#i'll come back to it later since this was just a rough draft anyway

[nomiyakazehaya]

actor au, was talking about it with some peeps in a discord server and got to talking about how megs would totally do a complete 180 personality flip between being "in-character" and "out-of-character". absolutely the perfect candidate for gap moe. goes from looking murderous, terrifying and dangerous to the most sweetest, friendliest and gentle person with the clapper cue. gives people mad whiplash with the utter contrast.

i'm like barely coherent because i'm running on no hours of sleep for nearly two days straight so sorry if i'm rambling and not making much sense lmao

[tlbodine]

Stuck? Try junebugging.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but we're 5 days into nanowrimo so maybe this will be helpful.

Do you want the safety and surety of knowing what happens next in your story but can't stick to an outline? Does knowing in advance what will happen suck the joy out of discovery writing? Do you try to wing it through plots but get tangled in plot holes or have a story that runs out of steam because you can't figure out what went wrong? Are you at your most creative when you have a little bit of guidance? Do you tend to under-write? Do you get ideas in your head for random scenes and snippets that drop from the sky without context?

If any of these apply to you, junebugging a draft might be for you!

What Is Junebugging?

Since you're on Tumblr, you might already be familiar with the concept of junebugging as it relates to cleaning. If not -- I think the idea was first introduced to me by @jumpingjacktrash.

The basic idea is that you tackle cleaning by way of controlled chaos. You pick a specific area you want to focus on, like your kitchen sink, and then wander off to deal with other things as they occur to you, but always returning back to that area. You end up cleaning a little bit at a time in an order that may not make sense to an outsider but which keeps you from getting overwhelmed and discouraged.

How Does Junebugging Work in Writing?

OK, so that's great, but how does this work with writing? Well. In my case, the general idea is to jump between writing linearly, outlining, and writing out of order. It usually looks something like:

Start free-writing a scene, feeling my way through it and enjoying the discovery process.

Thinking, ok, now I have this scene, did anything need to happen to lead up to it? Do I need to go back and add some foreshadowing? Does this scene set anything up that needs to be paid off? And then jump forward/back to make those adjustments.

I'll usually have a bunch of disconnected ideas of ideas that have popped into my head, so I'll write those down in a list somewhere and then try to figure out what goes in between them and what order it goes in.

I'll write what I call "micro-scenes" which is where I'll just sketch out a few essential elements of what's going on without worrying too much about details, description, etc. -- just he did this, she said that, the setting was this, real bare-bones script. Then I can come back through and flesh out each of those microscenes into an actual scene later.

Got a story that has a complex structure? No problem. Write through each storyline one at a time and then chop them up and weave them together afterward. Write all the B plot scenes first then come back through to do A plot and C plot. Move the pieces around like legos. No one ever has to know.

This method works for me because I can't "decide" story elements in advance. I have never been able to just sit down and "figure out" what happens in a story beyond a couple steps ahead -- I have to discovery-write my way forward. But at the same time, that gets really daunting. So I zoom forward with micro-scenes, roughing out the beats in the most bare-bones way possible, then when I run out of clear vision for what happens next I backtrack, flesh out those scenes, build in connective tissue, etc. and by then I will probably find more inspiration to jump forward.

It's basically folding drafting, outlining, and revising all together into a single phase of writing, which is chaotic and goes against everything people teach you, but if it works? then it fuckin works.

Anyway, sorry for the jumbled-up post, I'm dashing this off quickly while I heat up a pizza and I'm about to dive back into my WIP -- but I hope this was a little helpful. If nothing else, take this as my blanket permission that it's 100% OK to jump around, write out of order, write messy, outline sometimes, pants sometimes, and do whatever else it takes just to get through the story. You've got this. Good luck.

[seangelfish]

Meet and Greet

Jun Sazanami x Reader ♡ Tags: Fluff, established relationship, romance, no mention of pronouns ♡ Word count: 864 ♡ Synopsis: An idol like yourself shouldn't be spotted at events like this. That's just too risky! But you're here anyway to not only experience what it's like from the fan's point of view, but also to surprise your boyfriend, Jun Sazanami from Eve. ♡ A/N: Had this in the drafts for a while and it is finally finished! I miss my Jun Sazanami phase~ I still love him and he will forever be my dream boyfriend.

Your hair was tied back with a black cap covering your head. Over your eyes laid a pair of dark shades and a mask to cover your mouth. This was the perfect disguise for you to go see your boyfriend at his meet and greet. After all, you were an idol at the same agency he was in, so you had to be careful about being recognised by his fans.

However, what you really came dressed in was not the disguise you should've gone for, but a casual outfit instead. Sure, you still covered your head with a cap, but your whole face was exposed which could lead to trouble.

You thought otherwise though because despite being a popular idol at Cos Pro, you were still going to attend a meet and greet for Eve, a unit that attracts all eyes. So, you didn't need to worry about being recognised as everyone's attention would be only on them. You doubted anyone would look your way if the Hiyori Tomoe and Jun Sazanami were in the same room as them.

You entered the line, awaiting your turn to meet Eve. For some reason, the idea of being here as a fan when you were an idol was absolutely nerve-racking. Maybe you should've gone in disguise? It was too late now as the line started moving forward, yet thankfully enough, as you expected, no one batted an eye at you.

And despite feeling so nervous, you felt a sensation of excitement brew in you. You were going to see your boyfriend from a different perspective! This is so exciting! you thought to yourself happily. I can't wait to see him!

You hummed a little tune to yourself as you watched fans squeal in delight as they readied themselves to shake their favourite idols' hands.

The venue was crowded with girls which wasn't a surprise to you since Eve catered towards that demographic, but a part of you couldn't help but feel a little bit jealous when Jun would dish out his attention to them. At the same time, you were proud of him. He looked so happy and fulfilled to be given such love for his hard work. It was his dream to become an idol, so seeing him smile so brightly like this only made your heart flutter.

"Thank you for supporting me and Eve," he said politely, shaking a fan's hand firmly. "I appreciate it so much."

"O-Of course!" they would bashfully reply, a slight blush appearing on their cheeks. "I will always be your fan!"

You sighed contently at this. You were nearing the front of the line now, so you readied yourself as you stepped in front of the dark blue-haired boy.

Before you could greet him though, his eyes widened at your figure in front of him.

"(Y/N), w-what are you doing here?" he hissed worriedly. "You're not even wearing a mask! Did anyone recognise you? I hope you didn't get harassed... I'll call security later to escort you out, but you shouldn't..."

Despite the shock in his eyes, you could see how they lit up when he saw you.

"Don't worry, Jun," you whispered back. "No one recognised me!"

He sighed but smiled. "Alright, let's get this over with. Take my hands."

You placed your hands in his. As expected, they were calloused and rough, but at the same time, soft. Your boyfriend shook your hands gently, but his grip was tight as if he didn't want to let you go.

"Thank you for coming here to visit me!" he exclaimed. "I appreciate your support so much!"

His usual lines. He really was taking this seriously so that no one would spot you.

You grinned, then said, "Jun, I'm so proud of you. Do you know exactly why I'm here? I'm here to tell you that you've been doing such a good job getting to this point. You've worked so hard and it's admirable. I hope that you keep at it, that life continues to treat you well."

He looked at you dazed, but his eyes glistened. He wasn't sure if it was the lights that had him squinting like this, but your words did take an emotional toll on him.

"And remember that you're loved," you continued.

At that point, he knew that it was you – the reason why his eyes started to water. Your words touched his heart, and hearing them from you made it all worthwhile that he was here, existing, as an idol.

"T-Thank you..." he stammered out. "I really am happy that you're here, (Y/N)–"

"20 seconds left!" reminded one of employees.

"My time's nearly up, Jun," you stated. "Have a good rest of your day. I love you."

You whispered the last part, but only for Jun to hear. Thankfully, he caught it amid chatter.

"I love you too," he whispered back.

"Next!"

You unlinked your hands from Jun's, then stepped away from the table to chat with Hiyori. Jun continued his job greeting the next fans in line, but from the corner of his eye, he kept looking at you, hoping that you, his lover, would have a good day too.

Intro page | Ensemble Stars masterlist | Rules

[loveroftoomanyfandoms]

Cooking Up Love, Chapter 4

Pairing: Chef!Matt Murdock x F!Journalist!Reader

Rating: T (for now, might change, probably not)

Story Summary: Here

Warnings/Tags: Hallmark levels of fluffy, cheesy goodness (and speed that their relationship develops, lol), no use of Y/N, Matt is not a vigilante, more tags to come as the story develops

Word Count: ~1600

A/N: Here's chapter 4! If you'd like to be added to the tag list for this story, please let me know!

(Divider made by the insanely talented @theradioactivespidergwen!)

Tag List: @yarrystyleeza @hailey-murdock @mattkinsella @bellaxgiornata @danzer8705 @chezagnes @shouldbestudying41

Early the next afternoon, Ellison called you into his office.

You walked in. "What's up?"

Ellison leaned back in his chair. "I need to talk to you about your article."

Your brow furrowed. You had stayed up half the night working on it (while eating some of what was quite honestly the best tiramisu you had ever had) and had sent a rough draft to Ellison that morning after reading it over. "What about it?"

"Quite frankly, it sucks."

You blinked at him in surprise. "Excuse me?"

"It reads like you literally just transcribed the interview. There's no emotion to it."

"So, what, do you want it in another format, or…" You were hoping Ellison wasn't going to tell you to just forget about it or that he was reassigning the piece back to Kelsie, who was still out sick with food poisoning.

Ellison shook his head. "We need to switch gears. Instead of an interview, I want a full human-interest story." Ellison sat back up. "I want our readers to get to know Chef Murdock as both a chef and as a person. You got a bit of that in your interview, but I want more. Spend as much time with him as possible and do what you do best -- get him to open up to you. Find out what his interests are outside of cooking, how he develops his recipes, where his inspiration comes from. Give me personal details and anecdotes."

You nodded. Your second attempt at an interview had gone a lot smoother than your first -- you had found Chef Murdock had relaxed more the longer the two of you had talked, so you were pretty sure he wouldn't mind sitting down for a more in-depth interview. "Okay."

"Alright, that's it. Get a rough draft of your new article to me by next Wednesday -- that should be enough time to edit before we go to print the following Monday."

"Got it."

Ellison eyed you. "Don't make me regret that raise I agreed to."

You shook your head. "Don't worry, I won't."

You went back to your desk and eyed the clock. You had already been planning on stopping by Daredevil on your way home from work in order to drop Chef Murdock's dish back off to him and was just going to leave it with Karen at the host stand, but since you needed to talk with Chef Murdock anyway... 

You pulled out your phone and sent him a text. Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I could come by the restaurant to talk with you for a minute before you open?

A few seconds later, your phone chimed. It's not a bother, and sure.

Okay, I'll be by in about 20 minutes.

Sounds good.

You grabbed your bag and Chef Murdock's dish and popped by Ellison's office again. "I'm leaving a bit early so I can go by Daredevil to talk to Chef Murdock."

Ellison nodded. "Okay, see you Monday."

You hurried towards Daredevil, sending Chef Murdock a text as you approached.

A minute later a man with shaggy blonde hair and a friendly face unlocked the door. "Hi, you must be the journalist from the Bulletin, right?"

You nodded and introduced yourself as you stepped inside.

The blond man smiled and stuck his hand out for you to shake. "Matt's signing for a delivery, but he'll be out in just a second. I'm Foggy Nelson, his business partner."

You took his offered hand. "Oh, yes, Chef Nelson. It's nice to meet you too."

Chef Nelson grinned. "So, I heard you were on the receiving end of Matt's apology tiramisu."

You huffed out a laugh. "Oh, uh, yeah, I guess he told you about that. Does he always apologize with tiramisu?"

"Only when he knows he really screwed up." Chef Nelson glanced towards the kitchen before looking back at you. "By the way, thanks for giving him another chance at an interview. Matt can be prickly but he's really a good guy underneath."

You smiled, thinking about how warm and open Chef Murdock had been the previous afternoon compared to your first meeting. "I'm beginning to see that."

"Sorry about that," Chef Murdock's voice said as he came out of the kitchen towards you.

You turned towards him. Today he was wearing a white t-shirt and black pants with his usual red glasses. It's unfair how damn hot he is , you thought to yourself.

You swallowed. "Hi, Chef Murdock."

"Hi," he replied pleasantly. "So what brings you by? Did you have some more questions for me?"

You nodded. "Yes, but I also came by to return your container to you and thank you again for the tiramisu."

Chef Murdock took the empty container with a grin. "I guess that means it wasn't poisoned, then?"

You huffed out a laugh even as your face heated. "I'm sorry about that."

Chef Murdock chuckled. "It's okay."

You shook your head. "In all honesty though I think that that was probably the best thing I've ever eaten. I'll definitely be placing some to-go orders for tiramisu after work."

Chef Murdock smiled. "It's not on the menu yet because I'm still perfecting it, but until then if you let me know in advance I'll be happy to make some for you."

"Matt makes his own ladyfingers from scratch," Chef Nelson chimed in. "That's the secret."

"Well, one of them." Chef Murdock grinned at you. "There's a few other secrets to my tiramisu that not even Foggy knows."

Chef Nelson chuckled. "And with that, I'm going to go get started on the dishes I do know the secrets to." 

He gave you a brief nod. "It was very nice meeting you."

"Same to you," you replied.

You waited until Chef Nelson had disappeared into the kitchen before turning back to Chef Murdock. "So about my article… I turned a draft of it into my editor this morning and he said it wasn't personal enough, so he wants me to expand it into a full human-interest story instead of just an interview."

