#i never know how to tag this series sowwy

[eyefocusing]

this thang

[minustwofingers]

exoplanet part 7

pairing: ellie williams x fem!reader (she/her pronouns used)

series masterlist (read parts 1-6 here!)

summary: you’ve won the life lottery as one of the few people on earth with parents who gained admittance to the most prestigous safezone in the world after the outbreak. but after a lab accident sends you out to jackson, wyoming, real life hits you fast. it’s a good thing that a hot lesbian finds u. (lol). mean ellie at first, slowburn, enemies to friends to lovers, fem reader asf

warnings: stuck up awful rich people. mentions of: abortion (sowwy ** i can't write kids), homophobia, throwing up, general awful elitism, heavy drinking, implied minor character death, and we talk about stuff like unethical labor practices/basically slave labor. depictions of: violence, guns.

a/n: hey yall....sorry for taking literal months to write this. and sorry in advance for what you're about to read, since this is admittedly a little far removed from tlou. and i'm also sorry if this isn't what you guys are expecting—i know i made you wait a long time for this, so it was tough for me to finally get around to posting because i didn't want to disappoint anyone. also it was just sooo sad writing the last scene because i just didn't want it to end!! anywayyyy enjoy

wc: 14.6k (i know...i know...)

tags: @intrnetdoll @dazedshoon @lovecaraya @pctcr @sariyaflowr @loser-keiji @prettyplant0 @666findgod @sawaagyapong @rystarkov @buzzybuzzsposts @addisonnie @galacticstxrdust @elliesbabygirl​ @pinkazelma @ariianelle @lu002 @blairfox04 @sparkleswonderland @elliesflower @muthafuckingstargirl @elliewilliamsissubermommyoml @eviestevie-14 @quicksilversg1rl @guacala @crtcrp @overtrred28 @sugarqueencosmos @iriswalrus @chiao1209 @lovecaraya @thatgiraffefromtlou @alwayslongingforyou @thelastofshimmer

May 16th, 2029

Welcome to AskAI! Enter your questions below and I'll try my best to answer :) 

How does Cordyceps spread?

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is mostly commonly spread between humans by the medium of bodily fluids, though this was not always the case. In the early stages of the outbreak, most carriers were infected by the presence of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis spores in flour from a Jakartan mill. It is still unclear how the contamination occurred. 

Is saliva included in bodily fluids that carry Cordyceps?

Yes, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis can be spread through human saliva. Other bodily fluids include blood, feces, mucus, and semen.

So if someone were to kiss someone infected with Cordyceps, would that person be infected too?

Yes, because Ophiocordyceps unilateralis can be spread through human saliva. 

How long would it take before seeing symptoms?

If Ophiocordyceps unilateralis spores were to be introduced to an individual via mouth-to-mouth transmission, the approximate incubation window has been recorded to be no longer than 8 hours.

How long would it take to be detected by a standard testing device?

Our testers would detect the presence of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis within an hour after exposure. Note that this only refers to the conditions outside of Terranova. There has never been a detected case of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis in Terranova’s history. 

Thank you.

You’re welcome! Please leave feedback on the AskAI Feedback Form if you have any ideas as to how I can improve <3

One year later

“And there’s no way we can skip?” 

“You know the rules.”

Dina rolled her eyes and sighed as you two stood at the door of your parents’ penthouse, waiting to knock. “Maybe if you went and I said that I was sick or something.”

“They’d know you were lying.”

“They’d probably be happy if I missed dinner.” 

“I don’t know if happy is something they can be,” you said. You tried to make it light and joking, but it came out with the heaviness of truth. “Plus, they’re not exactly thrilled with me either.”

“Not exactly thrilled” was the understatement of the century. Ever since you’d come home with a pregnant outsider toting a gun and covered in dirt, your parents had convinced themselves that you’d somehow become corrupted over your time living outside. 

But Dina had it way worse. Your parents were so scandalized by her rugged ways and the fact that she’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock that they’d nearly fainted upon realizing you were advocating for her Terranovan citizenship. 

You both had had the good fortune of avoiding any further tense interactions with them for the last few months, but that morning you’d awoken to an email that contained an invitation to their home for dinner. It was noted that Dina had to attend.

So here you two were. Dressed in uncomfortable, stiff clothes and nervously twiddling your thumbs. 

“You’re going to be fine,” you promised Dina. It sounded like a lie. “I’ll do most of the talking, okay?”

“If you say so.” 

You rang the doorbell.

It took just a few moments before the door swung open.

“Hi Chris!” you greeted, plastering a smile on your face. 

Your family housekeeper smiled back with a neutral warmth. She looked slightly thinner than you remembered when you saw her last just a few months ago. “Hello. Miss Dina, please remember to keep your shoes on this time.” 

Dina flushed bright red. The last time she’d come over for dinner, she’d taken her shoes off and had been given a very stern lecture by your mother about how improper stockinged feet were for dinner. “Of course not, ma’am.” 

You sent her an apologetic look and stepped inside.

“Your parents are in the sitting room,” Chris told you as she took your coats. 

You thanked her.

“Why don’t they ever come up to greet us themselves?” Dina whispered to you. 

You shrugged. “No clue. They just never have. They probably don’t want to have to take a break from whatever stimulating conversation they’re having about the country club happenings.”

She snorted. All of a sudden, you were overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude for Dina and her spirit. After your family had essentially decided you were hopeless, family get-togethers had become torture. Dina was your lifeline.

As Chris had said, your parents were found lounging in the sitting room, your mother fanning herself with one hand and holding what looked to be a gin and tonic in the other, your father sitting across from her in a tastefully worn armchair. 

“Girls,” your mother greeted. Her eyes looked flinty and flat. “How good of you to come. I was worried you’d lost your way.”

It was a classic Y/L/N insult for latecomers, but it was barely a minute past 6:30. 

“The elevator wasn’t working,” you offered. “We had to take the stairs.”

“Hm. Well, come and sit. Petra can get you a drink.” 

A tall girl who couldn’t have been much younger than you was standing at the other end of the room next to the bar. She had bright ginger hair that stood out starkly against the neutral beige of her uniform and a small, squatty nose. You’d never seen her before in your life. 

“Is she new?” you asked.

“Who, Petra? Oh, I think so. It must’ve been…oh, I’m not sure. This March, I believe? What do you think, darling?”

“Around then.” The solid ice globe slid against the glass with a clink as your father answered, taking a long pull of his bourbon after. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Dina politely.

Your mother let out a labored sigh. “Dear, I’m very glad to see you working on manners, but there’s no need to engage with the help.”

Dina didn’t answer, instead sending you a meaningful look. 

“Well, not usually,” she continued. “Though it is appropriate to interact with them in matters that are considered strictly business. Take, for example, the fact that neither of you have managed to order a drink yet. Petra, come.”

You stared at your hands, folded tightly in your lap. If there was anything you hated more than your parents, it was how they treated the help. And, though you’d never say it out loud, you didn’t understand how two middle aged adults needed more than one full-time housekeeper on hand. Chris made sense. Petra was entirely unnecessary. 

“We really don’t need anything,” you said to Petra when she was in front of you, looking rather pale. “But thank you.” 

The tension in the air refused to dissipate, not even when you were relocated to the dining room and had the crutch of picking away at the three courses served to you. 

Dina, having been thoroughly scolded by your mother the last time she dined with her, was clinical in choosing which utensil to use for each course. 

Your mother babbled on and on about the country club and the book club. Your father occasionally butted in with a few dull, lifeless comments. There was something especially dead in his appearance, like he was running on zero sleep.

“You may be curious as to why I asked you two here today,” your mother said after the main course plates had been cleared. “First of all, I wanted to extend my congratulations to my daughter for graduating in just a few days.” 

“Thank you,” you said stiffly. 

“And more importantly—” 

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes.

“—I wanted to announce that your father will finally be retiring,” she said. “He’s been working so hard for the last few years. Isn’t this wonderful?”

“That’s really great, Father,” you said, feigning a smile to hide your confusion. You hadn’t known that your father had even worked, much less hard enough to warrant a formal retirement. 

“Thanks, dove,” he said.

“When’s your last day?” you pried, wondering if you could manage any more information out of him. 

“This Friday.”

“Hm.” So much for that. You exchanged glances with Dina as Petra reappeared with a tray of small goblets filled with colorful globes of sorbet. 

“You’ll both be expected to be in attendance at his retirement party,” Mother added. She was frowning deeper now. 

“Even me?” said Dina.

“Yes.” She smiled tightly. “And please note that they’re unaware that we helped you through your…little problem. I can’t imagine why that would ever come up in conversation, but I would really prefer it didn’t.”

“Uh huh,” responded Dina, her eyes wide. 

When Dina had arrived, your family had given her two options—have her child and give it up for adoption, or terminate the pregnancy then and there in secret. Refusing to comply would lead to your parents being entirely unwilling to sponsor her citizenship as it was far too unseemly to be an unmarried mother. Though it was clear your parents thought she was devastated by the prospect, she’d confided in you later that she hadn’t realized that that had been an option for her. She’d taken the second option without a second thought, telling you that she didn’t feel ready to be a mother. 

The unfortunate part of it all was that your parents held this over her head on occasion, using it as leverage to make Dina feel like she owed them. Hence why she never felt entirely comfortable with telling them off. 

That your parents had kept the abortion a secret was hardly a surprise. Abortion was one of those issues that no one liked to talk about. Though it wasn’t the hardest procedure to get, it was never publicly discussed. You’d never personally known of anyone who had gotten one before, but the clinic had been so full when you’d attended with Dina nearly a year ago that you were beginning to second guess that fact. 

“Anyway,” said your mother lightly, “Darling, have you heard anything from the Thompsons recently?” 

“Oh, no. I haven’t seen Richard in quite some time.”

“It’s funny you say that. Melanie was supposed to host the Garden Club party last week, and you’ll never believe what happened.”

“What, honey?” Your father stared dully at the tablecloth, entirely unengaged. 

“When I stopped by, the rest of the girls were already there,” your mother said. “Just sitting out in front of her building looking very confused. I walked right up and asked what was going on—you know, now that I’m co-president, I need to keep things in order—”

“Yes, honey.”

“—And Angie tells me that they’ve been ringing her for ten minutes and she hasn't answered. I decided to give her a call, and straight to voicemail. So we all sat out there until it started raining. We never even got an apology text.” 

“Oh,” said your father, looking a little more engaged. “Is that really?”

“Yes,” your mother said. The attention made her sit up straighter. “It absolutely was. It was incredibly inappropriate. I couldn’t believe it. And to think that she stole that hosting spot from me…”

“Do you know if she’s alright?” your father asked,

She shrugged. “I should hope not. That’s the only excuse she could have for what happened.”

“Hm.” Your father moved the melting sorbet around without clinking his spoon to the crystal. “It seems that quite a few of us have been dropping off the face of the Earth.”

“It must be because of the long winter,” you said diplomatically. “Too much darkness makes us all a little loony.”

Your mother raised a brow and hummed in assent. “I suppose so.”

“Is that why groceries are so expensive now?” you asked. It had become a new development. About 6 months after you and Dina had returned, the prices on the shelves had rocketed upwards.

“Something like that,” your father said vaguely. 

“What does that mean?”

“Y/N,” your mother warned.

“It’s alright, dear,” your father said, waving his hand. “It’s really nothing interesting. Supplying this city has always had its challenges. This year just happens to be especially hard.”

“What kind of challenges?” pried Dina.

“Shipments are always difficult to orchestrate,” he said. “As is quality control. It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. Prices will go back to usual within a few months. The pendulum always has to swing back.”

It was a saying he always used—the pendulum analogy.

Dessert wrapped up quickly. Your mother gave you the official date for your father’s retirement party and ironed out your graduation details, and before you knew it you and Dina were off into the night. 

“Thank fucking god that’s over,” said Dina as you two trotted down the street to the metro. 

“Tell me about it.” You zipped up your jacket to ward off the slight chill in the evening air. “I’m really sorry you had to deal with all of that. I appreciate you coming with me. I know they’re awful to you.”

“Well, they’ll be worse if I don’t go,” she responded, her eyes cloudy for a second. She was right. One misstep and they could have her citizenship and their financial sponsorship rescinded. 

“True,” you conceded. 

The metro was bustling with people as you and Dina hopped on to the yellow line that would take you to the university residences. It was modeled right after the Parisian metros, with its Art Nouveau signs and themed stops.  There was only standing room, so you two clutched onto the stainless steel poles in the middle. 

The doors made a groaning sound and a speaker crackled as the announcer came on.

“Doors closing. Please stand clear of the exits. This is an express train with service to University Park. Other stops include 25th Street and North Village. There will be no evening service to Rotingham.” 

You and Dina seemed to come to an unspoken agreement to remain silent and process the hell that had been dinner with your parents as the train lurched forward into motion. You closed your eyes and would’ve rested your head against the handrail had it not been so gross. 

The only fortunate thing about your parents was the fact that they were incredibly easy to get to, despite living on the other side of the city from the university. What would’ve normally taken 40 minutes with transfers was cut down to 15 with the use of an express train that ran right from the station outside of your apartment. 

You had resolved to just sit in silence when the train came to a screeching halt. 

Your eyes shot open, meeting Dina’s confused gaze. 

The lights above flickered, then sputtered out to leave you in darkness. 

There was a hushed silence amongst everyone in your train car. 

“What’s going on?” Dina whispered to you. 

“This happens sometimes,” you said quietly back, but it was sort of a lie. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for the lights to go out, but you’d never had it happen in tandem with a train stopping on the tracks before reaching a station. And especially not an express train…

The lights flickered on again, and there was a shared sense of relief as a few of the train’s occupants let out a shaky laugh. 

“Thought we were going to have to walk!” said a ruddy looking old man sitting across from you. The car responded with polite chuckles. 

“Apologies for the delay,” came a voice over the loudspeaker—a human voice, not an automated one. “There was a disturbance on the tracks that had to be dealt with. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Service will continue as usual.”

The train lurched back into movement, the dark walls of the tunnel moving past in a blur.

“That was weird,” Dina remarked once you two had gotten to your stop and were walking up to ground level.

“Yeah,” you said, frowning. “I didn’t want to tell you then because I didn’t want to freak you out, but normally express trains never stop, especially not at this time of night with less trains in service.”

“What qualifies as a disturbance on the tracks?”

“I have no clue,” you confessed. The sun was hovering just barely over the horizon, its last rays of light reflecting aggressively off of the skyscrapers in the distance from which you came. “Someone probably dropped something big like a suitcase onto the tracks and blocked the way. It happens.” 

You were purposefully avoiding the elephant in the room—that it had probably been a person on the tracks. It wasn’t especially common—not nearly as common as you heard it was in places like New York before the outbreak—but it happened on occasion. Terranova wasn’t the best place for everyone.

“The Thompsons are Simon’s family, right?” Dina asked you. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the cheerful chatter of fellow university students socializing and drinking on the green next to the sidewalk.

“Yeah,” you said. You and Dina had occasionally hung out with Simon since returning. You noticed that Simon had really taken a liking to Dina, but neglected to mention it since his parents were actively attempting to arrange a marriage between him and some girl in the Art History program at your school. “Have you talked to him at all? I haven’t heard from him for a week or so.”

“Me neither.” Dina tightened the dark braid that fell over her shoulder as she walked, looking rather troubled. “I didn’t realize his parents were missing.”

“They’re probably fine,” you said. “I seriously wouldn’t worry about it. There’s nothing here that could hurt them.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I just forget that there’s no infected here sometimes. Like, tonight, I thought I was gonna have to start swinging on someone in the train when the power cut.” 

“God, same.” You shivered. “It’s weird to know that we don’t have to worry about that anymore. But I think it’ll get easier with time.”

“Yeah,” said Dina, but she didn’t sound convinced. “Well, I’m going to text Simon and see if he’s alright. Or maybe call him. I’m sure he’ll know what happened.” 

“Let me know what he says.” You’d ascended the steps up to your shared apartment and were slotting the key into the keyhole. “By the way, did I ever formally invite you to my graduation?”

“Not that I recall.” Dina followed you in and kicked her shoes off.

“Well, consider this your formal invitation,” you said, turning to grin at her. “It’s this Saturday. Be there or be square.”

“Will there be free food?”

