#i traced the background so the rest of the panels on this will Not be accurate

[plutonium-sky]

aaaaanother comic wip which i am Actually working on at this very moment

[pengujoon]

DANCING IN THE DARK

cont. gojo x reader, toothrotting fluff. they're dancing in the dark, super super cute. use of mi amor, they kiss, living together!au, intentional lowercase.

a/n. was listening to perfect by ed sheeran and this piece came to be. it felt super cute when i was writing it!! so love sick for him.

song. ed sheeran - perfect

in the middle of the living room, all the lights were turned off, casting the room into a velvety darkness. but it was not a void; it was a canvas awaiting the touch of something magical. that magic came in the form of moonlight, streaming in through the windows like liquid silver, bathing the room in its soft, ethereal glow.

the night was alive with romance, and the very air seemed to hum with the resonance of your synchronised heartbeats.

satoru, with a loving smile, extended his hand toward you. “may i have this dance?”

you couldn't help but giggle at his sweet gesture, and you placed your hand in his. “of course, mi amor.”

he led you to the centre of the room, where a slow, romantic song played softly in the background. as you swayed together, your bodies pressed close, and you felt the warmth of his embrace.

with the grace of a seasoned dancer, he initiated a gentle twirl, and you felt like you were floating on a cloud of pure affection. your gown, like a silken dream, billowed around you, whispering the secrets of your hearts intertwined.

satoru's hand found its way to the small of your back, holding you securely. with a flourish that only deepened the enchantment, he lifted you off your feet, and you soared towards the ceiling, weightless and free. his unwavering gaze never left yours, a testament to the intensity of his affection. he gently lowered you back down, his soft and loving smile making you fall all too hard for him yet again.

his other hand gently lifted your chin, bringing your lips closer to his. your heart raced with anticipation as he closed the gap between you, his lips capturing yours in a tender, lingering kiss.

the kiss was soft and sweet, a silent declaration of love and affection. as you pulled away, your eyes met his, the depth of your love and adoration unfathomable.

satoru's fingers, as gentle as the softest caress, brushed a stray strand of hair from your face, then traced a path down to your neck. the pulse of your love resonated there, a rhythm that echoed in perfect harmony with his very own. his lips found yours again, this time with a bit more urgency, as if he couldn't get enough of your taste.

you responded in kind, your fingers tangling in his white locks as you deepened the kiss. the world outside seemed to disappear, and all that mattered was the sensation of his lips on yours, the warmth of his body pressed against yours.

as the song continued to play, you and satoru shared a series of sweet, soft kisses. each one left you breathless, your heart soaring with love and desire.

when the music finally faded, satoru held you close, his forehead resting against yours. “i love you way much more than words can ever express,” he whispered, his voice filled with raw emotion. his hands ran through your hair, pulling you closer against him as his hands found rest by your waist.

you smiled, your heart overflowing with love. “and i love you, satoru, more than anything in this world.”

in that moment, as you held each other close, you knew that this was a love that would last a lifetime. it was a love that could be felt in every sweet, tender kiss, and it was a love that would continue to grow with each passing day.

urgh.... satoru..... so this is what all the bsd fans went through when that dazai panel appeared.

[asirensrequiem]

Why are Anthony and husk living with alastor and why hasn’t he killed em yet?

I’m sensing he has a soft spot for nifty, Anthony and husk

Anthony and Husk live next door in their apartment complex! Husk in this universe has simply seen too much and Alastor is aware of this. Husk, knowing that Al is a threat, obeys his requests without question and isn't afraid of getting his hands a bit dirty.

Niffty lives on the bottom floor of the building and works as a maid/room service. I imagine she found traces of Alastors nightly activities while cleaning his apartment and spoke up about it. Alastor attempted to threaten her, but she seemed unfazed and almost excited. So in turn she offered her services to assist him for... whatever Niffty's reasons are haha!

I definitely feel that over the years, Alastor has grown quite fond of the both of them and would definitely be torn if something were to happen to them.

I haven't had much of an opportunity to show the layout of the buildings, rooms, and the town in general, nor do I think I will since I want to focus more on that sweet sweet romance and lore, but I may post a map or layout picture at some point for different locations in between chapters~

I'll provide a brief description of some of the places we've visited thus far: Alastor lives on the top floor of an apartment complex. The unit itself consists of 3 rooms (4 if you count a bathroom). The first room is the combined kitchen and living room directly when you walk in the door as shown in "Meet".

Pretty everything in the unit is connected to this room. I have never been too great at backgrounds but hopefully this comic will slowly change that lol.

The next room would be the bedroom. This room is located in the attic. The ladder that Lucifer fell down can be folded up and closed like an attic. The way the ladder goes into the kitchen is similar to how it is in Miraculous Ladybug if any of y'all get me--

The roof of the bedroom is slightly slanted and there is a window above a desk that was positioned out of frame from the already shown shot of this room. There is a queen-sized bed, a bedside table, and a closet in the corner, also out of show from what has been shown thus far.

The rest of the apartment has not shown up yet, but it will be where a lot of scenes take place so that will be shown more and more throughout the chapters~ The remaining rooms are the obligatory bathroom and Alastor's radio studio. I will not share too much about said studio since it will be making an appearance next chapter ;) I WILL however share that there is a step-out balcony attached to the apartment as well.

More information about Husk and Anthony will pop up here and there and I do want to do a few Huskerdust mini-episodes ;) The town layout will be a project and a half if I am to solidify it, but I am more concerned about the fluff, angst, and ROMANCE!! I think the most solidified part of the town layout is that it is slightly elevated above the ocean shore with rock walls around the beach so you take stairs to get on and off of the beach. This gives me a bit more freedom in some plot points is all :))

ANYWAY thank you for the questions, I kinda went on a rant, but hopefully, this answers some unspoken questions as well. It's hard to convey EVERYTHING I want to in each panel and chapter so I am always open to clarification post releases! This is the kind of stuff that keeps motivating me and I frikkin love you guys for that! TvT

<3<3<3

[beesmygod]

yesterday was webcomics day. i am bea and i make "A Ghost Story" - part 4: the art

this part i feel like gets done semi-easy once the rest of the shit is dealt with. yesterday, my knuckles continued to swell and feel like rotten wood so i had to cut it short. this shit happens more frequently than i would prefer. today i need to run to the store and also pick myself up a lil treat (an eighth). for right now tho i have some cbd rich stuff that should help. maybe. while the index finger still hurts, only the middle knuckle is swollen anymore. let's see.

i started with panels 2 and 3 bc they seemed the least immediately labor intensive. ill be copy/pasting the line/flats for panel 3 to edit from there. t...there's going to be a lot of copy/paste this page. its not usually like that. but i usually only copy/paste the lines and flats. i will re-shade things so that they look different

unlike the sketch, the lineart has more "weight" to it. wait thats not how the pillow would deform. hold on.

ok that's better. did people even notice that before i changed it. probably not. but it matters to me!!!!! these little things add up and add weight to your world!!!! ive been trying new things with line as as of [looks at watch] last week. so it looks bad right now. like someones vague idea of what good lineart is supposed to look like. practice makes perfect tho....or breeds familiarity or something.

some parts of this look weird. dont worry. we will cover up that shit with speech bubbles. thank you comics for your ways of obfuscating bad art.

flats are easy. select everything that isnt your line art, invert the selection, and dump a base layer. then color that base layer with a mask

this page will, blessedly, not have any complex backgrounds. i already established the scene previously and can skate on doing my textured backgrounds. the background gradients in the direction the light in the room is being cast, usually.

first, a multiply layer at 50%. since she's facing away from the light source, she'll be mostly in shadow. then a white overlay layer at 50%; this is to make the first shadow layer pop and keep from getting too muddy. then a second multiply layer at 50% for the next layer of shadows.

added some sweat beads to make her look more haggard and some shine to her hair, since she's so close to the light. i've started bothering doing this bc it unfortunately looks good. finally i add one more multiply layer at 40% over her eyes to make her look more over this entire thing. and then added the red glow in another overlay layer (100%) where it would land if being cast from above.

completely servicable and theres room for like. a speech bubble later. usually i do text first, but in this case its so secondary to the actions being performed, i want to prioritize one over the other.

looking at it, im not going to be able to copy/paste this after all. she's going to settle in more and her body will rotate too much in the process. i can use this as a base to trace over, though, which will get me started.

but pain is occurring so im going to eat breakfast. what a bitch!

[non-plutonian-druid]

so i was watching clue

[ID: Five short messy comics featuring tua characters reenacting scenes from the movie Clue.

Comic one: Viktor, posing dramatically with tears in his eyes, says "I was a victim too. Or at least, my wife was. She had friends who were..... SOCIALISTS". The next panel was traced over a screenshot of the movie; the rest of the Hargreeves are staring in shock and horror. Reginald is dead in the background, unacknowledged.

Comic two: Diego shouts, "If I was the killer I would kill you next!" Allison and Five stand into frame and give him identical deeply skeptical expressions. Diego says, "I said if!"

Comic three: Five says "I will confess to my very real black mail, because I am just like all of you and not an FBI plant." Five, who is literally a child, continues, "I work for the government and I'm a homosexual." Luther says, "Welp that all sounds perfectly legit to me."

Comic four: Viktor, grinning an extremely strained smile, says "I can explain!" A police officer, who has not been cast as anyone, says "What for? Theres nothing illegal about any of this!" Viktor looks deeply confused and asks "Are you sure?"

Comic five: Five smirks at the camera and says "Now I'm gonna go home." Then he puts a pair of sunglasses on and says, "And sleep with my wife." End ID.]

[thephooka]

How we got here from there

Or, the long journey of a longform long-running webcomic about a long man with long wings.

In the spirit of @feathernotes and @phantomarine who have been talking about just starting your webcomic and not worrying about being "ready", I was inspired to do a post about White Noise's origin! I'm a little limited by the fact that I either left behind or destroyed a lot of the art I have from prior to 2009, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Cringe Truth below the cut!

The Cringe Truth of White Noise is that it has its roots in a Pokemon x Yu Yu Hakusho x self-insert(s) roleplay thread I used to do with an internet friend I made on Neopets guild forums way back in 2002-ish. We would come home from school every day and RP over AIM, and then when we had to get offline, whoever left first would email the other one, and we would continue via email until we were back on AIM at the same time.

Liya was my self insert.

This isn't even remotely the earliest art of her, it's just the earliest I have on hand. I was drawing her for almost a decade by the time I drew this one. Imagine the earlier drawings as being like I traced over Sailor Moon characters that I printed out from deviantART and gave them a brown ponytail.

The funny thing is Liya really hasn't changed much from her original form! I also had loose brown curls that I kept in a ponytail 24/7 to the point that it showed when I had it down (which is why her hair is 'dented' like that). I did it because I was trans and didn't know it; she does it because she hasn't realized she can just cut it off and be butch yet.

Other characters that date back from this time period: Yoshi (originally an InuYasha/Rurouni Kenshin pastiche), Hawk (I don't remember when he got wings but they were white at first), Numair (named after the Tamora Pierce character and filling a Koenma kind of role), Helly (sort of--I had an elf character named Kamui who had the same temperament, and he was eventually transmuted into Helly) and...Kurogane.

I've never named Kurogane but he appears in the background of the comic a few times, as my own personal inside joke.

Vlad came along somewhere between this RP period and planning the comic, but I can't remember when or why. I don't have drawings from that time (~2004?) but he was the first character I drew when I got a tablet for the first time.

Everyone else came along later when I started actually planning out the comic.

All this said: the reason I started White Noise as a weekly webcomic is because I wanted to learn to draw better.

At the time I was in college majoring in animation, but I didn't feel like I was learning very much at all (the program was badly structured; I had more art history classes than anything else. It was a mess.) I was also working nights in order to feed myself, and so had a lot of downtime. I had this story rattling around in my head from my RP days, so I figured, why not just give it a go?

For posterity here's a photo of a chapter 1 panel in progress, back in 2011 with my typical college diet in the bg:

(Chapter 1 was originally pencil on paper, scanned in and colored in PS. I later re-drew it to make it fully digital to match with the rest of the comic.)

There's been a lot of talking about not waiting until you're 'ready' to start a webcomic, and I agree with that sentiment. Try framing it like this: making a comic every week for years and years will improve your art way more than any prep work you can do before starting the comic. It's like learning to swim. You can read about swimming all you want, but you're not going to really figure it out until you do it. If your early comics are bad, well, that's normal. It used to be an expected part of doing webcomics; I blame the shift into expecting webcomics to be polished from start to finish partly on commercialization in the space, but that's an angry rant for another time.

With this background, here's the collage I posted for WN's 10 year anniversary back in 2021:

And now we're here.

So do your webcomic. Put it on ComicFury or make a janky little site for it. Be okay with imperfect pages and be prepared to shout into the void for a while. Even if it's always a hobby, if it never makes you a dime or wins you any awards--that's fine! You'll be a lot happier if you learn not to worry about that stuff, and just make something that will help you grow and make you happy. We could do with a lot more work like that in the world imo.

[neogandw]

Continuing onward, page 2 of 6, the rest of which you can see here.

Honestly this page was a lot of fun, I love recreating areas in gaming a lot, so this was a lot of fun with the whole playing around with multiple universes in smash to give the idea that the Inkling girl just can't hit a shot.

Of note:

I like to think that Inkling Girl's first mistake was skipping Sheldon's explanation. Like, I get it, but his bios do give you a hint of how the thing is supposed to work. Just because you're familiar with a thing it doesn't mean you should skip the manual.

I could have straight up taken a picture of Mementos, but I instead re-drew the whole bit (if anything I just reused a re-draw of the main mementos map which I have done in a previous drawing project). I honestly do not skip steps, if I can recreate a thing for the shot, I'll go out of my way to do it. It makes things look more seamless and in-line with the drawings as a whole if I do everything from scratch, though I'm not above re-using previous drawing assets if I can get away with it (since the mementos map never really changes, I can just reuse that isolated re-draw I have).

If you want it for whatever reason, here it is.

Oh, by the by, I kinda based Joker's render off his appearence in Tactica since that had been recently released by the time I was doing the drawing. I do like the tactica renders so I may base the persona characters off that to simplify them a bit style-wise.

I know WarioWare being used for Samus is a bit of an odd choice, but I figured I could just do a simpler area rather than going with either Norfair (all that lava would get in the way of the ORANGE paint), Brinstar (same, but Yellow) or Frigate Orpheon (I didn't really need the parasite queen in the background). Adding Pikachu in was a later idea just to highlight how much she's missing the shot.