Chef Murdock's brow furrowed. "Oh? What does that consist of?"

"Uh, well… usually with my human-interest pieces I spend time with the person I'm writing about, getting to know them over the course of several days, but since I don't want to take up too much of your time I'd probably just have some more interview questions for you, and if it would be possible I'd like to watch you work in the kitchen for a bit? It doesn't actually have to be during open hours or anything like that, and I'll even sign an NDA if you want me to promising that I won't reveal any of your recipes to anyone."

Chef Murdock pursed his lips as he thought. Finally, he nodded. "Yeah, that's okay."

You huffed out a breath. "Thank you so much. I'm free all weekend, so you can just text or call me and let me know whenever is convenient for you."

"Actually, how about we start tomorrow? Meet me here at, say, 8 AM?"

You nodded. "Okay, yeah, that sounds good."

"Great. I'll see you tomorrow then."

"Thanks again for the tiramisu. It really was fantastic."

Chef Murdock smiled. "You're welcome."

"Okay. Bye."

You turned and walked back into the lobby so Karen could let you out, actually looking forward to seeing Chef Murdock the next morning.

Matt waited until you left then returned to the kitchen, where Foggy was slicing up cucumbers for the dinner salads.

Foggy paused in his prepping. "So… she seems nice."

Matt nodded. "Yeah, she is."

"Pretty, too."

Matt shook his head with a grin. "I wouldn't know."

Foggy chuckled. "Mmhmm. Sure you wouldn't, Matty. That's why you were totally flirting with her just now."

Matt's brow furrowed. "I wasn't flirting."

"I know your tells, Matty -- you like a girl, you cook for her." Foggy dropped his voice into an imitation of Matt's. "'Oh, I can totally make you tiramisu even though it's not on the menu, no problem'."

Matt shook his head. "She's writing an article about me -- of course I'm going to be nice and offer to make tiramisu for her again. Which reminds me, the editor at the Bulletin wants her to expand her interview into a human-interest story." 

"Oh hey, that's awesome, man. A full human-interest piece will be great publicity for the restaurant."

Matt nodded. "We're going to meet up tomorrow morning to discuss it."

"Couldn't wait to see her again, huh?"

Matt shook his head. "She wants to watch me cook, so I'm going to have her accompany me to the farmer's market then give her a small cooking demo here afterwards before we start prepping for tomorrow night's service."

"Ah okay, cool."

Matt turned his head towards the receiving door. "Josie's here with the wine order."

Foggy set his knife down as the doorbell rang. "I got it."

"Make sure she's got the Frangelico I added to this week's order, will ya?"

"Sure thing."

Matt sighed to himself as Foggy left to go receive their order. The truth was that he actually was looking forward to spending more time with you. You were kind, and funny, and endearing, and according to Foggy, 'pretty', which admittedly made Matt curious as to what you looked like. 

He shook his head. He needed to keep things strictly professional between the two of you. The last time he was interested in a journalist it almost cost him his career and he wasn't going to make that mistake again, no matter how much he was beginning to trust you.

[chiconisroc]

Chapter 35 is up peeps for 'Was Not The Hero' : ) (A Philip Wittebane/belos fanfic)

Update Nov 8th- Updated chapter is up! Thank you @conejo-sama for editing the chapter : ) And with this chapter, we reached the 500 page mark!

Yeah, can't believe the story has hit 500 pages, that's crazy. I definitely want to thank you all for the support~

So, I got some bad news :c. I won't be updating this story till probably December. During November, I will be working on rough drafts for two books I want to write. Taking the challenge in the nanowrimo challenge by writing 50 k words of a work, well... i'll be doing 100k since I'm working on two projects, hahaha

Anyways, chapter 35 is a bit slow, so I apologize for that. Just a small build up for future events and some build up for the other characters. Let me know what you peeps think. While I'm gone, peeps can still message me or ask me questions. I will do my best to come back to this story later.

Thank yoyu @asherisawkward and @oxblooddraws for beta reading. The edited version will be up later : )

Summary of the Was Not The Hero for new peeps:

He lost…

Many years of planning and sacrifices for nothing.

He has failed to eliminate the dangers that his fellow humans may face in the future…

Now he’s back home after living centuries in a wicked world full of monsters, yet he has not realized he was the monster of Boiling Isles all along.

[kitkatmonsterfox]

I had this small ninjago au idea that I had for a while now, idk if I'll ever draw it or not, but the au is called Fsm overlord brother au were follow by the name the overlord is the fsm brother. This was based on the scraped idea that ov was the other half of fsm that tommy had, but instead of him being the oni half, why not make it a family problem, because there's alwas family drama in the fsm bloodline..

Read the rough draft of the idea

So the idea goes like this, before Fsm runs away from the first realm, he spots something on the oni side, a baby. He was confused at first but later learned, just like him. This baby was also born in the conflict of the oni & dragon powers,so not wanting the same fate that he was about to experience, he took him. years passed, and the boy grew up bigger than the fsm, sometimes being mistaken as a younger brother to the overlord they had a strong brotherly bond going on mishap, sometimes getting into trouble, promising to never leave eachother side. But as time passed and both got older, they grew more disten, the fsm focuses more on keeping balanced and peace in the realms while the overlord think the only solution to peace it to conquer but the fsm Opposed the idea Believing everyone has the right of there freedom but he just Scoft and walked away. The fsm worried that his oni side is starting to take over but ignoring it anyway. Later that night, the fsm since something was wrong and went to check it out, he soon saw that his brother was Causing mast destruction and chaos, putting people under a curse to obey him the fsm confronted him about it but the overlord pushed him away, believing that he will bring true peace but in darkness. Fsm Realizing that his oni side had fully taken over, he had no choice but to stop him , so a battle ensued. Both never seem tired out each other, but fsm needs to find a way to stop him once and for all, but he needs to think fast because the overlord used his power to create an instructable army he tried to fight them off but he was starting to grow tired, so he had to make the biggest decision, but at that moment the overlord was about to hit his finally on him blow until the fsm stabed him in the chest, both shocked by this, the overlord pulled him self out the Sword to regain what had happened. the fsm took the opportunity to use the power he had left and split the island in two. ov being on the dark island and fsm being on ninjago. Thire was finally peaceful, but they felt an intense guilt for what he had done. many years passed, and the fsm had kids of his own telling Cautionary tales of the overlord, But not mentioning that the overlord is their uncle. Fear on how they would fell or them follow in his path, after his death the fsm was looking for his brother in the departed realm, hoping that he'll change him or that he regret the Actions he had made and come back. But the more he looked, he had a horrific realization that his soul was still in ninjago waiting for his next attack to cover the world in darkness

This is just the rough draft of the brother Au, I'll update it if i ever come back to it, with designs of the overlord human form. Let me know what you think of it and what should I do to improve on it or have any suggestions?

[lorata]

If Lyme in 74 could go back to when she was thirteen and do everything again, would she make any different choices?

ok real talk this ask is 18 months old but I have been chipping away at this fic since 2021 so anon if you're still here THANK YOU for the prompt that slowburn ate my brain for the better part of 2 years

(anon if you're long gone I don't blame you but I enjoyed it anyway)

(I don't have a title for this, MAYBE LATER)

Link to LJ if you prefer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Claudius’ body lies heavy across her lap. His blood coats her hands, hot and wet and slippery and that’s his blood, his blood, she promised to protect him and now he’s dead. Alma Coin smiles down at her, mouth a mocking gash across her face, and asks for last words. Lyme spits into the dirt. She’d give anything for the Arena so she could take this woman down with her. "Go fuck yourself."

"Personally I think that's lacking that special something, but for a first draft I'll take it," Coin says. Then, almost lazily: "Fire."

Pain, sharp and hot and burning and then —

She jolts upright in bed, sweat-slicked and gasping, air slicing through her lungs like a fresh blade, both hands over her mouth to muffle a scream. A dream. Just a dream. No boots in the dark, no rifles glinting in the torchlight, no bodies of miners crushed beneath fallen rock. No ears ringing from explosions. No Claudius, falling stiff and silent to the ground with eyes wide and a mouth full of blood. He’s here, safe across the room and —

No.

No Claudius. No second bunk. No steel walls and dull, orange recessed lighting. A desk with books and papers stacked in the corner. Shoes — absurdly small — on the chair. Heavy oak dresser with a bedsheet tossed over the large vanity mirror. An open window casting tree shadows on the floor.

And numbers, thousands of numbers, scrawled across the walls in permanent marker: 33 - 16th, 10F, mutt attack. 10 - 3rd, 4M, exsanguination. 27 - 24th, 12M, blunt force trauma.

Twenty-five years of buried memories gush out like fallen intestines. “No,” Lyme says aloud. It comes out rough, the voice of a girl who’s spent years trying to make it sound lower, tougher, less like someone a few inches of hair away from pigtails and ribbons.

Claudius’ body lies heavy across her lap. His blood coats her hands, hot and wet and slippery and that’s his blood, his blood, she promised to protect him and now he’s dead. Alma Coin smiles down at her, mouth a mocking gash across her face, and asks for last words. Lyme spits into the dirt. She’d give anything for the Arena so she could take this woman down with her "Go fuck yourself."

"Personally I think that's lacking that special something, but for a first draft I'll take it," Coin says. Then, almost lazily: "Fire."

Pain, sharp and hot and burning and then —

She jolts upright in bed, sweat-slicked and gasping, air slicing through her lungs like a fresh blade, both hands over her mouth to muffle a scream. A dream. Just a dream. No boots in the dark, no rifles glinting in the torchlight, no bodies of miners crushed beneath fallen rock. No ears ringing from explosions. No Claudius, falling stiff and silent to the ground with eyes wide and a mouth full of blood. He’s here, safe across the room and —

No.

No Claudius. No second bunk. No steel walls and dull, orange recessed lighting. A desk with books and papers stacked in the corner. Shoes — absurdly small — on the chair. Heavy oak dresser with a bedsheet tossed over the large vanity mirror. An open window casting tree shadows on the floor.

And numbers, thousands of numbers, scrawled across the walls in permanent marker: 33 - 16th, 10F, mutt attack. 10 - 3rd, 4M, exsanguination. 27 - 24th, 12M, blunt force trauma.

Twenty-five years of buried memories gush out like fallen intestines. “No,” Lyme says aloud. It comes out rough, the voice of a girl who’s spent years trying to make it sound lower, tougher, less like someone a few inches of hair away from pigtails and ribbons.

She scrambles out of bed, nearly falls on her face when her feet hit the ground too soon. Kid’s bed, barely a foot off the ground. Her legs are gangly, strong calves from walking but not filled out yet. Lyme swallows back bile. Still a dream, still a dream, it has to be a dream —

Rest of the house is dark, quiet. Nothing but the refrigerator humming in the corner of the kitchen; the door cuts a swath in the line of empties on the floor when Lyme yanks it open. No food inside but there wouldn’t be, would it, she kept all her food in her bedroom. In a box in the back of her closet, hidden so he wouldn’t find it. Bread, apples, beans, milk and eggs in a wire basket in the stream out back. The rest of the vouchers will be under her bed, slipped in between the slats. Her stomach knots.

More memories, like water seeping in through boots with a crack in the sealant. The Centre used to give out calendars, shiny, glossy paper with pictures of pretty children grinning at the camera as they climbed the ropes course or tossed dodgeballs, posing with their arms around each other like they won’t be pulling hidden knives as soon as the photo shoot is over. Lyme (she will not think the other name) had one on the back of her door — and yes, once she returns, walking fast like the dark will nip her heels, there it is. This month the kids are racing on the grass, a brown-skinned girl in shorts with bandaids on her knees pumping her fist in triumph as she dashes across the finish line.

May. And one date five days away, circled in thick red marker with giant exclamation marks, the point jammed in hard enough to dent the paper.

Her birthday. Her thirteenth birthday.

“Fuck,” Lyme says, in her Games-damned preteen voice.

She snatches up a school notebook and flips rapidly past math notes interspersed with death list calculations to the first blank page. In five days Lyme — this Lyme, the body she’s found herself back in like an awful nightmare — will turn thirteen. At the time she cared about one thing, and one thing only, but Lyme has watched children and friends live nad die, has seen the country fall in flames, and there is context now, context bigger than a young girl’s escape to freedom. Lyme has long forgotten her age but she knows how long she’s been out, does the math and works it backwards: thirteen in May means the tail end of the 49th —

Brutus. Brutus has just won his Games. He’s there in the Village being the perfect little Victor, while his mentor promises him he’ll never have to go into the Arena ever again. Misha — 11 years old, still in Transition, bright-eyed and feral and burning with life.

And Claudius … Claudius isn’t even a year old.

Lyme’s fingers press in against the pen’s side until her knuckles cramp. Spring of 49 means the world is ramping up for the — fucking hell — Quarter Quell. Four of Two’s tributes will die this year, bloody and ignominious, and Haymitch Abernathy’s family sleeps safe in their house, a two-month countdown ticking down on their lives, unknowing. As do the five hundred-some-odd kids who will have died in brutal, bloody ways before Lyme’s life catches up with itself again.

“Okay,” Lyme says out loud. The sour taste in her mouth thickens. So she’s dead, and living this all again to — what, make the same mistakes? See it happen all over again? Or is this some fucked-up karmic chance to do things differently?

The walls press in, thick and close, and now she’s across the room, shoving up the heavy sash and scrambling up over the sill, twisting around and pulling herself up onto the roof. The lights of town spill over up into the sky, blotting out the lower rim of stars in an orange glow, but the constellations dance above her head as she stares straight up. She saw the Milky Way for the first time in her Field Exam, a spatter of light and colour like a bucket of paint splashed above the jagged tree line so beautiful she’d stopped and stared, camera-face forgotten.

