#i think it can work. if it's well written but therein lies the problem.

[not100bees]

i do think that percy jackson really does do a good job at making the gods feel godly, they are capricious and self centered, but they are removed, and play in the lives of mortals when they see fit. a lot of stuff in the same vein as percy jackson tries to play up the humanity of the gods which isn't 100% wrong but it does leave them feeling like people with like magic than like gods proper

[cookies-over-yonder]

Father-Son Bonding (feat. Hermie Unworthy, Uncle/Brother/Unwanted Roommate)

CO-WRITTEN BY @silverlistenstothings

Nicky comes over to visit Taylor while Cass is at work. Hermie is also there, for some reason.

Part 19 of The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Roommates

ao3

According to Taylor, Nicky is coming over to bring Taylor dinner while Cassandra is out at a work function. This has been in the books for a few days now, and Hermie has been dreading it the entire time. Taylor, on the other hand, has been reminding Hermie every moment he can, practically bouncing with excitement at the opportunity to see his dad. 

Therein lies the problem, Hermie supposes. Despite Taylor and Cassandra’s insistence that they want Hermie around, it’s not something they can believe. It’s not something they’ll let themself believe. Hope only opens them up to hurt, so they’ve given up on it a long time ago. They might think they’re fine with Hermie now , but as soon as Cassandra readjusts to Nicky’s presence in her life, as soon as Taylor remembers how much better Nicky is, they’ll come to their senses and finally rid themself of Hermie. Recency bias is the only thing keeping them around. 

Taylor has spent most of the afternoon in the bathroom, singing and humming and getting ready for Nicky’s arrival. Hermie, of course, has spent the entire day curled up in bed, trying to fall back asleep. They don’t want to listen to Taylor be excited about Hermie’s inevitable replacement, and they certainly don’t want to hear how well he gets along with Nicky. It’s two parts fear of being kicked out, and one part envy. They’re not proud of how often they resent Taylor’s relationship with his parents, but then, they’re not proud of anything they have going on. It’s nothing new. 

The doorbell rings, and Taylor turns the music off before hollering ‘I’m coming, dad!’ and scampering down the stairs. Hermie rolls over and brings the corner of their pillow up over their ears. It doesn’t quite muffle the sounds of conversation, but at least they can’t make out the words. 

They’re about to finally doze off again when Taylor calls their name from downstairs. They very much consider ignoring him, but there’s no real point to it, they suppose. 

Is he really going to kick them out already? Is a single one-on-one interaction all it takes for Taylor to realize how much better he could have it?

Well. They suppose that makes sense, actually. They roll to their feet in no real rush, and step out of their room. 

"Come down for food!" Taylor calls. 

Ah, one last meal before breaking the news. It's clear he's trying to soften the blow. Whatever, they'll take the bait. 

Hermie sighs, straightens their stolen shirt, reminds themself that they really have nothing to prove, and heads down the stairs. Nicky glances at them over the back of the couch, and raises his hand in a half-wave.

“Hey, Hermie,” he says casually, without a trace of guilt. They didn’t want to guilt Taylor into keeping them around, but they feel like Nicky could at least show a little remorse. 

“Nicky,” Hermie greets cooly, tentatively circling around the other side of the couch. They keep an eye on both Nicky and Taylor, bracing themself for their inevitable dismissal. 

“I just got you the same thing as Taylor, hope that’s ok,” Nicky explains, handing Hermie a warm takeout container. 

“… which is?” Hermie asks, sitting down against the arm of the couch, with Taylor between them and Nicky. 

“Chicken fried rice!” Taylor chirps happily. 

Oh. Good. Great. They can’t eat this. But it would be weird to say something about it now, wouldn’t it? Nicky bought them food for some reason, so they should be polite. Besides, Taylor hasn’t said anything, and he should know that Hermie’s vegetarian, and Hermie doesn’t want to make him feel bad for forgetting.

… oh, Hermie never actually brought up their dietary preferences, did they? It’s not even Taylor’s fault. They dug their own grave, so they can’t complain about laying in it. 

“Thanks,” Hermie says, a bit belatedly. They unwrap their chopsticks and snap them apart, before undoing the lid of the takeout container. The scent of chicken hits them immediately, closely followed by a wave of nausea. 

Ok. Well. They thought they might be able to choke some of it down, it’s not like they’re allergic or anything, but they’ll definitely throw up if they try. 

Taylor says something about what they’re watching, but Hermie barely hears it, too lost in their own head. Maybe if they compact the rice enough it’ll look like they ate some? Just enough that Hermie can say ‘I’m not really hungry right now, thanks though, I’ll have the rest for leftovers’ and then Taylor will ask the next day if he can eat their leftovers and Hermie can say that that’s fine and the crisis will be avoided entirely. 

Yes, this is the perfect plan. 

They glance over at Nicky and Taylor. Taylor is digging into his own rice with enviable fervor. Nicky is eating at a more reasonable pace, and meets Hermie’s eye when they look over. Hermie quickly looks away. 

They poke at their rice with their chopsticks, trying to remember how to even use them. They might not be selling it well, but moving the bits of chicken around to one corner of the container is keeping them entertained more than whatever Taylor put on the screen.

Suddenly, a spring roll comes into view. Hermie looks up to see Taylor holding it out to them.

His eyes are wide and there's a slight smile on his face. It's weird.

Supposedly the spring rolls don't have any meat, because they remember the V written on the box earlier. Hermie glances from Taylor’s face to the spring roll and back, before cautiously extending a hand. Taylor places it in their palm with palpable satisfaction, before returning his attention to the screen. 

Alright. They are now holding a lukewarm vegetable spring roll. The longer they hold it, the colder and sweatier it will get, neither of which are traits Hermie especially wants from their food. They should eat it, but also the smell of chicken is still nauseatingly present and just because it’s a vegetable spring roll doesn’t mean there’s no meat. 

… it probably means exactly that, actually, but Hermie can’t be sure . No, they need to investigate themself. They half-close their carton of fried rice and lay it in their lap so they can use both hands. When a glance confirms that neither Nicky nor Taylor are watching, they lift the spring roll to their nose. It mostly just smells like vegetables and Hermie’s awful, sweaty hands, but it warrants closer investigation. They carefully split the casing with a claw, parting it to reveal, to the surprise of no one, nothing but vegetable filling. 

Great. They’re not sure why they did that, actually—

“Hey, uh, Hermie, what’re you doin’ to that spring roll there?” Nicky asks, somewhere between concerned and amused. Hermie jumps, and immediately rushes to hide the evidence.

In their mouth. 

Obviously.

It’s a small enough bite that they’re not at risk of choking, but they probably definitely shouldn’t have shoved it in their mouth all at once when they’re still feeling a little queasy. Their body makes an attempt at gagging, but they refuse to part their lips. They are not going to throw up, that would be embarrassing . 

They chew to the best of their abilities. Nicky is staring, definitely leaning further into concern now. Taylor is sending them worried glances too. After what feels like an impossibly long time, they swallow.

“What?” Hermie croaks, before clearing their throat and repeating themself. 

“Yeah, nevermind I guess,” Nicky says, and that’s that. 

Nicky returns his attention to the screen, and Taylor does as well after a moment. Hermie suddenly wants very badly to go wash their hands, but it’s not like they can just get up and dismiss themself. 

Well, they can, obviously, but they don’t want to attract any attention to themself. As soon as they do, Taylor will remember why he called them down, and he’ll break the news, and it’ll be awkward , after everything he said a few days ago. 

Taylor wordlessly slips another spring roll into Hermie’s hand. To make up for swallowing the other one whole, they nibble at it slowly. It tastes a lot better when they’re not preoccupied with trying not to choke. 

They try to tune into whatever anime Taylor has them watching, but they’re already at the end of the first, maybe the second episode, so they figure it’s basically a lost cause. They already have no idea what’s happening, and they’re not about to ask. Hermie wants to leave to go do nothing in the privacy of their own bedroom, but they’re still waiting on the real reason Taylor called them down here and it also seems like a lot of work, getting up and going all the way up to the guest room. 

They kind of zone out after that, watching the screen in only the vaguest sense of the word. Nicky makes some comment that has Taylor snickering and saying something in response. They’re not whispering, but Hermie can barely make sense of the words anyway. Whatever it is has Nicky grinning and throwing an arm around Taylor’s shoulder, pulling him close and ruffling his hair. Taylor is grinning, leaning into the touch like an affectionate cat when Nicky’s hand brushes against his horns. 

“… growing in!” Nicky is saying when Hermie finally gets their brain to focus on the words. Taylor preens under the praise. 

“Yeah! Aren't they cool?”

“They’re awesome, kiddo.”

“Sometimes I get headaches, but I know it’s just growing pains,” Taylor brags, puffing out his chest. 

“Yeah, I’d get those too. You’re doing well, you little demon.”

The fondness in Nicky’s tone makes Hermie’s stomach twist a little.

Taylor’s horns have grown in quite a bit, considering there was nothing there less than a year ago, but they still aren’t anywhere near the size of Hermie’s, nor do they have the slight gradient to a lighter color near the tip… but then, the coloration is something they very clearly inherited from Jodie, and any amount of pride is shot after that. The shape of their horns is closer to that of Nicky’s, but it’s not like he’s taken any notice. He’d much rather pay attention to Taylor.

Obviously. Because that’s his son. It’s embarrassing to even think about Nicky giving Hermie the same treatment, all casual affection and praise. They don’t want that, at all, from anyone, but especially not from Nicky. 

Which is why they keep thinking about it, and why the thought is making their chest hurt a little. Obviously. 

They shake their head to clear the thought from it, and make another attempt at focusing on the show. It doesn’t get them very far, especially when Taylor leans into Nicky’s side and nudges his foot against Hermie’s thigh, but at least they’re not consumed by that worthless sense of envy anymore. They set the abandoned container of takeout on the floor beside the couch, and settle against the arm rest. 

Despite the fact that Hermie has been laying in bed all day, they still somehow manage to doze off against the arm of the couch. They only jolt back awake when Taylor shifts his feet away from their leg. They weren’t fully asleep, still semi-conscious of the Japanese chatter from the tv, but it was embarrassing to get that close to falling asleep in front of Nicky. 

Not that Nicky is paying any attention to them. Neither is Taylor, actually. Nicky is standing up, stretching his arm over his head and rolling his neck. Taylor, fully sitting up now, bounces to his feet. Hermie watches quietly from the couch.

“Well, I should be heading out soon,” Nicky sys, and there’s a flicker of anxiety in Taylor’s expression—gone as soon as it arrives—”You two think you can finish all this food?”

“Definitely!” Taylor says, smiling once more, “ehe… you’ll be back soon, right?”

His voice raises an octave seemingly involuntarily—it makes him sound smaller. Nicky doesn’t seem to notice, as he pats Taylor’s shoulder a couple times. 

“Of course, kid,” he says, reassuring but casual. God, he really is an idiot.

“Okay, uh-“ Taylor clears his throat. “See you soon!”

“Yeah, see you-“

“Can you like, give him your number or something?” Hermie cuts in, sliding to their feet to approach the door. “Right now the only way we have to contact you is threatening Taylor’s life, so.”

“Oh hell yeah, good thinking,” Nicky says, sliding his phone out of his pocket and unlocking it in one smooth move before handing it to Taylor. “Put your number in, I’ll text you.” 

His eyes slide over to Hermie, but instead of just glossing over them like most people tend to, he smiles a bit when they lock eyes. “You too, Hermie.”

Hermie is unsure of how well they’re able to hide the shock on their face. 

“Pardon?” 

“I mean, you’re around, so like, might as well, right?” Nicky says casually, and Hermie supposes that makes sense. Hermie is merely another point of contact in case Taylor and Nicky can’t reach each other directly. It's not like Nicky has any interest in keeping in contact with Hermie themself.

Taylor hands Hermie Nicky’s phone— his own name is input as T SWIFT , complete with a sunglasses emoji— and Hermie quickly puts in their own number. They hesitate over the last name, before ultimately deciding to leave the field blank. They return the phone, and Nicky takes it back with a nod. 

“Alright, see you soon, kiddo,” Nicky says, ruffling Taylor’s hair before ducking out of the house. 

Taylor watches, only closing the door once he's out of sight. His shoulders slump a little when he does, as if just now stepping off-stage after an important scene. Hermie notes the reaction, but refrains from commenting for the time being. 

When Nicky texts them later, Hermie registers his number, but doesn’t reply. 

[readsbymoonlight]

Book: Wishtress

Author: Nadine Brandes

Rating: 🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑

Recommended for: Those who like seeing characters fight through difficulties

Published: 13th September, 2022

Wishtress is a book that has a lot to say. That's expected, isn't it, considering it has 464 pages. The theme it tackles is the classic Good vs Evil, which might be considered cliché but remains relevant no matter how many times it's explored. In Myrthe's world, it's possible to gain a magic power, but whether it's a Talent or a Bane is up to you. When it comes to the plot, there's again lots going on. Everyone wants something, but above all, everyone wants a wish. To get it? Well, you need the Wishtress. Right off the bat, the book starts off pretty tragically, with Myrthe's Wishtress power causing chaos in her life because she's young and doesn't know how to control it yet. This is fine, but it unfortunately set the tone for rest of the story, giving her no chance at all to breathe or have any joy at all. It's my personal pet peeve, though, and some may find the fact that everyone wants Myrthe for something yet not being able to give it a character-building experience for her. For me, all the bad things she has to go through overshadow the things I like about the book, turning it into an agonising read. With the detailed way the book was written, it's clear to see that the author has spent a lot of time crafting the world and thinking about how things work. That's always lovely to have, especially when there is a magic system unique to it. The author takes time to walk you through what Talents are and how they came to be. The overall concept is immediately interesting and was what first prompted me to request the book. Tears that grant wishes! A curse that promises to kill! However, I have to say that all of it falls quite flat for me. It feels like, because of how overpowered such a Talent is, the author had to take it out of the picture as soon as possible after showing its potency (and its perils). It's great to see what someone does when you take away their strengths, but Myrthe was never allowed to use her powers, so it doesn't matter at all that she doesn't have it once she's cursed. I love that the battle of good and evil is so directly left in the hands of individual people. Everyone can choose the way they live their lives and use their powers. Good or evil, Talent or Bane, it's all very black and white. And therein lies the problem. There is no nuance anywhere, no shades of grey. The characters themselves also embody this fight by being good or evil. But there is no exploration of why someone is good or evil. They just are, and they have to choose one. And if you choose a Bane, which is more powerful and tempting and corrupting, you're evil. End of story. Speaking of an ending, I just want to say that I like open endings. For someone who doesn't like bad ones, it gives me the leeway to pretend everything's fine. If there's just the smallest sliver of hope, I'll hold onto it. But this book makes everything too easy, too convenient, without any rhyme or reason. Everything works towards fulfilling the plot and it slogged there. In the very same way I slogged through reading the book. All in all, it just seems like there were many other ways to go about handling this story. Of course, that wasn't the story the author wanted to tell, and that's fine. It's just that this one isn't for me.

Disclaimer: e-ARC obtained from NetGalley, photo found on Google

[thefools-journey]

So. Some of you may be wondering why we haven’t written a whole ton about the secondaries or what have you. Here’s the reason: we were waiting for them to end before we really dug into the problems we were noticing. We felt that it was only fair to wait for the routes to finish so that we had an understanding of the writers’ vision. Who knew, we thought, maybe they would see the problems themselves and course correct, maybe they are building to something we can’t quite see yet and these issues will have actual payoff, maybe-

In light of Muriel and Lucio’s endings, and the general mess that has dominated Portia’s route for a year plus now, we are breaking our silence. We are actually going to talk about this shit show.

The fandom at large has talked about a bunch of issues with the secondaries but for me, the cardinal sin, the thing that really all the issues lead back to, is this: the writers lost sight of the tarot themes which so strongly defined and held together the primary routes. Let me explain.

The primary routes each center around three thematic cores:

The Love Interest’s Major Arcana and its Reversed/Upright meanings

The MC’s Fool’s Journey, both how it can go right and how it can go wrong

A question about the MC’s identity and their relationship to said identity

Asra’s route asks: Who was the MC? How does the MC navigate a past they cannot and will not remember? What do they owe a past they cannot remember? How do they handle the revelations of what Asra, Nadia, Julian, etc did? How do you right the past? Can you?

Nadia’s route asks: Who is the MC? The MC has no past. Are they the Fool only? Are they actually the same person they were? How can they tell? Who are they, really? Are they an imposter? No one can answer these questions for them.

Julian’s route asks: Who will the MC become? How does the MC see their future? Is there anything worth fighting for for that future? What will become of them and their loved ones? 

Now, if you notice, these themes are expertly woven throughout the primaries. Asra’s past dominates his route, Nadia is also missing memories and trying to construct her identity both with her family and with Vesuvia, and Julian’s fear of the future drives his flailing for control. Asra has to learn to take a broader view of his actions to get his Upright Ending, Nadia has to learn to trust herself and those around her for hers, and Julian has to learn how to let go for his. These lessons are the issues their cards stand for. The primaries are so dang elegant and delicate in their handlings of theme it is honestly awe-inspiring.

Thematically, the secondary routes have completely lost their hearts. First of all, the MC does not have strong, core questions which need to be answered. They just don’t. I suppose the writers did not want to retread old territory (which is weird considering how tightly bound the primaries are; it really tricks you into thinking you’re living the same events but from different angles depending on your route) but they did not replace the old with anything new. Muriel’s route is, on the surface, about discovering and owning his past, the good and the bad. Why not tie MC’s self-discovery to that story? Or they could have taken the angle that Muriel’s route is about convincing him to be present and active in the world while MC builds an identity for themself outside of Asra, the shop, and the memories they cannot retrieve. Why not tie the investigation themes running through Portia’s early route back to MC and their past? Portia has the unique angle of being as in the dark as MC about all of this, why not discover the past together? And for goodness’ sake, Lucio has no future when his route begins, why not tie that to his need for growth, responsibility, and MC’s own future between the Fool, the Devil, or something mortal and in between?

Secondly, the routes lost their tarot backbone. We have a primer on how to get specific endings for each LI and it still holds, but the writers did not follow through on the thematic coherence of each secondary. The Hermit is looking for something, be it perspective, insight, a solution to a problem, whatever. The key here is that the Hermit must find or learn what they are searching for, this thing must change their understanding of the world, and finally, they must bring this lesson back to the world from which they retreated. Can someone please enlighten me as what exactly Muriel learns then teaches the world around him? Nothing Muriel learns from Morga, MC, or even the Hermit ties back into anything. The Devil warns that you are out of control and exerting a lot of manipulative, destructive behavior on the world around you. It asks you to take responsibility for yourself and your actions. So can someone tell me why Lucio’s route actively avoids any interaction or reflection on two of Lucio’s biggest victims: Muriel and Julian? Why does the route only try to make amends with the “easier” of his victims in the cast? The Star is first and foremost the card of clarity, the light at the end of the tunnel. Perseverance, if you will. Yet Portia’s route has been the muddiest of the trio; the writers drop the investigation aspect of her route in favor just handing her and MC information they could have easily found and muddying the waters with Tasya (she blows up the palace but it’s all okay bc she has a secret daughter Julian never thought to bring up or mention) and the complete removal of the Devil as antagonist. 

So that leaves just the Fool’s Journey trying to hold this stool up with only one leg. And well...it doesn’t go well. At best, the secondary route books pay the barest surface level homage to the themes of the individual cards. At worst, they ignore the cards completely. Muriel's Moon book has nothing to do with illusions or delusions or lies or even an Alice in the Looking Glass upside down world. Portia's back half is a complete and utter mess, starting with her Temperance book being so badly mangled that Muriel's aftermath book does it better. Lucio's route too bungles the Tower and the Star. There just isn't enough here to carry the routes alone.

Add to the core loss the loss of intertextuality. The primary routes are very good, even great but they too do have their moments and mistakes. What helps strengthen them when the cores stumble is how the trio is woven together. Things you learn in Asra's route can inform the way you play Nadia's, for example. Julian's route informs what is going on in Asra's route and slots some missing puzzle pieces together. Nadia's route tells you of the power struggles she is facing and informs the other two routes' handling of Julian and his trial. On and on, the three routes support each other because they are built out of the same basic plot beats, just tackled in very different ways. Now, the writers are allowed to try and write whatever they want. They apparently wanted to be more experimental and less tied down to an overarching plot with the three secondaries. Okay, fine, they are allowed to do that. The problem is that they sacrificed one of the key strengths of the primary trio and didn't replace said strength with anything else. They also, on some level, harmed the very premise of the game, which is that only the player's choices and route selected change the overall plot. Instead of feeling like legitimate possibilities or offshoots of the same timeline/plot, the secondaries feel almost like Arcana AUs. The secondaries throw out all relations to the primaries and each other as quickly as possible and for what? 

It is probably the height of arrogance to suggest fixes for works whose behind the scenes I do not know. At the same time, some small, obvious changes could have salvaged Muriel and maybe Lucio's endings (rip Portia). Instead of having the Hermit appear as a disappointing cameo, why not have him say something cryptic to Muriel, then have MC start trying to seal the Devil. Then let Muriel use his forget me mark to cloak MC and hide them from the Devil's attacks. Protecting MC by hiding them from Lucio, keeping him focused on Muriel, seems to me a simple third solution between Muriel's desire to run and his desire to never fight again. It lets him stand up to Lucio and let him have it while holding onto who Muriel has become. The Reversed End would have MC try to draw Lucio's attention at some point, disrupting the sealing, and eventually leading to Muriel killing the Devil. With Lucio's Upright End, I just have to ask: why doesn't MC fully claim the power of the Fool instead of the Devil? We don't need the other Arcana involved in this fight; we have three routes that demonstrate that. Just have MC pull Scout into the conflict, then have Lucio tell MC he believes in them, then add his power to the mix. You got yourself a full Fool who leaves Scout guarding the realm until they and Lucio's mortal bodies fail and they return to the realm to be together forever. Boom, you're done, you can even add some ambiguous lines so that players can decide how happy their MC is with this arrangement, send me the check.