Dedede and a Pikmin laying down was funny enough already, but here's a bit of hilarity I thought about (and I know that explaining the joke ruins it, but you know, this is supposed to be a commentary): this is flat zone, it's entirely 2D, the inkling girl somehow missed the shot even when you only needed to aim left or right.

I like Minecraft a lot, but when DRAWING the universe its a bit dull if everything is just cubes. So while I totally can do that I just choose to make a stylized version that is semi-cubey for most everything. Though Alex I prefer to go full proportions.

Alex being more human proportioned does bring some challenges since I do want her to look like a country bumpkin of sorts, so this comic helped me finalize how I would do it. Honestly its kind of based on how artist Peargor does it. Though I'm gonna go with a longer braid and some freckles.

I do largely prefer Alex over Steve though, so you'll likely see her whenever I involve minecraft on my drawings. If I were to draw steve though? I'd likely make him buff. I tend to think of Alex as the builder/farmer (which is my playstyle) whereas Steve is the adventurer (how my friends play the game).

I didn't actually borrow any textures from Minecraft, they were self made. Which is kind of why they're kind of shit.

Honestly drawing the regular Charger was a bit of a thing. The Splatoon weaponry can be very complex in its detailing so for the first few panels it was kind of traced. Over time I just did it on my own for later panels.

Tracing isn't a bad practice, just as long as you don't pass an entirely traced work as your own. Trace responsibly kids, it helps learn how to do a thing.

[nanistar]

Any advice on how to draw backgrounds? Gotten to the point in my art where im semi confident in drawing poses and expressions but backgrounds?? girl help i can only somewhat draw a tree

oh hell yeah i love backgrounds, ive been working on more interiors lately (when not overburdened by sbc work lol) but im assuming you're asking about nature so that's how im going to answer it as okay so: -first of all find yourself a good TEXTURED blending/smudging brush because it will save your life. i use these rock texture brushes from This Studio Ghibli pack, it's $6 and i HIGHLY recommend the whole pack because it's the main one i use for most of my bg foliage/grass ect and i love it dearly

-find references either in irl photos or other artist's work. if using another artist's work watch their speedpaints or look at what you like about their art style and techniques and steal it. im serious. obviously don't trace it and pass it off as something of your own but look at how they do the aspects you struggle with, and try to incorporate that

for me, that struggle is forest foliage because i have a hard time filling out the spaces without everything looking like same colored blobs, so i looked at how my buddy hannah mudshadow does bgs because she's really good at filling out a scene and making it look natural, and i noticed she uses a lot of abstract shapes instead of trying to render every leaf, so rather than doing my base work for bushes/trees with a leaf brush, i use a chunky scatter brush now and it looks really good, and then i can go and add some leaf brushes on top of that for more definition in areas that might catch light ect so that will give it the thick, bushy .. bush look without looking crowded or too shaped

-nature is messy as hell and things are never going to be perfectly shaped and toned unless you're drawing perfectly managed hedges or something. got some dirt brown on your green bush? those are dead leaves now. accidental weird texture on your tree? the bark is gone there, something ate it. bushes and trees have dead branches that just hang out there in them, grass grows long and sometimes a deer or whatever doesn't eat the whole patch so there's long uneven sprigs sticking up. petals fall off flowers. trees have huge webs of branches

-don't try to detail everything. make things further away more abstract and messy to give the illusion of detail. throw a gradient over it for some slight tone variation or something so it;s not completely flat but ppl are going to look at your subject and see the rest of it with the corner of their eyes, so you don;t need to fully render every flower in the field. here's some examples of that

the cactuses in the far BG are just V and Y shapes, the joshua tree in the middle distance is dark with some light blobs right on the edge where the needles would catch light.

this is from 2021 so be nice to me but as the flowers go back in the distance, i stop rendering their petals and start doing blue dots with white dots, and then even further away i just sorta blend blue and green together to give the illusion of a field of flowers.

-i dont know what your style is, but i personally hate using a ton of layers and tend to merge them as i go, but for the most part i draw every panel of SBC bg on the same 1 layer, going back to front (start with sky, mountain, bg grass, foreground grass and cactus, then go back and scatter foliage as necessary) and it keeps my stuff loser and i tend to get less precious about making things look perfect. i also work very fast because i am unironically really lazy at art and am desperate for shortcuts.

-oh yeah one more thing. assuming you draw cats, cats are SOOOOOO small in comparison to literally everything. as warrior artists i think our perspective gets a but confused sometimes (i am certainly guilty of this too!) and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this because sometimes that's just how you have to build your scenes, but it really makes me laugh when i see scenes of like, rusty jumping off his fence to go into the woods, but the fence is only a bit taller than him. so try to remember things are huge and cats are small as hell

na'ni's a huge cat, all things considered but look at her compared to my small aloe plant

or the cedar tree in my front yard.

absolutely microscopic. don't look at my slippers.

so yeah. i hope this helps, it's not so much a tutorial because i don't think i'm the best person for tutorials because honestly i dont know much and this is all stuff i've picked up on, like i dont know shit about composition or values or color theory but this is important stuff to keep in mind about the environments themselves. don't worry too hard about colors at first because you can always change it by adjusting your curves n stuff. or slap a filter on that bad boy. or dont. also pay attention to your horizon line because it helps angle the rest of your piece. but look up tutorials for that because i only started learning about it like a week ago

[mandalhoerian]

NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 11

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 1OK warnings: the girls are fightingggggg summary: Tensions arise. Leon thinks it's between him and Vera, but he doesn't expect to find himself out of the picture when Ada comes back into frame. author's note: i thought i was never going to finish this omg... but we're officially done with the sewers! nearly at the end of this work i cant believe it tbh

READ ON AO3 ! ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

“Holy shit…”

“Ada!”

“How the fuck did she get in there—”

“We need to get her out.”

He was lucky Vera didn’t respond with, Yeah dumbass, and instead began circling the monitoring room they were in; bloodshot, yet sharp, intelligent eyes gliding through for anything that could help them out while he paced back and forth in front of the giant, rectangular window overlooking the pit of garbage — thinking, thinking.

Leon’s teeth ached from gritting them, the unconscious attention orbiting around his shoulder making itself scarce and bouncing around in his skull instead when he needed it to focus. Ada was a small blotch of red fabric on a bed of scrap down there, curled on her side with her back to them, a hand outstretched and the other tucked beneath her body. Identifying exactly where she was injured was difficult from the position her body was in. He could only assume she was unconscious from the rise and fall of her ribcage since they couldn’t get her attention from banging on the glass.

This was basically them observing her like she was an animal put on display in one of those glass cages in a zoo.

He rested a fist on the stainless surface, and pressed his forehead to the back of his hand, shutting his eyes. The pulsing, subtle pain wasn’t helping the thinking process, nor the panic chewing away at the back of his mind refusing to let him come down and focus. Chewing the inside of his bottom lip, he turned his head to rest his cheek against his curled knuckles and opened his eyes to glance back at Vera, who had her back to him, standing in front of some kind of control panel fixed to the wall behind him.

The cold chill in the air was sapping his strength as he reached out to her. “Anything?”

The demanding, impatient undertones weren’t supposed to be there, Leon wasn’t even aware some part of him was doing that to hide the frazzled pity party raging inside — at odds with the comfort of her always having some sort of solution no matter the situation, with the expectation she would somehow make the problem of retrieving Ada disappear.

“Map.” Not turning away to face him, she pointed to the wall right next to the window Leon was agonizing on, and then stopped whatever she was examining to walk over there, and ran her fingers across the board, tracing the blueprints. Not dwelling on his lack of environmental awareness, he perked up, lifting himself off to peer at it.

At first glance, it was confusing, but she made it easy to read. Somehow. “Right outside this place is the first floor of the treatment room. We were just on the upper level of it. See?” She jabbed her finger on the title at the top of the poster, and made a line downward. “Ada must have fallen from… there. They’re connected. Looks like they have a system to contain the trash gathered above and treat it before dumping ‘em in the incinerator, or whatever.”

“I don’t get it,” Leon sighed.

“Yeah, well. This isn’t a class. You’re good. Ada on the other hand… She got lucky landing right there so we can see her.” Her fingers dragged over the diagram, the chipped black nail polish contrasting with the white background of the chart. “According to this, we need to pass through that door over there. The U-Area is where the waste disposal opens to. And…”

Leon was already grimacing at the red lights surrounding the very obvious blockade in their path, looking more and more like a bank vault in his eyes. “Fantastic. Code again? Bracelet?”

Vera ripped the map off, hastily folding it while she crossed the path to the terminal, the crimson washing over her silhouette and making it glow around the edges. Leon also followed, with no idea what the neighboring sockets next to it were, trying to make sense of the three vertically paralleling panels side by side with slots in the middle of each one. Some had… chess piece-shaped plugs inserted in them. This designing choice. In a sewer.

He’d blame the hallucinations, except this was reality.

“I had a hunch.”

“A hunch,” he echoed, the insides of his eyebrows pulling together.

“Just, gimme a sec,” she dismissed with a playful clicking sound resonating from the back of her mouth, and pulled out a switchblade from her utility belt, shoving the end of the blade in between the front cover and the case of the biggest of the panels on the very left, just beside the vault door, breaking it open after wiggling the weapon in a circular motion. The metal came away with a soft clatter as it bounced on the concrete floor, other buttons and screws following suit in her careful prying to reach the circuitry.

He watched over her shoulder with great interest, the swiftness of her fingers fumbling around in the electronic guts and maneuvering around the wires. A true professional knowing exactly what to do. “So…?”

“Yep,” was all she said, finding something where he only could see plastic threads of different colors in a metal skeleton. “This is our guy.”

“Okay…?”

Vera did a double take on him, eyes appearing eerily red from the light as she pulled him away and got him to stand in the middle of the area for whatever reason, and he was dumbly obliged. “See those snake-wide wires from one station to another? Don’t they look like they’re connecting everything together?”

“Yeah,” Leon said, following the path she was following with her index finger.

“So like. Think of this as a very complex electric circuit. Maybe you don’t remember, it gets taught early I think? I don’t know which grade. Late elementary?”

Leon was one more outrageous misinformation from sputtering. “Physics. High school.”

“Ah,” she said, in the most monotonous, disinterested way possible, and shook it off, leaving him there to work on the big case again, burying her hands inside the mechanism of the contraption, and a loud pop was heard as a spark came off. Leon flinched at the sudden occurrence, and it didn't go unnoticed, judging by Vera's smug expression as she looked over her shoulder at him. “Anyway. Electric circuit. You know what to do with those. Wire it correct to turn the light on.”

“You make it sound so easy.” Leon would have laughed if it weren't for the current circumstances. “Isn’t that risky? If you fry the entire thing, we’re not getting through that door.”

“Good thing I’m not that much of a mess, right?” Vera replied, and suddenly jerked her hand away, the movement quick as she hissed in pain and stuck her finger in her mouth. "Ow."

"Careful!"

“Just a tiny pinch,” she muttered, sucking on her fingertip to ease the burning sensation, and Leon stood there, not knowing what to do and awkwardly struggling with himself over it. “Easy as I’m making it sound, this is gonna take a while.” She went down on one knee and shrugged off her backpack, searching the contents for something, not sparing a glance at him when saying, “You should do a thorough sweep of this place. We need anything we can get.”

He didn’t know what had him spaced out so much, the painkillers or finally being in a safe space where no need to look out for what lurked just around the corner, so, he only soaked the words in when Vera stopped whatever she was doing and looked as if she was awaiting something.

“You want me to go?”

"Are you sure you're not secretly a child and the sun didn't rise today for you to be able to do such a thing?"

“I—” At a loss for words, all he could do was open his mouth and close it for a comeback that wasn’t there, standing there like a huge idiot. “I mean, yeah, I could do that, it’s just—”

“Ada will be fine,” she interrupted, a tiny smile there as she took out some supplies from the bag: pliers, tape— “I’m on it. One thing at a time, you know? Or rather, many things at once. We gotta pick the speed up. Maybe you could try contacting Claire in the meanwhile? Marş, marş!”

He had a feeling that last part meant ‘Chop, chop,’ or something and not a type of wetlands, nearly offended at being kicked out. This was coming out of nowhere. Nevermind splitting up always causing more trouble than it was worth, leaving Vera with Ada in her condition was out of the question. The uneasy doubt made for an immediate objection and the offer of a better suggestion, but Vera beat him to it once more, “It’ll be fine. I know you don’t have a lot of faith in me at the moment, but—”

“Wait, what? No,” he burst out, the shock of it getting his body to move and stand right next to her, disbelief outweighing the constant, persistently annoying presence in his shoulder, having to look down at the kneeling girl. “That’s not true, this isn’t about that.”

He trusted her with his life, what was she talking about?

“Are you sure? Umbrella and all?”

Leon froze mid-inhale with the accusation, his hackles rising at the momentary pause that made it irrefutable on his tongue like a sweet turning acrid with the mention, and he bit the tip of it to swallow the bile, the saliva leaving a dry trail in its wake. She lightly scoffed as if this was all the confirmation she needed, and he hadn’t even said anything. The gray gaze veiled over with transparent red was steady and patient as she looked up at him under her lashes, the shine of it uncanny against the relaxed stance. The shadows of the room shrouded her, hiding her from the fluorescent glare of the artificial lighting, but Leon could still make out the details of her features, her jaw, the bridge of her nose, the curves and the sharp angles, the gleam in her eyes, all bathed in red, overtaking the pink.

He had to look away to sigh for a second, eyelids fluttering shut, and he scratched above his eyebrows to cover for the fact he was trying to rub the tension away.

The information she revealed had been shelved moving forward. For way too many reasons. One of them being too much to process, all things considered, with everything they’d been through; the near death experiences, the encounters with unholy monsters and zombies alike, and whatever else there was hiding in the dark. It wasn’t a conversation to be had lightly. Choosing to ignore it in the meanwhile was inspired by Marvin’s wisdom — don’t think, thinking slows you down, slow gets you killed. He’d embraced that willingly, because he could at least trust that she wasn’t out to get anyone other than Umbrella, and so far, she hadn’t proved him wrong.

So, it wasn’t about faith. It wasn’t about that at all.