She could do it again. Go back, live the next five years of her life in Residential. Redo all the kills, the isolation tests, the physical demands, the psychological scarring. Live the Arena again: kill all those children — and they would be children now, half her age or less — feel that guilt all over again. Remember every trick, every surprise, every Gamemaker’s changeup or mentor’s wildcard from every Arena over the last twenty years and try to save the ones she’d lost. Find Misha, find Claudius and try to save them again, sit through those awful, agonizing weeks knowing she’d done it once, knowing how close she’d been to losing everything — and how much it mattered that these ones, these ones made it.

Save Cato. Save Brutus. Save her country from splitting into pieces.

All she has to do is live it all again. And in the meantime, hundreds of children will be hacked to pieces on live television, thousands more will starve slowly in the districts, the sex trade brutalizes boys and girls and makes them blame themselves for their own victimization, all while the Capitol parties, the military power hidden in the mountains watches and waits for its time to strike and President Fucking Snow sips tea and gardens in his palatial mansion.

A scream tears its way out of her throat, scaring the crickets into stunned silence. Lyme drags her hands over her face and curls up on her side, fighting a sob. She jams it back into herself with violent force, tracking down every atom of helpless despair and transforming it into rage, because the old mentor’s maxim still holds true: once you start it’s very hard to stop, so don’t open that door unless you’ve got your kid in a place where it’s safe for them to come down.

Unfortunately for Lyme, her mentor’s dead in a pile of rubble. Or, alternately, he’s off in the Village prepping for the Quarter Quell with no fucking clue about the thirty-eight-thirteen-year-old having a fucking breakdown on her roof half a district away. Either way, he can’t help her now.

“Can’t do it,” Lyme says to the empty air. A cricket beeps in solidarity and falls silent. “Can’t do that again.”

She barely made it out the first time with ten deaths on her conscience. If Lyme has to do it all again and bear the weight of thousands she will burn the whole fucking place to the ground.

You know, boss, says a voice in her head that sounds a lot like Claudius, that’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.

Lyme sits up. Wipes her face. Stares down at hands that have never murdered anything worse than a stick with fresh green still in the wood.

“Okay,” she says again. This time it settles in her stomach, heavy like iron. Or — like a sword, its weight balanced in her grip. “Fuck. Okay.”

----------------------------

She’s gone by the time the man who thinks he’s still her father stumbles home.

----------------------------

She hitches a ride on the district train. Adult Lyme in teenage-Lyme’s body spends a good hour plotting how to sneak in, where to hide, how to avoid the train staff — before one of the men spots her and gives a friendly wave. “Hey Maddy,” he calls (the name shoves a dagger into the base of her spine but she stays still even as her lungs close). “Going in early today. Big city?”

And oh. Right. She’d been taking the train back and forth for years, for that last summer’s Reaping, for big-city clothes shopping, sometimes just to get away, and the train men never made her pay for it. Sometimes they pulled up a stool in the engine with them and let her watch over the controls. She used to love watching the train devour the track, the dust of her hometown disappearing in the distance behind her. “Just remember us when you win, eh, kiddo?” the conductor used to grin.

She’d forgotten, of course. Before she even stood on stage at the Reaping square. But today he’s there, and he waves, and Lyme swallows the bag of crushed glass in her throat and forces out a grin. “Got some paperwork at the main office,” she says, then, because she feels like she has to, “Five more days.”

“Attagirl.” He flashes her a thumb’s up. They’re the same age, Lyme thinks, this man now and the person she is inside her head. He might even be younger. “We got some sandwiches in the cooler up front, if you want to swing by and grab a couple. Paperwork can take a lot out of you.”

She laughs in spite of herself — the adult Lyme, not the adult-masquerading-as-kid — because boy does it ever, but the good thing is, he can’t tell the difference between a real one and a twelve-almost-thirteen-year-old faking it, half to stay on their good side and half because underneath it all she liked that they’d treated her like a grownup. (They hadn’t, of course, she can see that now. They’d treated her exactly like they should — with respect, but still a kid. But at the time it felt like they did, and that made all the difference.)

Did they recognize her when she strode onto the stage five years from now, new clothes, new name, a good head taller? Where are they now, in the version of Lyme’s life where she’s lying dead under the mountain? What is their place in Alma Coin’s future?

Lyme grits her teeth and grips her rucksack straps as she follows him down the narrow aisle.

----------------------------

Misha told her once, how she broke into the Peacekeeping office after hours on a dare, to steal her own arrest record and bring it back to impress one of the girls in Residential. Lyme isn’t stupid enough to try that, but one thing Misha told her is that the beat-keepers are pattern-finders. Here in Two — here in the city in Two especially — they’re busy people, but they aren’t pushed to the limits of their cruelty policing the country’s poor and desperate. It’s mostly the little things, and they aren’t always on alert.

In the early morning the station is open, staffed with a skeleton crew. If Lyme had her own body back she could march in and ask, but no one’s going to tell her anything looking like this, and Lyme is quick on her feet with the sponsors but spinning a story to get her into the records room of the central Peacekeeping station is a bit over her head.

Good thing Lyme just finished fighting a war.

Everything is about sight-lines. Get in. Duck. Around a corner. Against the wall. Into a side room. Down, over, across. And she doesn’t even have to pop in to fire off a shot that will alert the whole place to her location. After the past few months it’s actually anti-climactic: in and out with a piece of paper stuffed into her rucksack, all in under ten minutes.

(She looked for another name, too, but there’s nothing there — and won’t be for at least another decade, she realizes as she runs more mental math. Well. At least that gives her time.)

“Ferdinand Jacobs,” Lyme says aloud, and snorts out a laugh into her hand. Ferdinand? “Oh, girl. You didn’t tell me your whole fucking family was like this.”

----------------------------

She tracks down Artemisia Jacobs leaving her apartment for school. And Lyme prepared herself, she did, but all the mental pep talks in the world can’t cope to seeing her girl again, scowling in braids and overalls as she leaps the narrow stairs three at a time and takes a vicious swipe at the flower boxes lining the neighbour’s fence.

She’s alive. Her girl is alive, and safe, even with the remains of an old bruise at the far edge of her cheekbone. Lyme exhales and flattens out her fists.

“Hey,” Lyme calls out.

The girl stops. Narrows her eyes, gives Lyme a quick once-over. “You’re tall,” she says. She hooks her thumbs into her belt loops and rocks back on her heels, chin jutted out in defiance. “No fashion sense though.”

Snow on a Games-damned shitheap, but Lyme has missed her. She shoves down the volcanic rush of affection and keeps her voice casual. “I heard you’re good at stealing things. And setting things on fire.”

Artemisia’s eyes flicker but stay narrowed. Her finger taps an uneven staccato against her leg. “Squeaky rats around here.”

“No rats, just a good reputation.” And oh, hell, Lyme knows her girl but this is her girl as a girl, she’s not her Victor yet, she’s not even a killer, she’s practically an infant, and Lyme has historically reacted with blind panic to anything below Reaping age. How the hell are you supposed to talk to kids? How is she supposed to convince the world’s most skeptical and suspicious kid of something that makes no sense?

Except — it’s Misha, isn’t it, and one thing has always been true.

Lyme squares her shoulders. “I’m going to blow up the Capitol and kill the president. Want to come?”

Artemisia lets out a bark of startled laughter. “What? You’re crazy.”

Lyme doesn’t flinch. She does pull out a knife, from the collection of stolen Centre weapons she’d been keeping under her mattress. She tosses it across the sidewalk; Artemisia catches it without blinking. “Also, I need to steal a baby.”

A full five seconds, then Artemisia laughs again, this time the best kind of wild. “You’re definitely crazy. But sure, why not. Sounds fun.”

----------------------------

They pick their way through the city centre, ripping off bits of a cheese loaf that Artemisia stole from outside a bakery and passing it back and forth. “Do you know the Beaumonts?” Lyme asks her. Claudius told her his full name once, after his mother showed up at the Village, and she’d nearly accused him of pulling one over on her. What the fuck kind of name was that?

Artemisia shoots her a sideways look. “Are Twelves dead meat? Obviously. Which ones?”

The sidewalk ends and Lyme stops, rocking her toes back and forth over the edge. “Gloria and Jeremy.” She’d put a restraining order out on them after Gloria’s unexpected visit. The father never tried, but the mother had made a fuss a few times after that. Legal handled it and Claudius never even had to know.

“Who? Oh, them. No, he’s disowned or whatever. If you want the good stuff you should try —“ She stops, studies Lyme’s expression as she flicks the knife from her sleeve and rolls it over her fingers. “That’s the baby? You’re stealing a Beaumont baby? Ew, why? It’s going to have inbreeding diseases. There’s, like, so many group homes.”

Only Misha would immediately start comparing children to puppies and debate the merits of mutts over purebreds, but Lyme doesn’t have time to get into the analogy. “He’s mine,” she says instead. “I’m taking him.”

Not her best cover story — not even a cover story, really — and she can see Artemisia give her a long once-over and do some rapid math calculations, but Lyme’s mother had been fourteen, a fact that had been scary to Lyme at ten and now as an adult actively horrified her. Nero’s sister wasn’t that much older either. Finally Artemisia shrugs. “Okay,” she says. “No judging. But also, gross. We should probably set the house on fire on the way out.”

Lyme laughs, sharp and nasty, the sound dredging something thick and ugly up from deep within her insides. She closes her eyes on images of silent hovercrafts bombing the Victors’ Village into rubble and snarls her throat closed around a reflexive I’ve missed you. “Save that for the Capitol.”

“Holy shit.” Lyme tips back on her heels, leans back to shade her eyes. Beside her, Artemisia’s low whistle echoes agreement. “That is one ugly house.”

“Social climbers, I told you. But it’s only impressive on the outside, there’s nothing good in it.” She makes a speculative face, like she’s chewing on her tongue. “Except for a baby, I guess. This is so weird. So have you ever been inside? Can you give me anything?”

Lyme hesitates. For half a second she digs around in her memories, tries to find anything Claudius told her that might help, but it’s all fragments: she used to lock me in the closet, she’d drag me to the bathroom and hold my head under the sink, one time I crawled into her bed with a knife. “No,” she admits finally.

Artemisia’s eyes cut to her again, and this time her nose crinkles like a cat smelling something unpleasant. But all she says is, “Okay,” and continues on. “I’ll look. Don’t hang around, you’ll get me caught. Nothing worse than taking a newbie on a job.”

“Thanks,” Lyme says, because she has to, and speaking chokes off the wave of real gratitude, messy and complicated and absolutely unable to express. Artemisia doesn’t know her — will never know her, will never sit with her on a roof at three in the morning, brain meds stuffed into her sock. They’ll never ugly-spar with knives until the blood runs red and the wildness leaves Misha’s eyes, will never patch each other up with Misha propped up on the bathroom counter, sleepy and finally content, head tipped forward onto Lyme’s shoulder as she dabs iodine on a surface cut.

But this Artemisia is alive. And maybe they’ll paint each other’s nails.

Lyme doesn’t turn back to watch Misha at work. She ducks the side street, skirts around until she finds the library Claudius said he used to sleep in sometimes, during the Games when no one asked him why he didn’t have school. It’s not hard to tuck herself into a back corner with a book (“The Cost of Peace: The History of Panem’s Peacekeepers”) and flip listlessly through the pages.

(Once her fingers snag on a page etched with a lithographic print of a familiar mountain fortress. The yawning mouth draws her in, heart beating faster and faster until she slams the book shut. She pulls her knees to her chest, grips the back of her neck with both hands and forces in breath after breath until Claudius’ wide-open eyes and blood-smeared mouth leave her vision.)

“Yo.” A nudge at her shoe. “Found us an in. Also got us some food. Let’s find somewhere to chill until dark.”

----------------------------

Breaking in: easy. Finding the baby: easy. Leaving the house with Gloria and her husband happily asleep in their beds: a whole lot harder.

“You know it’s harder to kill people than it looks,” says Artemisia over her shoulder.

Lyme jumps. “What?” She does manage to keep her voice to a whisper, even as she peers through the crack in the door at the two adults asleep in their beds, oblivious.

“You know, in the Games. They make it look easy. All that stabbing, the blood, the cannon, boom like that.” Artemisia cocks her head thoughtfully. “It’s not, really. People have a lot more blood than you think, and they make way more noise. We can set the house on fire if you want, but I wouldn’t do it now.” She taps the back of Lyme’s hand to punctuate her point, and … oh. Well, shit. Lyme didn’t even notice the knife she’d flipped around to lie flat in her hand, angled precisely for throat-slitting.

She wouldn’t have done it. It’s been years since Lyme set foot in the Arena. But at the same time … memories of artillery thundering overhead, the press of her soldiers at her shoulder as they fought their way up the mountain in charge after useless charge. Lyme’s barometer for ‘senseless death’ has shifted over this past year.

Would anyone care if Jeremy and Gloria Beaumont bled to death in their beds? Would anyone even notice? Does it matter if they haven’t hurt Claudius yet, from their perspective — when they have hurt him already, for years, enough that the shadows of it chased him all the way through to adulthood? No, it fucking doesn’t. Time is clearly not a straight line, a-fucking-parently. They hurt him then. They will hurt him, soon.

They will never hurt him again.

Artemisia watches her still, careful and studying. She has — and hasn’t — killed more people as she has fingers. Lyme exhales and pockets the knife. “Let’s get the kid.”

