#it had completely fallen apart from decades of love

[peachesvault]

Water and Scars

Hero!Bakugou x Retired!Reader

He was used to this. The floor slightly scuffed where he stood everyday silently after he got back from patrol; completely enamored by you. You; blissfully, unknowingly dancing your heart out in the large home studio you got custom built, jumps in the air, rolls, leaps, breaking. You lived and breathed dance, movement was a part of your soul, and it never failed to completely enthrall him.

The way you moved so effortlessly, completely bending and spinning at speed and angles he couldn’t think of, almost waterlike. Like the river water swirling through rocks, carrying fallen flowers down the stream to a dam of twigs and sticks, the flowers gathering over time; an offering at a shrine, praising you, your beauty.

He won’t lie, sometimes it scared him, after all, nobody he knew could move so fluidly, he would have thought it impossible if not for you. Ever after you retired from your job as a pro hero, he always seemed to be scared for you, for hurting yourself; yet times like this remembered that you were ever so capable in whatever aspect you desired.

Retired. That's right. Once, long ago, Bakugou would have looked you in the eyes and broken up with you just for retiring after injuring yourself; it was unfathomable to his past self that any job apart from being a hero had any worth whatsoever, a waste of time. Yet you had breathed life into him, Captivated and lured him; siren-like. He couldn’t fathom leaving you, and after all his experiences he was grateful to have met you in the cramped UA classroom all those years ago.

He fell for you long before he asked you out, because you just lived. You lived so.. real. So authentic, so much like you were truly favored by the gods. Your work ethic, your empathy, your love; he was forever lucky for you.

You both had fought in the war together, side by side when death seemed inevitable. The both of you holding your heads up high and looking it in the eye as you fought, vowing you would end this war or it would end you.

You also were there for each other, together. He remembers those days, the days when after the war you would both sit in the showers fully clothed, drenched to the bone, your foreheads touching as you cried, laughed, reminisced. It pained him to remember those particular nights, ungodly hours of holding you in his arms as you sobbed in pain from old injuries, insecurity washing through you from your scars, and he remembers when you did the same for him. Just two unfortunate people helping each other through the aftermath of the impossible.

The impossible; what a funny concept. They didn't believe in you until you did do the impossible, but they didn't care after, letting the heroes carry the trauma and burden by themselves, only happy that they didn’t have to live in fear; no fucks about the people who lived the fear.

It never stopped you though. You kept the fire burning in you, decades after the war as you kept fighting and protecting the people of Japan. Until last year that was.

Last year, a particularly brutal villain attack; shattering your arm. You were fine now ofcourse, he wouldn’t accept anything else. But you decided to take yourself out the industry, you had done your part, and now it was your legacy for people to hold themselves up to. That's what you told everyone, but he knew you; you were the love his life, of course he did.

He knew it had to do with the fact that you disliked the industry. Even after everything that you went through, you had seen the truth of the industry and how heroes were treated. He saw how sometimes your eyes would gloss up while patching him up after a particularly rough villain attack, even if he pretended he didn’t. It was quite endearing actually; during the war, you had been so numb to any suffering, you had told him to get the fuck up and fight, you had popped his leg back in, ignoring his pained yells. You, a force to be reckoned with. Angry waves ruthlessly beating the rocks littering the coast. You had done so much for everyone; it wasn’t fair to force you to keep fighting.

That's why he supported you when you decided to retire, why he stood his ground and defended your name in rooms you weren’t in, why he loved you, why he watched you dance every day after patrol in secret.

Well not really. You always noticed him - you had been the top hero for the better of two decades; it would be shameful to your legacy to not know your surroundings. Yet you always stayed silent, putting on a show for Bakugou when he looked especially sad. You knew he was being transported somewhere else everyday while watching you, the way his eyes glazed over, and tears pricked at his waterline. But just like he didn’t mention when you cried you didn't either.

Sometimes you wondered what he thought about. Did he think about the same memory everyday? Or was it something different each time?

It didn’t matter. If him watching you ‘secretly’ doing what made you happy made him happy, you wouldn’t mind indulging him and putting on a show.

Tried to keep a water theme! How did I do?

DO NOT COPY OR POST ELSEWHERE. REBLOGS AND LIKES APPRECIATED

Taglist (Open!):

@pretty-sparkle-bomb @tlissablr @matteglaze

[batneko]

Oops I thought about Mithrun and Senshi too much and now the ship has sailed, sorry, it's cresting the horizon there's no point in even waving anymore.

(Cross-posted from a thread I wrote on bluesky yesterday.)

Mithrun was already fond of Senshi because Senshi is the person who made him feel like he deserved to keep living, so during the first year or so when the new kingdom is still getting settled Mithrun hangs around Senshi whenever they happen to cross paths.

Somebody mentions to Senshi that Mithrun wanted to learn to make noodles, so Senshi thinks that's why and is happy to teach him. Senshi is also trying to make a concentrated effort to unlearn his prejudices, and Mithrun turns out to be easy to talk to. He doesn't mind answering any odd questions Senshi has, or admitting when he doesn't know something. He'll also explain his own motivations (when he understands them himself) so even with Senshi's blunted social skills they can understand each other.

So it just makes sense for them to move in together! Neither of them is going to live in the city full-time, Senshi enjoys cooking for another person when they ARE both home, and they can report back to each other when they've seen particularly dangerous/delicious monsters on their trips. Logic!

Neither of them has a strong sexual/romantic drive so it's a solid decade before they even think to put a label on it. There are small changes here and there over the years though. Senshi learns Mithrun can't sleep without being lulled into it so he always makes him a filling snack and a warm drink. He keeps an eye on Mithrun's health and schedule. He likes doing this kind of thing, it feels good to have someone to take care of.

It's not perfect, of course. Mithrun has trouble expressing what he likes and wants, and since he's usually pretty blunt unless he's being bitchy Senshi has no idea when Mithrun is upset. Senshi can get upset about stuff too, and Mithrun has to learn to do things that seem pointless to him because they make Senshi happier.

(yes this is about doing the dishes)

And then one day while they're eating Senshi gently tucks Mithrun's hair behind his ear because it's gotten a little long and is suddenly overwhelmed with affection and the urge to do... something. He should do something here, right? So he offers to tie it back, but that's harder than expected.

Senshi tracks down Chilchuck to ask him how to do hair, and Chilchuck catches on immediately and is like, "lol, weird, you do you though man, congrats." Senshi is baffled and Chilchuck passes the lesson along to Flertom instead (her hair is most similar to Mithrun's). After that Mithrun heads out on his missions with his hair neatly pulled back and always returns once the braids have completely fallen apart.

Eventually Senshi is able to put a name to his feelings and realize he's felt this way for a WHILE, so he tells Mithrun he loves him. Mithrun says, "It doesn't feel the way it did before, but I care for you, your happiness is important to me. Being parted from you would be deeply unpleasant. I don't know if there's a name for this feeling other than 'love.'" And then reveals he inquired about dwarvish marriage customs EIGHT YEARS AGO and has had the rings in his room this whole time. Senshi, tearfully, accepts.

They have a quiet ceremony that weekend and forget to invite anyone.

Senshi eventually remembers to tell his friends, who are differing levels of surprised. Mithrun sends formal notices to the people who matter back in the elven kingdom and causes a HUGE scandal. He's quietly thrilled about this.

People who assumed Senshi and Mithrun were together this whole time and only mildly surprised they weren't already married: Laios, Falin, Kabru

(Kabru sees Mithrun often and always politely inquires "how are things with Senshi back home?" and Mithrun always says "good." or, rarely, "he's mad at me. 😑")

People who knew they weren't officially together but aren't surprised it turned out this way: Chilchuck, Cithis, Mithrun's brother

(Obrin came to visit once and Mithrun introduced Senshi as "this is Senshi, I like him." and Senshi was like "aw, I like you too! 🥰" and Obrin was just like "......hm!")

People who are absolutely blindsided: Marcille, Pattadol

(Marcille thinks love is supposed to be INTENSE and OVERWHELMING and LIFE-CHANGING and like, it can be but calm down.)

People who literally never wondered about them at all: Izutsumi

(Izutsumi lives with them, as much as she lives with anybody, she just doesn't care. She actually likes Mithrun's cooking better because he will serve her plain noodles without a word and Senshi is devastated by this.)

I'm not sure if they have sex. I think they would at least try it to see if it's for them. It does help Mithrun fall asleep! And I think Senshi would definitely enjoy being able to make Mithrun really come undone.

Not much really changes after they get married, they still have their own rooms, they still live largely separate lives. Except Senshi no longer has to worry about maintaining personal space when spending time with Mithrun. You're allowed to hug and cuddle your husband whenever you want, right? That's part of the whole deal!

Mithrun likes it but only Senshi can tell, at least until Mithrun starts reciprocating. Somebody who doesn't know they're together sees Mithrun wander over and lean on Senshi like an armrest and they're like "uhhhhh is that racist?" and somebody else is like "no no they're just like that."

[loveerran]

Deliverance for the Captives

I recently attended a ward that was different than any other ward I have ever attended before. It was located near a prison and comprised mostly of men who were either currently incarcerated or previously released. They met in a warehouse conference room. Folding chairs were set up in a fan shape, pointed toward a podium. On the week I attended, they were having a testimony meeting. I arrived a bit late and took a chair a friend was saving for me just as the testimonies were beginning.

An LDS testimony meeting can be a real cultural experience. Everyone is welcome. A typical testimony meeting involves members taking turns standing up and delivering whatever words are in their heart to the entire congregation. Testimonies may be a minute long or considerably more. The entire program is completely free form and open to all the unexpected moments such a format suggests. Sometimes testimonies are brief and focused on a witness of Jesus Christ. Other times, they delve into personal experiences or provide the congregation with an impromptu lesson from the speaker. And there are, occasionally, some that are quite memorable and depart from the typical formulas entirely. It’s a uniquely Mormon event, and you really should consider attending one just for the experience (you can sit in back and not participate, and they are typically held on the first Sunday of each month).

In this particular meeting, a man who had spent decades behind bars spoke encouragingly to the others. We also heard the story of a homeless man living in a park and dealing with police issues. The US incarcerates a lot of individuals, and most have significant difficulty finding work and putting their lives together after release. Almost all the speakers were men, though two were women.

The testimony that stood out to me the most came from a wonderful sister who was married to someone who had spent time in prison. She followed up with more wonderful thoughts a bit later as we sat in a lesson together. The two messages touched my heart and have been coming back to me ever since. This is how I have been remembering them:

1. During the testimony meeting, she spoke to the men about living with ‘the jail that is in your head’. She talked about how they carry with them the burden of their own negative self-perceptions and how this holds them back from believing they can heal and re-integrate, holds them back from realizing who they are as children of loving Heavenly Parents and from becoming who they and their families want them to become. She also spoke of how the negative beliefs and judgments of others hurt us and bind us down. Christ came to set the prisoners free. Part of becoming free is realizing that the past does not dictate all that is possible in the future for us. Christ wants to free us from the chains of negative self-perception and the shame and fear we inherit from the world around us when they see us as something other than children of God.

2. In a later class she spoke again. This time she talked about her own situation. How hard it was to have a husband who was in prison. She spoke of a box of expectations, and how she placed in this box all the things that had been part of how her life was supposed to go, and all the accomplishments and milestones she had expected to experience along the way: college, marrying a returned missionary, living happily ever after, and so on. Instead, her box had blown up, just fallen apart in tatters. As she lived through that, she learned that the love of God exists outside of boxes. God works powerfully, even in lives that don’t seem to fit the mold of conventional expectations.

Some people who read this may be offended by the idea of these men attending church. They may want to focus on the fact that these men are criminals who have done bad things and hurt others. They may want to continue ostracizing and isolating them or avoid interacting with and seeing them at all. Those are natural feelings, and I do not expect and am not calling for the victims of these men to forgive or embrace them. However, they are still human beings. They are still children of God. They are still in need of redemption. Christ called on us to minister to those in need, including those in prison – physically or otherwise. Our prophet has encouraged “each of us to reach out to ‘the one’ in our lives who may be feeling lost or alone”. Mercy and the enduring love of Jesus Christ can be difficult topics.

After that meeting, I found myself feeling glad these men had this place to gather, a place to seek healing and fellowship, a place to express their desire to do good and become better, a place to work on their hope for putting off the sins of the past and becoming reborn and redeemed through the atonement of Jesus Christ. I was glad that their families, and those who still love them and want them to heal, could join them there. And I thought about how Jesus might embrace and welcome them if they ever attended His ward, regardless of where it was.

[profeshyearner]

HumDrum

Chapter 1:

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Story will eventually contain smut, dark themes, heavy angst, detailed descriptions of depression etc. Minors DNI, 18+.

Warnings for this chapter: none.

The hum of fluorescent lights overhead was constant—faint, but ever-present, like an over-zealous fly trapped between the glass pane of a window and the screen.

You’d grown used to it, just like you’d grown used to the recycled air and the blinding white of the cinder block walls and cement floor. Down here, in the lower levels of Vought Tower, there were no windows, your only dose of sunlight on your commute to work and rare evenings when you didn’t stay late. No sound except the buzz of electricity, the quiet shuffle of papers, and the occasional click of your computer’s outdated keyboard.

You were an assistant archivist at Vought—just a name on a file. A pair of hands to catalog, organize, and refile partially blacked out records you weren’t even allowed to read.

And most days, that suited you just fine.

It hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when you might’ve said you were proud to work for Vought. Not out loud, but maybe to yourself, at night, staring at the clean lines of your new apartment and thinking about how far you’d come.

Two years ago, you had traded the tall wooden stacks of your local natural history museum’s collections library for Vought’s sterile halls.

Your life before New York was collections work, mostly. Handling preservation of insects in glass tubes filled to the top with ethanol, and pencil scratch scientific notebooks from researchers long gone—real tangible things with weight and texture and meaning. You had loved it, the quiet reverence of it. The way time softened in archive rooms, how it felt like you were brushing fingertips with people whose lives had played out decades before you were even a thought in your parents’ heads.