“And anything you want to drink,” you told her, though you weren’t entirely sure of that fact. You’d only ever been to one graduation in your life, and that had been years before it was socially acceptable for you to drink anything beyond the odd glass of watered down wine—but you recalled a memory of particularly free-flowing champagne flutes being passed around. 

“Consider me sold.” 

~

You had to be going crazy. There was no way. 

You entered the numbers back into the graphing software again. Then again. Then one more time, just to be sure you were seeing what you were seeing. 

“Everything going alright over there?” asked old Professor Gunther, looking up from his grading and his steaming cup of tea. 

“Um—” You blinked, hard, then looked back down at your calculations. “Professor, can you look at these for me? I think I must’ve made a mistake.”

“Of course, my dear.” He graciously accepted the notepad full of barely legible numbers that you came up to hand to him and adjusted the glasses on his face so he could squint more efficiently. “And what is this exactly?”

“I’ve been parsing through the data on that star—that K star you’d been watching for a while—and, um, I’ve noticed something.” Your voice shook nearly as much as your hand as you pointed to the scribbled numbers. “Can you, uh, graph these? And put them into a different program than StarBlast? And look at the spectra? It’s giving me what I think is—actually, I don’t know. You do it and I’ll show you what I got.” 

“I’m confused about what you could have possibly done wrong,” he said, though he was already opening his own laptop and starting up a different program that you hadn’t used before because of how much you hated the GUI. “Did you try to parse it by hand to check?”

“Yes,” you said. “Horrible idea. Took me forever.” 

“And you got the same result?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” He took off his glasses to wipe them off, then began typing in the data you’d emailed to him earlier for bookkeeping purposes. “Let me see what I have.” 

The agonizing few minutes it took for him to enter him already had your mind spiraling with possibilities as the implications sunk in. If you were right—if this was right—everything was going to change in your field. 

The spectra graph roared to life.

“Jesus Christ,” you heard your professor say. “Is this—”

“I think so,” you said. “I think so.”

What you two were looking at held more than one piece of crucial information. The first was nothing but basic calculations of a Doppler Shift that detected that there was a planet. Your calculations estimated its size at roughly the same as the Earth, with a similar orbital period and distance from its star that placed it in the habitable zone.

That wasn’t anything earth-shattering. There were plenty of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone, implying that if the conditions were right, there was an environment conducive to organic life. 

What was, however, were the spectra emissions that you were staring at, slack-jawed and skin prickling. 

“Methane,” you whispered. “And oxygen. And phosphine.” 

And not just a little—enough that it suggested biological processes that could only occur with the presence of life.

“I think you should finish writing this report,” Professor Gunther finally said. 

You froze. “What?” 

He turned to you, his glasses sliding down his bulbous nose and a kind smile on his face. “I’ve made enough discoveries in my life. This one is yours to claim.” 

You were overcome with so much gratitude that you launched yourself at him, throwing your arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.

Gunther good-naturedly patted your back with the enthusiasm of a grandfather being pestered by his grandchildren. “This is your moment. Take it.” 

“Thank you,” you said, pulling back with tears welling up in your eyes. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

He smiled again. “It’s truly my pleasure. I feel lucky to have had a student like you.” 

“If you don’t stop, I’m going to start crying.”

“We can’t have that,” he said, standing up and handing you back your sheet of calculations. “You have work to do.”

You settled back into your work across from him, nearly buzzing with excitement as you finished typing up your findings. It would be a long process for the study to actually be published—long, painful, and undoubtedly draining—but it would be so worth it. You’d be the one who discovered a planet that (most likely) harbored life. For the first time in history. 

Though you wouldn’t be publishing a paper any time soon, you still had to log the planet into the “global” (not exactly global given that there was no other place on Earth with the same technology as Terranova) database. And with that meant giving it a name.

In that moment, it was like time froze as the cursor blinked in the box. There was nothing but the blood rushing in your head, the dull hum of the fluorescent lights above, and the slight stickiness of the leather desk chair beneath you. 

You gulped. It was standard in the department to name planets after the astronomer that discovered them. You’d never had a planet named after you before. You’d only ever crunched numbers that Gunther had given to you to analyze spectra emissions. This was the first time you’d ever actually discovered something that hadn’t already been logged before it had landed on your desk.

And yet…

You closed your eyes. Suddenly you were back in the meadow at Jackson, tracing the wisps of the Milky Way with your finger as you and Ellie talked about the constellations. You saw the childish excitement on her normally stern features when she held the moon rock for the first time. You saw the wonder in her eyes when you told her a new space fact that she’d never heard before. That she’d never had the opportunity to learn before. 

Your fingers moved before you could stop them, quickly tapping out the name “Ellie” into the box and hitting the enter button. 

For the rest of the day, you regretted it. You tried not to think of her anymore. It was something that you’d promised yourself you wouldn’t do after you spent the entirety of last summer miserable and doing nothing but turning over the memories in your mind until Dina made you do something with her. 

It was difficult. You wanted to put it in the past, because you couldn’t think about her without thinking about how she probably wasn’t even alive anymore. Which didn’t make any sense. Nothing ever made any sense about Ellie. Even before you predicted she’d been bitten, she’d already been behaving erratically—not packing her things, not saying a real goodbye to Joel, catching more food than their small group of three could possibly need near the end. It was like she knew that she wouldn’t be able to go.

Which didn’t make any sense, because why go all that way knowing that it was for nothing?

Which made you think about how bizarre she was before leaving. How sad she seemed when she told you that she was going, like even then she knew that it wouldn’t happen. 

And you hadn’t gotten sick from her, even though you should have. She’d kissed you long after she would’ve been bitten. And you knew from your frantic research upon arriving that you should have tested positive when Simon checked. 

So why hadn’t you? And why had she?

It was things like this that could keep you up for days if you weren’t careful. It was awful, but sometimes you liked to believe that she had really been sick and had died shortly after. You had a vision of her killing herself before fully turning, and even though it hurt to imagine it, it was the most humane end of them all. If she was dead, then maybe there was an afterlife, and maybe a piece of her was watching over you. Maybe she was still with you. Maybe she finally was able to rest. 

You hoped that little piece of her had seen her name the first planet with life after her.

A tiny smile crept across your face, but inside you felt devastated. You were going to mourn her again all day, like you always did when something reminded you of her. And you were probably going to dream of her, of her stupid grin and the way her hair felt when it tickled your face. 

Pull it together you thought glumly. You had to be normal for your father’s retirement party that night, and you had just under 4 hours to do so. 

~

“Ugh,” you said, staring at your phone as you stood with Dina near the door, both of you dolled up and ready to go to the party.

“That’s how I feel too,” said Dina. “I’m going to kill myself if anyone brings up anything about how hard my childhood must’ve been and how I’m doing such a good job adjusting one more time.”

“Ha,” you said. “Mom just texted me to tell me that we need to stop by theirs first.”

“Why? Aren’t they already at the venue?”

“Yeah,” you responded, wrinkling your nose. “But apparently she forgot her gift for him—some vintage Rolex she got restored for him.”

“A vintage what?”

“Stupidly overpriced wristwatch,” you explained. 

It took less time than usual to get to their building. Despite it being at peak busy hour, the platforms seemed eerily empty.

“Is there some holiday going on?” Dina asked, sitting across from you so that you both had your own row of seats. 

“Oh, I’m such an idiot,” you said, clapping your forehead with your hand. “Of course there is. That’s why my father held his retirement party today. It’s the first day of this festival that goes all week.”

“What’s it for?”

“I honestly don’t know the background,” you admitted. “Most people just use it as an excuse to get incredibly drunk. I think it has something to do with the founding. It’s, like, the only time that public intoxication is okay.” 

“Damn,” said Dina thoughtfully. 

“The trains will probably fill up on our way back,” you said, sighing. “Hopefully it won’t be too bad. Worst comes to worst we can walk.”

“It gets that bad?” 

“There’s hardly standing room,” you said, recalling the last festival you’d been around for—the summer before you’d been catapulted to Jackson. “And it just reeks of drunk people. And you have to be really careful, because I hear the custodial staff has to work overtime to clean up all the vomit.” 

“Gross,” said Dina. “And here I was thinking that it was just all being proper and mannerly.”

“Everyone has their limits,” you said lightly.

The penthouse felt just as oppressive as when you came for dinners, like you were walking into the lair of a dragon who was coming back at any moment. Chris was gone—likely participating in the festival herself—but you were surprised to see the figure of Petra bent in a corner as you entered, dusting the top shelf of their bookcase.

You and Dina politely greeted her before ascending the steps to your father’s office.

“Why did your Mom put it in here?” Dina asked as you began shuffling through papers to find the box that your mother had described over text.

“My father doesn’t work in here all too often,” you said, opening a few drawers and seeing no trace of the green and gold box. “He just uses it to file away things.” 

“What does he do?” 

“I actually have no clue,” you confessed. “He doesn’t talk about it, and I don’t ask.” 

“Do you want to see if we can find out?” Dina asked with a conspiratorial raise of her eyebrow as she motioned towards the filing cabinets. “Just a quick look. They’ll never know that we were here.”

You took a moment to consider. If Chris had answered the door to let you two in, you would’ve told her that you couldn’t, because she would definitely snitch if she knew. But she was nowhere to be seen, and Petra looked like she was busy enough downstairs. 

“Sure. Why not.”��

The first few cabinets held nothing interesting—just spending reports and copies of contracts that were written in legalese. 

“It looks like he works with whoever supplies this place,” remarked Dina as you two skimmed the papers and saw records of contacts all over the continent, from the old continental US and South America, each detailing something boring about shipping dates and inventory. 

But then came the third cabinet, with papers dated back before you were born with what looked like sketches of barren looking buildings and hand-scrawled notes. 

“What are these?” you breathed, laying them out on the ground. 

“I think…” Dina squinted. “I think that these might be manufacturing plants?” 

“Oh?” You dug further around in the cabinet to see if you could find any further illuminating evidence. 

“Yeah,” said Dina, staring as she began to flip through the pages already on the floor. “Holy shit, dude. This is…sort of messed up. Look at how small these living quarters are.”

You peered over her shoulder to see the architectural sketches of what looked to be more of what you imagined a prison to be. There were long bunks stacked on top of each other in what looked to be a never ending line, the mattresses barely even large enough to be considered twins. 

Someone cleared their throat behind you, and you nearly leapt.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” said Petra. Her voice was low and raspy. You noted that it was the first time she’d ever spoken.

“Oh, uh—” You began to frantically gather the papers, hoping she hadn’t seen. Would she tell your parents? “Sorry if we disturbed your work. My parents, uh, they asked us to get something from—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupted, holding up a hand. “I won’t say anything.”

“Thank you.” You stared up at her steely green eyes, wondering what had compelled her to approach you and Dina. “Um, is there anything we can do to help you?”

“Don’t drink the bourbon,” she said, so quickly that it seemed to fluster her. 

“What? Why?”

“Just don’t do it,” she said again. “Better yet, don’t drink anything except for the water.”  

“I’m sorry,” you said, feeling genuinely apologetic. “I’m not sure if I understand.”

Something crossed over Dina’s face, and suddenly something in her seemed to shift. Her features paled. She knew something you didn’t.

“I came from one of those places,” Petra said, motioning to the diagrams that you were staring at. “They’re not—they’re not somewhere you want to be. We all try our best to come here. That’s what they tell us, you know. Do well enough and you’ll get sent to where everyone gets to live a life of grandeur and luxury. But they barely send anyone, and when they do, they get shitty positions like this.” 

Your breath caught in your throat as your understanding slowly grew. Of course. How had you been so stupid to think that wealthy people were ever going to have any of their kind work any real job? 

“You two were the ones who came from outside, right?” Petra continued. When you two nodded, she crouched next to you. “And you were wondering what was going on with the prices?”

You nodded again, awestruck.

“Your Dad’s little spiel on it being about bad weather is bullshit,” she said, her words hard. “People are getting tired of this. They’re realizing they’re never getting out. You know what it’s like out there—it’s scary. It’s tiring. So many people get sick, so many die. So when people finally caught onto the fact that the work they’re doing is nothing but dressed up slavery and that their chances of getting out are basically zero, they start doing things to mess with the system.”

“Like contaminating the products?” Even as she said it, it seemed like Dina already knew the answer. 

Petra just gave you two a long look. 

“So that’s what he meant by quality control,” you said, the realization hitting you. 

“Among other things.” 

“How long do you think we have?” asked Dina.

“Not very long at all.” 

“You guys can’t be serious,” you said, nervous laughter catching in your chest. “Do you seriously mean that Terranova isn’t going to be around for much longer? Is that what you’re saying?”

Petra shrugged and stood up. “Believe whatever you want. But from where I stand, it looks like there’s only two possible ways out of this situation. That is, unless you guys all become farmers.”

“I don’t think I’m following,” you said.

“Two options,” Petra said, sighing heavily. “Either we starve or we don’t. And the latter means taking a really big fucking chance on what we bring in.”

“But the system has worked for so long,” you said, more to yourself than anyone else. 

“Too long,” she amended. “It was never sustainable. Maybe if you people had been okay with just eating native plants and wildlife. Maybe if you people were okay with changing your way of life. But no, you just had to have your fucking oranges from Florida and your coffee from South America.” 

“Don’t lump me into this,” said Dina. “I just got here.” 

Petra laughed, but it was a hard and sharp sound. “Well, chances are you won’t be here for long.”

“Hang on,” you said. “We’re still doing quality control inspections. The most likely scenario is that we’re going to have to cut down on imports—not that we’re about to go up in flames any minute.”

“I hope you’re right about that,” she said in that voice that told you that she thought that you definitely weren’t and didn’t see the point in arguing further. “Anyways, I’ve got to finish working so I can get home before dark. Be careful, okay?” 

“You too,” you said. “And thanks for…not saying anything.”

It was a bit presumptuous considering that Petra hadn’t really given you any good reason beyond her word that she wouldn’t mention you lurking in your father’s cabinets, so you and Dina were thorough in carefully placing each file back into the correct place, just in case. 

“Do you really think what she said is true?” you asked once you and Dina had located the watch and were on the metro once again.

Dina shrugged. “I mean, it makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Look,” said Dina. “I know that this might be hard for you to hear, but I’m pretty sure this place lives off of what’s basically slave labor. If there’s any humanity left in the world, I would like to think that Terranova would eventually fall.” 

You swallowed hard, then blinked. For a moment you thought you were going to throw up. “I never knew. I didn’t realize.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Dina’s voice was surprisingly patient. “You were a kid. But you’re not anymore, so it’s time to grow up and face the music.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t either.” 

The two of you fell into a silence as the train sped past empty platforms bathed in shadows and you thought and thought and thought. 

There was just too much happening today. First Gunther’s lab, then Ellie, now your entire worldview toppling. 

As the train windows continued to blur the background of the tunnels and empty stations, your mind spun with reflections of your childhood—of you enjoying simple luxuries that you didn’t realize came at the expense of others. That you didn’t even think to ask about. You’d mindlessly trudged along, eating your exotic fruits and drinking your expensive tea and wearing clothes built from indulgent fabrics just because you could. Even when Dina had asked where the oranges came from all the way back in Jackson, you hadn’t let yourself wonder. You hadn’t let yourself consider the possibility that it was anything less than the sanitized fairyland that you’d been brought up in—perhaps because you knew all along. 

And that made it even worse.

Dina seemed to understand, sending you a few glances without prodding. 

“Do you think we need to leave?” you asked, your voice just barely a whisper.

“Us leaving isn’t going to do anything,” Dina said, like she’d been expecting it. “And how would we even do that? It’s not like we can just charter a helicopter again to drop us off back in Jackson.” 

Something twisted inside of you. “Oh, God. You’re right. We couldn’t even leave if we tried.”

And you might have to try, a sinister voice inside you whispered. What if Petra was right about the contaminated products? What if they missed something when checking imports?

You’d never been taught how quickly the fungus spread in the original outbreak, and you knew little about the normal amount of time it would take any sort of disease to infect the entire population. But you did know how densely populated everything was. How reliant everything was on a few strictly maintained channels, like public transportation. 

It wouldn’t be hard for it to all come crashing down, really. It would just take the right place at the right time and—

“Don’t freak out, Y/N.” Dina laid a hand on your shoulder. “We’ll figure something out if it comes to that.” 

You smiled at her, grateful that you didn’t even have to put your words into thoughts. “But if we can’t leave, what do we do? It’s not like we can just sit by and do nothing.”