Babies are — well, they’re terrifying, and gross: needy, leaking flesh-bags that explode out of every orifice and grow heavier with every second. Lyme has spent her entire career successfully cultivating an image that means no one will ever ask her to hold one without ever coming out to say she hates larval humans on camera. But this one will grow up to be Claudius, and it’s not his fault he’s not a person yet. What is Lyme supposed to do, wait for him to grow old enough that Gloria starts slapping him in the face or locking him in cabinets? From what Claudius told her, his memories a mix of fuzzy and strangely sharp, like stepping on glass while feeling around barefoot in a dark room, his very earliest memories hadn’t been that bad. Lonely, maybe, but not aggressive. Things only went wrong once he learned to talk.

It’s very likely Lyme will fuck him up even more than his parents did, but at least she won’t hold his head under the fucking sink.

“Geez, even their diapers are bougie,” Artemisia scoffs from across the room, rifling through a bin. “I’ll make a bag of stuff, I guess. I don’t see a carrier thing so you’ll have to use a blanket if you don’t want to hold him the whole time. Hope you’ve got biceps.”

Lyme swallows hard. “It’s fine, I’ve got him.”  She crosses over to the crib and looks down, stomach twisting. The baby watches her, not crying out, grey eyes wide and serious. (He lies in her lap, eyes sightless, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.) “Hey, D.” Her voice is all wrong, rough even at twelve and not tender or maternal at all, but he only stares at her as she reaches down and lifts him to her shoulder. “Let’s blow this fuck-ass joint.”

----------------------------

Turns out they have one more stop on the way, which was not in the plan but in retrospect, really probably should have been. Because, turns out, when faced with a baby and a ten-year-old and the whole span of the mountains between her and the Capitol and nothing but a brace of knives between them, Lyme doesn’t feel like a war commander with an Arena and two victors and a handful of dead kids and countless dead soldiers behind her. She feels horribly, undeniably, terrifyingly thirteen, and the longer she stays here, the more she wonders if that’s going to stick.

“This is not the Capitol,” says Artemisia, dry as the desert.

Lyme hefts the makeshift carrier-knot over her shoulder. “Pit stop.”

“Now I know you’re nuts,” Artemisia says, that half-mix of admiration and let’s-wait-I-want-to-watch-the-explosion in her tone that Lyme misses so hard her chest aches. “You can’t sneak into the Village. It’s the first thing we learn in school. Even I don’t climb barbed wire, and you’ve got a baby.”

“You don’t need to climb the fence,” Lyme tells her. It doesn’t count as betraying trade secrets, not when Misha would have been here anyway. Not when they don’t plan to stay. “You can get in from above if you climb the mountain trails. No one ever does, that’s all.”

It takes them a day and a half.

“Ho-ly shit,” Artemisia whistles, as they stand on the rear mountain path that leads down to the Village orchard. “How did you find this shit out?”

“I know things,” Lyme says. “Wait here with him. I’ll be back.”

She makes a face, and for a minute Lyme thinks she’s going to make a fight about it, but then Artemisia nods and holds out her arms for — the baby. (It’s still too hard to think of him as Claudius, just yet.) “Okay, yeah. Congrats on finding a place that freaks me out too much to want to steal from. I’m pretty sure if they catch you in here you get used as target practice for the Seniors.”

They don’t use kids, Lyme almost tells her, but the words curl up in the back of her throat and crumble into dust.

Nero answers the door in the ugliest chunky-knit sweater Lyme has ever seen (the bare garment was a sensible Adessa knit, she can recognize the weave, but the front has an embroidered tomcat in lurid purple and gold). He’s younger than Lyme has ever seen him except his original Games tapes, though even young his eyes are hollow. He blinks down at Lyme, and for a dizzying second she sees herself through his eyes: an angry teenager with ropy Centre muscles and an atypical crew cut, too old for telltale bruises on her face but all the hallmarks in the set of her shoulders and the curl of her fists.

“Okay,” Nero says, blase as ever. It’s so painfully Nero — so very much her mentor, who took in Lyme standing over the kitchen sink with a shard of broken glass stuck deep into her wrist and simply said No — that Lyme desperately wants to fling herself at him and bury her face in his chest.

The worst is knowing that she could, a strange girl he’s never seen but who’s bleeding hurt and fear all over his floor, and he’d probably let her.

She hadn’t rehearsed this part. She probably should have. But Lyme always did her best sponsor-work unscripted. “Five years from now, you’re going to meet a tribute,” Lyme says. “She’s going to win, and you’re going to kick off the wildest, most batshit mentor dynasty this Village has ever seen. And twenty years after that, we all die. Every single one of us, in a war we can never hope to win.”

Nero folds his arms. Curls his fingers over his bicep, looks her over as one foot taps a steady rhythm against the floor. “Okay,” he says again, without judgement. Brutus never managed that skill, or either very deliberately cultivated his the other direction; he could make the most neutral statement of fact sound like a virulent condemnation. “And that girl’s you?”

“You killed your old man when you were twelve,” Lyme says. Nero stiffens, but doesn’t try to interrupt. “He was going to hurt your sister. You told me this because I didn’t kill mine, but I wished I could have. I didn’t want a male mentor and you needed me to understand why Adessa or Calli wouldn’t have understood the way you did.” She swallows. “I still think Calli would have let me hunt him down and kill him, but you’re right that it probably wouldn’t have been … you know, better. For me. In the long run, anyway.”

Nero’s breathing has gone suspiciously even, nice and slow but shallow. Lyme would recognize that from across the sponsor ring. “Okay,” he says again. Doesn’t prove anything, she hears at the edges of his words, except what does it prove? What else is there?

“The 75th is the Quarter Quell.” Lyme’s voice cracks. She’s so tired of holding it all in, pretending like she doesn’t know, like none of it all matters. Like she hasn’t been torn apart, like starting over isn’t just as bad as losing everything. All these people, her loved ones, looking at her with a stranger’s eyes. “They Reap us again. There’s a Rebellion — all of us are killed — the details don’t matter. That’s not the point, I don’t care. I want to make it stop. I’m going to make it stop. I’m going to kill the president before it ever happens.”

His eyes are white around the edges, nostrils flared, but he hasn’t moved, his voice still level. “Just you?”

She shakes her head. “I found my kids. Misha’s ten, I think? Maybe eleven, you know birthdays. She wins 57. Claudius is — fuck, he’s just a baby. I thought I could do this, but I can’t — I can’t do it alone.” Lyme, the one she is now, this age, would scream to hear the quiver beneath in her voice, the desperate need underlying it all. “I need my mentor.”

This time his exhale is long and steady. “Kill the president,” Nero repeats, and lets out a slow fuuuuuck that’s more breath than sound. “With a baby. For fuck’s sake. Okay, wait here.”

----------------------------

For once, Artemisia has nothing sarcastic or witty to say. The inter-district train slides smoothly down the rails, humming with the quiet efficiency that had become second nature to Lyme over the years, but since the war had fallen by the wayside of her memory in favour of silent District 13 hovercrafts or clinging to the roof of freight cars. It feels like years since Lyme has enjoyed the kind of sleek, modern comfort the Capitol throws at everyday convenience, but now it sits sour in her mouth. Hard to forget the riots, the images of bread lines in the outer districts, white-uniformed Peacekeepers firing into crowds as the mayor announced rations had been restricted due to seditious activity among the general populace.

Artemisia, at least, knows nothing of this. She can’t stop staring, even though the usual passenger rail has nothing on the twice-yearly tribute train with its cascading chandeliers and overwhelming frippery. Then again, it’s hard to tell whether it’s the wood panelling and plush carpet she’s staring at, or the others in the car with them.

Which — fair. When Nero told her to wait, Lyme expected him to grab his sword, maybe an overnight bag if he’d decided to be extremely proactive. She had not expected him to return with both Ronan and Adessa at his side, both of them studying her with the kind of expression she would rather have redirected to Games footage or her very distant memories of school science class, staring at leaves or bugs or thin slices of potatoes through thick magnifying glass lenses. Adessa in particular very much looks like she’d enjoy taking Lyme apart, with putting her back together firmly listed under ‘optional’.

But apparently while Nero, Mr. ‘country before self, duty before life’ himself is fine to drop everything and take a nonsense-spouting teenager on a treason joyride at the drop of a dagger, he won’t do it without backup, So. Here they are. Adessa, primly knitting by the window and acting like she can’t sense Artemisia’s worshipful eyes on her, and Ronan, who insisted on giving Lyme’s aching back a break, cradling the baby in his arms with years of practice in the ease of his posture.

“How many infants do you suppose I have kissed,” he says to Lyme when he catches her staring. “Not everyone has a reputation for enjoying fingerling baby sandwiches.”

“He’s joking,” Lyme says to Artemisia automatically. “She doesn’t eat meat.”

“Please.” Adessa does not even look up from her stitches, did not bother to question Lyme’s assertion despite her reputation. “As though I would bother with postnatal. All the scientific potential is in the foetal predevelopment stage.”

Artemisia glances at Lyme, eyes questioning, but there she can only shrug. Adessa leveraging her influence in the Capitol to gain access to underground stem cell research for absolutely no reason other than boredom and scientific curiosity — sure, why not.

Adessa smiles to herself and adds another skein.

----------------------------

Years ago — years from now, in the never-was — Claudius asked Lyme what she would have been, if she hadn’t been a Victor. She told him she never could have been anything else. The whole line of his spine had relaxed and he’d said he was the same. Now, the baby who would be Claudius, a tiny, solemn-eyed thing who latches onto her finger with surprising strength, will be anything but that.

“What’s left for us, huh?” Lyme asks him, softly. Artemisia, not one to let herself be awestruck for long, has challenged Nero to a game of five-finger fillet. Lyme took Claudius over to the window, though she’s not really sure how much babies can see or understand. For all she knows the whole thing is a big, flashing blob of light to him. “What do we do, in a world where I stop us from existing?”

It sounds like the plot of a terrible movie the two of them watch at three in the morning when the nightmares get too bad to sleep. The question sounds like something Brutus would snort and punch her for worrying about, the kind of philosophical bullshit that’s above their pay grade, you don’t get to stress about existential shit when you spend half your life trying to keep very real kids very much alive. But here she is, curled up on the ornate wooden passenger bench, watching an Artemisia she only ever knew from photographs cackle in triumph as Nero pretends to suck an imaginary cut on his finger, and wondering if, at the end of all of this, she’ll simply disappear.

As soon as she thought hits, a cool weight spreads across her shoulders. That’s the answer, isn’t it. All of this, this is Lyme’s borrowed time. She died in the mines with Coin’s gun to her forehead, died with a curse on her lips and a snarl on her face and ice-gray eyes boring into her soul. And now she has to change the rules, to twist the game and stop the war and those empty, stupid deaths, but — she was never meant to be here. She’s dead. This is not redemption, it’s not a do-over, not for her. It’s a chance to do a little good before what’s left of her vanishes from the universe for good.

“Nero will look after you,” Lyme tells Claudius. “It wouldn’t be fair if you disappeared, you or Misha or the rest of them. I’m the one who did all this. I’m the only one who remembers. You’ll get a good life and you’ll learn who you can be without all this killing. I’ll tell Nero to get you a cello. They have to make kid-sized ones somewhere.”

“Holy shit,” Artemisia bursts out, the knife clattering to the serving tray she’d filched for the game. Nero sits back, grinning. “You can see the whole mountains from here. I never knew they were so big!”

“Mountains and earth,” Lyme says without thinking. If only Brutus could hear her now.

“You,” Artemisia shoots back without tearing her eyes away from the windows, “are corny as shit, mystery terrorist.”

----------------------------

Lyme never thought too hard about Ronan’s weird Presidential privileges very much, until he walks right in to the mansion unannounced with two Victors, two kids and a baby and nobody tries to stop him. “Oh, he can see us,” Ronan says in a flat voice. “It’s impossible to get the drop on him, the man puts cameras in the showers—”

(“Perv,” says Artemisia, dismissively)

“—but the thing to remember with Coriolanus is, this is a man at the top of his game. He’s killed everyone who opposed him and has leverage on anyone who might think to try. He is both extremely intelligent and understimulated. It makes him dangerous, but in this case it may work in our favour.”

“So he’s letting us in because he’s bored,” Artemisia says. “You know what, I get it.”

----------------------------

Coriolanus is waiting for them in his study, plush carpets and oak-panelled walls, a heavy table with a tray of baked goods. “Ronan,” he says, spreading his hands. “What an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?” 

This is the part Lyme didn’t think through. What it would feel like to face him now, remembering years of dead children, the cold, casual malice when Artemisia finally won and the President insinuated she wasn’t grateful enough, Claudius returning from his one-on-one pale and shaking, the chill of a death threat wrapped around his throat.

Lyme holds herself still and blank-faced, even as her heart skips in her cheat — but if she’s filled with the murder-fury she can’t imagine Ronan, decades upon decades of resentment and rage coiled up into that quiet, unassuming man and his cane — and she braces herself for the blistering speech she most definitely would have spent the last fifty years perfecting if she were Ronan.

Ronan tilts his head with the predatory anticipation of a hawk spotting a field mouse. His fingers flex at his sides — a knife flies across the room — and President Snow falls, soundless on the ankle-deep carpet, dagger buried to the hilt in the hollow of his eye socket. 

“Holy shit!” Artemisia bursts out. “Holy fuck, you nailed him! I would have gone with a cool line, though. Something like, ‘You can die!’ Okay no that’s stupid, but you know what I mean. You should have had a kill phrase”

“Monologuing drops the odds of a confirmed kill to an average of ten percent,” Adessa says evenly. “Fourth-most common late-game cause of death for over-confident Careers.”

