#i imagine there would be a lot to talk about there if roman could bring himself to a place of sincerity

[lith-myathar]

.

[romanarose]

Hi Roman! Loooove your HCs re: the TF boys. Could I pls ask you what you think would be the biggest sources of contention when it comes to each guy and their SO & how they handle relationship conflict?

Hello, wonderful human! Sorry it took so long for me to respond. Been cranking out fics to catch up and prepare for everything lol!!!

Happy to answer you! I'll be focusing mostly on the guys issues, not so much readers, but we all bring out own things into relationships.

Warnings: Addiction, ptsd, general relationship issues

I think everything should be gender neutral, correct me if i missed something.

More HC's here

Santiago

Commitment.

My dude can't commit to a thing.

I imagine after the movie events he went to see yvonna.... and then left after a few months bc he's a mess.

First arguement you get into he;s like "fine! I'll just leave then, clearly this isn't working"

And you give your best ????? face.

Santi you dumbass.

But you don't give up that easily! You're a menace to society.

You make him face down the issue, talk to you, and *gasp* share how he feels!

When its resolve, you tell him he can't just threaten to leave when he gets frustrated. If he wants to leave he needs to be honest, but he can't hide away under one small issue.

You ask if he really wants to leave. He says no so fucking fast.

He admits he hasn't had any stability in his life like... ever. Immigrant family, military, then his less-than-legal missions... but he wants to make it work with you

You have to work to find a balance between not letting him run away but not forcing him to stay.

But it works. Santi finds you easier and easier to talk to about things and soon enough, he's been with you for a year and theres still no itch to leave.

Ben

Benny Miller is a goof ball.

That's why you fell in love with him in the first place!

But he's not the most mature. He struggles to be serious, even when he wants to. That's the issue. You don't want to dampen his shine, you love him how he is

Thing is, you've been together 6 months and you still feel like you're casually dating.

There was no big "I love you".

He simple kissed your cheek saying goodbye, said "love you!" and dashed off to his friends.

But you did love him, you loved him so much but you weren't sure he was invested as you were. Maybe he wasn't ready for a serious relationship or you were more of a casual date to him...

Benny notices your mood change pretty quickly. He may be dumb but he's not stupid

(This is a joke Benny is canonically a highly skilled and talented individual I love him so much.)

"What am I to you?"

You ask him and it starts a whole discussion. You're surprised to find he's listening intently to what you have to say, takes in your words well.

You express how it hurts that every time he says "love you" It's the same tone of voice he uses with his friends or brother. He makes you feel like you're "one of the guys" but you're having sex.

Benny pauses and gathers his words before expressing that he does love you, very deeply. He thinks about marrying you... he just struggles to express it verbally. After some talking, you introduce him to the idea of love languages.

You figure out Benny loves receiving with words of affirmation and thats what he gets stuck on. He can't express well through words, so he thinks he's fucked.

You take the time to talk about the other four, and ways he can express through those.

After this talk, you feel much better and Ben makes you feel so, so loved and special.

(He also makes sure to say his "I love you" during sex or more initmate moments, not just in passing, letting you know that he really, really does.)

Will

Fear.

You probably expected PTSD, didn't you?

Well thats a part of it. His PTSD does affect his life but I think he's scared to lose you and scared to hurt you.

Will keeps you at arms length. Maybe you're a friend of Ben's and are around a lot and clear chemistry!! But nothing is happening

Finally you confront him. Bestie you can't keep lingering touch on my arm if you're not gonna fuck me about it.

Will is def the most straight forward and self aware so he's gonna be honest.

"I choked a man out in a grocery store for not moving his cart fast enough and almost killed him, my fiance left me after that, I've got 33 confirmed kills and also I watched one of my best friends die and carried his dead body over the fucking Andes, man."

A lot to unpack there!!!!

He tells you he's afraid he's going to lose you if he lets you get too close. He's afraid of hurting you.

You tell him he's sweet but he should also go to therapy.

You go with him to the first appointment.

Will I think is the easiest bc I just think hes the most mature and open

Frankie

Addiction

My dude hates himself.

And literally any feeling he's like "well time to do some coke about it."

It wasn't a big deal when you just started dating. You knew he did coke sometimes on weekends and rationalized that it can't be that big a deal, it's like drinking, right?

(Im 26 now and realizing how many people casually do coke is wild to me. None of my business tho.)

But soon you realize just how bad it's gotten. He's high almost all the time. Then his liscense comes under review. Then the trip to south america...

You don't think he's ever even sober, and you're worried about him, worried his heart is going to give out. Sometimes you stay awake watching him breath just to be sure.

Finally you can't take it anymore. You never wanted to to be the ultimatum party but you can't do this, you're suffering and so is he. He either gets sober or you leave. You didn't care how long it took, you didn't care if he relapsed but he needed to start trying.

Frankie ops to go to rehab. It's best, because he's gonna need to detox first.

You visit often, almost every day, making sure his friends all knew when visit times were and sometimes going as group, sometimes separate but always making sure someone came by every single day so he knew he wasn't alone.

90 days later, Frankie comes out a new man. He's cheeks fuller and pants tighter but his smile bigger.

He's gonna be okay and so are you.

Tom

He's dead

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!!!! I love tf boys head cannons <3

[thesamoanqueen]

Blackwater XIX

Raiting: 18+

Warnings: well I said a couple of months ago that something was toxic… there’s a lil bit of non-con this time, so if someone of you is not ready, im sorry, is that chap.

A/N: this chapter wasn't very easy to write, but the next ones won't be either, let's wish each other good luck.

She had hoped to go somewhere else, but with problems piling up day after day doing so wasn't even an option. It was safer to stay south, where their reservation still acted as a natural stop to any external influence coming from across the border, plus Roman was in the area, though again not there with her, having yet another meeting with yet another person for yet another deal.

She hadn't been very happy about it at first, but had to admit at least to herself that maybe it was for the best. In town she had finally found something she could bring to Lisa to thank her and plus they were relatively close home, which meant they would be there before night and she could go to bed to recover a bit.

The stress caused by the situation did not help either her mood or body already affected by hormonal swings of a heat that Y/N prayed to postpone as long as possible. She wasn't sleeping well due to too many thoughts, she was losing her appetite, as well as the desire to go running and that afternoon she had another one of her waves of shivers which was trying to fight with some hot chocolate in an attempt to also replenish a sugars. She had bought Solo a coffee too, but he kept holding it in his hand without drinking, too busy glaring at anyone who dared come closer than necessary, that was not even so close.

- You didn't grow up here, did you? – she asked, interrupting silence between them once again, because they spent a lot of time together, but even if he seemed willing to talk with her, their conversations were never long.

He looked at her a bit confused, putting aside his perpetual serious face for a moment, coffee still in his hand.

- Jimmy said you came here after, like me – she explained, letting out an encouraging smile and he shook his head no.

- I grew up in the area, with my family.

Y/N let out a surprised oh, going back to twirling the straw in silence as they walked towards the suv.

From the stories she had thought he had come from out of state to help Roman, but she probably misunderstood. She hadn't spent much time with Solo's family, she had only seen them once actually and he didn't open up more than necessary, most of the time talking about what there was to do during the day, well she talked, he was more comfortable listening.

- Not with them. They were always together somewhere. – he added unexpectedly, perhaps not to make her uncomfortable with another silence or perhaps not to make her feel so out of place and Y/N smiled gratefully.

Y/N saw him nod slightly, as if satisfying her had satisfied him too.

She had never really thought about it, but there was an age gap between him and those three. Now he was a big boy with muscles and a menacing look, in those years he had probably just been a kid that them didn't want around. She couldn't imagine what it was like, Y/N hadn't had any brother or sister, she had grown up alone, but the half year spent with all of them before the chaos was enough for her to understand. Maybe he couldn't have tolerated them as a kid, always together already as pack leaving him at home and doing their own business, but now he was a man, it was different.

His family is broken.

- I'm sorry, Solo...

Standing next to the black suv, he looked at her, again confused by her reaction.

- We have to do what needs to be done.

- They're your brothers no matter what.

- I swore to the Tribal Chief. They did it too. – he said serious, his tone almost angry.

In packs like theirs, still tied to old laws and traditions, it was normal to have a relationship of deep respect with those at the top. Those were legacies that were now intertwined with a changed society but still subject to natural balances, such as the amendment on property rights between mates and social hierarchies for those who belonged to or were born from groups not commonly seen well. Y/N, with her omega smell, knew a lot about it and had had to deal with it there too in the first few months, but the prospect of an acknowledgment, oath, was new and something she hadn't heard.

She saw Solo open the door to let her in, his face less angry, but still solemn.

- You don't have to – he reassured her, mistaking her silence for concern, dark round eyes stopping too long lower, at the base between her neck and shoulder, where Y/N had tightened her jacket trying to send away the cold shivers – you already have his… smell.

Smell wasn't the word he wanted to say, but what Solo was referring to, she didn't have yet.

Our mark. His mark.

That too was an old legacy, dangerous in her case, but Y/N didn't have time to think too much about it by looking for her phone which in the meantime had notified of a message.

***

Paul was a smart man. Roman had chosen him as a wise man for that very reason. There was no one in the entire country more capable than him, no one who had his level of experience. He was a lawyer, an advisor, a connoisseur, he had political support, important acquaintances within the packs and outside, plus his family had practically adopted him when he was a boy, so he was not a stranger. The wise man was many things, but honest only when necessary and Roman had never had a problem with that kind of approach in their time together. He tolerated all sorts of expedient for his purpose, he had learned the hard way how much it cost to have feelings, but everything changed if those tricks helped something of which he was not made aware.

Because Roman knew from years and life lessons. Loyalty and trust were something he no longer expected, from anyone and certainly not from someone who had stayed afloat when everyone else drowned. Everyone could be a friend, everyone could be an enemy, his wolf now did no exception and all the whispers, phone calls and messages that kept Paul busy even when they were together were nothing but further proof of a picture that he knew. The wiseman acted driven by the feeling of ground crumbling beneath their feet, frightened by changes that his cousin and those dogs on the border threatened, by the possibility of a future that Roman would not allow as long as he was able to breathe. He loved the wise man, he could forgive him being a coward, pretending not to see, at least until he took a step too far.

- So? – he asked annoyed, almost making the phone fly out of his hand.

- Two weeks. Tomorrow both of you will exchange the sogi – he reported in a heavy voice, his shoulders low, his face frowning as if someone had just stepped on him after the news.

He didn't like the prospect of that fight, first of all because he was risking his head. Roman knew even without having to ask that he would play his cards to make things better and save everything, but for him the two weeks he had dealt were too much time and those plans useless. Fourteen days were the ritual time to provide what was necessary for families, so that both parties were ready for any outcome, but for him were just a useless wait. He wouldn't be the one to lose, he had no alternatives to plan unlike Jey, he just needed to have free way and get his hands on his cousin.

- About the stipulations, I was thinking- he advanced, trying to recover as much as possible.

- There are none.

- My Tribal Chief, if I may, considering what we are facing now, it would be better to leave a few more resources and perhaps-

- There will be no stipulations.

He had complied with stipulations, conditions for weeks, suffered weakness for months, the time for mercy was over. He had left many doors open for his cousins, he had tried everything and Jey however had gone where he shouldn't, disrespecting him to the point of contesting him with the Elders, they had gone too far and now there was only one way to put an end to it. The only acceptable stipulation was unconditional surrender, total humiliation, there was nothing else to talk about. Guts were needed to keep their family in line, his dad had reminded him of this and Roman was not willing to receive other reminders in the future, he was no longer a boy. Whatever happened next, he would handle it the way he handled everything, with a firm grip and without regard, he didn't need those two to do it. He was the alpha, he had control and winning cards to play against everyone.

- How much longer do we have to stay here? – he asked, tired of waiting, staring with annoyance at the watch on his wrist.

They had been in that office longer than he was willing to tolerate and he couldn't stand listening to the wise man calls or him typing messages anymore, he didn't have all day to waste signing a deal with the governor. He had to train, dedicate the next fourteen days focusing on the goal, not sitting bored in a chair waiting for a paper that should have already been ready the second he set foot in that building.

- I'm going to immediately check where Pearce has ended up, my… – the wise man snapped to attention, but he barely managed to turn to go towards the door – tribal… chief.

Roman smelled him before even moving his gaze to the man accompanying Pearce. He had no idea who he was, he didn't remember his face if they had ever met before, but he had a smell that he didn't like. He didn't like the smell of him, he didn't like the way was staring at him, he didn't like the attitude and he sure as hell didn't like that he came around when he had business to do.

We don't like him.

- Reigns.

Pearce greeted, already adjusting glasses on his nose, his expression stressed as always. Roman didn't even look at him, focused on observing the new arrival who was already taking place at the table without having been invited. Pearce had that same attitude in the past, a couple of years ago, until Roman had taken it away from him in his own way and since then had never reappeared. He almost wanted to do the same with that new guy.

- What’s this idea Mr. Pearce?! It was supposed to be a private meeting for private business! Very important business! It's unacceptable! – complained the wise man, standing up against that lack of respect.

- Our new neighbors have informed the governor of activities across the border. It seemed right to him to invite Mr. Aldis as a delegate to clarify before signing anything. He’s in charge of that area now.

That's what he was. Another puppet, another well-dressed small dude convinced to have power or a chance against him, thought he was worth something, that he could stand face to face with Roman, thanks to the talks of those idiots to whom his cousins had left the field free. They were becoming arrogant, stupidly brave, throwing in his face that he had lost his hold in the north and that now there were others there. They hadn't gone too far yet, keeping everything legal, moving with what they could to make their voices heard, their new influence known, but Roman was fine with those games as long as they didn't go beyond the limit. And the limit was his patience running out.

- Since you no longer have jurisdiction there and the upcoming Bloodline activities threaten the entire area, restrictions must be established for the future. Real restrictions Mr. Reigns that I will take care of enforcing and making clear to you. Without it, nothing new will be authorized. – the new dude, Aldis, announced, openly defying his influence, head held high and the wise man behind him jumped.

They wanted to authorize him.

- How dare you- he screamed, but Roman simply raised a finger to silence him, the other hand gripping the chair.

That tanned, smug face of him would have looked perfect smashed onto his table or on the floor, better under his foot.

They wanted to play the big game, gamble when he already had more important business to take care of. It was almost hilarious, almost because that little game would be short-lived. He would let them do it, for a while, until Jey got what he deserved since everything that was happening was his fault. That was what happened if they left their side exposed, if they allowed a pack of strays to smell weakness, it was the price to pay for a crack and the reason Roman would have no more second thoughts.

Elders were right, he had to focus, do what he had to do and what he had been chosen for. He couldn't afford any more weaknesses or they would become ready and able to bite his throat.

- Go ahead – he conceded, collecting himself.

He would get rid of them one by one, blood of his blood or not. Without mercy.

***

She had sought comfort between now cold sheets smelling of him, curling up her legs for extra warmth, keeping her eyes tighter to ward off thoughts ready to fill her mind, but hadn't made it and her she-wolf had found Roman through the link. She had sensed him immediately, probably because he wasn't shielding anything believing that she was still asleep and Y/N had snuck out to join him in the dim light of his home office.

Mate is not here with us.

He was sitting on the couch with a solitary lamp, his face serious, fingers running through the seeds of his necklace. He was physically there, but his head was somewhere else as happened too often now. In the house he always kept the ulafala in the case, but Y/N didn't need to ask to know why he was there staring at it when he was supposed to be resting by her side, in their bed. Paul had told her as soon as he received the news, keeping to their agreement or perhaps already seeking help and Y/N had finally given a deadline to the anxiety that was weighing on her.

Fourteen days of peace before chaos, before completely crumbling what was left of the family, but in a few hours it would truly become inevitable. Or it was probably already late judging by Roman's face.

- Will you have to wear it? – she asked in a whisper, entering the room almost on tiptoe.

He hadn't told her anything about how the meeting would take place nor had he added anything about the fight, but she couldn't blame him. She had promised to stand by him, to defend him, yet she hadn't reacted well to his drastic change of plans and he didn't seem to really understand why she hadn't accepted it. What had happened was serious, but what could happened next would be even worse. Standing, she watched him keep his gaze fixed on the symbol of sacrifices, of his role and pains without turning to look at her and she too observed it, perhaps expecting a revelation.

Red for power, seeds for the rebirth of the dynasty.

She knew the value and pride behind that object, Roman had told Y/N all the stories about the ulafala, but no matter how hard she tried in her eyes it was only a necklace left weighing him down. It should have given him strength, conveyed his strength, represented the family future and instead he found himself fighting to keep it around his neck, to keep what he had gained after an argument born from unpleasant circumstances and degenerated due to old grudges.

- I earned it, represents me – she heard him reply, because in his mind it was the only thought.

She felt it, she knew it. He felt his efforts, sacrifices threatened and they were, but Y/N still felt like it wasn't Jey or Jimmy who was the real danger. At least not initially, now everything was a danger, even the elders who were supposed to accompany and advise him. Them all had fallen into a trap were building with their own hands and she couldn't resign herself to the sight of that disaster.

He's not just that for us.