Dina pulled her bottom lip under her teeth, worrying it before answering. “I don’t really think that we have a choice. Right now, at least. I don’t know if there’s anything that just the two of us can do.”

“I’ll find more,” you said. “I’ll talk to my professors—my friends at university—Simon—”

“Do you think that we’re the only two that know about this?” asked Dina. “Because I really don’t. Maybe your friends don’t. But anyone in the military and anyone who was around when this was founded has got to know. They just don’t care enough.”

Something slowly iced over inside of you as the implications sunk in. 

Gunther had probably known. No, scratch that—he definitely did. He was an academic who had been in his 30s when the world fell apart. Any adult would have asked the same questions that Dina had upon arrival. 

“We’ll figure something out, I’m sure,” said Dina firmly. “Okay? Don’t worry.” 

“Speaking of Simon,” you said, narrowing your eyes, “Did you ever get in touch with him? Is his family okay?” 

“Oh, yeah.” said Dina. “He texted me back a bit ago. Said something about how he was just busy and that his family had been camping up in the mountains.” 

You two faded into silence. 

The retirement party came and went without much trouble. On the outside, at least. You were a mental wreck, barely able to keep it together as near strangers came up to you and expressed how much bigger you were since they’d seen you a decade and a half ago. 

You noted with muted suspicion that Simon’s parents were nowhere to be seen amongst the crowd, not even by the lavishly decorated bar. 

~

That night, you did dream of Ellie. It wasn’t the usual. Ellie wasn’t turning in front of you or bleeding or crying out in pain with a bite mark on her arm. She wasn’t yelling at you for failing her and letting her get bitten without even noticing. No; instead, she lay beside you in your meadow spot and talked to you.

And somehow that was so much worse.

“I named a planet after you,” you said, feeling hot tears pool at the seams of your eyes that you squeezed together to avoid sobbing. You knew you were dreaming. You always knew you were dreaming—seeing Ellie always seemed to prompt a degree of lucidity that was otherwise missing in your sleep. 

“That’s really fucking sappy of you.”

“I miss you.” It came out like a compulsion, like you couldn’t stop it. “Are you here? Are you with me?”

“Y/N,” Ellie said, turning to look at you. The darkness made it difficult to see her whole face, but you could see the look of pity on her features in the gray-blue of the moonlight. “Of course I’m not here. Don’t be stupid. I’m dead.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re not. Like, if something happened.”

“Something did happen. I died.” 

“Fuck you.”

She smiled sadly, and for a moment you thought her eyes looked more reflective than usual. “It’s not very helpful to think that way. And what can I tell you? I’m not even real.”

“I’d like you to try,” you whispered.

“Fine.” She sat up, pulling her legs into a lazy tangle as she looked at you. “What did you seriously expect, dude? You were never going to stay. I wasn’t going to go. If I hadn’t been bitten, I’m sure I would’ve orchestrated some way to get out of it. My family is back in Jackson. I liked you just fine, but you’re not my family. That shit’s deeper. Different.” 

You opened your mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. The sharp pain in your chest faded into a cold sense of familiarity. Then, because she wasn’t real and there was no reason to feel embarrassed about bearing your emotions: 

“You feel more like family than anyone here.” 

“Then that sounds like a you problem,” said Ellie, flatly. “I’m not gonna let you guilt trip me like this. Boo fucking hoo, you grew up richer than everyone else on Earth and had to deal with strict parents. Do you realize what actual, real problems are? What about the people who make your lifestyle possible, huh? What about them?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Then you’re fucking stupid.” 

The tears were streaming freely down your face now. “I would do anything to be back with you. I wanted to stay. I miss you so much. I don’t know what to do with myself without you.”

“And I’m sorry you have to deal with that.” 

“Will you just say that you miss me too? You don’t have to mean it. I just want—I just want to hear it.” 

“I can’t miss you. I’m not around anymore.” 

Ellie watched as you curled in on yourself and sobbed so hard you thought you were going to be sick. 

“You’re so weak,” she said after a few minutes. There was no venom in her tone. It was as if she was merely relaying something as inconsequential as the weather to you. “All you do is expect other people to care for you.” 

Not real. Not real. Not real you repeated to yourself in your mind with growing franticness. 

She wasn’t real. None of this was real. Ellie was never that affectionate with you, but this was another level. This was something personal. 

“You said that being weak isn’t bad.”

“And you said that you were going to make sure I was going to get to Terranova.”

 “And it’s not my fault that you decided to go gallivanting alone in the woods.”

“You could’ve tried harder.”

“I did as much as I could.”

“Sure you did.” 

You bolted awake. The hair at the nape of your neck was wet with the slick of sweat. For a moment, you let yourself catch your breath, reorient yourself in your surroundings. 

Your room. You were in your dorm room, with your space posters and your books. Ellie hadn’t been here. She hadn’t said that. You were okay.

A blaring noise jarred you as you realized that your alarm had made you wake up. Your alarm, because it was graduation day and you needed to be ready for a full day of festivities. 

“Fuck,” you muttered, scrubbing your face with you hands. The last thing you wanted to do after this was have to see your parents and pretend like you like them for appearances. 

She's gone. She's gone. She's gone you repeated in your head like a mantra. It was over. You shouldn’t have named that stupid planet after her, because she was gone and she always would be.

It would only be a matter of time until your parents would start asking you about your dating life, you realized as you brushed your teeth over the shiny white basin of your sink, the minty bubbles making your lips tingle. They’d been willing to entertain your reasoning of wanting to focus on your studies while you were at university, but you knew they’d been looking for prospective engagements behind your back.

It took you longer than usual to get ready, your mind wandering as you lingered in different corners of your apartment. You kept the lights off, opting to let the cool, gray daylight from the gloomy clouds wash the surfaces of your room. 

“Hey,” said Dina, appearing from her own room and leaning against the doorframe. 

“Good morning,” you greeted blandly, your attention on the necklace that just wouldn’t clasp around your neck.

“Looking spiffy,” she said. “By the way, did Simon say anything to you?” 

“No.” You paused and turned to her, a frown on her face. As far as you were concerned, you really had no reason to be in contact with Simon beyond the general pleasantries. 

“He just called me,” said Dina. “He seemed—I dunno. Like, weirdly frantic. He was saying that we need to stop by his.” 

“His” was inconveniently on the opposite side of the city, even further past your parents’ place. 

“Why? Pretty far for a short jaunt.” 

“He was really insistent,” pressed Dina. Her long black curls were unruly, her skin sallow in a way you hadn’t seen in a while. She hadn’t been sleeping as well recently, it seemed, just like you since you’d spoken to Petra. “Maybe we should just stop by.” 

“Did he say anything about why?”

“I tried to ask,” said Dina, frowning. “But the call dropped.”

“I hate how horrible service is in your room,” you said. 

“Me too. Anyway, are we gonna see him?” 

You shrugged. “I guess. We have some time. I’ll text him too just to see what’s going on.” 

Dina was ready in just a few minutes, pulling a light blue sweatshirt over her shirt and stepping into her shoes. 

“You look soooo cute,” she said, pinching your cheeks. “My little grad.”

You rolled your eyes, but the size of your smile ruined it. 

For once in your life, you noticed that the university green outside of your apartment was suspiciously empty. 

“Quiet,” Dina noted as you made your way to the metro. “It’s eerie.” 

“People were probably partying all night,” you said. “Celebrating graduation and whatnot. I imagine everyone’s sleeping off a hangover instead of having to get up at the crack of dawn to voyage across the city.”

Dina held up her hands. “Gee. Sorry.” 

The train was a little more populated. Some older Terranovans had newspapers cracked as they licked their fingers to turn the page. The silent hum of the train lulled you into another soliloquy as the tunnel plunged you into darkness.

You had to stop thinking about Ellie. You needed to move on, as awful as it was. You’d named a planet after her. She’d be forever remembered in the stars, and that should be enough. You didn’t need to keep dragging her memory behind you like a corpse, because she was dead and she was never coming back and she was—

On the platform?

Your mouth dropped as the doors of the train slowly rolled open to reveal a short girl with shoulder length auburn hair slowly ambling towards the platform. She was wearing a pale green short sleeve that had some sort of edgy spatter pattern on it—something that was very Ellie-esque. But something wasn’t…

It took you one breath to notice that neither of her bare arms had any tattoos. It took you another to see that what you had initially assumed to be a pattern was actually blood-soaked fabric formed from red rivelets that trickled from a wound on her neck.

“Holy fuck,” you whispered, grabbing Dina’s hand. “Do you see—”

“Everybody run!” Dina screamed, leaping up from the train seat and dragging you with her as she bolted off the train and to the opposite exit. 

The girl wailed and barrelled towards the train car, her eyes locking onto the nervous movement of the passengers. You froze. It was slowly becoming obvious that this wasn’t Ellie, from the slightly different set of her eyes to the unfamiliar button nose. But it was hard to not feel anything but sympathy for the monster before you. She was just a girl, probably younger than you. 

“Fucking go, Y/N,” Dina snapped, yanking you harder and onto the platform just as Not-Ellie leapt onto one of the newspaper readers. “It’s not her.” 

She didn’t need to tell you twice. In seconds you two had sprinted to the mouth of the stairs, feet pummeling against the pavement as the sounds of the carnage unfolding behind you followed. 

You ran. You didn’t stop running, not even when the screams faded and you and Dina were blocks and blocks away, hidden in an alley. Not even when your lungs were so empty and sore that they felt like they were breaths away from breaking, not even when you were sure there was nothing left inside you.

Dina kept your pace, blindly following your lead as you darted in between streets and side alleys until you reached your parents’ apartment. 

“Do you think there’s more?” you managed to whisper through heaving voices once you stood on the steps. 

You and Dina hadn’t ran into anyone after the metro, undead or alive. 

“Not here,” hissed Dina. “Inside first. Then we evaluate after we’re safer.” 

For a moment, the phantom dread from your normal life spilled over and you were afraid of facing your parents. It was almost laughable—there were deranged infected hosts looking to eat your flesh roaming the streets, and you were worried about seeing your parents. 

“I’d almost prefer out here, too,” said Dina, looking as if she’d read your mind. 

The apartment complex was also empty and eerily quiet as you two ascended the steps. Dina had insisted that you took the stairs, pointing out that the elevator was far too risky. 

“It might get stuck,” she’d whispered as she’d pulled you away from pressing the button. “Also—unnecessary noise.” 

You nodded wordlessly, following her up the steps until you reached the top floor.

Still no one to be seen.

The spare key was still hidden under the flower pot, and the penthouse door swung open easily. You and Dina locked it behind you before dragging a small bookcase in front of it, piling on books until no one could physically break through. 

“Sweep the apartment,” Dina said lowly, reaching over to grab the fireplace poker that was in the entryway. “Behind me until you get a weapon.” 

For a few tense moments, you cowered behind Dina as she navigated you both into the dark, empty kitchen. Every breath that left your lips was shaky and uneven. Your fingers trembled around the handle of the butcher’s knife that you’d retrieved from the block. 

Nothing was on the first floor. 

Nothing on the second floor, either. There was no sign of your parents anywhere. By all accounts, it seemed that they’d just up and left for coffee. Which is probably what they’d done, given that your father had just retired and had nothing better to do. 

“Fucking thank god,” you’d cried out once you’d swept the last room, collapsing onto the sitting room sofa. “Jesus Christ, Dina. What the fuck. I can’t believe I just—”

The words petered out as the adrenaline rush that had been keeping you at least someone composed dissipated, leaving you a shaking and inconsolable mess. 

“We’re so lucky that we got out in time,” said Dina, her eyes blurry and unfocused.

You took a break from your crying to look at her. “What?”

“The doors close automatically,” she said flatly. “No motion sensor. If that girl had shown up any later—if we hadn’t noticed her in time—”

“We would’ve been stuck on the train with her,” you said, cold realization trickling into you. “Oh my god. That probably happened to the people on the train who weren’t quick enough.”

“Or didn’t know any better,” Dina added. “Didn’t you say that no one here really understands what the infection is? That it makes people hosts?” 

Your heart dropped. “We’re so fucked. We need to get out.” 

“Have a plane anywhere?”

“Oh, god, Simon,” you wailed. “He was probably—he must’ve known—his parents must have—”

“Let’s not dwell,” said Dina firmly, brushing her hands off on her pants. “Okay. Let’s take inventory of the situation. That girl likely wasn’t patient zero. Wherever she came from was around…8th street?” 

You nodded.

“Right. 8th street, which is where the majority of non-student residential living spaces are. Chances are that if it wasn’t already, it’s all over that area. We came south, which is away from the most densely populated area and probably why we haven’t seen anyone else. We’re up high with what seems to be currently running water, no current activity in the building, and plenty of both perishable and nonperishable food. 

“But this isn’t permanent. The power grid is going to fail soon, and plumbing is likely going to go next. And if we somehow make it long enough, any infected in the building are going to turn into clickers, and they’ll stop at nothing to get in. Our window is limited. If we wait to get out, they’re going to get stronger and grow in numbers. We need to play this right.”

“So what you’re saying is that if there’s any possible chance of escape,” you said, feeling the blood drain from your face, “That we need to take it.”

Dina nodded, her face hard. 

“How long do you think we have until we have to make that choice?” 

She winced. “Probably 2 hours ago. There’s likely enough infected scattered around the city after the metro incident that it’s all over now.”

Your stomach dropped. 

“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” said Dina. “It’s only going to get worse the longer we wait. So if that big fancy scientist brain of yours has any genius plans of how to get us out, please hurry it up and say so.” 

“Well,” you said, your mouth dry as you brainstormed aloud, “We are at the southern tip of the city. We’re probably not all that far from the border. The problem would be getting across—and, of course, getting there in the first place. It’s designed to be deceptive so that raiders can’t find it.” 

“We’re not going to cross the border,” said Dina. “We’re never getting across on foot unless it’s been destroyed. Simon told me about how it works. There’s quite literally zero chance unless we start tunneling underground.” 

“So no crossing on foot,” you said weakly. “Noted. Well. Uh. Can you fly a plane?”

“Depends. Do you have one?” 

You buried your face in your hands. 

“Come on, Y/N. Think. There has to be another option.” 

Another option. Another option. Think, think, think…

Scientist brain. Science. 

Like your degree. Like the lab you’d been working in last year. Like the ill-fated experiment that you’d scrapped after the university cut funding for it after your accident.

Like the time that you’d actually succeeded in inventing teleportation, even if it was accidental.

Like the contraption that was likely gathering dust in an unlocked lab room just a few blocks away. 

“Dina,” you said, “I’ve got it. But I need you to get me to Gunther’s lab.” 

The only good thing about today was the fact that Gunther’s lab, which was normally an inconvenient train ride away from your apartment, was in fact within perfectly reasonable walking distance from your parents’. 

There were many bad things, though. Namely the infected now roaming the streets. And the plumes of smoke rising in the distance, suggesting that the Terranovan authorities were attempting to quell the issue the old-fashioned way. 

With two knives and a pistol in your hand (you’d never been more happy to see something actually useful in your father’s antique collection), you were at least feeling more prepared to slowly creep back down the staircase of the building and out onto the streets. 

For the first two blocks, everything remained uneventful. You and Dina stuck close to the shadows, being careful not to speak, make any noise, or bump into anything noisy. 

Then a girl that looked somewhat familiar to you came stumbling around the corner, cloudy orange saliva dripping from her ashen lips. She locked onto you and began to excitedly chitter, her jerky movements becoming more pointed as she started approaching. 

“Knife,” Dina whispered, flicking your arm once she saw you raise your pistol. “Too loud.” 

It was your first kill without the help of a bullet. As the blade slid across the throat of the girl, you realized where you recognized her from—she’d been one of the students you’d tutored back in high school. You’d always liked her. Her name had been Liesel, and she was one of your best pupils. She’d been so bright. You thought she’d end up skipping senior year and just coming with you to college. 

Not anymore. You tried not to think too hard about the look you’d seen in her eyes right as you severed her carotid artery—something human, something cognisant. You couldn’t cope with what that implied. 

Did Ellie look like that? No, surely not. It’d been over a year. She was likely a clicker by now, her freckled face entirely swallowed by the spore shards. But was she still in there, like Liesel had been?

The next ones were easier—random men whose eyes remained flat and flinty even as you sent them to their ends. By the time you and Dina had broken into Gunther’s lab, you were splattered in blood and assorted mystery fluids. 

