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pedropascallme · 8 months ago

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The Good, the Bad, and the Better II

Pairing: gunslinger!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Summary: "You stood, walking into the main room to see the Millers sat at the kitchen table, conversing in hushed tones. They stopped speaking when you approached; Joel kept his gaze down, and Tommy shifted to look at you, offering a polite smile."

Content: Mentions of crimes? Is that a warning? If I missed anything please let me know!

AN: Hi this took forever to edit because I love overusing adjectives. Anyway this is part 2, part 1 is here! I likely won't be updating this series super often because I'm way too busy but nevertheless I persist.

You learned quickly that this was not a house of God.

The Miller boys were…brash, put lightly. It wasn’t shocking; of course, two grown men, unmarried and in a territory where anything could happen, and often did, were going to eat, drink, and be merry on their own accord. But you were startled by Ellie’s delight at being included in their fliting and fighting. You listened for hours on end as El and Tommy hurled insults and laughed while Joel looked on with a glint of humor in his eyes, never cracking a smile; the men drinking beer and Ellie sipping sarsaparilla, her hand dwarfed by Tommy’s as she tried her best to beat him in an arm wrestle.

You didn’t mind, in all honesty, but the culture shock was something you hadn’t expected. Maybe you should’ve known that your aunt’s friends wouldn’t be gentlemen to the highest degree, given her track record and the company she often kept, but it was better than sitting at home and waiting to join your parents in the Heavens—death by boredom and self-pity.

Despite the disorder, you found solace in the moments you were granted now, in Texas. The sun was radiant, adding natural blush to your cheeks and making you feel truly alive in the midst of all your losses. And the company was, though chaotic, far from bad. You continued to teach Ellie the hand games you used to play with the girls at church, Tommy watching idly, his foot hitting the floorboards in sync with the rhythm of your hands smacking together. You did, truly, have a soft spot for the younger girl. It was something that felt familial, the thought of two orphans living under the same roof and sharing the experience of adventure and the wild west—or maybe it was just because she made you laugh till your stomach hurt, tears creeping out of your eyes when she made you cackle with glee, the taste of the salt on your face finally associated with joy instead of sorrow.

Tommy, too, was increasingly easy to be around. He was polite, for someone who lived in such a frenzied manner, and seemed to genuinely mean it when he waved good morning, putting breakfast in front of you first when the sun rose.

“How come I never get fed first?” Ellie whined, still in sleep clothes, knees tucked into her chest as the sun crept in through the windows, heating the house.

“Ladies first.” Tommy winked, serving you before reaching over to drop down Ellie’s plate in front of her.

“I could be a lady!” Ellie spread herself out, arms and legs wide as she slumped in her chair.

“Do ya wanna be one?” Tommy arched a brow, feeding himself now.

“…Just want some damn eggs…” She grumbled.

But Joel still made you out of place, still gave you that uneasy heat in the bottom of your stomach that you had grown accustomed to pushing down. He stayed mostly quiet, even when it came to rough housing; his looming presence felt more adjacent to violence than Tommy and Ellie’s wrestling, and his blunt, grunted responses to their insults made your heartbeat pick up just a bit. He barely addressed you, opting to care for the horses while you ate, leaving for town shortly after and returning after dinner. You didn’t know where he went, where he found himself on the long days under the Texan sun, and all Ellie ever told you was not to worry about the work the Millers did.

You heard Joel say your name once or twice on occasion while you readied yourself for bed, Ellie snoring behind you on the mattress you shared, unable to pick up any other dialogue between Joel and Tommy from the other room.

You hated to admit it, so you didn’t, but hearing your name fall from Joel’s lips excited you more than anything else ever had.

~~~

Texas, November 1847

“I don’t understand—how will I know if the next card will be the right number to help me get to twenty-one?” The cabin was quiet, save for your conversation, and you heard birds circling nearby, calling down at the nothingness of the fields below. Joel and Tommy had left after breakfast, and Ellie used the silence to her advantage, finally teaching you the games Tommy said would create a poor influence.

“You don’t! That’s the point—give me your cards.” Ellie snatched the stack of cards in front of you, shuffling them together with her own and dealing them out again. “It’s all luck, that’s all betting is. Joel says it’s cheat or be cheated, but I think it’s fun.”

“He doesn’t seem to say much else…” You muttered, peaking at Ellie over your cards, “Oh—uh, hit me.” You tried to remember the correct terminology for the game, making El smile up at you.

She passed you another card, “He’s not so bad. Don’t know why you don’t like him.”

“Who said I didn’t like him?” You felt defensive, “I never said that. It’s rude to talk about people when they aren’t in your presence.”

“Ain’t it also a sin to gamble?” Ellie looked devious, and you bit back the urge to toss your cards at her.

“I don’t have money down. And I don’t think Joel likes me.” You countered. “Never even looks at me.”

“That’s just what he’s like,” Ellie echoed Tommy’s words from a month prior, and you still didn’t like how they sounded, “Quiet type.”

“I think it’s rude.”

“So you don’t like him.”

“I like him fine. Just wish he would address me. Wonder sometimes if he even knows my name.” You felt heat creep underneath your corset when you recalled that he did, in fact, know your name, and the memories of hearing him say it in hushed conversation with Tommy when they thought you were only made you feel warmer.

“Uh huh,” the same devious look returned to Ellie’s face, and she revealed her cards to you—a perfect 21, “I win.”

You heard the patter of hooves outside, a whinny, and then the sound of boots hitting the dusty ground. Joel and Tommy pushed through the door, respectively stoic and jovial. You noticed the guns strapped to their legs, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in your own skin; why did they need those?

And why did you want to watch Joel pull the trigger?

They weren’t anything like the hunting rifles your father had owned but never used. They looked like props, shiny and decorative, but all too heavy on the belts of the men in front of you to be anything but the real deal.

Maybe they just liked hunting in style; you pushed the thought from your mind, supposing that ignorance would be bliss.

You watched Tommy take a handful of coins from his pocket, placing them on the table in front of Ellie, who delighted in running her fingers over the metal. You stayed seated, curiously stealing glances at the money. You nearly jumped when you felt a tap on your shoulder, turning to see Joel standing over you before he reached out his hand to offer you a coin like the ones Ellie and Tommy were giggling like school children over. You placed your hand over it shyly, feeling the cold of the metal where it met the warmth of Joel’s hand.

“Keep it.” He turned before you could ask what for, let alone say thank you.

You looked at Ellie from across the table. She just smiled.

~~~

You spent the following morning at the small desk in the corner of your bedroom, writing notes to your aunt and describing in less than stellar detail the events of the past month, asking how New York was and ensuring that she knew how deeply you missed her. The paper was old, and the ink nearly dry, but it was all you could find in the house and felt it would be a waste not to use what you had so luckily stumbled upon. You pushed the letter out of the way, putting down the pen and watching it roll back on the wood of the desk. It hit the coin Joel had given you the day prior, and you sat staring at it for a moment; why on earth was this clouding your mind so much? It was just a coin, a dollar piece—Ellie hadn’t seemed disturbed by the wealth the Millers had brought home yesterday, why should one dollar cause your hands to tremble?

You knew why.

You knew it was because of the mystery, the sudden understanding that these men were likely insincere, despite your best efforts to see the best in everybody. You knew it was because of how the coin complemented the tanned skin of Joel’s hand when he had gifted it to you, and the way you could still see the imprint of his thumb against the stamp of lady liberty. The thought of Joel keeping one of the coins with the sole intent of giving it to you made you turn scarlet.

Your first crush had been an older boy at church; his hair was dusty blonde, and you liked the way he sang his hymns. And then there had been the boy who worked at the stables in town, who tried to steal a kiss from you when your father stopped to talk to the man who ran the place. There was the man who worked at the shop down the road, and the other boy from church. And of course, the boy on the ranch next door that your mother insisted you bring fresh bread to whenever she had made enough, pushing a basket into your arms and encouraging you to find yourself a lifelong connection.

But they had all been so…plain.

You felt dirty, knowing that deep down you harbored any sort of feeling for a man who wouldn’t even look you in the eyes, one so much older than you with a hint of gray in his beard and calloused hands, silver gun strapped to his hip and money you didn’t know the source of in his pockets—but maybe that’s what made it fun this time, instead of harboring a guilty conscious about whether or not you were good enough for him, you were left wondering whether or not he was good enough for you.

It was a complete role reversal, a situation that turned the tired trope of your incessant need to be a good, God-fearing young woman in order to appeal to someone on its head. You were already good enough—great, even. Better, at least, than he was.

And at the very least, it was more interesting than any other crush you had experienced.

You stood, walking into the main room to see the Millers sat at the kitchen table, conversing in hushed tones. They stopped speaking when you approached; Joel kept his gaze down, and Tommy shifted to look at you, offering a polite smile.

“Where’s El?” You asked when you realized they wouldn’t speak unless spoken to.

“Off somewhere.” Tommy was casual about Ellie’s outings. You felt almost jealous of how easy it was for her to go off exploring on her own, taking a horse—her horse—and spending her days wild and free; you wondered what life would have been like for you if you had been granted that type of liberation growing up.

You supposed you would be much more like your aunt.

“Oh,” you tried not to show your disappointment at the younger girl’s absence, or your anxiety at being left alone with the two men currently in your presence. You spoke directly to Tommy, facing him to speak rather than leaving your words ambiguous in the direction of both men. Joel didn’t seem to care, not that you’d be able to read his expression properly if he did. “I have a letter for my aunt. Will you mail it for me?”

“You can mail it yourself today!” Tommy’s grin grew wider, “You’re goin’ on an adventure, girly.”

“What?” You couldn’t begin to hide the surprise in your voice. You hadn’t left the house since you’d arrived, opting to familiarize yourself with the space and the patch of land surrounding it, and the thought of leaving made your stomach churn just a bit.

"You have land, ever think to check on it?" Tommy teased, though he clearly sensed your distress with the way he pulled another chair out from the table, beckoning you silently to sit. You did, crossing your ankles and clasping your hands in your lap.

“When? Now?” You prodded, trying to maintain a shred of dignity, but feeling antsy.

“Slow down, now—in a bit. Y’ever ride a horse before?” Tommy narrowed his eyes at you playfully.

“No.” Joel interrupted before you had a chance to open your mouth.

“I—yes, I have.” You tried to ignore Joel, side-eyeing him while you answered Tommy’s question.

“She’s not takin’ a horse.” Joel was gruff, and you liked the way his accent paired with his deep voice, but that didn’t quell your confusion.

“C’mon, Joel—” Tommy raised his shoulders, something you noticed he did when arguing with his brother.

“No. Too dangerous.” Joel leaned forward, “Not worth the risk.”

Tommy let his shoulders sag, looking between you and Joel. He let out a defeated huff. “What, then—she ridin’ with you?”

With you?

“S’what makes the most sense.” Joel shrugged, nonchalant, and reached for a bottle of something on the table before taking a swig. “Safer.”

You think this may be the most you’d ever heard the elder Miller speak in one sitting, and you didn’t know whether to be honored or threatened that he was talking about you.

“I don’t…I can’t ride that well,” you muttered, feeling as though it was only fair for you to get a say in the outcome of this argument, even if you were agreeing with Joel, “Joel’s right.”

Joel and Tommy locked eyes, and Tommy raised his hands in defeat, before silently leaving the table to prep the horses.

You sat quietly next to Joel, sneaking glances, and listening to him swallow the remaining liquid in the bottle he had in front of him. You felt hot again, unsure of why you had agreed to share a horse—unsure of why it was Joel taking you in the first place, why Tommy couldn’t be your guardian for the day, why you didn’t just take the cart they had picked you up from the train station in.

“Y’alright?” You jumped at the sudden intrusion from your thoughts, looking up at Joel, who stared back at you.

“N—yes, I’m fine…How are you?” You tried desperately to make an awkward situation less awkward, still almost frightened by Joel’s presence despite the way it thrilled you. Joel made a face that neared a smile but still managed to come off as more of a sneer.

“Doin’ fine, darlin’.” He stood, finding his way outside to help Tommy, leaving you to reflect on how stupid you must look trying to engage with him.

When you mustered up the courage to leave the shack and locate the two men, you found Joel mounted on his horse, Tommy winding the rope they had used to keep the animal close to the house around his fingers. Joel looked statuesque; high and mighty, wide shoulders sending a shadow behind him that you let your shoes toe at in the dirt. The suede of his hat barely hid the graying hair he had pushed back underneath it, and as you studied him atop the white, speckled horse, you found yourself thinking of the Bible verse that had scared you so much as a child, about death and his steed. You felt your thighs tremble and buried the thought.

Tommy snapped you to attention, whistling low.

“You ready?”

“I—yes.”

“Got that letter?” He smiled at you. You patted your apron pocket, reassuring both Tommy and yourself that the note to your aunt was tucked away safely. “Atta girl. Get on up there, then.” Tommy nodded towards the horse and an uninterested Joel, and you hesitated. There was no mount, no saddle for you, and the Millers seemed to forget that you were shorter than they were—and wearing a dress. You heard Joel huff before he dismounted, boots landing hard on the dirt, crunching rocks underneath him as he walked towards you and, wordlessly, picked you up.

“Joel!” You felt red rush to your face, his arm wrapped tightly around your waist until he stood parallel to the ever-patient horse, where he maneuvered you bridal-style and waited for you to get your legs around the horse’s midriff. You couldn’t look up, stunned and somewhat frozen in place, refusing to make eye contact with an amused Tommy as Joel himself got onto the horse with ease in front of you.

“El jumps. For the record.” Joel muttered at you, “Hold on.” You hesitated again, raising your arms before an impatient Joel delicately connected his hand to one of your own, pulling it against his stomach. “I don’t bite, darlin’.” You could see the white of his teeth when he spoke. You scooted closer, pressing your chest into him slightly as if to test the waters. He didn’t budge.

