely no choice but to let it out.

[Explicit / 60k / complete]

I can't not love you by @raekentheoryarchive

Liam's a little lost in life. His latest relationship has fizzled out, his best friends are about to be married, and he’s rapidly realizing he doesn’t want to be the best man without a date. So, inspired by their tale of rekindled romance, he decides to track down all his exes and figure out which one was right for him all along. The problem is that several have been out of contact for years, and he has no idea where they are. The solution? His promiscuous, struggling musician neighbor Theo, who happens to have dabbled in the police academy long enough to be good at digging up dirt and finding people. But time is running out, the wedding countdown clock ticking ever closer, and if Theo can stop flirting with him for maybe five seconds and find his former flames, he might have a shot at this. || What’s Your Number AU.

[TeenUp / 48.6k / complete]

Wilful Entrapment by @RedCoral

Theo looked at him from head to toe in the dingy bar they were at, his expression thoughtful and deadly serious as he said, "So tell me Liam. Are you sure you're not a parking ticket? Because you've got fine written all over you."

Liam laughed so hard, he almost fell from the barstool. "Oh my God. Is that what you're going with?"

"Did you know people are more likely to laugh at the jokes of people they're attracted to?"

[TeenUp / 41.9k / complete]

Tougher Than The Rest by @glitter-cake20

Theo is horribly self conscious about his body, but a pair of blue eyes sees him for what he truly is.

[Explicit / 44.1k / complete]

The Last Of Us by @raeken_09

A bizzare fungal infection breaks out all over the world, causing people to lose their minds and turn into infected monsters. The remainder of civilisation was quarintined in cities while soldiers kept a close watch on who goes in and out. The McCall Pack is fractured when it proved that the bites of the Infected were deadly to werecreatures. After a careless night out to just be normal teenagers Liam and Mason are bitten. So why does Liam live to see te morning?

[Mature / 50.3k / complete]

Vacancy Signs by @lovelylittlegrim

Theo and Liam are in Manhattan negotiating a pack allyship when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. Now, the two of them have to find their way back to Beacon Hills without getting eaten by zombies or killing one another.

[Explicit / 89.6k / wip]

Just like a tattoo, I'll always have you. by @mmmwddd

The pack has just defeated the Ghost Riders and for now everything is fine. At least until Liam’s sixteenth birthday when his soulmark shows up with a name that he was not expecting.

[NR / 31.4k / complete]

Happiness is a four-letter word by @glitter-cake20

Liam goes out looking for trouble, instead he finds the beginning of a road that could change everything for him.

[Explicit / 93.4k / complete]

Highway to Hope by @flyde

Theo has been obsessed with this youtube guy who posts videos of himself singing in his car. Watching every video there is of Liam, Theo finds himself falling in love. When Liam's songs get more and more sad and dark, Theo starts worrying. The shadows beneath Liam's eyes get darker in every new clip, his voice huskier, his driving a little too fast, a little too reckless. Paying close attention, reading between the lines, Theo can tell Liam is not okay. And then the catastrophe happens.

[Mature / 41.4k / complete]

Scepticism by @sweetest_thiam

Everyone told Liam to avoid the kid in the hallway, but that scrutinizing gaze was just too tempting.

[TeenUp / 50.9k / wip]

Red by @extrasteps and @ajp-37

Theo returns from hell but has lost all of his powers, including his chimera status, making him completely human. He also has a red string of fate wrapped around his left wrist, connecting him to Liam, the one who brought him back. When Malia attacks him, she nearly kills him, and Liam and Lydia step in, all but forcing Scott to bite him and make him a werewolf. Making Theo pack, and the growing connection between him and Liam, changes the whole outcome of season 6.

[Explicit / 134.1k / wip]

We Who Wait by @wolfenboyb

Liam is the son of a local preacher struggling to get good grades, to fit in, to live up to his father's expectations. Every spare moment is spent at the church or school, much to his best friend's annoyance. So when Mason drags Liam out to an underground all-ages punk rock show he's thrown into a world that frightens and excites him. Especially when he meets Theo, the pink haired, in-everyones-face vocalist that gives no fucks and causes trouble where ever he can. And he has a close eye on the preacher's son.

[TeenUp / 83.3k / wip]

The boy I shouldn't want to love by @dan13la-blog-blog

Liam comes back to Beacon Hills after years, when his mother decides to get remarried. His big shock is finding out that his new step-father's son is the same guy that back then in elementary school used to bully him, making his life a literal hell...

[Mature / 161.6k / wip]

[vengeancedemons]

devil hit his second stride // self para (pt 1)

summary: In Hell, Robbie runs into a familiar face who convinces him to stop wallowing in self pity and make a move to stop his uncle from ripping his life to shreds. trigger warnings: hell, death, mentions of violence  featuring: robbie reyes, phil coulson, mentions of elias morrow, gabriel reyes, daisy johnson ( @daisyquakes ), and jessica jones ( @goddamndumbass ) word count: 4320 no one SAY ANYTHING

There were a lot of metaphors about Hell, a lot of famous quotes invoking the word. Robbie had read up on them after his death and subsequent resurrection, studied them as if they might somehow hold answers to what happened to him. Churchill famously instructed those who were going through Hell to keep going. Twain once quipped that one should go to Heaven for the climate, but Hell for the company. Sartre claimed that Hell was other people. Robbie had gathered a whole collection of quips and quotes, a whole world of things writers and politicians and activists said were Hell, because he’d known the deal he’d made to save his own life only had one end result and he’d wanted to be prepared. He’d been an idiot, in that regard. 

There was no preparing for Hell.

