#its fine; except my brother and my dad happen to have no memory or attention issues and think we're faking it and just doing whatever

[berryblu-soda]

Punching siblings reeeeal good then turning back time so nothing actually happened should be an option

[misha-moose-dean-burger-lover]

for @bend-me-shape-me's spn advent calendar 2020. prompt: carols.

dedicated to @one-more-offbeat-anthem!! happy birthday <3

After Chuck's defeated, and Billie's gone, and the Empty has been bargained with (semantics, any of the Winchesters would say if you asked one of the four to elaborate) into returning Cas in exchange for eternal sleep, there's peace.

After they're done, and really done, there's time.

A moment to breathe, a minute to look at the clouds, and hours stretching endless, days on end, resonating with something resembling quiet.

And then, there's a guitar.

*

"Nope." Dean declares. "Never seen that thing in here before. And I once did Christmas inventory by myself, so I should know."

Sam snickers at Dean's cavalier tone. He'd been content to examine the instrument from a distance, unlike his brother, but that didn't mean he wasn't paying attention. "You had to do it yourself, Dean. Those were the exact words of the bet."

"I was drunk, and you hustled me!"

"You've known I play poker my entire life!"

"Well, yeah." Dean flashes his best shit-eating grin. "But you've sucked, your entire life, so —"

"— sure I have —"

"— your entire life has really just been a very long, very lame hustle!" Dean spreads his arms in a display of triumph. "And ergo, you hustled me into Christmas inventory-ing. The case is rested, your honor."

"That's not how you say —"

"Sam. Dean." Cas interjects, loud and exasperated. Sam shuts up immediately, eyes falling to his lap, while Dean exchanges a sheepish look with Cas (and Jack, who to his credit, seemed to be unaffected by the mini-feud. But that's less the part about him being God-Lite and more about him being himself. A kid who grew up watching his dads bicker endlessly and mostly, uneventfully, and has come to terms with it as a primary aspect of (at least, his) family.)

Cas, as usual, puts up with less of their crap. "Is this really necessary right now?"

Dean loves him for it, except when it's targeted at Dean and since that's kind of a lot, he isn't sure he loves it, or just loves Cas and generalises the things he does under the wider bracket of Cas.

"And if it's not," Cas goes on, using what is probably his I-led-garrisons-in-heaven voice, which automatically sends a shiver up Dean's spine. "Can we agree the guitar is, somehow, a recent addition and leave it at that?"

Sam nods slightly, apologetic. Dean just rolls his eyes, but it's a yes. (Everyone there knows it's a yes.)

"It's not cursed." Jack cuts in brightly. "Or out of the ordinary at all."

"So," Dean blinks. "We just happen to have an awesome new guitar show up, completely randomly, in this top secret Bunker no one know about, minus any ulterior motives or death curses?"

Jack grins. "Yes."

"Cool." Dean says immediately, and Sam huffs an amused laugh. He thinks he sees Cas smile as well, and a smirk grows on his face.

"Dibs."

*

Unsurprisingly, nobody counters his dibs, and Dean ends up taking the guitar to his room.

It's after a few days of insecurity, leading right into embarrassment, leading further to ignoring its existence, and further still to a mostly depressive array of memories — before it circles back to insecurity, and is about to repeat all over again, when he stops himself in his proverbial spiral, and decides to just friggin' do it.

That night, he picks up the pick.

Fiddles with it in his hands for a minute, and proceeds to abandon the idea again, because it does not feel right. Different shape, different weight.

And Dean Winchester's already enough of a misfit for this project, for his guitar pick to be a poor goddamn fit in his hand too.

But there's something about being so close that stirs up motivation in his heart, similar to the first day they found the damn thing, and next morning, he's out looking for a music shop in town.

That night, he finally plays.

It's uncertain — experimental — and he soon realizes why nobody ever says a damn thing about guitars when they say you never forget how to ride a bike.

But then, slowly, and really slowly at that, music seems to return to his fingers.

It isn't smooth by any chance, or even really accurate, but there's a faint tug in his brain that leads him to the next chord, and a twitch in his wrist that tells him when to strum, and he's awful, he's really friggin' awful, but even repeatedly saying so in his head refuses to dampen the overwhelming feeling that lights him up from the inside to start to feel like maybe he can play again. There's hope, and there's terrible, off-timed, broken music, and there's Dean in the middle of it, and maybe he can actually do this.

Recollection of how to play had come to his hands as they trembled, and tried, but the exhilaration of it, and the joy, only come back to his heart once he'd stopped, heart racing, adrenaline high, and unexplainable tears pricking his eyes.

Dean Winchester goes to bed that night, giddy in a way he hasn't been in years.

And outside his bedroom, his family of three exchange confused glances when the playing stopped abruptly, and then smiles when a sound that can only be said to bear semblance to a squeal, follows the silence.

(The first song Dean had played in over twenty five years had been Joy to the World.

It had also been the first song he'd ever learned — Cassie's choice, not his. Sam, Cas and Jack didn't know any of that. To them, it had just been a christmas carol. But there was also something so moving about that, soft in a way each of them knew Dean would fight against being, that they didn't realize they hadn't budged from Dean's door, long until faint snores replaced the quiet, and they left for their own beds, wordlessly already having decided on a plan for the next day.)

*

Cas knocks first on Dean's bedroom door, and all music immediately ceases. There's a yell from inside after ten seconds of a shuffling kind of silence.

"Yeah?"

"May I come in?" Cas asks.

Another pause.

Cas wonders worriedly if Sam and Jack were mistaken when they said that Cas had to be first, that he was their best shot at getting Dean to open up — the easiest past Dean's line of defense.

Then Dean says, a little quieter. "Yeah, sure."

Cas enters, gently closing the door behind himself before his eyes land on Dean — and he fights the urge to smile, because Dean hasn't kept away the guitar or anything. It's still on his lap, not in playing stance, with his arms folded over it — but he's not trying to hide it from Cas.

"Is everything okay?" Dean interrupts his reverie. Cas nods.

Neither of them say anything for a minute.

"Can I listen?"

Cas surprises himself with his own courage to ask — no twisted words or excuses to stay, just a simple question. Things were so rarely simple for them, but this wasn't a common occurrence either so it evened out.

"Y-yeah." Dean mutters.

Cas lights up.

"I suck, by the way." Dean adds, almost immediately. "But I'll suck less with time, I'm hoping. I mean, I'm supposed to, you know, but I — uh, I mean — maybe I —"

Cas realizes that he hadn't stopped smiling at Dean and that's what had made Dean falter, and he looks away, embarrassed.

"I'll just play, I guess." Dean manages smally, sounding as embarrassed as him.

"Please."

Dean clears his throat instead of playing.

"Yeah."

Cas can tell he's nervous. Even if he weren't good at, and very used to reading Dean, he could've gauged as much. And he wishes he had the right words, he really does, but he's aware a sincere speech of how much it means that Dean let him stay, and listen, would have the opposite effect of calming.

Then there's another knock on the door, and Cas relaxes.

"Dean?"

Sure enough, it's Jack.

Sam had explained how Dean was most likely, unfortunately, to deflect if he was there — "his denial fires up, Cas. I associate it with a parenting complex of some kind, and he just won't let go of it." — so the order had been decided as Cas, Jack and Sam. No overwhelming by arriving all three at once, or one after the other as if it were planned. No, they'd enter after some time, giving the previous person time to make Dean comfortable to them before the next enters.

Cas thinks it's a rather brilliant plan, and wonders if he should ask Sam to formulate a similar one to get Dean to open up about other things too. He doesn't, ultimately.

"Yeah?" Dean yells back.

"Have you seen Cas?"

That had been the plan.

"Yeah," Dean raises his voice to answer. "He, uh. He's right here. Come on in."

And Jack does, and eyes Cas with probably too much meaning (he means triumph) for Dean to not have noticed, before turning to the latter. "Oh. Were you about to play for Cas?"

Dean colors at that, his ears reddening almost instantly, and Cas files it away for pondering later.

"Can I be here too?"

And Dean's eyes widen a little — sign of anxiety, maybe understanding — and he licks his lips and then he nods. "I guess. I mean, okay, fine. But didn't you need Cas for something?" He adds, confused.

"I," Jack hesitates. Oh no, Cas thinks. Sam's prepared him for this, but Jack looks like he's about to, as Dean would say, wing it. And all-powerful or not, he knows his son is a terrible liar. "No, I just wanted to know if you'd seen him."

Dean narrows his eyes.

"Now I do know. That, uh, you've seen him." Jack braves on, determined to reach the bottom of the proverbial hole he'd dug for himself apparently. "So now, I don't need to know anything. Now I can stay."

Dean sighs.

"I can, right?"

There's a lightness in Dean's voice instead of tension when he says, "Yeah."

"Thank you." Jack says brightly, and all Cas can do is shake his head when Jack turns to him for feedback, and the both of them proceed to wear (nearly matching, but not on purpose) excited stares as they focus on Dean.

*

The final straw is when there's a third knock on the door, and Sam pokes his head in. One unconvincing "Where's everyone at?" later, he's joined Cas and Jack in staring with a unnecessary (and hopefully unintended) comfort-the-vic's-family smile at Dean.

God, he loves these dumbasses and would give his life for everyone present in the room, but none of them can act for shit.

It's glaringly obvious they've all respectively shown up to listen to him play.

Which is bullshit in itself, because Dean wasn't being modest when he told Cas he sucks — he does suck. But then, he doesn't think any of them would mind. Sam would probably unlock new levels of the puppy eyes if he knew how happy even playing awfully, made Dean. Jack would be blunt, of course, but undeterringly sweet. And Cas? He'd probably smile at him all the way through, just — that smile of his, that always seems to make time freeze and Dean's heart stutter.

So Dean decides magnanimously to not call them out.

Right away, anyway.

Instead, he turns to them with a question. "Any requests?"

(He can't play one of the only songs he remembers having learned without errors yet, so obviously asking for requests is the right way to go. But you see, once you've given up on impressing, it's only fair to see yourself to the end of the chaos.)

"Christmas carols." Jack answers before anyone else.

"It's May."

"Sam's," Jack swallows. Dean should really get on teaching the kid how to lie. "Sam's making me listen to carols."

"In May?" He asks his brother this time.

Sam shrugs, struggling to keep a diplomatic face.

"You're going to grow up to be the young adult who doesn't take off the Christmas lights in January." Dean informs Jack, who absorbs his words with all the seriousness Dean should have expected. "And, fine. We can do carols."

Cas speaks up. "Any carol you'd like, Dean."

"Nah," Dean shakes his head. "Jack requested it. We'll do what he says." And he insists to his conscience that he said so because he wants to make Jack happy, and not because he's well aware the kid isn't being subjected to carols by Sam in friggin' May, and probably doesn't know any.

"Oh." Jack's face falls. He looks at Sam in the most conspicuous way anyone's ever looked at anyone. "I —"

"Uhhuh?"

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!" Cas blurts, on behalf of Jack, and there's a two second gap where Sam facepalms and Jack exchanges a conspirational glance with Cas, and then Dean's throwing his head back and laughing.

And soon, Sam's joining in with an exasperated kind of chuckling as if he's gotten stuck in the wrong team but he doesn't regret a thing, and then Cas starts too, mostly from looking at Dean losing his shit (Dean strictly ignores thinking about that part and focuses on imprinting Cas's laugh to memory) and probably also because the ridiculosity of the entire situation probably struck him, and of course Jack's smiling at all of them, and it's, altogether, everything Dean could ever have wished for.

The evening ends with Dean playing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (of course) for at least an hour while consistently getting better at the repeating music, and although it's him humming under his breath (like he always has while playing) that starts it off, soon all of them are offering their own awful renditions to the chaos. Cas is off-key, Sam somehow manages to screw up the lyrics, and Jack is as flat as a friggin' plateau.

And it all comes together in a wholly unmelodious kind of awesome — to Dean the same way they say a mother's love comes through for an ugly child.

After Rudolph, it's Silent Night (another song Dean's learned, it hits him, once he's trying to find the right chord) and even Cas manages to look disappointed at the lyrics Sam and he come up with to make up for not knowing the real ones, and since Jack's never heard this one, he simply listens in rapt attention leaving Dean wondering if he probably ended up learning the wrong version on account of all his concentration.

And last of all, it's We Wish You A Merry Christmas, and Dean plays the chorus enough times that he's perfect at it, because for once, no one messes up the beat or the lyrics, and everyone has the most fun.

All in all, it's an evening to remember.

What Dean learns through it all is primarily the lesson that letting your family think they tricked you into having an audience is sometimes an excellent choice to make, and that things can be crap, but still be enjoyed. That doesn't mean he's not going to practice his ass off learning to play at least the choruses of the Led Zepp tracks he gifted Cas (the idea came to him in bed last night, and Cas has always sounded like he enjoyed them, okay?) so he can play them 'for Cas' as the kid so casually put — but then, some things are different from other things, just the way some love's different too.

And while some things are about efforts, and saying the words that scare you, others are about letting go, and singing carols in bright and sunny May.

The only thing Dean's sure about is that just about all of it comes down to being free.

[doctor-plagueis]

Nora's Knightly Love

Trigger Warning: mentions of noncon and rape you have been warned.

Nora had some troubles, well actually it was a lot of troubles.

From night terrors, to night terrors and night... ok so, Nora has nightmares because of...a lot. Nora lived in the North where if you aren't strong, you die,and she almost did, repeatedly from Beowulfs to Ursas to...people...

Gods...if it wasn't for mother she wouldn't be a virgin today...

That's not a memory she relishes, watching her mother be used as a toy for men like she's nothing but a hole to fuck...Nora was five years old and they were gonna do that to her...fuck, she's crying and shaking again.

Damnit fuck fuck fuck why can't she forget that night daMNIT!

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

Nora's crying again...he should do something...

"Hey Nora, you ok?" he asked meekly

"Huh!" she nearly jumped from her bed at that "Um, um, ye 'm fine..."

"You're not very good at lying" he said while getting up...he's not wearing his pijamas.

"When’d you start sleeping shirtless Fearless Leader? Also are those shorts?" she was curious...and also deflecting.

He moved closer she could see him better now...when'd he get so buff? When he sat down at her bed she realized something...Pyrrha and Rennie were out on their date...

"Started when Yang decided to steal it, apparently she feels comfy in it...weird huh?"

"Yea..."

Awkward silence, more awkward silence even more awkward silence...

“C’mon Nora you can talk to me I'm your leader...and hopefully your friend?" wait, was he unsure of that?

“‘F’course you're my friend Jauney, why, did you think weren't?" Huh weird she's calmer, maybe it has something to do with talking to Fearless Leader? He does have a pretty reassuring presence.

"Well, maybe there's some culture shock with you being a Northerner and me being Arcadian, but in Arcadia when a friend is feeling down we talk about it and sort it out together, would you like that? Would you like to talk?" He was trying to be reassuring… his sisters were always better at it than him.

"...ok" Nora sounds so meek, this is weird.

"You sure? We don't have to y'know" He was calming to her, talking with him made her less scared...maybe this is what she needs?

"Growing up in the North is difficult Jaune-" whoa she called him Jaune not Fearless Leader or Jauney...this is serious "-You either fight back against the world and it's dangers or you die...or worse..." at that Nora saw Jaune recoil slightly not noticeable if they weren't this close…huh…

"My mom and I lived with dad until he was taken by the cold...my only memory of him is lighting his pyre with mum..." she took a breath...this is harder than she predicted. Damnit...

"Then me and mum decided to head south, to warmer lands, away from the shithole that is the North-" wait...is Jaune ok, he looks weird...she'll keep talking with a closer eye now..."-But before we got to the seas...we...we were attacked by raider..."

Jaune was now visibly sweating and breathing heavy, memories were flooding back...bad, bad memories...

"Nothing happened to me but...mum let herself be...used by them she, she was raped Jaune, just so I wouldn't, and then they took her away like some trophy of conquest...that's how I became an orphan...Jaune?" uh oh he's freaking out.

"Jaune, JAUNE!"

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

Jaune awoke today was a special day, today would be the day his dad finally train him, actually, really train him, with Crocea Mors! This was going to be the start his glory, his heroism would begin today! Hahah oh that’s corny heheh…But he really couldn’t wait…

…So Jaune had taken Crocea Mors to train alone in the woods, so what? He was already gonna train with dad anyway!

(CRACK)

“Huh? What was that?” oookkk so Jaune was suddenly a little worried.

“Well, well, well ain’t you a pretty lil’ thang” came a hoarse voice from the trees.

“Who? Who’s there!? I-I have a sword!” Shit shit shit; Jaune wasn’t ready for this sorta stuff! Fighting some Creeps or young Beowulfs is one thing but fighting someone is different!

“Ohohoho, looks like this blond cutie has sum fight in’im…good, more fun this way…” that’s really, really creepy and concerning.

“Where are you!? Show yourself!” Jaune tried being intimidated.

“Oh don’tchu worry, ya won’t have time to anyways”

“wha-”

“you’ll be more worried about breathin’ with a cock in yer throat hahahaha!”

At that Jaune chose to make the smart move: run like hell!

Except he didn’t get away…

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

“JAUNE!” Nora screamed.

“Huh, wha!?”

“Are you okay!? No, don’t answer that you, clearly aren’t!”

“I-I uh…”

Jaune was silent now, which for Nora was a bad sign…

…Maybe it’s time for Nora to act less like a Northerner and start acting more like an Arcadian…

“Jauney…yo-um-ya-crap, ok, Jaune” she said searching for words and getting his attention.

“Jaune look at me” he did.

“Did did-um did I bring some bad things up? I mean obviously I did but-um” ugh this is difficult how do Arcadians do it?

“Did I bring anything bad for you?”

“Ye-yea, I um…you just reminded me how I lost my…”

“Virginity?” she really hopes he says no, please for Brothers sake say no!

“Yea…”

“Oh Jaune I-I’m sorry I didn’t mean to I-” She made him remember such a horrible thing…

“Don’t, you couldn’t have known” she shouldn’thave known…

Nora got up stood in front of Jaune and held her arms open…Nora isn’t good at this but at least she knows hugs are good comfort…

...Jaune accepted the hug.

“You can cry Jaune …please cry it’s good for you…”

“(Hick) I’m not goin’ to cry (hick)”

“Stop forcing yourself to be strong…isn’t that what you made me do? I’m here…”

At that Jaune broke down like a faulty dam, and he didn’t stop crying for a long, long time.

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

That was a week ago.

Jauney and I have been spending more time together we’re supporting each other as best we can…

…My nightmares are going away, well, not really, but with Jauney's help they’re…manageable…I’ve found myself talking less with Rennie, and I don’t really mind it weirdly, oh well, Rennie does need to spend more time with his girlfriend after all…

…Hope Pyrrha's taking care of him well.

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

Nora and I have been talking about our…pasts a lot lately, its helping.

Nora and I also have been having these weird silences, not awkward but comforting, is this what friends feel all the time? Pyrrha and I don’t have these silences, neither do any of the other girls, huh, kinda feels special for some reason…

��I like the silence.

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

Almost a month now, me and Jauney have been talking for a month, and I feel like we’ve bonded so much over so little time, maybe we’ve bonded even faster than Rennie and I did...I like it Jaune and I’s bond, feels good, really good…

…I think I like him, like, like-him-like-him. I’m okay with it, more than okay actually…

…Does he feel the same?... Why am I even worrying he doesn’t?...

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

I really like Nora, oh who’s believing that blatant lie?

I Love Nora. As more than a friend, I love Nora romantically…

…Maybe she feels the same? Oh, who am I kidding? she’d never love someone like me, not after… (sigh)

Maybe I should just ask her out she’ll reject me and we can go back to talking like friends.

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

Alright perfect Ren and Pyrrha are away I can ask Him/Her

“Hey Nora/Jaune” they said simultaneously

“Oh, go ahead Nora” always the gentleman, one of his many charms.

“Nu-uh Fearless leader you first!” she said playfully

“yeahokayIcandothis” Jaune said under his breath

“Nora” “Yeah?” “Would you go get some dinner with me?”

“Ooh like dinner pancakes? Sure Jauney, you’re the best!” she was so excited (sigh) she’s amazing…

“N-No more like a-ummm”

“A what Jauney?”

“Wouldyougooutonadatewithme?” Oh great, he messed it up.

“…” her silence is so deafening, I really fucked up huh?

“…YES!!!” wait wut?

“Ohyoudon’tknowhowmanyweeksI’vewaitedforeitherofustoaskthatIwasgonna askyououtmyselfbecauseIcouldn’twaitand-”

“Nora! Nora calm down and speak in a way I can understand”

“I, yea, sorry, got too excited, started talking Nora mode, anyways-” she was…still talking really fast, but at least he could understand now! “-The answer is yes, also fuck yes and also gods I’ve waited too long to do: this!”

Suddenly Nora lunged forward and stabbed Jaune…Nah she just kissed him…WAIT A DAMN MINUTE!

“mhnph!” “Mmm~oh yeah, always knew you’d taste good Jauney~” “…izzat a yes?”

“What do you think?” “I think I’m dreaming that’s what” Nora giggled at that, fuck, even her laugh is adorable

“Well you’re wide awake, and, you got yourself a date! Isn’t that a confidence boost~” Fucking hell Nora knows how to be seductive.

“I’m the luckiest guy in beacon right now!” he said with his signature goofy grin

“Well” she wrapped her arms around his “where’s our date going to be?”

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

[Notes]

[Pyrrha and Ren are indeed dating.]

[Yes the Booty Tier List will affect this check it out]

[Again this is going to be my first smut story so I'd apreciate the criticism]

Here ya go this is the first part of this two-shot.

Nest one will be smut I promise.

Part 1 / Part2

[corancoranthemagicalman]

💜💜🌻💜💜🌻💜💜

Thank you so much 💜 my day was stressful and mentally taxing but overall it was fine :) i am so so flattered/flustered that you want to gift me something in return- i never expect anything when i'm penguin anon. And irl i'm trying to be better at accepting things from people. so if you really would like to gift me something here are some tropes i like: cas gardening (sorry i can't get away from flowers/plants!), dadstiel with baby or toddler jack, general domestic fluff, anything that explores cas & dean healing/character growth 💜 but i honestly don't expect anything in return for my hearts and flowers. They are freely given 💜💜🌻💜💜🌻💜💜

-🐧🌻

I’m sorry to hear it was stressful for you, dear. I’m glad that overall it wasn’t too bad for you, though. I hope this cheers you up? I’m a few hours later with it because I get distracted big time in research. Like figuring out that Dean was 22 when Shrek came out. Which had literally no bearing on this, but was fun to figure out. The hearts and flowers are more than appreciated. 💕🌺🌺💕

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

When Dean was four, he watched his mother hold his baby brother to the blooming sunflowers she kept in the backyard. Mom said they were called Sunriches. They were named that because they were like golden suns. Dean thought the sun was golden, but when he tried looking at it, the sun was just a bright, white color. Blinding. Dad said he couldn’t look at the sun without hurting himself, so he stopped trying.

