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tinyozlion · 1 year

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TinyOZlion's GW Episode Guide for People Who Aren't Gundam People: Episode 01 - “The Shooting Star She Saw”

ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ OH boy oh BOY! It's time for PGW's first episode analysis! Let’s get started!

First let me pop in my 20 year old VHS tapes! ...Wait, I can’t. I don’t have a VCR player anymore, huh. Well, okay, let me just pop in these 20 year old DVDs! ...Nope, I can’t, computers stopped having disc drives in them. So... I guess. Uh.

Okay. Listen. Hear me out: I’ve bought this entire series on TWO redundant formats already. I’ve bought every manga. I’ve bought posters. I’ve bought model kits, I’ve bought figurines, I’ve bought toys.

I HAVE PAID MY DUES TO YOU, BANDAI! NO MORE!!

–80 minutes and 2 seeders later–

Wow, so this is the Blu-Ray edition huh? Let’s check it out, how different could it bbbvvhOLY SHIT

It’s so…… crisp.

This feels intimate. I shouldn’t be seeing the Gundams like this. They’re… they’re so… clean. I don’t recognize any of these people without the artifacting, the scan lines, the VHS blur.

I can see all the cel jitter??

No… NO! This is wrong. This is DISRESPECTFUL.

God never intended 90’s anime to be viewed at 1080p! It wasn’t DRAWN in 1080p!

And yet… the color quality… that seductive line definition …

Fine, The Crispness, you win. I’ll watch my anime in high definition, but I WILL NEVER FORGET MY ROOTS!!!!!!

...Actually fuck that, this is gorgeous and I’m never going back. If I ever have a few hundred bucks burning a hole in my pocket I guess I’ll just buy it AGAIN. To be responsible.

OKAY. Now we can start.

Note!: While this Episode Analysis is sort of 1/2 walkthrough for new viewers and 1/2 refresher + commentary for returning Wing fans, what it ISN'T intended to be is a full episode summary (for really good episode summaries, you can go here!) However, I am going to be going over this particular episode with a fine tooth comb, because episode 01 is by far the worst offender of the series. It’s got it all: bizarrely worded dialogue, mistranslations, delivering a bunch of new information to us by taking it out of the fridge and pouring it directly down the back of our shirts... Later in the series I will be grouping episodes together to cover more ground, but this one is a doozy, so it’s getting its own solo entry. Get ready: The pacing of this first episode is BONKERS. Things are going to move very fast, and a lot of new concepts are going to be dropped in quick succession.

*Ahem*

With high expectations human beings leave earth to begin a new life in Space Colonies. HOWEVER– (the way Optimus-Narrator says “However” lives in my brain as a permanent sound bite) the United Earth Sphere Alliance gains great military powers, and soon seizes control of one colony after another– in the name of “justice” and “peace”. The year is After Colony 195– Operation Meteor: in a move to counter the Alliance’s tyranny, rebel citizens of certain colonies scheme to bring new arsenals to the Earth, disguising them as shooting stars. HOWEVER– the Alliance headquarters catches on to this operation...

This intro is actually very succinct, clear, and to the point– IF you already know what to expect from this genre. (In my section on the history of Gundam in Japan and North America, I talked about how Wing's opening exposition was written based on the assumption that everybody watching would already be familiar with the basics of the Gundam franchise, so all that needed to be explained for Wing was what was departing from the original.)

--The main takeaway from the exposition is that A) There are Space Colonies, B) The earth is oppressing them via its military, using big robots to terrorize the small squishy people living in the space hamster wheels; and C) during something called “Operation Meteor”, an unspecified resistance group from the colonies sent secret weapons to earth.

Earth Big Military Bad, Space Colonies Oppressed, Space Colonies Send Five Mystery Weapons To Earth To Do Something About It. Okay we’re all caught up.

--Oh, what are the big robots? They haven’t been introduced yet– presumably because every single person watching this Gundam show already knows what Mobile Suits are, and knows that a Gundam is a big, special Mobile Suit, right? Unless you’re me, and nine years old, and watching it for the first time in America in the year 2000 AD. So just in case you're me from then and I'm me from now, let me clarify: the big robots are called “Mobile Suits” and this is a show about them. They aren’t Transformers, they need a person inside to make them go.

Let’s meet some of them, shall we?

--In this really very pretty opening sequence, we are shown the five mysterious capsules shooting down to the big blue marble that is earth. Fun science note: compare these to the Apollo command modules, and other vehicles designed for reentry!

--We cut to an Alliance surveillance satellite. The crew has picked up the Secret Colony Weapon Gashapons on their radar, but have no idea what they are. It’s probably just space debris, but just in case it’s Something Bad, they decide to let the closest available military person know about it, so someone with guns can deal with it.

--It is indeed Something Bad, and the military person they tell about it already KNOWS it’s bad, because he’s a main character and his name is Zechs Merquise. He’s the handsome fellow wearing a strange helmet/mask.

He is immediately dismissive of the Alliance satellite crew, because to him it’s obvious that space debris wouldn’t “ride the wave course to earth”. I have tried my best to identify what a “wave course” is, to no avail. I’m assuming that here it means a standard or safe path for reentry vehicles to take.

(EDIT: It turns out "wave riding" is a thing from Zeta Gundam! It is indeed a procedure mobile suits use to "surf" with a heat-shielded device for safe atmospheric reentry! Now we know!)

--As alluded to by the Narrator, the Alliance (or at least, this particular and very significant group of people currently associated with the Alliance) does in fact know something about Operation Meteor (or “M”). They being to close the gap on the one capsule out of five that they can catch up with.

–And here’s our first round of confusing dialogue! Goodie!:

Zechs: “One would do just dandy. A hired front line soldier mustn’t rush to battle.” Soft-Spoken Zechs Groupie Who Doesn’t Get A Name So I Will Call Him “Milo”: “That’s quite the bold statement, sir.” Zechs, chuckling: “I told you. I am a True Soldier.”

–Now, what the fuck does any of that entail. Allow me to explain:

Firstly: Zechs indicates that catching up with only one capsule is fine (or “dandy”), because Zechs suspects this encounter will lead to combat of some sort, so even if it WAS possible to catch up with more than one capsule, it would be risky to engage multiple targets of unknown abilities. “A hired soldier” would be especially unwise to do so, because they’re not fighting for anything particularly meaningful– they’re just there to do a job, and why be in a hurry to die for your salary?

--This is our first introduction to Zech’s ethos on fighting and what it means to be a soldier, or “True Soldier”. This is also our first introduction to one of Gundam Wing’s Big Important Vocabulary Terms! Which you can find explained in detail in the Dictionary Section.

Unfortunately for us, “Soldier” and “True Soldier” will sometimes be used interchangeably, but they mean very different things.

Zechs is a man deeply concerned with chivalry, honor, and purpose– the morality and aesthetics of combat. A “soldier” might be someone paid to fight, enlisted with no particular goals, or deployed on a mission that doesn’t involve them– but a “TRUE Soldier” is someone fighting to prove something, to advance their goals, to test their own limits in battle with a worthy opponent, to discover something about themselves in the process of fighting.

Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo gives him a Look™ and says “that’s bold of you sir” because Zechs is most certainly not a hired soldier-- as we'll soon learn, he's OZ's ace pilot (more on OZ later), known for his exceptionally fast reflexes and high speed MS combat, which has earned him the moniker "Lighting Count". So while he isn't actually the type to jump into things before understanding what’s going on-- unlike some other people we're about to meet in this episode-- not rushing in combat isn't really what he's famous for.

Also, he’s being kind of a prick! Calling everyone else hired guns and then doubling down by reminding them that HE is a True Soldier?? Yikes!

...Or at least, that’s how the scene reads in English.

First-Episode-Zechs is really laying it on thick for us. And if you’ll take a quick peek behind the curtain with me: Zechs isn’t written this way past this episode. Or really, past this HALF of the episode.

But, if one is looking for an in-character explanation for this dialogue as it stands, it’s possible that First-Episode-Zechs is a glimpse into what a cocksure ace pilot raised on Treize’s idealism (more on that later) is like, right at the peak of his so-far spotless career, and in the last moments he’ll be able to afford this kind of unbridled arrogance before the world conspires to humble him.

Honestly, that would be in keeping with the way ALL the characters are depicted in these early episodes: each naive or overconfident in their own way, not yet having been forced to challenge their ideals.

–But! this might also just be one of many localization fumbles. A fan translation of this scene indicates that what Zechs might actually be trying to say here is more like:

“No need to chase after more work than we signed up for, we’re all just grunts on the front lines together after all”

and Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo is therefore responding to him more like:

“That’s a bit cheeky of you to say, Mr. Best-Friends-With-The-Colonel Ace Pilot The Lighting Count Merquise.”

(...I’ve lamented this before but it’s DAMN HARD to find alternate translations of GW's script, and I'm limited by being a feeble monolingual English speaker. If you’re reading this and have more expertise than I do on this matter and want to share your insights / sources, please know that I'd sign over my soul to see them.)

–On a side note, I love how super crunchy Zechs’ voice is in this first episode. As one astute comment I read once suggested: you can tell Brian Drummond was coming down from playing Vegeta. He still had some of that ol’ Saiyan phlegm in him.

– And now for a brief interlude from our scifi high-politicking to witness some relatable familial drama!

I appreciate this contrast! The important takeaway from this scene is that Relena is the daughter of Vice Foreign Minister Darlian, an important dignitary who mediates between the Earth Sphere Alliance and the Space Colonies. They’re on their way home from one of his frequent business trips to space.

A vague spoiler, but I find it bittersweet how Zechs is unaware that Relena is on the shuttle about to be caught in the crossfire, and by showing up, he is saving her life.

OMG IT’S HAPPENING. IT’S HERE. IT’S TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE “BATTLE SEED”:

Zechs: “So that’s their little battle seed, all ready to sprout into new battles.” Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo: “Ha. Operation M.”

--I get the feeling that Milo is used to Zechs-isms by now and is just like “Oh lieutenant, you kidder,” whenever he says some wild allegorical shit he just made up.

Anyway, here’s the thing about “battle seed”– this is obviously an idiom that we've done poor service to. But in the original, it’s apparently “Battle EGG”, or perhaps, “EGG OF WAR”. Does that help? No? Well that’s all I’ve got for you. Sorry.

Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo: “It moves just like a bird…”

Aw, Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo, you’re so cute when you talk about the enemy death machine. Of course it moves like a bird, it hatched out of a Battle Egg!

Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo: “Let’s wake him up with our machine gun!” Zechs: “No. No machine gun for him– Shoot him down!” Otto: “But, Lt. Zechs…!” Zechs: “We were told the purpose of this operation was to bring in the weapon, but it’s not the weapon, (the real target) is the fighter pilot inside!”

Now, I know “don’t shoot him with the gun, shoot him DOWN with the gun” sounds stupid, but really he’s just saying “No warning shots.”

Whatever kind of new technology they’re up against, strafing it with a machine gun would be like hitting it with spitballs. What they need to do is get the enemy craft out of the air and capture the pilot, and the carrier ship’s machine guns just aren’t going to cut it. --Which is why Zechs is about to hop out and try and fuck it up with a Mobile Suit.

Fucking things up with a Mobile Suit is what Zechses like best.

--It is worth noting that Zechs immediately clocked the pilot as the most dangerous and valuable part of the enemy operation (because of course! Pilots are warriors, and warriors have honor, and a warrior’s honor is proof of humanity’s worth). Mind you, this is moments BEFORE they see the actual Gundam, but nevertheless, this is a significant value statement that will be important throughout the series: It’s the people that matter. It’s always the people that matter. The weapons are secondary. Even if superior technology grants someone an edge in battle, a weak person behind the controls will always betray themselves.

This is partly why Zechs doesn’t use the Aries MS that’s designed for flight, despite this being aerial combat; he goes in his preferred Leo suit, which is your bog-standard humanoid canon fodder Mobile Suit used as ground troops. This seems like a suboptimal choice, but Zechs lives by the idea that a good pilot can overcome the limitations of their machine.

And this is put to the test literally the instant he drops.

–The unfortunate aspect of this scene happening in Episode 01 is that the viewer will have no context yet for exactly how absolutely, impossibly, ludicrously impressive this stunt is. Zechs not only isn’t dead after this, but he manages to fuck up a Gundam using a Leo, which is testament to exactly how much of badass this guy is.

Oh hey speaking of which check it out, it’s a Gundam.

–Two of Zech’s backup squad are instantly blown away in one shot from the Wing Gundam. This is barely commented on, and I think that’s one of the bigger mistakes of this episode. Those two guys aren’t named, and Zechs’ only remark is that it's "not too shabby" / "unbelievable". Considering how much the death of his subordinates weighs on him later, this seems remarkably flippant.

Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo: “Are you alright?” Zechs: “Yeah. Sorry to worry you. I did everything I could.”

See? That’s the kind of rapport Zechs and his subordinates usually have; they keep it professional, but the people who work with Zechs respect him immensely, and as their officer he tries to do right by them.

Zechs: “There’s no bright future for soldiers scurrying for their reward.”

This is a fancy-pants way of expressing disdain for the Alliance sailors who weren’t involved in the fight, but were more than happy to claim the spoils. In the fan translation of this episode he literally says “tell them the treasure sunk at these coordinates”. To him, these are just pirates after loot, not True Soldiers.

___

We just talked about Zechs for a long time. Now let’s talk about Heero Yuy.

Unfortunately for our first Gundam pilot, he took a long, precarious, silent shuttle ride all the way to earth only to be discovered immediately by the Alliance military. He fails to shoot down the civilian carrier that's seen him, and then he fails to shoot down the OZ mobile suit carrier ("Wait" I hear you say, "OZ mobile suit carrier? What's OZ? Aren't Zechs & co. from the Alliance?" Aha! Sharp-eared listener, you miss nothing! Have no fear, we will discuss OZ shortly).

Heero barely has time to dry out the wings of his Wing Gundam before he’s blindsided by OZ’s ace pilot and crashing his infinitely valuable Mobile Suit into the ocean. He makes it out alive by the skin of his teeth.

Not a great first day on the job for our boy Heero! Bad luck meeting Zechs Merquise first thing upon entering earth’s orbit.

But a surprise encounter with OZ's top pilot notwithstanding, this... probably could have gone better, right? Why would our first introduced Gundam pilot be so cavalier about crashing and burning the second he makes it to his destination? Why would he recklessly reveal his Gundam and pick a fight on a stealth mission? And what’s with this giddy energy he’s got after making a fresh kill? Heero isn't exactly a cheerful guy; he only seems to laugh when he's exhilarated about having gotten away with something. This is one of those times, and it is his very most unhinged cackle. Finally, he gets to DO something. Feels good. Feels right.

...It’s almost like this boy has zero sense of self preservation and no investment in his future; shooting down enemies for him is a game with no stakes.

–For the returning Wing viewer: if you're familiar the gist of Operation Meteor, remember that it would have been slated to happen directly before the series started; that’s when all the Gundam pilots (at the urging of their Doctors) independently decided to steal their Gundams and ignore the original premise. So Heero just recently made off like a bandit with the Wing Gundam. He stole that motherfucker right out the display case. His primary objective at the moment isn't primarily to take down OZ and the Alliance (though that's obviously the long-term goal), it's to make sure the Barton Foundation DOESN’T get the Gundam. So really, getting shot down immediately upon arriving on earth isn't the worst thing that could happen. Heero smiles when he finally sees the earth because it means maybe this will be over soon. Mission accomplished. Now all he has to do is die! :)

___

Relena Darlain’s father is a very important, very busy man who never has any time to spare for his daughter, even on her birthday, and in this telenovela of her own life, she’s going to graciously pretend like this doesn’t bother her and make her strong, independent, teenage girl way home on foot, narrating her predicament out loud along the way. She’s the main character, after all, the center of the world. Her troubles are the only troubles that are real.

*Record scratch*

Lying there on the beach is someone who is actually in trouble. She’s the only one here. She HAS to help.

___

–Alright, okay. I see what you did there, Wing.

--The gentleman in Napoleonic cosplay is Treize Khushrenada. He is a Major General (for now) in the Alliance military (for now), and his eyebrows are so big because they are full of secrets.

He and Zechs are best buddies forever and ever, they have matching charm bracelets, and they can finish each other's sandwiches. Whenever these two are on screen together I am going to have to decipher every. single. word. because Treize and Zechs are ALREADY cryptic bastards, and when they're together they talk in friend-speak where only half of what they're communicating actually gets said.

Just this once, as a treat, they are having a fairly intelligible conversation. First one's free.

...But really Treize, taking a call DURING the performance? Bad form old chap, bad form.

SIDE NOTE: Based on the teeny tiny figures, this could maybe be Petrushka? And I desperately want this to be Petrushka because:

It means Treize has good taste

Petrushkranada

–To put this conversation in perspective: Gundanium is a very sophisticated type of semi-metallic ceramic-like compound that can only be refined correctly in outer space. Think of it as something you’d have to spend all your faculty funding on to buy a gram of for your science department. Suddenly, someone rolls up with a six-story building made out of the stuff. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” is the only appropriate response.

Treize: "Something like this never would have happened if you and I had been in OZ 15 years ago; that much is for certain."

--If I may humbly direct your attention to my Policy of Ignoring Stupid Shit, this one of the many reasons why we are going to glance at Zechs and Treize's canonical ages, do the math, realize that 15 years ago, Treize and Zechs would have been 9 and 4 years old respectively, and then we are going to gently slide those numbers into the garbage and crank them both up to a respectable adult age in our minds.

--OH RIGHT! OZ!! Remember, we were going to talk about OZ? Well, Treize is going to tell us about it here in a minute, I'm going to tell you about it now, because we need to know what OZ is in brief before we can make sense of this exchange:

OZ is a secret paramilitary organization hiding inside the official Earth Sphere Alliance military. As an organization, it's responsible for a great deal of clandestine political skullduggery and foul play that has left the Colonies and Earth in a state of easily-manipulated perpetual turmoil. OZ has been around for a while-- that's because its even MORE clandestine and sinister parent organization is even older. In its current incarnation, OZ is hiding out inside the elite mobile suit division called the "Specials", which Treize commands. In addition to being the Special's commander, he personally trained many of its top members when he was serving as an instructor at the Lake Victoria Military Academy. Zechs, and a number of other important characters we'll meet, all graduated from this academy under Treize's tutelage, and now serve him as elite mobile suit pilots in the Specials. Which is OZ. Which is the even more shadowy and sinister organization beneath that. It's a turducken of villainy.

What makes the Specials / OZ noteworthy in the ranks of the Alliance is that they are given free reign to act on their own initiative in combat. They don't answer to the Alliance military, they answer to Treize. This pisses a significant number of significant people off.

Treize pisses a significant number of significant people off. He's under the age of 65, which makes him an infant in the ranks of the brass. He's got elusive, powerful aristocratic backing that makes him untouchable. His followers are fanatically, and I mean FANATICALLY loyal to him. And he has the absolute chutzpah to be really good at everything he does. GOD he's the worst. His eyebrows are insured for $10,000.

--When Treize is lamenting that he and Zechs weren't in OZ fifteen years ago, he is referring to a very, very important sequence of events that began around AC 180 (give or take, if you're following my advice about stretching the timeline); events that brought the Earth and the Colonies within an arm's reach of unification and peace, only to be catastrophically and violently ripped apart, to the detriment of both.

(This is a very important date for Zechs, in particular. It's a very important date for the Gundams as well.)

Treize is making the point that if he and Zechs had been in charge back in the day, well, all this revolutionary sentiment wouldn't be necessary. We would have handled that mess far more sensibly, wouldn't we, Bestie?

-- Zechs has already absorbed this subtext and skips ahead to say "Gundams are on earth." Emphasizing that yes, shit really is popping off. The thing we heard scary bedtime stories about is real and it's happening and we get to be the ones to deal with it. Exciting times we're living in.

Treize: "I'm sure you're aware, but this is an important period. Do not do anything to anger the Alliance." Zechs, smirking: "I fully understand."

The Gundams aren't the only scary thing under the Alliance's bed. Lots of volatile elements are about to collide, all at once, very soon. Treize is just giving Zechs a wink and a nudge-- hey, I know you already know that big things are afoot, I trust you not to rock the boat too early.

--Oh! For the record, OZ stands for Organization of the Zodiac. You may have noticed that the two standard Mobile Suits we've been introduced to so far were called "Aries" and "Leo". OZ is inseparable from the history of Mobile Suit development, and all of its MS are therefore constellation-themed. ...But it's also just straight up a reference to "The Wizard of OZ", because OZ's signature mascot is--

--A LIIIIOOON!!!

...Yes! Thank you Tinylion, now we know why you're here. Back in your teapot now, sweetie. There you go.

--It's a lion, and the insignia for the OZ space corps is the Tin Man. The series lead scriptwriter Sumisawa loves him a book & film reference, you will find them all over Wing.

___

–Gosh, Treize is so SASSY in this episode. Look at this delinquent, showing up late for War Class because he was at a concert and on the phone with his boyfriend. Here he is giving lip to his supervisors, answering questions with totally undisguised disdain. He can’t keep getting away with it. He’s a naughty, naughty boy. Someone should teach him a lesson.

–God yes, General Septem. Fuck yes. The best worst voice acting in the show. Iconic. Immortal. Powerful. Showstopping. Brave. Go off, Nappa.

-VALUABLE KHAMBET RESAWRSEZ

–Treize is sitting at the war table like a fox in a chicken coop, biding his time and thinking: “I don’t owe these complacent, arrogant fools answers for anything. They haven’t left their desks in decades. They’ve never seen the cost of human life first hand. In the depths of their ignorance they think they’re the ones who can steer the course of the future. Hilarious. Thank god for Me.”

MEANWHILE: Relena is still on the beach trying to figure out what to do with this sick feral cat she found.

The TNR crew finally shows up with a kitty crate but the cat wakes up and tries to chew its own head off in self-defense. Having failed to die, it bites everyone, hijacks their car, and gets the fuck out of Dodge.

“Ma’am have you had all your shots?”

Relena is not listening. Relena is introducing herself to the Heero-shaped dust cloud that’s still lingering in the air, because what the fuck else are you gonna do.

Oh hey look it’s more Gundams!

The Gashapons of War have touched down in different parts of the world and set to work wreaking havoc immediately.

Unbeknownst to the Alliance or OZ, any appearance of coordination between the Gundams is an accident– none of them have any idea there are other Gundams besides their own.

They’re all in the same position as Heero: they refused the original premise of Operation Meteor and now they’re on borrowed time fighting whatever enemies come up on their radar. Each of them thinks they’re in this alone (except for Quatre, who has groupies).

However, just because the pilots aren’t coordinated doesn’t mean the mysterious people giving them orders are. But we'll learn more about that later.

--- Let's meet the rest of the Gundam boys!

–Duo: LEEEEROOOOY JENKINS we only get old memes in the colonies –Trowa: New phone, new name, new Gundam, who may I ask is calling –Wufei: Stealth missions are for casuals who can’t fight their way out of impossible odds. Skill issue. –Quatre: I am literally begging you to not fuck around so I don’t have to make you find out.

Speaking of Quatre: Hey! If this were a different series with a mature audience rating, this scene would be unmentionably gruesome!

___

-Awww, Soldier-I’ve-Named-Milo is bad at math! He’s just like me for real. Anyway, there are (4 + 1 = 5)....Five. Five Gundams total.

-Zechs correctly makes the assessment that the game has just changed, and it’s about to get extremely serious very quickly.

___

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for:

Spicy feral kitten arrives at Relena’s school. Relena is more confused than ever, but now this is officially a Mystery. She likes mysteries. She likes Mystery Boy. He’s the perfect foil for her, the main character, in this YA novel that she is the protagonist of.

Feral Mystery Boy suddenly makes it 100% publicly clear that he has no interest in playing nice, or in playing at all. Mystery Boy leans in real close, and says a thing that you might hear from, say, a guy in a black suit you accidentally witnessed murdering someone in a back alley, who then followed you to school.

The telenovela of Relena’s life is hitting its mid-season dark plot-twist, and

She.

Loving.

It.

Tune in next week for Episodes 2 - 3!

~TinyOzLion, out.

#Parsing Post #Gundam Wing #Gundam Wing Meta #Gundam Meta #Gundam Wing Episode Guide #Episode Analysis #tinyozlion pgw

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benevolentgodloki · 2 years

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KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER.

○ NAME: Pirate

○ PRONOUNS: She/her.

○ PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION: tumblr IMs for introductions to discuss threads or chat to established role-play partners, Discord for a select few I gel with or especially if you're part of a server I'm in/a group thread is being written (I get overwhelmed with notifications so I can't have too many people in separate places). Asks for everything else!

○ NAME OF MUSE(S): Loki

○ EXPERIENCE/HOW LONG (MONTHS/YEARS?): Idk like 22 years or something? I've been on tumblr for 10 years.

○ PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: MSN, Skype, Discord, RolePages, Vulpine Imperium, Fantasmic, tumblr

○ BEST EXPERIENCE: Meeting my best friends through fanfic and role-play

○ RP PET PEEVES / DEALBREAKERS: Vague posts/call-outs/drama, persistent negativity, repeatedly dropping threads or refreshing entire blogs and moving before we can develop a relationship, splicing dialogue/writing it retrospectively in posts, openly complaining about something without being considerate to who might be reading it, jealousy, being fandom police, Pirate whining hypocritically about all this

○ FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT: A decent mix of all tbh. Over exposure to fluff or smut can get dull for Loki. Too much angst hurts him. I like hurt/comfort. Also, my 'smut' is not the same kind of smut that word tends to make you think of. I'm not really one for mechanically jamming two muses together anyway. My 'smut' can be quite plot heavy so it's more erotica-ish? If you don't like smut usually but you're curious, you can try it out with me (if Loki's interested) and see if you like how it goes. I've converted more than one person who didn't like usual smut to start with :P Absolutely no judgement on people who just like to get right on in there, it's more jarring for me without build-up and exposition. Sometimes I'm even happier to fade to black if we've done a lot of the same old thing.

○ PLOTS OR MEMES: Light plot or memes. I don't like heavy plotting unless we've been discussing something specific and got excited. I like to pants my way through threads usually until we spark something up. I don't reblog memes often but established partners can check my /memes tag and send things in and if I want to turn it into a thread I will!

○ LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: Short to medium. I'm very succinct with what I write and I don't always do a lot of introspection because Loki's a trickster so getting in his head sometimes reveals too much to a partner. I've also read too much Pratchett so I get to the point quite fast, except when Loki's waffling the hell on. Sometimes I do get 'hooked on a feeling' or there's a lot to say and the replies get longer. With partners I'm not always a fan of long posts unless there's a good reason for it e.g. Smaugie does lots of awesome exposition and world-building and character stuff. Some peeps however are fleshing things out a lot or they end up godmodding so it's very difficult for me to explain what my character was doing or to further the plot without my brain crying.