The sterile building was empty and deathly silent. Each step on the tiled floor echoed, the fluorescent lighting painfully bright. 

“Are there any workers in here usually?” Dina asked, her voice low. 

“Rarely,” you whispered back. “It’s normally totally empty beside me or Gunther.”

“I hope you’re right.” 

A long screeching that sounded like it came from a few doors down made you freeze.

“Let’s move,” Dina said under her breath. “I don’t want to find out who that is.” 

Gunther’s lab was nearly just as you remembered it. The only difference was the missing files on his desk, which suggested that he’d taken his work home with him. 

As you’d hoped, the prototype you’d developed in your third year was under a white sheet, almost entirely untouched. 

“This is what sent you to Jackson?” Dina whispered in wonder, her fingers hovering over the wires but not daring to touch.

In actuality, it was a very small contraption, just transistors and gates and wires that crossed over each other like veins. It had been intended for use on laboratory rats. It’d never been sized to people. But if this was your only shot…

“I can’t remember exactly what Gunther and I did to—”

Scratchhhhhh.

Your blood ran cold. Something was outside the door. 

“I’ll cover it,” said Dina, her voice firm. Don’t worry.”

And you wouldn’t—not when there was one zombie against you and Dina, armed to the teeth.

“Uh, anyway—” You blinked as you stared down at the mess of wires. “Technically what happened was it short-circuit—”

Scratch scratch scratch

You gulped. “Um, like I was saying, it short—”

Scratchscratchscratchscratch

To punctuate the point, the door creaked and shifted. 

Dina pressed her finger to her lips as she slowly crept over to the door, standing on her toes to look through the thin strip of plexiglass that ran across the top of the door. 

For a moment, you thought that she’d frozen. Then she quietly stepped over to the desk, snatched the pen Gunther had lying around, and scribbled something onto it. She handed it to you, her finger still posed over her lips. 

7 of them. All big. I think they followed us from the street.

Just as you finished reading it, the doorknob began to turn, back and forth and back and forth against the lock. 

Dina pulled the note from your fingers to scribble something else out. 

Don't say anything. Noise will send them into a feeding frenzy. Door won't hold long. Do whatever you need to fix it and get us out.

You nodded, your heart crawling in your throat. If you couldn’t figure out how to fix this in time…Gunther’s lab was on the 6th floor. 

There were only 3 bullets in the pistol—you’d checked. And a kitchen knife was fine when you were out on the street facing one infected at a time, but 7 in an enclosed space was different.

You probably weren’t going to get out of here alive. 

Not unless you pulled it together right now. 

You pinched the bridge of your nose as you tried to run through all possible ways to recreate the conditions that had sent you to Jackson. You needed that special iridescent wire, which you could see shoved into the corner. You needed a power source. You needed a working circuit board. 

You had all of it. You could do this. 

SIlently, you retrieved the spool of wire and began reattaching it to the board in the pattern you vaguely recalled from your work. 

The lights flickered above, and it was all you could do to keep yourself from swearing out loud. 

The power needed to hold. It needed to hold for just one more minute, just for a moment while you finished configuring the—

Your hand knocked the spool to the floor.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The thudding started slower but crescendoed into the sound of groaning wood as the infected outside began to pound at the door. 

Dina waved a slip of paper in front of you with wide eyes that said Hurry the FUCK up!. 

You sent her a desperate look back. Your hands were shaking so hard that it was a miracle you were even able to feed the end of the wire through the pliers to snap off the end. You dug your nails into the protective sleeve at the end to expose the tip of the wire.

The door held just until you plugged the wire into the input. 

As it hummed to life, sputtering and sparking and shimmering in the air, the lights flickered once, then plunged you into darkness as the sound of wood splintering came from the door. 

Someone—it was probably you—screamed as a crowd came barrelling through the door, all hunched shoulders and gaping maws. 

Then you grabbed the hand of Dina and felt yourself tumble into nothingness. 

~

The sky was clear and bluebell blue above you when you came to, your back pressed uncomfortably against the sun-warmed earth. Every part of you ached like you’d just been run over, just like it had that day one year ago that started it all.

You didn’t need to look around to confirm—you were certain of where you were. You just knew it. 

A groaning sound made you shoot up, clutching at the pistol in your hand. 

Dina was sprawled on the ground next to you, rubbing her forehead with her hands. 

“We did it,” you said, astonished. “We actually did it. We got out.” 

“And you launched us out to Jackson.” Dina was sitting up now, looking around with wide eyes. “Jesus Christ. Are those things coming with us?”

“I don’t think so,” you said blandly. Your hands were still shaking, just as they had in the lab moments before. 

The backpack you’d packed with supplies lay strewn on the ground, covered in the dust of the clearing. 

“Are we—”

“I think so,” you said. “Funny how it sent us to the same place it sent me. I guess we’ll never figure out how, though.”

“Yeah.”

A comfortable silence fell over the two of you as you acclimated to the bright Wyoming sun, the warmth of the air against your skin.

Your heart lurched as the implications sunk in. Now that you couldn’t pretend like Jackson had been some sort of distant memory, you were going to mourn Ellie all over again whether you liked it or not. 

“It’s going to be weird without her.” Dina was apparently on the same page. 

You choked back the sob that came up, rubbing your eyes angrily. You would not cry right now, not when you had more important things to attend to. 

“She really did love you, you know,” Dina continued, also apparently oblivious to the fact that you were just barely holding it together. “Even if she never said it. I’ve never seen her like that around anyone. I hope you haven’t been beating yourself up over what happened.”

You sent her a tight smile. It was odd, talking about Ellie like this with her. You’d never had before. It was one of those topics that you both knew to just avoid. “I just hope Joel is alright. I can’t imagine how difficult that would be—losing two daughters just like tha—”

A twig snapping in the woods sent you into silence, your hand drifting back down to your pistol as you spun around.

For a moment, all you could hear was the breath that hitched in both your and Dina’s throat. Then a girl with short brown hair burst through the tree line, her gun set on you. 

“Ellie?” you gasped. 

She fell still, mouth agape and eyebrows nearly touching her hairline.

“Ellie, what the fuck?” said Dina, recovering much quicker than you. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I—” Ellie dropped her pistol so it pointed to the ground, staring at Dina incredulously. “What are you doing here?” Then she rounded on you. “What did you do? You promised to stay in Terranova.” 

You couldn’t answer. You were just so starstruck that all you could was stare, taking in everything about her. She was certainly Ellie—with her stupid little flashlight on her backpack strap and her fern tattoo and the perpetual grumpiness etched on her face. It was strange to think that you could have mistaken anyone else for her.

“Well?” she pressed, stepping closer, her mouth in a hard line. 

“Terranova fell. It’s gone. I did what I had to do to get us out.” The words came out quietly. Then, without thinking: “You’re alive.” 

“Long story,” said Ellie. “I think the scanner was defective.” 

“That sounds like a pretty short story.”

She stared at you with an expression of such odd devastation that you felt your heart drop.

Dina jumped to her feet and launched herself at Ellie, throwing her arms around her neck and laughing hysterically. “I can’t believe it. I just—I just—you’re alive. I’m so glad you’re alive.” 

Ellie, for her part, stood mostly still, awkwardly patting Dina on the back until she was released. “I’m glad you are, too.”

You tried not to feel jealous, but it was hard not to. Dina could jump into Ellie’s arms and tell her nice things like that without having to think twice because they’d always been friends. You did, because you weren’t sure if Ellie would want that anymore. 

You didn’t try to touch her as she walked you and Dina back. She followed suit, not even trying to speak to you. 

By the time you were walking through the walls of Jackson and waving to the gaping passerbys who were shocked at your return, you felt like you were going to be sick. 

Ellie was alive. She’d never been dead, and you’d left her out here while you and Dina got to eat fancy Brazilian chocolates and Floridian oranges and artisanal bread. You’d been actively trying to forget her instead of trying to find her.

And now she was here, next to you. And she didn’t seem even remotely interested in you. But could you blame her? It had been a year. You’d left her to come back to Jackson all by herself. She didn’t have any reason to wait around for you. She’d probably found someone else. Or gotten back together with Cat.

And who were you to think that she’d even be interested in you if there wasn’t the guaranteed casualness from a definite end date? 

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Joel appeared on the front porch as you and Dina approached with Ellie flanking you, his eyes wide. 

“Joel!” you cried out, your angst briefly forgotten. 

His eyes darted between the three of you, his face awash with shock. “Did ya just get sick of living there or something?”

You looked down and surveyed your outfit. You were clearly wearing something that was intended to be formal—a flowing graduation dress—but you were splattered with blood and viscous mystery substances and covered in a healthy layer of dirt. You’d clearly gone through some shit. 

You were struggling to come up with a response other than “hey” when you were reminded of something you’d shoved into your bag while you’d been preparing to leave your parents’ penthouse. 

Feeling smug that you’d managed to remember, you reached into your pack and fished around until you found what you were looking for.

“We just figured you’d be almost out of this by now,” you said dryly. The value-sized bag of coffee beans dangled from your fingers, its maroon packaging catching in the sun. 

His face split into a wide grin as he shook his head in disbelief. “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit. I guess I’ve got to tell Tommy that we don’t have to ration anymore. C’mon, let’s get you settled.”

~

Joel insisted that you move back into your old room instead of the vacant cottage down the street, which was equal parts touching and equal parts terrifying. Ellie lingered by the doorway as you unpacked, disappearing down the hall when you finally lifted your head from your few belongings to say something to her. 

You let out a long, labored exhale, dropping onto your bed and curling your knees up to your chest. You’d since changed and showered the dirt and blood off, shed your tattered graduation dress and left it gathered in the corner like a snake’s molt. The setting sun filtered through the curtains, turning the walls golden. 

You didn’t know what to do. That you could even come back to Jackson had been a thought you hadn’t dared to consider until this morning, when there were no other options. That Ellie was still alive—well, you hadn’t had any time to strategize or plan for that one. You were still reeling from seeing her for the first time in a year, all summer freckles and flyaway hairs escaping from a loose hairband.

She’d looked even better than you’d remembered. There were certain parts of her that you realized you’d forgotten—like the scar on her eyebrow, the way her voice sounded. It made you feel nauseous, knowing that despite your best efforts, you hadn’t been able to keep the real Ellie alive in your head. 

You’d already eaten something with Tommy and Maria, who had been insistent on hearing from you and Dina about the events in Terranova. Joel had left you to your own devices with instructions to see him tomorrow to figure out work after you’d had a decent rest, so there was really no reason to go roaming around hoping to run into Ellie. 

But you really wanted to. You checked the clock again, seeing that it was already past 9. Dusk had already fallen upon Jackson, the setting sun now just a suggestion of a golden line on the horizon.

You had a feeling you knew where she was. 

The meadow was just as lush and green as you remembered as your feet carried you across the grass. It seemed that really nothing had changed—except for the horses in the distance, where you could see a small foal beside a chestnut mare that you were pretty sure was Shimmer. 

“Hi,” you said, settling down next to Ellie’s spot under the tree. 

If she was surprised to see you, she didn’t show it. She just sighed and fiddled with the sleeve of her shirt. 

“Hi.” 

“I’m sorry for bothering you,” you said, keeping your eyes locked on the darkening sky. “I just wanted to come find you to tell you that I understand if you don’t—want me like that anymore. I’ll leave you alone if you want me to.” 

Even when she took her time responding, you didn’t dare look her way. 

“Is that what you want?” You couldn’t quite decipher the tone she’d used. 

“Obviously not,” you said mildly. “I would never want that.” 

“I wouldn’t either.” 

Your breath caught in your throat, your gaze dropping to meet hers. You were just about to speak when—

“The scanner wasn’t defective,” said Ellie. Her voice was soft, her own eyes falling to look at her tattooed arm. 

“Of course it was,” you said, feeling very confused as to why she was suddenly detouring into something so unrelated. “If it wasn’t, you’d be dead already.” 

“I’ve been bitten twice.”

You blinked, sure you’d heard her incorrectly. “Sorry?” 

“I’ve been bitten twice,” said Ellie again, this time with more conviction. “That’s why the scanner came back red. There was nothing wrong with it.” 

“Then how…” Your words trailed off. 

She didn’t let you ponder long. “I’m immune.” 

Immune. 

You closed your mouth—it’d been hanging open unceremoniously for a moment—and tried to fit this very startling fact in with everything else you knew about her. What did being immune mean? And why was she telling you now?

“You knew from the start that you couldn’t come with me to Terranova,” you realized aloud. 

Ellie was gnawing at her bottom look as she looked back at you. You noted that she didn’t offer up any corrections. 

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” You couldn’t hide the hurt in your voice. “Why did you lie to me like that?” 

“I found out that I was immune when I was back in Boston,” Ellie said, the words spilling out of her. “I was in this abandoned mall with my best friend—Riley. She told me she was leaving to be a Firefly, and I begged her to stay and kissed her and for a moment I was so sure that something was going to change between us—something for the better. But then…” She waved her tattooed arm in front of her. “We both got bit. I survived. She, obviously, did not.”

Something deep inside you twisted as you tried to imagine how traumatizing that must’ve been for someone that couldn’t have been older than 14. 

“And so I thought that maybe, you were my chance to right what I’ve done wrong,” continued Ellie. Even though she wasn’t looking at you anymore, you could see the reflective sheen of tears in her eyes. “I’ve gotten to live while so many other people have died. I just can’t handle another. It’s not fair of me to keep someone here when there’s somewhere safer for them. It’s selfish, and I’ve been that enough.”

It was as if you’d found the last puzzle piece for the jigsaw of Ellie Williams. All this time, you’d been struggling in your attempts to understand why she was pushing you away—and why she changed her mind so suddenly. 

Now you got it. Ellie had come into this knowing that she’d likely never see you again. She’d been betting on it, even. It was all some convoluted way for her to set things right in her head, for her to forgive herself for Riley and whoever else she’d lost. 

“You could have told me,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “I would have understood.” 

Ellie sent you a sad smile, shaking her head. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone that I’m immune. It’s one of those things that only Joel and Maria and Tommy know about. No one else. They’d fucking kill me if they found out you knew.” 

“I’m really sorry.” The fabric of her t-shirt was soft under your fingers as you rested a hand on her shoulder. 

“I’m really sorry for how much of an asshole I was to you,” said Ellie. You didn’t miss the way her eyes had widened when you’d reached out to touch her. “I didn’t want to be that way. I always wanted more. I just couldn’t handle having that, knowing that you were going to leave anyway. I thought it’d be easier for the both of us if you thought I was awful.”

“Didn’t work very well.”

“Clearly.”

“I forgive you,” you said, moving your hand so you could thread your fingers into the loose strands that she hadn’t pulled into that baby bun she always wore. 

Instead of kissing you like you thought she might, she threw her arms around you and crushed herself against you, burying her face into your neck.

You held her there, feeling the way her frame trembled under the weight of a sob and tracing patterns across her back. 

“I missed you,” you whispered, your chin rested atop her shoulder. “I thought about you every day.”

Ellie clung to you harder as you shifted.

“I’m really sorry,” she said again, muffled against your neck. “I’m sorry for everything.” 

“I’m not.” You finally pulled away so that she had to look you in the eyes. Under the soft bath of moonlight, her green eyes glowed. “Terranova shouldn’t have existed in the first place. I’m glad that I got out. And I’m even more glad that it brought me back to you.” 

Her hand found yours, your fingers tangling.

“I used to spend all my free time wondering what you were doing up North,” said Ellie. You felt her thumb brush across the top of your hand. “I thought that maybe if I imagined you happy, it’d be easier.”

“What did you think I was doing?” 

The corner of her mouth quirked up. “Lots of studying, I assumed. And going to fancy events for rich people, eating all that expensive shit that the rest of the world can’t have.” 

“Not far off,” you admitted. “But you missed how much time I’d spend wondering about you. I dreamt about you all the time. Sometimes I’d see people who looked similar to you and it’d ruin my whole day. I couldn’t believe that you were gone. I think that deep down I knew that you weren’t.” 

She squeezed your hand. When you looked down at where you were touching, you noted how there wasn’t such a stark difference between you and her anymore. The doll fresh-out-of-the-box skin had disappeared in favor of scars and marks collected from your time in the real world. 

“I really thought you’d be safe there,” said Ellie. 

