#its just this gnawing thought of like. but everyone in your family absolutely thinks less of you bc you arent skinny. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vannahfanfics · 4 years ago

Text

Worthy

Category: Romantic Fluff

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Characters: Shoto Todoroki, Momo Yaoyorozu

Hey, everyone! I'm happy to present the piece I wrote for the @todorokibigbang! Enjoy some TodoMomo wedding fluff <3 Also, be sure to check out the absolutely stunning art by my partner, @danyartime!

Shoto sucked in a deep breath as he straightened his bowtie for the tenth time in the last minute, using his reflection in the mirror to ensure that the wine red accessory hugged the collar of his white button-down shirt snugly. As his hands fell, they automatically itched to smooth down the nonexistent creases in the thick, sleek fabric of his tuxedo jacket. He smoothed his palms down his front anyway, until they met the band of his black dress pants. Just as he began to wonder if he should re-shine his shoes, he realized just exactly where his mind was derailing and smiled sardonically to himself.

Natsuo told me about the pre-wedding jitters, but I never imagined they would be this bad.

Of course, Shoto had no compulsions to flee the altar; proposing to his soon-to-be wife was the greatest decision he had ever made. He would happily give her his heart, his world, everything he could offer, and more without sparing a second thought. However, as he stood there fidgeting in front of the floor-length mirror, listening to his groomsmen bicker and laugh in the adjoining room, Shoto would be remiss to admit that he wasn’t nervous.

He couldn’t help but wonder if he was deserving of all this— friends and family to surround him as he passes into the next chapter of his life and a successful career as a burgeoning pro hero with a sound investment in an agency that he, Izuku, and Katsuki were slowly building from the ground up—all of which he could share with his beloved. After all the trials and tribulations of his young life, it all seemed so… easy. Shoto was far from perfect and had his regrets, so how could this wonderful life just have fallen into his hands?

As he ruminated, he smacked his lips, his mouth going uncomfortably dry, eyebrows furrowed as he sipped at a bottle of water. Shoto had never entertained these thoughts before—not when he graduated, not when he broke out as a professional hero, and not even on his worst days when he couldn’t save anyone—so it was mighty conspicuous that his subconscious chose now of all days to second-guess himself. He scrunched up his face as he tried to will away the anxiety gnawing at his insides.

Ever since high school, you’ve worked hard to become who you are now. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy the comforts you slaved for… he told himself, but it rang hollowly in his heavy heart. He drained the water bottle and tossed it in the trash, grimace not leaving his face. His tongue still felt bone-dry and coated with ash. As he paced the small room, rubbing his sweaty palms on his thighs, there was a quiet knock at the door that led to the hallway.

“Hey, Sho, it’s us!” called Natsuo’s cheerful voice, followed by Fuyumi chirping a greeting. Running a hand through his hair and checking himself in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look too rattled, he hurried to the door and opened it. His elder siblings wore identical smiles as they looked him up and down.

“You sure clean up nice,” Natsuo grinned as he looped an arm around Shoto’s neck and tugged him down to affectionately ruffle his hair. “Look at you, so big now that you’re getting married, huh? Man, how time flies.”

Shoto grunted as he tugged himself away, indignantly smoothing down his hair. The strands were fine and ordered enough that he didn’t have to bother doing anything, but he didn’t want to meet his bride with flyaways sticking up all over his head. “Natsuo…”

“Hey, stud, not having any second thoughts, are you?” the white-haired man grinned playfully, nudging him with an elbow. Shoto blinked, floored by his elder brother’s sudden inquiry.

“What? Of course not!” he answered in bewilderment. Natsuo seemed entertained and had no implications that it was an inappropriate thing to ask.

“Good, good!” Natsuo chimed. He then glanced at Fuyumi as she began to sniffle.

“I can’t believe it… Our Shoto is all grown up…” she moaned and dabbed at the tears blooming in the corners of her eyes. “Next thing you know, he’ll be having babies and will slowly move out of our lives…”

Shoto turned beet red at the mention of having children. It wasn’t out of the question, but it certainly wasn’t on his mind right now, so it unnerved him a little to have it brought up in conversation. He swallowed the nervous nausea in favor of stepping forward to wrap his sister up in a gentle hug. He was taller than her now, so she could nestle right into the crook of his shoulder and cry.

“Fuyumi, I’m not going anywhere,” he laughed lightly. “You’re still my family. I know life gets busy, but I’m still going to make every effort to see you all.”

“Really?” Fuyumi gasped as her head snapped up. Shoto tried not to laugh at the black smudges of mascara under her eyes and smiled reassuringly.

“Of course,” he said before leaning down to kiss the top of her head. The sweet action made Fuyumi start blubbering again, and no amount of dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief prevented the mascara from streaming down her flushed cheeks. Natsuo led her away to the bathroom, trying to suppress his snickers as Fuyumi wailed about “what a good young boy Shoto turned out to be,” and left Shoto in the doorway.

What a good young boy he turned out to be, her words echoed in the dark of his mind. Though her words should fill him with pride and love, the only thing that rose up within Shoto was the cold emptiness of doubt. He leaned in the doorframe as his breath left him in a heavy sigh, and he stared at the place his siblings had rounded the corner. Fuyumi’s crying face flashed in his mind.

Why was she crying in the first place? Why would she ever think that I would abandon them? The notion made nervous butterflies flutter in his stomach. Had Shoto perhaps been negligent with his family? Sure, they were the textbook definition of dysfunctional, but after his first semester at U.A., he’d done his best to try to mend their fractured relationship. Had he not done enough? Did Fuyumi really believe that now that he’d found a wife, he’d just make his own little family and forget all about them?

He scowled as that irritating dryness returned to his mouth, making him run a hand over his lips. His entire family would be attending the ceremony today. He thought that was because they were there to support him, but could it be mere pretense? Or worse, did they all believe that after today they would see less and less of him until routine visits became replaced with excuses? He squirmed in the doorway as a pang of guilt began to prickle at him.

Before he could dwell on that unsettling thought, someone called his name from down the hall. He looked up to see the looming bulk of his father striding towards him. Shoto involuntarily straightened up, blinking as Enji came to a stop in front of him.

“Hello, son,” Enji coughed uncomfortably, tugging at the baby-blue tie tucked into his gray suit jacket. Shoto could tell that Enji was trying to hide his nervousness by the way he kept his head held high and the nervous twitches in his face muscles. Even now, after Shoto had grown into a young man, their relationship still had its strains, yet Shoto wasn’t petty enough to deny his father witnessing his marriage, so he’d still invited him. Enji’s eyes raked over him before giving an approving nod. “It suits you,” he said with a vague gesture to his tuxedo.

“Thanks.”

Enji shuffled his weight from one large foot to the other, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he struggled to gather his words. “Father, is there something you want to say?”

“I, uh,” Enji gulped and scratched at his close-cropped auburn hair. “I just wanted… I just wanted to tell you… how proud I am of you, Shoto,” he mumbled, voice dropping with every word. Shoto’s face blanched in shock, causing him to just stare dumbly up at his father. Enji continued to fidget nervously, fumbling through his fatherly dotage. “You’ve, uh… You’ve come a long way. I know that a part of you will never forgive me for what I’ve done, and I know now that the way I treated you was not right. I’m, uh… very grateful that you’re even allowing me to be here to see you get married.”

“Father, it’s not—”

“Please let me finish,” Enji blurted, going a little pink in the face. Shoto nodded respectfully, and Enji grumbled under his breath, “How should I say this?” He contemplated anxiously for a moment before continuing, “You’re a fine young man and a fine young hero, a better one than I ever could have dreamed of, and you did that all on your own. Even if I don’t deserve it, it’s an honor to call you my son.”

Shoto’s throat bobbed as it grew a little tight.

“Thanks, Father…”

“I know you’ll go on to do amazing things,” Enji said, seeming to relax as Shoto didn't outright reject his sentiments. He laid a large hand on Shoto’s shoulders. “You’ve made a promising career for yourself because of your hard work in school. Japan couldn’t ask for a finer hero.” Enji held onto his shoulder a second before he coughed uncomfortably and retracted. “I, um… I had better go now. Sorry if I interrupted anything.” It looked like he wanted to embrace Shoto, but he merely offered him a handshake. Shoto shook his hand, still slightly dazed from his father’s emotional speech, and then watched him head towards the entryway.

Enji paused and looked back at him with knitted eyebrows.

“Are you… Are you all right, Shoto? You seem tense. You aren’t having any second thoughts, are you?”

There it is again… Why was everyone asking that? Was that just a thing people asked the groom on their wedding day? Was it really that common for grooms to leave their brides?

“Of course not, Father. I couldn’t be happier.”

Enji nodded thoughtfully, staring at him a moment, before uttering a terse, “Good.” Then he was gone, and Shoto was alone again.

Japan couldn’t ask for a finer hero.

Well, Shoto certainly didn’t feel very fine right now. Shoto had to crawl his way up to the top alongside his classmates. He thought of Fuyumi, of how she’d cried and begged Shoto not to leave them. Maybe he was devoting too much energy to his career. What would the adoring public think if they learned that Shoto was forsaking all the important things in his life to be the best? They’d call him an egotist, for sure. Was that what he was?

Once again, he thought about how easily everything seemed to be falling into place. Could that be because Shoto was sacrificing other things in the process? Or worse, was this “vision” of his easy life all an illusion?

What if all of this isn’t as it seems, and I really don’t deserve any of it?

Just as panic began to pump through his system, he was jolted out of his thoughts by the door to the adjoining room slamming open. He whirled around to see Katsuki stomping into the room, his face nearly as red as the wine red of his boutonniere. The volatile blond was dragging Shoto’s best man in by the collar, clearly to complain about something he didn’t approve of.

Shoto raised his eyebrows as Katsuki slung a very frightened Izuku to the ground in front of him.

“K-Kacchan! It’s not that serious!” the green-haired boy whined as he rolled over to sit cross-legged on the floor and pout. Katsuki snorted haughtily and craned up his head, nose upturned so far that he was nearly looking at the ceiling.

“Idiot! I’ll never understand why this Icy-Hot bastard chose you as his best man! Do you know what this loser just suggested?” Katsuki accused with a sharp point at the sulking Izuku while he rounded on Shoto. Nonplussed, Shoto just shook his head. “‘Hey, why don’t we send Shoto to check and see if the girls are ready’?” Katsuki mocked in a high-pitched, squeaky rendition of Izuku’s voice. “Moron!” Katsuki yelled and leaned down over Izuku, hands on his hips while Izuku blushed and rubbed at the side of his face. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride? A best man would know that!”

“I just wanted to make sure everything was coming along well,” Izuku explained meekly. “If there was a problem, I wanted to make sure we knew about it and could plan accordingly…”

“Then send one of the other extras, not the fucking groom!”

As the two began to bicker back and forth, Shoto sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head. Honestly, he should have known better than to stick the two in a room together, but their venue didn’t really give them a choice. It was an antiquated millhouse fashioned into a wedding venue; the bridal party dressed in a small suite upstairs from the main floor where the wedding would be held, while the men prepared in a small, two-room shack next door. They’d been charmed by the rustic and quaint nature of the venue, as neither of them wanted a grand affair of their wedding, but Shoto was beginning to wonder if perhaps they should have opted for somewhere with more space and privacy…

“Enough,” Shoto barked as his frustration reached a boil. Izuku and Katsuki both stopped mid-chatter to look at him with wide eyes. “I appreciate the sentiments, both of you, but I would rather not quibble on my wedding day, thank you.” He sagged a little as the weariness began to take its toll. Arguing was really the least of his problems right now, considering he was shouldering an existential crisis. Izuku and Katsuki both looked at each other before squinting at him suspiciously.

“Hey, you all right, man?” Katsuki asked.

“You seem tense, Shoto. Are you okay? You’re not getting second thoughts, are you?” Izuku gasped worriedly. He shot to his feet to grab Shoto by the shoulders. “Please don’t tell me you’re considering calling off the wedding! Don’t worry! Lots of guys get nervous with this kind of commitment! But please, remember that you love—”

“Izuku,” Shoto interrupted with a weary smile and gently pushed his friend in the chest. “I’m not having second thoughts. Please don’t worry about that.” As Izuku deflated in relief, Shoto wondered if he should tell his friends about his real doubts. After a microsecond of consideration, he decided not to. Katsuki would probably just tell him to man up, and Izuku would go on an entire blabbering speech, and that’s not really what Shoto needed right now. Smiling thinly, Shoto placed his hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “I’m all right, really. There’s just been a lot of planning and preparation today, so I just want things to go well.”

“Right! Of course! As your best man, that’s my job! I’ll go right now and make sure everything is in order, okay? Don’t you worry, Shoto, I’ll make sure this goes off without a hitch!”

Before Shoto could insist that it really wasn’t necessary, the green-haired boy had zoomed off, untied dress shoe laces flapping behind him. Shoto looked after him with a small chuckle. Izuku had always been a bit flighty, but he really was an invaluable friend to him, so that’s why he had been the obvious choice for Shoto’s best man. He couldn’t imagine anyone else standing next to him when he greeted his bride at the altar.

The doubt crept up into his mind with its poisonous whispers. Izuku was a good friend, but did Shoto deserve a friend like that? Had he even come close to repaying all the things that Izuku had done for him? The smile fell from his lips as the cold guilt flushed through him once more.

“Oi.”

Shoto looked at Katsuki with unfocused eyes, still half-brooding. Katsuki’s crimson eyes thinned into small slivers as he squinted suspiciously. “Seriously, Icy-Hot, are you okay? You don’t… seem like yourself,” the blond asked slowly.

Shoto’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. Katsuki was as prickly as his wild hair, so to have him so readily show concern and inquire about Shoto’s wellbeing definitely dragged him out of his stupor. Again, Shoto debated whether or not to come clean about the disordered mess that was currently his mind.

Shoto had never been much of a fibber, but for some reason, the lies rolled so easily off his tongue today.

“As I told Izuku, I’m fine,” he said smoothly, feigning a grateful smile. “I think all the wedding planning just caught up to me at once, that’s all. I’m sure if I just take a moment to relax and gather my thoughts, I’ll be alright. We still have plenty of time before the main event.”

Katsuki continued to eye him with his lips parted in a skeptical pout, but instead of prying, he just slowly nodded his head a few times.

“All right. If you say so. I’m gonna go make sure that loser doesn’t mess anything up,” he decided, brushing past Shoto to walk to the door. He paused on the threshold to toss a blank stare over his shoulder. “Don’t think too much. You’ve always been the type to get too in your head,” he advised before continuing after Izuku. Shoto went to step after him, hand raised, but Katsuki was already gone. His arm flopped back down to his side as he released a shaky breath.

“Maybe I am thinking too much…” he murmured to himself.

He’d like to convince himself of that, but that little beast inside him just snickered. Are you sure that’s not just another one of your lies? it taunted. He rubbed his neck as that ash-choking feeling returned, his body trembling with a few tight coughs. Izuku and Katsuki both seemed so concerned for him… Did he really deserve that concern? Maybe they weren’t really even concerned about him, but were more worried he’d take off and leave his fiancé a shattered, sobbing mess at the altar. Had Shoto been selfish in his friendships?

Had he been selfish in his relationship? Everyone kept asking the same question… What if they could see that selfishness and were on edge because they all kept thinking that he couldn’t stick it out, that he was too self-absorbed? Shoto’s breaths began to come in terse, ragged gasps as he spiraled into a self-esteem crash.

What was wrong with him? Why was he thinking like this? He pawed at his head with a small groan. Nothing made sense; everything was swirling around in his head like a whirlwind. He stumbled out of the doorway and slammed it shut in front of him before collapsing against it. The painted wood was cool against his flushing face.

Breathe. Breathe, he tried to calm himself, gulping down air.