What he could look at was Mom holding Sammy. He was only a couple of months old, but Mom was excitedly talking to him as if he could talk back. Dad said he wouldn’t be able to talk for a while. That didn’t seem to bother Mom. She was content to describe the flowers to Sammy. They were taller than Dean was. Mom said they wouldn’t get any bigger, but one day Dean would be tall enough to hold Sammy up to the flower petals. He looked forward to that.

Mom looked pretty in her dress, from Dean’s memory of the time. Her skirt swayed in the autumn wind in time with the petals dancing in the breeze. It was ethereal, like a princess talking to animals. Except instead of a squirrel on her shoulder there was a baby in her arms. Dean thought it looked like magic.

A few months later, when Dean was finally trusted with holding Sammy in his arms, he was running out of his burning home.

He didn’t think about the sunflowers they left behind.

Read more undercut or check it out on AO3!

Later in life, when Dean was flirting too close to a stable relationship with a reporter, he idly thumbed at the petals of the Suntastic Yellows. He remembered his mom telling him that they were the tiniest sunflowers. The type they used in bouquets. Cassie had a small pot resting on her windowsill.

Cassie’s hands drew around his waist from behind him. Humming into his neck, Cassie drew him backward with her. He thought about it in an absent sense, walking away from the sunflowers.

“You know,” she whispered against the shell of his ear, “they say that sunflowers track the sun all throughout the day.”

“Oh, really?” Dean smirked, taking her lips in his own. She was wonderful, really. Too wonderful. Wonderful enough that Dean thought about confessing everything to her. Cassie would understand. She was clever and understanding. Hell, maybe she’d even accept him.

It was too bad, then, that when Dean told her what he did—what he was—that she didn’t believe him. Dean wouldn’t have believed himself either. Walking away with his keys in his hand and his heart at his feet, Dean wondered if this is what it would always feel like. If he would always have to walk away from the place his heart was trying to make into a home. Maybe it was something about being a sunflower. Always tracking the sun throughout the day.

Too bad Dean couldn’t find the damn sunlight.

“Dude, look!” Dean grinned during another part of his life, pointing at some old lady’s front garden full of Taiyos. “It’s like Shrek.” He teased his brother, elbowing Sam who only rolled his eyes in return.

“Shrek? Really?” Sam scoffed. “How old were you when that even happened?”

Dean huffed a laugh. “What? You’re telling me you didn’t go watch the cinematic masterpiece known as Shrek with all of your college buddies?”

Sam rolled his eyes again, huffing with a shrug of his shoulders. “Sure, Dean. And then we watched Holiday in the Sun right after, too.”

“Never took you for a Mary-Kate and Ashley fan, Sammy.” Dean grinned, watching the sunflowers swaying in the breeze from the corner of his eye.

They looked peaceful in the witness’ front yard. Untouched by the grueling werewolf that was lurking through the small town. Dean could hear Sam’s sharp inhale from beside him.

“I always thought sunflowers were… homey,” Sam confessed, watching the sunflowers dance with a furrowed brow.

Shooting Sam a crooked grin, Dean stepped forward toward the sunflowers but he didn’t dare touch them. “I’m not surprised,” he began. “Mom used to grow them. She started taking you out into the garden as soon as you stopped crying all the time.”

Sam was silent for a moment, causing Dean to look at him with concern. It wasn’t often that Sam was quiet, but when he was it was always a contemplative silence. “I didn’t know that.” He spoke softly.

“You wouldn’t have remembered.” Dean shrugged, stepping onto the witness’ walkway to begin making their way up to the door. “These are a bit taller than hers were. But then again, everything seemed taller then.”

There was another moment of contemplative silence, but it seemed Sam had nothing left to say. He knocked on the witness’ door, taking care not to meet Dean’s eye. Dean wondered what that meant. Wondered if Sam felt the same way when he saw sunflowers.

Then again, Sam had always been larger than life. Tall and proud.

When Dean was on the aching side of forty, he watched Castiel hold their four-year-old son to the blooming sunflowers he kept in the backyard. Cas had been enchanted by the Little Beckas when he had seen them. While they might not have been the tallest—or the smallest—of sunflowers, he had thought they were lovely. Dean had made a quip about their halo and bought Cas seeds the same day.

Watching Cas and Jack reminded Dean of being four and trying to see what color the sun was. It was blinding, something he felt he should look away from lest it hurt him. But he found that he couldn’t look away. He didn’t want to. He just wanted to watch Cas answer every question Jack had.

He was beautiful, Dean often thought, but especially in moments like these. The cuffs of his jeans were muddied and his bare feet were buried in the soil where he sat with Jack in his lap. Dean hated how Cas refused to wear shoes outside, but he had claimed to like being closer to the Earth. Dean couldn’t argue with him. He wouldn’t argue with him; not for what made him happy.

Cas turned to look at him, catching his gaze and drawing him closer with just a look. Dean moved without hesitation, standing beside Cas and kicking at his knee with his booted foot. His approach drew Jack’s attention away from the flowers, who clapped excitedly the closer he got.

“Whaddya think, Jack? Do you like the colors?” Dean hummed, watching Jack’s gummy smile as the kid waved up at him.

“Daddy says that sunflowers face East!” He pointed enthusiastically, laughing and reaching for the blooms in front of him.

Dean frowned, looking from Cas to the flowers. “I thought sunflowers rotated with the sun or whatever.”

Cas hummed, tilting his head with a nod. “They do, in their youth.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Jack’s head. “But when they mature, the sunflowers learn that they get the most light during the morning hours when the sun has just risen from the East.” Bouncing Jack momentarily and causing the boy to giggle, Cas turned to face Dean. “They just learn what’s healthiest for them. It just takes time.”

Inhaling sharply, Dean wondered if this was it. If this was his East. Watching a smiling Jack and Cas whispering about sunflowers that—while not the tallest or the smallest—were a halo of colors. Two colors that came together, that never faded, that bloomed to life in this tiny garden he called home. He was a dark heart and a bright halo, smiling toward the bright, white sunlight of a gummy smile and clapping hands.

With a grunt, Dean lowered himself to the soil, sitting beside Cas and wrapping his arm around Cas’ shoulder. “These little guys are pollen-less,” he spoke to Jack. “That’s why we got the honeysuckles.”

“Honeysuckles stand for devotion.” Cas’ voice rumbled gently. “In the ancient Celtic alphabet, the symbol that the Ogham carved into stone to represent the honeysuckle stood for following one’s path.”

Dean snorted a laugh, shaking his head. “Sort of counterintuitive. Since, yanno, Free Will.” He quipped, raising a curious brow toward Cas.

Bowing his head in concession, Cas continued. “Yes, that is true. The Druids meant it more like… trusting one’s gut. Rather than sticking to the story.” He grinned, rocking with Jack in his arms for a moment. “But the honeysuckle is rather hard to kill. That is why it means everlasting devotion.”

“Deaths don’t stick, huh?” Dean hummed, squeezing Cas closer into his side. “Sounds like someone I know.”

Cas exhaled a laugh, resting his head atop Jack’s. “The Chinese valued the honeysuckle for its healing properties. It can be a cooling herb to remove toxins.”

Dean pressed a kiss to Cas’ cheek, keeping his lips there for a moment longer before pulling away. “Even if the honeysuckle can’t heal ‘em, the sunflowers like the company anyway.” He smiled softly, watching as Cas’ eyes turned dewy toward him. “And ‘sides, the honeysuckle brings all the bees to the yard.”

Snorting laughter that Jack joined in without knowing the cause, Cas shook his head. “I suppose so.” His attempt to suppress a smile made Dean’s own grin widen. “But the sunflower is more than enough company.”

“Damn straight,” Dean whispered against Cas’ lips, kissing him slowly and savoring the moment.

Between them, Jack made exaggerated kissy faces, causing them to pull apart and watch him with amusement. He grinned, reaching up and holding Dean and Cas’ cheeks in his palms.

“Daddy and Poppa sittin’ in a tree!” Jack sang, giggling as he smushed their heads together.

Mocking a frown, Dean held his other hand out behind Jack’s back. His palm felt so large in comparison to how small Jack was. “Did Uncle Sam teach you that?”

“Yup!” Jack nodded enthusiastically, head bobbing as he continued to hum the song under his breath.

Cas gave another chuckle under his breath, looking from Jack to Dean. “I suppose we should head inside. We're still expecting Sam and Eileen for lunch.”

Dean stood with a groan as his knees ached. He reached out a hand to help Cas and Jack up, standing tall with his family in their little garden. Keeping their fingers intertwined, Dean didn’t have to think about the sunflowers they left behind.

They would be there as long as the sun was in the East.

[kyber-kisses]

Hymn (Part 2)

Winchester brothers x Sister!reader (Platonic)

wanna start from the beginning? Here is the Masterlist!

Warnings: cursing, its mostly fluff my dudes.

Summary: Y/N Winchester has wrestled with demons ever since her mother died, but when her younger brothers lives are in danger it’s their souls she fights to save, because isn’t that what a big sister should do?

A/n:OK so i may or may not be in love with writing this series, but whatever. This fic is based on the lyrics from joel porters Hymn. Hope you guys enjoy and feedback is greatly appreciated!

Dean woke up in a cold sweat, his eyes straining in the utter darkness of his room while his breathing rate slowly began to steady from where it had been seconds ago. Shifting on the mattress he flicked on the bedside lamp and slowly sat up, his black sleep shirt clinging to his skin.

“Fuck.”

Dragging a shaky hand down his face, he took a deep breath. It had been a long time since he had that nightmare. He had hoped it had gone away completely but apparently his mind wouldn’t let it go. . . Then again it was a memory. Just a memory. A terrible, horrible memory. and some memories just don't go away.

Glancing over at the clock on his nightstand he found that he had slept in, which was unlike him. The neon red numbers telling him that it was a quarter past ten. Sliding on his robe, he made his way for the door, the only thing on his mind being a cup of coffee

. . . Until he halted in his tracks and looked back.

It was still there. Then again where else would it be? Even though the back wall of his room was covered in an arrange of weapons, your hunting rifle stood out among the rest like some sort of sad centerpiece. How he had kept hold of it all these years was beyond him.

He paused for another second before backtracking and slowly taking it off the wall. Your rifle had been your prized possession, and your aim unparalleled. His dad used to say he had never seen someone so young shoot so well. Shifting the gun in his hand, Dean let his thumb trace over your name. You had carved it into the stock when you first got it, using Deans favorite pocket knife for the job.

Miss you.

Almost two and a half decades. That how long you had been gone. He thought losing his mom had been hard, but then you thrust your rifle into his arms and disappeared out that damn motel room door and he never saw you again. That was when he really broke.

Quickly wiping the stray tears from his eyes, he put the rifle back in its place, turned off the lights and headed for the kitchen. Coffee. He needed coffee.

His body went into autopilot and before he knew it he was walking through the threshold of the bunkers kitchen, making a beeline for the coffee pot.

“Well look who finally decided to roll out of bed.”

“Shut up.” Dean grumbled, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“You okay?”

Dean hummed a response as he poured himself a cup before sinking down into the seat across from his brother. “Yeah, yeah- I uh, just had some really weird dreams.”

“I don’t wanna know-“

“They were about Y/N.”

That was all it took to fully gain the youngest Winchesters attention, his eyes peering over the edge of his coffee cup mid sip. There was a pause as he swallowed. “Y/N?”

“Yeah- it uh-“ Dean pinched the bridge of his nose like it physically pained him to think about it. “It was the night she disappeared. Everything was the same, down to you doing your fucking homework to her teaching me how to shoot her damn rifle.”

“You remember all that?”

“You don’t?” Dean dropped his hand from his face to send his brother a bewildered look.

“I mean, I remember bits and pieces but not every little detail.” Sam shrugged, going back to his coffee.

“That was one of the worst nights of my life.”

Sliding his laptop away from him, Sam folded his arms across the top of the table. “What else do you remember?”

This time it was Deans turn to shrug, eyes fixating on the black liquid in his cup. “Her running out the door and leaving us in the motel room, Her screaming, Dad coming back and going into a full blown panic- I don’t think I had ever seen him so afraid.” Dean swallowed thickly, swirling the contents in his mug. “I remember him just leaving us there so he could look for her. And then he was gone for hours and when he came back all he had was her flannel. The thing was in tatters and covered in blood.”

“I kinda remember that.” Sam nodded, his eyes going to the matching bracelets on his and Deans wrists. Bracelets being a loose term. In reality they were just bits of fabric Dean had salvaged from your flannel later that night. It was one of the few things left of you that they had. “I just mostly remember dad crying after he thought we had gone to bed. It happened every night for weeks.”

“Yeah.” Dean could feel his emotions bubbling up inside him again. His dad had spent months tearing apart the state and the surrounding ones looking for you. But they always came up with nothing.

You were just gone. Like you had been snatched out of thin air.

Dean remembered the months and even years that followed after that so well. They were hard. His big sister was gone and everything felt so much scarier. . . And then dad came to the conclusion that you were dead and that was that. Except Dean refused to believe it. You were so tough and brave, there was no way you could be dead. You couldn’t be dead, he would say constantly. You just needed finding. He kept saying that because he had to believe it. Because being the boy who’d lost his mother was one thing, being the boy who’d lost his mother and sister something else entirely. But as the years went on, he slowly began to lose hope and then one day he just woke up and believed it.

You were dead. If you were alive you would have been home by now. You would have fought every monster in the country if you had to to get back home to them. And if you weren’t back by now, you weren’t coming back ever.

Dean sniffed, feeling the familiar burn in his nostrils telling him tears were coming. Trying to mask it he rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand again. “I miss her.”

“I know. I do to.” Sam sighed, watching his brother try not to break down in front of him. Sam had loved you as much as Dean had but to Dean you were his hero. You always had been. While Sam looked up to Dean, Dean had always looked up to you.

“I’m starting to forget her voice.” Dean suddenly admitted, his voice cracking ever so slightly. “I don’t mean to. . . But it’s fading away.” Slowly rising from his seat, Dean headed for the door. “I hope you can still hear her.”

As Sam watched his brother disappear back down the hallway, he let his mind wander before pushing out of his own seat to go in search of something long forgotten.

*. *. *. *. *. *.

A few hours later Sam found himself wandering towards his brothers room, laptop folded underneath his arm.

“Hey, Dean?” Rapping his knuckles on the door, he leaned against the wall waiting for a response.

“What?”

Taking it as a sign he twisted the handle and nudged open the door, peering into the brightness of Deans room. His brother was seated at his desk, cleaning one of the many guns that usually sat silently on his wall.

“Wait, is that Y/Ns-“

“Rifle. Yeah.” Dean sighed, leaning back in his seat to admire his work.

“I don’t know why you still clean that thing. Neither of us use it. The last person to shoot it was her.” Stepping through the doorway, he walked towards the desk, smiling faintly at the sight of your carved name in the stock.

“Gives me something to do. It’s kinda relaxing actually.” Wiping his hands on his jeans, Dena turned his gaze towards Sam. “What’s up?”

“Oh, uh I found something. C’mon I wanna show you.” Nodding towards the door Sam beckoned his brother to follow, which thankfully he did.

“This better be fuckin worth it.” Dean sighed, his footsteps echoing down the bunker hallway as he followed Sam towards the library.

“Oh trust me, I think it will be.” Adjusting his laptop underneath his arm, Sam stepped up into the well lit room. “Do you remember that old camcorder Y/N used to carry around? The one that we thought broke forever ago?”

“. . . Yeah, why?”

“Well, I dug it out of storage. Turns out, not broken at all.” Sam chuckled, opening up his laptop as he plugged the camcorder into the computer with a usb cable, the screen suddenly lighting up.

“You know, I don’t even remember what’s on here.” Sinking down in the seat besides his brother, Dean leaned forward to watch as Sam worked on pulling up the footage.

“If you break a limb doing this your gonna be the one to tell dad how it happened.” Your voice suddenly echoing through the speakers of the laptop, catching Dean off guard as he sat up straighter.

“I’m gonna be fine! Please Y/N!”

“This is a terrible idea.”

A small smile spread over Deans lips as you suddenly set down the camera walking into view. Dean couldn’t have been more than ten in the footage. An even younger Sam momentary running past as you helped Dean get situated in Bobby’s old hammock.

“Promise you won’t break any bones?”

“Yes.”

“Pinkie promise?” You held up your hand, pinkie extended so Dean could wrap his own around yours.

“Pinkie promise.”

Deans smile steadily grew as the memory came back. Dad has dropped the three of you off at Bobby’s for the weekend and when Dean found out he had a hammock his little boy brain went into overdrive.

“Can you spin it all the way around?”

“All the way around? Bub, your gonna fall out if I do that.” You shook your head before giving into defeat and pulling the hammock back to get it going.

“I won’t! I got this!”

It was proven the exact opposite a minute later when the hammock on the screen arched into a full circle swing, proceeding to send the middle Winchester child flying backwards into the bushes. A six year old Sam screeched with laughter somewhere off camera.

A full bellied laugh escaped Dean as he threw his head back, Sam chuckling besides him.

“I can’t believe I forgot about that! Y/N spent like ten minutes trying to clean all those cuts I got from the friggin bush.” Dean wheezed wiping at the tears still in his eyes. “Was I always that dumb?”

“Bold of you to assume you still aren’t.”

“Hey-“

As the footage quickly switched both brothers lit up again, this time watching as you balanced a seven year old Sam on your shoulders on the end of a weather worn dock.

“Wait- was this the summer we stayed in lake county?” Dean leaned forward on his elbows, eyes bright.

“I think so. Dad worked several cases in that area that year.”

“Y/N, please don’t jump-“ little Sam let out a whine, arms wrapping around your head in fear that he might fall.

“Don’t jump? Don’t jump?! Well now I feel like I should just for the heck of it!” You mused, dangling one foot over the water, hands still wrapped around Sam’s ankles.

“No!”

“Uh-oh, I’m loosing my balance-“ you laughed, feeling Sams grip tighten.

Your playful antics were quickly cut short as Dean blurred into view, his little feet thundering across the dock as he rocketed towards you, laughing. Your head quickly spun around in unison with Sams, both sets of eyes widening as he charged at you.

“Dean, No!”

But it was too late. The blonde rascal came barreling into you and the three of you went over the edge with a series of shrieks and laughs, a spray of water hitting the dock as you went down.

That was all it took to get both brothers laughing again, Dean leaning back in his seat as he gripped his side.

“God, I can’t remember the last time- the last time I laughed this much-“ he panted through chuckles.

“Well there’s several hours of footage on here, so don’t pass out from laughing too much.”

Deans eyes widened as the last of the laughter faded on his lips. “Wait, are you serious?”

“Yeah. Guess Y/N wanted to make sure we had some sort of home videos to watch.”

Letting out a content sigh, the older Winchester nodded. He hadn’t realized until now how much of a childhood you had actually given him and Sam before running out the door. He was grateful.

“Well uh, what else is on here?” Turning back to the screen, Dean leaned foreword on his elbows watching as the footage continued to play.

It didn’t take long for them to realize how much of their childhood you had actually captured. From the time you took them skiing while dad had worked a case in Estes Park to when the three of you dressed up as the three musketeers for Halloween. It was all there. Almost every second of footage filled with full belly laughter and embarrassing moments. That’s how your old camcorder quickly became Deans favorite item in the world.It was a pocket of good memories. A pocket of childhood innocence.

They were closing in on hour two of of the footage while watching you and Dean completely wipe out while tubing that the jade eyed Winchester felt something suddenly shift in him. His laughter slowly petering out along with his smile. The sudden silence catching Sams attention as he looked way from the screen, his own chuckle slowly stopping.

“Dean? You okay?”

He drew in a breath before nodding slightly. “Sam, I think we should go back.”

There was a pause as the youngest of the Winchesters processed what his brother had said. “Seriously, are you sure? We haven’t-“

“Been back there in almost two decades? I know. I just— she deserved better.”

“She totally did.” Sam nodded in agreement. “ I can go pack a bag if you want and we can be out of here in thirty?”

Yeah, that sounds good.” Dean sighed, sucking in another breath. He shouldn’t have gotten all sad about the videos, but the sudden thought that you weren’t around to help make more new memories tore him up inside.

Before leaving, Sam paused in the doorway to turn around one last time. “You know, we should show those to mom at some point. I have a feeling she would really get a hoot out of them.”

“yeah, she totally would.”

SPN Taglist:

@familybusinesswritingbro​​​​​​@a–1–1–3 @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​​​​​​​ @music-is-all-i-need @agusdoti​​​​​ @callmekda​​​​​​ @jordangdelacruz​​​​​ @orphiceseum​​​​​ @andthatsmyworld​​​​​ @marvelfangirllll​​​​​​ @fandomnerdespressourself​​​​​​ @gladiosamicitias​​​​​ @castielsangelsx​​​​​ @lxstgxrl-ck​​​​​ @tis-i-the-wayward-idgit @amendoise @phoenixuprisingsstuff​​​​​ @ericalynne007 @kaitlaitlaitl​​​​​​  @totallyluciferr​​​​​​ @supernaturalenchanted​​​​​​ @dolanfivsosxox​​​​​@supernatural-ocs @emptycanvasposts​​​​​ @akshi8278​ @defenderrosetyler​​​​​​ @heyyy-hey-babyyy​​​​​ @idksupernatural​​​​​​ @vicmc624 @all-will-be-well-love@busy-bee-angel-misska @starsandmidnightblue​​​​​​ @lilulo-12fanfiction​ @beanie-beebo​​​​​​ @xoxoaudreymarie​​​​​​ @greenarrowhead​​​​​​ @mrsjenniferwinchester​​​​​​  @mysticalfuncollectorus​​​​​ @brebolin​​​​​ @biahblue​​​​​ @noahandthegiraffe​​

HYMN Taglist:

@biahblue​ @brebolin​ @noahandthegiraffe​ @psych0crybaby​ @beetears​ @supernaturalenchanted​ @skyelikestowrite @leej2468​ @vicmc624​

[cake-writes]

Compromise (Part Nine)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Story Warnings: Mom!Reader, Dad!Bucky, Ex-Relationship, Co-Parenting Drama, Slow Burn, Angst, Fluff, Separation Anxiety

Summary: You didn’t want to trust him again, because every time you did, Bucky broke your heart just a little more. Deep down, though, you wanted to get along with him. You wanted to be amicable. You wanted your daughter to know her father. You’d always wanted that. It just required a compromise.

Part Eight / Master List / Spotify Playlist

Lunch was the most uncomfortable ham and cheese melt you’ve ever had.

That’s not to say you didn’t like the diner. Kitschy and quaint – a real hole in the wall, really, and although you’d lived right around the corner for the last two years, you hadn’t even known it was here. If you were being honest, though, you probably would have given it a pass even if you had known. With worn-down tables, cracked red vinyl booths, and chipped mugs filled to the brim with terrible coffee, this wasn’t exactly the kind of place you’d ever take your young daughter.

That said, when you were single and childless, it would have been right up your alley.