But it didn’t pay well. And after the breakup—seven years, shared apartment, shared bookshelves, shared pet fish named Ronald—you wanted out of that city. The quiet hours in a space you once spent daydreaming of wedding cake flavors and next steps were too overwhelming to bear, and you couldn’t face another awkward hangout with your mutual friends who you were painfully aware only entertained you out of pity. Your own friendships had fallen apart slowly after college, and it was easier to fall into place in your boyfriend’s already needly planned out life, like you were the missing piece of an already completed puzzle.

You told yourself it was a fresh start. Something practical. A pivot.

Stacks of papers and old VHS tapes certainly weren’t as exciting as the shiny, luminescent exoskeletons of foreign insects, but you had always wanted to see New York City and were looking forward to a fresh new life.

So when Vought International posted an opening for archival staff—government-adjacent, private sector, full benefits complete with a much better healthcare package than your current job—you applied.

You figured it’d be similar enough. Data management, handling historical records, artifact storage. You didn’t ask too many questions. You didn’t want to. You just needed a job that felt stable. Unshakable. And Vought… well. What could be more permanent than them?

The interview process was clinical. Fast. You passed your background checks with flying colors–speeding ticket from two years ago be damned–showed up to orientation in navy trousers, and signed an NDA the size of a novella. It wasn’t until the door clicked shut behind you on sublevel 3 that you started to realize what you’d gotten yourself into.

The Vought archives were nothing like the museum stacks. No curiosities on shelves, no faded photographs or war medals or fragile manuscripts.

Here, everything smelled like metal and chemical sealants. Like secrets you weren’t actually sure you wanted to unearth; so unlike the magic and mystique of the natural history archives.

Most of the documents you were allowed to handle were redacted so thoroughly you could barely tell what department they belonged to. Your direct supervisor was a woman named Sandy—stern, silent, impossibly sharp—and she made it very clear from day one:

You are not here to learn. You are here to file.

You do not ask questions. You do not read past the titles.

You never, ever wander.

And you stay out of the Seven’s way–not that you would ever see them.

Most of Vought’s employees never directly dealt with Supes, and in your position, you weren’t sure if you wanted to.

They seemed like shiny, unmovable metal statues. Not people, not kind, not compassionate; more machine-like than man, Vought’s showy pageants always felt like some strange attraction rather than something genuine, but then again, you didn’t take the job for the proximity it brought you to a man who could talk to fish.

You spent your first few weeks on edge. Constantly second-guessing yourself, afraid of Sandy looking over your shoulder, silently judging every wrong move. But over time, you settled into the rhythm of the place.

There was comfort in repetition. Wake up. Coffee. Sublevel 3. Paperwork. Return files. Sign-out. Sleep. Repeat. You didn’t really know anyone in the city. You told yourself you’d make friends when you were ready. There were a few casual connections—Kara from intake who sometimes ate lunch in the lounge with you, the barista at the coffee shop near your apartment who always remembered your order (cold brew with one pump of pistachio, one pump vanilla, and 2%), but mostly, you kept to yourself.

It wasn’t that you didn’t want to connect. You just didn’t know how to explain the feeling that had crept into your chest since joining Vought—the way the building itself felt like it was breathing and alive in a way you didn’t trust.

Sometimes, late at night, you wondered if you were being watched.

You told yourself it was just paranoia. That it was just the adjustment—new city, new job, new you.

But you never shook the feeling.

Classified files were stacked floor-to-ceiling in steel cabinets that locked themselves shut with a biometric hiss. You never tried to open them. No one in your position would. Requests for access went through Sandy and Sandy only, who kept her office locked and, after your first week, only ever came out to tut at you for taking too long to find the right stack. She ran the archive like it was maximum fucking lockdown, and you were just a lowly guard.

You handled requests mostly from admin staff—people like Madelyn Stillwell, early on, or someone on Stan Edgar’s team; a summer intern working for higher-ups who didn’t know what half of what they were pulling even meant. Occasionally, Queen Maeve would come down–she was the first Supe you had actually ever seen up close much less spoke to–granted, your exchanges didn’t expand beyond “Here’s your file” and “Please return it by Thursday.”

She was always polite, though. Tired-looking. Like someone who’d stopped expecting answers a long time ago.

Then, a long time of nothing; you had seen on the news the Maeve had died confronting Soldier Boy (the archives were the busiest they had ever been when he popped back up on Vought’s radar); but eventually things quieted down again and life became business as usual.

Then Sister Sage started showing up.

And everything changed.

She didn’t have clearance—technically—but after Homelander started putting eyes in every hallway and his supporters ran rampant, fueled by Firecracker’s newest piece of propaganda, no one really enforced protocol anymore. Especially not on the lower floors, especially not to Supes. You weren’t stupid. You saw the way people flinched when Homelander’s name came up. You heard the stories—the ones that didn’t make it to VNN.

Still, it wasn’t until he showed up in person that you understood what real fear felt like.

It was late—a Thursday, you think, it was hard to keep track of time when every day felt the same and you couldn’t even peek out a window. You were alone in the records room, cataloging entries from the Compound V case releases–stuff for the FDA mostly. Dry reading. Boring. Which made it all the more noticeable when the door opened behind you without warning.

You turned, expecting your supervisor and ready to hear another jab about what you had done wrong this week, when you looked up and came face to face with him, the man no one wanted to get on the wrong side of.

Homelander.

[mywritesaremylove]

Timeless

The timeless love that Bucky had

I found it in a dusty shoe box today. 

The photograph. 

Folded corners, a little torn on the edges, and yellowed with age. Still, the image was clear enough to see your grin. boyish and crooked, the same one that made my heart skip in 1941. 

He was standing in front of the corner diner in Brooklyn, arm slung around me, your military uniform still crisp from training. my dress was too long, my hair and soft curls. You say I looked like the dames in the movies, though I never believed you. 

I sat on the floor of our apartment- our apartment, the one SHIELD helped me find after they confirmed you were alive and time folded and on itself. Because just like that, I was 19 again. Just like that, I could smell the leather of your bomber jacket and hear the way you'd say my name, like a prayer and a promise all wrapped in one. 

The war stole everything. You, Steve, entire lifetimes. 

I cried the day they said you'd fallen off the train. Not the soft, cinematic tears they show in films, but the ugly, just even kind -  the kind where grief grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. For decades, you were a ghost I couldn't touch. A heartbeat I thought I imagined. The man I loved turned myth. 

But now you're back. 

Not the same, not entirely. There are cracks in you, deep ones, and shadows behind your eyes that weren't there before. Sometimes you flinch when I touch you. Sometimes you look at me like you are remembering, and other times like you wish you could forget. 

But then there are the other times. 

Like when we walk through Central Park and you still reach for my hand, like instinct. Or when you find old swing records and the antique shops and your face softens-  because you know that's our music. The Andrews sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn miller. You dance with me in the kitchen sometimes, when the memories aren't too loud. 

And in those moments, I know what we are. 

We’re timeless. 

We always were.  from the second I locked eyes at the USO dance and you offered me a Coca-Cola with that charming little smart. from the letters you sent me, ink smudged and pages worn, telling me you'd be home soon. From the nights I kept the porch light on, hoping. 

Even now, with silver in your hair and the world completely changed, I look at you and I know. You're always meant to come back to me. Somehow, some way. Even when time tried to erase us. 

And when we're old, if we're lucky enough to grow old, I hope someone finds that photo of us. I hope they ask about the girl with stars in her eyes and the soldier who came back from the dead. I hope they feel what I feel when I look at it: 

That this love, the story, was always something out of time.

Something not of this world. 

Something timeless. 

[odditycircus-2002]

Mortal Kombat Invasions: The Terraformer

Starring Medusa!Reader

A/N: I had a stroke of inspiration and decided to make one with Medusa!Reader. None of y’all asked but I hope y’all like it😁

Liu Kang: There was a Shang Tsung whom deeply adored a Y/N, who did not reciprocate his affections. But rather cruelly feigned their love for him in order to learn his magic and secrets of the Flesh Pits. Once learning all that they needed, Y/N betrayed Shang Tsung with a kiss that transformed him into an abhorrent tree made from his flesh and bone from where she made her throne. The Flesh Pits became her center of power where she could create horrific abominations before unleashing them upon all timelines to feast on any living thing in sight, whether that be man, woman, or child. Once there’s no one left to resist, Y/N would then use her magic and machines to terraform the timelines to her liking. If they’re not stopped, then all of the timelines will be subjected to their tyrannical rule.

Liu Kang: Upon first inspection, I thought that this Y/N was another of many of those that wish to conquer all other timelines. But I was mistaken… They do not wish to terraform timelines into barren thorn covered wastelands to rule them, but to destroy them. If they are not stopped, then this timeline and all others will have nothing remaining but Y/N and their monsters.

Liu Kang: The battle could be described as nothing more than complete brutal chaos that threatened to tear apart an entire realm, but eventually my allies were able to corner Y/N and subdued them. Seeing them to be too mad to reason with, they had no choice but to behead the mad Gorgon. Using their severed head, my allies were able to take out a great majority of Y/N’s monsters as they tried to avenge their fallen mistress. Yet, those that were not turned to stone were quick to flee, scattering into other timelines only to be later hunted down. It will take a very long time before the realms can fully heal from the damage Y/N’s terraforming and monsters. Yet, I’ve seen the realms able to heal within decades and even over the course of eons countless times, so as long as there remains the smallest seed to bloom from.

[sequinsmile-x]

Our Great Divide - Chapter 4: Beyond the Terror in the Nightfall

It's what they'd hoped would happen for years. For close to a decade it's what they would talk about late at night whilst snuggled up in bed together, quiet voices whispering about a life where Jack and Haley came back, where Jack could meet his siblings and their family would finally feel complete. Now it was finally happening, Emily had a pit in her stomach. A heavy weight made of fear and guilt as she worried that this could actually be the thing that tore them apart.

A Foyet Arc AU

-x-

Hi friends <3

I continue to be blown away by the love for this fic, thank you so so much. This is such an interesting perspective to explore their story from and it means so much that you're enjoying it too <3

As always, let me know what you think of this chapter !

-x-

Warnings: Full list of warnings can be found on the Master List

Words: 4.1k

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily’s grateful to have Stella in her lap. The reassuring and familiar weight of her youngest keeping her grounded as they had a family conversation Emily had pictured so many times. She’d semi-practised it in her head when hope had a hold on her, but the reality of doing it was so much more difficult than she’d imagined. 

“Do you understand?” Aaron asks, Leo and Hugo sat on either side of him, matching expressions on their faces that usually brought her joy. Hugo nods, his lips pressed together as he speaks first. 

“So Jack and Miss Haley are back home?” 

Aaron nods, his arm around the boy's shoulders as he tugs them closer, his need to have his children near as strong as it had ever been. He smiles tightly at Emily before he responds, “That’s right.” 

“Can we meet them?” Hugo asks, his innocence allowing him to be excited, “I’ve always wanted a big brother.” 

It feels like a punch in the gut, the reality that in another life, when things had been simpler, Hugo would have always known his older brother. That they’d have grown up together and been close. Jack’s resistance to even hear about his siblings, whilst understandable, had hurt Aaron more than he’d admit. His naive fantasy that this would work out the way he’d been dreaming of for years crumbling around him. 

“We’ll take this one step at a time, baby,” Emily says, replying for her husband, “We’ve got time,” she smiles when Hugo nods, his disappointment silent but clear. She looks at Leo, her heart clenching at his confusion, “Do you understand Leo?” 

He nods but furrows his brow, “Do you think he’ll like me?” 

Emily tilts her head, “Who sweetie? Jack?” 

Leo nods again, “What if he doesn’t like me?” 

Aaron is snapped out of the semi-trance he’d fallen into at the shake in his son’s voice, and he tugs him closer, kissing Leo’s dark hair, “Of course, he’ll like you,” he smiles softly, “Everyone likes you, buddy.” 

Emily smiles as Leo beams and she turns her attention to Stella, tilting her head as she looks down at her little girl, “Do you understand sweet girl?” 

“The bad guy is gone, and Jack is home,” she says, summing it up in such a way, her sweet voice making it sound even more innocent, that Emily pulls her closer on instinct, kissing the top of her head. 

“That’s right baby,” she says, smiling when Stella turns to wrap her arms around her, always keen to be in the arms of one of her parents, “Do any of you have any other questions?” She asks, and Leo raises his hand, something he’d started doing since he’d learnt it in school, and she chuckles, “Yes Leo?” 

“Can we have pizza for dinner?”

She laughs, unable to stop herself, and she feels a little lighter when Aaron does too, the speed at which their children had accepted something so complicated so easily enough to ease some of the tension that had settled over them. She looks at Aaron, who nods, his smile as relaxed as she’d seen it in days, and then she looks back at her youngest son, “Yes, baby. I’m sure we can manage that.” 

They have dinner together and it feels normal, like the last week or so hadn’t happened, and Emily feels guilty for how grateful she is. Aaron puts Stella to bed, and then Emily puts Leo to bed, taking more time than she usually would as she does it, revelling in the one-on-one time with her youngest son as she reads him a story until he falls asleep against her. When she makes it back downstairs she hears laughter, twin giggles from Aaron and their son as he gives Hugo a piggyback around the hallway. It was a game they’d played since Hugo was small, small enough that it had worried Emily at first, her mother’s instincts kicking in as her toddler laughed so much on his father’s back that she worried he’d fall. She stands back and watches them, letting the small piece of normality wash over her as she leans against a wall, her shoulder catching a framed photo of their family of 5 from Hugo’s most recent birthday. 

She’s pulled out of the moment when the doorbell rings and she frowns, wondering who would come over at this time of night. She walks to the door, keen to answer it before the bell rings again and potentially wakes up either of her kids sleeping upstairs. She doesn’t check the peephole, so she doesn’t prepare herself for coming face-to-face with her husband’s ex-wife. 

“Haley,” she chokes out, clearing her throat in an attempt to hide her surprise, “I…wasn’t expecting to see you.” 

Haley smiles tightly, “I felt bad for how we left the other day,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, “I thought we should talk some more.”

Emily nods and stares at her for a second before she realises she’s still blocking the door. She takes a step backwards, “Sorry, come in.” 