Here is the bottom line. Our group is full of aroace, and several combinations therein, individuals. We are the last group who should have gotten into a dating sim of all things. But the Arcana did something with the primaries that was special; they wrote a compelling plot with dazzling lore, complex characters, and strong themes wrapped up in a dating sim bow. The writers know better and we know they know better. I do not know what happened with the secondaries, especially around books 10-11, which is where minor issues slowly start spiraling into major ones, but it is clear that Nix Hydra needed some more planning before they released these routes. Hopefully they will learn.

TL;DR: Nix Hydra fired their tarot consultants about eighteen months ago and it has wrecked their secondary routes until they were just embarrassments. They never intended for the secondary routes to even exist and once they had to make them, they scrambled and threw out everything that made the primaries work.

- Mod Telos

[thoughtsofthegirlwiththecurl]

Okay, I've had some time to mull and read other very smart critiques of Horizon: Forbidden West, so here are my mishmashed thoughts!

Spoilers, spoilers, so many spoilers

I mean, first off, I loved the game! I loved returning to this world, it was insanely beautiful, I cried at the Redwood trees! I love Aloy, I love all of Aloy's friends, new and returning, I love all your NPC allies! I loved the new machines. I loved flying! I loved the new resource management system (I am a sucker for a good game resource management system, and I always struggled in HZD with whether I should keep a hard-won machine heart vs. a stack of ammunition-building material). I loved that this game included more puzzles in places that might have had just more machine fights in HZD! I loved swimming! Any time a game lets me have a water level, I become a fish; I live there now. I loved how fucking queer it is! On top of Lis and Alva being explicitly queer, it felt like every time a side-quest-giving NPC or Old World recording/data-point mentioned the person's significant other, they were queer! And there was trans and NB rep!

I think I was less bothered by the general flattening of the HZD NPCs than other people, but I agree that was definitely a thing, and other people have spoken on it more eloquently. Other people have also dug into the treatment of Talanah more eloquently too, so I won't rehash it here, except to say, weirdness of her questline not withstanding, I was most devastated that she didn't join the base gang. Come on! There were four cubicles in that bunk room!

As with everyone else, it was the writing that got me. Not on a line level, or even really on a character level, but on an over-arching story level. Which was disappointing because HZD is so well written! And frankly, I want to talk about Hephaestus.

Given how Hades and, to a lesser extent, HEPH were written in HZD, I kind of expected all the subordinate functions to have become fully sentient AIs that Aloy would have to wrangle into working together without GAIA. But I was totally on board with bringing back GAIA, once it became immediately clear that was the primary goal. And I was following along great until GAIA explained that unless HEPH came back under her control, the world was going to end in a few months. And it feels like (timeline got a bit a wonky, because I pressed through a bunch of main quests so I could get all the gadgets before doing a bunch of world exploring) it was not too long after that that it becomes clear you need HEPH to defeat the Zeniths. I mean, for the latter at least, the door is left open for another option (i.e. Sylens' contraption), even if the characters kind of double-down on HEPH as the only plan.

So here you have merging HEPH with GAIA as the only way to (a) stop the Zeniths from destroying the world, but more importantly (b) to prevent a worldwide ecological collapse that is going to happen in 4 months. The Zeniths, I mean you could always 11th-hour foil their plans for ages if necessary (and if the story had gone off that way). But GAIA reiterates it to you multiple times early on that ecological collapse is going to happen without HEPH. That merging with HEPH is the only way to stop it.

And therein lies the problem. What HZD, especially Frozen Wilds, made clear, but which HFW hammers home is that HEPHAESTUS is the reason machines got more violent. And at it's heart, the whole conceit of the Horizon games is that you get to fight giant machine creatures. That's, like, their whole thing. So the game is telling me "you have to merge HEPH with GAIA, it's the only way to save the world" but in my head I'm thinking "there's no way that can happen because what would the franchise even become at that point".

And then the game...doesn't do anything with it?? The Zeniths take over as the most pressing issue. And you do manage to defeat them with Sylens and Tilda's help. Then Aloy has a throw-away line about how you caught HEPH before, you can do it again, but the bigger problem is Nemesis. Like girl???? Is it???? First off, Nemesis' beef was with the Zeniths who...imprisoned it? Ignored it? And they're all dead. I guess we can assume it's going to just hate all humans? Second: it kind of seemed like the Gemini cauldron was the only place to catch HEPH, and the way HEPH is written, it seems smart enough it won't be tricked back there again.

It comes back around to what others have said, that this feels like 2 games smashed together: a story about restoring GAIA to stave off ecological collapse and a story about the Zeniths coming to Earth, ostensibly to destroy it. And the first gets abandoned for the sake of the second.

Also what is the time scale???? I know these games play fast-and-loose with geography, not that I'm complaining there (side note: the irony of finishing the water quests in the desert and then walking less than a day to find a huge river and lush jungle?), but I have no sense of how much time is supposed to have passed. GAIA originally says 4 months until ecological collapse, but then stretches it out if she has her subordinate functions--I don't remember how long, but less than a year. Does the entire game take place in a few days? Months? How long until permanent ecological collapse by the end of the game? And it's all irrelevant anyways, because they can never trap HEPH because then the franchise falls apart!

And listen, I get that that's going to be the next game's problem, that they'll have to come up with a McGuffin because HEPH will be untrappable, but why make your main goal of the game something unachievable and then not come up with a work-around solution? It just felt weird. It's like, this could have been a game about restoring the subordinate functions and making those each much longer quests, and GAIA insists you need HEPH to stave off ecological collapse, but in the end you find a work around for that! And the next game could be about Far Zenith.

I just kind of felt, at the end, like what did Aloy even accomplish? We killed all the Zeniths, who actually weren't going to stick around and were planning to leave Earth anyways instead of destroying it. I get that they were all arrogant assholes, but it feels like their whole storyline could have just been "hey, we see you have a copy of Gaia, could we get a copy of that? We fucked up our first colony and want to make a new one on a different planet." I guess we saved Beta? (Who I love, don't get me wrong.) And bought a few more months before ecological collapse? And helped quash a rebellion among the Tenakth so that maybe they can have peace with the Carja? Which should have felt more like a main plot point but ended up feeling like a side quest?? Like, that could have been the final battle!

I guess after writing that, it feels like this was two games smashed together but simultaneously somehow left unfinished?

I dunno. At the end of the day, I still loved the game. I'll definitely replay it. With a big open world like this, cohesive plot becomes less important to me (I couldn't tell you the plot of Skyrim if you put a gun to my head and Dragon Age: Inquisition has only the barest bones of one stringing it together). I just feel a bit disappointed after how good HZD was.

[itsclydebitches]

I’m wlw. While, I’m not going to shame WLW members of the FNDM, bumblby pisses me off. V6 skipped development for both characters for the sake of “confirming” it, but I thought there scenes in V7 were cute. At first. Then it felt like RT dangling gay keys in front of my face. Now they’re attached to the hip while giving the het. ship (Renora) independence. Yang doesn’t care what Ruby thinks and only Blake was upset by her fall. What are your thoughts?

I’ve touched on their relationship quit a bit over the years, on and off, so I’ll try to summarize those big thoughts here: 

I like the ship. I’ve always liked the ship. I’ve never been a die-hard fan like some, but as soon as I entered the fandom and realized they were a thing I went, “Oh yeah, I can see that. I’m on board!” 

Which isn’t to say I’m always a fan of how people engage with them. It’s a fact that every major ship in any fandom is going to have its annoying, dramatic, and toxic elements. It’s also a fact that RWBY has developed a reputation for being particularly vitriolic. I think a lot of the hate towards Blake/Yang stems less from what we actually got in the canon and more from bad experiences from a small subset of fans. Not everyone. Not even the majority. But enough that casual fans, Blake/Sun fans, those who dislike the ship, etc. have reached a point where bmblb is a) so incredibly prominent and b) at times so heated that even a fellow shipper can grow frustrated at the state of the “RWBY” tag. This then bleeds into our reading of the canon material. After all, if you’re frustrated about seeing this pairing so often in fandom spaces and/or you’ve had a bad run-in with someone who ships them, seeing even more of them on Saturday will exacerbate those feelings. 

This is a frustration that’s increased as the show still refuses to make the relationship canon. Crafting scenes each week where something semi-romantic occurs, but isn’t enough to confirm a relationship (like the forehead touch) creates a branching number of annoyances, from “Oh my god how is this still not canon” to “Here’s another week of the whole fandom claiming it is canon.” Those “dangling gay keys” are a problem both for those desperate to see the relationship confirmed because they love it and those desperate to see the relationship confirmed so the characters can begin focusing on other aspects of their identities. “Attached at the hip” feels too close to queer baiting for comfort while simultaneously too narrow a depiction of Blake and Yang. Surely they have concerns and relationships outside of each other. 

I agree entirely that the relationship was rushed in some respects. However, there’s a post somewhere in the depths of my blog where I argue strongly that queer relationships should be allowed to be rushed, simply because so many het ships are too. I stand by that. I understand the frustration of moving from the two interacting primarily as teammates to suddenly holding hands, but that’s a gap that appears in many, many non-queer pairings. Jaune is a great example. Though we introduced Pyrrha’s interest in him from the get-go, he was running after Weiss for his whole time at Beacon, got a little closer to Pyrrha, she suddenly kissed him, and then... we’re meant to believe they were madly in love? His grief is certainly written in a way to imply as much. The cultural expectation of the guy losing the girl just fills in the rest, we didn’t actually see it on screen. So I both agree and disagree. I always want RWBY to be better written, but I also don’t want to hold our queer pairings to standards we don’t demand of the het ones. That way lies a lot of excuses for why it “can’t” ever happen. I’d rather have poorly written and rushed representation than no representation at all. 

Agree entirely about there being a problem with Yang’s fall. Blake’s reaction was fine. The lack of reaction from everyone else was not. As I said in my recap, you can’t prove their love by taking love away from these other relationships. Making Ruby seemingly care less about her sister will not convince me that Blake cares a great deal. Though this is a problem RT has across the whole cast, tying into that “attached at the hip”ness. Characters tend to have one (1) relationship and that’s it. RT really struggles to write a cohesive group, instead creating a collection of duos that happen to inhabit the same space. I can see places where they’ve been trying to correct that this volume  — Yang speaking to Ruby about Summer, Nora talking to the girls about Ren  — but moments like Blake’s talk with Ruby really struggle. In that, these characters haven’t spoken in seven seasons, so all Blake has to say is a generic, ‘I believe in you’ that comes across as stilted and unpersuasive  — we can see the writers trying to convince us that Ruby is The Best and that these girls have a relationship when they... don’t. And scenes like Yang’s fall show us that these underlying struggles are still at work. RT doesn’t know how to craft a scene where everyone reacts because Yang is a well-rounded person sporting a deep and unique relationship with three other teammates. They know how to craft a scene where the one (1) relationship takes centerstage and everyone else becomes cardboard cutouts. 

As for renora’s independence, I need to side with RWBY on this one. The entire point of this arc is that Nora realized she is also attached at the hip and wants to do something about it. That’s a good thing! Whether or not RT actually manages to write a relationship where they’re together without being entirely co-dependent remains to be seen, but splitting them in this last episode was a good start. Similarly, the show did separate Blake and Yang for the majority of this volume and now may have separated Yang from the group for a significant length of time. That’s not the same thing as the girls realizing they need space like Nora did... but then, they aren’t in an acknowledged relationship like Nora is. I don’t think it’s fair to compare them when Yang and Blake haven’t even reached the point where they’re talking about their relationship, let alone what that looks like going forward, and therein lies my real criticism. In order to see the depth RT is trying to give to renora, they have to actually make bmblb canon first. It all comes back to that. The question of queerbaiting, how they find healthy boundaries, how they compare to other relationships in the show... there’s no real groundwork to discuss any of that until we can say, 100%, that they are, in fact, a couple. 

[genesisarclite]

Unpopular opinion below the cut, but this is something that's been in the back of my head and bugging me ever since I first played Zero Dawn way back in 2017. Just another bit of musing and a chance to get some thoughts out on "paper", brought upon by my desire to create a fic for the fandom and a growing frustration with crafting the story I wish to tell.

Aloy is, to me, one of the most remarkably boring characters I've ever dealt with in fiction.

There. I said it.

And I don't mean boring as in no personality or something like that. I mean that she's just boring. She's skilled and capable and good at almost everything, and the flaws she does have are downplayed to the point of being nearly nonexistent. Even when characters call her out for things or are hostile toward her, they are almost universally shown to be wrong (with the possible exception of Rost). While being strong and capable isn't a bad thing, and is necessary for a game and story like this to work, the problem is that it's just not balanced out by notable flaws, weaknesses, or failures.

For example, she's frequently abrasive and rude. It can be justified, of course, by her having lived in isolation for nineteen years, but when she demonstrates that trait in the real world, she's rarely called out for it. Instead, others shy away from her, grumble a bit, or just take it in stride and move on. While she mellows out a little in Forbidden West, it takes until past the halfway point for the main story to start doing this.

And the fact that she's a famous one-woman army, capable of taking down machines many times her size, and is so celebrated as though this is a rare and wondrous thing, is obnoxious. Yet, I have no problem with her being able to do it. We know she trained for around thirteen years under Rost to win the Proving, but because she proceeds to rarely fail, has few obvious faults, and is almost always right, the impact is totally lost for me.

I have many original female characters for my own original works, of course, many of whom are women of action in their own right. I have no issue with Aloy being capable and a warrior - I love Yuna, for example, and Fang, Megan Reed, Aria Argento, Lara Croft, Kasumi Goto, and so many others. I have no issue with her being determined and capable.

It's the execution that really grinds my gears.

And therein lies the issue with the fic that's been at the back of my mind since I finished "Death's Door" in Forbidden West.

In the fic I want to write, she's going to travel to unknown lands and run into a new tribe and robots. The problem is that following her canonical capabilities means cutting the tension, because we know she's faced down everything from Apex Thunderjaws to Slaughterspines. I would prefer to have her struggle and be told - and proven - that she's wrong. That she's not the only one who understands how the world works, and not everything she can do is unique. That she can still be overwhelmed. And I want to see her overcome all that and grow, become even better and stronger for it, because that sounds like it would be fun.

And so I twist myself into a pretzel trying to figure out how to join the disparate halves. A protagonist who always wins, is always right, and whose faults never get in the way isn't very interesting to read about. Aloy as she is, for me, simply doesn't translate well to written form, and the story I want to write requires that she be uprooted and forced to face new challengers.

I suppose I'm concerned how it could be taken. Will the Aloy of my fic be recognized as the same person, but with a little more dug out of her to make her feel more human? Or will she be seen as someone entirely different?

Not to mention that one of the things she has to face will be something she's not had to deal with yet. It doesn't involve spear or bow, deadly machines or ancient ruins. It comes from within, and I think it will be an interesting tale.

But getting past that pretzel is the hardest part, and I'm reluctant only in that I don't how the highly capable and intelligent Aloy being dropped into a situation where she's in over her head and not the best on the block will be taken.

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine one-shot “Artistic Differences” (Rated NC17)

Summary: Kurt and Blaine have known each other all their lives. They've loved each other almost as long. But as Blaine uses his love for Kurt as inspiration for his music, Kurt has yet to reciprocate. And since painting is Kurt's entire world, Blaine is worried about what that might mean for the two of them. (2703 words)

Notes: I had been writing this for the @klaineadvent Drabble Challenge 2020 prompt 'opinion'. I finally finished it. Wee! XD

Read on AO3.

Baby, you're not alone...

'Cause you're here with me...

And nothing's ever gonna bring us down...

'Cause nothing can keep me from lovin' you...

And you know it's true...

It don't matter what'll come to be...

Our love is all we need to make it through...

Blaine stops singing when he notices an echo haunting his lyrics, lingering on the high notes for longer than written. He listens with eyes closed, smiling at his keyboard. 

His boyfriend Kurt, humming behind the melody. 

Blaine has been ironing this song out for the past three hours now but Kurt hasn't complained once about the constant stopping and starting.

He never does. 

Blaine peeks over his shoulder as he continues to play with the harmonies and watches Kurt, focused on the canvas in front of him, swaying to the rhythm of the music, happily sandwiched between his two passions - art and music.

It's a mild and sunny Saturday - a whole day devoted to cleaning up commissions and tying loose ends on weekly projects before their one day off together. Blaine and Kurt share a studio space - normally unheard of for an artist and a musician, but they make it work. It helps that they've known one another for so long that being alone together is the same as being alone with themselves. That also means they get the inside scoop on what the other is working on long before the public does.

And what they're not working on, which has begun to bother Blaine.

Blaine adores everything his talented boyfriend comes up with. Even regarding his more controversial works, there isn't a thing Kurt has painted that Blaine finds objectionable. Kurt puts his heart and soul into every painting, no matter who it's for, and no matter the subject. A writer from Artforum once wrote: "Kurt Hummel goes beyond the veil to showcase not just the external, but the core of every subject - their drives and motivations. It pairs nicely with the transparency of his own soul, which shines through the gouache and the gesso to leave the viewer with a tangible piece."

And therein lies the root of Blaine's problem.

A glance at one of Kurt's canvasses and the world knows everything it needs to about what he loves.

But one subject in particular has gone wholly unrepresented.

“How come you've never painted a portrait of me?” Blaine asks.

"Hmm... what's that, love?" Kurt mutters, switching out brushes, then moving from a blob of Titanium White to a smear of Winsor Blue.

"How come you've never painted a portrait of me?" Blaine rises off his piano bench and relocates to the wooden folding chair behind Kurt's easel in the hopes of pulling his attention a bit. "You've been an artist for as long as I've known you, and I've known you your entire life. But not once have you ever painted a portrait of me."

“Why do I need to? I have you right here," Kurt says, pretending to bop the tip of Blaine's nose with his brush. "Besides, these aren’t personal." His gaze bounces between the three canvases set on easels in an arc in front of him. "They’re bought and paid for.”

"But what about your private stuff? You've shown me your sketchbooks and your digital art files. Unless you have some hidden folder marked 'secret boyfriend art' that I've yet to come across, there's not a single piece of me in any of your work."

Kurt doesn't steer his gaze away from the apple he's adding highlights to to acknowledge his pouty boyfriend, but the corner of his mouth hitches. "If you say so, dear."

"I know so," Blaine grumps, crossing his arms over his chest and dropping back in the chair so hard he nearly topples it over.

"That's your opinion."

"You're evading."

"Is it really so important to you?"

"Yes! It would be nice to be immortalized by my artist boyfriend!"

Kurt snickers. "Are you that much of a narcissist?"

"Your art is important to you! More than that - it's your life! You paint everything that you love! You've made dozens of paintings of Finn, your father, your mother, your Navigator... "

"My Navigator is my baby. It deserves love. I don't get to drive it much living in the city," Kurt defends. "Besides, those paintings I posted on Instagram landed me a huge contract with Lincoln, and that paid for our month-long tryst to Bali. You're welcome, by the way."

"I'm not saying I'm not grateful... " Blaine pauses, the smile on his face a souvenir from thirty straight days of overindulgence in sex and alcohol. "I think I more than proved that on that private beach? Under the moonlight?"

"Yeah, you did," Kurt growls, silently hoping that will be the end of this discussion.

"But... " Blaine picks up and Kurt's heart sinks.

No luck.

"... nowhere am I present in your work. Not that I've seen. Not even in the abstract. And that makes me think... " 

"Think what?" Kurt mutters, his playful attitude fading the longer this conversation drags on.

Blaine sighs, realizing how much like a spoiled toddler he sounds. But he's in too deep to stop now. "That you don't expect me to be around long."

Kurt's snicker turns into a full-blown chortle. "We've been together forever! You staked a claim on me in kindergarten! Are you suddenly going somewhere?"

"Can't you take this seriously?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's ridiculous!"

Blaine huffs. "Great. So my feelings are ridiculous."

"No, Blaine, your feelings are valid. This argument is ridiculous. Believe it or don't, you don't know everything about me. Or my work. What does it matter what I put on a canvas? I told you that I love you! That I would always love you! I tell you over and over and over! Those are my words! My truth! Listen to my truth!"

"B-but what if you change your mind?" Blaine grimaces when that toddler inside him begins throwing an all-out tantrum.

"Then I change my mind!" Kurt groans, slamming his free hand down on an open tube of Dandelion Green, sending a thick ribbon of paint a good four feet. "I'm allowed to change my mind! And so are you! But I don't see that happening!"

"Then why won't you marry me?"

Kurt pulls a face, probably without thinking about it. "Because I'm not very fond of marriage."

"Why not? Your parents had a great marriage! And your father has a wonderful second marriage!"

"But your parents don't have a very good marriage, do they? Nor your older brother, who's been divorced twice already! " Kurt argues, frustration causing him to forget himself and clean his stained hand on the untucked hem of his shirt instead of a rag. That should be a huge red-flag for Blaine to back down, yet he doesn't. Common sense? Sorry, don't know her. "And the national average isn't that great, either. Doesn't it mean more that I choose to stay with you instead of feeling obligated to?"