There was no making it easier. You couldn’t “keep going,” no matter how easy Churchill made it sound. You didn’t enjoy the company the way Twain joked that you might. The other people Sartre had feared were just as lost, just as tortured, just as absorbed in the terribleness of it all as you were. No metaphor Robbie had come across had managed to do justice to the real thing. Hell was Hell. There was no other way of describing it, no way of putting it into terms the average person would understand. You either knew it or you didn’t. You’d either been there or you couldn’t possibly imagine it. And Robbie could imagine it well. 

It was different, this time around. The last time (the last two times, rather), he’d at least gone out on his own terms. He’d chosen to exit stage left with Eli’s shoulders gripped in his hands. He decided to take the Darkhold back to where it belonged even if that meant he’d wind up where he belonged, too. And the people he’d cared about hadn’t been left in the best positions, but at least he’d known they’d be okay. He’d known Daisy would look out for Gabe, had known that Coulson would keep an eye on the SHIELD agents he’d begrudgingly come to tolerate. There hadn’t been an awful lot to fear.

This time was different.

With Eli running around in Robbie’s skin, there was no overselling the shitstorm that was waiting for the people he cared for. Daisy, who’d taken up residence on his couch the last few months, would be a burden Eli wouldn’t want to put up with. Jessica, who was almost a friend as much as someone you’d once nearly plowed over with your car could hope to be, would be an inconvenience his uncle wouldn’t want to deal with. And Gabe… It was too much to hope that Eli would leave Gabe out of things. It was too much to wish that his brother might remain blissfully ignorant in L.A. while their uncle wreaked havoc in New York. Whatever Eli had planned, Gabe would undoubtedly be caught in the crossfire the same way he had the night of that street race, when the Fifth Street gang saw Eli’s car and open fired with no regard for who was actually inside. And Robbie was powerless to stop any of it.

Shit, he was worse than powerless. The last time he’d been in Hell, he’d at least had the limited protection of the Rider keeping him out of the worst of it. It meant giving up control more often than not, but it made him relatively difficult to harm. Just like on Earth, the Rider had protected Robbie from damage in Hell. He’d made sure Robbie won most of the fights he got into, ensured that anyone who fucked with them had a generally bad day. Eli made sure Robbie was without that protection this go around, and that must have been intentional in more ways than one. His uncle had wanted the power of the Ghost Rider, beyond shadow of a doubt… but he’d also wanted to make sure Robbie was without it. And he’d absolutely succeeded in that.

You couldn’t die in Hell. Robbie figured that out his very first day, when he’d looked down at his chest to see a blade sticking out of it, rusted and bloody. You felt every ounce of pain dealt out to you, felt the way your heart tore itself to shreds as it beat around metal, felt your lungs fill up with blood and dust until there was no room left to breathe, but you couldn’t die. It was like one of the shitty video games Gabe used to play --- you bled, you ached, you faded away, and you popped back up someplace else to do it all again. Death would have been far easier. Anything would have been easier. Everyone there knew it.

It was why he’d also learned another important lesson his first Rider-less day in Hell. He’d learned about a rumor, a legend that desperate souls accepted as truth because there had to be some kind of end to all of this. It was a Fifth Street goon who’d blurted it out to him, a man terrified of Robbie who’d never even met the Rider. (Robbie had taken care of plenty of gang members without the Devil making an appearance at all, in the early days. There had been so much anger and nowhere to put it. It was inevitable.) 

‘There’s a story,’ the man had said, practically blubbering at the mere sight of the man who had taken his life. ‘If you take out the guy who killed you down here, you get out. You get to move on.’ 

‘Move on to what?’ Robbie had demanded, but the man hadn’t known. All he had known, all he had heard was that removing the person responsible for your presence in Hell from its depths meant a ticket to someplace else. And everyone figured that nothing could possibly be worse than this. 

So they fought. They beat each other to death only to yield no result when the person they were trying so desperately to remove appeared again out of their reach, breathing oxygenless through deceased lungs. It was utterly pointless and they knew it, but it was the only thing they knew how to do. It was the Fifth Street member who’d told him the legend that taught Robbie what happened when you died in Hell, putting a sword through his back the moment he turned away and shrugging unapologetically when Robbie turned back to him. ‘I just had to try it,’ the man said, ‘just once.’ And the expression on his face made it clear that whatever he’d hoped would happen wasn’t happening and Robbie had died and come back for what wasn’t the first time and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Robbie didn’t know if the legend had a grain of truth to it. For him, he didn’t guess it mattered much either way. He couldn’t get rid of the person responsible for sending him to Hell, and it wasn’t because his uncle was out of reach. No, Robbie couldn’t get rid of the guy responsible for his current predicament because it wasn’t Eli at all. The only person Robbie had to blame for his presence in the underworld was Robbie. He was the one who sold his soul to the Devil for a prize he’d already won. He was the one who’d been clueless to the fact that his uncle was being driven mad right in front of his eyes. He was the one arrogant enough to believe he could make a quick day trip to Hell and pluck a soul from damnation without facing any kind of consequence. The worst person in Robbie’s life, the one responsible for every goddamn shitshow he was a part of, had always lived in the fucking mirror. He’d always known that.

And so, with no way of knowing what was going on up above and no hope of finding his way out of Hell any time soon, he focused on survival. He focused on dying as little as possible, on staying away from the Fifth Street gang members he’d gifted with all-expense-paid tickets to Hell and avoiding Lucy Bauer and her gaggle of scientists whose ghosts he’d torn from their places on Earth and keeping distance between himself and all the trash he’d taken out since the Rider brought him back from the dead. Some days, he did okay. Some days, he bled out a hundred times an hour. It was a matter of luck more than anything else. 