Dives were a dime a dozen in New York, but you had your favourites. This one in particular reminded you of a place you used to frequent before, but more so after you started eating for two, especially when Bucky used to indulge your pregnancy cravings. In lieu of flowers, he often brought home your usual order from the little diner down the street: a couple of ham and cheese melts that the two of you shared over Netflix binges well into the night.

You liked the melt from here, too. And the greasy fries.

What you didn’t like was the tension.

This wasn’t a date. Bucky had made that perfectly clear. He didn’t want it to be a date, because he wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to begin with. Right? All he wanted was— well, you weren’t sure what it was he wanted, exactly. He’d invited you out for lunch, but you couldn’t figure out why. To help with your strained co-parenting relationship, perhaps, or did he just enjoy your company?

No way. How could he, when you were so standoffish and nasty all the time?

Some part of you hoped that he still did want to spend time with you, but you pushed that idea right out of your mind. It was more important for you and Bucky to get along for your daughter – to work as a unit, a team, even if you weren’t together.

Right?

The problem was that you missed being together. You missed him.

You missed the twinkle in those gorgeous baby blues when he told you how much he loved you; missed that stupid, smug smile on his face when he teased you; missed the gentleness he offered you, the warmth, the affection. Even if his love was long gone, yours certainly wasn’t, and as of late you’d caught yourself daydreaming about what could have been.

What if you hadn’t ended things?

Where would your little family be?

Would Winnie have a little brother or sister?

Even when things were rocky way back when, you still thought about Bucky, longed for him, maybe even needed him sometimes. As independent as you were before the two of you got together – and after, especially as a single mom – you could definitely get by on your own, but it was nice to share your life with another person. It was nice to have someone to come home to.

When he was there, anyway. He usually wasn’t. Work kept him away.

You were better off on your own.

Right?

Toying with the last half of your sandwich, you found yourself sneaking glances at Bucky from across the well-worn table. Staring at his phone, he seemed lost in thought, brows furrowing as he read the messages he’d just received. He’d been happy to ignore them until the fourth chime; it would have been important, unfortunately, and he’d apologized for even pulling it out at all.

Work.

You certainly didn’t miss that, but today, you didn’t mind. You were just happy to spend time with him. And you were happy to see how far he’d come. Therapy at last; who would have thought? Bucky had taken great strides to better himself, and he’d changed in a lot of ways. Improved.

Soft chestnut locks fell into his face, which he absentmindedly blew out of his eyes as he typed out a response with a quickness you’d never seen. Two years’ experience with modern day technology had apparently upskilled him quite a bit, not that you cared right in this moment because you were more focused on how stupidly attractive he was.

You wanted to run your fingers through his stupid, messy hair. Wanted to brush it out of his stupid, handsome face. Wanted to kiss him and tell him how much you’d missed him.

Stupid to think any of that at all, but you did it anyway.

Your eyes trailed down to the tight, moisture-wicking black t-shirt on his body, which accentuated strong, muscular arms – arms that he’d wrapped around you too many times to count – arms that had always made you feel safe, despite the fact that one of them was cold and hard and dangerous.

Dangerous, but not to you. Never to you. A couple of red marks and bruises, nothing more, and only when you asked him for it. Or begged.

The sudden memory sent a pleasant shiver down your spine.

His thick, callused fingers typed away at the screen, but you knew firsthand just how dexterous they could be. A completely appropriate thought for such a harmless setting, to be sure, and you felt your face start to heat up as your thoughts went down a path they absolutely shouldn’t have.

“It’s Nat,” Bucky said, then, startling you out of your daydream, and your eyes jerked up to his.

“What?” you asked hoarsely.

“Natasha.” He waved his phone just a little to indicate what he was talking about, before he set it to the side. “She wants a debrief.”

Right. The mission. The one he’d just returned from.

“It’s fine,” you told him as evenly as you could manage, heart pounding within the confines of your chest. It felt like you’d been caught fantasizing about him, caught red-handed, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You don’t have to explain.”

You’d never expected him to share work details with you, and you still didn’t. Curiosity was human nature, but you didn’t need to know. That wasn’t what mattered, anyway; what mattered was that he never used to be around because of it.

Now he was.

“I know I don’t have to,” he said, casually reaching over the table to steal a couple of your fries. He’d already eaten all of his, along with the rest of his food. Bucky had always been a fast eater; that hadn’t changed, at least, and neither had his familiarity with you in such a casual setting.

You liked it.

Still wanted some paybacks, though, so as he went to shove your fries into his mouth, you reached over and snatched the pickle off of his plate. He’d saved it for last, because James Buchanan Barnes had always loved a good dill pickle. That hadn’t changed, either.

Fries just inches away from meeting their untimely death, Bucky froze, as if he only happened to realize just now what he’d done. The guilty look on his face told a different story, however.

“Give me the fries or the pickle gets hurt,” you warned.

“Hey,” he pleaded half-heartedly. “Come on, you’re not gonna eat ‘em all—”

“Fries,” you repeated, inching the pickle closer to its demise: your mouth.

“Okay, okay! Here.” Bucky held them out to you – a peace offering, or maybe he was just kissing ass. He’d always been good at that, hadn’t he? “Damn. Forgot how much you love your fries.”  

You, of course, did what any normal person would do. You took them right out of his hand. Except, unlike any other normal person, you used your mouth.

Your lips brushed against his callused fingertips, accidental contact that felt like pure electricity. It made you remember all sorts of things the two of you had once done behind closed doors – things you absolutely shouldn’t have been thinking of in this particular setting, or at this particular moment. 

One-track mind. Especially today.

Why?

Even you heard his sharp intake of breath. 

Emboldened, not to mention empowered by the stunned expression on Bucky’s face, you licked away the salt from your lips. “Guess we’re gonna have to make sure you don’t forget again, huh?”

Then you took a bite of the pickle, as if to make a point. What point that was, you had no idea, and it didn’t matter anyway. This was all just a confident façade, a front meant to hide the racing of your heart.

You watched his surprise give way to something a little darker – a certain look that matched your memories tit-for-tat and had your panties sticking uncomfortably to the apex of your thighs. 

“You’re playing a dangerous game, sweetheart.”

His voice, low and rough, set your body on fire.

Oh, this was a dangerous game.

You loved it.

“I don’t know, Buck,” you drawled, eyeing the pickle. “Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Been awhile since you stole some of my fries.”

Then you turned your attention back to him. 

Teasing, yes. Dangerous, absolutely.

You were flirting. Why, oh why, were you flirting? Nothing good would come of this, but you couldn’t stop yourself. He’d changed. This wasn’t the same Bucky anymore. Deep down, it was still him, just a better version, a fact that was becoming more and more evident the more time you spent with him.

Your nerves went haywire as Bucky studied your face; his eyes traced every dip and curve and feature, and when you worried your lower lip in between your teeth, his focus lingered on your mouth for a few seconds longer than necessary.

Tense in the best way. You loved that, too.

Then he cleared his throat and looked away.

“You… You go ahead and have it, doll. I’ll get the check.” 

Rejection. That’s what it was. Pure and simple.

What the hell were you thinking? Of course Bucky turned you down. Not that your intentions were obvious, anyway; you didn’t even know what you wanted from him, so how could he? How on earth could he know that you’d been longing for him like an idiot? 

You’d been daydreaming not just what could have been, but what could be.

Except it couldn’t. Not really.

Your relationship was over. It would always be over. The two of you had already come to an agreement that your daughter was more important. Her safety. Her stability. Winnie didn’t need parents who argued and couldn’t stand each other. She needed good role models. She needed love, and this was the best way of ensuring that she got it. Better to love her separately and do a good job parenting her than the alternative.

Right?

So what the hell had gotten into you?

Maybe you’d flirted because the future wasn’t set in stone, and you had hope. For some stupid reason, you hoped that he felt the same way, that he wanted this too, that he missed you just as much as you missed him. And that was worst part of all, because you already knew he didn’t. 

Two years was a long time. He would have moved on by now, just like you should have. 

You hadn’t. You couldn’t. 

How idiotic.

“You’re quiet,” came Bucky’s voice from your left, soft but playful. “What happened to all that sass?”

His gentle ribbing pulled you out of your reverie, and that was when you realized that the two of you had just made your way back past the playground in the park. Despite your embarrassment, the sun was still shining, the kids were still playing, and the parents were still around, still watching, still together.

Not like the two of you.

Ever the gentleman, Bucky had insisted on walking you home after paying for your meal. His invitation, his treat.  And you’d thanked him, of course, but for the entire walk back you’d been ruminating over the fact that you made a fool out of yourself.

“I’m tired,” you lied. In reality, you were wide awake. Too awake. “I had some trouble sleeping last night. It’s hard to turn my brain off sometimes.”

That, at least, was the truth.

His soft laugh made your heart ache. “Yeah, I know the feeling.” Then he paused, likely to consider whether it was appropriate before he finally offered, “Anything I can help with?”

You met his eyes, then – such a stunning blue, a reflection of clear blue sky and far too genuine – before you quickly turned away, shoving your hands in your pockets. A nervous tic, maybe, or a defense mechanism.

A barrier. 

A wall.

“No,” you responded, even though you desperately wanted to say the opposite, “but thanks.”

Rejection. That’s what it was. Pure and simple.

“Sure,” was all he said before an awkward silence came over the two of you, and you only vaguely noticed when his hands slid into his pockets, too.

Interlude #3

[elisaphoenix13]

Friendly Comforts

For @funkylittlebidiot for reaching the top role of my Mama Bear discord server! Hope it's to your liking!

Cassie and William were at the coffee table in the living room of the lake house lazily building a house of cards while everyone else lazed about in their own way. Most of the kids were up in their own rooms playing or watching tv, but they decided to stay downstairs. Stephen was in the kitchen washing dishes, and Tony was dozing on the couch behind William with baby Lucy sleeping on his chest. One was drooling and the other was snoring softly, but it was nothing like the way Quill snored.

Cassie was still used to Tony's snoring though. He did raise her for five years, and the lake house was home for her. It held bittersweet memories and of course some fun ones as well. Like the time Tony was having a really good day and helped the girls plant the vegetable garden at the side of the house. He fortunately had quite a few good days, but the bad days still won over in quantity. Getting out of bed had been hard for him, so Cassie took it upon herself to make things easier for him. If Tony slept in, Cassie would go into his room and get Diana out of her crib (or her bed when she was older) and make her breakfast and take care of her until Tony was ready to face the day.

There had been a couple of days that were so bad he had stayed in bed all day. Fortunately those were days when Cassie was old enough to cook for them with the stove and Diana was easily occupied with her coloring books or the tv.

"Was this all ever too much for you?" William suddenly asks after placing a card on top of the ones that Cassie stacked against each other. The house continued to stand.

"Hmm...no. I don't think so. When I was still living with my mom and Paxton, it was always quiet there. Then my dad became Ant-Man and things were more exciting...then we moved to the tower. I had a lot more fun there because there was always something going on. I can tell you that Mom has sighed exactly four hundred and sixty-seven times before the snap." Cassie smiles.

"You kept count?" William asks in surprise. "What's he at now?"

"Oh, pfft. I don't know. With all of the Avengers and seven kids, he sighs so much that I lost count."

Stephen sighs from the kitchen. "Cassie, please stop counting how often I sigh."

Both teens smile and the girl looks back at the house of cards and stacks another pair of cards. They work on the fragile structure in silence up until William slowly starts to place the last card they need to complete it. Before he even gets close, the table rattles from the force of a thump from upstairs and both of them sigh with exasperation when the cards go tumbling down onto the coffee table and some onto the floor around them.

"Ugh...I really should know better to do something like that when my parents are around." Cassie says and makes a face as she starts to clean up the cards.

"Want to play a board game instead?" William asks and Cassie nods.

"How about…" She gets up and walks over to the bookshelf stacked with board games. "Connect Four?"

William nods and Cassie grabs the game off of the shelf and takes it over to the coffee table and sits back down. While William puts the plastic pieces together, Cassie seperates the colored plastic coins and pushes one of the piles over to him. They play the game quietly, occasionally pulling the bottom to the side to let the coins clatter to the table to start another game, and Stephen eventually brings snacks over to them. Strawberries and cream for William, and Cheez-Its for Cassie each in their seperate bowls.

"Thanks Mom." William says softly and Stephen smiles and pats his head.

"You're welcome."

Cassie smiles. "Hey Will...you want to see something funny?"

"What?"

She grins and leans closer to William to tap Tony's shoulder and he grunts and bats her hand away. He was definitely away though...just not completely and that was exactly where Cassie needed him. She had discovered this funny little tidbit while she lived here with him and Diana and every once in a while she would do this to get a laugh.

"Tony?" Cassie says softly.

"Huh? What?" The engineer mumbles but keeps his eyes closed.

"Mom wanted me to tell you that he's pregnant. With triplets."

Stephen chokes on the tea he was drinking from and looks at Cassie in bewilderment but she just smiles and holds her finger up.

"Tha's great." Tony mutters and waves at her. "Just tell him to keep them in for a couple of years."

Stephen wipes his mouth. "I can't decide whether to be happy that he accepts that so easily or concerned. There are a few things wrong with that conversation." He shakes his head and sits on the other couch to watch tv as the teens go back to their game.

"I'm surprised you're not trying to take Lucy." Cassie says and Stephen sighs heavily.

"There has been a recent discovery that she is the biggest daddy's girl. I did all of the work and she wants him." He says the last part with an expression like he ate something sour and Cassie laughs.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later. She's his Valerie."

Stephen snorts and turns his attention back to the tv, and after about half an hour, Friday alerts them that Valerie had woken up from her nap. William volunteers to go get her, and gets up and goes up to the master bedroom when Stephen nods, and he smiles when he sees the toddler sitting up in her crib and rubbing her eyes. When Valerie sees him approach the crib, she stands up and holds out her arms for him, yawning as William takes her out of her crib.

"Have a good nap?"

"Uh-huh."

"Want to help me kick Cassie's butt in Connect Four and share my snack?" He smiles when she nods again and takes her down to the living room where he sits back down and sets Valerie in his lap. "I have a partner now." He grins to Cassie.

"Well your partner is more interested in your snack right now." The other teen giggles.

Sure enough, Valerie was picking up one of William's strawberries and scooping up some whipped cream with it. He shrugs and they start a new game that the toddler watches quietly as she munches on her snack, until she points at a column with her other hand.

"There." She says.

"Oh. Good eye." William praises as he drops his coin into the slot for the win and Cassie pouts.

"She's too good at this game." She says and the beam that adorned Valerie's face had the teens and Stephen melting.

It wasn't even a lie either. Valerie knew how the game was played and knew how to win, and she had easily kicked her siblings butts without them letting her win. It was one game they could actually play with her and not have to stretch out to their planned loss because she was that good at it.

A hitch of breath draws William's and Cassie's attention, and Stephen lunges forward when he sees Tony's fingers curling toward his palm. His arm was acting up again and he hadn't even moved before he let out a pained gasp.

"Oh…god. Someone...fuck... someone take Lulu." He winces and Cassie immediately crawls around the coffee table to take the infant.

"Tony, try to relax." Stephen says gently as he uses his magic to try and help with the pain.

"I'll go get Papa." Cassie says as she stands with Lucy held to her shoulder.

Stephen nods and Cassie heads up the stairs to get Quill, and William cleans up their game with Valerie's help. While Tony's episodes were rare, Valerie understood what was happening so seeing her father in pain didn't scare her as much as it used to. It still bothered her of course, but she knew Mommy and Uncle Quill would help him feel better, and so she usually went to play with one of her siblings whenever it happened.

"Can you help carry our snacks up to my room? We can watch a movie." William asks Valerie.

"Yes." She says and picks up the bowl of strawberries with both hands and slowly climbs the stairs.

William grabs the bowl of whipped cream and Cassie's Cheez-Its and follows Valerie, and they barely move out if the way fast enough when Quill comes tearing around the corner from his room and down the stairs. He shouts an apology over his shoulder at them as he joins Stephen at Tony's side, and William catches a glimpse of a white and blue light coming from the celestial's hands before turning the corner to go to his room. He finds Cassie standing in the middle of the hallway holding Lucy and he motions to his bedroom door with one of the bowls.

"We're going to watch a movie in my room. Wanna join?" He asks and Cassie nods, following the two as she gently rocks Lucy.

Thankfully the infant was in a good mood and not screaming about being taken away from Tony, but they both knew that wouldn't last long. The three get settled on William's bed and place the bowls in front of them so Valerie can get to the whipped cream.

"Friday? Turn on a Disney movie please? Surprise us." William asks.

His tv turns on and Sleeping Beauty pops up next and they watch it quietly until Stephen comes up about twenty minutes later.

"Is he okay?" Cassie asks.

"He'll be fine. Just needs a few minutes." Stephen smiles. "I'll take Lucy now."

"Sure." She says and hands Lucy over to him.

"Valerie? Are you okay here with your brother and Cassie?" Stephen asks.

"Uh-huh." The little girl nods and Stephen kisses the top of her head before leaving the bedroom.

"You better eat those before my brother catches a whiff of them." William tells Cassie as he points to the bowl of crackers.

"He can pry them from my cold, dead fingers." She says with a laugh as she picks up the bowl to eat her Cheez-Its.

Another twenty minutes of the movie pass in silence with the exception of crunching from Cassie and munching from Valerie and William.

"Hey...do you ever get tired of doing things?" William asks and stammers when Cassie looks at him in alarm. "I-I mean you help with Diana a lot and sometimes you help cook dinner for everyone, and I know you do a lot for your parents."

Cassie shrugs. "Sure. Every once in a while. But I just tell my parents I need a day for myself and they either order takeout or Dad makes dinner. They take care of me and protect me and it's the least I can do." Cassie chews on another small handful of crackers before continuing. "I love spending time with Diana, but she knows that sometimes I need to spend time with people my own age and she understands that."

"I wonder if me and Thomas would even be here if you weren't so nice." William says quietly. "This family has been the best thing that ever happened to us and for once we don't have to hide our powers or who we are. I feel safe here...and I want to call Stephen and Tony, Mom and Dad, because they feel like that to me. I don't want to lose any of this."

Cassie smiles and looks back at the tv. "I'm sure you've figured it out but you're stuck with us. Mom would have a conniption if you were unhappy in any way and he would do anything to fix that."

"Yeah... we're definitely putting that together." William nods. "Dad too."

"Pfft," Cassie snorts. "If anyone tried anything, he would sue them of everything they own. Even just for looking at you funny...but he's just extra like that."

William laughs and accepts the last strawberry that Valerie offers up to him and scoops up the rest of the whipped cream with it. A breeze blows against their faces a few seconds later and Cassie gasps when she finds the rest of her Cheez-Its gone and Thomas sitting on the bed and munching loudly.

"Hey!"

"I could smell them from my room." He says around his mouthful and the other two teens make a face.

"First, rude. You can just ask. Second, gross. Close your mouth." Cassie gripes.

"Thomas! I told you not to run in the house!" Stephen calls from downstairs and Thomas's eyes widen.

"How did he know?"

"Mama knows everything." Valerie says and William and Cassie point at her.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #230: THE LAST FAREWELL!

April, 1983

“Yellowjacket no more!”

Aw, dang! Hank got raptured!

Captain America, Thor, and Hawkeye is a weird collection of characters to be staring forlornly at the empty Yellowjacket uniform.

Thor hasn’t really expressed much about the Yellowjacket situation in comparison. You think they could squeeze Wasp into the shot. Just her ex-husband is all. She’s just the team leader is all.

Put Wasp on the cover, you cowards.

So last times on Avengers: Hank Pym got himself kicked out of the Avengers and out of his marriage and pretty much deserved it. He was tricked into committing treason by his arch-nemesis Egghead and sent to jail. He sat in jail for, like, a really long time. The wheels really spun on the arc.

He was kicked out of the Avengers/walked before he could be kicked out in #213. He was arrested at the end of issue #217. His trial was in issue #228.

He was kidnapped from his trial by the Masters of Evil. Then in #229, he turned the tables on them all in quite a satisfying manner and slugged Egghead in the egg head.

Then Hawkeye manslaughtered him. He’s dead.

Hawkeye arrowed the science gun to stop Egghead from shooting Hank in the back and then the science gun backfired and microwaved that egg.

This makes Hank’s victory a little bittersweet for him.

Hank Pym: “I defeated the Masters of Evil single-handed... but more than anything, I wanted to bring Egghead to justice. He was a thorn in my side for so many years. I was never able to defeat him for long, not when I was Ant-Man... and not even after I became Giant-Man! He bedeviled me in every identity I assumed. He did me the greatest wrong when I was Yellowjacket. I’d already ruined my Avengers career, when he tricked me into committing a federal crime!”

Hawkeye too is set to thinking by what happened. Maybe humming a bit of Bohemian Rhapsody to himself too.

Hawkeye: “This is unreal! I’ve never killed a man before! I never planned on anything like this happening! Yeah, but I can’t feel sorry for Egghead! If anyone deserved this, he did! My brother Barney bought the farm, stopping Egghead from killing the Avengers. And if I hadn’t acted when I did, Hank Pym would be dead! If I had to do it again... I would!”

Hawkeye: ‘Eh, fuck ‘em!’

hah.

But Hank laments that with Egghead dead, so goes his chance of proving his innocence by turning him over to the law.

Hank Pym: “Egghead was always getting away from me, Hawkeye. It’s almost as if he’s pulled the ultimate escape!”

Fun fact: There doesn’t seem to be an Ultimate Egghead! Why would there need to be? Even more than in the 616, Ultimate Hank Pym is by far his own worst enemy.

Hawkeye basically tells Hank to buck up and that there’s basically incriminating evidence lying all over the place.

He doesn’t say it but even Egghead’s dead deceased corpse is kind of like evidence. Evidence that he wasn’t dead until recently.

Captain Marvel shows up because someone finally came looking for Hawkeye.

Hank is surprised, much like others have been that this is Captain Marvel. He knew the old guy, the super saiyan. And I guess he didn’t hear there was a new one.

Hawkeye: “We’ve had a few changes since you went in the slammer, Hank. C.M. is an Avenger in training.”

Huh. Captain Marvel doesn’t even react to the dead body. Then again, there’s a lot of bodies lying all around the place.

And while Hawkeye is introducing the new Captain Marvel to Hank, one of those bodies stirs.

Moonstone has regained consciousness and assesses the situation. She could blast Hank, Captain Marvel, and Hawkeye with her coherent light pew pew but that’d just weaken her.

Like in the previous issue, Moonstone is one of the few supervillains who knows when to fold ‘em.

So she decides to skeedaddle while the getting is good but whoops.

Getting wasn’t good.

The rest of the Avengers have shown up and cornered her while she was pondering.

So Moonstone decides ‘eh fuck it’ and promises to spill all the beans if it gets her a lighter sentence.

So days later, the mostly off-screen trial of Hank Pym finally ends.

A loooot of new evidence suddenly popping up led the prosecution to withdraw all charges.

The lead prosecution witness, Trish Starr, suddenly reversing her testimony after putting on Tony Stark’s magical mental-scan helmet kind of tanked the case, really.

Wait, they really did just admit the use of the helmet in the trial when its new, unsubstantiated technology whose inventor disappeared?