- You don't need it – she reminded him, stopping looking at the ulafala to focus on him.

She saw him inspire with frustration, felt annoyance pass through him at the mere idea of continuing that conversation, his eyes far from hers.

- Go back to bed Y/N.

- Come with me then, is not mornin yet – she insisted, refusing to give up.

They had different opinions, different approaches, it had always been like that and perhaps it would never change, but they were on the same side. She didn't want to go back to their room if he wasn't there, didn't want to sleep if he wasn't there, she had been alone for too long to throw away moments, to wait two weeks to pass and then hope to go back to what they had before. She trusted Roman, she had never trusted anyone like him, but it wasn't going to end up with Jey and Y/N was honestly afraid of the aftermath he talked about. The threats were different, without blood ties and were just waiting the right moment to attack him, they wanted to get him out of the way and take everything, not just his role. No one can get rid of a weed without pulling out its roots. It had already happened with her family and now can happen again because he was focused just on what was in front of him. But she couldn't wait for the inevitable, it wasn't in her nature to do what she had to do or what he wanted, she existed to do what he couldn't.

She saw him stay silent, sign he had no intention of moving. So she stood in front of him, slipping the ulafala from his fingers without asking. That move finally forced him to raise his head, trying to understand what was happening, while she carefully placed it back in the case where he kept it and then went back to the couch. She listened him breathe heavily, scratch his dark beard with a grimace, and she sat down on his lap to take up the entire view.

- Ain't doing this talk once more – he stopped her soon, shaking his head.

- Not even if im the one asking? – she tried, seeing him immediately clench his jaw.

- Im doing it for you, for us, all! I told you and you said we were on the same side, now what?!

- I'm not taking anything back. I'm just worried it’s already too much – she confessed, not really knowing how else to explain the feeling in her.

Maybe she was giving in to the hormones, anxiety, or maybe was the fact she hadn't cared about others in years like she did now for him, but it was all happening so fast and whether Roman was ready to admit it or not, he was losing control and not facing things with a right mindset. Those outbursts of anger, the way he turned against everyone, judgments, drastic solutions, he was getting carried away by the desire for revenge and his justice. He kept saying he was doing it for them, for their future and instead seemed like a pretext to rush towards other problems. They didn't need acknowlegment, a border to build anything, they were fine, everything worked when it was just them, together. They had never been happier than in the time spent getting to know each other, digging their bond out of the dust and strengthening it. Life certainly couldn't be made up only of moments like those, dates and runs in the woods, but things could certainly have been different.

- Whatever it takes, doesn't matter, at all – he announced, almost exasperated by having to explain, by having to hear, his gaze so confident and Y/N stared at him for a moment without being able to say anything else.

Whatever it takes, he said.

The prospect of those sacrifices and ease which he said he wanted to face them would torment was heavy, but as she had sadly learned to do growing up, she hid all the worry in the back of her mind.

He didn't listen or maybe he didn't want to.

So Y/N simply moved closer, challenging his growing temper, to seek some warmth and his lips in an uncertain kiss. Saw him look at her almost suspiciously for her reaction, studying before reciprocate the kiss and sliding his hands down her thighs. Close, felt their breaths slowly mix in the silence of the dark house and that warmth she had found too late, growing from the most vulnerable part to her chest begging for comfort.

- You matter to me – she reminded him in a heated murmur, forehead resting on him, swollen lips touching, eyes burning for something that went beyond words.

She didn't really care about anything else. They could have been anywhere, surrounded by anyone or in utter desolation and Y/N would still have searched for those eyes. They were her firm point, he was her person. The thought of it terrified her, but she was done fighting and pretending. Roman was everything for her, she had nothing else anymore and she wanted, hoped... he would understand that for that exact reason they couldn't give in. They had to stay together, as a pack, mates.

She saw his gaze lingering on her lips, rising then to meet her eyes, two brown pools now dark in the dim light of the room. Felt his fingers gripping her hips, digging into soft flesh with possession, domineering and lust, marking her skin to claim and force her where she already was.

- Then you gonna be there with me, as you should – he demanded, resolute and despite fighting with everything her head suggested, Y/N nodded to please him again, letting Roman finally crash his mouth against her, satisfied.

They would find a way, they would find a solution even if it seemed difficult, they could do it together, but in that moment Y/N just needed to feel him close, just for her, far from all the noise and problems that awaited them out. They could give themselves that moment of rest, cherish it and Y/N rocked on him, moaning into his hot mouth as their bodies inexorably warmed up. His tongue was insatiable, ready to devour and intoxicate her with his good taste, thrown into a fight that she didn't even dare win. She preferred to let him have control in those moments, while her fingers made their way through dark soft locks, scratching the back of his strong neck to once again elicit that raw growl that vibrated through his broad chest into her bones. Felt his hands slide deeper, grasping her ass, encouraging Y/N to move her hips, pushing on his boner which was quickly answering to juices already wetting his pants.

She had stopped wearing panties when they went to bed a while ago and now was even grateful. She would bear nothing but the feeling of his hard body against her, pressure building like a blessed torture as he guided her growling for her to ride him shamelessly. Y/N had been trying to slow down and control herself for months now, so as not to give in to the heat of their bond, stay with feet on the ground and mind clear now that everything was falling apart, but it was an inexorable descent faster every time Roman touched her. She clung to him, feeling one of his hands travel up under her shirt to roughly grab one of her breasts, his calloused palm rubbing her sensitive nipple making her squirm. Her body had always been hyper-reactive to his attentions, but now she had fallen into a spiral with no exit. Y/N yearned him like a castaway for salvation and in moments like that the need mixed with something more, something that Y/N had never felt for anyone else and her she-wolf fought to make her whisper.

Tell him. We need him. Our mate. Tell him.

- My pussy wet as fuck hm? You need me, don't you? – he said voice like velvet, breaking their kiss and motioning for her to raise herself just enough to sink easily into her cunt – Ima fill you up good, babygirl… don't worry. Aint going nowhere and you'll be stuck with me.

The heat caused by his intrusion had already forced Y/N to open her mouth without being able to speak back, but the sudden thrust of his hips quickly accelerating to pound her almost made her cry. Hands tightened on his shoulders, eyes narrowing with each thrust and then opening as the wave of heat rose from her belly, sending her entire body into flames. Bouncing on his lap, she felt Roman moving his hand from her breast to give her a sharp slap on her ass, he did it one more time drawing a moan and then move up to her throat, to squeeze it just enough to bring tears to her eyes. Quickening the pace, in the frenzy of their moment, Y/N began to confuse the her own pounding heart with the slick sound of bodies slamming together. Her mind becomes more clouded by the second, ears filled with Roman's growls and threatening promises like dark spells ready to tear her soul and climax away. Confused between pleasure and desperation, she held him to her as he held her by the throat, twitches of her wet center uncontrolled amidst the panting of both of them that grew angrier. Room around flashed, throbbing like folds around his cock, impregnated with smell of their bodies, air charged and heavy, saturated with sweat and lust, with a mix of their smells.

They were racing with no intention of slowing down, as if the only goal was to consume, melt and crumble thanks to the other one. Y/N end came sudden and violent between a sloppy kiss and a particularly insistent push on that soft point on which Roman loved to rage without any mercy, fast, powerful, in a strangled moan that made her bare feet tingle, rising in an electric discharge up her legs to a sweaty body, chest begging and hot face. She closed her eyes, grabbing Roman's arm for her life, throwing her head back and then immediately hiding her face on his shoulder because he wasn't slowing down, he wasn't even giving her a moment to breath and she had already went over her limit. Heat kept growing and shake her, causing Y/N to lose all contact with her surroundings, ears ringing as if she had been underwater, body still crying out for more while Roman pounded furiously. Stunned, she stood abandoned in his arms, letting him have his way as he wanted, until something made her eyes widen, pushing her to gasp.

- R-Ro- she tried, because his hand had somehow left her throat, to grab Y/N by the back of her neck and tilt her head to the side.

He was holding her by her curls, beard scratching her hot neck, tongue ready to lick away sweat from her sweet pulsing weak spot to prepare it.

- Easy, stay still – his breath against her skin, so close, pushed Y/N to stiffen as much as his words – I'll be gentle, ssh…

Roman had never pushed, he had never held her like he was doing at that moment and feeling his teeth on her flesh sharper than usual, Y/N wriggled away.

- Don't - she tried again, feeling him tighten his grip, slowing down his thrusts, another hand moving to her wrist.

Why he was acting like that?

- Don't panic, its me – he reassured her, words heavy, attitude raising for her reaction and she planted her feet, her only free hand tapping on his bare chest.

It was him, Roman? Was it really him that one? Suddenly Y/N wasn't so sure and ignoring her wolf pleas, confused between the sense of discomfort and desire to give in, she pushed again to put some space between them.

- Y/N

- No, not like this! – she wailed and when finally managed to slide away from his legs, Y/N saw him jump up with a growl.

The crash of the coffee table froze her on the couch, eyes wide as she watched him pant in anger with clenched fists, body stiff. Still dirty for their moment, but with her mind completely clear now, she watched him stand there trying to regain control in a heavy silence she hadn't felt between them in a while. Roman rubbed his face, rolling his large shoulders, rocking his head and even though she was shaken, something in Y/N's chest tightened following the imperceptible direction of his gaze across the room, where she had put the ulafala away.

Did he want to mark her to prove a point? To have full control in order to not go through what had happened with his family? It was that?

Mate…

She moved her eyes to his hand, the one would have grabbed to calm him, to bring him back to there with her, the one she always found on herself for any reason even the stupidest, the one Y/N had learned to want, but a second too long passed and her hesitation was enough for Roman to quickly settle down, deciding to walk out of the room without a word to leave her again.

***

Uncle Afa was a man bent by age and illness now. When him and his dad stopped traveling around the country, he opened a gym in a recreation center on the eastern outskirts of the city where family had settled. He only trained their people at that time, city folks didn't want to set foot among savages, but his uncle ignored comments like his dad, dedicating himself heart and soul to the pack. Roman remembered going into that place the last time when he was sixteen, probably with the twins, to put on muscles that had grown bigger on their own later and fill his stomach always asking for more. The gym was different now from then, it was larger, it had incorporated buildings next door and it wasn't dusty at all. There was a sign, clean walls full of photos and articles, in the central one there was also him, right at the top.

They had organized the meeting there to have a neutral place, a place that represented everyone, a symbol of the pack values as the Elders demanded. Yet sitting at the head of the table in the gym hall, with the attention of many of his blood just beyond the threshold, Roman kept undaunted watching that perfectly framed photo at the top of the wall. He was there to talk, ready to prove his worth even if it was thanks to him that that picture had a wall to still be on, if that gym existed after his uncle's family had spent almost everything to pay the national healthcare system, if the next generations would have a place to go or eat like he did. He acknowledged his family efforts, but all of them would have been still in that dusty past of mediocrity if Roman had not taken everything into his own hands knowing he was more than what the world saw.

- Don't try, don’t think about it, I wouldn't do it if I was in your place - he heard Jimmy warn, blocking the wise man from trying to come forward to break the silence of their meeting that had already started a few minutes ago without a word.

Roman heard him clear his throat anyway, but payed no attention until Jey, the only one sitting besides him and Y/N, decided to cut it short.

- I don't have any piece of paper with me – he announced, rubbing his hands on his legs.

Roman eyed him silently, slowly tilting his head and Jey shifted in his seat, face so serious as he settled himself better to speak.

He could broaden his shoulders and give himself as much tone as he wanted, but he would never be on his level, he would never be like him and it was evident. That meeting was ridiculous, disrespectful even.

- It's just between us for me. Families have nothing to do with it – he explained, quickly nodding to whoever was outside the door – Same for Solo, he's my brother... and Y/N, she's family too. He disappears with you though and won't set foot in the packland again as long as I'm here. – he concluded, pointing to the wise man who didn't even manage to mutter his disappointment before Roman burst out laughing.

He’s crazy and dumb.

His hoarse laugh echoed throughout the entire empty hall and he didn't bother to hide it or hold back, simply running a hand over his beard to regain control only after a while. With the entire family's eyes on him, he knocked the table with his hand, eyeing his cousin once more.

Jey. The little soldier Jey. Roman had tried to keep him close, to teach him how things worked, because he loved him and still he didn’t get it. Not a single thing. Anything at all.

He persisted with his speeches even a few days before the moment which Roman would have removed him from the family, putting everything on the table to play the good pup. He wanted the title, he wanted to chase him away, but he was willing to vouch for his family anyway, for Solo who had kicked him and even Y/N… as if there was only one scenario out of all the ones imaginable in which Roman would have left her if not as a deadman or it would have allowed him to realize the ideas he had in his dumb head. He still thought the problem was him or the advice the wise man had given him to stay on top, he thought he could keep his hands clean, not involve anyone and he didn't understand that the situation they were in already, was the exact reason for which he would never have survived in Roman’s place.

- You're wasting my time – he said, giving him an annoyed smile.

Jey didn't reply, cashing in without even a nod. He was good at cashing in, Roman acknowledged it, it was his talent, perhaps his only one, but it still wouldn't have been enough against him. He might be determined and willing to fight him one more time, but it would be no use. Roman had no limits and had learned over the years and blows what was needed to kept the role he had.

- Whoever will standing at the end decides, tha’s the deal, the stipulation. There's nothing else to say – he established, tone suddenly deadly heavy.

There was nothing he wasn't willing to do or lose to keep what was his.

He saw Jey nod, imitate him and stand up and in the silence of the room leave the table to join him. Face to face to each other, he stared at his reflection in his cousin's dark eyes, the ulafala still around his neck as it was in the photo of him on the wall and as it always would be. He squeezed Jey forearm and allowed that even if the bond between them no longer existed, their wolves shared a final breath.

Blood of my blood. Brother. Traitor.

When the air left his lungs again to fill them with the stale smell of the center, Roman let go without hesitation, Jey imitating him in a perfect mirror. However, was he who turned his back on his cousin this time to go away first, ignoring the wise man's sad look and those of the rest of the family outside waiting. Y/N who had been on the sidelines the entire time, unexpectedly joined him, her back straight and face betraying nothing as she took her place next to him. Roman didn't comment, there was nothing to say.

Two weeks and he would have control again. Only two weeks before moving on.

Tag squad: @sunnyfleur23 @racerchix21 @alyyaanna @reignsangel444 @romanreignsdefencesquad @romanstheory @claymorexpunisher @keybladeofsteel @msbigredmachine @nayys-world @gobbersworld @utika151209 @cumxxslutt @civildawn @romanmydaddy @triscillal @papireigns-05 @helensanders92 @darqchilddaydreamz @meggylynnloves @unfriendly--blvck--hottie @nicolewoo @joannasteez @reignsx @kianaleani @daguenoire @extra-11 @333creolelady @snowpanda18 @brattyfics @mzv11 @romanreignseater @spritelucozade @tribalchiefdaily @dreamsinfocus @vebner37 @depressedneedingrevenge @cyberdejos2 @mahi-wayy @jxtina-86 @harmshake @southerngirl41 @smile1318

[amazable01]

God, I've been thinking about Remus and Patton in canon, but I haven't known what to say, but now with the finale being worked on, I feel like this is a good time to talk about this. Cause if you go back with a fresh mind (blocking out fanon concepts and just watching the actual material), Remus and Patton don't hate each other at all. In fact, in a platonic/foil kind of way, I think they complete each other, and work well together like Roman and Logan.

Remus never once in canon has insulted Patton. He has offered up uncomfortable ideas, but if anything, Remus has encouraged Patton. He gives him a creative blessing for sanitizing, and seems genuinely confused and surprised when Logan brings up Patton being an issue. Remus and Patton also bounce off one another, what with the creative thing in DWIT, but also in the asides with the "kill-joyman" bit and their interactions in the incorrect quotes (and who can forget the air fryer and Remus being genuinely excited and curious about it). Remus never intentionally goes after Patton, and when you would expect him to lash out at Morality, it's said to the group instead of him directly.

And if you look at Remus' few appearances in canon, Patton's presence actually seems to temper him slightly. DWIT, WMPG (Christmas 2023), incorrect quotes, and the asides are VERY light compared to WTIT. While you could call it a change in approach, it's really not. Remus always behaves this way toward Logan specifically, and in WTIT he is intentionally pushing the other far beyond his comfort. Patton not being brought up to help the issue intentionally makes Logan's problem with Remus worse. Which implies Remus does change his behavior slightly around Patton.

But, if Sanders Sides has shown anything across its run, it's to not underestimate the intelligence of any approach or person, regardless of how smart they appear on the surface.

So if Remus was trying to stoke what he imagines is important, he's not going to intentionally kill Thomas' drive by driving him to the brink. I think a lot of people forget that Patton is passion, not Roman. Roman is romantic and creative, but Patton is the actual feeling of passion and motivation for a project. And without that, Roman (and likely Remus) are just thoughts that get lost. And so it makes perfect sense for Remus to not actually hate Patton. Because Patton has never done anything to him, and is the only way that Remus can actually have his thoughts voiced out.*

*Remember that the Split is not canonical or confirmed. There's nothing saying that something like that happened, as Logan said it was "Like an ovum" which would imply this was how they were born. On top of this, if Remus was mad at anyone for separating out the sides like the Split implies, it would be Janus because he decided what was allowed and safe to be known. Patton probably was a contributing factor, but knowing how Patton reacts to changes in environment and nostalgia, I doubt Patton would've actively chosen to change something so drastically. I could make a whole post about this and why the Split isn't really corroborated in canon, but that's another discussion for another time.