It was about the tangled barn of yarn tied in knots with no hope of unraveling his insides that only a punch to his face would snap him out of. He didn’t know what to feel, but at the same time, things were coming at him with no name attached to them — all of which lacked any form like they’d stopped in the developmental stages.

Resentment was there, for being told half-truth, followed by guilt as an allergic reaction for harboring bitterness towards a friend, elevating sympathy for what she’d been through, a child used as a puppet in a scheme involving human experimentations. Something that cut deep at the knowledge she’d been aware all along. Admiration for her inhuman dedication to keep going. Incomprehensible. Unimaginable. Simply something out of fiction. Vera already had something around her from the start that emanated she was too brilliant to be real like some neon sign, and this had completely broken Leon’s reaction scale.

(Fear of having her run off with the evidence to save her own ass and abandon him. Prove his trust wrong like his superior did.)

And yet, “You saved my life. You’re still here. End of story,” came out of him unblinking, confident as a proven scientist. Three simple sentences sliced that tangled ball of yard in one go. “Page me if anything happens.”

Vera turned her gaze down, just nodding and offering a silent, “Okay,” and Leon started walking away, hand coming up to cradle his shoulder, feeling at the bandages and rotating his arm in small circles. The heat emitting from it was distracting, but he endured and pushed open the door, welcoming the cool draft despite the stink.

“Take the map,” she called out after him.

Leon caught the flying paper thrown at him with the force of a boomerang right in the nick of time, the sound echoing all around him. “Thanks.”

“A cable car?”

Only when his voice bounced back to him from the vast, empty space of the facility that Leon noticed he’d said that out loud, laser-focused on the Umbrella logo staring right back at him on the large vehicle. “Interesting.”

The single vagoned train-like structure was anchored to the platform, suspended in the air by steel cables, the rails above leading to the unknown depths of the underground area obscured by pitch black, intermittently illuminated by a spark of electricity running through damaged circuits where the lights ahead should be hanging from.

Now that he thought about it, metal and steel had replaced cement of the sewers infused with stool and piss the closer they got to this part of the complex, the stench fading and giving way to a more neutral, less offensive copper smell.

He had a feeling about the destination, but it was impossible to determine how long it would take to traverse the entire length, and the last thing he wanted to do was get on it and find out that it was a one-way ride or a trap waiting to spring.

Still, couldn’t hurt to take a peek, right?

“ID wristband required for cable car entry,” a robotic, female voice announced when he got closer to the door with a glowing green screen on it turning red upon his arrival.

Leon stared at his bare wrist, recalling Vera having snatched one from that uninvited zombie only able to have access to the corridor because he had it on him prior to turning. If they had any business with the lab, his instincts were telling him one of those bracelets would grant them the pass needed.

He was hoping it wouldn't come to that.

Digging deeper when you were already in a hole and needed a ladder to climb out was not a good decision.

"Vera, come in," He drummed his fingers on the device as he waited for an answer, walking the short length of the platform, staring at the orange and yellow signs warning about the danger of high voltage in the railways. "Found something interesting.”

“Yeah?”

“Cable car.”

“Uh-huh.”

Something made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he whipped his head around to see nothing, but the feeling of being watched, being followed persisted. He moved further away from the entrance of the car and went to lean against the railing instead, observing the gloomy scenery. “Know what this is?”

“Is that rhetorical or you want me to answer?”

“Vera.”

She was strained from the signal cutting in and out. “It’s a ride to NEST.”

He gave a concentrated puff of air from his nose at the way she said it so casually. At one hand, the no-bullshit attitude was appreciated, at the other, he was caught off guard by the honesty — the normalcy of it.

“Is NEST the secret underground lab Ben Bertolucci was talking about?”

“Yeah.”

He expected more snark and less directness along the lines of, ‘What do you think the word nest implies, dum-dum.’ A headache was coming in.

“Ada’s heading there, then?”

The static on the other side was growing louder, her voice inaudible for a few moments as she fought to get the device to work. “Has to be. Cable car’s the only way to reach it. That I know of… Either that, or she’s looking for another route to get there.”

That’s the most she’d said about the topic. He dragged a palm down his face, fingertips picking up dampness along his brow line. “Got it. Anything else I should know?”

“About?”

He deliberately made what he said next sound dumb. “Well, whatever’s over there. More of those things?”

And he waited for the response as Vera mulled over it for a little. Option one was themed Leon not really needing to know. Option two was a jab about him not needing to since they wouldn’t be going there. Option three varied: duh, obviously, technically yes, or, probably.

Instead, she said, “Worse than that, I imagine.”

No joking around. Yeah. She was simultaneously saying nothing and everything he needed to know. This wasn’t doing any favors to Leon’s already anxious mind. “You could have lied, you know.”

Her chuckle crackled, broken by the bad connection. “Bit busy at the moment.”

The line fell silent afterwards, and Leon decided to not to push it further, leaving Vera to finish her job, closing his eyes as he went to hop on the table adjacent to the cable car with an assortment of papers, a computer monitor, and fliers scattered on the surface. Sitting down and flexing his shoulder helped to ease the tension, but the occasional flickering of the fluorescent lights above that washed over him and stuck a beam of ache right between his eyes definitely didn’t.

He absentmindedly picked one of the notes, expecting it to be about construction or technicalities, and was instead met with: Sally, Dad loves you so much. I’m coming babygirl. Wait for me a little longer.

The words were shaky and the ink had smudged in places, leaving spots, some of the lines so thick that the pen tore into the paper from the pressure. Leon peered at the date in the corner, only a week ago, and the ache in his shoulder and the heaviness in his limbs doubled. He wondered where the father had ended up, imagining him mindlessly wandering this underground maze, chunks of flesh dented in with teeth marks among countless companions who shared the same fate with a loved one's picture tucked in their breast pocket.

"Leon?!"

He whipped his head toward the originator of the shocked call, jumping down from the table and lowering the note gingerly, heartbeat accelerating. "Claire?"

"Oh my god!"

The relief that had him going weak in the knees was short lived, though. Claire was jogging up to him with Sherry cradled like a rag doll in her arms, a bundle of limbs trying to curl up on herself as attempts at soothing her were interrupted, and even from the distance it was uncanny how off her color was. Leon sprinted to meet them halfway there before he was even aware of it, grabbing the girl’s shoulders, checking her over for any bites or scratches.

He was afraid to ask, but did anyway. “What happened?”

The exhaustion weighing Claire down got to Leon’s radar then. “She’s infected with G.”

The tremors he felt underneath his palms transferred over to him as Sherry kept shuddering, breaths coming out in short gasps from cracked lips with barely a splash of color. He could hear her lungs clicking with each exhale.The warmth of her skin was searing to the touch.

He was so lost in the brief memory of little Emma that the click of heels closing in didn’t get through to him until it was too late.

“Step back. Now.”

Not commanding. Definitely not intimidating.

Armored misery was what Annette Birkin had spiraled into, pointing her gun at him with the hammer pulled back to reveal a shell in the chamber, knuckles white from the force of her grip and shoulders taut, a dark burgundy bruise on the left side of her face blooming on her cheekbone, the white of her eyes pinked from having shed tears beforehand.

Claire let out a heated yell, as frantic as Annette looked, half-shielding Leon with her body, Sherry still in her arms. “Stop! He’s with me!”

“He’s with that bitch,” Annette said in a correcting way, low and spiteful. He could only assume she meant Ada. “I’m not letting him anywhere near my daughter.”

“You already shot me once, and here I am.”

The advantage he took in hopes of smoothing down the tension had the opposite effect as the barrel of the gun pointed at him shook with Claire’s outraged, “What?! She shot you?”

Annette shook her head, lips thinning before they parted. “It was a warning shot. Wasn’t meant for him.”

He put his hands up, slowly, practically seeing the bristles raising on Annette’s back like a dog. “Aimed at an FBI agent. Good for you I got in the way.”

He didn’t know if her huffing laugh was genuine surprise or a sarcastic scoff, but it didn’t matter when her hands didn’t move an inch to indicate letting up, the steel of the barrel catching the intermittent spark of light from above like a taunting. “FBI? FBI.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat, the bead of sweat trailing down from the back of his neck to his spine was the drag of the tip of a knife to his senses. “You might want to reconsider your choice of enemies,” he tried, voice coming raspier than he intended. “I understand your reaction. I’m sure in these circumstances, she’s willing to forget about it until we get out of here. We all want the same thing.”

Annette shifted on her feet, briefly glancing at the suffering little girl when he nodded his chin in that direction. The veins in her neck bulged as her jaw clenched, breathing slowing. Unshed tears that would have escaped if she blinked filled her eyes, and she turned her head away, refusing to look any more. She gestured with a cock of her gun for Leon to step away. “Before I change my mind.”

Claire started to protest. “Don’t do this Annette—”

“Please, I’m not the enemy. Listen. Put it down, let me help, and then I’ll do anything I can to put you in the best possible position to—”

“You listen to me, boy. Stop wasting my time. You have no idea what you’re doing, who you’re protecting, or what you’re risking by getting in my way. I’m putting the next shot between your eyes the moment you open your dumb mouth again. I have a child and a city to save. Make your choice now.”

With a deep exhale, he carefully stepped aside with his hands up, clearing the path to the cable car's closed doors, and Annette slid on the floor towards them, not daring to take her eyes off him. The lock glowed green as she came closer, and she didn't need to lower her weapon as she took advantage of it to slip inside the safety of the capsule.

"Get in," she called to Claire.

Claire sent a pleading look to Leon standing a few feet away, and he couldn't do anything but remain there helplessly as she scurried in after bracing Sherry to hold her better, peeking at him over her shoulder in the last second to mutter, "Sorry."

“Not your fault.”

Her eyes shone with sincerity. “She said she can cure Sherry.”

Leon’s lungs were a balloon deflating at that. “She can?—”

“Yeah. So, take Vera and get out of here. Don’t follow us. We’ll be okay.”

And to his sinking horror, Claire wholeheartedly believed what she was saying.

Annette cut in, not caring to elaborate any further on what little context Claire provided. "I'd take her advice if I were you."

The door shut with a muffled hiss, leaving him on his own trapped in a state of shock and confusion, the telltale beeping of the lock mechanism signaling his defeat. Leon was rooted where he stood, in a daze locked on the car disappearing from sight with the speed of a snail, continuing to observe the eerie darkness that slowly swallowed it in pitiful curiosity.

Eventually, he turned around and trudged through the platform, barely aware of his movements, each step that carried him away from the now empty station stretching the fragile string holding him together thinner.

Taking the map in one hand and the radio in the other, he numbly thumbed at the buttons as the map crinkled, the creases fresh and symmetrical. “Vera, come in.”

It was faint, but he heard the radio buzz. “Everything okay?”

Better to rip the bandaid off in one go.

He drew in a ragged breath, his mouth tasting like cotton, his pulse pounding in his ears and he could feel it in his fingertips, could feel the sweat gather on his hairline and his clothes clinging to his hot body. "I..." He croaked and cleared his throat, wincing at the sudden noise and how the sounds clashed in his skull. "Bad news, Sherry got infected. Good news, Annette can apparently fix it. Claire's with them on the way to the NEST right now."

The lack of reply was normal in his opinion, he waited until he heard the crackling of what he assumed was sputtering breaths. “Jesus fuck. What the fuck.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I know.”

“How’s Claire—I mean—”

“Just. Tired.”

“Are you going with them? Did Annette—”

Leon wiped at the dampness on his forehead with the back of his hand. "No, no, I... I wouldn't be able to go along even if I wanted to. Annette didn't want me there."

He was going to add, ‘I wouldn’t leave you two behind like that,’ — but Vera’s immediate, “Because of Ada?” derailed his train of thought.

“Because of Ada.”

“How nice of her to give a fuck about you like that.”

“She didn’t shoot me this time.”

“What a character development,” she said, he could picture the roll of eyes that came with it, but didn’t feel like laughing or bantering at the moment at all.

“Listen, um,” he started, unable to hold back the words anymore, and they came out as a bundle of words that didn’t quite know their turn, spilling from him in an anxious mess. “I… This— cure. It could be cured. G. Do you think… Did you know…”

What he meant was: Did you know we could have saved Marvin if we were faster? Has it been weighing on you all this time? Can Raccoon City be saved after all? Did this many people need to suffer if they had a cure all along? I can’t stop thinking. I can’t stop thinking.

Her, “Fuck off,” made his spine so straight he thought a rod had gone through his esophagus. So sharp and cold it was a slap to the face, heat shot up from his neck all the way to the tip of his ears, the sudden rise in temperature scorching his shoulder. “My dad would still be here if I did.”

Good thing nobody was there to see a grown man go beet red from shame.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek, a metallic tang flooding his mouth as his teeth pierced the flesh. He stared at the tip of his shoes, itching to somehow be able to walk away from the conversation. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he apologized softly. “I’m sorry. I was just. Sharing? I guess…”

Could have worded it better.

“Ah.” The sigh through the receiver was long and spent, the long stretch of silence having him wonder if she cut the line off or not. “My nerves are on fucking pins and needles, I—”

“It’s okay,” The tension in his shoulders and back dissipated, and he took a deep breath to wash out the remains of mortification that settled on his palate. "We’re good—we’re good, right?”

“Yeah,” she sniffled. “Yeah. Of course.”

Eager to change the subject, he rubbed his fingers together, the material of the fingerless glove wrinkling with the motion. “I can’t believe they had a cure for G-virus lying around, everything could have been—”

“They don’t.”

Leon stared ahead, focusing on a random safe sitting on top of a table at the end of a catwalk, and a dead body propped up against the railing beside it. “What do you mean they don’t?”

The bitterness of her laugh cracked into the void of the transmission. "G isn't the strain raising people from the dead, or making those dogs rabid. It's what made William into that thing. You still remember what Claire read to us, right?"

“Yeah..?”

“The… zombie virus is a different thing. Fuck if I remember which letter of the alphabet they named it. But G, it's something else. Something new. It's no wonder people who made it have an antiviral agent lying around. Can't exactly test shit without a control group."

He didn’t get the difference at all. It was all the same in his eyes, the maker of abominations.

"Zombie virus is a different thing," he repeated, ignoring her remark about testing viruses on living subjects, "I thought it was all the same? But Ada said—"

"I know what she said," Vera interrupted him, and Leon had to stop himself from getting on the defensive over the hostility that wasn't even directed at him. "Either the FBI are misinformed or she was just saying things to satiate our curiosity. Classified information, yeah?"