○ BEST TIME TO WRITE: Late morning to early eve

○ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): I find lying incredibly uncomfortable unless I'm acting, so no XD I am also not a magical frost giant god with a religious following. I am however bisexual, pagan, and wish I could physically flip my biological sex and appearance at a whim. I don't like to take hard opinions on anything so I'm very middle-ground trickstery, but I'm also obsessed with order and schedules due to my (likely) autism. I'm also far more clever than I am wise, though I think I'm gradually exchanging Intelligence points for Wisdom as I get older. God I hope so.

TAGGED BY: @paragonrising :D

TAGGING: Anyone who hasn't done this before or wants to do it again!

#outofillusions #about Pirate

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clearlynotjanus · 3 years

Text

Loceit Appreciation Week: Day One, Hobbies

READ ON AO3

Chapter Summary: Through three accidental bonding moments over their usually solo hobbies, Logan & Janus realize they have a bit in common & enjoy what the other has to offer.

CW: Food mention, NSFW insinuated very briefly, Greek mythology Word Count: 6497 Genre: Gen Rating: Gen Ships: Slowburn Loceit, slowburn Intruloceit, pre-established Intrulogical, pre-established Dukeceit

taglist: @sanderssidesangsttrash @catalinaacosta @whatishappeningrightnow @anxiousbean4404 @vexelore @the-dead-and-the-decaying @serpentinesomebody @poptartsaysurloved @robertdownerjr @dangitsbrightinhere @iamuncomffy @sanderdarksides @evertriedsoywithyourpopcorn @dragonfander @virgilstarantula @a-rudethude @indubitably-emo @gay-artist-626 @cosplayhanna @edupunkn00b @wouldntyou-liketoknow @awesomerandomgirl1 @loceitweek2021

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Without any effort made to conceal himself, Janus observed Logan and Remus from the kitchen pass through. Cynically his eyes measured the almost formal distance between the lovers on the couch. There was no need to guesstimate their familiarity; Remus gushed every chance he got about their private life but Janus was still nosey as ever. He leaned forward there with an elbow bent across the counter, the other propped up with an apple brought to his mouth every so often with a satisfying crunch. His gaze switched between keen on their movements and hazy as trains of thought whisked him away.

Janus was aware his staring made Logan uncomfortable in these moments. He shifted, glanced in Janus’ direction, cleared his throat, pushed his glasses back unnecessarily, all as though being perceived so closely was an entirely new concept; but that was just another reason to continue. This was, after all, the Dark Side; his side, and far be it from Janus to let Logan forget that detail. Besides, it wasn’t like he was a peeping Tom, leering as their casual afternoon became intimate. No, whenever that occurred, Janus was out of the room faster than Remus could get it up.

Today was tedious in its domesticity. Remus scribbled like a madman with furious scritchscritchscritches in a notebook that seemed to change positions whenever Janus looked at him, specifically. Logan rested his head gently against a loosely balled fist. With a quiet schwiff every couple of minutes, he turned a page of the book in his lap. The room was silent otherwise.

Crunch. Schwiff. Scritchscritchscritch. Crunch. Schwiff. Scritchscritchscritch. Crunch -- The apple was finished and the sticky core was disposed of.

“Logan,” Janus called suddenly in a sweet tone as the trash’s lid closed.

The Side in question stayed silent; either to finish the line his eyes were currently on or to give Janus a taste of his own uncomfortable medicine. Either way, Janus rounded the kitchen corner and balanced a hip against the arm rest next to Remus. A gloved hand idly found its way into his partner’s curls; thoughtlessly, Remus leaned into the feeling, but remained otherwise unresponsive, clearly content with his scribbling. Logan finally blinked up. His expression seemed indecisive between exasperated and dubious, with a predictable amount of disinterest.

“What is it you’re reading?” Janus asked, brows and chin raised with an amount of intrigue that Logan didn’t immediately trust. Not to say Logan didn’t trust Janus individually, but even if he was the Side who understood Deceit the best, there was still quite a bit of water under this particular bridge -- or, uh, whatever idiom would fit here.

Instead of responding verbally, Logan held up the blue and black cover for Janus to read himself; which he then did. With a slightly cocked head, the words were enunciated slowly.

“Born Under Saturn. The Character and Conduct of Artists; A Documented History From Antiquity to The French Revolution,” Janus blinked back up at Logan’s face, digesting the rather wordy sentence. “An analysis of historical artists?” He attempted to boil the topic down to something more … succinct as Logan lowered the book again.

“Basically,” He allowed, eyes poised to resume his reading.

Janus hummed with peaked interest and continued to watch as Logan’s demeanor receded from vaguely conversational to studiously mute once more. In truth, it sounded like a rather compelling read. Being Thomas’ Sides, of course, they were all inclined to art in some way; for the more left-brained Sides such as Janus and Logan however, the critique and reasoning behind the art and associated artists compelled them more frequently than the act of creating art, itself.

“What’s the part about Saturn?” Janus asked with knitted brows, the hand in Remus’ hair going still as he interrupted again after a moment. This question seemed to get Logan going as he shifted in his seat.

“Well, I had assumed from the title that the study would be centered around evidence pertaining to when and where artists were born, alluding to the hypothesis that Saturnian positions and dispositions resulted in a certain type of artistic character,” Logan explained, annoyance bleeding into his tone as he placed the back of his hand on the page he was currently on in a humorless gesture.

“And I take it from your very contented mood that that’s exactly what the book is about,” Janus teased reflexively, taken aback by Logan’s sudden enthusiasm. Perhaps, Janus thought, he hadn’t been so bothered by being stared at and was simply wrestling with his expectations of the text.

“Ha ha,” He laughed dryly; the sound made Janus smirk. “Saturn is, unfortunately,” Logan waved his hand at the book, “Just a metaphor here.”

“A metaphor for what?” Janus pressed gently, giving a final tug of affection to Remus’ hair before retracting his hand; sensing the appendage being stolen, the distracted Creativity leaned to follow the stimulus until it was far out of reach. Janus turned away and sat delicately on the shallow coffee table in front of Logan, who then paused.

He didn’t wonder why Janus was interested in this topic; after all, he thought, philosophy and theoretical debate were right up Janus’ alley. Additionally, they were speaking about metaphors, he rationalized. Logan didn’t need to understand nor regularly use the literary device to know its practical application, particularly to Deceit who always spoke in those encumbering and roundabout ways. What Logan really paused for was a moment of recognition that after years of distant silence, they were embarking on a rather cordial discussion.

“The melancholic,” Logan explained.

“So not the Roman god?”

“Well, yes and no, but for the comparison to make sense, no is easier,” Janus nodded and crossed his legs, listening with intent held in his brows. “It is a tad convoluted but the theory relates to the history of the four humors,” Janus gave a soft, one-noted hum and Logan nodded. “After all, the Greek etymology for the word melancholy is melas, meaning black and kholé meaning bile; black bile, of course--”

“Being one of the four … fluids,” Janus scrunched his nose distastefully, “Associated with the four humors,” He finished his interruption, gesturing with a loose wrist.

“Exactly,” Logan breathed with a surprised half smile.

“So what does Saturn have to do with black bile?” Janus asked reasonably.

“Well that part goes back to the interpretive study of Astrology,” Janus tilted his head with surprised interest. “Which, despite its dubious plausibility today, played a frequently understated role in the founding of modern science, especially modern psychology.” Logan paused, watching Janus’ face shift subtly in thought.

“Forgive my relatively ignorant knowledge of Astrology,” Logan nodded permissibly as Janus began to piece the theory together with slow words, “But I guess what you’re saying, or rather, what you expected the book to say, is that artists all suffer from a melancholic disposition?” Logan hummed and shook his head, causing Janus to purse his lips.

“Again, yes and no. The book is saying that, to some extent.”

“You had just been expecting the evidence to be reliant on literal Saturn rather than...whatever they’re actually using,” Janus tried again and was rewarded with another half smile.

“Are you nerds done yet?” Remus piped up suddenly as Logan opened his mouth to continue. Janus’ head turned and the awareness in his partner’s eyes made his own narrow; how long had he been attentive to their conversation? “I wanna show Lolo what I made.”

“Quite, then,” Janus smiled curtly at Remus who beamed with knowing sarcasm in a way that only Janus would be able to detect. Rat bastard. “Another time,” He promised almost provocatively as a parting to Logan, who looked rather miffed and torn between continuing this unexpectedly stimulating conversation and tending to his boyfriend’s desires.

Janus stood before brushing invisible dirt off himself. “Have a wonderful afternoon, lovebirds,” Janus lilted, fingers wiggling in a goodbye wave as his back disappeared down the hall.

Logan blinked several times before inhaling and turning to Remus, who seemed a few moments more patient and perhaps a little more amused than usual.

- - - - -

Remus’ door having gone unanswered, when music began to softly crackle from the direction of the kitchen, Logan followed it with a vague intrigue. He paused in the entry, blinking at the four black-sleeved and yellow-gloved hands that flitted about the counter spaces. They rifled through the fridge and plucked from the cabinets with a sense of mindlessness from their owner, who stood at the sink. Using his natural two arms, Janus filled various bowls with water as he hummed along to the quiet, bouncy swing song that played from an antique looking gramophone Logan could’ve sworn wasn’t there yesterday. The scene was fascinating, from a scientific point of view; he had never considered how Janus’ many arms worked and seeing them here, stretching out and acting as though they had their own sentience piqued his interest immensely.

For long moments, Logan watched silently before the arms retracted, bringing various items back to the workspace closest to Janus. Packets of gelatin, food coloring -- Logan squinted from his position; corn syrup? The answer to a question he hadn’t asked made itself apparent as he recalled a few various tidbits Remus had given him about his partner. Logan cleared his throat to get Janus’ attention, satisfied with his distant examinations.

“Oh,” The baker turned around, excess arms disappearing inside him with a flourish as they completed their purpose of fetching. “Logan, good morning,” Janus greeted in a sunny tone, though confusion hinted in his eyes.

“Good morning,” He returned, taking conservative steps into the kitchen. He nodded at the gelatin packets. “So this is the gelatin art Remus talks about,” Logan observed without question.

“Remus talks about it?” Janus asked, reserved happiness in his distracted tone as he stepped from the sink to the counter and began measuring out tablespoons of corn syrup.

“Frequently,” Logan confirmed, crossing his arms casually. The conversation came to a peaceful lull as Janus began to stir the syrup and water. Concluding that, he turned and took steps that placed him closer than usual to the other.

“What does he say?” Janus asked like a teen greedy for rumors, giving a sly glance from under his lashes as he paused. The moment lingered as he reached around Logan for the gelatin packets he stood in front of, meeting his eyes all the while. Suddenly, Logan couldn’t remember a single thing Remus had ever said. The tips of his ears reddened with a blush that creeped up the back of his neck. He swallowed against the dryness of his throat.

“Just that you enjoy making gelatin,” Logan responded after Janus had made his way back to the counter, his posture feeling as stiff and unnatural as his answer. He could see the disappointment in the way Janus’ lips pursed as he began dumping the neutral colored gelatin into the solution.

“Is that so.”

“Yes,” Logan cleared his throat and again felt that his response was lame. It made the air between them go stale. How did Remus manage to speak with Janus so casually and with so much enthusiasm? Of course, he wouldn't be Remus without an absence of shame, but still; Logan found himself envying the fact.

He was appreciative of the cheerful music that eased the awkwardness. Also that Janus didn’t seem to mind how apparently awful he was at idle conversations despite his desire to engage in them. After a few moments, Janus went back to humming as he repeated the task of pouring gelatin into the bowls and discarding the packets. As the heat in his face receded, Logan recalled more of Remus’ words over the time they had been dating.

He always spoke very highly of his partner, which was to be expected. Janus was graceful, patient, and, quote, ridiculously smart. Despite taking everything Remus had to say with mounded tablespoons of realism flavored salt, examining Janus now and through the lens of their recent interactions, Logan would have to agree.

“He has an awful habit,” Janus revived the conversation as one song faded into the next. He turned and leaned back against the counter; as he spoke, he slowly began turning the knob of a manual can opener against a can of condensed milk. “Of eating various inedible things,” Janus scrunched his nose and Logan exhaled. “You won’t believe the things he’s consumed over the years.”

“That’s why you make the gelatin, correct?” Logan asked, hoping this time his phrasing opened up the possibility for more elaboration.

“Mhm,” Janus hummed with a shallow nod and twisted the lid off before throwing it in the trash as well. He turned and stirred the thickened milk into the largest bowl of water and corn syrup. Discomfort washed over Logan once more as he began to realize the conversation had died again. His head fell but soon snapped up as Janus thankfully continued after a moment.

“Of course it doesn’t negate the problem entirely,” His tone was less annoyed than Logan would’ve thought. Though there was plenty of quiet frustration, mostly he sounded concerned and tired. “But I like to imagine it helps some at least.”

“I think it helps more than you realize,” Logan offered slowly in a tone that was sure of itself despite the confusion in his brow. Did Janus not realize his instrumental intervention?

Remus never really shut up about how much he appreciated Janus. The various ways Janus managed him and his mental health over their lifetime together, how effortless Janus made it all look; Logan had to admit, hearing about it constantly was rather intimidating, especially at the beginning of their relationship. He had high expectations to meet if everything Remus said was true, and like he thought before, it was beginning to look that way as Logan got to know Janus for himself. Remus talked a fair amount about how much he appreciated Logan as well though, so he never did have much of a chance to get demoralized about it. Even so, gauging the dynamic between Janus and Remus without his interference was a bit startling as everything came into focus.

They flowed together easily; in the interactions Logan had witnessed, their affection always had a sense of routine and familiarity, but not in the stale way that felt boring after years of repetition. Perhaps, Logan began to think, it had clouded his view a bit and prevented him from questioning if Remus ever expressed his gratitude to Janus, directly. The likelihood that he didn’t seemed infinitesimal, and yet the doubt was still clear in Janus’ words. Was it that he didn’t believe Remus then?

Janus cautioned a look at Logan from over his shoulder, surprise and then confusion flashed across his features; exactly how much did Remus talk about him? He didn’t mind being complimented of course, he adored praise, but something about the idea of Remus jumping into a new relationship only to gush about him constantly didn’t sit right with him. Especially if that person was Logan. Who knew how Logan felt after all this time? Janus scrunched his nose and tossed the now empty can with a sense of distaste.

“I suppose he talks about me too much if you think that,” His tone was apologetic as he gave the mixture a final stir before turning to meet Logan’s eyes with a flashy smile. “Enough about all that though; would you like to help?”

Logan blinked, his mind catching up to the topic dismissal. “Help?” He repeated automatically before realizing what Janus meant. “Oh. No,” He unfolded his arms to wave a hand, shaking his head. “I’m not one for baking, I’ll just get in the way.”

“Nonsense,” Janus insisted, reaching forward to gently steal Logan by his sleeve. “If you need more motivation than just my requesting, think about how thrilled Remus will surely be knowing you had a hand in this batch.”

Logan let himself be pulled towards the workstation, not having it in him to refuse Janus’ smile and persistence more than once.

“I suppose you have a point,” He conceded with a sigh and Janus clapped his hands together quietly.

“Splendid,” he plucked the box of food coloring from the counter and pushed the dark blue dropper into Logan’s hands. “This is the easy part anyway. I trust you completely.”

Somehow, the implication of Janus trusting him made him pause, feeling his chest going warm. Logan stared down at the small bottle in his hands, feeling even more clueless now being involved than he had simply watching Janus; but Janus still trusted him. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that Janus was trusting him on reputation alone, something the others consistently seem to find inconceivable. Not often was Logan trusted so explicitly, which was concerning to say the least, but function aside, the sentiment filled him with unexpected happiness.

“Just get this,” Janus tapped one of bowls filled with water, corn syrup, and gelatin, “As close to this shade,” He then pointed to the blue swirl part of the Tide Pod resting between the various ingredients, “As you can get,” Janus finished with another disarming smile. Forcing himself to look away, Logan thought that at the rate Janus used that sort of charm on him like that, he’d never remember anything ever again.

“Okay,” He asserted slowly with a nod and unscrewed the small bottle. As he set to dropping small amounts of the dye before stirring and comparing the colors, Janus seemed to be doing the same with a shade of bright orange. “I suppose that’s good,” Logan ascertained after a few silent moments, holding the clear bowl up to his face for closer inspection.

“Flawless, I would say,” Janus complimented, completing his own color a second later. “Next,” He said slowly and reached to gather several of one kind of item that Logan didn’t immediately recognize, “We set the molds,” Janus explained as he neatly lined about a dozen purple, palm sized squares between them. Logan uttered a small, ah, in understanding.

He scanned the counter for a tool that would be useful here; the idea of pouring the liquid straight into the molds seemed rather silly and messy. If this were Patton, Logan wouldn’t put it past him, but Janus was far more structured, far more sensible.

“Should we use those?” Logan asked, reaching for the rather thick gauge baking syringes set to the side as Janus opened the molds to reveal a swirl shape identical to the signature Tide Pod.

“A step ahead of me,” Janus lilted with a nod, raising his eyes just enough to spot the syringes he planned on retrieving next. “Go on then,” He pointed his chin at the gelatin, reaching over Logan for a needle of his own. “I trust it’s fairly self explanatory for you.”

And it was; the entire procedure wasn’t particularly challenging, as long as Janus wasn’t smiling at him or charming him out of his brain cells. Logan drew up about half the syringe’s barrel and then held one half of the mold in his palm. Comparing it to the Tide Pod, he began to gently squeeze the blue solution along half of the swirl pattern, dragging it across the material for an even consistency. Janus smiled to himself, watching from the corner of his eye and began to do the same with his own orange gelatin, working from the opposite end of the line.

“When it comes to the ones already filled,” Janus began as they approached meeting in the middle, though before he could finish, Logan interrupted knowingly.

“I suppose I should avoid picking the mold up so as to not disrupt the other side,” He guessed and positioned his syringe at a different angle, experimenting with how he should go about it now before settling on a method.

“Precisely,” Janus delighted quietly, moving behind Logan and out of his way to fill in the orange sides of the already completed blue ones. “Typically,” He continued as they settled back into a rhythm, “I just do both colors at once, holding it as you had started,” Janus glanced out of the corner of his eye; Logan looked so concentrated, it was impossible not to find the focus in his eyes adorable. For a brief moment, before Janus continued, Logan began to worry that he was getting in the way as he feared. If Janus had a certain way of doing this and he was doing it wrong, comparatively, then it was just as he thought; that he shouldn’t have gotten involved.

“But I don’t quite mind this either,” Janus finished softly and Logan exhaled the breath he didn’t realize was being held. As the silence began to press on, he started to wish he could figure out something to say to Janus’ kindness. Then he wondered if this was how Remus often felt.

As Janus took Logan’s empty syringe and quickly rinsed both of theirs in the sink, he explained their next and final step before they would be placed in the fridge until completion. Sealing the molds with their domed, other half, they would repeat the filling action with the condensed milk and gelatin mixture.

“Simple enough,” Logan said as he accepted the syringe that Janus handed him with a smile. This time, Logan offered his own small expression before the two set to work. After a few silent moments, he continued with a rather impulsive question. “Does Remus ever help you with this?” Surely he did; in the same way Logan found it impossible that Remus never expressed his gratitude to Janus, he couldn’t fathom that the two didn’t enjoy this together.

“Oh, no, never,” Janus answered immediately with an appalled tone. Logan blinked, his hand going still as he again reevaluated how he perceived their relationship. “The first and only time I tried to get him to help,” He continued, his own hands pausing to stare wide eyed and offended at Logan, “He ate three of my molds!”

Logan couldn’t help the small smile that curved his lips, though he tried to dismiss it quickly by pursing them and looking away. The distress Janus clearly felt for something so simple was … a bit bewildering, but also very him, Logan decided. He got the sense that Remus would love to help, if he could, but that he had the habit of ruining Janus’ things in the process. With a heavy sigh, Janus went back to filling the molds and when Logan could keep the smile out of his voice, he continued.

“The other day he brought a few rocks from the Imagination to my room and asked what they were. He does that,” Logan glanced at Janus, “Stops by and asks questions like that, but when I located my geology kit, the first thing he did,” Logan smiled again, fondness creeping into his tone despite himself, “Was tear the handbook pages in excitement,” Janus clicked his tongue and shook his head, empathizing with the tragedy, but Logan continued, gesturing in small ways now. “It was completely illegible,” Logan paused, recalling the fear in Remus’ expression as he apologized profusely, handing the torn book back by the tips of his fingers.

“Was?” Janus prompted quietly, watching Logan’s faintly passionate storytelling from the corner of his eye.

“At least for its intended use as a portable guide. If you pushed the papers together, you could piece the sentences but,” Logan paused again and shook his head, “He insisted on writing it, all of it. He took one of my notebooks right there and stared down at the little book and wrote everything he could make out,” Logan laughed dryly and resumed filling the mold he had stopped on. “I bet he has the entire handbook memorized now.”

“He adores you very much then,” Janus said without reservation, without even looking away from the molds. The conclusion caught Logan off guard and silence persisted as he waited for Janus to elaborate; but no such continuation came. Again Logan found himself holding his breath, but it wasn’t like he didn’t know that Remus loved him. He said it at least ten times a day. It just felt very different coming from someone who’s known Remus for so long, Logan guessed. It’s different when someone else can see love that easily.

“I know,” Logan whispered sentimentally after a while, and wondered in the enduring silence of their work if he should’ve said that Remus loved Janus very much, too.

- - - - -

Janus paused on the bottom step of the Dark Side stairs as he spotted Logan, bent slightly at the waist and jotting something down on a rather large stack of white paper. The astringent smell of Sharpies was unavoidable. While it certainly wasn’t new at this point for Logan to be found here on a casual basis, it was a bit strange that Remus wasn’t in the immediate area.

“Hello, Logan,” Janus greeted in a smiling tone as he continued into the room and approached the workspace that was their dining table.

“Hello,” He returned the friendly gesture without tearing his eyes away or stopping his hand from drawing a simplistic symbol in one of the dated squares.

“What brings you here without your typical consort?” Now peering over Logan’s shoulder, Janus realized it wasn’t just any stack of paper he was writing on, but a wall calendar.

“Remus just went to the bathroom. He’ll probably be back in a few moments.”

Janus made a soft sound of understanding and continued to watch. Capping the silvery marker he had been using, Logan switched it out for a dark blue one. Intrigue growing, Janus observed as he neatly drew an open circle, then some complex looking arrow shape beside it. Next Logan drew an odd arch shape on the other side of the square beside another open circle, this one with a dot in the center. Then two smaller circles diagonal from each other connected with a single line. Finally, next to that symbol, he drew a half crescent moon. Janus’ brows furrowed delicately.

“Logan, dear?”

“Hm?”

“What on Earth are you doing?”

Logan blinked and paused before slowly standing from his leaning position. He … didn’t really know where to begin. Talking about his hobby with Remus was one thing; while his boyfriend readily listened to his enthusing and had even offered his artistic expertise in ‘livening up’ the calendar today, the idea of explaining it to Janus felt like a different beast altogether. Why was that? Logan observed his feelings on the matter, staring down at the calendar. The writing there was neither impressive nor sloppy, but a typical middle ground of insignificantly informative, in his opinion. Mindlessly, he brought the marker up to his chest and capped it with a decisive click. His stomach became uneasy imagining himself divulging eagerly, about anything, to Janus. Why was that?

“I’m,” Indulging in a pseudoscience? Partaking in something that is unreliable and interpretive at best? Having an indemonstrable belief system? Being less than serious? Logan turned to face Janus, his arms falling to his sides. “Calculating planetary positions and hypothesizing on their potential,” Spiritual? Emotional? “Financial, political, and interpersonal ramifications,” Logan’s heart raced. He counted the beats. One, two, three, fourfivesixseveneight--

“I see,” Janus said reflexively but then paused to digest the sentence. It sounded interesting enough to him; foresight was high on his list of well regarded practices. Whatever helped in that pursuit, Janus found at least a little compelling. Though he cocked his head slightly and gave Logan a once over. Was he acting rather … defensive? There was no lie in his words, Janus would’ve immediately known after all, but he got the sense that he wasn’t being painted the full picture here.

A bead of sweat dripped down the back of Logan’s collar. Janus wasn’t looking at him in any specific way, there wasn’t anything interrogative about the silence, in fact Janus’ expression was rather polite. Logan had noticed at some point that Janus looked at him more like an equal than any of the other accepted Sides. In return, he had come to trust the intrigue frequently found in his expressions. And yet he was anxious. Why? Historically, talking to Janus had never made him nervous before, sharing in pastimes together hadn’t either, so … why did he feel like sinking through the soles of his shoes and never speaking about this, ever again?

“Well,” Janus broke the silence with his entertained tone. “You were always into space and such, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Logan inhaled through his nose, more suddenly than he meant to, and realized only now there was a tension in his hands as they twitched to relax. Janus didn’t see anything wrong with his description of the hobby, but the fact was that he didn’t know the whole story. Logan’s explanation was, of course, accurate; accurate enough to not count as a lie, but Janus’ suspicion was warranted. A suspicion that was much closer to curiosity than Logan realized in his paranoid attempt to seem and sound more serious than necessary.

“Yes,” He mumbled and turned back around to the calendar. Janus watched with narrowed eyes as Logan placed the marker back with the rest, seeming to have a particular order that they belonged in. After a pause, he diverted his attention to the open, beige colored notebook on the other side of the table. Logan began to lightly drag a finger along the bottom of a written line of symbols there. Janus could only assume he was committing their exact meaning to memory in a way only someone like Logan could.

“So tell me,” Janus interrupted again as he elegantly sat himself down at the table opposite Logan, whose train of thought halted abruptly. “What do those symbols mean?” Janus asked, cradling his cheek in his palm as he reached the other hand to point at the five dark blue markings Logan had made. Logan swallowed and blinked slowly, bracing himself. There was no way he made it out of this conversation with Janus’ opinion of him remaining positive.

Keeping his tone as neutral as possible, Logan then dragged his finger along each symbol as it was defined, meeting Janus’ inquisitive eyes with his own hesitant gaze.

“Full moon,” Open circle, “Sagittarius,” arrow. Logan directed his finger to the other side of the square, dictating that those two symbols didn’t correlate in a direct sense to the next three. “Gemini,” He continued, pointing to the odd arch shape, “Sun,” dotted open circle, “Opposition,” the two smaller circles connected by the thin line, “Moon,” Logan finished at the half crescent moon shape.