Haley walks into the house. She doesn’t hide how she looks around, her gaze drifting from photo to photo hung on the walls, every corner of their house the home they’d fought for it to be. She turns to look back at Emily, “It’s a lovely house.” 

“Thanks,” she replies, the awkwardness misplaced in her home, “Would you like something to-”

“Sweetheart,” Aaron says, turning the corner, Hugo still on his back, “Who was that at the…” he trails off when he sees his ex-wife, “Haley.”

Emily watches as realisation crosses Hugo’s face and she walks over, helping him down from Aaron’s back, “Why don’t you go up to your room, honey?” She says, crouching down to his level and scraping his hair back from his face, encouraging him to look at her and not the blonde woman standing in the hall. 

“But-”

“Please, sweetheart?” She asks, “I’ll come up and see you in a little bit,” she promises, “You can play the Switch up there.” 

His eyes go wide at the offer, “Really?”

She nods, grateful that bribery still worked now he is no longer a tiny thing that needed to be talked into brushing his teeth, “Really,” she confirms, kissing his forehead, “Just this once, okay.” 

“Okay,” he says enthusiastically, running off to the den to grab the Switch before he trundles up the stairs. 

It’s only when he’s out of sight that she stands up straight, shaking off her husband’s apologetic smile as she presses her hand against his back, rubbing a soothing circle to remind him that she was there no matter what, “Shall we go sit down?” She offers, and he nods, and she looks up at Haley, “Do you want something to drink?” 

Haley shakes her head, “No thank you.” 

They settle in the living room, Emily so close to Aaron that she’s practically in his lap, their thighs pressed against each other as their joint hands settle on her thigh. He’s sure it’s some kind of subconscious attempt to mark her territory, as if they weren’t sitting in some kind of museum of their love for each other. 

“I’m sorry for the other day,” Haley says, clearing her throat as she settles on the opposite end of the couch to them, “Jack is…it’s been a lot for him. He’s a teenager and thats hard at the best of times,” she says, unknowingly repeating what Emily had said when they’d left her office, “And I was surprised at the news that you had children. I just needed some time to…adjust,” she blows out a shaky breath, “I know it isn’t fair. But I don’t think in any of the ways I imagined this I pictured coming back to find out you had a new family. That you’d just…replaced us.” 

Something about the way she says it has Emily’s shackles going up, her back tight with the implication that she and her children were some kind of consolidation prize. A backup that wouldn’t have been needed if things had turned out differently. 

“My family isn’t a replacement, Haley,” Aaron says, an edge of sternness creeping into his voice as he tightens his hold on Emily’s hand, “And I could never replace Jack. He’s my son.” 

Haley sighs and nods, “You’re right. I’m sorry. This is just an impossible situation,” she smiles tightly, “There aren’t any books on it. I checked.” 

Emily smiles, “Me too.” 

Haley returns her smile, her gaze flicking to a picture on the wall, “Your children are adorable.” 

“Thanks,” Emily replies, looking at the picture herself, her children’s matching smiles shining back at her, “We think so too.” 

“How do manage with work?” Haley asks, “I noticed Emily’s name on your old desk, Aaron,” she says as she looks at him, “Did you finally get that promotion?” 

He takes a deep breath, knowing his answer would likely get a reaction, his inability to do for Haley and Jack what he’d done for Emily and their children had been one of the reasons his first marriage had turned to dust around him. Settling on every good memory that had come before it, each happy moment he’d had with his eldest son and Haley marred by how their relationship had ended. By the choices he had made. 

“Actually, I retired when Hugo, our eldest, was born,” he says, watching as his ex-wife’s shoulders get tense again, “One of us had to, and Emily wasn’t ready to leave yet. So we eventually came to the decision that I should.” 

“You…you retired?” She asks, swallowing thickly as a bitter laugh pushes free from her throat, “You did the one thing that would have stopped any of this from happening if you’d just done it years ago when I asked?” She shakes her head and laughs again, “But, sure Emily wanted to carry on working so you retired no questions asked.” 

Aaron sighs, “Haley-”

“It doesn’t matter that my son and I had to hide for so long. That we had to live under different names and break off contact with everyone we knew. As long as you got to start everything from scratch and make the right choice this time it’s all okay.” 

“Haley-” he tries again, but he’s cut off by Emily this time, her fury clear from the way she grips his thigh, her blunt nails digging in through his jeans. 

“You don’t get to come into my house and speak to my husband like that,” Emily says, protectiveness flaring in her lungs, “I understand this is difficult-”

Haley scoffs, “Oh, you understand-”

“But you aren’t the only one who has been impacted by this,” she says, carrying on as if Haley hadn’t spoken, “We’re all trying our best.” 

She can see how tight Haley’s jaw is from across the couch, but she nods sharply, “Okay,” she clears her throat, “I know,” she screws her hands up in her lap, “I think it would be good if we tried to all get together again. Jack would…he would like to meet his siblings. But maybe not here.” 

Aaron nods, the tension in the room thick enough that he struggles to fill his lungs, “How about that park we used to go to? The one near Capitol Hill?” 

“That sounds good.” 

“Mommy.” 

Emily sighs at the sound of Hugo’s voice travelling down the stairs, his patience clearly running out. She looks at her husband and squeezes his hand, “I’d better go up and see him.” 

He nods and kisses her cheek before she stands up, and she smiles tightly at Haley before she leaves the room, not quite able to fill her lungs until she’s out in the hall. She takes the stairs two at a time, smiling when she sees Hugopurposely standing just inside of his bedroom so he keeps in line with her request to stay in there. 

“Hi sweetie,” she says, ruffling his hair before she steps into his room, “Are you okay?” 

He shrugs, his eyebrows furrowed as he sinks into his bed, “Is that Miss Haley?” 

She nods as she sits on his bed with him, gathering him up against her side, needing the comfort of her little boy, “Yes, it is.” 

“She sounds mad.” 

She closes her eyes as she presses a kiss to his head, settling them down so they are lying next to each other, “She is, honey. But I think she’s mostly sad.” 

He frowns as he looks up at her, “Did Daddy do something wrong?” 

She shakes her head, running her fingers through his hair, “No, baby. No one did anything wrong. It’s just…really complicated,” she says, unable to stop herself from smiling when he looks confused, “It’s hard. Like that big puzzle with all those tiny pieces that Aunt Tara got you for your birthday.” 

He nods in understanding and rests his head back against her chest, “I miss things being simple.” 

She smiles again, “Me too, sweet boy,” she says, kissing his head, soaking in the scent of him like she had done since he was just hours old, “Want me to stay until you fall asleep?” 

“Yes please, Mommy.” 

She sings to him until he starts to drift off, his body heavy against her as his breath evens out. She stays with him long after he falls asleep, content to stay in the relative peace she’d made in his room. She sighs when she hears the front door open and close, and then Aaron’s footsteps on the stairs. She closes her eyes and relaxes her grip on Hugo just enough that her husband would hopefully think she was sleeping, the thought of talking this through again, of having to discuss how complicated everything had become again, enough to make her cry. All she wanted was to lay here with her oldest and pretend it was just a normal night. 

If Aaron knows she’s faking it, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he leans over her and kisses Hugo’s forehead and then hers, whispering an apology against her skin before he leaves the room for a second. He’s back with a blanket that he lays over her before he kisses the top of her head one more time. He turns off the light and gently closes the door behind him, leaving her and Hugo alone and safely tucked up in his small bed. 

She falls asleep curled up around her son, hoping more than anything they’d make it through this.

___

March 2013

It had been hours of this. Hours of laying on her back, of being checked on by nurses and doctors as her labour slowly progressed. With each passing contraction she felt more on edge and the only things keeping her grounded were her husband and the thought they’d soon be meeting their son. 

She had a plan. She was going to spend as much of her labour on her feet as she could, letting gravity do its job as she waited for her son to make his entrance into the world. Hugo, it seemed, had other plans. 

She’d felt nothing short of ridiculous when she cried as her due date came and went with no signs of labour - not even a Braxton Hicks contraction which had been happening on and off for weeks. She tried everything to induce labour naturally, her doctor’s warning that she shouldn’t go past 41 weeks ringing in the back of her mind. Aaron bought her every type of spicy food possible. He went to a specific whole foods store to buy her tea, which the internet said would start her labour. They had enough sex to rival the early days of their relationship, with no small amount of manoeuvring and her pile of pillows to make sure she was comfortable. 

Nothing had worked. So her plan was torn from under her and she had no choice but to lay in bed as an IV delivered medication to do what her body hadn’t been able to do for itself. She knew it wasn’t her fault, that it was just one of those things, but it didn’t make it any easier to take. 

She’d wanted one thing about her pregnancy to be as she’d hoped it would be. 

She clenches her teeth to capture a groan, her grip on Aaron’s hand so tight she’s sure she feels his knuckles crack together but it barely registers as the contraction rips through her. She screws her eyes shut as she tries to breathe through it. Aaron rests his forehead against her temple, whispering comforting praise as the contraction reaches its peak and then fades. It had been hours of this. Her body pushed almost to its limit each time, and she was exhausted. 

“Fuck,” she exclaims, resting back against the bed again, “Fuck this sucks,” she opens her eyes and looks at her husband, something she refused to call a pout spreading across her face, “Why won’t he come out?” He opens his mouth to respond and she cuts him off, “And don’t give me any of that ‘you’ve made a comfortable home for him’ bullshit,” she grimaces, shifting her hips to try to find some relief from the discomfort in her back, “I can feel him in my fucking pelvis and I doubt it’s any more comfortable for him than it is for me.” 

Aaron simply leans forward to kiss her forehead, “Want me to get the nurse to come and check on you again?” He asks, his endless patience for her almost irritating. She nods and he kisses her forehead again before reaching over her and pressing the call bell on the wall, “You’re doing amazing, sweetheart.” 

She squeezes his hand tightly again when the nurse examines her, and she’s disappointed that she’s not much further along, the desire to meet her son even stronger than her desire for this to all be over. 

It takes another hour for things to change, for the contractions to get closer together and for the pain to become close to overwhelming, each pass of it through her body almost too much for her to bear. Everything she’s been ignoring for months starts to creep up on her, the fear that she wouldn’t be able to keep her little boy safe pressing down on her chest, her lungs tight as another contraction rolls through her. 

“I can’t do this.” 

She doesn’t even realise she’s spoken outloud until Aaron presses her hand between both of his, kissing her knuckles as the machine she’s attached to lets him know her contraction is coming to its end, “Em, you’re doing an amazing job. You’re so close - Hugo is almost here.” 

She shakes her head, “No, you don’t…” she trails off, her laugh close to hysterical as she looks at him, tears splashing down onto her cheeks, “He’s safe where he is. I can’t protect him when he’s here,” her voice cracks and she thinks her chest does with it, the pressure of everything forcing it to concave as she tries to breathe. Aaron cups her face, rubbing back and forth across her cheek, “I can’t do this. He has to stay safe.” 

Aaron stands up and sits on the edge of her bed and presses his forehead against hers, “Emily, you can do anything,” he says, kissing her before she leans in to rest her head against his shoulder, “You’re the strongest person I know,” he rubs his hand up and down her back, his eyes flicking to the monitor as she tightens her grip on him, her body tense against him as another contraction starts to build, “And I’ll keep you both safe no matter what. We’ll keep each other safe.” 

She shudders out a breath as she pulls back to look at him, her eyes shining as her lower lip trembles, “I think…I think it’s almost time.” 

He smiles softly, “I’ll get the nurse.”

___

She gasps as her son slips into the doctor’s waiting hands, the relief overwhelming as she collapses back against the bed. She barely pays attention as Aaron kisses her temple and then her cheek as he tells her how much he loves her, how proud he is of her. She doesn’t notice how the nurse on her other side pulls down her gown leaving her practically naked. 

All she is aware of is him. 

Hugo’s cry is loud and sharp, and as the doctor holds him up and passes him to her, letting Emily settle him against her chest, she feels a wave of love rush through her, her breath catching in her lungs as she looks at him. He was bright red and covered in god knows what, his dark hair stuck down to his cone-shaped head, and he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life. 

“Hi Hugo,” she whispers, kissing his head, “Hi. Look at you,” she looks up at Aaron, sure she’d be knocked over if she wasn’t lying down at the strength of the love in his gaze, and she cups his cheek, “Look at him, Aaron.” 

“He’s beautiful,” he says, kissing her head and then Hugo’s, “Just like you.” 

She looks back at her son, smiling as he continues to cry. She shushes him, resting her cheek against his head, “You’re okay, baby,” she says, “Mommy’s here.” 

“Would Dad like to cut the cord?” 

The doctor’s question is what reminds Emily that they aren’t alone, that it isn’t just the three of them in their own little world, and Aaron nods, kissing his wife and son one more time before he stands up. He pays close attention as the doctor tells him what to do as Emily continues to whisper to Hugo, telling him how loved he is, how much they’ve been looking forward to meeting him. 

By the time they are alone, what feels like hours later, Hugo clean and wrapped up warm in Emily’s arms, and her fresh out of the shower, she doesn’t think she’s ever been happier. She’s exhausted, sore in ways she didn’t know was possible, but she doesn’t think she could sleep even if she wanted to. All she wants is to sit and look at her son, to commit every single thing about his sweet face to memory, and enjoy this first night of his life. 

She looks up at her husband as he barely covers a yawn for the third time in as many minutes. He’s sitting on the bed with her, half behind her as he has his arms wrapped around the both of them, his excitement and happiness tinged with the sadness that followed them everywhere. The sadness that, for once, she wasn’t going to address.

“You should get some sleep, honey,” she says, unhooking one arm from around Hugo as she cups Aaron’s cheek, “You’re exhausted.” 

He chuckles, “You’re the one who gave birth, sweetheart,” he says, stamping a quick kiss against her lips, “You should get some rest.” 

She shakes her head lovingly, “I feel too wired to sleep,” she says, “You’ve been awake just as long as I have,” she kisses him again, “Get some sleep. We’ll both be here when you wake up.” 