It burned; his throat felt like it was drying up into a desert. Just as he stumbled into the center of the room, blearily looking for water, there was a soft knock at the door. It rang in his pounding head like a death knell. He clenched his teeth as he struggled to come down to earth instead of rocketing himself into the stratosphere.

I need… I need to calm down…

“Shoto?” his mother’s voice timidly called. Her soft-spoken tone sliced through the layer of anxiety clouding his mind, allowing him to descend back to reality. He closed his eyes as he composed himself, steadying his ragged breaths and slowing his heart rate. That’s right… I can’t… I can’t let her know I’m like this.

After he was confident he was presentable, Shoto crossed the floor in a few quick strides to open the door for her. Rei smiled sweetly up at him before her slate-gray eyes dropped to admire the way the tuxedo accented his muscular form. She ran her small hands down his sleeves before linking her fingers with his and giving them a gentle squeeze. He hoped she didn’t notice that they were trembling. “You look so handsome,” she praised, looking back up at him lovingly.

“Thank you, Mother,” Shoto smiled. He walked backward into the room, tugging on his mother’s fingers so she would follow, and Rei gently shut the door behind her. She walked to the floor-length mirror to inspect her own look— a baby-blue dress patterned with white flowers tied together with white flats and a baby-blue headband. “You also look lovely,” he added while retrieving another bottle of water from the mini-fridge in the corner. Rei hummed gratefully at his appraisal, watching him guzzle half of the plastic bottle through her reflection.

“Are you nervous, dear?” she asked abruptly. Shoto flinched in surprise, which made him lurch forward and spill water down his windpipe. He spluttered and coughed, eyes watering at the burning sensation overtaking his throat, while Rei turned around to look at him in concern. As he wiped the stream of water and spit from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, he debated lying to her. However, all notions of that flew out the window when he caught her soft, motherly gaze. “It’s natural, dear,” she reassured as she walked over to him.

Lie. She doesn’t need to know, chimed that anxious beast. It was tempting; Shoto could feel the excuse forming on his tongue. Except… no words came out. He looked helplessly at her, causing her expression to morph into one of intense concern. Shoto didn’t want to lie. He didn’t want to feel this way— selfish and egotistical and undeserving of his life.

His life with her.

“Shoto. Tell me what’s wrong,” she ordered, her voice just firm enough to abolish any remaining ideas of lying to her.

Shoto exhaled deeply and sagged down onto the small sofa next to the fridge. His mother could read him with scary precision, so there really was no use lying, anyway. She stopped in front of him to weave her slim fingers into his two-toned hair, and he responded by leaning forward to press his forehead into her belly. Rei softly scratched along his scalp in rhythmic, soothing strokes, and though she really hadn’t said anything, even the action alone made Shoto relax just the tiniest bit.

“What’s bothering you?”

He expected her to ask him if he was having second thoughts, just like the rest of them—but she didn’t. Shoto swallowed thickly before answering in a tiny voice. “I just realized how lucky I am, and I’m not quite sure I’m deserving of it.”

“What makes you say that, my love?” she questioned. Shoto pushed himself further into her stomach, comforted by her soft, soothing presence. Yet all the while, something nickered in the back of his mind. You abandoned her for years. You don’t deserve her comfort. Sickened by the thought, Shoto pushed himself away, grabbing a throw pillow to bury his face in it instead. He heard Rei softly gasp; then, the couch cushion dipped beside him as she tentatively sat down. He curled around the throw pillow, stomach whirling as all his anxieties came to a boil.

“Shoto,” she whispered and laid a gentle hand on the small of his back. “Talk to me, Shoto.”

Even though he had rejected her in favor of the pillow, he found himself falling against her. She held him close as he curled against her side. He was so much bigger than her now, but he still felt like he fit naturally into her petite frame. Slowly, he pried his face away from the pillow to reveal that the fabric had darkened with tears. He looked at her brokenly, the salty droplets rolling down his cheeks.

“Am I selfish, Mother?” he asked hoarsely, horrifiedly. Surely he must be, if everyone kept asking him if he would turn tail and run. “If I’m selfish, and am turning everyone away, then won’t… won’t I end up pushing her away and breaking her heart?” Just the thought of it broke Shoto’s, shattered it into a million little pieces. The love of his life, his dream, his salvation—the thought of doing that to her made him want to die, and the thought that he was already well on his way there made him want to die right now.

“Shoto, sweetheart,” Rei breathed and pulled him into a crushing hug. Shoto squeezed his eyes shut and buried himself into her, breathing in her scent of floral perfume and ice water. She kissed the top of his head before resting her cheek against it. “You are not selfish. What on Earth has gotten that into your head?”

“I just… Everyone keeps asking if I’m having second thoughts. Fuyumi was really upset thinking that I won’t be around anymore, and then Father came to talk to me about how far I’ve come as a hero, and then Izuku and Katsuki were worried about me, and—” he sucked in a breath after everything came tumbling out, trying to sort his disordered thoughts. “I just… Everything seems like it’s falling into place, and I just can’t help but think that it shouldn’t be. That it’s too easy, and because of that, I must be messing up somewhere, right?” As he looked at her, conflicted, Rei smiled reassuringly and brushed a strand of his red-and-white hair out of his face.

“Shoto, honey, you deserve everything you’re being given. If I can’t convince you of that, though,” she smiled mischievously and gestured at the door with her chin, “maybe she can.”

A blush exploded up from Shoto’s neck to flush all the way to the crown of his head. He grabbed the pillow and smashed his face into it, flopping across Rei’s lap to smoosh down into the couch for good measure. His mother laughed at his overreaction, barely masking the click of heels over the wood.

“Shoto?” came the tentative voice. What is she doing here? He thought, heart pounding in his throat.

“Sorry,” he heard Izuku say meekly. “Shoto was just so out of sorts… I thought the only one who could snap him out of it was her…”

“Idiot! Didn’t I say it was bad luck?” Katsuki scolded. Shoto heard him huff and the creak of the pressed fabric of his tuxedo as he crossed his arms. “But, Icy-Hot is acting pretty weird today… All right, do your stuff.”

Shoto just squirmed uncomfortably, listening to the ruffles of the lace and the soft click of heels as the woman he would be meeting at the aisle in another hour or two stopped beside him.

“Shoto,” Momo said, the laughter evident in her voice. God, he loved her voice. It was like a song, high and sweet. “Honey, what’s the matter?”

“Can’t look,” he mumbled evasively. “Bad luck.”

“You don’t have to look at me, then,” she chuckled, reaching down to soothingly run a hand over his back. He found himself arching a little into her touch, calm spreading through his nerves. “Just talk to me, sweetie.” Her white gown ruffled as she kneeled down on the floor beside him. Shoto dug his fingers into the pillow, wondering if there was a way out of this mortifying situation. There wasn’t, and he really didn’t want an out, anyway. She continued to stroke down the length of his spine. “Shoto, honey, you know you’re not selfish, right?”

The silence told Momo all she needed to know. She exhaled deeply, and he didn’t have to look at her to know she was wearing that sweet, loving smile she always wore when she comforted him. “Let me tell you something. Not for a single second have I felt neglected, nor have I had any inclination that you were sacrificing your personal life for the sake of your career,” she iterated slowly. Shoto squirmed as her reassurance battled with the poisonous beast inside him.

“Maybe I haven’t done it to you yet, but… What about my friends and family?”

“Boys?” Momo asked, presumably looking at Katsuki and Izuku. “Have you ever felt like Shoto hasn’t been a good friend?”

“What? No! Of course not!” Izuku blurted. “You’re an amazing friend! I can always count on you to be there when I need it, no matter what we’re doing.”

“Yeah. If anything, he can shove off, the Icy-Hot bastard.”

“Kacchan!”

“What? He’s up our asses all the time!”

“That’s because we’re partners, Kacchan! We’re gonna open up our own agency, remember?”

“That doesn’t mean he has to show up at my house for some stupid soba party he decided to have without telling anyone!”

Shoto found his lips curling into a tiny smile into the pillow. It was a shame that bickering was so familiar, and so comforting. Momo giggled sweetly and patted him on the back.

“See, honey? Your friends certainly don’t think you’re selfish and pushing them away.”

Although it was a start, Shoto couldn’t help but think of his sobbing sister.

“But… Fuyumi…”

“Shoto, that isn’t what Fuyumi meant at all,” Rei chortled and rubbed the back of his head. “Fuyumi just felt like a mother bird watching her chick leave the nest… Women get emotional over things like that. Your sister—and the rest of us, for that matter—all know you love us very much and want to stay an active part of our lives. I’ve enjoyed every minute of watching you grow into a man, and have never felt like you were abandoning me. You’re growing up. That is a reality we must face, and sometimes… It’s a little tough for us, that’s all.”

“That’s right,” Momo seconded. “See? We all love you, Shoto, so much. Please don’t ever think that you’re selfish, because you’re far from it.” He felt his eyes water as the emotions caused her voice to crack, indicating she was on the border of tears. Though he couldn’t look at her like he wanted to, he groped blindly in the air, searching for her hand. Momo caught it in both of hers to give it a tight squeeze, then pressed a lingering kiss to his knuckles. “Every day I’m thankful that you’ve chosen to love me,” she murmured against his skin, and he felt her tears drip down onto his hand. “My selfless hero.”

“Momo,” he groaned. When she hummed against his hand, he smiled weakly. “I appreciate you coming to cheer me up, but if you don’t leave now, I’m going to have to commit some wedding taboo.”

Momo laughed heartily, uttering small “okay’s” between her giggles, and slowly stood up. His fingers skimmed against the soft fabric of her lace skirt, and he found himself extraordinarily tempted to peek; but he didn’t. He knew that it would be a feeling like no other when he saw her walking down the aisle, so he just had to wait a little bit longer.

“Thank you both for looking out for him,” Momo said to Katsuki and Izuku as she left. “I’ll see you soon!”

Shoto waited until the clacks of her heels faded before he slowly sat up, rubbing at his tear-sticky face. Rei looked at him with a loving smile.

“Do you feel better, sweetie?”

“Mhmm,” he nodded with a sleepy smile. Having an existential crisis sure was exhausting. Still, his nerves soon began to buzz with the anticipation of what was yet to come. “How long until the ceremony?” he asked, looking expectantly at Izuku and Katsuki.

“About forty-five minutes, but it doesn’t matter, because there’s no way in Hell I’m letting you walk out like that. Get your ass in here!” Katsuki growled as he marched over and snatched him up by the collar. Shoto could only stumble after him as he was dragged into the groomsmens’ room, while Rei and Izuku both looked on laughing.

Forty-four minutes later, Katsuki had combed his messy hair back to submission and managed to erase almost all evidence of his puffy eyes and teary cheeks.

Now, Shoto stood rocking on his heels in front of the steel altar woven with ivy, wine-red roses, and white dahlias. Momo’s bridesmaids— Ochako, Mina, Tooru, and Tsuyu—were across the altar on the left, while Shoto’s groomsmen—Katsuki, Tenya, Inasa, Kirishima—and his best man Izuku were behind him to his right. Stretching out before him were rows of chairs, each one filled by someone special in his and Momo’s lives. Their families sat in the front row with bated breath. The ceremony was held in the main room while the reception would be held in an adjoining one—and in between them was a winding spiral staircase that Momo would be walking down any moment.

Shoto straightened up as the pianist began to play. His heterochromatic eyes were fixated on the staircase and his breath stilled in his chest. He caught the flash of her heel first, then the ruffles of her lace skirt as she slowly began to descend from upstairs. Shoto’s mouth gradually fell open as she came down from the heavens like an angel, here to grace his undeserving mortal self with her rapturous love. She was chuckling quietly to her father, who held her arm as he guided her down the steps. Kyoka came down last, carrying the long train of Momo’s dress.

He had been right to wait. It was a gorgeous sleeveless mermaid gown that hugged her beautiful figure in all the right ways. A swathe of wine red cut the skirt in half and adorned the bodice of her dress in thin, swirling threads that looked like roses. Her soft tresses of black hair were piled above her head before falling down in luscious curls to frame her face. A tiara was tucked into her hair, securing the sheer white veil cascading over her. She held a bouquet of white and red flowers as she slowly walked down the aisle, which had been laden with rose and dahlia petals by the flower girl. Even through the veil, Shoto could see her brimming with joy just by the aura radiating off her.

When she stopped next to him, giving her father a kiss on the cheek before he left to sit with the rest of the audience, Shoto could only gape in pure awe. He didn’t even register the priest speaking.

“Honey,” Momo laughed quietly. “You might want to pay attention.”

“Right,” he said and snapped his mouth shut, blushing as a few of the wedding party snickered and elbowed one another. His gaze snuck back to his beautiful bride, the love of his life, who stood so patiently waiting to read her vows. When she felt him staring, she smirked and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes.

“What?”

“I’m just realizing how lucky I am,” he explained softly. She looked at him with a confused smile. “I get to share this life I’ve made with the most wonderful woman on the planet. I thought at first I wasn’t worthy of it, but now… I’ve realized.”

“Realized what, Shoto?”

“Why I worked so hard for a life like this to begin with. I wanted to become a man deserving of your love, Momo,” he explained, reaching out to gently ghost his fingers over hers. “I’m just really glad to hear that you think I’m worthy.”

“Silly,” she laughed, tears slipping down her cheeks and clinging to the sheer lace of the veil. “You’ve always been worthy.”

Maybe that’s the way she felt. It was just a testament to how beautiful she was, right down to her soul. But now, after this whirlwind of a day, Shoto could rest easy knowing that he really was. Because she was his angel, his goddess, his salvation, and his life, and she was worthy of everything he had to give her and more—and he would work tirelessly every day to live up to that, to keep himself worthy.

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

#todomomo #shoto x momo #momo x shoto #momo yaoyorozu #yaoyorozu momo #shoto todoroki #todoroki shoto #todoroki x yaoyorozu #yaoyorozu x todoroki #my hero academia #mha #bnha #boku no hero academia #my hero

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 4 years ago

Text

Alt Ending, Part 6

First

Tag: @solangelo252

“I’ll just write one scene”

Good news! It wasn’t acid!

Bad news! It was so much worse!

Marinette had apparently learned nothing from the last time she’d been thrown into painful green liquid. That thing about holding your breath? Yeah, that doesn’t work when you were screaming your whole way down. It also didn’t help that she backflopped and whatever air she’d managed to hold onto left her with a gasp right before she was submerged in the cold green.

Of course, the lack of oxygen was the least of her worries.

Every wound she’d ever gotten had reopened, one at a time.

Burns her hands from the times she’d helped her family in the bakery. Skin got sloughed off her elbows and knees from years of trips and pushes. Her nose cracked under a kickball gone awry. A hole slowly tore itself into her cheek from how often she bit at it.

But that wasn’t the worst part. If it had just been that, she would have been fine. She inched through the water between gasps for air as the Lazarus waters churned to keep her head under, searching desperately for shore through all the green, but it wasn’t to be. She was distracted by the end of the first minute by a whole new world of pain.

She had forgotten about most of the akuma stuff. Call it selective memory or repression or whatever, but now it was coming back in literally excruciating detail. All the times she had missed jumps on patrols and snapped another part of her leg in half. Her trademark yoyo’s string dug into the skin of her fingers, threatening to cut off her fingers and even occasionally managing. A mind controlled Chat’s Cataclysm, setting every cell in her arm alight before killing them entirely.

Levity came in the form of being a Gotham vigilante. At that point punches and kicks and slaps and even the odd slash with a knife were nothing in comparison to a Cataclysm --.

A chunk was torn out of her side and she cried out. The bullet buried itself in her, that wasn’t what hurt the most. The area around the bullet was torn to shreds and steaming and generally just everything skin should not be doing.

She knelt in the water and pressed her hand to the wound, taking deep breaths of the green for the first time in a while and remembering that that was a bad idea when her vision threatened to go black.

No time to think about that, though!