A puzzled look flashed across Janus’ face before the words connected like a puzzle, forming a sentence he understood theoretically but in no literal way; full moon in Sagittarius, Gemini sun, opposition moon … which was in Sagittarius then? Janus could only guess. These were phrases he’s heard before, of course, but Logan said them in a way that felt far more significant than any well-rated horoscope app had.

Logan let Janus ruminate on his explanation, hoping no more questions came at the detriment of his reputation. Again he started to consult his notebook, but it was only a few moments before Janus spoke again.

“So … what’s the significance of … all that?” He asked and Logan’s mind raced in the same way Remus, Roman, and Virgil could speak at a mile a minute.

“The significance,” Logan began after what felt like much longer than a moment of struggling to quiet his mind, “Is as I said; potential financial, political, and interpersonal ramifications,” He completed in a mumble before clearing his throat, unable to meet Janus’ eyes anymore, causing the latter to frown.

The fact that Logan was growing increasingly uncomfortable wasn’t lost on Janus, of course. He watched the gears churning in Logan’s mind as mental gymnastics were performed. It wasn’t a secret to Denial why he felt discontented currently; being taken seriously was paramount to this Side and everyone had a long history of finding Logic to be a joke. After years of being dismissed without advocacy, Janus could only hope to display a patience and interest deep enough for Logan to find himself comfortable in his presence again.

“As you said,” Janus agreed, dismissing that superficial statement. “But what about that one, specifically? It’s in blue so I assume it has some significance.”

Logan’s lips tightened; where did he even begin? Explaining the correspondence between phenomena and full moons? Diving into Jupiter’s mythology and Sagittarius’ significance to Thomas, personally, as his moon ruler? The unease in his stomach shifted up his throat.

“Oh hey, Dee!” Remus suddenly interrupted as he returned from down the hall. If Logan were a man of lesser self control, he may have jumped right out of his skin.

They both turned to blink at the entrance, Logan a second too late as Remus dotted an affectionate kiss to his cheek. Rigidly, he gave a half-lipped smile to the gesture.

“Lolo telling you about his nerdy Astrology stuff?” Remus plopped himself into a chair between them at the table.

“Just a little,” Janus said as he sat back and crossed his legs.

“Booooo,” Remus cheered, giving Logan a thumbs down before grinning. He leaned over to peer at the dark blue symbols that were drawn while he was away. “Full moon in Sagittarius,” Remus read like he was fluent in this second language Janus had only just learned the existence of. “And uh,” He paused, cocked his head in order to read the markings easier, “Gemini sun, uh, what’s that one again, Lolo?” Remus pointed at the connected, diagonal circles.

Janus narrowed his eyes. He got the sense that Remus could easily say what that sign meant, but had asked Logan in order to hear him talk about it. How sweet.

“Opposition,” Logan repeated like a sigh as he reached to scratch the back of his neck. “Since the sun is in Gemini for most of this month, it will be opposing the moon’s position in Sagittarius that day.”

“Does that spell trouble for Tommyboy?” Remus asked mischievously, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the unused seat behind Logan.

“On the contrary,” Logan responded, opening his mouth to continue but then quickly closing it as the corner of his vision registered Janus again.

The frown on Janus’ lips grew deeper as he silently observed the two. It seemed to come down to him and his effects on Logan’s nerves; the assumption that he would dismiss him like Patton, Roman, and Thomas, or say that he was wrong like Virgil.

“Please,” Janus urged in his most genuine tone as he held up his hands like a white flag. “Pretend I’m not here, do carry on.”

Logan inhaled slowly and seemed to take his time believing that sentiment. Another mental stalemate began; Logan wrestled with the expectations he held himself to, the assumed expectations Janus had of him, and the misconception that his hobby would be seen as silly or less than in any way. The silence dragged on until Remus broke the tension once more.

“Yeah, c’mon Lolo. Dee listens to me rant about stupid shit all the time. He’s got the patience of a Saint, I swear,” Remus smirked at Janus, who then reached out to pull affectionately on his partner’s ear.

“Like I have a choice with you,” Janus mumbled fondly, lacing his voice with thick sarcasm.

Quickly, Remus turned his head like a baited shark and bit after Janus’ hand as it was retracted, narrowly missing the appendages with his teeth. Janus rolled his eyes and Remus beamed before shifting in his seat and staring up at Logan expectantly.

Logan’s chest burned with some unfamiliar feeling as he watched the clearly loving display. Naming emotions certainly wasn’t his strong suit, but whatever it was tightened his throat and made swallowing difficult. As usual for him, the feeling was quickly pushed away.

Which caused it to land directly into Denial’s jurisdiction. Janus had long perfected the art of remaining stoic in the face of blindsiding emotions that weren’t his own; which of course included now, as the denial of jealousy swiftly punched him in the stomach. Janus’ breathing stopped as he waited for the familiar pang of envy to subside, knowing by instinct that the originator stood before him.

“I suppose,” Logan continued after a moment before clearing his throat. “It is on the contrary that Thomas will be experiencing anything negative on this day or the two previous days leading up to this full moon,” He reached to flip a page in his notebook, revealing a neatly drawn chart of dates and signs. His finger rested decisively next to three in particular. “The moon will be in Sagittarius, opposing the current sun sign; Gemini. This is particularly good for Thomas since he has a natal Sagittarius moon.”

“Laaaaaame,” Remus exaggerated belligerently. Having been through this before, Logan gave a renewed half smile, knowing Remus only found Thomas’ lack of misfortune ‘lame’ and not the inherency of his explanation.

Janus exhaled finally as the emotional turmoil in his stomach subsided with Logan’s contentment. His chin raised curiously, eyeing the revealed page. This all sounded fascinating. He got the feeling that there was so much more to this topic, and that he would be very willing and rather eager to listen to it all as long as it was coming from Logan.

“Tell me, Lolo,” Remus said in a dark voice, frantically leaning forward, splaying his palms on the table and disregarding the way his quick movement made Logan’s markers roll away. “Do your charts and shit say when he’ll die?”

“No,” Logan sighed and rolled his eyes. The air turned sweet and Janus’ brows raised despite himself. “Even if they did, I wouldn’t tell you. It’d be incredibly subjective anyway,” Logan gestured dismissively and turned away, catching sight of Janus’ intrigued smirk. The expression made him gulp. “It’s all incredibly subjective,” He continued, now in a mumble as he went to close his notebook.

Hastily, Logan began to gather the haphazard markers like he planned on packing his project away for the day. Lie and jealousy aside, Janus found himself invested.

“Well,” He began as Logan took a step back from the table to stare at the floor, seeming to have lost a marker in Remus’ chaos. “I thought it was all rather … enchanting,” Janus flirted unashamedly, producing the green hued utensil between his fingers with a curled smile. Logan blinked, the tips of his ears going red. “You’ll tell me more sometime?” Janus insisted, turning the thing in his grip and offering it more pointedly.

Logan swallowed and reached to quickly pluck the object from Janus’ fingers.

“Sure,” He sighed, suddenly feeling like he had agreed to something rather damning.

“Delightful.”

Chapter One || Chapter Two

#loceit appreciation week #loceit week #loceitweek2021 #loceit #janus x logan #sanders sides fanfiction

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kurisus · 4 years

Text

Chapter 88-2 thoughts

I’m writing this at 6 AM because I CAN’T SLEEP WOO. As mentioned in my snaps, I first read this chapter while in a work call so I’m rereading it now to be able to focus a bit better. Buckle up, this will be long. Spoilers as always.

So Yukine was not necessarily snuggling with the wolves. He was asking them to eat him. I think in all the other bad stuff happening this chapter this detail got overlooked slightly but it’s bad!!!!

Who was the shadow we saw approaching him when he was with the wolves?? Was it trash dad after all? I think it has to be.

really don’t appreciate the Suzuha mention in THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND TWENTY

Yukine was such a caring brother it makes my heart hurt. Yukine in general makes my heart hurt. How did it end up happening that his mom just left him behind??

so if Fujisaki is telling the truth, we now know the context of Yukine’s death. And somehow, I think this is the most unpleasant revelation to come out of this chapter. Big statement, I know, but it explains...a lot.

Yukine was writing letters to his sister in secret for probably years, and as soon as his dad found out...well, we know the rest. I remember speculating (and a few others did too) why Yukine was barefoot and not struggling in that panel a couple chapters back that showed his final moments. So if he was already beaten enough to warrant hospitalization, that would explain why he wasn’t reacting the way he should have been.

At this point, if trash dad WAS telling the truth, I’d be fine if they didn’t show the actual scene of his death and just left it at that. Which means...we now know everything about Yukine’s time when he was alive. And of course there’s a lot we can say to fill out the gaps, but we have all the most important details. Finding out exactly how he died was the last piece in the puzzle. Aside from his full first name, that is.

Yukine yelling at trash dad to shut up and him continuing on anyway :) we really needed to know his final thoughts were “why?” :) I hate it here :)

I really hate even talking about this, this shit is FUCKED

okay so as far as trash dad is aware, Yukine’s body was still in the fridge. Meaning he had no idea that Yato went to dig it up all those months ago. Meaning Nora never breathed a word about it to him. I don’t really know how to express my feelings on this but thank you Nora. we owe you one. I have a feeling trash dad’s intent was not to give him a proper burial (since he’s all about false shows of kindness), though as to what it was, I cannot say.

I think at this point it’s pretty clear that Yato is the one who gave him a proper burial. When the panel of the empty refrigerator dropped a few months back, the fact that the body was missing struck me as just odd, and I thought maybe Yukine’s dad dug it back up for some sort of weird ritual, but judging by what we know now, that doesn’t seem likely. As soon as people started saying Yato buried him I was smacking my face like “of COURSE that’s what happened duh”

so trash dad is confirmed to drop his body in a very similar way to Hiyori, and we also confirmed that the version of him in the black robe is his spirit form. Nora mentioned his “body” a while back but now we finally got to see it. Is he a half ayakashi?? Is this just something he can do because he’s possessing Fujisaki’s body??? gah Adachitoka I want ANSWERS

Hagusa’s vessel name is just a double whammy. It’s like a horrible inversion of the fact that Yato named Kazuma Kazune. “Kazune” has the double meaning of referring to their time limit as well as being the “Kazu” Yato was already familiar with. With Hagusa, that name refers to a type of grain that looks like rice...in other words, something that appears valuable but is worthless. And now we see the vessel name is Yuuki? Adachitoka galaxy brained to punch me in the face.

SO THE REASON YUKINE DOESN’T HAVE A CELL PHONE IS BECAUSE HE DIED BEFORE THEY WERE INVENTED???? I always thought it was because he didn’t need one since Yato, Hiyori, Kazuma, and Kofuku were really the only people he needed to communicate with. but he seemed really excited to use trash dad’s. I’m in pain.

I’m thinking back to when Hiyori almost asked Yukine how he died way back in the beginning of the manga and trash dad now telling Yukine “Hiyori never wanted to know? I bet she did, since humans always want to pry into other people’s business” you shut your mouth

Speaking of Hiyori all we got of her this chapter was her looking pissed off. When she arrives to the fight I just want her to fuck shit up. She may not have her half ayakashi form but she can still snap trash dad’s neck in half.

Perhaps the reason Yukine didn’t find any news articles about himself was because “Haru” was just a nickname. I find it hard to believe that there was nothing about him going missing, especially since his dad made a fuss with putting up missing person flyers everywhere. There’s no way the police wouldn’t have gotten involved, right?

Either way it doesn’t really matter--his dad never got charged with anything even if he was a suspect, and no one else cared enough to look either.

this is so many levels of fucked

“So even now my father is still killing me” this line. THIS LINE. THIS FUCKING LINE. It’s such a succinct and excellent summary of Yukine as a character--as much as we love our son, the fact remains that he is dead. And he is dead because of his father’s abuse and society’s neglect. So no matter however much he grows and changes in the afterlife, it cannot change that his life was cut short far too soon, and everything good that happens to him is overshadowed by the fact that it’s indirectly because of his nasty father. And he got away with it. I can’t.

Before this chapter came out I speculated we’d want to strangle Yukine’s dad even more than we already did. and I was right. but holy shit this line was a kick in the gut while I’m still recovering from “that boy loved people”

Yukine loved people too....he loved people and they turned their backs on him BUT HE NEVER GAVE UP ON LOVING!!! IT JUST TOOK A DIFFERENT SHAPE. FUCK.

So Father knows someone visited the fridge. I wonder if he’s figured out that it was Hiyori yet. I just want her to snap him like a twig. it’s what he deserves.

Father also doesn’t care about Yukine, like, at all (we been knew), to the point he couldn’t even realize the only blond character in this fucking manga now has black hair. MAN. that just says a lot about him, huh.

Are we going to find out whether one of his parents was foreign?? He and Yuka are both noticeably light-haired and it hasn’t been addressed aside from Yukine’s hair color changing.

The hair color change was the only spoiler I saw before the chapter came out and it’s been haunting me ever since. I thought initially Yukine dyed his hair while trash dad was out, but now I wonder if the dark hair is his vessel form? Fujisaki summoned him before leaving, so I don’t know. He does look like his bird ayakashi form with having clawed hands as well.

I remember seeing speculation that trash dad generally tells the truth. well as of this chapter we know he’s a fucking liar. Hiyori left that flower, and I think it will end up being important in the long run when Yukine realizes that she’s the only human who truly cares about him.

Whether trash dad has been telling the truth about other things remains to be seen. We still don’t know how he got out of Yomi, if that’s really what happened to make him immortal. But this lie about the flower seems to be a white lie. He could have just said he didn’t know. If he so readily lied about this, who’s to say he hasn’t been lying about other things too, you know?

Yukine destroying the fridge would normally make me be like good for her.jpeg but since the context is him with trash dad I actually hate it

Since Yukine is now so eager to meet his dad I can’t shake the feeling that he’s dead. It would be the perfect gut-punch for him to demand why his father killed him, only to find out that he’s dead (and maybe even that YATO did it...which would only add more fuel to the fire....fuck) and never get to resolve his turmoil.

I’ve been on the fence about whether Yukine’s dad is still alive but based on this chapter I’m putting my bets on “he’s dead and Yato killed him back in the early manga because that would cause the most suffering at present and that generally seems to be the route Adachitoka takes.”

Like, yeah, if Yato did it it was to protect Yukine, but that doesn’t matter when he’s already so pissed off at Yato.

Yato only fired on trash dad because he didn’t know that it was Yukine with him. And Yukine is again thinking that Yato is trying to hurt him. This chapter is also a horrible inversion of...was it 83-2? where Yato tried to kill trash dad and Yukine stopped him? Except now this time it’s not because Yukine wants answers, it’s because he’s pissed at Yato and loyal to trash dad.

Yato was also a fool for thinking sniping trash dad from afar would work, especially when it didn’t even work the first time.

So now the thing I’ve been working up to talking about throughout these many, many words: Hagusa��s vessel form is...himself. He is the weapon. This is such a wonderful (and terrible) narrative choice I’m delighted by where it will take us physically and metaphorically, but obviously it hurts. A lot.

Yuuki being himself the weapon that trash dad fights Yato with for what may be their final showdown is such a fitting culmination to his character arc in this section of the story. (when trash dad said he would turn him into a weapon I DIDN’T REALIZE IT WAS LITERAL)

This is also a good choice art-wise because it means even more pain with seeing Yukine physically fighting Yato rather than Yato and trash dad fighting with swords or something.

So Yato met with Yuka before (it was a flashback, as many people pointed out to me after I goofed last month lmao) but whether that was earlier today or further in the past remains to be seen. I hope he told her to get out because it seems like trash dad is heading into her house while Yato and Yukine face off.

well. “face off” is maybe an exaggeration. Yato will not be able to fight Yukine at all and I’m anticipating he gets the shit kicked out of him, again, while he tries to make him see reason. bro. I hate this. I really, really hate this. This final fight is going all the ways I knew it would, but hoped it wouldn’t.

Hiyori and Nora come help please

July can’t come soon enough

I’m pretty sure this is my longest thoughts post ever. so much happened and I have so many feelings about all of it.

#Noragami #Noragami manga #Noragami spoilers #chapter 88.2 #AND NOW WITH THAT I will try to get some more sleep.#live update

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bigbrotherlouis · 3 years

Note

✨✨

hello lovely!! if it’s okay with you, i’m going to do a scene from the latest chapter of tried to keep myself from hurting bc i am proud of that one a lot!

Mitch tips forward again, determined to try again, and get stopped by the press of Dylan’s palm to his forehead.

“Mitch,” Dylan says, his voice shot through with something. “What are you doing?”

He blinks at him. “What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” (i really went into this last chapter not wanting to do an happy ever after. like, yeah, they’re going to end on a positive bc i like those kinds of stories, but i didn’t want everything to be fixed by talking to each other. they still have stuff they have to work out, and i wanted it to be realistic)

There’s a pause. “Okay, fuck this,” he mumbles and shoves carefully at him, enough so Mitch tumbles back and he can stand. It’s a weird sense of deja vu, sprawled on the ground, watching Dylan fix himself up after rejecting him again. (parallels!) It aches in a way Mitch didn’t know still ached. He swallows hard.

“Where are you going?”

“Hotel.”

“Why?”

“I’m not doing this shit,” he says and pulls out his phone, tapping at it too quickly. (they both try to solve things mostly by ignoring them, and this is dylan doing that) His hands are shaking slightly. Mitch swallows again, the taste of Dylan still on his tongue, and his throat way too dry.

“Are you, uh,” he says, still aching. “Are you breaking up with me.” (this maybe was a little too obvious for mitch to ask straight up, but i think it made sense in context. the last time dylan did this, they broke up. it’s reasonable for him to think that history’s repeating itself)

That gets Dylan’s attention; he glances up from his phone to stare at him. “What? No.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Yes,” Dylan says and then frowns. “No. I don’t know.”

“Okay, then why are you leaving?”

“Why are you trying to blow me on the sofa?” (i never know how to refer to blowjobs. it’s awkward for me every time.)

“Getting you to the bedroom seemed like too much work,” he says, too honest and too unthinking. Dylan levels a look at him. (this is less supposed to be flippancy and more supposed to be mitch not thinking. his brain’s busy trying to think through what’s happening)

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

He shrugs his shoulder. “You looked like you needed a blowjob,” he mutters and makes a face, nothing left in him to keep it away. (mitch in this fic has a history of trying to fix things with sex and this was him trying to fix the weirdness between them, or manage dylan’s mood)

Dylan stares at him some more and then sighs. “Just— hold on for a second.”

Mitch watches as he turns around and disappears in the direction of the kitchen, holding his breath until he reappears with another protein bar. He drops it on Mitch’s stomach.

“Eat that.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Take a fucking bite, Marner.” Mitch obediently unwraps it and takes a bite, chewing quickly. (more managing) “You told me that you wanted to gargle bleach.”

“Huh?”

“Every time you suck a dick, you said you want to gargle bleach,” Dylan says and then nods at the protein bar. “For the taste.” (i really tried to make dylan attentive and and thoughtful in his own way and this was the culmination of that)

Mitch looks at what’s left in his hand, tastes the mild sweetness on his tongue instead of— well. “Oh. Thanks?”

“Why the fuck did you try to suck my dick?” (very delicate, dylan)

“Why not?”

“Jesus Christ, do you have to play so dumb? Or have you forgotten the massive fight we had about this?”

“I’m an adult, Dylan. I can do what I want.”

“Sure, but what if I didn’t want a blowjob, huh?”

“Dunno, dude, you were enjoying it for a while there,” (trying to balance dylan’s interest as someone who experiences sexual attraction with his refusal to make mitch do something he doesn’t want to do was really hard in this scene! i don’t know if i did it well, honestly, but i sure as hell tried. dylan’s still trying to figure out what boundaries are) Mitch tells him and finishes the rest of the protein bar, feels it settle uncomfortably in his stomach. “You were still mad and I thought it would snap you out of your sulking. I was wrong, apparently.”

“I wasn’t sulking.”

“Oh, yeah you were, bud. Big time.”

Dylan breathes hard for a second. “So, what? You decided to try and suck it out of me?”

“It was working until you got pissy.”

“I’m never pissy.” (they’re still young and dumb)

Mitch snorts, pushing himself into a better sitting position. “Sure.” Dylan looks down at his phone again and then moves, snagging his jacket and looking for his shoes. “Shit, wait, you’re still leaving?”

“I— yeah?”

“Because I tried to hook up with you? You, my boyfriend?” (mitch is also trying to figure out boundaries!)

“I’m still mad at you and I don’t want you throwing yourself at me as, like, some weird omega thing.”

“Weird omega thing,” Mitch repeats, testing the words against his teeth. (unapologetically one of my favourite phrases) “Okay.”

“You’re telling me it’s not?”

“I’m telling you that I’m an adult who makes my own decisions and I can do what I want.”

“Fine,” Dylan says and looks at him head on, eyes keen and sharp. “Did you want that?” (i really wanted to show dylan changing and learning through this fic and this is one of the ways i hoped it showed!)

“I wanted you to be in a better mood.”

“Not what I asked.” (okay, maybe it’s a bit much to ask hockey players in their early twenties to understand the nuance between wanting sex and wanting the outcome of sex, but it was an important point to make to the reader, in my eyes)

Mitch tries again. “You wanted it.”

“Also not what I asked,” Dylan tells him. Mitch thinks about it for a second and then drops his shoulders, sighing.

“I mean, does it matter?”

“Does it— of course it fucking matters, Mitchell. What the fuck.”

“You’re upset, I can make you feel better, it’s what I’m supposed to do. (something something we live in a society) So it doesn’t matter,” he explains, watching emotions cross over Dylan’s face too fast to catch fully. Dylan seems to settle on a determined sort of anger, mouth pressed into a tight line.

“Listen to me, no, listen. I don’t— I don’t care about the whole fucking omega thing, okay? I really don’t. I’m trying to care less about the alpha thing, but it’s me so it’s a little harder. (meaning, it’s really easy to give people grace sometimes while beating yourself up for the same thing. dylan doesn’t care about mitch being a good omega, but desperately cares about being a good alpha) But you? This? I care about you, as my— as my boyfriend, not as my fuckin’— omega, or whatever.” (there’s probably a whole other fic here about what omegas mean in this particular au but i will most likely not be writing it)

“Dylan—”

“Shut up, I’m making a point. I already told you, and I don’t know how many times I’m going to tell you again, but I don’t fucking care that you don’t like sex. You don’t want to have it, so we won’t, and you can stop feeling so fucking gulity about it. I can deal with my own dick and you can just leave it alone. Can you get that into your thick skull, already?”

Mitch is quiet for a second, waiting, but the anger doesn’t fade from Dylan’s face, from his body. “Then why are you so mad?”

“I’m mad because you just do shit instead of talking about it, or, like, asking, and I know I’m not one for talking about feelings, but shit, Mitch, at least I’m not trying to fuck my way into feeling secure.” (could he have said this more delicately? probably. would it have been true to character? no. also it’s nice and succinct, thanks dylan for wrapping that up so neatly)

“Hey,” Mitch says lowly. It’s the only thing he can make himself say.

“You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you.”

“No,” Dylan says. “You don’t. Which, like, it has to be earned n’shit, but that goes both ways, and I can’t trust you if you’re not going to be honest with me. I can’t trust you if I think you’re going to keep bulldozing over your own emotions to make me happy. Or, what you think will make me happy.”

“I don’t want you to—” He cuts himself off because he doesn’t know how to end that sentence, everything muddled in his brain. (this was where i thought about starting the whole “i’m scared you’ll leave me if i don’t want to have sex with you” argument but then decided it was too much for the last chapter) “You liked it, though.”

“Yeah, because I like sex and I think you’re hot, and there was not enough blood in my brain to understand what was happening right away. I’m sorry, though. I should’ve stopped you sooner.” (originally, they weren’t going to get as far as they did with the blowjob but it didn’t work to stop it any sooner, so i kept writing. this is also not an excuse necessarily but again: hockey player)

Mitch’s ass is starting to hurt, so he hauls himself up from the floor to sit on the couch again, twisted around to keep Dylan in his sightline. “I’m sorry too,” he says and tips his head up. “Are you still going to leave.”

“Depends,” he says warily. Mitch digs his fingers into the back cushion and hates the thought of him walking away.

“I’ll keep my hands to myself. (*selena gomez voice* i mean i could by why would i want to) C’mon, Dyl, we’re not going to see each other in forever.”

Dylan visibly hesitates, but eventually he drops his coat again, toes off his shoes, crosses around the sofa to stand in front of him, Mitch twisted the right way around. “Okay, fine, but I want to go to bed. I’m tired.”

“It’s still early,” Mitch says, just to be difficult. He’s tired too, bone-weary from the game and from the rest of the night, and he gives over his hands so Dylan can pull him up. (it’s about the hand touching!! the intimacy!!)

anyway this was a tricky scene to balance while being respectful of 1) where characters currently are 2) where they used to be and 3) where i wanted them to end up. so mitch defaulting to sex to make dylan feel better and dylan letting him fulfills point 2, dylan stopping them but only after he realises fulfills point 1, and agreeing to talk fulfills point 3! not sure if it was executed well re: motivations and reactions, but i definitely did my best :)

#angela #thank you!!#also fun fact you deleted after i sent this link to you #and i genuinely was worried i wrote something that pissed you off #i hope that was not the case!#fic talk #my fic #hockey fic #hockey bros #answered #selkiefinalist #signed sealed delivered

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mychemicalrachel · 4 years

Text

Right Now

This is a follow-up to my fic Right Here but can be read as a standalone!

When Eddie had asked Buck to be Christopher’s godfather, he said it was a precaution, just a way of knowing that Chris would be taken care of if anything happened. It was supposed to be a safety net. A contingency plan. It was never supposed to be real.

Part One; The Hospital Word Count: 2140 Read on Ao3

After the ladder truck incident, Buck thought he could say with a great amount of certainty that he knew pain. His leg had been crushed-- it was touch and go for a while whether he would even keep it-- and the pain of not just that moment, lying helpless under the truck, but the many moments that followed were more than just physically painful. They were terrifying. More terror than he had ever known.

And then he’d lost Christopher in the tsunami and Buck understood a different kind of pain, watching his best friend think, however briefly, that his son had been swept away with the waves. Gone forever.

Still, nothing in his life ever prepared him for the sight of Eddie lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

He was breathing with the help of a cold machine, a tube disappearing down his throat. It was only until he could breathe by himself, Hen had carefully reminded Buck.

If he ever woke up, that is.