Blaine doesn't have an answer for that, even though the answer is obviously yes. Of course, it does. And in high school, that would have been enough to shut Blaine up. But admitting to that feels too much like conceding, and this one time, this is an argument he wants to win. "Did you hear that song I've been working on?" Blaine asks, switching gears so quickly, it puts Kurt on edge.

"Yes," Kurt replies, his voice becoming tight quickly. "It's lovely."

"I wrote it for you."

"Thank you. It sounds wonderful. Another huge hit in the making."

"It's the 15th song I've written in your honor."

"Wow," Kurt says dryly, predicting the direction this is heading. "That many?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's an incredibly kind and loving gesture, one that I didn't know required reciprocation."

"It doesn't require reciprocation. But it would be nice."

Kurt rolls his eyes at Blaine's agenda. Tit for tat. Is that how this is supposed to work? "From what I remember, those songs made you a pretty penny."

"So?"

"So, it's not like you wrote them for me and kept them between us. Most of those songs are chart-toppers."

"But I didn't release them for the money! I wouldn't care if they didn't make me a dime! I put them on the albums because I'm not afraid to let the world know how I feel about you!"

Kurt's brow furrows as he fights through a blooming headache to decode that declaration. Once he gets it, he gasps. "I'm not hiding you away if that's what you're implying! You go with me EVERYWHERE! Every gallery opening, every art show! There have been articles written about our relationship! You're no dirty little secret!"

"I never said I was."

"No?" Kurt chuckles bitterly. "You're sure implying it a great deal!"

"That's not what this is about."

"You're right. It's not. Blaine!" Kurt tosses his brush into a mug of water and starts pacing the floor. "I am a gay artist walking a very fine line."

"I'm a gay artist, too!" Blaine says, offended.

"But you're a musician. And a songwriter. Musicians are supposed to use love as their muse. Writing about your relationship is expected... unless you're Taylor Swift, apparently."

"Yeah. What's up with that?"

Kurt shrugs. "I don't know. The point is that the second I make a piece of art about our relationship in any way, shape, or form, I'm afraid that's all it will be about, no matter what I intend."

"Isn't art supposed to be subject to interpretation?"

"That's just it! If I hint that my art has anything to do with you, that will become the only interpretation. Because too many straight people see the homosexual experience as solely about the right to fuck who we want to fuck and nothing else. I make a portrait about you or dedicated to you, and after that... " Kurt's eyes leave Blaine's face, scanning the room and his canvasses all around for help making his argument. He finds a painting of a forest they hiked through in Bali and stops there "... a tree that I paint will no longer be just a tree. It will become a symbol. In a forest of evergreens, if one needle is slightly browner than the rest because the paint oxidizes weirdly or whatever, then it'll be about you and me on the skids and nothing else. And I don't want that to happen."

Blaine turns in his chair to find the painting Kurt is staring at. On the surface, it's trees, dirt, and sky, but underneath, it's much more than that. That painting of their beloved paradise is perfection - so much so that he can feel the sun on his face, the breeze kissing his cheek, smell the sunscreen on his skin. "I understand what you're saying, but... "

"But?" Kurt grinds out between his teeth. This is the frustrating thing about arguing with Blaine. Even when he says he sees Kurt's point of view, he doesn't seem to really.

And when he's not winning, he gets dismissive.

"... I think you're overthinking things a little."

"And you're not?"

"Another evade," Blaine says, pointing at him in a way reminiscent of his brother's only acting technique.

Kurt grabs the hair at his temple and pulls to keep from flinging the palette in his hand like a frisbee at Blaine's head. "Isn't it more important that you know how I feel about you? You inspire me every day! Your love, your support, your music - they feed my soul! But do I have to plaster it on a wall to make it real?"

"That's kind of an empty question because you don't! There are no paintings of me! Not even in our apartment! And I'm sorry, but I think that's very telling!"

Kurt nods, his lips pulled taut. "You're right, Blaine. Not one. And it is very telling." He drops his palette on his work table and circles the room, grabbing finished canvases and carrying them over. He positions them purposefully, placing some under UV lights he has mounted to runners on the ceiling. 

"What... what are you doing?" Blaine asks with worry, wondering if Kurt is about to do something hasty, something that will ruin his paintings, waste all those hours of work, jeopardize the money he has yet to collect for them. 

Kurt doesn't answer. 

He doesn't even look at him. 

He works silently, his shoulders rigid, his footsteps heavy as he collects paintings Blaine forgot about, paintings that had made Blaine bristle because they were of places they had been to together, things they had made a point to see only with each other, but not a one included him. Those Kurt flips upside down.

He swipes a squeeze bottle of clear liquid from his army of supplies. It could be water. It could be paint thinner. Blaine doesn't know, but he's not certain he wants to find out. He's about to leap off his seat to stop him, but Kurt switches off the overhead lights, turns on the UVs, and Blaine stops. He watches in horror as Kurt douses the flipped canvases in fluid, but the paint doesn't run. Whatever is in that bottle, it sticks, but only in certain areas, and before it dries completely, Kurt dusts the paintings with a fine powder, one that brings hidden images to life beneath the lights.

“Oh my God,” Blaine mutters, stepping back to get a better look.

Every painting, in one way or another, is of him. Of them. And not just recently. There are images of them from college, high school... middle school. There are profiles of Blaine in the negative space between flowers of one painting, and in the clouds of another. A fluorescent image of teenaged him playing guitar to a silhouette of Kurt sitting beside him. There are shadows of them dancing, singing, even a daring one of them making love up against a wall. 

And the flipped landscapes? Their vacation pictures, as it were? The glowing dust reveals portraits hiding in plain sight, painted upside down and invisible to the naked eye. All of these images, Kurt painted in ways where no one would detect them if they weren't looking for them. If they didn't know they were there.

And they are in every. single. one.

Now that he's seen this, it's safe to assume all of Kurt's works carry similar Easter eggs, even paintings long gone.

"Why... why didn't you tell me about this?" Blaine asks, too stuck on stupid to move, walk from painting to painting and examine them properly.

"Why did I need to? I love you. I've told you. What else did I need to prove?"

Blaine shakes his head slowly, ashamed of himself. What an imbecile he is! Kurt is absolutely right. He loves him! He didn't need to prove it! The hurt Blaine felt - that was on him. It wasn't Kurt's responsibility to fix it. There isn't a day that goes by where Kurt doesn't show his love to Blaine in one way or another. Blaine didn't need this. He really didn't.

And right now, he doesn't feel he deserves it.

On a side note, how wrapped up in his own crap has he been that here, in this space that they share, where proximity has forced Kurt to memorize every song Blaine has been writing for his latest album while he paints, that he never realized just how frickin' talented his boyfriend is!?

"Kurt... " Blaine finally finds the strength to take a step forward, drawn to that ghostly image of them making love. It's a simple shadow of the moment, but it evokes a powerful memory "... these are incredible. How did you... ?" Blaine expects an answer before he can finish. Kurt is rarely shy about discussing his work.

Though Blaine should use this opening to his advantage - apologize since those should have been the first words out of his mouth.

But he gets nothing.

"Kurt?" Blaine looks over his shoulder in search of his boyfriend, ready to make amends. 

But Kurt is gone.

[wulfies-kpop-fanfics]

One Photo → Mark Lee [8]

↳  Pairing: Mark Lee/Reader

↳  AU: Soulmate!AU - The first touch of two soulmates permanently scars their bodies.

↳  Warning: angst if you squint, I guess

↳  Word count: 2,294

↳  Chapters: Prelude | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | You Are Here! | 9

⁙ Summary: For an end of the year photography project, you’re tasked with taking a photograph for your favourite group, NCT127, and coincidentally, discover your soulmate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WEDNESDAY - 8 TWO YEARS LATER

The heart of Toronto would never compare to the magnificence of Times Square in New York, but the mass amount of billboards by the Eaton Center always managed to send you into awe during your nightly trek home from work. 

You looked up toward the billboards with a sigh as you waited for your streetcar, barely managing to squeeze out a smile as you saw Mark’s visage splayed along one of the electronic spaces. The night sky was too polluted with the city’s light to display any real stars, but Mark’s face was more than enough for you. For the past week, you had seen NCT127’s faces sprawled across that billboard, part of promotions for their latest global comeback. It was a brief respite as you waited for your streetcar home every night, to finally know that the day was over and that you could relax.

It had been such a long time since you’ve seen Mark in person. Even though you texted him every day when the two of you were awake at the same time and video chatted whenever he had five minutes to himself, it always felt depressing to be without him. To not kiss or touch or hug at all was torture.

Everyone knew that it was deadly for soulmates to be apart for so long, that depression would set in and even worse physical illnesses were a real risk. It was hard to be so far away and over the past year you had been let go from multiple jobs because you were constantly sick, and therein lies the problem. You simply couldn’t afford the solution to your problem. So, depression and illness it was. It took everything you had to keep your head above water, to keep your dream alive and know that one day your heart wouldn’t ache as much as it does at the present moment.

After a 20 minute ride on the streetcar, you entered your building and took the stairs up to your little hole-in-the-wall apartment, the bare minimum that you could afford after Rhiannon paid her last half of the old place’s rent. A single bed, bath and a tiny kitchen that housed a little chair and round table. Thankfully, there was enough counter space that you could place a tiny TV to watch Netflix on while you ate. You were lucky that the house had a large living room, which doubled as your studio.

The coffee table was one of the only things left from your old apartment, along with the tote of Marvel films you kept hidden below it. Atop the table now rested all of your cameras, a drawing tablet and cards that you got in the mail from Mark from time-to-time, instead of notes, binders and textbooks. Sitting against the wall across from the table was a small bookshelf and an easel with a large frame sitting on it, housing the last portrait you finished the night before, ready to be shipped to the buyer.

After… somewhat enjoying a quick pot of white cheddar mac & cheese and watching a rerun of Supernatural on your little TV, you head into your room and sit at the desk next to your bed. After starting your computer, you opened up discord and sat back in your wheely chair, waiting for Rhiannon’s status to change to green. Wednesday was the day that she had to be up early for her job, so that meant time for a 10-minute call before you went to bed and she went to work. 

Next to your computer was a copy of the photo you took two years ago, of your soulmate and all his friends beneath the shedding cherry trees in High Park. You smiled at it, the memory was fond but now faint in your mind. You reached forward to pick it up, but you stopped yourself. You knew that if you inspected the photo more, you’d only miss Mark and all your friends more. 

There were times where your apartment became so quiet that it reminded you how alone you really were. You had lived with Rhiannon most of your life, and that meant there was at least some noise going on at all times. Whether she had her headset unplugged when she was listening to music or watching youtube videos, she was clattering about when helping you wash and dry the dishes, or if she was walking around and tripped on nothing. She was always talking, laughing, or doing something that always let you know that she was there. Now, you had nothing.  

The silence is broken and you’re startled by the calling sound from discord, Rhiannon’s icon popping up on the top of your screen. You place your hand on your mouse and click the join call button, adjusting the webcam perched on the top of your desktop monitor. 

"Hey," Rhiannon was the first to speak, yawning and reaching back to pull her hair into a perfect, tight ponytail. 

"Hey," you respond, watching her closely and leaning your chin on your right palm. "How are you holding up?"

"I should be asking you that, Jesus, you look like the Hulk if he got the swine flu," she retorts, and even through the grainy quality you can tell she has sympathy written all over her face. "I'm doing great, we've got two cleanings today and a wisdom teeth removal, so that'll be fun." 

You scoff and attempt to smile, "I'm fiiiiine, other than the fact that I'm here and you're there, 13 hours in the future and at least one ocean in between us and an entire continent and a half. I'd say that constitutes abandonment."

"I got the getting while it was good and you know that," she stuck her tongue out at you. "You need to keep saving so that you can fly your ass out here." She squinted at the screen. "You really need to drink like… an entire bottle of nyquil, dude."

"If only it were that easy," you groan. "I don't even have a photographer's position yet. All I get is sitting at a desk and responding to emails… even with my head start, I can't find a good job and I barely make enough to keep living in Toronto." You stick out your tongue back at her for the nyquil comment. "As if I haven't been hiding a bottle of dayquil in my desk for the past week."

Rhiannon stopped what she was doing and leaned toward her camera. "You know why you can't get the jobs you want," her voice is soft, empathetic. "Mark is having trouble, too. He's been doing a lot of half days, so I don't know how they plan to do their tour with him being constantly sick." 

You looked away. "I can't afford to take any more time off… I don't want to lose this job. If I do, I'm not sure that I'll be able to make my rent."

"You're going to need to take time eventually,” Rhiannon stated firmly. "If you don't get at least some of your strength back you're going to end up in the hospital like I did. Remember?" 

You glanced back at your screen, watching Donghyuck wander around in the backdrop. You were beyond jealous that they got to live together. 

"Maybe. I just miss you. More than I miss having a clear passageway in my nose." 

Rhiannon smiled sadly at you. "I miss you too, everyone does. You'll be here soon, I promise. I gotta go, sleep well and drink plenty of water, okay?"

"Okay." 

Rhiannon waved at you before her screen went dark, ending the call. The call was shorter than usual, so you presumed that she had woken up late. You zoned out a little, acutely aware that the apartment had gone silent again. You didn't want to cry, to give up after surviving for so long. You had made it this far without letting everything get to you.

You knew that your deteriorating health was because of your separation from Mark and companies saw that as a liability, even though laws had come into place last year to protect separated soulmates from workplace discrimination. You felt a tiny ping of hope when Rhiannon said you would be able to move soon, but you knew she was lying to make you feel better. 

Feeling lethargic, you stand and make your way to the dresser in the corner of your room, stripping and throwing your clothes about the room. You open up a drawer and pull out a pair of sweatpants and the softest t-shirt you could find and slipped them on, wandering to your bed and slowly climbing in. You slipped off your glasses, placing them on your desk and reached forward to turn off your lamp.

You hugged your polar bear and tried to get comfortable, hoping to fall asleep quickly. You supposed you could call into work when you woke up; at least your manager was nice enough to understand when you needed a day off. You rolled over, tossed and turned, but sleep wouldn't come. Not while your phone was constantly buzzing. 

"What the hell," you mumble to yourself, untangling yourself from the knot of blankets you had tied yourself in to reach for your phone. Your lock screen lit up with a photo of Mark, one you had taken two years ago of him standing in Union Station. 

[Rhiannon (5)] 

She sure knew how to type quickly. 

Rhiannon: I'm on my way to work, I'll let you know when I'm there

Rhiannon: sorry our call was so short, I was running a little late

Rhiannon: I talked to Mark last night, did he say anything? 

Rhiannon: are you asleep already? It's been like 5 minutes 

Rhiannon: ok you're basically just ignoring me at this point

You: calm down bro I was getting in my pyjamas 

Rhiannon: I forgot how slow you get when you're sick, I could die of boredom waiting for you to respond 

You: hardy har 

Rhiannon: so have you talked to mark today? 

You: around lunchtime he woke up from a nightmare but I assume hes busy right now 

Rhiannon: Things have been pretty bad around now, I think you might have guessed that

You: Yeah, things aren’t really that great here either, but I’m more worried about Mark… have they given him time off? 

Rhiannon: Not much besides half days. He’s really been missing you. Maybe you should message him and see if he’s not busy

You: Yeah, maybe. I feel really guilty

Rhiannon: I know. I still could help you buy your plane ticket, you know. You: You know I can’t do that, I can’t take more from you than I have already. I owe you too much.

No response. 

You: Rhiannon I’m sorry 

You: Come on, you can’t have scrubbed in that fast!

You sighed, staring at your screen and still seeing no response from your best friend. You took a deep breath in and immediately regretted it when you began coughing up a lung, but at least you weren't upchucking your dinner. Instead, you decided to send a text to Mark.

You: mark, you there? 

You close your mind for a moment, thinking that maybe going to bed even later than usual would just make you more sick in the end, but you really needed to know what was going on. 

Mark: yeah I'm here babe, what's wrong, can't sleep? 

You: no not really… do you have time to talk for a bit? 

Mark: yeah, my legs gave out during our first practice so I'm taking a break

You: I'm sorry

Mark: it's not your fault (Y/N) 

You: it kind of is, we're both dying because I can't afford to move 

Mark: (Y/N), we're not dying, and it's okay, you'll be able to move soon

You: face it you know that we are… I haven't felt this horrible in a long time and I've thrown up three times today 

Mark didn't respond right away. 

Mark: why are you putting yourself down so much 

You: I just… have a lot of regrets right now 

Mark: what do you mean

You licked your lips and rolled over in bed, wondering if you should tell him.

Mark: are you okay? 

You: no, I feel like this would make you hate me 

Mark: I could never hate you and you know that. Tell me what's been bothering you.

You: For the past while… Rhiannon’s been offering me money. It’s honestly not much because everyone’s struggling nowadays, but it would be enough for me to fly to Korea, and I’ve felt so guilty about it that I kept saying no and she stopped offering

Mark: You mean that you could have been here faster? You: and now I feel that saying no was a really bad idea… and I.. I can’t afford anything, barely even food and now I hear that you’re even more sick than I am and I feel terrible

You: I don’t know what to do

Mark: It’s okay, (Y/N), really. I know how hard it is to take money from someone else, I’m not mad at you

You: Really?

Mark: I’m just disappointed that I have to keep waiting. You’ll be able to move soon, I promise, I promise, I promise

You: Are you going to be okay

Mark: As long as you are. Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll be there for you the second you land. Okay?

You: Okay. I… I should probably get some sleep now. Mark: Rest well, I love you

You: I love you too 

You sighed, placing your phone on your desk and turning over in your bed. It was time.

[strangertheory]

If Byler doesn't happen how would you react? I would be dissapointed but not surprised at all. I hope I'm wrong though

Let's just say it all depends on how well-written the alternative narrative is.

The Duffer Brothers and the writing team are telling a very well-crafted story. I feel fairly confident in saying that I believe I will be very satisfied with whatever ending they create for the story as a whole.

I currently appreciate Byler the most because I see it as the most well-crafted subtextual romantic narrative in the series. The foundations for a wonderful coming-of-age romantic story arc are there.

All of the evidence is there if fans are willing to consider it with the same respect that they grant cishet pairings.

And therein lies the problem: heteronormativity.

Do you want my honest opinion?

Byler is, given current evidence, already subtextually canon to me. At its basic essence.

How would I react if Mike and Will weren’t understood to be together by the end of the series?

It depends on whether the writers can build an equally compelling narrative.

I hope that whatever they write in seasons 4 and 5 makes sense in the context of the thoughtful writing decisions that they’ve made in the first three seasons.

I'm still anxiously awaiting the next twists in the story. I'm not bored in my optimism. I'm most interested in how stories unfold, how characters work through the challenges they face, and what happens along the way. I am not necessarily as interested in the destination itself and therefore even if a writer decided to announce "guess what everyone, Mike and Will are going to be a couple eventually!" I would still have many more questions and I would want to watch their story play out.

But to return to your question: if the writers can spin an equally compelling and similarly well-developed conclusion to the seemingly intentionally foreshadowed tension in the dynamic between their characters thus far in the series then I’ll of course respect and appreciate it.

And, of course, although the online fan community seems to be very preoccupied with romantic subplots and "shipping" we should also remember that a meaningful story can be told with or without romance. But I do think there does seem to be something as-yet unspoken between Mike and Will that needs to be resolved and I hypothesize that the direction the writers might take is an eventual romantic plotline. I do think that Mike and Will eventually recognizing that they have mutual feelings for each other could be a very meaningful moment in the story.

[2ndblogg]

Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that’s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)  

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...

[chalantness]

fic: Here, On the Edge of Hell (6/6)

Rating: M Word Count: ~14,300 (part six) Characters: Steve/Natasha Summary: mafia au. She knows her father hadn’t been lying when he said that Uncle Howard wanted her to keep an eye on Steve, but if this was simply about protection, he wouldn’t have put her on the line at all. Especially not with all of the heat Steve Rogers is getting from the other Families, which means that her uncle has another reason for Natasha to be involved.

He just won’t tell her what it is.

Read On: [ ao3 ]

A/N: I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S FINALLY HERE! The last part of the mafia 'verse!!

I initially thought this was going to take me 1-1.5 months tops to finish, but in true Chanty fashion, it took twice that long... three months later, and we're finally at the end! I'm excited and a little nervous to get to the big reveals, and I'm warning you now that this is my first genuine attempt at writing action sequences of this kind, but I'm really happy of how this chapter and this whole story turned out and I hope you darlings are, too! I had so much fun with this 'verse, and it's definitely the closest of anything I've written to the kinds of stories I want to tell in my original works. If you liked this story overall (I know there was a lot of room for improvement!) then I think you may like the stories I've got in store as an author!

Thank you darlings for all of your support and enthusiasm!

“I must admit, I was beginning to doubt if I’d ever get the satisfaction of having a Rogers on his knees. Of course,” Anton muses, sliding both hands lazily into his pockets, “I’d always pictured it to be Joseph. Maybe Pietro. But I suppose you look enough like both of them to suffice.”

Steve clenches his jaw, eyes flickering to Wanda kneeling beside him in the middle of what seems to be an empty warehouse. Honestly, Steve wouldn’t be surprised if it’s exactly that. The restaurant he and Wanda had been about to pick up food from is near the harbor, and Steve knows that Howard Stark just bought a few shipment facilities in this area from a business going bankrupt. He mentioned they were about to break ground on this site, too, which means all of the buildings would’ve already been cleaned out and fenced off from the public, and since this place is going to be the new site for another Stark Industries building, it would make sense that Anton would have access to it.