[myapathyhaspeaked]

Platonic Sides Week Day 4: Inside Jokes

Back in the day, yearly Halloween decorations were less holiday fun and more a force of nature. The Core Sides would wake up on October first to find the Mindscape common room covered in gore and grime. Blood seeped from the floorboards, and impressions of haunting faces were pressed into the wall. Posters for horror movies were plastered all over, and cobwebs crowded each corner. It was the result of Virgil and Remus sneaking in late at night. Inspired by Virgil listing off the scariest things he could think of, the Duke would bring it all to metaphysical reality.

But then Virgil was accepted, and instead of ambushing them, he was invited to collaborate with Roman. The decor wasn’t nearly as scary, now consisting of cheery jack-o-lantern lights and plastic skeletons, but now that they had more than a late night raid to set up (and Remus wasn’t involved) it was a lot more cohesive, and the others could tell that real thought was put into how it was all arranged. Unlike before, when it looked like the Exorcist throwing up everywhere scene equivalent of a Spirit Halloween. It was also a lot more relaxing for Virgil, who didn’t have to face the consequences of telling Remus of all people (why did he used to think that was a good idea?) what he saw as shit-your-pants worthy the morning after. And despite what one might expect from someone who loved making himself a nuisance and inviting himself where he wasn’t welcome, Remus didn’t crash the decorating or switch out the cartoony ghost banners for goopy intestines. He just went back to his tower in the Imagination, and did his worst.

Because of recent “developments”, they were now making an effort to not force any Side out (though some were more excited about this prospect than others). Since Halloween was soon approaching, Virgil had hesitantly decided to dig up an old tradition, and invited the Duke to join Roman and him in decorating. After all, with two Creativities bouncing ideas off each other and two safer Sides to keep His Disgrace in check, it had to turn out great, right?

Yeah that silly idea was thrown out the window as soon as the twins’ opposing tastes lead to them butting heads.

“Why the hell would I use plastic knives? This isn’t a school cafeteria, I’m using high-quality, stainless steel, blood covered knives!”

“You’d use plastic knives because we don’t want someone to poke their eye out!” Roman argued. In his defense, he wasn’t suggesting they use the dinky plastic knives found in fast food restaurants that can’t actually cut anything, but plastic molded to look like the kind of bloody knives you’d see in cartoons, with bright red blood painted onto a right triangle on a stick. 

“Maybe you would, but I have some goddamn artistic integrity. The glorious season of Halloween deserves nothing less than real knives.”

Having had enough, and really needing a hand with hanging up the witch on a broomstick, Virgil decided to get involved (which was never a good idea, but being smart was Logan’s job).

“Yeah, because we totally want a repeat of Crochet Night,” he interrupted with a snicker as he struggled to get a loop of string onto one of the hooks they’d stuck onto the ceiling. It didn’t help that he really didn’t feel safe standing on a chair for this, so he was shaking a bit.

“Crochet Night?” Roman asked, interest evident in his voice, because one would assume that crocheting was a very mundane activity, the kind of thing you’d expect grannies to do while talking about the latest bingo game. But the combination of yarn, needles, Remus, free time, and perhaps a lack of supervision had some interesting possabilities, and he was intrigued.

“It’s a long story,” Virgil answered, and he wasn’t lying. It would be a task of its own to even describe the end result.

“Yeah dude, get your own fucking noodle incident!” Remus jeered, stabbing some rusty nails in the wall to hang decorations from. The nice thing about the Mindscape was that they didn’t have to bother finding a stud.

“Excuse me, Rudey Gloom and I have so many ‘noodle incidents!’ Just last week was spaghetti Sunday!” the Prince protested, and Virgil just shook his head and went back to trying to hang the witch (because that’s how it actually happened). He’d explain it later.

It was a while later, and they were debating if adding fake eyeballs to the blood red Hawaiian punch was too much. In Remus’ opinion, there was no such thing as too many eyeballs, but the others didn’t fully trust him not to put in real ones. Maybe one of two though, ones that they verified were just ping pong balls or something before they were put in, that might be fun.

One might think the first week of October is too early to start putting out party snacks. But since food in the Mindscape didn’t expire unless they (just Remus really) wanted it to, a table of them served just fine as decoration.

“We could make them outta jelly, then it would be like eating an actual one.”

Roman cringed at his brother’s suggestion, before hiding his face behind a sip from a red solo cup. Yes, like in the movies.

“I’m pretty sure you’re the only person who’d want that,” Virgil said, setting down a tray of those sprinkle covered sugar cookies that have pictures of pumpkins and ghosts on them.

“You say that,” the Prince replied, looking more excited than the situation called for.

“You say that,” Virgil mirrored, laughter barely contained by the grin on his face.

“What the fuck are you two saying?”

“Oh, it’s uh…” he trailed off, because really to understand he’d need to explain about five weeks’ worth of context, the history of ferrets, and the plot of an obscure kids’ show episode.

“You had to be there, Angus Boredom!” Roman boasted, gesturing his solo cup at his brother. Remus groaned, wanting more than ever to know what that was all about now that he was being denied the knowledge.

Several minutes later, Virgil gawked when he walked in with paper mâché supplies to see the twins working together to stick spooky gel stickers to the ceiling. Them working together for once wasn’t what he was reacting to, though that was also unusual. No, the real weirdness was that Roman was sitting on his brother’s shoulders.

“Hey Emo,” Remus waved, causing Roman to brace himself against the ceiling so he wouldn’t fall off. “You got the sauce?”

“For the last time, glue is not a condiment. And what are you two doing?”

“Uh, isn’t it obvious?” Roman asked as he removed the backing from a squishy spider sticker. “We’re putting up stickers. They glow in the dark, it’ll be fabulous!”

“I can see that, I’m not blind,” he rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t you use a ladder or something?”

“Nah, do you know how many people die from ladders? This is much safer,” he answered, and normally Virgil would argue that there was no way that was true. But really? They were quite good at it. Roman could stretch and reach and maneuver however he needed to, and Remus had no problem adjusting so they didn’t come crashing down. And, as long as he was given a bit of warning, Remus could stroll over to where they needed to be next and Roman wouldn’t so much as sway, balancing himself with his twin’s gait. It was obvious they had done this before. Multiple times.

“When did you even learn how to do that?” he queried, because before Remus revealed himself to Thomas, a majority of the interactions he used to see between the Creativities consisted of medieval duels.

“Oh, well we were on this quest in the Imagination,” Roman began, and that was already a plot twist. Last he checked, each brother was banned from the other’s side unless given explicit permission to enter. Of course, that didn’t mean the rule was actually followed (it wasn’t). But before he could continue, steam started escaping from his ears.

“Unfortunately, a wizard banned us from ever saying what happened that day, so it’s a pain in the ass to explain. I’d try writing it down, but I don’t want my morningstar to be dyed pink.” Usually Remus was immune to curses, since he didn’t mind if horrible or weird things happened to him. But the bastard of a wizard had personalized the curse to do things that actually bugged him, like covering his sketchbooks in cute cat stickers. He was tempted to donate it to Patton, but the paternal Side probably wouldn’t have been too appreciative of the drawings within.

Virgil looked up from where he was spreading out a tarp in preparation for the messy craft. “So I’ll never know?” The twins just shrugged in unison.

“Eh, I guess that’s fair. Three Sides, three things we refuse to explain, all checks out.”

---

@platonicsidesweek

[oatmealdaydreams]

I know I got no choice, got no choice, but to love myself

Please let me know if you want to be added on or taken off the taglist!

Pairing: Intrulogical

Warnings: violent thoughts, violent imagery, intrusive thoughts, insecurity

Description: Logan admires Remus’ consistent love for himself. Remus doesn’t think it matters. It’s not like he had a choice.

Extra: the title is from the song Reaper Man by Mother Mother. It's a Remus song and I will die on that hill.

[Masterlist] | ao3 link

[fic under the cut]

In the late hours of the night, Logan and Remus lay together on the edges of falling asleep. Both dressed in cozy pajamas, under warm blankets and covers. They drift into a calm atmosphere with each other. It’s been a long day for the both of them, and resting with one another is just the thing they need. Curtains are drawn to let in soft moonlight from windows that peek into a nightscape in the Imagination. An idea Roman had, and one Remus helped install into every bedroom in the Mindscape. It’s peaceful and quiet, though both of them remain somewhat awake in each other’s arms. 

“Cephy,” a quiet, sleepy voice calls. 

Remus’ own sleepy voice hums in response, content as the first runs a hand through his hair. 

“I’m not one to be sentimental,” a sleepy Logan starts, only for Remus to snort at him. “But, I do admire your consistent strive to love yourself. It’s wonderful to witness.” 

At that, Remus turns his head to Logan, eyebrows furrowed. Logan moves his hand with him, keeping up the gentle and calm gesturing of running it through his partner’s hair. The small bits of confusion across his face confuse Logan. 

“You...you what?” Remus mutters. 

Logan gives a soft smile, “I admire your sense of self-love. You have this strength to just love all these parts of yourself, even if certain others don’t. I admire it.” 

Remus can only scoff. Logan’s face shifts from soft fondness to worry, and his hand in Remus’ hair stills. Remus noticeably tenses, eyes darting away from his companion. 

“Cephy,” Logan calls again, his hand moving to cup Remus’ cheek. “What’s wrong?”

Remus doesn’t look at him.

“Nothin’, nerd,” he answers quietly. 

“Hey, if there’s something bothering you, you can talk to me. I will listen,” Logan thumbs Remus’ cheek soothingly, and Remus has to close his eyes before he dares to melt from a simple gesture. 

“I know. You’d—you listen, I know.”

“Then what’s the matter, dear?”

“There ain’t anythin’. That’s the thing, it don’t matter. It’s just somethin’ I have to do.”

“I...I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

Remus sighs, “‘Course, ya don’t.”

He winces. It wasn’t meant to be that sharp. He doesn’t mean it like that. He didn’t mean it. 

He’s trying to be there for you, and all you can do is fuck it up! Rude, rude child. Fuck-up. Stupid little rat man. 

Logan is patient. A hand still thumbing his cheek, still keeping him steady and here, still warm against his face. Logan’s listening. He always listens, and, yeah, it’s a whole lot fucking better than not being listened to. God, why must he be so fucking observant? Why can’t Thomathy have a stupider Logic that doesn’t care about shit? Fuck you, Thommy Salami. Fuck you and your stupidly sweet Logic who cares and worries. 

“You said you like how I love myself,” Remus continues, rubbing his cheek against Logan’s palm apologetically as he opens his eyes. “It ain’t somethin’ that matters. I kinda have to do it.”

Logan sits up a little, bringing Remus with him. He cups his face with both hands now, a sadly withdrawn expression in his cephalopod's stark red eyes. Remus looks at him, shrugging, as they sit there. He nearly closes his eyes again as Logan thumbs both cheeks now, soft and warm and grounding. 

“What do you mean by ‘you have to do it’, Cephy?”

Remus furrows his brows, giving him an of course, I do look. 

“What do you mean when you say ‘it doesn’t matter’?” Logan tries. 

“‘Cause it don’t? What else would I mean, Professor Dork?” Remus says nonchalantly. 

“How could loving yourself not matter? It’s important.”

Remus makes a noncommittal noise, shrugging again. 

“It matters, my dear. Of course, it matters. You’re important, and you loving yourself always matters,” Logan insists. 

Remus searches for the lie, his eyes gazing intensely into Logan’s beautiful grey and indigo. C’mon, he lives with Jannie of all Sides, he’s learned not to take anything at face value. Sure, yeah, JanJan doesn’t always speak in deception and threads of yellow, but living with that guy teaches you how to twist through what’s said and what’s meant. 

After not finding anything for a good few minutes, Remus slumps. There’s an odd silence that makes him itch to scream, so the silence can’t cut his throat out. He doesn’t like the silence. 

I wonder how silence could cut your throat. With a dagger? Like wind so sharp it cuts through wood? Would it sting? Would it bleed like a waterfall and stain Logan’s carpet? Blood’s hard to get out. You shouldn’t make such a mess, you stupid fucking bastard. Bad, bad, bad. 

Logan plants a gentle kiss to Remus’ nose that pushes out a soft whine from the Duke, his eyes closing again as his skin tries to savor the affection. It sends delightful tingles that his mind doesn’t comment on. 

“Why do you think you have to love yourself, Cephy?” Logan asks, a serious tone bleeding through his tongue. 

“I, um…” Remus doesn’t want to open his eyes, but he forces them open to focus and shifts them away from Logan. “Who else would fuckin’ love me?”

Logan’s breath hitches, heart clenching uncomfortably in his chest. 

“What?” is all he can utter. 

“I’ve gotta do it ‘cause no one else will. ‘S not like ‘m wanted much by everyone, anyway,” Remus continues, unaware of the horribly bare concern that washes over his nerd’s face. “I ain’t got a choice, Lolo.” 

He looks back at Logan, and a worried noise slips from his lips. Logan’s mouth is slightly agape, eyebrows furrowed, and looks every bit ready to cry. 

“Lolo—”

“You, you’re...Remus,” Logan will cry any second now, and it’s Remus’ fault. 

Remus squirms under the whimper of his own name, a small flinch shuddering his body. Logan doesn’t call him by name anymore. He calls him ‘dear’ or ‘Cephy or sweet little nicknames that he’d never admit were sentimental. He doesn’t—he doesn’t call him ‘Remus’ unless someone fucked up or it’s really serious. Did he fuck up? Oh, he fucked up, didn’t he? He fucks up a lot of things, but Logan is the one thing, the someone, he doesn’t wanna fuck up. He’s sorry, he didn’t mean to fuck up. 

“Hey, hey, shh. I’m not mad,��� Logan’s voice cracks near the end as he tries to reassure his boyfriend. “It’s okay, Cephy.”

The return of an endearing nickname eases Remus, and he pushes his face out of Logan’s hands and into his chest. Logan moves to hold him properly, helping him to lay his head in the crook of his neck. Logan’s arms hold him tight, and he pulls Remus securely into his lap. Remus snuggles into his companion, chasing the nearly overwhelming warmth from being held. He shivers, and Logan wraps a blanket around them. 

“You’re loved, Remus. Of course, you’re loved. I care about you, and–and—” Logan mutters into Remus’ smelly hair, not giving a flying fuck. “Janus cares about you, too. He likes taking care of you. And Roman’s missed you.”

Remus separates his nose from the crook of Logan’s neck, head sharply turning up to look at him. He can’t stop the look of utter disbelief echoing in his eyes, nor can he stop himself from scoffing again. Roman’s not...why would he miss him? He said he didn’t like him! You’re not supposed to miss the people you don’t like, right? How’s that supposed to work? He said he didn’t like him, and it’s not like he’s tried spending time with him much. Of course, he doesn’t miss him. Remus misses him...but that’s him, and not Roman, because he isn’t Roman and Roman isn’t him and Roman doesn’t want to be anything like him. He doesn’t miss him! He doesn’t...he—he—

“He’s—Ro what?” Remus stammers. 

“Roman misses you. He told me himself that he misses you but doesn’t know how to connect with you because it’s been so long. He cares, Cephy,” Logan explains, uttering quietly as they’re both caught up in emotions. 

“No. No, he don’t. He said he don’t like me, how could he miss me? That’s not—no—”

“Cephy, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. ‘Cause if he misses me, then why won’t he try? He should know—he should...he’s not...I…”

Remus buries himself back into Logan, as if he were trying to burrow into his chest like a little mole. Logan holds him tighter, engulfing him, protecting him. 

“You’re loved, my dear. You’re loved, I promise, you are. You’ve got people who care about you. You don’t have to depend on only yourself to feel loved and wanted. It’s okay, Cephy, I’ve got you,” Logan mumbles into Remus' head of messy hair. 

“I don’t—I dunno if I can believe you, Lolo…”

“That’s okay, little fry. I’ll keep reminding you until you do.”

“Even if I do?” Remus’ voice is small. 

“Even then,” Logan’s voice is wet. 

A few, tiny tracks of tears flow down Logan’s face and hit Remus’ head. Remus glances up, wiping away his companion’s tears and not giving a shit about the grossness of crying. He wraps his own arms around Logan, clinging to him as his nerd does the same. They slowly lay each other down—the blanket coming with them, warm and soft—and Logan pulls the cover back over them. 

It’s late in the night as Logan and Remus lay together on the edges of tearful slumber and comforting embraces. Both remain dressed in cozy pajamas, under their warm blankets and covers. They drift deep into each other, burying their bodies together. It’s been a long day, and an emotional night for them both. Curtains are drawn to let in soft moonlight, the Imagination sending in calm breezes through the windows. It’s peaceful and quiet as they cuddle there, ready to sleep, ready to gentle each other’s worries away. It’s there Remus realizes he isn’t alone, he’s wanted and loved. It’s there Logan holds on tightly to his love, trying so desperately for his fondness and care for his companion to be felt through how he holds him. It’s there they let silent tears fall and quiet hearts heal. 