Buck decidedly did not cry. His eyes brimmed red and watery, but he couldn’t allow the tears to start, in fear that they might never stop. He stands against the wall, arms hugged tightly to his chest, and watches as Athena swoops in, stoic as ever, to get a succinct report from the doctors; they’d been adamant up until that point that nothing could be disclosed unless they were family. Though he had faced Athena’s wrath many times and knew the effect it had, the fact that she was still in her police uniform probably added to the doctor’s hesitation to follow standard protocol.

“You see these people?” Athena asks, waving a finger in the direction of Buck and Bobby. “They are his family. You want blood relation? His next of kin is a nine-year-old boy. Should I bring him in, let you explain to him that his dad is in a coma?”

Buck closes his eyes. He cant cry. He can’t cry. He can’t--

“Buck?”

He opens his eyes to find Bobby in front of him. His face is blurry behind a cloud of tears.

Dammit. So much for not crying.

“Come on,” Bobby says. It’s his Captain Nash voice; the one he usually reserves for field missions and when someone is in trouble. The one that left no room for argument. And Buck is certainly in no position to argue.

Bobby leads him out of the room-- for a moment he fears he’s being taken back to the waiting room, but he’s not sure he could stand the idea of having this breakdown in a room full of strangers. Thankfully, Bobby finds a line of chairs near the vacant nurse’s station and sits Buck down. He keeps a hand tight on Buck’s wrist, like if he let’s go Buck will run.

Run back into Eddie’s room.

Run through the front doors and far, far away from all of this.

“Buck, you gotta calm down.”

Nothing about this was calm. If there was one perfect time in his life to have a full blown meltdown, he’s pretty certain this is it.

“Eddie’s going to be okay, Buck.”

A sob catches in his throat and he bitterly chokes it down. “You don’t know that.”

“He’s a fighter,” Bobby says and the grip on his arm tightens just a bit. “Look, he’s been in trouble before--”

“Not like this,” Buck interjects.

“--and he always makes it through.”

“Bobby.” Buck sits up, turning to face the older man. The man he’d always looked up to, trusted, believed. Now, he sees the uncertainty in Bobby’s eyes. The fact that he’s not even sure he believes what he’s saying.

Still, there’s a sense of resolve when he says, “Athena will get all of the information from the doctors.” This, at least, they both know is true.

“And then?” Buck asks. The tears he had sworn to withhold are running free down his cheeks. He doesn’t even attempt to stop them, just wipes at them with the sleeve of his shirt. It still smells like fire and a fresh wave of grief and guilt floods him. “Bobby, what if--”

“No,” Bobby says. “Buck, do not go there, okay? Eddie is going to wake up.”

And what if he doesn’t?

Buck can’t form he words, but the mere thought of them has him sinking back into the chair. He wants nothing more than to rush back in to Eddie’s side, and yet something holds him in place. A terror beyond anything he’s ever felt-- the fear of what if.

What if Eddie doesn’t wake up?

What if he’s dying?

What if he’s already dead?

Athena approaches them with caution a few minutes later and Buck immediately stands, prepared for the worst, though she’s smart enough to start with, “Everything is fine.”

A thousand questions pop into Buck’s head and he reaches out, grasping for which one to ask first. He wants to know just how badly Eddie’s hurt, when they expect him to wake up… and yet, the first words out of his mouth are, “Can I see him again?”

Athena sighs, glancing at Bobby, then she nods.

Back in Eddie’s room, Buck forgoes a chair in favor of hovering near the head of the bed. The machines beep too loud in his ears, but he finds comfort in the sound. It means that Eddie is alive.

He reaches out for Eddie’s hand, pressing their palms together. He squeezes and is foolish enough to expect some sort of gesture in return.

“He was right behind me,” Buck says. His grip on Eddie’s hand tightens. “You asshole.” He swipes aggressively at the tears that assault his vision. “You were right behind me.”

A hand settles on his shoulder and Buck looks up to see Athena watching him. Her usually commanding demeanor is slipping, leaving him with a glimpse of the woman he so rarely sees when she’s in uniform; not a cop, but a friend. A concerned person with a heart that hurts, and whether it aches for him or for Eddie he’s unsure.

“What happened?” she asks.

Buck laughs. The sound is wet and sad. “It was a fire in an apartment,” he explains. “Everyone else had already cleared out, but we had to be thorough. We were checking the last room when we got the evac order. And he was right behind me. There was a beam-- I didn’t see it coming down until it was too late.”

“Buck,” Athena says in a motherly voice. “You know that what happened wasn’t your fault.”

He bites down too hard on his lip. “I could have saved him,” Buck argues. “I could have-- I don’t know. I could have pushed him out of the way, or warned him, or--”

“You did save him,” Bobby interrupts. “Buck, you carried him out of there. You got him to the ambulance. You saved his life.”

Buck looks down at Eddie. His chest rises and falls in time with the machine. It doesn’t feel like he saved anything.

“They’ll take him off the ventilator soon,” Athena informs them. She keeps her eyes trained on Buck. “Right now, the biggest concern is his head. They’re not sure yet the extent of the injury, but his brain was swollen and he wasn’t getting enough oxygen.”

“When will he wake up?”

“They’ve induced a coma to reduce the swelling.” Now she shrugs, a gesture both worrying for obvious reasons, and comforting because Buck knows that she’s being completely honest; she’s not handling him with kid gloves or trying to sugar coat the truth. It’s something he appreciates. “Right now, he just needs time.”

Time.

Buck wants to laugh, but he’s afraid he might just end up crying again.

“Buck, there’s something else.”

He looks up to find Bobby frowning.

“A few months ago, you and Eddie signed those papers that named you Christopher’s godfather.”

Buck nods, anticipating where this is going. He recalls, like a distant nightmare, when he had to tell Eddie that Christopher had been lost in the tsunami. And now he’s going to have to tell Christopher that his dad is in a coma. Still, he nods because he knows that, even without the legal aspect, it’s his responsibility. He wouldn't trust anyone else. “Yeah, I’ll tell Chris.”

“Well… it’s not just that,” Bobby explains. “Buck, Eddie isn’t in a position to take care of Christopher at the moment. That leaves you.”

“What?”

“You’re his godfather.”

“Yeah,” Buck remembers that conversation distinctly; how Eddie had come to his apartment after being buried alive, how he’d practically begged Buck to agree to care for his son if anything happened to him. But this isn’t what they had talked about. “No, that’s only if Eddie dies. And you just said--”

“He’s not dying, Buck,” says Bobby, while Athena says, “Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?” his gaze bounces between them like a pinball, waiting for either of them to elaborate. Eventually he lands on Athena. “What do you mean not exactly?”

“When you signed the papers, you agreed to take care of Chris if Eddie dies or is--” she pauses to cast a sad look at Eddie, “--incapacitated.”

Incapacitated. Like a coma.

“So you’re saying that, starting now, I’m Christopher’s legal guardian?”

When Eddie had asked him to be Christopher’s godfather, he said it was a precaution, just a way of knowing that Chris would be taken care of if anything happened.

It was supposed to be a safety net. A contingency plan. It was never supposed to be real.

And yet, staring down at Eddie, the emotions that swell in Buck’s chest are very real. The IVs, the ventilator, the bandage on his head, are all real and Buck isn’t sure how to comprehend that.

“I have to go,” Buck says suddenly. It takes all of his willpower to let go of Eddie’s hand, but he focuses on what he has to do now. With a glance at his watch, he realizes he’s been here longer than he thought. He’s already running late. “Carla’s probably wondering why Eddie’s not home by now, and I have to go to the station to change before I can go over. I need to call Isabel and Pepa, and--”

“Buck.”

Buck stops.

“Let me give you a ride,” Athena says gently.

But Buck is already shaking his head. “No. No, I have to do this. I can do this.” He very carefully doesn’t look at either of them. He pats down his pockets. “Bobby, I can’t find my keys.”

“They’re at the station,” Bobby tells him, “with your Jeep. You rode here in the ambulance.”

Right. Buck remembers that. He looks back at Eddie.

This can’t be real.

Because if it’s real, then there is a real chance that Eddie won’t wake up. There’s a real chance that Eddie will die here in this hospital bed.

“Bobby,” Buck says. His voice cracks, as does his resolve, and he finds himself trembling. “I can’t do this.”

“Not by yourself,” Athena agrees and wraps him in a hug-- he’s so much bigger than her, and yet in that moment he’s never felt smaller. He leans on her, letting her take some of the weight he’s feeling in his chest. Her hands make circles on his back, a soothing gesture that Maddie used to do when he was younger. It helps him breathe. “This is overwhelming and it’s too much for anyone to handle alone. But you’re not doing this alone.”

Over her shoulder, Buck can see Bobby already pulling the phone from his pocket. “I will call Carla to let her know what’s going on and see if she can stay with Christopher a little longer, then I will call Isabel and Pepa and tell them everything. You--” he points the phone in Buck’s direction, “need to shower and change. Athena will take you back to the station. You need to calm down and collect yourself before you see Christopher. If you’re a wreck, it’s going to scare him.”

As Athena leads him away, Buck looks back in time to see Bobby collapse into the chair next to Eddie’s bed. The phone is still in his hand, but he makes no move to call anyone. Instead, he starts to cry.

In that moment, that fleeting glimpse of Bobby when he thought Buck was out of sight, Buck thinks he understands; Bobby didn’t have it all together. He wasn’t calm or collected. He was pretending because that’s what Buck needed to see.

And now, as Christopher’s godfather, he knows what he needs to do. It doesn’t matter how terrified Buck is feeling, that he’s reeling with guilt and worry and anguish. He has to push all of those emotions down and be strong for Chris. Right now, that was the only thing that mattered.

#eddie's in a coma #but i promise he will live #angst with a happy ending #sad buck #godfather buck #i don't honestly know exactly where I'm going with this fic #but i'll figure it out as i go along #buddie #buck x eddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 #my fics #Right Now #and since i will be posting updates spontaneously #Just message me if you want to be tagged in updates #That would make me super happy!

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xmxisxforxmaybe · 5 years

Text

Decryption_Error: “The Server Room, Part I”

Summary: Elliot is locked in the server room by a few of his colleagues to stop him from ruining their Memorial Day weekend. Y/N, Elliot’s manager, finds him and comes up with a solution to fix the broken servers, but because of Elliot’s injuries and his refusal to go to a hospital, Y/N makes him stay at her place for the long weekend. As Elliot and Y/N bond for the first time outside of work, something a little more than friendship starts to emerge.

Summary/Mood Board

Word Count: 5800

Disclaimer: I know 0 things about technology and want to cry real tears for making my narrator Elliot’s boss. I sincerely apologize to anyone I offend for my whack tech references--please let me know if you need me to fix something because it’s awful and I will credit you for saving me some embarrassment!

Tags: @sherlollydramoine @rami-malek-trash @teamwolf2411 @thingsfandom @limabein @lovie-rami @txmel @hopplessdreamer @ouatlovr

Warnings: Physical injuries/blood, language, **=heavily paraphrased from a monologue on Robot

Author’s Note: I won’t be able to update this story as quickly as Remnants because my life is about to get crazy busy. However, I will do my best so y’all don’t lose interest : ) Special shoutout to @alottanothing for helping me get this story organized and underway! Thanks for being my cheerleader 💕

For fuck’s sake! I thought as I changed out of my swimsuit and into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, shoving my still wet feet into a pair of sandals.

I had made it to my family’s place for Memorial Day weekend for the first time in years only to be called back to work because something happened to the servers. My boss, Miles, was out of town like everyone else in the goddamn city, and he trusted me as the Senior Manager to handle the situation.

CIStech Cybersecurity had been my life for the past four years. Starting as an Analyst really fostered my affinity for data and subsequently put me on the fast-track to become management. I liked working hard, and when I first started at CIStech, I would be mystified when I realized it was 10 pm, everyone had gone home, and I had skipped dinner (again) because I was 5,000 clicks deep into testing a contingency plan I created for scenario 11/1,000 in the event of a security breach.

My relationship with my job was complex--I knew I worked too much, but I needed those long days to help quell my anxiety; data gave me a focus and helped me make sense of a world that seemed to be drifting further and further into shades of grey, a place where evil and good barely served as separate entities anymore.

This long weekend was an important test for me—I needed to prove to myself that I could step away from the office and the world wouldn’t end, nor would my mental stability.

Except that I did step away from the office and the world did end—sort of. So much for convincing my brain that taking time off was a good thing.

For the first three quarters of the drive into the city, I had gone over about 30 scenarios in my mind and just as I was about to drive myself crazy, I shook my head and cranked up the music. There was only so much I could mentally prep for until I knew whether the problem was physical or within the network.

Because everyone in the city had fled to escape the rising humidity, I was able to park on a side street about a half of a block from work. I swiped my badge to get into the lobby of CNC Precision Machining, our host company, then said a quick hello to the head of night security, Lance. I swiped my badge again to activate the elevator, and as I rode up to the 18th floor, my anxiety curled into a lead ball and made itself at home in my stomach. Something did not feel right, and I almost, almost went back downstairs to ask Lance to radio a guard.

But, how often do we actually act on our anxiousness? For me, I had to talk myself out of so many horrors a day that I always felt silly when I gave in to whatever idea had made itself at home in my mind.

I talked myself down, thinking, It’s almost 11 pm, and all I have to do is check the servers. Maybe one of the fans broke. Maybe a plug fell out. I can fix it and still get back to Mom and Dad’s by 2.

Once again, I swiped my badge. I entered CIStech’s wing, but as I opened the door to the cybersecurity offices and turned to deactivate the alarm, I saw it had never been set. My mouth fell open, and again the idea of turning back flitted through my mind, except being pissed overtook my apprehension.

Whoever was the last to leave was getting a letter of reprimand. Sure, the building itself was secure, but to not set the alarm in a company’s tech security office? Inexcusable.

Since I was now fuming, the unset alarm compounding with my ire over my ruined start to the weekend, I grumbled away my nagging thoughts as I quickly walked to the server room, swiped my badge and scanned my fingerprint to open the door.

The harsh lights were on an automatic switch, so they popped to life as I stepped a few inches into the room; however, the crunch of plastic and the popping of glass made me stop, one foot poised in the air as I looked down to see what I stepped on.

The remnants of a server, or more than one server, were littered across the ground, and as I scanned for the source of the damage, the last thing I expected to find was a body. Immediately, my mind wondered if this was a trap, and then I wondered if the body was even alive.

My voice emitted a sort of strangled groan which caused the body on the floor to move—and when I saw that it wasn’t just a random body, my heart sank.

It was Elliot, my employee and my friend.

***Eight Months Ago***

“Next up is Elliot Alderson. Recent grad. Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Tech. This is the guy with the impressive skill set, knowledgeable in everything we use. His portfolio backs it up, too.”

“Mmm, I remember reading through it and thinking if even half of it is legit, he’s smarter than everyone in that room put together,” Colin said, gesturing in the direction of the office floor.

“I tested his work on the headless Raspberry PI he sent with his portfolio—worked like a charm.”

“That could save us a lot of headaches,” JaLeah said, clicking through the description in Elliot’s portfolio again.

“Did you notice how streamlined his portfolio is? It’s masterfully organized and aesthetically pleasing,” I said, leaning over to look at JaLeah’s screen.

She hummed in agreement.

“Jayne? Bring in Mr. Alderson, please,” I said as I pressed the button on the wireless intercom.

At CIStech, we strived to maintain a comfortable atmosphere. Instead of a panel of interviewers, it was just myself and my two Supervisors. Instead of interviewing in our board room, we interviewed in my office, the three of us seated at a round table so when the applicant joined us, they felt less on-the-spot.

However, when Elliot Alderson walked in the room, his unease was so palpable I doubted anything would alleviate his nervousness.

“Mr. Alderson,” Colin began, extending his hand. “I’m Colin Greene, Supervisor.

Elliot paused long enough for me to give him a onceover, and peripherally, I saw JaLeah do the same.

“I’m Y/N Y/L/N, Senior Manager,” I said, shaking Elliot’s hand, his grip light as if the last thing he wanted to do in the world was touch me.

As JaLeah introduced herself, I took another quick inventory of Elliot Alderson. He was dressed well, although in clothes that were a bit too big on his small frame. His haircut, however, was immaculate, cut in a close fade on the sides with a mop of styled black hair on top.

His big, greyish eyes were moving around the room as if he were searching for the exit; and then, suddenly they stopped. It was like he reminded himself to pick a spot and focus.

“Go ahead and take a seat,” JaLeah said, sliding over the piece of paper that listed our interview questions.

As Elliot pulled out the chair and settled in, I explained what would happen during the interview, the goal to once again ease the nerves of the applicant.

“So, Mr. Alderson, I’m going to explain the process for this interview. First, we will give you a few minutes to read over the questions on the paper in front of you. When you are ready, let us know and we will take turns asking those questions. Once the Q&A portion is complete, we will connect our laptops to the one right here via RDP, and we will ask you to complete a specific task. Any questions so far?”

Elliot shook his head no.

“Excellent. Please take a few minutes to read over the questions, feel free to jot down notes in the spaces provided, then let us know when you are ready to begin,” I explained, ending with a smile.

Elliot did not return my smile; instead, his eyes dropped to the interview questions. As I watched him scan the paper, I had to remind myself not to stare. There was something about him that drew me in. His eyes were unlike any I had ever seen, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that damn, overquoted line from one of Walt Whitman’s poems: “I contain multitudes.”

Looking at Elliot, it was clear he contained depths, and I wanted to know everything there was to know about him. I could count on one hand the number of times I felt so immediately intrigued by another person.

After a minute or two, Elliot looked up, his eyes flickering between the three of us, and said, “Okay.”

Colin began, asking Elliot to tell us about his schooling and his professional experience.

Elliot answered carefully, reciting his academic and professional history. His voice was deep, a soothing monotone that was more like a raspy rattle than a melodious note.

“Thank you,” I said once he had finished speaking. “Question two asks about the steps you would take to secure a server. Walk us through that process, please.”

Once again, Elliot’s answer was correct and succinct.

“To secure a server, you use the SSL protocol for data encryption and decryption. Establish a secure password for your root and administrative users. Create the new users in the system. Remove remote access from the default root accounts. Configure your firewall rules for your remote access.”

I watched Elliot as he answered, his eyes focused on a spot over my shoulder. I made my notes as JaLeah moved on to the next question.

“What are the most common types of cyberattacks? Explain which attack you feel is most common and why it is most common.”

Elliot listed off the usual attacks with ease—phishing, malware, DDoS, password attacks, malvertising, man in the middle, but it was his answer to the second part of the question that allowed us to see a glimpse under his carefully crafted façade.

“People. People are the only reason cyberattacks happen and people are the ones who make it easy for hackers to execute any attack. The most common cyberattack in a large corporation is phishing—people are all too willing to provide information without first checking the origination. People who work in companies operate on autopilot, running their daily programs, usually without interruption, and in order to avoid a runtime error, people will click a link, enter their password, and by then, they have you.”**

We were all quiet for a moment and Elliot looked a bit surprised, as if he couldn’t believe what he just said aloud.

“Excellent answer, Mr. Alderson,” JaLeah said, narrowing her eyes and nodding, still mulling over Elliot’s response. “If only we knew how to prevent human error—but I supposed that would be a billion-dollar answer,” she finished, flashing him a smile.

He shrugged his shoulders and gave her a tiny smile in response.

That was the only real glimpse of Elliot’s personality we got for the rest of the interview, but he absolutely nailed the task, finding each vulnerability we set up in our system and fixing it in record time.

“Do you have any questions for us, Mr. Alderson?” I asked as we closed out the interview.

“I’ve already found out everything I needed to know,” Elliot replied, his eyes meeting and holding my gaze.

I smirked and nodded.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Mr. Alderson. You’ll hear from HR within 24 hours, either way,” I said as I hit the intercom.

“Please see Mr. Alderson out, Jayne.”

Elliot left as nervously as he entered, not bothering with any attempt at casual conversation to make his interview a bit more memorable.

As soon as the office door clicked shut, Colin leaned back in his chair and said, “No way. Guy’s weird.”

“Weird?” I questioned. “Since when is being nervous the same as being ‘weird’?”

“He didn’t make eye contact with me once—and not like in an ‘on the spectrum way.’ More like, he has a secret and no one can know it way. I’m not trying to be a dick—I just got a bad vibe.”

“Well, you are being a dick,” I said. “There are a thousand reasons why people struggle with eye contact, Colin. Don’t stereotype. Give me something factual if you really didn’t like him for the position.”

“And I remember a time when you couldn’t look me in the eye, Colin,” JaLeah said, her dark eyes flashing.

Colin rubbed his hands over his face and sighed.

“He didn’t elaborate on any of the questions—he spit back text-book answers on every one, except for JaLeah’s question about cyberattacks. I felt like he wasn’t hungry for this job—he acted like he didn’t really want it.”

I nodded my head.

“I wish he would have elaborated, too. However, I think his tech skills far outweigh any subpar people skills.”

“I agree with Y/N,” JaLeah said. “But I do see Colin’s point—remember when we had those interns? We ended up hiring Steph because she was able to build a rapport with everyone here. Granted, they all had about the same skill set, but her ability to communicate set her apart.”

“Doesn’t it also work in reverse, though--tech skills over people skills?”

Colin nodded in agreement. “It does.”

“So, let me make you both a deal: if any of the remaining candidates perform as well or better than Elliot Alderson on the task, we hire them. If not, we go with Alderson.”

“Works for me,” JaLeah said. “For the record, I did like him. He really spit some fire on that answer about human error.”

I smiled at JaLeah and nodded while Colin rolled his eyes.

“Alright—who’s up next?” he said, already accepting the idea that he was probably not going to win this one.

* * * * *

I closed my eyes and rolled my neck, listening to the bones pop and crunch. It was time to get up and take a lap around the office before the blood decided to pool in my calves and send me to an early grave.

It was nearly 8 pm, so when I saw the illumination of a computer screen reflected in a set of big grey eyes, I was a bit surprised. Elliot Alderson had accepted our offer and started at CIStech three weeks ago. He was proving to be an excellent engineer, and once he settled in, I wanted to assign him to the white hat team.

However, Colin saw fit to initiate a trial by fire and made Elliot the project manager for the development of a new code that could counter a DDoS flooding attack.

Colin may have done it to be an asshole, but I permitted it out of curiosity to see if my hire had what it took to climb. It was already clear that Elliot’s skills were unmatched. If he could pitch, he would be on the fast-track to becoming my boss one day.

When he saw me approach, his fingers immediately stilled and a look of apprehension crossed his features.

“Hey, Elliot. Working late?” I asked, surprised at the butterflies in my stomach as I initiated a conversation with him.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Ms. Y/L/N. I didn’t realize how late it was,” Elliot said in his deep voice, his words rolling out in that gentle monotone.

“Y/N. It’s Y/N—we don’t do that Mr. and Ms. stuff once you’re hired. Call me crazy, but I like to think of all 50 or so of us as a family. Distant and dysfunctional, sure. But whose family isn’t?” I finished with an awkward chuckle at my own joke.

Elliot looked at me, his expression unreadable, and said nothing for what felt like an obscene amount of time. I’m certain my cheeks colored at my failed attempt at a joke and his subsequent silence. I began to feel an urgent need to fill the quietness with this almost-stranger I just called “family” when Elliot finally spoke.

“That’s . . . nice.”

I laughed and said, “You’re not much of a talker, are you?”

Elliot gave me a tiny smile, if you could even call the fleeting upturn of his lips before they drew back into a straight line a smile.

“No. I’m not.”

I thought for a few seconds, wanting my first one-on-one interaction with Elliot to be right. A thousand things to say barreled through my mind like Shanghai’s Maglev, and I saw Elliot’s attention turn back to his computer, his fingers twitching, probably wondering if it would be rude to go back to work.

“Do you know what I wish, Elliot?” I said, my words rushed as I reigned in the speeding train of my thoughts.

“No,” Elliot said, looking at me with genuine confusion.

“I wish we had a code we could input to just automatically cut out the bullshit of small talk. Imagine if our minds could input all of that information—we’d know right away whether or not a person was to our liking, whether they would be someone who could become our friend.”

Elliot looked at me, his eyes shining from the monitor in the dark of the office, his mouth a bit agape; he looked at me as if I were either the first human he’d ever seen or the last human he’d ever see—I couldn’t make up my mind on the former or the latter.

“Is that totally crazy?” I asked.

“It’s the least crazy thing I’ve ever heard,” Elliot said, his voice breaking with its normal monotone to convey honesty.

I smiled, and the butterflies in my stomach finally settled. I moved around Elliot’s desk and leaned on the edge. He scooted his chair back so he could angle it toward me, his hands fidgeting, unsure what to do without a keyboard underneath of them.

“I’m willing to pretend that code is real—we’ve scanned each other, determined we’re cool, and can now proceed along the route of friendship. At least, that’s what my data has output.”

Elliot grinned, and the fucking butterflies came back in full force. There was no part of my 8 pm afterwork self that was equipped to handle how damn good-looking this guy was.

“My data reads the same,” he said, his smile turning shy, his eyes flickering away from my face and toward the floor.

“Excellent. So, as emerging friends, I want to confess that, believe or not, I’m not much of a talker either.”

“I—I don’t think we are the same kind of not-talkers,” Elliot said, frowning up at me.

“Do me a favor. Tomorrow, pay attention after you pitch the DDoS counter plan. Once the pitch is out, everyone shoots off their own ideas and if they don’t have an original thought, they’ll turn to criticism. I won’t say a word—I never do.”

“Why?” Elliot asked, clearly interested because his response was immediate.

“Because I listen. People are so consumed by a need to have self-validation that they talk just to talk, hoping something that comes out of their mouth is what sparks someone else’s path to self-validation. It’s a . . . circle jerk, if you don’t mind me speaking in my ‘off the clock’ tongue.”

Elliot’s mouth had dropped open a little again as he listened, his brows drawn in as he gave it some thought—well, a lot of thought because once again, the silence bordered on oppressive before he spoke again.

“I thought people only said things like that inside their minds. Especially bosses.”

“Did I reveal an inherent human truth you were unaware of?”

Elliot chuckled, a gravelly rumble, and it was the cutest damn thing I had ever heard.

“No—I’ve thought the same thing for as long as I can remember.”

“See? Our data chose well. Now, do you want to sit there and tell me more about how unalike we are or are you ready to trust me enough to help you with whatever is plaguing you about pitching tomorrow?”

“How did you—” Elliot began before sighing and popping off of his chair to stalk over to the window. It took me by surprise that a little piece of his mask was so readily falling away.

I stayed where I was, even though his form was little more than a shadow that moved against the backdrop of the lighted city.

“I am not good with people,” Elliot said, his voice sounding harsh and too loud in the quiet office. “I don’t know how to talk to them one-on-one, so I sure as hell don’t know how to talk to them in a group. All I can think of when I get in front of anyone is how much of an idiot they think I am. I even typed up a letter of resignation,” Elliot said, his voice returning to its normal murmur with his confession.