"We should tell her if she doesn't know."

"If," She emphasized. "No point in trying to get more involved otherwise. Not our business."

“You’re still saying that?” It very much was their business. Claire, Annette, and even Ada before told them to walk away, but he wasn’t going to. He couldn’t. Who would after coming this far? “We’re past that point already. We might even be close to ending all of this, and— Jesus, don’t you want definitive, undeniable proof? That’s where we’re going to get it. A lab, Vera. Fingerprints of Umbrella straight from the source. Come on.”

He was tired of playing it logical and safe when it was already obvious they were headed down this rabbit hole. Time to dive in with their eyes open.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," was all Vera commented before she dropped the subject, her voice taking on a lighter sheen. "I'm almost done, by the way. Don't go too far."

"Sure," he agreed, easily, the knots in his stomach unwinding. "See you in a bit."

Leon felt like he was caught in a never-ending loop of the same repetitive steps. Discover a new area, open the gate, get swarmed by zombies, lose a bullet, stack up on supplies, get swarmed by zombies, get up, walk forward, find a safe zone, rest a while, find new stuff, set out again, open a door, get swarmed by zombies, press his back to a wall, reload, open a door, walk, get swarmed.

At this point, he wouldn't be surprised to see the exact same room he saw a mile ago with a path leading to another hallway in the same shape. There was no telling where he was going, just blindly trusting the instinct to go and go and go, and when it didn't feel like it was right, his gut screamed at him to turn back and take a different road. The map Vera threw at him for this very reason remained crumpled and useless in the back pocket of his pants, the scribbles and the drawn routes all crossed over each other, the network of routes resembling a child-designed maze as they all somehow led to the waterways waist-deep with sludge and trash and decomposing corpses, and he wasn't about to take a dip with his open gunshot wound anytime soon.

On the brighter side of things, he was now more or less familiar with the layout of the facility thanks to his adventures and Vera's colorful additions, getting better at evading, conserving bullets and the damage to his uniform and equipment. It was the downside of using guns - the ammo consumption being the biggest factor to keep in mind as they kept becoming scarcer and scarcer to find. He needed to be careful with his shots from now on, and only use them on the creatures that were a little more threatening and dangerous than the standard fare, but that didn't mean it was any less frustrating when he still came out of situations with a handful of shallow wounds, especially ones he was supposed to be more skilled at avoiding.

"Status update, Vera, how is it going?" he asked for the second time in the last twenty minutes, the impatience dissipating after he opened a locker to reveal a body that didn't belong in the small space, crouched in all the wrong angles and stuffed in there by someone by the looks of it, the missing flesh of his face rotting with green blotches on the purple skin. He averted his eyes and instead focused on the pallor of the undamaged portions of the cheek and the vacant blue pupils, the corpse's features revealing it belonged to a young man, no older than him.

In one of the earlier conversations, she’d given him the best news he received so far in this shithole: Ada was awake in there, and Vera had gestured to her they were working on a way to get her out.

The last few times, though, with the weight of Ada’s mortality off of their shoulders, she’d gone on technical tangents with all the eloquence of an electrician he was too unfamiliar with engineering to understand that at this point he thought finding the right plugs for the sockets to open the door would be easier instead of trying to rewire the whole thing, resulting in conversations such as: "what's this wire to do?" "pump energy to the relay" "what does it do?" "relays the power to the circuit breaker." "so what's the purpose of that?" "the circuit breaker?" "yeah." "it breaks the circuit so it doesn't blow up and fry the cables when it reaches its max wattage." "great. what is the circuit we're supposed to break then?" "are you being serious?" "...yes."

Which resulted in him receiving a, "Fuck off," in the end.

Not that he minded.

This time around, he expected a barb to deflect his insistent jabs, mock annoyance or a promise of bouncing back faster than lightning, but what he received was the uncomfortable crunch of static followed by silence, the monotonous drone of the open line indicating she was listening.

"Hello?"

He pressed the button of the device in hopes of making the sound clearer, his other hand splaying open in front of him in a confused gesture.

More crackling, a soft hiss, a mumbled curse. "Shhhhit," she hissed, followed by a clatter of metal like she tossed a screwdriver. "You piece of shit, where did you go?"

He checked around the corner he'd previously cleaned up just in case, his shoes squeaking as he rounded the sharp turn and peered into the darkness with his flashlight shining the path ahead, and hurried across the corridor. "Need help?"

"What are you gonna do, hit it with a rock?" The slight amusement in her tone was drowned in more rustling and groaning as she struggled to do something. "It's fine, just—it slipped, gimme a sec. Sorry, I—" Her voice broke off mid-sentence. "Stop distracting me, go away, you're making it worse!"

Was that directed at him or at something else? He stopped at the next turn, a door blocked by a trash container next to a rack of lockers, and was met with nothing but the unappealing, wet squelch of the sole of his boots in the puddle of blood next to an old fire extinguisher. His skin prickled as he leaned closer to check around it, only to be met with an empty hallway, a blackboard fixed on the wall with the letters H E L P emblazoned across it in chipped red paint.

"AAAAAAAA!!!" Vera's screech echoed in his ear. He'd gained the ability to distinguish between serious screams and irritated ones, so it didn't make him jump but he winced from the sheer volume, rubbing his free palm against his aching shoulder as he tuned back into her rambling. "You fucker! No, not the other one, the one— I got it, I got it! Ha, suck it up!"

A puff of air left Leon's nostrils. "Aren't you a ray of sunshine?"

Vera took offense in that, her offended gasp as she scoffed made it more comedic than dramatic. "Says the guy who keeps calling me every ten goddamn seconds like a needy little puppy."

"Oh, sorry for being worried, I guess. It's not like you're wide open for anything that comes through the door or anything."

"Do I look like I'm asking for a rescue party?" she drawled.

A chuckle left him in the form of an amused huff, the tension in his joints easing up. "Like you came across cockroaches."

"I hope you slip on one, asshole."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to me today."

Her next words came out nasal and muffled from what he assumed was her cupping her nose and mouth with the back of her palm. "Eh. That honor is probably mine." The mood changed like a switch that was flicked on and off again, she coughed a few times, and he heard her pat the front of her shirt and take a deep inhale and a shaky exhale, and then the radio went quiet. The shuffling of clothing rustling through the speaker was the next thing to indicate she was still there. "And on that note, I got the door open. Heading downstairs to get Ada out."

"Huh?" Leon looked at the pink walkie-talkie as if it personally insulted him. "No— wait for me, you can't go on your own. Who knows what's down there?"

"I do. It's fine."

"We've been through this, you know..."

She laughed, a nervous titter. "It's just a door."

And what she didn't say out loud, he heard as an echo. What could go wrong?

The unannounced, jinx-sent Birkin fight left them both traumatized from getting trapped in a burning control room with no other choice than to play whack-a-mole with the giant monster's claw as the hammer, followed by having to strategize like it was a turn-based RPG not to get thrown off the side of the platform while one played the bait and the other handled the crane controls to send container after container hurtling back to knock the mutated William into the abyss — because there was nothing else left to do other than getting him off their back. No fighting this thing.

And get rid of him they did, one crate at a time until the man was completely out of sight, the only remaining evidence of his presence being the last of his shrieks fading to black.

"Just a door, huh," Leon breathed out, panting and staggering forward on wobbly legs to wrap a steadying arm around Vera's middle before she fell over on the side in front of the crane controls.

She pushed him aside and full-on laid down on the ground, belly-down, starfishing under his open-mouthed amusement. "Just a fucking door," she wheezed, the backpack that somehow had survived the whole ordeal made her look like a turtle. "If that son of a bitch pulls a Terminator I'm nuking him. I swear to god. Sorry to Sherry but I can't do this anymore."

He rested his hands on his knees, crouching in the shadows of the massive construction machine, and gazed at the infinite expanse of nothing but a pitch black sky, the stench of sulfur around them filling his lungs. The wooden flooring of the platform creaked beneath him as he shifted his weight to settle on his backside, dropping next to her, a relieved hissing out from his lips.

There was no way for him to even begin to comprehend how Vera was feeling, her hands visibly shaking next to her, her hair an untamed, frizzy mess, the rips on her fishnets tearing apart more with the friction and she was absolutely covered in all sorts of stains from the dark patches of soot to the splatters of blood, her sweat seeping through the fabric.

He rolled over to mess with the outer pockets of the bag, looking for some kind of snack to bring her blood sugar back up, and found a chocolate bar that he guessed was a lucky find. Vera's mane of hair grunted when he handed it over, a deep frown on her face that scrunched her nose, her eyes cracking open enough to show the whites of them as she snatched it from him and wolfed it down.

After swallowing the last bite, she said, "Thanks."

It was funny to see her muching on it with a grimace of pain as she moved her jaw and chewed, and he watched her as she got back on her feet with the grace of a baby deer and extended a helping hand. She ignored it and stood on her own, slapping her palms together to dust the grime off, and he took her example to wipe at his dirty cheeks.

"We're not going back the way we came," Leon pointed out, stepping towards the edge of the platform to look up at the large crane that hung over the gap, Birkin's previous assault knocking down the scaffolding along with the metal walkway and leaving them with nothing to cover the bottomless pit.

"We got that door." Vera sounded drained, the lack of energy in her voice enough of an indicator. He understood her sentiment.

Leon couldn't stop the jab from coming out, taking out the map from the back pocket of his trousers. "Let's hope this door has something better in store than the last one."

"What a thing to say about Ada!"

He had a long way to go before winning a verbal sparring match against her.

"Huh," he hummed, the sizable paper in his hands bending backward and folded in half as he studied it more closely, the creases etched into the lines and contour of the tiny rooms and hallways. He found the right spot and began pointing out the structure with his finger. "This opens straight to the U-Area."

"No way, let me look," Vera squinted as he held it up for her, and he saw her gray irises flicker from the right to the left in a rapid back and forth, a fleeting brush of her shoulder as she got up close to peer at it. "Huh."

"Told you," he said. "Let's go."

"The fair damsel awaits," she sighed, no doubt talking about the agent, and wiped at the sweat dripping into her eyes from her fringe, combing it in place with her fingers. The ends of her hair were burnt and curled inward from the fire they'd narrowly avoided, smelling of smoke, the blackish curls reminding him of the stray cats he often spotted walking down the street next to the cafe where he used to grab a morning coffee from before classes, the thin furry bodies wandering around the alleyways and looking for scraps of food to eat.

A bit too eager, she began marching towards the opposite direction of where they came from, her steps not quite as surefooted as he was used to seeing her stride with such confidence, the exhaustion showing as she hunched over in an attempt to catch her breath. Leon fell into a slower pace next to her, keeping an eye out for anything that could possibly jump out of nowhere as he switched the gun's safety off, ready for combat, and scanned the surroundings with his flashlight to guide them through the narrow stairway going up.

"I can't believe power's still holding up," she observed after seeing the green light blinking above the garbage disposal door while Leon pulled down the lever, the mechanism whirring to life as the shutter lifted upward, revealing piles, no, hoards of trash, cans, broken glass and boxes scattered around with pipes and the walls colored in an assortment of mucky brown. The stench that permeated the air, a combination of rot and dirt and something so pungent his nostrils burned with the smell, made him gag, but he managed to hold it back to spare himself the embarrassment of coughing his lungs out, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve instead — Ada had been stuck here for god knows how long.

Ada.

Forgetting about the odor, Leon rushed in as he pictured the image of her, surrounded by filth, and he was caught up in the whirlwind of relief and panic and urgency of going to get her, the exhaustion forgotten. "Ada? Ada, where are you!"

"Over here!"

He pivoted at the sound of her voice coming from somewhere near, spotting splatters of blood on the floor that was once white and gray and now the color of rust, finding Ada hiding herself between two mountains of garbage leaning to the wall, and didn't recognize her at first glance. Her trenchcoat was gone, leaving her in a short, flimsy cocktail dress, supporting her body weight by her hands on the floor, the leg a metal piece was sticking out of facing up. The put-together, clean appearance of hers was no more, she was covered in grime just like they were, and in the dim lighting her exposed limbs were shimmering with sweat.

He ran to her as fast as he could, squatting to check the extent of the injury. "Ada... I was getting worried there for a sec..."

"Oof," Vera grimaced behind him, hands going to her knees as she bent down by her waist, her hair swinging over her head and pooling in front of her face. "That looks nasty."

"How do you think it feels?" Ada quipped, a bit dry, and gave Vera a tight lipped smile, though Leon wasn't sure if she meant it in an insulting manner or as a joke. "I can't get it out."

Leon looked at her thigh, and back at Ada. "I don't know if we should..."

"Just do it. I can't walk like this."

Vera knelt on one knee next to her and tilted her chin to the side to inspect it from a different angle. Ada didn't seem to appreciate the attention but tolerated it with a quiet acceptance, watching Vera as she continued to look, but Leon was the one who blurted out, "Don't touch it!" when she reached for the metal piece, stopping in her tracks, fingers hovering over it.

"The hell," Vera exclaimed, backing her hand away as if she'd burned it and looking up at Leon standing over them, her eyebrows arching.

"Antiseptic," he explained, positioning himself behind her for better access to her backpack, pulling out the bottle of isopropyl alcohol and the roll of bandages from the bag. Vera stared at him for a couple more seconds before she seemed to finally catch up, then nodded in understanding and took the materials from his open palm as he handed them to her, "I take it out, you disinfect and bandage right after."

"Sure thing, boss."

His cheeks flared up in response to the nickname, his heart jumping up to his throat at the acknowledgment, but it all washed away when Vera nodded at him to go on, the teasing forgotten for a more pressing matter, and he went on to take care of it as gently as possible, all the while being hyper aware of eyes on him as he worked to take the metal out in one go. Ada kept her expression impassive, her back ramrod straight with a fist resting on the knee of the healthy leg, only a hiss of discomfort escaping through her teeth as the shrapnel slid out of her flesh.

Vera's touch was surprisingly gentle despite her usually brash demeanor, cleaning the area with a soaked piece of cotton to get rid of the dried blood and disinfect it, humming under her breath at Ada's reaction letting her pain show more than before. She tied the gauze with a deft knot, sealing it in place, and began packing the things back into her bag.

"Can you walk?" Vera asked, holding up a hand for Ada to take it and pull her up, getting a firm nod in return. Ada brushed herself off, her legs not entirely steady as she took a few experimental steps, the heels of her pumps clicking against the concrete floor.