Damn, I knew the Marvel legal system was wild (considering comic books as legal documents as explored in Dan Slott’s run on the character) but still!

Although it makes sense. Egghead got Trish to incriminate Hank by using the bionic arm to alter her memories. The helmet Tony invented undoes that kind of alteration. This connects the dots quite reasonably. Glad Stern was paying attention when preparing to finish this arc.

Moonstone and Beetle confirming that Egghead was using Hank as a tool also helps.

In fact, not only did the prosecution drop all their charges, the judge also dismissed all the charges. Which feels redundant? I dunno much about law, really. Just the She-Hulk version of law. Which, again, uses comic books as legal documents.

Apparently happening at around the same time, Hawkeye also had his day in court.

Literally a day.

It wasn’t a trial, just a hearing to investigate whether he was guilty of wrong-doing in the death of Egghead.

Newsman with a newsplan: “Though he was threatened with contempt-of-court charges a number of times -- Hawkeye was found innocent of any wrong-doing in the death of Dr. Elihas Starr -- the self-styled Egghead.”

Yeah, I bet Hawkeye was threatened with contempt-of-court a bunch. And I bet you anything that at least one of the times he rejoined with “No, you’re out of order! This whole damn courtroom is out of order!”

And then the judge probably just sighed.

I mean, look at that unbelievable Hawkeye in the bottom left panel.

Anyway, I think Stern must have felt a little pent up having to start his Avengers run finishing off someone else’s story, especially having to devote a recap issue to it since the plot had been interspersed with fill-ins.

Because in the middle of concluding this arc, he throws in two plot beats that I have to assume are to set up stuff of his own.

A day after the trial, the Beetle is being escorted to a cell in a Western Pennsylvanian federal maximum security prison when he bumps into another prisoner.

What neither the Beetle or the guard notices is that the bump to “Sam Smithers” has peeled off some skin on his arm and revealed THAT HE IS ACTUALLY MADE OF WOOD!

Suspect possibly a living puppet.

And elsewhere but samewhen, IN SPACE, specifically on Saturn’s moon Titan, Thanos’ brother Eros is basically complaining about being bored.

When Captain Mar-vell died of having a lot of cancer, he asked Eros to look after Mar-vell’s... uh... -google- robot girlfriend?? Elysius.

Eventual mom to Genis and Phyla-Vells.

Soooooo, Eros has done as Mar-vell’s deathbed wish was and spent an agonizing several consecutive months hanging out in Titan’s beautiful inside forests and just having a real hard time caring about one thing for such a long period of time.

I’m not even being unfair to him.

Eros: “This is the first time in ages that I’ve spent so many consecutive months on Titan! I have ever been a wanderer! I’ve sought out adventure across the wide cosmos. Frankly, I have known romance on more worlds than most sentient beings could imagine. That’s part of the problem. Our friendship has been wonderful, but I’m having a hard time adjusting to it. My previous relationships have all been of a fleeting nature.”

‘Look its not you, its me’ except for attempting to dump someone as a friend, instead of romantically.

Not dump, even. He just kind of wants to ditch her and is asking in a roundabout way if she’s emotionally stable enough to ditch.

She goes, yeah sure, go off and have fun. And maybe she’s getting tired of his company too.

Elysius: “Look... you’ve been a great comfort to me these last few months, but now I need to be alone for a while with my thoughts.”

Geez, how clingy has he been this whole time while desperately wanting to be anywhere else?

Anyway, since she’s fine with him fucking off, he does fuck off. Right to the Hall of Science.

Where Eros’ dad is like ‘oh ffs’ when Eros tells him that he needs to use the LIVING COMPUTER Isaac to look up planets with the highest adventure potential.

Mentor of Titan is a man deeply disappointed in both of his sons for very different reasons.

Anyway, would you really be surprised if I told you that Earth was in the Top 3 planets in known space for adventure?

You wouldn’t, right?

Meanwhile, back at the plot, Hank Pym is on a boat with Trish Starr.

She wants to apologize for that time she incriminated him but Hank isn’t going to blame her for being as much a pawn in Egghead’s scheme as he was.

Trish: “Yes, uncle was like that all of his life. I think he really enjoyed using people.”

And she remembers the first time they met in Marvel Feature #5, where Egghead tried to drain her mind to power his machines. Because. Batteries hadn’t been invented? Because he’s just not happy unless he’s screwing over someone else?

Second one sounds likeliest.

She also remembers the time he car bombed her car but siphoned out most of the gas first.

Trish: “He didn’t want to kill me... only maim me. Nice guy, my uncle.”

Yeah. Its stories like that why its only Trish and Hank also Fred Sloan on a boat at Egghead’s funeral. Yeah, by the way, this is basically Egghead’s funeral.

Fred is only here for Trish.

Hank reacts to Fred so I wondered if he’s important in some way or if Hank recognized him but I checked the wiki and his main importance seems to be... this issue? So I don’t know why Hank reacts to the guy.

So Fred is just here for Trish. Trish is here out of duty, since she was Egghead’s only known family. And Hank is also only here out of duty but more archnemesis ‘can’t believe that asshole is dead and I don’t even get to feel good about it’ duty. I assume.

Hank even gets the honor (?) of laying Egghead to rest. By dumping his ashes into New York harbor.

Mostly because it doesn’t seem like Trish wants to?

So Hank quotes some Mark Twain and dumps the ashes.

Hank Pym: “‘Death... the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all -- the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.’ Farewell, Egghead.”

Trish: “It’s awful to say this -- but I can’t find it in myself to be sorry. I think I’m glad he’s dead.”

And that’s Egghead’s legacy. Mourned by no one. And his death is only not cheered because the only people that cared feel shitty about feeling glad he’s dead.

ANYWAY, there’s some other loose ends to tie up.

So Hank takes a taxi to the Avengers Mansion and I guess finally explicitly explains why the mansion has seemed to change positions over time?

Hank Pym: “I never thought I’d be coming here again. The place has certainly changed since the day Jan and I met here with Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk to draft the Avengers charter and by-laws. And I still recall the time Iron Man and Thor moved the mansion back from the street to give us more privacy. What a project that was!”

Sounds like a heck of a noodle incident, Hank.

... Why just Thor and Iron Man? Did they... did they literally just shove the mansion back from the street? ... There’s... basements and caves under there. How does that work? That seems like a massive architectural project.

Hank, pls, I need to know more details. You can’t just drop that information and casually stroll away. HANK!

Captain Marvel meets Hank at the door and escorts him inside, captain marveling at how calm Hank is despite everything he’s been through.

Hank shows up to the Avengers meeting and-

Oh god, She-Hulk looks like she wants to punch the suppressed emotions right out of Jan. She-Hulk, pls.

So, Wasp is super formal, calling Hank Dr. Pym and telling him that they want to use the mento-scan helmet to see if he was under outside influence when he did all the very bad things he did.

All of the Avengers are harboring their own concerns.

She-Hulk: “I’ve read legal briefs that were more informal! She’s cool on the surface, but inside -- ! Jannie, why are you doing this to yourself?!”

Are you guys already at the cute nickname stage of your friendship or is that just the way She-Hulk be?

Cap is worried that this is rough on Jan but that she’s doing what she needs to do as the Avengers chairwoman. But he’s more worried about the absence of Iron Man who is still missing and who ignored three calls to assemble.

Thor is just internally like ‘just do the helmet, my dude.’

Hawkeye is literally biting his lip at the tension.

Hawkeye: “Jan divorced Hank after his last breakdown. If we find out that he wasn’t to blame, what’s it gonna do to the both of ‘em? I hate this! That stupid court hearing was a breeze in comparison.”

Huh, Hawkeye has a point. Even if outside influence is proven, its not as straightforward as Jan and Hank instantly getting back together, no harm no foul. There was harm. And the problems with their relationship were deeper than one incident. But it would also create this possible expectation that they should get back together because the specific incident wasn’t Hank’s fault.

And Captain Marvel is still looking at this from an outsiders’ perspective.

Captain Marvel: “They’re really hurting over this... all of them! They all care so very, very much. If I ever become a fully active Avenger, I pray that I can live up to their example.”

So Hank very calmly agrees to use the helmet. But...

Hank Pym: “Sorry... no outside influences. It would have changed a lot of things if there had been, wouldn’t it? But no, I made my own mistakes... and I have to live with them.”

Thiiiiis was the best decision for the story arc. It may seem, in retrospect, the worst decision in the long run, but I can respect the story for standing by what it has done and standing by the growth Hank has had as a result of everything that happened.

I think a lot of more modern marvel comics have gone a little wild with letting the heroes do all kinds of dubious things and also die because it can be easily undone. It was a Skrull, they were being mind-controlled, it was an AU Nazi version of them created by a cosmic cube child. Or by giving the hero some big redemptive moment like Iron Man wiping his mind to make up for doing Civil War. Or Iron Man dying to make up for Civil War 2. You can explore whatever scenarios you want without worrying about dealing with the consequences long-term.

But in this era of Marvel, they were concerned with the long-term. Not to say that there weren’t cop-outs back in this day too. But since books were expected to keep going indefinitely instead of being cancelled and relaunched, there’s less of a sense of ‘this thing is only here to play with for a little while.’ If you wrote a thing, another writer was expected to follow up on it.

And I miss that a little.

So not giving a cop-out bullshit thing that undoes Hank’s actions was bad in the long run for his image as a character. But that’s a long way from now problem, exacerbated by writers like Chuck Austin and Mark Millar who wanted to wallow in it.

For an arc where Hank fell from grace and proved himself again, taking ownership of what a garbage fire his life can be was necessary.

One among many reasons I probably won’t like the Crossing when I get to it, haha.

With Hank’s actions proven as being Hank’s actions, Hank says there’s one more loose end that he wants to help tie off.

He wants to participate as witness when the Avengers hold a court of inquiry for Hawkeye killing Egghead.

This comes as an absolute surprise to Hawkeye, who I guess never read the bylaws. Which honestly, is very in-character for him.

But it being brought up, he insists that all he has to do is enter the findings of the state judge and be done with it.

Hank insists he participate though.

Hank Pym: “Hawkeye is faced with charges because he acted in my defense. It’s only right that I act in his.”

So, the Avengers go to the first floor library, which is apparently the court of inquiry room. I feel like we’re suddenly getting a lot of details about the layout of the Avengers Mansion in recent issues.

So Wasp convenes the court all formal style, so formal style that Hawkeye thinks that stickler Cap(tain America) couldn’t have done a better job. The purpose of the court of inquiry is to determine the validity of the charge of “unreasonable use of deadly force” and determine what if any proper disciplinary action should be taken.

I think Hawkeye is annoyed at having to go through with this (read the bylaws, my dude) because when Wasp asks if he has anything to add to his claim of innocence of the charge, he says he already gave the court copies of the court transcript that cleared him of the same charge, but also decides to speechify a little, because he wasn’t accused of contempt of court enough today.

Hawkeye: “I have already given the chair copies of the transcript of a hearing of the state courts... a hearing which found me not guilty of the same charge. And I have something else to say as well!”

“I don’t deny that my actions caused the death of Egghead. But in no way did I use undue force! I found Hank Pym in mortal danger, and I used the necessary means to save him... period. After all, we are supposed to be the Avengers, right?”

Luckily for Hawkeye, the Avengers are more willing to put up with him than a state court so Jan just goes ‘ok, noted.’

Captain Marvel also has a minor change of heart on Hawkeye. I don’t think we’ve gotten her in-depth feelings on him before (although he did get pissy about her joining the team, we didn’t see her response to that) but she’s impressed because she thought he had more wind than conviction but is seeing that isn’t so. And she’s also impressed by Serious Mode Jan who she thought was kind of flighty.

Captain Monica Marvel seeing all kinds of new sides of the Avengers lately.

Also, this isn’t important and you won’t be able to see what I mean unless I included more caps than I wanted to, but in the panel establishing the court of inquiry, Monica is just standing off to the side. But in the next panel she appears in, she’s moved over to sit on a couch instead.

I think its a framing thing but its still kind of funny to imagine her going ‘wait why am I standing up’ and heading for the comfy couch.

With Hawkeye’s statement given, Wasp invites Hank Pym to speak his piece.

And Hank gets up and gives an entirely unnecessary but probably appreciated defense of Hawkeye.

Hank Pym: “Ladies and gentlemen... I have not always been on the friendliest of terms with Hawkeye. Point of fact, we nearly came to blows a number of times... back in the days when I was an Avenger. But in all the time I’ve known him, Hawkeye has never used undue force.”

“I realize that this inquiry is little more than a formality. I have no doubt that you will find in his behalf. He did, as he said, act only in my defense. Unlike my own recent case before you, there is not the slightest hint of misconduct or negligence. The only thing Hawkeye is guilty of is being a good Avenger.”

“When I last spoke before this body, at my court-martial, I was not in a rational state of mind. I was unfit to be an Avenger. You wisely expelled me. I never expected to speak before you again. And now, I can think of no finer final statement than this... It has been my sincere honor to have known Hawkeye’s fellowship... as it has to have known yours.”

Okay. So. Half a defense of Hawkeye. And half... just a general good-bye and a demonstration that he actually does know how to deliver a defense at a court-martial. Cool.

I imagine if he had a mic, he would have dropped it.

Probably not, actually. Hank isn’t that exact blend of cool and inconsiderate for a mic drop.

Jarvis intercepts Hank on his way out and asks that he come with him to the second floor study. Jarvis has taken the liberty of gathering up the personal items Hank just kind of left in the mansion and packing them for him.

One suitcase has a bunch of Hank’s clothes that he had stashed in the mansion over the years. Including some wacky ties for wacky tie Fridays and a shirt that Hank had just plumb lost.

The other suitcase is a spare Yellowjacket outfit. In case Hank ever needs it.

Then Hank and Jarvis shake hands, Hank thanking Jarvis for everything that he’s done for him and the Avengers. He asks Jarvis to take care of himself because he knows he doesn’t have to ask him to take care of the Avengers.

This is a very touching scene. Its so touching that Jarvis excuses himself to go get misty eyed.

This is a Jarvis appreciation blog because I appreciate Jarvis as well.

Then, as Hank heads back down the staircase, he is intercepted by Thor, Captain America, and Hawkeye.

Yeah, the court of inquiry resolved off-screen because of how forgone a conclusion it was.

The three Avengers basically fall all over themselves to pat Hank on the back. Hank actually looks somewhat panicked by the positive affirmation.

That’s some mixture of funny and sad that I can’t identify.

Hawkeye tells Hank how much he appreciated his unnecessary defense. Thor clasps Hank’s shoulder and tells him he’s a class act, but in Thor-y words. And Cap extends an offer for whatever the Avengers can do to help Hank get back on his feet.

Hank thanks him for the offer but he’s already received an offer from a small research foundation in the Midwest.

Seems like getting exonerated of a treason charge is the best resume of all. That and Hank’s actual impressive resume.

But Cap has some stuff to work out re: Hank because he starts off on the stuff he put on the back burner back in that Ghost Rider issue.

Cap(tain America): “Hank... I know Iron Man would agree, if he were here, that we’re all sorry about the way things worked out. We should have realized the pressures you’d been under, prior to your breakdown. I was group leader at the time! I should have -- !”

Hank Pym: “Hold it right there, Cap! What I did, I did to myself! If I could have admitted that my problems existed... If I’d been willing to open up to you folks... Well, ‘if’ can be a big word sometimes. The fact of the matter is, I screwed up. And you did the only thing you could do! I don’t blame any of you.”

Hank has boarded the personal responsibility train and goddammit he’s riding it to the end of the line!

Good for him. Good clarity for the arc to have in its last issue.

But having started to slightly shout at the Avengers that he’s taking responsibility dammit! (he looks a bit pissed when he’s responding to Cap) Hank awkwardly excuses himself.

Cap tries to stop Hank from leaving because he has reached the bargaining stage of grief, I guess.

Cap: “Hank, wait! It doesn’t have to end like this! We could make a special amendment to the by-laws! We could reinstate you as an Avenger! You could be a special reservist -- !”

Hank: “Thanks, Cap. But no thanks. Trying to play super hero was the biggest mistake I ever made with my life! I was only fooling myself in ever thinking otherwise. But if you ever really think you might need a Yellowjacket again some day...”

He hands Cap the Yellowjacket suitcase.

Hank: “... Here! All you need is a good man and what’s in this case!”

I would hope, anyway. It’s going to be awkward if he opens it up later and its full of wacky ties.

The funny thing, although not really funny ha ha, is that Yellowjacket is the one codename of Hank’s that never really catches on outside of him.

You have multiple Ant-Men, a couple Goliaths, at least one other Giant-Man. There was a second Yellowjacket, eventually. But she didn’t make a big splash.

Despite Hank’s attempt here to pass the torch, Yellowjacket is a codename that remains inextricably tied to him. Which might be the problem. If there were another, more successful or at least more endearing Yellowjacket, Hank’s infamy in the role would not stand out so much.

Alas.

She-Hulk and Captain Marvel try next to intercept Hank. They don’t know him very well but they wanted to say their goodbyes too, despite not really knowing him that well.

Its the thought that definitely counts, probably.

But Hawkeye has some social awareness for a change and draws their attention to Wasp who is hanging back, but who clearly wants to talk to Hank.

So the rest of the Avengers quickly vacate to let Hank and Jan finally have closure. Or re-closure. “I want a divorce and to never see you again” is a kind of closure.

The situation has changed, however.

They both try to apologize to each other and then laugh at the awkwardness.

Hank: “Janet van Dyne, you are one in a million! After all that I put you through, you want to tell me that you’re sorry?”

Wasp: “I think we both made some mistakes along the way, but there were some good times... weren’t there?”

Hank: “Yes. But you can’t base a marriage on just a few good times. I fell for the young lady who reminded me of my first wife... and you thought you’d found the strong, silent hero. But I was never that strong, Jan. You know that now.”

Wasp: “Uh-huh.”

Damn, his prison time really did bring Hank a lot of clarity. That or the pile of therapists Tony kept throwing at him.

Hank also kind of talks over Jan here. Or at least steers the conversation. I don’t know what Jan would have said because Hank tells her that they both have other lives to lead and tells her to take care of herself.

Maybe its for the best, if, like Cap, she was going to try to shoulder all the blame for Hank’s bad decisions.

Hank walks out the door and finds Trish and Fred from the boat waiting to give him a ride to the airport. And then he is gone.

Like in the final image of the COURT-MARTIAL issue, Jan watches at the window.

“The last time Henry Pym left these walls, Janet felt like crying... but couldn’t find any tears. Today, at last, she has found the tears... for her former husband... for her team... for herself. Today, there is pain and remorse and release. There will be time enough for joy and hope tomorrow.”

Emotional catharsis can be like that.

In that the book kept going ‘Jan is really holding her emotions in and that’s probably not overall great for her’ its good that she can let it out now.

Kind of laughing at Captain Marvel and She-Hulk who only recently just met Jan being the ones going there there while the men she has known for years are just awkwardly standing in the background.

And that’s the fall and rise of Hank Pym. Apparently collected in trade as The Trial of Yellowjacket, which is a decent enough name too.

Overall, a good arc. That is kind of hampered by the need for filler and a writer change near the end. But honestly, Stern catches the ball and runs with it. He concludes the arc just as good as Shooter would’ve.

This arc is all kinds of iconic for Hank, although, unfortunately, most people are only aware of the beginning and maybe have a hazy understanding of what the ending does.

Although. This is a really good send-off for Hank. A really, really good send-off that would have worked best if he did like he said and quit superheroing forever.

That’s not to be, obviously, not in a perpetual narrative machine like Marvel. But it feels like it could have been and maybe should have been the last word on his character.

I enjoy Hank in Busiek’s Avengers and in Avengers Academy. And also, conceptually, Hank telling Reed “it’s on, bitch.” I very don’t enjoy Ultimate Hank Pym. So its a balancing act. The perfect exit for the character vs but I like some stuff when they brought him back.

Anyway.

After this, Stern gets to move on to his own material. Which he already planted the seeds for in this issue.

That’s a pun.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because of my bad puns. Also like and reblog, if you like to reblog.

[anotherbeingsworld]

The Revelation - Part 3 (Final)

(Part 1, Part 2) 

Summary: A revelation for their story. 

Characters: Bryce Lahela, Casey Valentine and Keiki Lahela. 

Warnings: None. 

A/N: I’M BACKKK (well, not literally since I have been reblogging stuff and all! ) I hope all of you are doing amazing/good/fine/well and all the good stuff! My life has been really hectic, and classes above all has been a huge thing. I really miss writing and, with uni; its getting quite tough to write anything. I missed writing Bryce but, I am so happy we got our boy back. This story is the end of the Imagines series, I never planned to expand it, but... maybe in the future. For now, this is the third part (I am being dramatic, sjsjskk but.. this is a mini series that I never thought would happen and seeing it got lots of love from all of you. It made me realize why I kept on writing it.)  Also, I apologize if i am very behind on fics! I havent been able to catch up with anything and, I will try to catch up during this weekend! (Hopefully!) I apologize in advance if they are any grammar mistakes since English was never a first language but, I hope all of you will love it! Sending virtual hugs to all of you, i hope you have a good day/night!! <3 

Thank you @mvalentine , for the major idea for this part! and, to everyone who has been there given me all the hugs and all. Sending love towards ya. <33

Tags:  Tags:  @bitchloveskcbaseball​​ , @storyofmychoices​​ @jaxsmutsuo​​ , @mvalentine​​ , @princess-geek , @lahellacute​​ , @kacie-0156​​ , @simp-for-villains​​ , @annekebbphotography​​ , @brycelahel​​, @mrsbhandari​​ , @dcbbw​​ , @choicessa​​ , @choices-confessions , @aylamwrites​​ , @fantasyoverreality98​​ , @drakewalker04​​ , @baltersome​​ , @thecordoniandiaries​​ , @thundergom​​  @starrystarrytrouble​​, @ohramsey​​ , @kelseaaa​​  , @rookie-ramsey​​ , @bratzlahela​​ , @ohvamsey​ , @choicesficwriterscreations , @soft-for-drake , @lalizah

LINK TO MY MASTERLIST

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

It never occurs to him that one day, his sister will be living with him whilst he tries to survive his life at Edenbrook. But, after that day; it felt like an emotional rollercoaster for both of them. Readjusting, reliving old memories and reconnecting to each other. He never knew that he missed her that much, and Keiki didn't realize that being there felt like she was doing something right once in a while.

It is weeks after their meeting, and things are looking up for both of them. Bryce felt much better knowing that Keiki is safe, as he is learning to be her brother from now on. Or, as Casey would put it; be her best friend that he was once before.

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

Keiki and Casey are at his apartment as they planned on this special day; Bryce's birthday. Casey had already planned an advanced celebration in mind for him but, both herself and Keiki especially Keiki wanted to celebrate something for him. Casey had slept over at the Lahela’s today, as both of them did some huge planning for it.

After long hours of planning and browsing through 8 million pins on Pinterest for the last week. They finally started their journey on making it the best birthday for him.