“And you, my dear,” Anton continues, turning to Wanda, and Steve feels his entire body stiffen as Anton reaches down to grasp at Wanda’s throat, forcing her to tip her chin up to meet his stare. Her wrists are tied behind her back, probably just as tightly as Steve’s are, but her arms still wiggle as she struggles against the knot, twisting her body away from Anton as best as she can. “Unfortunately, I’ll have to get rid of you as well. If I thought you would actually stay quiet, I would’ve kept your pretty face for myself.”

Wanda narrows her eyes up at him in a glare. “I would have begged for you to kill me instead.”

“I thought you were smart enough not to show your hand.” Anton releases her throat with a shove, nearly knocking her over, and Steve grits his teeth together. “Since it seems worse than death for you, I might just change my mind. Kill your beloved brother in front of you then keep you out of sight for a while, just for my amusement.”

“I’m all for that plan,” Ivan chimes in, squatting down beside Wanda and brushing her hair from her face, glass shards from the shattered back windshield of the car still threaded through the wild strands. He grasps her chin with his fingers, flashing his teeth in a dangerous smile. “What do you think, princess? Should we have a little fun?”

“That’s enough,” Steve practically growls. “You’re not touching her.”

“Unless it’s over your dead body?” Anton guesses. “Because if that’s what you’re waiting for, it’s about to be arranged.”

“You’re not touching her, period,” Steve snaps, only barely keeping his voice from shaking, every muscle in his body going taut. He’s pissed. He’s fucking pissed, and he knows that Anton can see it in his eyes because there’s a fleeting flash of alarm in his eyes before he blinks, smug once more.

It doesn’t fool Steve, though. Anton might’ve taken his gun, and he might have Steve on his knees with his hands tied, but the man still feels threatened by him.

“You’re not in any position to be making threats,” Ivan spits out at Steve, practically sneering. “But what else would I expect? You Rogers feel like you own the fucking world. Howard barely even blinks in my direction all these years and yet, you step in and he serves his precious niece up to you on a silver platter, just because you’re Joseph’s boy.”

Steve curls his fists even tighter, somehow, almost tight enough that his fingernails practically break through his own skin. “Therein lies your problem,” Steve replies, and some small, selfish part of him relishes in the obvious annoyance flickering in Ivan’s expression at how calm his voice is, almost nonchalant. No doubt the guy thinks it only proves his belief that Steve feels like he’s entitled. “Maybe if you stopped treating women like playthings, he might start to consider you as someone worth acknowledging.”

Ivan half-shoves his hand away from Wanda, just as Anton had, and grabs the front of Steve’s shirt with his fist, hauling him onto his feet as he practically growls in his face.

Steve blinks back at him, jaw ticking, but he manages to keep his expression composed. Which of course only pisses Ivan off even more.

“You think you can just swoop in and take your daddy’s place on top?” Ivan demands. “You think you’ve got everyone fooled?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Steve hitches his mouth up ever so slightly in a smirk. “I think being head of the Family already speaks for itself. Not that you’d know what that kind of respect is like considering Howard barely considers you one of his soldiers.”

Ivan grits his teeth. “I’m the only one who isn’t too big of a coward to be scared off by Stark’s made up rules. That’s the real reason he doesn’t get in my way.”

“You’re a liability,” Steve counters. “You think my father is the only reason I get any respect? Your father is the only reason you haven’t been cut off.”

A growl rips of Ivan’s throat. “You little—”

“Calm down, boy!” Anton barks, yanking Ivan back by his jacket, and Ivan shoves Steve back before shrugging his father’s hand off of him, still gritting his teeth. “This is why you get sloppy. He’s trying to rile you up and you’re falling for it.”

Steve holds back a grunt of discomfort as his knees hit the ground again, his body very nearly swaying back from the force of Ivan’s shove, but he manages to catch his balance at the last second. Anton is in Ivan’s face now, his words coming out in a low hiss as he says something to Ivan under his breath, and Steve takes the moment of distraction to turn to Wanda once more. He hadn’t wanted to risk more than just a few quick glances, wanting to avoid drawing any more attention onto her. It’s already obvious to Anton and Ivan that the only real advantage they have over Steve is his sister, and likewise for Wanda, but actually showing that weakness is even worse.

He was worried that she might’ve been more banged up from the crash than he initially thought, and now that he has the time to look for any injuries, he notices a fresh scrape on her arm, probably from when Anton dragged her from the wreckage. But it isn’t bleeding, nor does it seem all that deep, so he won’t worry over it right now.

What does worry him, though, is the fact that Wanda is still squirming against her restraints. It’s subtle enough that Ivan and Anton probably won’t notice, but Steve does, and for a moment he thinks that maybe she’s in discomfort because of how tightly the rope could be knotted around her wrists—but then he catches a glimpse of something shifting behind her back. The slim, black metal is hidden by Wanda’s blouse at an awkward angle with the way her wrists are tied together, but he recognizes it in an instant.

Bucky’s knife.

... ...

The hotel that Yuri’s men take her to is one of the few in New York that her uncle hasn’t managed to buy out, which Natasha is willing to bet isn’t a coincidence on their part. That’s likely the only reason they were able to slip under the Family’s radar for so long, though the place itself is by no means modest, and Natasha isn’t surprised when they lead her onto the elevator reserved for the residential suites at the top. And he’d probably booked out the entire top floor, too, not simply for his men but for the sake of discretion as well – and, not for the first time, Natasha knows it’d been the right call to follow Yelena’s advice to not have Tony follow her when she was going to be grabbed.

Judging just from the number of men posted along the hallways on the way to the suite, Natasha knows her family would’ve been outgunned on their own, even with every capo and soldier available on such short notice. Having the entire Family and their men will give them the advantage.

Just as long as Natasha can hold out until they find her.

Yelena has barely glanced in her direction, her composed expression perfectly in place, and Natasha has been careful to keep her own gaze appropriately alarmed considering she was just coerced into the back of a van off of the street without any explanation. If she comes off too unaffected, they may realize that she’d been expecting this; but she can’t come off too affected, either, considering it would be just as suspicious for someone so high up in a mafia to act as if this is her first ever time in this kind of situation.

Which it isn’t, though both other times had been part of her plan, so it really didn’t matter how unaffected she appeared to be when she’d had the upper hand from the beginning. This time is far different, and if Natasha had any less of a poker face, she wouldn’t stand a chance at making Yuri believe she’s entirely in the dark.

Yelena produces a keycard from her pocket as they reach the double doors of the suite, unlocking them, and then two men draw them open from inside, revealing a large sitting room with wide, glass walls overlooking the city.

And, lounging on the couch in the center of the suite, is Yuri Petrovich.

Natasha had already known who he was before Yelena had explained their connection. He may live in a different country, but his mob has associates in New York, so the Family has always kept tabs on them. Even without that reason, her uncle would’ve insisted on it, anyway, simply because of their reputation.

And because of her, she realizes. Just as Yelena had said, whether or not Natasha truly is related to him isn’t relevant; the possibility of it alone would’ve been enough for her and her mother to be on their radar to begin with, and that would’ve been enough for Uncle Howard to view the threat of the Petrovich mob coming after them as real.

“Natasha,” he greets, his smile almost charming, and his men usher her further into the room as they close the doors behind her. “I’m glad that you can join us.”

Her lips curve into the ghosts of a smirk. “I couldn’t exactly decline the invitation.”

He waves her over with two fingers, and she takes a moment to let her gaze slide over the room. Partly to assess where his men are posted throughout the suite, a move he would’ve expected her to pull, but also to take note of where Yelena has come to stand behind the couch Yuri is seated on. Distant enough as to not draw suspicion yet close enough to have an advantage over him from behind, though it also puts her in everyone’s line of fire, so the chances of her actually being able to make the first move are slim.

Not without a distraction, at least.

Natasha walks around the couch opposite of Yuri, perching herself on the cushion, and he leans forward to grab a bottle of vodka out of a bucket of ice on the table. “Care to join me?” he asks, pouring the alcohol into two shot glasses. “I know it’s not a traditional drink to share for first meetings, but I have a feeling you and I have the same taste.”

She lets cautious curiosity flicker in her eyes when he looks at her. “That’s quite an assumption”

“Let’s just say, I recognize a kindred spirit when I see one,” he replies, sliding one of the glasses over, and she eyes him skeptically as she picks it up. “After all, we already have quite a lot in common.”

“Because I’m of Russian blood?” she asks. She knows it could be dangerous to try and coax the truth out of him like this, but the secretive, smug edge to his smirk only widens, his eyes flashing, and Natasha can tell that he finds her choice of words more ironic than suspicious. “If you know this about me, you’ll also know I was raised here.”

He hums, lifting his glass instead of replying, and Natasha tips her head back as he does to drain her shot. It’ll take more than this to get her drunk or even buzzed, but she still needs to be careful if he insists on more.

“I do know this,” Yuri finally answers, setting the vodka aside as he stares back at her. “I know quite a bit about you, in fact.”

“And I suppose the reason for that is why you’ve come all the way here to pay me a visit in person,” Natasha muses. “Or is this how you woo all the Russian girls?”

“Woo?” He shakes his head. “No, that would be rather inappropriate, though I don’t suppose Melina Stark has given you a clue as to why.”

Natasha allows her irritation to flit across her expression, her body stiffening in annoyance at his tone, though the satisfied curl of his lips tells her that she’s come off as alarmed as she’d intended. “If we have as much in common as you say, then you’ll know that as adept as I am at playing games, I don’t particularly enjoy them,” Natasha replies, letting her casual tone slip from her voice as she narrows ever so slightly. “I would hardly consider us kindred spirits simply because we’re both of Russian descent.”

Yuri raises his eyebrows slightly, almost seeming impressed by her bluntness. “Perhaps we don’t have everything in common, because I do enjoy a good game of watching others squirm. But since I admire your boldness, I’ll return it: our Russian descent isn’t all that we share, dear sister. We are blood by its very definition.”

She tilts her head, gauging his expression. It’s clear that he believes his words, just as Yelena had said, and she lets anger flit across her face. “And I should take your word?”

“If I had the time, I would’ve brought Melina here to tell you the story herself,” Yuri replies, his smirk widening as he lounges back against the couch. “But since she isn’t with us at the moment, I’ll give you the courtesy that she should’ve given you and tell you exactly why Melina Vostokoff fled to America on your father’s arm. Of course, if I’d been accused of having an affair with my best friend’s husband, I wouldn’t be too keen on sharing that story with my supposed daughter,” he adds with a shake of his head.

“An affair?” Natasha questions.

“I believe you’re intelligent, dear sister, and the talk of you within the underground of New York would support my belief,” Yuri muses. “I know you must have wondered what would’ve compelled your mother to marry a man who had been on vacation and leave her country on such an impulsive whim. Sure, it makes for quite a romantic story, but you know deep down that isn’t the truth.” Yuri leans forward again, his elbows resting on his knees as he holds Natasha’s stare, eyes flashing dangerously. “The reason that Melina acclimated so quickly to her husband’s lifestyle is because she was already familiar with it herself. It was a life she shared with her best friend Alia back in Russia.”

“Which is supposedly your mother,” Natasha guesses, keeping her voice dry and unamused. “Alia Petrovich.”

He flashes his teeth in a wide grin. “Formerly known as Natalia Romanov. Quite similar to your own name, isn’t it, Natasha?”

This time, Natasha’s surprise is genuine as she pulls back slightly. He reaches into his pocket, making Natasha’s body stiffen in alarm, but rather than a weapon, he produces a thin necklace and tosses it in her direction, and she catches it in her palm. The charm is a slim bar, engraved in script—her own name, she realizes.

“When my mother passed, this was found among her possessions. At first, I believed it was simply hers. Natasha is a variant of Natalia, after all.” He shakes his head, and there’s something in his voice, something in his eyes, that has Natasha nearly holding her breath. She isn’t simply feigning ignorance for his sake; she can feel her blood begin to hum in her veins, as if anticipating his next words. “But then I realized that it wasn’t meant for her. It was meant for you, my dear sister,” he tells her, and Natasha nearly risks a glance at Yelena, wanting to see if this is a surprise to her as well. Natasha is willing to bet that it is. “Melina never had an affair. Our mother was the one that did.”

... ...

Steve clenches and unclenches his jaw, careful to keep his anger in his expression even as he feels relief unfurl in his chest as Wanda finally slices through the knot around her wrists. She catches the rope in her fingers before it can go slack, hand closing tightly around the handle of the slim, black knife. The one that Ivan had evidently missed when he’d patted her down. Considering her arms have been drawn behind her back this whole time, Steve is guessing that she had the holster strapped under her blouse. Bucky’s knife is thin enough that it would have still been decently concealed despite the tapered fit of the material, but also, they’d been lucky that Ivan hadn’t done a thorough check.

He probably thought he hadn’t needed to; Wanda is as adept with a gun as the rest of the Family, but she isn’t typically armed.

It seems that Bucky has taken care of that himself.

“Enough,” Anton finally barks, shaking his head at Ivan before turning back to Steve. “Yet another example of how you Rogers have been a thorn in my side all these years.”

“Considering I didn’t even know who you were until a few months ago, it’s rather an impressive accomplishment to be under your skin for years,” Steve retorts. Anton may not be as reactive as Ivan, but Steve still knows how to piss Anton off. He’s pretty damn full of himself, and considering how long Joseph Rogers has known him, it’d be a definite bruise to Anton’s ego to know he hadn’t been worth mentioning, especially since Steve had already known most of the other Family members when he took his father’s place.

As long as Anton and Ivan are too focused on being pissed at Steve to notice that Wanda’s freed herself, all she’ll have to do is hold off until the right time.

Though Steve doesn’t know how easily that’ll come, if at all. It may just be Anton and Ivan inside the warehouse with them, but Steve knew he’d had a few men with him during the crash. Likely the handful of capos and soldiers loyal to him rather than to Howard, because there’s no way they’d go along with this kind of plan otherwise. It’d put their asses on the line, too, and Steve would hope that they’re sensible enough to know that both Anton and Ivan would throw them under the bus if Howard got wind of it.

Anton’s jaw ticks. “I’ve known you the least, but I’m pretty damn sure I’ll get the most enjoyment out of putting a bullet through your head.”

“Because I walked in and took the seat at the head of the Families that you’ve wanted all along?” Steve asks. “Or because I know you were the one stealing from Howard?”

It’s something Steve had a gut feeling about being true when it’d clicked into place in his mind, but the flash in Anton’s eyes is all the confirmation he needs. He manages to school his expression back into annoyance only a second later, but it’s more in vain than anything else. He knows Steve had caught his initial reaction.

And maybe that’s why he doesn’t completely deny it like Steve had still been expecting. “And what makes you say that?” Anton asks, still feigning annoyance.

“Howard is a cautious man when it comes to his legitimate businesses, and especially when it comes to Stark Industries,” Steve points out. “I can only imagine how much stricter he was when Stark Industries was getting off of the ground, and operating out of only one small building with a handful of employees should’ve meant he’d have no trouble keeping everything locked up tight. Not unless someone Howard trusted enough to give complete access without his monitoring was the one stealing,” Steve adds.

Anton’s eyes flash. “I’ve known Howard for years. He wouldn’t believe your word over mine.”

“He would if it made sense, which it does,” Steve counters. “Howard’s loyal, but not blindly loyal. And considering your son’s recklessness puts the Family’s ass in some kind of jeopardy almost every day, he’d have no problems cutting both of you out of the picture the second he gets a decent reason. Even if your secret dies with me, he’d still cut you off for trying to get rid of Pietro and Wanda, too.” This time Anton doesn’t attempt to hide his surprise, and in his peripheral, Steve catches his sister flinch, genuinely shocked.

Anton smirks, but the smugness from his eyes is gone. “Those incidents weren’t my doing,” he argues.

“Maybe not directly,” Steve counters. “It was an Asgard car spotted near both of those scenes at the time, and by every one of the Family’s busted deals and shipments, too. But if we dig just a little deeper, it’d be easy to find out that you and Ivan were the ones goading Hela into doing your dirty work.”

“She doesn’t need anyone to help fuel her crazy.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Steve agrees. “Which makes her a convenient person to pin the blame on, especially since the Family knows she has it out for my father. Dad was getting a lot closer to your secret. You knew he’d share his theories with his kids, too, so you needed a quick and permanent fix. Then my dad goes missing and you get your chance.”

Anton narrows his eyes. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” he questions, but there’s no real threat in his voice, and Steve knows his assumptions are right.

Before Steve can respond, though, Ivan snaps, “I’m getting sick of all this talking.” He draws his gun from the pocket inside his jacket, giving Steve a glimpse of his own gun hooked into Ivan’s holster at his hip. “Maybe we should test your theory of this secret dying with you,” he snarls. Steve simply blinks back at him, but then he catches Ivan’s gaze shift back to Wanda and Steve’s shoulders go rigid. Ivan smirks. “Or better yet, maybe we’ll start with your sister first. You won’t feel like such a smug ass then, huh?”

Ivan squats down and grasps Wanda by her neck, forcing her chin to tip up as he starts to dig his fingers into her throat—

And then a screech from outside. It’s muffled but unmistakable, and close. Maybe no more than a few dozen feet away.

Tires.

Ivan and Anton’s heads snap around toward the doors at the other end of the warehouse. “What the hell is that?” Ivan growls out, but Anton lets out a low hiss for him to shut up, one hand already reaching into his jacket for his gun as he takes a few steps closer, as if ready to head outside to check himself.

There are voices being raised from outside; the men Anton kept posted out there to keep watch start to shout over one another, their words muffled but the alarm ringing clear in their tones.

And then two harsh cracks rip through the air – gunshots – right before the sound of metal slamming together, colliding in a hard crash.

“Shit,” Ivan mutters, starting to get up, but then Wanda slips her arms out from behind her almost in a blink, knife in hand, and Ivan lets out a sudden groan as she thrusts the blade into him. He hisses, his hand going slack around his gun as he staggers back, and then Wanda is shoving him forward and sending him stumbling back into Anton as his weight knocks them both over. Another blink, and Wanda is lunging across the small distance, on her knees beside Steve and shoving him over as another shot goes off.

Steve groans, a jolt of pain shooting through his shoulder right before his side hits the ground, but he barely has a second to register it before Wanda is down on one knee in front of him, her body half-angled away from him just as Anton has gotten back onto his feet, lifting his gun to aim it in their direction.

For a fleeting second, Steve’s heart slams to stop against his ribcage—

And then Anton’s face twists into a sneer as he spits out, “You’re too much of a princess to pull that trigger,” at Wanda, and Steve’s eyes snap onto his sister. With the way he’d fallen and the way Wanda’s back is turned toward him, he hadn’t noticed the gun in her hand, pointed right back at Anton.

Ivan’s gun, Steve realizes. His gaze slides down and, sure enough, he finds Bucky’s knife still curled tightly in her other hand, only a little bit of blood actually smudged onto the blade from how quickly she’d pulled it out of Ivan’s chest.

“Go ahead, prove me right,” Anton goads. “You don’t have the balls to—”

He’s cut off as another crack rips through the air, and then he’s shouting, staggering down onto one knee, his gun falling from his hand and clattering onto the ground as he clutches at his shoulder with a hiss. Wanda shifts her body, arm swinging toward Ivan as he’s in the middle of staggering back up to his feet, and then another shot goes off and groans out, “fuck!” and clutches at his leg, his body hitting the ground once more. Wanda whirls back toward Steve, bending over him, and though the blade manages to nick his skin in her haste to slice the ropes from around his wrist, he barely notices. After getting grazed with one of Anton’s bullets, a little cut is hardly going to bother him.

Wanda is on her feet before Steve is, gun aimed at Anton once more as she gets her boot on his gun where it fell, sliding it back before he can attempt to retrieve it. Steve half-lunges across the small distance to Ivan, still clutching at his leg where Wanda shot him, and then Steve snatches his gun out of Ivan’s holster and aims it at him.

He turns his head, keeping Ivan in his peripheral as he looks at Wanda with his lips twitching at the corners. “Good aim.”

Wanda’s eyes twinkle. “I’m Clint’s best student for a reason,” she replies as the doors at the other end of the warehouse are thrown open, and then both of their gazes are whirling in that direction just as Bucky and Sam and a few officers burst through.

Steve very nearly slackens in relief, but he manages to keep his gun aimed at Ivan until one of the officers reaches him, producing a pair of handcuffs.

Wanda lowers her gun, too, just as Bucky reaches her, one hand reaching out to cup her cheek as his eyes dart over her almost wildly. A moment later, he exhales a breath, the tension ebbing from his body as he seems to confirm for himself that she isn’t hurt, and then he’s reaching down with his other hand to curl his fingers around hers where they’re still gripping the handle of the knife. His knife, stained with Ivan’s blood. His eyes glint. “Atta girl,” he murmurs, and then he’s drawing her close, slanting his lips over hers. Steve watches as Wanda’s body finally eases in relief, very nearly melting into Bucky as she sways forward, and he hooks an arm around her to keep them both steady.

Steve turns away to give them a moment, and then Sam is beside him, reaching up to touch the frayed line of his jacket where the bullet grazed him.

“Just a scratch?” Sam asks, one eyebrow arched as his lip hitches at the corner, and, despite everything, Steve breathes out a laugh.

“Barely a paper cut,” Steve returns, and Sam just shakes his head. “You guys got here pretty fast.”

Sam nods, gaze shifting onto Anton as two officers are snapping cuffs around his wrists and starting to lead him out of the warehouse. “We’ve had a tracker on Anton’s car for a few days now and we’ve been tailing him at a decent distance. The second it got cut off in the crash, our asses were on the move.”