“Best get a move on,” Tommy reminded you of his presence, “Wanna be back before sundown.”

~~~

It had been years since you had ridden a horse. As a child, you knew girls whose parents were wealthy, and could afford the luxury of buying their daughters their own personal mare to parade around. You tried not to feel envious; you were happy for what you had—for everything God granted—but you couldn’t help the flare of envy that rose in your throat when you saw girls braiding the dusty manes of their horses, putting Queen Anne’s lace and dandelions in their tails.

Joel was silent. He hadn’t said a word since Tommy had seen you off on your excursion, and part of you was glad. You could focus on the slow sound of the horse’s hooves against the landscape and the way the breeze knocked the short plants over themselves. You could feel Joel’s stomach expand with every breath he took, your hands still planted cautiously around his waist. You found yourself leaning forward into him every few minutes, the comfort of his back, the friction of his jacket against your cheek keeping you grounded. You jumped where you sat when he turned slightly to spit the chewing tobacco he had in his cheeks.

“Sorry.” Joel grumbled a short apology, and you lowered yourself back onto him hesitantly.

“It’s alright.” Your breathing fell in sync with his. More silence followed, and you tried to think of ways you might break the tension that surrounded you. “Joel?”

“Mm.”

“Why did you give me that money?” Your words were quiet, nearly vanishing into the suede of his jacket. Joel didn’t respond for a long while.

“Wanted you to have it,” He shrugged, and you moved with him, his shoulders lifting your neck slightly, “ain’t like you got a job.” His head turned just enough for him to view you in his peripheral, and you looked up at him, not fully convinced by his answer.

You didn’t believe him. “Got land.”

“Not the same, darlin’.” Joel returned his attention to the path in front of him.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Pardon?”

“The money.”

Joel sighed, as if he had been anticipating your line of questioning. “Y’ask a lot of questions.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re difficult, too.” He spoke with an air of amusement.

“Yeah? Well, you’re rude.”

“Why’s‘at?”

“You don’t address me properly, you don’t look at me when you speak, you drink too much, and you manhandled me earlier.”

“That all?” Joel snorted, amused by your distaste.

“You aren’t a gentleman.” You removed your arms from his waist and placed them at your sides.

“I’m not?” Joel was taunting you now, entertained by your outburst.

“You’re not.”

Joel purposefully kicked at the horse’s side, encouraging it to speed up and cross haphazardly over a brush. You bounced, quickly returning your hands to Joel, wrapping them tighter around him this time, and feeling his stomach vibrate as he chuckled.

“Joel!”

“You’re no peach yourself.” Joel brought the horse to a trot once more.

“I’m—what?”

“You ain’t as proper as you act, darlin’. It ain’t hard to tell.”

You spluttered, taken aback by his attack on your virtue. “I hardly know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” Joel brought the horse to a stop, jumping off before reaching out a hand to help you down. “Pretty thing like you in that fancy dress, roughin’ it with three strangers out in th’middle of nowhere.” Joel didn’t wait for you to reach for his hand; instead, he placed his palm on your waist and maneuvered your leg over the side of the horse to let you jump off. “I know you like those card games El taught you. I think you like the idea of letting yourself get a li’l corrupted.” Joel’s eyes were like molasses under the sun, and you averted your gaze, watching his lips move when he spoke instead of trying to make eye contact. The choice only made it worse, pink lips forming his words so precisely that you could practically see his accent. “Where do you think the money came from, sweetheart?”

“I…I can tell you where I hope you got it from…” You felt relief when your feet hit the ground. Joel’s hand didn’t leave your waist, and you looked up at him, realizing that this was the first time you’d seen him smile—all it took was a few insults at his expense, and his own analysis of you.

“Where’s‘at?”

“A bank.”

“Then that’s where it came from.” He abruptly removed his hand from your waist, and you expected to see a bright red print when you looked down at the spot he had been holding; instead, all you saw was the same blue of your dress, a warm, damp feeling on your hip where you could still feel the excess heat from Joel’s skin. “C’mon. We’re walkin’ the rest of the way.”

You followed him, feeling a bit pathetic at the way you ran to match his stride before he could leave you in the dust.

“But that isn’t where it came from, is it?” You pushed, not done riling yourself up, kicking dirt up on the trail as you walked.

“Why’re you so worried ‘bout where it came from?” Joel stuffed more tobacco in his lip without breaking step.

“I’m—it isn’t worry.” And it wasn’t, to an extent: really, you were just curious to unravel the mystery that the Millers had so plainly laid out for you. That, and with the new knowledge that he had a gun strapped to his hip, something gnawed at you to know any shred of truth you could get out of him. “I’m just curious.”

“I couldn’t tell.” Joel didn’t look at you, but he slowed his pace, putting his hands on his hips. “All money comes from banks, darlin’.”

At that, you dropped the subject, understanding that at the present moment you’d get nothing else out of him. “Why do you call me that?”

“Mm?” Joel’s speed increased again.

“You call me darling. But you don’t call El that.”

“Mm.” Joel mumbled again, in assent this time.

“Do you call my aunt that?”

Joel guffawed, “No—Tess’d serve my head on a platter.”

“So why me?”

“Suits you.” Joel looked down at you, and you avoided his gaze, leaving you unable to see the sudden consternation in his face. “Why? Y’don’t like it?”

“I—no, I didn’t say that…”

You rounded a bend, and the house came into view in the distance; it was old. Worn down, but not nearly as much as the old shack the Millers and El called home. It looked sturdy, at least—like it could sustain life, if someone was there to give it a little love. The thought made you think of Joel, and you didn’t know why.

Maybe you did. Just a little.

You were about to ask more questions, try to get more information out of Joel, when he smacked a hand on your stomach, landing with a thud that made you grab at his wrist to steady yourself.

“Joel—!”

“Quiet.” He looked stern, a far cry from the grins and giggles he had shared with you, however hesitantly, on the journey. You followed his line of sight, narrowing your eyes against the glare of the sun, and you could make out three men and their horses.

“Joel…?” You whispered now, hand still grasping at his wrist.

“Get down.” You did as you were told, following Joel’s lead and flattening yourself against the sand and pebbles beneath you. The earth was cold, like it had just rained, and you could hear Joel breathing beside you, his arm coming to rest over your back, shielding you. From what? You were unsure. You tried to crane your neck to see what the men were doing—get a glimpse of the people who surrounded your would-be home, who were clearly making Joel antsy—but the weeds were too tall, and the men were too far away. You could hear small crashes every now and then, ground crunching under boots and hooves, unable to make out any conversation. Joel’s hand was heavy on your back, and you could feel his calloused fingers gently brushing against the fabric of your dress. Whether it was subconscious on his part or not, you couldn’t complain; it felt soothing in the midst of whatever you had stumbled into.

You don’t know how long you lay in the dirt before you heard a whistle, and the sound of horses running too close to you for comfort.

When you peaked your head up again, Joel quickly moved his hand up your back and clapped it on the back of your neck, bringing you down to his level, close enough to see the sweat dripping from his temples. “You stay right here.” He didn’t give you any time to respond with so much as a nod before he was lifting himself off of the ground and grabbing the pistol from his hip, walking slowly toward the house; gun drawn, head down, steps silent. You counted the seconds until you were given a sign that you, too, could remove yourself from the ground.

“S’alright,” Joel called over his shoulder to you, “c’mon down here.”

You caught up to him, wiping what you could of the dirt off of your dress and stretching your limbs after lying idly for so long.

“Can I please have an explanation,” you stomped as you approached him, “as to what that was about?”

“Later,” Joel muttered, “Get inside.”

You meandered towards the entrance to the house, the small wooden door looked as though it might fall off its hinges if you pushed too hard, so you tried to open it with grace despite your frustration. Leaning against the frame, your head fell, neck stiff from your attempts to follow the action from your spot in the weeds, and you spotted a piece of paper in the grass.

You bent down, grabbing the torn paper and dusting it off as best you could. Your heartbeat picked up, and the hot air made you feel suddenly thirsty and dazed. The muscles in your knees tightened.

“What’cha got, darlin’?” Joel made his way to the door, ready to get out of the sun.

You pushed the paper into him, and you’re sure you must have looked an ugly combination of hurt and outrage, glaring at him when you pressed it between his ribs. If he was worried, his face hardly gave it away; the cold look he always wore marred only by a bit of mud and furrowed brows as he delicately slipped the paper from your hands and brought it up to his face.

WANTED:

JOEL and THOMAS MILLER

DEAD or ALIVE

NOTORIOUS ROBBERS of BANKS and TRAINS

$5,000.00 REWARD

CONTACT SHERIFF and RAILWAY AGENCY

Joel smiled at the poster in his hands, tracing the sketches of himself and his brother with his eyes, then moving his gaze down to you. You continued to glare, now feeling unafraid to look him dead in the eye despite what you had just learned.

“Told you, it all comes from a bank.” Joel sounded almost sheepish, but you couldn’t tell if it was because he now knew someone was looking for him, or if it was because of how quickly the ad had turned you against him.

You turned on your heel, and slammed the door in his face, not caring if the hinges broke and the wood splintered out at him.

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us smut #tlou #tlou fanfiction #tlou smut

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gingersp1ce547 · 10 months ago

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I think the watcher and the eye workers dont actually give a shit about luffy. If they did they would be fighting the feds, but instead they spend their time tormenting the islanders. Appearing when the islanders are weakest, trying to drag them around (and possibly back to egg island? At least it seemed that way for tubbo’s case), kill them repeatedly along with their eggs and even grief their homes.

I think getting luffy back is just an excuse for the watcher to continue to torment the islanders.

During his monologue right before appearing in the room with the eggs, the watcher says this:

“Congratulations on surviving purgatory. It was lovely having you here. In fact, it was so lovely that you should stay here. I remember catching some sentiments from some of you that you would like to stay here. How about we make that happen? An eternity in purgatory. An eternity as my plaything. That’s your fate- forever here.”

He then follows it up with this in his speech to el quackity:

“You simple creature, I was not expecting the success of this island to be this great. You will receive a rare thank you from me for that. It has been excellent watching you tear each other apart.”

The watcher gets great enjoyment out of watching the islanders suffer. More enjoyment than he thought he would. Enough so that he never wants it to end.

“You want to return to your little island prison? Comparatively, im pretty nice to you all. I just tell you to suffer and let you go your merry way. You desire your eggs. Unfortunately for you, our games arent over just yet. We will play just a couple more games for my enjoyment.” (From the monologue after the 1 v 1)

The watcher will let the islanders leave egg island, but the fun isnt over yet. The first two of these games we know to be the hide and seek game that led the islanders into the egg chamber and escaping to the boat.

But the watcher didn’t say he wanted to play two more games. He said a couple more. As the boat sails away this, the watcher adds to this, saying:

“Remember the true end of purgatory rests solely in my hands. Safe travels sinners. Enjoy the chaos”

Purgatory ends only when the watcher wants it to end and from everything i’ve gathered. He does not want it to end. However, the islanders must be rewarded for their amazing performance by being given the option to leave egg island and specifically that. Everything the watcher says about letting the islanders leave is about the islands, not purgatory itself and so the watcher has given himself a loop hole.

The islanders get to go home, but purgatory never ends. Instead he finds a reason to send his workers after them, and when q!phil gives him the opportunity to double down on his torment, he takes it.

#i started getting this feeling yesterday and going back and looking through the evidence has me like 80% convinced #could be wrong tho d:#qsmp #qsmp theory #qsmp analysis #qpurgatory #gingersp1ce547

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fallingforel · 11 months ago

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Promptmas day 7-All I want for christmas- Matty healy

A/n a very merry christmas to all those who celebrate sorry this one’s a bit of a sad one and i don’t really like it but at least it’s okay(?) love el xx

p.s i will be writing the rest by new years i promise the prompts will be done by the end of the year xx

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It was the run up to christmas and my best friend matty and I were doing our annual christmas together. it was like this every year spending christmas with mattys family since my parents had died, 4 years ago. Matty and I had been best mates since we were 14 I can still remember it as clear as day.

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20 years ago,

“what are you doing here?” I ask the curly haired boy stood in my smoking spot, i came here to clear my head on days where i wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with my peers, it wasn’t deep feeling, it was just a sense of feeling I didn’t belong.

“smoking?” he says but more questioning it. “you look like you need a fag.” he says moving his hand that held the cigarette over his eyes, suggesting my eyes which were red roar from where i had been crying over another girl who had called me a bitch and slag.

“i do. your in my spot.” i say back dryly not being bothered with tone and dealing with another person today. “am i? i didn’t realise this was a spot with your name marked on it?” he remarks quite snappily. “it is.” i move over to where he was stood moving him slightly so i could point to where my name was carved out on the wall, “y/n’s spot, huh. so it is. my bad. i’ve heard a lot of things about you, I don’t believe them by the way. I’ve seen you around, you seem like a nice lass. m’names matty by the way.” “nice to meet you. why don’t you believe the things said about me? everyone else does.” “think you’re just misunderstood, like i am, everyone in this shitty school spreads things about people. I’ve had my fair share of the comments too. so have ross and george. not adam though. he keeps to himself.” “who are adam ross and george?” “my mates they’d like you. we’re friends now by the way” he says leaning in to give me a hug.

and that was that. after we had finished our fags he introduced me to the rest of his friends and we were our own group, matty and I were the closest though. we were the most misunderstood people in that school, ross adam and george still stood by us though. I think matty was the only one who truly understood what i was going through though.

⋆｡°✩

23rd december, 2023

“are you excited, mums excited. she says she’s got lots planned for us this year. something about going out in town? she said you’d know” Matty says from the drivers seat, it was like this every year, matty would tell me what the plan was. we always drove down on the 23rd, splitting the drive we’d swap half way through. “oh yeah. she wants a girls day, we’re doing a spot of christmas shopping and coffee and after we’ve finished that we’d all go to my mum and dads grave after we’ve finished shopping. Are you coming? you don’t have to.” I say changing the radio station, it was my parents favourite christmas song. this time of year was always the hardest time for me, my parents loved christmas. but as long as i busied myself and spent it surrounded by my second family. “Yeah. we’ll all go. we always do darling. i’m not going to leave you to do that on your own am i? i’ve never left you high and dry. have i?” “apart from when you were in rehab” “apart from when I was in rehab. but apart from that never happened. has it?” “no. your right. sorry” “what you saying sorry for daft cow?” matty chuckles. “i don’t know. you know what im like this time of year.” “I do, that’s why it’s going to be a good Christmas with the healys darling, we always make it fun” he says focusing on the road now more than ever as we were closer to the northern quarter now so it was bad weather, and the wind was blowing about everywhere.

⋆｡°✩

“oh y/n I’m so glad you’re here, lincoln and louis are driving me insane, i need some girl presence in the house” she says linking our arms and dragging me away from the car, “cheers mum. just let me drag all the shit inside yeah?” “language matthew! and yes, your a big boy you can do it, if you need help you have your brother and lincoln.” she says shouting towards where mattys car sat on the drive.

“you and I are going out in town in a bit, we should definitely have a cuppa first. you must be exhausted after the drive. did he make you drive this year?” “we always say that we’ll split it but he never lets me. i thought this year would finally be the year especially with the wind, but no.” “it’s good that he does that, i would tell him off if he made you drive” “i think that’s mainly why he doesn’t you know? he doesn’t want a bollocking from his mother when you see me step out of the drivers seat” “probably, boys and their mothers hey?” she says handing me my cup of tea“yeah i know, thank you.” i say taking it from her.

“how are you coping anyway? i know this time of year is always difficult for you love.” “yeah, i’m doing okay. i mean im not completely okay. i never will be i think, but im the best i can be, you are always welcoming the lot of you. thank you for having me.” “no worries. i’ve known you for twenty years darling, your family. it’d be stupid to say no, besides you’ve been spending christmas with us for twenty years in one way or another. i’d be stupid to say no to not spending christmas with my daughter in law” i laugh “you have got to stop calling me that” i say tapping her arm “it’s bound to happen one way or another, your both besotted with eachother. he hasn’t been with anyone since gabby.” “no. i’m not in love with him” “you are, you just haven’t realised it yet my love” “denise!“ “okay! okay! i’ll stop. but you’ll realise it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but one day, one day you’ll realise.”