She was mercilessly pulled back to her old pains as she felt something cold pressed to the side of her head. A blade dug under the skin, pushing down and sawing through the cartilage of her ears, taking the pinna with it. The last sounds she ever properly heard were the screams tearing themselves from her throat. Fingers scraped the wounds as she begged and pleaded for him to stop, digging into the frayed skin and fractured bones until it pulled out its prize.

The acid was back. It ate at her skin and pushed itself down her throat and into where her ears had been and sept into every inch of her until she could feel nothing except for pain. Every nerve ending screamed for an end to it, for death to take her finally.

And then it was gone. And she, foolishly, hoped it was over. After all, that was a perfectly viable death. She could have absolutely died in that moment, the acid could have dissolved everything of use or suffocated her until her body finally gave out.

But then came the thirst.

And, somehow, the thirst was the worst part.

At least with everything else it was something she had dealt with, it was things she knew she could get through. She’d done it before, she’d endured it, and that was fine. But the hunger was different. She’d spent those last few days completely out of it. Mostly lost in a world where her problem was less the fact that she was slowly dying of dehydration and more that everyone in her life thought she was stupid and useless and more trouble than she was worth.

And she almost missed that. Her constant nightmares had made her more or less numb to that by this point.

Instead, she felt the slow gnawing at what the acid had left of her stomach. Her throat torn to shreds, her mouth hopelessly dry despite the water that she was drowning in. The fatigue taking over every part of her until she could no longer fight against the pit holding her under. Every cell in her body seemed to give out, one by one. They knew it was useless, that she was useless, that there was no point in hoping SHE of all people could get her hands on it in time. Lidded eyes slowly, painfully, raised to look at the shore only a few feet away. She tried to force herself to grab onto something beneath her despite the fact that she was shaking so badly she knew it was impossible, tried to drag herself the last bit…

She slumped forward, gone before her head had even hit the bottom.

She woke up to fingers trailing through her hair, slowly and gently pulling knots out of damp locks.

And then they pulled their hands out.

She was allowed to roll off the person’s lap to cough and sputter and gasp until the bulk of the water was out of her lungs. Even after she’d managed to expel it, she felt weak and shaky. She refused to move out of the position she was in, forehead pressed to the cool rock in the cave, knees tucked under her, hands covering the back of her neck and head protectively. She couldn’t care less that she was touching her own lung water, that there was still a steady trail dripping from her parted lips. At least when she was like this she didn’t have to face whatever had happened to her in the time since she’d passed out.

“Marinette?” Said Damian from somewhere near her, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it.

She gave him a cough as an answer.

She took one last, shaky breath of semi-fresh air and then forced her eyes open.

Yep, that was a puddle of lung water. She looked down at the rock beneath her, taking in the ugly green tint that the waters cast upon it.

The shivering wouldn’t stop. She didn’t know whether it was her weak muscles or the intense cold that had soaked into her bones.

A hand rested upon her back and she forced herself to look over at Duke. He looked at her, concern etched in every line of his green face.

Wait, green?

She blinked a few times to try and get the last of the water that would be in her eyes out, but it didn’t seem to be getting any better. Frustrated, she brought her hands up to try and rub the green out.

It wasn’t working.

She rubbed harder, started trying to almost pull off her skin and might have even popped her eyes out if hands hadn’t caught her wrists and pulled them away from her face.

She looked up at Damian for a few minutes, taking in the odd tint in her vision that made his skin a sickly color. She felt like up, but there didn’t seem to be anything in her stomach to throw up with.

“How’re you feeling?” Asked Damian carefully, still not releasing her.

Her irritation spiked and she wrenched her hands free. “Fine, thanks.” She had to tear the short words from her throat, it was raw and scratchy and she hated speaking but she continued on regardless: “I’m not a civvie, Dami, you don’t have to pretend like you care.”

He reeled back like he’d been slapped -- well, no, she’d seen him take far more than a slap without flinching, but you get the point -- and she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

Still, she forced a “sorry” through tight lips. He hardly seemed perturbed by just how fake the apology was, probably used to it considering he had as many siblings as he had, and left to go talk to his mother.

She flopped back onto the stone despite the fact that it was too cold, that SHE was too cold, and just laid there. She glared at some stalactites on the ceiling like they had personally offended her.

Duke’s face carefully poked its way into her vision and she looked up at him for a minute before sighing and reaching a hand towards him. He got the idea, locking his hand with hers and pulling her to shaky feet. She leaned against him heavily, head resting against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t realize… I didn’t think it would be that bad...”

She shook her head slightly against his shoulder and he let himself trail off.

Damian and Talia were speaking in Arabic. Marinette couldn’t translate most of it, but she got the general gist. Damian was saying thanks over and over again (one of the few words she’d managed to catch onto in Arabic outside of swears) and Talia’s hand motions assured that it was fine. Damian hesitated slightly before wrapping his mother in a hug and, though she tensed up at first and seemed unsure what to do, she carefully returned it.

Marinette felt like she was intruding. Her gaze fell to the floor.

Oh. Someone had taken her miraculous off of her, she realized as she looked down at herself. She wore one of Jason’s hoodies and a pair of Cass’s old sweatpants, both stolen from their owners. A hand came up to touch her hair and she noted absently that it was still pushed out of her face with a cloth headband from when she was doing her skincare routine right before the incident with the Rogues. It was like nothing had ever happened.

Honestly, it was almost weird to see casual clothes on herself rather than the swing-style dress she’d been wearing for who knows how long --.

Huh. She wondered if Kaalki was okay. She hoped so, she would have felt awful if the kwami had gotten hurt because of overuse.

She looked at Duke to ask, and found him stressing over something on his phone. She tried to peek over his shoulder and pouted when he angled the phone away and continued to type out a message.

“Dukeeeeeeee. Duke. Duke. Duuuuuke. Duke. Duke,” she whined to be annoying.

He didn’t answer outside of moving the hand on her shoulder up to cover her mouth. She licked his hand and saw disgust flicker across his face before he brought his hand up to try and wipe her spit off on her forehead. She recoiled and pressed back against the offending hand, holding him off.

They continued on like this for a good minute before Damian sidled up between them and forced them apart.

“You’re both children.”

Marinette huffed a little and clung onto him, partially to be annoying and partially because she still felt horribly weak and cold. He seemed annoyed but he supported her weight as they started walking back through the compound.

“Dami, you’re the youngest one here. If we’re children what does that make you?”

“A baby,” said Duke, pocketing his phone.

Damian’s face burned red and he clicked his tongue. “I’m hardly younger than either of you.”

“Three months is a long time,” Marinette said wisely.

“Three years is even longer,” Duke said, even wiser.

A scowl made its way across the least wise person’s face. “Why do I put up with either of you?”

“Because you love us,” said Marinette just as Duke said “Because you’re a softy”.

Duke grinned and held up a hand for her to high five and she did so, only to regret it when she was forced to remember that there had been spit on that hand. He smirked at her disgust. She vaguely considered murder.

Duke’s amusement slowly disappeared and he looked at Damian. “They’re on their way. Should get here within a few hours.”

Damian cringed.

Marinette buried her face in his shoulder and closed her eyes, considering everything. She doubted that when they said ‘they’ they weren’t including Bruce. Even if she didn’t have her quick and easy murder method anymore, she could still be deadly. Then again, she would have to fight off however many batfamily members just to get to him and by the point she did so -- IF she even did so -- she would be exhausted and easy for Bruce to subdue.

Hm. It was worth a shot, at least.

Marinette stared at the suitcase on the ground. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Mari, you look dead on your feet -- don’t laugh I’m being serious -- and if anyone saw us walking you through town... it would be bad.”

Her slight smile at the unintentional joke slipped into a frown as she bit the inside of her cheek. “What if I say I have trauma related to suitcases?”

“Considering you’ve already been in it and we just watched all your trauma -- or, at least, all the things you would consider to be trauma -- play out, I’m going to have to say I don’t quite believe you.”

A dark look passed over her face and, for a moment, she swore the world looked just a little more green.

But, then, she held her hands out and let them tie them off with some rope.

(Of course, she knew how to get out of it, but it would be a pain and, really, what would she do if she could get out? Suitcases aren’t exactly easy to get out of from the inside.)

“Sorry about this, Mari,” said Duke.

She hummed her understanding.

They closed the suitcase over her. Without a giant dress in the way, it was actually a pretty roomy space. Still, it took a lot of shifting to find a position where her bony knees and elbows didn’t dig into her. This didn’t last long. Now that she didn’t have the warmth of another person she was unbearably cold. Bony limbs be damned, she wasn’t going to freeze to death in a suitcase of all things.

Once she stopped shifting around they started walking. She rested her head against the suitcase, eyes struggling to remain open, and found they were talking about food in the areas around them. She wanted food. She told them so. There was a beat where they stilled and then Damian promised to get her something.

Alright. So they could hear her in there. That took away the calling the police option, but that didn’t matter much.

Out of boredom, she pulled her phone from her pocket and clicked it on. To her surprise, it actually worked.

She stared at the home screen for a moment. She and Jason were flipping off the camera while Tim looked on, unamused. She’d used to think the picture was cute. Now, though, with her vision tinted green and the knowledge of what she was going to do... she found tears springing to her eyes. She looked at the screen for just a second longer to check the time -- 15:00 -- and then turned the phone around and used it as a light.

With nothing else to do as she waited for things to pan out the way she wanted, she examined herself. It was weird to look at her hands and see them in perfect shape. Old scars from the oven and repeated punching without proper protection on her knuckles and lines from her yoyo were all gone. No hint of anything that had ever happened to her. It felt weird. Like she wasn’t really herself anymore.

She tripped out on that for a while until she heard voices.

Alright, go time.

She slipped her phone back into her pocket. She doubted anyone would think to check her for one.

She carefully pulled her headband down and slipped it in her mouth, then knotted the fabric behind her head a few times until it was so tight it almost hurt.

Marinette took a deep breath and then started screaming through her makeshift gag.

Three things happened in rapid succession: the light chatter around the three of them petered out, Duke swore loudly, and then the bats broke into a run.

Despite their best efforts, though, they got caught. It’s kind of hard to run and do parkour when you’re toting along a suitcase, especially if you don’t want to hurt the person inside. The suitcase rolled to a stop and she could hear mad scrambling as Duke and Damian struggled to get away without risking their civilian identities.

Marinette squeezed her eyes shut and started thinking.

The bats were going to hate her for this. She was going to have to actually put in effort to die now instead of having an instant death via taking off her miraculous. Harley probably didn’t know that she was still alive (or, rather, around, because the ‘alive’ thing was very recent) and Marinette couldn’t even be sure she cared.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Good, good. Keep thinking about that.

Harley was going to be so pissed at her for taking so long. Harley would always love Joker more than her. Harley was probably just using her for her own gain. Harley didn’t care about her and never would, or at least not in the way Marinette so desperately wanted her to.

By the time the suitcase was opened Marinette was full on sobbing. The sudden influx of light certainly didn’t help the situation.

She whimpered and shielded her eyes despite wanting oh-so-desperately to step out into the sun and bask in its rays for the first time since before Harley.

Some god must have been listening to her for once, because a pair of hands carefully lifted her out of the suitcase. She slowly, almost reluctantly, looked up at her ‘savior’. The kind-looking woman had moved to block most of the sunlight and the little parts that escaped surrounded her head like a halo. Marinette gave her a wet smile as her gag and the rope binding her hands were removed.

The woman spoke to her in Arabic and, though she didn’t understand any of it, the soft edge to her voice made her feel so safe. Marinette choked out a sob and allowed the woman to gather her into a hug.

Briefly, her gaze lifted from the woman’s shoulder and she saw Damian and Duke getting held back by some random citizens. If the civilians had seen the watery smile on her face they would have thought it was just happiness at finally be saved. The two bats knew better, the slightly sour looks on their faces told her so.

A hand came up to run through her hair and she buried her face in the woman’s shoulder as she began to cry even harder.

The officer was holding Duke and Damian at gunpoint as two citizens worked at trying to cuff them. He only put his gun back in its holster after he was sure that they weren’t going to be running anytime soon.

Marinette didn’t know for sure what the cop thought was going on, but she had a few guesses. After all, she worked in law enforcement too, however unofficially. If she’d seen someone in her state -- clothes hanging off her too-thin frame and shaking like a leaf after being pulled out of a suitcase -- she would have instantly assumed trafficking or, at the very least, kidnapping.

Knowing what the officer was expecting, she also knew exactly how to play into that idea. Really, the boys had had no chance.

“She’s our sister!” Damian tried to argue.

The officer, Ali, looked at the three of them with a skeptical frown. Damian might have passed as her family, they were both mixed white and chinese (he was also part arab, but half-siblings exist), but Duke definitely couldn’t.

“Did you know these men before… all of this, ma’am?”

She sniffled and brought a hand up to swipe under her eyes. Technically, if she were actually a trafficking victim, the answer would have probably been ‘yes’, most trafficking cases started out on the victim’s terms. She also knew that, when victims were truthful about this, they often got thrown into jail for prostitution. She didn’t feel like getting thrown in a cell.

“N-no. I was just going to work and they -- and they --,” she cut herself off, dissolving into sobs.

Ali pulled her into a hug and she tried to ignore the fact that his hand was definitely too low.

She could practically FEEL Damian and Duke’s annoyance. This looked bad for them, all three of the present bats knew it, and the real explanation wouldn’t be believed.

The two boys were filed into the back of a police car and Marinette was allowed to sit shotgun.

The cop offered her a shock blanket and, despite not being in shock, she took it. She was so unbearably cold despite her thick layers and the fact that it was the middle of summer.

She watched the cop walk around the car to the driver’s seat and everything was quiet as they started off towards the police station.

“You’re an asshole, Mari,” Duke said in French.

She glanced at the cop, but he just looked confused. Fair enough. English was a pretty common second language around the world because of business and tourism, but no one learned French if they didn’t have to.

She gave a wet laugh. “Yeah.”

The cop frowned. “What are they saying?”

She waved him off. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not!”

She fought back a bit of laughter and turned in her seat to look at the two of them. “What’d you boys really expect?”

“You’ve never tried to leave before, forgive us for thinking that wouldn’t change. It’s called…” Damian frowned for a moment before finding the term he needed: “Learned helplessness.”

“Tell me you didn’t pay attention in psychology without telling me. Learned helplessness is where you try a bunch of different things and nothing works so you learn not to try again. I never tried anything.”

“Oh so NOW she knows about psychological trauma,” complained Duke.

A true frown made its way across her face. “I’ve always known about psychological trauma. It was Hawkmoth’s whole thing in Paris.”

“She knows intellectually, she’s just woefully unable to apply the teachings to herself,” said Damian.

Marinette scowled at him. “Harley. Didn’t. Traumatize. Me.”

All she got were two eyerolls and she huffed, turning back around in her seat and crossing her arms. The boys switched languages and, after checking to make sure she didn’t understand, started chatting.

She slowly started to nod off, head resting against the center console. She was without her normal coffee, and she kind of regretted not waiting for Duke and Damian to get food before enacting her plan, and she’d more or less cried herself out earlier…

The only thing keeping her from sleeping was Ali’s hand, resting right on top of her head. She wanted to think it was innocent. In her experience, cops almost never were.

The chattering cut off when they came to a stop and she slowly lifted her head up and looked around, expecting a police station. Instead, she found a normal red light (or, at least, she was pretty sure that it was red, her vision was still tinted green). She frowned a little and turned to look at Duke and Damian…

They had disappeared from the backseat.

She shot up and hissed a curse. Of course they could break out of police cars -- now that she was thinking about it, she was pretty sure Duke had mentioned doing it before.

Ali looked back and she saw his face change from calm to confused to annoyed. He tried to smooth his expression back into a neutral one and assure her that everything was fine, but she didn’t really care about him anymore.