Leon noticed a few drops of blood sliding down from the piece of metal and dropped it on the floor. "So... what do we do now?"

"We?" Vera paused for a moment, like she hadn't expected him to phrase it like that, and looked back at the other woman.

Ada shook her head. "Get yourself out of here. While you still can."

"I'm — we're not just gonna leave you. Not like this," he protested, gesturing at the bloody rag on her thigh, out of worry and confusion and maybe some lingering sense of responsibility that made him feel like he'd be betraying Ada if he simply up and left, especially after everything that she's done for them. She was a capable person, true, it just didn't feel right.

"You don’t understand. The situation’s worse than I thought."

Vera scoffed, crossing her arms. "Right. How're you going to get out of this shitpit exactly? After we leave?"

"I can take care of myself."

The other girl didn't have to say anything, making a point just by openly staring with eyebrows up all the way to her hairline, making a face that expressed what she thought about that statement.

"I don't know what your objective is, but you need to listen to your own advice," Vera continued, as if Ada had never said anything. "That leg isn't gonna get you far in this condition."

The look she received was one that said they were at an impasse and Ada was considering it, the tilt of her head and the way her mouth parted to say something made Leon think they were actually going to cooperate with each other and make it work, only for her to break her gaze from Vera and fix him with a stare that sent shivers down his spine. "Good thing I have you two, then, huh?"

Leon brightened up, a bit proud and happy to have some sort of resolution, even though he could feel the daggers Vera was trying to drill into the side of his skull without saying anything. He chose to ignore it, thinking that this was a win-win, because really, Ada finally letting them help when they were obviously going in the same direction? Why would that be bad?

Vera was as stiff as a board, but turned to lead the way, taking a step to walk past Ada as she did so, giving her a polite nod and nothing else.

Leon began to follow her, but not before he noticed Ada's eyes following her, a contemplative look in them that disappeared as soon as Ada's focus landed on him, making Leon wonder if he saw it correctly at all. "You still want to help?"

He nodded fervently, spirits soaring. "Of course!"

"We have to get to the NEST. It's—"

"Umbrella's lab, we know." He shared a look with Vera, somewhat content with himself to let it be known they were on the same frequency with Ada. "That's where the G-virus is, right?"

Ada's eyes narrowed, a missed beat in the way she answered. "That was easy to deduce, I suppose."

"Yeah." There was no need for distrust to come between them, so it was an easy confession. "And Vera's a private investigator, she already knew about Umbrella before this started."

He caught the girl in question mouthing his name in anger, teeth clenched shut, looking like she wanted to cave his head in, not understanding where the anger was coming from.

Ada turned her attention to her. "Is that so? What kind of a PI?"

"The kind that gets snitched on, apparently," Vera glared daggers at him, her nose wrinkled, nostrils flaring as she let out a scoff that was aimed at him.

"Come on, she's FBI. No harm in her knowing," he dismissed, hoping she wouldn't press it further and chew his ears off for this. Vera made a noncommittal noise that he didn't know how to interpret, but she didn't voice out any objections, so he thought they were good, at least for now. "We're together in this. So... NEST?"

The agent ignored him, however, "How much do you know?"

"Enough," Vera answered, clearly wanting the subject to be dropped.

"About?"

"Am I being interrogated, Agent?"

"Depends. Is there something you're hiding?"

Vera stepped closer, her demeanor shifting. "There's a lot I'm avoiding, let's leave it at that. It's been like that for a long while, and will continue to be so until I get what I came for. For the greater good."

There was no answer coming. Instead, the silence that followed was so thick with something that it made his hairs stand on end, goosebumps rising on his forearms. Something was happening between them he didn't understand. Ada was scrutinizing her with an intense glare, something fierce and calculating flashing in her eyes, a bit intimidating, but Vera returned the gaze with such a ferocity in her own, challenging Ada to call her bluff and say something else.

And she did. "Okay," Ada agreed, with the hint of a smile in the corner of her lips. "Then, for the greater good, shall we?"

Leon didn't know what he was supposed to be expecting. Maybe a proper introduction, a clear outline of the plan, a friendly chat. Anything, really, but this sudden shift in atmosphere, it was suddenly very hot in the room. Like something else was going on other than getting to NEST, like they had history.

"O...kay," he muttered.

"This tram is bound for NEST. Do not exit until the final destination."

Leon stared at the speaker attached to the ceiling of the vehicle as he pulled down the lever to get it moving, Ada and Vera already inside, the latter of which had her arms crossed and was glaring at the ceiling as if she wished to smite it, not noticing Ada's observing gaze that followed the way she fiddled with the digital camera she'd just used to record the outside of the cable car to catch the Umbrella logo on it, or the way she swayed and pressed herself to the wall as the tram began to move. They were sitting next to each other on the bench, Ada's injured leg stretched out, and she had to be feeling uncomfortable, but didn't let it show.

"You know what I was thinking?" He started, heated as he tried to start a conversation, anything really to get rid of the tension hanging over their heads. "I can’t wait for the FBI to raid Umbrella headquarters and take those bastards to justice."

Vera leaned back after setting down the still recording camera to face the window of the cable car, her hair hitting the metal of the wall with a soft thud, the muscles of her throat straining as she gulped down and closed her eyes.

" I agree… but to be clear, you’re not working in official capacity. This is a federal case." Ada stressed, the sharp tone of her voice making Vera snap her eyes open to look at her from under her eyelashes. "Once we get the G-Virus—"

"We?" asked Vera, for the second time tonight, turning her head to meet Ada's gaze that was unreadable, filled with some emotion that made the space between her eyebrows pinch.

Ada's eyes darted away to stare at the floor, and she sat upright to avoid further eye contact. "Yes," she admitted, a bit strained, but it was genuine. "I thought I might need your help… and I was right. If you can secure the G-Virus, I can make sure what happened in Raccoon City never happens again."

Vera was surprised at the offer, and she gave it some thought before she replied. "I'm not risking any of our lives for that stupid virus. We're not some disposable assets. Finding Claire and Sherry comes first. You can deal with the rest as you wanted from the start. On your own, that is."

"No, wait a minute," Leon objected, shaking his head as he turned to look at Vera. "I want to do something. Umbrella has to pay for what they've done. You heard her, she's with the government, she can take this to the media, the whole country — the world. With what we have, all of this, this is not something they can sweep under the rug. Please, let's help her get the virus. It's important."

She shot up from her seat and grabbed her backpack, going for the camera next to stop the recording. "God, no," she huffed, the calmness breaking to reveal how frustrated she was with everything that happened. "Claire and Sherry are more important than the virus. And you're not putting their lives on the line for something that's not guaranteed—"

"I'm not putting their lives in danger."

"And yours doesn't matter?"

"It does, but," he gestured with his hands in a hopeless motion. "I mean, I signed up for this when I applied to the RPD. If it's for the people, then—"

She scowled at him, and he hated the disappointment on her face, her eyes darting back and forth over his face, as if she was searching for something that wasn't there. "It's not worth it, Leon."

Ada watched their exchange like a tennis match, staying quiet, and he thought she would interject, but she didn't, choosing to see how things played out instead.

"How can you say that?"

Vera clicked her tongue, and his stomach sank, his chest growing cold. "The fucking G-Virus isn't the reason why RC went to shit, I told you already," she said, and something in the way she spoke sent a chill down his spine.

He wondered why she was being so defensive. Was there something she knew that he didn't? Again?

It wasn't the first time.

He shook his head and pursed his lips. "Even if it's not the direct cause, it's definitely a part of it. All that experimenting on people, all that bloodshed. The police, the entire city, my fellow officers died trying to keep everyone safe. The civilians. Us. You saw that little girl," he pleaded, his heart sinking lower when she averted her gaze from him and focused on the screen of the camera, fidgeting with the buttons. "I'm doing this for them. Even if I have to die for it, then so be it."

Vera sucked in a sharp breath and didn't look at him. She didn't agree to anything, or argued, just stayed silent, a hand reaching out to take her headphones out of her bag and slip them around her neck, turning away from him and bringing her legs up to sit on the bench, faint rock music filled the air. He knew there was no use in pushing, and she wouldn't change her mind no matter what, but the cold indifference, the blatant refusal of wanting to do anything that she disagreed with made him mad. He understood where she was coming from, that she was concerned with getting the younger girl to safety and probably wanted to forget about all of this and get as far away from it as possible, but he wanted to fight it. To do something. Make a difference, however small. It was naive and probably short-sighted, but he needed to do it.

With a heavy heart, Leon looked back at Ada and saw the corner of her lip quirk up in the faintest of smiles, her chin in the palm of her hand.

[quohotos]

So I don't have any art prepared for 810nicle day, so instead let me regale you of a story of a time where I didn't make some bionicle art. It was a bit of a shitshow.

So it was around 2017 I think, I was in high school. Back then I was on facebook and in this Bionicle fan forum/shitpost group called "Bionicle Maskposting". Honestly it was a great community with so many injokes, having to leave it behind was one of the reasons I stayed on facebook for so long after it stopped being a good platform. Usually people would share memes, mocs, and lore thoughts, but on a rare occasion people would try to find folks to help them with new group projects.

One of these fateful cases was a person who was trying to put together a crew to make a bionicle fan comic. I'd been teaching myself vector, having been inspired by the Bionicle flash games, so I tentatively offered my service to the project. I was still learning and not super confident in my abilities. I told them I probably couldn't do it on my own, but maybe could do backgrounds and trace overs in a vector style.

I got added to their discord server, it was like the third server I ever joined on discord. The mastermind behind all of this was very excited to have someone on board, and was quick to catch me up on what he'd been working on. He showed me his block out of the comic so far, there was no actual art, just all black panels and the dialogue to go with them. And it was... oh god it was bad.

The premise of the comic: It's set in an alternate universe where Tahu is the soul survivor of the Toa Mata. The rest of the Toa are brutally killed by Makuta and now he's haunted by horrific visions, survivor's guilt, and PTSD. He also has a son. Love is cannon in this universe and he has to raise the child he sired with Gali before she was ripped to shreds by a crab.

It was uhhh... not exactly the kind of story I wanted to sign on to, not to mention it was just poorly written, probably a teenager like me at the time. Everyone writes stuff like that, nothing wrong about it in the long term... but then it got worse.

This new guy joined the server, one I didn't recognize. He had like a wolf avatar for his discord profile. He immediately takes one look at what's been planned so far and says, "I love it," but then he has to ask one crucial question before he can continue.

"Is there Jesus in it?"

No he didn't say it like that, I'm paraphrasing, but he asked if there were going to be any themes of Christianity or Tahu's faith in the story.

what the fuck?

Why?

Why would that be in the Bionicle story? What a socially unaware thing to ask? Is he trolling this guy?

Well the ringleader guy who started the project responds mere seconds later

"Yeah, totally, Tahu's faith in Jesus Christ and his struggle with doubt is going to be a big part of the story."

Again, paraphrasing, but it was an enthusiastic response from the guy. They then went on to very rapidly start exchanging ideas about how they can add more christian themes to this already very cursed Bionicle fanfiction. Around that time I politely announced that I didn't feel like I could contribute to the project and excused myself from the server. I'm glad I wasn't ruder, they were doing their own thing there was no reason to be mean about it even if it was buck fucking wild.

I'm assuming it never came out, and part of me regrets leaving so early because right now I'm morbidly curious about how it turned out even if it's probably the last thing I'd ever want to read or draw.

Anyways that's my story, and part of the reason why even though I was one of the biggest Bionicle nerds you can imagine while growing up I generally stay away from fan forum discussions of it as an adult.

Happy Bionicle day

[ambyandony]

shortcuts I took to make drawing the squatizi comic easier

Used a photo reference for the backgrounds (note: this actually made it harder, I couldn’t figure out which beach was in the picture I was looking at so I only had one angle)

(note 2: I didn’t trace the photo or anything but I did colour pick from it)

made Squalo’s towel fall off his shoulder because it looked awkward and it remains on the ground for the rest of the comic . That stupid fucking blue towel.

for fun I made it visibly do this like you can just see it slowly slide off

didn’t overline the background characters and made them all a solid colour cause fuckem

didnt even draw the background characters in one of the panels even though the lesbians probably still should’ve been visible . I just have to assume Squalo is in the exact position on the frame where they just aren’t visible behind him

there’s a rock in the background but I didn’t draw it at all when the camera angle was facing only tiziano because I fucking hate that rock

If I don’t like how something looks and it’s inconsequential to the overall panel and in a corner I just deform the panel so it’s covered. Cause fuckit

covered one of Squalo’s hands with Tiziano’s hair while they were hugging because it looked wonky and I redrew it too many times

accidentally drew Tiziano’s hair wrong in one panel. That wasn’t a shortcut I just fucked it up and by the time I realised I’d already coloured and shaded it and it sucks and I want to fix it

used speech bubbles to hide shit I didn’t like

used a grid to write most of the dialogue

chibified the boyfriends for 2 panels but that was more because the panels were very tiny.