Today, he was doing all right. The safe spot he’d found would be burned by tomorrow --- news of people’s whereabouts traveled quickly in Hell, especially when the person in question was one that large groups of souls were seeking out --- but for the moment, his feet were on solid ground and his blood wasn’t spilling from his veins. He didn’t know how long he’d been here. Time moved differently in Hell, crawled by one moment and sped up the next. His first go-round, he’d tried to keep count. He’d tallied up what he’d thought might have been days in his head, counted them into months and years. By his count, he’d been in Hell nearly a hundred years then, but when he got back to Earth he’d found only months had passed. He hadn’t bothered counting when he brought the Darkhold back. His high school teachers might have frequently assigned him the title of slow learner, but he could take a lesson when it was obvious and this one was. Time in Hell was relative. 

And there was no sense counting it up when you knew it wasn’t going to end.

It was a realization he’d come to rather quickly, after Eli tossed him out. He went from fighting a battle in the back of his own mind to staring out at all-too-familiar fiery slopes, and he’d known in an instant that this was how things would be for him now. No one could be lucky enough to escape Hell three times, especially now that he didn’t have Ghost Rider’s powers to fall back on. This time, Robbie figured, he was here to stay. 

So he focused on the moment in front of him. He focused on the fact that, today, he wasn’t fighting off old enemies, wasn’t killing the same people over and over again or dying so many times that he barely had enough time to draw breath between one slaughter and the next. And he was wound tight and jumping at the slightest sound, but so was everyone. That was a side effect of Hell, and there was no shot at ever avoiding it. 

It was lucky, he supposed, that he stopped to look before putting the blade he’d stolen off an old New York City gang member through the chest of the person who walked up behind him. Most days, Robbie wouldn’t have bothered. After so long in Hell, he’d lost any hope that anyone he met wouldn’t strike him down where he stood. But this time… This time, the familiar face that greeted him wasn’t one of the gang members he’d taken out in New York or L.A. It wasn’t the ghost of some scientist who’d worked with his uncle, wasn’t a wannabe supervillain with a justified grudge. It was, perhaps, a man whose death Robbie was still responsible for, but not one who would kill him for it. 

Robbie’s shoulders dropped at the sight of him, grip slackening on the switchblade he’d been white-knuckling. He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing thickly before letting them slide back open to reveal that the figure was still there, still watching him with inquisitive eyes. They stayed like that for a moment, a pair of ghosts staring into eyes they’d thought they’d seen the last of, each waiting on the other to make the first move. Finally, Robbie shifted enough to make room for another body to sit on the ground beside him, and his newfound companion moved forward to take the silent invitation.

“I’d heard you were back,” Coulson said quietly. “Didn’t want to believe it.”

“Yeah, well,” Robbie sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face, “seems like I’ve got a hard time staying away.”

“Haven’t heard anything about the other guy popping back up,” Coulson prodded, and Robbie tasted bile in the back of his throat, which was stupid. There was no bile in his stomach, no food that could threaten to make its way back up. He hadn’t eaten since a slice of cold pizza Daisy left on the counter just a few hours before Eli made his presence known, and while he hadn’t been keeping track of the hours he knew there were a hell of a lot of them between now and then. 

“It’s just me this time,” he said, tasting ash in his mouth with the words, because Coulson would want to know why. He would want to know how, and if he asked, Robbie was going to tell him. Robbie would blurt out everything, everything, and while Coulson might not hold what happened to him after he let the Rider into his head against Robbie, he knew the man would never forgive him if anything happened to Daisy. And right now, in this moment? Robbie couldn’t promise that she was okay.

“Is it like what happened before?” Coulson pressed, because, in spite of his unassuming outward appearance, he was still a spy. He was still one of the best agents SHIELD had ever had, and Robbie was still a fairly shitty liar. “It went into someone else, like it did with Mack?”

Robbie couldn’t look at him. He kept his eyes down on his hands, on the stolen switchblade with blood rusting the metal. He couldn’t remember now if the blood was there when he got it or if he’d put it there himself. He didn’t think it made much of a difference. “Not exactly,” he replied after a long pause, because Coulson would read a silence just as easily as a lie. 

Another silence stretched between them, a canyon of stillness as Coulson looked at Robbie and Robbie looked anywhere else. “Robbie,” Coulson said, his voice somehow firm and gentle at the same time, and Robbie had never been the sort of person who held his heart on his sleeve but fuck, it took every ounce of strength in him not to cry. 

Coulson, he realized with the smallest ounce of hysteria in his thoughts, sounded like what he’d always figured a father might sound like. He was nothing like Alberto Reyes, who’d walked out long before Robbie had a clear picture of his face saved into memory. He was nothing like Elias Morrow, who’d been more than willing to send Robbie to Hell for his own selfish gain. Coulson was the closest thing Robbie had seen in his life to a decent goddamn father figure, and what had Robbie shown him in return? He’d gotten him sent to Hell.

He’d probably gotten Daisy killed. 

Robbie felt very cold all of a sudden, a shiver going down his spine. Eli said once that there was meaning to that, joked about it when Robbie was a child getting used to having an uncle where he’d once had a mother and father. That means someone is walking over the place where you’ll be buried, he’d said, feigning seriousness until Robbie’s eyes widened and he couldn’t hold back a laugh. Robbie always wondered if it was true. He wondered what his grave would look like now, if he’d have one. Was a grave yours if the body in it hadn’t belonged to you, in the end? Were you still a person if someone else was walking around in your skin? At what point did a man become a ghost?

“It was Eli,” he said, so sudden it surprised even himself. “It was… When you saw us, before, me and Daisy, Eli followed us out somehow. He hitched a ride inside my head. Rode around up there for months until he had the strength to…” Robbie trailed off, that phantom nausea tugging at his gut again, compelling him to expel food he hadn’t eaten from a body he didn’t have. “He kicked me out. He’s running around up there in my skin, with my face, with --- With the Rider in my head with him. And I don’t, I don’t know how to stop him. I don’t think I can stop him.”

