#it's hard to choose a piece bc everything is so spoilery

[hedwig221b]

hii can we have a sneak pic into your current work ? 👀

hehe love ya ! have a great day <3

Have a treat, sweetie, this is another piece of a fic for the loveliest @hotgirlstiles

He was done and set up to go. The bag at his feet, the passport in his pocket.

Derek didn’t move.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Peter sigh and fold his arms, though the man didn’t say a thing. He heard Derek’s racing heartbeat. The stench of his apprehension and grim anger soaked every corner around them.

Suddenly, there were steps. Small and quiet, as if the person tried really hard not to be heard.

Derek’s head snapped to the side. His throat tightened at the sight of the omega peeking out of the corner. With his heart beating out of his chest, Derek lifted his hand.

“Come here,” he begged.

Ignoring Peter altogether, Stiles walked briskly towards him and pressed himself against his chest, folding his arms on Derek’s back. He wasn’t crying but took deep breaths where his nose was buried in Derek’s neck.

Derek wrapped his arms tightly around his frame and put his lips against Stiles’ ear.

“Listen to Peter, okay? I trust him. I wouldn’t leave you with someone I didn’t trust.”

“Okay,” said Stiles barely above a breath.

“I’ll try to be quick,” Derek promised hotly.

Stiles tensed a bit, took a deep breath, and extracted himself from Derek’s arms. He didn’t ask where Derek was going, for how long, or why. He just smiled politely and nodded.

It wasn’t his smile, not the one Derek knew. The wolf wanted to take Stiles and shake the truth out of him, to scream and beg until Stiles told him what had happened between the kiss and him waking up.

Do you regret it? Did you forget it? Do you think it was a dream? Do you want more?

Derek stared at him for a couple of seconds, then grabbed his face, and pressed a searing kiss to his cheekbone. It lasted a second, even less. Then, again, eternity would not be enough for the wolf.

Without a word, without a glance, Derek turned around, grabbed his bag, and marched out of the house.

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[cannibalisticskittles]

What do you think of Saeran's after ending? I honestly cannot believe he chose forgiveness in such a short time....

(nick don’t look at this one yet it’s spoilery)

oh that aspect was bullshit of the highest caliber. it’s softened a LITTLE BIT because of the sheer fact that 1. papa choi (and rika and v) still does face legal consequences and saeran doesn’t seem to be opposed to that at least, and 2. seven is unceasingly angry with papa choi so at least SOMEONE recognizes the severity of what happened!!! but... oh my god. this turned into a long rant and for that i’m sorry, but oh my GOD.

like, okay, if it was just rika and v, that would be one thing. tbh i’d always thought that, once he was out of mint eye and in a space where he could process everything and recognize how wrong the things rika did were... after working through that, eventually he would have decent odds of sympathizing with her, if only a little. like, not to the point where he’s cool with her, he’s never going to get to a place where he plays happy family with rika and v, or even allows them in his life as occasional ‘friends’ or whatever, no way. they’ve gotta vamoose (to a cell) for the sake of his mental health, i think anything else would just do more damage.

but given the history he has with rika, how much he believed in her cause and how much he just plain cares about Helping People Who Are Hurt... whether it’s merited or not, i can see him forgiving rika eventually, at least to an extent. so i think i’m okay with the broad strokes of saeran’s forgiveness towards rika and v, at least.

(in v’s case, i can’t believe my headcanon that i’ve had for years was validated — the idea that if saeran forgives v, it’s with a mindset of ‘wow you’re pretty pathetic, huh. just... totally spineless. you’re not a mastermind after all, you’re just... kind of an obsessive loser with a martyr complex who consistently picks the most harmful choices. i guess this is the best i could expect from you, so..... i’m choosing to focus on moving forwards from this, too.’ i’ve never thought that saeran would sympathize with v, regardless of whether forgiveness entered the equation, and it is SO funny to see that reflected in the after end. he really does just look at v as a sad, strange little man.)

and i understand that there are times when forgiveness can be much more about the person doing the forgiving than the person being forgiven, and saeran has spent years and years and years being blisteringly angry because the feud rika manufactured with seven benefited her and mint eye. i can see how he might be just........... tired of spending so much of his life and his energy on anger. his dad’s a terrible person, no one’s questioning that, so maybe at the end of everything, he just wants to move on and not be exhausted from always being scared and angry.