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

Casey and Keiki are hustling on buying confetti streamers and everything needed for a birthday for Bryce. Both of them were enthusiastic to make it happen as it was Keiki's first celebration with Bryce for years.

'We need a chocolate cake!' Keiki exclaimed as Casey let out a chuckle at her excitement.

Keiki ran forward and reached the bakery aisle where there were various cakes in the display making both of them gasped in awe at the number of delicious delicacies that were in front of them.

‘Let’s get all of em!’ An evil look in Keiki's eyes, as Casey felt her stomach grumble in hunger as she hadn't had breakfast even though she would remind her patients to not forget the most important meal of the day.

‘….I called dibs on the rainbow cake!' Casey leaps forward as she had her hand in the rainbow sponge cake that was calling her name as Keiki ran to the other end of the aisle picking up three different types of cakes varied from vanilla, chocolate, and cheesecake.

They meet up at the center of the aisle, as both of them let out a laugh. The looks on the customers who are shaking their heads in disapproval made Casey a bit nervous, as she gets a bit too overwhelmed by the sudden looks. Keiki remembers small info that Bryce told her about Casey, as she immediately places the cakes in their cart and gives Casey a small squeeze on her hand, the same gesture that Bryce would do. It calmed her nerves before both of them smiled at each other. It somehow was a bonding moment, as at that moment Keiki felt like the sister she never had and little did she know; Keiki felt the same way about her as well. They proceed on getting all the stuff needed for Bryce's surprise party before getting lunch.

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

After a huge number of supplies and food has been brought in their possession, they made it with a lot of time to prepare. There were foods to be served, confetti to be hung, and all the presents needed to be hid as well. Much much later, after three quarters of the home had been covered with confetti, they decided to take a break before a dreaded task was heading their way: blowing balloons. Casey was never a fan of balloons except hot air balloons. Both of them sank themselves on the couch that she knew all too well, and all the memories placed a small smile on her face.

She turns her attention to Keiki, who is relaxing as well. But, Casey figures there is a guarded look in her eyes. Somehow, something there is still bothering her. She doesn't wants to pry on their business, but… it feels like she needs a friend. A sister, or maybe someone who isn’t Bryce.

‘Do you think he will like it?’ She starts the conversation after finally figuring out what to say.

Her eyes falls at the decorations around the house, a small smile appears on her face.

‘I think so, his last birthday party back home was before he left for college… ‘ she pauses a bit, somehow an attempt to recover the memory from the back of her mind.

‘It was his 18th, and I remember he got into a fight the night before with dad. And, I feel bad for him. We ended up having a small celebration of our own, at the kitchen with some of our maids in the house. The maids helped me in surprising him with a chocolate cake, and we did celebrate it with a marathon of cartoons.’ A smile appeared on her face, as she was sucked into the memory of it all.

‘That sounds lovely Keiki.’ She places her hands on her shoulder, giving her an encouraging nod.

‘Thanks, it was years ago… it’s one of those days y’know.’ She shrugged it out but, the environment between them suddenly became tense, as she slowly raise her guard back up once more, somehow a shield was placed in front of her.

There was a silence between them,

‘How do you feel seeing him again?’ Casey constructed her sentence slowly, as the nerves inside of her were screaming loudly.

‘I… don’t know. It was happening so fast, and… I don’t know where to go. I always wanted to see him again, but he had told them about not returning back. I thought he was exaggerating but, I never was ready to not be with him. We faced our whole lives together, and one day… walking down the large hallways, it doesn’t feel right. Coming here wasn't the smartest way to escape but… it felt like I was destined to come.’ Her head dropped, somehow an attempt to hide herself from embarrassment.

‘Hey… it’s okay. You don’t have to feel bad about it.’ Casey reassures her, as they sat in silence once more.

‘I know, I know… I feel helpless at home, and the first thought I have was to see Bryce again. It’s silly honestly…’ She shrugs it off again.

‘It’s not silly to miss your own brother Keiki… I admit, I never even knew about you before our unfortunate meet at the front of the door.. which I am still embarrassed about..’ Her cheeks went red remembering the comment she left before at his front door that was a scarred memory for her. Keiki lets out a small laugh, as she somehow knows what Casey is talking about.

‘Anyways- what I mean to say is… I think he is happy to have you here aswell.’ She stated earning a questionable look from Keiki’s face.

‘Seriously?’

Casey nods, with a huge smile on her face.

‘Yeah, he seems much happier. Somehow, I can sense that both of you are close before.’

Keiki was smiling as she felt much at ease, from the revelation that somehow she didn’t know she was looking for. She stood up, happily with the conversation as they continue on getting the house ready for one Bryce Lahela.

Casey was about to move towards the balloons, before Keiki stops her mid-way earning a surprise look on her face.

‘Keiki, what’s up?’

She was silent, somehow searching for the right words.

‘Thank you.’

‘Happy to help, now all of these balloons ain’t gonna blow themselves!’ She gestures at the balloons that were scattered on the apartment floor.

A laugh escapes from the younger Lahela, as they proceed on the task. A sense of calm overcoming herself. A revelation she didn’t know she needed before.

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

It was finally 6 p.m. as they are finally done putting up the decorations, as the apartment somehow looks homey and fun at the same time! Both Keiki and Casey both threw themselves on the couch as the exhaustion finally caught up to them, it was a long and tiring day for both of them. But, the results were amazing so they didn’t mind at all.

The sound of the door opening caught both of their attention, as Bryce struts in with a surprising look on his face. His eyes gaze around the apartment, as there were confetti and decorations which are in the right amount. Both Keiki and Casey bolt upright from the couch as they were engulfed into one of Bryce's hugs.

After a while of hugging, both of them shouted.

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRYCE!’

Bryce’s smile was as wide as the moment where she saw him doing what he loves, the smile that came from spending time with his friends and the smile that makes her heart skip a beat as he is always the one who made her smile. Both Keiki and Casey look at each other in satisfaction, as they did it. It was a difficult task but they pulled through together, and it feels amazing.

The small celebration between the three of them went well, as there were thoughts that had crossed his mind. There were somehow like a family, and… honestly, he felt excited about what the future might hold for the three of them.

As Casey lit up the candles on all of the cakes that they bought, he paused thinking of a wish that he wanted for this year. His eyes fall on both of them, Casey Valentine; the person who has been there for him from the very beginning and the person who is still here despite his past, and his estranged sister; Keiki Lahela, who came on his door. The person who was once considered his best friend years ago, as they grew apart. The fear of his parents barging on his front door was visible, as he has a hunch on them coming to bring Keiki back home. But, right now; it was his moment. The moment that he never had as a child, happiness despite being surrounded by an enormous amount of luxury

He blew out all the candles, as he silently makes a wish which earning a double pair of eyebrows raised at him. Bryce lets out a laugh as he proceeds on cutting the cake. The three of them sat on the floor as they enjoyed the refreshments that were set by both Keiki and Casey which consists of a lot of finger food and a huge amount of party snacks that were already made, as the lack of cooking skills by Casey.

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

The day is starting to get darker as Bryce and Keiki are cleaning up the mess as Casey is tidying at the front. They were settling on the dishes, as Keiki paused.

Bryce noticed the sudden movement as he stops working on whatever’s left in the sink.

‘I know that look Keiki, it’s the look when you didn’t get to play your toys years ago.’ Bryce teased her, as she punches his arm lightly, a laugh escapes her lips.

‘Years ago, I hated you for what you did. I hated you for leaving home, and I hated you for leaving….me behind.’

Bryce didn’t say anything, as he understood how she felt. When he left for college before, he promised to come back for her. He didn’t keep his promised, and Keiki is justified to feel that way.

‘Being in school, I realized. Understood, how you felt. I understand why you and dad would always quarrel, the way you hated there. And, honestly… I am so sorry for lashing out for you not being here for me.’ Keiki lets out a sigh as Bryce place his arms on her shoulder.

‘You don’t have to be sorry kiddo, I left you there. Sometimes, I wished our lives were much better than what we have been through.’ Bryce reveals as he felt himself reminiscing old times, the happier times.

‘…I think a happier life might lead us on a different path Bryce.’ She raised her eyebrows knowingly gesturing towards Casey with a smirk on her face who is helping them tidying up the leftovers. Bryce smiles at the sight of her.

‘Yeah, maybe. But, one thing I regret the most is, not being able to beat up the kid who pushed you years ago. Nobody messes with my sister.’ Bryce stated with a rage in his eyes, as Keiki shook her head.

‘You’re funny when you are scary, you know that?’

‘It’s one of my specialties, actually.’ Bryce replies with a hint of cockiness in his voice.

Their conversation was cut short, as Casey calls them out for the gift giving session that they planned for Bryce. Both of the Lahela siblings happily walked back to the living room, as the smiles on their faces stays that way for the rest of the day.

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

After the celebration ended, Bryce and Keiki stood together at the window overlooking the crowded city of Boston where it has become their new home.

She was lost in thought as her eyes stared at the cityscapes beyond her, it wasn't Hawaii anymore. But, the fear of her past creeping up to her was somehow still visible.

Bryce stood there, trying to catch up with past events. Everything was new as somethings were meant to be fixed once more. He pulled her into a brotherly hug, as Keiki tries her best to get out of his grasp. It wasn't a common form of affection for them, but its something new.

The revelation as the past came colliding once more bringing them together after years and years of being apart.

'I am glad to have you here  kid.'

'I am glad to be here aswell.' She smiles as Bryce ruffles her hair a special gesture for the Lahela siblings that made her laugh.

They don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow or the next month, but hey. They wouldn’t sweat it much since life has a funny way of making it work and both Bryce and Keiki have lots of moments to look forward to and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

THE END

[punkscowardschampions]

Joe & Ronnie

Joe: [Enough time later that you might think you’ll not hear from him again, realistically like a day or two but given what you did it’d seem like longer/regret and dip ‘cos ya should but we know that ain’t it]

Joe: you spent Charlie’s modelling money yet

Ronnie: long gone baby like you

Ronnie: if you were after a cut shouldve taken it sooner

Joe: nah, it’s yours

Joe: his but sounds like he enjoyed himself, by her account

Joe: no need to ask what you spent it on

Ronnie: but you wanna hear my account yeah

Ronnie: thats what this is

Joe: do you think that’s what this is

Ronnie: youre not taking up space in my head mckenna

Joe: and not in your diary, as you pointed out up top

Joe: busy busy yeah

Ronnie: i werent asked to audition to be a doss student cunt 💔

Ronnie: & the one he brought back didnt fancy me enough to ask me to join in either

Ronnie: busy getting out their way

Joe: leave it a couple years you’ll be a mature student and they ask less questions

Joe: how rude

Joe: after you told him about your massive cock and everything? 💔

Ronnie: go ed and dig me up when youve graduated then

Ronnie: 3s a crowd when 2 of em are scousers & the others from fuck knows where didnt have you to translate or the horse for scale

Joe: after an invite? Sure thing, sis

Joe: not Kent then, gutted

Ronnie: less questions you said put your ? away gobshite

Ronnie: not england but i aint a skinhead who cares so hes as alive as dorothy ever leaves em

Joe: people love that though

Joe: black EDL members and asian conservatives, such a laugh for ‘em

Ronnie: too late to go back and put the boot in now he ll have been shown the door & it wasnt me getting a name or number

Joe: his loss all ‘round then, I get it

Ronnie: yeah

Joe: alright, so I need linking

Ronnie: you got cash or you selling yourself

Joe: I’ve got cash, just not the contact

Ronnie: hand it over ill pick up for you

Joe: you think i’m that green

Ronnie: what colour do you reckon you are

Joe: you’ve got no prejudice, apparently, so what’s it matter

Joe: [picture of some of the multi-coloured bruises you acquired]

Ronnie: he was a pussy & you want me to connect you to people who aint

Ronnie: youre an easy target

Joe: you wanna pocket my money yourself instead, I get it

Joe: you can have a % of the shit, alright

Joe: not asking you to do it for nothing

Ronnie: thats all theyd do when you show up with your baby face and habit

Ronnie: ill take your money & still have it pocketed cos i dont need student loans to score no shit are you asking me to do it for nothing

Joe: what you gonna give me to keep hold of ‘til you give me mine

Ronnie: add an arm to your collection what do i care

Joe: yeah, what do ya

Ronnie: you want a easy pick up get a schoolboy plug i dont know any

Ronnie: i care about money youre ready to waste

Joe: that’s part of the appeal

Joe: why get it in a safe, nearly legitimate way

Joe: half the fun, eh, alright, alright

Joe: do it then, I don’t know no fucker else I can ask yet, I’ve gambled on worse

Ronnie: i just wanna get it thats the fun

Ronnie: get into a fight with whoever the fuck you like whenever for a pissing contest

Joe: you wanna start one ‘fore I’ve given you the cash and you’ve given me mine?

Joe: that’s blatant bullshit

Ronnie: you wish

Ronnie: save your childish excitement for the phone call home like

Joe: nah, you’re full of shit that it’s not just as much about the company and authentic experience

Joe: there’s plenty dealers that are nowt but businessmen

Joe: nothing but a transaction and they’ll sell to a junkie and city banker as one in the same

Joe: don’t act like you don’t have a deathwish or what was the point of taking me there and showing me

Ronnie: where the fuck am i meeting buisinessmen or getting the cash to pay em

Ronnie: dont be fucking rem

Joe: everyone’s stupid enough to wanna get their dick sucked over cold hard cash every other deal, no matter how presentable or legit they play

Ronnie: ive got the links ive got

Joe: fine

Joe: where you wanna do this then

Ronnie: whats your problem

Ronnie: [but a location anyway]

Joe: what’s mine

Joe: thought we’d covered that in length or are you less convinced now

Ronnie: convinced youve got fuck all to cry about

Joe: obviously

Joe: definitely bother with you if that were true

Ronnie: you wanted a big sister im doing all the hand holding

Joe: I never did and I still don’t

Joe: but you carrying on with the pretence if it makes you feel better

Ronnie: i didnt come to you or ask for fuck all to make me better

Joe: yeah you’re blameless

Joe: all in my fucked up head and not yours

Joe: what’s it like being an 👼🏼

Ronnie: i already told you you aint in my head & you werent in my veins for long enough to get fucking soft about it

Joe: i’ll be there in [however long that’d take you]

Ronnie: boss

Joe: you sound like them, you know

Ronnie: i dunno who the fuck youre talking about

Joe: the rest of the fam, of course

Joe: glad to see that the level of chatting bollocks to make yourself feel better is genetic, s’not depressing at all

Ronnie: that still dont clear fuck all up for me except that youre a bigger cunt than i thought

Joe: you don’t think about me

Joe: and none of that shit happened, your memory loss and confusion extends to that, don’t worry

Ronnie: you like me but you still compare me to em every chance you get

Ronnie: fuck you

Joe: yeah, fuck me

Joe: like you haven’t just

Joe: forget it, actually forget it

Ronnie: youre as full of shit as you reckon I am

Ronnie: forget that its been ages & youre speaking up now cause you want something

Joe: i haven’t been able to flick my brain onto anything else, never mind shut it down, I haven’t slept or eat or done anything to take me away from it, you

Joe: and it meant nothing to you

Joe: fuck you

Ronnie: gear not me

Ronnie: theres the authentic experience you were going on about

Joe: no

Ronnie: yeah

Joe: this is what I mean

Joe: you know as well as I do what it was

Joe: why are you fucking lying and saying I am

Ronnie: im a junkie all i do is lie & nothing else means anything to me

Ronnie: youre worse than green if you dont fucking know that

Joe: you’re lying that it meant nothing

Joe: not lying that it did

Joe: even if it made you fucking sick, that isn’t nothing and I don’t believe you

Ronnie: dont believe me i dont care who the fuck are you

Joe: your brother

Ronnie: youre nothing

Joe: yeah right

Ronnie: the dealer means more

Joe: already pointed out you’re that much of a cliche

Ronnie: what we can’t both be a cliche take it then

Joe: never heard that one

Ronnie: nows your chance to make a final comparison between me & whatever family member you hate or are turned on by the most

Joe: final chance, alright then, sound even more stupid

Ronnie: sound like more of a pussy that youre kicking off over this but not gonna fuck off

Joe: why would I?

Joe: i’m not pretending that it weren’t a thing

Ronnie: nah youre pretending it was

Ronnie: whoever the fuck ever told you youre special is the liar here like

Joe: your mate don’t count, you ain’t done that before either so fuck off with your jaded routine

Ronnie: hes my brother when & where it counts

Joe: there’s no blood and no reason not to go there, that’s where it counts

Ronnie: if i wanted to fuck you too your ma wouldnt stop me she means even less than you

Joe: yeah

Joe: you and your life aren’t totally fucked because of how much you care

Ronnie: you dont know shit about me or my life

Joe: you wish

Ronnie: you dont

Joe: or do you, actually

Joe: you shove it in everyone’s face, what do you reckon everyone thinks

Ronnie: youve seen a few scars & now youve seen into my soul yeah

Ronnie: shut the fuck up for all you know i lived a couple of doors down from you for your whole bullshit childhood

Joe: you look like that and reckon it doesn’t scream mommy issues? Fuck off, you aren’t that dumb

Ronnie: fuck you

Ronnie: everything you do is pure about her

Joe: not everything but I can admit she contributed

Ronnie: shes the 1st bitch to fuck me over but not the only is the difference between us

Ronnie: that unwanted bullshit was a pattern

Joe: you don’t know me either

Ronnie: i know you had a set of parents who kept hold of you however fucking west you were

Ronnie: no cunt was calling you racist shit or trying to touch you up

Joe: you’ve got a monopoly on fucked then, got it

Ronnie: like fuck have i but mine dont start & stop at mommy dearest how you think

Joe: of course it doesn’t

Joe: neither does mine

Ronnie: stop acting like youre an expert on how and why my head is wrecked and i wont have to kick yours in

Joe: you started it

Joe: but that’s good with me

Ronnie: get over yourself mckenna

Ronnie: you like what i start

Joe: i prefer the other night

Ronnie: yeah i like when youre getting punched in the face too

Joe: you can do the honours in a bit

Joe: fuck healing, yeah

Ronnie: what did your girlfriend say

Joe: oh, I got mugged and her dad’s gonna get her some pepper spray and a rape alarm 👍

Ronnie: hot

Ronnie: but she ll have dreamt you fell off the horse only got the single fantasy in her

Joe: that her dad’s so responsible and caring? would be her #2 if she had the range

Ronnie: if hes delivering that shit in person let me know so i can start something with him

Joe: oh god

Joe: that reminds me

Joe: She wants to invite Charlie over for like, a dinner party or something

Ronnie: if her daddy is there hes gonna need that rape alarm back off her to fend off mary

Joe: 😂

Joe: idk if she’s that oblivious and now wants Charlie to fuck her, or she thinks he’s my only mate 🙄

Ronnie: shes over you baby i scared her off

Joe: or she thought you was gonna ask for a line 😏

Joe: if that’s true I’ll owe you, again

Ronnie: ket hook up

Joe: you think she’ll let her love be in pain on your behalf?

Joe: not likely

Ronnie: not gonna ask politely

Joe: hot

Joe: I was gonna hit you up sooner

Joe: I tried to find you after

Ronnie: you didnt try hard

Joe: I only had one eye, by that point

Ronnie: im an attention whore with screaming mommy issues cant make it no easier to spot me in a crowd

Joe: in that crowd?

Joe: or will you be pissy if I call you dime a dozen

Ronnie: still got the accent as my own personal rape alarm

Joe: where’d you go then

Ronnie: youre a tourist theres no point telling you

Joe: if you left with that lad, no need to go over the details, got the picture

Ronnie: why the fuck would i leave with him

Joe: you mean you weren’t in his pants for his benefit

Joe: careful, getting bit close to honesty

Ronnie: i mean to go where i dont need a horse or an en suite

Ronnie: youre a hopeless romantic like

Joe: that’s a new complaint, I’ll tell my exes

Joe: deffo their fault after-all, buzzing

Ronnie: how many are there

Joe: get less slut-shaming off Soph, cheek

Joe: I dunno, I had to keep it moving because of all the secret mommy issues, you know

Joe: I’ll do a tally

Ronnie: its not already carved into your arm no wonder theyre pissy at you

Joe: if that worked for any of ‘em they could come back from the ex thing

Joe: 💔

Ronnie: try her initials whatever the fuck they are in between dinner party courses and win her back

Joe: you should come

Ronnie: id be made up if she pepper sprays me

Joe: it’d be the only way this won’t be the worst evening ever

Ronnie: loads of ways to take out your other eye ill pass you a spoon

Joe: give a go doing my A-Z carving with it too

Joe: 🤞 she invites her twink classmate and you can try for your threesome

Ronnie: she’ll get in there before us cause youll have distracted me with the state of your cackhanded 💘 carving

Joe: can’t say I’d be sorry

Ronnie: you catholics invented anal but i reckon its overrated

Joe: you’d probably feel different if that’s where your g-spot was but can’t say I disagree with that either, not that that’s anything too deep to have in common so we’re fine

Joe: and raised strictly un-catholic so the pope can’t have a go

Ronnie: nah no cunt would find it if it was there either

Joe: 💔 baby

Ronnie: you mean it

Joe: yeah

Joe: which bit, though

Ronnie: my invite to the shitshow

Joe: ‘course

Joe: if it’s shit, you’ll only have yourself to blame for not livening it up enough

Joe: and I will have to kill myself if I have to be there sincerely

Ronnie: he knows about you

Ronnie: might wanna kill yourself if he opens his mouth

Joe: oh

Joe: so I’m gonna have to act all nice and respectful, yeah

Ronnie: if you wanna make me sound full of shit

Joe: what did you say?