This time, it was my turn to nurse the quiet. I thought about saying, Bullshit—you’re talking to me. You can do anything you put your mind to! But Elliot wasn’t someone who needed a pep-talk. He was deeper than that—probably even deeper than I could ever comprehend. “I’m not gonna bullshit you. You could walk out of here and get hired just about anywhere in any one of these buildings with your skill set. But I’d like to believe that you care, maybe just a little, that I am the one who extended you an offer—gave you a shot at your first ‘real’ job. So, yeah, you can run. But you’ll hurt my feelings if you do.” Whatever Elliot was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. He walked back to stand in front of me and he blinked those big eyes that were once again a reflection of the light blue of the desktop.

“You don’t even know me enough to be affected by anything I do. I’m just another cog in the wheel.” I thought we were on a path to friendship, but if this was Elliot’s response to my admission I cared about whether or not he quit, I knew he was hiding, deep, deep inside of himself. “What makes you think you’re unworthy of general human concern? You are human, aren’t you?” I said, once again making an awkward joke for myself to softly laugh at. “I—I didn’t mean that I—" “Careful, Elliot. You intrigue me. And when people intrigue me, I have to figure them out. Have to.”

Elliot took off toward the window again, pacing as he struggled to convey his fear.

“Like I said, I’m not much of a talker and I’m not very good with people. I can do anything with a computer, but people. I just . . . can’t.”

“Mmm, until I see a T-800 running around and declaring “I’ll be back,” I will disagree with you that you can do ‘anything’ with a computer.”

Elliot stopped pacing and turned to face me, his head comically turned to the side as he decided whether or not to finally laugh at one of my jokes.

This time, he did laugh, a soft little chuckle as he shook his head and shoved his hands in his pants’ pockets.

“Let me make you an offer—”

“An offer I can’t refuse?”

I giggled and shook my head.

“Yes! He jokes! We really are on the path to friendship. . . which means, I want to help you: Fill me in on the details of what you’ve designed, and we can practice. Come on—we’ll go in the meeting room.”

“I can’t ask you to—”

“You did not ask. I gave you a command. All you have to do is type Y,” I said in a sing-song voice, smiling before pushing off the edge of his desk and walking toward the meeting room.

I turned after a moment to see Elliot grab his laptop and follow me.

When we crossed the office to the meeting room, I paused with my hand on the door.

“Actions help us believe what our minds have convinced us not to believe—if I truly thought you were nothing more than a cog, would I give my time to you? Tell me—what’s more valuable than time?”

Elliot didn’t answer me. Instead, he smiled at me, his expression conveying his gratitude.

I turned the knob and walked toward the sofa, plopping onto the cushion.

“So, fill me in.”

* * * * *

Elliot and I passed many nights like this, and I quickly realized Elliot wasn’t going to follow in my footsteps and climb up the management ladder. After his DDoS proposal, Colin followed my recommendation and moved Elliot to the white hat hackers, a small team of ten. The white hats worked a little more in isolation than the other techs, which is what Elliot wanted.

So, we worked. We talked. We listened. We ate too much take-out and spent too many late hours at the office.

Our data was compatible, which would be Elliot-speak for saying, “We became friends.”

***Present***

“Elliot! Elliot, what happened?” I asked as I dropped to my knees and rolled him the rest of the way onto his back.

His eyes snapped open and darted around the room, looking everywhere but at me. Elliot scooted away and backed up to the wall, pulling his knees up to his chest and crossing his arms over his legs. He looked like a trapped, feral animal, trying to make itself as small as possible to avoid capture.

I noticed the cuts and the trails of blood that smeared across his hands, and I saw that there was blood on the floor where he had been laying. As I looked him over, I also saw a gash across his forehead that ran into his hairline. Blood was still trickling down the side of his face.

“Elliot,” I said again in a soft, calm voice.

He still didn’t react; instead, he looked around the room and started mumbling, thumping the back of his head off the wall.

I got up and quickly moved to drop down in front of him, placing my hand between his head and the wall. It looked like he already had a concussion and I didn’t want him to hurt himself anymore.

“Elliot. Hey. It’s Y/N. You’ve gotta focus, sweetheart. Focus on my voice.”

I kept repeating myself in the same soothing tone. After a few moments, I slowly reached out and grasped his shoulder, running my thumb over the material of his light grey dress shirt.

Slowly, Elliot stopped moving his head and his eyes stopped darting. I still had no idea what he was mumbling and if it weren’t for the vibrations of his chest and the very subtle movements of his lips, I wouldn’t have known he was speaking.

When Elliot finally fixed his eyes on my face, his brows contracted into confusion.

“Y/N?” he said, his voice raspy, like someone who had been talking too loudly over music or who had smoked too many cigarettes in a night.

“Hey,” I said smiling and removing my hand from his shoulder.

“Shit! The servers!” Elliot said, and tried to dart up, but I held him back.

“No. Don’t move. Your head is bleeding and so are your hands. I need to get you to a hospital.”

Once again Elliot’s eyes began to look everywhere but my face and he tried to scramble up. This time, he broke free from my grasp and I found myself flat on my ass as he bolted up from the floor.

He didn’t get very far because after about three steps he swooned and crashed into one of the broken servers. I scrambled to my feet and helped him sit back down on the floor.

“See? Hospital. Now.”

This time Elliot looked right at me, his eyes filled with tears as he begged me not to take him to a hospital. The display of pure emotion was a shock for me—even though Elliot and I spent a lot of time together, he was always very careful in his interactions and remained emotionally distant. To see him so vulnerable made me rethink my insistence.

“Shh, okay. Okay. Listen—I don’t know if you’re concussed or what, but can you tell me anything about what happened? Or when this happened? If the tapes never went out. . .” I trailed off, unable to even imagine the repercussions.

“The courier left at 4:48.”

I raised my eyebrow at Elliot’s precise answer.

“Okaaaay.”

“I remember the time because—” Elliot broke off and looked away.

“Because why?”

“That’s when they locked me in here,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible over the buzzing of the air conditioning that kept the server room so cool.

My phone rang, startling both of us. As I talked, Elliot retreated further into himself again, his knees pressed to his chest once more, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

“Yes, I’m at work, Miles.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah.”

“We definitely have a problem, but everything’s been backed up—the tapes were couriered out this afternoon.”

“No—you don’t need to come in.”

“Uh, it’s a problem with the a few of the servers themselves, some broken parts. Listen, I promise—I’ll take care of it and everything will be up and running on Tuesday like nothing ever happened.”

“You’re welcome—enjoy your night.”

“I will. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and stood up, leaving Elliot to himself for a moment. I surveyed the damage that was apparently done by Elliot himself. My mind couldn’t even grasp the idea that people I supervised, many of whom I had hired myself, would do something so inhumane.

It was no secret that people avoided Elliot, even his white hat teammates—he was closed off, smarter than most of them, and worked harder than all of them. I wasn’t blind to the way he was he treated, but I also knew him in a different way; I knew he kept to himself because it was so difficult for him to socialize with people he considered strangers.

I also knew Elliot didn’t mean to do this.

After I surveyed the damage, I began thinking outloud, “Towers 2, 3, 6, and 7 are fucking toast, but the rest are untouched. I need to synchronize the traffic to the secondary servers and synch the databases. Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, the traffic is light enough that no real damage should have been done. I have a friend who might be able to get us new towers.”

Elliot was watching me as I talked and figured out how to fix his mess.

“I can—” he began, but I cut him off.

“I have to tell them how this happened, Elliot. I’m not making any promises, but if I can fix it by Tuesday morning, you might be able to keep your job. And I can promise you, the fucking assholes that did this to you won’t.”

Elliot looked to the floor again, his face filled with sadness.

“Sit—do not move while I grab some papertowels and ice.”

Elliot gave me a barely perceptible nod, and I went off to gather what I needed to ice his head and clean up the blood.

When I came back, Elliot was sitting at the desk in the server room, his fingers poking over the keys on the keyboard.

“Damnit, Elliot! I said not to move.”

“This is all my fault. I have to fix it. I have to fix it. I have to—”

I cut him off by lifting his arms away from the keyboard and scooting the rolling chair back. Elliot turned his bloodshot eyes to mine, the rims lined with red and I wondered if he’d been crying.

I sighed and placed my hands on both of his shoulders.

“This is not your fault,” I said firmly, my eyes flickering between his, refusing to release him from my gaze until he listened to me.

Elliot opened his mouth, then closed it, choosing not to fight me.

“Hold this on your head,” I said, tearing my eyes from his face, and reaching for the ice pack I had set on the desk.

Elliot complied, and I turned back to the desk to finish synchronizing the servers. Once I was done, I wiped up the blood on the floor with the wet papertowels, then unplugged the damaged servers.

“Now, let’s get out of here. Your head is still bleeding,” I said as I made a final lap to check for damage.

I helped Elliot up by wedging my hand under his elbow, careful to avoid his fucked up hands. For a moment, the two of us were face-to-face. His eyes lifted up to look into mine and I sighed, reaching up to grasp his chin and turn his head to look at the gash.

“Head wounds are the worst. Never can tell how deep they are,” I whispered, looking closely at his cut.

“I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“I know, El. Come on.”

Elliot followed me out of the server room and I locked the door. After throwing away the bloodied papertowels in the bathroom, I came out to see Elliot at his desk, struggling into his hoodie, hissing as his bleeding and bruised hands slid through the fabric.

“I’ll get your backpack,” I said as I approached and reached under his desk to pull it out. “Is there anything else you need?”

Elliot shook his head no and I shrugged into his backpack. He stayed close as I set the alarm and waited for the elevator, neither one of us wanting to talk.

“Good night, Lance,” I called toward the front desk as I kept walking.

“Eh, Ms. Y/L/N? Do you need me to call—”

“Nope—all is well! Sorry you’re stuck here tonight, though,” I said with a wave.

“Me, too,” Lance answered, chuckling a little.

I led Elliot to the passenger door of my SUV, opening it and then waiting for Elliot to get in. Once I made sure he was settled, I shut the door and opened up the back door to take off his backpack and place it onto the seat.

I got in, buckled up, and put the key in the ignition. The radio started belting out the Britney Spears song I was rocking to on the way in, and I quickly turned it down after Elliot and I both jumped.

“Now you know my darkest secret,” I said shaking my head.

Elliot looked at me, the hint of the smallest smile in the universe turning up one corner of his mouth.

“I’m taking you to my place and I don’t want an argument. I have a friend who is a PA and I’m going to call her. She’s going to look at your head and if she says you need to go to the hospital, you are going to go. Is that clear?”

Elliot frowned and his eyes looked to the door as if he was contemplating whether or not he could escape.

I quickly put the SUV in gear and swerved out into the street to prevent him from making a move.

“Ok,” he said quietly, knowing he had no other choice.

#Elliot Alderson #elliot alderson x reader #female reader #elliot x reader #elliot alderson fanfic #rami malek #rami malek character #mr robot #mr robot fanfiction

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tanadrin · 5 years

Text

Stat Mons, Dum Volvitur Orbis

(Attention conservation notice: 7500 word extract concerning a subplot from my NaNoWriMo project, which I am posting here mostly to inspire me to catch up in this last week so I don’t fail miserably to hit the word count)

Mazai na Sair--”Maz” to most people--had been at Mountain Stream for four years when Obradil arrived. It had until then been a time of tranquility or satisfaction in her life, a rare and precious thing to her. When Obradil came, all of that was disturbed, much to Maz’s displeasure.

When she was a child, in Kapesk-by-the-Sea, far away to the south, she realized around the time that puberty hit that she was not happy in the world. She struggled to understand the people around her. Their goals, their desires, their hopes for the future often seemed alien to her, all too narrowly focused, too wrapped up in trivialities, and, at bottom, too content to endure the intolerable cruelties of worldly life. It was difficult for her simply to exist in the world. For a long time, she believed that what that really meant was that there was something wrong with her. Even if that were so, however, it was something she was powerless to change. An unhappy adolescence gave way to depressive twenties, as she floundered around, looking for something to give her life coherence and purpose. She longed for a place where she could be herself, and not be in tension with the world around her. Where she could, at least, not feel like merely being awake to the things around her was a source of conflict and pain.

When she was twenty-six, she learned of Mountain Stream. This was at a party in Savrenosk, where she had ended up after dropping out of school and working a few different odd jobs. A heavily cyberized ekun who had spent most of the evening talking to her friends about their government analytics job had finally switched to a different topic. Something they’d read about in the news, recently: an old commune in the hill country that had been having something of a resurgence lately. Northern spirituality, reborn. Oh, what a funny thing; what won’t these Oddasans think of next? Something they said, in passing, arrested Maz’s attention: “they think only in the fell-country you can really be free.”

Maz paused on her way over to the kitchen to get another drink. “What does that mean?” she said to the ekun.

The ekun scratched their head. “Well, I’m no expert,” they said, “but apparently it’s something to do with Naira. You know, religion.” From their tone of voice, they didn’t think much of religion, but they tried not to show it. “It’s called Mountain Stream. They lead--hold on, I’ll look it up--they try to lead a life ‘imbued with contemplative purpose,’ I guess. They think that’s the only way to find a place in the world on your own terms, and if you can’t do that, you’re destined to be unhappy. Or something.”

“Huh,” was all Maz said.

“Would make for a nice vacation, but I don’t know if I’d want to live there.” The ekun smiled. “But it ties in to what I was telling Parra about my theory of an Oddasan spiritual revival. So at work, these articles keep crossing my desk--”

And that was it. They were back on the subject of work, and it felt like a switch being flipped. Maz couldn’t be less interested if she tried. But the image of the Oddasan commune lodged itself in her mind.

The party ended, her friends dispersed. Maz never saw the ekun again. And she forgot about Mountain Stream, mostly. Once in a while as she was falling asleep at night she would think of it, and in her head it was a little village far away in the hills, all pretty wooden houses and honest Oddasan country folk, and something in that called to her in a way she could never explain. In a way her friends or her family would think was crazy, if she tried.

Then, two years later, she met someone from Mountain Stream. She was in Pardom now, a rainy port city on the border with Oddasa. She had, rather unwisely, moved there to be with somebody and the relationship had ended badly. She was alone now, living in a small one-room apartment above a bar where she worked, pulling down just enough money to live comfortably--food, rent, books--but scrupulously avoiding conversations with her parents about where her life was going, and what her plans for the future were. She had none; all of those she had given up on long ago. They felt like the fever-dreams of childhood. When you were a teenager, and you thought you could still change the world.

The bar was empty one evening, and she was just about to close early, when a man walked in off the street. He was older, and wore a heavy, gray wool coat, the kind you saw only in North Oddasa, where it got very cold in the winter. His hair and beard, half-gray, were long, but well-kept, and his face had the look of someone who spent most of his days outdoors. More curiously, to Maz’s mind, was the series of small scars above his left eye. Barely noticeable. But she had seen a series of scars like that on only a handful of occasions. What they usually meant was that somebody with a lot of augs or cybernetic prosthetics had had some kind of drastic revision surgery, a correction or an upgrade that involved moving a lot of tissue around. Possibly a clonegraft. But this man had no cybernetics that Maz could see. Sometimes people were shy about their augs, but those kind of people didn’t usually go in for the heavy cyberization that might lead to that kind of surgery.

The man sat down at the bar and asked for something hot. “I have an appointment around the corner in an hour,” he said. “You don’t mind if I wait here?”

“Not at all,” Maz said. She poured him a large cup of coffee. They talked. His name was Urzin. Mostly about the weather at first. Then where they were from.

“Kapesk, originally,” Maz said. “That’s where my parents still are.”

“That’s a long way away,” Urzin said. “You visit often?”

Maz shook her head. “I wouldn’t say we get along very well. They’re my parents and I love them, but…”

“You don’t have a lot in common?”

She nodded. “Very little, in fact. What about you? Where are you from?”

“Originally, I’m from here, actually,” Urzin said. “Pardom, born and raised. But I traveled a lot when I was younger.”

“And you came back to Pardom in the end?”

“No, not at all. I live in the north now. In the hill-country. In a little placed called Mountain Stream.”

Maz looked up from the tap she was cleaning when he said that. “Mountain Stream?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“In passing. A while back. I thought it was a commune or something.”

Urzin shrugged. “Sort of. Commune. Monastery. Intentional community. Gang of unwashed hippies living on the moors. Whatever you want to call it. Some people don’t think highly of that kind of thing.”

“I thought it sounded… nice.”

Urzin smiled. “Nice? It is nice, if you like that life. I happen to like it a lot.”

“Were you raised religious?”

“Religious? No, not especially. I wouldn’t say we’re a very religious community.”

“I thought you were all Nairene?”

Urzin shook his head. “No. I think that’s the impression we give. Some of us are, definitely. Oddasa has always been Naira’s earth, and probably always will be. But that’s not the thing that unites us.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s hard to explain. I guess the most succinct way would be--do you know the Nairene expression ‘a life contemplated’? It’s kind of a technical term. The Nairenes have always believed that emotion and instinct largely rule our lives. That most of the actions we take, the decisions we make, the way we react to other people come from unconscious choices. Or, I think the word they use is pre-conscious. We justify them to ourselves later, but we don’t really think about them at the time.”

“And that’s bad?”

“It’s neither bad nor good. It just is. The pre-conscious instincts and emotions which rule us can rule well, or badly. A lot of times they’re ciphers, based on decisions we made or principles we adopted a long time ago, which we apply by rote now. It’s easier for our brains to work that way. Keeps us from being plagued by indecision. But we only call on our conscious mind, we only act with intentionality, when we’re uncertain, or when a truly novel situation presents itself to us. Again, not in itself inherently good or bad. Quite bad, maybe, if you’re in a crisis and you need a quick decision. But too often, we use old ciphers, outdated ciphers, or worse, ciphers we inherited from the people around us, ideas and thoughts and principles that have accumulated over decades or centuries and which weigh us down--and so we move through the world in ways that make us unhappy. Mountain Stream is really just about freeing ourselves from that kind of existence. Living with intentionality. Being conscious and present in our own lives.”

“And you need to live in the hills to do it?”

“Maybe not. But it’s hard to imbue every decision with intentionality when you’re driving a car, or worrying about whether you’re going to catch the next train. Even here in Pardom, life moves pretty fast. It isn’t a good way to live if you value that.”

“So you’re primitivists?”

“Not especially. You noticed the scars?”

Maz nodded.

“You don’t have to be baseline or anything to live in Mountain Stream. But those who live with us a long time tend to find cybernetics more a hindrance than a help. Anyway, the net connection up there is terrible.”

Maz laughed. “Is that what happened to you? You got sick of spinning in circles, trying to get good reception?”

Urzin’s face went rather serious, and Maz realized she had accidentally asked a very personal question.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “I didn’t come to Mountain Stream intending to stay for long. It’s not that kind of place--you don’t have to foreswear the outside world or anything. You don’t have to lock yourself in a cloister. That’s an old argument, actually: rules. Rules can help a community stay dedicated to its founding principle. But rules are also a way not to have to think. We mostly don’t like rules.

“But I did stay, in the end. And I realized the things I was doing that made me unhappy, the principles I was enacting in my life, extended into every inch of the space around me. Even, rather deeply, into my flesh. My body had become someone else’s. So I had my cybernetics removed. It took a long time, and it was pretty painful. But I’m happy I did it. I want my experience of the world to be more unmediated. As much as it can be, anyway. But there are those among us who don’t share my aversion to cybernetics, and that’s fine too. Can I ask you something, by the way?”

Maz shrugged. Fair’s fair, she thought. “Sure.”

“Were you raised religious?”

Maz thought about how to answer that question. “Not… really,” she said. “Why?”

“Many of the people who inquire about Mountain Stream have a spiritual background. You seem drawn to it, is all. I don’t want you to be disappointed. Nairene thought has influenced us, but we don’t pray together. We don’t have any temples. We’re not celibate monks.”

Maz nodded. “That’s not what I think of when I think of religion, anyway. I was raised on the Landspell.”

“The Landspell? You mean, the dragon-cult?”

Maz winced. “We don’t call it that down south. Sounds too… well, culty. Gives people the wrong impression. The Dragon isn’t a god.”

“Oh. Sorry. What is he, then?”

“It’s, uh, well, it’s a dragon. Just a dragon.”

“So the Kapeskers believe in monsters? In this enlightened age?”

“Not many of them. It’s a rural thing. Folk-religion, maybe. And anyway, there were only ever two.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“I don’t know that I’m qualified. It’s not like I’m a theologian. It’s just what my parents talked about sometimes.”

“I’d still like to hear it.”

So Maz did her best to explain. There were two dragons, you see. The dragon of the world, and the dragon of time. But no, she had to go back. You had to understand this, first: this world, this universe, was not our original home. Humans were spiritual beings, not physical ones, and originally we were from somewhere else. Earth? Urzin asked. No, not Earth. Well, yes, in a literal sense, actually Earth, but that wasn’t what Maz meant. Even the humans on Earth were originally from this other place. Her mom had always called it the Summerland.

In the Summerland, it was never cold or dark. In the Summerland, you were never afraid, or in pain. Long, long ago, we all lived in the Summerland. Perhaps as fragments of one great celestial being. Perhaps as just ourselves. But we were led astray. In Maz’s mother’s telling, it was just by other human souls, who made a mistake. In her uncle’s telling, it was by a creature with gray eyes and a gray face, who only pretended to be human. In some tellings, it was by the dragon-of-time, the dragon-of-sorrow. We left the Summerland, and came here, to the mortal world, the world of physics and entropy and fundamental forces. The world of economics and politics and greed and suffering. The world where change acquires another, terrible meaning: decay.

And we were trapped. We were spiritual beings enclosed in clods of flesh. It weighed us down, made us miserable. We sought a way out. We will seek a way out. And we will fuck it up, and we will destroy the universe.

Urzin raised an eyebrow. “Wait, will? It’s inevitable?”

“Yeah. It’s inevitable. That’s where the other dragon comes from. The dragon of time. Sometimes they call it the Dragon at the End of Time. The dragon we make with our hands, trying to escape this universe, but it just ends up devouring us. Destroying our souls forever.”

“Hills and heavens, that’s bleak,” Urzin said.

“It’s not that hopeless,” Maz said. “Because making that dragon accidentally creates another dragon, too. The reflection of the dragon-of-time is the dragon-of-truth. It has other names, too. Tirworm. Guide. Midayus. Gwannin. Some of them are gods in other places in the south. But the point is, this other dragon, it’s not just at the end of time like the first. Or, it is, but it’s not trapped in time like we are. It can reach back, and help guide us, spiritually. It can help us learn to escape the roads of suffering, and reach the Summerland again.”

“And what happens if we do?”

“We go back to being how we were meant to be. A little wiser, maybe, for having known this world. And we can help our friends and our family who are trapped here return as well. And if enough of us manage it, before the end, maybe the whole disaster is averted.”

“But then what happens to this other dragon? Wouldn’t that meant it never existed, either?”

Maz shrugged. “I wouldn’t analyze it too deeply. It’s a farmer’s religion. Most of the people who believe in it pray to the Dragon for a good harvest, and tell stories about the Wicked Worm that steals away naughty children and eats them. All the esoteric stuff is a lot less popular these days.”

“But obviously not forgotten.”

“Not forgotten, no. And to answer your original question: I don’t think of myself as raised with religion, because I wasn’t ever taught to believe all that. My mother was. And I think my father, but he doesn’t talk about it as much. His parents were… harsh people. They saw their religion as a cudgel to use against the world. My mother’s parents saw it as a shield to protect the people you love. What I remember, though, when my mom told me those stories, is I remember that the Dragon was right about one thing: the world hurts. I mean that both ways. It hurts the people in it. And it just hurts all by itself. And I think the people in Gedzal, the ones who started by telling each other stories around campfires at night that turned into the Landspell, I think they recognized that. Everything else is trying to understand, trying to justify, trying to make it all make sense without the benefit of philosophy or science or whatever the old religions of Earth were. And I think that’s what the ancient Nairenes were probably trying to do, too.”

Urzin nodded. “I think you’re right,” he said. Then, “You should come to Mountain Stream. Just for a visit, I mean. I think you’d understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Some people come thinking we have answers. Some people come just to gawk, or just to say they did. Some people come because they’re in terrible pain, and when we can’t help them, they get angry. But I don’t think any of those people understand why we really live our lives the way we do. I think the ones who really understand know that there’s a lot of pain in the world, and sometimes the best we can do is seek, imperfectly, after a way to fix it. And if they’re there, instead of in Savrenosk or Elsaria trying to fix the world, then they’re there because all they know how to do, or try to do, is start with themselves.”

“You make it sound so selfish.”

“Selfish? No, quite the opposite. I once had a very wise teacher, when I first came to Mountain Stream, who said to me, ‘Urzin, you ought to have compassion for all people, everywhere.’ ‘Even terrible people?’ I asked. ‘Even terrible people,’ he said. ‘Suffering is suffering, no matter where it lies.’ ‘Then I should find someone to help,’ I said. ‘You idiot!’ he answered. ‘Aren’t you suffering, too? Where is your compassion for yourself? How can you ever make other people’s lives better if you can’t even make your own better--if you’re about to break under the strain? Compassion for everyone! Even for yourself. Not more than compassion for other people--and not one jot less.’”

From there, the conversation went to less weighty subjects, but Maz found that Urzin’s words stuck with her. He left for his appointment soon after, and Maz closed up the bar, went upstairs, and lay in bed, thinking about what compassion for herself meant. Five days later, she started selling off anything that wouldn’t fit in a backpack, she quit her job, and she bought a ticket by ferry up the coast, into Oddasa. From Port Oddasa, she took a bus to a little town called Havrely, in the south of the hill country, and from Havrely, she hitched a ride with a farmer to Mountain Stream. It was, in the end, quite unlike what she had expected: small stone houses, dotting a hilly landscape, joined by winding paths to one another and to satellite settlements and lone hermitages on the eastern cliffs.

Two weeks after her arrival, she was sitting on the steps of the Chapterhouse, the main building in the middle of the village, a coat clutched tightly around her to ward off the chilly wind and the flecks of rain. She realized for the first time in her life she could see herself in the same place in two, five, twenty years, and the thought did not disturb her at all. She was, in a way she had never quite known before, actually quite content. And for the next four years, her life only got better.

That was, until Obradil came. He came by the same road Maz had, up from Pardom by the coast, and he came like so many seekers as one who was trying to start a new phase of their life, but who wasn’t really able to leave the old one behind. He’d been an archeologist and an artist formerly, well-regarded as the former and fairly successful as the latter. From Rafral, a handsome old city with stunning white-sand beaches, on the warm shallow seas of the Eballi coast. Maz barely noticed him at first.