She knows she’s hit on his fear in one shot, hours and hours of labour not enough to dull her skills, and he rests his forehead against hers, “You’ll wake me up if you need anything?”

She nods, her forehead knocking gently against his, “I promise.” 

It takes some manoeuvring for him to slip out from behind her, but they manage it without waking up Hugo. Aaron kisses them both and tells them he loves them before he settles onto the cot the nurse had rolled in for him. Emily has to stop herself from laughing when he has to curl up to fit on the small bed, at least a foot too tall to sleep on it comfortably. Despite that, he falls asleep the quickest she’s ever known him to, his arms wrapped around the thin pillow. 

“Daddy loves us so much, sweet boy,” she says, turning her focus back on her son. She runs her knuckles up and down his cheek, smiling when his face twitches against the touch. The fear she’d felt earlier that she couldn’t keep him safe returns in full force, stealing the breath from her lungs as she lifts the baby to kiss his forehead, her breath shuddering in her chest as she breathes him in, “I’m going to make sure you’re always safe, Hugo,” she kisses him again, her eyes closed as she rests her cheek against the top of his head, “No matter what.” 

[quinloki]

Charlotte Katakuri - BITTER

Requestor: Anonymous (you were wise to request this anonymously I think XD ) Reader Vibes Requested: AFAB she/her CW: I don't know how to warn this. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. It's short and SHARP.

Your scream of terror rang in Katakuri’s ears like a siren. Just like the mythological beast’s enchanting song, he couldn’t get the sound of it out of his head.

It echoed with every thump of his heart.

Your eyes wide with fear, the way you went ghost-white at the sight of him. Everything about him was monstrous to you, not just his size, or his fangs, or his lineage. His very existence within your home had struck you as wrong.

Things had been slow going between the two of you, since your marriage by Mama’s will nearly a decade ago. It had taken almost a year for you to each truly relax around one another. Months after that before you could consider what you did to be called cuddling.

Slowly, carefully, and steadily, the two of you had grown closer. Responsibility turned into affection, turned into trust.

Turned into love.

A sweet love that was the soft tangle of fingers as you sat together. A gentle love that was full of deep breaths and slow movements, consummation within the confines of what intimacy you could handle. A love that was akin to a tree, more than a flower. Slowly taking root, but sturdy and strong, branches hefty enough to cradle you both well.

It was all gone now.

He didn’t even have to ask why. He didn’t even have to ask how.

Slumping to his knees, Katakuri presses his forehead to the ground, doing everything he can to look smaller, to look less threatening, to look as fragile as he feels.

“I won’t hurt you.” He says, voice even and firm, held together by decades of practiced control. He repeats the phrase a couple more times, until the thundering of your heart calms a little. Until the shivering in your legs and arms aren’t skittering through the floor against his skin.

“I promise, I will never harm you.” He says finally, eyes and face still pointed toward the floor. He doesn’t have his scarf nearby, he hasn’t needed it while inside his home for a long time. He could use his power to get it, but if you’d lost enough of your memories that you didn’t even know what Devil Fruits were, he didn’t want to send you into a panic right now.

He could look ahead.

Should.

But he can’t.

Every ounce of his control is focused on his own heart, his own words. He cannot spare a drop of concentration for anything else, or he will fall apart. The perfect son of the Charlotte family, defeated by a single wail.

Countless battles. Internal and external. Enemies and weaknesses laid low and set as mortar and brick to separate himself from anything that could crack the mask he’d made.

Scraps of film were left on the floor. Shattered pieces of the remnants of your memory.

Left behind on purpose.

Left behind on command of his mother.

Left behind as a message, more than even the state you were in.

He had dared to put something above himself. Above his family. Above his mother. He had dared to love you so completely that only a fool would’ve missed how far he’d fallen.

To dare to love anyone more than his family.

This was the cost.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I wish to hear the tales of siren Lizzy driving men into rocks with disinterested lesbian asexuality! Those sound like fun stories!

Oh my god, like, the most recent event, I think I manic pixie dreamgirled a dear friend, who we'd met in weird circumstances (he and his brothers were notable town characters being small business owners with a visible presence and themselves as a trio came across a lot stranger than they actually were. A bestie of mine met his brother and married him and he's the nicest most normal guy, so his brother (much nerdier) became a sort of friend-brother-in-law and we became friends, but I'd reacted in shock and awe to my friend having met her husband by chance since I recognised them in a very silly way and when I was a teen had used their appearance for characters in a story on account of them being Notable Strange People In Town and I'd thought they were only background characters in my life forever until then and therefore fair game to take inspiration from.)

I was just being me at him (chatty, fun, extremely weird, trying not to admit I'd basically made up spy fanfiction about him and his brothers a decade earlier) and he also was sort of weird in a benign normal nerdy way so I didn't think there was anything strange, until I realised he was coming around regularly and bestowing quite large gifts and writing really really really nice birthday cards specifically to me (easy to tell when you're a twin and your twin also gets a present and card from him) which made me start to realise he miiiight have a crush on me, and then I thought about it some more from his perspective of meeting me and how I can be rather full on in person and he was a wallflower who rarely got any attention especially compared to his two more conventionally normcore brothers, and realised I'd accidentally enabled him up to the point that I briefly considered just marrying him to avoid the embarrassment if he did proposition me. But I sort of gently ghosted and just toned back the interaction to group chats and collective meetings and while I feel sort of bad and miss hanging out with a friend who is in town, it was probably very sensible because he was way too nice to accidentally destroy through awkwardness :P

since I'm biromantic and demisexual I do end up crushing on guys and giving anyone a really long time to shoot their shot because I can't tell if I'm just mildly crushing and it could be more or if it's going to turn into more but it is Always a catastrophe and makes me feel More Gay Than Ever in the aftermath and I know now after so many failed attempts I am Not Meant to date at the very least any guy who is excessively cis, het, shy, or normcore in interests because I just end up in a spiral about not matching them in any way whatsoever despite my surface ability to start crushing, and it causes an enormous communication gulf that they are never equipped to handle and I always end up feeling like I'm trying to explain myself to a brick wall until I give up and things fall apart, because in the same time I was giving them a run up, they had already fallen completely in love or else thought we should already be having tons of sex and were hurt I wasn't interested yet and couldn't SAY that so they get passive aggressive and super weird and - aaurgh. Sometimes I just want to be friends, also, but that can also be seen as interest from some people so then they hit a double brick wall where I only ACCIDENTALLY led them on and I sometimes don't even know myself which one it was if I did crush on them at least a little at first.

I do catch myself thinking sometimes that I should just shave my head to try and get some sort of visible barrier up XD

[profoundbondfanfic]

Born to be yours by zation [Explicit, 72k words]

Castiel finds a curious creature in his backyard. Or, The one where Dean wanted an apple but found himself a human instead (and also an apple).

Breathing Into You by casblackfeathers [Explicit, 110k words]

‘Beware the deep sea, that’s where the monsters come from.’ Dean had heard these words since birth, his father’s warnings shaping him into the man he is today. That’s not the root of Dean’s hatred for merpeople, though. Twenty years after the day tragedy had touched the Winchesters’ lives forever as well as the end of the Great War between humans and mer, Dean is still haunted by that moment. But loving the sea is just as much a part of him as the dread for the merfolk, so when he isn’t working at the local bar, he is there, underwater, immersed in the vast blue his mother used to speak of in her bedtime stories. Dean knows, however, that the sea can be as ruthless as it is soothing. When he is caught in the middle of a storm and faces the anger of the waves, the mysterious appearance of a stranger with blue eyes as clear as the waters Dean loves losing himself in forces Dean to question the truth behind his father’s old mantra.

carving deep blue ripples by dothraki_shieldmaiden [Mature, 85k words]

With his little brother at Stanford and his father searching out leads on the monster that killed his mother, Dean Winchester is left to hunt alone. It's fun, except in the ways that it really blows. Things start to turn around when he meets Castiel Novak, another hunter. Castiel is aloof and maybe a little too sarcastic, but he's good backup (and pretty easy on the eyes. Not that Dean's looking or anything). After a few hunts, Dean is willing to make his and Castiel's partnership permanent (and he's not exactly averse to adding another component to their partnership either. After all, he's caught Castiel looking at him just as many times as Castiel's caught him looking). But Castiel is hiding a secret, and it's so explosive that it threatens to not only tear them apart, but also tear apart everything Dean believes in.

Convenient Husbands by Annie D (scaramouche) [Explicit, 39k words]

"It's only temporary, right?" Dean says. "Just until you're healed up, and then we'll never have to see each other again. So what do you say, Castiel, do you want to marry me or not?"

Dragon Hunt by peanutbutterjelly-pie (Aleakim) [Explicit, 171k words]

What is a former knight fallen from grace supposed to do when one day, after almost a decade of scouring the outskirts of the kingdom for his missing brother, he finds himself confronted with a powerful, terrifying and also ridiculously weird dragon? Yes, exactly: team up with the guy and scam oblivious people out of their money! Easy as that, right? (In which Dean ends up stumbling upon a strange, blue-eyed dragon and before he even knows what's happening he is in way too deep to get out again.)

It's a Small World (aka the Worst Ride at Disneyland) by ireadhpinenochian [Mature, 45k words]

Dean's life didn't start out great. With his mom dying and his father taking him and Sam on wild goose chase after wilder goose chase to track down her killer until Sam couldn't take it anymore and ran off, it pretty much sucked. But now he has Cas. And Cas is great--perfect, even--definitely the best thing that's ever happened to him, even if he isn't quite human. He's been living so long in domestic bliss that he completely forgot to be worried about waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which is, of course, when his giant of a brother strolls back into his life sending Dean into a panic that he and Cas will have to uproot their perfect apple pie life if Sam finds out Cas' big secret.

Like Lightning Under Your Skin by A_Diamond [Explicit, 24k words]

Desperate for a way to save his brother from a demon’s clutches, hunter Dean does the unthinkable and seeks out a supernatural creature for help: a powerful lightning elemental, the kind he and his family should be killing. When his attempt to bind the elemental goes awry, he finds himself psychically connected to it instead. The creature’s emotions bleed into his; its pain echoes into him. Rather than finding the solution to saving Sam, Dean’s given himself a new and even more time-sensitive problem. He has to find a way to master the bond before the rest of the hunters decide he’s too far gone and put him down. The trouble is that the more time he spends connected to the elemental’s thoughts, the more he starts to wonder if they don’t have it all wrong. Maybe the creature, which calls itself Castiel, doesn’t deserve to be slaughtered; maybe the rest of its kind hadn’t deserved that, either. Or maybe that’s just Castiel’s voice in his head.

Man in the Wilderness by OneHundredSuns [Explicit, 68k words]

Dean Winchester is fresh out of Purgatory along with every other Tom, Dick and Wendigo that called the cesspool home. As the monsters lay waste to the Earth and eat anything they can get their hands on, Dean sets out to find his only remaining family so that they can hunker down and fight the assholes head on. He doesn’t mean to stumble upon Castiel Novak and his adorable twins in the middle of the apocalypse and he sure as hell doesn’t mean to offer them a ride to wherever they are trying to get to. But the world is a dangerous place now and he’s always been a sucker for blue eyes and cute kids. So he’ll help them out and just hope it doesn’t get him or them killed in the process.

Miasma by ValandraWrites [Explicit, 13k words]

Dean's grown up with a monster under his bed. They kind of became friends. Then they kind of became more than friends.

The Graveyard Shift by PurgatoryJar, riseofthefallenone [Explicit, 620k words]

Dean’s favourite coffee shop, The Graveyard Shift, is only open after the sun goes down. Which is perfect for him, because that’s exactly when he craves coffee the most while doing the overnight at the fire hall. The coffee shop’s owner is pretty perfect too, but it’s kind of a bummer that Dean never gets to see Cas during the day. In a world where the supernatural live more or less in peace with the rest of humanity, it’s a little impolite to ask Cas just what he really is - or what his dark past entails.

[physalian]

Timeskips (A Deceptively Tricky Trope)

Anyone remember when we all went to the theaters to see Endgame and the trailers actually fooled us into thinking all the action happened immediately after Infinity War? Then 15 minutes into the movie, the Thanos we grew to love/hate dies and the bomb drops: “Five…Years…Later”

It’s a shame that the movie didn’t properly explore the worldly consequences of losing half the population in favor of a Marvel victory lap through all its greatest hits. That our heroes could do absolutely nothing for five whole years, opening on a shot of a cold and dark cityscape — that was the best use and execution of a timeskip I’ve seen in recent memory, even if the rest of the movie didn’t follow through with it.

Timeskips are an effective way to age up characters or age past the end of an era of peace, or the healing after a tragedy (or the lifeless aftermath of one). Usually, your established heroes do their heroic thing, and anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to a couple years pass before the story picks back up again. Some may have died along the way, the political climate has changed, couples have had children, or babies have grown into their own characters, relationships have grown, begun, or fallen apart.

These damnable plot devices are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the author gets to skip sometimes decades of meandering plot and development to tell almost an entirely new story in the same universe, sometimes not even with the same characters who are now too old, too dead, or retired.

However, timeskips can also cause some massive confusion, missed opportunities, and fandom wars over whether or not the jaded and grizzled and depressed heroes we see on screen are, in fact, a realistic evolution from the last time we saw them (looking at you, Star Wars).

Sometimes, they’re used in a single episode, thrusting a present character into the depressing dystopian future so they can prevent whatever causes said future before disaster strikes (Teen Titans "How Long Is Forever?"), and all returns to normal by the time the credits roll. Sometimes, the author really wanted the drama and angst of a pregnancy, then got stuck with a baby that needs constant attention from its parents who can no longer go do Plot Things until the baby can take care of themselves (The Originals).

Sometimes it’s the jump between two eras of a series, where our heroes have had a couple years of practice and now we can make the tone a little darker and the action a little more visceral. Or, it’s expected of a multi-book saga that regularly jumps a year ahead with each edition, leading up to the big prophecy (Percy Jackson, Harry Potter).

The Fundamentals of a Good Timeskip

As requested by Anonymous!