She reached into his belt and pulled his gun out of its holster. Safety off. Finger on the trigger. Evade the hand trying to take it away. Push him back with a foot until he’s pressed against a window. Check that he can’t move much. Point at his head.

“Thanks for the help,” she chirped. “Or, at least, for trying.”

She pulled the trigger.

Blood and gore splattered everywhere. Point blank range always had that effect. The shock blanket managed to keep most of it off of her, but some got on her face and in her hair.

She thought she’d be more disgusted. If not with herself then at least with the blood. Instead, she reached a hand up slowly to rest over where the blood had hit. It was… warm. She hadn’t expected that she could ever feel warm again.

She slowly looked at the body. It was gushing blood all over her foot and she found she almost didn’t care. She almost found herself smiling. It was soaking through her old sneakers, warming her in a way nothing else had since she'd been dunked in the Pit.

And then the color… kwami. It wasn’t green, it wasn’t brown or black like what normally happens when you mixed red and green, it was RED.

A sickening smile finally made its way across her face.

The screaming started. She pulled herself from her haze, released the body and watched it slump. Right. This was going to suck if she got arrested.

She shed her blanket and leaned over the body, checking for and taking everything she could use. Taser. Extra bullets. A baton. Tear gas. Wallet…

Yeah, that was everything, she was pretty sure. She, reluctantly, wiped the still-wet blood off her hands to pull her hood up and cover her splattered face and then slipped out the door. No one stopped her -- probably because of the gun in her hands -- and she was allowed to disappear down an alley.

Alright. She was free.

She wasn’t FREE free, obviously, the bats would find her eventually. But she had some time out. What should she do first?

… she should probably get the blood off. Getting arrested would suck.

She slipped out the other side of the alley and started weaving her way through the city in search of a gas station. There were a good amount in Tibet, so it didn’t take too long to find one. She ducked into it to wash the remaining blood off her face and hands and, after being prompted to buy something by a clerk in return for being allowed the pleasure of using their dingy bathrooms, bought a tiny bag of chips.

Then she was back to walking aimlessly. She made sure to switch directions often, occasionally even going back the way she’d just come. The less predictable her movements the better.

She nibbled at the chips as she went. She’d only bought them to get the cashier off her ass, but she actually was pretty hungry. She had to fight herself not to scarf the entire thing down.

Right, basic needs have been met, what next?

She pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the time. 20:00. The bats were definitely in the city.

She hesitated slightly. They probably assumed her phone was dead, even she had, so they probably hadn’t started tracking her yet…

She swallowed back her fear. She needed to do this before one of the bats realized and actually started tracking her.

A few clicks later, she was pressing her phone to her ear.

It didn’t even ring once before she got an answer: “Marinette?”

“Maman,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Marinette could practically hear the way her mother’s shoulders slumped in relief. She rested her head back against the wall, tears springing to her eyes for what felt like the millionth time that day.

“We thought you were…” Her mother didn’t dare complete the thought aloud.

Marinette held back the ‘Well, I was, but I got better’ that was on the tip of her tongue. Her mother didn’t know about her activities as Ladybug and she was never going to. Marinette took a vow to protect when she started heroism, and that definitely extended to her parents.

“I’m alive. Surprise,” she said after a moment’s consideration.

Sabine gave a little laugh and Marinette didn’t care if it was forced because it was HERS. A sob built in her throat.

“I hope you know you owe me more explanation than just that, young lady. It’s almost been a year! Your father and I --.” Sabine stopped herself and softened her tone. “We’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

She swallowed thickly. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m... fine. And… I can’t explain, there’s just so much and… yeah. It’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. I just needed to hear your voice again.”

Her mother hesitated. “That sounds an awful lot like you’re about to disappear again.”

“I am,” she confirmed, because lying would hurt her mother more in the long run. Still, she almost wished that she could have lied because listening to her mother sob was almost unbearable. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk long. I just wanted to call and tell you guys that… that I’m okay. And that I love you.”

Her mother’s breath caught.

Marinette glared at the ground.

She waited for her mother to get her breathing under control.

“I love you, too, sweetie. Would you like to talk to Pere?”

She hesitated and then mumbled a no. She couldn’t. Talking to her mother was hard, but at least her mother was practical. Her mother knew that Marinette wasn’t going to change what she was doing. Her mother knew that Marinette was doing what she felt like she must.

Her father, though, her father would plead with her. He’d promise to protect her. He’d promise that she could come home, that they could deal with it together, that everything is easier to handle when you do it with others. And she just might believe him.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

The phone slipped from her hand and she barely paid it any mind as it shattered on the concrete below.

She slowly slid to the ground beside her phone and rested her head in her hands. Tears that she’d been holding back since she started the call spilled from between her fingers. Her breath came to her in shaky gasps that were definitely not enough in the long run and her lungs hurt as she struggled for air between sobs but it was nothing compared to drowning in acid so she was fine.

No. Not fine. Fine implied that things were, if not going distinctly ‘well’, going vaguely in the right direction. Marinette felt like she’d seen a fork in a path and then ignored both choices in favor of whacking a new path through the forest. She knew, somewhere, that she was only getting further and further from where she’d originally intended and yet she couldn’t turn back. Because turning back would mean looking and seeing all the plants she’d killed on her way through the brush that hadn’t even needed to die and she couldn’t face that. She couldn’t. So she kept going. Kept praying that, somehow, she’d find her way back to the path.

So, no, ‘fine’ wasn’t the word. She was… she was dealing. She’d deal.

She took a few more deep, steadying breaths before picking her head up. She needed to leave. Tim would start tracking her soon, if he hadn’t already, and she couldn’t beat all the bats at once.

She chanced one more look at her phone. The call had disconnected and now she was staring at her home screen yet again. The picture of herself smiling at the camera with friends was cracked, her face lost in a spiderweb of broken glass.

Marinette took a deep breath and then brought her fist down on the phone. It shattered and went dark beneath her hand. Blood, warm and red, slowly dripped along her arm and she stuffed it in one of her pockets before she could start dripping on the ground.

She started aimlessly walking around again. She’d find a motel or something after a few hours. For now, she needed to be untraceable.

She knew she should take off her outfit. They were looking for someone in a hoodie and sweats. But she couldn’t. It was the last thing she had of either of them, of any of the bats. Even if they were on different sides, she still cared about them. She still found herself wanting them to be happy.

She just wanted Harley to be happier.

Which meant she was going to have to put some effort in.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

The bats would find her no matter what, it was a given. They had access to pretty much every camera in the world, access to satellites for the things they couldn’t see with the cameras. She could only evade them for so long. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.

Which meant that she needed to be the one to decide on when. It would never be an even fight, they had years of experience on her, but she had infinitely better chances if she caught them off guard rather than the other way around. She had to find them before they could find her.

She’d have to go online at a library or something to see if Bruce Wayne came along. Him leaving without much notice would probably draw Vicky Vale’s attention and an article would be made.

If he hadn’t then she’d have to figure out a way back to America. This was the better option, she thought. They wouldn’t expect her to be able to get back easily without a passport and a limited amount of money, so she might just be able to sneak up on Bruce.

If he HAD come along she’d start checking out motels and hotels. He’d get a bunch of rooms that were right next to each other, preferably ones that were linked together. She’d have to check for rooms with the lights on and blinds closed. Painstaking, but it could work.

Of course, it was also very likely that Bruce had some sort of safehouse here, or that she just wouldn’t happen upon the right hotel, and she wouldn’t be able to find him that way. If that were the case...

Her hands slipped into her pockets and she felt her fingers brush over the cold metal of her gun.

Well, she knew one way to attract a bat.

#i didnt know what iteration of lazarus pit i wanted to do for a while #and then my dumb acab brain was like 'kill a cop!!'#and so i did #it was fun #as for the rest of the chapter idk if i like it #too tired to change anything tho #alternate ending #alternative ending #alt ending #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #joker #harley quinn #harleen quinzel

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luidilovins · 4 years ago

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You should turn your post on the Uncanny Valley into a book or something. I am not even kidding, it's brilliant and sorely needed information. Thank you for it.

Tbh its just speculative that the uncanny valley is an inherent biological trait and not cultural or a learned behavior at the moment. A good example would be the cultural phenomenon of colorophobia where in the US we have a longer history of using clowns in our horror pop culture genres than countries like Japan.

Clown entertainment has been around since the Egytian times and maybe some people have always been freaked out by them it honestly just takes one director or author to have an disproportionately irrational fear and good cinematography skills to convince people that they SHOULD hate clowns just as much, (I could say the same about the movie Jaws but thats a bit of a tangent,) or a memorable event that damages the public's trust in something that SHOULD be innocent or harmless. (A good examples being the John Wayne Gacy trials.)

Clowns are also thought to be in the uncanney valley so ita a fairly good argument on cultural phenomenon versus genetic traits. Up until aroud the 60s-70s clowns were actually fairly well liked by the US general public and a lot of older generation still find a fondness in it that would scare the living shit out of their grandchildren.

As far as evidence that I may be right about the "uncanney valley might be because of rabies" theory, there has been a small case study suggesting that the movements of a non-human robot that trigger the effect in us, is also present in people with parkinsons but the sample size is too small for me to be thoroughly convinced.

And don't be mistaken I also dislike this concept because saying that ableism is an inherent human trait is just as bad as saying racism is an inherent human trait. There is little to gain from distrust in the disabled and little historical evidence to suggest it was common or beneficial to discard disabled people. Disabled people's remains have been found time and time again to live to incredibly long livea and be cared for, and participate in their communities. I'm highly critical of this particular case study and I take it with a grain of salt because its on cosmo, but evidence of human disabilities and compassion can be sourced by actual bones and it's been placed on VERY credible sources. NPR, NBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, NY Times, literally the clostest you can get to creme of the crop news articles on DOZENS of accounts and if you have a goddam problem then pay for a tour to the Smithsonian, find an archeologist and coherse them into showing you the bones and then explain phorensics to you because you probably wouldn't understand unless you too were a phorensic archeologist yourself.

What I DO BELIEVE tho is that if the uncanny valley is a legitimate inherent trait, that like most evolutionary traits, it made it this far for this long because it somehow served us benificially. And the biggest benifit I can think of is identifying neuro-infectious diseases because they can spread agressivley, many of them lead to death or lasting effects and are fucking MISERABLE to catch. We're talking brain swelling, fevers, uncontrollable vomiting, tremors, hallucinations, motor and vocal tics, difficulty swallowing, seizures. This could all happen because they eat infected deer meat or because of one bad fox bite. It's miserable if you survive and horrifying if you dont. Rabies can survive in your muscle tissue for years before infecting your brain and once it does usually you only live for about 5-10 days in and out of concious knowledge that you're going to die painfully, and disease aggrivated psychosis. It would be hard to pinpoint the causation because the amout of time before full blown infection would vary too much to assosiate for a long time. So your only option is to hone in on telltale signs.

The disabled people who would suffer from herdeditary or developmental neurological disorders run the risk of prejudice from mistaken identity, but if a human is part of a community, and doesn't die within a week from having a wobbly head, it would sooner or later become apparent that they're not dangerous. I think nowadays culturally people don't press to learn more about disabled people due to social and political prejudice and never fucking grow up past that. Mistaken identity or not. You learn about people from the patterns of their behaviors so even ones that seem abnormal to you become a normal recognizable pattern for them. Fancy that.

We don't get grossed out by chimps or gorillas, who are even more distant cousins, and the proof that we don't have a search and destroy button for anything immediatly related to us is a bunch of bullshit can be found in almost every human's blood on earth. And not just neanderthals, but denisovans as well. And that's not even accounting for genetic backtracking the crossbreeding of other sapiens species before we were whittled down to just the three. What makes the tweet even stupider is that when neandertals still roamed the earth humans were shorter, hardier, and overall more rough looking so we looked even indistinguished then. We Also Chewed On Bones and neandertals handled cold climates better than us based on a study on chest cavity density and, skull nasal intake and heat circulation, providing genetic diversity and the upper hand in survival in the tundras or mountainous regions spanning over Eurasia. If it wasn't for humans fucking neandertals we might not have been able to spread over the contient or diversify the way we did.

So my full hypothesis is that if the uncanny valley is a genetic inherent human trait it was used to benifit people from catching agressive diseases in a time where the benifit of fearing a group member with rabies outweighed the cost of fearing a group member with a disability like parkinsons.

WHAT PISSED ME OFF was the idea that we are DESIGNED to be unwary of our evolutionary cousins could easily be used for white supremacist spaces to justify racism BECAUSE IT ALREADY HAS

So that one tweet that might seem like a quirky thinkpiece in my eyes is just fuel for eugenics trend round whatever number we're on. It's like we don't fucking learn. It would be REALLY easy to retool the concept that it's natural for people to be fearful of whatever the bullshit definition of sub-humans are. Claiming that black people were sub-human thus deserving of mistrust and submission to white ownership worked like a fucking charm.

Maybe if I go to college and major in psyche/socio/civics it'll be my college thesis. Right now I'm more of a hobbyist than anything, but what I DO know is that anyone can make an untested hypothesis to combat another untested hypothesis and it should hold just as much goddamn value. I combatted the idea that the idea that human othering was funneled into an unconfirmed effect that causes disgust and terror based on non-human sapiens is in fact racist and gave what is in my opinion a more evoluntionary practical approach to the uncanney valley.

The generalized links that I used APARENTLY weren't good enough for some people but aparently a single tweet that says "hur dur heedle dee uncanney valley exists because of human cousins" was taken at face value even tho it was probably tapped out in five seconds without regards to the reproccussions. I find a huge discomfort that less than studious links about the evolution of monkey social behaviors that I used as a guideline to explaining my concerns became the focal point for people to nitpick without even having the gall to "well actually" on the subject. That absolute ravaging NEED to rip apart at it and devolve into name calling because I MENTIONED racism is fucking suspicious and I don't trust it. I had to stop looking at the responses because some people were only reblogging and arguing with barely half of my argument and i was getting nowhere fast.

There were a few people that made actual points with cited sources that made their own rebuttle arguments. That I respect. It's just as valid an argument as mine and I'm ALWAYS willing to take on more credible sources to strengthen my stance or gain perspective.

But it's the utter dismissal of a concerning concept that just seeped into the subtext that gnawed at my gut. Some people on top of hating the linked sources I provided, admitted they didn't read it, refused to read between the lines to purposfully misinterpret or derail my main points, and detract that my claim that the tweet was a result of systemic white supremacy saturated into modern science was a bunch of bullshit because I claimed that 1500s anglos invented racism.

The thing is we did invent the racism that we fucking currently subscribe to.

We practice the science that we formulated based on our own social prejudice. Real people die from this.

We remain uncritical of our own theorums that we postulate then pat ourselves on the back like we're philosophical geniuses even though racism is a family heirloom with a new paint job.

We preach the eugenics ideals that we pulled out of our asses to benifit from fearmongering, promises of national security and unpaied labor.

White supremacists create subtext with the intention of it being consumed by accident or in ways that seem palatable.

Fuck.

That.

I don't hate the person who wrote the tweet. Chances are that they gave the tweet as much thought as they took the time to write it and went on their day as a fun little thinkpiece. Everyone on the internet does it. But its that kind of thinking error that needs to be adressed as a progression of historic and scientific prejudice that gets rehashed, recycled and untouched and continually damages and is weaponized against marginalized people. I am not wrong for taking it seriously especially when a bunch of people were sitting around nodding their heads just as effortlessly.

I don't owe the internet any more sources than the tweet. I don't owe anyone on the internet a full scientific ananysis. And the people's reaction to what I had to say was actually what further convinced me I might have hit the nail on the head.

#answered asks #uncanny valley effect #eugenics #fuck white supremacy #systemic racism #racism #negative #slavery #luidilovins

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bnha-mha-imagines · 5 years ago

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Okay, get this: a new lov member who’s really awkward and shy. Everyone thinks she’s just a normal gal but it turns out she’s absolutely out of her mind? /sigh/ I don’t even know anymore 😔 rip. I’m so bad at requesting it should be my new party trick. Anyways, I hope you have a good day and I love your writing!!