“You don’t need to worry about me like that anymore,” you told her, cupping her face with your free hand. Her eyelids fluttered half-closed as she leaned into the contact. “You’ve done enough. You can care about me without taking responsibility for everything bad that ever happens to me. You deserve to have something good without suffering because of it. I promise I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Not anymore,” she agreed. 

When you kissed her, it felt like coming home. There was something so achingly familiar in the slope of her neck, the slight chapped-ness of her lips, the almost silent click of her jaw as her mouth parted with a gasp as your hands twisted in her hair. 

You weren’t quite sure how you managed a year without it. 

The skin of her neck was just as soft as you remembered against your lips, her response just as reactive. 

“What’s this?” you asked, pulling away to point at what looked like a small tattoo on the side of her neck. You hadn’t noticed it before—her hair had been covering it. 

“Oh.” Ellie looked sheepish. “My free birthday tattoo from Cat. It’s the moon.” 

“I see that,” you murmured, brushing her hair back more intentionally to get a better look at it. “Why that phase?” 

“It’s the phase it would’ve been on the day we met,” said Ellie. She was bright red now. “Don’t fucking laugh. I know that it’s stupid. Shut up. Stop!” 

You desperately tried to stop your giggles, schooling your face into something straight and no-nonsense. 

“I spent so long wondering if you even liked me,” you told her. “And now you’ve gone and gotten a tattoo dedicated to me. I feel so validated.” 

Ellie rolled her eyes. 

“I have you beat, though,” you said, quieter now. 

She looked back at you, her brows furrowed. “Huh?” 

“When it comes to grand, stupid gestures,” you explained, your finger pointing up to the sky in the general area that you’d collected your data from. “There’s a planet named Ellie up there now.” 

Her jaw dropped for just a moment. “You’re kidding.” 

“No.” Now you were feeling slightly self-conscious. 

“You would do something like that,” Ellie muttered, more to herself than anything. “A whole fucking planet.” 

You let her drape an arm around you, pulling you into her until your head fit into the space between her shoulder and her chin. 

“So,” Ellie said, and you could feel the words vibrate in her diaphragm, “What now?” 

“What do you mean, what now?” 

“I mean, what are you gonna do now that you’re stuck here with me for the foreseeable future?” 

“Enjoy being stuck with you,” you said. “Maybe get a matching tattoo. Give you the piece of the meteorite I nabbed from the display case in my lab. But mostly spend my time bothering you.”

When she didn’t answer, you shifted so you could look up at her. She was already looking back, her eyes soft and the corners of her lips pulling into two dimples. 

“Is that alright with you?’ you ventured.

Her arm tightened around you, fingers gently pressing into the flesh of your forearm like she still couldn’t quite believe you were there. 

“You can be so fucking stupid sometimes,” she said. “I get a tattoo for you and you’re still asking if I want you around.” 

“It’s been known for you to make rash decisions,” you offered dryly. “I didn’t want to jump to any assumptions.”

 She rolled her eyes, still smiling down at you, eyes awash with the reflections of the stars above. 

Slowly, you reached up and touched her face again, letting your fingers relearn her features, tracing the paths created by freckles—just like you had in her bed all those months ago. 

But unlike last time, she didn’t stop you. She didn’t do anything except let you. There was something in her demeanor, something that was fragile and vulnerable and everything that you wanted her to be with you.

“Is this going to be enough for you?” she asked suddenly, her voice raw. 

“What do you mean?” Your fingers paused and rested at her cheekbones.

“It’s just—” She blinked hard and cast her gaze up to the sky. “You grew up so differently than me. I’m not going to be able to give you that fancy Terranova life. Are you sure this is going to make you happy?” 

“Yes.” 

She looked at you, an eyebrow raised skeptically. Your hands moved to cup her face, fingers threading back into her hair. 

“Don’t make that face,” you chided.

“I just find it really hard to believe.” 

You took in a breath. Perhaps more elaboration was in order.

“I’ll put it like this,” you said. “I spent most of my life thinking I needed to be something extraordinary to be happy. I put so much time into trying to be special and nothing I did ever felt like it was enough. But then I met you, and one day I realized while I was here that I didn’t need that anymore. Just being around you makes me more content than I’ve ever been. I don’t want to be like what I was before. I would consider it my greatest success if I got to lead an ordinary life with you.”

You took her brief silence as an opportunity to press your lips to the corner of her mouth.

“Believe me now?” you asked. 

Ellie nodded, leaning in to drop an affectionate kiss at the top of your nose. 

And as you sat there, nestled into the warmth of her side and craning your head up to the sky, you’d never been more sure of yourself. 

This would be more than enough. 

final a/n: ok so some apologies are in order for this one! first of all, sorry for aborting jj lmao. i just couldn't envision doing light speed travel with a baby strapped to dina. big apologies for not including a final smut scene. i actually had one semi-drafted out because i wanted to write one where ellie bottomed bc i feel like it would really hammer in that she was finally choosing to be vulnerable, but the shift in the scene tone just didn't sit right with me. sometimes i write bonus scenes for big fics like this, so if there's enough interest i might write a short one shot of the scene i scrapped/other scenes that i also scrapped. also, speaking of things i scrapped: i had an alternate ending in mind where joel actually did die and ellie went on her seattle rampage + y/n realizes she's alive and tries to sneak out with dina to find her. i might end up writing that one too, depending on interest! anyway, thank you all for coming along on this journey with me so far! it's not totally over yet...the epilogue is still in the works! i appreciate hearing what you guys think of this and hope you all enjoyed !!!

also idk if this is important to bring up but i will say that i didn't realize the kind of message i'd be sending when i wrote a protagonist who's from a place like terranova—exoplanet isn't meant to be some sort of piece that makes you empathize with ignorant beneficiaries of slave labor...it's just the way it shook out and for that i'm sorry 😭

[farharbour]

oc interview

i was tagged by @hibernationsuit, thank u!! 🫂💖 i'll tag umm @mercuryislove @reaperkiller & @bisexualocs! don't feel obligated to do it though lol. anyone else who wants to do this can just say i tagged u, idm :)

i'm doing this for jess because i'm predictable asf:

name: jesse diresta

nickname(s): jess, blue (by piper, it annoys him but not enough to ask her to stop using it)

gender: trans man (he/him)

star sign(s): cap sun (cusp) + pisces moon + virgo rising (yes i picked his star signs first then gave him a birthday to match nghfjdhdf)

height: 6' / 183 cm.

orientation: bisexual / polyamorous but he's not weird about it

nationality/ethnicity: american (italian; his nana (maternal grandmother) immigrated from italy)

fave fruit: kiwifruit, but honestly post-war he's just happy to get any fresh produce at all LOL

fave season: spring for sure! winter is very hard on him emotionally & there's something comforting about the warmth and life that the spring brings. somewhere in there there's a metaphor about growth healing and rebirth or w/e

fave flower: poppies

fave scent: allspice, sandalwood, lemon-scented disinfectant/hand sanitizer (unnecessarily specific, sowwy)

coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: black coffee. it's different post-war and harder to make a good batch even with pre-war beans but he'll still never take it with sugar

avg. hours of sleep: between 4-6

dog or cat person: neither, he's a fish person NHFDFNDHFD

dream trip: he'd always wanted to go visit italy but unfortunately that's not in the cards for him because of the whole. y'know. apocalypse thing.

fave fictional character: any dostoevsky protagonist (his fave book is probably the brothers kramazov) (king of reading!). he also has a soft spot for the silver shroud since that was terri's ult favourite character/series.

number of blankets they sleep with: just one! he runs cold but nick always gives off enough ambient heat for him to be comfy with a single blanket

random fact: he's not that great at hacking terminals, he's just super lucky with guessing the correct passcode and passes it off as pure skill if anyone asks / tangential thought: sometimes he messes up an easy terminal on purpose or acts like it's harder than it actually is just so he can watch nick do it for him and swoon over how smart and talented he is when he very well could have done the same thing LOL and nick knows when he does it too obviously but he plays along. it's flirting

[bi-demon-ium]

AO3 Tag Game!

Tagged by @mvshortcut :) I did it here as well but now I'm doing it for this fandom/account bc I CAN (a lot of this will be directly copy/pasted if applicable im sowwy)

How many works do you have on AO3?

116. (Including snippet collections.) For this fandom/account. Far more if you count others,

What’s your total AO3 word count?

Okay this one it won't let me separate by pseud or fandom so you're just gonna have to live with being lumped in with all my MBS and a few other misc fics at "653,461". Didn't get the other accounts though. Man, I'm a mess

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Okay, well, this one by nature is also not solely for this fandom,

(number in parentheses is number of ao3 works posted)

The Mysterious Benedict Society (116) (including snippet collections)

Ted Lasso (44) (also including snippet collections)

Instinct (2) (one is a small snippet collection--)

House MD (1)

Death by Dying (1)

Gravity Falls, technically, but it was one crossover (1)

ditto with The Legend of Zelda (1)

King Falls AM (1)

The House in the Cerulean Sea (6)

Shadowhunters (??? at least 36) (some now hidden/lost)

Professor Layton (1)

The Librarians (2)

The Sandman (1)

The Mentalist (2)

Star Trek (AOS) (1)

Sanders Sides (at least 1)

Miraculous Ladybug (1)

Rosewell: New Mexico (2)

The Dresden Files (1)

That's stuff posted to ao3/finished. There's also, technically,

for stuff I published when I was twelve and I now refuse to acknowledge (not all bc of the fandom but bc the fic was Bad):

Doctor Who

Supernatural

Sherlock

Psych

Castle

Welcome to Night Vale

Avengers

A Series of Unfortunate Events

And then stuff I've written for but never finished:

Warehouse 13

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)

Dirk Gently (2010)

SurrealEstate

Zoo (podcast)

Once Upon a Time

Scooby Doo

Person of Interest

The Goes Wrong Show

Spy Kids (???)

Ace Attorney

The Adventure Zone

Criminal Minds

Star Trek (TOS, TNG, and DS9)

Haven

MacGyver

Trollhunters

exactly one (1) joke The Magnus Archives fic

Percy Jackson and the Olympians + The Kane Chronicles + Tales of Apollo

Leverage

Pushing Daisies

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Megamind

Bones

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Lucifer

Some of these are deeply questionable and/or only have like two (2) wips or even posted works at most, but I'm thorough. Also, I will write about almost anything bc my brain loves to process things like this. I may have even missed something

Top five fics by kudos:

I was gonna have the snippets collections not count but I've got so many exact ties it doesn't matter.

gemini schmemini (136)

kate and her bucket sitting in a tree, S-P-Y-I-N-G (98)

caught (81)

[insert poetic title here] (81)

affectionate gestures<3 (81)

of rube goldbergs and weather machines (74)

tumblr snippets: mbs edition (74)

keeping out the cold (70)

birdsong (70)

Number Two Regrets Her Life Choices™ (68)

timeline? i don't know her (68)

That's actually 6 bc I made a mistake but I've already color coded them so whatever

Do you respond to comments?

I really try to, but then I get all in my head about it and/or am really really tired and put it off so long it then feels like it would be weird to respond because it's been forever. However, if there's a direct question or something I want to address/respond to, as in, I have something particularly unique to say or a question to answer, then I'll usually respond really fast.

And this fandom's smaller so if I'm slightly more likely to respond 😭

Also when I know who's commenting personally which is al ot more likely

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending you’ve ever written?

Honestly, I'm not a huge unhappy ending person, but. uhhh

solo

bring me home (in a blinding dream)

hollowed

seasalt

checkmate

dark side of the moon

wretched clarity

cruel kindness

green-eyed monster

the naming of cats

curled & crushed

oops

I didn't even look at the snippet collections lkgfhjh

Do you write crossovers?

Not often, but I rotate them in my brain. Honestly, though, I'm more inclined to write a fusion than a crossover proper. And even so, I tend to just be thinking about it rather than actually writing it. I've only written one crossover in recent memory (recently, that is) and it was mostly a joke about a shared actress made into actual angst. :)

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Yeah lmao

Do you write smut?

😏 ......not for this fandom. That I'd post anyway

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

👁️👁️ not. Directly in this fandom

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!! also not in this fandom

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

In this fandom? Nicholas/Milligan. Overall, ever? Recency bias/hyperfixationitis says whatever I'm into the most at the moment. But generally for MBS I prefer gen (although I've written a lot of Nicholas/Milligan, that's partially because it's blissfully easier to find gen already)

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

:(

SO many

Particularly minotaur, the dearly departed, and the "paralyzed" series. Oh and the hanahaki AU

What are your writing strengths?

I think I can write a really funny string of dialogue, and I'm also fond of fun metaphors, both in the elegant poetic way and in the more Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett way (which is to say, still potentially elegant but also comedic as hell)

What are your writing weaknesses?

Motivating myself to write anything; being overly self-indulgent

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I'm extremely bad at linguistics in general, so if I must include someone talking in another language in my fic, I think I'd tend to cheat and do italics or some other indication that this is 'in another language' (ie "Where are you going?" she asked in Russian), but that's admittedly a lazy approach. But I also think it's probably better than butchering it with an auto-translator? Also, when people just include the translation in the end notes, even with a link (although that makes it marginally better) it breaks the flow of the story and makes it hard to read. Making an effort to at least match grammar is good (which I would do if it was for longer than a single scene, probably) but I think the best solution is when people know what they're doing and like, have an actual translation with a little html code so you can click on it and it reveals what it means? Or if you're clever, revealing what it means using context around it, but that has its own limitations. So that both like, uses the actual language and doesn't break up the flow. It balances accessibility, flow, and respect for the other language in question well. But you've got to both know what you're doing with the language (either asking someone/hiring someone/knowing the language yourself) and the html (although there are guides for that you'd have to spend time figuring it out + know it exists in the first place to look). And this is fanfiction, something we ultimately do for free in our spare time, so the lazy approach, I think, can be understandable. Maybe not in every context, but it's not worth stressing a lot over in a few random lines or anything, you know? It is really cool when people do know a language well enough to include it properly in a fic, though, it can say a lot about a character or dynamic; and their background(s) and like. it's neat :)

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Ever? Doctor Who. In a shitty little notebook in middle school. Then there was some Star Trek (both TNG and TOS) and Avatar: the Last Airbender and Marvel and such, and then Supernatural (my first smut? extremely terrible Destiel smut. rip) and I think the first thing I ever posted was Welcome to Night Vale? Not sure.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

Oh, man. I have no idea. Here's a few favorites from this fandom:

cain's lament

minotaur

shades of green

a hope in hell

Number Two Regrets Her Life Choices™

tagging:

PLEASE, if you want to do this, I'm begging you, tag me in it and do it. i'm too tired to come up with names im so sorry

[saintobio]

S.O.S | one: remnants of war

when crash landing on a strange planet takes you to a different reality where the man you love is no longer the man that loves you

pairings. gojou satoru, fem!reader

genre. heavy angst, romance, sci-fi, space au, 18+

word count. 7k+

tags & warnings. ooc, war, violence, profanity, killings/death, miscarriage, trauma, injuries, blood, suggestive smut, kinda yandere

notes. sorry i’ve been sick but i finally managed to pump out a 7k chapter <3 it’s not much n i wrote this at 3am i am sowwy for any errors

series masterlist -> episode two

When it came to war, victory wasn’t just about who had the most advanced weapons, or the most skilled troops, or the most military power. It wasn’t about who outnumbered who in the battlefield. Wasn’t about the lesser deaths and lesser damages. And definitely wasn’t about who destroyed more territories than the other.

Victory in warfare was about strategy.

From a classic book Satoru had picked up and curiously read back in his teenage years — ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu said that in order to be victorious, there are certain rules in war that one must always keep in mind:

If our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.

In his tactical dispositions, he also stated that a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. One may know how to conquer without being able to do it. One may be able to secure himself from defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy. Therefore, victory wasn’t about physical strength, combat skills, nor an extraordinary display of prowess in the battlefield. It was having a sharp, perceptive mind. It was making astute decisions in the midst of life and death. ‘Adroitness’ they called it. And Satoru Gojou had it.

“Watch out for the enemy aircraft. It’s not an allied plane,” speaking to the radio was the white-haired First Lieutenant himself as he maneuvered the control wheel to his right, tilting the jet in a 60-degree angle while guiding the two other fighter jets tailing him from side-to-side “Let’s move to Zone 6 from our current position.”

“Roger that.”

“Copy.”