Steve nods, but there’s something in Sam’s eyes that makes him pause. “What?” he asks, aware of the way Bucky and Wanda pull away from each other in his peripheral as Bucky tugs her closer to Steve’s side, his lips twitching into a grin.

“We’ve got something for you,” Bucky answers, nodding his head toward the doors.

Steve catches his sister’s curious gaze, exchanging a look before Bucky is gently urging her forward with a hand on the small of her back, and Steve follows the two of them out of the warehouse with Sam. There are already several patrol cars parked along the fence that’d been put up by the construction company, officers in the midst of loading Ivan and Anton and their men into the back seats, and what few pedestrians happen to be walking in the area are already starting to pause to try and see what’s happening.

It isn’t until Steve’s gaze finds a familiar car at the end of the fence, though, that he realizes why Sam and Bucky had been grinning so hard.

Dad.

... ...

Our mother.

Natasha’s fingers tighten around the necklace in her hand, so much so that she can feel the charm starting to dig into her palm, but she barely flinches. Her stare stays fixed on Yuri, searching his face for any small shift in his expression, any small twitch or tell that may give away the fact that he’s bluffing—but that smirk sits perfectly in place and the smug gleam in his eyes never wavers. Rationally, she knows that this doesn’t automatically mean he’s telling the truth. She has a pretty damn good poker face, too, and she can count on one hand the number of times someone had picked up on it when she was bluffing. Even then, they hadn’t been entirely sure if she was actually lying or not.

But she can feel her chest tightening, and her instinct tells her that something about his story makes sense.

She’s always found her parents’ story odd, and though Yelena’s explanation would’ve cleared a lot of it, Natasha knew something was still off. Something was missing. Why would her mother join a mob so that she, Joseph, and Alia could keep each other safe and yet sleep with the man her best friend married? The very same one she wanted to protect Alia from? And Natasha knows she looks like her father, like her Uncle Howard and Tony and Peter. It’s been said countless times that she has the Stark stamp to her.

Belatedly, her conversation with Steve comes back to her and how he apologized for getting upset when she hid “Sarah Rogers” from him. He told her he would’ve done the same thing, would’ve waited before telling Natasha something that could upset her because it was about her mother.

I just want to be sure, he told her.

This was what he’d been hesitant to tell her. Maybe he didn’t put together the exact truth, but he’d already suspected that her mother wasn’t her birth mother.

“I suppose you expect me to just take your word for it,” Natasha replies, managing to keep her voice steady despite the way her heart is starting to pound against her ribcage.

Yuri sits up a little straighter, lifting his eyebrows. “Perhaps I should have invited Melina to join us and tell you herself.”

Natasha lets out a light, almost nonchalant him in reply, even as her fist curls even tighter around the necklace still in her hand, and she knows she’s managed to catch him off guard by her lack of reaction to his threat because there’s a fleeting shift of uncertainty in his eyes. Then he blinks and that smug, knowing gleam is back in place.

“I’m surprised you didn’t consider it to begin with, after going through all this trouble to come here to convince me of the truth in person.” Natasha quirks an eyebrow at him. “Unless, of course, you have another reason for coming to an entirely different country to meet someone who could only supposedly be your family.”

He nearly bares his teeth in a dangerous grin. “You really don’t enjoy games, do you, dear sister?” he drawls. “It’s almost as if you’re trying to rush this along. Of course, if I were you, I would be eager to get to my date tonight as well. With Rogers, correct?” He reaches for the bottle of vodka again and then leans forward to retrieve Natasha’s shot glass, his eyes glinting as he catches her stare. “Like mother, like daughter, after all. I’m told that our mother was quite fond of Joseph Rogers. I’m sure I would’ve heard all about him if not for the way my father got particularly violent whenever Joseph Rogers was ever breathed. It’s quite tragic that he went missing a few months ago, isn’t it?”

Natasha studies his expression for a moment, and, possibly for the first time since he began speaking, she knows he’s bluffing.

His tone is suggestive, and threatening, wanting her to believe he’s in on the secret of how Joseph Rogers had gone missing, or maybe that he’d been involved somehow.

But he wouldn’t be here if he knew the truth. Even if he’s cold enough not to care about someone planning to kill his own father, Ivan dying while Yuri is overseas won’t make it easy for Yuri to take control of the mob if he makes it back to Russia. Not if there are already more than enough people that want him gone.

Maybe she doesn’t need to stall. Maybe she can distract him herself.

“Oh, you don’t expect me to believe that you listen to the rumors,” Natasha counters, letting her voice lilt in amusement—and, sure enough, there’s a flash of uncertainty in his eyes at her reaction. He slides her shot glass back over and she picks it up, letting a secretive smile curl at her lips. “But I will say this, your acting is quite convincing.”

She downs her shot without waiting for him to finish pouring his, licking her lips, and his jaw ticks. “And here I thought you don’t like playing games.”

Natasha tilts her head, arching an eyebrow. “And what game is it that you think I’m playing?”

Yuri smirks, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “I’m sure it doesn’t do well for your reputation that the head of the Families went missing at all, let alone for this long and without any leads,” he muses. “But there’s no need to keep up pretenses for me.” She simply hums as he sets the bottle of vodka down on the table between them, letting her lips curve into a smug, knowing smirk of her own, not so much as blinking when he holds her stare, and she can see exactly when he realizes that she may not be bluffing.

He blinks twice, working to keep his expression unaffected. “Alright. I’ll humor you, dear sister. If Joseph Rogers hasn’t been missing all this time, where is he?”

Natasha leans in closer to the table between them, nearly perched on the very edge of the couch. “Tell me, baby brother,” she starts, her smirk widening when she catches the way his jaw ticks, “why I should divulge that when you haven’t even admitted that you’ve come here to kill me. I’ve never even stepped foot in Russia and yet, I’m a threat to you, aren’t I?” She leans in even closer, catching the way Yelena draws closer to Yuri from behind, too, as is protective. “If it’s a choice between you and me, I’m the best bet. A mafia princess to the underground and a Stark princess to the world. I can offer them everything, but you and your father are nothing but liabilities they’re eager to cut out.”

A growl nearly rips from Yuri’s throat, his composure quickly slipping through his fingers. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”

“No,” she replies, her voice dropping to a low, staged whisper. “I only pretend to,” she says, glancing over his shoulder to catch Yelena’s gaze, and the woman gives her a barely discernable nod right before she has her gun up, firing two shots – one each for the two men standing at the doors of the suite.

Natasha doesn’t have to look back to check to see if they hit, nor does she have time to, because just as Yuri starts to turn around, Natasha’s hand wraps around the neck of the bottle of vodka and she’s swinging it hard, slamming it up into Yuri’s jaw with as much force as she can muster at such a close range.

Yuri keels over as Natasha is on her feet, twisting her body around as she flings the bottle toward the two men standing to her left. There are also two more men to her right that could have a chance to shoot at her, but as she gets a running start, she catches a glimpse of the two guys that’d been posted behind Yelena dropping to the floor as she whirls around, gun pointed, so Natasha doesn’t worry about what’s behind her as she sprints forward, dropping to the ground right as one of them manages to get their gun up. He gets a shot off, but Natasha is already sliding across the carpet, swiping her legs under the other guy – the one already staggering back from being hit with the bottle of vodka – before spinning back around and onto her feet, and then she grabs the other guy by his jacket, yanking him down and sending his head cracking against her knee.

She swipes one of their guns out of their hands and whirls around, aiming it at where Yuri had been in the same second that Yelena does—

But Yuri is already up and over the couch and bounding out the suite, the doors slamming closed behind him, and Yelena exhales a curse under her breath as she lowers her gun and catches Natasha’s gaze.

“As soon as he caught me, he knew he’d be outnumbered when it came down to the three of us,” Yelena tells her. “But if the others are still in the hallway when we leave this suite, we’ll be outnumbered. If even half of the men stayed, that’s too much heat for us to take, and there’s no other way out of this suite.”

“Well, if he makes it out of this hotel, he’ll come after both of us and my family, too,” Natasha counters.

Yelena rubs her lips together, considering this for a moment, and then she swears under her breath again. “Let’s go,” she says, and Natasha swallows lightly, crossing the room and meeting Yelena at the door. “Any plan?” she asks.

Despite herself, Natasha lets out a humorless laugh. “Try not to die?”

Yelena nearly cracks a smile. “Your plan sucks,” she retorts, and then they’re both tugging at the handles, throwing the doors open and stepping into the hallway, and Natasha whirls around to stand with her back to Yelena’s as she points her gun at—

“Mom,” Natasha breathes out, her heart nearly slamming to a stop against her ribcage as she lowers her gun. Her mother lowers her gun, too, and her composed expression dissolves into relief. Natasha’s eyes flit over her shoulder and down the hallway, her father already lowering his own gun as he makes his way over to them, and then, right in front of the door to the stairwell, Uncle Howard and Nick Fury are watching as Thor and Odin are shoving someone over the threshold and maneuvering him down the stairs.

Yuri.

Natasha nearly sways back on her feet as she feels the relief flood through her, her eyes shifting back to her mother. “You got him?” she asks, even though she already knows the answer. She still wants to hear it, though.

“Yes,” her mother tells her, her voice soft. “If you had waited a few more minutes, we would’ve saved you from all the excitement.”

“She wouldn’t be our daughter if she preferred less excitement,” her father quips, coming to stand beside them. Natasha exhales a sharp, breathy sort of laugh as her mother reaches for her, drawing her close—and though she and her parents have never been the kind to prefer hugs, it’s almost instant, the way she melts into the embrace.

... ...

Wanda must’ve seen their father a split second before Steve had, because just as Steve’s mind is starting to catch up to the fact that that’s him – that his father is here, after being gone for so months – Wanda lets out a shaky, sharp, breathy sound, and then she starts running, quickly crossing the distance to the gate at the corner of the fence as their father gets it open. She throws herself at him in a hug that quite literally knocks him back a few steps, but his arms go around her, too, as his deep laugh fills the air.

Steve takes his time making his way over, feeling himself smile as he watches his father brushes a kiss to Wanda’s hair, murmuring something to her that makes her giggle and press her face into his shoulder. Then his eyes shift, watching through the fence as Pietro gets out of their father’s car and starts heading toward their father and sister. He catches Steve’s gaze, lifting his hand in a wave, and Steve’s smile widens, relieved his brother doesn’t seem any worse for wear considering he just got out of the hospital.

“Bet you didn’t see this coming!” Pietro calls out, and their father lifts his head, his eyes wrinkling into a brighter smile when they land on Steve.

Wanda turns to look over her shoulder at him, too, her eyelashes dotted with tears she hasn’t quite shed yet. His sister’s smile is small and shaky, but beautiful and relieved and so fucking happy, and then she steps back from their father, practically ducking under his arm to squeeze Pietro in a hug the second he’s within her reach.

“Steve,” his father greets, his voice low and gruff. The two of them had never been particularly affectionate with each other, not in the same way his siblings are, but it was never something Steve held any resentment towards him for. His father raised the twins mostly on his own, while Steve didn’t even meet his father until after high school, and anytime they’ve spent together since then, they’ve had the twins as a buffer. He and his father are closer now, but there had still been some lingering space between them.

Still, somehow Steve isn’t all that surprised when his father doesn’t hesitate to grasp at Steve’s shoulder, pulling him in for a hug as well.

Steve blinks, his chest tightening, but he doesn’t miss a beat in returning his father’s embrace. It doesn’t linger quite as long as his hug with Wanda had, but his father still gives him one last sort of squeeze before pulling away, one hand still lingering on Steve’s shoulder.

And this time, Steve is surprised when he catches the cracks in his father’s usually nonchalant expression. Considering who the man is, Steve had always seen his father as formidable and unyielding. Sure, Steve knew firsthand that the man had a soft side for his children, but for the most part, his composure never wavered.

“Welcome home,” Steve tells him, his voice a little rough. “How was your trip?”

His father’s eyes glint. “Good,” he answers simply, and it should be strange, how that one word seems to make the air shift. He turns to Wanda and Pietro as Wanda blinks up at him, her eyes wide and glimmering. “It was really good,” he tells them, the meaning clear in his tone. “But I much prefer to be home.”

“I take it that means you don’t have plans to be anywhere else anytime soon?” Steve asks.

His father squeezes his shoulder firmly, his lips hitching up into a wider smile—and, for a fleeting second, Steve almost sees his own face smiling back at him, making his chest squeeze in a way he hasn’t felt since his mother had passed.

“No,” his father promises, shaking his head once. “I’m right where I need to be.”

“Well, if you ever did decide to take another vacation,” Pietro chimes in, his lips spreading into a wide grin as he glances at Steve, “we can hold down the fort.”

Wanda breathes out a laugh, her smile bright, proud, and when Steve catches his father’s stare once more, he sees the same emotion reflected in his eyes. “I’ve always known that,” he says, and Steve feels his chest squeeze again, his own smile widening because he’s starting to realize that maybe he always had, too.

... ...

Her uncle stays behind at the hotel to handle things with Nick and Odin, and though Uncle Howard asks Natasha if she wants to have a say in what they do with Yuri and his men, she promises her uncle that she won’t come up with something nearly as creative as he can. Besides, she knows that the Family likes to take their time in dealing with anyone that’s threatened one of their own, and Natasha doesn’t want to waste another ounce of her energy on Yuri if she can help it. And she’s willing to bet it will drive him crazy to be told that he’d gone through all of this effort to come after her himself when she doesn’t even want to be there to watch while the Family has their fun with him.

“I know today has been exciting and all, so I thought I’d make one of your favorites,” her father says, and it’s almost instant, the grin that pulls at Natasha’s lips when he slides over a double shot of vodka poured into a wine glass. Part of her wonders if she should find the choice of alcohol ironic, all things considered, but as she picks up the glass, swirling it around as if it were actually wine, she doesn’t think of sharing shots of vodka with Yuri in that hotel suite. Instead, she thinks about the first ever time her father had poured her vodka in a wine glass just like this, when she first moved into this apartment out of college and her parents had come over to help her get settled in.

He’d joked about it being a celebration of both of her heritages, when in reality, they simply hadn’t wanted to open every box until they found her shot glasses.

“How sentimental,” her mother notes, amusement pulling at her own smile.

Her father tips his head, considering this. “I have my moments,” he admits, reaching into his pocket, and Natasha watches as he pulls out the thin, silver necklace that she’d held earlier that night, setting it carefully on the kitchen island between them, his expression softening.

Melina picks it up gently, threading the chain through her fingers and lifting it to let the engraved bar dangle for her to read.

Natasha watches her mother, remembering the way she and Alia—Natalia—had looked in that photograph she and Steve had found among his father’s things. It had to have been taken after Joseph Rogers, Alia, and her mother had joined the mob since Alexi was in the photo, too, and yet, Alia looked content. She looked happy because she was with the people she loved most, and that was enough to make her feel as carefree as she’d looked in that photo, even if her life had been anything but that because of Ivan.

“Is there any truth to that?” Natasha asks gently, nodding at the necklace in her mother’s hand, though it’s not really a question. The expression on both of her parents’ faces is more than enough proof.

Her mother catches her gaze, her smile soft. “Yes,” she answers simply, reaching over to tuck some of Natasha’s hair behind her ear. “You’re my last piece of her.”

Natasha feels something warm tug at her chest, and then she turns to her father. “How did you all meet?”

“Because of Joseph,” her father replies. Natasha lifts her eyebrows slightly in surprise; she hadn’t expected that. “By now, I assume you and Steve both know the truth about him and Alia and your mother?” her father asks.

She nods, glancing at her mother. “We found an old picture of you with some of his things.”

Her mother’s smile widens just a little as she sets the necklace back down, untangling the chain from her fingers. “The three of us had known each other since childhood,” her mother explains. “Alia had the biggest heart and wore it on her sleeve, but that was a dangerous thing in our world. Ivan wanted her the moment he saw her, but it was clear to everyone that Joseph and I were the only ones she cared for. She always blamed herself for Ivan wanting to get rid of Joseph, and she was never the same after he left.”

“Joseph was the reason your uncle and I went to Russia in the first place,” her father adds. “He couldn��t risk going back, but when Howard and Maria were having problems and needed space, Joseph asked Howard and I to go to Russia just to check on his old friends. He never stopped worrying about them, but also, he could tell that Howard needed some objective to keep his mind busy.” Her father’s eyes shift to her mother’s, his lips quirking. “Your mother was actually the one to introduce me to Alia,” he says.

Natasha turns to her mother, her own amusement tugging at her lips. “Really?”

Her mother chuckles. “He and your uncle didn’t quite do a good job at hiding how they studied us at the bar,” her mother tells her. “I didn’t know at the time it was because of Joseph. I just knew that Alia had been having a particularly hard time lately and could use a charming stranger to comfort her.”

“We actually left Russia shortly after, but your mother tracked us down when Alia found out she was pregnant,” her father continues. “She hadn’t been engaged to Ivan by then, and your uncle and I snuck the two of them away. But Ivan was far too possessive to let Alia go, and Howard and I hadn’t been prepared to handle this kind of threat away from home.” His eyebrows furrow, the frustration of the memory flashing in his eyes. “Alexi was able to warn us that Ivan finally found her after Alia had given birth.”

“She wanted your father to take you to keep you safe.” Her mother gives her a small, wry sort of smile. “She wanted me to go with him. Ivan only wanted her. He stopped searching for Joseph because he was no longer in his way, and he wouldn’t care if I was gone, either. If she had come with us, he would’ve stopped at nothing to find her and drag her back. She didn’t want to put anyone through that, and she absolutely didn’t want you to be raised like that, always on the run, hiding. She begged us to save you.”

“The moment we brought you home, Joseph recognized her in your face,” her father says, voice soft. “Everyone says how much you look like me, but you look like her, too. You just have to know where to find it.”

Natasha feels herself smile, feels a warmth fluttering in her chest as she thinks back to the photograph they’d found among Joseph’s things. It’s a little odd to think that she hadn’t recognized her own face in Alia, even when Alia had been so much younger in that picture, but part of her liked that it hadn’t been something so obvious. Her likeness to her birth mother, just like the secret itself, was something you have to know to see—something that makes a difference but doesn’t change everything about Natasha’s life.

It doesn’t change who her mother is. It simply gives her another woman to admire.

“I wish I could’ve met her,” Natasha says quietly, and her father comes around the island, cups the back of Natasha’s neck as he brushes a kiss to her forehead.

He doesn’t say the words – neither of her parents do – but Natasha knows the feeling is mutual. She also knows that there wouldn’t have been a way for that to happen, even if Alia was still alive. Not as long as Ivan was alive, too.

A knock at the door makes her father draw away slightly, glancing at Natasha, and, despite everything, she feels her lips twitch in a grin. The only people other than her parents who have ever had her codes to the apartment before are Uncle Howard and Tony, and neither of them would’ve let themselves in at the lobby only to knock on her front door. Then her father blinks, amusement glinting in his eyes as he realizes who it could be, and she rubs her lips together to fight off a smile as he goes to answer it.

And no, she’s not at all surprised when Steve is in her kitchen a moment later, his gaze finding hers within seconds.

“Nat,” he breathes as he crosses the distance to her in a few steps, cupping her face with his hands as his eyes flit over her, checking for himself to see that she’s alright.

Then he exhales a sharp breath, his body easing in relief, and Natasha feels herself smiling as he slants his mouth over hers. The kiss is hard and deep in an instant, and she almost feels herself swaying back atop the barstool with the force of it. He sucks on her bottom lip, thumbs brushing over her cheeks, down the line of her jaw, drawing a soft noise from her throat, and then she hears someone (likely her father) clearing their throat. Steve chuckles as he eases his lips off of hers, parting their kiss and pulling back.

“I’m alright,” she reassures softly, reaching up to wrap her hands around his wrists, giving him a gentle squeeze as if in emphasis.

Over his shoulder, she catches her mother getting up from her barstool, walking toward the threshold of the kitchen – and that’s when she notices Joseph Rogers filling the doorway, reaching for her mother and pulling her into his arms in a hug.

Natasha feels her chest flutter, the warmth of relief at seeing Joseph Rogers alive and home mixing with the bittersweet twinge of knowing what he and her mother are offering each other comfort for. Natasha’s throat tightens a little, her chest tightening, and then Steve is stroking his thumbs over her cheeks in slow, soothing strokes, and her eyes flit up to his. She doesn’t have to ask to know that his father must’ve filled him in on the truth of her and Alia because she can see it in his eyes, just as she knows that the empathy there isn’t just for her. It’s for his father and for her parents, and for Alia, for the hope that they could’ve reunited one day, no matter how slim the chance.

“Come here,” Steve murmurs, pulling his hands from her face so he can wrap his arms around her, drawing her close—and she doesn’t quite realize how overwhelmed she is until her eyes are closed and her face is pressed against his chest, blocking everything else out other than his steady breaths and the soothing circles he rubs over her back.

... ...

It’s late by the time they make it back to his place, but he’s still wide awake as he lays next to Nat in bed. She’d come back with him rather than the two of them crashing at her apartment since they were already there, and he knows it’s because she wanted him to be close to Pietro, just in case. His brother is supposed to be watched for the next few days, anyway, and since Wanda and Pietro had already taken to sleeping at his brownstone rather than their own apartments for the last few days, Steve doesn’t see a point in switching things up. It’s hardly a bother to have them under his roof, and after having the place all to himself for so long, he likes that it feels less empty these days.

He starts to slip out of bed when he feels Natasha reach for him, her fingers curling around his forearm as he’s sitting up, and he smiles down at her in the dark. Even though he’s not tired, he knows she is, because she’d passed out almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Still, part of him had expected her to wake up as soon as he moved.