Ahh thank you! :) I’m not sure if you wanted this to be cute or disturbing so I went with the latter because nothing I’ve posted so far is dark themed (all my stuff is like, fluff haha)! :0 Let’s get some well rounded writing up in here!

New LOV member who’s secretly insane

Warnings: DARK THEMES that include but are not limited to: Blood, dead animals, disturbing images, cannibalism, death, hearing voices, sadism/masochism, violence, mentions of self-harm etc. etc. You get the picture.

^^^Don’t read if you’re sensitive to similar topics. I went ham on this, yall.

Disclaimer: The reader depicted in this is chronically insane and is an extreme case. This is in no way a depiction of a person with a mental disorder. I don’t want to spread any misinformation, most people with mental disorders are lovely people and are not crazy/dangerous in anyway

Under the cut vvv

Tomura Shigaraki:

Look, he wasn’t a fan of the whole awkward-shy act, but hey, you were pretty hot and you had a quirk that the League definitely needed

So he let you in, figuring he’d just need to have that timid attitude of yours whipped out of you

But OH. It didn’t take long for him to realize you were completely bonkers.

Dabi was giving you shit like he did everyone, and all it took was a poor comment on his part for your usually pleasant expression to contort into one of malice and...joy? The way your face darkened and your eyes swirled with an unhinged gleam…

Maybe you’d be more interesting than he initially thought~ plus, seeing you threaten Dabi was definitely some brownie points in Tomura’s book

At times it gets frustrating because you can get out of hand, and he honestly couldn’t even handle the League WITHOUT another crazy added in the mix

But you were powerful and an important addition to the team, so you were stuck with this sorry lot whether you liked it or not

Kurogiri:

He was a little surprised, but pleasantly so, when Tomura recruited you for the League. You were actually...rather normal compared to the rest of the bunch, but he was far from complaining!

You were also modest and well-mannered, and Kurogiri especially admired that. The rest of the League was full of squabbling hotheads, so you were a breath of fresh air!

At the bar, he’d talk a lot with you seeing as you were one of the calmer villains, but overtime he noticed that certain comments would raise a few red flags.

One day you bring in the mangled body of a cat and...oh.

The way you casually set it on the bar counter and grin at Kurogiri happily while you ask for a kiddy cocktail… all the while your hands were still soaked in its blood.

Tomura’s decision made a bit more sense now. You were completely off your rocker! He treats you pretty much the same as before, but is usually the one who has to reel you in when you start to show your crazy too much.

Dabi:

When you first joined the League, he couldn’t believe it. Was Tomura fucking stupid? How could a shy, pretty thing like you possibly fit in with the baddest villain organization?

Needless to say, he was kind of an asshole to you. He’d make rude comments, blatantly say you didn’t belong here, condescendingly give you names like “princess”

For the most part you would bear it all with a grin, and though he didn’t exactly understand you reaction, he would scoff and roll his eyes. “Weirdo”

One day he happens to strike a particularly strong chord with you, and suddenly you’ve shoved him against a wall, hands wrapped around his throat

You choking him wasn’t what off put him. It was the demented look in your eyes and the lopsided grin overwhelming your face. You were practically begging him to insult you again.

“It feels soooo good when you call me names!” you giggle, fingers squeezing into his neck. “Maybe you can choke me next?!” Your eyes were excited at the sadistic thought.

He shoves you off rather easily after he gets over his initial surprise, rubbing his neck. “Crazy bitch…”

The fact that he didn’t ignite your crazy ass on the spot means you’d gained his respect, if in the slightest. Clearly you’re a better fit to be a villain than he thought. He still picks on you, but significantly less.

Himiko Toga:

She was excited to have another girl! She flocked straight to you and grabbed your sleeve right away!

“Aiiya! You’re so cute, look at you!” She poked your cheeks and you got a little flustered under the attention. She thinks you’re so shy and adorable!!!!

She makes it her mission to become your bestest best friend! But she can’t help but get a little excited from time to time.

“(Y/n), you’re too cute! Please, can I cut you up!? Just a few slices here and there! You’d look ten times cuter if I do!” And she’s grinning.

Her grin completely falters, however, when you agree. “W-What?” she didn’t expect it at all! She was used to getting brushed off.

But no...the crazed look in your eye at the mention of spilled blood… you were practically dripping with insanity.

Kurogiri stopped the both of you before you both had the chance to completely slice each other up, but from that moment on your were pretty much conjoined at the hip.

Crazy cuties flock together

Spinner:

When a cute, shy thing like yourself joined the League, he was a total flustered mess! You were absolutely adorable!

Like Kurogiri, you were a breath of fresh air, a nice change of pace to the usually colorful bunch that he got to hang around with.

You were nice to him, and he always gets embarrassed when you compliment him! So naturally he assumes that you’re the sweetheart of the bunch!

You’re talking, and finally Spinner outright asks you, “How’d you even get roped into villainy?” because it blows his mind such a normie like you are in the League

And, very casually and chipper, you describe how you murdered your family in cold blood. They hadn’t even done anything to upset you. You just wanted to.

“O-Oh.” He honestly didn’t know what to say...but he didn’t really get a chance to speak as you suddenly pull a necklace out from under your shirt. It was a strange looking thing, a shriveled black lump on a string.

“Look! I even carry a piece of them around with me!” His eyes widen, and you just giggle and tuck the petrified piece of corpse jewelry back into your shirt.

Twice:

Needless to say, Twice had some mixed feelings about you when you first joined the League.

“What the hell is such a prude bitch doing in the League?” “Aww how cute! Finally a fresh face! Happy to meet you!”

He’s honestly probably the first to realize you’re absolutely batshit because he’s always half doubting your sincerity

Let’s just say he isn’t surprised when you’re on a mission and you start gnawing and eating at a fresh corpse on the ground

“Wow, that’s fucking bad ass” “Ew!!! That’s disgusting, what the fuck!”

And hearing his voices go back and forth, you just look up, blood smeared across your face, a strange gleam in your eye and you grin!

“Hahaha! Twice, you always say the funniest things!!!”

After the mission he tries to avoid you as much as he can. Though your quirk and tenacity was something the League definitely benefited from, that didn’t mean he wanted to be anywhere near you after the shit he saw that night

You were fucking wild

Mr. Compress

After Shigaraki let you into the League, he was pretty interested in you. You seemed pretty average and you acted like a timid civilian, so what kind of quirk did you have? Surely something must have caught Tomura’s eye that he wasn’t seeing.

So he, being the man of charisma and mystery that he was, made it his secret motive to find out what you were hiding.

He took it upon himself to show you around the hideout as your own personal guide. Not that you were complaining! Compress is so flashy and entertaining that you were actually enjoying your time with him.

Not gonna lie, he was acting a little too charming and over-confident with you, trying to get you to slip up and spill a secret

And spill you did! Though not intentionally. It sort of all happened at once. Compress was moving ahead of you and all of a sudden he was thrown back against the wall.

He hits it with a grunt and slides down to the floor, looking up at you with a stunned expression. What the fuck did he do to merit that?!

But you weren’t even looking at him. No, you were whispering under your breath, staring at the ceiling and grinning like a madman.

“You’re right! That was fun!” you spoke to the empty room, pausing a moment before letting out a loud, crazy laugh. “You always were good at jokes!”

Slowly he rose and moved away from the room where you stood conversing with your imaginary voices.

Telekinesis was a pretty powerful quirk! Though it seemed your perks also came with some hefty flaws… very interesting!

Magne:

Magne was so excited to have another girl in the League! She loved Toga, of course, but at times Magne found her to be a bit...much

So when you first arrived, seemingly normal, she was so ecstatic! She wanted to do all sorts of girl things with you that she couldn’t really do often in the boy-dominated League

You were so cute and timid, she couldn’t help but want to have a girl’s sleepover with you and Toga!

Your true colors started to show, however, during the middle of a truth or dare game. Magne had asked you what your favorite crime to commit was, expecting something calmer like robbery or identity theft

Color her surprised when your face contorts into the craziest, most terrifying look as you narrate a violent murder and proceed to grab a pillow and rip it to shreds with your hands as a ‘demonstration’.

Cute AND violently psycho. She can roll with that.

#lov x reader #bnha x reader #dabi x reader #shigaraki x reader #tomura x reader #bnha league of villains #bnha lov #bnha villain #bnha magne #bnha toga #bnha dabi #bnha twice #bnha kurogiri #kurogiri x reader #toga x reader #bnha imagines #bnha headcanons #request

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tiesandtea · 4 years ago

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Ahead of Suede’s Galway Arts Festival headliner, Brett Anderson, reflects on fatherhood, ageing, mortality, his first-ever meeting with David Bowie, and why he’ll never write his autobiography.

By Olaf Tyaransen. Published on 22 July 2016.

“The world doesn’t need another bloke from a band writing about himself taking drugs years ago,” he continues. “It’s boring. Such a cliché. I did have a bloody minded idea about writing an autobiography about my early life that ended the day we got signed. I thought that would be an interesting way to do it and leave people hanging a bit thinking, ‘Come on, we want the interesting stuff!’ But me talking about my life as a child and struggling as an adolescent… and stopping just at the part everyone wants. Maybe I’ll do that.”

“I’m terrified of absolutely everything,” declares Brett Anderson. “I can’t go out my front door without being terrified.”

How times change. Back in the early ‘90s, when Anderson was rarely off the front covers of the UK music weeklies, the porcelain-skinned, rake-thin and eminently quotable Suede singer used to be the fearless poster boy for druggy decadence and sexual daring (“I’m a bisexual who has never had a homosexual experience”).

Today, at the ripe old age of 48, the still angular frontman is clean and sober, a married father of two, and a very different sort of rock star. “I think as you become older you become less carefree about life and about your future,” he muses. “When you’re younger you don’t really entertain it as a concept because you think you’re immortal or whatever. I’m not actually sure what you think, if you even have a sense of the future. I certainly didn’t when I was in my twenties and now it’s a different thing. I’ve a family and having a family changes your perspective on things, your own mortality especially, and I think lots of it is fear of death being at the heart of it. That’s probably what a psychologist would say.”

This somewhat fearful worldview is at the black heart of Suede’s darkly poetic, thrillingly orchestral seventh studio album, Night Thoughts. Anderson’s awareness of his own mortality is also reflected on its rather bleak-looking sleeve, which depicts a scantily clad woman floating in an ink-black sea. “Yeah, the sleeve of the album was supposed to be a comment on that,” he says. “You know, the tiny figure lost in the vast indifferent sea, and that’s sometimes how I view life. You are a flicker of light against a huge, consuming, empty universe… and that’s what I wanted to reflect with the sleeve.”

For the most part, despite some exuberantly trashy musical flourishes, the songs are just as dark and gloomy. Not that Anderson is apologising for them. “Well, that’s what I’m here for!” he laughs. “I’m not interested in making jolly music or putting across jolly sentiments. I don’t care. I’ll leave that to other bands, it doesn’t interest me. For me it’s about accessing these primal things that matter, the big questions of life and death and birth and mortality, and those are the things I want to talk about in my music. I don’t feel as though I’ve always done that and there’s been moments in my career where I think I’ve been more flippant, and that’s fine because I think you need that complexity to have a real career, to have a body of work, it can’t be one dimensional, but I think now I want to get to the heart of things.”

The title, Night Thoughts, refers more to this gnawing sense of existential dread than to his preferred time to concentrate on writing song lyrics. “It doesn’t really refer to my writing process, it’s more supposed to be those moments at four o’clock in the morning when the walls seem to be caving in on your life, that primal fear of the night that you have. I don’t kind of get up in the middle of the night. Occasionally I’ll get ideas and scribble them down, but I’m not an insomniac.”

The follow-up to 2013’s excellent comeback Bloodsports (their first since 2002’s poorly received A New Morning, the album that preceded their lengthy hiatus), Suede tried a different approach when writing and recording Night Thoughts. Rather than staying put in London, Anderson and his bandmates – the current line-up comprises Richard Oakes, Neil Codling, Mat Osman and Simon Gilbert – instead decamped to Belgium with absolutely nothing prepared in advance.

“We did, yeah,” he says. “We took a bit of a leap of faith and went into a studio in Brussels and basically just recorded a whole load of music that hadn’t been turned into songs. Doing something like that is quite a risk because it means you might end up with a whole lot of things you don’t use – or can’t use because not every bit of music I’m presented with turns into a Suede song.”

”It was more important to us just to have a different mindset going into this and from very early on we wanted it to be a coherent record rather than a collection of good songs, which basically Bloodsports was,” he continues. “We wanted it to have some unity as an album and we thought that was a good way to do it, go in there and record some music, let it breathe and then I’d sort of go in and arrange the songs around the music, the music would flow. So that was basically the backbone of the album recorded like that. Once I’d written some of the things, and lots of them had worked and some of them hadn’t, we had to go and tinker with it a bit, but that was how the backbone of the record was made.”

Were they up against the clock with this? “Not really, no, I’m never against the clock. It’s always ready when it’s ready, to be honest.” Despite having an orchestra playing on most of the songs... “Oh no! We did the orchestration later,” he explains. “It was just us in the studio. But that’s an interesting idea. Doing something like that would be even more a leap of faith – to hire an orchestra and then have to work around that.

“You have to make yourself less comfortable with what you’re doing. As soon as you start repeating yourself and doing the same things over and over that’s when the music gets boring. You have to always be a little bit concerned about it. You gotta almost always feel that it might not work to keep it exciting.”

On the song ‘What I’m Trying To Tell You’, which written for his young son, Anderson admits that he doesn’t “know the price of anything.” So is he still a pampered popstar? Does he know what a pint of milk costs? “I know exactly what it costs, yeah,” he laughs, “but it depends on what you want. Organic? Semi-skimmed? Ha! No, I don’t have a pampered popstar existence. When Suede broke up, I went through a period of making solo albums and that was very interesting because instead of being in this big machine, a successful band where everything is done for you, you’re out on your own and that was a great learning curve. I did things I’d never done.”

Such as? “I learned to drive and all these sorts of things, and I felt like I was standing on my own two feet,” he explains. “It was such an essential period for me about 10 years ago when I was making solo albums. They weren’t the most successful for me financially, but they were incredibly successful for me personally and I learned a lot about my limits. The pampered popstar thing, you can’t do that when you’ve a family. Suddenly, when there’s kids around, you’re not the most important person in the room and that’s a big lesson you learn from having kids.”

When Anderson and Suede first became famous in the early ‘90s, his most obvious influence was David Bowie. So much so that the NME put them together for a memorable cover shoot modelled on one that Bowie had done with Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs years earlier. “Well, a couple of times after that, we’d get together and hang out.” Where was he when news of Bowie’s death broke? “I was at home,” he replies. “What can I say? I don’t know if I can really add anything else to it, there’s been so much discussion of his death. It’s a terrible tragedy, it’s a terrible tragedy for music. One of the greatest artists ever. I don’t think we’ll see his type again, I really don’t. Those times have passed and when he died, a type of artist died as well, and that’s very sad. I can’t see how we’d ever find another one of him. It’s impossible.”

British photographer Roger Sargent, who’s best-known for his work with The Libertines, made a feature film to accompany Night Thoughts. When the band toured earlier this year following its launch, they performed from behind a screen on which the movie was projected during the first half of their set. “I sat down with Roger and explained the themes of the record to him – basically birth and death and decaying and ageing,” he explains. “He felt as though he could do something with that. He really wanted to do it because he had been experiencing those things. Bereavement, having a kid… so these big life and death issues were happening to him as well.