And just as the three combat planes flew past a thick array of slate grey clouds, Satoru was laser-focused inside the cockpit while mapping the area in his head so he could visualize the best aviation tactics he could gather from this scene. It was needless to say that the air space was his domain and it went hand-in-hand with his stellar eyesight that allowed him to get a clear vision of the city. Almost like he was omnipresent with his God-like perception. He could sense his brain creating its own GPS coordinates from the seemingly empty skies of Tokyo, which later allowed him to ascertain that there was an unidentified aircraft surrounding them before the radar screen could even detect its movements.

Flying a warplane was no easy task, yet he had soared every corner of Japan’s air space for the last eight years while memorizing all the possible directions where all these hostile aircrafts could launch their missiles. He was only 21 when he was first entrusted to fly an F-15 Eagle, only 23 when he was promoted First Lieutenant of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, and only 26 when he became the most feared fighter ace after over 207 aerial kills. He had never been shot down nor had he ever lost any of his wingmen during aerial dogfights. He was hailed as a military hero and a legend by his countrymen, but also a ruthless sadist and a staunch nationalist by his enemies.

“Bogey sighted.” It was his fellow airman, Yuuta Okkotsu, who alerted his co-pilots with urgency. “There’s only one in the area, Alpha 1.”

Just as Satoru predicted. “I already got visual on it,” he announced, keeping a tight hand on the throttle lever as he glided the jet in an obtuse angle. “Tail the bogey. I’ll cover it from above.”

“Roger,” answered his third airman, Second Lieutenant Suguru Getou, from their fighter squadron, “It’s not a reconnaissance aircraft. It’s a MiG-29.”

The thing was, although he was the leader of the squadron, Satoru still had to obey orders from his superiors down at the headquarters. The Colonel himself was in the Tactical Command Center and Control Room monitoring every movement of their aircrafts while the team were tracking the enemies crossing the Tokyo air space to do aerial reconnaissance. Thus, whether Satoru liked it or not, firing a missile was always at the decision of the Colonel, and not his. He could only direct his airmen to a certain extent, but never to the point of driving them to an attack. It was an absolute nightmare for a bloodthirsty man like him to hold off on retaliating when he was more than willing to shoot down enemy aircrafts of any caliber for having the audacity to cross his motherland.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” spoke Yuuta from his radio as he flew the Raptor towards the enemy’s MiG fighter jet. That same jet was slowing down its velocity as soon as it sensed Yuuta’s proximity. “It’s slowing down. I’m gonna cross him.”

Both Satoru and Suguru yelled otherwise from their respective jets. “It’s a trap!” they warned in unison before Gojou continued, “It’s gonna attack from behind!”

In confirmation to the First Lieutenant’s assumption, the enemy pilot did blast off a powerful missile towards the Raptor that, in a matter of seconds, could detonate the entire aircraft it touches.

“Shit,” Suguru cussed as he increased his speed while ensuring the stability of his fuselage, “This is Alpha 2 on standby. Alpha 3 is in danger. Permission to engage?”

Everyone on the radio could hear Yuuta’s panic when the enemy attacked him with its armaments. A fusillade of gunshots were soon fired towards his route and the Raptor could be seen swerving from left to right just to avoid the cannons. “Jesus Christ! It’s… It’s shooting me down.”

“Maintain current formation,” answered the Colonel down at the HQ, “Do not fire unless granted.”

Another missile was fired from the enemy’s side.

And another.

“Goddamn. They fired on us first!” The attack led Satoru to grip his control wheel tightly, making a drastic attempt to pull up and accelerate vertically so he could get a better view of the MiG chasing Yuuta’s Raptor plane as the latter made a swift turn to the left to avoid the missile. Unfortunately, the weapon still managed to scrape off the Raptor’s horizontal stabilizer, sending the tail of the jet to an explosion. “Alpha 3’s plane is compromised! Permission to fire, sir?!”

Satoru took a deep breath and held it in as he kept his eyes on the enemy’s aircraft underneath him. Just one press of the red button. Only one long press, and his radar display suggested that he was in the perfect position to blast off a deadly missile towards the bogey. This would have been his 208th kill.

But there was no immediate response from the other end of the radio.

“I’ll switch to guns,” Satoru bargained, resting his thumb above the red button at the weapons panel as he waited for the go signal. “Please confirm. Please, please.”

“Denied,” however, was the answer of their military leader. “Pursue the enemy out of the city ASAP. We have civilians down there. Don’t risk it.”

Fuck.

Even Suguru himself was disappointed at the order, but had no other choice except to chase after the steel gray jet. “Roger, I’m on it.”

“Raptor’s going down hard,” Satoru said under his breath as he caught sight of Yuuta’s aircraft below him—its right wing starting to burn up. 8 years in the air force and Satoru had never lost an airman during combat fights. Not one, not two. Not until today. He had responsibilities towards the lives of his airmen and if Yuuta couldn’t make it this time, Satoru knew that the burden of losing a member would haunt him forever. He wasn’t crazy for wanting to protect the lives of his fellow soldiers. “Yuuta, lead the jet out of the city limits, do you copy?”

“Yuuta.”

“Yuuta, do you copy?”

“…Yuuta, eject now! NOW!”

It took a few minutes for the younger airman to respond, mumbling incoherent words through the radio as if he was fumbling over the navigation. “I-I’m going to e-eject.”

Relief washed over Satoru’s body as soon as he heard the sound of Yuuta’s voice, yet it didn’t help that he was still at the height of tension because the bogey that nearly killed his airman was still flying freely around Tokyo. ‘1 plane down, 2 to go.’ The enemy must be feeling smug for shooting down a Raptor, especially when there were three of them and only one of him, but Satoru’s pride would not allow them to lose this dogfight. Even if it was just between him and the enemy, he would risk his own life just to ensure that the bogey would never be able to fly around his land ever again. Satoru Gojou dedicated his entire life to put his nation first before himself; it was a pledge he had made the moment he joined the JASDF and he would stick to it even if he was at the median between life and death.

He was ready to die for his country, whether that be today, tomorrow, or any other day soon.

Yet, at the back of his mind, losing this battle would also mean leaving the person he loved behind. All the promises he had made, the moments he would miss, the marriage vows he was still yet to exchange—only the thought of you came inside his mind while 65,000 feet in altitude.

“Please. Just please stay.” You reached for his hand and squeezed it with all your might as if being able to feel your desperation could somehow change his mind. Satoru was even certain that you would have begged to no end if you could. “I don’t want you to go to war anymore. We need you here. I need you here. I-I don’t know what I’d do if something happens to you.”

He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and pulled you close. “They need to deploy me up there. I have to do my job.”

“If you walk out of that door, I swear to God,” you paused, voice shaking and eyes brimming with gut-wrenching tears, “I’m never going to forgive you.”

He wasn’t exactly choosing his military duties over you, but saving the people also meant that he was saving you. To keep you away from danger was his utmost priority, but in order for that to be possible, a little bit of sacrifice must be made.

And a little bit of hope that he would come back safe.

“I’ll come home to you, I promise. I asked Anais to look after you while I’m gone.” His saccharine words were added with a loving kiss he had planted on your stomach. He could feel his heart swelling at the thought of your bump getting twice as large by the time he returned. “Keep mommy safe, okay?”

Your face, on the other hand, melted into inexplicable pain. “S-Satoru, please.”

“I gotta go.” It took him a lot to pull away from you as if the heaviness in his heart brought a stronger force than the Earth’s gravity. But he had to leave. He had to cup your face, press his forehead against yours, and kiss you one last time. “I love you.”

“I’m gonna fire.” Satoru announced his decision as he manned the control wheel and steered the Eagle vertically. “I have to.”

And he had to go home to his pregnant girlfriend. Safe.

“First Lieutenant Satoru! Get a hold of yourself!” The Colonel did not hold back on displaying his exasperation. “You are not given permission to shoot! Hold your fire or there will be penalty—”

“It’s not a reconnaissance plane! This thing’s going to drop a nuclear bomb on us.” He spoke with tensed jaws, the veins in his neck were standing out in livid ridges. It was ridiculous that he couldn’t even engage while the enemy was showing its hostility like this. Satoru wasn’t flying an air superiority aircraft for nothing and he planned to let his superiors understand the consequences that bad decisions could lead them to. “Trust me on this, Colonel. We’d have a lot more civilian casualties if I don’t shoot it now! That MiG has a nuclear bomb loaded and it’s going to kill hundreds and thousands of innocent lives. Every second is crucial and the moment we delay any form of attacks, it’s going to take advantage.”

“I’m with Alpha 1, sir,” added Suguru, matching the speed of the MiG aircraft while sending his best friend a salute. “I’ll lead the bogey to the pacific. We got this.”

Certainly. And just the sight of Yuuta ejecting from the canopy, Satoru could feel chills running down his spine while imagining the horrifying thought of his airman in those angry flames that swallowed his aircraft. But Yuuta was alive and safe now. They only had the enemy to focus on, but how come everything suddenly became suffocating? His heart was thumping at an unstable rhythm. His lungs were requiring him to have more oxygen intake. There was no explanation to the phenomenon that he was experiencing internally at that moment—all he knew was that it was a sign for him to choose a decision based on his own judgment without the command of his superiors.

While flying the Eagle at top speed, it felt as though the fighter jet was slicing through the Earth’s atmosphere by the time he went head-to-head against the MiG. His acceleration gave him the chance to then be able to get a millisecond glimpse of the pilot from the country that started this era’s World War. Why, if anything, should Satoru show mercy on a person that participated in killing millions of innocent people across the world?

Due to his fast reflex, he succeeded in avoiding the cannonade from the bogey, only receiving partial damages on the canopy and the fuselage, but not enough to disrupt the inertial navigation system. In return, the First Lieutenant along with his infamous icy glare showed zero hesitation before he pressed two red buttons that released a precision attack from AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Screams and orders from an angry set of military superiors could be heard from the radio, but Satoru was far too focused on the missiles that tailed his enemy like a loaded firework that was ready to explode.

“Bogey is away from the city limits,” he spoke to the radio, “Suguru, you can go vertical as fast as you can.”

“Copy that.”

The MiG was on a deadend despite facing a never ending sky in front of him because the missiles were built to chase the enemy’s trail. And so, it didn’t even last more than two seconds until the bogey detonated from the highly explosive weapon shot down by Japan’s infamous fighter ace. It was in Satoru’s belief that no enemy should escape his country alive, therefore, after seeing that the enemy safely ejected himself out of the jet, Satoru circled back to the area and loaded up his 20mm gatling guns to completely assassinate the pilot on his parachute to death.

There must have been 35 bullet holes on his body, none of which could still render him alive after this aerial dogfight.

There was an obvious sense of satisfaction when he flew back to the military zone while discerning the Tokyo skies free from any more unidentified enemy aircrafts. His pride gave him the self-gratification that he needed after following decisions on his own no matter what kind of consequences were awaiting him at the headquarters. They could confiscate his badge, take his insignia, and strip him of all the rights he had as a fighter pilot and a military officer, or worse—dishonorably discharge him, but none of the aforementioned repercussions had surprisingly greeted him as he hopped out of the Eagle.

Among the high-ranking officers and their phlegmatic faces that welcomed him back at the headquarters, it was the Colonel that first made a remark about Satoru’s boldness in the earlier interception. “That was risky behavior you showed up there, First Lieutenant Satoru.”

As he took off his helmet and mask, the white-haired ace offered an apathetic salute. “You could thank me for saving lives. The crash was off the city limits like you wanted, sir.”

“You killed the enemy,” the older man reiterated, his eyes growing as dark as his raven mustache, “We had an agreement that we will only hold them captive. If you think we’re safe now, I’m telling you that country is more than capable of sending a hundred more aircrafts as revenge.”

“Then, I’ll kill a hundred more of them.” Satoru continued to remove his gloves as he walked along the hallways while the Colonel, the officers, and the military personnels followed his trail inside the center. A quick pivot on his heel made him turn to face his superior with a salute. “It was nice flying by your useless commands today, Colonel. I hope they find a better person for your position soon.”

For now, his duty was over. And although it did not end as pleasantly as one would expect, he still spared his country from unexpected nuclear warfare. No one with a sound mind should assume that they were totally safe from nuclear attacks, but the goal was to defect them as much as they could. Not triggering the enemy could make them look weak as opposed to showing the enemy that Japan was not a country they should mess with. He knew that the events today would not be the last, but if the enemy were to wipe out the entire nation, they would have to go through JASDF’s brutal sky domination first.

And the person behind every successful interception was him.

Yet, in spite of all his sacrifices and his heroic intentions, the battlefield did not end in the Tokyo skies. The battle, the only one he had ever lost, was in the infirmary after a nurse had informed him of an incident concerning the woman that he loved the most.

“What’s wrong?” he worriedly asked, cupping your cheek and staring at your listless eyes as he sat at the edge of your hospital bed. “What happened while I was gone?”

Heartbreaking silence was your only response.

“The baby.” It was your fellow nurse who answered. “Sir, she… she collapsed and lost the baby after you left.”

2 YEARS AFTER

“Why do you keep testing his commitment to the air force?” You had already lost count of the amount of times your step-sister, Anais, would follow you around the bunkers only to question your relationship with Satoru. “He’s a hero, Y/N. It’s his lifelong dream to become a General. He’s keeping all of us safe. He’s defending our homeland. I’ve known Satoru since we were kids and he’s always been a man who would put others first before himself. You shouldn’t corner him into a position where he has to choose between you and his duty.”

You ended up continuing your footsteps a tad bit faster than hers so you could escape the unreasonable nonsense that she was blathering about. To keep it together and ignore her has been your specialty by now. So that was exactly what you did. And as you entered the central dining hall, you immediately had the familiar smell of rusting metal along with the fetor of gunpowder that hung in the air. It came to the point where you no longer had the appetite to eat enough nor did you have the energy to interact with everyone in this underground environment that they had opened to citizens from over a year ago after they failed to stop the nuclear warfare.

They said the nuclear war was nearly over, yet you had not managed to see sunlight for the past two years ever since the rest of you ‘survivors’ were thrown into an underground city built only to carry a population of 2,500 people. You worked as a ward nurse, mostly to aid wounded soldiers, and you knew exactly the consequences of what would happen to those who regularly went out of the underground base. You had seen plenty of them down at the infirmary and had to give each and everyone of them the false hope that they still had the possibility to live even after being exposed to extreme radiation. That those acute skin burns that turned into cancer; those inflamed, red scabs that never healed—that they could get better. That they could survive it. That they were lucky enough not to be like those who were incinerated entirely.

You were a liar after all.

So much so to the point where you were feeling less and less emotions when you had to witness the death of another fallen soldier. It no longer mattered to you if they were once someone’s parent, child, spouse, or sibling. It didn’t matter anymore that you now had to stand next to a woman who was just heavily mourning the death of her husband yesterday when you tried to resuscitate his life to no avail. Here she was, proceeding with her life in spite of her soulless eyes as she lined up to get a tray at the cafeteria. Here she was, barely noticing your presence beside her as you both mechanically walked to get stale food from overworked cooks who could also feel the same tedious, unenthusiastic life routine. Waking up each day, fulfilling mandatory tasks, eating rationed meals, and going back to bed. It didn’t help that all you could see from left to right were dull gray metal and unpainted concrete. Or people wearing the same dark jumpsuits as if you were all prisoners under the rubbles of an ashen city. You could understand why the widow you comforted yesterday looked like she was ready to just take her own life rather than spend the rest of it down here.

Because that same feeling was once within you.

It had been two years since you lost your baby, but you couldn’t say that your heart, despite being calloused, had completely healed. The reason why Anais had been pestering you about your treatment towards Satoru was because it had been your personal choice to detach your emotional dependence on him. He, too, was heartbroken at the loss of his child, but he could never understand the gravity it had on you. You nearly begged on his knees to stay at home before that one tragic day happened and it always left lingering a thought in your mind that your baby would have been 2 years old by now had Satoru chosen to stay.

He didn’t stay that day and he had been telling you every day for the past year that it was one of his biggest regrets in life. That he wished he could have turned back time. That he wanted to punish himself for saving countless children’s lives but not his own. You didn’t speak much to him and decided to keep your grief in silence despite the numerous times he had tried to apologize. Eventually, he stopped pursuing you, and your life had become a routine of simple hi’s and hello’s. You two were overcome by lassitude, sent down to the abyss of internal conflicts that were never fixed through proper communication. There were days where he would be deployed and be gone for months. There were days where he would briefly come back and talk about the men they had lost in war. There were days where you two would be in bed wrapped up in each other’s naked bodies, yet no word or any form of intimacy would be shared. There was no connection anymore. It was kind of just… doing intimate things for the sake of relieving emotional stress. It was just living and breathing and being there. It was just reminding yourself that he was still alive and that you still had him.