The sea of information settled between them, and Robbie could swear he saw the words floating in the air, fading in and out of existence as Coulson processed it all. He didn’t know if the shock on the agent’s face was because of the tale he’d spun, the fact that it was more words than he’d probably ever heard Robbie say in one sitting, or some mixture of the two. The silence was a heavy one, a weight on his chest that he didn’t know how to breathe around. And he didn’t need to breathe down here, not when he was already dead, but he still felt as if he was suffocating. When he tore his eyes from the switchblade to risk a glance in Coulson’s direction, the man was looking at him with an unreadable expression and Robbie wondered if he might break his day-long streak of not being covered in his own blood. And god, he would have let him. If Coulson tried to take the knife from his hand and drive it through his fucking skull in that moment, Robbie would have let him. 

Finally, Coulson shifted, breaking the silence with the question Robbie had known was coming. “Does Daisy know?” And even though he’d known Coulson would ask, it was a punch to the goddamn gut. Robbie closed his eyes again, letting his head drop. He would have preferred the knife to the skull, he thought. He would have preferred anything else.

“I don’t know,” he replied, so quiet he wasn’t sure Coulson would be able to hear it. He wasn’t sure he wanted Coulson to hear it, wasn’t sure he wanted the other man to know. Robbie had failed Daisy, and he didn’t even know how deep that failure went. He didn’t even know if she was alive right now, didn’t know if Eli would try to fool her or if he’d kill her the moment she walked into the apartment. At one point, he might have liked to think he knew his uncle well enough to predict his next move, but now? Now, Robbie wasn’t sure he’d ever known Eli at all. He’d never taken Eli for a murderer, but he was one. He’d never taken Eli for a narcissist, but he’d nearly gotten his entire fucking family killed in order to pursue his own selfish goals.

He’d never believed Eli was capable of hurting him, but he’d sent him to Hell without a hint of hesitation. 

There was a sound off to the side, a quiet click of Coulson’s tongue as he mulled the new information over, and Robbie wondered if this was the part where the knife would slip from his hand to Coulson’s, if this was where he’d die and respawn someplace else, ready to die again. He braced for a blow that didn’t come, prepared for an imaginary hit. Instead, Coulson sighed. Robbie opened his eyes, glanced over at the man cautiously. Coulson was staring at him, studying him intently as he chewed on the inside of his cheek, deep in thought. Finally, he broke the silence with a question: “So what are you going to do about it?”

Robbie blinked, eyes wide as the words settled into his head. He opened his mouth and closed it. Once, twice, three times. Finally, he spoke, and the confusion was clear in his tone. “What?”

“What are you going to do about it?” Coulson repeated, and the words made just as little sense this time as they had before because what? Robbie was in Hell. He had no access to Earth, no way of knowing what was happening there, and certainly no way to stop it. He didn’t have a plan because he had no options. 

“What can I do about it?” He asked, incredulous. 

Coulson quirked a brow, looking so utterly unimpressed that Robbie had to run through his story again in his head, had to look for the parts he’d missed in his situation that made Coulson believe he had anything resembling options here. He came up short, again and again. If he had choices, he had no idea what they were. And still, Coulson looked like he was missing something obvious. 

Finally, the agent seemed to take pity on Robbie with a sigh, shaking his head. “Robbie,” he said patiently, sounding very much like a man preparing to explain something simple to a particularly stupid toddler, “your body is still your body. Isn’t it?”

“I… guess so?” Robbie wasn’t sure what he was getting at, didn’t know what this had to do with anything. His body was still his body, but it wasn’t accessible. It was up on Earth and he was down in Hell and it wasn’t like there was an express train he could take to get back to it.

“And it’s still alive,” Coulson pushed, and Robbie tilted his head to the side, still not understanding the relevance. 

“I don’t think it would do Eli much good to kill it,” he allowed, because that would really defeat the purpose of whatever Eli had planned. Besides, Robbie didn’t think the Rider would let his body die, even if Robbie wasn’t in it. The guy needed something to hitch a ride in, didn’t he?

“So your body is alive,” Coulson continued slowly, “and your soul is alive.”

“Is that what we are?” Robbie questioned. “Souls?” He’d never given it much thought before and, given Coulson’s expression, it wasn’t a conversation they had time for now, either. 

“I don’t think you understand the point,” Coulson said which, fair. Robbie definitely didn’t understand the point of whatever it was Coulson was getting at, but whose fault was that? Coulson was the one being a cryptic old bastard, as if SHIELD and its shitty secrecy was an important thing in Hell. Robbie sighed, shaking his head and motioning for Coulson to just come out and say whatever obvious thing he was missing. “If your soul is alive and your body is alive,” Coulson said, finally taking enough pity on Robbie to spell the damn thing out, “that means you’re alive, Robbie. You aren’t dead. You’re just lost.”

“I’m not lost,” Robbie argued, because he was nothing if not contrary. “I know exactly where I am. I’m in Hell, Coulson. What’s it matter if my body’s alive if I can’t get to it.” 

“Have you tried?”  Coulson sounded angry now and Robbie remembered that, while he sounded fatherly in the way none of the men in Robbie’s life ever had, he wasn’t Robbie’s father. He was a guy who’d found Robbie at a strange time in his life and offered him guidance he hadn’t known he’d needed, but he wasn’t his father. If Coulson was a father figure to anyone, it was the person up on Earth with the body he was demanding he try to find a way back to. Fathers, when they were decent, protected the people they cared for. And right now, for Coulson, that wasn’t Robbie.

It was Daisy. 