“So he thought, ‘I’ve got to do this project, I need to get some of this out of my system’. And the reason we chose him is because it seemed like it was more important to him than just a job. What I wanted to do was let him run with those things, and to express and interpret them in his own way. What I didn’t want to do was sit down over his shoulder and say, ‘No, you’ve got this wrong, this isn’t about this it’s about this or something else.’ “I wanted him to interpret them purely in his own way so sometimes the film runs in parallel to what I’m talking about and at times it drifts off. It’s the story of a man and a terrible tragedy that happens in his life and the consequences of that tragedy. It’s not a literal interpretation of the lyrics of the album but it kind of touches on some of the things.”

Surprisingly for a band with such a cinematic sound, Suede haven’t done much in the way of movie soundtracks. “Well, we did a couple of years ago,” he recalls. “We did the title song for a film called Far From China, which was a bit of a one-off. I’d love to do something like that again, but I’m not sure if we’re seen as the sort of band that do that sort of thing. I always find it confusing how people perceive us but I’d love to do that.

“Cinema was one of the big influences of the album,” he continues. “We’re all big fans of cinema, as is Ed [Buller] the producer. He’s in LA at the moment working on film scores and he’s done stuff with Hans Zimmer, so he’s sort of drifting into that field more. There’s always been that sense to Suede’s music that we wanted it to have some sort of cinematic size.” Buller produced all of Suede’s most successful albums. “He’s kind of an invisible member, in lots of ways. We’ve made our best records with Ed and hopefully we’ll carry on. He always does a really good job.”

Looking back on Suede’s career, can he identify one moment that was the biggest? “There was a really lovely moment in the Royal Albert Hall in 2010 when we reformed, and we played ‘Metal Mickey’ and there was this standing ovation. It was lovely to see all that love after all those years. It was a really wonderful way to come back. That standing ovation was a feeling that I’d be happy to take to the grave.”

When they reformed to play that Albert Hall show, there were no initial plans to carry on. “We were just gonna take it as it came, play the gig, see what happens, how we feel, but it was wonderful and I’m really glad that we did because it’s gone from a band playing all the old hits – which is easy to do, to be honest – to a band that’s been reborn creatively… which isn’t easy to do. The last two records are right up there with what we’ve done in the past, and I’m so pleased because that’s what it’s all about for me, creating new music and not playing the old songs. It’s about evolving as an artist and I think people are interested in what we’re gonna do next; I know I am. I don’t know what path we’re going to go on, or where it’s going to lead us, but I know we’ll do something interesting with the new record.”

Has he ever had a lengthy creative dry spell? “Yeah, doesn’t every writer?” he says. “I don’t really believe in ‘writer’s block’, it’s just a meaningless term. You have to shake yourself up and do something else and come back to it reinvigorated. Writer’s block sounds so permanent and it’s just a temporary state of mind but of course you go through different stages of creativity and every time I start a new record I always think, ‘I don’t know if I can do this again’. “You always have these crises of confidence but that’s almost half the process. All these bad things that you feel, you know, these weird uncertainties, sense of doubt, it’s part of it because, when you overcome it, you get this sense of achievement. It’s very much part of the process, you can’t have the good side of it without the bad side.”

Would Brett Lewis Anderson ever consider writing his autobiography? “No, I don’t think anyone needs to read about me in the ‘90s,” he sighs. “It’s kind of boring, it doesn’t really interest me. If I wrote anything like that it would be short novels or something like that. Bizarrely enough, I’m not particularly self-centred which I’m sure a whole load of people will laugh at or find hard to believe, given my public persona, but I don’t particularly want to write about myself. Maybe I’ll change my mind in 20 years but not now.

Suede headline the Festival Big Top at the Galway Arts Festival on Saturday, July 23 with The Frank and Walters supporting.

#brett anderson #suede #hot press magazine #night thoughts #bloodsports #stumbled upon this interview the other day when raiding the Hot Press website #it's a great long read!#very prophetic about both Coal Black Mornings (hahaha) and The Blue Hour #also nice bits about Bloodsports and Night Thoughts #and a nice mention of the Royal Albert Hall reunion show #also i slightly adapted the formatting of this text for a better reading since the original paragraphs are SO long

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hopesilverheart · 4 years ago

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Title: I loved your colours (before I loved you) Artist: @calliartss Rating: Explicit (Chapter 10 only) Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Alec Lightwood & Clary Fray, Clary Fray/Isabelle Lightwood Word Count: ~95k Summary: Magnus Bane is a journalist who's always dreamed of modelling for Lightwood Fashions. When the CEO Alec Lightwood starts looking for new models for their spring collection, he jumps on the occasion.

In the meantime, Alec Lightwood is struggling with the idea of finally announcing his role as co-designer. When Magnus Bane strolls into his life, Alec is torn between keeping his secret or throwing all caution to the wind.

This fic was created for the Malec Discord Mini Bang 2020.

Chapter 12: Dear Happy, don’t go

“Is everything alright, sweetheart?”

Alec’s gaze snapped to his mother as she walked into the kitchen, smiling at him softly. It had been such a long time since they had spent time together, just the two of them, so Alec locked his phone again and tried to ignore the worry gnawing at his chest. He had woken up late to fifteen missed calls from Magnus, but his boyfriend had failed to pick up when Alec had tried calling him back.

“It’s all good,” he told his mother, plastering a warm grin onto his face and gesturing at the breakfast buffet he had put together. “I know I’m no chef, but I thought I would make us breakfast, just like we used to when I was younger. I couldn’t remember if you preferred blueberries or strawberries, so I got a bit of both…”

“This is lovely, Alec,” his mother murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of his head as she grabbed a plate from behind him. “I wasn’t even sure you would be staying the night. Did Isabelle come home last night, or did she end up staying with Magnus somewhere?”

“The latter,” Alec answered, plating up some pancakes, fruit, and eggs before taking his old seat at the breakfast table out of habit. “Magnus called me a few times last night and again early this morning, but I haven’t heard from either of them since. I’m assuming they passed out and are going to wake up with awful hangovers sometime this afternoon.”

“Good thing they don’t have work, then,” Maryse chuckled. “It would be a shame for my two best editors to be out of commission on a busy day. Although… Did your team have anything planned for the day?”

“Oh no, absolutely not,” Alec snorted. “That would have been a disaster waiting to happen. Clary and I gave everyone the week-end off to celebrate the photoshoot with Vogue as well as the upcoming March rush. They need all the rest they can afford before hell breaks loose.”

“I’m sure they appreciate the gesture,” his mother laughed lightly, taking her seat to Alec’s right as though nothing had changed from the time when they still lived in the same house. “You’re a good boss, Alec. And I’m not just talking about your job as a CEO. I know I was always sceptical about you taking on a position as a designer within your own company, but I have to admit it’s paid off. I’m proud of you, sweetheart.”

Alec’s heart warmed at his mother’s words, even as his brain struggled to catch on to what she was saying. He and his mother weren’t the type to talk their feelings out or discuss their problems with each other. Most of the time, they just nodded at each other in passing when they crossed paths in the office and went through the mandatory monthly conversation during family dinners.

In all his years as a designer, Alec had never once heard his mother tell him that she was proud of him for what he had achieved as a designer. He knew, deep down, that she had always admired his hard work and success, but she had just… She’d just never said it before, and he couldn’t help but wonder why she had chosen this day of all days to make such a heart-felt confession.

“Did something happen?” He asked, trying to think back on what they had been talking about during dinner the night before. “I mean, thank you, it means a lot to me to hear you say that, but why are you- Why now?”

“The media team received your finished plans for the spring collection yesterday,” she answered, her eyes gleaming with pride. “I’d already seen some of it, of course, since we’ve printed a few issues in the past month or so, but this is the first time I saw it in its entirety. Honestly, Alec, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and I don’t even care that much about clothes.”

“Oh,” Alec breathed out. He hadn’t even considered what his mother might think about the collection when he and Clary had started working on it. He wondered if she, as his mother, understood what many people didn’t when they saw the clothes he had designed over the past two months.

“He’s a lucky man,” she smiled knowingly. “But I’m assuming he doesn’t know yet? It didn’t escape my notice that you all very carefully avoided talking about the spring collection last night.”

“Yeah, I- I’ve been planning something, actually,” Alec blushed, looking away from his mother when her eyes widened in surprise. “I thought I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and at first I was only going to tell Magnus, but Clary and I have came up with a larger plan. There’s a good chance that by the end of the month, I won’t be a secret partner anymore.”

“Alec!” His mother exclaimed, squeezing his right hand excitedly. “I’m happy to hear that. I know Isabelle has been pressuring you to get this over with for years, but I’m glad you’re doing it in your own time. Is it going to happen during the fashion show?”

“I- Yes, actually,” Alec frowned. “How did you know? I am really that predictable?”

“Maybe not to most people, but you’re my son,” Maryse chuckled. “I know you, and I know you secretly have a flair for the dramatics. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you, although I do hope you’ll have everything figured out on time.”

“Oh yeah, don’t worry about it,” Alec grinned, thinking about all the preparations he and Clary had been taking care of. “Clary is just as excited about this as I am, if a little less nervous, so she’s been helping me out. She wants it to be perfect and highlight the collection at the same time, so she’s not going to screw anything up. Besides, I played to her buried romantic side as well.”

Because as much as Clary liked to act as though Alec was the only romantic one in their duo, he knew the truth better than anyone else. All it had taken was one mention of dedicating the collection to Magnus and she had been all over him, calling people left and right to make the fashion show even more epic than what they had originally planned.

“You and Magnus… It’s really serious, isn’t it?” His mother murmured, looking at him warmly. “You really care about him enough to reveal the secret you’ve been hiding for years. He must be one special man, Alec.”

“He is,” Alec murmured, thinking about all the things Magnus had done to make Alec fall in love with him, one day and gesture at a time. “We haven’t said- I mean, we still have a few steps to take in our relationship before the fashion show, but I’m pretty sure he could be the one.”

“You know, sometimes I forget that you got your romantic tendencies from me,” his mother shook her head fondly. “You and Isabelle will be the death of them with all your gestures and words and grand confessions. He’s a lucky man, Alec, never forget that. No matter how great he is, you’re an even better catch.”

“You’re a little biased, mom,” Alec pointed out, although he was beaming brightly at his mother and squeezing her fingers a little more tightly in his. “But thank you, I’ll try to remember that.”

They stayed silent for a few minutes, eating their food and exchanging the usual small talk they always did when Alec stopped by the house. It was far less stilted than usual, which made Alec think they were finally on the right track to sorting through the remaining mess of their relationship. If nothing else, at least dating Magnus would have mended the connection Alec and his mother had once shared.

“Why do you guys look so… happy?” Max grimaced as he entered the kitchen, looking rumpled and still half-asleep. “And since when do we do family breakfast in the morning after dinner? I thought it was a one-time-only kind of thing we did to make ourselves feel less guilty about living apart.”

“Yes, Max, thank you for analysing our family dynamics,” Alec rolled his eyes, ruffling his brother’s hair as he rounded the table to take the seat on Maryse’s left. “But we’re allowed to change things up once in a while. Mom and I just had some things we wanted to talk about, and breakfast felt appropriate.”

“Whatever,” Max muttered. “As long as I get free food out of this, I’m not going to complain.”

“Honey, all your food is free,” Maryse pointed out, stealing a strawberry from Max’s plate and ignoring her youngest son’s indignant spluttering. “As long as you live in my house and don’t have a job, nothing in this kitchen is yours. It’s what being a child means, if you think about it.”

“God, I get it,” Max mumbled. “I can’t wait to go to college and get away from you guys, especially if you’re going to start having emotional conversations before 11 in the morning.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll keep all those feelings buried deep inside our hearts when you’re around,” Alec snorted. “We wouldn’t want you to think that we – heaven forbid – love you. Really, that would be the biggest tragedy this family has ever seen, and we’ve seen a lot.”

“We all know the biggest tragedy in this household is either Jace’s complete lack of filter around Simon, or your terrible choice in socks,” Max snarked back, kicking at Alec’s legs to punctuate his words. “Seriously, you’re a fashion designer, shouldn’t you know how to dress yourself? Even I have better style than you do.”

“No, you dress like a wannabe popular kid who doesn’t want to admit he prefers Disney movies to action ones,” Alec retorted, smirking smugly when Max blushed darkly before sticking his tongue out at him childishly. “That’s a point to me, little brother.”

“Boys,” their mother interrupted, staring at the both of them exasperatedly and pointing at their plates. “Stop acting like middle-schoolers and finish your food. It would be a shame for Alec’s efforts to go to waste just because the two of you were busy arguing over who’s the ‘coolest’ sibling. We all know who that award goes to, and it’s neither one of you.”

“Yes, mom, we know who your favourite is,” Max scoffed. “No need to remind us, thank you very much.”

Alec held back a laugh as their mother turned to stare at Max with the most unimpressed look in her eyes. His younger brother hadn’t quite learned how to shut up at the appropriate times yet, and it was always rather entertaining to watch him get scolded for behaving like a ‘child’.

(It wasn’t quite as entertaining when the tables were turned, but he didn’t have to worry about that this morning.)

“Young man, I know you’ve been wanting to leave this house for a while now, but you should know better than to insinuate I have a favourite-”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, alright! I take it all back!” Max raised his hands in surrender, shovelling the rest of his breakfast down his mouth before grabbing a mug of coffee and quickly backing out of the kitchen. “I love you, mom!”

“He’s just saying that because he doesn’t want to get in trouble, isn’t he?” Maryse sighed, turning back towards Alec and smiling wryly when Alec nodded. “Well, it’s not like I don’t have plenty of experience with difficult teenagers. I love you and your siblings very much, but you were never the easiest bunch to handle, especially not during your last year of high school.”

“Please don’t talk about that year,” Alec winced. “Seriously, I would rather burn all those memories out of my brain than have to relive a single one of them ever again. As for Max… Well, he’s just feeling left out. Being the youngest was all fun and games when he was younger and got all the perks, but now that we’re gone and he’s the only one left, I’m quite sure it’s normal for him to act out a bit. Besides, he’s a Lightwood…”

“He breaks noses and accepts the consequences?” Maryse completed for him, raising an unimpressed eyebrow as she always did when they mentioned their family motto. They had come up with it after Izzy had gotten in a fight with one of her classmates, and it had stuck ever since. “But thank you, Alec. I’m glad you grew up to become such a respectful and wise young man.”

“I don’t know about the wise,” Alec snorted. “But I’ll take the respectful. Now, I’m sorry to cut our time together short, but I should probably stop by Magnus’ to make sure he and Izzy are doing alright after last night.”

“See? You’re plenty wise,” his mother smiled, patting his cheek gently. “Go on, go find your man and your sister and keep me updated on their condition. And please let Isabelle know that I don’t want her to lock herself up in her room every time her girlfriend and her have an argument.”

“I’ll be sure to pass on the message,” Alec chuckled. “Anything else I should know, or am I free now?”

“Oh, yes actually! I was going to mention it at the office on Monday, but since you’re here now, I don’t see the harm in telling you about it,” Maryse grinned. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that Magnus is officially going to be hired as the company’s Head Editor! His trial period just came to an end, and I think we can all agree that he’s been doing a great job so far.”

Alec’s smile froze on his face, his brain struggling to understand what his mother was saying. Magnus was already the company’s Head Editor and had been for as long as Alec had known him, maybe even longer than that. Right?

“That’s… great,” he choked out, hoping his mother wouldn’t notice how strange he was acting. “You know, I can’t seem to remember just how long he’s been doing this trial thing for. It’s been what, two… three…?”

“It’s been a whole month, Alec! A month and a half, almost,” his mother said, looking at him askance. “Do you guys not talk about that? Honestly, I thought I wouldn’t have to tell you at all, since the two of you are so close. Shouldn’t you have been celebrating with him when he found out?”

Wasn’t that a good question?

“I guess we were just so busy with the Vogue shoot, and then it must have slipped his mind, and you know… We’ll probably celebrate next week,” Alec answered as cheerfully as he could manage. “The collection has just been kicking our asses, so I’m not surprised he hasn’t found the time to mention it.”