It’s there, in the middle of the night, that Remus starts to feel wanted by someone who isn’t him. 

Taglist: @lost-in-thought-20 @thegoldenduckie @not-sure-what-im-feeling

[the-exhausted-xexandaler]

So I found out that Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place has a sequel series. I’m referring of course to Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, a time skip forward by I think 16 years since Justin was graduating High School at the end of the first series and is 34 in this series but that’s me getting off track. I only found out about because I had the urge to watch the Disney Doctor Who season.

First, good to see David Henrie (Justin Russo) taking on basically the role that David DeLuise (Jerry Russo AKA the Dad) was for the course of the show. And the drama that Justin hasn’t actually told his family about the wizarding world because he’s embarrassed of his failures is really believable, especially given Justin’s character.

Here are some things that I’m looking forwards to or noticed about the show just from the first two episodes.

1. At least one cameo from Jake T. Austin reprising his role as Max Russo. Maybe to come spoil his favorite (and only) nephews in the family since he makes mad bank now. I imagine his ‘To the Max!’ Sandwich finally got the endorsement of being the official sandwich of the New York Mets.

2. Alex Russo (Selena Gomez) bringing up the whole ‘end of the world prophecy’ being a very real possibility and Billie (played by young Janice LeAnn Brown) who is a young menace but also the only one who can stop it is believable for the canon of the series. What really is amazing is the character development we can see happened while the show had that gap with Alex not even begrudgingly saying that Justin is the ‘best wizard she knows’ and how she genuinely cares about her big brother. I mean she cared a lot back in the first series sure, but she was much more than willing to drive her bro crazy before helping him.

3. Justin… can use magic??? I thought there was a system in place that if you want to marry a mortal, you have to give up your ability to use magic. Was this a side effect of him getting his power from… was it Professor Kr��mel? That would be the only way I could understand it working out and I hope a later episode goes into details because why can he use magic is a pretty big… wait… why can’t his kids use magic?

Okay forget the list let’s talk about this plot hole… so all three Justin, Alex and Max had access to magic, and that was after their dad Jerry married Theresa (Maria Canals-Barrera). Even if we assume that having even one wizard be born from a no-longer-wizard is incredibly low chance, they had three kids who all were wizards, so some sort of genetic disposition towards wizardry must exist in their bloodline even stronger than any other. Was there something in Justin getting his powers back after the contest that kept his kids from being able to do magic? Did Roman (Alkaio Thiele) have to wear a stupid hat without understanding why? Can they do magic but Justin just refuses to teach them, or more curiously… is Justin the actual father of Roman and Milo (Max Matenko) or is he their step father but they don’t have much memory of their real dad?

Oooh… this is getting much more interesting… after all, for everyone who knows this show good and well, we all know that-

Everything is not what it seems~

[buckybarnesss]

This is sort of an out of left field question- but what are your thoughts on Peter and Talia being half or step siblings?

Obviously, they don’t look alike very much. And clearly genes are funky things and this is not damning evidence. But I think it’s a very personal hc to me bc I myself have a half brother who I love very much, but it does influence our interactions.

One thing I constantly think about is Peter being an unreliable narrator. And what we see of Laura from his pov is different than Scott and Stiles finding her body. Is he imagining she’s blond and looks more like him? Yeah sure this could just be casting inaccuracies. But it feels very personal lol.

Has Peter always felt a degree of distance with his family? Where did the idea of him being Talia’s left hand come from? Wouldnt he have been there in the alpha pack flash back if that was the case? Was he younger than Laura? This also brings to mind Papa Hale (who I like to imagine was a human part of the pack/another pack before him and Talia were in a relationship). Was Talia always a Hale? Or married in?

Anyway, I have many thoughts and questions. But I really appreciate your analysis and insight. Joining a fandom past its prime (affectionate) is sort of like being in the apocalypse where 80% of the fandom is dead, and finding a ‘survivor’ is a miracle. Anyway, if you feel like it, I would love your thoughts on it all :3

if laura hale is my roman empire than talia and peter's relationship is my holy roman empire.

@dear-massacre and i talk about this quite frequently. it's a problem fam.

i do have a talia hale and peter hale and the hale family feels tags.

we don't really have any information other than some crumbs jeff has thrown us within canon.

in my opinion talia is the hale. there's no other option put forth. derek's father is such a non-entity that there's zero mention of him. the hales are clearly an old family of werewolves and were part of the very founding of beacon hills itself likely connected to the nemeton.

not to mention, season 3 has a lot to do with derek learning from and accepting talia's legacy and the legacy of the hale family. it also directly contrasts the argents. the argents pay lip service to being matriarchal but we know gerard has been calling the shots for decades whereas it seems as though the hales actually were.

so when you get down to it you can pretty much headcanon anything you want for how the exact specifics of how talia and peter are related but what we do know is talia was the older sibling and peter the younger.

peter doesn't actually talk about talia very much if at all. however, his monolog in monstrous is quite illuminating on peter's headspace while he was in a coma and pre-resurrection.

i predicted this. i told-i told talia this was going to happen... something like this was going to happen... i said that they were gonna come for us... " the argents, they're gonna come for us. they're gonna burn us to the ground-- burn us to the ground." did she listen? of course not! did anyone listen? they listened to her-- yes!-- say that everything was going to be fine. that we were all perfectly safe...perfectly safe... but she made us weak! she made us weak. and what happens to the weakest in the herd? they get picked off by the predators! we used to be the apex predators, until talia turned us into sheep.

with that said i do have my own ideas on their relationship given what we know. visionary is the episode that does the heavy lifting in the entire goddamn show in regards to this.

the age inconsistency comes from bringing back the younger actor from season 2 to play peter in visionary. it makes peter appear closer to derek's age than he actually is. i think it's almost part of peter's manipulations. it's his attempt to manipulate the audience as well just like he did lydia.

there's just simply no way talia hale didn't know about peter's everything. she was not only his older sister but she was his alpha. i think peter and talia may have been more similar than people want to believe.

peter is a lot of things. many of them contradictory. he loved his sister and clearly mourned her but that doesn't mean he didn't resent her just a little. he did still after all go with derek to retrieve her claws and i think there's something twisted up in him about how derek resembles her and begins to become more like her.

when you begin to sort of dig into what we know about the hale family the more one begins to question if talia was as benevolent as people assume she was. there's some seriously morally questionable things that occurred. talia did some shady things.

the real big one is that she coerced corrine into carrying her pregnancy with malia to term. the likely explanation is talia did this because she knew this would decrease corrine's power.

corrine is pretty explicit about this with what she says to malia:

you know, your real name isn't malia. you don't have a name. talia hale took you away from me before i could give you one.

and

corrine: i'm not going to stop, malia. i'm taking back what you stole from me. malia: i didn't steal anything. corrine: but you did. corrine: and I don't care if you're a willing participant or not. talia hale spent nine months trying to convince me of the miracle of childbirth. you know what it really felt like? a parasite. talia said it was a gift, that the coyote passes down part of her power to her daughter. she called it "beautiful." i call it "theft."

she also took peter's memories of malia's existence which considering peter's reaction doesn't seem like he had much say in. so in effect talia removed peter's agency.

she probably felt she had valid reason for doing these things. corrine was a threat and dangerous person but still it's really, really questionable. it still ended with malia's adoptive mother and sister being killed and malia going missing for years because corrine was vengeful over losing her power. talia was still alive when this happened.

of all people talia had to be aware of peter's -- you know -- everything and she probably held the leash. he wasn't a problem so long as she was the alpha and could control him.

talia also had to have been aware of and likely either approved of or encouraged him taking a mentor sort of role with derek. we see peter having a keen interest in derek in both visionary and the season 4 flashbacks.

like, who do we think ran off and told talia about what happened with derek and paige? who likely instructed peter on getting rid of paige's body and helping to cover up her death to protect derek and the family?

i actually fully believe she knew peter was skulking about the werewolf summit and may have even told him to do so.

talia is like the mona lisa smile of teen wolf. she's inscrutable but we get impressions about her and what she was like via the people that knew her. her children, her brother, her advisor and peers.

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Asbod!! (This is my name for you when i refer to you in my discord servers lol) can you talk about Brothers? I love it!! I want any thoughts you have abt it! All of the thoughts you have about it!

first of all i love the name Asbod please feel free to call me that (that goes for everyone)

SECOND oh my god Brothers was such a fun thing to write especially considering there's a strange thing that happens with the twins where Roman gets comforted by Remus a lot (I'm guilty of this I know shush) but Remus doesn't really have a whole lot of people he can actually go to for things

(under the cut because wow)

one of the things i associate the most with remus is my tenuous relationship with reality. this might be tmi but I have these...episodes? hallucinations? delusions? somethings where it's really hard for me to stay in my body where i am at the point in time that i should be, and most often how this manifests (or how i realize it's happening to me and i would like it to No Longer Happen) is I get really fucking cold. Now, normally, I'm a goddamn space heater so that's an unfamiliar sensation. so i wanted to give remus that same kind of panic where it's cold, who knows why, and then you slowly have that feeling that something is Wrong. Not in that there's something outright coming to get you, or that you can see how things are going to spiral out of control, but that feeling of being in a sterile, bland, completely emotionless room and hearing the buzzing of the fluorescent lights just a little too loudly. and of course because it's remus, we take it to the extreme

the wolf...look, i blame puss in boots the last wish and dimension 20's neverafter for reigniting my love for wolf death deities, especially benevolent ones. (yeah yeah Death from puss in boots isn't really benevolent until the very end but you get what i mean, he's reasonable, he's not just mindlessly evil or malicious.) The wolf for me is such a symbol of the end of a story, or at the very least an irrevocable turning point. within the context of the twins specifically, the wolf serves as an interesting bridge between the two; the wolf as a fairytale figure fits very nicely into Roman's more traditional 'storied' Imagination, whereas the fear and uncertainly the figure of the wolf connotes slots very well into Remus's side. there's something incredibly soothing for me, a very brain-spicy person, about having a being who is kind for no other reason than it chooses to be. I dunno if you caught remus referencing Emily Dickinson's work as he was carried.

and then for roman! we all know i'm a full time station master for the roman angst train, but it works both ways. roman is deeply connected to the imagination, to creativity, to his brother, and as much as remus and he butt heads about things, there's an element of roman's creativity that remus finds safe. i think roman perhaps out of all the sides is truly the embodiment of the hurt/comfort genre, the desire to see something fall so far, yes, but land on something soft. that's the sort of thing his brother makes, and so the imagination/remus/the wolf takes him to roman because that's the soft landing he needs. and then with the hypothermia specifically--look, okay, i'm not an exception to the lure of that trope, even if i never take it the sexy route. bringing someone out of that state requires patience, gentle and constant attention, because you have to warm them up slowly and carefully. how could i not want to portray that? especially for these two, who are such obvious mirrors yet at the same time are exactly the same.

[mask131]

Roman gods are not Greek gods: Venus

VENUS

After doing Mars, I had to talk about Venus.

Now… Unlike Mars, who was always a very important Roman god and stayed important even after the Hellenization, Venus is one of those numerous deities that started out as secondary figures in the “original” Roman religion, before the Hellenization suddenly had them promoted to “main god” status.

Who was originally Venus, before being associated with the Greek Aphrodite? She was, like Mars, a goddess of vegetation – but a minor one. She was a small Italic deity, tied to the maturation of plants, the fecundation of flowers and the protection of vegetable gardens. Alongside goddesses such as Feronia of Flora, she was a spirit of sprung and fecundity, present in festivals such as the Floralia and the Vinalia rustica. But starting with the 2nd century BC, her association with Aphrodite suddenly raised her to the rank of “one of the twelve main gods” and she inherited almost everything from the Greek Aphrodite: she gained her personality, her legends, her attributes… She became the goddess of beauty, love and sexuality, and thanks to Caesar pushing forward her cult (since he claimed that his family, the gens Julia, descended from Aeneas, the son of Venus), she quickly became a very famous and powerful deity in the Roman pantheon. But even then, the Hellenization wasn’t complete as Venus kept a lot of unique traits separating her from Aphrodite.

Notably, her original role as a goddess of vegetation stayed prevalent in her post-Hellenization fame, which led to Venus’ take on beauty and sexuality being heavily focused on fertility and prosperity. She also kept her “natural” function as the goddess in charge of the “everyday wine”: the Romans separated the “sacred” wine, a wine for sacrifices and religious ceremonies, from the “common” wine used as a simple alcohol, and the latter was Venus’ wine. Her month was the month of April, the time in which the renewed nature filled itself with love. Of course, no need to tell you how the idea of a goddess bringing fruits could be tied to human sexuality: she was Venus Genetrix, the goddess of motherhood – and it was under this “motherly” concept that Julius Caesar presented her as his ancestress. It was under this same name that she was considered the “mother” of Rome and of all Romans, since she birthed Aeneas, the supposed founder of the Roman civilization. Even more than just a physical or cultural mother, Venus was also “Venus Physica”, the universal force of nature responsible for creating and shaping the physical world, connecting Venus’ motherly role to her powers as a vegetation goddess. She was basically a form of “Nature Mother”, which does cause a main split with the Greek Aphrodite, who was more of a “lover” figure than a “mother” one.

In fact, in a strange twist, despite still being recognized as a goddess of seduction and sexuality, Venus was a much more… “chaste” deity than Aphrodite, thanks to the Romans being much stricter when it came to their sexual life. For example some temples of Venus were thought to receive their funds from the payment imposed on women for sexual misdemeanors, and one of the biggest aspects of Venus was “Venus Verticordia”, “Venus the changer of hearts” – a role in which the goddess is supposed to turn lust into chastity. It was a cult closely tied to the cult of the virginal Vestals, and Venus Verticordia was even said to have been created as an answer to some Vestals transgressing their vow of virginity. Only the Romans could imagine a goddess of sexuality that would actually promote virginity… (You can also see how Venus went from “the adulterer” to “the perfect wife” in my post about Mars). Similarly, while the Greek Aphrodite seems to have been outside of the rule of Hera as a goddess of marriage, in the Roman world, Venus was one of the marriage goddesses alongside Juno – future brides offering gifts to the goddess, and in exchange Venus preparing the “bliss” of the bride and ensuring the fertility of the union. There was to Venus a very “lawful love and sexuality” aspect that is very different from Aphrodite’s… let’s say more “chaotic” approach to sex and couples.

Another aspect of Venus that is very Roman is her military role – because as I said, almost all Roman gods are military gods in one way or another, and Venus was thought to be a giver of victory under the name “Venus Victrix”, “Venus the Victorious”, a depiction of the goddess with weapons in her hands. In general people prayed to Venus not so much for love or physical pleasure, rather they expected from her all sorts of good things and more… we could say “abstract” pleasures. For example, as Venux Felix, “Lucky Venus”, she was an embodiment of fortune and luck, while as Venux Libertina, “Venus the Freedwoman”, she became a goddess of freedom and of the free women (remember, slavery was a common thing in Ancient Rome). She was also confused with the goddess Cloacina (a water goddess of the Etrusceans that became the goddess of the Roman sewers, the Cloaca Maxima), but as Venus Cloacina was “Venus the Purifier”, a goddess of cleansing and purification in both a literal way (getting rid of stench and filth) and a figurative way (Venus Cloacina was tied to the concept of reconciliation and peace-making) – plus, of course, in the same “lawful love” angle talked above, she was also responsible for making “pure” the sexual intercourses within the marriage and the married couple.

Speaking of water, this is probably the other main element that struck the Romans deeply: the Hesiodic birth of Aphrodite out of the foam of the sea. The Romans fell in love with this idea of a sea-born goddess, and tried as hard as they could to shape their Venus into a water deity and sea-goddess. It was again, still tied to her role as a goddess of vegetation: water brings life to plants and nature, the same way sexuality brings life to humanity. She was “Venus Euploia”, Venus of the fair voyage ; and Venus Pontia, Venus of the sea – a goddess worshiped by sailors and mariners, and whose task was to smooth the waves to ensure a good sea-travel, to the point some even considered her the “Queen of the Sea” and made her basically a Roman equivalent of the Greek Amphitrite. Fascinatingly, despite this strong association with water, Venus was also considered a celestial goddess – called names such as Venus Caelestis (Celestial Venus) or Venus Urania (Heavenly Venus), and according to Virgil it was in the form of the morning star (the planet Venus) that she guided her son Aeneas through his travels.

A final point about Venus I would like to make is that, under the many attributions and aspects of Venus, several strange ones kept popping out, bizarre regional alternate takes on the goddess that the Romans themselves were sometimes baffled by. Such as Venus Calva, aka the Bald Venus, which led to several legends being told to try to explain her lack of hair ; or Venus Barbata, the Bearded Venus, which was an hermaphrodite Venus, with the body and outfit of a woman, but the beard and genitalia of a man. (It is possible that this one is just a continuation of the fascinating deity known as Aphroditos, a male Aphrodite from Cyprus, I’ll let you check on this one – though Roman poets liked to explain it by just thinking it depicted Venus as the “ultimate nurturer”, uniting male and female attributes together for the purpose of… well, nurturing the world).