The attacks left everyone traumatized, but Satoru focused on his military duties and worked hard to rise up to the position of a Lieutenant General after overthrowing his incompetent superiors. He was only 28 years old and was already the 2nd highest ranking military officer in the entire nation. Everywhere he went, people respected him. They would bow down to him. They were intimidated at the sight of him. They would treat him like a saint. You would have been extremely proud of him if only it didn’t have to take your baby’s death for him to reach his dream.

And these thoughts you had now were the exact reasons why your step-sister would not leave you alone. To her, you were being unreasonable. Selfish. Ungrateful.

“—you can’t make this about you when he’s only concerned about the safety of our people,” she said. It was probably even offensive to her that you were sitting at a table, dipping your single piece of bread in a bland mushroom soup as she went on and on about your life. “Y/N, I understand your pain and I know it’s been hard for you ever since you lost your unborn baby, but… it’s been two years. You’re making Satoru suffer by blaming the miscarriage on him. Miscarriages literally happen to so many women during war. Do you really want to raise your child at a time like this? Think of your loss as a blessing in disguise.”

Insensitive. So damn insensitive.

You kept your gaze straight ahead, choosing not to meet Anais’ eyes and just watch the people in queue being given rationed food which, in their words, were still better than MREs. The food supply was scarce and just enough to keep the people alive, but even then, famine was another issue aside from the nuclear devastation on the ground above this man-made city. You had seen children at the infirmary showing signs of malnutrition and as much as it broke your heart, there wasn’t much you could do. Perhaps, at Anais’ last words, she was right. But you could never let your heart accept that.

“Y/N, please. Are you listening to me?” Anais sighed as she sat in front of you.

You chewed your bread slowly and finally broke your commitment to staying taciturn. “What exactly do you mean by ‘making him suffer’?”

Her eyes had fire behind them, almost as red as her long, wavy hair. Her obvious frustration was more so because your indifference was a hit to her pride as Gojou’s beloved childhood best friend. “You’re basically ignoring his existence,” she told you, “Do you realize that the way you’re treating him reflects the way he treats the rest of us? His subordinates are telling me he’s the harshest he’s ever been to them. He also doesn’t talk to me nor Ares anymore. He’s always cold and temperamental and… and… I don’t know. He’s not the same.”

“He’s a grown man. It was his choice to change the way he treats you all,” you replied, pushing the plate away. To reinforce your statement, you began to add, “It’s not my responsibility to care about every single one of your feelings.”

You missed him, of course you did, but the past two years had been difficult for you both. It was even harder to just reconnect and act like nothing strained your relationship with him while knowing deep, deep down that the unbearable pain of losing a child would always stab you to the core.

“Don’t be cruel,” Anais called out just as you were getting up from your seat, “I don’t think you even love him to begin with.”

You stopped from your tracks, and only slightly did you turn your head towards her. “Do you?”

The question took her aback. “That’s… That’s not what I meant.”

How funny. “For a second there, I thought you were his lover.”

You had never been like this to Anais—never been one to talk back, never been one to be spiteful, never been one to walk out and turn your back on her as you decided to leave the sterile environment of the crowded cafeteria on your way to a much, much peaceful place away from everyone else.

Anais and her brother, Ares, were twin siblings, and the both of them were considered as the first family of your late father before he took your mother in as a mistress. That description alone was enough for anyone to assume that you didn’t really have a good relationship with your step-siblings when your father brought you into their family. All your life, you had been ostracized. They were sent to private schools, spoiled with the most lavish things, and treated with blinding privileges, but despite having half the same blood running through your veins, you didn’t experience life the same way they did. Or at least, life before the ripple effects of the nuclear war.

There were boundaries you weren’t allowed to cross back then, and only at 18 years old while working as a ward nurse when you met a wounded soldier named Satoru Gojou did your life start to change.

The person who reminded you of this “abominable change” was none other than your step-brother—the same person you saw while walking along the corridor towards the med bay. With his furrowed red brows and downturned lips, you could already tell that he was coming to you after having heard the exchange you have had with his twin sister back at the dining hall. Ares was always like this; defensive, hot-headed, and to put it simply, an asshole. Between him and Anais, he was the one who had been vocal about his distaste with you for being a simple freeloader in his family.

So seeing him now, stomping towards your direction with a killer gaze wasn’t exactly new. He had done worse.

“I’ll be on duty,” you advised as you heard his footsteps within an arm’s distance, “Stop following me around.”

“You’re so full of yourself, huh,” Ares hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and giving you the same resentful look he carried each time you crossed his path. “Isn’t it enough that you get to live in a private quarter while my sister and I have to sleep in the bunkers with the rest of these people? Do you even deserve that spot? Do you deserve the privilege you get just because Satoru nii-san is the Lieutenant General? Quit parading yourself around like you’re his wife.”

You chose to stay silent, not because you were agreeing with your step-brother, but because arguing with a manchild who already had preconceived judgment about you was futile. It was a waste of time and most definitely a waste of precious oxygen to even respond to.

“They’re childhood best friends,” he continued, much to your dismay, as if you didn’t know that damn fact already. “He was supposed to be with my sister, but you seduced him and got knocked up, and now Anais has to suffer from the consequences! You’re no better than a whore like your mom—”

Before your step-brother could continue his acidic remarks, you met his words with a harsh slap that left a bright, red mark on his cheek. “I dare you insult me in front of Satoru,” you warned through gritted teeth, thinking about how you wouldn’t have reacted in such a violent way had he kept your mother out of his mouth, “I dare you say it again and pray to yourself you don’t get killed. Satoru is a brutal man.”

Ares raised a hand. “You—”

You didn’t flinch from the sudden jerk of his hand not just because it wasn’t the first time he had tried hurting you (the bruises on your leg, hip, and arm could attest to that), but also because he couldn’t proceed harming your face the moment Shoko Ieiri walked out of the infirmary in her white lab coat, pulling her surgical mask down to her chin and staring back-and-forth between you and your visibly angry step-brother.

“Is everything okay?” asked her. In her own way, she was only preventing things from escalating further into violence.

“Dr. Ieiri,” you greeted your colleague with a light bow, “I was just on my way to you.”

She nodded, although still eyeing Ares on the side. “Well, good timing ‘cause I need your help with the patient on the right wing. He’s on the sixth bed.” Then she redirected her gaze towards your assaulter. “Are you here to get treated as well?”

You could almost hear the string of curse words behind Ares’ tight lips, but he restrained his despicable thoughts from coming out since showing his true colors in front of a renowned doctor like Shoko could get him in so much trouble. Well, you didn’t care whether or not he would continue his outburst. All you were focused on doing now was to reach for the medical cart before heading to the right wing to meet another wounded patient who joined the rest of the soldiers lying on their bed, hidden behind those white curtains. If only you could wear scrubs on a day like this.

Unfortunately, wearing a surgical mask could not suffice when your nose was intensely rejecting the noxious chlorine-like fumes that were coming from the hazmat suits. If the hazardous smell could penetrate your olfaction that much, you could only imagine how worse things could be up there.

6th bed on the right wing. Right. There was no 6th bed. Ieiri was referring to the farthest room to the right side of the infirmary, a private medical room specifically to cater the military officers with honorable rankings. You took a deep breath and conserved enough oxygen in your lungs as you glanced at the wounded man behind the glass panel. He was holding his bloody left rib, topless above his bed while waiting for a nurse to come to his aid.

“Do you need stitches?” you asked without returning his longing gaze after you entered the code to his private room. While pushing the cart near the side of his bed, you quickly rummaged through the box and pulled out all the necessary antiseptic instruments you could use on him.

He, on the other hand, tried to sit up before wrapping a hand around your waist. “Are you not gonna ask me how I got hurt?”

Your eyes trailed down on the gash below his left rib. It was about the length of your hand, but wasn’t really deep enough to be life-threatening. The amount of bleeding could have placed him at risk, however, he seemed to have managed to stop it before even coming here. It was either a knife or a bullet he had dodged. You didn’t bother asking. “I’m gonna clean it,” you said, “Just sit down.”

Satoru raked his fingers through his white hair. A look of frustration was bubbling behind his sky blue eyes. “Babe.” His voice dropped an octave lower. “I could have died today, you know. A prisoner from the enemy forces escaped the dungeon and he attempted to assassinate me with multiple gunshots. Imagine if I didn’t dodge them.”

So, a bullet. You guessed right. “You are Satoru Gojou,” was your expressionless response while dabbing a piece of cloth with saline solution around his wound, “This is as far as anyone could get to you.”

Literally. Because a Lieutenant General shouldn’t even be walking around unarmed without soldiers protecting him. He didn’t enlighten you further about the attack, but was far too invested in the way your hand was brushing against his chest as you tried to wrap a bandage around his lean body. “I missed you,” he whispered, tucking a few strands of your hair behind your ear, “I missed you so fucking much. This is the only time you’ve ever paid attention to me.”

His fingers traveled down to your spine, then further down to the slope of your back before he rested them on your hip. Satoru attached his lips on your shoulder soon after, but you pulled away and placed your hands against his pectoral muscles. “Don’t get too cozy around me if you’re just gonna leave again.”

“I didn’t want to leave you,” he countered, letting you pin the blood-soaked bandage around him just as he made you sit on his lap. “I know I can’t bring back our baby’s life and I’m the person to blame for that, but… please, please let me start over with you. I’d never give up on you until you’ve forgiven me.”

“We can’t start over in an environment like this.” You dodged his attempt to kiss your lips, but could feel his warm breath fanning the expanse of your neck. “You can’t just ask me to forget about everything when living here is an everyday reminder of the devastating things that happened to us.”

His cold hands cupped your cheek, forcing you to look at his crystalline irises. They were a shade of blue that reminded you of an ice giant in the same solar system as the Earth. He had Neptunes for eyes and a warm Sun for a heart, but yours was nothing but a blackhole ready to swallow every strong emotion down to your void. That was how your relationship started to feel empty. He could sense that, too. “I know,” he said, “I know, baby. That’s why I have plans for us. We’re not gonna stay here forever.”

“What do you mean?” Your question, however, was answered by a kiss.

One quick kiss, you assumed. You thought he would soon resume to explain his “plans” right after you indulged him with a kiss, but perhaps the familiarity of his touch made you crave for something more. The feeling of his skin. The warmth of his touch. The pleasure of his kisses. This was the man that loved you with every fiber of his being. He was someone who confessed his feelings for you from the moment he first met you. Meeting him was almost like a kilonova; a transient astronomical event that occurs when two neutron stars merge. It becomes a blackhole.

And this connection, this bond, this twin flame energy you share with him were the same ones that could salvage the abyss you two had created in between.

“Satoru.” You breathed through his neck, feeling the intensity of your euphoric state as you moved on top of him. He held your hips in place with a tight grip, his mouth parting open just enough to match the lustful gaze from his half-lidded eyes. “S-Satoru, I… I hate you.”

The white-haired man dug his face on the slope between your chests, leaving affectionate kisses on your cleavage only so he could map your mounds with his marks. “I’d hate me, too,” he responded, cupping your breast before diving in to wrap his mouth around the nub. “Hate me all you want, my love. I’d still keep running after you.”

In the middle of the night in your shared private quarters, the dim lights added to the sensual gratification of reconnecting by body, mind, and spirit with your partner in life. Despite the wounds on his rib that limited the movements of his hips, he could still hit your most pleasurable places with you on all fours and him thrusting from behind. A hand was keeping your hips in place as the tip of his member moved in and out of your hole, stretching your walls until he was able to reach his release.

“Fuck,” he cussed under his breath, panting as he fell on top of you. He distracted your soreness below by placing a soft, affectionate kiss on your lips. The one where he was completely enveloping his lips with yours, running his tongue along your lower lip, and deepening his access by swirling the wet muscle around the cavern of your mouth. When he pulled away, his shiny eyes were more illuminated than the faint yellow lighting of your room. “Let’s talk tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

Should you ask him now or should you succumb to sleep? Because you were at a point of exhaustion from a long night of passion with the man you loved, you decided that it wouldn’t hurt to wait one more day to hear whatever it was that he had to say.

He had so much to say.

Satoru hasn’t gotten any wink of sleep after you made love all night, wondering if this feeling could last forever. Perhaps he could place it in a jar and keep it sealed there. How could he protect someone without hurting them? How could he fulfill his role without sacrificing anything?

If it was good news to you, he had already decided. The war was over, but the world was hopeless. There was no other possible way to live through this world except to escape it.

But before that could happen, he still had duties to do and people he had to get back to.

Somehow, when he kissed your forehead while you were sleeping soundly in bed, he was even more determined to get up and get the job done. He put on his uniform, wore his kepi, and slipped on his military boots. The badges and insignia on his uniform wasn’t what scared the living lights out of the soldiers and civilians he passed by while walking towards the armory. They were scared of the stony expression he was wearing on his face. Mouth clamped and eyes fixed. A cloud of warning was settling over his features.

“General,” spoke one of his subordinates, “He’s been held captive last night.”

Satoru faced his soldiers with his chin up high. “You can proceed. Make sure Anais won’t hear about this.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

It didn’t take another minute for the red-haired male twin to be kicked out of the storage room—his face marked with bruises as he weakly ran towards Satoru in pitiful desperation. He was coughing up blood before going down on his knees to beg for his life. Even Major Suguru Getou couldn’t stand the sight of Ares crying like a child when he was just asserting dominance and violence on an innocent woman who deserved none of it.

“N-Nii-san… Please, get me outta here.” His voice reflected the amount of suffering he had endured the night before. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

The Lieutenant General crouched down to meet the man’s gaze at the same level, but the difference was that the former was entertained while the latter was horrified.

“Don’t you know?” Satoru asked with the corner of his lips slightly upturned, “We’ll have to lessen the oxygen release from the tank down to twenty percent so we can conserve enough for all the people down here.”

Why, should he ask, was it relevant to say now?

Ares already knew why, and he understood exactly what every word meant. “N-No… M-My sister. She’s only got me. Nii-san, don’t—”

Too late.

“Take him to the gas chamber at once,” he ordered the soldiers in formation as he walked out of the storage room. They all gave him a salute before following his commands. “Make his death quick and feed his remains to the dogs. I want none of the civilians to know about this.”

If anything, the cold and ruthless Lieutenant General Satoru Gojou still had the courtesy to get up, turn around, and leave. He was often one to watch his enemies die before his eyes, but this was a different case overall. Ares was the brother of his childhood best friend, and so he couldn’t stand the thought of hearing his screams if he stayed another second longer down at the storage rooms. He was only doing him a favor of making his punishment a lot more humane that he would have done to others, but he still had to have him killed. He still had to pay.

And this was the clear proof that Satoru had already lost all of his conscience due to the remnants of war that deeply calloused his soul.

[ressjeon]

✉: check in tag ♡

— tagged by: these beautiful people: @jiminza, @taegularities, @xiaokoo, @kookdiaries, @ddaechwita, @jinned, @minsugallery & @chemicalpink 💕 a week ago im sowwy T.T

1. why did you choose your URL?

everyone's been confused what it actually means so here we go XD. initially, i was damn confused on coming up with one cause i want it to be unique? me and @mignonnex were brainstorming about names 😭 and i was thinking of something about powerful women, so queen or empress + the name of my bias, Jungkook. i was gonna go with queenjeon (someone came up with it already) and empressjeon (too long) so in the end it’s just “ressjeon”, easy to say and kind of unique ig 😂

2. any sideblogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them?

yes, i do have one and its @yanniereads! i've been reading way before I started writing and I usually give long ass reviews so I wanted a separate blog where I can do all of those and just focus on writing on this one 💕

3. how long have you’ve been on tumblr?

As a reader, I’ve been here around late 2016 I think because of BTS fanfics XD. I don’t actually remember how I started on this app, i knew this app existed but i never bothered to venture into it until I started reading fanfics and it just happened? though I only started writing in 2019 and posting this year o.o

4. do you have a queue tag?

uh I just realized that I don’t have one but I recently just started queueing things so 🤡

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

for my multi one, mainly to read, give feedback and interact with people in the fandom here and for this one is to write and gush only for BTS hehe. Also, I never expected myself to start writing since I was just contented as a reader but then a dream happened (my dreams are always vivid) + and a fmv haunting me for weeks so the moment i woke up, i grabbed my laptop and was writing for the whole day and the rest is history.