And Robbie got it. He really did. If it had been Gabe in trouble, he’d be angry too. He’d be chastising whoever he was with and demanding they do something, but what was there to be done? “People don’t just walk out of Hell, Coulson,” he snapped.

“Didn’t you do that?” Coulson retorted. “Multiple times?”

“Yeah, with a demon in my head and a chain that could open portals to other dimensions. You see either of those things laying around now?”

“What if I had a way?” 

Robbie’s head snapped up, and he searched Coulson’s face for any hint of humor and came up short. “You got a way out of Hell,” he repeated slowly, “and you… What? Waited ‘til now to bring it up?”

“I have a rumor,” Coulson amended, and that made more sense. Rumors were like currency down here. They passed from person to person, gained value where they went. Everyone was looking for an out of some kind or another, but no one had ever found one.

“Rumors are usually bullshit,” Robbie pointed out, looking back down to his switchblade and twirling it in his fingers absently. “Plenty of rumors about ways out, but I never heard of anybody actually making it. You know why that is?” He paused, though not long enough for Coulson to answer before he provided the answer all his own: “Because the rumors are fucking horseshit.” 

“Or because the wrong people are trying,” Coulson countered. “Look, this rumor says it’s a door. The only people who can pass through it are people who shouldn’t be here. Like, for example, someone living?” 

“Or a good man who didn’t earn his spot,” Robbie replied, the realization springing on him all at once. “Shit, Coulson, if this thing’s real…”

“We could both get out,” Coulson confirmed with a nod. Robbie sucked in a breath through his teeth, weighing their options. If it were just him with a shot to get out of Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d take it. The thought of getting his hopes up just to have them dashes was somehow worse than the idea of never trying at all. But if this could mean a second chance for Coulson, too…

Robbie looked up, a newfound determination in his eyes. “Well, shit,” he sighed, shaking his head. “What do we have to lose?”

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

2099 Alpha #1 Thoughts

This was a confusing set of teaser trailers.

This is partially a post covering the issue and a rant about the entire premise of the series.

Throughout this comic book (and F4 2099) one prevailing question kept crossing my mind.

 “Who is this even for?”

 It was a question that became louder when I looked at both the cover and the blurb at the back explaining how this project came to be about.

 Matthew Rosenberg, author of the most controversial and derided X-Men run in recent memory (so you know that bodes well), pointed out that 2019 was both the 80th anniversary of Marvel comics (even though most people would argue Marvel truly started in 1961 with F4 #1) and also 80 years away from the real life year 2099.

 The idea was dismissed but then Nick Spencer decided he liked it and after one thing led to another this event was born.

 This event being a ‘reimagining’ of the 2099 universe but with ‘a similar methodology’ to the original 1992 line (that is to say avoiding the ‘common traps’ of descendants of known characters*), with a mind towards how the future was perceived in 2019 vs. 1992.

 Right off the bat there are inherent problems with that entire premise.

 First of all the original 2099 line presented a version of the future that if anything is MORE relevant now than it was in 1992.

 Futurism in any era is never just one thing, but the futurism of 2019 is generally speaking understandably cynical and nihilistic. It’s a world which foresees a future where there isn’t even an illusion of freedom, where the gap between rich and poor has grown even wider than it already is with little-no feasible way to close it, where corporations run the show (more openly than they already do) and where environmental disaster is ravaging mankind if not having already wiped it out. This is to say nothing of a world where artificial intelligence and mechanisation will probably compromise a lot of people’s employment opportunities, and pose direct physical and mental dangers to human lives.

 That is the general ethos of how a lot of people and a lot of fiction reflects the future NOWDAYS. And that’s what the 2099 was doing in 1992! Not only was the line set in the future it was literally ahead of it’s time as the world we live in if anything has grown to reflect it more and more.

  Secondly when you are approaching the notion of making a futuristic version of Spider-Man and the Punisher in the year 2099 and applying the same ‘methodology’ as the LAST time someone tried to make a futuristic version of Spider-Man and the Punisher in the year 2099 the results at best are not going to be that different, rendering the exercise pointless. In fact in all likelihood you are going to be worse or at least derivative. Even if you are not the fact that the 2099 line resonated with people enough for it to continually pop up every so often for nearly 30 years means that your new take is unlikely to hold up to people’s nostalgia.

 And make no mistake, this is a project that exists for nostalgia. It doesn’t exist just for the sake of exploring a possible future for the Marvel universe, otherwise why revive a popular and famous Marvel brand to do it?

 And therein lies my fundamental question.

 If this project exists because people are already invested in 2099 then why reboot it and thus mitigate their emotional investment?

 Nostalgic 2099 fans don’t simply want to see any iteration of these characters. They want something at least mostly in line with the original 1992 iteration, which is why when Spidey 2099 was scheduled for a spin-off in 2014 the fandom spoke with one voice, they wanted Peter David back. And whilst the iteration of Miguel and 2099 as a whole he presented was not identical to the 1992 version(s) it was at least a helluva lot closer than 2009’s Timestorm (a pathetic attempt to essentially do Ultimate 2099) and wound up being more successful as a result.

 This is literally the exact mistake the Nu52 made in that it erased the iterations of the DC characters and DC universe people knew and loved and replaced it with new versions (‘coincidentally’ closer to the versions the DC higher ups knew and loved as kids). It alienated readers to the point where DC Rebirth practically reverse rebooted the Nu52, rendering the characters much closer to their pre-Nu52 counterparts, and in Superman’s case having the pre-Nu52 Superman literally replace his successor.

 With the 2099 event though the attempt at rebooting is even more wrongheaded considering that this isn’t even a lasting universe that might in theory develop new readers over time. It’s a string of connected one shots associated with a Spider-Man story arc. If there is any aftermath to this event at all it will be fairly minimal and at most follow Miguel O’Hara.