[hoursofreading]

COWEN: But how does art protect them? How does that explain wonderful art in Florence? PALMER: Imagine for a moment that you are the French ambassador, and you’re on your way to Rome to meet with the pope because the French king always needs this. Now, if you’re an ambassador, you’re, at minimum, the son of a count because only aristocracy can be ambassadors. On your way south, you’re stopping off in different cities, including Florence. Now, you already have a terrible opinion of Florence because Florence is a pit of merchants, scum, and villainy. Florence, in order to prevent noblemen from taking over the republic, literally executed everyone in this city who had a drop of royal blood or noble blood. So, it’s just commoners. There’s not a single person in this city who is of sufficient right to be worthy to talk to you. In addition, Florence has such a terrible reputation for sodomy, homosexuality, and perversion that the verb to Florentine is literally the word for anal sex in five different European countries, including in France. So, you’re on your way to this city, and it’s full of merchant scum and they’re all perverts and there isn’t even anyone there who’s worthy to host you on the way. You’re going to stay with your dad’s banker because he’s the only Florentine whose address you’ve got. You show up in the city, and you reach the city, and suddenly, wait a minute, it’s full of these gorgeous ancient Roman bronzes. Wait a minute, they can’t be ancient Roman bronzes. They look like they’re new, but that technology doesn’t exist. That technology was lost centuries ago. Then you go to the banker’s house, and he greets you humbly at the door saying, “I’m sorry, my house is unworthy to host your excellency,” and he invites you inside, and you look around the courtyard, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before, with these round circular arches that let enormous amounts of light shine in on the gardens and the statues. You’ve never seen this before. Wait, you have seen this before. It looks like the ruins of the Roman villa in the backyard of your father’s castle where you grew up, but that doesn’t exist anymore. Those arts were lost. In the middle of the courtyard, there’s a gorgeous statue, an ancient Roman statue of Bacchus or Dionysius, and next to it, there’s a brand-new statue that’s obviously new because it hasn’t even turned green yet. The bronze is still ruddy. But that technology, you know, doesn’t exist. In the corner, there are some men dressed in strange robes speaking a language you’ve never heard, and you say, “What language are they speaking?” The banker says, “Oh, they’re speaking Ancient Greek. They’re Plato scholars.” And you say, “But Ancient Greek is lost, and Plato is lost. How do you have this?” “Oh, we have lots of Ancient Greek here. Look, here’s my grandson, Lorenzo. He’s just written a sonnet in Ancient Greek about the three parts of the soul.” And then, here’s a little boy reciting a sonnet to you about the nature of the soul in Ancient Greek. You’re like, “Where am I? All of this stuff is impossible.” And that’s the moment that your host, Cosimo de’ Medici, turns to you and says, “Would France like to make an alliance with Florence?” You could say no, right? You could say, “No, we’re going to come here, we’re going to bring our army. We’re going to mop the floor with you because you’re helpless compared to our giant forces, and we’re going to burn this down and take the gold, and all of this will be gone, and we’ll be rich.” Or you could say, “Yes. Let’s make an alliance. Send me a bronzesmith and an architect and a Greek tutor and a Plato scholar, and we’re going to bring them to the court in France, and the king is going to do his court like this. Then, when the envoys from England show up, they’re going to feel like uncultured country bumpkins, just like I feel now.” That’s how it’s a defense mechanism, because they are helpless on the military game, but they are so ahead on the culture game that you don’t want to hurt them. You want to befriend them so that you can have the art.

[gemsofgreece]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJg3VowM/

What even is this? A Moroccan talking bad about Greeks because our ancestors defeated them thousands of years ago??? Like what?? Are they gonna just complain about everything at this point just to have an excuse to spread hate..

But also, Greeks did not defeat them, that's a major point! 😂 The interaction between Greeks and Berbers was minimal at best.

Imagine being colonized like a dozen times and accusing the ones who actually did not colonize you or colonised a small part where you happened to live nearby! But even if we had, it's also funny to blame people now for ancestors colonizing yours 2500 years ago but you simultaneously give a bigger pass to those colonizing you until 70 years ago LMAO

However, I don't think we should care much about such things. I am not aware of Berber people in general having any sort of beef with Greeks. That person, I mean, yeah like the girl in the response video says, seems to have issues. You only need to see the way she speaks and gestures, she's essentially spitting hate there.

I honestly wouldn't consider this concerning enough to discuss but I liked the Greek girl's response, she's very eloquent and, might I say, has a wonderful and effortless accent in English.

Of course the Greek girl makes numerous points throughout, however I could nitpick some stuff in her arguments as well. For one, Afroditi’s pronunciation is not that much of a serious argument as she's referring to the modern pronunciation. Not that the "Amazigh priestess" used an archaic pronunciation correctly, but just saying, not an entirely correct counter-argument either.

Also about the taxes, Ottomans absolutely did tax Christian Greeks very heavily, it's the notorious "haratsi" (Haraç), we still use the word to refer to illogical taxes.

Her best point was mentioning that the Berbers themselves had empires, expanding all the way up to Spain, sometimes cruel as well.

Then, just to be sure, I did make some research on the Internet. Wikipedia, for one, mentions no substantial interaction between Greeks and Berbers except to say that when Greeks of Sicily attempted to capture Carthage from the Phoenicians, Berbers fought along their side in hopes that their rights in the Phoenician city-state would improve!

Then the other time Greeks mention Berbers is when Byzantine authors were documenting that Berbers were raiding the Greek monasteries in Cyrenaica. Okay...

I did however find a website which is about Berber history which claims that everything we know is wrong and Egyptian and Greek gods are taken from the Berbers. Yeah, that whole "you know this wrong, it's the other way around, actually" is trending A LOT lately. This Berber website is twisting the general academic research that points that Berbers had their own original pantheon which however was later influenced by the Greeks and the Romans after they started settling there. Once again, this website too abuses intepretatio graeca and twists Herodotus' words. But still the similarities aren't that strong at all. And honestly I really doubt Egyptians needed to "steal" stuff from others. This priestess must spend a lot of time in this website.

I don't know what's happening lately. I think it has become a trend for everyone to claim they are indigenous from the very first 10000000000 year old original ultimately influential culture that everyone has colonized and tortured and appropriated, especially all the "unfairly" and "accidentally" famous civilizations. If I had a cent for every time I have been hearing this lately and by people that most likely are not equipped to claim this, I would have been changing icons to Twitter at this point. It does seem like a "culture envy" phenomenon... really the girl has a point for calling the priestess "culture vulture". It's like people can't promote their own culture without abusing or bringing down another.

And especially when it is about the organic voluntary expansion or mutual influence in religions, it is absolutely the most ridiculous thing. In the same sense, all Christians in the globe are culturally appropriating the Twelve Apostles. Why do we get dumber and dumber with every new year?

Anyway, here's the response video of the Greek girl.

[wolfprincesszola]

The Fate of the Marked Six Chapter 13

as always, reblogs and likes are appreciated! enjoy <3 ——————– Summary: Virgil moves into a new town and meets Roman, a ghost that he promises to help in finding the unfinished business needed to pass over. However, Roman's past seemed to be deeply muddled with trouble, an uncurable disease that has started to affect a classmate, and a certain tight-lipped valedictorian. Friendships are made and Virgil finds himself thrown into a situation far more complicated and twisted than he signed up. Hopefully, with the help of his new five friends, he can find a way to bring peace to the town once and for all.

Trigger Warning: None

Content Warning: Swearing

<Masterlist>

<Previous> <Next> ——————–

Chapter 13

Roman had been gaining his memories back. It was a long and slow process, but he found out the more he followed Logan around, the more memories came back to him. He remembered a lot when it came to his brother and a part of him understood why his life turned out the way it did. A part of him understood why Logan became the way he did. However, it still hurt that no matter what, Logan couldn’t accept the fact that Roman was a ghost, and that maybe a part of Roman's unfinished business came from Logan. Until Logan could accept it, Roman was stuck being a ghost.

Although, it wasn’t as bad when he was hanging out with Virgil. Virgil made his day a lot better. Virgil always found a way to make him smile, even if it wasn’t on purpose. Currently, at the moment, they were waiting in the car for Janus to come out so they could drive to school, as Logan had woken them to tell them that it was an urgent situation.

“Listen, I don’t care if this boy has 7 years of experience with a gun. I know self-defense and I don’t think he can do much with a gun like that.” Virgil grumbled, putting his hoodie over his ears to keep him warm.

Roman snorted, looking at the boy, “Our dad also taught us self-”

“Let me imagine, okay?” Virgil scowled, “Besides, what do you know, you amnesiac ghost?”

“A lot.” Roman remarked, but still shut his mouth and let Virgil talk about how inconvenient it was for his brother to make them do all this at 4 in the morning.

His complaining was cut off with Janus walking into the car.

“Hey.” Virgil nodded.

“You upset about Logan making us do this at 4 in the morning?”

“Yeah.” Virgil sighed, “Also, I know you can’t see him, but Roman’s here too.”

“Hello, Roman” Janus nodded.

"He’s the boy who can see the marks, right?”

“Yeah, Janus’s the boy who can see the marks.”

“Oh, right, I forgot he knows our powers. Does he have a power?”

“Yeah, teleportation.” Virgil remarked.

Janus suddenly groaned, rubbing his temples.

“What?” Virgil and Roman both asked at the same time.

"I've been hanging around Remus too much, so I am going to ask on Remus' behalf before he can ask. Does this mean he’s Dr. Strange?“ Janus sighed, "Although...it would be amusing to know that in order to teleport, he has to do the fucking circle thing.”

Roman rolled his eyes, “No, I can just snap my hand.”

Virgil repeated what Roman said and then Janus raised his hand, "Like Thanos?"

Virgil grinned, turning to Roman and imitating drawing the circle that Dr. Strange did. "Like this?"

“I hate the both of you.” Roman rolled his eyes, pretending like a smile wasn’t forming at his lips from the silliness of the boy. "Just drive."

“Alright, fine.” Virgil snorted as he began to drive the car towards the school.

"Do you think Logan would have a clearer answer since they were brothers?" Janus asked.

"Oh, good point!" Virgil's eyes lit up.

"You might die if you ask him though." Janus raised his eyebrows.

“I dunno, maybe he’s in a silly mood. Besides, he always liked me better than he liked you.”

Janus rolled his eyes, but said nothing to it.

The three soon walked out of the car and towards the school when they saw Logan waiting at the front.

“You seem cozy.” Virgil remarked as soon as they came within earshot of each other. “You have a jacket, hat, and scarf on. It almost seems like you look like we’re going into snow.”

“I’m unreasonably cold right now.” Logan shrugged, “Come on, I’ve prepared coffee and hot chocolate for you guys. Patton’s already waiting."

“Aw, thanks.” Virgil smiled, lagging behind to mumble to Roman that maybe his brother wasn’t such a bad person. Roman just rolled his eyes, smiling at Virgil.

“Hey, Logan?” Janus began.

“What’s up?”

"Is that your Sherlock cosplay?" Janus squinted his eyes as he finally placed where he knew where the outfit came from.

"No." Logan looked away, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"Hm." Janus raised an eyebrow with a knowing look, but didn't say anything about it. Instead, he brought the attention to Virgil, "Didn't you have something you wanted to ask him, Virgil?"

“Oh, right. Was your brother Dr. Strange? Apparently, his power was the power of transportation.”

Roman hitched his breath as he saw hurt flash into Logan’s eyes that was somewhat unreadable to the other boys. He saw the regret, but then it faded into a melancholy smile.

“He was obsessed with Dr. Strange. He only needed to blink and then he could transport himself and myself, but he loved being extra. He would constantly do the Dr. Strange thing, and made it obsessively long in order to annoy me. I kinda miss it.” Logan remarked, walking a little faster towards the front office.

Virgil gave a grin to Janus, "See? He likes me better."

"The symbol above his head was bright red." Janus remarked.

The mark of regret. Roman thought it was a sad story. Forever living to regret all the things Logan wished he could say to Roman, never being able to utter them in fear that it would confirm all his worst nightmares. It would confirm that Logan only villainized Roman because it was easier to be angry than to be sad.

When all four of them walked into the room, Roman felt a different magic aura. He turned to where the aura was to see a ghost he hadn’t seen before. The ghost was a child, only a child. He was over by Patton, seconds away from grabbing the rosary from Patton’s neck. Patton didn’t seem to know or understand, just continuing to murmur something under his breath with a book in his hand.

Roman gave a look to Virgil, who stared at him and shook his head. Virgil wanted Roman to wait to see what would happen.

Logan showed everyone to a seat, where there were cups of hot chocolate or coffee, “Patton helped me make it.”

Virgil motioned for Roman to pretend like he was living, and Roman sat down at a chair, careful to watch the child from his peripherals.

The child touched the rosary, yelping as it seemed to burn him. At that moment, the child tried a different method, pulling the string of the rosary. Patton didn’t seem to notice as he continued reading and murmuring something under his breath. Virgil and Roman were still watching.

The child got burned as soon as he tried to take it off Patton, yelping. Then, the child took a deep breath and snapped off the necklace, and started to run away with it, trying not to scream at the pain that came from the rosary.

“Go after him now.” Virgil interrupted the group, and almost immediately, Roman nodded, running after the child. The child looked back, terrified to see that the two could see him, and started to dash faster.

The kid was fast, but Roman was faster. Roman also had the power of transportation on his side, so anytime the kid got too far from him, Roman was able to catch up to him.

He was running around in circles at one point, even going back to the council room as he was running after the kid.

Then, the kid decided to try and find the exit, and Roman knew that if the kid did find one of the 8 exit gates, Roman was screwed. They came to the front gate, and then, for some reason, the kid kept running against the gate, as if there was an imaginary border. As Roman ran closer, he noticed a growing magical aura that blocked even him from getting out to the school. Roman easily grabbed the boy by the collar, focusing on transporting back into the room. In a blink, the two of them were back into the front office where he found Virgil and Janus watching the front door.

“They’re here.” Virgil murmured. Roman assumed he filled them in on what happened.

“Good.” Logan replied, closing the book and nodding to Patton, who had stopped chanting.

“What did you do?” Janus asked.

“I got a vision that someone removed Patton’s rosary. There’s nothing I can do to prevent him from that…but then I remembered that my grandmother used to be a spell caster. I borrowed his book, and gave it to Patton to continue chanting until we captured the person. He has the largest magical aura of us.”

“I don’t have a power though.”

“Maybe your power is the ability to speak spells?” Virgil offered. “And maybe you couldn’t do it because you’ve never casted a spell before.”

Logan seemed to be too distracted to educate Virgil about the magical auras as he walked over to where Roman is. “Thanks for catching the ghost. Rosemary please?”

His eyes were staring right at Roman, but something was off. One of his eyes was dark blue, the other was brown, but Roman didn’t understand why it was off.

“He can see me?” Roman turned to Virgil.

“No, he can see the floating rosemary though.”

“Ah.” Roman nodded, looking at the kid he still had in hand. “So…you going to give it to him, or what?”

“What if I don’t?”

“Come on, kid, it’s clearly hurting you. Just give it to him.”

“He’ll ruin my life if I come back empty handed.”

“Who will?” Roman raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t tell you.” The kid shook his head, but the fear in his eyes was apparent. “Just let me take the lifer’s pendant.”

“You do realize that this ‘lifer’ still has a life. You don’t.”

“No, I do. I really do. I will die if I don’t give it to him.”

“You have died, kid. Accept it. It’s not worth hurting someone who has nothing to do with whoever this person that’s in charge of you. Just move on, and find your unfinished business.” Virgil spoke up.

“I can’t.” The kid sobbed, “You don’t understand. You’re a lifer.”

“What the hell is a lifer?” Roman huffed.

“A person who’s living. The lifers never understand what power Caleb has over us.”

Roman and Virgil shared a look with each other, and Virgil mouthed the name to Janus who quickly wrote it down.

“What about me? I’m clearly not a lifer.” Roman pointed to the fact that he was still holding on to the kid.

The kid shook his head, “Just whatever you do, don’t let his promises get to you. It seems so heartwarming and nice especially after you’ve been lost for a long time…but it’s not worth it. Please…just let me take it back to him.”

Virgil gave a look to Roman before he waved him off, “Let him go. I’ll just give another rosary to Patton.”

“But…” Roman began.

Logan stared at Virgil, almost trying to see what Virgil was doing before he sighed, taking off the rosary from his neck. “Here. You can give him mine too.”

“What?” Roman snapped, “Logan, you’re logical. What do you mean you’re giving him something that is a protective charm?”

“In fact, I went ahead and grabbed Remus’s rosary too.” Logan grabbed one out of his pocket, “I think you can have all of them.”

Logan held his hand out for the child. The child sniffled, nervous about taking it.

“Logan, what are you doing?” Virgil raised an eyebrow.

“Go ahead.” Logan urged the kid. The kid slowly but surely grabbed the rosary, surprised to see that it didn’t burn him.