⋆｡°✩

it had been a good day, after finishing our cups of tea, denise and i headed in to town grabbing some last minute christmas presents. we found some nice crackers in town and decided that we would put pull one and put it in the middle of my mum and dads grave so it looked like they were there with us. we were just heading in to costa after putting our bags into the car to have a coffee where we were meeting louis matty lincoln and tim before heading to my parents grave to put some flowers down. we did it every year, due to my parents being close to everyone in mattys family. so they came along with me, i think it’s also mainly because they don’t want me doing it alone though. i don’t mind the extra company though.

“merry christmas mum and dad. I love you, hope you’re spreading joy up there.” I say placing the flowers and in the middle of their graves then placing and kissing both of their headstones. “merry christmas y/m/n and y/d/n. thank you for everything you did for us. we love you.” matty says next going to kiss their headstones.

matty and i pulled the cracker and placed the joke hat and gift around it and stepped back.

we stood there for a few minutes making sure their graves were clean before leaving.

⋆｡°✩

a little bit later after dinner everyone had moved into the living room and started playing games. i excused myself to go sit out on the porch so i could have a moment to myself, i was incredibly grateful for the company. but i just need a moment from all the hustle and bustle of the healy’s to reflect on memories of christmases spent with my parents and talk to them.

i was on my second fag when i heard the door close behind me “you’ve been out here for an hour y/n. are you okay” mattys voice breaks the silence of the night. “i’m okay. i just miss my mum and dad. i wish i had them back. you know?” “Im not going to lie to you and say I understand, because i don’t. but i will say this, We all miss them very much. and i know right now you feel like a burden but i promise you’re not, you never have been y/n. you’re a healy through and through, we’ve spent 20 years being friends sweetheart, my family love you I love you.” he says while inching closer and closer towards me until my back is pressed against his chest “what are you saying matthew?” I ask turning to face him our faces coming closer than i thought they would be. “i’m saying that I love you, i always have darling. and I would like santa to give me you. that’s all i want for christmas. you.” “matty. I-“ tears roll down my face my voice coming out in choked sobs before i manage to say “I love you too matty. thank you for showing me that the whole world isn’t against me. i think it’d be nice to have each other for christmas. i haven’t got you anything anyway” i say joking before crashing my lips on to his.

⋆｡°✩

end.

#matty healy #matty healy x you #matty healy angst #matty healy x oc #matty healy fic #matty healy x y/n #matty healy x reader #matty healy fluff #christmas75 #christmas prompts

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leslie057 · 1 year ago

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I'm gonna go with will + daddy issues, for the WIP ask game. :)

hey there :) this one is rough honestly and i dont know if it’ll ever get finished so here is a chunk of it. the part with el leads up to something else that causes more introspection but you'll just have to wonder about all that i guess

Surprisingly enough, his body itself is what wakes him. Surprising because—it’s very early.

And he didn’t have a nightmare, and there was nothing else to disrupt his rest. No din from his alarm clock on the nightstand. No gentle yet unwelcome request for him to get up made by someone in his family. No symphony of construction work sounds outside or an ongoing chickadee whistle ringing through the world like usual. It’s too early for most of that. Barely sunrise, and the world basically seems dead to him.

He simply...woke up. All there is is his body, its circadian rhythm, carrying on, without even the faintest sunlight cues. This hasn’t happened in forever.

But it happened when he was four, and it was Christmas morning. And he was up before anyone else, including Jonathan. The steady whir of his baby brain and the ripple of his warm blood were synthesized in an internal song that woke him easily, like his body just knew he wanted to be awake. He tunneled under his heavy blanket and hurried to his parents’ room, where the bed was low to the ground and the ottoman was even lower. A perfect height for climbing. He made his way up to the bed and placed himself in the wide gap between the sleeping adults. Mom was already stirring as he squeezed his dad’s bicep and burrowed into his shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, Daddy.”

Inhaling sharply, he cringed at his son’s touch and grunted. “Get off, Will," was the command. There was the illusion of a laugh somewhere inside it, gruff and ironic. "Now.”

Will didn’t obey, but his mom was quick to remove him herself. He felt her palms slip beneath his underarms and lift him smoothly off the mattress. Then he found himself being set right back down, right next to her. He doesn’t remember being upset at that. He loved his father. He was actually entertained by Dad’s roughness at the time. Reminded him of the big rugged bears that were in his animal book.

That would change, but it would change slowly.

If it were a few weeks into the future, the surprising sensation of contentment from a good night's sleep might come close to making him forget his life.

Not this morning.

Eleven isn’t there. In her bed. His bed. At least, it used to be his.

He sits up and pulls clean socks over his feet. Leaving the mattress on the floor in his wake, he begins his search. “E-el,” he calls out to the empty hallway.

The house is different. Not physically. But it feels less balanced than it was in the spring, less private. It doesn’t feel quite like home. For the past week, it’s threatened to suffocate him. He envisions some vaporous spirit creeping in each night to push the walls in closer, to force the roof in, to knock on the lightbulbs up to the point of burnout. Something isn’t right.

(Hasn't their home always been a broken one?)

Recovering has never been easy, but it has never been this hard. When he was younger, he could make better sense of things. There was still so much he didn’t know about the world (he was always being sheltered from it), so facing a monster was more mind-reshuffling than mind-bending. When you are small, you’re given a percentage of the truth. For the rest, your imagination fills in the gaps. When he crashed his bike two winters ago, nose going red from the cold that wouldn’t compare to the Upside Down’s and the wind murmuring through the trees as if to warn him, he was terrified by the image of a faceless creature flitting past, yes, but shocked? Not really. At the time, he could be no more certain of the existence of demogorgons than he was about the existence of STDs or debt or ghosts or mermaids (what?) or mortgage. And he wasn’t sure about any of those things because they fit into the various truth-gaps.

The world isn’t a complete mystery anymore. He knows that most adults are unwilling to believe in monsters. He knows that most teenage boys are, too. Most teenage boys aren’t like him. In more ways than one.

From the hallway, he can smell no pancakes, which means Jonathan went to work. So did Mom. There’s another thing that makes him different; he is the only one who doesn’t work. Guilt has been hovering over him for a while because of that. He’s fourteen. Jonathan began working his first job when he was fourteen.

But he would never be expected to carry those same responsibilities because he’s Will. He’s a casualty. A kid that rose from the dead. And a kid at heart. He’s sensitive. Breakable. (Floral.) His dad used to let him know that, his mom treats him like that. She doesn’t mean to, and that makes everything worse.

They are right, though. And growing up seems so far away.

He isn’t ready for the earth to keep spinning. (It has never stopped. When he vanished, it didn’t stop.) What he would give to go back to before. Before he was sent to “Heaven” and back and everyone had to save him and keep saving him. Bob Newby isn’t alive to remember what he saved. That is among the things which torture him the most. Whether they want to or not, dead boys cause a big fuss.

(He's always caused a fuss.)

(He just wanted his father to love him. He didn't know how to be to make that happen.)

El is nowhere to be found. That is, until he steps outside.

There, at the end of the porch, she rocks lightly in their swing with one leg hanging down.

“Hey,” he greets amicably enough, though he recognizes the awkward note in his voice.

“Hello.”

“How long have you been up?"

“Not very long,” she says, thumbing casually through the colorful magazine in her lap.

He nods and sits in a nearby chair. Already, silence stretches between them like a rope bridge, measureless and tense. They’ve rarely spent time alone before, just the two of them, and for someone who has his life-preserver-in-human-form right beside him, he has little to say. He looks instead at the overcast sky, at the thick sashes of gray threading across it, and roasts his brain for a topic of conversation.

“I'm sorry you have to share your room with me at night,” she speaks before he gets the chance.

He shakes his head. “I don’t mind.” It’s a lie.

“Thank you.”

“What are you reading?”

She flips back to the front and shows him. It’s Seventeen. An issue from January. 1979. A flushed blonde girl graces the cover, posing behind the lines cutting calories without starving, should you try to change him?, and must you tell your mother everything?

She slumps and sets it on the swing. With her head down, she scrapes at her nail beds. All peeled and infected. Some of the exposed skin is dark. The broken tissue is trying to repair itself.

Some is a fresh, saturated red. He would suggest that she bandage them, let her borrow their hydrogen peroxide, but then she’d know he was staring.

“Nancy lent me a stack of these a while ago. I think they’re pretty, but they get boring.”

He lets a smile spread across his face, warm from the humid air that surrounds them. “You know, you can always borrow something of mine to read. If you want. Or, we could go to the library.”

“The library?”

“Yeah. They have everything there.”

She pitches her head forward expectantly. “More magazines?"

“And books. It’s mostly books. Upstairs, they have a shelf with VHS tapes. It’s small. The movies are old. But it’s cool.”

“Cool. I'm kind of sick of Nancy's magazines.”

“So...you wanna go?”

She looks at him with a quizzical expression and sits up straight, the pale fabric of her top (she hasn’t been wearing the things Max bought for her at Starcourt) smoothing itself out against her torso. Maybe she doesn’t want to wear bright clothing because she doesn’t feel like being seen anymore. Because she doesn’t feel bright. “It’s close by?”

“We have bikes, right? You’ll just ride my old one. It’s not that small.”

“Oh. Okay. But we need to make sure we’re here at 12."

“Why?”

“Your mom. She left a note. She wants to talk to us when she comes home for lunch.”

He rises hesitantly, and she does the same. “Oh. Well, it’s probably about the funeral tomorrow.”

They begin to walk across the porch, and she bows her head. “I guess.”

“You know,” he says after a moment, “you don’t have to go. She won’t force you. If you think it’ll be too hard, just tell her, and you can stay home.”

“You don’t want me to go?”

“No, I didn’t mean—why would I not want—”

“Because I would like to go.”

“Okay,” he says. “So you’ll go.”

#*ask #stranger things #ask #talewt #will byers #fanfiction #fic #writing #el hopper #st fanfic #well thats not a snippet #oh well #jancyweek is about to be two weeks for me bc i think i will be posting fics next week #so until then feel free to ask about wips #will probably not be as generous as with this one

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starsarefire824 · 2 years ago

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What if the duffer just make Will come out,him accepting Mike not gonna love him and move on and that's what they mean in their interviews for Will's storyline in s5?

For me personally, if this is how they choose to go about Will's arc, then it better be the most well written scene of the entire show. I refuse to accept anything less than that.

I think that I'd be a little angry and a little sad at the lost opportunity that is byler, but I am a pessimist at heart and so I wouldn't necessarily be surprised tbh. It would end up being like 75% of my ship and not come to fruition or end in a way that I didn't want and I would go on my merry way back to here and probably write fanfic to cope.

BUT, that being said, as I see it right now, the way Mike was written in season 4 literally doesn't make sense if the only thing we get out of Will coming out is Mike giving him a pat on the back and being like hey man that's cool.

Will confessing his love to Mike and being rejected doesn't fit the trajectory of what the Duffer's have laid out in the writing so far. Mike would have been written completely differently in season four. Instead of him being awkward around Will, not being able to touch him, unloading his emotional baggage onto him, seeking comfort, and offering Will a heartfelt apology where he says his life isn't the same without him. We wouldn't have gotten the whole monologue written as a direct response to Will's veiled love confession.

Instead, we most likely would have had things from Mike's pov. We would have seen him watching Will, we would have seen hints that he is starting to realize all those things Will is trying to hide, we would have had wayyyyy more moments of understanding and romance between El and him, Will and him wouldn't have been locked in a car together for three days to have multiple heart to hearts. We would have had a scene where Mike realizes, really sees who and what Will is, see what his feelings are. And we would of already had that confrontation. We would have had Mike and El solidly together and happy and romantic at the end, and we would have had that soft rejection. So that all of their three personal arcs could move on in season 5. But we didn't get any of that. Not one thing that leads me to believe that that is where the story will lead.

If anything, we didn't really get one ounce of Mike's pov in season 5. And the only thing we did get was him telling Will about his feelings. But we, as the audience, were not really given a glimpse into the WHY exactly he couldn't hug Will, why he can't say I love you to El, why he had to be pushed and prodded by his best friend to finally tell her, why he could freely open up to Will and not his girlfriend. I'm hoping that all that will be shown to us in season 5.

So while I still believe that this is definitely something that can happen, I am still in the camp that it won't happen. I think they have something much more interesting and much more tied in with the actual story/supernatural plot for Mike and Will.

#byler #byler ask #anon asks

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wiseoldmage · 27 days ago

Text

Canon Application

Character name: Elminster Aumar

Character series: Dungeons and Dragons (Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate 3, others)

Point taken from: As seen in the game Baldur's Gate 3 (1492 DR)

Do you allow canon doubles to app? No

Link to stats page: -----------

Short character about: Elminster, AKA "The One Who Walks", AKA "The Old Mage", AKA "The Sage of Shadowdale", is a venerable wizard whose life is full of wild tales, and even more myths. Believed by many to be more than 1,000 years old, it is said that Elminster alone survived a terrible attack by a malevolent magelord on his hometown, leaving him orphaned and with his father's broken blade, 'The Lion Sword' to steward. For a time he lived with outcast knights, part of their merry band until he could no longer abide the violence and set out on his own at 16. Once his time as a bandit passed, Elminster turned his life to the study of magical arts, but not before being saved by the very Goddess of Magic herself, Mystra. After revealing their true forms to one another (Elminster had been transformed into a woman, "Elmara", and Mystra had in turn taken on a human form as "Myrjala"- yes it is a lot, the author understands) El and Mystra came to love one another rather deeply, and El dedicated his life to being the chosen to the Mother of All Magic. There are many tales to be told about Elminster: his trials by Mystra to fall to the powers of Bane, his raising of Mystra's mythical daughters reared through the lives of other Chosen, how he rallied a band of Harpers to fight off a blight of malaugrym at Blackstaff Tower in what would later be known as "The Year of the Stalking Satyr", and his constant conflict with the nefarious and immortal wizard Manshoon. His loves, and losses, were many. When one lives to surpass the lives of so many mortals, friendship becomes a rare currency. None of these was so interestingly bought, then, than the friendship to Volothamp Geddarm, author of the widely popular but seldom fact-checked "Volo's Guide to…" series of travelogues. What started as more of a 'amicable tolerance' turned into an endearing friendship, with El flexing his powers- and his knowledge- to aide the bard time and time again, making the two form an unlikely bond that spans over the very planes of existence themselves. From acts so monumental as rewriting space and time, to the old wizard simply proofreading Volo's many works, the two are two sides of the same coin: one brings the undeniable charisma, and one brings centuries of power. In the end, to pretend like one knows the entire life of Elminster is to be the most ignorant of people. Would anyone believe you, after all, if you claimed that the wizard had a child with a song-dragon? Would they believe you if you claimed the wizard once fought with avatars of Bane and Shar, or if you claimed that Elminster once saved leaders of some of the most prosperous towns along the Sword Coast like a nanny protects a child? Read all of the books you can, scour through every scroll, hire every historian- you'll only ever know part of Elminster's story. ---------------