She’s always been attuned to him like that.

“I’m just going to drink something warm to help me sleep,” he tells her softly, leaning over to brush his lips to her cheek, running a hand over her side through the duvet.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asks, her voice heavy and a little raspy with sleep, and he feels his smile widen as he peers down at her in the dark. She’s practically still half asleep, but he’s not surprised at all that she still offers to get up with him. He knows she had quite a day, but she knows he did, too.

“No, it’s okay,” he reassures, sliding his lips lower, pressing a kiss to the spot along her jaw that always, always makes her shiver, and she makes this little noise from the back of her throat. “Sleep,” he murmurs against her skin, and she chuckles softly, barely above a whisper, as she curls into herself a little more and hums in reply.

He clicks his door shut softly behind him when he steps out into the hallway, quietly padding past Wanda and Pietro’s doors as he heads downstairs. He can see that the kitchen light is already on, which likely means his father is still up, and, sure enough, Steve finds him sitting at the kitchen island with a mug of tea sitting on the counter in front of him. His father has his head bent over his phone in front of him, but considering the screen is off when he lifts his head to look at Steve, he was probably just lost in thought. Steve doesn’t blame him. It’s probably the reason the man is up at all, just as Steve is, which is likely why his father doesn’t seem surprised to see him up, too.

The kettle is still hot when Steve picks it up, so he pours some in a mug and grabs a packet of chamomile tea from the box that Wanda keeps stocked in his pantry.

“So, you and Nat, huh?” his father asks once Steve is sitting in the barstool next to his, and a laugh bursts from Steve as he tears at the packet, dunking the tea bag into his mug. His father chuckles, too, shaking his head a little at himself, and maybe also at the strangeness of the moment. Not because it’s the two of them talking alone, when that hasn’t really happened much before, but because, out of all the things he could’ve asked about after the last few hours – hell, after the last few months – this is what he picks.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and maybe he should feel like an idiot for smiling so widely, but he honestly doesn’t care and he knows his father doesn’t, either.

In fact, his father’s mouth hitches as his smile widens a little, too. But his eyes soften a little as he asks, “How’s she holding up?”

Steve pauses as he considers this, toying with the string of the tea bag hanging over the rim of his mug. He thinks about the way Natasha had held onto him in her kitchen when he’d pulled her against his chest, squeezing him close but yet not quite clinging to him, either. “I think maybe it hasn’t entirely hit her just yet,” he admits, because he thinks that’s the truth. She hadn’t seemed particularly shocked when they had dinner at her apartment with their parents; she simply seemed tired, and maybe a little distracted, like she couldn’t help her thoughts pulling her away from the conversation every now and then. “But I don’t think her entire world has been knocked out of place.”

His father nods at this. Considering he’s known Natasha her whole life, he’d probably know how to interpret her reactions pretty damn well, too.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it would be,” his father tells him, rubbing a hand over his hair. “But we didn’t want to minimize how big of a secret it was to keep from her, either.”

We. As in, him and Melina and Edward, maybe even Howard and Maria, too, since Steve doubts Howard would’ve kept this from his wife this entire time.

“Why did you and Melina pretend not to have known each other from before?” Steve asks. It’s not an accusation, and he knows his father won’t take it as one, and though Steve already has an idea of the answer, he figures he might as well ask, anyway, now that all of this is out in the open.

“I think it was instinct, mostly.” His father’s smile turns a little wry as he looks at Steve. “We’d gotten pretty good at downplaying how close we were with each other and with Alia back in Russia, even before Ivan started actively threatening me. When Edward brought her to New York and I saw her again after all those years, it was like a reflex. I’d missed her—missed both of them—but there really wouldn’t be a reason for me to have known a woman who’d never stepped foot in the States before. The Family knew I was adopted, but not from where. Your grandparents kept it under lock and key because Ivan was on a manhunt, and even after he’d stopped, we didn’t want to risk any slip ups.”

Steve nods at this. “Did you ever plan on telling her, or any of us?”

“We debated on it for years,” his father admits with an exhale. “It made sense not to when you were all younger, but there were several times later on that could’ve been right that we just didn’t say anything. I don’t think it was any one thing or any one reason. But it was more about how we felt about it and about bringing it up. You all had the right to know the truth, especially when it could’ve put you in danger, just like Natasha had been today. That’s on us,” his father adds, swallowing roughly with a shake of his head.

“Dad,” Steve says, his voice low and a little rough, too. “It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault.”

He’s not just saying that to comfort his father, but because Steve genuinely believes it. Yeah, his father had a point; if he’d never sent Yelena to warn them before Yuri got to New York, they wouldn’t have had an edge over him.

But the truth had come out when they needed it, not when it was too late to help anyone, and it was so much more than just keeping Natasha’s birth mother or keeping his father’s past a secret from their own children. His father had to flee the only home and the only family he’d ever known at only thirteen because a man almost twice his age was threatened by his friendship with the girl he wanted, and Melina had to leave her best friend behind, knowing she would’ve likely been dead once Ivan found her. And it wasn’t just that, either. Melina must’ve been terrified of what Ivan would do to Alia for running in the first place, but Alia begged her to keep her daughter safe, and so Melina honored her plea. Even Edward, who had only known Alia for a short while, had to have been affected at leaving the mother of his child behind right after she’d given birth.

If telling the truth meant having to relive those memories, Steve would’ve been incredibly hesitant of it, too. That’s not something he or Nat, or Wanda or Pietro, would hold against their parents.

“Your mother knew, though,” his father adds after a moment, and Steve feels his heart trip in his chest as he stares back at his father. “She was the first to meet Melina.”

Steve feels his eyebrows furrow at this. He’s a few years older than Natasha, but not by much, which meant… “I thought you’d stopped seeing me and Mom by then?”

His father nods. “I had. We thought it would be safer, not just because of the Family, but also because I never knew for sure if Ivan was still looking for me. I also knew it was a lot for your mother to take in general, even if she’d never say it. She never would’ve asked to keep you away from me, but I knew she needed it to be that way, at least for a little while.” He rubs his lips together, looking Steve in the eyes as he adds, “I know that wasn’t a choice I should’ve made for her, for you. And to this day, I still wonder if it was the wrong one. I knew your mother was a tough person, tougher than both of us, but maybe I’d underestimated what she was willing to bear for me,” he admits quietly.

Steve doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until it comes out in a sharp exhale. “You thought she wouldn’t want to handle this life?” Steve asks.

His father rubs at his jaw, seeming to contemplate this. “I wondered a lot of things. Your mother was too good for this world from the beginning, but she’d also known who I was when we met. She’d chosen to trust me, and I respected her and her choice. I loved her. But I knew it all bothered her to some extent, especially when you came along.”

Steve swallows lightly. He’d like to believe his mother could’ve handled anything, but he also knows firsthand that this world is a lot at first glance. It’s still a lot once you’re on the inside, too, but his mother had been young and had her child to think of. She genuinely loved his father, but that didn’t mean she had to love his lifestyle, too.

And he knows his mother. If she let his father convince her that keeping Steve and herself from him and the Family was for the best, it was because part of her had believed it, too. If she wanted to raise Steve in this lifestyle for whatever reason that may have been, she would’ve fought her father like hell to stay and she would’ve won, too.

Like he said: she was tougher than both of them.

“How did she meet Melina, then?” Steve asks after a moment, already feeling a smile tug at his lips. He knows without a doubt his mother probably loved Melina.

She would’ve loved Natasha, too.

“By pure chance, actually,” his father answers, his own smile widening, too, as he glances down into his tea at the memory. “Your mother recognized Melina from the photograph I had and knew of her from the stories I told her, and we happened to run into each other in Brooklyn. It was the one and only time your mother and I had approached each other since we agreed to keep our distance. And they loved each other, of course, but I knew they would. You’d think they were the childhood friends.”

Steve chuckles at this, feeling a warmth squeeze at his chest. Somehow, he could almost picture the memory perfectly.

“Your mother and Alia would’ve loved each other, too,” his father adds, his smile softening as Steve stares back at him. “And Alia would’ve loved you.”

Steve reaches over, placing a hand on his father’s shoulder, and his father lifts his hand to grip Steve’s. “I would’ve loved her, too,” Steve says, giving him a squeeze, and his father lets out a breathy laugh as he nods.

... ...

She can feel Steve’s hand at her hip, his fingers calloused yet gentle and teasing as they toy with the hem of his shirt on her. Natasha had rolled onto her back sometime during the night, her shoulder practically pressing against Steve’s chest, and she feels her lips pull into a soft smile as he inches her shirt higher up her body, making her stomach flutter just under his palm when he splays his fingers over her skin. Then he dips his head to press a kiss to her cheek, her jaw, the column of her neck, feeling her pulse thrum under his lips, and she makes a soft noise when he hand dips down, fingers slipping under the waistband of her panties and pulling them down over one hip.

“Steve,” she breathes, feeling his mouth curve into a grin against her collarbone, and then his fingers hook under the other side of her panties, too, pulling them down her legs and then off entirely.

“Good morning,” he says into her skin, and she feels her smile widen, feels him nudge her legs open as his body slides down hers. He pushes her shirt up a little higher, kisses over one of her ribs, brushes his lips against an old scar on her other hip, and then his face is pressed against the inside of one of her thighs, lips quirking into a smile.

Her eyelashes flutter open as she lifts herself up on her elbows, glancing down to where Steve is settled between her legs, pressing one into the mattress as he pulls the other over his shoulders. She can already feel her breaths coming in a little shorter and shallower, feel her heart beating a little faster, even as a slow, almost lazy sort of smirk pulls at her lips as she meets his gaze. His mouth is hitched in that crooked, boyish sort of smile she’s come to love, but there’s nothing teasing about the heavy look in his eyes.

Under the darkening arousal, she can see the pure adoration in his gaze, reflecting her own. She knows, realistically, it’s only been a few days—but she can’t really remember what it was like to wake up without Steve beside her, to fall asleep to his large, warm body curling over hers, and she doesn’t want to remember, either.

“Good morning,” she breathes, reaching down to cup his jaw, rubbing her thumb against the corner of his mouth as it widens just a little more.

Then he’s dipping down, licking into where she’s warm and already a little wet for him, and she sucks in a breath, trapping it in her chest as her eyelashes flutter. She keeps her hand on his jaw, rubbing the budding stubble there, feeling it flex with every pass of his tongue against her, every little groan and lick and nibble, and it almost makes it feel heightened, somehow. She’s not quite holding onto him, but still, it feels as if he presses in closer at the exact moment her fingers twitch to drag him in, feels as if his licks linger when his tongue slides over a particularly sensitive spot that has her hand trembling to twist into his hair. She keeps her gaze on him as her vision grows blurry and her eyelids grow heavy, and then his eyes lick up to hers, sucking at her little bundle of nerves, and her head almost falls back as her body gently arches off of the bed.

He sucks at it again, her elbow nearly sliding out from under her, and then his tongue dips down and into her, and her lips part in a soft moan. And then his lips slide back up before she can find a rhythm, teasing her, tongue flicking against her hard bud right before he sucks it again, and she twists her neck to press her face into the pillow.

Again, and again, and again he works his mouth over her, groaning with her every little shift, sending delicious vibrations everywhere as she arches and rolls her hips—

And she doesn’t know if this morning feels different because of what happened yesterday, or if they feel different, but already it feels like too much, too fast, and she practically smothers herself with his pillow to muffle her voice as she bursts apart at the seams. White-hot pleasure crashes over her, rushing through her as he holds her to him, and she twists one hand into his sheets, the other braced against his headboard as she rides out her high and he coaxes every last drop of it out of her with a long groan.

Then he eases his mouth off of her, sliding his hands gently up and down her thighs, over her hips, almost soothing her as she shudders delicately from the pleasure. He kisses up her flushed skin, his lips brushing against almost every inch of it along the way, letting her catch her breath as he settles back over her.

He presses his face into her neck as she wraps her arms around his torso, kissing her there, too, and she lightly digs her nails into the muscles in his back.

“Good morning,” he says again, drawing a breathy chuckle from her that quickly dissolves into moan as she feels him between their bodies, hard and pressing right against her little bundle of nerves. His hand curves over her hip, gripping as he presses at her entrance, and then her body arches as best as it can under his as he slides in. She sinks her nails into his back a little harder as he sinks into her a little deeper, pausing as he slips all the way, and then his other hand is braced against the mattress, his mouth slanting over hers as he starts to move, and she very nearly whimpers into the kiss as he sweeps his tongue into her mouth at the same second he snaps his hips harder against hers.

They try to be slow at first, to savor it, but within seconds their kiss quickens, and then so do their bodies as they move against each other. Her chest squeezes, her lungs starting to sting just a little bit because she needs to take a breath, but she doesn’t pull away, not yet.

Not until a few moments later, when her second orgasm bursts through her, almost taking her by surprise as she twists her lips away from his to suck in a shaky breath. Pleasure rushes through her again, a little harder and a little faster now, her lips parting in a moan that seems trapped in her chest as she shudders under the white-hot waves crashing over her. He kisses her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, groaning words into her skin that she can’t quite hear over the blood pounding in her ears, but then she feels his body growing taut above hers, his hips growing more urgent, until he stiffens and buries his face into her neck, teeth sinking into her skin as his groans out in his release.

It’s a long, few moments before Natasha feels her breaths finally start to even out, feels his body finally start to ease above her, and then his tongue darts out, licking at the indent of his teeth in her skin before he lifts his head to peer down at her.

“A girl could get used to a wake-up call like that,” she breathes out, and even though her voice is light and teasing, she knows there’s something more in her own words.

And she knows that Steve can hear it, too, because the warmth fluttering in her chest is reflected in his eyes as he smiles down at her. He replies with a teasing, “I’ll keep that in mind,” but she can hear the promise in his voice, and she’s smiling when he dips his head down to kiss her.

... ...

“Hey, soldier,” a voice whispers in his ear, warm and teasing, and Steve feels his lips twitch into a grin as Natasha slides onto the stool beside his, setting an empty glass on the bar counter. He spins his barstool to face her, rubs his lips together in vain to hide his amusement, but even if he could manage a poker face around Nat, she’d still see it in his eyes that he doesn’t find her new little joke as annoying as he sometimes pretends. Somehow, she’d decided that his father being back to take over as head of the Family meant that Steve was no more than a soldier now, or less, considering he wasn’t technically a “made” man, and honestly? Steve is far more amused by how much delight Natasha takes in her own joke than the actual joke itself. “Can I buy a man a drink?” she asks, setting her hands atop his knees to lean in and brush a kiss to his lips.

“The drinks are free,” Steve points out, arching an eyebrow, and Natasha smirks, her eyes bright with amusement.

He remembers how she’d had that same twinkle in her eyes when they first met right in this restaurant, almost at this very spot at the bar just a few months ago. The place had been closed that day, too, though rather than catching it between the lunch and dinner rush, the restaurant is closed for the rest of the night.

And technically speaking, it’s closed for them, though Steve is starting to realize that the Family will find any and every excuse to gather together and celebrate.

“Shouldn’t you two be over there?” Pietro chimes in from behind the bar, pouring more water into Natasha’s empty glass before gesturing at the dining room filled with the rest of the Family, loud with excited chatter and the sound of the kids screaming. “Of course, if Howard is retelling how he kicked Anton’s ass, I’d be hiding here, too.”

Steve breathes out a laugh. Over a month later and both Howard and Tony still manage to bring up the story of officially kicking Anton and Ivan out of the state—hell, damn near out of the country—but then again, considering Anton had been a fundamental part of Stark Industries from the ground up, Steve doubts Howard will get over it anytime soon, or ever. Even if Howard had only really tolerated Anton these last few years, knowing that he had been betrayed for so long was a hard thing to get over. Howard may be more pissed than anything else right now, but some part of him is upset, too, just as Odin and Frigga must have been upset that Hela had been behind all the ambushes.

Steve half-expected Odin to argue against banning Hela from New York, but he had practically demanded to do it himself. Odin had been furious with his daughter, but at the end of the day, she’s still his daughter, and it’s probably easier for Odin to focus on her betrayal and her recklessness more than anything else.

“It’s a good story,” Sam comments, dropping into the stool on the other side of Nat, pulling Maria between his knees as she sips on the tumbler of rum in her hand.

“You only like it because you’re in it,” Maria retorts, and Sam hides his grin against her shoulder as she rolls her eyes, her lips twitching at the corners in a smirk. “Although, it does make for quite a tale. Two cops joining in on an old-fashioned mafia shakedown and chase? I still say you should let me publish an anonymous article on it.”

Sam just chuckles, knowing there’s no genuine threat behind her words, and then something catches his eye that makes him sit up a little straighter, flashing his teeth in a smile as he asks, “And where might you two be coming from?”

Steve turns to look over his shoulder as Wanda and Bucky step out from the kitchen, his sister tucked under his best friend’s arm. He has his head bent close to hers, likely to whisper something in her ear, but he straightens up at Sam’s comment, pressing his lips together as he shakes his head. Wanda’s cheeks are flushed, and yes, maybe Steve would feel wary about that, except he already has a pretty good idea on why Bucky might’ve wanted to steal Wanda away for a little while. He’d come to Steve and his father earlier that week about wanting Wanda to move in with him, not because he had been asking for permission or anything, because in the end, whatever she wanted was what he was going to give her, even if her father and brother were wary of it. But he’d wanted their honest opinion on whether they thought it would be too much, too fast for her.

Had it been a few weeks before, maybe it would have been. Steve still remembers how his sister sat in his kitchen and admitted that she didn’t see things going further between them. Even if he didn’t care about her being a mafia princess, she’d been worried about the Family never quite accepting him. But if Sam and Bucky helping to protect Wanda hadn’t been enough to earn the Family’s good graces, the evidence that they gathered against Anton, Ivan, and Hela to prove their betrayal would have.

“Pay attention to your own girl, Wilson,” Bucky counters, brushing a kiss to Wanda’s hair as she giggles. She pauses their stride as she turns to them, stretching on her toes to whisper in his ear, and he dips his head to kiss her, quick and hard, earning a half-hearted noise of protest from Pietro that has Wanda pulling away with another giggle.

Then she glides over to Natasha, taking her hand and giving it a tug. “They’re about to start slicing and serving cake, which means we need to do a toast!”

Natasha catches Steve’s gaze as Wanda starts to pull her onto her feet, her eyes sparkling, and Steve gives her a grin, grabbing their glasses as they all head back into the main dining room. It’s louder and warmer, and little Morgan Stark and Nathaniel Barton nearly trip him over as they run by, but it only makes Steve’s grin widen.

He joins Natasha where she’s standing at the head of the long table in the middle of the room, a few dozen faces staring back at them as they take their seats. He peers down at Nat as he hands over her glass, catching the way his mother’s ring twinkles on her finger under the bright glow of the chandeliers. Then he glances around the room, finding his father sitting further down the table, smiling at him from his seat between Howard and Melina. Across from them, Peter nudges Bucky with his elbow as he and Wanda sit with him, Peter whispering something that makes Bucky hide his laugh with a cough, and on his other side, Pepper and Tony laugh as Morgan practically climbs into Sam’s lap.

It quiets down as Steve lifts his glass, curving his hand over Nat’s hip and drawing her close as he thanks them for celebrating with them tonight, asking them to raise their glass in a toast to his father coming home safe, to Pietro’s quick recovery, and to his and Nat’s engagement.

“And to Family,” he finishes, peering down at Natasha.

“To Family,” she echoes, and there are cheers and clinks of utensils against glasses of wine right before his mouth slants against hers in a kiss. Then he feels Natasha smile against his mouth just as she parts their kiss a moment later, turning his head to bring her lips near his ear. “And when exactly do you want to tell them the Family is about to get a little bigger?” she whispers, and Steve breathes out a chuckle, pressing a kiss against her neck. If he thought he could get away with touching her stomach, he would’ve.

“This is the Family we’re talking about, Nat,” he points out, drawing back to catch her bright eyes, a warmth squeezing at his chest. “They probably found out a week ago.”

[direnightshade]

Broken Patterns

“Where are you working, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The steady tick, tick, tick of the wall mounted clock nearby fills the silence that follows the woman’s statement. I glance around nervously, taking in the sight of the room. The walls are white and the bottom half is trimmed with a molding that I’ve only ever seen in places that are far too expensive for me to afford. Meanwhile, the top half of the walls are covered in a multitude of photos and art, each one framed in mismatched metals. To my left there is a bookshelf that spans the entirety of one wall. It is filled to the brim with books of varying genres.

Oh, how I long for a place such as this some day.

My gaze swings back to the woman with the pinched face and the short, jet black pixie haircut. I swallow thickly and wipe my already clammy palms along the tops of my jean-clad thighs. “I just landed an internship with Simon & Schuster.”

A steady scribble of the tip of her pen can be heard as she scrawls across her piece of paper, humming in acknowledgement, though I am certain the sound is a mere afterthought; one to appease me as if she’s giving off the appearance that she’s listening. “And when did you move to New York?”

“Two years ago, right after I turned eighteen.”

More scribbling follows, and I shift anxiously on the velveteen couch that has been dyed a pretty shade of dark green. Almost immediately, I am pinned to the very spot I sit by the intense gaze of the woman who is meant to be my therapist. There are no words exchanged, but the look that she is giving me seems to say it all: stay still. I sink into myself and remain in place as she has so silently willed me to do.

This is only the beginning of the session, and already, it is unlike anything I would have expected.

“So, tell me,” she says, finally satisfied that she’s written all that she can for the time being, “what brings you into my office?” Her posture has straightened considerably now, and for the first time since I’d stepped foot past the threshold of the room’s door do I feel as if she’s actually listening to what I have to say.