“Why didn’t that burn him?” Roman asked.

“Because one was taken by force with negative energy. The rest were given, and it doesn’t matter what energy he has because he was given it.” Virgil replied.

“Go ahead, give him yours too.” Logan motioned for Janus and Virgil to.

“Logan, what is going on?” Janus asked, clutching onto his rosary.

“Go ahead.” Logan shrugged.

There was some shuffling and Roman eyed Patton to see that he was reading through the books.

“What are you doing, Patton?”

“Trying to find something to help you see clearly.” Patton snorted, “You’re going insane.”

“No, I’m not. Go ahead.” Logan pointed.

Virgil sighed, ripping the rosary off his neck and then giving it to the boy before Janus did the same with holding his hand out for the boy to grab the rosaries.

“Let him go.” Virgil commanded Roman.

Roman sighed, turning towards the boy, “I better not see you doing anything to them again, okay?”

“Okay.” The boy nodded.

Roman let go of the boy and watched as he ran away.

As soon as the boy was out of the room, Virgil sighed, turning to the boy, “Alright, what the hell, Logan?”

“Now, Patton.” Logan turned to Patton with a sense of urgency before he collapsed onto the ground, coughing.

Patton spouted a spell in a different language and suddenly, Roman felt a huge magical aura envelop him before it was gone.

As soon as Patton finished, he slammed the book shut, making sure to check on Logan.

Roman knelt down by Logan, who sat up and suddenly, his eyes were the color of chocolate again.

Then, Roman understood why he thought Logan was being weird. Logan was pushing his limits and Roman knew Logan was more snappy when he was at his limit.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Patton rolled his eyes. “You become unreasonable.”

“Shut up, Morris.” Logan groaned, clutching his head, “I have the worst headache.”

“Alright, it’s fine. You did good.” Patton rubbed his head.

Logan looked up at Patton, and smiled, holding a fist out, “You did better.”

His smile was genuine and he didn’t seem like he was too mad at Patton, like he normally was. For a second, a part of his past came forth into his expression. It was clear Patton could see it too by the way his face flushed, but he still bumped Logan's fist, helping Logan up.

Roman stared at Logan and Patton and then it finally hit him. The boy that Patton was talking about was Logan. That practically put Roman into an excited stance, knowing that he was seeing a love story in real time. Still, he stayed silent about it.

“What was that, Logan? Explain.”

“The rosary weakens my powers. I took it off during the shower and had a huge vision a couple nights before about a ghost taking Patton’s rosary. Then, Patton calls me today with a load of new information, and I decide to try and call a meeting for that. I drop my rosary and suddenly, I’m in another vision of the same thing at the school, and so I decide to do a risky thing because the vision continues into another part. I find out that Caleb’s using the rosary to try and break through the magic. He’s getting more powerful, but I’m now one step ahead of him. I get a quick stop at the hospital, and ask Remus to throw the rosary out the window. Grab that, grab six of my crystals I got from my parents, and then come here. Then, I take off the rosary, and decide to try something with Patton to watch me do it safely. It takes me over half an hour to learn how to be in visions at the same time as being in real life.” Logan explained, “Then, I come and greet you. Once I see the magical protective aura fall off of Patton, I turn on my power, and then use that to guide my actions.”

“So, what now?”

“Well, right now, I have six crystals. Remus will be fine without protection for the night. I’ll give him a crystal later.” Logan shrugged before taking them out of his bag and throwing them to Patton. Patton ducked and Janus, behind him, barely caught all of them, handing them to the boy.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Your magic aura is by far the most powerful. Lace them with your protection.” Janus seemed to understand now, “Even if Caleb finds a way to break through Virgil’s magic, it’ll be difficult for him to break through yours, and since yours is more powerful, it’ll be almost impossible.”

“Thank you, Janus.” Logan nodded, grateful for the explanation.

It wasn’t long before Patton had done just that, and Logan had handed everyone a crystal. Putting one away in his backpack, and putting one in his pocket, he turned to Virgil, “I don’t know if you know how to make these ghost-material like, but…he should have one too.”

“Suddenly started caring for the dead, huh?” Virgil smirked.

“Maybe a part of me feels a little uncomfortable with hurting your friends.”

“Not the fact that he’s your brother?”

“Virgil, give it up.” Logan gave a small smile, “My brother’s been dead for 4 years. If he was a ghost, the mediums my parents hired would’ve already found him. He’s nowhere to be seen, probably enjoying the afterlife. Whoever your friend is, although he may have the same name, is not my brother, Roman Sanders.”

Virgil exchanged a look with Roman who shrugged in response. Logan was right in some way. It didn’t make sense why despite the normal time for ghosts to appear in the world being a few months, his was 4 years. His little brother was now the same age as him. It didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Virgil sighed, taking the crystal and muttering something before holding it out to Roman. “Keep it and never take it off your body. Don’t let anybody touch it.”

“You can do that?” Roman gaped, grabbing the crystal as it dematerialized and was able to fit into his pocket without a thought of making himself touch it. It didn’t phase through his hand.

“I don’t like doing it a lot. It drains my power a bit.” Virgil murmured.

“What was the spell Patton cast after you collapsed?” Janus asked, deciding to change the subject.

“A follow spell.” Logan shrugged. “He can find anyone within a 25 foot radius, including ghosts. It’s linked to the keychain he has around his waist.”

Patton tossed it to Virgil, “Give it to your ghost friend. He can find where the kid went now, and that gives us a start to where Caleb might be, and what secrets Caleb might be holding.”

Virgil murmured something before tossing it over for Roman to catch it. Roman linked it onto his belt loop.

“Wait, does that mean that you were in on the plan the entire time?” Janus asked Patton.

“No, Logan was signing ‘follow book’ in ASL to me behind his back. No one else could see it, because only I was behind him.” Patton shrugged, “I looked at the book to find any following spells and I found it.”

“You guys make a good team.” Janus remarked.

“Go follow, Ro." Virgil turned to Roman. “Stay safe, and if you find anything too magically unnatural, come back. Don’t go in until we figure something out together, okay?”

-+=~=+-

Roman couldn’t understand how to use the keychain. No matter what he tried, there was nothing the keychain was doing. However, he wasn’t going to go back and ask them because he felt it was supposed to be simple. What he was doing currently was sitting at the nearby park, staring at the statue made in his honor trying to figure out how to use the keychain.

He heard some shuffling and looked up to see someone he thought looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place where he knew his from.

“Hey, Roman. It’s been a while.” The woman nodded towards the boy, deciding to sit at the bench Roman was also sitting at. “I’d ask you how you are…but I’m sure you wouldn’t answer anyways.”

“I’m okay. Who are you?”

“Everyone misses you, especially your brother. I think, a little too much.”

Roman paused, staring at the woman.

“I guess it never really hit me until he recently snapped at me, but I think I’ve finally realized I’ve failed the both of you. I remember how lively and happy you used to be. Then, high school came around, and suddenly you became all serious. I loved it at the time. You took on more responsibilities and always made sure to help me out when I couldn't do anything, but I think I became a little too dependent on you. Soon, I was asking you for things that I should’ve asked the other teachers. Soon, your father started to ask you of things that you shouldn’t have to worry about. You were doing our taxes, doing your homework, grading tests, and helping with grade reports. Your father said you were doing fine, so I assumed you were. I was so stupid not to see that the only time you ever felt like yourself was when you were hanging out with your brother. With him, you didn’t change. You were the passionate, kind-hearted, and loud boy that was still growing, but with everyone else, including me, you were serious, quiet, and angry. You died and it felt like my whole world fell apart. Everything you had done now needed to be done by me again. I was suffering with the gain of responsibility and the loss of a son. I couldn’t get out of bed for months. Your father was almost nonexistent in our lives. Then, your brother stepped up. I should’ve been there for him, but then he stopped lashing out at us. He stopped being sad. He started wiping away his tears and mine. He went into freshman year, doing the things I should’ve done for him. He learned how to do our taxes, grade tests, do grade reports, and more just to fill the hole in our hearts. I stopped talking about you and stopped visiting your grave. I stopped being functional and started depending on your poor brother. Then, he took on even more responsibility without me asking. He started taking over my responsibilities, and I loved it. But then, I started to see it again too. He stopped being the happy-go-lucky boy he used to be, and started withdrawing from everyone and everything. He stopped having friends, stopped smiling, and more. I thought it was bullying, but I guess I was just too short-sighted.”

Roman was quiet. The memories were coming back to him. He remembered how his parents had asked him to take a little bit more responsibility as they were in the middle of figuring whether or not they should’ve divorced. Roman, who desperately wanted to shield Logan away from the conflict, agreed. Then, it started getting worse. Their father became more and more distant, and their mother became more and more dependent. Roman remembered the fights and the breakdowns he had alone in his room. He remembered pretending everything was fine for Logan, and pretending like nothing was wrong with blasting music loud enough to muffle their screaming.

“You tried so hard to protect Logan…and yet, I failed him too. I lost you a long time before you died…and I regretted every moment of that. However, I thought I still had Logan. Turns out, I lost him too the moment I stopped being a mother to him. I feel awful for the way I’ve put all my responsibilities on you. I’m sure your father feels awful for being emotionally unavailable to you. I’m so sorry.” His mother sobbed, falling to her knees. “This is all my fault.”

Roman felt his heart break. He spent his entirety of his high school career trying to make sure Logan would never have to experience the same thing, but a single car ride had left their family so broken.

“How do I fix this?”

“You can’t.” Roman replied coldly. “You hurt me, and as much as I don’t care about what you do to me….you hurt my brother.”

Their mother sighed, “I’m sorry. I’m asking you again when I shouldn’t be.”

Roman sighed, standing up, deciding it wasn’t worth it.

“I have so many things I want to say, but they’re not worth it to say to you. You’ve already ruined my life. You’ve ruined Logan. You wanted us to be with you until the end, but we’re not just your little ducklings that will follow you.” Roman groaned.

Then, in that moment that he said the word “follow”, the world lit up, showing blue footsteps. Roman blinked and after a few seconds, they disappeared.

“Follow!” Roman yelled and the footsteps showed again. They seemed to be going towards a direction and Roman laughed in happiness. His anger forgotten, he followed the footsteps all the way until they reached a building that he hadn’t seen before. Although he knew all the places around it, he swore that the building had not been there.

At the top of the building, the words “Covington Entertainment” were listed at the top. He remembered Virgil slightly mentioning the name. Before he could walk in though, he felt a dark aura come in between him, and suddenly, his crystal started to glow. Taking it out, he noticed that the crystal wrapped a magical aura around him, almost protecting him from the aura of the negative energy. The rosary would definitely break upon approaching the area, but Patton’s magic was strong enough to protect even a ghost. Roman put it back in his pocket, closed his eyes, and made a circle with his hands until he appeared at the school again.

He heard giggling and he opened his eyes to see Virgil on the ground rolling while he was laughing at him. Patton, Logan, and Janus, all who had been discussing something with the whiteboard, stopped to look at the boy.

“You were right, Janus. He does look ridiculous.” Virgil snorted.

“Did he do the thing?” Janus let amusement run across this face, “Dammit, I wish I could see him.”

“I’m not doing that again.” Roman grumbled.

“Aw, don’t say that.” Virgil teased, “What did you find?”

“...well, it’s nothing good.” Roman sighed, “He has an entire building, and it’s so powerful that I know the rosary would’ve broken upon even being around the building. The crystal glowed and put a protective barrier around me. Whatever is in there is dangerous, and I don’t know what will happen if I go in.”

“Can you draw the building for us?”

“Sure. I’ll even draw a map around it.” Roman shrugged, grabbing a whiteboard pen.

Logan jumped at the sight of it. “Sorry, I’m tired. I wasn’t expecting him to pick it up.”

“You should sleep.” Janus suggested.

“Not before we figure this out.” Logan mumbled, “I’ll drink a cup of coffee after this.”

“No, it’s a good idea if you guys sleep. We can take turns.” Virgil remarked, “You and Patton have been awake since this morning. You guys can go to sleep. Me and Janus can stay awake and help figure this out because we woke up an hour ago or so, then we can switch.”

Logan seemed clearly uneasy with the idea, but soon agreed upon seeing how worried Patton looked for him. He sighed, “Fine. I already sent the stuff saying that this was where our field trip was going to be. Try not to be so loud, and make sure to keep the crystal on you at all times.”

“Okay.” Virgil nodded.

Roman uncapped the pen, deciding that it was better if he started on the drawing while everyone was getting set up.

“Your friend’s a good artist.” Patton remarked.

Roman smiled as he wrote off to the side, “Thanks, Pat. You're the one that gave me the chance to find this place anyways.”

He drew from memory, ever so often looking to the side to see Logan pulling out blankets.

“Where are you getting these from?” Janus snorted.

“My mother’s the principal of the school. Of course there are going to be pillows for days that I have to stay late before my mother comes to drop me back home.” Logan replied.

Roman finished his drawing, stepping back to look at it.

“Woah.” Logan murmured as he stared at the drawing, right as he finished setting up a small bed area.

Roman erased the conversation he had with Patton and wrote to the side, “Between City Park Stationary, and Lowinres.”

“No, that’s impossible. There isn’t something between them. They’re right next to each other.”

“It was there.” Roman wrote.

“Janus and I will figure it out.” Virgil reassured Logan, urging them to go to sleep.

It wasn’t long before the two of them were settled in the makeshift bed, and sleep had succumbed to the two of them.

“I think I’m going to get some fresh air first, and call Re, if that’s okay with you?” Janus asked Virgil.

Virgil nodded, “Go ahead. I’ll talk to Ro in the meantime.”

“Why do you trust my brother so much?” Roman asked

“Hm?” Virgil raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, I love him with my heart, truly, but he’s a little stupid sometimes. He acts so logical, but sometimes that logic gets in the way of seeing what’s truly the reason behind. Why did you trust him when you took off your rosary? That was complete craziness.”

“The same reason why you trusted me so blindly when I told you I’d help you find your unfinished business. There’s this gut feeling inside you that knows they mean good.”

“My brother means good…but it still doesn’t mean it’ll work out well. Trust me, I’ve been in so many of his failed plans that I know what it’s like to watch his fail. I thought this one would fail, just as his other plans.”

“But you still did it despite thinking it would fail. In all those other times, you still participated in it. In this time, you trusted me who participated in it.” Virgil murmured, “I think a little part of you just wants to believe that your brother hasn’t fully grown up yet and maybe still needs your help.”

Roman stared at the boy he knew to be his younger brother, now the same age as him.

“He’s still the little boy I met when I was 10, to me.” Roman shrugged.

“Well, a part of him will always need you by his side. It’s just right now, he’s being strong. Logan’s a good person, but he’s a little strong-minded. He doesn’t want to accept that you might be you…because he’s spent a lot of his life suppressing his grief. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to believe you’re someone else so he doesn’t have to confront those feelings.”

Roman felt his heart warm by that a little. “I think I’m a little happy that he hasn’t forgotten me.”

“Are you kidding me? It’d be a mistake to forget you. Sometimes you’re a little annoying, but you truly make my days a little better. Thanks for that.” Virgil smiled.

“Thanks, Virge.”

“Course, Ro.” Virgil smiled, staring at the drawing he created, “You’re a good artist.”

“Thanks. It was my dream.” Roman murmured, staring at the boy. A strand of hair fell in front of Virgil's face, and Roman took that time to brush it behind his ear.

“Thanks.” Virgil murmured, “I just…wonder what’s going on with this. Why this? Why us?”

“I don’t know…but I don’t think there’s anything we’ll learn unless we dive right into the center. I have to go in there.”

“But…?”

“I don’t think I’ll come out the same.” Roman murmured, “I mean you heard the kid. He warned me against listening to his promises.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“See if Logan is my unfinished business before I risk my life. I don’t know what happened before I died, but it’s clear it was big enough for him to regret everything he said to me.”

“I’ll look into it.”

Roman couldn’t help but feel so happy that Virgil was willing to help him out. Then, he didn’t know when, but somewhere along the lines of understanding Virgil was his platonic soulmate, a part of him learned to see how beautiful he looked.

“Thank you for everything.” Roman murmured.

“I just…need you to stay safe. Promise me that much.”

“I can’t.”

“I know.” Virgil whispered, nodding, “Just pretend for a second.”

Roman stared at the artificial lights on the ceiling, “I can't make a promise I can't keep.”

“You were always so truthful like that.” Virgil sighed, looking down.

“Hey, I’m not going just yet.”

“I know. I am just scared.”

“Why? You’re not the one really risking your life.”

“Roman, you don’t understand the life of a medium. I have moved so many times in my life. I have seen so many ghosts, heard so many stories, helped so many of them find the afterlife. I have lost every single one of my friends, and I know that I will have to say goodbye to you one day. I just…don’t know if I want to lose you too. You’ve been so nice and amazing to me. You’ve been a great friend, and honestly, there’s a connection between us that I’ve never had before with anyone. You understand me, and I don’t want to lose you before you’re ready. I’ve never felt this way with someone before.”

Roman felt his face heat up, and prayed that it wasn’t red. He just smiled, trying to ignore the pounding heartbeat in his ears.