Telltale signs of a dubious skip:

Audience is expected to care more about an undeveloped newcomer than the pre-existing cast, because the current cast does without explanation

Audience is “told” to accept Catastrophic Event without being “shown” how and why it happened

Characters die, break-up, disappear, marry, change teams, or change entire personalities for ~drama~ and no other reason

The Book You Never Wrote was way more interesting than the future you brought us to

The new plot depends on Events Unwritten, but never shows or explains Events Unwritten

Timeskip only exists because the author is unable to make the leaps in logic themselves and hopes you won’t notice

The legacy of past heroes is trashed completely for More Story

Signs of a successful skip:

Characters we know and love are still themselves, just a little older and wiser

Characters that do change do so logically, within reason, and could have been extrapolated from the last publication

Radical changes and the new hellscape you threw your heroes into is given ample screen time to show “How tf we got here”

The new world doesn’t disregard or ignore the legacy and victory of past heroes

Absolutely nothing of import or unexpected happened in the interim, except time

Anyone who dies off-screen won the story by dying of old age, or some other respectful avenue (popular with aging mentors and old masters, usually when their actor also passes)

Whether your timeskip succeeds or fails depends entirely on, in my humble opinion, how much story you skip and sacrifice to make the jump, and how radical the changes are from the past to the future. And, to what degree the skip serves as a means to an end or the centerpiece of the new story.

Meaning that since you leave weeks, months, years, or decades unwritten, how interesting was the Book You Never Wrote, and how badly would audiences need to read it to understand the jump from A to B?

If I’m writing a ten-year skip and half my heroes have died, half have ended wonderful relationships, two kids have been born, a known hero has become a villain, and an entire city’s been destroyed… that is a *very* interesting story I wish I had the opportunity to read, because it sounds like every character I fell in love with is about to become unrecognizable and very frustrating to follow now that I don’t understand why they make the choices they do — *if* I’m never shown evidence to support the leaps in logic.

If I’m writing a ten-year skip and all that happens in the interim is a minor child character is now a tween with a pretty average life, or my super-powered heroes have had only mediocre rogues to battle, or a character who began in the mail room is now a middle manager at their boring job, then, yeah, we can skip all that jazz and get to the good stuff. This is usually the setup for your “next generation” skip for any genre.

Good timeskips also depend on how readily the characters accept and acknowledge the changes that have happened off-page, and how much the future story now depends on the information the audience never received. If your plot and your characters constantly reference and argue over the Book You Never Wrote, your audience won’t be pleased to not have read said book.

I’m going to use specific media here because the nature of a timeskip concerns entire plots and my usual vague examples don’t suffice. How you write and implement one is entirely up to you and each of these have their staunch defenders, I just don’t like them and I’m here to explain why. Hopefully if you’ve seen at least one of them, you can use them as a shining example of what (or what not) to do in your own work.

The fandoms in question:

The 100

Star Wars

Percy Jackson

Last Airbender/Legend of Korra

How to Train Your Dragon

The Little Mermaid

—

The 100

The timeskips in question are between seasons 2 and 3, and between seasons 4 and 5. The first timeskip is a couple months between seasons 2 and 3. After a huge conflict (and easily the best season of the show by a country mile), shifting alliances, enemy-of-my-enemy, the best couple-that-never-was, the season ends with protagonist Clark unable to let herself enjoy the spoils of war because of the crimes she committed to make it happen. She leaves behind all her friends to go be a hermit, including deuteragonist Bellamy, who is Not Happy about this decision.

The problem: In between seasons, Clark hasn’t changed much, but Bellamy sure has. He gets a girlfriend, develops an entire relationship, only for this girl to get fridged within the first 50 minutes or so of season 3. He takes her death super hard and, with Clark not there, spirals into a bit of a blind-faith fascist turning on all his friends and becoming nigh unrecognizable. Without seeing the growing relationship with the fodder girlfriend, without seeing how hard life has been for him without Clarke, all his choices, all his beliefs, all his pontificating sound completely foreign and out of character and he does not recover until it’s almost too late. As he’s the deuteragonist of the show, you can only take yelling at your TV for all his stupid and OOC decisions for so long, when it could have been done so much better.

The second damning timeskip is five whole years between seasons 4 and 5. Bellamy develops another unseen romance up in space, his sister becomes a bloodthirsty underground queen, and Clark devotes her entire life to raising a little girl she finds.

The problem: Clark cares a lot more about protecting the little girl than anything else, a choice audiences can’t empathize with because we’re still siding with the characters we’ve watched grow and suffer for four seasons, making Clarke an incredibly frustrating character to watch.

Five-year timeskips are fine. I think I’m in the minority in hating this decision by the writers. However, when your characters’ motivations change so radically without you being able to follow that development, making their new choices seem incredibly inconsistent with who they’re supposed to be, the disconnect is super strong. We’re being told at this point to care about these strangers over the existing cast without ever having been shown why.

Star Wars

Timeskip in question: Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens. Enough time for Rey to look like a 20-something and, I believe, the exact same gap between the movies in the real world. The argument over Luke’s character has been beaten to death by now. We end Return of the Jedi with the promise of a galaxy in peace after decades of civil war between the Rebels and the Empire and the ultimate sacrifice from Anakin.

The problem: We open Force Awakens like the war never ended. There’s still stormtroopers, there’s still the Empire (though, now it’s called the First Order), there’s still Rebels rebelling. The happily ever after one would expect between Han and Leia is shattered because their kid went Dark Side. Their kid went Dark Side because… well, one side, the other side, and the unrevealed truth.

It’s less “Luke would never make these choices” and more “How do you expect audiences to believe Luke made these choices without seeing the pain and trauma inflicted on him to end up like this”. The casual fan only watches the episodic films. Luke ended one movie as a semi-optimistic war hero. He began the very next film jaded and traumatized enough to debate, and nearly go through with, murdering his nephew because of what he *might* do someday.

That anyone expected that to go over well was deluding themselves, but everyone knows these movies are a mess.

There’s also the disappointment in realizing all that Anakin lived and died for fell apart in less than 30 years. Who are these people calling themselves the First Order? Where did they get the funds, the resources, the platform to become as big a threat as they are? How did the Rebels fail so spectacularly at building a functioning government? How do they not have the funds, platform, and resources to buy better ships and equipment? How did no one realize they were hollowing out an entire planet to build another Death Star?

The Sequel Trilogy lost audiences when it refused to provide any explanations at all for *why* these changes happened. The movies don’t care about *how* Ben became Kylo, they just need you to accept that it happened. They don’t care *how* the First Order rose, just don’t look too closely or it all falls apart.

The skip between Empire Strikes Back to Return of the Jedi is also a bit sketchy, because Luke has done all his Jedi training off-screen and can just pull abilities out of nowhere, but the plot of Return of the Jedi doesn’t depend on having seen Luke grow.

Percy Jackson

I feel bad putting this here because it’s not nearly as egregious as the previous two, but because the original series was so good, these choices are that much more baffling. The timeskips in question: Sea of Monsters (2) to Titan’s Curse (3) and Last Olympian (5) to Lost Hero (6).

The books focus on a singular week or two per year, so Percy can age from 12 to 16 in time for the Great Prophecy by the end of the series. This series is filled with timeskips and unseen content, but the jump between books 2 and 3 is the most jarring. I just did a retrospective for both of them so if you happened to read that, I’m repeating myself a little.

The problem: At the end of SoM there is a huge shakeup in the realm of who will actually be the chosen one — a discarded chess piece has been revived and brought back onto the board. In the missing months, Percy has built an entire friendship and rapport with his would-be rival, and so many reunions were left unwritten between Thalia and the friends she left behind. It’s the depth of the missing content that really feels like they forgot to print a chapter in either book, particularly when she’s so important to the story.

Percy references quite a few times how good friends he and Thalia have become. Fantastic, on what page might I read that development, when the author spent quite a bit of time building up the presumption that you two would hate each other?

The other timeskip is the complete opposite. Last Olympian to Lost Hero is, I believe, only a month. Once again, we have a presumed happy ending and ultimate sacrifice completely torched for the sake of More Story. The original five-book saga culminates with the tragic death of a villain we’d watched for five whole books. His argument was the thesis of the first series.

The problem: As with Star Wars, everything that character died for is rendered mostly moot. There is evidence that his death meant something, in the positive changes seen in the lives of those that survived him, but he died preventing armageddon… and a month later Bigger Badder armageddon is on the rise.

I almost wish the timeskip here had been longer. A couple years, at the expense of aging up the heroes to their twenties. His legacy on the story is virtually nonexistent. When you look back at the horrible tragedy that was this kid’s life, all it amounted to, everything he fought for, everything he believed in and died for and lost friends for… bought only a month of peace.

The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

Obviously, the timeskip in question is between these two series, about, what, sixty years? Last Airbender ends with, once again, the world at peace, ish, with lots of cleaning up to do, reparations to make, and governments to reshape. In the gap between series, almost everyone we knew has passed away, or aged out of being useful to the plot. Aang, of course, had to die so Korra could be born.

In the first season, because I’m reasonably confident all they planned was one season, the 60 year interim sees a lot of radical changes. Fan favorites die, the old ways are lost, the status quo is nothing like it used to be. So how do they get away with it?

Firstly, the show doesn’t begin with the main villains having already conquered Republic City and trashing everything the heroes fought for. The entire season is a crawl, then a plunge, toward disaster. They let you enjoy the fruits of the old characters’ labor, see the world that they built, before the new threat attempts to burn it down.

Secondly, because almost the entire original cast is dead or absent, there are no relationships sorely missing context, and there’s no *subversive* twists to what the audience could extrapolate from the ending of the old show.

LoK did make some radical changes to the world, but, crucially, it didn’t change the surviving core characters — we still have a known point of reference through which to view all the other changes. Katara is still Katara, she’s just older. Zuko is still Zuko, he’s just older. Katara didn’t become a persnickety, bitter bat and Zuko didn’t launch the Fire Nation Invasion II and return to his angsty ponytail-era.

It also helps that Korra is, like us, an outsider to this strange new world, a perfect vector through which the audience can ask questions and get answers on how, why, and when everything changed. LoK, unlike Star Wars, cared and thought about the *how* and the *why*.

If you’re going to write a story about the next generation without compromising the legacy of the old guard, Legend of Korra is a solid example of how to do it convincingly, respectfully, and entertainingly, even if it did drop the ball on some characters *cough*Sokka and Suki*cough*

How to Train your Dragon

But an even better example? How to Train Your Dragon to How to Train your Dragon 2. It’s been five years, a massive risk for your children’s animated fantasy series, but it’s also been almost five years of real-world time. Those who were Hiccup’s age when the first movie premiered are still Hiccup’s age when they head back to theaters. Not to mention the optional Netflix shows to help fill in the gaps.

Once again, there’s no *subversive* choices made with the relationships. Hiccup is still with Astrid and they’ve grown out of their awkward teenage phase. Their personalities haven’t radically changed either, only matured, the main group of heroes have had time to foster deeper bonds.

There’s no surprise children, no important characters who got killed off screen, and the changes to their homeland seem reasonable and logical given the time frame. A place that once feared dragons is now dedicated entirely to their preservation and conservation.

This is a timeskip that took advantage of every benefit of skipping time. The audience can very easily fill in the missing years with their imagination, because the jump from A to B makes perfect sense.

Frozen and Frozen II relied on the same mechanic of the audience growing with the characters with that one musical number. I’m not a fan of the execution of either of these movies, see this post about Frozen’s convolutions, but the execution of the skip itself is well done. All that’s happened in the interim is Elsa getting a little more comfortable being a person, and time has passed.

The Little Mermaid

The gap between Little Mermaid and Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea double-skips. First, it skips ahead to Ariel and Eric having an infant Melody, then about twelve years later to Melody being a tween and the new protagonist of the story.

Why it works: Melody is remarkably like her mother and rides the line between endearing and annoying very well and the plot depends on the skip happening at all – twelve years removed from the ocean and Melody has no idea her mother was a mermaid. Ariel and Eric (and Flounder) have grown to become wizened and worrisome parents and absolutely nothing remarkable happened unseen between the credits of the first movie and the second skip in the second movie. They get twelve years of peace, respecting the first movie’s legacy, and it’s through the actions of characters we see on screen that start jeopardizing everything.

—

Another feature I didn’t touch on earlier is that, by virtue of being a musical, the opening song to the Little Mermaid sequel efficiently catches audiences up on all the necessary exposition, all the old familiar faces, and where everyone is now in about 4 minutes. Frozen II does the same.

The Percy Jackson books also give a “previously on Percy Jackson” exposition speedrun at the start of books 2-5 and notes any important details that occurred in the missing months (save the glaring omissions detailed above).

If your time skip is just a plot device to get from A to Y, a well-handled exposition speedrun to catch everyone up won’t offend anyone, so long as you do it tastefully. If your skip is the centerpiece of the plot and the “how did we get here” is the big mystery, jarring your audience with the unexpected future on the opening pages is the point.

Do your best to avoid awkwardly having your characters state “X years have passed,” in dialogue because it’s always obvious and you can do better. Have somebody reference their upcoming birthday so audiences can do the math, or an anniversary. “X years have passed” cracks the immersion, as your characters don’t know or care that a time skip has occurred.

Or, if you’ve written a narrating style that talks directly to the audience, the narrator can just say “X months ago we did Y in the last book, reader, you remember how fun that was?” 

—

TL;DR, terrible timeskips happen, in my opinion, when the writers are disinterested with the interim and want to get to the good stuff without providing a logical jump to get there. Or, they happen when the time the story skips to jeopardizes where it came from without explanation. Whether that’s undermining the legacy of the original hero, ruining relationships and killing fan favorites for *subversion points* and *drama*, or creating a world so far removed from what audiences expected that they’re left confused watching their heroes make baffling decisions based on development they’re promised did happen, but is never shown. It’s one thing if you take your wide-eyed hero and toss him into a bleak future where everyone’s shocked by his pessimistic outlook, it’s completely different tossing your hero into a bleak future and none of his friends seem to care.

[catsfellfrosh]

P.R.Brown and Rammstein

The fruitful collaboration of the famous photographer, designer and director from the USA P.R. Brown was not limited to creating covers for singles and video clips for Rammstein. They invited Brown to shoot their performance at three concerts of their North American stadium tour in 2022.