Ronnie: told him i shot you he werent best pleased about it but youre not his brother so fuck all he can do

Joe: sweet

Joe: still not gonna fuck him though

Ronnie: hed get your g spot for you 🍒

Joe: not if he’s worried about my innocence

Ronnie: hes worried about my head getting wrecked not yours only bitch who is

Joe: you’ll have to tell him what you told me

Joe: I ain’t in there

Ronnie: you fairies bring everything back to your obsession with your mothers course hes no fucking exception

Ronnie: & cos i stole my file when i was a kid he thinks i give a shit too you were part of the happy 🏡 picture he was getting in a flap about but i tore through that 🌈 optimism with the 💉

Ronnie: you can have lively

Joe: better he knows than goes on about it

Joe: it’s far from 🌈☀️ even if you were up for it

Ronnie: every soft lad but him knows its ⛈ if not outright 🌨

Joe: when I started looking, if you were like them, I weren’t even gonna bother to talk to you

Joe: just give her the info and let her do it herself

Joe: but I knew you weren’t

Ronnie: told you youd have liked me at 9

Joe: 😏 yeah yeah

Ronnie: shed have bailed before scrolling that far back even with the pure messy sketchy shit kept off for the sake of dorothys cv

Joe: idk,she bangs on about her own glory days as ‘precaution’ enough

Joe: probably dead proud

Ronnie: raincheck on dinner i gotta go slit my throat after hearing that like

Joe: yeah, it’s real fun

Joe: far as starters go though, you’re welcome

Ronnie: cos you owe me go ed & drag my corpse there dress it up like horse girl and send her that info so i dont make her proud yeah

Joe: gotcha

Joe: the fibres sending Soph down are an unfortunate side-affect or added bonus, depending how you feel

Ronnie: dressing like a dyke art teacher is shady to my mourners hed have loved having me on the team

Joe: sure she wants to be buried in her jodhpurs, like

Joe: not gay but kink-adjacent, he’ll be alright

Ronnie: inside the horse youll have to hollow it out for her

Joe: poor horse not ready to be made into glue but there we go

Ronnie: but when youre ready to follow me to the grave only need a plastic bag

Joe: follow you anywhere, or whatever sounds good in a song

Ronnie: not had a little brother like that before

Ronnie: never know the mime is behind you or not

Joe: he shy or you cut his tongue out altogether

Ronnie: saving that for you cos i know how you feel about ��� & theres fuck all else left

Ronnie: hed never get attention whore out or mommy issues w & m forget it

Joe: I can feel the slutshame

Joe: there hasn’t been hundreds, come on

Joe: you were being weird, I needed to get you talking, it worked

Ronnie: how many then

Joe: I guess 6 total, not counting anyone before like 15 because that isn’t real, maybe 7 but we might be pushing the term girlfriend there

Ronnie: 💘 how many songs

Joe: not destined for the bin? Fuck all

Joe: cliche points off the charts though

Ronnie: i know youve seen the busking vids hes still got posted up that im in i cant say shit

Joe: you’re good

Joe: even when you have to go Top40 for the tips

Joe: class thing about the cello, looks more pitiful ‘cos the case is massive, people try to fill it, like

Ronnie: soz im not killing myself fast enough for you

Ronnie: miss me with your schoolboy cliches 🖕

Joe: don’t worry, the songs were ‘insert name here’ jobs if they were anything

Joe: don’t wanna sound like I’m singing about a 75 year old bloke, do I

Ronnie: if itd been changed you wouldnt have found me shit at stalking as you are songwriting like

Joe: you’ve already got your own song anyway, don’t be greedy

Ronnie: ill keep you some 🐴 if youre not

Ronnie: 1st thing i tried if you do wanna follow after us

Joe: trip down memory lane we can both handle

Joe: ‘course

Ronnie: dont have any exes itll have to do

Joe: prefer the ket

Ronnie: write a song about it

Joe: [blatantly will in a pisstake way]

Ronnie: k gonna be dead easy to carve with the spoon can do it rattling

Joe: your faith in my abilities is appreciated

Ronnie: youre not fucking here youll have to

Joe: just got out the station hold on

Ronnie: fuck telling me to hold on you hurry up

Joe: if you shut up I can run

Ronnie: can you

Joe: fuck off i’m not that unfit 😂

Ronnie: nah dead fit far as homos and horse girls reckon

Joe: lucky me

Ronnie: youve had 7 bitches no cunts gonna feel sorry for you

Joe: all various shades of boring though

Ronnie: no shit

Joe: so you’re saying you ain’t gutted for me? 💔

Ronnie: your virginity sob story is like me in that crowd of cunts you couldnt find your way through

Joe: Christ, don’t remind me, first and last time I ever went near a virgin

Ronnie: theyre all older than you itd be pathetic well as boring

Joe: exactly

Joe: too much hassle having to worry about them, destroys any point of doing it

Ronnie: gotta put their kids in the cupboard as is

Joe: fortune in gaffa tape, like

Ronnie: still not 💔 mckenna going on about how flush you are since i met you

Joe: amazing how far you can stretch the loans when you steal Soph’s food and do fuck all that ain’t necessary

Joe: not like I actually dated any sugar mommies

Joe: should’ve, clearly but carefree 18-25s are easiest actually

Ronnie: gears necessary now youre gonna have to start stealing more than her pasta shapes

Joe: you’re my manager now, are you 😏

Joe: there’s shit I can do, music gigs, it’s fine

Ronnie: fine for your baby habit

Ronnie: it wont last

Joe: alright doom and gloom

Joe: not gonna learn how to cover my teeth yet

Ronnie: fuck off & fuck you

Joe: i’m here so come say it to my face

Ronnie: youre not better than me cos you can nod through a cello practice

Joe: where’d I say I was

Ronnie: when you said how fucking functional you are

Joe: I didn’t, I said I could get cash, that’s all

Ronnie: so can i its not the fucking point

Joe: and I didn’t say you couldn’t so what’s yours

Ronnie: youre not a fucking kid at the pool if youre gonna pussy out cos the waters too cold fucking do it

Joe: I’m in and you know that

Joe: so let me in

Ronnie: bullshit are you

Ronnie: youre proud of yourself for treading water

Joe: you’ve got the plug, I’ve got the cash, what is the problem with that

Joe: it’s an equalizer, if anything

Ronnie: we ll never be equal

Ronnie: you can cover your arm run off to class & pick up another boring girl whenever the fuck you like

Joe: what do you want me to do, seriously

Joe: say it

Ronnie: stop talking

Ronnie: fucks sake

Joe: [Show up hun]

Ronnie: [I love the idea that they have to wait around for ages for this dealer in awkward silence haha]

Joe: [the casual tension]

Ronnie: [god knows what she’s gonna use to ease the tension with a lil bit o self harm because god knows where they even are, I worry about you and all the infections you would get gal]

Joe: [the casual one-upmanship until you’re interrupted]

Ronnie: [we know she’s not paying him in cash and we know why she’s not please don’t get into another fight Joseph]

Joe: [got to let that one go as she was specifically like you’re not better than me, probably fuck off whilst that happens ‘cos not gonna stick about]

Ronnie: [take your heroin and calm down huns]

Joe: [hope you take enough to pass out ‘cos you’re not gonna be in any sort of mood now either of ya lol]

Ronnie: [we’ll do you both that favour]

[sheewolf85]

New Fic - Right Where You Belong

Summary: Based on Twitter ramblings from Keelywolfe, Nanenna, myself, and many others!

Edge is the older brother here, only a teenager himself and living on the streets with Red when he's invited by Rus to stay at his place with his dad and younger brother. He can watch the kids while Rus goes to work at the lab with Gaster! It's perfect! And it is, for a while, until one day the kids get into a fight and Blue gets hurt.

As much as Edge wants to comfort the kids and make sure everything is okay, he can't help but wonder what's going to happen when Rus and Gaster get home. Will he and his brother lose their warm, safe home?

Notes: This has been stuck in my head ever since this morning when it was talked about on Twitter. It had to be written!

One quick note here, Edge and Rus are the same age, about sixteen or so. Rus can't do much at the lab, but enough to earn a bit of cash to help out with the bills.

I want to gift this to the ppl on Twitter, but I feel like I'd miss someone, so, if you were part of the twitter convo, consider this your gift!

Read it AO3 

Or read after the cut

Stars, he was tired. He hadn’t slept well the night before because his baby brother hadn’t slept well, and all Edge wanted was a damn nap that he wasn’t likely to get anytime soon seeing as how he was the only one in the house to watch the two younger kids.

Which, admittedly, he wasn’t doing a very good job of at the moment. But they were fine; they were in Blue’s room playing while Edge attempted to keep his sockets open in the living room. He was listening, though, and they seemed to be playing some sort of superhero game, both of them being the heroes while several of Blue’s stuffed animals played the bad guys. It was honestly cute, even if they were both a bit grouchy today.

To top it off, neither of the toddlers had taken a nap. Edge had honestly expected Red to pass right the heck out since he’d barely slept the night before, but no, he was chattering to himself the whole hour while Blue sang himself lullabies.

It wasn’t much of a surprise when their play turned a bit sour, their gentle squabbling over which villain was going to get their butt handed to them next turning into an all-out argument complete with raised voices and name-calling.

Edge really should have gotten up to check on them and help them calm down fifteen minutes ago. He shouldn’t have let it go on so long, but he was so tired!

Red screeching in anger got Edge to his feet in a hurry. He made it to the doorway of Blue’s room just in time to see Red throw a toy at Blue. It hit him square in the face with enough force to knock him down and smack the back of his head on another toy.

Blue was immediately in tears, screaming in both pain and anger as Edge rushed over to check him. Edge’s soul began to pound as Blue sat up and marrow dripped from nasal aperture. There was the tiniest of cracks on the left side, close to his socket.  

Edge’s mind began to race at the sight of the crack. He could only barely remember how he’d gotten the vast majority of his scars, but he knew they all hurt when they were fresh.

“i didn’t mean to!” Red hollered, running up to them.

Blue kicked at him, screaming again and barely missing his knee by a few inches.

Edge pulled his little brother back, away from potential harm by Blue’s flailing feet. “I know, Red, but you can’t throw things like that!”  He turned his attention back to Blue. “Shhh, it’s okay, Blue,” he said softly. “You’re okay; let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” He helped Blue to his feet. “Red, I want you to stay here and think about what you’ve done while I help Blue.”

Red sniffled and nodded, his gaze on his feet. Edge so wanted to scoop him up and remind him that these things happened but he needed to try to control himself a little better. He didn’t have time; he had to get Blue at least cleaned up before Rus and Gaster got home.

Thinking of Rus and Gaster only made his soul pound harder. Gaster was a great father, very kind and attentive to his two boys, and Rus was the kind of older brother Edge so wished he could be. The fact that Gaster even let Edge and Red stay in their home spoke to the kind of man he was, even if Edge did work for his stay. He cooked and cleaned and cared for the children, but he’d do it all four times over if Gaster asked it of him.

He set a still-sobbing Blue on the counter by the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet to wet a paper towel. After wringing it out one-handed, he tried to gently wipe at Blue’s face. Blue screeched louder and pushed Edge’s hand away.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Blue,” he said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you, buddy, but I need to get you cleaned up so I can see if you need a healer.” Stars, he hoped Blue wouldn’t need a healer.

Blue whined and looked up at Edge with bright, starry eye lights, but he nodded and let Edge do what had to be done. Gently dabbing the smeared marrow away, Edge could finally see the extent of the crack. It didn’t go through his bone like the one in Edge’s socket, thank goodness. It was only on the outer surface of the bone, but that surely didn’t mean it hurt any less.

It had stopped bleeding finally and soon Edge had the little guy all cleaned up. He took him to change his clothes and then set the boys in different rooms for time out, which only resulted in more screaming from children who were adamant that they were okay now and wanted to play. Red even kicked at him just before he shut the door to their shared room.

Both kids in time out, their muffled cries still echoing through the house, Edge found himself in the bathroom and locked the door. Sitting on the floor by the bathtub, he drew his knees up and let his head fall between them. He tried to wrap his arms around his head to block out the sound, but it was hopeless. Even among the cries from frustrated children, Edge could hear the memory of Blue’s painful screaming.

He was going to have a bruise, that was certain. Even if the crack were somehow miraculously healed by the time Blue’s father and older brother came home, there was no way to hide what had happened.

Guilt twisted in Edge’s soul. Would he really have tried to hide it? What kind of person was he? Gaster trusted him with his youngest child, and that was how he was going to repay his kindness? No, he had to be honest and let the chips fall as they may.

A tight sob forced its way out of Edge’s chest. He knew exactly how the chips were going to fall. This was all his fault, and if Gaster was even a fraction as smart as Edge knew him to be, he and his brother would be back out on the streets by tonight.

If it were only Edge himself, he could handle that. He’d made a mistake and he’d pay the price. What was killing him now wasn’t what he was going to lose. No, it was that his baby brother was going to have to pay that price right along with him. Red didn’t belong on the streets. He deserved to have a filling meal each night and a warm, safe place to sleep.

If there was a way to ask Gaster to please keep Red here, he’d do it, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know if it was selfishness or the knowledge that Red could be a handful, but he would not ask Gaster to care for his brother.

The sudden vibration of his phone in his pocket made him jump. He hurried to his feet and pulled out to silence the blaring alarm.

He swore under his breath and went to the sink to try to clean up. Rus and Gaster would be home within the hour, and he hadn’t even started anything for dinner.

Splashing some water on his face only marginally helped, but it was enough to calm the panic still aching in his chest. A few deep breaths later, he opened the door and went to let the kids know they could be free from time out.

Except both their doors were open and the two were playing quietly together in Blue’s room. He stood in the doorway and folded his arms across his chest.

“What are you two doing out of time out?” he asked, eyeing the both of them. The discoloration of a bruise was already starting to bloom around Blue’s left eye.

“You were in the bathroom crying for a long time,” Blue said sadly. “Are you okay?”

Stars, he was going to miss that kid.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you both going to be good now or do I need to separate you again?”

This time it was Red who answered. “we’re being good. i even said i was sorry.”

Well, that was something, at least. “Good. I’m going to start dinner.”  Hopefully he’d have enough time to at least enjoy it with the family.

Learning to cook had been an experience Edge would never forget. He loved being able to craft tasty dinners and treats, and having a stocked kitchen like he did here made it easy to decide on something to make. At least, most of the time. Now, as Edge surveyed the cupboards, he couldn’t think of a single thing. Nothing seemed good enough. The kids, and probably Rus, would go for something simple like chili dogs or chicken strips, but if this was going to be the last real dinner Red was going to have for a while, Edge wanted to make it count.

He still hadn’t been able to decide on anything by the time the door opened. Edge closed his eyes and gripped the side of the counter behind him to keep his balance as Blue shrieked in joy and went running down the hall.

“Daddy!” he cried, just like every day when Gaster and Rus got home, and Edge could imagine Gaster scooping him up just like always.

“Hello, there!” Gaster’s voice called out happily. “How are--oh my! What happened to your socket?”

“Red threw a toy at me.”

Edge hurried out to the living room to try to explain.

Gaster looked up at him, concern on his scarred features. “Hello, Edge,” he said calmly.

“It was my fault,” Edge admitted. “I wasn’t watching them as carefully as I should have. I promise you, Red has been punished.” He wouldn’t say that all he’d gotten was time out. He swallowed, suddenly hoping neither Gaster nor Rus would ask.

Red peeked around the corner, and Edge’s soul hurt at the expression on his tiny face. He had hoped and prayed so many times that Red wouldn’t remember what they’d been through before living on the streets, but that expression told him otherwise. Even if he didn’t remember specifics, he knew enough.

“i said i was sorry,” Red said softly, more a confession than a defiant statement.

To Edge’s surprise, Rus went over and kneeled down by Red. “of course you’re sorry, buddy. we don’t mean to hurt our friends, but sometimes we get cranky and it happens, right?”

Red nodded and reached out with both arms, a silent request for a hug. Rus scooped him up and hugged him tightly.

“are you okay?” Rus asked, bouncing Red lightly in his arms.

Red nodded, and the urge to pull him out of Rus’ arms was nearly overwhelming. Edge forced himself to stay where he was.

“And you?” Gaster asked, looking at Edge. “Are you okay?”

Him? “I--”

“He cried for a long time,” Blue said sadly. “But I couldn’t hug him because the door was locked.”

Edge swallowed thickly, his cheekbones heating up.

“Which door was locked?” Gaster asked curiously, an undertone of something perhaps more serious.

“The bathroom,” Blue replied. “He was in the bathroom.”

Tattletale.

Edge sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “They weren’t alone for too long, Sir--I mean, Gaster.”

In truth, Edge had no idea how long they were alone. Probably more than an hour, which was entirely too long.

Gaster bent to put Blue down and then settled a hand on Rus’ shoulder. “Will you take the little ones to play for a moment? I’d like to have a word with Edge.”

Rus must have agreed because he coaxed the kids down the hall with promises of the best blanket fort in the world.

“Edge? Come sit down with me.”

Gaster didn’t touch him, not exactly. He reached out and almost set a hand on his shoulder like he did with his own son, stopping just before making contact. Edge only nodded and went with him to the living room. He knew what was going to happen next, and while he wasn’t prepared, he knew it was inevitable. It had been from the beginning.

They sat on the couch together, Gaster folding his hands in his lap.

“First and foremost, I want to assure you that I understand how you feel. Maybe not exactly, but close enough. I understand that bad days happen, especially when children are cranky. I can tell from Blue’s eyes that he didn’t nap today, and I’d say from what I saw of Red’s face that it was the same with him?”

Edge nodded, his gaze kept firmly on his knees.

“You’ve handled them so well, Edge, that I have no doubts you handled the situation today with care and love.”

That time Edge shook his head. He had to be honest. “No, I didn’t. They were alone in the bedroom and I didn’t even get up to check on them until they started arguing.”

“Why is that a bad thing?” Gaster asked.

Edge looked at him then, a little surprised. “Because I know how Red is. He’s got a temper when he’s well-rested, and today he was not.”

But Gaster smiled. “You’re right, he does have a temper. But that doesn’t mean you have to be there every moment to stop him from lashing out. What he needs is to learn that his actions have consequences and to understand that only he can control his anger.”

“But Blue--”

“Got hurt. Yes, he did, but that’s not your fault either. Not entirely. What I’m saying, Edge, is that I’m not going to kick you out or ask you to leave. Red needs a stable environment to learn how to control his temper, and you need a safe place to help teach him.”

Edge felt the tears begin to form in his sockets and tried to blink them away. He looked at Gaster for a moment before he could ask his next question.

“Why are you being so kind to us?”

Gaster smiled again, soft and comforting. “I know a thing or two about living on the streets, Edge. I never had a little brother to care for, though, and I can’t, in good conscience, let the two of you go back to that life.”

Edge nodded slowly, trying to wrap his mind around this new perspective. He and Red weren’t going to be homeless again. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I didn’t start dinner,” he finally said.

“Well, that’s a different story then, isn’t it?” Gaster said, a tease in his voice. “I suppose punishment will have to be cooking with me.”

“Oh no,” Edge deadpanned, “please, not that.”

He couldn’t hide a smile in the face of Gaster’s laughter, and together they went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

[angelcorebabyowo]

Title: Honeydew

Warnings: Brief mention of suicidal thoughts

Summary: Lydia, Johann and edward get ready for a party and it's all OOC because yeah

"I don't even want to go!" Johann complains adjusting his poet's shirt and flopping down into the window bench with a huff as Lydia just as quickly starts to brush through his unkempt hair, he even closed his eyes whenever the strokes got gentler. He typically didn't go to parties unless he was performing and he, sadly, wasn't invited to do that this time. Honestly, the only reason he agreed to go was that it was considered rude to ignore an invitation from the mayor so he felt as if there wasn't really even a choice. Maybe he should just fake sick to get out of it, that wouldn't be all that bad, just a simple little head cold.

He sighs softly and leans back into his sister so that he wasn't jerked around as much, he was a bit tender-headed so it made it easier on both of them now that he wasn't wincing every three seconds. "It'll be perfectly fine babes, don't stress so much. You'll get gray hairs if you do it too much." Lydia warned with a small grin, her unnaturally sharp canine teeth looking unnatural amongst the normal ones. A few years ago she dragged everyone into sharping them but she continues to do it every time they run down even slightly. It would be weird if she didn't make it look so damn good " Although I bet you'd love that, huh?"

"Oh, you better believe it" Johann joked sticking just the tip of his tongue out of his mouth by habit. That wasn't a lie, he always fantasized about the thought of having grayish-silver hair at a young age and everyone in the family knew it and would make fun of him at every chance they could. He knew it wouldn't be a good look or actually enjoy it but it still made him laugh every time so he didn't really think that far ahead on the subject. His dad had gone completely grey by the time he was 30 and Edward, his brother, was starting to already so signs of it at the ripe age of 16 so it was possible that he could develop early on as well. "Could you imagine me being completely grey by my 20th birthday? You'd have to start calling me sir in a sign of respect!"

"You get no respect, none" Lydia laughs and stops brushing Johann's hair for a quick second before starting to do the very loose twist with her fingers. It was one of the easiest hairstyles she knew that could be done in half an hour or less. "Put it in a bun or just leave it down? Either way, it's getting twisted because I've already started."

"Maybe in a bun? " He mumbles leaning more onto the window and looking out at the city the setting sun was hitting just perfect to cast a somewhat orange and pink glow on the tops of certain buildings.  He assumed his apartment complex was one of them do to the height alone. He sometimes wanted to just sit on the ledge and watch the sunset that way, one false mood and he would plummet ten stories down before landing in the pool below. He wondered if he'd still be alive by that point. 

"A buns always a safe option." She whispers interrupting his thoughts and gently putting his hair in a bun before taking a step back to look at her handiwork "Its a little high but I think you should be good. That way it's nearly a safe bet, not one person would recognize you." 

"Do you think Avi would still recognize me though?" Johann questions as he looks into the vanity mirror and puts on a fix inspired mask. He forgot why he picked a fox, maybe do to their cunning abilities or something along those lines. He'd picked it out when he first got the invitation weeks ago so all memories seemed to just fade from him. 

"Avi would recognize you even if you didn't have a face or hair, now stop being a love-stuck puppy and both of you finish getting ready. " Edward interrupts walking into the room. How no one heard him walking down the hall with the obnoxiously loud heels was beyond everyone. He was also wearing his mask already. A cream scaled one with a few black scales mixed into it as it added ' Flavor '

'Snake' was the first thing that came to Johann's mind whenever he first saw it all those weeks ago, and even today his mind couldn't stop from going to that place no matter how many times Edward insisted it was a dragon inspired one. Johann still wondered what kind of snake it would even be, maybe just a simple corn snake. Edward wasn't that mean, after all, he wouldn't pick something venomous after all. 

"I am ready." Johann insists pointing to his outfit, the only thing he had to do was change into some dress pants and he'd be off to go.

"I was talking about both of you. More specifically Miss. "I'll do it later" over there," Edward says, he had a point after all. Lydia wasn't even remotely ready to go at that point. Her hair was pulled into an over-the-top and eye-drawing hairstyle and her nails were done to perfection, but other than that her clothes were just basic pajamas "go get dressed before we leave you at home." 

Lydia smirks before patting Edward on the cheek in a taunting manner. "Talking mad shit for someone who got his license suspended."

"Johann can! Right, you can still drive?" Edward questions flopping down onto Johann's bed with a loud sigh as the bed creaks under the new weight. He winced at the sound but overall didn't say anything about it. 

"I'm 15 years old and haven't even taken the exam yet" 

"Didn't ask how old or if it was legal just asked if you knew how."

"I refuse to let either one of you drive my car," Lydia says before walking out of the room to actually go get ready knowing that the other two would actually leave her behind. 

"Our car!" Edward calls before leaning over and closing the door fully and sighs loudly again before laying up against the headboard already messing up his golden capelet and neon blue shirt. He really couldn't stand not being the center of attention for a single second, he always dressed like that so it wasn't that far of a bet after all. "We have ten minutes before it starts but you know the saying-"

"Arriving fashionably late is better than arriving on time, shows how little you care."  Both of them say at the same time although while Edward sounds cheerful Johann just sounds even more tired then he always does as if he was trying to drag it out for as much as he possibly could. Johann sat at the vanity trying to figure out how he was going to cover up the bags under his eyes that, even with the mask, were extremely prominent. he eventually just settled on leaving them there as it seemed to add character to the entire look. (He was going for a renaissance era poet who just lost his husband due to some mysterious illness. He seemed to actually be hitting all of the points except for the crying but no way was he going to cry in front of people.)