Ronan examines the head of his cane. “Besides, ‘eat my poisoned petit four-flavoured shit, you smug fuck’ didn’t have a snappy ring to it.”

----------------------------

The President is dead. Long live the President.

“You have a choice,” Ronan says, glacial calm, facing down the Peacekeepers who crashed down the door and stare at them, bug-eyed shock behind the clear faceplates. “One: Kill us all right here, report this to your superiors, work to keep order in the streets during the chaos of a power vacuum. Two: Back me now, take control. No one else has to die.”

It can’t possibly work, Lyme thinks. She survived months and months of the worst, most awful, gruelling guerilla bullshit before the end, run after run after run up that Games-damned mountain, soldier after soldier splattered against the bedrock of her homeland and it never felt like they got anywhere. And Ronan’s going to ask nicely?

The Peacekeepers glance at each other. And then — holy shit — they nod, raise their rifles and move to flank the door.

Claudius squirms against Lyme’s back and lets out a fussy grumble.

“And a bottle, please,” Ronan says, still without moving. “We have a little one to feed.”

----------------------------

Claudius fusses in a cradle one of the Peacekeepers conjured up from somewhere on Ronan’s orders, a bemused expression behind the clear faceplate. Misha sprawls on her side on the bed beside him, arms wrapped around herself, one leg jutted awkwardly to the side with the other tucked under her, a confused tangle of limbs that’s at once possessive of her space and self-protective. Lyme sits on the floor, back braced against the wall, like she’s done a hundred times after nightmares or unexpected triggers or escape attempts kept her kids awake. Exhaustion presses to her forehead like a heavy cloth but she can’t sleep, not yet.

She can feel it, the pull of time at the back of her neck. She had one job to do and she did it, and you don’t fulfill a cosmic mission endowed by what-the-fuck ever and get to overstay your welcome. Brutus, Misha, Nero, Claudius, they’re all alive, and now it’s time for Lyme to go. It’s justice, anyway; she caused this, doomed Claudius by bringing him with her, doomed Misha by leaving her behind. Doomed them all by rebelling in the first place. Doomed Brutus by not rebelling sooner. Whatever her choices, she killed them. Now she can finally rest, knowing that she saved them and can vanish from their lives forever.

The starfish, safe and happy in the ocean, don’t need to worry about the kid who tossed them in.

Fuck, that’s maudlin. She’d ask for a drink except there’s an age-lock on the machines in the Games Complex, nothing harder than hot chocolate for minors. Lyme laughs under her breath and lets her eyes fall shut.

----------------------------

She wakes to wailing and a foot kicking her shin in a frenetic rhythm. “Hey, wake up, lazy!” Artemisia grins down at her. She has … banana …? in her hair? “Did you know these machine things make anything you want? I got us a whole pancake bar, it took me like an hour to order all the fixings. Grab your larva and let’s eat.”

Nero shoulders his way into the room, ruffling Lyme’s hair on his way past. “I got him,” he rumbles, reaching down to prop a red-faced and furious Claudius against his shoulder. “Finally crying, huh? Good for you, buddy. Let it out.”

Lyme stares at the sight — her future mentor, cradling her future victor, tickling his baby-soft cheek with one massive finger — and out of reflex digs fingernails into the skin of her wrist until blood beads up beneath the scratches. Nero catches sight and frowns. “Hey, no, don’t do that. C’mon up, I’ll grab a bandage.”

“I’m older than you,” Lyme says reflexively. Snow on a fucking shitpile, right now she’s Adessa’s age. She’d never had time to do the math before.

Nero blinks at her. Claudius, still squalling, jams a tear-stained face into Nero’s neck and subsides into sniffles. He’s probably thinking something about how, if she’s older than he is, why did she bother saying something so stupid and petty, which is a question Lyme asks herself every Games-damned time Nero makes a reasonable point about self-care and she regresses to a stubborn teenager. “We won’t use one with hovercrafts on it, then,” he says, deadpan. “Don’t wait too long, though. The girl is experimenting with the pancakes and some of them are pretty good. She’s got a peanut butter-pineapple and a maple-wasabi that are real tasty. Can’t really recommend the ‘Salt Bomb’ though.”

He saunters out — through the door filters the clink of cutlery, Artemisia’s laughter, Ronan asking for the savoury options please and thank you, Adessa’s liquid what is that monstrosity — and Lyme stares at the line of pink across her smooth (smooth!) wrist. “What the fuck,” she says aloud. Then, again, an edge of panic squeezing her throat: “What the fuck?”

Claudius and Misha both asked her, years ago, what she would have done if she hadn’t won the Games.  Both times Lyme gave the same answer: she could never have been born to do anything but this.

So what is she supposed to do now?

18 YEARS LATER

“Got another one for you.”

Lyme glances up as Pryor drops a file on her desk. “Bad?”

“Not like some of the others, might be nothing. Still, take a look.”

Shouts echo down the corridors, the squeak of shoes and sharp ping of dodgeballs hitting the floor. A few voices rise in evident squabble; a trainer overrides them and the din subsides into the regular chaos of the game. Lyme stares at the wall for a long moment, snorts a low laugh, and flips open the cover of the file.

The face that stares up at her knocks her hard in the gut. Tousled blond hair, blue eyes, square white teeth. He grins through the first few years of photos, but then —

Abrupt mood swings, says his most recent assessment. Short temper, violent outbursts, uncommunicative. Home visit recommended.

Lyme slumps back in her chair, chest aching. “Cato.” The word comes out hardly more than breath. He’d never talked about his home life — never talked about anything, really, hadn’t been interested in his mentor at all, too wrapped up in Clove. No bruises in his file, not like Claudius or Misha or Sloane or Slate or half the kids she took on with warning bells that rang so loud she could barely sleep at night. If he had a shitty family they were the quiet kind, not the kind with heavy fists.

And yet — reactive attachment and codependent and responds to positive reinforcement and he clung to Clove like a lifeline and here he is now, that happy, smiling kid curled in on himself and there’s no kill tests this time to turn him hard.

Breath still caught in her chest, Lyme scrawls home visit approved across the top of the file.

“I know that look.”

She startles. Claudius flops against the door jamb, one eyebrow cocked. “You’re supposed to be flagging kids for the system, not taking them all home.”

Lyme tries for a look halfway between haughty and nonchalant, but the grin her kid gives her says she didn’t pull it off. “Who says I’m taking anyone home? You’re here early.”

Sloane ducks around under Claudius’ arm. He tweaks the end of her braid and she shoots a glare at him, all five foot nothing of her. “No, you didn’t come pick us up.”

“Is it home time already? The kids were just playing —“

She stops as the silence envelops her office. No shrieks. No trainer whistles. No thump of over-excited kids crashing into walls. How long had she been staring at Cato’s file?

Claudius rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Ma, it’s Misha’s night to cook so we have to get secret takeout on the way home.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lyme drops the file in her outbox and holds out her arm to Sloane, who curls in against her side. Claudius flanks her other side and together they head out from the District 2 Athletics and Personal Growth Centre — not-so-secret headquarters for District 2 Family Services — into the glow of the mid-afternoon sun. “Tell me about your day,” she says.

“I tried the crossbow today,” Sloane says. “Just for fun. I don’t think I’m going to stick with it but it was fun to try.”

“I got asked if I want to stay on when I graduate,” Claudius says, so casual it takes Lyme a second.

Her head snaps around so fast a muscle in her neck twinges. “What? What did you say?”

He shrugs. “I told them I’d think about it.”

“Dillweed!” Sloane jogs sideways, reaching around behind Lyme to sock Claudius in the kidneys. “You couldn’t go first so I wouldn’t sound dumb?”

“You’re not dumb, you’re twelve.” He aims a kick back at her that misses by a clearly-purposeful margin. “And you’re doing smart things like trying out lots of stuff to see if you like it. You’re working hard and you’ll get a great recommendation when you’re older, that’s why we have the Centre.”

Twenty years of losing tributes, war, failure, death, a whole new lifetime to try again and this is where she landed: two not-dead kids balancing bickering and stunning sincerity while the third (two years her junior, forever her kid) prepares the worst casserole known to humankind back at home. Cato is not the first file to cross her desk; across the district a handful of kids live out happier lives with families no longer struggling to provide for them, or new parents who are proud to have them, and she will find more. No more looking for bruises and channeling repressed anger into murder — not now, not ever.

Sloane harrumphs like an old man, but then she stops and glances up at Lyme with a slow smile. “Uh oh, Mom’s having feelings.”

Lyme rears back and glares at both of them, but before she can retort, both Claudius and Sloane say “Yeah, yeah” in the exact same tone.

“Oh well now it’s war,” she declares, and knocks them both into the grass.

[totally-not-deacon]

WIP Wednesday!!!

Tagged by @dalishthunder, and gonna bother @bokatan, @bardic-inspo, and @throughtrialbyfire!

So uh, I don't have writing in the traditional, fanfic, sense. But I DID get it into my head to work on giving Follower!Marasa a little gimmick. Thinking once a day, at an inn, you can give her some form of alcohol in exchange for a long-winded, rambling, (probably) intoxicated story. Some about her, some things she's seen/done, some just lore related stuff she's found interesting. Definitely gonna have that exaggerated, "the fish was THIIIISS big" kind of energy.

I'll go ahead and give you the (VERY rough) draft of the first story, and the only one actually partially in the CK now.

(BOLD is the Player response)

What, you want a bedtime story, now? Fine, how about this.

You ever been to Cyrodiil in the autumn? Gone stomping though the Great Forest to see the pretty leaves? Don’t. It’s cold. It’s wet. And it’s miserable. So imagine you’re me – you’ve been marching since the Dawn era, it’s raining, and you were dumb enough to drop your day’s rations in the mud almost twelve hours ago. As you can imagine, we were having the time of our lives.

But all of a sudden – like you’ve been blessed by the Gods themselves – the clouds part, and your superiors finally tell everyone to start setting camp. You could kiss them for this. Well, if you could reach, that is. And if you didn’t value your life. Yeah, best to hold off on that one, actually.

Anyway, we all go about, setting up tents and whatnot. Takes forever, the whole ground feels like it’s nothing but rocks with a thin layer of leaves on top. Not one of us was gonna sleep comfortably. Not that any of us cared at that point, could have strung us up by the necks if it meant we’d get a break from the officers barking orders.

Can we come back to this later? [EXIT]

Wow, alright. I’m sure we can come up with a time that’s far more convenient for you.

Are you going to get to the story part soon?

Okay, rude. As I was coming to, before being interrupted, these weren’t just rocks under the soil. They were bricks. We were setting up camp on top of some old town, or something. Wasn’t on any of our maps, so it must’ve been gone for a long while. Lots of places got wiped out during the Oblivion Crisis, so it was probably just one of those. Didn’t stop a few of the others from trying to scare some of the new recruits with ghost stories. One of ‘em kept saying something about the dirt, I think? I have no idea.

As luck would have it, I think I found the one flat spot in the entire clearing. The second that canvas was up, I was out. Surely I’d sleep straight into morning, right? Wrong.

Was it the Imperials?

Was it the – who is telling the story? That’s what I thought.

I wake up all of a sudden, it’s still dark out, almost dead silent. But I knew something was up. It felt like there were eyes on me, from – from all directions. I’m thinking we’re about to be ambushed, but I can’t even reach for my sword. In fact, I can’t move at all. It was like being paralyzed, but this was no spell. At least, I don’t think it was. So I’m stuck there, waiting for what surely must be the Imperials about to storm from the treeline at any moment. But that’s when I hear it.

Whispering.

At first, I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. It felt close, really close, but I couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t sound like it was coming outside the tent, or even, gods forbid, in the tent but… but beneath it.

Now I know you’re making this up. [1]

Look, I know how it sounds, but for once I’m not messing with you!

How much did you have to drink? [2]

Dead sober, sadly. We were all still pretending to have some level of decorum within earshot of the officers.

Then what happened? [3]

Finally, someone actually listening for once!

… [cont.]

So as you can imagine, I did not do much sleeping that night. I was already packing up by the time the sun started to rise. Couple of others were already up as well, and I think we could all tell. None of us had to say it. Funny thing was, we were all spread out through the camp, but somehow we all heard the same thing.

Once it looks like we’re about to move out again, I look back to where I had my tent that night, and I see one of the new recruits walking my way. And then… I didn’t. Guy was gone. Apparently fell through some rotten boards and down an old well.

Rotten boards your tent was on top of.

Uh-huh. Someone threw a torch down, trying to see how far down he was, but… it never seemed to reach the bottom.

Aaaanyway, take a stab at where they were lol

[flamedraco]

Day 7 of Making a Minecraft Diaries AU

My brain is wanting to be difficult today. Not sure if it's a small motivation dip or just the ADHD but I'm pretty much having to force words to function on the doc right now so I might pop back over to outlines for a bit instead of writing the chapters.

Haven't really touched my outlines since saying I was going to start working on chapter one and chapter one is sitting at around 3,700 words at the moment. I'm pecking at it line by line but I'm thinking it's the first chapter curse. I call them the hardest chapters to write for a reason. I know YWNTMBAH's first chapter went through a lot of changes before it was posted and this feels like a similar situation. I might just need to hit refresh on my brain or something. I'll attempt to do outlines and if my brain is still kicking up a hissy fit I might just attempt something else for a while.

Welcome to me having to bargain with my brain to do anything because I know I want to write and I want to write Diaries AU stuff I just need to figure out does my brain just want this specific scene in the first chapter over with, does it want to go back to outlines, or do you want to go do the evil bastard version of the AU?

Anyways, I told you guys I'd probably give you a snippet of chapter one and even let you guys vote on what you wanted, so have at it! Bearing in mind that this is the first rough draft of the chapter and that this could be subject to change later.