 And that brings up the other end of this event’s problems. This holds little appeal to (the already miniscule number of) potential newer fans.

 Consider how this event started. You are a newer fan reading Spencer’s ASM run. You pick up issue #25 and randomly this other Spider-Man looking guy you maybe recognize from some video games and the post-credits scene from Into the Spider-Verse shows up, looking half dead.

 For less than 20 pages across 3 issues you follow him stumbling about spouting nonsense before he delivers some weird line about possible futures (that you’ll only understand if you already know about the 2099 lines) and then he blows up.

 Okay, at best you get the idea. He is a Spider-Man from the future and the present day has erased his future, that’s bad.

 Then you pick this up and you maybe figure out that this Miguel character in this comic book is in fact the same guy, or a VERSION of the same guy you met back in ASM. That’s confusing. It’s confusing because you need to deduce that this issue is the newly rewritten timeline, making your investment in the preceding ASM issues kinda pointless. It might also be confusing because time travel stories tend to be confusing unless written with a lot of clarity.

 But say you just picked THIS up, maybe because you recognized Spidey 2099 on the cover (and god forbid you picked it up due to recognizing the classic 2099 characters).

 Spencer in this comic book doesn’t write a story. He writes a series of teaser vignettes strung together by the Watcher and Doom spouting a load of cryptic nonsense.

 Nothing is explained, nothing is clearly conveyed, the world building is quite frankly awful, you merely get an impression  of this future, you are not actually organically introduced to much of anything. In comparison the first few issues of Spider-Man 2099 already gave you a great idea of what this world of the future was like.

 It’s not just that the presentation is bad and thus likely to alienate newer readers (I was lost with it and I’m familiar with the older 2099 stuff to a degree) but it’s also frankly inferior to the 1992 rendition of the future.

 Perhaps the 1992 Marvel line wasn’t the single most original vision of the future ever conceived, but it at least combined older ideas together and presented a consistent vision. Perhaps the microcosm of the 1992’s vision of the future was the notion of the ravaged ruins of old New York being the foundations upon which new super sky scrapers were built, the rich literally living above the poor.

 But this issue never brings that up, it doesn’t bring up the narrative and literal foundations of the world this takes place in. My personal impression was that this 2099 doesn’t even incorporate such an idea.  It’s a microcosm of how off the rails this reboot is.

 Everything feels downright generic sans the city of traffic and the colony of Thor/Asgardian worshippers.

 Even those are derivative though. Transverse City rips off (a much better executed) idea from a 2007 episode of Doctor Who ‘Gridlock’ which is regarded as something of a modern classic by fans.  And the Thor worshippers was something that came directly from the original 1992 2099 line, but weirdly is being used to tease...Conan the Barbarian???????? Conan hasn’t got anything to do with Thor besides coming from a warrior background. It might as well be Silver Samurai!

 Perhaps the best microcosm of this issue’s failings at world building and presentation, can be found in the opening scene.

 In the scene Thor’s hammer is frequently relocated and seems to be maybe or maybe not moving on it’s own volition. That isn’t to say the story is building in mystery as to whether or not it is moving on it’s own. It’s just that poorly conveyed to the audience. I honestly have little idea what was happening in that scene sans the authorities going to war with Thor’s worshippers.

 The scene also contains a microcosm of this book being for nobody. In said scene a police officer gets their face revealed and is referred to as ‘Jake’. If you didn’t already realize it, this is Jake Gallows, Punisher 2099. He does nothing else in the course of the issue beyond get injured fight and tell his friend a confusing police story. Then the issue ends teasing him as Punisher 2099.

 Like I said nostalgic 2099 fans will be turned off by this on principle because it’s not the character you know and love (his costume will also be different too) but if you are a newer reader...what are you even supposed to make of this? He’s just a random cop, it might as well have been his cop buddy who was the Punisher. It was at best a lame first impression.

And that’s true of virtually EVERY character teased in this comic exempting maybe Ghost Rider 2099.

He at least got a little more personality, you got a little more insight into how he operates, but only as a normal guy not as anything associated with the classic Ghost Rider or the 2099 counterpart you know and love.

Miguel’s background was confusing as he seems to already have his powers but is chummy with his dickhead boss/Dad/archnemesis Tyler Stone and the brief flashbacks to his origin are both different to the original 2099 line and nonsensical.

Conan didn’t even appear to my recollection but he’s still teased.

And the F4 tease was laughable as it didn’t even feature the F4 but rather HERBIE and a newly imagined take on Venture, effectively the first super villain of the 2099 line.

When this event was announced I was sad that Peter David was uninvolved.

But now I see why.

They didn’t want him involved and this is frankly an insult to his and the other 2099 creators’ works.

Don’t read this.

*Gotta love that subtle shade thrown out at the MC2 universe, a universe which lasted longer than the original 2099 line and you know....was way better than this reimagining has been so far. Why does modern Marvel punch down on Spider-Girl.

[venus-says]

Life update and some other things!

I'm sorry, the old Venus can't come to the phone right now... Why?... Oh, 'cause he's dead!

Yes, you're not having a hallucination, I'm indeed back with the blog. I mean, I'm not completely back yet, but I'm in the process of coming back.

So, you may be asking (or not) why I've bee away for an entire month and well this post is to tell what happened.

I was trying to keep a schedule of posts because I'm a madman and I thought that having consistency in the form of posting daily would be a great idea and that the world would conspire in my favor and would let that happen while having two huge long term projects coexisting. It happens that life isn't as kind and it came to bite me in the ass for trying to do too much stuff at the same time.