There was a cycle to the visitors that Mountain Stream had, and it was the first thing Maz noticed when she came. There was always a steady trickle of new faces in the Chapterhouse. There were beds for visitors there, and everyone but the actual tourists, the ones who would hire a guide from Havrely or one of the other nearby towns and just fly over in an afternoon, would stay there first. Most left again, after a few days or a few weeks, and it was hard to remember their names after they were gone. Sometimes they had found what they were looking for, or, more usually, they just realized Mountain Stream was not for them.

The ones who stayed longer were easier to keep track of. There were many fewer of them. They tended to be the ones who understood that you did not leave your old life behind on a whim, and expect a new one to appear fully-formed around you. They were also the ones who had a little more compassion for themselves, and, as a result, more compassion for the people around them. But the real defining trait, the ones that separated those who stayed for a month from those who stayed for three, or even those who stayed for a year, was whether they could really leave who they had been behind. It was only partly an ego thing. It was also an adjustment thing. The social dynamics of a tiny, tight-knit community that was de facto cut off from the rest of the world were totally different from life in the big city, or even a decent-sized town. If you were too invested in one way of seeing yourself, you would soon find life among people who had never seen you that way, who never could, was intolerable. It didn’t matter how well suited you were for that life otherwise.

Obradil was, at first, just another face, the kind Maz didn’t expect to see in another week. He kept clean shaven, his hair very neat, dressed, despite the harsh northern weather, in light, old-fashioned clothes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a casual Rafral dinner party, which is to say he stuck out like a sore thumb anywhere east or north of there. And they were a long way east and north of Rafral. Maz was mildly surprised when she noticed he was still there three weeks later; that was when she learned his name. Somebody had given him an old coat, though, so at least he wouldn’t freeze to death. And he was helping around the Chapterhouse, cooking and cleaning, though still not doing any of the heavy outdoor labor. There was hope for him, Maz thought, until she realized that every time she walked by he was, directly or indirectly, talking about life in Rafral. Ah, she thought, one of those. He’ll find what he’s looking for, or he won’t, soon enough; then he’ll be gone.

But then, to her astonishment, he wasn’t. He lasted another month. Then another. Then Maz, despite knowing this was a stupid reaction, found herself getting kind of annoyed with him. Who was this guy?

So she resolved to do something about it. She found out from Yol, one of the permanent Chapterhouse residents, where Obradil was living--a cottage just by the Chapterhouse gate--and she went down there early one morning with a present, some fruit wine she’d made herself the previous summer. She was determined to figure out who this guy was.

If Obradil was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. He took the wine with a smile, and apparently sincere gratitude, and Maz introduced herself officially for the first time.

“Mazai na Sair,” she said, shaking his hand.

“Obradil of Rafral,” he replied.

“So I’ve heard.”

They chatted about the weather, about the goings on in different corners of the community, about Barro, the hermit who had passed away recently, and how Urzin, to everyone’s surprise, had taken up residence in his old cottage and now never took visitors anymore. Then Maz slowly steered the conversation, in what she hoped was a nonchalant fashion, toward Obradil and why, exactly, he was at Mountain Stream; and on hearing his reasons for coming, her heart sank.

It wasn’t that he was attached to his old life, although he was. It wasn’t that he didn’t seem to understand what Maz and the others were doing here. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. The thing that really worried her was that he had Ideas.

Four years ago, when Maz had just arrived in Mountain Stream, Obradil was on his second career as an artist, and making waves in the Rafral avant-garde scene. He had become interested in religion. Old religion, ancient religion: the millenarian movements of four centuries ago, and, in particular, the apocalyptic flavor of Nairanism that had erupted explosively in Eballo, before burning itself out inside a couple of generations. It had left few traces, besides some ardent reformist Nairans in places like Rafral, among whom Obradil’s great grandfather or something had been included. Apparently this whole idea started out as just an aesthetic thing for Obradil. A way to surprise his fellow artists, to use his knowledge of history to add the appearance of depth to his work--not how he would phrase it, maybe--but it had eventually become more than that. Obradil had delved deep into the history of Eballo, and he had come away thinking that the whole understanding of Eballi Nairanism was wrong. He wanted to get back to the roots of the thing. He wanted a place where he could study and contemplate and explore what he thought the original meaning of the movement was. For some godforsaken reason, he thought Mountain Stream was the place to do it.

Maybe, if she was being very patient, it wasn’t a totally crazy thought. Six generations ago, these hills had been home to a Nairan retreat. Four generations ago, it had declined, until it was abandoned; Mountain Stream had been a refounding of sorts, thirty years after the last of the original teaching lineage had left. Large stone ruins, some two hundred years old, were built into the hillside a couple of kilometers away. The Chapterhouse was an outbuilding, restored and expanded, of the old retreat, which was on top of a steep hill you could see from its gates. No one Maz knew had ever been up there. It was a difficult climb, and the path was long washed away.

Obradil, though, he wanted to go up there. More than that, he thought there was something there to discover, a truth that called to him. He thought there was something here to find, something that Mountain Stream itself was just a dilution of or distraction from, and he was the one to find it. And that worried the hell out of Maz. The last thing she needed was somebody who saw in this place something its residents, its community, did not want or see trying to impose their vision on the rest of them. That was a recipe for conflict, for upending the peaceful live-and-let-live attitude she and the others tried to live by, even if Obradil didn’t realize it. At least, she thought, his ideas were silly, and no direct harm could come from them. She went away disliking Obradil even more, and worried about him causing trouble, but figuring that, at worst, he would annoy them all for a while, then go away.

Obradil moved from the gatehouse to a cottage further down the road the week after. Maz was helping a friend of hers move in in his place, when she noticed the bottle of wine she’d given him collecting dust on a shelf. They drank it that night as a little housewarming celebration, so at least it didn’t go to waste. She heard from Yol a couple of months later that he had climbed up to the old retreat, and was living there now. He rarely came down, because the walk was so difficult, but he was trying to restore the path. Fine. Whatever.

Then she heard he had students. She saw Ezma talking to a couple of strangers on the road one day; by the time she caught up, they were walking on, but Ezma was still sitting on a stone, tying her shoes. “Visitors, or new arrivals?” Maz asked.

“New arrivals,” Ezma said.

“They realize the Chapterhouse is the other way, right?”

“They’re not going to the Chapterhouse,” Ezma said.

“Where are they going?”

“The hilltop. They’re looking for Obradil. They want him to teach them.”

Maz was shocked. “Teach them what?”

“I don’t know,” Ezma said. “I didn’t ask.”

* * *

They were the first, but they were not alone. More followed, in twos and threes, until Obradil had collected a couple of dozen up there on the hill. They were growing their own food and only occasionally coming down to visit the Chapterhouse, and Maz didn’t know whether they were even really a part of Mountain Stream anymore, or even if it mattered. There wasn’t a rule against this sort of thing, after all. Like Urzin had said. They didn’t do rules here. Maybe they should have, though; because life in the hills was starting to change, and Maz wasn’t the only one becoming uncomfortable.

Urzin had finally showed himself. Apparently some lost disciples of Obradil had wandered into his vegetable patch, and when he worked out who they were and why they were standing on his carrots, he sought out their teacher immediately to have words with him. What, exactly, those words consisted of, Maz didn’t know; but he came down from the hilltop in a foul mood. Maz went to his house the next day to check on him; but he didn’t answer when she knocked, and he figured one unwelcome intrusion was enough for the time being.

Maz did her best, but she found in the end, she couldn’t let it lie. She had to do something. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t try to, force Obradil out. But she had to see for herself what he was up to. So one morning, she packed a lunch of bread and cheese, filled a bottle with water, grabbed a sturdy walking-stick, and set off for Obradil’s hilltop.

It was a warm day, nice and clear, and the ground was dry. That was good; the new path Obradil’s students had made was still steep and difficult, and in wet weather it was probably nearly impossible to climb. As it was, Maz was sweating prodigiously, and her legs were on fire when she cleared the edge of the summit. What she found on top was a wide, scrub-filled expanse, with a few stubby trees here and there; and near the middle, a high old stone building, whose towers and upper floors had collapsed long ago. Wooden shutters covered some of the lower windows, and the mostly-intact ground floor looked inhabited. Old flagstones had been exposed where weeds had been pulled up, and some effort had been made to scrub off the accumulated dirt and moss.

She approached the largest, closest door, and rapped on it with her stick. There was no answer. She waited a couple of minutes, and tried again; still no answer. She pulled at it gently, and it swung open, so she went inside. It was cool in among the heavy stones, and the old passageways had been cleared out and thoroughly cleaned, but it was still all rather dark and spartan. The doors on either side of the hall led to little cells, which had been made into bedrooms of a sort; and as Maz walked, she heard voices. They were coming from the far end of the hall, from an open doorway that looked out onto a courtyard.

She stepped into the sunny courtyard, and when her eyes had adjusted, saw a semicircle of bright-eyed students, mostly fairly young, sitting around Obradil. He stood in front of a dry fountain, and talked excitedly. There was a small stack of books by his feet, and from time to time he would pick one up, and read something out from them. Maz watched, not wanting to interrupt, and trying to understand what was going on.

At first, Obradil seemed to be talking, of all things, about comparative religion. He talked about Landspell in passing, and some of the newer, reform-minded Nairan denominations. He digressed into a short description of the finer points of Bamarso eschatology, something involving liquid nitrogen being poured down the throats of sinners, but only if they truly believed they deserved it, before returning to something he was calling “the true heart of Naira.” But just when Maz thought he was about to describe what that was, he switched subjects completely. He started talking about tribalism, about ingroup-outgroup bias, about ritual as social glue. He plucked up a book and started reading from it. “The true function of all ritualism, even moral codes,” he said, “is to impose a cost on the practitioner. To impose a cost is to cut away all who refuse to pay it. The more onerous the cost, the more ardent the faith, one can be assured, of all who remain. The more isolated they will be if they do start to question the rites, and therefore the more cohesive the group will be: with the caveat that the smaller it will be. Therefore, all movements which seek to be ecumenical in character cannot afford to be exclusive; and all movements which hope to cultivate a strong core of ardent true believers will not, in the end, be ecumenical.”

Maz smirked; it wasn’t like a would-be cult leader to give the game away so easily. Surely that should be part of the secret teachings. But if that honest appraisal of organized religion put off any of Obradil’s students, they didn’t show it. They continued to listen raptly. And Obradil was off again now; now he was talking about botany of all things, and Maz was truly confused.

He stopped, it seemed rather abruptly, partway through a list of flowering native to Oddasa. His students stood one by one, and some wandered off to attend to other things, and some chatted with one another, and some began eating lunch there in the courtyard. Obradil came over to Maz, smiling.

“It’s good to have visitors,” he said. “Welcome. What did you think?”

“Of what?” Maz asked.

“Of my theory,” he said. “On the true heart of Naira.”

“I--I’m not sure I understood it,” Maz said.

Obradil frowned. “That’s what Urzin said. Perhaps the analogies I used were rather opaque. That’s a real risk, you know, of being secluded up here. We invent our own jargon, and before you know it, we might as well be speaking another language.”

Maz nodded. “Sure.”

“I’m glad you’re here, though. I wanted to run something by you. And show you something. Come, let me explain on the way.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Not far. Just under the hill. There’s tunnels below us, did you know that? I only found them when I came up here and started exploring the retreat. There’s something you should see there.”

“Uh, alright. Fine. Show me these tunnels.”

Obradil pointed to a doorway on the far side of the courtyard, and Maz followed him. They crossed through another passageway, coming out behind the main building and onto another newly-cut path that bent away to the left as it approached the hillside, and vanished behind a clump of bushes.

“What did you want to ask me?” Maz asked.

“I wanted to know how you and the others would feel if I brought more people here. Just to the hilltop.”

“Funny you should bring that up,” Maz said. “I wanted to talk to you about that. I think Urzin is really upset with you. And he’s not the only one.”

“Yes, Urzin came to see me. I tried to explain, but I think there was a miscommunication. He thought I was mocking him, all of you. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think Mountain Stream is a very special place. I just think it can be more.”

“It’s fine as it is,” Maz said. “We like it as it is.”

“Maybe that’s not what the world needs, though.”

“I’m not here because of what the world needs.”

“Sure. I get that. But… oh, Maz! It’s so hard to explain. I wish you had understood my lecture better.”

“Well, I’m listening. Try me.”

“Maybe it’s not something that can be explained only with words. Maybe it has to be shown as well. You know, when these people come to me, when they seek me out, they don’t understand at first, either. They have to spend time with us, participate in the rituals we share, hear the metaphors again and again, before they understand. Sometimes understanding comes on you sideways.”

“Is that what you’re cultivating? A group of true believers?”

“What, like a cult? No. Goodness, no. This is science, Maz. Science, psychology, pure practical stuff. I want to show the whole world how it can work better. How it can be better. How to make everybody as happy as possible.”

“And what does that look like, exactly?”

“I’m not sure how to say it. When I tried to explain it to Urzin, he was furious.”

“Try.”

“Well, for one,” Obradil said a little sheepishly, “for one, I think you have to be baseline. I think everybody has to be baseline.”

Maz stopped walking. “Say that again?”

Obradil sighed. “Look, I know. I sound like some big-city Naturalist, like a villain in an old movie.”

“Wars have been fought over that kind of thing, Obradil. Hundreds of thousands of people have died over that kind of thing.”

“And I don’t want that! I really don’t. But it’s like I was trying to explain, with the native flora of Oddasa--”

Maz interrupted. “Oddasa doesn’t have any native flora.”

“Pardon?”

“Oddasa doesn’t have any native flora. This planet was terraformed four hundred years ago. Every plant species on it is from a planet dozens of light years away, or was genegineered within the last two centuries. Or it’s a hybrid of the two. Nothing evolved here.”

Obradil shook his head. “That’s not true.”

“What do you mean, that’s not true? It’s a matter of historical record. Human beings are not native to Eku, nor are any of the plants and animals we share genes with.”

“You don’t understand yet, and that’s fine. There are other things in Oddasa, Maz. Things which look like plants and animals and even people, but which are not. Which have been here since the beginning.”

“Obradil, I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. That’s insane.”

“I know it’s a strange idea, but I want to show you how I know this.”

The path descended as it turned, and they came, just a little below the lip of the hill, to a small stone doorway set into the ground. Inside, there was a passage of closely-set unmortared stones. Someone had strung electric lights through it. It slanted downward as they walked, and here and there side passages split off, but they continued in a straight line.

“Don’t worry,” Obradil said. “These structures are old, but safe. We’ve been down here dozens of times in the last few weeks.”

Finally, after several minutes of walking, the passage widened; heavy stone pillars supported a high ceiling, and here the walls were the solid rock of the land underneath the hilltop. Maz realized they had been carved and smoothed into intricate, serpentine designs; and between the designs were written words. Very old words, words she could not read.

“Do you recognize the language?”

“No,” Maz said. “You can read it?”

“It’s almost unknown on Eku,” Obradil said. “Greek. The language of the first settlers. Mixed in with some English and Arabic here and there.”

“How old are these inscriptions?”

“About three hundred years, I think,” Obradil said. “I can’t be sure without conducting a more extensive study. That’s why I want to bring more people in. Archeologists. Scientists. Maybe even conduct some excavations.”

“Obradil… I don’t know. This is… interesting, sure. But we’re a quiet community. There are old ruins all over Oddasa, and far more down south. Why do these ruins need to be excavated now?”

“Because of what these inscriptions say.” Obradil was grinning wide now, and there was something a little unearthly about his face in the sterile electric light. “They speak of the true heart of Naira. They speak of things older than us, of things that look like us but are not us. They speak secrets of the universe, Maz, and we can uncover them, and show them to everyone. And then everyone will be happy and free.”

“And what’s this?”

Maz pointed to something else, sitting near the middle of the room. It was a heavy piece of metal, whose outside looked like it had been elegantly shaped by a careful sculptor, who then tried to destroy it with a bomb. It was black and half-melted on one side, but it was not broken. Someone had set up some kind of interface with it; a small handheld terminal sat on a stone beside it.

“Ah,” said Obradil. “That’s just something I brought with me when I came. I found it a few years ago, in Eballo. There was a meteorite near my home, or what looked like one--a bright light in the middle of the night, and a sound like a thunderclap. I found this in the crater.”

“It looks artificial. Not like a meteorite at all.”

“I think it is,” Obradil said. “And I think it’s connected to these inscriptions.”

“You think whoever made these inscriptions left it in orbit or something?”

“I’m not sure the connection is that straightforward. But I think it can help you understand. Here.” He led Maz over to the object, and held her hand near it.

“It’s warm,” she said.

“It always has been.”

“Obradil, this is all very strange. I think if you want to bring a bunch of people here, you should come down to the Chapterhouse. We can call people in to talk about it. Have a meeting or something. You can apologize to Urzin for whatever your misunderstanding with him was about. Maybe we can figure out a way for you to have your excavation that won’t disrupt everyone else’s lives too much. And you can find someone to analyze whatever this is.”

“Yes,” Obradil said. “That all sounds quite reasonable. Do me one favor, quickly. An experiment, if you like. Perform one ritual with me.”

“A ritual?”

“Yes. A simple one. I’m going to read a phrase off the wall. Touch the surface, there, when I do.”

“Obradil, I don’t want to--”

Before Maz could finish her sentence, Obradil blurted out something she didn’t understand. Greek, probably. She was about to turn, and walk out of the tunnels; but then he grabbed her hand again, and pressed it to the warm, smooth surface of the object on the floor. For a moment, the sharp venom of anger rose in her, and she felt herself about to yell something at him--then it was gone.For the second time in her life, Maz had a moment of spiritual revelation. Suddenly everything Obradil had told her made sense, and she understood that, together, they were going to change the world.

#tanadrin's fiction

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thesteadydietofeverything · 6 years

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Video Game Year in Review: The Top 10

As with any year-end list, this one probably isn’t complete. Last year, I fell in love with Nioh over winter break after I had already made my top 10, and just a few days ago, I started playing Hollow Knight. As I made clear in my previous lists, Metroidvanias can be hit or miss for me. I can get fed up with wandering around without a clear destination, and Hollow Knight has a bit of that so far, but it also has one of the most atmospherically welcoming settings for a video game in recent memory, and so far I’ve been pretty damn enraptured by it. I’m not too worried about it making the list at this point; it didn’t even technically come out this year anyway, but its Switch release earlier this year gave it somewhat of a second debut, for all the earned attention it finally got. At least I got a little shout-out here before publishing.

Anyway, here’s ten games I loved the shit out of in 2018. This was one year with a handful of games that I absolutely adored, none of which necessarily immediately jumped out to me as hands down the best one of the bunch, and honestly, that’s the way I’d prefer it, but it did make ranking them a bit tough. Really, from number five onward, the ranking gets pretty interchangeable. I didn’t plan on the game in my number one spot being the one that it is until I actually wrote out my feelings for it and decided that out of all them it was the easiest for me to just gush about. Alright, no further ado:

10. Donut County - Overall, it’s probably a good thing that Donut County isn’t longer than it is, but for as mechanically simple as sucking objects into an ever-expanding void is, it’s something that I felt I would’ve been perfectly entertained doing for a lot longer than the game lasted. Donut County has a wildly inspired and novel central gameplay hook, a relatably goofy sense of humor that might border on obnoxious if it weren’t so sincerely delivered, and an anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist message that mostly works without beating you over the head too hard with it. Ben Esposito and his team have created one of the most charming and original games I’ve played in years here.

9. Paratopic - “Cinematic” is a grossly overused and frequently inappropriate word to use in games criticism, but this game often had me coming back to the word, observing how many ways it feels like it authentically takes inspiration from creative methods seen more often in film, particularly art films, than in games, much more so than say, Red Dead Redemption 2, which typically embarrassingly pales in comparison to any movies it’s obviously aping from. There’s its willingness to not explain to you what’s going on, letting you pick up on clues from scenery and incidental dialogue. Its multiple switching perspectives, laced together to draw meaningful narrative connections. Its tendency to sit in the atmosphere of a scene. Its ability to tell a succinct story intended to be experienced in one sitting. And most of all, those jump cuts. I know Paratopic isn’t the first game to employ this technique, but as far as I can remember, it’s the first that I’ve played to utilize them for purposeful artistic effect, and every time it happened, it was oddly thrilling. I loved when I’d switch from walking to suddenly driving, and had a moment of panic, as if I suddenly just woke up at the wheel. The cliffhangers scenes would occasionally end on made me desperate to get back to that thread. Hell, even just the fact that there clearly were scenes, that lasted a few minutes at a time, then moved on to the next one, felt weirdly refreshing at a time when AAA design is becoming so absurdly bloated. Paratopic excited me, not in its desire to emulate a separate art medium, but in its casual realization of how many underutilized narrative techniques work genuinely effectively in this medium.

8. Dusk - I really can’t imagine a game that more perfectly matches my Platonic ideal of “video game comfort food” than Dusk, aside from, maybe, the game in the number one spot of this list. I was raised on 90’s PC FPS games like Doom and, as is much more relevant to this game, Quake. Yeah, for the most part, it’s nice that games have moved on, both in depth of gameplay and artistry, but goddamn does a back-to-basics twitchy shooter with inspired level design and creepy atmosphere just feel good sometimes. The grainy, chunky polygons of this game encapsulate everything I love about the rudimentary but remarkably evocative minimalism of early 3D graphics. The movement feels absurdly fast by modern standards, and the effect is thrilling - every projectile is dodgeable, as long as your reflexes are sharp enough. Undoubtedly the most impressive thing about this game is its ambitious level design, so much of which rivals even John Romero’s. The longer this game goes on, the more sprawling and labyrinthine it becomes. The map shapes become increasingly wacky. The gothic architecture becomes more foreboding and awe-inspiring. Dusk does a lot with a little, and in the process, makes so much more than a tribute to game design and aesthetics of the past - for me, it stands right alongside its obvious inspirations as one of the very best of its ilk.

7. Into the Breach - An absolute masterclass of game design. Into the Breach leaves nothing about its mechanics obscured, making sure you understand how every move is going to go down just as well as it does, and the fact that the result is still compellingly challenging is a sure sign we’re in the hands of remarkably skilled and intelligent developers. The narrative in this game is sparse - you assume the role of time-looping soldiers attempting over and over again to save your world from alien invasion (think Edge of Tomorrow), and that’s pretty much all you get for the plot, aside from some effective but minimal character beats and dialogue one-liners. And yet, every battlefield, a small grid with its own arrangement of sprites (giant creepy-crawlies, various creative mech classes, structures full of terrified denizens given a modicum of hope at the arrival of their ragged potential saviors) offers a playground for drama to unfold, as gripping and epic as any great mecha anime battle. As I mentioned in my previous list with Dead Cells, I have trouble sticking with run-based games, and this game wasn’t quite an exception - honestly, if it had something resembling a more traditional narrative campaign, I could see it potentially filling my number one spot. But that a game of its style nevertheless stuck with me as well as it did proves what a tremendous achievement I found it to be.

6. Astro Bot Rescue Mission - This was both the first game I’ve played fully in VR and the first game I’ve ever platinumed. I guess that might say something about how thoroughly I fell for it. For some reason, one of the questions that my brain kept posing while playing this game is, “would you like this game as much if it weren’t in VR?” I would like to pose that first off, if this wasn’t a VR game, it would be quite a different game, but yes, probably a perfectly delightful 3D platformer in its own right. But most of all, this game helped me realize what a bullshit question that is in the first place. By virtue of its VR nature, this game is just fundamentally different, just as the jump from 2D to 3D resulted in games that were just fundamentally different. The perspective you’re given watching over your little robot playable character allows to look in 360 degrees, and often you need to, if you’re seeking out every level’s secrets, and yet, while it moves forward, it doesn’t follow you vertically, so sometimes you’re looking up or down as well. It’s difficult to describe exactly how this perspective is so much more than a gimmick or something, outside of the cliched exaggeration of “it feels like you’re really there, man,” but honestly, this statement isn’t wrong. I truly did feel immersed in these levels in a way that I wouldn’t have if this weren’t a VR game, and while it’s not exactly a feeling I now desire from every game, it does stand out as one of the singular gaming experiences I had in 2018 as a result.

5. Thonebreaker: The Witcher Tales - I gushed plenty about this game in my review. How its approach to Gwent-based combat is both welcoming to newcomers and remarkably varied, offering new ways to approach and think about the game with nearly every encounter. How its sizable story is filled with fascinating characters and genuinely distressing choices, forcing you to grapple with the inherent injustices of your position. How its vivid art style and wonderfully moody Marcin Przybyłowicz score sell The Witcher feel of this game, despite how differently it plays from the mainline entries of the game. And maybe most of all, how criminally overlooked this game has been. So I’ll make the same claim I did before - if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt did something for you, it’s likely this game will too. Don’t worry about the card game - I did too, and trust me, it’s fun. It’s the new Witcher game; that really ought to be all you need to know.

4. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life - There’s...a lot about the Yakuza games that I’ve come to adore, but one of the biggest ones that kept sticking out to me while playing The Song of Life is how they build a sense of place. After playing Yakuza 0, set in 1988, and Yakuza Kiwami, set in 2005, I played this one, set in 2016. Each time, same Kiryu, but older, same Kamurocho, but era appropriate. Setting every Yakuza game in the same map has to be one of the quietly boldest experiments in video games, forgoing fresh new vistas to explore in favor of the same familiar boulevards, alleys, and parks of the iconic red-light district, painting an exquisitely detailed and loving portrait of a neighborhood changing with the decades. While Kiryu’s exasperation at once again walking into the all-too-familiar crowded streets of Kamurocho, brighter and louder than ever, hardly matched my eagerness to see how it had changed, it felt appropriate. Though he’s still the hottest dad (grandpa?) in town, he is kinda old now, and he’s certainly earned the right to just be over it a little. Even the silliest of the era-relevant sub stories (one of which delightfully features Kiryu putting a selfie-stick wielding, obnoxious-stunt pulling, wanna-be influencer shithead in his place) serve to underscore how out of place he now is in his old stomping grounds.

By contrast, the other setting of Yakuza 6, the quaint seaside town of Onomichi, very quickly begins to feel like an idyllic retirement destination. The introduction to this part of the game has to be my favorite video game moment of 2018 - Kiryu trying to calm a hungry baby, while walking the deserted streets after dark in search of one store that still happens to be open. The faint sound of ocean in the distance effectively evokes the freshness, the bitterness, of the air. The emptiness and darkness of the space is almost shocking, compared to the sensory overload of Kamurocho. And there’s Haruto. Kiryu took Haruka in when she was 9, so he’s never had to deal with a baby before. He’s out of his element, but hardly unwilling. The help he gets from Kiyomi and his other new friends is the kind of comfort Kiryu needs at this point in his life. Likewise, the events in Onomichi play out like a retirement fantasy - building an amateur baseball team out of local talent, building relationships with the denizens of a bar in an incredible Japanese version of Cheers, hanging out with the town’s Yakuza, who are so small potatoes they seem to barely fit the definitions of organized or crime. It all works beautifully as a touching send-off to my favorite video game character.