Y'all wanted the bi bird so here's the start of Wilbur's POV in chapter 1!

And The World Began to Change, For Better or For Worse: Chapter 1, Scene 3

Wilbur…knew that his name was Wilbur.

He knew that the sky above was blue, and that the white in the sky were clouds. He knew that the trees around him were green. And that their trunks were brown.

As he sat up, he knew he had wings and a tail. He knew that his legs resembled that of the little songbirds that fluttered from tree to tree, singing their beautiful songs and making him want to join and sing with them.

Wilbur knew that his name was Wilbur.

But when he tries to recall where he is…nothing comes to him. And when he tries to remember more about who he is, about what he is, he draws blanks.

He knows that the birds fluttering through the trees are a mix of canaries and robins, he thinks he spots a blue jay somewhere.

He looks at his wings and he knows that he is a magpie. Marked by the distinctive blue mixed with black and white feathers.

He presses his talons into the sash across his chest, tracing it, knowing that it's meant to hold a quiver on his back between his wings. He knows he's supposed to have arrows in that quiver, a bow in his inventory to notch arrows into.

But he has nothing.

His talons trace the belt along his waist and he finds a sheath for a sword, and yet no sword to draw.

Wilbur's nose wrinkles as he stands, spreading out his wings and stretching them. He flaps them a few times, making sure that they are uninjured. He runs his talons through the plumage around his neck, fixing the feathers so that they were neater.

He tries to take a step, his tail swishing in irritation as he feels unbalanced. He shakes his head and keeps trying. Lifting his leg up and then putting it down again, repeating the motion a few times until it felt more natural. Until the grass under his talons felt comforting rather than unfamiliar.

He started to walk. Eventually using his wings to flutter around the clearing and hop. Testing his mobility.

He should…he knows he should be able to fly. Like the birds in the trees.

Wilbur knows…enough.

He knows he has fangs in his mouth and that he's capable of eating raw meat without concern for his health. He knows he can eat berries just as well, he just needs to be cautious for ones that would make him sick.

Wilbur knows that he is strong. That his wings can carry him off the ground, that his tail can act like a third hand and could pop an arm out of a socket. He knows he should have good balance, could stand on one leg for hours, could fly straight in strong winds and keep flying in rain.

But he does not know what he is.

Or where he comes from.

Nor how he got here.

Wilbur knows…that he is frustrated by this. Walking over to a small pond of water to look at his reflection. He sees a blue right eye and a teal left eye staring back at him. Freckles that dot across his cheeks and nose.

He is not a…bird. Not entirely. But he is bird-like.

He is not quite one thing or the other.

But he knows that his name is Wilbur.

"Who am I?" He asks the reflection, confused.

The reflection just shows his confusion back at him.

Wilbur slams his tail into the water, making it ripple as he turns around and explores his surroundings.

[scary-senpai]

Would love to hear more about you & me & a high balcony!

Gahh! Thank you so much for the ask. (Original link is here, if anyone wants to join or reblog.)

So, “you & me & a high balcony” is one of the fics I drafted when I was teaching myself to write again. So it's awkward and striving (mostly in the right direction), and still pretty rough--I started writing it in 2020, I haven't really touched it since 2021, and I have learned a whole lot since then. At the same time, it is a fic that is near to my heart and I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about it! <3

“you & me & a high balcony” is about Genos taking Garou home for the first time--why? tbd! I wrote probably about 100k words of various interconnected fics without fully committing to the unifying concept or plot and I will never, ever do that again. Probably.

Anyway, Genos takes Garou home and neglects to fully inform Saitama. You are getting my draft in its fully unedited glory.

Saitama’s cactus is on the balcony and it is a very, very painful experience for him. In keeping with running canon gags, Saitama is absolutely powerless against this ickle, stationary cactus and he finds himself in an ongoing fight with it, almost immediately. He also gets totally entangled in Genos' camping gear, but put a pin in that, we'll come back to it.

What follows is a series of interspersed scenes between Genos and Garou inside the apartment, Saitama making strange noises outside, Genos fabricating excuses and lying (poorly), and Genos occasionally stepping out on the balcony pretending to be Genos (because, again, Saitama is wrapped up like a sad sandwich in an unpitched camping tent.) In retrospect, it's very clear how much I miss writing for stage, because it feels a bit like an homage to Noises Off (but, you know, prose).

In the spirit of adventure, I am sending an unedited screenshot. With comments boxes! I haven't re-read it in years because I'm too nervous, but you can!

“CW” doesn’t necessarily stand for content warning but I guess it certainly could? CW is an abbreviation of my name so it’s how I highlight “shit I need to go back and figure out.” Being older and wiser, most of my drafts are now just bullet points for me to come back to later, when I have a coherent, unifying thought for the story/fic/series. It has saved me a lot of screaming and tears.

Anyway, Saitama keeps moving the cactus into the apartment. Garou keeps moving it back. Genos has no idea what the fuck is happening, but it’s the least of his problems. Eventually it leads to Saitama and Garou having a heart-to-heart (and agreeing not to tell Genos they met) and, idk, man, I love writing Genos x Garou a lot, but (Platonic) Garou + Saitama scenes are my absolute favorite. I just give them my ideal relationship, which is All of the Hijinks and None of the Sex with someone who finishes your sentences, but all the sentences are puns.

I started drafting the story in 2020, and anything I wrote in 2020 chronicles my descent into madness— inadvertently & indirectly. Suffice to say, quarantine was hitting me very hard and a lot of my behavior was centered around making myself laugh. My serotonin starved brain had a tendency to overload scenes with jokes. Even if they didn’t fit, even if they threw off the pacing. But stories and scenes need to have cohesive plots and it’s silly, to the point of being out of character. Sometimes that's part of the process, though. There's always a lot of love in the first draft of a story, I think, because it's a leap of faith.

I had written a litany of things that embarrassed me about this draft, I deleted it. So I'll share one of the things that I am proud of coming up with--I don't play a lot of video games. I needed a fighting game for King and Saitama to play during a stint of dialogue (the outcome of which involves King lending Saitama Hatoful Boyfriend so that Genos can practice dating (and also he does not trust Saitama with any of his beloved Doki Doki sims). So I thought of the one game I played a lot as a kid (Super Smash Bros) and combined it with something I do know really well (literature) and came up, um, this:

The Body Electric is near to my heart because it was a major part of my writing journey. It was also a major part of my writing journey where I learned a lot, mostly by making mistakes. Granted, it remains largely unpublished so I failed in gracefully private but it is really important to me to finish it one day.

Thank you so much for the ask!

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

I feel like mine is more of a gut feeling. I'll feel if something is going too slow or fast. But I do try to figure out what exactly is the issue of the scene, and then how I can fix that. I kinda have a system, I guess.

I'll walk through several examples of revising my WIP The Secret Portal to demonstrate what I mean that will hopefully help. Not all of them may be applicable, but hopefully it helps.

#1- the main problem at the start of a scene is resolved too quickly

Usually I'll reread and find out it's too fast or the sudden jump was awkward. For example, one of my chapters starts with my character Lexi looking for her friend Ash. Then she gets a sign of Ash before the end of that page.

On reread, I realized this happened too early in the chapter. Someone gave me the advice to have Lexi look around for a bit before she found Ash. This allowed me to extend one of my weakest chapters into something I'm now proud of. I had Lexi look around for a bit and used her observational nature to find one sign of Ash, then a second one. I even got to explore her more anxious and emotional side along with it.

#2- "filler" is wasting time

I have a scene I like to call "The Grilled Cheese Sandwich Debate," but whenever I look at it, I realize it goes on for far too long and the pacing just halts in place. As much as I love the chaos of the scene, and the character building it does, I realize that it has to be shorter.

While I have yet to edit it down, I have figured out that the issue is that too many characters are involved in it. The issue is I wanted it to be a whole-group conversation, but it just comes across as awkward to include everyone, since I saw no reason not to include all the side characters in the conversation. However, it doesn't work for the story. So now I'm coming up with reasons for some characters who didn't add much to not be there.

#3- a scene goes on without meaning

I had a scene where Lexi was learning her teleportation for the first time, but it just meandered on and ended lamely. I went back to it and figured out what Lexi's motivation was and certain issues she may have with it. Giving the character a motivation for even one-off scenes is crucial to not just controlling the pacing of the scene, but helping establish their character overall.

#4- balancing a subplot

I have multiple subplots that are all important for later. The way TSP is set up is in a multi-POV format, with some flashbacks. While this may not be how your book is set up, subplots need to be evenly distributed, so maybe this will help.

I had one flashback that followed a rough patch between Lexi and Ash that was extremely important for later in the series. I realized Lexi's middle chapters of the subplot dragged on and added nothing. Scrapping them and replacing chapters with an Ash POV solved everything. I have no idea why I didn't do this sooner.

I also realized a couple subplots weren't placed correctly in terms of the chapters. Finding out where the transitions worked and spreading them out worked wonders, so now certain plotlines weren't crammed together.

#5- chapter length

Chapters can be short. Chapters can be long. If you feel like a chapter is going on for too long, cut it down. If you feel like a chapter is pretty long but there's no reasonable place to cut down, let it be long.

It's a balancing act. I have one chapter that's about half a page and another chapter that was once two long chapters shoved together because they felt like they needed to be together.

#6- character arcs

When writing the second book in the series, I realized at the rate Noelle's arc is going, I'm not going to get her to where I needed her by the end of the book. In the previous draft, I felt like it was too quick anyway, but I thought with a more focused trajectory I'd be able to do it.

But I don't think I'm going to get her to that point by the end of the book. So I considered pushing the arc to the third part, and I think it may actually work better.

For Ash, I have her on this downward spiral, but when I had her already sinking by the end of Part One, I realized her arc was also a little too fast. I extended a scene where Ash was sulking and made her stop sulking. I have another scene where she has an intense 200+ word debate with herself before making a bad decision (this also relates back to #1- the chapter just jumped to what it wanted to do with no regard for Ash's character) in order to further highlight her sinking later. I need to establish more of how Ash usually acts in order to juxtapose it later.

TLDR

If a chapter feels like it jumps to an event too quickly, try to focus more on the character struggling, debating, etc for them to feel more active in the story, rather than the story happening to them.

If you feel like "filler" is important enough to keep (i.e., develops/established the characters), but goes on for too long, figure out exactly why it's too long, and focus on that to make the scene more efficient.

If you need a scene to happen but it goes on without meaning, find your character's motivation to keep going or obstacles they should face in order to give it meaning.

Sometimes subplots are unnecessary and add nothing. Scrap it. If it's important, find out why it's not working. Does it need a new POV? Is there just too many/are there not enough scenes covering it? Is the placing of each scene awkward?

Chapter length does not have to be uniform. Figure out how long each needs to be individually.

How quick does your character change? Are they going too fast? Do you need to postpone a change or show more of who they are first?

My System

Gut instinct will tell me if something is going too fast/slow.

Step back and take a bird's eye view of the scene/plot/arc/book/etc.

Identify the problem.

Figure out how to fix the problem.

Hope this was helpful!

real question. how do other writers manage story pacing. is it intuitive or do you have a system

[kingsofeverything]

nanowrimo 2021

ramble below the cut:

this is my first year signing up to do nanowrimo on the official site, which was the hardest thing for me because i kept forgetting to input my words there and had to go back and edit. but i had a very successful nano21 with a total of 113297 words and an avg of 3776 words/day! i had a lot of fun checking in with everyone else who participated from the 1d library discord, and it was nice to have the encouragement! compared to my first year doing nano, this was honestly a breeze even though i wound up writing more than double what i did that first time. (sometimes i like to look at my word count tag chronologically and read through the first month of posts because i started keeping track when i did nano that first time and it's nice to see how far i've come but also funny to see me losing it lol)

i've always been a fast writer, but i think that first nano is what sort of kicked me into being this way. i approached it with the attitude of hitting that daily word count goal no matter what and not looking back, and that's worked well for me since then. fix it on the second draft, etc etc. i really do try to treat my first draft as a rough draft, which means that sometimes i use the same phrase twice in one paragraph lol or use the word just a million times or my god everyone shrugs so often lol but i have to just (just!) not care. i can fix it later.

so now i'm over 100k into this new girl au and whoa does it need fixing later. i still have no real idea how long the final fic will be, but i'm guessing at least 200k which is kind of hilarious to me because that's stupid long and also this fic is 100% being written because i love that show and i wanted it in larry form. there's nothing groundbreaking going on here lol there's so much of it that's straight from the show that i'm def including a disclaimer in the author's notes (not that it's necessary because it's fanfic but i'll do it anyway). i don't really have a point, so if you've read this far, i'm sorry? but i'm super excited about this fic, and really glad i decided to do nano this year because now i have 100k towards what will be my longest fic and i'm having a fucking blast writing it.

[djmarinizelablog]

Is it just me or you haven't been writing smut lately? Even with all the new good smut from other writers, it's never enough!

Ah, I try to write an assortment of fics so I can play with the different tropes and genres---smut is pretty much just a side thought whenever I work on the plot. But thank you for reaching out, nevertheless! If you have a specific scene in mind, you can always send me a prompt and I'll work on it!

I personally don't want to be branded as a "smut writer." I just want to be a good writer in general, and I'm still working on that. :)

Anyway, I've been working on multiple drafts right now, but since you asked, here's an excerpt from an upcoming fic of mine (hint: spicy/smut/nsfw):

They barely make it to the parking lot where Hange finally shoves him into the backseat of his car after a kiss so intense he can barely breathe. It immediately turns him on. Something is telling him it’s going to be one of those nights. She clambers in and Levi pulls her towards him so they can make out again, this time while laying down, their kisses rough and fueled with desire. Even though it’s dark out and there are no people in view, save for the figures overlooking from the balcony, Levi be damned if one of those is his coworker. But from the way Hange is playing with his tongue in her mouth, he can’t be bothered to look.