There wasn't necessarily one specific thing that lead me to take a break, it was more like a conversion of bad things happening at the same time in my personal life that really worn me down to an estate of deep sadness and exhaustion, and to my luck, all of that decided to happen at the same time as quarantine started in Brazil which brought a lot of tension, a huge political mess, and a whole lot of anxiety as our current president and his supporters seem to not care for the well being of the population thinking that the virus is just a made-up thing to make him and his government look bad. And don't even get me started in the whole lot of unconstitutional stuff has been happening, and that apparently no one in our justice system seems to care, that just makes the fear of us falling into another dictatorial regime after only 35 years of being back into living in a democracy hunt me in my dreams at night.

As you can see, this hasn't been the happiest of times.

And it just gets worse because the things that were supposed to help me in escaping from this terrifying reality actually only made me feel worse. First, because I couldn't just sit down and watch them, I had to watch and write about them, which was something I honestly had no energy to do. And second, because I wasn't exactly happy with the shows themselves, you know? I was really done with Prichan after the another!Daia arc, Zero-One had been constantly making me angry, all of the problems I had with Precure 5 seemed to only have been exacerbated into extreme levels in GoGo, Kamen Rider Ghost's 2nd and 3rd arc were just ghastly, and On Parade... well, was On Parade. Only Healin' Good was genuinely making me happy but even that I tried to avoid because I was very afraid of my mood ruining my experience with the show and turning something I really enjoyed into something that I hated.

And I know that it seems that I'm that salty bitch who loves to hate things just for the sake of it and that I should be thriving if I was seeing a lot of problems in the shows I was watching, but that's very far from the truth, I actually hate talking about bad things. Because the franchises I cover here are things that I love, I mean, this is a personal blog where I tell my PERSONAL experiences as I watch these shows, and as things that I love I want all of them to be good and I wanna say good things about them, but I can't come here and fake saying that I loved something and I had the greatest time ever because it would go against what this blog is about. Also faking enthusiasm is just as mentally exhausting as being honest and talking shit about stuff so that wouldn't really solve any of my problems.

So, in a self-preservation move, I step away from this blog and I indulged myself in a whole bunch of shit that wasn't anime in order to get me up and running again while I try to forget the problems of the world. I've listened to a shit-ton of podcasts, I've done some gaming (which is something that I barely do), obviously I cleaned and cooked a lot (like most of the people in quarantine are doing), and I've even got back into reading which was something that I haven't really done since my tablet broke like two years ago. Gosh, I even found out I actually like musicals and I've been watching recordings of shows on youtube non-stop and that has brought me a lot of joy (and I believe a lot of headaches to my neighbors). Heck, I even got to watch a few of the anime that just started in the most recent season and even got to find some new faves, so that break time was really helpful in making my mind drift away from all the negativities and the bad energy that was lurking around.

Of course, I'm still not 100% back, I'm still feeling very tired and my sense of time is all messed up, but I'm feeling better and I'm feeling renewed so I thought it was the time to slowly get back with the blog. And you can call me weird here, but it didn't feel right to be back with new energies and a new vibe and continue with the same dumb name for the blog. Like, I know this is a dumb thing to be hung on, but I gotta be honest I was never fully happy with my usernames that I've used in the past two~three years. I think CureCupid is a dumb name and venus-moonrise is even dumber, and I've been wanting to rebrand for a long ass time but I'm not a creative hoe and I couldn't think of a better name that wouldn't sound silly as hell and it wouldn't include the words venus, moon, and fairy, in any shape or form.

But I thought about it and realized that there wouldn't be any other time as perfect as this one to change my URLs, because I already lost the timing once when I stopped making gifs at CureCupid and I had that huge ass break in the blog before I came back to it in August last year, and since I'm with renewed energies would be very conflicting to keep going while having this thing with a dark aura around bringing me enjoyment down. And so I changed my usernames, I'm sorry for making you all confused, but I needed a concrete change.

And that's not the only change happening. Forget the daily posts, I may try that again in the future, but not for now. Until my gears are grinding to their full capacities I will post whenever I want, but whenever I get ready to have a schedule again I will post only 4 days of the week because if there's a thing that this period has taught me is that I need to consume other things that aren't precure, aikatsu, and kamen rider, so that I don't go crazy. So there's that.

Finally to conclude this long-ass post I would like to thank you all for still keeping up with me even though I'm a terrible content creator. I don't know if people on tumblr are aware but I have a WordPress blog that is basically the same thing as the tumblr just with more screenshots of the episodes and that blog hasn't had a single day with 0 visitors even though I haven't posted in the past 38 days and I'm really grateful for that and I hope that from now on I can match up with this support.

I'm not sure when I'll be back with the weekly show reviews, thankfully for the purposes of this blog almost all shows I cover are in hiatus due to COVID-19 so I can catch up with them easily without feeling pressured. But before that I decided that I'll do a monthly faves post to come out sometime during this week, is not necessarily a post with only my favorite things of the month, I just got inspired by Pixielocks video and I wanted to do something to talk about the things I watched during the break and it's something I want to become a regular thing for the blog so I have another incentive to watch other things without the need of commitment.

Well, I've written way more than I needed but I'm glad I was finally able to put this out, it may seem like a silly thing but it really made me feel better to be able to open up about stuff. Thank you so much for reading, be safe, take care of yourself, happy mother's day (!!!), and I hope I can meet you in the next time. Bye-bye.

[withlove-so]

My Fodlansona: Written edition!

Cause who needs art skills, amiright?

(This will have the timeskip looks of Ashe, Annette, and Felix because I took a screen shot from my game and forgot I was at the time skip. If you don’t wanna see that, just avoid this, otherwise you’re good)

Also under the cut, cause this got l o n g

Anyway, my bab!

Her full name is Sorrel Abrielle Caledoria!

I edited a notes sheet for her, and though it’s possible it could change, I like where it is now.