I inhale a shaky breath in hopes that it will steel my resolve, and when I exhale, I begin to tell her everything.

I tell her about the screaming that became a staple in my childhood home; about how it had all been my fault, because of course it was. I had been unable to grasp the simplest things that were being taught to me. It certainly hadn’t been because the expectations that were set so heavily onto my shoulders were so unrealistic that no child at my age could have lived up to them. No. No, of course not. That wasn’t it at all. It was all me. My failings.

I tell her about how I’d taken out all of my pent up anger and aggression out on the dolls that my mother had so lovingly gifted to me; that I’d mutilated them so badly my mother took me to see a child psychologist claiming she thought me to be some future murdering psychopath. Isn’t that hilarious?!

It’s an absurd thought. Truly.

I couldn’t harm a fly…

I tell her about Ben.

He was, I think, the first person I ever thought I loved. I met him, of all the places, on Bow Bridge in Central Park one crisp Autumn morning. I’d been fresh off the train, barely in the city for a full twenty four hours when we’d crossed paths. He’s a painter—a lovely one at that, I’ve always told him as much—and when I’d stumbled across him, he was painting the landscape. I couldn’t help but admire his talents. I think I may have stopped and gawked for far too long and perhaps that is what caught his attention, though I am sure if he was here, he would sing a different tune. He loves to tell people that when he saw me it was if I had walked straight out of one of his paintings; a dream incarnate. The line makes me roll my eyes with disgust now, but back then in the early stages of the relationship, that line would always have me hook, line, and sinker.

But therein lies the problem, you see. I am a sucker for pretty words, for people who can paint me the loveliest picture of a life that I have always wanted but yet to have. And, oh, how he painted that lie well.

Over time the compliments and the affection have waned significantly, and now I fear that it is only I who is trying to give it my all any more. I believe that he is seeing someone else, that the pretty words he once showered down on me are now being put upon another heart, leaving mine to rot.

He checks his phone late at night when he thinks that I am asleep. I can hear the steady tap, tap, tap of his thumbs against the screen and every now and again, I can hear the soft laughter he emits whenever whomever she is responds with some undoubtedly witty remark. Where he once used to be so adamant that we put our phones aside and focus on one another, he now has done a complete one-eighty. We sit on opposite ends of the couch whilst he entertains himself with whatever conversation he is so engrossed in, meanwhile I am left to watch this movie—one that he chose—alone.

I am turning into my mother more and more every day, I realize. I am untrusting and paranoid, always asking him who it is that he’s taking calls from or who he’s texting. He tells me it’s nothing, that it’s just work, but he was never this busy with work before…

Two days ago is when he’d come clean.

My suspicions were not unfounded. He had been seeing someone. Her name is Mina and apparently she is lovely.

There is a brief bout of scribbling of a pen against paper, and when it stops, my therapist lifts her head once more to look at me. “How does that make you feel?”

Like I am a waste, I want to tell her. It makes me feel as if I am nothing; that if the one person on this planet who was meant to love me cannot seem to then perhaps I am, myself, unworthy of such a gift.

My features soften and I allow the corners of my mouth to turn up into a small smile. “I feel fine.”

The woman reaches up to pull her glasses down off of the bridge of her nose, setting the frames atop her notebook. She exhales a sigh and regards me carefully before doling out a reply. “This is a new development for you. Surely you must have some sort of feelings about it.”

“I told you that I’d had my suspicions. I’ve had more than two days to process the inevitable.”

“Having a suspicion and having confirmation are two completely different things. This idea in your mind has since been made real. Doesn’t that hurt you,” she counters.

The smile that had been so carefully put into place falters, and my lips press into a thin line.

It is clear that my therapist is pleased with this non verbal response as she once again resumes her note taking.

“No,” I reply carefully.

“No?”

“No.”

There is a stretch of silence that follows my insistence, and soon enough, she sets the notepad, pen, and her glasses aside and regards me carefully. “What are you doing to cope?”

I barely manage to bite back the snort that nearly bubbled up to the surface. Cope? Since when have I ever coped with anything? I suppose, if we are being technical, what I do is a form of coping, albeit an unhealthy one. I take those feelings, the ones that weigh on my chest so heavily that it feels as if it may very well collapse under the strain, and I compact them until they are so small I can easily store them in a cage that I have built myself. I tuck them away and store the box somewhere deep inside myself, never allowing them to see the light of day so that I never have to deal with the emotional traumas that I have been dealt.

“I work,” I say matter-of-factly, as if the idea of me needing to do anything else is utterly absurd.

She hums and clasps her hands together, setting them atop her lap. “And what have you done for an emotional release? Anything at all? Or are you throwing yourself into work to avoid the situation?”

My jaw clenches at her insistence, though, I don’t know why I would have expected anything else. Perhaps I wasn’t expecting this first session to have become so deep so quickly. “If you’re asking if I’ve cried, the answer is no.”

“And why not?”

I am growing more and more irritated by the second. I could, if I so wished, put an end to this right now. I could get up and end the session, thank her for her time and walk right out of the door. Or, the pen sitting beside her on the end table would push straight into her eye socket rather nicely, I reckon…

No. No, I rid myself of that thought and exhale an audible sigh.

“Because what is the point? Crying doesn’t fix the relationship. He’s made his choice.”

“Crying can be a good release for us. It’s very cathartic.”

“I’m not wasting my tears on someone who didn’t have the decency to leave the relationship before giving a part of themselves to someone else.”

The irony is not lost on me that eleven years later I find myself in another office in a different part of the city with tears freely spilling down onto my cheeks as I reach for the tissue that is offered to me. When one isn’t enough, I am gifted the entire box.

It feels as if I am crying out years and years of repressed emotion, and I fear—as my body wracks with sob after sob—that the tears will be never ending. This therapist, who I have already decided is miles above the one I’d seen when I was twenty, sits and waits patiently for me to let it all out. She has been nothing short of supportive and I feel relief.

Earlier this week I had requested that Charlie jot down the number for his therapist’s office so that I may make an appointment of my own. Though he, too, has been more than happy to listen to me when I vent my frustrations or cry on his shoulder when things become a little too overwhelming for me, I have come to realize that perhaps it is not fair of me to unload so much onto him when he is still dealing with so much himself. And what’s more, is that I have realized that I have begun to fall into an old pattern.

Rather than fully dealing with the emotional upset he has caused with his trysts, I have once again begun to tamp down and repress my negative emotions in favor of pretending that all's right with the world. Not only do I not want to shut myself down and risk ruining this relationship, I also do not believe my tactics to be in the best interest of Little b. So, if nothing else, I will do this for them.

When the tears finally subside, and I have once again managed to pull myself together, I take a moment to dab a clean tissue against the underside of my eyes. Just as I am inhaling another shaky breath, my therapist—who is not the same woman that Charlie shares his allotted time with—poses a question.

“Have you discussed your feelings with him?”

I sniffle and ball up the tissue in my hand as it comes to rest in my lap. “We had a long, long discussion after things calmed down. He knows that I was—am—unhappy with his choices.”

There is a soft sigh emitted when she shifts in her seat and crosses her legs. One hand rests on her knee whilst the other keeps her chin propped up as her elbow sets on the arm of the chair she’s currently seated in. “You told me that he’s admitted to opening up to someone emotionally when he felt he couldn’t do that with you and that this seems to be the root of your dispiritedness. I’d like to talk about that.”

I wouldn’t, I think to myself almost immediately.

But, this is why I am here, after all. I need to discuss the things that I wish to bury. Only then do I have any real chance of repairing the damaged, unhealthy parts of myself. If we, as a family, have any real shot at moving forward, then I must face this head on regardless of how much I want nothing more than to run the other way.

And yet…

I am struggling.

“Do you still worry that this may be an issue?”

My head hangs forward, and I close my eyes tightly to ward off the onslaught of tears that once again threaten to force their way out. There is a slight tremor that starts in my chin and works its way to my bottom lip. I hate this, this feeling of being rendered speechless, of being weak and vulnerable. I hate that, once again, I have given someone else the power to crush me so.

I nod wordlessly, the motion so slight that it would have been missed had she not been paying careful attention.

“Has he done anything to make you think that it is?”

Another stretch of silence follows her words, and this time, I find myself shaking my head. No, no he hasn’t.

And yet…

I am afraid.

And…

My therapist says my name to grab my attention, and when I finally lift my head to look at her, it is with tearfully blurred vision. “If he has not done anything to make you think that it is, then tell me about the steps he has taken to attempt to alleviate those fears.”

I inhale a shaky breath and begin to list off everything from deleting the long list of contacts in his phone to quitting his job at the theater. When the subject of the move to Los Angeles is brought up, I am asked that one question that haunted my thoughts mere days ago.

What do I want?

How do I feel?

“I…” My lips press together as I trail off, and I work my jaw as I take a moment to think. “I want to leave. I think the move will be good for both of us, and not just because this means that Charlie can see Henry more regularly now.” While I speak, I lift a hand to dab away the last remaining tears from my eyes, finally feeling more confident in this turn of conversation. “You know, when I first moved here, I loved this city so much that I resolved to stay here until I turned old and grey.”

There is a small smile that forms when I speak, and I huff out soft laughter. But as I shake my head, the smile begins to wane. “But now… After everything that’s transpired over the last month… This city that brought me so much joy just feels so oppressive now. Some of the places I used to love to venture to have been tainted by the awful confessions that he’s bestowed upon me. What I want is to leave. But most importantly, what I want is for this to work...”

By the time that my session concludes, I am feeling infinitely better than when I’d initially walked through the front door. For the first time in all the times that I have tried—or was forced to try—therapy, I am leaving a session with tools that I feel will be useful in aiding my own emotional recovery from everything that I have dealt with in life. For the first time in my life, I will attempt to cope with the emotions that I feel in a healthy way. I feel, for the first time in a long, long time, like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

When I make my way out of the building, I am surprised to find Charlie waiting for me just outside. There is a fleeting look of concern that flashes across his face when he takes in my red-rimmed eyes, but just as quickly as the look emerges, it dissipates entirely when a broad smile stretches across my face. “You came all the way out here to get me,” I ask, the pleasant surprise evident in my voice.

“Wanted to make sure your first session went well,” he says just as he reaches out for me once I’m near enough.

A soft hum is emitted when his hands settle on my waist to draw me in closer, and I lift my arms to wrap them loosely around his neck. I tip my head back slightly to look up at him, taking a moment to soak in his features before I speak. “You were nervous.”

He huffs in automatic response, his gaze darting to the side momentarily. “Absolutely not.”

If it is possible for my smile to widen any further, then it certainly does so. “It’s okay,” I say, fingers raking through the hair at the nape of Charlie’s neck whilst he continues to hold me close, safe and out of the way from any passersby. “We’re okay. It went great. Probably the best session I’ve ever had. Now I know why you’ve chosen that office.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We smile at one another, and for the first time in over a month, I truly feel as if everything will be alright.

[shanoaravendare]

Camp Unus Annus: The Author (Part 3)

Sorry for the delay, I thought I was going to be able to wrap this up in 3 parts but it’s running a bit longer than I predicted.

Previous Parts: 1, 2

              The girl jolted awake, lifting her head quickly from where it rested on her chest only to grimace at the throbbing pain the movement created in her head. She tried to press her hands to her temples to relieve the pain, but they were bound securely behind her to the back of the wooden chair she was seated in. As consciousness took hold the girl realized that her legs were also tied to the chair and her captor had taken the time to both blindfold and gag her. Certain that her captor was aware she had awakened, the girl forewent any pretense of unconsciousness and began to thrash desperately against her bonds, with what outcome in mind she couldn’t say.

              From somewhere in the room she could hear the distinctive metallic clicking of a typewriter. Though she couldn’t see him, her captor sat only feet away from her working feverishly to finish writing the last few paragraphs that would set the scene for what was going to happen next. A crooked grin crossed his face as he reviewed what he had written before yanking the page out of the typewriter and setting it face down on the desk. As he turned to face the girl, he lifted an old metal baseball bat from where it rested against the side of his desk. Having realized the futility of her movements the girl now sat slumped against her bonds, only occasionally rubbing her head against one shoulder or the other, trying to work either the blindfold or gag out of position.

              “I’ll bet that right about now you’re thinking, I should have listened to my buddy, aren’t you,” a deep voice asked close enough to Shanoa’s face that she could feel the heat of the speaker’s breath on her face. “It’s okay, you don’t have to answer. Just listen,” the voice continued as she felt the speaker lean in closer and begin to untie the blindfold. She groaned nervously into the gag and jerked convulsively at her bonds. The hands stopped and the speaker leaned back a little bit. “I can leave you blindfolded if you would prefer, but I find it’s easy to hold a conversation when you can look someone in the eyes. Now hold still, or I will make you hold still,” the voice growled at her.

              As the blindfold came off, Shanoa slowly opened her eyes and blinked rapidly a few times to try and clear her vision which had become blurry from the blindfold’s pressure. The dark blur in front of her resolved itself into the shape of a man wearing a black button-up shirt over black jeans. His dark hair was cut short with a slight fringe overhanging his forehead. There was something strangely familiar about the man’s face but her rattled brains couldn’t quite put a finger on why.

              “That’s much better,” the man said cheerfully as he carelessly tossed the blindfold off to the side. “I can see your eyes, you can see mine, much more civilized. Now we can really talk.” The man’s crooked smile didn’t reach his eyes as he dragged his desk chair closer to where Shanoa sat before taking a seat in it. He was so close now their knees were practically touching. “Now where should we begin, Shanoa?”

              Her eyes, which had been inspecting the room around her, snapped back to focus on the man’s face when he spoke her name. She looked down to make sure she wasn’t wearing a nametag, then looked back at the man’s strangely familiar face.

              “Ah yes, I know who you are, and I’m not surprised that you don’t know me. I wouldn’t expect you to, though I’m sure that you’ve heard of me. For the sake of discussion, you can call me The Author.” He watched smiling as the look of confusion on Shanoa’s face was replaced with one of recognition and that just as quickly with one of terror. “So, you have heard of me. Good, that saves me the trouble of having to explain certain things to you.”

              The Author leaned back in his chair and stretched out an arm to grab a familiar leather-bound notebook from his desk. Shanoa watched as he flipped carelessly through its pages until he reached the one he was looking for. He ran a single finger down the page as he reread its contents with a calculating eye then shut the notebook with a snap and tossed it on the floor between the two chairs. Shanoa stared at lying there between them and took a deep breath through her nose to try and calm her racing heart.

              “You have a gift with words, young lady,” the Author’s voice brought her attention back to him. “An exceedingly rare gift with words indeed. One that could rival my own, in time,” he finished with gritted teeth. “And therein lies the problem. You see, I’ve worked hard to keep my little secret. Granted, I made a few mistakes with Daniel and Ryan, but I managed to make my disappearance convincing enough to make up for them. Now you show up just as I’m about to make my come back and, without knowing it, you could undo the years of work I’ve put into it.“

              The Author stood up causing his chair to roll backwards across the floor until it bumped into the desk. “So, I have a proposition for you. Collaborate with me, add your gift to my own. We work together and I make sure you have all the success and fame you could ever want. Our secret is safe, and everyone is happy,” the Author flourished his hand in the air with a grin. “Or,” his voice dropped, and his hand gripped the baseball bat,” …you could choose not to cooperate. In which case I will make certain that you are no threat to me. Am I perfectly clear?”

              Shanoa nodded her understanding vigorously with the Author’s face mere inches from hers. “Good,” he said as he straightened his stance, swinging the baseball bat up to rest lightly on his shoulder. “Now I know this is a weighty decision for you, so I’m going to give you a little time to think things through before giving me your answer. I need to take care of a, nuisance, down at the camp who thinks he’s in control of things around here, but when I get back, I’ll expect your answer. Make sure it’s the right one,” he finished over his shoulder as he shut the door behind him.

              Left alone in the silent cabin with only her thoughts, Shanoa began to panic. No one would be looking for her until Darcy got done with her workshop because everyone would assume they were together. She was at the mercy of a madman who may or may not be able to control others through his writing and believed that she could do the same. Desperately she looked around the cabin for anything that might help her get free of her bonds, but the Author had very few possessions and had made sure that they were all well out of her reach.

              If it hadn’t been for the intense way that Counselor Mark had spoken of the Author during his story the night before Shanoa would have immediately dismissed the possibility of someone being able to control the world with stories. Now, she was sure that not only was it real, but that Counselor Mark had encountered it firsthand and somehow managed to survive. The most likely explanation would be that he also had this same ability. As she twisted and wiggled against the ropes tying her to the chair, she kept trying to think of a way to call for help. The Author quite obviously believed that she had this gift within her too. Could she use that somehow? What if it didn’t work? She wouldn’t be any worse off than she was now. What if he could tell when she tried? Was it worth the risk?

              Shanoa stopped struggling for a moment and took a deep breath in through her nose, paused, then let it out slowly releasing the tension in her shoulders at the same time. She lightly closed her eyes and began to picture the trail she and Darcy followed to the tree that morning. She pictured Counselor Mark leaning against the tree in the midday warmth, enjoying the contrast in temperature between the sun and the shade on his skin. No, that won’t work. I don’t know where I am in relation to the tree, she thought to herself shaking her head in frustration.

              Taking another deep breath to center herself, Shanoa listened closely to the sounds of nature coming from outside the cabin. She could hear the wind rustling in the branches of trees and the calls of various birds and insects, but none of it was enough to tell her exactly where the cabin was located. Tears of frustration burned in her eyes as she listened for something, anything, she could use to help her. She was on the edge of despair when she faintly caught the voices of Counselors Mark and Ethan in the area. Shanoa knew she only would have one shot to get this right, so she closed her eyes again and forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out.

              The two Counselors made their way up the hill following the seldom used hiking trail. Amy and Evan had everything well in hand at the main camp, so they had plenty of time to complete their search. Ethan had caught only a glimpse of a grey tail disappearing into the woods with the keys to the camp bus, but he was certain that the critter had headed this direction. As they searched the area Mark caught sight of a small cabin tucked back into the trees and decided to go see if anyone there had seen any sign of the keys.

              Shanoa, starting to get a headache from focusing so hard, paused, and listened intently for any sign that her effort was having any effect. Mark and Ethan’s voices sounded closer than they had been, and her heart began to race again. As she listened their conversation became more and more distinct until she could make out every word of their conversation. Help was tantalizingly close now and she began to struggle against her restraints again, this time focusing on making as much noise as possible.               “Hey Mark, did you hear that,” Ethan’s muffled voice came from somewhere outside the cabin. “I think I heard something crashing around in that shack.”

              “Maybe it’s the cat you let steal the keys,” Mark’s voice taunted as it got closer to the door.

              Mark hears the sounds coming from the cabin and realizes their source is something much larger than a cat. As he approaches the door, he can make out the muffled sound of someone crying out in distress accompanying the crashing sounds that had drawn Ethan’s attention. Concerned for the well-being of whoever was inside he opened the door swiftly and strode into the room.

              The pressure of her headache was nearly unbearable as Shanoa threw every ounce of energy she could muster into one final tilt of the chair, sending her crashing to the floor with a muffled scream. The cabin door swung open to bang against the wall as the side of her head bounced off the floor temporarily stunning her. Early afternoon sunlight poured through the open door and across her face momentarily keeping her from focusing on the shadowed figure highlighted in the doorway.

              “Holy shit! Shanoa, what happened to you,” Mark shouted as he rushed forward to set the chair and its bound occupant upright. His fingers fumbled a little as he untied and removed Shanoa’s gag. Her head rocked gently with the movement and he paused to steady her. Her eyes blinked slowly and never quite seemed to fully focus on his face.  “Hey, Shanoa,” he snapped his fingers in front of her face, “…focus. What happened? Where’s your buddy?” Her eyes focused momentarily before widening in fear. A panicked look crossed her face and she closed her eyes tightly then began shaking her head slowly side to side, as if she were trying to deny something. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down. It’s going to be alright. Let’s get you out of here first and then we’ll figure everything else out,” he soothed putting his hands on her shoulders and rubbing them comfortingly.

              The girl’s head felt like it was going to burst from the pressure building up inside it. The counselor’s voice slid across her mind without registering exact words, just the tone. Her thoughts were scrambled like the pieces of a newly started puzzle. She knew she had succeeded but some part of her mind kept screaming that she was in more danger now than she had been before.

              While Mark focused on freeing Shanoa, Ethan wandered around the cabin trying to learn something about its owner. His eyes were drawn to the desk and the typewriter occupying it. Seeing the lone sheet of paper laying face down on the desk he picked it up and began to read. As his eyes scanned the words his mouth slowly dropped open in shock. Without taking his eyes off the page he stepped over to where Mark was crouched working at undoing knots and tapped him on the shoulder. Mark looked over his should with an irritated glare and Ethan wordlessly shoved the page in his face.

[tiny-anxious-mess]

Dress to Impress

Summary: It’s date night for Logan and Roman. Logan searches for something to wear and instead finds a dress, some self-doubt, and a whole lot of love. (Human AU) 

Pairings: Logan/Roman, Logince 

Warnings: A few swears, kissing (though its nothing heated or anything), and some self-doubt and insecurity from Logan 

Notes: second story!! thank you for all of the lovely comments on my first story, every single one makes my day! this fic was inspired by all the lovely fanart ive seen of all the different sides in dresses and i felt like writing something romantic so who better to pair logan with than the prince himself? haha hope yall enjoy this! 

***

It wasn’t that Logan was nervous, he was just... hesitant.