6. why did you choose your icon?

uh I saw this on Twitter and was shook at how well edited it is and it’s VERY S E X Y so why not? ;)

7. why did you choose your header?

I actually didn’t make this header rip, I legit just got this on Google but I'm gonna try to make my own to match my whole blog aesthetic? (do I even have one lmao)

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

I don’t get a lot of notes in general but I would say the masterpost of my current series posted here (there will be more series soon so wink wink)

9. how many mutuals do you have?

uh i actually need to write them down because Tumblr usually makes us unfollow each other 🤡 but its less than a hundred

10. how many followers do you have?

I have a decent one that I'm content with and I'm grateful for each one of them.

11. how many people do you follow?

uh less than 200 for sure 🤡

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

idk if I any of my post is considered as one but intentionally, I don’t think I did

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

though I only alternate between posting pics & written posts, I'm actually active the whole day everyday but I just don’t post so ring me whenever 🤡

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

no, HAHAHAH cuz I fight somewhere else (I don’t hold back there) and im trying to avoid it on this platform because too much has happened here already ♡

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I mean I always reblog important stuff that clearly matters but other than that i just try to reblog as much as i can.

16. do you like tag games?

yes ofc though im always late T.T

17. do you like ask games?

yes again though i barely get asks :(

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i know people would always say that it doesn't exist or that it doesn't matter but there are actual people here who are deemed as "tumblr famous" by the community, i have a few mutuals who are and they deserved it ♡

19. do i have a crush on a mutual?

i am recently in a harem now after being married to @erotikkook so 🤡

Tagging: @yoonia @yminie @blue-sidez @zibermuda @sketchguk @kithtaehyung @xjoonchildx @nomseok @jungkxook @clouditae @wishesunderthestars @jungkooksbroski @chateautae @agustdakasuga @dulcetvk @sugasbabiie @hisunshiine @venusiangguk @btssavedmylifeblr @bangtantaegi @ppersonna @lemonjoonah @dreamescapeswriting @avveh

y'all probably did this already...😅

[that-banana-headed-bovine]

Headcanons for Michael, please?

hMMMM- Gonna be honest, I haven’t given neaaar enough consideration to Michael ASHODAOISHD, I will do my best with this-

By the way, a lot of these headcanons were made in collaboration with friends so like, these are by no means Bovine Originals TM-  I’m gonna tag som people but if someone gets tagged who did not wa n t to be tagged I will take it out and I am sowwy if this happens

What I think realistically:

  In between episodes, missions still go on (this has been confirmed by canon at least once I think?), but the missions are a whole lot more casual.  A lot of times, it’s more like a glorified road trip than an actual mission, and this is where Peak Bonding Time with Michael and Kitt happens.  As long as Michael’s not spending the whole time playing Atari, anyway... They wind up playing a lot of games that Kitt rigs with Hax (c’mon now that can’t not be how he swept the floor with Michael at blackjack of all things) which Michael somehow doesn’t catch on to, and they end up at a looot of drive-thrus, much to Kitt’s chagrin. 

What I think is hilarious:

  Pretty much all of these were made with @trust-doesnt-oxidize, we stan they-

  Michael really, really loves his burgers okay?  Like, so much.  Like SO much that if he doesn’t think he’ll be able to go to a drive-thru for a while, he’ll just.  Store one in the glove compartment.  Kitt hates this SO BADLY-  Michael will willingly eat week old food from his glove compartment and it reaches a point where Kitt has to stop him for sanitary reasons.  Perhaps Bonnie occasionally finds one of these highly expired treasures during repairs and loses her mind.

  But also our mans is a human garbage disposal, so he’ll eat anything you put in front of him.  He is very not picky, but if he has an option he will choose That Option.

  Also Michael continually forgetting that Kitt has access to his own programming and betting him to beat his high score on Atari games,,,

  Michael continually losing said bets.

What is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends:

  Honestly I don’t think I can ever beat the novelization’s tragic backstory, seriously I refuse to believe that what the heck-

  I was talking with @solarcitymelodies and they mentioned Michael being emotionally repressed as a product of the time (and likely his history in the military), which is why he has a very difficult time being emotionally vulnerable.  He plays off everything as a joke, and what he can’t do that for, he likes to project (think “Trust Doesn’t Rust,” where he repeatedly just Told Kitt yOu FeEl NeRvOuS tOo RoIt?! and Kitt’s like ???no??? and Michael’s like uwu I totally get you buddy it’s okay to be scared and Kitt’s like Literally What-).  That one def hurts, and I think it’s real accurate.  Our mans doesn’t think he can be emotionally vulnerable because he’s gotta be Strong Tough Boi and like Michael stop nobody takes you seriously anyway <3

  Another one that I love to toy around with is just,,, Michael seems very confused about what the heck Kitt i s.  Like, sometimes he treats Kitt like a robot who just happens to talk, sometimes he treats him like a friend, sometimes he acknowledges Kitt’s feelings, sometimes he doesn’t-- It’s likely a product of inconsistent writing from different teams since Michael’s character was actually progressing quite naturally throughout Season 2 until Season 3 decided to destroy our hopes and dreams. Sniffles.  But like, I feel like he wants Kitt to be a person and a friend, but until he can get himself to really believe it, he can’t really,,, act on it I guess?  It seems like he’s catching on by Season 2, but, once again, Season 3 is evil and hates me.  I like to think that, once the series ended, at sooome point, he’d come to a more confident realization about Kitt, and it’s then that he’d realize Kitt’s own insecurities as a result of being confused about what he himself is based on how others treated him.  And he’d feel at least somewhat responsible for that, so yeah.

What would never work with canon but canon is Stinky Poopoo so I believe it anyway:

  Michael realizes that smacking the dashboard as hard as humanly possible is actually abuse, and he stops doing that.

Haha jk that’s too crazy even for this.

  This one’s the hardest for me because Michael is such a spazz that nothing feels too OOC for him, so this is more going to be an explanation for why something I love to think, and I think most of the fandom loves to think,,, can’t be canon.  I’m sorry.

  Whether it’s after the events of Knight Rider or Knight Rider 2000 *gAGS*, Michael eventually has to permanently retire from FLAG because, y’know.  Aging exists.  And I would love to think that Michael is able to take Kitt with him to live this very calm and “normal” stretch of life, where their friendship can grow and they can be buds.

The issue is idk if this can ha pp e n .

  And no, I don’t mean because Shawn happened in KR2000, I literally give zero hoots about what that movie wanted us to think.  The only thing I take from that movie is Kitt’s temporary deactivation for finance reasons, but anyway...

  I just feel like FLAG couldn’t afford to DO that.  I mean, it was actually pretty clever that the events of KR2000 were kicked off by FLAG running out of funds because, really, that was going to happen eventually.  In the original series, it seems like Wilton left behind an infinite supply of money based on what Michael is able to do and whatnot, but unless Wilton was the richest man in existence ever, that’s not the case.  Devon still has to host fundraisers for charity reasons, and it’s still highly discouraged that Michael causes as much property damage as he does on a regular basis, because that all comes out of the Foundation’s wallet.  Eventually, that’s going to run out if donations don’t match what Wilton had.  And while repairing a building costs a lot of money, something costs a lot more money than that, and that is the vehicle itself.  I can’t tell whether more money went into the microchips or the cars themselves, all I know is that they cost a LOT of money, like I want to say Kitt was 16 million?  Karr was even more expensive at 20-something million I- I don’t know my lore well enough okAyyyyy- It was a bad enough blow to lose Karr, but FLAG viewed that as a necessary loss which it wasn’t imo but AnYwaY.  Kitt is currently programmed to Michael, but I feel like that would be easy enough to change.  It wouldn’t erase his emotional bond to Michael since I think most of that was Kitt’s own feelings over his programming, but it would allow FLAG to utilize their investment for even longer.

  I could see the show taking the happy ending where they’re able to continue to exist together, and any stories of mine will definitely take the happy ending, but it’s not actually very realistic with canon.  Maybe, if Kitt’s programming became outdated or the Knight 2000 was too expensive to keep in good repair, then it could happen?  Idk, lemme know what you think about this one!

[masonscig]

about me tag game

rules: answer 30 questions and tag blogs you are contractually obligated to know better

tagged by: i was tagged by a bunch of people so thank u to @lilas, @veeples, @admdmrtn, @agentsunshine, @echohauville and @masonsfangs for thinking of me !!! and im using the edited version by meg @/lilas !!!

tagging: @raleighcarrera, @pixeljazzy, @bravomckenzie and whoever else wants to do this !!!

name/nickname: jade / please is there really a way to give me a nickname... most people make it longer when they try LMFAOOO

gender: she/her

star sign: I AM AN ARIES WOMAN [virgo ↑ sagittarius ☽]

height: 4′10...................... anyways

birthday: march 29th [the way im about to have my second birthday in quarantine im absolutely SICK]

lucky number: none bc i have the worst luck on the planet. i like even numbers tho

when did you create this blog: i made this sideblog in like... june i think ?

what do I post: all twc – i reblog twc art, edits, and fics [even though i’ve been really terrible at that lately since i’ve been active in another fandom atm]. i post commissions of my own, occasional headcanons, shitposts, fics every once in a blue moon.... tbh im boring on here :/ sowwy

last thing googled: jared hess’s filmography [nacho libre / gentleman broncos supremacy]

do I get asks: occasionally ! i usually get them from my friends and forget to answer them [i am SO sorry rip to chrisha and esme and kat and becky and alicia and baylee..... yall are the vips i don’t deserve u]. and i get some prompts i never finish.... i love funny anons pls send sum of those

why I chose my url: bc i wanted something relating to mason! and since he doesn’t have a canon last name i had to choose something that was close enough for me. i’m genuinely obsessed w my url like i was FLOORED when it wasn’t copped SKDFKSDJ i don’t think i’d ever change it

*my current projects/wips: i have.... many wips bc ill have an idea and a basic passage and i’ll jot it down and take forever to actually finish it – the attached series is on hiatus for now while i write for another fandom, but i’m working on that, a spiritual sequel to another mason fic i wrote before, another mason fic, a felix fic w my new detective, and some prompts i might get to eventually. i am the literal worst at finishing wips LMFAOOOO

favorite bands: hmm i don’t listen to too many bands, so i’ll include rap groups, and girl groups! foster the people, pivot gang, the internet, bad suns, & two door cinema club, chloe x halle, city girls, and wu-tang clan !

favorite solo artists: buckle up biddies! these are my favs at the moment + some are my favs of all time – rihanna, megan thee stallion, bree runway, smino, tei shi, sza, flo milli, ari lennox, tinashe, slayyyter, cordae, schoolboy q, vince staples ... ok ill stop here

song stuck in my head: unrequited love by thundercat GOD it’s so good but haunting i LOVE it

favorite song: kiss it better by rihanna will always be my favorite song of all time no contest

last movie: don verdean bc i wanted to finish watching all of jared hess’s films ! 

last show: jojo’s bizarre adventure part 5 [i am a mista and bucciarati simp first, human being second]

favorite food: i love food and eating omg so this one is hard as hell

*food I hate: h*t d*gs and chili idk how the hell yall eat that shit

*favorite color: i really love mustard yellow and any deep green color !

*favorite animal: omg.... i love monkeys and dogs and cats... idk i love all animals tbh KSKDKKDFS

what I’m currently wearing: cotton shorts, a tank top, and my grandpa’s sweater [he passed last year and my grandma gifted a bunch of his old sweaters to me so it’s v comforting]

dream job: haha should i get existential here..... i genuinely don’t know what i’m supposed to be doing w my life SKJFDKSDJKJSD anyways !

dream trip: tokyo w my boyfriend !!!! we’ve been talking about it for years so i think it’d be the trip of a lifetime

*currently reading: i was trying to reread twilight but i got distracted LMAO [don’t worry i read my old copy from middle school i aint giving her any money]

*currently thinking about: finishing wips for an appreciation week i’m running, 

nationality: usa :/

*fun fact: during the first month or so i started dating my bf we were swimming at my house and i tripped over my sleeping dog and tore my knee up and i still have the scar to this day ! and we’re still dating almost 8 years later LMAOOO 

top three fictional universes: god im thinking more anime but i’d prob choose hxh or mha or any universe yuasa comes up with bc he writes women so well

[inkykeiji]

ahhh love that i accidentally got myself in the anon club but that’s probably good bc i’m a bitch with a lot of questions!!! such as, i’m sure someone’s asked this before and i just missed it so hopefully you won’t mind answering again but do we know how tomura and reader met in bmb universe? and will we ever see her relationship(s) with her friend(s) deteriorate as she gets more attached to him? i know it’s talked about briefly but wondering if u had plans to go deeper into that!! thank u for ur time sowwy <3 ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

LMAO i mean if you don’t wanna be there you don’t have to, of course!!! no pressure at all, i promise!! <33

i don’t mind at all ehehe please never apologize for asking a question!!! things can get lost on my blog pretty easily (i’ve really been meaning to go through the entire thing and tag it in a more organized fashion i just haven’t had the time eeee) but either way, my point is, i never mind, no apology necessary <33

i’ve been keeping it a secret because i have plans to write a short lil prequel series about their first meeting and stuff!!! you all seem to be really interested in it and i’d love to write something for it ehehe. hmm, i hadn’t really had plans to explore the way he cuts her off from her friends (technically he doesn’t cut her off too bad until the threats begin--like she’s able to go to uni by herself and sometimes even stay out with them after, provided that she tells tomura exactly where shes and exactly how long she’ll be gone for. her friends think his possessiveness is weird n creepy but she clearly doesn’t care). good questions, thank you lil bear!! <33

[lookoutfortrashcansyosuke]

Tagged by: @jinandtakaya   ♡ 1ST RULE: tag 9 people you want to get to know better:  @supersexyghotmew95 , @fall17 , @mattie-raven-wolf , @artikgato , @bowlcutprotag , @99rupees , @whoalookincooljoker , I feel like a little nobody, bothering bigger, better people then me aND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU NEED to do this or anything AND ALSO WOops I couldn’t find 9 people more like I couldn’t find 2 more people that I felt even remotely ok-ish tagging ♡ 2ND RULE: bold the statements that are true. (I don’t know how to do the read more thing soooo this is gonna be long, I’m sowwy) APPEARANCE:  I am 5'7 or taller - I wear glasses - I have at least one tattoo - I have at least one piercing - I have blonde hair - I have brown eyes - I have short hair - My abs are at least somewhat defined - I have or had braces ABILITY: I can sing well - I can play an instrument - I can do over 30 pushups without stopping - I am a fast runner - I can draw well - I have a good memory - I am good at doing math in my head - I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute - I have beaten at least 2 people arm wrestling - I can make at least 3 recipes from scratch - I know how to throw a proper punch HOBBIES: I enjoy sports - I’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else - I’m in an orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else - I have learned a new song in the past week - I exercise at least once a week - I have gone for runs at least once a week in warmer months - I have drawn something in the past month - I enjoy writing - Fandoms are my #1 priority - I do some form of Martial arts EXPERIENCES: I have had my first kiss - I have had alcohol - I have scored a winning point in a sport - I have watched an entire TV series in one sitting - I have been at an overnight event - I have been in a taxi - I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year - I have beaten a video game in one day - I have visited another country - I have been to one of my favorite bands concerts MY LIFE: I have one person that I consider to be my Best Friend™ - I live close to my school/work - My parents are still together - I have at least one sibling - I live in the United States - There is snow where I live right now - I have hung out with a friend in the past month - I have a smart phone - I own at least 15 CDs - I share my room with someone RELATIONSHIPS: I am in a relationship - I have a crush on a celebrity - I have a crush on someone I know - I’ve been in at least 3 relationships - I have never been in a relationship - I have admitted my feelings to a crush - I get crushes easily - I have had a crush for over a year - I have been in a relationship for over a year - I have had feelings for a friend RANDOM: I have break-danced - I know a person named Jamie - I have had a teacher that has a name that is hard to pronounce - I have dyed my hair - I’m listening to a song on repeat right now - I have punched someone in the past week - I know someone who has gone to jail - I have broken a bone - I have eaten a waffle today - I know what I want to do in life - I speak at least two languages - I have made a new friend in the past year