Okay…maybe Virgil being vulnerable was cute. Maybe a part of him could admit that he wouldn’t have minded if they were more than friends. But the logical part of him said that Virgil was a lifer while Roman wasn't. Virgil had the rest of his life when Roman didn’t. They couldn’t even physically touch each other. How would their relationship ever work out?

-+=~=+-

“I think we should visit Remus.” Logan suggested to the entire group as soon as they were all wide awake.

“Uh huh.” Patton murmured, laying on the table.

Well…they were all awake. That was what mattered in the end. Logan and Patton were in the process of chugging their second cup of coffee while Virgil and Janus had just woken up.

“Do you think it’d be a smart idea to dump a cold bucket of water above Patton’s head?” Roman asked, staring at the boy who was half-dead.

“If you have a death wish.” Virgil snorted, “Come on, let’s go see Remus.”

Although Roman had immediately teleported into the hospital, he knew it would take the humans a little longer to travel with transportation.

Almost immediately after teleporting himself outside of Remus’s room, he felt the magical aura shift. The crystal glowed brighter as it enveloped Roman fully and he took a deep breath, crossing his fingers as he hoped the crystal worked as expected.

He walked in to see Remus sleeping, with a weak pulse. Roman blinked, staring at Remus. Next to Remus was a ghost that he hadn’t seen anywhere, but somehow he knew the name of.

The ghost was a man, about 45 year old, sitting next to Remus, with dirty blonde hair, and a beard. He was holding a metal cane that scraped against the ground with a horrible grinding noise anytime he moved. The man’s red eyes sent a chill down Roman’s spine.

“Caleb.”

Caleb turned to look at Roman, grinning, “Ah, so we’ve finally met. This is such an inconvenient time to meet.”

“Uh huh.” Roman stared at the adult in front of him, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Why, you already know that part. I’ve heard a lot of your plans, I know you know about me, and who I am. I know your brother knows a lot about me.”

“But we don’t know why. We don’t know what you want from us, and most of all, we don’t know why you keep messing with us.”

“Ah, my dear Roman, you’ll find out through time.” Caleb clicked the roof of his tongue, “In the meanwhile, I’m afraid that I’m getting more and more powerful while you and your ragtag group of ‘heroes’ are lagging behind. It’s almost as if you haven’t learned from your mistakes.”

“Mistakes…? What are you talking about?” Roman scoffed.

“Oh, that’s right. You wouldn’t remember. I wiped your memory.” Caleb snorted, “It’s for your own good.”

“You…wiped my memory?” Roman didn’t understand a thing coming out of Caleb’s mouth, “How? How could you even do that? How do you even know my name?”

“That is something only your memories can answer, and I’m afraid there’s no way I’m giving them back to you. I may be a lot more powerful now, but I am not going to risk letting you learn from the mistakes you made before.”

Roman’s blood ran cold. He had been in this exact place, with someone else. He knew that there was something he was missing, and that he wouldn’t be able to find it unless he forcefully took it back.

“My memories have been coming back.”

“Oh, bah humbug. Those are all the memories I don’t care about.” Caleb scoffed, “I don’t care if you remember your brother, or the fact that you build hundreds of book nooks with him. I don’t care if you remember talking to the pretty boy who sat next to you in third grade. I care about the important ones, and trust me, Roman Sanders, you are far from ever learning what those important ones are even about, let alone how to learn from those mistakes.”

“You’re saying that I’m going through the same things again. I’ll make the same mistakes, sure…but I’ll learn from them again.” Roman put a brave face on, “This time, I’m sure I have more enforcements.”

“The truth is, you have less. Before…you were a group of 6, and throughout the entire escapade, you had your brother to take care of, leaving you with a group of 7. Now, I was lucky enough to spare your brother, but, trust me, just like before, your group of 6 will soon fall under my hands, and you will regret ever coming to face me again.”

“You’re a bad person.”

“Oh, I know that.” Caleb sneered, “I’ve heard that phrase too many times by every single Sanders I’ve come across. I’m sure that when your brother sees me next, he’ll say the same thing. You guys are all the same. Your entire family wants to be the good guys, the heroes. You bring a group of your friends together to try and fight against me, but you always, and I mean always fail. You Sanders are too puny to be heroes, and it is because of your entire family that makes me more and more powerful the next time I come across another generation.”

Roman didn’t know what to say to that, but it was clear Caleb was done with his ranting. He sighed, “I’ll let you and your heroes play pretend, but I promise you that your time is coming, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do is give up now.”

Caleb held his hand out for Roman to shake. All Roman did was slap it away.

“I won’t. My group won’t. Unlike the other generations, we will succeed. I got a second chance to help my brother succeed.”

“You dumb boy.” Caleb chuckled before he grinned, “I look forward to your demise then. If you ever change your mind…you know where to find me.”

With that, Caleb poofed out of existence, leaving Roman alone in the middle, staring at the unconscious and weak Remus.

-+=~=+-

Roman didn’t move from his frozen position. Not even when Remus woke up. Not even when the nurses around came to check on Remus. It was only when he heard voices that he jumped back, and waited for them to walk into the room.

Virgil was the first to see Roman, and he raised an eyebrow upon seeing his face, “You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Roman smiled weakly, “Ha.”

Virgil’s face melded into worry, “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I don’t know how to explain it.” Roman whispered, “I just….he was here.”

“Who?” Virgil’s shoulders tensed up.

“Yo, thanks for checking in on me.” Remus joked at Virgil, who had been the only one talking, everyone else waiting for him to finish speaking to Roman.

Virgil paced over to where Remus was before he pressed his hand onto his forehead, “Jesus Christ, you’re burning up.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Sarcasm dripped out of Remus’s mouth, “And thanks for keeping the secret, Patton.”

“Get over it.” Logan made a face, “I’d rather help you not die than to keep your integrity when you’re dead.”

At that moment, Roman managed a small smile, “That’s my brother.”

Roman blinked, watching Janus walk to the other side of Remus to squeeze his hand. Remus smiled at Janus.

Janus turned towards where Virgil was looking, blinking at Roman, “Woah. I didn’t know he was here.”

“Who else did you think he was talking to?” Logan grumbled.

“Jeez, I forgot how aggressive Logan could be without sleep.” Roman snorted, “I, uh…saw something. Your friend over here was asleep when it happened.”

“What?”

“Caleb. I saw him.” Roman sighed, “I didn’t understand most of what he said, but what I did understand…wasn’t good.”

“What did he say?”

“That I’ve been through this before. He told me he was the one who wiped my memories. A group of 6, just like us now, went in to confront him. There were mistakes made that cost all my friends their lives. Everyone except mine and Logan’s.”

“Logan was also there?” Virgil turned to Logan, who was writing in the journal with Patton standing over him.

“What?” Logan raised an eyebrow, “Where?”

“He told me I was lucky he spared him, but he said that every single one of our ancestors before us had gone through the same thing, and every time, he had beaten them. I don’t know.” Roman huffed.

“You know anything about your ancestors facing Caleb?” Remus asked Logan.

“I don’t know anything about my ancestors.” Logan remarked, running his fingers through his hair. Roman remembered that he always looked to the right when he was lying.

“He’s lying.” Roman remarked.

“You’re lying.” Janus remarked.

Logan scoffed, “I’m not. I don’t know anything about my ancestors.”

He looked to the right again, and Roman knew he wasn’t going to budge.

“Let me talk to him.” Roman remarked.

“Logan, come here and talk to him yourself.”

Fear flashed through Logan’s eyes, and he watched as his expression shifted into a stern one. He was reliving every moment of their last moments, and Roman couldn’t help but feel horrible for whatever they said to each other for him to continue regretting it four years after his death.

“I’m in the middle of doing something.”

“What are you so scared of? What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything.” Logan shook his head.

Virgil turned to Roman, “It’s your choice. What do you want to do?”

Roman stared at Logan, and stared at his notes, “Janus, you can take over his notes.”

“Sorry?” Janus raised an eyebrow. “Why? He can still write.”

“I know my brother. There’s something he’s hiding that he clearly doesn’t want to relive, and there’s no way you’re getting it out of him, unless you do something a little illegal.” 

“A little?” Virgil remarked.

“You’re going to have to tell Patton to pin Logan down and also tell him to protect his balls.”

“What?” Both Janus and Virgil snapped, confused.

Remus seemed to understand, yelling at Patton, “Patton, it’s Operation Wrestling time!”

“You have a code name for that?” Virgil asked.

“Course we do.” Remus snorted, everyone watching as Patton ran towards Logan, trying to pin him down. Almost immediately, Logan tried to duck, aiming for his private area and hurt him where it really hurt. However, Patton was faster, and he dodged Logan, grabbing both his wrists and pinning them to the floor. Soon after, he put his knee over Logan’s stomach and his other leg over Logan’s legs. He was fully pinned down.

“Well, not like that.” Roman scowled.

Patton looked down at Logan, who was fully at his mercy, “Promise you’ll behave?”

Logan nodded, but Roman watched as his fingers crossed and he knew that it would be game over as soon as Patton let go of him. Patton did just that, shifting his legs off of him, and almost immediately, Logan tried to kick Patton in the balls again, but Patton was once again faster.

Patton turned, pushing Logan to the ground right as he got up, and put his knee over Logan’s knees, leaving his with his legs pinned to the ground and his wrists behind his back.

“Lesson number one in self-defense: never let the enemy get close to you, or else he’ll be able to predict what you’re about to do.” Patton smirked as he motioned for Virgil, “You needed him?”

“Right…” Virgil blinked, “Uh, Ro wanted to talk to you.”

“Thank you, Virge.” Roman grinned as Virgil went to hold Logan’s wrist.

Logan immediately winced, trying to pull his hand away. Virgil’s grip and Patton still pinning his down was enough to keep him in place. It took a minute, but soon enough, Logan stopped struggling, staring at Roman. He watched emotion flood through Logan's eyes.

“Hey, nougat. Long time no see.” Roman grinned.

Logan stared at him, almost in disbelief that he was kneeling in front of him. He watched as he blinked, and suddenly, silent tears started streaming down his face.

“You want to tell me why you’re hiding the information you know about our ancestors?”

Logan sniffled, looking away from Roman, and up. he scoffed, “What kind of cruel prank are you guys playing on me?”

“This isn’t a prank. I’m really here.”

“It’s really him.” Patton remarked, wiping Logan’s face with a smile. “Talk to him.”

“You want to answer my question?” Roman asked.

“I don’t know anything.” Logan’s voice cracked, trying hard not to sob.

“That’s a lie, and we both know it. You’re going to have to help me here, Lo. I don’t remember everything about my past, and I know that you do. Just tell me.”

Logan was silent for a while, trying to stop himself from crying. Then, after a few minutes, he finally spoke, “You were supposed to live. I was supposed to die.”

“What?”

“The mark of death, the liar's breath, the special one, the favorite sun, the hourglass, and the impasse. The six destined to come across me, the six destined to fall to my arms. Beware, for, if you come one by one, not all six will come out when it’s done.” Logan spoke.

“That’s the same prophecy Caleb told me.” Remus’s voice was quiet, but enough for everyone else to hear.

“And you didn’t bother to tell us earlier?” Virgil snapped, glaring, “Whatever, conversation for later.”

“The mark of death was your friend. Diagnosed with the same illness. The liar's breath, his boyfriend who could create ice out of thin air. The favorite sun was you. The hourglass was your friend who would start and stop time. Finally, the impasse, the one who was physically the strongest. There were only supposed to be six people.”

“Okay?”

“I followed you to Caleb. I prophesied every single one of them dying. I prophesied myself dying. I was supposed to die in that lair, but then something happened, and instead, you found me in there. Caleb spared us, only on the premises that we would never come back. He made us forget everything about that, but he said that I was still predestined to die. You begged him, telling him that I didn’t deserve that at such a young age. You traded your life for mine.”

“But I didn’t die at the hands of Caleb.”

“No, but Caleb transferred my fate of death to you. You were bound to die the way I was supposed to.” Logan murmured, “Then, I forgot everything. You did too. We all forgot. And for some reason, he wants us to remember now.”

“What if his power’s getting weaker?”

“Impossible. He’s getting stronger.” Logan scoffed, “Remus’s getting weaker. He wants us to remember because of one thing.”

“What?”

“The prophecy’s given us another chance to try and fix this.” Logan murmured, “And he wants us to quiver in fear knowing that he will succeed again.”

“Someone, please make sense here.” Patton begged, still holding Logan down to make sure he wouldn’t escape at any moment.

“The universe wants us to be the heroes of this story.” Logan murmured, “The universe wants us to save Remus.”

“Great, that’s good!”

“That’s not good. It means we have a limited amount of time before there is a chance all of us might die.” Logan muttered, “It means that this second chance might have a bleaker ending than the first chance gave us.”

“English?” Patton asked Logan again.

“Get off me and I’ll explain it.” Logan huffed.

“Not a chance. I get off you and you find a way to kick me in the nuts.”

Remus chirped in, “Basically...Caleb’s being an arrogant little bitch.”

“Ah.” Patton remarked, “Let’s go kick him in the nuts then.”

“No…he’s not too confident that he’ll win to give us all our memories back. There’s something me and Roman both don’t have…that would be the reason his plan fails.” Logan murmured, “It still doesn’t make sense. Why we went through this once…why we’re going through this again…why he bothers even warning us…why you were non-existent in the world for over 4 years only to reappear as a ghost now.”

“He mentioned that all of our ancestors have been through this exact thing, and all of them have fallen.”

“All I know about our family is that there has always been someone in every generation that has died. This may be the first step to finding out more. I’ll go talk to our parents.”

“What should the rest of us do?” Remus asked.

Janus walked over to grab the crystal out of Logan’s backpack on the nearby chair. He then gave it to Remus, “Whatever you do, don’t let this leave your side.”

“Someone’s going to go back to the school, and they’re going to look through all the notes I have on Michsleif Uchawi Cancer, and they’re going to find out more about the people who also had that cancer.” Logan commanded, “Then, someone else is going to research everything they can about everything related to Caleb, and you can refer to all the notes I’ve created on him.”

“Great. Virgil and I will go with Logan. Janus and Patton can go back-”

“No.” Logan shook his head, “I’m going with Janus. Virgil, stay here with Remus. Play nice, Ro.”

“What?” Roman gaped. “Why? It makes sense for me to come with you, and Virge's our best bet at translating between us. Remus can be here by himself, and there needs to be two people who help with researching because-”

Virgil seemed to understand, “He’s right, Gray. I need to stay with Remus just in case Caleb comes back. It’s too dangerous for you to stay here. With Logan, he needs to remain unemotional, and Janus can give him that support in this conversation. Which leaves you and Patton to go back and research.”

Roman stared at Patton, “Uh huh…and you’re sure?”

“Hey, Logan said to play nice.” Virgil teased, “Come on, do you not trust your brother?”

“He got me killed!” Roman accused.

Logan scoffed, his mouth agape, “For your information, had you not tried to protect me, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Whose fault is it now?”

“Still yours.” Roman grumbled, rolling his eyes, “Fine. Fine. I’ll go back with Patton.”

“Thank you.”

-+=~=+-

Roman spent the next five hours researching everything he could on the cancer and how it could’ve related with his relatives, telling Patton to look at anything relating to Caleb. It probably would've taken only four if the two didn't stop every once in a while to chat as if they were best friends who hadn't seen each other in years.

It wasn’t until late that they all came back together, meeting at the school with Remus on facetime.

“Alright, what have we got here?”

Roman decided to start scribbling his notes down while Logan explained what he had.

“Right, so there has been someone who has died in every generation of my family. It started with my great-grandpa.” Logan began, “His best friend had cancer, which I have to assume was Michsleif. 2 years after he gave birth to his twin daughters, he died, along with his best friend. When his twin daughters were 5, they met a friend who had cancer. Only one lived to give birth to two healthy baby boys, one that became our father, and the other that was our uncle. Our uncle died around the age of 23, with five of his friends, with my uncle having a rare cancer. Our father lived to give birth to Roman…and when Roman was 17, he had a friend who was sick with this same cancer. We know what happened there.”

“Every single one of them has passed away.” Virgil murmured, “There’s got to be some reason why it’s kept inside the Sanders bloodline.”

“Get this…every single one of the groups had 6 people. Every single one of them except for the one that caused Roman to die in the first place.” Logan shrugged.

They looked over to see Roman reporting the same thing about the cancer, with more information about each patient diagnosed. Unfortunately, there was no common pattern.

“Right, that leaves me.” Patton sighed, “Uh, Caleb was a troubled man. He died at an early age because he was said to be searching for something valuable. No one knew what it was, but it was clear that when he became a ghost, that was his unfinished business. He’s probably still looking for it to this day. The person he possessed was his son, and when his son died, his son moved to the afterlife as there was no unfinished business. Caleb probably has been looking for his unfinished business to return back to his son.”

“I doubt it. Even if he solves the whole unfinished business, he’s forever trapped within the in between of the spirit and real world.” Virgil chirped up, “It was the risk of possessing his son in the first place.”

“Then is there any way to get rid of him?”

“There’s an ancient spell that’s very risky, but it works.”