It was date night and a date might entail looking good. Roman would say that Logan always looked good, but you couldn’t fault Logan for putting in an effort.

But tonight was different. 

There was a meteor shower tonight and Logan wasn’t about to miss a second of it. Roman had tried to surprise him by scheduling their monthly date night on that night, but Logan was already one step ahead. He had a picnic basket and everything.

The night wasn’t the problem; he wasn’t hesitating because of the night or the date or the anything.

It was internal. He knew that; he had enough self-awareness for that, no matter his struggle with other such emotions.

He wanted to be comfortable for the night. They would be there long and it was supposed to be a warm night. And so he looked through his wardrobe and looked and looked and looked and—

Here was his problem.

Right in front of his was a dress.

It didn’t come as a surprise to him to find it; he had bought it himself ages ago, though he never had the right chance to wear it. But tonight presented to perfect opportunity to wear it.

And therein lied the catch.

It wasn’t that he was insecure or that he didn’t have the confidence to wear the dress out, it was just that... well, he had never worn something like it out with Roman.

Playing around with his clothing was nothing new—college had been an exciting time to mess around with it all. But as he grew a few years older, it was something that fell to the side. He dressed practically and appropriately depending on the situation. He rarely, for lack of a better term, dressed up just because he wanted to.

But now there was the dress and the date and Logan didn’t know what to do.

It’d be easy just to slip it on and go out. It was nothing fancy, just a short-sleeved sundress. It was practical, he told himself as he picked it up. It’s going to be warm out and this is nice and light and—it’s practical.

He didn’t understand why he was so hesitant. He wasn’t afraid of what other people said, he wasn’t afraid of himself. He just...

Roman had never seen him in a dress.

Hell, Roman had never seen him in anything other than pants and a shirt, what he normally wore. He had never seen the photos of Logan and Virgil, an old college friend, in drag for that one night after finals. He had never seen the makeup Logan kept in a bag in his bottom desk drawer. He had never seen Logan as anything other than Logan.

Not that he wouldn’t be Logan in the dress; of course he’d still be Logan. He’d just be Logan in a dress and that... that made him hesitate.

He won’t hate you for this, Logan reminded himself. There’s no reason to think that he would so don’t think about it. He loves you now and so he’ll love you tonight, dress or not. It’s illogical to think of the negative outcomes. You can’t predict the future; or at least, none of his past behavior is relevant; he’s given no indicators that he might react negatively to you in a dress.

Logan sighed heavily, squeezing the dress in his hands. He placed it down and reached for his phone, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

He pulled up Virgil’s contact.

Me: Virgil, sorry if I am interrupting something, but once you get the chance, remind what is the breathing technique you use to calm yourself down. I am... in need of some assistance.

Virgil: Nah you’re not interrupting anything b. I use the 4-7-8 breathing thing but it could be different for you. nothing is exactly guaranteed to work for any single person

Me: Thank you.

Virgil: Is everything alright? you’re usually the one helping me with breathing

Me: I am fine, just... I’m second-guessing myself and it is unnecessary. I simply need to ground myself for a moment.

Virgil: what are you nervous about?

Me: I’m not nervous, just hesitant.

Virgil: sure Jan, talk to me

Me: Mm. I just. Roman and I are going to the open field down the street for the meteor shower. I was looking for what to wear, seeing as it's supposed to be warm tonight, and came across a dress I bought a few months ago. I think it’s practically that I wear it but I. I’m being ridiculous and am second-guessing myself.

Virgil: Oh okay well relax roman is gonna drop dead when he sees you in the dress, its the blue one yeah?

Me: Yes. And I am perfectly relaxed. I am cool. I am chilled.

Virgil: why must you torture me this way?

Me: I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

Virgil: how the hell can you sound smug through text?? anyway roman will adore the dress and you and if he doesn't, ill fight him

Me: Violence is not necessary but the intent behind the action is much appreciated, Virgil. Thank you.

Virgil: no problem man, text me if you need anything or a hitman!!

Me: You’ve been hanging out with Remus, haven’t you?

Virgil: only when I'm willing to risk my sanity!!!!!!

Logan sighed again, putting down his phone. It was pointless to torture himself any further.

He stood up, grabbing the dress once again and moving towards the bathroom. 

Time to get dressed.

***

Logan and Roman arrived separately. Roman had to drive home from work and then to the field. Logan was already there, ten minutes early, with the picnic basket, blanket, telescope, books, and journal for the night.

He sat on the blanket, tugging on the hem of the dress. It would be fine, he told himself. He had nothing to worry about other than getting mauled by a bear.

He rolled his eyes at himself. God, now I sound like Virgil.

He shook his head, forcing himself to shake off his doubts. It would be fine, it was just him and Roman and the stars. He didn’t need to think about anything else.

And yet when he saw Roman’s car pull up next to his a few yards away, his heartbeat quickened.

Logan breathed in—one, two, three, four—held it—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—and then out—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

He stood, smoothing down his dress, and began towards Roman.

The man in question got out of his car, a bouquet of flowers in hand. Logan was able to identify roses, primroses, and red camellias. It was a rather beautiful arrangement; Logan could tell Roman had done it himself. He always insisted on carrying out his romantic gestures on his own.

Roman beamed when he saw Logan but it wasn’t until he used the flashlight on his phone that he reacted.

He paused then fully stopped. His mouth gaped, lips apart in an “o” formation. The flowers previously held closer up to his chest fell with his hand, now held loosely by his side.

Logan bit the inside of his cheek and reached up to readjust his glasses. He cleared his throat, saying, “Hi.”

God, “Hi”? Really, that’s all I can think of?

“H-Hi,” Roman stuttered. Even in the darkness, Logan could see the color in his cheeks, at the bridge of his nose.

“Ready?” Logan asked, wishing to fill the silence. 

Roman blinked multiple times, eyes flickering over Logan before he swallowed and nodded. “I-I, um, yeah--yes! Yes, I’m ready!” he exclaimed, cheeks flushing fully this time. Then he paused and thrusted out the flowers. “Here! They’re for you! Of course, they’re for you; I didn’t exactly plan on doing anything else tonight and even if I was, I certainly wouldn’t be getting them flowers. Unless it was someone like my mom or mama, or--” 

Logan walked forward, took the flowers, and kissed him. 

Roman followed with no hesitation. He reached up to cup Logan’s face, lips quirking up ever so slightly when Logan turned his face into Roman’s palm. 

They parted, lingering. “You look amazing,” Roman murmured against Logan’s lips. “Completely left me speechless.” 

Logan snorted, smiling. “You had plenty of words, they were just jumbled,” he said quietly. 

“That’s what you do to me,” Roman said. “Leave me all scrambled. It’s rude to deprive a poet of his words.” 

“I never deprived you of anything.” They had begun to sway back and forth, rocking in each other's arms, still just barely parted. 

“Oh please,” Roman scoffed, lips quirking again. He pulled back just enough to meet Logan’s eyes, gaze hooded and warm. “I could have a whole soliloquy written and memorized, and suddenly I see you and my thoughts fall to the side, my mouth goes dry, and all I can see is you. You, only you; you standing, sitting, humming, speaking, studying, laughing, smiling. You, just you; it’s enough to make me speechless. Enough to make me stop and stare. You’ve bewitched me and yet you are the cure.” 

Logan was no good with emotions, even less so with translating them well into the words. Roman made it seem so easy. But Logan didn’t need to match Roman’s talent beat for beat. 

Logan pressed a quick peck to Roman’s lips before resting his forehead against Roman’s. “I love you,” he whispered because he didn’t say those words a lot--perhaps not often enough--but he meant them every time he said it. 

“I love you too.” The words sounded sweet from Roman, ringing orange and pink like a sunset in Logan’s mind. 

Logan’s hand met and grasped Roman’s. “Shall we?” he asked, leaning back towards the field. 

Roman smiled--and he says I make him speechless, Logan thought--and squeezed his hand, bringing it up to his lips, sealing the night with one final kiss. 

“Let’s.” 

[queenofnohr]

Aeaean Spring Breeze - Ch. 3: The Underground Labyrinth Brings Order

Dreamwidth version here

---

???: Looks like they’re finally here. ???: Thank goodness. Making this Singularity was worth it, then! ???: ......Is it good? ???: Better than good— the plan is perfect. Don’t worry your little heart about it, just focus on the labyrinth. ???: That’s right, Asterios! Since I’m a witch, just leave everything up to me!

Arjuna: This is…… undoubtedly, a labyrinth…... Mash: Yes. I’ve gone over the infiltration routes several times, but it’s still a dangerous area where monsters prowl. Please proceed with caution, Master. Circe: Humans just go and make whatever they want on my island, huh! Jason: You’re talking like this totally isn’t your fault. Circe: Labyrinths are totally tasteless. I mean, who even likes making them? I create paradises, which the underworld obviously isn’t included in. That’s more up my teacher’s alley. ...…Hm? What’s with that signpost…… Arjuna: There’s something written on it. Let’s seeー “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Jason: ……Can we go back? Orion: You’re like a broken record! But I also wanna go back. George: Denied. Both: Guh. Odysseus: So it’s saying that beyond this point, we might die? How interesting. Let’s go. Circe: I’d like for you to exercise a liiiiiiiitle more caution before rushing in. Good grief…… Is this how all warriors are? Jason: Let’s goooooooo baaaaaack. Circe: Are you always this annoying!? Jason: No, only when I have a bad feeling about something. And these bad vibes are thick enough to taste. Arjuna: I see. Then, let’s head on in. George: There’s no use in arguing. Oh, and smile.

[he snaps a photo of Jason, Arjuna, and Orion]

Jason: ……Don’t just take pictures whenever you want! I end up smiling, even when I don’t want to smile! Circe: What are you doing over there you blockheads!? We’re going in!

[we go on a little]

George: Looks like…… another signpost. Arjuna: It says…… “O Flame, walk alongside me.” Circe: Hmmm.

[Fire shoots out]

Circe: Oh.

> Uwah!?

Mash: Master, are you okay? George: Don’t worry, Mash. I'm guarding them.

[Circe is standing around, on fire]

Odysseus: Circe, are you okay? Circe: Huh? Who? Me? Odysseus: ……Aren’t you covered in flames right now? Circe: Heh heh heh, I’m fine with this! After all, I’m a Great Witch! Odysseus: Just because you’re a Great Witch doesn’t mean you should be “fine” with being engulfed in flame. Circe: I’m telling you it’s fiiiiiine. These are silk garments given to me by Hecate. They won’t burn in these kinds of flames. Odysseus: Even so. Circe: Guh…… Well, I’ll just take that as you being worried about me. Orion: ……By the way, there’s a path forward up ahead. Circe: Huh? ......You’re right. Hmmm. The feeling I get is…… that path will open up if we fulfill a condition. Arjuna:  “O Flame, walk alongside me.” Hm...... Odysseus: “Walk alongside,” huh? ……Circe, come with me. Circe: Huh!? W- What do you mean “with you”!? Why me!? And why with you!? Odysseus: It’s just an idea. Walk together with flame would mean— Wouldn’t it mean to proceed while being enveloped in flame? Circe: No, no, that’s a totally unreasonable answer considering we all have to go through. Odysseus: Of course. We just need to catch the one doing the enveloping. Circe: ? ......Oh! Master, I know it’s sudden, but prepare for battle! Our enemy is the flame enveloping the room! Before it’s extinguished, we need to nab it and walk with it!

> R- Roger that!

Circe: Raise, destroy, and finally, resurrect. Unending circle of life and destruction, I bid thee to appear, O Flame!

[a monster comes out of the fire]

George: So that’s it. Did she turn the flames into an enemy? That’s what it seemed like to me. Jason: Do your best, everyone! Orion: (Of course this guy ain’t fighting) Arjuna: (I’ll just add this to the report I’m preparing for Medea......)

[battle]

Circe: …...Got it. Now that we’ve caught it, let’s see if it works! Arjuna: Looks like…… The wall is opening up. It seems Odysseus’s hunch was correct. Jason: Haaaaa...... I- It’s over, huh? Orion: Yeah, and you were sooooo much help. Odysseus: Alright, we did it. Circe: Yeah!

[they high five]

Circe: ...... ...... Why do I have to high-five this guy!? Odysseus: I’m starting to understand you. You act tough when you end up going along with something. Circe: Don’t laugh at that! Anyway the path opened up. Let’s head in! Odysseus: Indeed, let’s move!

Node 2

Circe: First it’s fire and now it’s ice…… Arjuna: It doesn’t seem like there’s a signpost. Jason: Hm? I don’t see a path…… Well, it looks easy enough. It should be fine if we melt it, right? Right, Arjuna. Time to put that bow to work! Arjuna: You mean Agni Gandiva? But...... Jason: What, think you can’t do it? Arjuna: …...Don’t be ridiculous. Actually, I fear the opposite happening. That is, will a single shot from me destroy this entire labyrinth? ーThat’s my only concern. Circe: Oi, oi, won’t we end up getting buried alive if that happensー? Arjuna: Then I will be exceedingly careful in limiting myself. Having said that, I don’t think my power will be inadequate, but I will devote all my strength to this task! Orion: (I feel like this’ll end badly) Arjuna: Agni, lend me your power!! My spirit flares! Here I go! AGNI GANDIVA!! George: Oh, another photo op!

[literally everything melts in a huge flood]

Circe: Woah- woah- woah- all the ice melted at once! Wah!

> Circe!!

Circe: Oh, it’s okay, I’m fine. It’s no big deal. Jason: Good grief. The whole room is flooded— (.1 seconds) (Waitwaitwait. Circe’s clothes are white.) ( .2 seconds) (Doesn’t that mean her clothes will get see-through? Won’t she be totally immodest?) (.3 seconds) (No, that’s beside the point. The real problem is how Circe reacts.) (.4 seconds) (She’s usually okay, but she’s still a Great Witch of Greece.) (.5 seconds) (Wouldn’t she turn a human who sees her bare skin into a monster?) (.6 seconds) (So the one in most trouble is Master.) (.7 seconds) (I have no other choice. Master, I’ll buy you ice-cream later.) (.8 seconds) (Heh…… At any rate, my High-Speed Thinking is more than a match for that gloomy Caster’s High-Speed Divine Words.) Jason: Oh no, my hand slipped!!

> Eh!?

[you black out]

Circe: Ugh, are you kidding me? I’m soaked. Odysseus: Are your clothes okay? Circe: Huh, my clothes? Hahaha. Just who do you think I am? I’m Hecate’s disciple, the Great Witch Circe. Even if it was a god that allowed my clothes to get all drenched and see-through, I wouldn’t forgive them! Odysseus: I see. I certainly can’t see anything.

> What happened?

[you open your eyes]

Jason: ……Sorry, I ended up doing something bad since as a hero my intellect is just too sharp…… Orion: What’s with that weird apology!? Arjuna: Does that count as an apology……? Circe: But back to what we were talking about earlier. What, were you interested in seeing my bare skin? Odysseus: No. I’m not, but I just thought it would be bad to make a girl feel shamed. Circe: ......Completely heartless! Like iron! A total Tin Man!

[she’s hitting him in her embarrassment]

Odysseus: ……I intended for that to be a legitimate answer. Orion: Yeah, he’s that type of person…… I’m understanding little by little. George: This is a pretty nice scene. Smile. Circe: Like I can!!

???: That was a little disappointing. ???: “Even if I saw your naked body, it isn’t a problem, since I’ll take responsibility” —is how I thought it would go. ???: That didn’t go smoothly. But, doesn’t it seem like they’re getting along? ???: Yes! It’s so wonderful. It was worth it to have you help out! ???: What should I do next? ???: Next…… Fufufu. Let’s see how they do against this.

Node 3

Circe: Oh, looks like there’s another signpost. What does it say, Arjuna? Arjuna: Let’s see...... “Destroy the paradox. That is the only way to reach the next path,” and, “You must tread forth without looking back.”

> Paradox......?

[Shakespeare, the Statue God, and Mephistopheles show up]

George: Oh no. You guys are— Mephistopheles: Please believe me. Shakespeare and the Statue God are big liars! Only my door is the real one. Shakespeare: Am I the liar? No, no, that’s impossible. Mephisto is a liar. And the Statue God is a big liar, too! Therefore, mine is the only real door. Statue God: Trust me…… Believe in God…… Both Mephisto and Shakespeare are liars…… God would never lie to you…… In other words, my door is the only real one…… Mash: Um…… What does this mean? Jason: Don’t ask me, Shielder. I don’t get it at all, but seems like one of the paths is correct, and the rest are busts. George: Three people in front of three doors. Does that mean we’re to figure out which is the correct path from these three? I think there should be a clue in their testimonies on which is the correct door, but…… Odysseus: It’s a paradox. Some are lying. Some are telling the truth. But if we don’t know how many liars and how many truth tellers there are, how do we come to a conclusion? Arjuna: I see. So, for example, say that Mephistopheles is telling the truth. That would mean that Shakespeare and the Statue God are lying. However, the Statue God says that Mephistopheles and Shakespeare are the liars. Therein lies the contradiction. If the Statue God is lying, then that means both Mephistopheles and Shakespeare are telling the truth. Odysseus: And that applies to all of them. All of them create a paradox, so there is no correct path.

> Th- This is making my head spin.

George: If someone is a liar, that also means that they are not a liar. ……It’s strange. Everyone is connected. Odysseus: Circe. Circe: Hm? Odysseus: I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Circe: Hmmm. It’s like a riddle. Odysseus: It is indeed. Circe: So, here’s what I’m thinking. Whoever made this riddle is the type of person who’s innately contrary. So I feel like using logic and reason to try and solve it would be a waste of time. Odysseus: ......What do you mean? Circe: The correct answer is— We go back the way we came. Everyone: HUH!? George: Oh, that’s a good one.

[he snaps a photo of Odysseus, Jason, Orion, and Arjuna’s stunned faces]

Orion: Wait, I think I was making a really weird face, so could you retake the photo, Teacher? George: No, a good photo op only comes once. Orion: *sniffle* Odysseus: Putting that aside— Circe, why do you think we should go back? Circe: Because! The signpost is the liar. These three are just here to liven things up. The Three: Urp. Odysseus: The signpost is the liar…… Ah, I understand now. “Destroy the paradox. That is the only way to reach the path forward,” turns into, “There is no need to destroy the paradox. The path forward is anything but,” whereas, “You must tread forth without looking back,” becomes, “You must turn around and go back the way you came.” In other words, do the opposite. I was thinking about it too logically. Circe: Was it a difficult riddle for such a straight-laced person? Odysseus: Heh…… I don’t have any comebacks when you put it that way. Well, I don’t know if I’d consider myself straight-laced, but…… Hm? Mephistopheles: We really are just here to liven things up! Shakespeare: I can’t deny that fact! But that doesn’t mean I’ll go back with the way things are now. Statue God: I…… don’t really have anything to do with this…… But being looked down on is kinda grating…… Destroy…... Circe: Ugh, what’s with you guys? You aren’t even the types to get worked up! Stone God: That was then, this is now…... Mephistopheles: Yeah, come on! Let’s duel!

[fight]

Mephistopheles: Ouch, ouch, I’m done for! Emotional BGM, please start! Huh, no? That’s the way it goes I s’pose. Oh well. Shakespeare: Mm, how disappointing! If I had it my way, I’d have you all deal with various problems, big and small, and depict a big emotional moment— only to pull the rug out from under you and have you end up at a bad end! Statue God: ...... ...... I’m tired…… I’m going back to Chaldea to laze around…… Oh, that’s right…… Since you solved the riddle, I have a prize for you…….

[Odysseus receives something]

Statue God: Goooooodbyeeeeee…… Circe: ......I’m the one who’s tired here! Odysseus: Honestly. I didn’t think we’d end up having to fight Servants…… Mm? Circe: What is it? Odysseus: ………Ah, I remember. I am Odysseus. Circe: ! Your memory returned? Odysseus: Partly, yes.

> How much, exactly?

Odysseus: Let’s see. My name is Odysseus. I am a man who participated in the Trojan War, and survived it even if by the skin of my teeth. ……The story of my life. I know at least that much, and my personality has returned to me. Circe: Do you remember me? Odysseus: Hahaha. Sorry, not at all. Circe: ......Well, maybe that’s for the better. Odysseus: Really? I want to know how we knew each other in life. Circe: ...... ...... We only hurt each other. We hurt each other, mutually, and could do nothing but hurt each other. It was awful. Odysseus: ...... ......Is that true? Circe: It is. Odysseus: I see. I can’t remember, so I can’t argue. Circe: Do you think I’d allow your counterargument? Me, a Great Witch? Odysseus: I suppose. Circe: What’s with that attitude, huh? Odysseus: Don’t pay it any mind. It seems like this is just what I’m like.

> They really do seem like good friends.

Jason: They probably will be, at least until he gets his memories back. Afterward is another story.

> I wonder what Circe thinks.

Arjuna: Here’s my take. I don’t think she loves him or hates him, but…… People’s feelings are complicated.

Arjuna: However, as far as I know, Odysseus had a wife. Mash: Yes. She was a woman who continued to wait for him to come home. Jason: That’s Penelope. I hear that while waiting for Odysseus, she had a whole mess of suitors coming for her. Orion: Sounds like someone I’d like to shack up with…… George: You have no chance. Orion: Even if the chances are only 1%, I won’t give up! George: Now that’s a manly look. Say cheese.

[he snaps a photo of Orion]

George: The title for this one will be “Orion Declares His Infidelity.” Orion: H-Haaaa, is Teacher trying to get me killed? George: Hahaha. Orion: At least deny it!

---

Ch. 2 ← → Ch. 4