“Alright,” Maryse said slowly, frowning at Alec worriedly. “Are you sure everything’s alright? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” Alec choked out. “Yeah, just- Just a little bit tired. I don’t sleep as well as I used to when I’m here, so I should probably go home for a while. I’ll text you later?”

“I thought you were going to see Magnus and Izzy,” his mother said perplexedly. “But yes, please text me later and let me know everything’s alright.”

“I’m sure they’re fine, I was just being a little too overprotective of my sister and my bo-boyfriend,” Alec grimaced unconvincingly, praying that he had managed to make it look at least slightly like a smile. “I’ll text, I promise, and I’ll see you at work on Monday!”

He rushed out of the house before his mother could say anything else, breathing heavily and trying to ignore the bitterness and confusion rising in his throat like bile. He was just overreacting. There was still a chance Magnus hadn’t been lying, or at least a chance that he had an iron-clad explanation that would justify the way he had twisted the truth.

He was overreacting. Magnus would never lie to him about something as important as his job. All he had to do was take the week-end for himself, realise he was being stupid, and act as though everything was normal when he saw Magnus at work on Monday.

Easy.

***

It, in fact, was not easy.

Magnus tried to call him another twenty times that weekend, wondering if Alec was alright. Alec had only answered his texts when Magnus had threatened to come over, begging his boyfriend to stay away and claiming to just need rest.

He didn’t talk to anyone for two days, telling Clary he needed time alone and trusting her to handle everyone else. If there was one thing his best friend was good at, it was having his back when he needed help and silent support. Even though she was dealing with Isabelle-related problems, she didn’t hesitate to stand by Alec. It was one of the many things he loved about her.

Still, he knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid the rest of the world forever. As much as he wanted to bury himself in blankets and food to forget about the fact that Magnus had probably been lying to him all along, he knew he couldn’t. He had a company to run and a fashion team to lead through the last month of the work-up to their spring collection.

Besides, ignoring Magnus wouldn’t get them anywhere. He didn’t want to talk to his boyfriend about the things he had been keeping from him, but he knew it was a necessity. They couldn’t stay together if Alec shut Magnus out and refused to discuss important matters with him when things got tough. If they wanted this relationship to work out, they needed to communicate.

Unfortunately, Alec had a feeling that in this case, communication might just lead to a quicker termination of their relationship. After all, Magnus had been lying to Alec ever since they had met – if only by omission – and Alec couldn’t think of a single explanation that would excuse a lie like that.

More importantly, he couldn’t think of a single explanation that would justify why Magnus hadn’t just told him. Alec wouldn’t have cared that he had only just joined the company as a temporary Head Editor. He would have been there for his boyfriend every step of the way, and they would have celebrated properly when Maryse finally gave Magnus the position he so clearly deserved.

Instead, he was left to wonder what on earth he had done to make Magnus think he couldn’t trust Alec.

“You okay, boss?” Maia asked him when he walked into work early that Monday morning, holding onto his cup of coffee for dear life. “Rough weekend?”

“Something like that,” Alec smiled brittlely, trying not to take his bad mood out on Maia, who really didn’t deserve his anger. “I’m going to spend the day in my office, so come up if you need something. And if Magnus stops by- When Magnus stops by, tell him to meet me in my office as soon as he has some free time.”

“Is everything alright between the two of you?” Maia frowned, although she looked ready to back off and disappear at a moment’s notice. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

“I’m not sure,” Alec sighed. “But thank you for checking up on me. I’d really rather not have to deal with people today, so just… Do your thing?”

“Absolutely, boss,” Maia saluted him seriously. “Any and all requests will go through Clary, and the boss-lady will only contact you if it’s an emergency. We don’t have anything huge planned this week, so you should be fine up there as long as you keep us updated on anything important.”

“Of course,” Alec nodded. “Thank you, Maia.”

She nodded at him as he walked back towards the elevator, hitting the button for the top floor a little more forcefully than usual and sighing heavily as he found himself alone again. Maybe he shouldn’t have come to the office after all, since he had a feeling he would be completely useless until he got to talk to Magnus.

He knew the easiest way to solve that issue would be to go down to the media floor and find his boyfriend, but he honestly wasn’t sure he would be able to make it out of the elevator if he tried doing that. He felt hollow, betrayal clawing at his heart every time he thought about all the things Magnus must have been hiding about himself. Maybe the other man didn’t think those things mattered, but Alec… Alec had thought he was getting to know every part of Magnus, and now it felt like he was missing hundreds of little pieces.

By the time he reached his office, he was feeling decidedly unready to face the day. He had paperwork to take care of, meetings to arrange, and higher-ups to talk to, but he would pat himself on the back if he got even one of those things done. Instead of worrying about his little – yet very important – tasks, he sat at his desk and stared at his office wall blankly, once again questioning his entire relationship with Magnus.

He had thought that after a day and a half of worrying, he would have been better and eager to take his mind off things. However, he had clearly overestimated himself.

He didn’t do anything that day. He answered a few calls, e-mailed Clary back when she asked him about one of the collection’s designs, and took care of one pile of paperwork, hoping it was the one his mother had talked to him about. Mostly, though, he gnawed at his bottom lip and stared at his door as though his mere gaze would be enough to draw Magnus there.

Unfortunately, it seemed that his boyfriend was having a busy day, since Alec hadn’t even gotten a text from him that morning – aside from his usual ‘good morning’ message. So, where Alec had expected to get his feelings off his chest before noon, he instead found himself waiting until six that evening to have his dreaded conversation with Magnus.

It really didn’t do anything to improve his mood, and he knew that would only make their interaction that much more painful.

“Hey,” Magnus smiled softly as he knocked and let himself into Alec’s office that evening. “Maia told me you wanted to see me here, but I got caught up in media stuff and couldn’t get away before now. I hope you didn’t want to talk about anything too urgent.”

“Not urgent, no,” Alec said blankly, hoping Magnus would pick up on his tone and stop it with the smiles and cheerfulness. “But I did want to see you.”

“Okay?” Magnus frowned, slowly stepping closer to Alec’s desk but thankfully stopping a few feet away from the designer. “Wait, did Isabelle say something? She told me she didn’t want to mention what happened the other night, but I was kind of hoping she would bring it up so…”

“Isabelle didn’t say anything,” Alec interrupted before Magnus could make things worse for himself. He had no idea what his boyfriend and sister had gotten up to that had made Magnus call him dozens of times, but he was almost certain he didn’t want to know. “My mother, however, did. I hear congratulations are in order and wished to offer them as the co-CEO of Lightwood Enterprises.”

“What- What are you talking about?” Magnus furrowed his brows, looking genuinely confused as to what was going on. “I thought you were here to discuss… Never mind. What are we talking about here?”

“It’s tradition for both CEOs to welcome the company’s highly-ranked employees when they’re offered a full time job,” Alec clarified, crossing his arms over his chest as Magnus’ eyes went wide. “So, I wanted to say congratulations on being offered the Head Editor position permanently, especially after only a little more than a month on trial!”

“Alexander…” Magnus started, cutting himself off and looking away as though only just realising what he had done wrong.

It was bullshit and they both knew it. Magnus had been lying all along, which meant he must have known Alec would find out eventually and must have been at least somewhat prepared for the fallout. Alec had been expecting an immediate apology, an explanation, anything to make him feel a little better about the state of their relationship.

And instead, all he got was his name? After almost two months of lying and bluffing and acting as though he had been friends with Isabelle all along, the best Magnus could give him was his name?

“Why?” He breathed out, staring at Magnus brokenly and trying to blink back the tears that threatened to slip out of his eyes. “Why didn’t you just tell me? What were you so afraid of?”

“I used to work for Fade Media!” Magnus exclaimed like that explained everything. “I didn’t want you to think I was only here to spy on you or something! Besides, I wasn’t sure you would hire me if you knew I worked for your media company’s biggest competitor.”

“We don’t care about our models’ professional past as long as it’s clean and seems to point at a hard-working, punctual individual,” Alec murmured. “What we do care about, however, is honesty. You shouldn’t have lied to us about where you worked, and you shouldn’t have had to buy yourself a position on the media team or whatever it is you did to get there.”

“I just talked to Isabelle,” Magnus grit out, looking vaguely offended by Alec’s accusations. “Besides, how was I supposed to know you didn’t care about all of that? I was already rejected once by your father, and I didn’t want to go through that a second time. For all I knew, you were just like him.”

Alec’s heart clenched painfully at his boyfriend’s words. The one thing he had promised himself as a teenager was that he would never grow up to be like his father. As an adult and a CEO, he had made that same promise hundreds of times and had never broken it once. He was a better man than his father had ever been, and he had proved it countless times already.

“You don’t get to compare me to him just because you’re frustrated or afraid or whatever it is you’re feeling right now,” he whispered, looking away from Magnus when guilt flooded his boyfriend’s eyes. He didn’t want guilt or pity or anything like that. He wanted an explanation and, more importantly, an apology. “You don’t get to act like this is my fault when you’re the one who decided to lie. I get that rejection hurts, but it was no reason to lie to a team of people who had never done anything to you.”

“I know I- Look, I was just ashamed,” Magnus said, turning pleading eyes on Alec. “But I never meant for you to find out,” Alec’s gaze hardened, and Magnus immediately seemed to recognise his mistake. “Like this. I never meant for you to find out like this.”

“That’s not what you said,” Alec shook his head sadly. “You weren’t planning on telling me. I don’t even care that much about the lie, since your job doesn’t matter when it comes to our relationship. As an employer I may be a little pissed, but it wouldn’t have affected our relationship if you had just come clean once we started getting serious. Lying, however… Why would you lie?”

“As if you’re any better!” Magnus hissed, his eyes turning stormy and his lips thinning. “You want to talk to me about lies? Then why don’t we talk about your little secret, huh? Don’t yell at me for lying to you when you’ve been hiding something just as – if not more – important. Co-designer? Co-designer, Alec! And you never even breathed a word of it to me.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Alec started, because it wasn’t. He had plans to make the reveal perfect. He hadn’t told Magnus yet because he wanted to do it right, to surprise his boyfriend and show him that he was no longer afraid. He had plans. He wasn’t the one throwing around words like ‘I never meant for you to find out.’ Before he could defend himself, however, Magnus closed the remaining distance to Alec’s desk and loomed over it angrily.

“It’s exactly the same thing,” Magnus curled his lip. “Except you’ve been listening to me gush about Clary’s secret partner ever since we started dating. You knew how much I admired him and you never stopped me when I went on rants. If that doesn’t make you lies far worse, then I don’t know what does.”

“I never told you because I wasn’t ready!” Alec cried out, slamming his hands on his desk and glaring at Magnus icily. “I didn’t actively lie, like you. I didn’t tell you I wasn’t the designer, and I even went so far as to give you clues! Don’t try to convince me that you wouldn’t have figured it out eventually, because I was not trying to hide it as much as I could have.”

“But you were still hiding it!” Magnus snapped. “Why is that, huh? Why weren’t you ready? Because you didn’t trust me to keep it a secret? Because you thought I would lose interest?”

“Because I was afraid!” Alec yelled, wiping away the tears that had started rolling down his cheeks. “Because I am afraid! Do you know what it feels like to take on a job and have everyone around you tell you it’s a terrible idea? I may be a fairly popular designer now, and I may have never struggled professionally when it comes to my collections with Clary, but it was never all fun and games.”

He clenched his jaw as he thought about all the people in his life who hadn’t believed in him, who hadn’t listened when he had told them about the extra classes he had been taking with Clary and mocked him for wanting to become something more than a businessman.

“My mother thought I was insane,” Alec chuckled mirthlessly. “She begged me to step down as co-designer and focus on the things that mattered. Isabelle and Jace made fun of me for months before we released our first collection, thinking I was delusional. Even the fashion team was sceptical. The only person I had was Clary, and she was struggling with just as much criticism as I was. So I didn’t tell you for the same reason only a handful of people know my secret. I’m afraid, Magnus.”

“So what? You’re allowed to be afraid, but I’m not?” Magnus growled lowly, and only then did Alec realise he was crying too. He hated himself for how much he wanted to comfort the other man at that moment. “Just because your secret is bigger than mine doesn’t mean I’m not also terrified.”

“Don’t compare our secrets, Magnus!” Alec all but screamed. “You don’t get to do that! You lied your way onto the media team, and you lied your way through your modelling interview! You created your own problem! You weren’t afraid of what the secret means to you, you were afraid of being caught.”

Even as he spoke, Alec knew he had hit the nail in the head. Magnus was staring at him with a mix of betrayal and sheepishness. He clearly knew what he had done was wrong, and Alec didn’t understand why he couldn’t just apologise for not trusting Alec.

He didn’t understand why Magnus had had to bring up something else, a secret that Alec had been planning on revealing anyways. A secret that had nothing to do with faking his past and everything to do with not wanting to be thrust in the spotlight. A secret…

A secret he hadn’t shared with Magnus.

“Who told you?” He croaked out, already knowing the answer to his own question. There was only one person in the world who knew about his position as co-designer and was close enough to Magnus to reveal it. Still, he needed to hear it from Magnus himself.

He needed the confirmation that two of the people he had trusted most in the world had completely disregarded his desires in order to satisfy their own wants.

“She didn’t… She didn’t mean to,” Magnus whispered. “You know she never cracked before, but Isabelle was- She was drunk, alright? She was drunk and I thought it would be easy enough to needle her about the secret designer and finally get a clear answer out of her. I didn’t realise I would be- I didn’t realise I would be betraying your trust at the same time.”

“You would have been betraying my trust even if I wasn’t the co-designer,” Alec murmured. “I told you to let it go. I told you to forget about it and let him do it in his own time, but you continued to push Izzy anyways. You knew she would break, because deep down she’s always wanted me to get credit for my work, and you took advantage of her.”

“Alexander, no… I-”

“I was going to tell you,” Alec smiled painfully through his tears. “I had a big reveal planned. I was going to show the whole world who I was, and I was going to talk about the collection and you and- It was going to be wonderful because I would finally be free. Now though, it turns out that the person who gave me the strength to be honest with myself and the rest of the world is just as much of a liar as everyone else. It turns out that he doesn’t respect or trust me the same way I respect and trust him.”

“Alexander, darling, please listen to me,” Magnus begged him, his hands shaking as he wrung them together. “I know where you’re going with this, but please think about it twice. We’re good together, aren’t we? We’re good, and we can fight without breaking up, because I- I lo-”

“Don’t.”

Magnus’ mouth snapped shut at Alec’s order. Even though he hadn’t said the words, the damage had already been done. Alec wasn’t stupid; he knew what his boyfriend had been about to say, knew that Magnus had meant every word of the confession he hadn’t been allowed to make.

He knew it, because his heart felt the same way. Yet…

“You need to leave,” he choked on his words. “You’re still a model for this season, and I won’t forbid you from spending time with the team, but you need to leave. I don’t know what you were thinking when you lied to me, and I don’t know what made you ask Isabelle about my secret, but I can’t- I don’t need to know.”

“You’re breaking up with me,” Magnus said listlessly. “Why- Alec, you’re breaking up with me?” He gasped out, the words only barely a whisper.

“I am,” he answered simply, knowing he looked and sounded just as heartbroken as he felt. “So please, Magnus, leave.”

To his credit, Magnus did. He stared at Alec for a few seconds longer, tears streaming down his face and his lips parted disbelievingly, but he left and closed the door behind him. The hole in Alec’s heart grew bigger than ever, and a sob slipped past his lips as soon as he realised he was alone once again.

So he cried, sobbed, and let his heart shatter into a million little pieces for hours, unable to think about anything but Magnus. Magnus, who loved him but hadn’t trusted him enough for Alec’s tastes. Magnus, who was still the most beautiful man Alec had ever seen, even when his face was covered in tear tracks.