Personality: Elminster is as unpredictable as the roaring waves. At times, he is said to be good-natures, caring and charming in equal measure, while at other times people have called him arrogant or even overly-serious. One must remember that humans are emotional enough in these short lives that we are given- what happens when given ten scores of those lives to live? Still, records of his time travelling will more likely than not reflect a man who is more inquisitive and interested in helping others than causing reckless violence against those who are innocent. For every tale of Elminster acting out of instinct and making brash decisions, there are scores of stories of a calm and collected mage using logic and reason (and perhaps a bit of magic) to seek peaceful solutions. He is protective of the people he cares about and those that have earned his love and respect. It is only when you find yourself in his inner-circle that the wizard will finally pull off the mask and reveal precisely how he feels. While he may have a vernacular that could put entire libraries to shame, and at times can drone on as if his listeners are *also* gifted with unnaturally long lives, he can be a man of simple tastes: food, wine, a good book, a good place to read it, and good company to discuss it all with. A fun fact: Elminster snores so loudly that people can hear him across rooms and halls. To alleviate this, El will typically use magic to mute himself if in the company of others; though this does still strike people as confusing, as Chosen of Mystra don't really need sleep... -----------

Abilities: -IMMORTAL: Elminster doesn't age, and is immune to any effect that would cause his age to change. He is still susceptible to being killed, so long as it isn't by the hands of time. -ELMINSTER'S EVASION: Elminster is under the effect of multiple modified contingency spells. Anytime he is about to die, or his soul is about to be trapped, he is transported to a harmless demiplane where he begins to slowly heal himself. He will need to remain here for ten days until he can travel planes and this ability will be available again. RESTISTANCES- Elminster is immune to all forms of poison, and has massive resistances to magic and fire. SILVER FIRE: Elminster can surround himself in silver flame, which lasts until he ends this ability at will. While active, him and everything he carries gain resistance to cold and are unharmed by anything warmer than -50f. He can also throw this fire, causing massive damage to others, or damaging those that come too close to him and the fire. *SPELLCASTING* CANTRIPS (at will): -Mage hand: A spectral, floating hand appears at a point you choose within range. When you cast the spell, you can use the hand to manipulate an object, open an unlocked door or container, stow or retrieve an item from an open container, or pour the contents out of a vial. -Fire bolt: You hurl a mote of fire at a creature or an object within range. The target receives very small fire damage, but can possibly have their clothes or other flammable items on them be caught on fire. A flammable object hit by this spell starts burning if it isn’t being worn or carried. -Minor Illusion: You create a sound or an image of an object within range that lasts for the duration. 1ST LEVEL (at will): -Disguise Self: You make yourself—including your clothing, armor, weapons, and other belongings on your person—look different until the spell ends. You can seem 1 foot shorter or taller and can appear heavier or lighter. You must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs as you have. Otherwise, the extent of the illusion is up to you. -Magic Missile: You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart strikes a creature of your choice that you can see within range. The damage is very minimal, like being hit with a sudden burst of focused air, however if cast with malice, the damage could increase. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several. -Shield: An imperceptible barrier of magical force protects you. Until the start of your next turn, you become harder to hit as an ethereal shield forms around your person, and makes the damage of other attacks decrease while also making you immune to other Magic Missile's. 2ND LEVEL (at will): -Mirror Image: Three illusory duplicates of yourself appear in your space. Until the spell ends, the duplicates move with you and mimic your actions, shifting position so it’s impossible to track which image is real. People trying to attack or throw things at Elminster using Mirror Image are more likely to miss and the duplicate is destroyed.

-Suggestion: You suggest a course of activity—described in no more than 25 words—to one creature you can see within range that can hear and understand you. The suggestion must sound achievable and not involve anything that would obviously deal damage to the target or its allies. For example, you could say, “Fetch the key to the cult’s treasure vault, and give the key to me.” Or you could say, “Stop fighting, leave this library peacefully, and don’t return.”

3RD LEVEL (at will):

-Counterspell: You attempt to interrupt a creature in the process of casting a spell. By casting this ability with intent to stop another person's spell, their abilities are unable to be cast.

-Fly: You touch a willing creature. For the duration, the target gains the ability to fly! Ethereal blue wings sprout out from your back, and you're able to fly just as quickly as you can run or walk normally. When the spell ends, the target falls if it is still aloft unless it can stop the fall.

-Lightning Bolt: A stroke of lightning forming a 100-foot-long, 5-foot-wide Line blasts out from you in a direction you choose. If someone is caught in the arc of this lightning bolt, you are likely to receive a terrible shock, but if you avoid it and are only close, you could become disoriented. 4TH LEVEL (3 uses):

-Stoneskin: For a short amount of time, usually no longer than five minutes, your skin turns as hard as stone, making you more resistant to all forms of damage. You can still move with your joints and mouth, however flexibility is not as prevalent as with normal skin.

-Greater Invisibility: Either yourself or a creature that you cast this spell on and touch gain complete invisibility for a few minutes, lasting longer if standing completely still or lasting shorter if moving quickly. 5TH LEVEL (3 uses):

-Wall of Force: An Invisible wall of force springs into existence at a point you choose within range. The wall appears in any orientation you choose, as a horizontal or vertical barrier or at an angle. Nothing can physically pass through the wall. It is immune to all damage. The color takes on the form that the caster wishes, but will generally be safe to touch. 6TH LEVEL (3 uses):

-Disintegrate: You launch a green ray at a target you can see within range. The necrotic energy is cast like a decayed lightning bolt, but those struck with it feel just as much damage to their soul as they do their body. Beings in good health may be able to survive, but can still suffer a damaged psyche if their mental fortitude is not strong enough. 7TH LEVEL (3 uses): -Group Transportation: This spell instantly transports you and up to eight willing creatures that you can see within range, or a single object that you can see within range, to a destination you select. This location must be no greater than half a mile away, and if the caster is unfamiliar with the final location, the accuracy may be off. It requires all members to be willing to be transported, or they are left behind. 8TH LEVEL (2 uses):

-Maze: You banish a creature that you can see within range into a labyrinthine demiplane. For at least fifteen minutes and up to an hour, that creature or person is sentenced to wander an unending maze that always changes, never allowing one to find their way back and rising higher and higher if someone tries to fly ahead.

-Incendiary Cloud: A swirling cloud of embers and smoke fills a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point, engulfing everything in a roaring fire. One of the most wild and malevolent of fire spells, this is only ever cast when care for the nearby place and people are no longer a priority- only the damage that can be done. 9TH LEVEL (2 uses):

-Meteor Swarm: Blazing orbs of fire plummet to the ground at four different points you can see within range. Hurled from the sky, these meteors shake the ground violently wherever they land, and can injure or kill those unlucky enough to not move out of their way. This spell requires open sky to cast in, less the wizard bring the building down upon himself!

-Wish: Wish is the mightiest spell a mortal can cast. By simply speaking aloud, you can alter reality itself. Such options include creating objects, restoring full health, resistance and spell immunity, and sudden learning. ------------------

Weapons/important items: -Mantle of Spell Resistance: Elminster finds that he can better avoid the different damages hurled at him in the world by wearing this aged garment. A large flowing cloak that the mage can change in color, but often sticks to a deep purple.

-Ring of Regeneration: This ring, blessed by gods of healing and justice, strengthen the mind of the wearer and assist the body in continuously healing itself at a slow rate. Some have even said that if the hand wearing this ring is cut off, another hand would eventually grow back in its place!

-Ring of Protection: It is unclear if there is a certain deity blessing this ring or the wearer, but all report of instances of bright shielding light blocking an attack that could have killed the wearer. It is not always guaranteed and indeed rather rare, but many people owe their lives to these rings.

-Bracers of Defense: For a wizard with no heavy armor and only magic to shield him, Elminster takes whatever lightweight defenses he can get! His bracers are old, but handled with care and they've repaid him by saving his arms from slicing and dicing more than once!

-"Lion Sword": A sword that was reforged from the fragments retrieved from his ruined home. There are stronger swords in many other planes, but El continues to use this weapon without fail.

-Eversmoking Pipe: A magical pipe that never needs to be refilled, and can last until El decides to extinguish it or put it away.

Pets: N/A

—-

OOC contact and your name: [email protected], Subject (Can message @dream-unity on tumblr for reference)

Are you 18 years or older?: Yes, and am also 21+

Other characters in Isola: N/A

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alltheficsiwant · 2 years ago

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Same Old Hawkins, Or not? | Part Five

PART Five | The Aftermath

Summary: After the events regarding the gate and the mind flayer. Reader now has to deal with her unsaid issues and the inevitable talk with her boys. Though, of course, Billy Hargrove has the habit of fucking things up into proportions.

Warning: Graphic violence, dark themes (Attempted rape and abuse). If you are triggered about these topics. Please read with caution or skip the part with !!! and continue on after the second !!!

Also, MINORS get the hell out of here. Forgot to rate this as 18+

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Harrintong!reader

Words: 6.7k

Note: Hey guys! We are nearing the end. I think they are just two more chapters after this plus the epilogue and we are done. I have a sequel planned for this because originally. I wrote a rewrite of Season 4 but opted to do season 2 instead. If the series gained enough traction or notes or request to be continued. I might continue on with it. Sooo, reblog, like and comment guys! ALSO, my ASK are open, SEND ME YOUR THOUGHTS OR ANYTHING AT ALL. - J <3

PART Three | PART Four | SERIES MASTERLIST

Will be posted in Ao3 soon!

After Eleven managed to close the gate, you and the rest of the kids gathered back to the Byers house and eventually towards the new Hopper residence in the middle of the woods.

In the span of a month, you built a bond with the kids as you helped in fixing things up in both residences. You also managed to meet El. During those times, the talking later never happened between the three of you. Well, Steve is busy curing his wounds both physically and emotionally. (“It’s not a phase anymore is it?” “Yeah, squirt. She called it,” “Well, better luck next time, Jerk,”). While you and Eddie, kind of dance around one another. Going on the same routine, meeting up every Wednesday at the lake and Friday’s for the campaign. Though the dynamics between the two of you changed, something Gareth and Jeff the ever observant sophomores noticed. You and Eddie didn’t even confirm or deny everything when they questioned you individually because you haven’t exactly talked about it yet.

Though Eddie did try, you swiftly change the subject and metal head gets the que. Luckily, despite Eddie’s obvious temperament as he wants things to be done rather quickly. He didn’t chastise you. You’ll tell when you are ready or you get over the initial mortification that is Eddie witnessing your first flashback. (So far, you haven’t had any, thank God)

Instead of dealing with those, you offered your help to the other kids. You grew closer to them, especially Max who you decided to take under your wing. You became her escape when Billy or anything under her house gets too much. You opened your doors to them much to Steve’s annoyance. (“You still love having them around Steve, admit it.” “Give me another month and I’ll decide,” “Whatever makes your sleep at night,”)

The next thing you know, you got thrown into the committee of highschoolers that handles the Snow Ball for the middle schoolers. It wasn’t exactly your type of thing but it teaches you how not to be late again in Ms. O’donell’s class twice in a row. Causing you to miss your Wednesday’s with Eddie twice too.

Well, you didn’t have to explain. He knows that, because he was there when Ms. O’donell delivered the blow but regardless. You were quite thankful for it. The inevitable talk of your feelings regarding the metal head is postponed.

Now you just need to get through your head. We hope you had more time though but someone has the tendency to throw a wrench into your plans. It's no other than Billy FUCKING Hargrove. After the incident in the Byers house, Max told you that Billy is pissed off more than ever to everyone and especially both you and Steve. He was itching for a fight and always provoked Steve but Steve who finally broke apart with his friend group didn’t bite on it.

Just landing on ignoring the bully and going on his merry way. The same treatment is given to you, making the Hellfire club members especially Eddie (Despite the unspeakable topic that looms over the both of you) was extra protective. Though you assured them that Billy is more bark than bite when it comes to girls.

You should have learned your lesson when he easily slammed your body down on the floor causing a flashback. Though, you were at ease because it was school and Billy doesn’t want to get into trouble. Doesn’t he?

Well, you learned that in a very hard way.

You volunteered to finish up with the designs. It was the last week of November and there is one week before the SnowBall and the official start of the Winter Break. The committee which is not surprisingly led by Nancy Wheeler wants to get ahead of everything. Including the decorations and since you made it clear that you would not spend your Friday night in a ball as a chaperone. You opted to help with the decors and preparations.

You wanted to finish it as soon as possible since you are itching to finally talk to Eddie because you miss the metal head. You always felt like he was too far from you despite being there. You volunteered to finish up not knowing that there is someone lurking around you waiting a chance to make a move on you.

Not the move you wanted and not the person you want to make a move on you.

“Ahhh. If it isn’t the Harrington Bitch,” When you hear his voice echoing through the room, you can’t help but sigh. You stopped for a moment before shaking your head to continue what you are doing. You really don’t want to give Billy Hargrove a time of day. “You’re not going to acknowledge me?”

You remained silent but you did move out of your chair and around the table. Subtly putting distance between the two of you and so that you will be able to see him.

“Seriously, silent treatment? I never thought you could shut that mouth of yours,” Billy snarled and that made you look up at him with an exhausted expression.

“What do you want, Hargrove?” You asked him as you laid your hands over the table. Billy walked— no more like stalked towards you as he slammed his hands against the table. You jumped as you took a step back from him. Seeing your reaction, Billy’s face lit up as he smirked at you.

“I told you I’ll deal with you and your cousin later. This is me wanting my due,” He told you and that made you clench your fist. Forcing yourself to calm down.

“What are you going to do? Beat me up?” You asked him as you tried to move slowly around the table enough for you to dash past him and out of the room. Thank God you are wearing your jeans and sneakers. You would just get your leather jacket and helmet tomorrow. Right now, you need to escape Billy Hargrove.

Billy looks like he isn’t getting your plan though his eyes raked over your body very slowly making you shudder in disgust. That look is so damn familiar. Fuck. No flashbacks please. Not fucking now.

“I have other ways to ask for payment,” He said as he turned to look over at you again before he landed back on your eyes. “I think we just need to fuck out our differences. You know,” He offered and that made you laugh at him. Making sure that the mocking is there.

“Fuck it out? You are a cocky asshole. Do you think that my hatred for you is what? Sexual tension?” You told him, the mocking tone heavy on your voice as you moved slowly around until you stood still. Two chairs are between the both of you and you just need to find the right timing to run. “Well, you have to wake up Hargrove. Not every girl wants you and not every girl wants to be in your pants. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to handle me,”

Billy snorted at that. “I cannot handle you? I remember, I handled you just fine back at that house. You tiny little thing,” He looked over at you. His eyes darkened a bit. “I could easily pin you down and do anything I want.”

You shuddered at the image and twisted your face in disgust.

“You are all bark but no bite, Billy. Now it just makes me think that you're overcompensating on something that isn’t there at all huh?” You told him as you readied yourself to run as you finally were able to release the fuel you accumulated about him through the months. “What do the housewives you seduced say? Did they come back for more or are they just as disappointed as Mrs. Whedon?”

Then you ran. “You little bitch— come here!”

You tried to out run him but you are no match to a nearly six footer basketball player. You are no athlete and you never really qualify for track. Your gait is also short because of your height but you hoped that the surprise is enough advantage.

You're so wrong.

You were merely out of the room before you felt a hand on your arm and the next thing you know you are slammed against the wall. You will yourself to focus on the adrenaline and the flashes of memories trying to seep in. You fought Billy back. Using the strength you had for years of riding a bike that is heavier than you and wielding wooden swords at the Dojo back at the Shit Show.