“Great! What’s the risk?”

“The user might lose their life. A life for a life.”

“But in this case, Caleb wouldn’t be resurrected.”

“Lives can’t be created or destroyed easily, much like matter.” Virgil remarked, “It’s a complicated process but from what I know, in the afterlife, you’re offered rebirth, or the ability to stay in the afterlife looking over things. When you go into the afterlife, you learn about all your past lives, and decide whether or not what to do. It’s a cycle. All we would be doing is wiping all his memories and making Caleb start off as another person. Hopefully, in that case, he won't end up the same. There is a rare case that souls get created through a weird force that I don’t really understand myself, but there’s no way for a soul to be destroyed.”

“Great.” Sarcasm dropped out of Janus’s mouth, “We’re screwed.”

“Don’t think like that.” Patton remarked, “I’d like to say we have less than a 1% chance at winning.”

“Still greater than 0!” Remus grinned, coughing.

“Jeez, you look worse off than wear.” Logan snorted, “How you feeling?”

“Better.” Remus croaked.

“Sleep more. You’ll get it out of your system soon.”

“Thanks.”

Before they could say more, there was a knock at the door.

Logan turned.

“Logan, honey?”

“Yeah?”

“You and your lovely club for cancer are having a meeting there, but I thought that maybe you were working too hard.”

Logan made a face, mouthing a lot of bitter sayings Roman found unreadable.

“I’d like to invite everyone over for a sleepover. I don’t think you’ve had the chance to be a kid in a while, so please. Just don’t think about your classes, or clubs, or anything. Just do what teens do, and have a sleepover together. I think it’d be very nice for you.”

“We’d love that. Thank you, Ms. Sanders!” Virgil yelled out before Roman and Logan could protest in return.

“Great! Let me know when you’re ready to head home. I want to prepare everything before you get back. I love you, Lo.”

“Uh huh.” Logan murmured, before he turned towards the whiteboard.

“You didn’t say it back.” Patton remarked as he turned towards Logan.

“Yeah, well, I stopped saying it once I stopped meaning it.” Logan exhaled, “And I stopped meaning it when my brother died.”

“Rough.” Patton patted his back. “Well now that your brother’s back, maybe you can start saying it again.”

Roman hated how much sense Patton made. Ever since he died, he noticed the boy had lost so much of the love he stored inside of his heart.

Despite that, everyone decided to drop the subject.

It was long before the sky turned dark, and they all traveled to Logan’s house. Logan offered them clean clothes, food, and more as an amazing host. It wasn’t long before everyone crashed out, as they hadn’t gotten much sleep from the past few days.

Roman didn’t need sleep as a ghost. That meant he would be up for the rest of the night, almost creepily watching the other kids sleep. He was lucky that Logan left him some paper to sketch with. He decided to take the time to just start drawing. At midnight, he heard heavy breathing in the room. Stopping the doodle of an eye, he turned to see Logan tossing and turning. The way they were situated had Logan in his bed, Patton sleeping on the floor mattress, and Virgil and Janus in two single pull-outs.

He watched as Logan made a scared noise before he gasped, sitting up in bed. Logan blinked, looking around as he felt his heartbeat, trying to assure himself he was alive and real. Roman stopped trying to find a pulse a long time ago.

Roman looked more closely and saw silent tears streaming down Logan's face. He sniffled, wiping them away and looking around. he froze upon seeing the floating pen and paper.

“Hi.” He wrote in the notebook, showing it to Logan.

Logan threatened Roman, “You tell anyone about this, and I’ll make you regret it.”

Roman knew his brother, and knew he was more bark than bite. He took the opportunity to write on the board, “You okay?”

“Just a nightmare, or vision. I hope it’s the former.” Logan shuddered.

“Sorry.” Roman wrote before going back to his doodling.

Logan shrugged, walking over to where Roman was to look at his drawing. It was an accurate side profile drawing of Virgil, but for some reason, he was having a lot of trouble on the eyes.

“Let it droop down. Our family has bigger eyes and you've only drawn family in your portraits. Virgil has more of a downturned shape there.” Logan remarked, pointing to the one eye facing towards them.

Roman did just that, happy with his result.

There was silence as Logan stared at the drawing, and Roman not knowing what to say.

“What was the nightmare about?” Roman asked, finally breaking the silence.

“There’s a big earthquake.” Logan murmured, “I don’t want to go further in detail.”

“It must be pretty bad for you to wake up like that.”

“Patton died.” Logan’s voice was void of emotion.

“He’s important to you?”

“He’s not.” Logan scoffed, his gaze shifting to the sleeping boy on the floor.

“Uh huh…tell that to your crying when you woke up. You can tell me anything.”

Logan hesitated, “He’s not that important to me. He’s just someone who’s been the only unchanging thing in a world that is moving a little too fast for my liking. I enjoy his company. That’s all there is to it.”

“That sounds like he’s someone really important. I understand that feeling.”

“Uh huh.” Logan nodded, “Cause Virgil was the first medium you found after three months of loneliness?”

“Basically. He’s my platonic soulmate.”

“I don’t think platonic soulmates draw each other on sketch paper.” Logan remarked.

“I don’t think people who are not really that important to you show up in your dreams.” Roman shot back.

“Touche.” Logan snorted, “Virgil’s a nice person.”

“I know.”

“Please don’t let him down.” Logan croaked, “If he’s really your soulmate…listen to him. Even if your heart is telling you to save someone else. Please.”

“Part of another vision you had?”

“I can’t tell you, Roman.” Logan murmured, “I just…you have to promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“That no matter how much you want to, no matter how much I call for you, no matter how loud I cry, you don’t try to save me. You follow Virgil’s directions, and if he tells you to leave me to die, you do what he says.” Logan’s voice cracked.

Roman’s hand shook and he gripped the pen. “I can’t promise you that, Logan.”

“Please.” Logan begged.

“You’re my brother. I made it my goal to always protect you. I’m not going to go back on that goal.”

“You don’t understand. Thousands more will die if you don’t. Please…” Logan begged.

“Logan, I’m not letting you die. I prevented it once, I’ll do it again. It’s my job as an older brother.”

“And you’re an asshole if you think I’m going to let you die again.” Logan scoffed, “Please.”

“No. End of story.”

“Then, prepare for a vital mistake.” Logan breathed sharply before he turned away, walking out of the room, “If anyone asks, I’m going for a walk outside. I’ll be safe.”

“I know” was Roman’s response, and he watched the boy grab his crystal on the way out. He trusted Logan. He trusted Virgil, but he trusted his own judgment more. There was no way that Roman was going to let anyone tell him who to save.

Still, Roman looked at the sleeping figure of Virgil, and his heart skipped a beat. Maybe a part of him would hesitate if Virgil’s judgment conflicted with his. However, they had been pretty good at agreeing so far. He hoped that day never had to come, and if it did, it was over something stupid and not fatal or life-threatening. ——————– they finally met each other :)

If you enjoyed this, please consider reblogging! Reblogging helps me a lot and it's just two clicks of a button (trust me, likes don't do anything to help me). Check out my masterlist for more, feel free to request any writings, and stick around if you want to see the rest of what I have in store for this! :)

[plotholes-and-spellingerrors]

I really enjoy this analysis, and I agree with the premise: taking this image at face value, the guy who posted it absolutely would not want any of the real-world policies necessary to lead to that world for everyone.

I don't read the original tweet as a literal statement, though. That basic interaction - that reactionary ideology is just pictures - is getting at something deeper. Because I, too, could compose an image of my imagined ideal future, right? Anyone can. But when h0mmelette says of some reactionaries that their ideology is pictures, I read it by way of Walter Benjamin when he says that fascism is the aestheticization of politics. And I think it's worth engaging with the original post on its own terms to try to understand what vittorio is saying, so that we know what we're up against.

So I'm going to look at the individual elements as representing a vibe, not representing a material policy outcome. I'll break them down individually, and then I'll bring it together into an overall statement.

Here's what I think he's saying with the individual elements.

Spaceship: I have a vague idea of a high science/high tech future. I think that "the future should look like the future".

Italian supercar: This is personal aspiration. Supercars, and especially Italian supercars, are a well-established cultural signifier of wealth and opulence: rappers sit in Ferraris and Lambos while they wear gold chains and sexy women in bikinis fawn all over them in music videos, so that's the life I want, too. I invest in crypto and talk about "fiat currency" a lot. I want to be rich while other people are poor. If I am not rich, it's because there's a conspiracy to keep me from being rich. If other people are not rich, it's because they're undeserving.

Roman-esque architecture: This is a white supremacist dog-whistle. We need to retvrn. Western Civilization produced the objectively best architecture in the world until the post-modern cultural bolsheviks tried to destroy our civilization with their bauhaus.

Roman soldier: This is a white supremacist dog-whistle. Rome was the superior civilization; I have fetishiszed specific, poorly-understood aspects of their culture. I crave a patriarchal, highly-militarized society where I, a man, am owed a beautiful sex-maid who bears me many children, all of whom are totally obedient to me. I believe that I know what's best about how society should function and that therefore I should be involved in the political process, but I also believe that anyone who disagrees with me is inherently evil and stupid and deserved to be barred from the political process.

Mediterranean climate: I want to live somewhere beautiful. I have never once considered the implications of how that could be achieved or what that might mean for anyone else. I deserve this and that is all that matters. It is unjust and cruel that the world does not conform to my wants.

Obviously, I can't be inside this guy's head and know that these are his exact thoughts. I am editorializing, and synthesizing the commentary expressed by many people online. But, overall, I think that these are fairly accurate assumptions.

And I think the important thing to realize is that when he says that this is the future he wants, he does not mean for everyone! He's saying: "my political ideology is whatever leads to this for me". This guy doesn't want to live in a better world, he wants to live in a theme park.

You could, absolutely, argue as ariaste does that the real-world policies that would lead to this world for everyone are very left-wing (and that they would absolutely fly in the face of this guy's actual politics). I think that ariaste does a great job on that side of it.

But I argue that this future could also be achieved, for a very small group of people, under world-wide authoritarianism. The reason you don't see a lot of tech billionaires worried about climate change is that while a lot of people will die as a result of unchecked climate change, not everyone will die. And the people who survive are the ones who have all the money and resources. If the Mediterranean becomes a hostile desert, that's fine, the wealthy will just move their villas to balmy, sunny England. So what if major farming regions become inhospitable? The wealthy can just pipe in water, or buy land in areas that are becoming more conducive to farming. The goal for these people is not that everyone lives well, only that they live well.

That spaceship in the picture could well be a slave transport. I know that traditionally in sci-fi the slave transports always look dirty and evil on the outside to show the audience that they're bad, but realistically, if you live in a theme park world, full of sleek, futuristic-looking technology, why would you want an evil, slimy, rusty cargo ship ruining your view? Much better to have a transporter that so easily fits into your society's aesthetic that it fades into the background so that you don't even have to contemplate the implications of its presence. There's a reason that in aristocratic manors, the servants have their own entrance around the back, and very likely even their own staircases and passages to their living quarters and work areas. The goal is to render totally invisible the daily machinery that maintains the nobility's life of ease.

As a leftist, it's very much my impulse to look at any depiction of the future and think to myself, "are these things desirable? How would they improve everyone's life? How could such improvement be achieved?", but I think it's important to remember that fundamentally, when a reactionary depicts a future, they're only ever imagining it for themselves. Everyone else be damned.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

[reginasrandomthoughts]

So I was wondering whether the people burning in the Christian hell can know any latin, since that is the language of the clergy, which kinda makes it the Christian God's preferred language (or does that apply to ecclesiastical latin only?).

Like, obviously some demons speak latin bc according to the extended Lore they sometimes speak latin during exorcisms, but it kinda makes sense to them since the lore says that demons were once angels so ecclesiastical latin should be like their mother tongue (don't argue with me about hebrew being the OG language of the Bible, we are talking Vatican era Christianism here and I think by this point that should be treated as its own lore bc too many things were added to it over the years. Like if we would agree that hebrew is the language of the Bible and God then the exorcists chanting latin at demons wouldnt make sense. Vatican era demons, God and the clergy obviously agreed to use latin from then on so we will go with their made up rules).

But I feel like your regular average Christian sinner should not be able to speak latin in Hell. Like, if you are in Hell, God has abandonned you, I am sorry to be the one delivering the news to you. And while I don't think that a lot of the regular sinners would know latin, there is definitely a lot of priests and nuns down there who would be praying in latin for God to deliver them and if I was God I would find that annoying, and if I was a demon I would find it insulting. Like, wasn't Satan's whole rebellion about not wanting to bow down to humans? Where do these inferior creatures get off on speaking their mother tongue? I feel like they would hate people who just decided to learn latin for the audacity, but they would have a sepcial hatred for the members of the clergy bc if you think about it, the priests and nuns burning in hell are their human equivalents: they too have sworn themselves to God and they too betrayes him. And looking into the mirror like that must hurt some type of way.

Anyway, I think that the Christian Hell has a blanket "no latin" rule applied to it for all human souls. Like you enter hell and you forget every latin word you have ever known including those quotes you learned from the Roman Era (pour one out for the guys who often think about the roman empire i guess). That ofc poses the fun question of what counts as latin bc ofc a lot of latin words are now used outside of religious context such as in scientific classifications or in names (like the one in my url). Would I forget my own name? Who knows, might have to summon a demon to ask but I'll pick up a cool middle name just in case.

So the big question is, what happens to the romans? Like from early christianity? Does Vatican-era Christian Hell have custody over their souls? If they spoke only latin, can they even speam or think words in hell? Like how many mono-theistic latin speaking romans are we talking about?

I say monotheistic bc I think that everyone's soul goes to the appropriate afterlife of the religion they believe in. Like, the soul of someone who doesn't believe in Jesus going to any version of the Christian god feels wrong. Like, imagine you are modern day pagen worshipping aphrodite and suddenly you are in saint peter's office getting the christian afterlife onboarding package. That is just not right.

It would be funny tho.

Which brings me to my main point: imagine a legal drama-comedy tv show (5 seasons, 24 eps per season for the syndication and royalty checks) called Devine Law where gods engage in ruthless custody battles for the souls of people who believed in gods/religious entities from multiple religions. We could have all the big names from word religions plus we could throw in lesser known pantheons from native american cultures or pull in African religions ... actually we can make an African spin off to let those religions have the spotlight (and to make money in that region too) and we can have a South East Asian spinoff too (for the same reasons, my cat needs to eat).

[1d1195]

Their story is so so cute and the songs written about it just really paints such a lovely story! And you don't have to explain yourself Sam, like Im not going to be offended if you didn't like them lol Middle school for me was for my emo phase yet with Paramore I simply cannot let them go lol What's wild is I vividly remember Harry's debut album and one of Paramore's album being released on the same day and my little tween brain couldn't handle it lol AND A WEREWOLF FIC!? Honestly seems fun lol

oh you definitely weren't delusional! Im sure there was something! Plus like sure you're in a relationship now but that doesn't mean you can't like not think about it?! Because you may not want a relationship right now with him but it's very interesting to know what could have been ya know?!

Parking is stressful especially in a busy city so I don't blame you! I get stressed and typically im not the one driving lol

Also bestie that traditional extra... OH IT WAS SO GOOD!!!!! It was so perfect especially in the form her jealousy took in! Her getting mad or like angry at Harry because of jealousy seemed highly unlikely, so her reacting by feeling bad/insecure about herself made sense for her character! Ngl if I would have reacted the same way! and what HURT while reading was Soph bringing up that ice skating accident and HOW HARRY MIGHT STILL HAVE HER NUMBER?! like nothing inherently bad but more just like awkward? Anyways loved reading it!Plus I never once doubted Harry bc he's insane for her!!! Yet it was still to see her talk about it with him! AHHH anyways I loved it!!!

I hope your week has been better Bestie!! Also I think by the time youll see this, its Valentine's Day soooooo HAPPY VALENTINE"S DAY MY LOVE🥰🥰🥰 You deserve all the love in the world! Im so happy to have found your little blog and I swear just chatting with you always brings a smile to my face! Love you lots and I hope you enjoy your day filled with all forms of love!!!

ps. I will likely be a bit MIA next week :( i have another round of exams :( but most likely by the weekend after I will be back!-💜

OH NO MORE EXAMS. No worries at all, I know you'll crush it! Best of luck! It'll be here when you're available 💕

In spirit, I imagine having Paramore and Harry drop at the same time was a lot hehehe. I used to make my family stop talking for hours when 1D had an interview streaming (I knew all the answers they were giving ahead of time, idk why I was like that)

I was a diehard Twilight fan (#TeamEdward) werewolf fic was the time of my life tbh. There is very little that can compare to a soulmate-MATE. It might be my roman empire.

EEEEEKKKK! So glad you liked it! Harry is def insane about her 💕 she has nothing to worry about but sometimes you can't help those feelings, you know? I think I would prefer to leave Traditional Harry to the jealousy in the future though, not her.

It's been an okay week so far; we had a snow day yesterday and school break is next week so just two more days. 😅 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Hope you get just as much love and more, you deserve it 💕

Love you, and talk to you soon!!!

xoxo