They sat in silence now, it wasn't awkward, in fact, it was more comfortable than anything. Edward was doing something on his phone and Johann was trying not to have a panic attack because he was actually going through with this while struggling to fit pants that were a little too tight on. Alright, so maybe it wasn't all that comfortable but it was close enough to it. 

After about 20 minutes Lydia rushed in with a smile wearing bother her outfit and mask on. It was a multi-colored short yet puffy dress that fell off the shoulders and a mask that looked suspiciously like a peacock with the number of feathers that seemed to be hastily glued on. "All they had at the store was the plain ones so I had to glue the feathers and sequins on myself so now it looks as if a 3-year-old designed it!" she complained before going over to Edward and promptly laying down on top of him with an over the top sigh. "Woe is me."

"Well whose fault is that L? We offered you to come with us weeks ago but Noooo, you needed to wait till the last second like some sort of troublemaker," Edward says pushing her off and then promptly standing up and rubbing his eyes slightly and throws the keys he had been hiding in his pockets to Lydia with a pout. 

"Off we go come along little children!" Lydia says before walking out the door again, the sound of her boots echoing through the mostly empty hall. The only thing in them was a few paintings of fruit painted in over the top and crazy colors and a single statue at the end of the hall that they won at an auction a few years ago for like a thousand dollars,

It wasn't worth it.

"We're the same age!" Johann argues running after her trying to put on some of his slip-on shoes as he walked. It didn't fit the look but no way was he also going to wear heels, that was pushing it too far for him at best. 

"Stairs or Elevator?" Edward askes whenever all three make it out of their apartment building and into the main hallway "I'm taking the stair because no way am I getting Vored by an elevator"

"Stop being so mean to me!"Edward whines but gets in the elevator anyway with a pout and it started to go down, Lydia was babbling about how much fun tonight would be and her brothers both groaned in unison. 

"That's baby talk. Grown-men take getting eaten like a champ." Lydia says with a small laugh before hitting the button to take them to the main lobby "Johann baby, what are you taking?"

"I'm already in pain so I'll just take the elevator, fuck walking down 10 flights of stairs. "Johann says pushing his way into the elevator and gently holds on to the railing. "Ed gets in here, I refuse to sit next to you if you walk down down disgusting!"

If this was going to happen all night then what a fun one it would be. 

[in-tua-deep]

consider an au where five fucks up the equations again and when he successfully transport all of them to the past he has absolutely no recollection of the future. now that theyre adults the sibs get to see five protect them live and realize that holy shit five cared for them more than they thought. so now five is like holy shit my sibs are recognizing my efforts and are visibly showing that they care and the poor boy is clueless cos???

oh man can you just picture their alarm when they realize that this is baby actually thirteen Five just like surprisedpikachu.jpg

also i’m 100% going off on my lessons learned ‘verse here so I’m gonna reference some stuff from that eyyy

They end up in the past, they’re all freaking out and Five is passed the fuck out with blood dripping from his nose and looking like death warmed over. They ended up like uhhh maybe a month after Five left the first time so they just kind of carry Five up to one of their rooms to hide him while he’s unconscious because it’s the middle of the night and thank GOD their dad doesn’t happen upon them

Vanya wakes up first and they managed to calm down that freak out and there’s a lot of hugging all around especially with Allison and Luther awkwardly apologizes for locking her up and turns the whole atmosphere awkward

“If he doesn’t wake up in a few hours I’m getting Mom” - Diego, probably

and Five blinks awake and they’re all immediately crowding him, and he swipes at them half heartedly and they’re all like “Five what the FUCK did you do can you get us back” and he’s just like “…did Dad make me jump too much again? Why am I in Klaus’s room?”

cue surprisedpikachu.jpg

They ask him what he remembers and Five is like?? Did I hit my head when I collapsed again? He swipes at his face and grimaces at the blood but doesn’t look surprised

(”What the fuck does he mean, again?” Ben hisses at Klaus towards the back of the group, “Why isn’t he freaking out more?”)

They do tell him that he brought them back from the future. They tell him everything after a quick argument about communication and the chance of him telling Dad (Five, on the bed, is unimpressed - as if he would tell Dad fucking anything he didn’t have to) so they tell him everything. They have proof as well! Because Vanya has powers

Five believes them, because the last thing he remembers is planning to time travel and he’s missing a wholeass month of memory when they locate something with the current date on it and is like “i fucking gueSS” and is probably pissed about the fact that he doesn’t remember the future tbh

and they’re all planning to camp out in Klaus’s room for the night but Five is the one who reminds them all that they’re thirteen and on a schedule now and they have to act like normal while Five tries to figure out,,, how to get his memories back he guesses? They don’t want to leave him alone and he’s really confused and like “i’ll be fine guys??” but is pretty confused at how concerned they’re being (”Your nose is still bleeding!” “i have tissues in my room for it don’t worry” “this has happened before?” “sometimes when i overexert myself, yeah”)

nobody except Five realizes that hey, they’re back and according to the rest of the world Five disappeared for a whole month. So Five doesn’t bat an eye when he arrives at breakfast and Reginald yells and demands he attend special training and everyone else is horrified. Klaus makes a snarky comment and Five practically hurls himself across the table to make a scene and cover it up by yelling something readiness to try time travel again and gets his special training time doubled

after breakfast he turns on Klaus with flashing eyes because Klaus is apparently an adult and should know better!! He literally whisper yells that thirteen-year-old Klaus knew how to keep his head the fuck down and does he want to get extra training? No! No he doesn’t! Just growling about how his siblings need to relearn the status quo or they’re going to make his job so much more difficult - 

“Your job?” They ask, alarmed and confused and Klaus has wilted entirely because he’s suddenly remembering just exactly what his special training looked like (not that he ever forgot but for a moment he’d still thought he was in a world where Reginald had no power over him) but Five deflects and says he has to go to training and for fucks sake to keep their heads down and not to let Dad know that they’re hanging out with Vanya or act overly attached with each other because that’s just asking for trouble 

they look confused and Five just sighs and is like “We’ll go over camera blindspots together later I guess, meet in Luther’s room”

“Hey,” someone asks, “What was Five’s special training?”

“He never talked about it,” Ben whispers back, “But sometimes he’d be hurt afterwards.”

“Fuck,” is the general sentiment shared by everyone, even though they have all 100% been hurt in this household before

They don’t see Five for the rest of the day and get progressively more antsy when he doesn’t show up at lunch or dinner until they’re all crammed into Luther’s room and there’s a blue flash and Five is on the floor gasping, there’s blood dripping on the floor and they watch in horrified silence as Five pops his thumb back into its socket with a grimace and a familiarity that alarms everyone

and without letting anyone speak, Five launches into where the cameras are, where the blindspots are, going over their daily schedules just in case his siblings have forgotten, and basically telling them that if Dad notices how attached they are to each other then he’ll do something about it “ - so keep a low profile and don’t piss him off for fuck’s sake”

“you literally purposefully pissed him off at breakfast” one of them points out

Five rolls his eyes, “if i didn’t then klaus would have gotten special training, wouldn’t he? and you know his training leaves him a fucking mess”

Klaus is all teary eyes and Five is uncomfortable and the others are just like,, hey,,,, we’re older that you, you don’t need to protect us,,,, and five rolls his eyes and is like ‘apparently i’m 58 and you guys suck just as much at self preservation as you did before you came back i though being a grownup was supposed to make you smarter but clearly you live to prove me wrong’

Five pulls some bandages out of thin air and starts wrapping his wrists with an air of practiced competence which brings attention back to them

Allison is quiet for a beat before thoughtfully saying “you know, we could just kill dad” which makes half the room choke on their own spit and the other half it kind of like you know what?? hell yeah 

“We can’t kill Dad.” Five says with a confidence that says he’s thought about this before, at length, which makes everyone turn to him, “If we kill Dad then we go into the foster system and get split up, Mom and Pogo don’t have any legal existence so can’t claim guardianship. But we could… run away.”

Before anyone can say anything, Five has jumped away and a minute later he’s back with a shoebox and a hopeful look and everyone is shocked when he opens it and provides fake IDs and cash and there is literally no way Five could have gotten this box between them coming back in time and this moment which can only mean that he had this before he left the first time which has all sorts of sad implications

Klaus at the very least bursts into tears and hugs Five who frowns and looks confused as though he can’t fathom a reason why his brother would hug him over this and no one is really dry eyed, Ben 100% gets on Five’s other side to join in this hug

“I know it’s not enough money,” Five says, shifting uncomfortably as Klaus’s grip tightens, “But the IDs were expensive and in a couple of months I’ll have it back anyway - ”

“Can’t Allison just rumor him?” someone says, but Allison frowns and lets them know that Grace is programmed to do… something if Allison rumors Dad, because Allison’s rumors won’t work on her. And no one wants to hurt Grace…

“It’ll have to do” Someone says, because honestly they aren’t going to stay under the roof for a moment longer than they really have to because Ben DIED here and they already had a breakdown over his existence and Five turned up injured after training, and Klaus’s training traumatized the living fuck out of him, and there are a lot of reasons to get out of the house

why do all my recent aus end up with them running away though

BUT YEAH that’s what I have they spend like, a whole day and half in the house before deciding there is no possible way they can do this again and Five is a baby and they’ve already learned a whole lot of terrible things about their brother that no one bothered to pay enough attention to the first time because they were all dumbasses caught up in their own little worlds

just a whole bunch of teenagers on the run while Five attempts to figure out an equation to fix his memory issue (is it just repressed?? did his older self’s consciousness perish? is there a block?) while the siblings have to deal with Commission agents (when the commission can find them that is, without trackers they have to rely on field agents spotting them) as well as avoiding notice by the authorities, training Vanya, and getting food/money

(and also actually get to know each other all over again, because future them weren’t close and clearly they’ve never really known Five)

just a good family adventure with occasional murder and dealing with their individual traumas and issues

[toomuchtimenerd]

Review for ‘The Queen’s Rising’ series by Rebecca Ross

I stayed up until 3am last night to finish this 2-part series and wow oh wow do I not regret it at all. Both the first book, The Queen’s Rising, and its sequel The Queen’s Resistance had pretty slow starts... but jeez once the plots got going they really got going. This duology was one of the many books that I had put on hold awhile ago. I think I originally wanted to read this during my sadgirl post-breakup phase exactly two years ago, a 3-month long period of time where I got broken up with, had an identity crisis, and proceeded to drop out of my sorority while fully embracing my inner nerd. Disclaimer: I loved being in a sorority, I really did. It just took up way too much of my time and I had realized juggling sorority duties and school left me with no time to pursue my own personal hobbies. 

BUT ANYWAY, I’m really glad I finished this series and really glad I took my time with it. The Queen’s Rising has a pretty slow start and by start I mean probably the first half of the entire book. But it became super complex with all the court politics going on and honestly it went from slow to holy shit whaT’S HAPPENING AHH over the course of like a chapter halfway through the book. The Queen’s Resistance was more or less the same, except with way more political twists (in my opinion, of course) and a touch more romance. Emphasis on touch, because neither of these books were romance-focused or even had that much romance at all, which was kind of a bummer because hello it’s me the lover of all things sappy romance. But I’ll get to that in a second.

The Queen’s Rising follows a young girl named Brienna who essentially gets dumped by her grandfather at a prestigious academy that trains young girls to become ‘passions’. This refers to someone who is master at one of the five subjects: art, music, drama, wit, and knowledge. Brienna’s mother dies before the start of the story, and Brienna’s father is purposefully kept a secret from her. Brienna herself dabbles in each of the five passions before settling on knowledge, which is taught by Master Cartier. Her biggest fears at the beginning of the book is not being picked up by a patron who will endorse the utilization of her passion, and unfortunately this comes true. But she’s offered by the academy headmistress to stay the summer and continue studying her passion, and the headmistress will try her best to pair her with a suitable patron in a few months. Brienna agrees to this and stays in contact with Master Cartier through letters for much of the summer when suddenly everything changed when the fire nation attacked. Just kidding. Brienna shares her strange visions of a Maevana lord from over a century ago with the headmistress, who gives her the choice to choose a strange man who goes by the name of Jourdain as her patron father. Brienna complies, and basically her entire fate is changed at this point.

So my first thoughts were that I really liked the sisterhood that went on throughout the six girls at the academy. Even though the book opens with the conclusion of their schooling we, as the reader, can still get a glimpse of how deep their relationships go. Ciri was a little bit of a brat, but I personally don’t blame her due to her unusual circumstance of sharing an instructor with someone else and Merei was LITERALLY Brienna’s ride-or-die. Obviously spoilers (because my reviews are always ridden with spoilers), but Merei’s role later on in the plot while they’re all in Maevana had me mentally screaming “YESSS SIS”. Cause honestly if I was Brienna, that’s what I would’ve done, especially when Merei shot Allenach on the battlefield. Well, maybe not if I was bleeding out on the ground but still. 

And how could I forget, Brienna the main character. I liked her quite a bit, truly, but if I’m being nit-picky then I definitely do have an issue with how her character progresses in The Queen’s Rising. Brienna starts off as someone who is clearly headstrong and determined, so I guess that’s ultimately the drive that keeps her going through the revolution and such. But I kind of felt like she went from “sheltered girl who’s only ever had time for books” trope to “Maevana warrior who is willing to fight and die for her rightful queen” a little too quickly. I get that she is half Maevan on her dad’s side (who is holy shit such a dick) but it just seems kind of abrupt for her to go from “I grew up as a dainty fair maiden in Valenia my whole entire life and don’t know anything about Maevana outside of what I learned from books” to “I’m going to beg the cruel king of Maevana for my adopted father’s safe passage back into the country and then when no one’s paying attention to me I’m going to scout this land I’ve never been on to look for a stone that has been lost for over a century and everything will be fine” all in the span of... maybe two or three chapters? We are shown that she receives sword/combat lessons from Isolde, the rightful queen of Maevana, but if my mental timeline for this story is correct then those lessons should have only been over the course of maybe two weeks. How much sword technique can a sheltered eighteen-year-old girl actually learn in two weeks? Enough to walk around enemy territory with a concealed weapon and be confident enough to use said weapon when needed? Errr... I don’t know fam that just doesn’t seem realistic. 

Another related issue I have with Brienna is that I feel like she embraces Maevana as her home incredibly quickly. In The Queen’s Rising we found out that Master Cartier is actually Lord Aodhan Morgane, the son of Kane Morgane who had survived the failed first uprising as an infant. He, like Brienna, spent virtually his entire life growing up in Valenia and was schooled in the passion of knowledge. In The Queen’s Resistance every other chapter was in Cartier’s POV, so we got a lot of glimpses into his personal thoughts and his own struggles with returning to Maevana. Unlike Brienna, Cartier/Aodhan really struggled with settling into Maevana, being a Lord, finding his place in a land that he didn’t grow up in, and trying to be a leader to people he had never met before. A lot of the first half of The Queen’s Resistance was centered around Cartier/Aodhan’s inner turmoil in these regards, whereas Brienna (in BOTH books) never seemed to have this struggle despite having a very similar upbringing. Brienna just seems to fit right into Maevana in a way that doesn’t seem particularly realistic or natural given the circumstances that surround her upbringing. 

Now onto the romance! The romance is all centered between Brienna and Cartier, and there are some subtle hints at the beginning of The Queen’s Rising that indicates this is the main relationship throughout the story. However, like the plot this relationship does not really exist or evolve in any way until after the halfway point of the book, when Brienna finds out that Cartier and Lord Morgane are one and the same. Which, by the way, came as a HUGE shocker to me. I DEFINITELY did not see that coming. I assumed Cartier would show up in Maevana in some way or another, but definitely not like that. It was a great twist though, and having both Brienna and Cartier in Allenach’s castle made for a great yet somewhat slow-burn romance. Admittedly, the romance aspect was pretty negligible in The Queen’s Rising. There’s a little bit more emphasis on their relationship in the sequel, but even then it’s not all that much... unfortunately. I really liked these two, and I thought the matching constellations on their passion cloaks were JUST SO DAMN TOUCHING. And the ending of The Queen’s Resistance with the whole golden thread tradition low key had me clutching my chest for a solid two seconds. So the final verdict here is that for the little bits of romance that this series featured, it was beautiful. But ultimately romance wasn’t the focus, nor was it even an emphasis, and if I could have things my way I would’ve definitely liked there to be a little more romance building and one-on-one moments between the pair.

Let’s see... I’m racking my memory for any notable thoughts on some of the side characters. Not gonna lie, Isolde fell pretty flat to me and despite her being the queen I personally could not bring myself to care all that much for her. Luc was a jolly guy, but again not very notable or stand-out-ish in a good way. While it doesn’t bother me, I do have to ask what was the point of Neeve’s character? She shows up in The Queen’s Resistance, and we learn pretty early on that she’s actually another one of Brienna’s half siblings through her father. I don’t understand why Neeve was cast aside by Allenach, after all wasn’t she a daughter that he so desperately wanted? Illegitimacy didn’t matter to him anyway, he could’ve just legitimized her and the fact that Neeve’s mother was dead meant that Allenach didn’t need to worry about anyone influencing Neeve aside from himself. Was Allenach banking THAT much on Brienna? I dunno, none of Neeve’s backstory really makes sense to me or brings much value to the plot either. I like the character just fine, I just don’t understand her purpose... aside from being a long-lost half-sister to the main character. 

I also kept thinking Sean Allenach would eventually betray the queen’s side but he never did, which also makes little sense to me. I mean I guess deep down he really is just a good kid, but it just seems so unlikely for that to be the case when both his older brother and his father are incredibly cruel people. I understood why Ewan and Keela didn’t take after their father, Declan Lannon, because after all they always had each other and they had Tomas who was always a good guy trying to set them on a better path. So for Sean, who seemingly did not have any kind of positive influence to counter the shitty influence that is his brother and father, to be such a kind person willing to undermine his own father’s power just seems statistically unlikely I guess?

And finally, the ending of The Queen’s Resistance with the whole thing about Cartier/Aodhan’s mother still being alive was... good GOD. She was the bone sweeper??? SERIOUSLY? Now that’s a fucking plot twist that I would’ve never saw coming. My heart definitely hurt for Lile, and her written account of what had happened to her over the last 25 years nearly brought tears to my eyes. I do wonder though, when Declan said he loved Lile was he referring to romantic love or the love shared between a mother and son? I was assuming the second type of love, since Declan kept referring to Cartier/Aodhan as ‘brother’. But in Lile’s written account of what happened in her life she writes that she took the Lannon name after ten years in the dungeons. I feel like there’s a lot of ambiguity as to what that actually means. Did she essentially become Declan’s consort? Or did she remain a motherly figure to him and her sharing Declan’s family name made it more real for him? I hope it’s the second one, because I would feel VERY uncomfortable if it were the first case.

When I started this series, I thought I had it all figured out. I guessed that Brienna was the rightful Kavanagh queen within the first chapter, but little did I know the author wanted to tell the story about the queen’s right hand woman, not the queen herself. Which is a very unique approach to a story and I think Ross did quite well (despite the queen herself falling flat as a character. Perhaps some sacrifices need to be made if the story is to emphasize someone other than the queen). Again, I do wish there was a bigger emphasis on Brienna and Cartier’s relationship. I enjoyed Brienna enough, but I simply adored Cartier/Aodhan and I admit I really wanted to see more interactions between the two through Cartier’s POV. I almost wish the last chapter of The Queen’s Resistance was written in Cartier’s POV because I wanted to know what thoughts swirled through his head while he was looking for the golden thread in the tapestry. Petitioning for a prequel novella, completely through Cartier’s POV, during the seven years he spent watching Brienna grow up dabbling in other passions before choosing to become a passion of knowledge. I would pay dumb money to read this. And I would go broke, because I would pay a lot of money to read a lot of things. 

[taylart-x]

Whumptober- Day 24

Day 24: Secret Injury

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go!

Characters: Virgil Tracy, Kayo Kyrano, Scott Tracy, John Tracy

Disclaimer: I do not own Thunderbirds or any of the characters from the show (or from TAG). I just want to make cool stories :)

Sorry, this one came out a bit rushed toward the end and didn’t have the greatest idea for the prompt. But here is what I did manage to make :)

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He jumped.

The edge seemed so far away, the rocks looking loose and not able to hold his weight if he even reached them.

He seemed to sail through the air for an impossible amount of time. He was weightless, even as his life flashed before his eyes. His family, his memories, hsi everything.

Gordon’s hair glistening from the sunlight reflecting off the water in his hair. Alan as he posed for Virgil to paint him. Scott as he ran across the airstrip to hug Virgil after a bad mission. John as he stared at the stars, wishing to live among them when they were young. Grandma when he helped her to make a batch of edible cookies. Dad as he brought Virgil down to the basement and showed him the blueprints for a cargo ship that would fly faster than the jets the air force had. Mum’s pride when he played his first recital.

And Kayo.

Kayo when she woke up every morning. Kayo when she trained. Kayo when she was shown Thunderbird S for the first time. Kayo.

God, he didn’t want to lose them. He didn’t want to lose himself.

Not like this.

His claw made contact with the outcrop, automatically clamping around it. The force of his stopping wrenched his arm up as his body continued to fall. The abrupt stop of his body yanked on his arm even more, and a cry burst through his lips as fire engulfed his shoulder, tearing its way through his nerves and up the rest of his arm.

But he had made it.

He had made it.

-+-+-+-

As soon as it had happened, he knew what it was. Virgil wasn’t an idiot, and was trained as a field medic. Instantly he had known that he had dislocated his shoulder. But he had a mission to finish, and his suit was supporting it for the time being. Plus, with his compression suit underneath it would be fine.

Hopefully.

Once the rescue was complete (a team of conservationists from DOC had gotten stuck in Milford Sound in the South Island of New Zealand due to a rockfall in the precarious mountains) he had stripped himself of his exosuit and had relocated his shoulder. The comms were off as he knew there would be a litany of creative curses as he did it.

He had reported to John that he was on his way home before promptly switching the comms off again. A sigh fell from his lips before he bid the conservationists goodbye and took TB2 up into the air.

Autopilot was switched on as soon as he could and he leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t tell Scott about what had happened. If he did, he knew he would be pulled from duty, and with Gordon still down for the count after the run in with the Chaos Crew, they couldn’t afford for virgil to be benched. Instead of doing what SOP demanded, he left his flight chair and went rooting around in the med bay for bandages and ice packs. He found no ice packs, or bandages, but was able to find a sling up for the flight home. He really needed to restock as some of the conservationists had needed medical attention from gashes from falling rocks.

Once he was satisfied with the stabilisation of his arm, he moved back to the cockpit and collapsed into his seat. Before John called in again he switched off the visual comms and only left the voice comms activated.

“Hey Virgil, you almost home?” came Scott’s voice not two minutes later.

“Yeah, just on approach to Fiji. Be back in about 20 minutes,” was Virgil’s reply, wincing slightly as he shifted where he sat.