PR Brown's calling card is his experiments with various techniques. He used the so-called tilt-shift method, when parts of the photo look blurred, this effect is especially interesting in portraits.One of his favorite tools is the 150 mm manual split-diopter from Prism Lens FX, a glass tool that creates the effect of blurred refraction in photographs.Brown is sure that seeing him holding this object in front of the camera seems strange to viewers, especially now when the photographer has a huge number of different computer filters at his disposal.

Taking with him a Fujifilm GFX 100, several lenses, a diopter and went to Chicago, East Rutherford and Foxborough. The show in the recognizable style of Rammstein hid its "dark stones" for the photographer.

- Olli saved me a couple of times on stage. I didn't know the production very well, I had a very detailed briefing, but I forgot, - admits Brown.

Jens Koch was nearby and helped with the work, which was deservedly mentioned by Brown: "Rammstein have great tour photographers."

Brown was delighted with these three concerts and regretted that his participation in the shooting came to an end.

- If they are not having fun, then they are the best actors on the planet, because it seems like they are having fun on stage. And I have been with many bands, especially with such a long history, who hate each other. It’s rare to find a band that’s been together for so long and still talk to each other and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Most of them are like failed marriages that have fallen apart.

-I only did it because it was them. I love the band, the music, and the show. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of bands I’ve shot, I think they were the only band that ever completely bought my photo shoots. ...And then they come back and call me a decade later and say, ‘Hey, do you want to shoot a live show?’ There are very few bands that are so dedicated to the creative people they work with, and that’s amazing.

Brown says.source PR Brown – Naked with RammsteinExclusive , Interview / Author KidArctica / September 24, 2023

P.R. BROWNDirector and Photographer@baudarmuttConnection to Rammstein:– Designed multiple single covers– Did two major photoshoots for the band– Directed two Emigrate music videos– Photographed three of the 2022 NA shows

Handheld split diopter from Prism Lens FX

Paul on stage in Boston, by P.R. Brown

Explosive Schneider in New Jersey, by P.R. Brown

Till in New Jersey, by P.R. Brown

[domonicriley]

Using Nostalgia and Self-Reference in Movies

Watching any recent sequel to a legacy franchise can feel like you’re playing nostalgia bongo, with the amount of references and callbacks to previous moments from the franchise’s history. Think the mini Stay Puft marshmallow men in Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Frozen Empire, or the reuse of famous quotes in Alien: Romulus, not to mention the fact that Star Wars is now just a big Easter egg hunt that only references itself. But why are they like this?

Well, for a start, it’s partly to do with the way Hollywood likes to play things nowadays. In the past, they would take risks on untested new ideas, allowing talented creators to make some pretty amazing movies. They weren’t always successful, but they managed to find a balance between profit and artistic integrity. Now, they are far more risk-averse. Looking at a release slate for 2024 movies earlier this year, it was nothing but sequels, prequels, and spin-offs: Gladiator II, Deadpool & Wolverine, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Godzilla X Kong. Barely a single original idea was given a real shot.

In contrast, the list of movies released forty years ago, in 1984, was a very different picture. Popular franchises like Terminator, Ghostbusters, and The Karate Kid got their first start in this year, and are still going (for better or worse) four decades later. Has there been a breakout franchise in 2024 that will still be able to boast this? I doubt it.

This reliance on established franchises can be looked at two ways. Cinema doesn’t hold the appeal it once did. Home entertainment’s improved, and the choice of what to watch has expanded, with competition from streaming services, while studios continue to hurt themselves by throwing movies onto their own streaming platforms instead of giving them theatrical releases, or pulling them from cinemas early if they underperform. Why go to the trouble of visiting the cinema when there’s so much on offer in the comfort of your own home?

Then there’s the fact that sequels are a safer bet than starting out with a completely new and original idea, especially as the budgets for large moves have gotten out of control. No one’s willing to risk $200 million on the next Star Wars.

Having a pre-established fanbase ready and waiting to watch your movie is less of a risk than having to get people excited about something new. The problem is that this stops anything fresh coming to the fore and really taking people by surprise. This is further confounded by the way studios approach movie making now, with executives and producers taking a bigger hand in what gets made and how it gets made, stifling creative freedom and leaving little room for the next generation of filmmakers with the same vision as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Hoping to minimize risk, the studio just rolls out another entry from a legacy franchise, but this is not a certain win. Fandoms are quite forgiving, but in the past ten years or so, many have fallen out with the studios that control their favourite franchises, as many poor-quality reboots and sequels have taken apart the things they love. Look at the way Luke Skywalker is treated in The Last Jedi, or Tolkien’s world in The Rings of Power. Such bad faith entries have turned fans away, and made them suspicious of certain studios who want to keep making more out of these IPs.

One response to this by the studios is to try and reach out to fans with movies and TV shows that are as inoffensive as possible. These often lack much originality, relying on established characters, callbacks, and the power of nostalgia to make their audiences happy. Not only are they a symbol of a studio that’s messed up, but also of a franchise that’s running out of ideas. There are two recent movies that can illustrate this for me.

The first is Ghostbusters: Afterlife, released in 2021. The movie is as easy on its audience as possible. It came out a few years after the mess of Ghostbusters 3, which had been a disaster when it came out, almost destroying the franchise. Off the back of this, Sony, decided to take it easy with the next movie in an attempt to win back fans, taking no creative risks, and treating the original characters with respect, especially the death of Harold Ramis who played Egon Spengler.

I liked Afterlife for what it is, but what it is is a nostalgia-heavy film with so many references to the first two movies. What’s more, its sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, continues this trend, failing to cut its own path, and relying entirely upon the fact that it was a Ghostbusters movie to get people watching, rather than also being an entertaining movie in its own right.

The second movie is 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. After a hugely successful reboot in 2015, and a less-than-great sequel in 2018, the Jurassic franchise was starting to look tired. The idea of dinosaurs running around eating people has been done to death by B-movies, and these films were embracing Monsterverse pseudo-science more and more. What choice was left for them but to go with the nostalgia angle?

Unlike Ghostbusters, there was no need to appeases the fans, who were still invested in this franchise, the decision to bring back Alan Grant, Eliie Sattler and Ian Malcolm was more about giving a generic Jurassic World movie a unique selling point, bringing back characters who hadn’t been seen for decades. Unfortunately, they weren’t the centre of the movie, as they had to compete with the new heroes like Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, but at least they were not deconstructed in any way, by making Alan into a failed alcoholic. It was pure nostalgia for its own sake, and considering that Dominion managed to bring in $1 billion, it seemed to work. The problem is where can the franchise go now? There’s another JW movie scheduled for release next year, but it feels like this property has fired all of its shots long ago, leaving little point in a seventh entry.

As these two examples show, nostalgia can be a good selling point, but it also means that these movies don’t have much to recommend them outside of it. They might be enjoyable enough, and certainly not damaging to the franchise, but they don’t blow you away either.

So, how should franchises use nostalgia and callbacks?

That depends to some extent on why it’s included in the first place. When I see a Terminator movie or show, I want to hear someone say “I’ll be back”. When franchises have been going on for so long, they pick up little things that fans are waiting for, like how Star Wars always includes the line “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”, or the way Lethal Weapon’s Riggs and Murtaugh do their “on three” routine. If they weren’t there, it would be disappointing. The problem is when this is the only thing that a movie can do to get a response from its audience. I can remember several scenes and lines from Frozen Empire, but none of them are original in their own right. The first Ghostbusters movie, on the other hand, has many moments unique to that film.

Often by the fifth or sixth entry, a franchise simply starts to reference (or even parody) itself, hitting all the beats they think fans want, constantly calling back to earlier entries. It’s rather like a Build A Sequel workshop, where pieces from all the other entries are sewn together to make something that’s derivative of everything else. All the pieces are there, but there’s nothing unique about it.

This might seem like it’s only a small concern, but I think it leads to deeper problems. For one, it will relegate these franchise to history at some point in the future, when no one is around who remembers seeing the original when it came out.

These sequels will become irrelevant if no one knows what they are calling back to, and not only that, but where will the new audience come from? Would anyone who didn’t know the original Ghostbusters care about Frozen Empire? Would it inspire them to go check it out? Or is it just something caught in its own franchise loop?

Fan service can make sense, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It would seem the better option rather than a franchise completely ignoring its fanbase to try and find a new audience. But in order to live on, these IPs need to keep bringing in more viewers. They need to do the impossible of pleasing their existing fans while also opening up to new fans.

If that can’t be done, then perhaps it’s time for these franchises to come to an end, to leave the originals unspoilt for fans to enjoy, and for studios to do that thing they have become terrified of, but which they will need to do sooner or later to survive: create something new.

[rosanna-writer]

we said hello and your eyes look like coming home (9/?)

Summary: A canon-divergent AU where the bond snaps for Rhys on Calanmai, Feyre unwittingly accepts it, and Fire Night magic proves to be more transformative than anyone bargained for. Feyre drags a mate she hardly knows out from Under the Mountain, then puts him back together as war with Hybern approaches. Warnings: dubious consent, canon-typical sexual violence, canon-typical violence Rating: Explicit Chapter Word Count: ~3.6k

I'm not quite sure how to tag a trigger warning for this, so just a note that in this chapter, Rhys uses his daemati ability to force someone to vomit.

Some dialogue and the riddle are taken directly from ACOTAR book one.

Read on AO3 or you can find the ninth chapter below the readmore.

ch. 1 - the altar is my hips | ch 2. - an arrowhead leading us home | ch. 3 - by the way, i just may like some explanations | ch. 4 - can't not think of all the cost | ch. 5 - honey i rose up from the dead | ch. 6 - this mad, mad love makes you come running | ch. 7 - therein lies the issue, friends don't try to trick you | ch. 8 - it's not his price to pay | ch. 9 - is it chill that you're in my head?

There was a note of anxiety mixed in with everything else that leaked through Rhys's shields this time. My own heart hammering seemingly in time with his and my stomach churning, I paced the cell and counted my steps in a vain attempt to occupy myself. I nearly ripped apart the pallet of hay just to have something to do with my hands. Wisely, the guards hadn't left me anything sharp, but I longed for a rock or something I could use to scrape artwork onto the wall and settle my mind.

Eventually, Rhys's side of the bond quieted, and I suspected he'd fallen asleep. It seemed cruel to wake him if Amarantha had wrung him out so thoroughly. I left him alone.

When the dungeon was this silent, I felt the echo of the stag's magic inside me more strongly. It hadn't faded the slightest bit since Calanmai. The few times I managed to stop worrying about Rhys, my thoughts drifted back to the new immortality I'd been left with. If I ever got out from Under the Mountain, I'd watch my family get old and die while I stayed looking exactly the same. The few decades I had left with them seemed impossibly long to me now, but in a few centuries, it would feel like the blink of an eye. Wrapping my mind around it was nearly enough to give me a headache.

When Nuala and Cerridwen appeared an hour later, I nearly wept with relief that I was finally getting a change of scenery. I might have gone mad otherwise.

Completely silent again, they brought me to the same bathing chamber and repeated the process of stripping me down and painting me, this time extending the paint all the way down to my fingertips. The twins couldn't possibly know it, but the paint would obscure the tattoo if the glamour failed. And again, I let them work.

But this time, the bundle of fabric they held out for me could barely be called a dress for completely new reasons. And I really, really wished Rhys had warned me better.

Thin panels of gauzy white fabric barely covered my breasts. They flowed into a single panel at the front and back of my legs, secured by a gold belt that didn't give me much confidence I'd stay covered if I moved the wrong way.

Nuala brushed makeup over my face as Cerridwen did my hair, coiling it around a gold diadem she placed on my head. I took deep breaths and tried to curb my rising panic as they worked. By the time they finished, I was nearly unrecognizable. Rhys had mentioned potentially dressing me up during our first conversation in my cell, so this didn't come as a complete surprise—it was not knowing the full details of what was happening that was eating at me.

"You look horrible in white."

The twins faded into the shadows as I turned to see Rhys leaning against the doorframe, hands in his pockets and his face twisted in disgust. He was so still and silent that I suspected he'd been watching me for a while.

I expected to see hunger as his eyes swept down my body and he took in all the exposed skin, but there was nothing but revulsion. I didn't mind; it was better than being leered at. And then I realized I'd only ever seen him slide his hands into his pockets when he was making a show of something.

I saw through the act—Rhys was nervous.

I just raised my brows, resisting the urge to cross my arms and attempt to cover myself. He'd seen all of it before anyway. "Should I take that to mean you weren't the one who picked this out?" I said, my voice sharp.

"I was. You looking horrible and making a mockery of your so-called virginity was the point." I bit back a retort that I could have figured that much out for myself and just waited for him to explain. He didn't seem the least bit frantic, which could only mean we weren't in a rush. He continued, "We're exploiting the loophole that you never had to be sober when you heard the riddle."

That explained the instruction not to drink anything that he didn't hand to me personally—I understood where he was going with this. "But you're not actually giving me anything stronger than water?" Somehow, the words came out calm and not like the desperate plea for reassurance they were.

"Precisely," Rhys said, and I let his apparent confidence steady me. It might have been an act, but it was a good one. "The evening's entertainment will be humiliating the drunk human. Amarantha will taunt you, saying it's such a shame you can't handle faerie wine because the riddle was so simple. I couldn't see another way she'd give you something easy."

The revealing dress made it obvious enough what sort of humiliation was in store for me. I'd force myself through it if it meant another shot at the riddle—I could guess what it had cost Rhys to change Amarantha's mind so quickly, and I wouldn't let that go to waste.

There was just one problem. "Rhys, I— I've never actually been drunk before," I said, cheeks burning.

His eyes went wide with shock, and he swore under his breath. Perhaps I'd said the one thing that could shred his cool demeanor to ribbons. "How old are you, Feyre?"

"Nineteen." I still didn't quite know him well enough to read all the emotions that crossed his face in quick succession, but now really wasn't the time to discuss this in detail. We had work to do. "But that doesn't matter, I'll be able to pretend. I just might need a bit of help."