“You fucking bitch, let’s see if you are going to be fucking disappointed.” he said as he pinned you down and the next thing you know lips are on you. You are no virgin and you already had a lot of encounters with guys but usually it was on your own terms. This is not it and the moment that Billy’s lips touch yours. The image shifted again and this time you are back at the floor of that apartment. Bleeding and struggling as you find the way to topple the guy off you.

He was already halfway through your blouse. The knife he was using was sharp as you felt it knick you a couple of times but you remained to struggle. Despite the sharpness of it and the fear of being slashed. Your will to escape is greater.

“Please stop! Let me go! I don’t know anything at all!”

The man laughed as he continued to cut through your blouse. He is on the last three buttons that lay across your stomach.

“Look at you! So pretty!” He exclaimed as he stopped and examined you. He ran his knife on your stomach, the blunt side before he leaned down. You looked at the side as tears fell from your eyes. Your hands are pinned down by the other man as he laughed at the scene.

“We will surely enjoy this! If you won’t talk maybe we can use your mouth for something else,”

Then you felt him move a bit down and felt his crotch touch your knee. You felt his knife going through the last three buttons.

“You are ours to—”

The image was abruptly changed as you felt arms enveloping you from behind. Familiar leather clad ones as you were rocked back and forth. Your name murmured to your ear as your cries died. Your vision blurry because of the tears but eventually cleared as your cries quiet out.

“That’s it sweetheart. Come back to me baby. I got you, you're safe.” Eddie mumbled as he continued to rock you back and forth. You blinked trying to gather yourself as you willed the images to disappear. You leaned your head against Eddie who stopped his rocking momentarily and leaned against you too.

“You’re okay sweetheart. Are you back to me now?” Eddie asked as you slowly nodded. “Okay, now I need you to breathe with me– that’s good– in and out. Just like that. Breathe with me.”

You didn’t notice you were struggling with your breath but as soon as he said it. You gasped and desperately tried to follow Eddie’s breathing. Though you heard a sound of struggling and turned just in time to see Steve picking up an object and slammed it against Billy’s face. Rendering him unconscious though you didn’t manage to see more as Eddie moved until you were facing him. His eyes trained on you.

“Eyes on me only. I need you to breathe with me again. In and out,” Finally it latched on as you followed every inhale and exhale. You didn’t know how long you and him sat there just breathing until you felt exhaustion taking over you as you slumped inside Eddie’s arms. Though you tried to fight it, everything is just heavy on you.

“I’m calling Hopper,” an unfamiliar voice said. A voice that is not Steve’s or Eddie’s since you have ingrained their voices. “I would like to take her out of the scene but if this is assault–”

“She needs to be here,” this time you knew it was Steve’s voice that said that. “Fuck, we should let her rest though. You can give her to me Eddie, I’ll take her—”

As soon as you heard that, your body instinctively borrowed itself to Eddie and the next thing you know you are whining no as you turned in his arms. You wrapped your arms around him and locked yourself against him.

“I got her, just got some blankets. We need to lay her down in something warm and soft,”

“I’ll get that,” another unfamiliar voice said before you heard shuffling feet. You tried to open your eyes, which you didn’t know you closed but it just won’t cooperate.

“Hey, you don’t need to stay awake,” It was Steve who spoke again. He had grown closer to you as you felt a hand running through your hair. While another is running against your back. “You can rest. We got you now Squirt,”

You didn’t know that was the words you needed to hear as the heaviness became ten fold and you felt safe. Then everything went black.

The next time you wake up, you are inside an office and laid down on a sofa. It was night and the reason you have woken up is the raised voices you hear.

“Please! Don’t call my dad. I beg you–” That sounded like Billy.

“Now you come begging? You fucking assaulted my cousin you fucking asshole!” It was Steve who shouted. You heard some shuffling and muffled voices. You urged yourself

“It wasn’t intentional. I got too angry. She-she– provoked—”

“Don’t you fucking say it!” A voice so shrill made you finally sit up. You knew it was Eddie who spoke up this time. You looked around trying to find them. “Don’t you dare say she fucking provoke you hargrove. She hated your fucking guts!”

“Okay now- you boys chill it out,” It was Hopper who finally spoke up. You carefully stood up as you still feel like your limbs have weights on them. Your eyes looked around until it landed over a window. There you see Steve, Eddie, Hopper and Billy. Though what surprised you was Jonathan and Nancy standing on the side. Nancy glaring at Billy while Jonathan just looked at him in disdain.

Hopper was actually standing with his back on you while the others were actually facing you. You guessed that Hopper is obscuring their view of you. You will yourself to move, wanting to hear the conversation.

“Now you listen here shithead,” Hopper said as you saw him leaned forward as he got up to Billy’s face. “You can deny having your way with the girl but the bruises on her arms can be evidence enough for assault.”

You were already standing at that point and no one even noticed your movement as you watched and listened. Though at the mention of the bruises you looked and nearly gasped as the hand shaped bruises.

“She fucking asked for it,” Billy hissed and you can’t help but watch in shock as Steve and Eddie went for him. Hopper had Steve while Jonathan went for Eddie. Though Eddie being the closest managed to land a punch on him, careening Billy a bit off his seat.

“Let me the fuck go!”

“Let me punch him Jim!”

Both of them shouted. Billy, who was recovering from Eddie’s punch, wiped the corner of his mouth as he glared at them all.

“It doesn’t help if you fucking go at him–”

“That bitch freak saw it coming. The way she fucking provoked me all the damn time,” Billy continue to speak.

“I suggest you fucking shut up—”

“She fucking deserved that when she can’t keep her mouth—” Slam! You jumped as Billy got his head slammed against the table and then again for good measure. The four men stood shocked that same as you as you saw Nancy holding on to Billy’s hair. She did it again making Billy groan not caring that his nose had started to bleed.

“Nobody deserved that asshole,” Nancy seethed as she glared at him. Billy looks at her as his nose continues to bleed. “I know your life is fucked up but you don’t have the fucking right to fuck others,”

Nancy then finally looked up through the window. Her eyes widened. She called out your name and they finally looked at you. You stood there shaking. Eddie immediately moved and the next thing you know he is right in front of you taking your face in his hands gently. You looked up at him and met his eyes full of concern.

“Hey,” He greeted as you reached out and wrapped each of your hands on each of his wrists.

“What happened?” You asked as you looked over at him. He sighed before he carefully moved his hands so that he could wrap his arms around you. You willingly got to him. The movement was natural just like that night. You are drawn to him. You settled your head against his chest.

“You don’t remember anything?” He asked quietly.

“Bits and pieces,” you gave and Eddie sighed. You heard someone stepped inside the office too and you leaned back to look to see Steve standing there. He was sporting an unreadable expression for a moment before it settled with concern as he looked at you.

“Hey squirt,” he said and you gingerly let go of Eddie who let you as you rushed towards Steve. He readily opened his arms as you slammed against him. His arms automatically wrapped around you as he buried his head against your head. “You scared me there a little,” He murmured alongside your name.

You don’t know how long you had each wrapped up but the both of you are interrupted when Hopper came into the office with Nancy and Jonathan behin. You let go of Steve and as soon as you made contact with Nancy. You gave him a small smile which she returned.

“Okay kid, why don’t we all sit down,” Hopper said as he motioned for the sofa and the empty seats in his office. Steve let you go and guided you towards the sofa. Eddie sat beside you while Steve took the other side. Your hands automatically reached out for them. Though you opted to lean your head against Eddie’s shoulder which Steve didn’t mind since he has one of your hands in his.

Hopper shuffled some papers around before he pulled out one before taking up his pen, “I know you just woke up but I need your statement,”

You looked at him for a moment before you nodded.

“Okay, can you tell us what happened?” Hopper asked. You tightened your grip on Eddie and Steve trying to remember what happened before you had another flashback.

“Ummm, I was in the room trying to finish up the decoration for the upcoming Snowball. I volunteered because I wanted my next Wednesday free,” You quietly told them. You felt Eddie’s thumb start to draw circles over the back of the hand he is holding. You leaned further towards him but still not letting go of Steve.

“I thought I was alone but Billy showed up. Talking about paying back whatever the hell it is,” You shakily took a deep breath as you looked down not wanting to look at anyone by the next bit of your story. “I-I did provoke him but only to fluster him so that I could run out of there. I already have my keys to my bike. I just need to outrun him,”

“But he caught up to me. I was ready to fight him off but he caught up to me. The next thing I know, he had me backed up the wall and–and—” You stuttered as your mind went blank.

“H-he kissed– oh god,” You can’t help but say as you closed your eyes. “He kissed me and that is all I can remember,” you told them. Not wanting to tell anyone that you slipped into yet another panic attack, or they already knew that you guessed. They would have witnessed it when they caught you there. You just don’t want to voice it out hoping you wouldn’t receive any more questions about it.

Everybody was silent after that except the scratching of Hopper’s pen. You can’t help but burrow deeper into Eddie, seeking the safety he provides. Not that Steve doesn’t give that but you craved Eddie’s presence. Not being able to be with him properly during the weeks since the night about the secrets of Hawkins. You let go of Steve’s hand and fully leaned against Eddie. Eddie immediately lifted his arm to let your head rest against his chest while his other hand caressed your arms. You saw Steve looked over at the two of you with narrowed eyes before he just looked towards the chief of police as he spoke again directly to the other four.

“Now, you four tell me how you found them? What are you doing at school?”

“Me and Jonathan are there to check up on her. The committee members said they left her there. We were about to go there and help her when we met these two outside, arguing,” Nancy explained as she pointed towards Eddie and Steve.

That made you look at them two. They had a sheepish expression on their faces. Hopper just looked at them before he spoke again.

“Why are you two arguing outside the school?” He asked as Steve and Eddie looked at each other.

“I was there to check on her,” Eddie mumbled. “I knew she was doing that for detention and we have our daily outings during Wednesdays,” He offered. You looked over at him as Eddie looked down at you. “I missed you, so I brought some food for us. Hoping you are still there,”

You can’t help but wrap your arms tighter around Eddie.

“I was there to also check on her. After everything that happened, I got a bit paranoid being alone inside the house,” Steve explained his presence. “Me and Eddie kind of got into a bit of an argument.”

Hopper narrowed his eyes and he scanned the demeanor of the three of you. He has his own conclusion.

“I assume it's about the relationship between Munson and her,” Hopper said as he looked down at the paper on his hand and scribbled it down.

“Yes,” Steve and Eddie answered in unison. You however looked between the two of them.

“Do we have a relationship?” You can’t help but ask as you look over at Eddie. Whose eyes softened as he looked at you. He reached out to cup your cheek with his hand.

“If you’ll have me, sweetheart,” Eddie mumbled, you looked at him for a moment before you nodded as you leaned back against him. Steve just looked at the exchange horrified.

“We still have to talk after,” you mumbled against his chest as Eddie smiled widely as he wrapped you back in his arms again.

“It's a date,” he just said. You didn’t know what he did but Steve grunted at that.

“We are getting out of topic here. How did you guys find them?” Hopper said as he looked over at you.

“We heard a loud noise coming from inside.” Nancy explained. “Steve and Eddie immediately went inside running. Me and Jonathan right behind them. We thought its something about the upside down.”

“As we grew closer, we heard Billy and then,” Nancy looked over at you as you looked over at her before she mumbled your name. “Then, she was screaming. Steve was the first one to reach the room.”

Steve whose fist clenched at the memory of you. You were sure of that and that made you detangle yourself off Eddie to comfort your cousin. Who opened up his arms for you as he held you this time.

“What did you see Steve?” Hopper asked.

Steve tightened his hold of you before he started speaking. “Billy was on top of her, kissing her and she was just thrashing around. When I saw that I just saw red and threw him off her.”

Everybody was quiet as Steve gathered himself. “I was angry and mortified because even after I took Billy off her she kept thrashing around. As if she is still fighting someone off,” Steve then looked down at you. You looked away not daring to look back because you just knew you would crumble.

“Then I came in,” Eddie said. “I already recognize that she is having another panic attack–”

“Another?” Steve asked but Eddie just shook his head pleading him not to speak. You felt Steve pull you closer with that.

“Instead of helping Steve, I went to her. Wrapped her in a hold and tried to coax her back. She already had bruised arms at that time.”

“Then me and Jonathan saw the scene, just in time for Steve to knock Billy out and for her cries to die down,” Nancy said.

Hopper nodded as he finally put down all their statements. Then he stood up towards a drawer and pulled out a camera. He gave it to Jonathan.

“We need pictures to file on a case—”

“Is he going to jail?” you spoke up suddenly as Hopper looked at you while Jonathan took it.

“I’ll detain him for now but I will be filing a case in Juvenile court. He’s still 17,” Hopper said as he looked at where Billy is nursing his bleeding nose and bruised face. “But I’ll be calling his parents and Steve’s to discuss the situation—”

“I don’t want to file a case,” You interjected . Steve and Eddie protested at that.

“No way, Squirt. We are filing that case.”

“You can’t just let him go like that?!”

“Detain, make him do community service. I don’t want him to end up in jail,” You told them as you looked around the people in the room.

“Why, sweetheart? He triggered your panic attack again” Eddie said as you looked at him.

“I know, but he can learn his lesson in a different way,” You told them. The image of Max came into your mind now that you are starting to think a bit more clearly. “I provoked him in that room. He was offering me sex and I threw something at him that engraged him. I knew Billy was ticking time bomb of anger.”

You glanced towards the window to look at him but he was already looking at you. Steve and Eddie noticed that and tried to shield you away but you refused. Despite the horrible flashbacks he forced on you. You knew Max and the situation of her house. How despite Billy being an asshole and totally misguided. He was the only thing that became a buffer for Niel and that is something that should be dealt with.

“I’ll probably regret this later but he deserves the help he needs,” You told them as Billy finally looked away from you. You turned to them. “And I just want this night to be over. I just want to rest,”

Hopper, who was quiet, nodded. “I still need to file this and have a case kid,” he told you and you nodded. “But I’ll see what I can do to not send him completely to Jail. I should contact—”

“No,” you stopped him as you looked at Steve. “I don’t want Uncle Harold to know about this not now please,”

Steve looks like he wants to argue but he just sighed in defeat and nodded. “Your choice kid, you’re already 18 right?” You nodded at that. “Okay, I'll detain you and it's best to have Jonathan go with your bruises then you guys can go.”

Jonathan gingerly stood up and walked over to you. “This will be quick,” he murmured quietly. You nodded as you lifted your arm. It trembled a bit and it was heavier than usual but held it up as still as you could. Jonathan took a few photos before he lowered it down.

“You have a bruise on your face too,” He murmured and you just nodded. Closing your eyes as he took another set. “Anywhere else?”

You felt your body and winced when you tried to move your back. “I-I think my back has some,” you murmured.

“Ummm, are you okay to lift—”

Without thinking about anything else, you lifted your shirt up. Everybody scrambled suddenly at your movement. Steve and Eddie stood side by side and turned around while Nancy hurriedly shut the blinds off. Hopper stepped outside, probably taking Billy’s side of the story. Jonathan was looking away.

You removed and turned your back to Jonathan, leaving you in your modest bra. You didn’t even register what you were doing. You just want it to be over and done with. In that moment, you forgot what you were trying to hide for everyone.

“You can take a picture, it's okay.” You told Jonathan as you clutched on the back of the sofa. You don’t know who gasped loud, you never knew who it was. You were too tired and worn to think about it as you heard Jonathan click the camera.

“D-do you have something on your front—” You turned a bit, though when the room became incredibly quiet. You suddenly opened your eyes and gasped. Your hand instinctively covers your stomach. You looked and saw that Eddie and Steve were frozen on the spot. Their eyes wide as it's trained on your now covered stomach.

Jonathan, who probably saw it too, has his eyes trained on Nancy while the girl has her hands covering her mouth.

Shit. They saw the scars.

Steve called out your name and slowly you opened your eyes to stare at him. “Where did you get those scars?” He asked.

“S-steve,”

“Where did you get it?” He asked, his eyes glossing over as he looked at you. “I-Is that what happened back in—” He stopped his eyes darkening. He made the same face when you talked about not running away in the forest but this time it was accompanied by anger. Fuck.

Steve called your name, your complete name and that made you start to shake. Your tremble probably prompted Eddie to finally move. He carefully moved towards you. His eyes were full of concern.

“Sweetheart,” He mumbled as he grew closer. Your vision started to blur as tears flooded your eyes.