3. Tetris Effect - There was a long time where I was contemplating putting this as my number one game. I went through some strange conflicts in the consideration - next to all these original, thoughtful games, am I really going to say that fucking Tetris is best one of them? Is that even fair? Is this game really anything more than just regular-ass Tetris but with some pretty lights and sounds and a 90’s rave kinda vibe? The answer to all of these, is, of course, yes, but also no. I’d defend my choice any day, though. This is the first game to actually get me into Tetris. I always appreciated it; it’s a classic, but it was never a game I had actually put much time or thought into before. This game not only sold me on Tetris, but got me obsessed with it, to the point where the name feels remarkably appropriate: ever since I began playing, I’ve been seeing tetriminos falling - in my sleep, in daydreams, any time I see any type of blocky shape in real life I’m fitting them together in my mind. The idea that all Tetris pieces, despite their differences, need each other and complement each other and can all fit together in perfect harmony, and that this is a metaphor for humanity, has to be some of the cheesiest bullshit I’ve ever heard, and yet, the game fully sold me on it from the first damn level. It’s all connected. We’re all together in this life. Don’t you forget it.

2. Celeste - This is a damn near perfect game, both as refreshing and demanding as a climb up a beautiful but treacherous mountain ought to be. I died many, many times (2424, to be exact), but the game explicitly encouraged me to be proud of that, acting as a friendly little cheerleader in between deaths, assuring me that I could do it. It’s both a welcome break from the smug, sneering attitude so many “difficult” games tend to traffic in, and absolutely central to its themes involving mental health. As the shockingly good plot starts making it increasingly clear that it’s about Madeline’s quest to conquer (or, at least, understand) her inner demons, the gameplay itself offers a simple but effective metaphor for struggling with mental illness - yes, it’s hard, and yes, you’re going to suffer and struggle, but you can make it, and you will make it, because you’re so much better than you think you are. Oh, and also, it’s not all bad, because at least you get to listen to some absolutely rippin’ tunes while you do it.

1. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - (Another one I reviewed!) This is my ideal JRPG. In my mind it stands next to childhood treasures like Final Fantasy IX. Unlike some recent Square projects that specifically try to clone their late 90’s output, this game hardly feels beholden to the game design of the past, and yet, feels of a piece with that era in a respectably non-cloying way. It has a bright, colorful, inviting world full of charming characters, an all-time great soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, and an exciting, deep combat system with an emphasis on action. Building my kingdom of Evermore was remarkably satisfying, down to all the little dumb tasks my citizens would ask of me, none of which my very good boy King Evan was too busy or too proud to refuse. There’s very little grinding. It’s a long game by most standards, but at 40-something hours, it feels lean by JRPG standards. And for as much of a storybook fantasy as the plot is, as much as it reduces woefully complicated socio-political issues into neat, resolvable tasks for Evan to solve, it always came across as perfectly genuine, and sometimes surprisingly affecting. It’s the game that I’ve wanted to play since the PS1 Final Fantasy games stole my heart as a kid. That’s hardly what I expected it to be as I started into it, and what a joy it was to discover that it was.

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falconsandfishes · 6 years

Text

platonic relationship

i have a bone to pick with plato. see the socratic method is basically the scene in montynpython in which a woman is weighed against a peice of wood to determine if she is a witch. and this is pretty much also the measurement system women use for me judge a cardio junkie by his ability to withstand smoke fumes. ive been up all night listening to eminem because i wish that i had the mysogny that he had because logically i should be mad at these females who lie to me but apparently developmentally theyre limited.

so pretty much i just want my neck not to hurt and my side and platonic love isn really the kind which could support my lumbar spine but if you think im angry you are right and maybe if i rhyme my brain will work this time and ill finally be able to explain was never targeted at my objects of affections at all i like to walk around the mall see a cutie with a skirt on and she sees me looking at her tells her grandmother to leave her there because this place looks fun as she smiles at me there comes abu my friend who judges me and judges you and as i stare at her i can tell she wants me too probably more emotionally mature than my mom and a virgin with her skirt on and its workun but i have the confidence of a plastic bag floating in the wind shes cheesing while i hide behind her even though shes 4 11 and im 6 4 and because he was there i didnt pass because i dont cross paths but even thinking about having a girlfriend makes him mad. if shes too young for me i would have figured that out but it doesnt help that no matter how young or how old even the weather lady im told shes not right for me so will you make up your mind please can someone define maturity because apparently there is a reverse correlation between it and age and socrates was no sage im not really impressed that he drank poison similarly i smoke weed which takes me back to age three and birthday parties then i think about how much my life failed but only because everyone always stood in front of me. so snitch on me when i talk to you when youre in front of me at your desk and say your story about butterflies is the best begging middle and end. meawhile i havent even gotten to the first page of my legend of the sword it had a much more compliated plot which was cut off. then tell me i didnt count to tenthousand while you were listening to the teacher say the is spelled t h e and put me in a remedial reading class with a bunch of girls and address us as the girls so we can read books about a mouse who lives with his family in a house but if girls and boys are the same how can you explain i was the only one in that group to be bumped up to the advanced on by 2nd grade. i guess reading the encylopedia of animals wasnt a wase memorized their latin names bufo sativa phylobates. so by third grade i was getting so good at math that they took me out of class and had me testing material meant for 5th graders and it was really lame how can i explain all the flaws in the system to all the other people who were also ruined by it.

finally one girl who was definitely old enough for me waved at me when i looked at her and i got a boner and walked over to the ladies at the tea shop who looked at me with a disgusted look on their faces then some gangster looking dude older than i am replaces me with his hand on her shoulder.

before i was 18 i could beat up my dad and ever since then i knew not many people in my generation had much of a chance against me but i looked so thin they were not understanding. high iq causing depression have anothe smoke session even though you have athsma everyone remember to complain that i prefer to get high off one big hit i stayed in high school till i graduated but i left.

unfortunately with brain damage i could still make straight as which made me think i was ok gpa jumping above 3.68 when i only show up an agerage of 3 days.

practice your sky hook do your pushups get embaressed when an asian princess sees you do them 20 hanlaps perfect form and im not even a jock wow id better stop. next thing the girl i like is sitting on my lap in class telling me she likes me back shes sitting on my desk shes rubbing my face my life isnt gay justnsaynsomehing and youll get laid.

nah ill let some kid with adhd steal her seat and ill help him with math instead because i didnt tell her this but im alread braindead. my soul probably died with my pet lizard or my kitten perhaps it was internet addiction.

what makes you think youll be make it as a porn star? you know im hot. well maybe i just didnt want you to act like a slut. i still remember the blonde who waves at me and smiled my freshman year it was clear that the world was my oyster the only problem was i couldn make my own choices.

i wanted to be an actor but i was so good at acting nobody got it. was so good at debating everyone liked to argue. was so succinct couldnt get the last word. so fast nobody would pass me the ball so dominant in wrestling i had to pretend i couldnt win just to have a friend.

pretty much i feel like the last cro magonon stuck on an island without charlotte saisselin bounce baby bounce three story house you look so cute in a blouse. hey look theres charlottes stalker i think il wave my arms around.

bounce baby is a reference to eigth grade i was watching a 100 meter race and then some black guy said that she never raced again. weed turned her from a goth into a wigger and after that i figured id become one too but it wasnt till 2009 i started to dress like you. what happened was i got some clothes from olympia sports to wear as warmups on the basketball court and to work as a salesman i shaved my head smiled knowing i was dead but still i couldnt even say i wanted to kiss girl without that not being cool enough for my nephew and her bowl broke too

it fell from her car on the pavement and she said that he didnt even get to hit it.

so now im living in my dads room on the floor and finally my back isnt sore i have a well paying job im away from mom i have iron lungs and dad still doesnt approve because now i play too much basketball.

hi im interested in going to california. i meant connecticut but califonia will do since its warm there. sure steve come on out west but read the fine print your 20s are dead.

prove you wrong shame on me. dont prove you wrong brag proudly. stay out west and let your dad die. watch him act like an asshole at home back east one more time. your reward for having surived on the street for years as a middle clas kid

your friend says he thought you were dead. by the way he has this girlfriend in connectiut. oh you were the one who set him up with her? theres a whole website or three centered around her?

better get you to spend your money on heroin and make you seem like a jerk in front of my dad. my excuse is im skitzophrenic.

all because my dad shamed me for growing up even crazier than him. thats why i called up my friend and asked him to date my girlfriend.

there must have been something in those amphetamines which made me keep stopping at her house. i found them up on the shelf years after i tried to spill them out.

it was the first time an adult had ever called me immature. he also said my handwriting was bad and i needed a cure. talking to him i began to get red where even to begin? i have a lot of prblems at home and this isnt fair. see my dad camps in the yard and gets drunk watches us through windows andmy sister punches me in the head. mom pretty much works till shes in bed.

every day she watches the same soap opera and oprah which i record for her on tape. my sisters friends call me gay so i go over and play with the kids from the other neighorhood all day.

one of them listens to a lot of eminem. his favorite song is if you dont like it you can suck my dick. hes in reform school and proud to be off his meds. when i talk about biking down a steep hill and blending into traffic he thinks i meannliterall blend in.

two gay twin brothers end of the road honor roll kids. play baseball and have alcoholic parents. hey ill tell the girl steve likes he likes her then she will never talk to him again. accept his chalenge to a fight and he will bang my head into a tree which is the same thing i did to another kid who tried to jump me but got sperated from his friends.

refuse to dance with the only girl in middle school who has hips. make fun of the girls intelligence who sits next to you in math and has giant tits. refuse to eat candy off the first girls tounge then your science teacher who pushed pills on you flips on the tv its 911

stare at a girl all day and say you dont like her. girls think youre gay if you have a boner. telll me a calculator doesnt mattrer for a test but i do worse without one. make a flag pencil it isnt cool enough for the other kids.

sit with the retarded kids timmy and jimmy. watch nick all night fresh prince and bill cosby.

your sister wont stop torturing you so hold her at knife point. buy knives at school try to resell them and for the first time ever the kids you sold them to ge caught witth knives.

stay in the program with three teachers who gave up on you. one leaves to become a dean suddenly your grades go up. kids are jealous because you dont do homework. girls smile at you knowing that your test scores are high despite that.

throw shotput as far as a high school kid without any exercise or practice. run around the track dozens of times in pants you still arent good enough yet.

go to an alternative program reluctantly in high school its sort of like jail. everyone smells like cigarettes the air is stale. this isnt good for you but we will make you think if you leave you will fail.

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xylianna · 7 years

Text

In which Prompto gets sick, and Ignis gets kissed

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12937311

Gladnis Week Day 3: Gladio & Ignis get tricked by Prompto and Noct into going on a date

Ignis Scientia caught his reflection in the glass of the doors as he entered the restaurant and almost smirked. He managed to halt the expression when it most resembled a polite smile. He saw his hair had come through the walk perfectly in place. The cool air of the night had tinged his cheeks and nose-tip pink. He was grateful for the black wool coat which served to both keep him warm and protect his immaculate three piece suit from the elements.

He looked good, he knew it, and he was in far too good a mood to deny the subtle boost being reminded of the fact gave his ego.

Noct had been surprisingly cooperative that day throughout their lessons, paid remarkable attention during the Council meeting, and had set to his homework with alacrity when they arrived at his apartment. Ignis didn’t have to wonder what prompted the uncharacteristic behavior for long, however.

“Please, Specs?” the Prince had wheedled, giving his advisor a pleading look, his blue eyes luminous with hope. “Can we just go do pizza tonight? At the place with the arcade? I mean, it’s Friday, and we can invite Gladio, so we’ll have security, and… please?” Noctis babbled in a torrent.

Most unusual. But, the Prince was under a lot of pressure… and surely it would do him good to blow off steam with his friend.

“Let me see if Gladiolus is available,” Ignis had said, pulling out his phone. A quick exchange of texts proved that the Shield was amenable to Noct’s notion.

So now Ignis found himself at a loud pizza parlor, raucous noise and riotous lights flooding out from the arcade room. His good spirits couldn’t be dampened by all the clamor, no. It was far too good of a day. He hoped (probably in vain) that things would continue along this path for a while, that Noct stayed so focused and dedicated, and…

Well. Perhaps best not to get his hopes up too high.

Spotting Gladio, he waved to get the man’s attention. “Good evening, Gladiolus.”

“Hey, Iggy,” said Gladio with an easy grin. “Where’s Princess?”

Ignis sighed. “He insisted on picking up Prompto. I would think the driver should be dropping them both off any time now.”

“Cool.” Gladio glanced around, maintaining a constant awareness of his environment and assessing all potential threats. It wouldn’t do to let his guard down, even at the local pizza joint. “I already grabbed a table, if you want to go sit. I’ll go wait for ‘em by the door.”

Ignis nodded, and seated himself at the indicated table. Never one to spend a moment idle when he could work on his never ending to-do list, he pulled out his phone and began checking his email. A text came through after a few minutes, however, that had his eyebrows raising well above the upper edge of his glasses.

Noctis: Hey Specs, Prompto’s not feeling well, we’re just gonna stay at my place and play King’s Knight. Sorry for the short notice. You should still get some food though. Say hi to Gladio for us.

With an irritated sigh, Ignis sent off a succinct reply, expressing his hopes that Noct’s friend felt better soon, and a reminder to the Prince that they would meet the next morning to review the day’s agenda over breakfast. He looked to see if he could catch sight of Gladio from there, but the place was too crowded. Since he still had his phone out, he shot a quick message to the Shield, advising him as to the change of plans.

A couple minutes later, Gladio approached the table balancing a heaping platter of pizza, a bowl of salad, and some serving plates, forks, and napkins. After dumping it all unceremoniously on the table, he dropped into the seat across from Ignis. “So, you get the night off babysitting,” he grinned as he loaded his plate with a couple large slices of pepperoni pizza. “Whatcha gonna do with all the free time?”

Ignis sighed, and served himself up a bowl of salad, choosing to let the pizza cool off a bit before digging in. Not everyone could have the apparently heat-resistant mouth of Gladiolus Amicitia.

The Royal Strategist felt himself flush, and quickly shifted his line of sight from the uncomfortably tantalizing view of Gladio’s face - and that mouth - down to his bowl of salad.

He belated realized the other man had asked him a question. Cheeks dusted with a light blush at the oversight, he replied, “Prepare for tomorrow, I imagine.” He adjusted his glasses and adopted a put-upon expression. “You can’t imagine how far behind this dinner will set me. It’s almost a relief poor Prompto wasn’t feeling up to the outing. Now I’ll get home sooner, and can get a head start on tomorrow morning’s work.”

Gladio snorted indelicately. “Oh yeah, I bet Prom's reeeaaal sick, Iggy.”

Ignis blinked. “Noctis said as much in his text message, yes.”

The Shield shook his head slowly, an expression of incredulous disbelief painted across his sun-bronzed features. “Dude.”

“What?”

“Dude!”

“What?!”

Gladio laughed, the sound filled with enough infectious good-humor that Ignis almost found himself joining in, even without knowing what prompted it.

Almost.

“Are you going to explain yourself?” Ignis asked, voice a bit testy, sitting up more precisely and folding his hands on the table in front of him, food forgotten for now.

Gladio’s expression shifted into a warm, but rueful, smile. “Dude,” he repeated one last time, for posterity’s sake. “They’re setting us up.”

Ignis frowned, lines marring the porcelain skin of his brow. “For what?”

His compatriot’s response was to just stare at him.

“What now?” Ignis asked, feeling his cheeks heat again.

“Iggy,” Gladio started to speak slowly, enunciating very clearly, his amber eyes earnest. “Setting us up. With each other.” He gestured around at the restaurant, the food on the table. “They sent us on a date.”

Now Ignis found himself rendered speechless. He removed his glasses and began to clean the lenses, a gesture which usually calmed him and gave him a moment to sort out his thoughts. But, all to soon, the glasses were pristine, and his brain was still spinning in a bewildered tumble.

He had certainly noticed how attractive Gladio was. Who wouldn’t? The man was practically a work of art. And as they’d grown closer, their orbits around the Prince inexorably drawing them together, he had discovered hidden depths in the Amicitia heir. While much of his time was obviously devoted to developing and perfecting his fighting skills, the Shield was also a voracious reader, enjoyed touring art galleries, and spent as much time as he could with his little sister, Iris.

Gladio was, in a word, amazing.

So, obviously, Ignis had never truly considered trying to pursue anything with the man beyond the friendship that had spawned from their professional rapport, because what could a man like Gladiolus Amicitia, with his pick almost every single woman and man in Insomnia, want with him?

Ignis was highly aware of his skills. He didn’t consider that being overly prideful, he considered it being honest. He had trained for years to get to this point, after all. He was used to the feeling that came from walking into nearly any room and immediately knowing you’re the smartest person within.

It was a lonely feeling.

He was also painfully aware of his many shortcomings. He was a workaholic, he had a woefully inadequate set of social skills outside of formal occasions (as tonight was demonstrating in lurid detail), and his few hobbies were strictly solitary activities. Ignis couldn't even remember the last time he'd gone out on a date.

“Iggy,” Gladio spoke up again, cutting off his ruminations. “Dude, say something.”

Ignis looked up and met Gladio’s eyes, wearing a carefully sculpted, emotionless, professionally polite mask. “That seems quite silly, Gladiolus. Perhaps this is a youthful prank on their part. Noct knows that I hardly consider this food,” he said, gesturing at his as of yet untouched pizza. “Or perhaps Prompto is truly ill, and you’re jumping to conclusions."

“Iggy.”

“What?” If Ignis’s voice was a bit strained, he would chalk it up to the noise of the place giving him a headache.

Gladio sighed, shook his head, leaned forward, and kissed him.

Ignis was almost too startled to kiss him back.

Almost.

#gladnis #gladnisweek

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oh-my-otome · 8 years

Text

Ieyasu prompt: two

‘She is relentless, this one,’ he said nothing, nor did the look on his face betray anything, as he coolly stared back at her, sitting perfectly neat and straight before him.

He couldn’t properly categorize the look in her eyes, somewhere between foolhardy honesty and a sudden realization for the need of restraint. As if she would have continued to prattle on with her nonsense about wanting him to live, but thought better of it in the end.

She said nothing more, and he found his own tongue stilled, his mind racing.

He expected her to be gone by now. Have a little fun teasing her and, by making no changes to his demeanor, get a few chuckles out of the Lord of Fools “gift.” Surely, she would run screaming from his castle in no time. She wouldn’t be the first hired help to throw in the towel.

There was no way to refuse a gift from Oda at this point. Not with Takeda brazenly sauntering his army along the borders. He would need Nobunaga before Nobunaga would need him, and any little slight might be the last straw.

But, if she quit on her own! Why, then he could hardly be blamed! That was...what he expected.

However, she continued to sit there, obediently staring back at him, waiting for him to speak at any moment. Ieyasu’s mind, once whirling, was rapidly dwindling down to only a handful of thoughts, each repeating endlessly.

And all because she had the gall to say the very last thing he ever thought she would.

He could feel his breath puff against the back of his teeth, and realized that his mouth was slightly agape. He wondered if he had been sitting with it like that this whole time. He wasn’t sure how to respond to someone like this-- always doing or saying something the complete opposite of his expectations.

“You’re quite the honey-tongued little people-pleaser, aren’t you?” he spat at her, and she flinched from his first word to his last. The hurt was clear on her face and he thought, if for just a moment, that she might have genuinely meant what she had said. He was used to people trying to charm their way into his graces, but genuine amity was hard to come by, as far as he was concerned.

Something about her expression made his heart pinch uncomfortably, but with practiced ease, he shoved the feeling aside. And yet...

‘Wait!’

Seemingly at the same time, he could hear a voice, so much like his own, but so much quieter than the other indignant assessments his mind offered up to explain away her reasoning.

She placed a hand on the floor and leaned forward, to get up, he supposed, and at once his thoughts were seized again by that quiet, pleading voice.

‘Don’t go!’

He was aware that he was glaring at her, in stark contrast to what he was thinking, a picture of warring emotions, glad that she was none the wiser.

“I’m no such thing. I don’t waste my time with flattery.”

She didn’t yell it, but she didn’t need to. In fact, not raising her voice made her statement all the more succinct and Ieyasu drew up short once again. Although there was no malice in how she said it, each syllable was dripping with sharp disappointment that he would even insinuate that she was telling anything but the truth to begin with.

She hadn’t gotten up before, but this time she pressed more of her weight into the hand that rested on the floor, and smoothly slid her other hand forward, looking very much like she would definitely leave the room for good now.

‘Fix it!’

“Don’t look at me. Caustic little wretch.”

‘Fuck!’

He didn’t know what to say to keep her from going, but even he didn’t expect that to come flying out of his mouth. In his haste to keep her from storming out, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he could have just calmly ordered her to stay.

Returning her hands to her lap, she leveled him with a gaze of polite contempt. Silent, but still bristling, he surmised, from his earlier slight.

There was value in this woman, even he had to admit it. She took everything he threw at her, and grit her teeth against it all.

Her reaction to his endless stream of mind games endeared her to him, and for a little while, it was fun to toy with her. To confess to her, right to her face, knowing full well that she would be confused and perplexed by it. Maybe even laugh it off, knowing his reputation as a trickster.

Calling her food disgusting and tasteless, for the pure joy of seeing her reaction, only to wait for her to leave the room before gobbling it down like a man starved.

Those nights when he left her alone, scared and defenseless on the battlefield, as he urged his horse and his men onward to the front.

If she only knew that his contingent of ninja were all around her, hidden in the canopy of the trees, watching her every move. Each poised and ready to defend her, and only her, until he could make it back himself.

But the fun was wearing off and he needed something higher. Something more mature, something elevated. More sophisticated. But he couldn’t quite reach that height on his own.

And if she got up and left the room now...somehow, he felt as if he would only sink deeper, further away from the lofty plateau he knew they could reach together, if he only knew how to achieve it.

He thought of that job he had given Hanzo, regarding the magistrate. Ieyasu wasn’t the type to ask for personal favors. When Hanzo returned, the ninja had looked at him, the obvious question ‘for this girl you barely know?’ clear in his eyes. But Ieyasu said nothing.

No, he couldn’t just let her walk out. He wanted her to quit, so that he wouldn’t be beholden to Oda for anything...but not for her to leave completely.

‘Hurry!’

She was staring at his untouched sea bream tempura, which had long since gone cold, and for a moment he was irritated that she wasn’t looking at him. He opened his mouth to comment on it, before remembering that he told her not to even look at him.

He cleared his throat in an agitated manner, causing her to look up reflexively, her lips parting, surely, to say something syrupy like ‘are you okay?’ or ‘what’s the matter?’ but he quickly cut her off.

‘Smooth. It. Over. Now.’

“The only reason why I had to fight next to that stupid Monkey in the first place is because of his incompetent little master.”

‘Unbelievable.’

He was ranting now, he knew, but at least she was silent and immobile. The last person he felt like talking about was Oda and his zoo, but the words just kept coming out of his mouth, the feeling of relief that she wasn’t leaving the room washing over him in waves.

Ieyasu could tell by her bored look that she was only nodding occasionally out of obligation. He had all but made up his mind to end his speech about how he was totally forced against his will to fight alongside the unwashed filth that is Hideyoshi and how he didn’t even want to aid that snake in the grass Mitsunari that one time, but Nobunaga made him, when she got up all on her own and picked up his tray.

‘You can’t! I...’

“If milord is quite finished with his food, I’d like to get the dishes done before the food sticks.”

The sound of her voice and the look on her face was so positively crocodilian that Ieyasu was momentarily stunned. She waited a second for him to say something, but upon receiving no answer, she simply turned her back to him and stepped toward the door.

“A-actually, I...” he cursed himself for the obvious tremor in his voice.

She stopped, but did not turn back to look at him.

‘Say something! Anything!’

“Good night, then, lord Ieyasu.”

“I-I’m tired, actually,” that goddamn stuttering!

He wasn’t the least bit tired, but if she left now...

“Right. Do get your sleep then,” the insincerity in her voice cut through him like a blade, but it was her hand sliding the door open that hurt more.

“Your lap,” he said hastily, “and wake me in an hour. There is a book I have to read!” he said, leaning heavily on an authoritative tone.

She closed the door with a huff, set the tray down hard enough to rattle its contents and knelt beside him indignantly.

He stiffened the minute she came near, instantly regretting how quickly his mouth just says things when he’s around her, without giving his brain a chance to catch up.

He could feel her eyes boring into him, as surely as he could feel his nerves beginning to rattle.

Before he tensed up even more, he took a deep audible breath, as if diving underwater, and dropped backwards to the floor, his head landing with a gentle rustle of fabric right on her thighs.

‘Right on her...on her...th--’ he could feel the rapid advance of his blush as it traveled down his cheeks to the back of his neck.

There was a muffled sound like the peal of wind chimes and he looked up to find her mask of haughtiness collapsing as she tried to cover her laughter by holding her sleeve in front of her mouth.

“Sh...shut up!”

“Children should go to sleep. It’s late.”

“What does a kitchen wench know! You--” here, he shut his own mouth instantaneously as a shiver coursed through him so strongly that he almost rolled right out of her lap.

She had been threading her fingers through his hair, stroking his scalp with light, experimental touches.

She boldly smirked down at him, her expression clearly conveying that she was filing his reaction away for later.

“Good night, lord Ieyasu.”

For @jemchew and @cottonballwithmustache

#samurai love ballad party #tokugawa ieyasu #short story

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bleedingcoffee42 · 8 years

Text

Absent- Part 13

So doing this in installment drabbles didn’t stop this from becoming a fic. Why do I do this?

Prev parts

xxxxxxx

“Interesting.”

It was interesting. Riza was watching herself act like an alchemist and it was something that seemed so natural to this version of her it was hard to doubt what she was seeing even if it was hard to comprehend. This woman was completely engrossed in the puzzle in her hand, already pulling a notebook from a shelf to start writing down the symbols and break them down into something more digestible. All with the same methodical practiced ease that she was used to breaking down a gun. It wasn't a foreign concept, she saw this in Roy and the boys every time their eye caught something that challenged them a little, but this was her.

“Other side of the coin....is more like the other side of your brain.” The alchemist Riza said.