(It’s an edit of my Annette from my game file, with snippets from other characters notes. Don’t mind the wonky stat stuff, I didn’t feel like editing/getting something to match her stat line)

As you can see, she was born in Albinea. (Which I totally made up a history for, since as far as I can tell there isn’t much to speak of beyond the plants that grow there and how freezing it is.)

Past life leading up to 1180:

Her family was the leading and unchallenged noble family for about 7 years after she was born, and even before then they were the leading family. That is until the common people decided to revolt. Her father treated his people poorly since he could do/make them do whatever he wanted without being questioned or denied. They decided to move to Fódlan since they wouldn’t be accepted in Albinea any more.

They, obviously, couldn’t still be considered nobles, so they lived their lives as commoners. Sorrel’s family struggled to adjust to this change, but since she was so young, she didn’t mind at all! She made lots of friends in Fhirdiad, and there were so many delicious treats and candies! A girl her age just couldn’t get enough of it.

But she couldn’t live happily for long, after all, her family wasn’t viewed very fondly. Her father was assassinated while she and her mother were away shopping. Her mother, who feared her life would be next, fled and went into hiding. She and Sorrel went to live at a church near the border, hoping she could take refuge there. Her mother became a priestess and followed in the church’s teachings. She begged the Goddess for forgiveness on the behalf of her husband’s cruelty and her own cowardice.

Her mother died due to a seemingly incurable illness only a few years later. Sorrel blamed the Godess for not helping her mother (or maybe even cursing her directly) despite her efforts to repent. She turned her back against the Godess and the church’s teaching, but because she had nowhere else to go, she feigned loyalty.

Sorrel wants to make her late mother proud, and tries to live her life to the fullest. She decides that since she can no longer be a noble, she may as well become close to one. She decides to attend schooling at the officers academy, this way she would be able to learn how to fight and, one day, become a knight. She hopes that attending at this academy will allow her to become close to and swear fealty to a noble.

What’s her house?

100% Blue Lions, come on now

(I totally wanna think of students for the other two though, cause I really enjoyed making this one.)

What’s she like?

Sorrel is pretty competitive and loves to show off. Gotta get those good knight points, right? She’ll challenge anyone who opposes her to a fight, and the last man standing gets to be right! So basically, she’s not the brightest. She charges in without a plan, but it just kinda works out. Probably because everyone else has to try and cover for her. Despite all this, she really is trying her best, it’s just in... interesting ways. She just wants to help the people she cares about, even at her own risk. (she really is knight material...)

Outside of fighting and training, she’s a softie. She loves eating baked treats and sweets, especially homemade ones. She loves anything and everything soft and fuzzy and won’t hesitate to pet it if she sees it. She also loves cold weather, which goes hand in hand with her love of fuzzy things. If the temperature is above freezing, she’s a sweating mess! She honestly doesn’t understand how anyone can live with it being so hot...

What’s she look like?

I can only give a description but hnnnng I’ll do my best. She’s really pale because Albinea is so cloudy and cold, most people stay indoors and don’t see the sun often. Her skin could be compared to that of a ghost. Her hair is orange and at chin’s length, though it used to be really long when she was younger. Her eyes are a light green color and she has a smallish nose. Her face is always red since she’s not used to Fodlan’s weather, even after all this time. She’s usually sweating for the same reason. She’s taller than average height at 5′5″, though not by much. (Spoiler: She doesn’t get any taller 5 years later, it’s tragic)

Stats and such:

I love gameplay mechanics so I couldn’t not include this

She starts off with an Iron lance, I’m not 100% why I chose this for her it just felt right.

These are her skill levels, including what she’s good and bad at.

⏬Sword: E

⏫Lance: D

⏺Axe: E

⏫Bow: E+

*️⃣Brawl: E

⏺Reason: E

⏬Faith: E

⏺Authority: E

⏬Heavy Armor: E

⏺Riding: E

⏫Flying: E+

I chose brawling as her budding talent cause I’m biased and she’d totally deck someone if she could.

Her default class line would be

Soldier -> Pegasus Knight -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord

But other alternatives could be

Fighter -> Archer -> Sniper

(If the enemy gets too close she just... punch)

Fighter -> Brawler Brigand -> Grappler Warrior

(She may not be able to wield an axe, but that won’t stop her from destroying everything in her path)

Personal Skill: Reckless Charge: If unit attacks first, damage dealt to foe +3 and damage taken +3

Misc info:

I chose dancing as an interest of her because... I don’t know. To be honest. I just thought she’d find it fun and enjoyable. Twirling around and having fun, laughing and just, being chill for once in her life. It was just a nice thought, but because that’s all it was I didn’t really know where to put it. So here it is.

I chose her close allies for a few different reasons.

I chose Ashe because I’m biased and love him he admires and wants to become a knight and so does she. But for two completely different reasons. I thought the dynamic would be interesting since he wants to become a knight to help people while she wants to be one just so she can rise above her current status. And I’m biased and love him.

I chose Annette because I see her as someone who is also close to Ashe and because she is from Fhirdiad. I imagine they must have run into each other a few times back then, and they could have even been friends. Maybe they shared sweets together? The idea was just too cute to pass up! They would definitely have girls nights and just hang out together.

Finally, I chose Felix because I’m 100% sure they spar. All. The. Time. They both want to prove their strength. Sorrel wants to show off and prove she’s the best, and Felix wants prove he’s stronger than everyone, and getting stronger, so of course he’d challenge someone so cocky. Sorrel is pretty naïve on what it really takes to be a knight, so most of what she knows comes from fables and such, and Felix would definely HATE it. So I think they’re dynamic would be like a competitive Ashe and I love it.

Bonus: Caspar would totally be a close runner up. They’re both morons who love charging in, they would just enable each other and it’d be horrible.