This isn’t happening. This is not how you want them to know about this. You don’t like the way this is fucking unfolding. Fuck. Fuck.

“I-I’m sorry,” You forced out as you shook your head and looked at Steve.

“P-please d-don’t tell me Uncle Nate– FUCK!” Steve exclaimed as he clutched on his head. “Is this the reason why your move to Hawkins got delayed? Is this the reason why you won’t tell me anything about Utah?”

You just continue to shake your head and cry. Eddie finally reached you and once his arms went around you. You flinched and backed away. Eddie jumped and a flash of hurt came across his face before it was gone.

“S-Steve please, n-not now. N-not today–”

“What happened?! What are you not telling me?”

“Steve! I don’t think this is the best time to berate your cousin,” Eddie finally spoke as he glared at the guy.

“B-but”

“I’ll tell you when I can” You spoke out as you looked at Steve. “I-I just want to rest for now. Please?” You pleadingly look at him.

Steve closed his eyes as he ran a hand through his face. “I’m sorry.” He quietly said before he looked over at you.” Y-yeah, I’m sorry. I-I just need–” He suddenly walked out of there and you finally broke down crying.

Eddie moved to take you in his arms and this time you let him as you buried your face against his neck. You didn’t know how long you were there in his arms until you felt him move you to get your shirt back to your body. Then he made you wear his leather jacket, leaving him on his hellfire shirt. You slipped your arms through the jacket and it was too big on you. The sleeves went over your hands but that’s okay. You inhaled his scent and for the second time that night. Your body felt heavy and without another thought in your head. You welcomed the darkness this time.

Hopper made sure that what happened with Billy and you remained under wraps. Billy’s parents were informed that he got into a fight and managed to hurt you a bit. Luckily Steve has bruises to show that he did try to defend you. Uncle Harold was beyond pissed when he learned of the fight.

Though you placate him, telling him that you are fine. You are not. That Hopper would be taking care of it. Fortunately, despite Uncle Harold’s insistence of handling what happened. He was only able to come home for one day before flying out again. A business trip he cannot miss but he made sure that Steve and you are stocked until Christmas and until they manage to come home.

After that night of incident, you and Steve are walking on eggshells. You both agreed that it was better for you to recover at least enough to take the exams before the winter break hits.Before the two of you finally talked.

Of course, during this time, Eddie suddenly became yours and Steve’s mediator. You might be too fucked up in talking about the shit show but talking about you and Eddie. That is something you are sure of. There is not much to talk about, nothing will change except that every touch and comfort is something more than friends do.

The two of you haven’t really kissed or gone on a date yet. You can’t seem to enjoy it knowing that the talk with Steve is looming for the both of you. Also, Eddie wants to know what really happened to you as he witnessed two of your panic attacks and two of them he helped bring you back.

He became your rock. He didn’t ask questions for the whole duration that he was with you when you recovered. He was just there, offering his warmth and affection to you.

Though you knew, the inevitable will come and you are absolutely terrified.

Terrified that when you tell them what happened back there might change their view of you. They might realized that despite the strong facade you're fronting, you are more fucked up than they realize. What if they didn’t want anything to do with you? What if Steve would always look at you out of pity? What if Eddie decided that he doesn’t need another fucked up thing in his life?

That rolled around your head for days as you waited for the impending talk. You never voiced it out. Out of fear that it would come true. Then without even doing that, the day came.

It came two days before Christmas. The case against Billy came to head as it was quickly processed in the city hall as Hopper knew the mayor personally. They wanted a sentence before Christmas came. He was sentenced to an anger management course right at Hawkins General while doing a total of 78 days of community service starting a month before the school ends. He is also going to be under probation and at all means should stay away from you until further notice.

It was Steve who delivered the news once it was over. Uncle Harold had cuddled you up while Aunt Miriam tried to console you. Though, the two of them need to leave again for another business trip. Bringing another slightly sad news that you will be spending your first Christmas in Hawkins without them.

Though it was a good thing that you and Steve are left alone. You wouldn’t want them to hear what you are about to tell Steve. You also decided it was best to have Eddie there. He deserves to hear too after witnessing two of your breakdowns.

So there you were with Eddie by your side, his arms bringing you the support you needed. Steve was sitting there looking everywhere but you as silence enveloped the living room. You didn’t know how to start and sure as hell knew that you wouldn’t be able to tell everything without any liquid courage.

“Why do we pull out Uncle’s hidden whiskey, yeah?” You spoke, breaking the silence. Steve finally looked over at you with a raised brow.

“I thought you hate fancy drinks like that?” Steve mused as he moved, getting it anyway as he knew he needed something to do.

You nodded. “Still hate it but I think we all three need something stronger,” you told him and he nodded. He excused himself towards his dad’s office leaving you and Eddie. You picked on your nails as you waited anxiously. Eddie must have noticed because the next thing you know. A big hand enveloped almost both of yours. Stilling your hands on doing further damage while the other wrapped itself around your shoulders.

You felt his lips land on your temple and stayed there as you closed your eyes and leaned to him.

“You got this,” Eddie mumbled against your temple as you nodded. “Steve, he might be a bit dramatic–”

“Oh, I know that,” you can’t help but say and that made Eddie chuckle.

“But he is a decent guy. He might be a jerk and asshole most of the time but he’s your cousin. He’s family. Whatever you say to him, it will be okay,” Eddie mumbled. You nodded but then you pulled away as you looked back at him.

“What about you?” You can’t help but ask. You hesitated as you looked at him. “What you will hear today, you might not want anything to do with me after,” You finally voice out the fear that nagged your head and made you terrified. Though the moment it went out of your mouth, Eddie looked back at you with pure adoration. Something you didn’t expect from him, not after what you said.

“Nothing can make me go away from you. Okay?” Eddie reverently told you as he reached out to hold your head with both of his hands. His brown doe eyes stared straight at yours as he spoke again. This time, quietly. “Whatever you say, it won’t change the fact that I am completely taken by you sweetheart. Hell, I even stayed by your side trying to be a hero when I’m not even close to it.”

You can’t help but hold on to his hand as he spoke. “Whatever it is, I will be right by your side when you face it. Okay?”

You nodded as he leaned down and placed a kiss on your forehead. The two of you pulled away from each other just in time for Steve to enter the living room with three glasses and the bottle of whiskey. You looked at him to see an unreadable expression on his face but once he looked at you. His gaze softened.

“Here,” He said as he poured you some. You took it, not waiting for the other to have their drinks. You downed it one go, relishing the burn as you winced. Then you can’t help but stare at the glass as you wait for the other two to settle down.

“Hey,” Steve called out your name. You looked back up at him as he looked at you still with a softened gaze. “Whenever you ready,”

You took a deep breath before you looked over at Eddie who just finished taking a sip on his glass. He nodded in his head at your encouragement. With one final nod, you looked over at Steve.

“Whatever you know about my father through Uncle Harold is complete utter bullshit,” You started and bit your lip as you continued. “Papa didn’t die because of a poisoning in the labs he worked at—” you trailed off as you looked over at Eddie and then Steve before delivering what could possibly open the floodgates of memory.

“He was murdered.”

To be continued.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #steve harrington #billy hargrove #nancy wheeler #SOHON #alltheficsiwant #stranger things fan fiction #stranger things fan fic #harrington!reader #stranger things #ilovemyrockstar

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doverstar · 2 years ago

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Just babbling but- I always get annoyed when fanfics make the whole stranger gang the best of friends, who always hang out with each other, even far into the future. I understand a bond occurs in such bizarre circumstances, but I just can't see Max going to hang with Eddie or Eddie and Steve hanging out or etc. It just doesn't seem plausible in my mind. Like sure, I feel that each of them would be amicable and have a healthy respect, but for them all to be besties! I don't get it. What are your thoughts

I love the babbling! Hi!

I kind of understand where you're coming from. I don't think that the Hawkins teenagers exclusively hang out with each other, like - I don't think if the Byers still lived in Hawkins, that Jonathan and Nancy would be besties with Steve and Robin and Eddie right away. I think they'd have their moments, but they each have their own group of friends they spend time with. Steve and Robin probably hang out every day; they're practically siblings, but beyond that, I think it would take some time after all the adventures for the teenagers to realize that they're each other's Ride or Dies, social barriers or no. I think the kids will always be best friends. They were already incredibly close before El came into their lives, and trauma bonding is a big deal. And I think Steve will always be in those kids' lives, at least a little. Especially Dustin's. Dustin does not have a dad. Dustin does not have a brother. Dustin has his mother, her cat(s), and his friends. (I actually have so many thoughts about Dustin and Dustin's thoughts on dads/men, Dustin's relationships with both Steve and Eddie, etc.) I think Dustin and Steve's friendship is really special to both of them and they wouldn't let it fall apart no matter where Dustin goes after high school, no matter where Steve goes in the future. But my honest opinion is: Yes, they would be. They would be best friends. All of them. Eventually. And I'll tell you why:

Because they've all gone through some crazy, crazy stuff. The same crazy stuff. Together. No one else knows how it feels to deal with the Upside Down except this group. No one else knows about what happened with the Russians. No one else knows about Vecna, the demogorgon, the real reason Hawkins is cursed. Where Will Byers actually was that one time he went missing. I mean, they all already knew each other in a sense. The teens all went to the same high school. And as for the kids - they've been best friends for years. They knew of Steve Harrington before Nancy started dating him. Max gave him a goodbye note, too. Nancy used to dress up for D&D campaigns Mike hosted when she was younger - and she chose to dance with Dustin at the Snowball. The Byers adopted Eleven and made her Jane. That child would fight for any one of these people, and has several times now, because according to her, nothing is more important than her friends. Robin and Steve have become inseparable. Nancy and Steve are on good terms despite the breakup. And if Eddie had lived, he would be indebted to this group of people he never would've hung out with otherwise. Dustin and his merry band of misfits worked to save the world and clear Eddie's name. That means something. You don't just go your separate ways after that. Realistically, yeah, it would be amicable and healthy and respectful at first. But they've bled together (get out of my head, Erica). Chrissy can hang out with the cheer squad all she wants, but would one of those girls face down a swarm of demobats for her? Nancy lost Barb, and we don't see her with anyone else friend-wise. No one else would get it. Jonathan gets it. Steve gets it. Robin gets it. Eddie gets it. Mike and Dustin and Lucas and Will and Eleven and Max get it. When you go through stuff like that - now they're aware of each other. Now it's different. You cannot just go back to normal life after Upside Down trauma; we've seen that. Now if they need someone to talk to, if something scary happens, do you think they're gonna turn to their immediate group of friends from normal life? Eddie wouldn't be able to talk to Jeff or Gareth about nightmares of Vecna pinning Chrissy to his ceiling. Steve can't call up Tommy H. or any of his basketball groupies if he's having some kind of demogorgon-induced PTSD. If some new mystery happens in town, this group will immediately seek out one another. There's something about going through stuff like that that breaks down barriers. Why would you hang out with anyone else as much as you hang out with the people you were the most real with in times of crises? Eddie/Chrissy/Robin (newbies) would have discovered during the UD adventures that these people are not all that hard to get along with/different from them (Eddie with Chrissy, Eddie with Steve, Robin with Nancy, Nancy with Robin, Nancy with Jonathan, Jonathan with Nancy, Dustin with Steve, Steve with Dustin, Hopper with Mike, Mike with Hopper, it happens EVERY TIME). They would also have discovered that when the end of the world is literally happening, they can count on these people. That creates a kind of bond you can't get anywhere else. I think they'd become less like an ordinary group of friends and more like a little family. You have your regular friends, sure, but if you're lucky and have what a family is supposed to be, you know friends come and go but you always have your family. Whatever that family looks like. You are the most comfortable with them. With family, you end up hanging out even when you weren't planning on it. When something serious happens, people who feel like family (or are family) are the first people you go to. I think it would be like that for the Hawkins crew, even Eddie and Chrissy after a while. Maybe not right away, but gradually? Absolutely. Age differences and social statuses do not matter when they're together. They're family. They're best friends because they're family. That's my take, anyway!

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snelbz · 4 years ago

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Secrets {Elorcan}

Written, as always, with @tacmc, aka the LOML.

Lorcan got a dreadful sense of deja vu as he trekked across town in his Jeep.

He was happily downing his second beer of the night, alone in his apartment watching Back to the Future when her text came through. Even though his mind protested, his body was moving toward his front door, slipping on his boots, and grabbing his keys and wallet before he even finished reading her words.

I need you. Please.

He knew where she had been all night, knew who she had been with. Now, Lorcan had to go pick up the pieces.

If only she had listened to him to begin with.

The snow was coming down hard. What had started out as some light flurries earlier in the evening had now coated everything the eye could see in a thick, white blanket. He probably should have driven a little more slowly, but he had to get to her, had to make sure that she was okay.

Even if she’d done it to herself.

When he pulled into her driveway, parking behind her little red car, Lorcan could still see the tire tracks in front of her house. He couldn’t have been gone for ten minutes before she had texted him.

Flipping the visor down, Lorcan looked at himself in the small mirror. It wasn’t that he needed to make sure he looked okay or that he needed to impress her. He needed to make sure that he kept his cool while he was in there. She already knew what he was thinking. It was up to him to make sure he didn’t say it.

With a sigh, Lorcan was out of the Jeep and tugging the beanie he wore down over his loose hair. He rang the doorbell and waited. And waited. And waited.

When she came to the door, her eyes were red and her nose was sniffly.

She didn’t say a word.

A second passed before Lorcan sighed and he pulled Elide into his arms, patting her back softly. He didn’t bother telling her all was okay. He didn’t trust his own voice. So, he remained quiet and patted her back until she backed up, pulled him inside, and shut the door behind them, shutting out the cold.

“I have wine,” Elide said, quietly, as she made her way to the kitchen. “I know it’s not your drink of choice, but you’re welcome to a glass.”

Lorcan stopped in the doorway of her little kitchen and leaned against the frame, his broad arms crossed. “Wine tastes like piss.”

“Says the man that downs beer like water,” Elide said, meant to add onto his sarcastic comment, but there was no bite to it, nor humor.

Instead, Elide looked down at her empty glass before filling it again.

Lorcan said nothing.

He knew he should say something comforting, but he was having trouble coming up with anything to say. After Elide’s third sip of wine, he settled for, “You okay?”

Elide set her glass calmly on the countertop. “Honestly?”

“Have I ever asked for anything other than honesty from you?” Lorcan followed, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible.

Elide slowly shook her head. “I’m almost out of wine.”

“Then it looks like we’re going for a drive,” he said, simply. “Come on.”

Elide didn’t argue. She just nodded, pulled her boots on and grabbed her coat. They walked out into the snow and Lorcan opened her door before helping her up into the passenger seat.

The ride to the liquor store was quiet. The music played softly in the background, but neither of them were really listening. Lorcan wasn’t sure if Elide was even paying attention to anything as they drove through the town. When they parked, Lorcan was out of the truck before Elide could even unbuckle her seatbelt. After a few minutes, he returned with three bags. One held Elide’s wine, one very clearly held a six-pack of beer, but the third was a mystery.

Looking back at the bags in the backseat, Elide chuckled quietly and said, “You need to be drunk for this, too?”

Lorcan glanced over at her, but his eyes were back on the road a second later. His silence was answer enough.

Elide said nothing more. Her eyes simply drifted toward the window, at the snow slowly and silently falling from the heavens.

“Are you going to stay quiet all night?” she asked, as Lorcan turned onto her street.

“No,” he replied, simply, even though he said nothing more.

“You’re mad,” she said.

“Why would I be mad?” he replied. “I’m not mad.”

“You sound mad,” she whispered.