Said in her voice, in that same tone she got when she was being professional. Very focused. Succinct. Completely zoned in on her task.

“This is very advanced for a culture as old as Xerses. It's advanced for our culture right now. My books will not be able to shed any light on this. My collection is older and focuses on gases and combustion. I don't deal in biology. I don't have anything on coin collection or ancient history.”

Riza nodded. That didn't mean she was done. The other woman didn't pry her eyes away from the coin and she was still writing and working on some notes of her own. “Perhaps you can help me?”

That was too far and finally concentration was broken. “Why would you think I have the expertise to help you with this? I have never sold a book that has dealt with ancient alchemic history or relics.”

Of course there wasn't a book on any of this in that house. Berthold Hawkeye's collection was focused on one thing and one thing alone: fire. He had books on combustion engines, studies on efficient fuels, temperature regulators, oxygen as an element, photosynthesis and respiration, oxidation, oxygen in the industrial age and exothermic reactions. Anything that could help him understand how to create and control fire. He had his basic alchemy books, like any other alchemist, but his library was dedicated to his passion. Early man banged rocks together to make a spark, he didn't believe modern man understood fire any better than just how to apply it to what they wanted. “The bookseller said he thought you had a book about fire in the history of warfare and weapons. This coin seems like a weapon.”

It was stretch of reason, but alchemists fed off of those. “It's still not my field and unfortunately this is not the primitive type of warfare that would be in that kind of book. I'm sorry. I can't help you.”

She was at least giving her some feedback, probably feeling sorry that she couldn't help her at all. However, she did have things to do and was not going to waste time with trying to do something she knew wasn't in her realm of comprehension. Always efficient. So Riza knew her time was up and it was time for the truth if she wanted answers. “It's because it's not the actual research I wanted to show you. That coin is part of it, but I need to show you something else to explain why I'm here.”

The other Riza ripped the page from the notebook and folded it to give it to her, along with the coin. When she looked up the stranger had already turned her back to her and then shocked her by lifting up her shirt. She was going to demand to know why this woman was taking off her shirt for her but then her eyes fixated on something very familiar and she was stunned into silence. A few moments elapsed before she could finally ask, “How....where did you get that?”

Riza pulled her shirt back down over the base of her tattoo and turned around. She didn't pull the shirt up enough to show the burn scar, that would have been too much. She locked eyes with the other version of her and saw the further disbelief as she saw a copy of herself. “I think you know who I got that from. There is only one man that had that research and only one man mad enough to imprint it on the back of his own daughter.”

“This....” Alternative Riza looked down at the coin. “This is what the coin does.”

She was surprised at how quickly she accepted this, but she was an alchemist. They were always quick to see past the impossible to the science underneath. “I am you. I'm Riza Hawkeye. I'm a different version of you who didn't become an alchemist and my father felt the only way to pass on his research was to carve it into my skin instead of my brain. You're the other version of me. The other side of the coin. In my life, my father had an apprentice he choice to be the next flame alchemist. Unfortunately, he ran out of time before that apprentice came back to him and he was determined to record his research somewhere in case he didn't live to see the day of the apprentice's return. He made it seem like it was my choice, but it wasn't. I told myself it was, but I was so scared of him it was the only way I could feel in control of the situation. He told me it was my choice to pick the next flame alchemist even though he knew damned well I had fallen in love with the boy he had already trained. Roy Mustang was chosen long before I ever saw him again.”

It was like talking to herself and the truth flowed too easily because she was desperate for answers. Riza was running out of time so words fell from her lips that she never admitted to anyone. She had been too scared to think about too much because she feared losing that control. She feared feeling like she was just used and had never had a say in her life at all. However, truth was truth and it was the only thing that could help her find answers.

“If you're an alchemist...”

“I'm not an alchemist.” Riza admitted. “He had an alternative and instead of teaching me... he branded me with his information. I can't imagine learning from him was much better than what I endured. At least mine was done quickly and over in a short amount of time however you have to know he was capable of tattooing his research on his own daughter. You had to, he was mad. There was no telling the lengths he would have gone to if he couldn't pass on his research and let that live on somehow. You had to fear the consequences of failure more than anything.“

There was silence as they looked at each other with the same knowing sad look. No communication was necessary.

Riza pointed to the coin. “I wouldn't be here unless I had to be. I never wanted to come back here again. I never wanted to think about him again. I never wanted to realize that maybe all my choices in life were actually made for me. I don't want to relive what happened to me in that house. None of it. It's gone and I can't remember it beyond the smells of that crawlspace because I had to mentally destroy the feeling of being there alone with him and his madness. That's why that house isn't standing anymore, because I refuse to look at it again and remember questioning why I was having to care for him as he died when he never took care of me as a child. My memories of that house all revolve around Roy now. Good times studying with him or having him help me with chores. The day he finally came back and how good it felt to share this horrible secret on my back with someone. To know someone else was outraged by what happened to me and that I wasn't wrong about how terrible my father was to do that. How much I questioned myself because normal human emotions were in no way a part of Berthold Hawkeye anymore. It was so good to have someone know what happened and.....care about me.”

“I learned.” Alternative Riza said. “I am the Flame Alchemist. Isn't that what schooling is for? Learning and...developing skills? I...accepted that it was the only way he knew how to share. It wasn't easy, but I learned and he finally paid attention to me.”

“At what cost?” Riza asked. Abuse comes in so many forms Riza Hawkeye. “In hindsight, it's easier to see and easier to avoid but you're not at fault for what happened. Neither of us where.”

“Get out.” Alternative Riza said and pushed the coin and paper into the other woman's hands. Shee refused to take it knowing to would conclude this conversation.

“I can't, not without your help.” Riza said, frustration finally evident in her voice. Was she going to have to fight herself to get the answers? Fight to make this woman see past the denial and start questioning her actions? It wasn't fair, but so little in her life had been fair. “You're an alchemist, you seek truth! Don't shut your eyes to it. Truth is horrible and not fair. I've talked about this so many times, too many times, with everyone but myself because I was too scared to venture into my past and not find explanations to make this all make sense. We lived in that house with the man who created flame alchemy, the most powerful form of alchemy this world has ever known. He was capable of the research but not the application, that is why he had to pass it on to someone else. He was defeated by his work, he couldn't master his own life's obsession and had no other choice than to force it on someone else. It's complex and requires someone with exceptional mental capacity and he had deteriorated so much that he was no longer capable of that. You know that is the truth.”

“If we are not the same no matter how you know this information.” The alchemist looked down at the coin. “Is this what this coin does? Make me question myself? Give you access to my past, my memories?”

“We are the same and I know if I don't unload everything on you, then you will have no reason to hear me out. You are work driven, you make use of every minute of your time especially here on the farm by yourself. You have no reason to speak with me other than the fact that you might have been able to sell off a valuable item or make some cash from advising me with your expertise. You saw I have a nice car, you know I'm not from around here. You sized me up when you send you dog out and evaluated whether or not I am worth your time. I did the same.” Riza said and took another step closer to the other woman so they had no choice but to look at each other. One worn down from work and the lack of finances to take care of herself, one worn down from work and the demons of her past. “Look at yourself and see the other path you could have had in your life. That is what this coin is for. You stayed here and became the new flame alchemist. I left and created the new flame alchemist. Either way we are still bound to the same thing.”

“So...you're trying to prove yourself to me? You need me?”

“I need to get out of here.” Riza answered honestly. She could always count on herself to answer the plea for help. “This coin has me trapped in my own mind looking at a life that I thought would be better without my decisions. I wouldn't want your life and I don't have the time to think about how happy Roy might be without me in his. Right now he's in danger and he's very possibly going to die if I don't get back to him. So I need you to help me determine if I have what it takes to activate this array and go back to normal.”

“It's not that simple. You just can't learn alchemy in a day. You should know that.” The alchemist replied offended.

“You exist because I have the knowledge so dammit, help me.”

Desperation was slowly taking over and she felt like everything was slipping away from her. She thought that talking about the truth would help her unlock some portal, perhaps she was taking what Ed said too literally, but truth was the foundation of what alchemists sought out. Truth in nature broken down into elements and reactions, truth in the cost of dabbling in something greater than humans should. Truth in telling herself that what she feared might be true.

“What aren't you telling me? Why have you only told me about our shared life and not how you lead yours?”

“I joined the army.” Riza answered honestly. There was no reason not to. This was going nowhere. “I left here and became a soldier because there was someone I wanted to protect. Not something, someone.”

“The apprentice you mentioned. Roy.”

“The Flame Alchemist. Father was right, it is a weapon of such horrible power that it should have never been in the hands of the government. We were naive. We don't deny that or the atrocities we committed. Now, we seek redemption and Roy is the only one who can change this country and put it back in the hands of the people. He....would not be on this path if it wasn't for me. He'd be happy.”

“You still sound naive to me. If the country is so bad you have to change it than why do you think it's going to be better without your interference?”

“Maybe there is equivalent exchange after all.” Riza answered. “In exchange for this power we have both suffered..... but without our suffering we would still be blind to what needs to be done. We wanted to save people and were willing to sacrifice our lives to do so, I suppose Truth did just that. Took our lives out of our hands and we have to struggle to get to the top. After all what is a sacrifice without pain, right?“

“He must be something special if you could trust him with....the family secret.” Alternative Riza crossed her arms. A soldier. Her. It was plausible, in an environment where an outside influence was allowed to affect the control....the experiment could yield unforeseen results. “However now that the world knows of flame alchemy's devastation, you can not take it back.”

“There will be no more flame alchemists.” Riza said definitively and turned around again. It took a lot to be close to this woman she aggravated and turn her back to her and make herself vulnerable. At least when she did it before she was a few steps away and had shock value on her side, but now she was clearly putting herself at a disadvantage. Still, she lifted her shirt up far enough to show off the burn scar. “I trusted him to decode and destroy it. I trust him to not pass it on to anyone else. I trust him completely.”

“He...did that?”

She could hear how horrified she was. Of course the conclusion most people would make was that the research was destroyed after it was taken. She put her shirt down and turned to look herself in the eye. “I made the choice. I asked him to do it. I wanted it gone, just like when I gave it to him, I just wanted it gone. I didn't think of him. How much it hurt him....I was so desperate. He thinks this was all his fault but it was mine. I made the choice. It hurts him more than me and I wish I had another choice.”

“Would you do it again?” Alternative Riza asked. “Knowing what you know now. Of how it ruined him and how happy he is without it? Would you still follow through with your actions knowing the results it yielded?”

“Yes.” Riza answered honestly and without having to think about it. “Because part of me is still that naive fool who thinks we could change things. You're right, not knowing what is going on doesn't make you any better off, it only makes you vulnerable. We know the truth at such a heavy price, but we define ourselves by what we do with that knowledge. I'll see him to the top and I'll watch him make this a better country. I need your help to do that though, because I'm afraid of what will happen to him when he finds me in reality. That coin is a trap meant for him and whoever made it is not going to abandon their goals because the wrong person picked it up. They'll alter their plans and use me against him. Will you help me?”

“I wish I could.” Alternative Riza put the coin in her hand and the paper with her notes on top of it. “I don't know how. Even if I did..... this alchemy is toying with your brain.... anything even slightly wrong will do serious damage. This isn't novice alchemy this is incredibly complex.”

“Oh God....” Maybe it was going to be even worse than she thought. If Roy tried to save her he could damage her brain himself. Losing her would be rough, but being the one who did it would destroy him.

#fic #absent

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actuallylorelaigilmore · 8 years

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first lines meme

rules: list the first lines of your last 20 stories. see if there are any patterns. then tag your favorite authors. i was tagged by @greatestheights. (thanks! if you hadn’t already done this, you’d be on my list for your perfect j/d fic alone.)

(don’t follow a ton of fic writers tbh but) tagging these talented people: @actuallylukedanes, @aerosmiley219, @comepraisetheinfanta, @confidxnteveryday, @andallthatmishigas, @etraytin and anybody else who wants to do this!

following the example before me, cut for length/divided into WIPs and published fic.

ten WIPS (in order of when I started working on them):

lizzington au, where the fire never happened and she was raised by her birth parents so Red meets her for the first time as infamous KGB operative Masha Rostova: Raymond Reddington spotted her across the crowded room as he waited to be seated. Later, he wouldn’t be able to explain exactly why; her laugh was almost demure and her outfit was only as alluring as those worn by all the other women in the restaurant. He just knew there was a story there. An excellent one. One that hadn’t even begun yet–and he wanted to be a part of it.

lizzington, post-s2 finale idea that was too sexy to be part of my slow burn chapter fic: “I’ve always been drawn to you,” she told him seriously, a confession no longer laced with shame. “Since the beginning, long before it made sense–even when it made me feel crazy. So I tried to blame you. For everything, really,” she added quietly. Here, there was shame.

josh x donna, the night of “20 Hours in America”: When Donna had finished writing all the letters to family members, she found Josh in the bar. Toby had gone up to his room, seeming preoccupied with something when he passed her on his way up, so she found Josh with a beer, sitting more than he was drinking, as was his way. She would have been shocked if he’d had anything stronger than his half a bottle, anyhow–he’d be nearly passed out, something he didn’t do in unfamiliar places. Sliding onto the seat next to his, she tossed her untidy hair back from her face and gave him her best cajoling look.

josh x donna, during “Inauguration: Over There”: It was all started by the snow. It made sense at the time, he thought, to throw snowballs. She wasn’t answering her phone, and at least snow wouldn’t break her window. The adrenaline rush when he hit the window first had to have addled his brain, made him more susceptible to things he never thought about. How her skin glowed, say, or how soft her mouth looked. He never would’ve told her how amazing she looked if he’d been in his right mind.

donna x amy, during “Commencement”: She doesn’t particularly like Amy. Truth be told, she doesn’t like Amy much at all. She’s pushy, and sees things in black and white, and Josh has an odd reaction to her, like an addict. But as long as Josh is chasing after Amy, she feels safe. Protected from herself. So she tries to encourage him, to help.

josh x donna, after “War Crimes”: They wait through what she thinks must be the longest hour of her life. Josh leans forward on the bench, in a position that looks horribly uncomfortable, his arm resting behind her back. It’s so far back it doesn’t touch her, and she figures it might if he’d sit like a normal person. Oh. Maybe that explains it, then.

josh x donna, for a smut request where donna is in charge: When she practically crashed through his door, Donna took him by surprise. She kept doing that. What was it Amy said once, that he needed to get hit on the head? Water balloon aside, there was something breathtaking about the way Donna didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t claim the same confidence; he hovered somewhere between awkward and anxious, and it was worse with her because she was everything. And it felt like he’d been waiting a lifetime to reach this point.

blaine x liv, post-s2 finale: Vivian Stoll, brain-eating leader of Fillmore-Graves Enterprises, left her with a business card and the ominously friendly, “Be seeing you.” Liv was too relieved to be alive–well, relatively speaking–to feel guilty for fleeing the scene at the first available opportunity.

ravi x major, post-s2 finale: Things can change so fast. Too fast, Ravi thinks, as he downs the shot of tequila and pretends it doesn’t remind him of Peyton.

peyton x blaine, post-s2 finale: Major personally escorted Peyton to the safe house, despite her half-hearted protests. Since he was the closest thing she had to a big brother, deep down she had expected nothing less.

ten published fics (in chronological order, most recent first):

a very brief career at the hoover institute: By any unit of measurement, Ainsley’s first day at the Hoover Institute could not be called a success.

lost in the forest of this heart: Lizzie drops into sleep almost instantly, her weight pressed lightly against his side as the road rumbles beneath them.

for tonight: Her hands were trembling as she laced up the back of her dress, but she managed to tie it securely. Nerves, Liz thought. Silly, really. They had shared dinner dozens of times since going off the grid. Local dives, upscale hotel cafes, five-star landmarks.

leave us in pieces, scattered everywhere: “Why did you tell me?” CJ’s voice is broken glass across the satellites. He wants to be looking at her instead of talking over the phone; he wants to be able to touch her face, to apologize, to offer comfort. This is not that conversation, or she wouldn’t be calling.

if we only tried: Lorelai answered the door less than a minute after Luke knocked.

where the past comes back to life: Their flight is delayed in New York. Josh decides to steal a few moments of rest while he waits, grabbing a seat slightly apart from the other staffers. It’s not exactly peaceful, but he can mostly tune them out.

mine: “This is completely unprofessional,” Josh mutters. He can almost hear the murmur of conversations in the ballroom from the tiny space Donna tugged him into–but not quite. Hopefully the distance works both ways, because her mouth on his ear is making it hard to keep discretion in mind right now.

just give me something to hold onto: “She gave back the ring,” Sam says, head hanging so low that he’s talking more to the carpet than to Josh.

the deepest of needs: CJ goes to him; he��ll never come to her. Not while the pain is still an open wound…not while Toby keeps it that way in order to be a father.

what you’re running from: She didn’t have anywhere else to go. Free didn’t mean in the clear, not after the manhunt and the Post Office and the plea deal. So Red showing up when she was released–Red being the only person she could count on, again–was a welcome surprise.

WIP CONCLUSIONS: I cannot do brevity. Seriously, the difference between what my work looks like in progress and what sees the light of day is startling when you just compare opening lengths.

I use just as much punctuation and italics, though, so clearly I think in the tones as I’m writing, rather than adding the emphasis later.

There’s almost no dialogue in my openings for WIPs, despite their length. I ramble about character’s internal monologues (and then thankfully clean that up later).

It’s possible to read a whole paragraph and be left with no idea whose perspective I’m talking about, in a WIP. Fun to know.

PUBLISHED WORKS: Considering how much I love/am good at dialogue, I don’t open with it as much as I would’ve expected. I have little interest in setting/description as a reader but clearly, I make an effort to set the scene as a writer--even though I’m sure I don’t manage that until the late stages of editing. So it’s good to know that before I publish, I’ve remembered to keep my audience in mind. That’s comforting.

Compared to my WIPs, I’m incapable of having a first sentence without a character’s name in it, even when the fic is only about one character, and the reader would know who I was talking about. That’s sort of weird.

I don’t do succinct starter sentences, unless I’m starting the sequel to a previous story that had a cliffhanger ending, which is why two of my examples are actually from older stories whose sequels are in the recent ten list. It felt like cheating to use the sequel sentences when they didn’t make sense without the context of the first story, so I used the real beginnings.

Italics and interesting punctuation are essential to me. I think that’s because playing with mood and tone is necessary but I’m not as good at it using just words?

I’m kind of all over the place otherwise, which is fair and true to my personality...I vary up my style (as much as I can) depending on what I’m writing. For example, the shortest starter sentence was for Lorelai Gilmore, and the sentences that follow it are more staccato than usual for me, which makes sense when the world I’m writing in is rapid-fire dialogue and lots of back-and-forth.

This took waaaaay longer than I expected but I feel like it was also much more educational than I thought it would be. So yay. :)

#if you don't have twenty stories pick however many you like #actuallylukedanes #i'd really like to see your answers for this #if you ever feel like it #:)#fanfiction #memes #clearing out tumblr draft posts where i got tagged and saved it for later #me #writing #fanfic #long post #really very long lol

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megrimlocke · 8 years

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My First Email to President Trump

Mr. President,

I’m not sure if you’ve gotten my cordial and rather more conciliatory letters or if you have read them or had them brought to your attention at all. Indeed, your staff has not even seen fit to respond in any fashion so far.

Regrettably, that is why this letter will not feature such a tone.

I have given you time to become presidential during your transition period and you failed. I have given you time to walk back some of your most absurd and incendiary social positions and you have failed. I have been quite patient in waiting for this dull, disciplined presidential Donald to emerge and you have failed to deliver.

I liked having a cool, collected president with a deliberate attitude and a calm demeanor. It was reassuring. Hell for all his bungling I even appreciated George Bush’s childlike charm- you could at least believe that he was acting in good faith, to whatever extent his intellectual capacity might allow anyway.

You have not failed in comparison with Barack Obama. That would suggest that you’re fit to compare with him, and you’re not. I desperately want you to be. I want you to rival him at being good at your job because it matters so much. I seriously want you to succeed because if you fail the way you have been for any time longer the results will be a disaster for our country.

You’re off the handle in the way you address yourself to others. You’re undisciplined in your approach to every aspect of this process and you have chosen people both fundamentally unqualified to do the jobs for which they are chosen but also with views antithetical to the existence of the administrative duties to which they are being appointed.

Your relationship with the press is even more concerning. You antagonize them for routine scrutiny for man in your position- and don’t worry I’m not going to waste time on a meaningless psychobabble about your narcissism or whatever because it doesn’t fucking matter. It bears repeating, whatever your psychological issues are they do not fucking matter. What matters is that YOU ARE FAILING.

What’s the result of all this? A highly ranked official within the Chinese defense directorate is calling a war with our country a “practical reality” that they feel the need to concern themselves over during your presidency. This alone is your biggest diplomatic fuckup. Wait I’m not so sure anymore because at the same time that you’re antagonizing the Chinese, our biggest global influence rival, you are also antagonizing fucking Mexico, our number two trading partner and a perfectly placid neighbor for many years. OH! And it gets even better! I’m glad there is an aide to read this to you because I’m pretty sure you can’t read a letter when Vladimir Putin is balls deep in your mouth.

Yeah there’s a weird relationship with that Mexican border and various legal situations, especially if you learn about Mexico from Robert Rodriguez films, but we have generally enjoyed a long friendship that did not include trying to shake each other down to pay for bullshit building projects. Frankly you will never bully a machismo culture into paying for this wall with the whole world watching and I expect that all you have done is ensured that mexican border patrol efforts are going to become even more lax than they already are, just to spite us over this bullshit policy. Fuck it, let’s just launch nukes at Canada and call it a day, then we’ll be about as thoroughly isolated from the rest of our own fucking continent as we can be.

And now of course you’ve done just as you said you would, proving wrong every even-keeled conservative I’ve spoken to, and you’ve banned people from muslim majority countries from entering our borders. I’m sure you have a bunch of lawyers and advisors and so on trying to come up with a way to make this make some kind of legal sense but let me help you out with something more succinct:

What you have done is in direct opposition to our first amendment- which you are required to uphold by the way- is vastly unpopular in this country as well as abroad, and is as a moral choice the most cowardly, disgusting thing for a US president to do since the japanese internment camps of the second world war.

I apologize for this becoming a longer letter than I had in mind but you’re fucking up at a rate of 1 dumbass fuckup per minute so I have a lot to address.

Let’s talk about nazis for a minute. You’ve got nazis supporting you, openly, in the streets, celebrating in Washington. Now you could have taken the time, in either a press conference or a video address or whatever to condemn them and formally, explicitly make it clear that they have no place among us. Instead, you have pronounced a policy of brown-people-exclusion that they are jerkng off to right now as you read this. Nazis jerk off to your ideas.

As if to ice a cake of fucking nazis, you have kicked the joint chiefs from the security council and replaced them with Steve Bannon, your propagandist. If you were trying to not look like Hitler lately putting Joseph Goebbels in a position of this kind was another example of your failure.

I know, Bannon is not literally Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was nowhere near as fat and he had the good sense to blow his own brains out.

I expect that for Bannon we will have to end out deposing you and put him through a lengthy trial on the taxpayer’s dime before we shell out even more money to have him executed in some infuriatingly humane chemical process after he’s done convincing your supporters that everyone has a sacred duty to burn down mosques or something.

Honestly the only thing that is missing is that you have not yet tried to annex anybody and you’ve yet to commit your first war crime. I suppose I can at least say you’ve not made those fuckups yet.

I’ve tried to make this an entertaining if not flattering read because I know that you’re not one for reading more than 140 characters, so it’s my hope that one of your staffers with a sufficiently dry, deadpan delivery will perform a reading of this letter for you so that your attention can be kept long enough to get to the action points below.

1. Stop antagonizing the Chinese. Seriously. We are involved in a war in Afghanistan you need to clean up before starting any new ones.

2. Fire Bannon and immediately make an appearance at either a press conference or by direct video rolling back this absurd immigration policy and denouncing the nazis that are cheering for you. I’m dead serious. The longer you delay heeding this advice, the closer you come to going down in history are the nazi president. I can’t believe I’m having to write these words. It’s fucking surreal that you have not already nipped your nazi problem in the bud.

3. Veto any bill that comes to your desk repealing Obamacare that has not also in it an immediately prepared and budget office approved replacement plan. I agree that there is room for healthcare reform. There were good ideas and lousy ones in Obamacare, that’s why we review and change. I happen to like seeing the calories on a menu for example. You cannot afford to fail at this. Your chances of reelection are already astonishingly slim- because you have been failing for a week- and you will not be up against an easily vilified Clinton next time.

4. You get your head on straight about Russia. They do not want to be buddies with you, they want to see you squirm the way they squirmed in the 90s. They want to be an ascendant superpower once again and their goals are consistently incompatible with ours, not to mention international law.

5. The TPP, imperfect though it was, was a vital part of our approach to China. You get a replacement plan in the works and you get it to congress by the end of February. Don’t worry, you’ll have the time because you’re dumping this wall bullshit to focus on it. You cannot make the approach to China a military approach. You need to do it with careful trade and building a support network in the Pacific and you need to do it deliberately and with a plan.

6. Review the 1st, 9th, and 14th amendments and make damn sure your supreme court nominee is very familiar with them. I retain to myself the right to marry whoever the hell I damn well please, and I’ve got three amendments between me and whoever wants to argue otherwise.

7. You get on the horn with the pipeline companies and explain to them in no uncertain terms that they may indeed have their pipelines- but they will not run through these lands that are sacred and that mean so much to the people of our country. You tell them they are, at their own expense, to reroute these pipes through areas that are not controversial.

8. Announce immediately that you are abandoning this absurd wall project and that instead you will be investing that 15 billion projected cost in a new project to construct homes for homeless veterans. You will explain that this project will put to work many blue collar construction workers and that we will be bringing back into the housing market and therefor the workforce some of the most dedicated workers to be found anywhere by finally looking after the vets that we should be the most ashamed of letting go unattended.

Take care of these bullets. Put up the twitter. Quit fucking up. You need to get this right or I guarantee you will not even run for reelection because you will get impeached and that impeachment will have you deposed. This order you signed this weekend is already unconstitutional as per amendment 1 and frankly the American people are not going to need any further grounds. The only reason I’m not looking to have you impeached already is that I hate instability and ruckus, and fixing your dumbass is better solution. Like renovating a tenement for 85k instead of trying to build a new complex for 200.

Adam Locke

P.s. As you may note in the bullets, I’m really rather moderate and willing to compromise on a number of points. Having a fuckup for a president is not one of them. I know you’re new, I know you will stumble, but if you can keep it to one dumbass fuckup per quarter at least we can at least get back to Bush levels of incompetence. Tighten it up or start revising your resume.

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