.....BUT.

HIS DAD BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF HIM. NEARLY TO DEATH. MOMENTS BEFORE THE FORGIVENESS HAPPENS WE WERE GETTING SCREENS WITH SOUND EFFECTS OF THE IMPACT(S) HAPPENING. WHAT THE /FUCK/.

like, the concept of letting go of your anger and choosing to forgive, conceptually, is one thing. it’s quite another to sit through that long sequence of SAERAN BEING BEATEN TO DEATH AND NEARLY SLIPPING AWAY and then also having so sit through and SUPPORT (in the dialogue choices) not only forgiving but sympathizing with THE MAN WHO TRIED TO CAUSE HIS DEATH AND IS STANDING THERE WATCHING HIM DIE

at the very least i wish mc’s responses to papa choi had been... colder. she gets one or two lines to emphasize that she thinks he’s scum, but there’s too much “i feel sorry for you.... how empty your life must have been to reach this point.... if only you’d made better choices...... if only you could find love in your heart now.......” no???????? i wish it was at least skewed more towards “listen, you’re a murderous brute and you deserve everything that’s coming to you but i’ll leave it at that since my boyfriend is trying to not let his trauma consume him and i’m trying to not let the injuries you inflicted on him be fatal. you should be groveling at his feet for this saintlike display tho, you miserable sack of shit.”

god i’m so. mad about it. i was even pleased with how cheritz had tackled something similar earlier! the conversation you have with rika and v where the mc learns that rika killed the twins’ mom in self-defense, and rika talks about how even though her own mother never showed a scrap of love for her and was a terrible person by all accounts, the idea of someone doing to her mother what SHE did to the twins’ mom makes her skin crawl, and she knows that despite everything, she’d view her mother’s killer as a monster. so even though the twins’ mom was an abusive shitheel, rika is convinced that saeran knowing she killed his mom is going to drive an immovable wedge between her and him, bc she assumes saeran‘s feelings towards his mother mirrors rika’s feelings. and man, i thought maybe cheritz was finally doing better at portraying this sort of thing because hey, people often DO hold very complicated feelings towards their abusers! rika knows her mom was awful but part of her still craves that love she never got, and if her mom died or was killed, she would still grieve! that’s a decent portrayal of a really complicated and nuanced idea AND it’s another important step for rika to take if she’s serious about taking responsibility!

annnnnd then everything else happened.

like...... i look at it and i can almost understand it. saeran has spent his life in pain and misery and fear and anger, being beaten by his mother, hiding from his father who he knows will kill him if he’s found... and when he sees his father, i think this might be him letting go of the last of his sense of responsibility for this? it’s never been his fault that his parents are shit people. he was made to believe that it was his fault, but it’s not. and now, he can look at his father and realize all his father’s flaws and faults, realize that if, after everything he himself has been through, he can still crawl through the bullshit and make the choice to learn and grow and love, then the fact that his father has not done that is his father’s own choice, and that’s....... pretty sad and empty. and he pities his dad for it. i break it down like this and i start to nod along with it. the pieces SEEM to fit together!

but OH MY GOD HE’S BEEN TRYING TO KILL YOU FOR YEARS AND HE’S ABOUT TO SUCCEED AT KILLING YOU NOW, UNCONDITIONAL FORGIVENESS MIGHT SOUND GOOD IN THEORY BUT IN PRACTICE IN THIS MOMENT IT IS AWFUL

it’s just... bad. and if they hadn’t made mc ALSO embody this saintly, selfless forgiveness, maybe it would’ve been less hard to swallow, but papa choi’s line about how both mc and saeran sincerely believe he can change.......... even tho he follows that up with ‘i mean, i can’t change, that’s utter nonsense, but it makes me sort of wish i could,’ that doesn’t feel like enough acknowledgment bc i just wanted to yell that i DON’T think he’s capable of change and i DON’T think he’s worthy of ANY measure of goodwill and i AM going to punch him in the trachea