Lorcan sighed. “I’m not mad, Elide, I just want to make sure you’re alright. You’re my best friend, I need you to be alright, so I’m here.” The Jeep idled in her driveway, but neither of them made a move to get out. Elide just stared at her hands in her lap. Lorcan took a deep breath and cut the engine. “Come on. Let’s go inside. You need to tell me what happened and I need a drink.”

He didn’t wait for her reply, just opened the door and was retrieving their bags as Elide slid down from the seat and made her way up to her front door. She unlocked it and was heading back towards her bedroom as Lorcan took the drinks into the kitchen. After kicking off her boots and grabbing an enormous, oversized hoodie - one that she’d stolen from Lorcan at some point in high school - her sock-covered feet were shuffling into the kitchen. Lorcan had already settled in the living room with a beer in hand, so Elide was surprised to find a full bottle of whiskey next to the wine on her counter.

“Looked like you needed something stronger,” he said, shrugging, refusing to meet her eyes even though the TV remained off.

“Don’t act like whiskey is for my benefit,” she said, even though she poured herself a shot and tossed it back before filling her wine glass. “You know I prefer tequila.”

Lorcan let out a humorless snort as Elide stumbled into the living room and settled on the couch beside him.

“So,” he began, clearing his throat. “What happened?”

Elide shrugged. “He came here, picked me up, we had dinner. He tried to come in, I told him he hadn’t been invited, that I wasn’t ready to take that step again, that I wanted to take things slow. He kept trying to come inside, but I kept telling him no. When he finally got the hint, he stormed off and drove away. After, of course, he called me a prude and an idiot, and thanked me for wasting his time, just like I always had.”

Lorcan’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

“Say it,” was all Elide said, after the silence filled the space between them.

“There’s nothing to say,” he said, cracking open the beer in his hand and putting it to his lips. After he’d drank deeply, he crushed the can and set it down on the side table next to him.

Those four, stupid words hung between them, regardless of the fact that neither of them had uttered them.

I told you so.

When Elide had called Lorcan on Christmas morning, he’d expected her to tell him some ridiculous story of something that one of their friends did after he’d left the bar on Christmas Eve. He expected her to wish him a Merry Christmas and ask what time he was planning to be at Rowan and Aelin’s for lunch.

So when she’d told him she bumped into her ex at the bar, Lorcan was quiet. When she told him she’d agreed to another date, Lorcan was silent as death.

Roland was an ass.

He didn’t deserve Elide.

He never had.

“I need you to say something,” Elide said, turning her eyes toward him.

“You need me to say something?” Lorcan asked, incredulously. “Want do you want me to say, El? I want to feel bad for you. I really fucking do, alright? But, I…”

“You what,” Elide breathed.

“I can’t,” Lorcan said, through gritted teeth. “I have no idea why you gave that jackass a second chance. I know that, you know that, it makes no sense to me! We did this same thing a year ago, El. Me, here with you, trying to put your heart back together after Roland was reckless with it!”

“He means something to me,” she said, looking down into her full glass. “He was my first, Lorcan, my first everything.”

Lorcan had to bite his tongue. He was well aware of everything Roland had been to Elide. He’d been around for years, in and out of Elide’s life, until he broke her heart last Christmas. He finally cleared his throat when he felt he was able to speak without snapping again. “I know. I know he was, El. But you promised. You promised you weren’t going to let him do this to you again. And the first opportunity he has, he comes right back and fucks with your head.”

Elide was silently brushing a thumb back and forth across her bottom lip. After a second, she looked up at him. “I loved him, Lor.”

The tears in her eyes nearly broke him.

Without a word, Lorcan wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. Elide buried her face in his chest. “I know you did.”

Lorcan wanted to kill him, wanted to kick his ass for making Elide cry, something she’d promised him would never happen again.

“I’m sorry for snapping,” he said, quietly, once her sobbing grew into silent cries. “I just… I can’t see you like this. Especially when it’s because of some prick that doesn’t deserve you.”

Elide shook her head, but he knew she wasn’t disregarding what he’d said. She was just trying to get her head straight. “I just need to accept that I’m going to be a cat lady and die alone.”

Lorcan snorted. “You’re allergic to cats.”

“Then it’ll be an early death,” Elide said, voice muffled thanks to where her face was still pressed against his chest. She leaned back and sighed. “I got your shirt wet.”

Lorcan shrugged. “Not a big deal. And you’re not going to die alone. There’s someone out there who’s going to make you the happiest girl in the world.” He paused for a moment and made sure she was looking at him. “And it sure as hell won’t be Roland Havilliard.””

“Then who will it be?” she asked, with a humorless chuckle. “Do share your wisdom, if you know that fact to be true.”

Lorcan just shook his head as he watched her. If only she knew, if only he could tell her of what he would never tell her. Lorcan believed what he had said, that there was someone out there who would make her the happiest girl in the world.

Little did she know that he wished it were him.

He knew it wasn’t, though.

He wanted that person to be him, but Elide Lochan deserved better than a bastard who couldn’t control his temper, who drank too much and felt too little. Yes, he loved Elide, more than he could ever love anyone, ever again. But she deserved better than him.

So he’d take his love for her to the grave.

#elide lochan #lorcan salvaterre #elorcan angst #snacmc #throne of glass

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feathersandblue · 4 years ago

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Dean Winchester, Character Death, and Frodo’s Return to the Shire

This will be a LOOONG post that has been stuck in my head for a while in bits and pieces - about Dean’s death, what it was and what it wasn’t, and incidentally, the Lord of the Rings has found its way in here too.

It’s pretty clear that Dabb always meant for Dean to die.

And while I strongly disagree with that, on so many levels, I think it might have been more palatable if framed in a different way, and so I’ve been trying to figure out what the ending might have looked like in a world that wasn’t quite as shitty as ours. Still shitty, but marginally less so.

Dean is notoriously bad at letting bad things happen if he can prevent them. I find it difficult to believe that Dean would ever quit hunting entirely, and for as long as he kept hunting, the danger of dying would always be present. It’s not unrealistic at all for him to die on a routine hunt. Life is unpredictable; life as a hunter, even more so. I understand that the writers might want to make that point. And it might have been valid if – and that’s the real problem – Dean’s death hadn’t otherwise been devoid of meaning.

The thing about character death – any sort of character death – is that it needs to have purpose.

And there are different ways that it can have purpose, but it depends on what sort of character we’re talking about.

Minor, often unnamed characters – the redshirts in every narrative – die to illustrate injustice or to highlight evil. Their death is a catalyst or a consequence of the events as they unfold, part of the conflict the heros have to solve. An army led into battle by a tyrant. Refugees in a camp dying of malnutrition. Murder victims of a serial killer. In all these cases, death fuels the plot but has little meaning beyond that.

There are minor characters whose death both fuels the plot and gives the hero a more personal motive to act. Supernatural is full of these. Mary and Jessica burning at the ceiling; Charlie dumped in a bathtub. Minor characters can have their own arcs, but ultimately their deaths are only important for the impact they have on the main characters.

The death of a protagonist is markedly different. Protagonists need to have agency even in death to maintain their status.

Their death has to be the reflection of their character development up to that point but it also has to tell us something about them that we did not already know – show us how they make a final decision or draw a final conclusion that marks the end of an inner conflict – which is what all storytelling is about. Character death has to serve a purpose to have meaning, and for a protagonist, the purpose must be personal.

And If it fails to do that, then that’s either a sign that we’re no longer dealing with a protagonist, or that something weng very, very wrong in the writers’ room. There is no inherent value in tragedy. In storytelling, tragedy is justified when it achieves something, otherwise, it’s just capriciousness.

Buffy’s death at the end of season 5 of BTVS is a classic example for the death of a protagonist. Harry’s decision to go and face Voldemort in the forbidden forest, even though it doesn’t ultimately kill him, is another. When Sam jumps into the abyss in Swan Song, that is his heroic sacrifice, but if he’d permanently died in season 2, that would have been bizarre and nonsensical because it was entirely beyond his control – it did not reflect his decisions, gave him no agency, and reduced him from a protagonist to a side character. In that moment, his death was something that happened to Dean. It worked because his death didn’t stick – he regained his agency after resurrection. But as an ending to his hero’s journey, it would have been singularly unsatisfying.

Dean is our protagonist, and he has been for 15 seasons. What does his death tell us about him that we didn’t know – what decisions did he make, what inner struggle got resolved, what meaning did his death have for him, personally, and then, in extension, for us?

The problem is that the finale, as is so often the case in Supernatural, tells two stories at once.

Whe the episode starts, it appears that Dean moves on with his life just fine, a well-adjusted model citizen. He’s ready to get a job, seems to be moderately happy. He even has dog. The decision to keep hunting is his, and death just accidentally happens, which of course is not unrealistic in his line of work. On the forefront, his death is brought about by the fact that he exercises free will. It tells us that he is a hunter and will always be one, that he keeps protecting people because that’s just who he is.

None of that, however, is new. It is just more of the same. All of Dean’s decisions in the finale tell us nothing about him that we did not already know. He’s trying to move on from the death of the people closest to him, as he’s always done. He chooses the hamster wheel, as he has always done. He follows in his father’s footsteps, as he has always done.

As he gets impaled, he has no choices left to make. There is no agency in his death, no inner struggle. His death furthers neither his character development nor the plot. That Dean simply accepts his death is as unsurprising as the fact that his final moments are spent reassuring Sam and telling him that he has to keep fighting.

The conclusion? Dean ceases to be a protagonist.

He dies not as the hero of his story. His death just happens to him.

After Sam and Dean had presumably freed themselves from the constraints of Chuck’s narrative, the final episode should have emphasized their agency, their freedom of choice, through change. But in the end, it only led them both to making the same choices as always, the unsurprising ones. And even the choices that did indicate a change (like Dean’s job application) were not shown to bear fruits.

What meaning does free will have when it doesn’t change the outcome? All the finale does is tell a bleak story about humanity and how we are incapable of making meaningful, consequential changes in our lives.

It’s almost like Lucifer is talking to us all the way from the Endverse of 5.04: “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up – here.”

Devastating as that is, there is another interpretation of the finale that is arguably worse, a different reading strongly suggested by both text and subtext.

Dean, as mentioned before, is trying to move on with his life but ultimately fails. The situation is different from the way he behaved when he lost Cas and Mary in season 13 where he was outright suicidal – his desperation is more quiet but also more profound. He seems determined to honor Cas’ and Jack’s sacrifice. But determination is not enough. Dean only goes through the motions, and it shows. He clings to the dog in the morning; the dog sticks to him closely throughout the day as dogs tend to do when they feel that their owner is in distress, almost like a therapy dog. His room looks messy, he makes an attempt to fix it but then abandons it as it requires too muh effort. Ultimately, he can’t be bothered. There are alcohol bottles standing around, a sign that he’s drinking, though not as heavily as in the past. All the while, he sems very laid-back, presumably relaxed and at peace and coping well with the loss but also weirdly detached.

When Sam mentions Cas and Jack at the pie festival, he says, “Yeah, I’m thinking about them too. You know that pain’s not going to go away. Right? But if we don’t keep living, then all that … sacrifice is gonna be for nothing.”

He feels an obligation. And he’s trying. It’s just not working very well.

He barely reacts when Sams pies him in the face.

When impaled on the rebar, Dean actively prevents Sam from calling for help. He tells Sam not to bring him back. And in the end, he asks Sam to tell him it’s okay to go. Which isn’t something he would do if he was simply dying – it strongly indicates that he wants to be allowed to die.

Prompting the conclusion that Dean is giving up on life the first opportunity he gets, not even knowing whether he’ll end up in heaven.

In this reading, Dean does have a little bit of agency. He makes a decision, sort of. His death marks the resolution of an inner struggle: He gives up.

He dies as a protagonist.

In the worst way possible.

In all honesty, I can’t decide which interpretation I hate more.

But what could the writers have done differently, if Dean was meant to die all along?

Back when the SPN finale had freshly aired, I was describing it like this:

Imagine that the One Ring is destroyed. But Merry died in the battle and Pippin went missing and was never found again. Frodo and Sam return to the Shire; Pippin and Merry are mentioned once in passing. Upon their arrival, Frodo is attacked by Wormtongue and slowly bleeds out over the span of thirty pages. Sam marries someone else than Rosie; Rosie is never mentioned again. Somehow, both Frodo and Sam are teleported to Valinor, where we are told that the real fun begins.

At the time, I only used this as an example to illustrate what a mess the finale had been. But in the weeks that have passed since, then, I’ve started thinking about the LOTR comparison some more, and it got me thinking about Dean’s death in a different way.

And it has everything to do with the difference between running from and walking toward.

As mentioned before, it’s not unrealistic that Dean would die on a random hunt. Would the Dean Winchester we know ever stop hunting? Maybe. We might want him to. Then again, would be still be Dean Winchester if he did? We know that Dean can’t help but feel responsible. He is someone who is incapable of staying hands-off.

Dean, as we see him in the finale, is trying to honor Cas’s and Jack’s memory by living, although he’s not very good at it – not outright suicidal but worn-out. Exhausted. And still he makes the decisions to keep hunting because he can do nothing else.

When Frodo and Sam returned to the Shire in LOTR, they had earned their happy ending. But Frodo, who had carried such a heavy burden that he was permanently altered by it, could no longer find happiness in Middleearth, and ultimately decided to depart for Valinor along with Gandalf and Bilbo with the promise of later being reunited with Sam. The journey had changed both of them, but it had changed Frodo to a greater degree, his responsibility had been greater, the weight on his shoulders heavier.

And I started to wonder whether the intention had initially been to show Dean in much the same state – and to frame his death as a decision to move on, the same way that LOTR has Frodo move on to the West.

Imagine the following: Cas is pulled into the Empty. His happiness and love change the Empty; he merges with it or otherwise changes it so that it’s now a more demon-friendly environment. Everyone there is at peace. Cas, in whatever form, moves on to Heaven – or maybe his soul does as it’s now mostly human.

Dean goes on a hunt and dies. Jack, or some other entity, shows up where you would expect the curiously absent reaper in order to give him a choice. Learning that Cas is in Heaven, and knowing that he will never be able to stop hunting if he remains on earth, Dean makes the conscious decision to move on. For the first time, Dean prioritizes his own happiness over his perceived duty. His death is no longer suicide by proxy, and neither is its sole purpose to illustrate the inherent meaningless of free will by turning him into a hamster-by-choice. Instead, it becomes a decision because he’s given back agency. He resolves an inner conflict and there’s even a final bit of character development as he breaks the chain of mutual co-dependency that ties him to Sam and allows himself to be with Cas. He remains a protagonist throughout the end.

And because he acknowledges his love for Cas and decides to be with him, he no longer just runs from, he walks toward.

The parallels to The Lord of the Rings get even more obvious when you take Sam into the equation because much like Samwise, Sam remains on earth in order to have a life that, for him, still holds meaning and the chance of happiness – whereas Dean can no longer be happy on earth as long as Cas isn’t there.

To be completely clear: I’d still think that such an ending would suck because it puts too much emphasis on an afterlife, and it would still send the message that characters like Dean could only find peace in death, and unless some adjustments were made to Sam’s arc as well, the ending would still suck for him.

But seeing as SPN plays in a universe where an afterlife exists, I could probably learn to live with Dean’s death if it had any sort of meaning, for him, besides dying and waiting for Sam to arrive, if it allowed for that final bit of character development. If he got to choose.

While I’ll never be able to see the finale that we actually got as anything but a complete atrocity.

#spn #supernatural #meta #dean winchester #destiel

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years ago

Text

Just A Dream Away

Chapter 6/13 read here on ao3!

for @harringrovebigbang

accompanying art piece by @monochromegee! check it out here!