He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly gathering himself before looking at me again. "I won't let you fail."

I considered that for a moment, wondering if it was just reassurance or there was something else he was getting at. "If the performance isn't convincing will you…step in?" It was vague, but I wasn't sure how exactly to ask.

"Step in?"

"Take over with your daemati abilities. Unless…the Night Court won't let you do that to me?"

Rhys stilled. Voice soft, he said, "You would trust me enough to do that?"

"Yes. Without hesitation." I thought it was obvious—if I didn't trust him, I wouldn't have been nearly so composed after being forced with no explanation into a dress that left me so bare and exposed.

His throat bobbed. He reached for me, then glanced at the paint on my body and dropped his hand, as if thinking better of smearing it. "I thought you might hate me for planning this without asking. I wanted to explain, but she was….demanding last night. I managed to steer the conversation back to the riddle, and I took the opportunity while it was there."

If he'd done the opposite—given up a potential advantage to spare my feelings—I might actually have hated him. Flinching away from hard choices would damn us all.

"I can handle anything as long as you're on my side."

"You shouldn't have to."

I felt myself tense up—that was a dangerous line of thinking, and one I was too familiar with. For a moment, it was as if I was back in the cabin, slinging a quiver over my shoulder even though I shouldn't have to be the one to feed my family. My hands seemed to curl into fists of their own accord.

We would not fall into that particular trap today.

"You didn't answer my question. Will you be able to take over if I need you to?"

Something in my voice made Rhys stand a little straighter, and I caught the briefest flash of the soldier he'd been centuries ago, before becoming High Lord. I'd never seen it before, but it seemed to be exactly what we needed from him to get through this.

"I will. Daemati abilities aren't connected to the Night Court."

It was exactly the answer I'd been hoping for, and a bit more of my nervousness faded. I even managed a smile. "Then let's solve a riddle and get home tonight."

I watched the smirk bloom on his face as he ceased to be the male I knew and became the Lord of Nightmares. The mask was firmly on as he purred, "The festivities await. Allow me the honor of escorting you."

I followed Rhys through the halls, walking close behind him but not touching. With him near, the mating bond seemed to uncoil again. Despite being about to enter a lion's den wearing nothing but scraps of too-sheer fabric, I hardly felt any fear.

It didn't keep me from shivering in the cold, though.

My feet were half-frozen from the stone floor, but I gritted my teeth and waited for them to go numb. It was better this way—no one would think I could possibly be a threat if I couldn't run. I just kept my hands at my sides and attempted to look as unbothered as I could. As we passed through the doors, I opened a crack in my shields for Rhys.

The same music from when I'd first arrived Under the Mountain was playing in the throne room again. It was as crowded as I'd ever seen it, though everyone gave Rhys—and by extension, me—a wide berth.

There was something satisfying about being the only one in Rhys's orbit, in a strange, instinctual way. It was probably just due to the mating bond, but I liked being the only one close enough to touch him in a crowded room. At the very least, it made all the gawking easier to ignore.

I followed him to the dais where Amarantha sat, Tamlin at her side as always. I half-listened as Rhys bowed and wished her a good evening, just watched Tamlin for a reaction again. He continued staring straight ahead as if he'd been turned to stone. Coward.

I schooled my features to look faintly bored as Amarantha took in the sight of me. She broke into a cold grin. "Rhysand, you must get your eye for fashion from your lowborn whore of a mother," she said.

I didn't fully understand the insult to his mother, but Rhys just inclined his head and said, "I'm flattered you think so." Polished as ever, he sounded as if it didn't bother him in the slightest. But I felt the truth of his rage through the bond.

"Feyre dear, turn around so we can appreciate the view from the back as well," Amarantha said, making a show of holding her hand out so the ring with Jurian's eye pointed at me. I bit back a retort about how kind it was of her to ensure that everyone here had an unobstructed view.

I stepped out from behind Rhys and did as she asked. He took advantage of the brief pause in the conversation to slip into my mind and answer the question he must have heard. She was an extraordinary seamstress.

When it became clear she wasn't getting much of a reaction from anyone, Amarantha dismissed us with a flick of her hand and an irritated, "Enjoy my party."

Rhys walked over to a table laden with food and drink, and I followed at his heels like a dog. The faeries that had been standing around it cleared out quickly. He reached for a bottle, seemingly at random, and filled a goblet.

"Wine?" he said, offering it to me. In my head, he added, It's safe. I shook my head anyway, trusting he understood I was just doing it for show. He pressed the goblet closer to me. When he spoke again, Rhys dropped his voice low in that way that had heat pooling in my lower abdomen, even though it was very much not the time for that. "Try it. I think you'll like it."

I gave him one wary look before snatching the goblet from him and chugging it. The liquid inside tasted of nothing but water. As I swallowed every last drop, I tried to ignore the chuckles of the faeries who were watching us. When I lowered the goblet, I wiped at my lips with the back of my hand. The smear of liquid from the goblet was dark red.

But my head was still perfectly clear.

I forced out a giggle that sounded nothing like me at all. It must have been convincing because there was a flicker of Rhys's approval down the bond as he poured another glass. But instead of passing it to me, he placed his free hand on my lower back.

I let him herd me towards a chair and perch me in his lap. It was a relief to finally get my feet off the cold floor, and more than anything I wanted to press every inch of skin to him I could, even if it was just to leech some warmth. I kept my back straight, shrinking from his touch, but it was so damned difficult not to give into the urge to do the opposite.

As much as I appreciate hearing those thoughts from you, please refrain from shouting them at me when we both need to concentrate.

Even in my head, his voice sounded a bit strained. I was seated too close to his knee to feel if he was hard or not, and before I could dwell too much on that particular line of thought, he was pressing the goblet to my lips again. I let him pour water down my throat until I'd drained all of it.

When he lowered the goblet, I took in the stares and the giggles from the partygoers. Amarantha was leaning over and whispering something to Tamlin, whose blank expression hadn't changed. I didn't want Tamlin to want me, but it enraged me to see no signs of remorse for starting the chain of events that led me being a plaything in his worst enemy's lap.

I held onto that anger as Rhys wrapped a possessive arm around my waist, let it help me look indignant instead of comfortable. I went stiff, and he chuckled in a way that sounded so utterly unlike him that I shivered.

But the discomfort I felt from his side of the bond was the farthest thing from amused.

Feyre. Amarantha wants to make you dance while you hear the riddle. Will you be able to? The music will pick up soon.

Rhys didn't need to specify what kind of dancing it was. I didn't hesitate to say, Yes.

His mind wrapped around mine again, just as it had when he'd forced me to lick his shoes. The apology didn't come in words, just another wave of feeling down the bond, wrapped up in his own sense of self-hatred for not preventing this and territorial anger at everyone leering at me.

I didn't blame him in the slightest.

The strange, otherworldly music got louder, and that was my cue. Rhys said something smug that was more for the benefit of the crowd than me, but I was so focused on keeping up appearances that I barely heard it.

I stood up, trying to look unsteady on my feet. Another spark of approval down the bond told me it was working. The increased stares made me flush deeper, which could only help make this convincing.

I turned to face Rhys as he spread his legs wide and leaned back in the chair. He tucked a hand behind his head, and the lazy smile on his face might have been the most obnoxious thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I pretended to stumble, reaching out and grabbing the top of the chair to steady myself in a way that pushed my breasts towards his face like an embarrassing accident. Rhys laughed, and others followed.

My focus narrowed to just his violet eyes, and everything else fell away. I canted my hips towards his and started to move, letting myself believe we were the only two people in the world. The mask on his face didn't slip, but I saw the truth of him under it.

His mind curled more tightly around mine. I didn't have words for what passed through the bond in that moment, but I could sense the way his entire being was poised to catch me if I fell. I might be the one dancing, but we were in this together.

Feyre, you look too coordinated. Move less in time with the music before they suspect something.

I adjusted as he said, and another flicker of relief down the bond let me know it was enough. The music was already off-kilter, distinctly faerie in a way that set me on edge. I wasn't sure how much longer I'd have to keep this up.

Do they expect me to vomit, Rhys?

Possibly.

Then use your abilities to make me. It will be suspicious if I don't.

Thank the Mother, Rhys didn't hesitate. His talons plunged deeper into me, taking complete control. I couldn't move of my own volition—breathing, blinking, and even the beating of my heart only happened exactly as he willed it.

I was an observer in my own body as he moved my legs in shaking steps around to the side of the chair. There was no nausea as invisible hands bent me over, just the burn of bile Rhys forced up from my stomach. I threw up on the floor.

Amarantha was saying something, but it was a struggle to focus on her words and not the sour taste left in my mouth. But as soon as the thought crossed my mind, the taste disappeared—also Rhys's doing. A few more wobbly footsteps, and I was standing between his legs again, facing the crowd.

She's getting ready to give you the riddle. I'll keep hold of your body so you can focus on what she's saying. Is that alright?

Yes. Thank you.

My ass jerked backwards towards his groin as I writhed again, clearly on display. A few faeries here and there looked faintly sick, but most seemed amused. Amarantha smiled right at me and said, "Don't let it be said I don't hold up my end of a bargain, Feyre. Here's the riddle I promised you." Her grin went wider than I'd ever seen it as she added, "It's a shame faerie wine is too strong for you to remember it tomorrow."

I cleared my mind, focusing and memorizing every word as she spoke, even as Rhys made my hips move in slow, inelegant circles.

There are those who seek me a lifetime but never we meet,

And those I kiss but who trample me beneath ungrateful feet.

At times I seem to favor the clever and the fair,

But I bless all those who are brave enough to dare.

By large, my ministrations are soft-handed and sweet,

But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat.

For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow,

When I kill, I do it slow…

As she sat back and laughed, I'd never felt more useless. Rhys had said this was supposed to be simple, yet I couldn't think of anything that resembled what she'd described, not in the slightest. Mother above, if this was supposed to be easy, I shuddered to think what else she'd had in mind.

Rhys's hands were on my waist again as he pulled me back onto his lap. I let his touch ground me. His talons pulled out of my mind gently, returning the control back to me without it being so sudden I'd react involuntarily and give the ruse away.

Despite having no idea what the answer could be, I let myself bask in the victory for a moment. Just having the riddle in my head meant that Rhys and I had won, and we'd done it right under Amarantha's nose.

Perhaps Amren had been right when she said my mate and I should be unstoppable together.

This time, the brush of Rhys's mind against mine felt like a friendly cat rubbing affectionately against my legs. I took that to mean he'd heard my thoughts and agreed. Now it was just a matter of enduring the rest of the party. All things considered, it didn't seem like too much of an ordeal if it meant I could stay this close to Rhys for a few more hours.

I turned the riddle over in my head as Amarantha went back to taunting Tamlin instead of me. Rhys continued to smirk and poured a few more glasses of "wine" down my throat. I did my best to look like I was struggling not to fall over.

I'd truly thought the worst was over until the throne room doors slammed open. The crowd murmured as the Attor dragged in a sobbing faerie and dropped him right in front of the dais. The faerie didn't even get up off the ground.

"I caught the summer lordling attempting to escape through the caves to the Spring Court lands," the Attor said. It sounded positively gleeful, its tail twitching with excitement like a dog's. "What would you like done with him, my queen?"

Amarantha's eyes snapped to Rhys as she commanded, "Find out why, so I can decide."

I'd been a fool to think the night was anywhere close to over.

[terriblepersongreatseamonster]

I’ll be honest, when Kylo first meets Rey the whole thing from him knocking her out to her waking up restrained and having their first face-to-face interaction has always felt a bit rapey to me.  I think it’s one of the big reasons I’ve been staunchly anti-Reylo for so long.  However, having now fallen to the Reylo side and rewatched the movies from that perspective, I have a different take on that first meeting and their subsequent interactions.

First, before I dive into everything, I want to address the age gap.  I wish Rey hadn’t been 19 when they met.  It just makes the whole ten-year age gap a little hard to stomach (even though it is a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away, and Ben has the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old).  I wish she’d been a little older, or that the gap hadn’t been so huge if they were going to insist she be 19.  Plus, how does that whole sharing-a-soul thing work?  Did Ben have a complete soul for the first decade of his life, and then as soon as Rey popped into existence his soul ripped in half and yeeted itself across the galaxy to find her?  (There’s probably an actual official answer to this particular question, but I haven’t really looked into it yet.)

Okay, let’s go back to Ben.  This was the son of Han and Leia, and they are two of the biggest deals in the New Republic.  They love Ben, but they don’t have a lot of time to be parents.  Anyone who’s had parents who were in leadership positions knows how much time is sacrificed to be available to others.  Ben spent the beginning of his life sharing his parents with the entire galaxy.  Plus, roughly around the time he came to be, Leia was off training to be a Jedi.  I’m not sure if she was still training after he was born, but from everything I’ve found, she quit her training sometime around then.  The woman might be a badass, but there are only so many hours in a day and so many places she can be at once.  

There’s no doubt in my mind that Ben was raised to have manners.  He’s the kid of leaders, he was probably in etiquette lessons before he could fully form sentences.  

I have no doubt that Ben witnessed his parents showing each other physical affection, but who knows how often that happened.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Han and Leia spent more time apart than together because of their roles in the New Republic.  On top of that, I’ve always felt that there was a layer of slight aggressiveness to their relationship.  It’s not bad, but it could be very confusing to a little kid.  This is what Ben spends the first decade of his life observing.  

Then, right as he reaches the age of ten, he gets sent off to hang out with his bachelor uncle to learn to be a Jedi.  I know that in the now non-canon material, Luke was married, but in the current canon, it seems that his marriage exists only in his dreams.  Given the Jedi issues with love and attachments, I sincerely doubt that Ben and his fellow padawans were given any kind of sex ed or instruction on how to treat someone they might be attracted to.  

So, Ben becomes Kylo, and while there are women who work with him, none of them are his soulmate.  He has zero dating experience and he only has his memories of his parents’ relationship to give him any idea of how to treat his soulmate.  I think he knew from very early on that the other half of his soul was out there, somewhere in the galaxy.  