I would say having Squalo’s arms covering his chest for the first half but that was intended and not a shortcut

One side of Tiziano’s hair was originally over his shoulder but it was very annoying so I scrapped it . Except for exactly one panel where I could not draw his neck/collarbone right in that exact area.

the other side IS partially on his shoulder but not fully. I just think it looks more elegant that way but it has the added benefit that I don’t have to think too hard about shading his neck . Thank fuck for men with long hair 🙌

Tiziano’s hair length is inconsistent because I was having trouble making it not look awkward in certain poses

not drawing the lips

Tiziano takes his stupid sunglasses off for exactly one panel because I could not make them look good and then he puts them back up on his forehead because he needed a free hand and had nowhere else to put them. He is not shown doing this

I save Squalo’s freckles till the last step. Squalo’s freckles go on when I’m done with everything else so I have GOT TO REMEMBER TO PUT THE FUCKING FRECKLES ON ITS GONNA BE SOOOO ANNOYING IF I POST HIM WITH NO FRECKLES

The background characters with speaking roles have the exact same hair and skin colour and I drew their faces simplified even when they’re visible up close for one panel because speaking roles or not they are still background characters. Even though I named them.

as an artistic choice I didn’t refine the lineart in the central panel of page 1 (inadvertently made it easier it was actually a choice for the aesthetic of the panel)

Didn’t try very hard to draw the back of Squalo’s hair.

things that did not make the comic easier

Adding extra panels . and reworking all the dialogue from the previous version because it was awkward

themed dialogue fonts

I HANDWRITE ALL THE DIALOGUE MYSELF ALL OF IT. AND I DECIDED TO FUCKING MAKE THE TITTLES ON THE IS AND JS CUSTOM FOR SQUALO AND TIZIANO. AMONG OTHER THINGS. HELP ME

drawing Squalo’s stupid nose broken

the last minute inclusion of the Portuguese Man O’ War

not knowing how to draw nipples

changing background character with speaking role #2’s swimsuit top and not knowing how to draw boobs

THOSE STUPID FUCKING SUNGLASSES

I draw Tiziano’s eyes so fucking detailed. Because he is beautiful

Emphasising Squalo’s musculature

not saving the base skin colour I used for Tiziano OR Squalo before I started shading

drawing them hugging. 3 1/2 times.

making this post instead of finishing it

[art-question-mark]

creators notes on each episode of belliveau so far: episode 3

very long awaited i’m sorry i got sidetracked

stef popping in after only knowing this girl for what, 30 minutes? the night before? will never not be funny

and then cut to eliza just being like “…” just makes it better shes so silly

“oh my pants” came from an autocorrect mishap i made over text and my friend and i immediately agreed it’s something stef would say so i changed the line to that. i don’t remember what he said before i changed it and honestly i don’t think anything would fit as well. also he’s british so he’s. he’s saying underwear. which is very silly

i also kind of hate the oh my pants but it became iconic so i had to keep it in

also there are certain panels (such as the oh my pants panel and the one of him with all the hearts @ lucy) that were so hilarious and iconic in the storyboards that i just traced them over to keep them forever

lucy!!!! i don’t know how to draw animals super well. which is the main reason lucy appears once in a blue moon

the backpacks man. they’re the end of me

this episode is very dialogue heavy but it sets up a good majority of the rest of the plot. a lot of things are off handle mentioned here that actually will be bigger later :))

stef: clear my name :(( also stef: this is how i’d kill a man

the crime scene file in the one panel is part of a like 10 page report that i totally filled out only to use One singular page from.

boss man and tommy :)

stef immediately including himself in the detective-ing (“i guess it’s our job …”) is so funny he’s just like :) we are a team :)

i had to use myself as a ref for eliza putting on her coat and backpack and it resulted in some silly photos and video

the backgrounds !! for the last two panels !! took ! so ! long ! but they’re SO PRETTY IM SO PROUD OF THEM!!!! i love how they turned out. also you may find something hidden in the background of the panel of stef peaking around the wall on the steps. just maybe

“it’s called a warrant!!!!” absolute icon behaviour

that’s it

read the comic please it won’t let me add the link suddenly but it’s on my other posts 😔

[pussymagnetmadara]

Sasuke + Sakura, please no.

Honestly, we are in 2022, Naruto the manga is not from yesterday, you clearly have time to read it again and again, how can people still tell me that SS makes sense in the entire work? Even though very often we recognize you pro SS, basically you accept this ship because your princess Sakura deserves Sasuke for everything she was forced to go through because of him... don't you realize that even that is incredibly toxic? So if you make someone "suffer" who has never asked for your opinion or involvement in their stories, and you suffer indirectly, then they owe you an eternal gratitude? No, I'm sorry, but no. Sasuke never owed Sakura anything from the beginning. Sakura's so-called feelings of love for Sasuke do not justify her involvement in Sasuke's life and ending up married to her and fathering her child. If we got this in final canon it's because of your incessant complaining to Kishimoto who never did your OTP justice. This ship is lame and flat as ever. Free to you to still send it but think before you insult other ships on Naruto as delusional people, because it is you that we should laugh at the most. You guys don't appreciate the background of the story, you just came for the so called love story that Sasuke owed to Sakura, for you nothing else matters, don't forget that Naruto is not a shōjo.

I've heard so much about it and to see you trying to defend your ship is so laughable because the manga serves you only one panel in the whole work and still... yes I'm talking about this particular scene.. 

and still nothing is provable in there. I remind you that Naruto and Sasuke had many visual exchanges much more intense than this one and the pro SNS hardly talk about it and I'm not a pro SNS at all for several reasons. Last time someone came to me claiming that he had written a story that traced and explained the love story of SasuSaku, but seriously, do you really believe that this is fan fiction, that you are writing in self-insert mode that does justice to your ship and that we will all wake up and finally believe it? No one else is doing this kind of thing but you. The canon material is so flat on your side that you have to insist on telling us about Sasuke Restuden, which I repeat here, is not canon. It's a fanfiction written by Jun Esaka, who said it herself on her twitter that Kishimoto remains the only official author of Naruto, he just drew the cover of your pro SS bible. This great joke cost me a choke with my morning coffee. Stop coming to us to harass and insult us because we don't understand your famous OTP which in your eyes makes sense because in the reality of the rest of the world, it doesn't.

But in the category that makes me most hysterical is the pro SS/SNS/Sakura who come to Sasuke to tear him down to make a fool of him, but why do you do that? If you don't like Sasuke, fine, free to you, but don't send your favorite character with another one you hate, it becomes ridiculous.

Here is a small list of canon elements that would have made more sense than SasuSaku:

SNS: I don’t like them as an OTP but they could have make sense.

Sasuke and Naruto call each other "the only one" friend or significant other?  as you wish, Kishimoto remains vague about this.

Karin Uzumaki: I do like them but I’m proud Karin has matured enough to move on.

Sasuke referred to her as the most powerful kunoichi he knew.

He developed a new sharingan power to save her from the immortal black flames of Amaterasu.

My own mother gave me a revelation that immediately reminded me of a scene from SS. The famous scene where Sasuke justifies his so-called relationship with Sakura. Indeed, the only link between Sasuke and Sakura today remains their daughter Sarada.

I explain myself here, my own parents, having never been a really harmonious couple, far from there and since their divorce proceedings, my mother said to me and I quote "For me, he remains only the father of my children, and that's all, it's the only thing that links us".

Exactly what Sasuke said about Sakura to Sarada because yes indeed, nothing binds them, nothing makes sense in their story except their daughter. Sasuke could have delivered more information, or could have told something else about their story and told Sarada that he married Sakura because he loves her and she is the fruit of their love but no, he remained very concise because there is nothing to say about them.

[humangerbil]

I had this panel mostly vector traced from my Self Inflicted piece. Decided to go and finish up the original panel. There is something relaxing about tracing manga panels and coloring them. Oh, I did edit the iris of his eyes to better match what we see later in the manga.

Couldn’t decide on softer or harder colors so you get both! (Please tell me which one you like better. I’m curious to know.)

Then, because I can’t help myself, I put it my traced version on top of the panel. It is cropped because I was too lazy to trace his hands.

This is one of my favorite panels, when Izuku is throwing Todoroki’s challenge back at him. I love his hair. I cut out the stadium and rest of the background in part because I was lazy but mostly because I liked the look of just sky. Seemed more appropriately dramatic that way.

[chilling-seavey]

Seasons Change (d.s.) - Cover Me Up

A/N Before I actually start writing this new story, I decided to write this blurb as a sort of pre-prologue. The events in this blurb do directly affect the events in the full story but you do not need to read this in order to read the main fic. Also, please follow the link in bio to add yourself to the taglist for this universe if you wish (unless you selected ‘tag for everything’!)

Summary: Daniel doesn’t want to leave his wife’s bedside. Not when she needs him most. 

Warnings: This blurb deals with terminal illnesses, death of loved ones, grief etc. 

Title inspired by Cover Me Up by Morgan Wallen

November 15, 2019

The house was quiet. It was usual now to find the silence that rested over the floorboards somewhat peaceful in the air of the small rural town. It was peaceful but it carried the weight of a thousand tonnes over the beams of the roof and the joists of the walls. In a sense, the peaceful quiet was almost suffocating.

With a six-year-old boy, an aspiring hockey player with rambunctious little personality in his small body, it was hard to find moments of quiet. But it felt like over previous month and a half, quiet was the only option. Even the little boy knew this well.

He would come home from school on the bright yellow school bus and run down the long dirt driveway to the white paneled farmhouse near the centre of the property, small Jack Russel Terrier running right beside him the whole way. His backpack bouncing over the material of his navy blue jacket and the tread of his sneakers on the thin gravel seemed to be the only sound in the tiny town.

Despite his obvious eager intent to run home at top speed, he would stop at the garden and pick one of the few flowers remaining before taking the front steps cautiously. He would then stop at the front door and take a breath before reaching for the handle and stepping inside. Daniel, who had been watching the clock like every weekday in the afternoon, was already at the front door when his son came home. He made sure the dog was inside before closing the door behind them and he helped his son to take his backpack off for him.

“How was school, spud?” Daniel asked quietly.

Everything was quiet.

“Good.”

Was always the response; quickly followed by a hopeful,

“How’s Mama?”

“Resting. You can go say hello if you like. Wash your hands first.” Daniel took his son’s jacket and shoes and then watched him hurry up the straight flight of stairs to the second floor. The six-year-old turned right at the top into the main bathroom and he heard the tap turn on.

With the school things tucked away in the front closet, Daniel headed back upstairs too and stepped into the master bedroom to the left of the stairs right behind his son.

“There’s my boy.” a soft voice greeted from the queen size bed just around the corner from the door as the little one climbed up onto the soft mattress.

Daniel leaned on the corner of the wall and watched the mother greet her son with the best smile she could offer him. Marigold was always like that; always smiling. She was rested back against a few down filled pillows under the cream coloured quilt and brushed her son’s messy brown hair out of his eyes.

“How was school, my darling boy?” she asked him like she did every weekday afternoon.

“Good.”

Was always the response. He held out the flower to her with his mother’s same smile.

“I picked you a flower, Mama.”

“Well, aren’t you as sweet as sugar?” Marigold tisked with a smile and took it from him to give it a little sniff. “Just like your Daddy, aren’t you, Lennox Blake?”

Six-year-old Lennox was just as in love with his mother as his father was and every time he looked at her, little hearts nearly floated in his light blue eyes.

“Are you better, Mama?” Lennox asked, like every day.

Marigold held his face in her hand that wasn’t taken by the small flower, “Not yet, sweet boy. I think I need some more of your magical hugs to see if that will help.”

Lennox grinned and nodded, shifting closer quickly.

“Gently, spud.” Daniel reminded softly from where he stood watching.

“He’s okay.” Marigold assured her husband softly, welcoming her son’s small body on top of hers with a smile and a slightly strained sigh. She twirled her fingers through his messy hair and kissed the top of his head, “I missed you so much today.”

Daniel walked around to her side of the bed and picked up her still-filled water glass before leaning down to kiss her dry lips, “Want me to put your pretty flower in a vase for you?”

Lennox smiled proudly at the offer and Marigold agreed with a small smile, holding out the small flower to her husband to take downstairs. With two hands free, she could hold her little boy more securely now and drew those little patterns over his back that he always liked, watching her melancholy husband leave to put the flower in a little glass of water for her and to start dinner preparation, petting the cat sleeping on the end of the bed on his way past.

Marigold didn’t know what she would have done if she didn’t have Daniel. She was a young woman of twenty-seven, in love with her high school sweetheart, and happened to be served the worst of life in the prior month and a half. Despite her diagnosis, he didn’t falter for a moment; he tended to her day in and day out as she got sicker and still treated her just as sweetly as he had on their very first date. She was the love of his life. What else was he supposed to do?

With Lennox upstairs telling Marigold all about his day, Daniel hurried around the kitchen to make dinner. He decided on a simple vegetable soup – something easy…he hated being too far from Marigold for too long – and set the three bowls on a tray with the flower in a glass of water with them. He set the tray on the top of the dresser in the master bedroom and helped to get Lennox sitting up in the middle of the bed with a pillow helping to prop him up before he passed him the half-filled bowl and a spoon.

“What do you say?” Marigold whispered.

Lennox smiled cheekily up at his father, “Thank you, Daddy.”

“You’re very welcome, spud.” Daniel replied with a half smile.

He took his own bowl off the tray and set it to the side so he could bring the last one over to his wife. She glanced up at him silently as he set the tray over her lap. Their eyes lingered on each other’s for a moment as if they were having a silent conversation just the two of them as their son ate quietly beside them.

“Still not hungry?” Daniel asked ever so quietly.

Marigold shook her head gently.

Daniel hesitated for a moment but nodded and exchanged a kiss for the tray back. He set it on the dresser and set his own bowl beside the other before joining his little family on the bed. He wasn’t hungry either.

With Lennox eating contently between his parents, they watched him peacefully, Daniel’s arm draped around him and his fingers twirling the end of Marigold’s long hair through his fingers. They raised their little boy with the best manners so being able to eat in a bed and not at a table was quite exciting for Lennox. To the six-year-old, his mother simply had a cold and needed to stay in bed until she got better. He still saw the smiles she gave him and the warmth of her hugs and even though the house was quieter than it once was, he was sure it would be lively again.

After dinner, Daniel got Lennox bathed and dressed into pyjamas and sat him on the floor of the master bedroom to watch some TV before bed. With the boy distracted, Daniel tended to his wife; shifting the pillows behind her to have her resting down a bit more and felt her forehead for any sign of a fever. He picked up the chapstick from the bedside table and popped off the cap to apply a layer or two to her dry lips. Marigold watched him quietly, his furrowed brows and solemn blue eyes and careful steady hand that traced her familiar lips.

“You’re going to give yourself wrinkles, my sweet.” Marigold whispered with an ever so light chuckle, reaching up a dainty hand to smooth the creases between his eyebrows. “Don’t want to age that pretty face of yours too soon now.”

Daniel only stared at her for a moment, still leaned in close from having applied her well used chapstick and he offered a weak shrug and a dull, “Doesn’t matter.”

“Daniel.” Marigold sighed quietly.

“I’m sorry.” Daniel mumbled, bowing his head for a moment. He leaned in again, kissing her lips twice and then her nose once and her cheek before standing up straight and put the chapstick away. She smiled faintly at him and reached up a careful hand to dust over the thin material of his white button-up that was rolled to the elbows. It was open and he had a white tank top on underneath tucked into black jeans. She liked him like that; casual and effortlessly handsome.

The TV played on quietly in the background and Lennox sat on the rug with the family dog sleeping his head on his lap. The six-year-old adored the pup…he truly was this boy’s best friend. Marigold smiled lovingly across the room at her unaware boy, his brown hair plastered wet over his head and he sat slouched slightly on the floor as he watched his evening show. Daniel brought the dishes downstairs and tidied up the kitchen a little before returning to his family and switched off the TV.