~~~~

The more Steve thinks about someone being stuck on the other side, the more he has his heart set on doing something about it.

He hadn’t been a hero to anybody last time they were dealing with the Upside Down, too caught up in his own troubles to do anything useful, and it had cost him the love of his life. He was going to guarantee that he stepped up this time. With more time to think, he defines a plan, “I think you’re right, I think we should get ahold of El. That way we can at least figure out who to go to next.”

“Okay, well, that sounds great and all that you have a plan, Steve, but you’re not calling anybody with this burnt up phone, and I’m pretty sure this is too time sensitive to write a letter.” Robin motions to the broken phone where it still hung from the base.

Steve thinks for a moment and snaps his fingers, “The neighbor would let us borrow hers.”

That’s how they end up in the elderly neighbor Dorothy's half of the duplex, Robin entertaining her in the living room with any random story she could think of, and Steve in the hallway a little ways down, talking low so the unsuspecting neighbor can’t hear what he is saying. To get in, they’d just told her that Robin's phone had just been cutting out, but Steve needed to call his sick mother until they could replace it.

Of course that isn’t true, he instead dials the number Joyce left for all of them to get in contact with her if need be, “Mrs Byers?”

On the other end, he hears a lot of noise in the background, at first worried about a repeat of last night, until the sounds made themselves clear as not doomsday static, but business. There’s a television turned up loud, noise from the kitchen like someone was cooking, talking carrying from a distant conversation, before Joyce’s gentle voice cuts through it, “Hi, honey. How have you been?”

He skips the formalities, trying to be fast for the sake of whoever is trapped, and to get it out before the neighbor got bored of Robin and started snooping, “I need to ask you something.”

“Of course, Is everything alright, Steve?” There’s a hint of concern in her voice he has to swallow before he decides what his answer will.

He decides just to rip the bandage off in one go, “Can you put El on the phone?”

Instantly her demeanor switches. They both knew Steve had no reason other than an emergency to want to talk to her daughter, because the other kids would have done it themselves, don’t need Steve as their messenger anymore, “What is this about?”

“We think there is someone in the Upside Down.” He hears her cover the receiver, and call to El in the next room, a hint of urgency to her tone. There was the sound of the phone being passed between two people before El's small voice rang out through the receiver.

“Hello?”

He again skips a proper greeting, full of too much nervous energy to worry about being polite, “Is there any chance at all that someone could still be in the Upside Down?”

It takes her a second to respond, but her answer is firm, “The gate is closed.”

“I know, but do you think we could’ve closed it on somebody?”

“Why?” She sounds unsure of whether or not she should trust him, so he explains to her, “The phone rang and Robin said it sounded like a bunch of static, and like someone was talking but she couldn’t hear them. It blew up like it did before when Will called.”

There’s a long pause and whispers in the background, like she’s being coached by Joyce, and her answers comes slowly, “Without powers I can’t help. But I have an idea.”

Another pause and her mother takes the phone back, “We’ll come back to Hawkins and figure it out, Steve. See what you can do until we get there.”

The line goes dead before he can thank her or ask how long he could expect to wait, so he sighs and hangs the phone back up. When he returns to the living room, Robin stands up from the couch and the neighbor asks politely, “How was she?”

He furrows his eyebrows, has too much on his mind and has to remember the cover story they came up with before he can answer, “She’s alright. Thank you, Dorothy.”

They’re halfway to the front door when she stops them, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you two, I have the city’s number if you need it.”

Robin smiles politely, “What for?”

“Well, that streetlight outside. It’s been flickering on and off these past few nights, I thought it would be bothering you two being right outside your window and all. I know it’s been driving me up the wall.” She chuckles, not realizing the significance of what she just said to them.

They exchange a look between themselves, both having gone a little pale.

Robin recovers quicker, so she forces a smile back onto her face, significantly less genuine this time, and steers Steve outside with a guiding hand on his back, assuring the neighbor before shutting the door in her face, “That’s alright, Dorothy. We hadn’t noticed actually.”

~~~~

This end of the neighborhood is so poorly lit, but Billy can’t afford to get cornered like this.

He’d taken off from the area around duplex apartment, leaving behind the big monster and running until he finds more street lights, though in a poor backwoods town like Hawkins, only a select few streets nearby downtown or the rich neighborhoods were taken care of, so it’s not until he’s all the way at the other end of the street, almost by the intersection to the next neighborhood, that he finds another dull and flickering street light.

It’s then, looking up hopefully at the dull, flickering light that he realizes this area is somewhat familiar to him, though it's still much farther out than his usually traveled routes between Cherry Lane and Loch Nora.

When things were normal, Billy was so bitter about leaving his home, so he hadn’t bothered getting familiar with the entire town. If it was out of his way, it wasn’t his problem, Hawkins was only ever supposed to be a temporary home for him anyways.

Even now he still wasn’t acquainted with the area, because over here past the neighborhood where he found Steve and Robin is the dark zone, where the storm clouds are thicker and the fog covers what little light there is in this place, and he normally wouldn’t dare stray over this way.

Right now though, there’s a monster that’s already tasted his blood on his heels, so it doesn’t really matter where he ends up.

He follows a long dirt driveway towards that one streetlight, beacon of hope that it was, when suddenly it hits him. This is the Byers’ house.

If there were literally anywhere else for him to go right now other than that house, he’d go there, guilty memories he’d been mostly forgiven for still sitting heavy in his heart, if not just because now all the people he’d hurt that day were still living without him, making new memories and probably remembering his as that same asshole that barged into the Byers family home that night.

But, he’s not out of the woods just yet to be picky, because there’s a trail of blood from his injured arm leading the monster to this exact spot, and that is a monster that already had the taste of his flesh. He’d have to take whatever he could get.

The second he opens the door, under the twisting vines and ash and mold covering almost everything in the house, it’s obvious that this isn’t the same house he’d burst into two years ago, none of the floral couches and knitted Afghans and Merry Mushroom canisters that made for that warm, homey feel of the place that had made Billy feel queasy when juxtaposed with what he’d thought was happening in that house before Steve apologized for lying, and he for kicking Steve’s ass, and gave him a new explanation that was, as he now knew, still a coverup, but didn’t seem so predatory.

Now there were all leather arm chairs, dirty work boots by the door, and empty beer bottles on the kitchen counters. He could tell from the way this house is decorated alone, at least if he imagined it without all the rot and death, that this house had been bought up by some unhappy old man, and he almost wants to be bitter, that he’s going to die in a place that looks like the embodiment of the unhappy future he was damned to even if he made it out of this hell, until something catches his eye.

On display hooks, positioned perfectly atop the mantelpiece, there is a proudly displayed shotgun.

Billy almost trips over the clutter-covered coffee table running to go get it, a feeling like hope in his chest, but when he pulls it down, his heart sinks a little. He can tell from the weight that it isn’t loaded, it’s just some old bastards trophy.

He worries for a second that it isn’t even a real gun at all, but a snarl from the other side of the door reminds him it doesn’t matter if it shoots, it’ll still bludgeon. A weapon is a weapon.

Still, he quickly turns the place over, clearing off that coffee table, feeling along the underside of the mantel for a hidden box, and digging through the side table drawers, in there finding old pills and candy wrappers, spare change and, in the very last place he looks, a box of shotgun shells.

He grabs it, but he doesn’t have time to be relieved, because on the other side of the door, there’s a snarl accompanied by a scratching sound, and he knows that that thing outside is taunting him. Trapping him in so it could toy with him before finally killing him. But he’s not going to let that happen, not now.

He couldn’t say how much time had passed down here, but he had been hurt and starved and damn near froze to death, and he had still survived. All this time it had been for himself, to prove he could do it and maybe, just maybe someday reach the other side, but now he had a purpose. Now he knew his Steve was right there, just out of his reach. He can’t give up now. He won’t.

He takes the gun into the kitchen, where he’ll have a minute if the monster does lose its temper and break in early, sliding to the floor with it so he’s level with where the monsters face would be once it turned the corner, gritting his teeth and lowering the barrel of the gun, his good hand shaking badly as he tries against his nerves and the bite making him weaker to load the shells in both barrels.

At the same time, just as he expected, the monster decides it’s done playing with its food, hitting into the door until the hinges crack and it swings open at an off angle. Billy curses under his breath and tries to load faster, in his panic accidentally catching sight of the bite wound on his arm, and it’s bad. As in, he can’t believe he’s still conscious right now bad. But he tries not to think about it and just locks the gun back in, cocks it, and aims it straight in front of him.

His hands are shaking so badly he’s not sure he could actually fire the gun or hit the monster even if he did, but surprisingly, he doesn’t have to put that theory to the test, because the monster never comes around the wall. Claws scratch into the damp carpeted floor in the room parallel to the one he’s in and eerie chitters and growls fill the disturbingly quiet air. Billy always wondered if that sound was them communicating, or if they were mocking him. Making his skin crawl so he’d let his guard down, be afraid as they tore him to shreds.

But then it just stops again. The house totally silent except for the monster's horribly ragged breathing, and then it leaves. Retreats right out of the front door, and from the rustling sound that carries from outside, back into the woods.

Billy breathes out a heavy sigh of relief, tilting his head back against the wall, exhausted. Above his head he notices a cross, just a little golden thing dangling right above his head, and he laughs bitterly. Some blessing this is.

Because, while he didn’t get viciously eaten alive, for which he supposes he could be grateful in some ways, here he still was, after so many days he couldn’t count them anymore, he was still trapped and alone with monsters hunting him. Now suddenly throwing Steve and his friend into the mix, and he’s got himself the perfect mix of hopelessness and heartbreak and dread making this all the harder.

With effort, he stands again, this time not making the mistake of leaving his weapon behind.

The adrenaline is slowly wearing off, and his arm really starts to demand his attention. It stings like nothing he’s ever felt before, a horrible sensation that makes his whole arm feel painfully numb. He just hopes the medicine in this house hadn’t succumbed to the elements like most things he scavenged for tend to anymore.

By some miracle, the old man who bought the place up still hadn’t finished unpacking, and right at the bottom of a cardboard box full of old towels is an almost completely preserved first aid kid, fully intact other than a couple of rotten bandages, but those wouldn’t be of much use to him right now anyways.

He tries to remember the rules his dad had taught him the first time he cut too deep, rules which he’d later passed down to Max when she was being nosy after witnessing a fight, following him around while he was trying to get his face to stop bleeding.

Clean it, medicate it, bandage it.

Normally when he was telling it to Max, he’d tack on to the end to go get help if she was bleeding more than a bandaids worth, but that’s not really of much use to him, so he pushes his sleeve up, grateful it had already been rolled up some and hadn’t been torn, and assesses the damage.

He can’t see any bone, which is good enough news, but he can’t see much of anything else from how badly he’s bleeding, which is not so good. He can’t even get a fair judgement of how bad it is with all the gore covering the actual wound, so he walks to the sink to wipe some of the blood away.

The water quality down here varies from day to day, not that he’d ever drink the stuff, he’d a thousand times over raid a monsters den for a single water bottle than put that stuff in his body, but sometimes he’d test it just to check if it was clean enough for him to try and wash away any of the dirt and blood on him.

Sometimes nothing would come from the faucet but disgusting black sludge. Today he was lucky, the water, if you could even call it that, cloudy and speckled, but not unusable. Besides, he would rather get some weird alien infection in his arm than bleed out anyways.

Max’s watch is caked in gore so he quickly runs it under the water too. It’s probably going to fry the stupid thing, and the thought of its familiar ticking being gone does admittedly make Billy a little uneasy, but he’d rather return the watch broken than stained with his blood.

Because that’s really his biggest goal. To keep surviving and make it out of wherever the hell he is so he could give Max back her watch and Steve back that stupid bandana he probably didn’t even notice was missing, and his dad back his jacket. Shove it in the asshole's face and tell him, ‘Here’s your jacket back you old bastard. Mind the blood stain on the collar and the tear in the shoulder. I fucking missed you, dad.’

He's able to get the bleeding to stop with rags, and once the wound is clean, he slathers the bite in as much polysporin as he can find, mostly to mask the heavy smell of blood lingering on his skin that would act like a beacon for the monsters miles away until this hole in his arm heals. He finds clean enough bandages and wraps it until he can barely move his wrist, tugging his sleeve back down over them. He decides not to clean up all the blood, so there was something to distract them from finding him once he leaves.

Healing is supposed to be the hardest part, and Billy had always thought that was bullshit- the hardest part was the betrayal when his dear old dad cracked his bones and left bruises on his skin when there are real monsters out there in the world that don’t give you a hug and an apology when it’s over- but now he knows for sure that isn’t true.

The most important thing is finding Steve again, and figuring out why he couldn’t see or touch him, and could only just barely hear him, but could feel his presence, almost tangibly.

Billy steals another two boxes of bullets, keeping the gun close at his side, and he sets back off for that duplex.

#harringrove big bang 2021 #harringrove #billy x steve #billy hargrove #steve harrington #robin buckley #tw blood #tw gun mention #ej writer #story by ej!#so excited to get this chapter out #because look at that amazing art!!!

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