By the time we reach The Force Awakens, Kylo is 29, and barely holding it together.  Ben is still in there, fighting hard to break free.  When he reaches Takodana in the search for the map, I would not be surprised if he sensed the missing piece of his soul and that’s how he found Rey so easily.  He was literally drawn to her like a magnet. 

When she starts shooting at him, he flicks away the blaster bolts.  He could easily have bounced them right back at her causing wound or death, or even stopped the blasts as soon as they started (much like how he did with Poe at the beginning of the movie).  He takes a surprisingly long time to actually put a stop to it.  And you get this sense that he’s trying to figure out what to do with her.  He observes her and even paces around her frozen form.  The guy is huge and intimidating, it would be enough to terrify anyone.  And Rey is already on edge from what happened at Maz’s castle.  

When Kylo knocks her out, he doesn’t just let her collapse onto the ground.  He’s right there catching her as she falls and then he sweeps her up in his arms, rather than having his underlings take over.  If he’d thought she was just some random girl, this action wouldn’t make sense.  I think, at that moment, he wanted to be as physically close to his missing piece as possible.

She comes to, restrained in this terrifyingly unfamiliar place, and the big bad of the galaxy is watching her.  He’s not touching her, he’s not even that close, but he is there and he’s still observing.  Still trying to figure her out.  As soon as she makes the comment about the mask, he pulls it off and they’re finally face-to-face.  When you watch, there is almost a subtle Gollum/Smeagol type fight going on inside him.  Ben is there, fighting against Kylo, and you end up with a very tense scene.  

Kylo doesn’t make a great choice using the words, “I can take whatever I want” and then immediately probing her mind.  Yes, this is non-consensual and scary.  But as soon as she tells him to get out of her mind, I think Ben takes over briefly because he doesn’t even question, just obeys.  He’s trying so hard to get a read on her.  And then the Kylo part of him takes over and tries so hard to pull the information from her.  

There’s an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor is reading Madame de Pompadour’s mind, and she starts reading his.  He’s shocked by this and she tells him, “A door once opened may be stepped through in either direction.”  This is exactly what happens between Rey & Ben/Kylo.  

Also, I just want to point out that there is a big difference between Poe and Rey’s interrogations.  Kylo is aggressive and angry with Poe, but he’s much more restrained with Rey.  In fact, by the time their interaction ends, he’s absolutely shaken by how Rey has responded, and you can see the fear in his eyes as he realizes he’s experiencing something completely new.  Rey can read him almost easier than he can read her.

Throughout the rest of the movie, their interactions are intense.  Kylo throws her against a tree.  And then he fights with Finn.  He screams and rages against the other man,  He beats Finn, and tries to take the lightsaber, but the saber flies past him and into Rey’s hands.  Ben almost manages to surface.  The rage is gone, and you can see how intrigued he is by this new development.  The way he looks at her is a complete shift from the way he looked at Finn.   Their lightsaber duel is not nearly as brutal as it should be considering the fact that he’s far more experienced with the blade.  He could use his powers to disarm her, could break her, and he doesn’t.  He fights with her, and it’s like he’s trying to get a read on just how skilled she really is.  He even tries to convince her to let him teach her.  That’s not something you say to someone you hate or want to kill.    When she wounds him, he just keeps getting back up until the earth splits and physically separates them from each other.  

He lets her go.  As wounded as he is, he’s still a very strong force user, and I think it’s very possible he could’ve pulled her back, could’ve dropped her in the chasm.  He could’ve ended things right there and then, but he doesn’t.  

From the first time he and Rey lock eyes on each other, he never looks at her like he looks at anyone else.  The anger, the hatred, all of it isn’t there when he looks at her.  There’s fascination, annoyance, frustration, and by the time we get into Last Jedi there are the beginnings of love in his gaze.  She’s his missing piece.  His soul is complete when he’s interacting with her.  

Kylo is barely there at all when he interacts with her.  Their first soul bond, he tries to order her to bring him Skywalker, but you can tell the order is half-hearted at best, and he immediately drops his hand and you see the shame in his face.  I suspect he’s been beating himself up about how he interrogated her, and realizes he was just about to pull the same shit again.  

Ben can’t fully break free, but he’s still there.  When he slips the glove off and they touch, that’s all Ben.  Kylo isn’t there at all.  (And then Luke had to break in and ruin a perfect moment.) He never denies her accusations that he’s a monster, and even sits quietly and listens when she pours out the whole story about what happened in the cavern.  His actions and behaviors with her are the closest we get to see Ben Solo for the majority of the trilogy.  

At his heart, Ben wants to be the kind of man he knows Rey deserves and I really do think you see him making a genuine effort to become that, even if the road to get there is rocky.  They share a soul, and I think it’s tearing both of them apart for the majority of the trilogy because they can’t seem to figure out how to get on the same page.  

I think Kylo/Ben was wrong for how he behaved at the beginning, and I'm not trying to make excuses for him. However, I do think he genuinely regretted his behavior and tried to be better.

[accio-halley]

The Sun Will Rise

PART 2

Remus Lupin × reader

contains mature content

tw: lots of angst, some cursing, alcohol, smoking, no smut..YET :')

Word count: 2100+ish

Part 1

Remus walked back to his apartment in a complete haze, not even noticing the joyful people on the streets or the world around him. He had just found the Potter’s, two of his very best friends, home in ruins and heard the news that the couple had been murdered. And after a quick conversation with Albus Dumbledore, learned that his other dear friend, Sirius, had been arrested for murder of Peter and betrayal of James and Lily. And Remus felt useless, he had been locked away in his werewolf state during the full moon the previous night.

His head felt like it was spinning. As he lit a cigarette to help him stop his nerves from shaking, he couldn't help the thoughts that were rushing through his head.

What would he do now?

Who would he be with?

How would he cope?

“This isn't real..." He mumbled to himself as he continued to walk, his mind racing.

Remus reached home and stumbled inside, his mind still a complete blur. He had to get away from his thoughts, and the only way that he knew how to do that was by getting incredibly drunk as quickly as possible.

He didn't even take his coat or shoes off before he grabbed a bottle of firewhiskey and started to down it. He had to get away from the pain.

Remus didn't care what people thought of him now. The love of his life was gone, and so were his best friends. Earlier, he had felt like he was going to burst into tears, but now he just wanted to drown those feelings with alcohol. He didn’t want to feel a thing.

Remus kept on drinking, barely able to think about anything else. He just wanted the pain to stop, and this was the only way that he could come close to doing so. Every time he drank, the words that haunted his mind went away. Every time he smoked, he was able to forget for a moment that his life had fallen apart. He spent the rest of that day on a drunken bender and chain smoked like a freight train.

The next day was spent very similarly. He immediately began drinking as soon as he was out of bed. That afternoon, he received a letter.

With his heart racing, he quickly snatched the letter and opened it up. He read it over a few times, struggling to focus his eyes long enough to actually understand the words that were staring back at him. He hadn't considered a memorial service for Lily and James- the thought had been too foreign and painful for him to bear. As much as he didn’t want to, he knew that he had to attend. He had to honor their memory and say goodbye.

Remus tried his best to sober up after the drunken bender he had been on. He went to the bathroom and splashed cold water in his face. He looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize himself. His facial hair hadn’t been trimmed in weeks, his hair a shaggy brown mess, his hazel eyes were heavily lidded, tired, and devoid of any emotion. It was as if he had aged a decade in a matter of days. It was no surprise, really. After all that he had been through.

He took a deep breath and looked away from the mirror. He couldn't stand to see that face anymore. But Remus knew that he had to get his shit together and get ready for the memorial service.

It felt like an eternity since Remus had taken a shower and even made any attempt at looking decent. After a shower, he dug through his wardrobe and chose some of his nicest clothes he owned for a funeral. Black pants, black jacket, black shirt. He combed his hair for the first time in a week. He was no where near prepared for this, for the memorial service of the two people that were the closest to him, but he couldn’t miss it.

Taking a deep breath, Remus walked out of his bedroom and towards the door. He didn't have much time to waste before the memorial. He had to get to it and say goodbye. Just say goodbye.

Remus walked into the church where the memorial service was being held and was amazed by the amount of people that were there. There was not very many empty seats remaining in the chapel. He quickly took a seat towards the back, not wanting to attract any attention to himself.

He knew that he must look awful- and the looks that some people shot him certainly confirmed it. He had no idea how he was going to get through this. He was tired of being the strong one, but he was also tired of being the weak one. He was just tired. Tired of everything. Tired of life.

Remus tried his best to keep it together as the memorial service underway, the tears pricking at his eyes and his heart breaking at every moment. He was overwhelmed by the emotions that were running through his body, struggling not to break down in front of everyone. He had never had to say goodbye to anyone in this sense before... and now he was saying goodbye to two of the most important people in his life. It felt like his heart was being ripped out, breaking open, and spilling out onto the church floor.

Remus's heart faltered and dropped to his stomach as he recognized a familiar, beautiful face. It felt like the world had came to a screeching halt around him. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, with her familiar pale blonde hair and kind smile. Fair, porcelain skin and those emerald green eyes that he remembered so well. She was a radiant beam of sunshine in the dreary, dark, rainstorm he called life. There, in the front of the church, was Pansy.

As Remus looked at her, he wanted to walk over and talk to her so badly. His heart longed for her so badly. It had been so long, so many weeks, months, years. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see her smile and her brilliant green gaze on him. He wanted to hear her melodic laugh and her sweet voice. Pansy was dressed in a beautiful black dress that contrasted her pale skin beautifully. She had aged over the past few years she had been away, but she was as beautiful as ever. Even as she weeped over their fallen friends.

Yet, Remus couldn't find the courage to face her at the end of the memorial service. He wanted nothing more than to go to her and comfort her.

When the memorial service was over, Remus watched her as if he was in a trance- her beauty and elegance was stunning compared to the way he looked. They had both changed in the time since they had last seen each other, but Pansy still looked as stunning as the first time that he met her. He could see the sorrow on her face as she mourned the loss of two of their friends.

Remus’ focus on Pansy was broke as Professor McGonogall approached him.

“Oh, Remus, I am so sorry.” His former professor cried as she pulled Remus into a hug.

Remus was frozen as she pulled him into the hug. He blinked a few times before registering what his former professor has said. The unexpected embrace broke his heart even more.

"Professor... you're here..." Remus said, his words barely coming out of his mouth as he returned the hug.

"I'm so sorry." She said.

Remus barely realized her words, his feelings of sorrow and grief spilling out all over again.

“Thank you.” Remus murmured.

When Professor McGonogall walked away, Pansy was behind her waiting to speak to Remus.

Remus froze. His world stopped.

"Remus," Pansy muttered, her voice wavering as she stepped towards him. "It’s so good to see you..."

He couldn't believe that she was talking to him again. It had been so long since he had even laid eyes on her, yet the familiarity of her voice just swept him away. It sent butterflies crazy in his stomach and goosebumps over his flesh.

Remus cleared his throat, his heart thudding in his chest.

Remus was overwhelmed with a flood of emotions. The devastation of the events that had taken place.

James and Lily dead.

Sirius in Azkaban for betraying them.

And now Pansy was back.

He was overwhelmed with a flood of emotions, and he just couldn't believe that he was seeing her. Pansy was back, standing right in front of him after all this time. After everything that had happened.

Remus felt like the world was spinning, and his heart was pounding in his chest like never before. He didn't know what to say. He felt too overwhelmed to say anything at all. He has no clue what to say to her.

You have to say something. Anything, you idiot!

Pansy’s heart broke as she took in Remus’ state. He looked very weathered, tired, sad, broken. His hair shaggy, his facial hair grown out, his normally soft, kind green eyes were tired and bleak. He looked like he had aged so much in the past two years Pansy was away at university. He was only twenty one but he had lived a lifetime of sadness, heartbreak, and devastation. He had become a broken man.

"It's... good to see you too, Pansy..." Remus replied, his voice even sounding hollow.

"I... uh..." Pansy started, her voice shaking. "I'm so glad you came."

Remus gave her a small, weak smile.

The pain in Remus’ eyes was apparent, the look of sheer heartbreak as he stood in front of her. He felt so inferior to her. It appeared that over the past two years, Pansy seemed to be thriving, living her best life, and as beautiful as ever. While Remus continued to live in the past and merely exist each day, not truly living his life.

"I've missed you, Remus," Pansy said, her voice uneven, “It is so good to see you again.”

She hesitantly placed a comforting hand on his shoulder which caused his heart to thud even harder, his stomach twisting in knots. He felt lightheaded, as if he might just pass out right there in the church.

"I've missed you too, Pansy..." He replied weakly.

“Would you like to… I don’t know… Catch up?” Pansy asked stiffly.

"Yes... I would." Remus whispered.

He was still too overwhelmed to say much. He just wanted her to be close to him again.

He wanted her to hold him. Love him. Comfort him. He wanted her to make him feel safe in the world again. She had always done it in the past, as his best friend, but now he needed her even more than he ever had before. He loved her and he couldn’t deny his feelings any longer.

“Where would you like to go?” Pansy asked.

She had no where to stay. She was in town for the memorial, her apartment was hours away in the city where she was studying at university.

"We could go to my apartment?" Remus suggested nervously, “I have a sofa I can sleep on. You could sleep in my bed.”

He had to be careful with his words, not wanting Pansy to think that he was trying to take advantage of the situation. He just wanted her to stay with him. He wanted to be with her. Alone with her. He was feeling too overwhelmed by everything to even think about going out. He just wanted to go back with her. To catch up. To talk. To be close.

He just wanted her to hold him. Love him. Support him. Comfort him. He wanted her to make him feel whole again. Make him feel safe in the world again. He just wanted to be with her. Have her close to him. Catch up. Talk.

To make the pain go away.

He had never stopped loving her. And he never, ever would. Even if she was oblivious to his affections.

"Alright... my apartment," he whispered. "Let's go."

A/N: Apologies for the delay in posting. I’ve been struggling with mental health but feeling much better. I’m hoping to have more posted in the near future. Just be patient with me.

Also, I would love to receive some requests if anyone had any. <3

Thanks to everyone for the support. 🖤

- halley 🫶🏻