“Daaad.” Lennox whined.

“Come on….story time with Mommy.” Daniel said softly, picking up the puppy from his lap so his son could climb back on the bed.

Lennox crawled up next to her and plopped himself down and pulled the quilt over his small legs. Marigold smiled and tucked her arm around her son so he was cuddled right up close to her side. With the hand that wasn’t holding the dog, Daniel passed over their favourite storybook to read – well, at least Marigold’s favourite. She bought it within the first month she found out she was pregnant, far too excited, and I Love You Forever sat front and center on the bookshelf in the nursery for all of Lennox’s young life. She had read it to him so much the spine was creased and a few pages a couple rips along the edges but they didn’t mind.

Daniel sat down with them and the dog curled himself up beside the cat the end of the bed while the family of three cuddled up together for a bedtime story. Marigold read quietly, her voice fading as the story came to an end and she coughed lightly as she closed the book gently. Lennox smiled up at her.

“One more?” he asked sweetly.

“No, no. It’s bedtime, sweet boy.” Marigold chuckled, pressing a kiss to his head.

Lennox nodded obediently.

She smiled gently at him and pet her hand over his damp hair, “I love you.”

“I love you this much!” Lennox threw out his arms wide, almost hitting Daniel in the face.

Marigold laughed weakly at their son and took his small hand in hers to pull him close and he cuddled up against her chest. She looked down at him and his tired blue eyes that were already starting to close from just being in her arms. She brushed her finger along his chubby cheek and gave it a little squish, “I love you more than all the flowers in the garden…and all the buggies in the fields…and all the leaves on the trees…”

With the little boy fading in his mother’s arms, it was time for bed. Marigold gave her son one last good night kiss to his soft cheek.

“Sweet dreams, my darling boy.”

Daniel scooped him up and Lennox gave her a sleepy wave from his father’s shoulder before he was carried down the hall to bed, the puppy rushing after them. His nightlight was switched on and Daniel made sure to tuck him nice and secure under his quilt like every night and the dog was left on his small pillow under the window. The book was placed back on the shelf and Daniel brought over Lennox’s favourite stuffed bear to cuddle with and tucked it in his arms.

He crouched down at his son’s bedside and brushed his large hand over Lennox’s small head, keeping his hair back from his face. Lennox blinked sleepily at him, cuddled up with his teddy bear.

“I love you.” the little boy yawned.

“I love you, spud.” Daniel whispered. He leaned in to kiss his head before standing up, “Sweet dreams.”

The door was shut behind him and Daniel lingered in the hallway for a moment. The window at the end of the hall sent streaks of moonlight over the hardwood and Daniel hadn’t even realized the sun had set. Days were blending into each other, hours were passing by too quickly, and Daniel felt like his life was dwindling right before his eyes. He could try to catch it – try to reach out and grasp what time he had left but it was inevitable. It was terminal.

Daniel returned to the master bedroom and closed the door behind him as to not wake his son. It wasn’t like there was going to be much noise at all in the silent house but it was habit. Marigold smiled tiredly at him from their bed and he walked around to her side to pet a hand through her hair. She leaned into his touch.

“Do you want a bath, sunshine?” Daniel asked softly.

Marigold just blinked tiredly up at him, her cheek resting heavily in the palm of his hand, “No, thank you.”

“Can I wash your face at least?”

“If you insist.”

Daniel stepped into the ensuite and ran a sink of lukewarm water to dampen a facecloth. He returned to her bedside and sat down with her to wipe her face gently with the cloth to help her feel somewhat put together. He usually helped her bathe every second day – every day if she was feeling up for it – and changed the sheets as often as he could to keep her fresh and comfortable. He was a good man.

Marigold’s face was wiped clean the best it could be by her husband’s gentle hand. He sat back from her and she rested her hand on his arm.

“Thank you.”

Daniel set his hand over hers, “What else can I get you, sunshine?”

Marigold thought for a moment and she sighed, “I think have to pee.”

Daniel nodded and stood up from the side of the bed to drop the facecloth back in the ensuite. He gently peeled back the quilt and the sheets and made sure her nightgown was down around her knees before sliding his hands around her back and helped to sit her up. She clung onto him weakly and he slowly shifted her legs off the side of the bed.

“Can you stand?” Daniel asked softly.

“Think so.” Marigold whispered. She held onto his arms as he helped to ease her up out of bed.

When she was standing, mostly using him to lean on as he held her up, Daniel noticed the wet patch in the bed.

His pause had her sighing, “It happened again?”

“Yeah.” Daniel said. “I’ll change the sheets.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Mari.” Daniel pulled over the usual wooden chair to her bedside and helped to ease her into it. It was one from the kitchen table but over the prior month or so it found its usual home in the corner of the master bedroom, only usually used by Daniel to sit with his wife as often as he could. With her sitting, he shooed the cat off the bed and worked quickly to strip the bed and change the padding on the mattress that was recommended by the doctors. He grabbed the extra sheets from the linen closet in the hallway and worked quickly to remake the bed for her.

Marigold watched him, her brows furrowed lightly as if in thought. She spoke quietly, “Is Lennox home from school yet?”

Daniel didn’t look up as he tucked the corner of the sheets under the mattress and answered his wife softly, “Yeah. He’s already in bed.”

Marigold nodded weakly.

When the bed was remade, he took an extra nightgown and pair of comfortable underwear from the dresser drawer for her and set them on the bed so he could change her out of her damp clothes. She raised her arms the best she could and Daniel shimmied her nightgown over her head and dropped it to the floor before carefully easing her out of her soiled underwear. They stayed silent as he re-dressed her and Marigold clung onto him as he shifted her hips to get her underwear up her legs and as he pulled her fresh white nightgown over her head and made sure her hair was out of the neckline. He pressed his palm to her forehead to feel her temperature. She seemed fine.

Daniel held her arms in his hands and eased her up out of the wooden chair. They stood chest to chest, Marigold having to look up at him slightly, and they just stared at each other for a moment. Illness seemed to age her from her twenty-six years, but she was still the same sweet young woman Daniel fell in love with across the high school gymnasium. He raised one hand to her cheek and brushed his thumb over her skin.

“Will you dance with me, Mari?” he asked ever so softly, caressing her cheek with the back of his finger.

“Dance with you?” she chuckled tiredly. “I can try.”

Daniel smiled lightly and led her around from the side of the bed to the center of their room, making sure she took each step carefully. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and opened the music app to select their song. The gentle guitar melody filled the room and Daniel set the phone on the fireplace mantle to give him two hands free. Despite her pain, Marigold was smiling at him, letting him raise her arms to his shoulders and he wrapped his right around her waist to help hold her up.

“You okay?” he whispered behind the introductory music.

She nodded and she pursed out her lips to get him to dip down and kiss her. As the lyrics started, she rested her tired head on his shoulder and let him lead, rocking them back and forth slowly in place in the middle of their bedroom by moonlight. She was almost limp in his arms although she tried her best to move with him, her bare feet shuffling slightly underneath her as they swayed.

So girl, leave your boots by the bed,

We ain't leaving this room

'Til someone needs medical help

Or the magnolias bloom

It's cold in this house and I ain't going out to chop wood

So cover me up and know you're enough

To use me for good

They danced often; usually Marigold would insist and drag Daniel away from whatever he was doing to have a quick dance in the kitchen or in the garden whenever the music from the radio hit her. Daniel wasn’t much of a dancer but there was something about Marigold’s contagious dimpled grin that always convinced him.

She truly was his sunshine, always dancing or singing or smiling whenever she could…the light of his life. Her spark was in their son too with her same smile and ability to pull Daniel from his shell. Lennox was the perfect mix of both of them and it broke their hearts that trying for a second baby was the beginning of the end. They had years worth of plans; things to do and places to visit and songs to dance to. They were each other’s person…just with not enough time.

Marigold’s hands tightened on the back of Daniel’s shirt, eyes falling closed as she let the music move them slowly around the rug of their room. He held her up, one arm around her waist and the other petting her hair as he let his breaths fall calmly against her neck, listening to the gentle song and the words that spoke too close to his heart.

Daniel whispered them to her, “But home was a dream, one that I'd never seen, 'til you came along”

So girl, hang your dress out to dry

We ain't leaving this room

'Til Percy Priest breaks open wide

And the river runs through

And carries this house on its stones

Like a piece of driftwood

So cover me up and know you're enough

To use me for good

“Dani.”

He paused their dancing for a moment as the quiet music played on from the mantle and glanced down at his wife, “What is it, Mari?”

“I’m…” she struggled to take a breath, “I’m really tired.”

“Okay, sunshine, I got you.” Daniel whispered and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He crouched down ever so slightly to lift her up in his arms, carrying her slowly back to bed as she kept her hands around his neck.

You knew it was serious when Marigold asked to stop dancing.

He laid her in bed as the song played on in the background and tucked the blankets up around her. He pressed a hand to her forehead and then to her cheek when he found her a little cold.

“Do you want the fire on?”

“Yes please.” Marigold whispered, blinking tiredly up at him. “And a sweater?”

Daniel let the song play through as he knelt down in front of the fireplace across the rom and took a few pieces of chopped wood from the basket next to it to light a fire. With a match lit and tossed in, the kindling caught flame easily and soon the room was filling with comfortable heat and a warm glow. Daniel returned to his wife’s bedside with one of his hoodies in hand and helped slide her arms into it and tucked it around her thin body before he sat himself down in the wooden chair as the song ended and the room fell back into perfect silence.

Marigold’s smaller and frailer hands fit into both of Daniel’s larger ones with ease and he rubbed his thumbs over her dry skin, his fingers callused from years of farm work, hockey practice, and guitar. His skin was rough but all too familiar and Marigold smiled weakly up at him from where she laid in bed. The moonlight that shone brighter through their bedroom window at the back of the house illuminated her thin face with the warm light of her bedside table lamp and Daniel stared at her silently. Their nights consisted of that now; lingering eye contact and hand holding, as if they hadn’t had enough of each other over the last eight years.

Her hair didn’t shimmer beautiful blonde like it used to, in fact, her whole appearance felt faded. It almost was as if she was from an old movie, drowned out in sepia and black and white until her tones and shades were as plain as the cream coloured sheets she laid in. The pillows were covered in tangled waves of her long hair and Daniel brushed the strands from her face with a gentle touch before raising her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Marigold’s dry lips fought to smile slightly at him and she ran her finger over his wedding ring that was set on his left hand.

“What are you smiling at?” Daniel asked softly.

“You.” she answered with ease. “My sweet Daniel.”

He kissed her hand again, letting his lips linger there a moment longer before resting his cheek down. Her fingers were cold against his flushed face and he just held her there to try and keep her warm, staring up at her.

“I love you.” Daniel whispered.

“I love you so much.” Marigold breathed.

She inhaled a little, struggling to catch her breath for a moment, and Daniel kissed her fingers one by one before resting them against his cheek again. They didn’t speak for a moment, just staring at each other with nothing but heartache adoration. It was as if they both knew.

Marigold weakly traced the shape of Daniel’s hands as he simply kept his eyes on her pale face, humming the tune to their song. Each line and callous over his skin was home to her touch, the veins on the back of his hand and the ring on his finger were part of her too. Daniel swore Marigold lived in him since they had their first kiss in the back of his pickup truck all those years ago. She was a part of his body, his heart, and his soul.

He sat with her as the minutes ticked by and the moon rose higher in the dark night sky, carefully watching each of her shallow shuttering inhales and rocky exhales. His soft voice filled their bedroom, singing to her quietly through the night. Midnight came and went and Daniel didn’t move from the chair at her bedside, his heart racing in his chest and his voice quivering slightly as he sang to her. His head rested down on her stomach and she weakly brushed her fingers through his sun-kissed brown hair. He could hear her heartbeat with his ear pressed to her body and it was slow and faint. His lyrics faltered for a moment and he sat up from her again.

“Marigold.” Daniel breathed.

She licked her dry lips and her cold hand fell into his, offering him a weak, “What is it, my sweet?”

“Mari…I…” Daniel’s blue eyes brimmed with tears but he didn’t dare let a single one fall.

Not when she was laying in front of him with death on her shoulder.

Daniel took a deep breath, “I…I don’t know what to do.”

Marigold nodded gently, her own light eyes brimming with tears, and she linked her pinky with his, “I know.”

He rested his elbows on his knees and held her hand in his against his lips, “I love you so much.”

“I’ve loved you enough for five lifetimes.” Marigold whispered.

He waited with her. He sat at her bedside and held her hands and sang to her quietly and let the minutes tick by, only praying for more. More moments to see her smile, more seconds to hear her laugh, more minutes to feel the soil softened texture of her skin. Time was slipping from him. Time was a landslide and he watched the world fade from the bright eyes of the love of his life day by day. He could hold onto her as tightly as he could but there was no mercy to be spared. His one true love was dying. And there was nothing he could do to save her.

Her breathing was starting to rattle slightly and her chest shuttered with each inhale. Daniel sang to her quietly, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear and caressed her cheek before holding both her hands in his. Marigold had tears in her eyes and she trembled sightly, not tearing her eyes from her husband.

“I got you.” Daniel whispered, shuffling closer to her bedside so she could feel more of his presence. “I’m right here.”

He held her hands and sang their song quietly to her as her breathing slowed and she grew weaker. The fire crackled soothingly from across the room and the moon shone brightly through the window overlooking the star sprinkled garden.

It was quarter to three am when Marigold’s chest fell still.

Daniel’s whispered singing faded out as his eyes dropped to her hand falling limp in his. He looked back up at her face, her eyes half closed and focused on him but unmoving.

“Mari?” Daniel breathed, giving her hand a little squeeze.

She was unresponsive.

“M-Marigold?” his voice broke.

The house was quiet. Far more quiet than Daniel was used to.

Daniel’s next breath ached his chest, burned his throat, and broke his heart. He lifted up Marigold’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her cold skin. At least they had their last dance.

He swallowed back his tears desperately, trying to convince himself that it was expected and he had the last month and a half to prepare…but how can you truly prepare to become a widow? Daniel pulled his phone from his pocket as he stood up from the chair and stood by the window overlooking the darkened gardens of their acreage as he dialled the funeral home as told. It was closed at barely 3am so Daniel left a message. When the line beeped, he couldn’t find his words for a moment.