He loosens up his tie, and she unravels it for him, going for his shirt afterwards, desperate to see him naked. Levi attempts to sit up, but Hange is doing all the work and she doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. Their hearts are both racing at this point. The fact that Hange’s controlling the rhythm of their movements together really makes him melt. He’s hard as fuck, but doesn’t want to cum so fast, lest it all be over. So he shifts his focus to her body while he unbuttons Hange’s shirt, but his hands tremble like crazy only for Hange to help him out.

“Too tense?” she laughs, unfastening the last button with one hand.

“Shut up, it’s been a while.” He spreads her shirt wide open and bites into her collarbones.

She hums. “I like that.”

He takes time exploring her body with his mouth, his fingers slipping inside the front of her pants and rubbing the fabric within. As soon as he knows they’re both ready, he fishes out his wallet and takes out a condom so he can put it on him. When Hange pulls down her own pants, she swings her leg over his thigh and rides him on the backseat of his car. He can feel himself inside her, and Hange’s eyes are delirious at this point. She starts grinding herself against him, and Levi immediately quivers.

“Fuck, Hange.” He’s gripping the sling of the safety belt from sheer pressure.

“Relax—”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

He slides down the seat for a bit, his pants pooling around his ankles. Hange pushes him down even more with her hand, her eyes seductive and alluring while she bites her lip. There’s really something hot about the way she does it. Maybe something about that dark lipstick of Hange’s makes him want to explode right then and there. His mind is probably having a short-circuit at this point.

After Hange changes the pace of their movements, he presses his shoe harder against the back of the passenger seat. It will probably leave a print. He tries to take a mental note of cleaning it up later, but he finally comes in a few seconds and Hange yells out her orgasm, the pleasure rushing through every fiber of their body. It’s a calming rush settling deep in their bones.

Once she removes herself on top of him, he remembers how to breathe. He grabs the box of tissues in the center console to wipe himself down. Hange then sits beside him in the backseat, both of them still panting from exhaustion.

“You good?” He’s staring at the windshield, his mind still overwhelmed with sensation.

“Yeah, I think so.” Hange straightens herself up and proceeds to pull her pants up. They stay in silence for a while, their hearts heaving from the quick sex. He wants to hold her hand, or even ask for her number so they can stay in touch, but before he can do that, Levi hears people coming out of the club. He cranes his neck and to his dismay, he can see his coworkers about to head to the parking lot, right where they are. Some of them have also brought in some people from the club, and they don’t need to ask questions to know what’s bound to happen. To spare herself of the trouble, Hange immediately gets out of the car and winks at him. “That’s the signal to run. Thanks for the time, Mister Banker.”

[tsipasce]

Same Difference Ch.17

A/N: Here is your reward for enduring last week lmao. This one is a bit long, but cutting it up just didn't seem as gratifying so I hope you guys enjoy.

Also, thank you so much for all the kudos, comments and bookmarks on AO3 and FFN-- you guys are too kind :'). I'll try posting more regularly on Tumblr too if ppl wanna read it here. Let me know what y'all think~

There was darkness, then flickers of lights and the occasional overwhelming flow of noises before it ebbed to silence and darkness yet again. First, she felt she was on a hard surface like concrete, then cold metal, then something cushion-like… a bed? Her thoughts were incoherent, presenting more as disjointed words and feelings. Anger, regret, hurt, with a sprinkle of sadness on top. Her body was heavy, every limb feeling as though the blood had been replaced with lead. Her head lolled and she heard someone suddenly shift at her side, the bed dipping under the pressure of said someone leaning on it and over her but was too out of it to open her eyes. Acquiescing, she fell back into unconsciousness.

An indefinite amount of time passed while she was in the darkness before her senses began to return fully. She heard typing, now able to feel a presence nearby. She wanted to open her eyes, but the task seemed too daunting still, simply listening would have to be enough for now.

“I can stand watch for now, if you’d like.” One voice offered, softly.

“What I’d like is to be left alone.” The other replied curtly.

“I see. We’re going to leave in the next few hours, I’ll get everyone ready.”

“You do that.”

Well this guy sounds like a treat… Nanami thought, her sarcasm unsurprisingly returning before the rest of her senses and memories. There were footsteps and then a soft thud, like a door being carefully shut. A couple moments passed before she heard what sounded like a laptop being closed, then footsteps coming towards her, and then silence. She desperately wanted to wake up, but her body refused to cooperate, causing her eyes to flutter behind her eyelids as she struggled in vain to move. She could sense the presence hadn’t left and she felt anxious as to what might happen next before hearing a sigh. She felt a sheet being pulled up to cover her arms, where goosebumps had been forming from the draft in wherever she was.

“I’ll deal with you when I get back.” The voice said with a hint of annoyance, though it was betrayed by its gentle tone. Hearing footsteps growing fainter, a door opened and closed once more. The words themselves were threatening but the way they were spoken, she felt oddly comforted. Falling back into the darkness, she decided to cultivate her energy and try her luck at waking up again later.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Emerging from the darkness again, the pain began immediately. Her head throbbed and she reflexively tried to groan but found her mouth and throat painfully full. Instantly recognizing the feeling, panic set in, the only other thing she could perceive being the desperate need for it to stop. She grabbed the tube, disassembling and reassembling it outside her body. The large obstruction dropped unceremoniously to the floor and she coughed, glad to be rid of it.

“Don’t be so rough with the equipment.”

She rolled her head to the direction of the voice, a bright light hitting her eyes as she struggled to open them for the first time since… Damn. It all came rushing back to her at once, the voice no longer a mystery. Her vision focused and she found herself looking at Overhaul as he sat at her bedside. His mask was on as he stared at her blankly. She stared back for a beat, not knowing how to begin speaking about what brought them to this point. Deciding she should be fully awake and rested for that conversation, she mentally tabled it, opting for their usual banter instead.

“It’s still intact isn’t it?” She cleared her throat, massaging it as she continued, “How long was I out?”

“Three days.”

“THREE DAYS?” Her eyes shot wide, another coughing fit beginning as she raised her voice after not speaking for days.

“Yes, that’s what I said.” He grimaced, moving back a bit at her sudden outburst, “Cough in the other direction.”

“No surprise that your bedside manner could use some work.” She sighed as she adjusted to raise herself up, wincing as her sore muscles tried their best to comply. He promptly rose, putting a pillow behind her as she sat up, his expression blank yet attentive, “Thanks.”

He nodded as he took his seat again and the silence continued, painfully. It felt like their first meeting all over again, neither knowing how to broach the awkward topic. Looking back, Nanami was angry at how insufferably rude he could be but couldn’t ignore her own part in this. A pang of guilt sat heavily in her chest when she remembered how easily she let her emotions get the best of her; she hadn’t told someone off like that in ages. In her mind, it in no way absolved him, but to say it was all his fault would be a lie. In that moment of rage, she… What did I do anyway? She glanced down, now more confused than anything, her brows furrowing before looking at him.

“Let’s chat.”

He readjusted in his chair, leaning back as he crossed his legs and folded his arms across his chest, “Let’s.”

His body language oozed condescension as though she was about to be scolded like a child and she hated it, “Why’d you attack me. Again.”

His eyes narrowed, displeased with how she was beginning their talk,” That was going to be my question to you. I thought we had a deal.”

“What are you talking about? We did—we do—I did not attack you.” she defended. Nanami knew they were both wrong for getting so worked up, but she wouldn’t stoop that low over an argument. “I was wrong, we both were for getting so heated, but I wouldn’t just start throwing hands like that. So again, why did you attack me? I thought… I thought we got passed all that.”

His brow furrowed at the implication, his jaw clenching uncomfortably at the hurt in her voice, “We are. We’re far passed all of that.” He intoned with a level of sincerity that seemed foreign to him. Having spent the past three days chastising himself for putting her in this position, wishing the exchange could be taken back, it was difficult to sound detached. He’d been angry, but harming her had been something he’d put out of his mind some time ago, “I didn’t attack you either…”

They both shared a moment of sincere confusion. Overhaul hadn’t come out unscathed either, having to heal his own head injury as well as a cracked vertebra from the impact once he came to. “Then what the hell happened?” Nanami asked, speaking the question they were both wrestling with. She looked around the room for her bag at the same time Overhaul reached for his laptop.

“We should run tests.” They said in unison. He handed her her notebook from the bag and a pen as they began noting exactly what happened leading up to the explosion.  As she recalled the events, there were a number of theories that came to mind, as well as ideas on how to safely perform reenactments of what transpired, but she also remembered the argument beforehand. He was somehow even more quiet than usual, and she could tell his gears were turning that morning, but the hostility seemed so out of the blue. Putting down her pen, he glanced up at her, noticing the sound of her writing had stopped and she was staring down thoughtfully.

“Did you think of something?”

“…Yeah. I did. Why’d you pick a fight with me that day?”

He looked back down at his keyboard and continued typing, “I don’t know what you mean. That little tiff was a joint effort.”

“No, no, no. It may have ended up that way, but you blew up at me after an entire week of solid teamwork. I expect the snide comments and the general air of grumpiness, but that was different… What happened?” He made the mistake of making eye contact with her. She didn’t look angry, just hurt.

Taken aback, all he could manage was “… I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure how to respond to that “emotion” nor did he have any plans to discuss feelings. If he was being honest, he wasn’t even sure why he did it himself. Perhaps it was self-sabotage and he was pushing her away, but to accept that would mean acknowledging they had gotten close; that he had, at some point, made the subconscious decision to stop viewing her as a pawn or even just a colleague, and to indulge the need for far more than their formal arrangement. He wasn’t ready to come to terms with the possible loss of his objectivity when it came to whatever went on between them, but he knew he’d have to confront the undercurrents of their relationship at some point. Right now, they had discovered a possible breakthrough in their research and there was no room for delay. With a ghost of a plan in mind for how to move forward with Nanami, he decided it would be more logical to smooth things over in the immediate moment with Dr. Watanabe; separating the two identities giving him the illusion of control. He continued” But I do know it won’t happen again. That was…unprofessional. How is your head?”

She bit her lip and exhaled, seeing the switch flick in his eyes knowing the wall had been put back up. “It’s... it’s fine. Just a little—no, really sore.” She confirmed with herself, rubbing her hand over the source of the pain to find stiches. Why wouldn’t he just overhaul this? “So, you decided to fix this the old-fashioned way, huh? The stitchwork is impeccable, but why go through the trouble? You could have just—”

“I didn’t want to touch you.”

“… Ouch.” She winced, glancing away as the abrupt response hurt a bit more than she expected.

Realizing it hadn’t been received how he planned, he clarified,” I meant I…didn’t want to use it on you. I was under the impression we had somehow attacked each other and assumed you might not find the prospect of me handling you in that way all that appealing.”

“…Oh. Well, thank you... I don’t mind if you touch me now” he rose a brow at this, “—I mean like to heal or—Oh you know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes before crossing her arms and continuing, “Just… just do it, please.”  The last word tacked on with a mumble.

Letting out an amused breath, he rose, motioning her to turn so her back faced him as he removed his gloves. She quickly brushed her hair to the side, missing a few strands. She tensed as he was much closer than she was prepared for, feeling the warmth of his hands against the nape of her neck as he gently gathered the stray hairs and handed them to her to gather in front. Smoothing down the part, he leisurely ran his hands through her hair, losing himself for a second before noticing the tops of her ears had reddened and her breath had quickened at his ministrations. Refocusing, he disassembled the stitches before immediately healing the wound knowing even a millisecond of delay would prove very painful. “Done.”

Cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders, she felt normal again and ready to get out of bed as her muscles had been unused for the better part of three days. Checking the time on her phone on the nightstand she saw it was only 6 am, “So, you wanna go for a run?”

“That’s not funny.”

“Fine, fine. But on a serious note, I think we should head to the lab. I know the deal was 2 weeks bu—”

“You don’t have to bargain. Get cleaned up, I’ll start preparations for testing tomorrow.”

She turned to him, brows raised in surprise, “Well okay then. I’ll see you back at the house.”

“See you there.” He said before exiting her room, shutting the door softly.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

After a thorough scrubbing and stretching, she felt ready to get back to her remaining paperwork, putting on her favorite chunky turtleneck and sweatpants effectively pulling off the lazy-but-still-fashionable look. Brewing herself a cup of tea and pulling out her workbag, she thought it best to not dwell on all the Feels ™ that had continuously threatened to surface, which was undoubtedly exacerbated by their current living situation.

She was woman enough to admit she stared just a little too long, smiled just a bit too enthusiastically, and was way too excited by even the smallest bits of physical contact with him… But it’s just a crush. She lied to herself as though he hadn’t been the most intellectually stimulating person she’d had the pleasure of talking to. As though she’d ever felt silence more comfortable than their time in the lab or simply sharing meals together. As though— Girl if you don’t concentrate... She chastised herself before attempting to neatly compartmentalize her feelings, refusing to acknowledge just how much more difficult keeping them in check had become. It’s just because you’re all up under each other, it’ll pass.

Refocusing on the task at hand, she opened her laptop and pulled out a well-worn file folder, her gaze turning somber as her fingers traced the bend of it; evidence of the many nights she’d revisited it only to close it when the answers didn’t come. In the past month she’d taken on a patient who seemingly had nowhere to go. Many of her colleagues had turned him away, seemingly too jaded to go through the trouble of dealing with such a case. Nanami herself was puzzled when she reviewed his file, but she knew there was no other option; she had to at least try.