“Okay, we’ll have debrief when you get back, yeah?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“Have a safe flight.” He could hear the grin in Scott’s voice. “And don’t go too slow, or you might get here at Christmas.”

“Har dee har. This ship is still faster than those little paper planes you flew in the air force,” came Virgil’s reply, along with a roll of the eyes.

“Keep telling yourself that. See you when you get home.”

“Yeah, see ya then.”

The comms switched off as Scott disconnected the line.

Before long, the line blinked again. This time with an orange light. Virgil hit connect, and John’s image appeared. Virgil could see him, but John couldn’t see Virgil. “Virgil, your suit indicators show a rapid pulse and swelling around your shoulder? It’s pressing up against your compression suit. What happened?”

Shit. He thought John might see that he had an injury. If he knows, he’ll tell Scott. He can’t put that extra pressure on his big brother.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I got hit by a falling rock, only a small one. Managed to miss the exosuit and hit my shoulder. Probably just some bruising,” was Virgil’s nonchalant reply.

“It seems worse than a bruise.”

“I promise John, that’s all it will be. May have nicked it slightly. I’ll take a look at it when I get home, okay?”

“F.A.B.” John’s reply was hesitant, but he cut the line, seemingly thinking better than to continue his interrogation of Virgil.

The rest of Virgil’s flight was spent without interruption, except for when the nausea flared up from a spot of turbulence, which jolted his sensitive shoulder, causing a cascade of pain to ripple outwards from his shoulder. Virgil had rushed to the medbay to get a sick bag, and just in time too, as he vomited as he hit more turbulence.

He ended up sitting on the floor of the medbay, his back up against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. He needed to get up. He would need to land soon. If only he could pull himself together a bit more.

It took a good few minutes, but he managed to drag himself to his feet, though he was light headed and woozy. He stumbled to the cockpit, his other arm steadying him against the doorframe.

Surprisingly, he managed to land without trouble, though afterwards he suspended doing post flight checks for sitting and breathing through another bout of nausea. The landing hadn’t been rough, but the use of his arm had been.

After a few minutes, he ran post flight and exited his ‘Bird. Time to debrief, then go sleep.

He unwrapped his arm from the sling and stepped into the elevator up to the rec room. His arm was awkwardly held up against his side, but he tried to make it look as normal as possible, though the elevator’s subtle vibrations weren’t helping at all.

Surprisingly, he made it to the rec room without throwing up again, and without passing out. Honestly, he thought he deserved an award for that.

Before Scott could even say hello in greeting, Virgil collapsed onto the couch in the pitted living room. His head rolled back onto the back of the couch, his hair hanging backwards to seemingly defy gravity.

Kayo smoothly sat beside him, her entire being much more put together than Virgil felt. “Hey, you okay?” she asked, voice soft.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just-”

“Okay, debrief time,” Scott unknowingly interrupted. “Let’s get this over so that we can go to bed, It’s way too late.”

Virgil flickered his eyes down to his wrist unit, which helpfully displayed the time. 11:39pm. Damn, that’s later than he thought. Rescue must’ve taken longer than he thought it had. “Okay,” Scott continued, looking up at the holograms John so helpfully displayed as he also appeared floating above the table. “So, a group of five ocnservationists was stuck-”

Virgil tuned out for everything Scott was saying. He knew all of it. He was bloody well there.

Scott and John swapped notes until Kayo nudged him.

His shoulder screamed at him as the push moved him slightly, jolting his shoulder. A grunt of pain escaped his throat at the movement of his shoulder. A hiss followed as Kayo moved again on the couch, this time to face him, her eyebrows knitted together in concern. “Virgil?”

“I’m fine,” he wheezed out, his own eyes scrunching shut. Breathe through it, just breathe.

“No you aren’t. What have you done to yourself?” She got off the couch and came around to his other side, quickly and efficiently stripping his uniform away from the injured area. A few whines and hisses escaped Virgil as she did it.

“I thought it was just bruising, Virgil?” John piped up from the table, his aqua eyes piercing Virgil where he sat.

“May have been a slight understatement,” he replied with a grimace. Kay’s fingers probed at the area, gently mapping out what hurt and the sensitive areas under the bruising.

“C’mon, let’s get you to the medbay. Then you and I are going to have a long chat about hiding injuries from me, yeah?”

Virgil sighed, but after seeing the fury in Scott’s eyes and the disappointment in John’s, he quickly agrees to Kayo’s request and let’s her lead him from the room.

“You’ve dislocated and then relocated your shoulder, hone. Please tell me you got someone to do that for you.”

Virgil widely remained silent.

She sighed and sat him down on the edge of the bed before getting some ice packs out and a sling. “You are the dumbest smart person I know,” she murmured, but softened the blow by laying a kiss on his head.

“Love you too.”

They eventually settled into bed, with Kayo curled into Virgil’s I injured side, the reassurance that he was still here needed after her heart rate had skyrocketed at the discovery of his injury.

They were still here for another day.

Though Virgil was owed a lecture by everyone.

[calpalirwin]

According to Plan

A/N: Let’s see how college went for our boy Ash. Only 2 more chapters and an epilogue left guys! Hope you’re caught up!

And away, and away we go!

~~~

Chapter 14

Ashton

September 2016-May 2020

~~~

I fought with myself as my phone pinged, her name flashing across the screen, when she texted me that first week of September after I had left her apartment. Against my better judgement, I opened the message.

It’s Madison. I have news that I think you should hear, but I want to tell you face to face. So if you’re ever in Yale... Um, hope all is well. Bye.

I struggled with texting her back to see what she meant by news or deleting the message and moving on with my life like I had supposedly left her to do. In the end, I kept the message but never messaged her back.

I didn’t delete her number or the message, but I didn’t text her either after I left her apartment that August. I stayed in contact with everyone else, even staying with them when I played at their schools.

When I played Yale, I always went to her apartment building, but I could never bring myself to go up to her door. Just like I could never bring myself to text her back.

Duke itself was great. It felt good to be doing something I had always dreamed of doing. Not that it stopped the nights from dragging on for eternities at a time. Some nights I’d sit in the dark, nursing a beer or two, and flip through the photo album she gave me. Other nights, I’d dig through my drawers for the Yale sweater and cling to it for dear life. Then, there were the nights when I looked at that damn message. The message got me through my worst nights at Duke. I’d stare at it for hours and get a renewed sense of what I was trying to do with my life. Like the night she called me. I broke wide open when my phone rang, her contact flashing across the screen. In our short time together she had never once called me. I didn’t answer for two reasons 1.) the fear that it was a fluke and 2.) the fear that it would break me open more than I already was. I told myself that whatever news she wanted to tell me could wait for two years. I also told myself that I wouldn’t regret not texting her back or answering her call.

Only, she never turned up on my doorstep after two years. I guessed she had decided to chase after a Master’s degree after all. It stung, but I couldn’t hold that against her. I was the one who had ended things so she could be free in Yale. I had no one to blame but myself. So, I just kept going along with my life as best as I knew how.

I graduated from Duke, so with more free time on my hands, I worked more hours at my dad’s shop, now that I was officially hired. I was there that first Saturday after graduation, not wanting to spend the day alone in my apartment.

I spent the morning working on car after car, my mind blank except for the task in front of me. Around lunchtime, my dad finally kicked me out. “No, Ash. You don’t get to hide here,” he said. “Go live your life.”

“This is me living my life,” I told him, stubbornly.

“No, it’s not. You’ve been pretending for a long time. Ever since you left for Duke, you’ve been really good at acting like everything’s fine.”

“That’s because everything is fine. I went to Duke, like I always wanted. I played soccer for them like I always wanted. Now, I’m here, working on cars, like I’ve always wanted.”

“Still not enough, is it?”

I sighed, feeling seconds away from falling apart. “Why isn’t it?” I sighed again.

“Because you need the girl, Ash. So, stop moping and go get her.”

“I don’t even know where she is.”

“Yeah, you do. Go clear your head, and you’ll find her.”

So I drove. With the music up and the windows down, I drove. Occasionally I looked over, swearing she was in the seat next to me, like she used to be. When the growling in my stomach got to be too much to ignore, I drove to the diner.

I ignored the nostalgia that hit me as I opened the door and made my way to the booth. I did a double take as I noticed someone already sitting there. It couldn’t be, could it?

My truck keys nearly slipped out of my hand. I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself, hard, just to be sure this was real. Sure enough, there she was. Her long blonde hair framed her green eyes that were staring out the window, a fry making its way to her mouth. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. Nearly four years had past seen I’d last seen her and she still looked the same. Time had been kind to her.

I looked down at myself. My fingers were stained with grease. My jumpsuit looked in desperate need of a wash, as did the rest of me. I ran a hand along my jaw and under my chin. Yep, I could do with a shave, too.

I looked over at her again and all those old feelings came rushing back. It was like seeing her for the first time all over again. My memories of her and us flashed in front of me. And this time, I welcomed the flashbacks. I wanted to remember what it was like to be seventeen. Back before life got in the way. I close my eyes and let the memories flood my mind.

I shook my head to clear away that last goodbye and walked over to her. I waved my hand in front of her to get her attention as I slid into the seat across from her.

Her eyes lit up as she scanned my face, and realized that it was really me. “Hey,” she smiled. “You kept your hair short, it looks good that way.” She got up and gave me a quick hug. “You look good, Ash.”

I went up to run my hand through my hair, that I had kept short ever since Prom, then remembered how gross my hands were. “Yeah, decided I was long overdue for a new look.” Then, my mind processed what had just happened. “Wait… did you just? You can hear me?!”

She laughed as she sat down, motioning for me to sit across from her. “I got the implant after my first year at Yale. Figured it was time.”

“You sound great,” I told her, taking a seat. Her voice was less slow, and even more confident than it had been those times she had graced me with her voice. Damn, this was gonna be way harder if she broke my heart now.

“You do too,” she smiled.

We stared at each other for a moment, both of us processing the changes. She finally broke the silence. “I texted you. Called you even. You never came to see me.”

“You never came to Duke,” I countered, half-teasing, half curious to see how she’d respond.

“Yeah, I got a little busy. How was Duke? Did you graduate already?”

“Yeah, last week. So, now I’m working in my dad’s shop full-time.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s good. That’s what I wanted. Are you hungry? Should we order? I’m starving.”

“Yeah, food sounds good.”

We ordered and we swapped stories about Duke and Yale. I told her about how great it had been at Duke, while she told me how her time at Yale had been amazing; both of us refusing to admit to the less than wonderful moments of the last few years.

“Nice tattoo,” I commented, when she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Thanks. Yours is nice, too.”

“I have more,” I said, glancing down at the heart decorating my wrist. “So, what was the news anyway?” I asked, finally getting to the hard stuff. “When you texted and called me. Did you find somebody new?” I swallowed hard, the long wondered about question finally hanging in the air between us.

She played with a straw wrapper. “You could say that…” she said coyly.

“Oh,” I said, swallowing again. “That’s great. I’m glad.” I smiled a half-smile. She had done exactly what I told her to do. There was no one to blame but myself.

“He’s hanging out with Mike right now. Did you want to come meet him?”

“I don’t think…” I protested.

“Oh, c’mon. You’re gonna love him, I promise,” she told me. She smiled again and I knew that I’d let this girl take my heart and stomp all over it if it meant I’d see that smile and hear her voice.

“Lead the way,” I gestured. “Oh, you drive now?” I asked as she walked to her brother’s truck. I had been too stuck in my own head to take notice of the cars when I had pulled in earlier.

She nodded. “I can hear now.”

“So, did Mike get a new truck?”

“No, I have my own car. It’s just in the shop,” she lied.

I shook my head, letting her have the lie. I got in my truck and followed her the few blocks to a house I’d never been to before. “Nice place,” I commented as we walked up to the porch.

“Thanks. It’s no apartment at Duke, but it’s exactly what I need. Rent’s a little steep though, but Mike’s staying with me while him and Crystal figure things out.” she said, opening the door.

“No help from that guy of yours?” I asked, trying not to be smug.

“He’s a little on the young side,” she let out a small laugh as she opened the front door.

A small body came hurtling out of the kitchen, slamming his tiny body into Madison’s legs. “Momma!” the boy screeched.

She picked up the boy and put him on her hip. “Judder-bug!” she greeted, kissing the curly blonde locks.

He put his hands on her cheeks, pulling her face to his. When he did, I caught a glimpse of a pair of gold-flecked hazel eyes I’d only seen in the mirror. I quickly put two and two together and did some math in my head. The boy looked to be about three, and I had left Madison not quite four years ago. Although hazel wasn’t a far cry from green, I knew that the kid had my eyes, not hers. I remembered how she responded when I asked if she had met someone. This had been the news she wanted to tell me, I decided. “Who’s your friend, Momma?” he was whispering.

“A very special friend,” she told him. “Can you say hi?”

He looked at me, then buried his face in his mom’s shoulder.

She smiled at me, apologetically. “He can be a little shy.” She set the boy down, “Go find Uncle Mikey,” she told him. We both watched as the boy disappeared down the hall. “Should we talk?” she asked, sitting on the couch and patting for me to sit next to her.

I collapsed next to her. “Shit, Mads… a kid?!”

“I texted and called,” she told me like that was enough of an answer. Her head came to rest on my shoulder for a second before she thought better of it.

“What did you say his name was?” I asked.

“Jude Thomas Irwin.”

“Irwin” I repeated, closing my eyes. “Irwin as in…?”

“As in, he has his dad’s last name.”

“Okay, so I am his…” I couldn’t say the word.

“Where else would he get curly hair and hazel eyes from?”

“And you didn’t feel the need to tell me this fact at all during the last four years?” The shock subsided into anger. How could she keep this from me?

“I tried,” she defended. “I texted and called you. You never responded.”

“And what would you have done if I had?”

“Told you to stay in Duke. That I had everything under control, and that it wasn’t your problem.”

“Not my problem?! Mads, you hid the fact that I have a son! I think that makes it my problem, don’t you? God, you know how I feel about this! My biological dad walked out on my mom and me!”

“Look, I’m sorry if you’re mad. But, I know you. You wouldn’t have stayed in Duke if you had known.”

“So, you lied so I would go to Duke?” My words were harsh. Who was she to decide something like that without talking to me about it?

“Technically, I didn’t lie.”

“I have a kid, Mads!”

“I know… Look, I did what I thought was best for us. You left me so you could go to Duke. I wasn’t going to stand in your way.”

I rubbed my eyes and let out a small scream of frustration. “Madison, that wasn’t your decision to make,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level and my words calm. “Do you know what you’ve done? Whatever your intentions, you kept my son from me! You know what being a dad means to me! How could you?”

“Not my decision to make?! You wouldn’t answer the phone, Ashton! Bottom line, you weren’t there. What was I supposed to do?”

“I wasn’t there? Madison, I didn’t know! You didn’t tell me!”

“I tried, Ashton!”

“You should’ve tried harder! You think I wouldn’t have been there if you had told me?”

“I know you would’ve been! And that wasn’t okay with me!”

“Why? What justification do you have for keeping him from me?” I asked, the fight leaving me in my need to know why.

“Okay,” she said, her voice becoming calm like mine. “You had just left, and I don’t hold that against you, I don’t. Then, I was pregnant, and I didn’t know how to tell you. This wasn’t the kind of news you could send through a text. So, I figured I’d reach out to let you know I had news and let you make the decision from there. But all I got was silence from you- both times. Which I don’t hold against you, either. I personally think it was for the best. And he’s always known who you are. I was never going to keep him from you. You hide it well, but I know how much pain you’re in because Jeff is only your stepdad, and that you want to be better than your biological father was to you. I was always going to let you be a dad to Jude. I just needed you to finish Duke first. I didn’t want you to regret not going. I’m sorry. Okay? I am so fucking sorry.”

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. “God, Mads… What about the possibility of me regretting not being there for you two?”

“You don’t have to forgive me. I only ask that you understand why I did what I did, and don’t let it spoil any relationship you might have with him.”

I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t blame her for what she had done. She was right, there was no way I would have stayed at Duke if I had known. Because of her lie- or omittance- I had been able to go to Duke and play soccer like I always wanted. I let out a sigh and opened my eyes to look at her. “How old is he?”

“He’s 2. He’ll be 3 in a few weeks. I’m having a birthday party for him. It’s a small thing, but you’re more than welcome to come.”

I nodded. Of course I was going to his birthday. I wasn’t going to miss a single day of his life. “Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?” she asked.

“It’ll take me time to stop being angry. But, I can understand why you did what you did. I can almost forgive you for it. And, I want a relationship with him. Whatever you’re comfortable with at first, but I eventually want some sort of custody. I’m going to be his dad. I’m not missing anymore of his life.”

She nodded. “Of course, Ash. Whatever you want is more than fine with me. Do you want to go meet him?”

“Yeah.”

She led us into the backyard where Mike was standing in front of a small goal. “Kick it!” he was encouraging Jude, who stood a few feet away, with a small soccer ball at his feet. The toddler kicked the ball with his foot, sending the ball skidding towards Mike, who stepped aside to let the ball fall into the goal. “Goal! Jude Irwin with the winning goal! Syracuse wins!” Mike cheered.

“Goal! Go Yrcus!” Jude cheered, throwing his arms up and screaming. “Momma, I made a goal!” he continued to cheer, running up to Madison.

“Good job, Judder-bug! High five!” she said, holding out her hand.

He slapped his small hand against Madison’s. “Yrcus wins!”

She laughed. “Syracuse,” she said slowly, teaching him. “Who did Syracuse beat this time?” she asked Mike.

“Uh… who did we play, Judester?”

“Uke!” Jude told his uncle.

“Duke?” Madison asked. “Aw, the only way Syracuse will ever beat Duke is in this backyard,” she teased her brother.

I laughed. Every game we had played against Syracuse, we had won. But, how did she know that? “Wait, how did you know that?”

“I might have gone to a game… or four…” she admitted.

“Momma loves Uke!” Jude ratted her out. “Huh, Momma?”

“Oh, does she?” I asked him.

“Mhm!” he nodded like a bobblehead. “Dada goes to Uke.”

“He does?”

“Mhm! We watch him play occer.”

“You,” Madison said, scooping up Jude who let out a shrill giggle- an exact copy of my own, I noted with a smile- “are a bad secret keeper!” She flipped him upside down before she flipped him upright, holding him on her hip. God, she looked amazing as a mom.

“You watched my games?” I asked her, feeling all those old feelings come rushing back.

“I might have…” she admitted with a coy smile. “Hey, Judder-bug, did you know that Ash went to Duke?” she asked, turning the direction of the conversation.

His hazel eyes went wide. “You know Dada?!”

Madison whispered something in his ear and his entire face split into a grin. He reached out for me.

I took him in my arms and immediately felt both overjoyed and overwhelmed. “Momma misses you,” he told me.

“I’ve missed her, too,” I told him.

“And, that’s my cue to go,” Mike said, excusing himself. “I’ll probably just crash at Crystal’s, Mads.”

“Okay, bye,” she told her brother.

“Bye, Judester,” he said, kissing Jude’s head. “Good to see ya, Ash.”

“Good to see ya too, man.”

Mike disappeared inside, leaving the three of us alone. “Did you have your nap?” Madison asked her son.

He shook his head, “Nope! No nap!”

“Yes, nap,” she said, going in the house.

I followed, Jude still clinging to my neck. “What about Dada?” he asked.

“Uh…” I stumbled, not knowing what to say.

“He’ll be here when you wake up,” she promised before looking at me. “Right?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. I set Jude down, who immediately clung to my leg and wailed. “No!” he scream-cried.

“It’s ok-” I started to tell him, but Madison had already beat me to it.

She crouched down next to him and turned his face towards hers. “Look at me,” she coaxed, softly. “Jude Thomas, look at me. Thank you. I need you to stop. You need a nap. Daddy will be here when you wake up, okay?” As she spoke, Jude slowly stopped wailing. “Now, do you want me to tuck you in?”

He sniffed and nodded, grabbing her hand.

“You’re gonna need to teach me that,” I said, staring at her amazed as she put Jude down and closed his door. How was I mad at her a half hour ago only to find myself falling for her all over again?

She shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“For you, maybe.”

She smiled. “Um, he’ll be out for at least 2 hours. So, if you had something… You don’t have to stay.”

I looked down at myself. “Uh, yeah, actually. I should clean up. What about…”

“Oh, you can come over whenever you want. I’m not… I just thought that… Sorry.”

“Thought what? That I only want to spend time with him?”

“Maybe…?”

“I’ll come back after I get cleaned up, okay? 45 minutes, tops.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“See you in a bit,” I told her, heading for the door. 

I drove to my apartment to shower and change, thinking the whole time about the time I had just spent with Madison. Four years of radio silence and a hidden secret- two, if you included the Cochlear implant- didn’t stop those old feelings I had for her from resurfacing. I drove back to her house, deciding that a relationship with Jude wasn’t enough; I needed one with her too. One that wasn’t strictly a co-parenting one. I needed her like I needed her when we were seventeen and in love; like when we were eighteen and I was too stubborn and hurt to tough out the distance.

I knocked on her door, flowers in one hand, a carton of ice cream in the other. She opened the door and stared at me for a minute, a look in her eye I’d only ever seen whenever we used to have sex. “C’mon in,” she recovered. “Jude’s still asleep.”

“These are for you,” I said, handing her the flowers. “Ice cream’s for later.”

She breathed in the flowers. “Peonies, my favorite. Thank you.”

“Yeah, you’re the only girl who didn’t like roses,” I remembered fondly, following her into the kitchen.

“Always reminded me of fun-”

“Funerals,” I cut her off. “I remember.”

She smiled at me, grabbing a small vase to put the flowers in. “You can put the ice cream in the freezer,” she said, nodding in its direction. “Do you want something to drink?”

I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.”

We sat in the living room, unsure of what to say. “It’s been hard,” she finally said, breaking the silence.

“What has?”

“Everything since high school graduation,” she half laughed. “Being away from you was hard. Watching you leave every other weekend was harder. Balancing school, a job, and a baby was hard. Missing you was the hardest, though.”

“But, you did it,” I told her, feeling proud for her. She had done it all, just like she planned, with a baby on her hip.

“I did it,” she smiled in agreement. “How did you react when I called you? Not the text. The phone call.”

I let out my breath in a slow huff. “That one tore me up for a bit because you’ve never called me. Talking always made you tired.”

“It tore me up, too. But I needed to try to contact you again. And I needed to know what you sounded like.”

“Disappointed?”

“No, not at all,” she laughed. “I almost came to Duke. After my Bachelor’s.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“What was I gonna do? Show up on your door with a suitcase and a baby and say ‘Honey we’re home’ and give you a heart attack?”

We both laughed at the absurdity of it all. “It was hard,” she said again. “And I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“How’d you react. I didn’t want you to leave Duke. And then I was scared that you wouldn’t want us. That I blew it by not telling you sooner. That you had found someone else and there wasn’t any room for an ex and a baby in your new life.”

“There was never anyone else. Mads, I didn’t leave for my benefit. I left for yours.”

“Well that was stupid, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I’m still waiting to see how things play out.”