Saying it out loud made it real.

“Hi this is Daniel…Daniel Seavey…it’s around 3am…” he checked the time, “2:49am…and…I was told to call when my wife…when…when my wife…”

Daniel looked back towards the bed and forced himself to breathe before focussing back out the window into the darkness.

“…when she passed.” Daniel swallowed thickly and bowed his head. “Give me a call when you open and come to…retrieve her…I’ll…I’ll meet you at the door. Thanks.”

Daniel hung up and slid his phone back in his pocket and leaned his forehead against the cool window with a trembling sigh. He had promised Marigold many times since her diagnosis that he would be brave for her and no shut down but holy shit he felt like his heart was shattering right out of his chest. He took a moment to breathe, to try and keep his emotions at bay which wasn’t easy especially being sleep deprived and exhausted, but forced himself to face the bed again. Marigold laid still.

Daniel walked over and tucked her arms under the blankets and brushed her long hair out of her face. She looked like she was sleeping if it wasn’t for the pale complexion of her face and the cool touch of her skin.

The house was perfectly quiet as Daniel stepped out into the hallway and took the stairs slowly but surly. He fed the cat and started the laundry and busied himself in the silence that rang in his ears. He felt like he was dreaming, floating, gliding around the house as he turned off the lights and locked the front door but left the porch light on for the funeral directors to arrive after sunrise.

Daniel found himself in the doorway of his son’s room, watching the six-year-old sleep soundly and peacefully, unbothered by the world. He had thought about it for the last month or so; how he was going to tell Lennox that his mother died and was never coming back. That would be one of the hardest things Daniel would ever have to do in his life.

With Lennox left sleeping, Daniel closed the door again and returned to his own room. He smothered the fire and closed the curtains and busied himself with getting changed into his pyjamas. He only really made it halfway: sliding on a pair of plaid lounge pants and shrugging off his button up before his body physically couldn’t hold back anymore. His sudden sob startled him and Daniel pressed a hand to his mouth to keep from possibly waking his son in the next room.

He turned off the bedroom lights and climbed into bed through his blurring tears and shuffled up close to his wife. She was cold and limp but he was heartbroken and all he wanted to do was hold her one last time. So Daniel curled his arm around her waist and nuzzled his face in her neck to try and encompass himself in the familiarity of her. His tears dripped down his cheeks and into the soft fabric of his hoodie that she still wore and he clung onto the material and cried until he was sure he was drowning in his tears.

With his son asleep peacefully nearby, Daniel forced himself into silence; weeping and whimpering through strangled gasps that he smothered into the shoulder of his sweater, wrapped around his wife. He knew it wasn’t his fault and that there was nothing he could have done differently to save her, but he still cried out a pathetic, “I’m sorry” into her neck, stroking her hair and almost hoping to will her back to life.

The farmhouse was quiet, their property was quiet, and the entire small town of Lincoln seemed to be perfectly silent as the minutes ticked by, the hours blended into each other, and Daniel cried the orange sun above the horizon. The small yellow marigold flower sat wilted in the cup on the nightstand. 

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[aeonghaseyo]

Your Trace, My Treasure

Summary: Marc and Nathaniel write and draw, respectively, on each others' notebooks because it's DEFINITELY a couple thing to do.

Word Count: 2105 AO3 link

Relationship/s: Nathaniel Kurtzberg/Marc Anciel Category: M/M Characters: Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Marc Anciel, Alix Kubdel (mentioned), Marinette Dupain-Cheng (mentioned), Juleka Couffaine (mentioned), Rose Lavillant (mentioned), Alya Cesaire (mentioned) Language used: English Author's Note: The creators of MLB really need to give the side characters screen time. The love square isn't the only romantic set of ships in the show and there are much more cute ships to write about. And so in my first time of writing a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic, it's about a ship that's entirely not part of the love square. This is my final workshop output from a creative writing class I enrolled in during the summer to get units in advance. Special thanks to my professor and two of my classmates for their feedback; I couldn't have made this work even more wonderful without their help. For the non-love-square ship and this being a successful workshop output thus far, I think I'm gonna give myself a pat on the back and more fanfic ideas to write. :)

Compared to the courtyard at Françoise Dupont High School where the lively chattering of students can be heard and the scrambling of footsteps were a staple, the art room was its own entire world of silence.

It was supposed to be a calming silence in that same art room where Marc and Nathaniel were to work on art-related endeavors of their own, but the former found this unwelcoming and rather deafening. It weighed down on his being that the atmosphere was unbearably awkward, much like he was most of the time even before he met Nathaniel and became his partner in creating comic books about Ladybug, Chat Noir, and their akumatized alter-egos who turned good and served as part of the superhero duo’s akuma-fighting team. Despite a remarkable development from being acquaintances, to newfound partners, and now to a bloomed romantic couple, Marc Anciel, as awkward as ever and still testing the waters on this newfound relationship, couldn’t shake this nagging feeling of inadequacy as someone’s significant other.

It just goes to show him that even though his romantic feelings for Nathaniel had been reciprocated at Day 0, it does not remove the remaining unease that Marc currently feels at Day 1. It was his first time in a relationship, and it was with the boy whose drawings he admired so much from the school paper. Simply put, it was too good to be true.

Unfortunately, the awkwardness Marc felt wasn’t masked enough, and Nathaniel immediately noticed from his place by the table beside his raven-haired beau. How could he not? It was very obvious, from the way Marc’s hand shakily distorted his usually refined, elegant script while writing the next chapter of their comic to the way his expression was contorted as if he was constipated. Nathaniel thought to himself that it was still an adorable sight, but clearly, something was up, and it wouldn’t do well to just ignore whatever troubled his beloved partner. Attempting to break the ice, the redhead cleared his throat, then spoke to call Marc’s attention.

“Marc.”

The novelist jolted in surprise at the utterance of his name. “Y-yes, Nathaniel?”

Leaning in for a better view of the page Marc was writing on, Nathaniel replied, “Your handwriting’s different.”

“W-wait, really?” blurted out Marc, quickly covering the page with his gloved hand. “I d-didn’t know you were p-particular with handwriting.”

Nathaniel placed a gentle, caring hand on his boyfriend’s with a smile aimed directly at him as he clarified himself, “It’s not that, Marc. I’ve seen it and it’s great. Right now, it just looks… wobbly. You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

Even if Nathaniel was a recluse in his own class, he could very well read into the emotions of people, but he doesn’t show it that often. As endearing as it was as a show of concern towards shy Marc, it was also overwhelming for the raven-haired novelist to have been the subject of such deep perception, even from the boy his heart palpitates for.

It was then that Marc’s fight or flight response reminded him in a split-second that he needed some sort of diversion for Nathaniel not to remind him of his own awkwardness.

“Isn’t it weird that our art teacher didn’t come here?” Marc rapidly questioned as he struggled not to look at the red-haired boy beside him. Despite this attempt to keep Nathaniel’s focus off of his disposition, glancing towards the door and not at Nathaniel did not help stop the blood from rushing to the novelist’s fair cheeks. His partner might be tired of this, of him, already, but that light chuckle of pure amusement coming from Nathaniel disproved that thought.

“Hey, hey, settle down Marc,” chided Nathaniel, “he might be running late. It’s okay for us to use the art room so long as it’s reserved around this time. Good thing that he reserved it at an earlier time than usual.”

With innocent green eyes, the raven-haired boy looked his boyfriend in the eye and asked, “H-he can do that?”

“Of course, he can. Let’s just wait for him, okay?” reassured Nathaniel, his left hand making its way on Marc’s right shoulder discreetly. “I’m sure my other classmates will arrive here shortly too.”

A shy smile emerged from Marc’s face as he replied, “Okay, Nath.”

Suddenly, a ringtone from the phone which was in Nathaniel’s pocket sounded audibly enough to catch both the boys’ attention. The redhead immediately fished out the device from his pocket and unlocked it, revealing three unread text messages from his close friend Alix.

Hey Nath! Something came up and I couldn’t swing by the art room. Love troubles again with Marinette. Juleka and Rose are also helping out with me so they can’t come.

I can’t believe that Marinette got invited personally by Adrien to his photoshoot but she can’t even give him her handmade gift or ask him out. Because she’s such a wuss, I got dragged here in the park by Rose because Mari needs all of her girl friends to push her towards Golden Boy Agreste YET AGAIN.

And apparently Alya alone couldn’t do it. Sorry! You’ll have Marc to keep you company anyway. Have fun! ;)

So much for those girls coming over to the art room. Nathaniel let out a sigh as he muttered, just enough for Marc to hear, “I stand corrected. The others aren’t coming.”

Catching on his partner’s crest-fallen demeanor and gazing at his face with sympathetic green orbs, Marc replied, “Guess it’s just the two of us for now.”

The next minutes were spent in silence again, with Marc continuing to finish a paragraph while Nathaniel sketched a bird’s eye view of the Eiffel tower as the background in one panel of the comic storyboard in his notebook. After several minutes elapsed, however, curiosity got the best of Marc, and so, with the tip of his pen lingering on the period of his last sentence, he kept on glancing at Nathaniel and the storyboarding he was working on. Besides the sheer focus that was evident in Nathaniel’s turquoise orbs, the shy novelist couldn’t help but notice the fine, steady strokes his beau’s hand were making with his fine-pointed mechanical pencil. So neat, so pristine. It’s amazing how he didn’t need an eraser to erase certain portions of his drawings over and over.

Marc had seen artist sketches himself of both people and objects, mostly done by his friend Marinette. As someone aspiring to become a fashion designer, she would be engrossed in sketching designs day by day, passion ignited by the sparks of inspiration she draws from around her. However, since Marinette’s sketches had obvious hints of disorder, as it normally is with crude artist sketches, it clearly contrasted with the otherwise structured sketches Nathaniel makes for his comic books. Marc, fully in awe, couldn’t help but take a break from his writing and stare at the red-haired illustrator’s creative process right next to him.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel, thanks to the strong, overbearing feeling of being watched, was getting overly conscious of his work. Keeping his composure to the best of his ability, he quickly turned to Marc and asked, “Do you need something Marc?”

Snapped out of his trance wide-eyed, Marc inwardly panicked. ‘Oh no, I must be staring at him too long! I hope I didn’t spook him too much.’

Scrambling for a sensible response, the novelist stuttered out, “I-i want to write something in your notebook.”

Setting down his pencil while his turquoise eyes were still on Marc, Nathaniel blinked inquisitively. “Oh, why would you want to do that?”

“B-because,” the shy writer reasoned, “I want to write something to remind you of me. T-that is, if y-you don’t mind.”

The red-haired teen averted his gaze from his partner as he remarked, “You know I don’t let anyone write on my notebook, Marc.”

This response triggered the disappointment that Marc had anticipated from the moment that they started continuing to develop the rest of the comic book they were working on together. It was even more daunting for the timid writer that their art teacher and the rest of Nathaniel’s classmates who were usually in the art room with them did not show up at that moment, or even at all. Marinette would tell Nathaniel that it’s a great idea for his newfound love to leave special traces on his personal notebook while Rose, somehow finding this romantic, would gush at this gesture with Juleka mumbling to herself in response. But what would have been the cherry on top for Marc at the moment is that if Alix was there to egg on Nathaniel, pressuring him to give in and let his boyfriend write something in his notebook. At least the comic relief from Alix’s teasing would help alleviate the collective awkwardness the couple felt at that moment. God, if only it wasn’t just the two of them in the art room at that moment.

But alas, he was alone, helpless and daunted, and he was facing the dragon which was Nathaniel, or whatever Nathaniel thought of him at that moment.

However, all of the fears and doubts that plagued Marc left him when Nathaniel continued with a small, endearing smile on his face, “But for you, I’ll make an exception.”

The novelist beamed at his boyfriend, green eyes sparkling with delight. “R-really?”

“In one condition.”

Marc took and held in a quick breath. “Anything, Nath.”

The illustrator picked up his pencil once again and uttered, with an outstretched hand right by Marc’s notebook, “Let me draw in your notebook.”

It was at that moment when Marc could feel his heart flutter, accompanied by the butterflies in his stomach as he opened his own notebook to the very last page and laid it out right by his beau’s workspace.

“It would be my pleasure.”

In a span of 2 minutes while Nathaniel was drawing on the last page of his boyfriend’s notebook, Marc, fidgeting and tapping his pen softly on his chin, racked his brain for a simple yet memorable piece to write on the first page of the illustrator’s notebook, which was left empty out of personal preference by its owner. Hoping to obtain bit by bit of inspiration, he glanced at Nathaniel, then at the empty page, then at Nathaniel, and so on and so forth. This went on, albeit unnoticed by the redhead, until mere seconds after, he scribbled away on the page once he had gotten attuned with his creative writing flow.

After both of them finished leaving their traces on each other’s notebook pages, Nathaniel and Marc gave each other back their notebooks and instantly opened them to where they each left their special mark. Struck with awe, the novelist softly traced the outline of the drawing and his emerald eyes were drawn to Nathaniel’s signature which he left underneath the recently drawn portrait. A tinge of pink formed on Marc’s cheeks as he admired every stroke that constituted this drawing of him done by none other than the boy he once looked up to, now loved, and who loved him back.

“No one’s written me a poem before,” Nathaniel uttered as he perused every line written by Marc on that now extra special page in his notebook, eyes taking in every word written in that distinct elegant script that served as an epitome of beauty that the redhead beheld. One particular line at the end of the writing, however, caught him by surprise: the words ‘Je t’aime’ accompanied by Marc’s signature in that same fancy handwriting the illustrator adored dearly.

Having regained his composure, Marc turned to Nathaniel and asked, “Do you like the poem? I-i thought of it on the spot so it might not exactly be to your liking, but-”

“I love it,” interrupted the red-haired teen breathlessly, wrapping an arm around his significant other and squeezing his shoulder. “Really Marc, you make the most wonderful written pieces.”

An expression as bright as day graced Marc’s features as he replied, albeit with a bit of shyness in his voice, “Y-you really think so?”

Nathaniel threw any single hint of hesitation in his being out the window as he placed a tender, loving kiss on Marc’s forehead. “I do. We’re meant to be partnered together, after all.”

And just like that, the uncomfortable awkwardness that haunted Marc was instantly warded off, and in a flash, he enveloped Nathaniel in a tight, warm, loving embrace and leaned into him in newfound solace. The silence in the art room has never been this comforting as the couple relished in this seemingly endless embrace together.