Kenta was a very jovial, large person with a personality to match. Built much like a strongman with tusks not unlike a walrus, he was hard to miss. Before he became her patient, she’d see him making small talk with the other patients, encouraging them though he himself was on the way to chemotherapy, his weight dwindling by the day. The previous doctors told him that he had osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. It was seemingly exacerbated by his quirk that gave him dense bones; they were perfect for diving, but apparently came at this very high price. The treatment had shown mild success, but her predecessors had decided his condition was becoming too advanced and an amputation was in order. After that visit, he attempted to keep his jovial nature, but his physical appearance continued to deteriorate, the medication and tests taking their toll. Full-hardy laughs were interrupted by coughing fits, round cheeks flexed into a habitual smile were replaced with gaunt hollows. Nanami couldn’t help but feel was cruel to be given such great power and still be unable to solve this problem.

She agonized, sincerely perplexed as to why someone as healthy and active as Kenta could have developed such an aggressive and rare form of cancer so quickly. It didn’t helped that after the first doctor’s diagnosis, the subsequent three doctors took little to no efforts to confirm said diagnosis, so she remained thoroughly unconvinced. She was a prodigy in her own right, but that alone couldn’t negate seniority. To go against the other doctors, she would need substantial proof of her theory—and also a theory to begin with.

Nanami was stirred from her thoughts by the sound of the silo being activated, as Overhaul stepped out. It had been hours since she had last gotten up as day turned into late night, too engrossed in her task. She glanced up for a moment, giving an absent-minded “hey” before returning to her work. It was unlike her to brush him off so quickly, and he assumed there were still hard feelings from earlier. Approaching her, he was about to speak before he caught a glimpse of her screen and notes, the file folder and its contents now haphazardly splayed on the coffee table, a few with drops of moisture on them.

“Didn’t I tell you no drinking in the living roo—” he stopped short, hearing a small sniffle escape her, before she attempted to cover it up by clearing her throat.

“Sorry, yeah, no drinking in the living room.” She laughed emptily, gathering the papers that were stained.

Seeing people cry was usually... uninspiring to him, to say the least; he couldn’t understand it, the need for such dramatic displays as an adult. But he found himself making exceptions more and more; she wasn’t one to throw herself on the floor in a tantrum—at least not seriously. Her tears were stifled, indignant, and his curiosity—yes, we’ll call it “curiosity”— got the better of him.

“What are you doing? Crying?”

“No!... Maybe.” She stubbornly corrected, further averting her gaze, hoping to use her hair as a curtain to obscure her face. Pausing for a beat, his attention turned to what he presumed was the source. He read over it as she attempted to fix her face. His brow furrowed, and Nanami turned back to see what he was doing. “Why do you care?”

“Osteosarcoma seems like an odd diagnosis for someone with his age and history.” He noted, choosing not to answer her question.

“That’s what I said!” she instinctually replied before remembering herself, “I mean quit snooping, this is patient-doctor information. It’s illegal to share.”

“Yet you brought it outside your office, to a yakuza base.” He deadpanned, pointing out the hypocrisy, taking a seat next to her on the couch. She pursed her lips, continuing to mull over theories, assuming he’d get bored and leave her be. “If not osteosarcoma, what do you think it could be?”

Knowing discretion was one of his strong suits, she decided to humor him. “I’m not sure. The tumor grew extremely fast and they began chemo almost immediately, so I didn’t get the benefit of a fresh diagnosis. He’d been perfectly healthy otherwise and his line of work kept him pretty active.”

“What’s his occupation?”

“He’s a commercial diver, it’s pretty fitting since his quirk gives him a lot of walrus-like qualities.”

“Sounds hazardous.”

“You’re one to talk. He’s practically made for it so drowning or being crushed under the pressure is near-impossible for him.”

“I was referring to all of the equipment. The fact that he’s kept all of his limbs up to this point is impressive.”

Slowly turning to him, a tired look on her face, she replied “… Your compliments are so very strange.”

Shrugging he continued, “It’s not that odd. The number of divers and sailors I’ve seen at port with mutilated legs is not small.”

Nanami was mid eye-roll when an epiphany struck her. Her eyes went wide, and she began frantically rummaging through the paperwork. "Shit-- wait, online!" grabbing her laptop, she began typing in a frenzy as Overhaul watched calmly. Finding Kenta's online records in the hospital database, she read a file from a month before his diagnosis stating he had been in a diving accident that severely fractured his leg where his tumor now was. She let out a shaky breath of excitement, "MO. It's fucking Myositis Ossificans! This explains why the 'tumor' grew so quickly. It's because it wasn't even really a tumor, just his body's response to a traumatic injury-- This is amazing!" 

He felt the corner of his mouth tug upward, as she practically wiggled in genuine excitement. “That diagnosis sounds much more appropriate.”

Facing him on the couch, she reflexively grabbed him by his shoulders, lost in excitement, before realizing what she was doing. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to just grab you like that,” she hurriedly removed her hands before he waved it off. “It’s just... I’ve been poring over this since I got this case but hadn’t thought to make that connection since he never mentioned the injury.” Thinking back for a moment, it dawned on her, “... how did you know to ask?”

 “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t suit you.”

Smiling, he rose, walking to the kitchen, “Would you like a cup?”

Very aware he was evading her question, she rolled her eyes smiling in kind “Sure. Of what?” She wrote down her final notes before putting away the files, tucking them and her laptop away as she waited for an answer.

Bringing over two cups of sake and the bottle, he sat next her with his own before sliding over her cup. She gave him a look and he sighed, “Consider it your reward for your work today. But don’t get used to it, my living room consumption rule still stands.”

She raised her hands in surrender, chuckling before taking a sip. “Oh! Let’s play a game.”

His brows furrowed as he continued to face forward still enjoying his drink,” Do I seem like a man who plays games?”

“Well, judging by the shogi board, I’d say yes.”

“… Just set the board.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a bit before starting the odd conversation, chatting and playing until they were on their fourth cup. Nanami was admittedly tipsy by this point and decided to ask something that had been on her mind for a while now with the aid of her liquid courage. If ever there was an opportunity, it was now, “Hey, why didn’t you ever become a doctor?” The question caught him off guard as he stopped drinking and peered off into the distance thoughtfully. His lips parting for a moment to speak before closing again to consider his answer.

“It would be difficult to treat people you can’t touch.”

“Hm… sounds like a copout. I wear gloves on the job at least 80% of the time and a lot of the non-surgical work that requires touching could easily be done by a nurse. So, what’s the real reason?”

“Well, you’re awfully bold tonight.”

“Eh, it’s your fault anyway,” she reminded him, toying with the sake glass. “So, are you gonna tell me or not?”

He considered her for a second before answering, “Win this game and I’ll tell you.”

“Easy.” She shot back before considering another outcome, “and what if I lose?”

He smiled easily, her stomach flipping as a glint of mischief was evident in his eyes, “Just try your best to win.”

Nanami was determined, or at least she convinced herself she was, not wanting to confront her curiosity at what he would do if she lost … or what he would do to me… Ok, let me put down this sake before I get a life sentence to horny jail. Recomposing herself a bit, she observed the board, stifling a smirk when she saw her path to victory. It was a moderately long game, but the outcome was in her favor as she took his king. Raising the piece betwixt her fingers, she smirked, “Now spill the beans.”

He stared into the proverbial abyss, slightly peeved at the loss, priding himself as a more-than proficient player before tonight. “Give me a moment.” He said casually raising a finger as he cleared his throat. Taking a measured sip from his cup before locking eyes with her, “I have a duty.” Nanami shot him an unsatisfactory look before he clarified, continuing, “Pops took me in when I had nothing to offer. This,” he began as he leered at his hands, recalling the destruction they regularly wrought, “is what I was meant to become in order to repay him. Bringing the yakuza back to their former glory and carrying on his legacy are my primary objectives. My time is limited since he’s not as young as he used to be. The years of schooling it would take to reap the benefits he deserves would prove much too long. Indulging in a dream like that is not in my nature, even if I did have the time. That is why.”

Her smile dulled as she processed his response. She wasn’t self-righteous enough to impose her own ideals on him, but it seemed like such a waste. His leading questions tonight were just one of many examples of his expertise. Even without the formal schooling he had a level of mastery that could easily earn him a degree, and coupled with his research skills, he could do a world of good. But instead here he was, content with just the opportunity to pay his debts. For someone so arrogant, he thought surprisingly little of his own nature.  Maybe someday someone could convince him he didn’t have to carry around this weight all the time. Still very tipsy, she responded,” Well, if it’s a dream of yours to begin with, your nature can’t be all that bad now can it?” At this he knitted his brows, trying to accept the possibility. Seeing his hesitation, she continued, “You can do both, you know. Give yourself some more credit, bird brain.” She slurred the last insult, finishing her sake off with a gulp, not wanting to sound too soft. Feeling the consequences of her actions, she swayed sleepily in her seat before closing her eyes.

The next thing she knew, she felt herself being nudged awake, “Come on, get up. You need to get into bed.”

“But it’s sooo comfy here. Why are you being such a buzzkill, Kai?” she whined as he grasped her forearms, encouraging her to rise from her seat.

Stopping in his tracks, he asked a bit taken aback, “Where did you hear that name?”

“Your Poppy Pops told me” She almost sang, a grin plastered on her face.

“…Do not ever use the phrase ‘Poppy Pops’ again. Also, if couches were meant for sleeping, beds wouldn’t exist.” He responded irritated, though he handled her like porcelain, still remembering how unpleasant the last three days had been. Guiding Nanami to her room, he finally got her to lay down after tuning out a slew of other ridiculous nickname proposals, the drowsiness setting in as soon as her head hit the pillow. Knowing it would be too much work convincing a now drunk Nanami to get under the covers, he begrudgingly put a spare blanket over her. Before leaving, he looked back at her sleepy form. As much as they could grate each other’s nerves, no one had ever thought to encourage him or challenge his own thinking besides his father. He had never been a warm or sentimental person, having to try thrice as hard to grasp emotions that came so naturally to others, but she had planted a seed of doubt. Having always been so confident in his own lacking, he found a part of himself excited to be proven wrong for the first time. Before closing the door softly, he spoke “Thank you, Nanami.”

[writing-gifts]

Hey Giftie, I found you through your Datura fic on AO3 and really admire you as a writer. Reading what you put out there is such a joy but it made me wonder how you manage to write something with multiple chapters. Can you maybe tell a little about your process and how you keep yourself motivated or what you do when it feels like you've written yourself into a corner? If this is a lot to ask I'll understand! Anyways, thank you for putting your writing out here, you're awesome <3

thanks! ^^ ik my stuff can get a bit niche at times so i'm just glad there are ppl that aren't just me can still enjoy them

i'm gonna try to be helpful and not ramble too much...

i know writing multi chapter stuff can be hard (i have fics that i started that are just sitting incomplete and i have no idea if i'm going back to them 😅) but i found these things helped me finish datura

this is the most important imo when it comes to motivation, make sure you're writing something you want to actually write! for a multi chapter fics it's crucial that it's not just something you're doing cause you think people will like it

ik having readers who like your stuff is good motivation too but there have been times where that wasn't available or straight up wasn't enough to get me to continue with making something

for datura i made some sort of outline, rough drafted parts of future chapters and wrote down things i knew that i wanted to happen, even if i wasn't sure where i wanted them to go

the longer the fic is the more necessary i see this

(if it's a fic thats not too long and you think you are okay with just drafting all the chapters before posting then a super quick outline or just jumping straight to it is what i'd do)

the more fleshed out and organized an outline is the less problems there are while writing since it's easier to notice these issues before that part of the story is posted

but i don't expect everyone to do a full outline or want to! the one i made for datura was messy and wasn't complete when i started posting. i added to it inbetween updates and some spots were still pretty vague, however what i had still helped me. 85% of the time i already knew where i was going and it was just a matter of how to get there, instead of me not knowing where i was heading at all

i don't write completely linear (i think for a lot of ppl it's like this)

sometimes i just wanna write a specific part of a story so i just jump there and get it done, i can come back to whatever part im avoiding later worldbuilding 💀 (i usually go back to that stuff last cause my excitement to show off my favorite parts helps me finish)

skipping around is also my favorite thing to do when i get stuck!

(and if i'm still having trouble figuring out how to proceed after that, sometimes writing a different story, bouncing ideas off other people, or just not writing for a little while helps me)

btw i like to write my rough drafts without focusing heavily on grammar and sentence structure, and then while i do my 500+ read overs of one chapter i fix all that lol

i don't just write on my laptop 📱

getting in front of a computer and staying there can be hard for me so i found using my phone is much easier

i can use it while i'm laying in bed, anywhere in the house, walking, outside, etc. and it's how i get most of my writing done at this point

set a schedule/goals

a schedule only 100% works if someone is super disciplined (and honestly i don't care for them) but i still try to set goals

they can be strict or loose based on what you prefer at any given time

for example: i'll try to update every week or every two weeks

or

i'm gonna try to finish a draft of this chapter before the week ends

or

i'm just gonna try to write something this week

since it's a hobby there weren't really any consequences if i didn't make the goal i set for myself but it did help me get moving! so yea i didn't finish "on time" but i still made progress 👌

i hope this helps some and that i made sense! if anything's confusing i can try to explain better!

and just gonna throw this out there, i think it's good to try to finish what you start but writing should mostly be fun, you can go at your own pace and if you don't finish a fic it's really not the end of the world 👍