His mind screamed for Magnus just as loudly as his heart did, and Alec lost track of time.

When he resurfaced, it was to the feeling of Clary’s small arms wrapped around him and her familiar, soothing scent seeping into his skin. He buried his face into her red hair and let everything out, trusting her to take care of him when he could no longer take care of himself.

But even as Clary rocked him gently and listened to him attentively, his mind was miles away, yelling at him to go back to the man he loved.

If only life was that easy.

#malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #fanfic #my writing

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satan-chillin · 5 years ago

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Secondary

Summary: Selfishness would always be an integral part of Rowena, which was why she couldn't care less if she had to take Sam away from Death's grasp herself.

Pairing: SamWena/SamWitch

Notes: For the Samwena Week Day 3 - Magic or Lore

Also available in Ao3

He was not breathing.

Sam was no longer breathing.

Rowena bit back against the sharp stab of pain that seized her with the discovery. She didn’t even know she could feel this as a damned soul and wasn’t it ironic that this was how she found out?

It was a gnawing pit that she felt in her chest, and it had been so long that she almost forgot how it could eat her from within.

This was why she learned to be callous in the first place, why she knew how to bury foolish emotions, why she put herself above all and damn the rest.

This was why she hadn’t cared.

She had it steady for centuries, cheating others and viciously tearing anyone in her way. She was in a continuous search of decadence, of that power that she thought would help her rise among these weak, lowly beings.

And then the realization came to her like a harsh slap in the face: she never wanted those. She thought she did, or at least made herself had that mindset to make it easier to justify all that blood on her hands.

Funny that it meant, deep down, what she believed all she deserved was these meaningless, hollow, and fleeting things.

What she wanted now was something else that could never be bought or obtained by magic, for all that she has of it.

Rowena sucked a deep breath, steeled herself, and set to work. She was far away from the proper altar but the table should be enough.

She extended poor Oskar’s life before and had managed to bring herself back to life over and over—the key to reviving Sam should be somewhere along the lines. It was a new workaround that she was looking for, but this should be familiar enough for her to perform the right spell.

“Sentio, in terra, in ventum sentio,” she began, pulling at the roots of her magic that surged from within her chest. “Sentio in animo ego dabo gratis. Huic exi dimidia parte.”

“Stop.”

Rowena stood rigid, turning to the commanding voice with fury.

Billie, with her usual air of placidity and general authority, bore a hint of warning with her. “Rowena,” Death spoke once more.

“I don’t recall asking for an audience,” Rowena sneered. “Go and let me be.”

“I am exactly where I should be,” Billie said. Her eyes flickered to where Sam’s lifeless body was. “Sam Winchester is dead, and it’s his time to be permanently fetched. No take-backs this time.”

“No,” Rowena said firmly. “You’ve taken my son already. Why should I give you Sam as well?”

Billie was unfazed when she cocked her head. “But they never belonged to you in the first place, Rowena,” she pointed out, scathingly indifferent. “You know how it is. You were close to messing with the grand scheme before. I think you know the consequences should you try and do so again.”

Rowena remembered that disastrous debacle, and to think that she wasn’t repeating history.

She discovered then a part of her that was hidden under the rubbles of her failure as a mother to her child, under all that hate she thought she only had for her unwanted son—she loved him, maybe not comparable to the kind of love that Fergus expected of her as a child, but she loved him.

She who claimed that it was a weakness and brought her nothing but suffering turned out to hold that semblance of affection for her son. It was too late, of course, and she paid for it with regret.

Rowena glanced at Sam. He looked so peaceful already like he was merely asleep, and for once, there were no lines on his face from worry. He deserved nothing but the tranquility in his piece of neverending paradise in Heaven where he would surely go after.

Sam never claimed to be flawless and without blood in his own hands, and yet he was able to change her into someone who yearned for redemption in his eyes.

The thing was, it was the selfishness that he could never erase from her. She wouldn’t be Rowena MacLeod if selfishness wasn’t an integral part of her.

Her hand crept over to touch Sam’s rapidly cooling face. “I know,” she said in reply to Billie’s warning.

It wasn’t surprising when Rowena figured that she couldn’t care less if she had to take Sam away from Death’s grasp herself.

“Ligabis ad eum et animam meam pro eo.”

Rowena was never the first choice.

It started when she was born, when her father told her that he would rather have her mother instead of her. He’d rather have a living wife and a dead child, and Rowena had been too young then to comprehend fully the hate.

Roderick had the choice to stay with her and their son, his only son; he did not, of course. He chose his grand life with his grand wife and grand family. His abandonment only fueled the bitterness that she grew up with.

The Grand Coven chose Olivette over her despite the jarring difference on their level of magic, and once Olivette ascended as the High Priestess of the coven, it was her word against Rowena’s. Next thing Rowena knew, she was banished and half of her powers sealed. She had made the conclusion that she didn’t belong anywhere together with her kind.

And when she did finally find her place centuries later, God decided to flip the table and Rowena’s home was forced to take arms against him. It boiled down to a choice one more between her and the world, and if it was a good man that was required to make the decision, would it be so surprising that he would readily choose the side of many?

Except Sam didn’t readily make the choice as expected. He broke down in front of her, and Rowena had to egg him on to kill her for the greater good. Dean was an excellent reminder for Sam that he pushed the knife into her in the next minute.

Sam grieved for her, and Rowena felt that she was actually important enough for him to mull over a do-or-die decision where the other end of the scale was the fate of the world.

They met again without the tense situation, and Sam, to her bemusement, was clearly carrying a deep-seated regret that was practically rolling off his broad shoulders. As much as Rowena wanted to pull him aside properly to assuage him, they never had the time, not when she was running the entirety of Hell and he was running around to find something that would help properly dispose of God for good.

Besides, she hardly thought it would matter. What would she say exactly? Should she poke fun at him for being so hung up on her death despite seeing her sitting on Hell's throne afterward?

She could tell him the truth. She could tell him that she took the throne as a penance, that she took it because it was an opportunity for her to provide aid against God. She was still a friend, their Rowena, Queen of Hell or no.

Rowena could tell Sam that absolution was what she truly wanted. She could tell him that it was he who changed her, made her want to be better.

She could tell him that she loved him.

No. She couldn't tell him that, not when he was quite taken already with someone who deserved him better than her, someone good for him and could stay with him.

It was fitting, Rowena supposed, that the punishment Death subjected her was locking Sam's memories of her. It wasn't only him; everyone was to forget that there was once Rowena MacLeod, a witch who found her home in two hunters, a fallen angel, and a nephilim.

Rowena remained the ruler of Hell, with half of her life force sacrificed for the person she held dear the most who couldn't even remember a trace of her.

And they said Death wasn't cruel.

Magic would always be paid by sacrifice, but Rowena couldn't find it in herself to regret it one bit.

***

Which was why when in one uneventful day in Hell Sam Winchester barged in with all his 6-foot flannel glory, Rowena stood from her throne, stupefied.

He walked up to her, disregarding the demons that surrounded them, and with a face clouded with anger in every step of the way.

Oh. It wasn't just fury there; there were also unnameable emotions that danced on his features, she realized upon closer inspection.

The silence of the court was deafening, more so when he spoke, almost brokenly, "Why didn't you say anything?"

The shame was unmistakable, try as she might hide it from her subjects.

"No direct contact, I'm afraid. It was what Billie and I agreed on," she replied, her voice sounding foreign in her own ears.

"So I was just supposed to live my life—the life you've given me—without knowing what happened? I continue on without knowing how I miraculously survived, is that it?"

Rowena refused to glance away under his demanding gaze. "They do say there is bliss in ignorance."

"No, goddamnit! Not when that means having a gaping hole in you that is looking for something that you and everyone else don't even remember in the first place!"

Rowena stood up when the weight of her guilt became unbearable. She approached him with deliberating steps. "Was it so bad then, to forget wee old me? It was preferable that way, for you and for me." She wanted to touch his face again though hesitated. "I can't have you thinking that you're indebted to me, and, knowing you, it'll be the case when you find out. I can't get in the way of your happiness, Sam."

She was taken aback when Sam had beaten her to it, reaching out with both his hands to cradle her face instead and crashed her mouth to his.

Oh.

For all its intent, it was a tender kiss that Sam seemed to have put his everything on. Rowena could only hold on to him, pour what she has and let Sam know.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re a part of that?” Sam asked when they broke free, thumbing her cheeks. He was seemingly unable to pry his hands away from her.

Rowena, full as heart might be, decided to ask hoarsely, "Do you mean that?"

She had to know. She was never anyone's first choice and yet Sam was choosing her right now.

"Of course I do," Sam replied, planting his lips on her forehead.

Rowena didn't need any other words.

#samwenaweek20 #samwena #samwitch #samwena fanfic #samwitch fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #spn fanfic #Sam Winchester #rowena macleod #sam x rowena

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sasorikigai · 4 years ago

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Tricky Life Questions || @sonxflight || accepting

12. How can I make someone else happy?

“Happiness is something that I wanted all along, for it had been my unreachable life goal ever since my family and clan were taken away from me. Could you imagine how beautiful our world would be if everyone of us could spend some time everyday and do one thing that lift someone up in the midst of their misery? For it may not simply be a feel good emotion, but a weapon to fight all of the negativity in the cruelty of reality, which I very well struggle with. When I grapple with such emotion daily, difficult would be an understatement attempting to make someone else happy. However, I have found my chronic depression, and emotional trauma have significantly been mitigated through kindness, which certainly has helped me to cope better and combat negative emotions. I would like to think I express my love through affectionate gestures and words of poetic lyricism. I would like to believe that you have been a frequent recipient of my devotive love.”

25. What is true freedom? Does it exist?

“It is interesting that many of the freedoms we seek today are seen as ends in themselves, as a final goal to be attained. It’s as though we think that once our particular freedom is achieved, all our problems will be solved. Why? Because we’ll have freedom! But freedom from what? And freedom to do or be what? Our hearts tend to see and desire something it cannot live without. So we continue to sink into our respective vices, struggles with them, so if our hearts are not changed, neither will our behavior change. I believe that true freedom begins in the heart, and although I have gone through so much changes in how I uphold myself, I believe my heart still remains relatively resolute. Yet, in all of this, the human heart remains free in one regard: free to choose whatever it desires. But the human heart could be so easily corrupted and enslaved by evil, just like mine used to be. Perhaps if I truly let go of all my guilt and remorse and dedicate and devote my life towards the good for the Earthrealm in solemn sacrifice... Perhaps I will be able to earn true freedom.”

30. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?

“The optimum circumstance of my passing would place me in a battlefield, fighting for a cause that would defend the sanctity and sustenance of the Earthrealm as I would drown in streams of blood, but if such honor would not be bestowed upon me... However it may cause unbearable and seemingly eternal pain and affliction, I would like to die in your arms. At least, in such selfish way, that I would not feel alone as I am being lulled into a sempiternal oblivion. Perhaps then, the Heavens will grant me a spectral vision, a speck of hope amidst the solar flare, instead of bone-gnawing, flesh-melting hellfire as I would be transported to the realm where my family and clan members dwell....”

37. What is the first thought you have in the morning and the last thought you have at night?

“The morning is akin to the deepening the keel of a boat so I can sail through life without its winds knocking you over. And what better time when the mind and brain is like a sponge, during the first minutes after waking? So I'll often try to find a sense of peace, something relaxed, safe, not at war with anything or anyone, happiness, that there is enough, fortunate, contented things going in the world around me, and love, including feeling cared about, compassion and kindness - and once they are found, I will let these sink in. Often, the nighttime tends to bring more torment and negativity, as my brain seems to be much better at focusing on negatives, but at least I do not let them to ruminate and carry over to the next day, or even worse, attempt to suppress them. I would also pertinently worry of your wellbeing, however unfortunate or fortunate the circumstances will be, that we had to be parted during the night. Even in distress, I find such hard-to-bend fundamentality changes when another body is pressed against my side. For there would be less of a sleep deprivation and more tender caress of impassioned love that will drown my doubts and fears and coax me to sleep.”

44. Is there such a thing as absolute truth?

“I find the statement "There exists an absolute truth," almost trivial in its simplicity. Suppose we assert the negation of the statement, that is, that there is no such thing as absolute truth. By making that assertion, we claim that the sentence "There exists no absolute truth" is absolutely true. The statement itself is self-contradictory, so its negation, "There exists an absolute truth," is true. This proof applies only to logic. It does not tell us whether any particular statement other than itself is true. It does not prove the existence (or non-existence) of God, the devil, heaven, hell, or afterlife for all it matters. Neither does it assert that we can always ascertain the truth or falsity of any arbitrary statement. Speaking from my experiences, what I used to believe as the ultimate truth was shattered in the time’s revelation as my resolute perception over people, events and consequences have all changed. I only believe love as absolute truth; as long as there is sacredness, reciprocated trust and solemnity of devotion.”

#✗ obsessive cathartic (headcanon)#✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ seeking reconciliation with his own humanity (iii)#(relationships; samurai jack)#sonxflight

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thevoidwrites · 5 years ago

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Of Radwa Ashour

I think it would be a disservice to translate the works of Radwa Ashour. Don’t get me wrong, it is an absolute necessity that everyone everywhere experience the painful art she drew from history, but what are those books without their mother tongue? One would argue, based on her stories, that we, too, are nothing without our mother tongue. (the irony of my writing this not with my mother tongue is not lost on me)

Radwa’s novels are, to me, more history than fiction. This might be the reason historical fiction exists. She tells of crucial times of Arab and Muslim defeat, of the low points of our history. The number of martyrs, the state of affairs, the oppression, are all things to read about and never understand until you experience them through a single family living in Grenata as they try to save some books from burnings, as some of them die of a broken heart, others are killed at the stake for practicing medicine, as the bathhouses are closed down, as a third generation is pushed to the ocean in exile. Pain upon pain upon pain. Pain felt through empathy, compassion.

Radwa is rooted in Arabic, her references, her words, her characters, her stories, they are based on the collective Arab experience; sadly, that experience is usually defeat, but it is something that must be shared upon all our shoulders. Radwa doesn’t tell you much about the politics of the time. She may mention the town of Tantoura putting their hope on a speech by Abdelnasser, but you know he will do nothing, you know all the rulers will betray these people. It’s about these people though, not politics. The direct effect of politics, the effect that matters, is what happens to the people. So, in a way, Radwa is still talking about politics, she‘s talking about the consequences of the collective decisions taken at the time. It’s all in the shared sense of loss that shrouds who we are right now.

Here’s what I expect would happen if this was in English, by far one of the worst languages to write compassionately about pain due to oppression and one that does not revere God as Arabic does. I recently tried to read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I knew nothing about this book except it was loved by many western folk I follow on Twitter and they thought this particular book is needed at this time since it’s written by an immigrant about his experience. So I started it and it was horrific. There is no denying the pain in those people’s lives, but it isn’t written for me, a person who lives quite close to pain already. Similarly, I still haven’t been able to watch the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale and I am yet to get the courage to read the book, although the book may surprise me and be kind like Radwa.

My hypothesis is this. These pieces of media, these books, these movies, these series that are loved by mostly a western audience and are supposed to be about oppression and to represent real pain felt by real people, is not made for the people in pain. It is not made to soothe, to share, to help you feel less alone in your losses. If you are being bombed, you can remember the girl from Tantoura hugging infant Mariam to her chest on the stairs while bombs rained on Beirut and remembering Darwish saying “On this Earth is something that deserves life.” When I’m in fear I remember Radwa, I remember her characters, I remember others who felt this pain as I did and I was not alone. It was still painful, traumatizing, frightening, jarring, but I was not alone in how I felt. My heart, although already weighed by the real world, can still take the burden Radwa writes in her books.

Instead, Ocean’s book was made to shock, to intensify the pain, to make sure numbed hearts feel it. These people get to see their faces, their cities, their comfort shaken on screen to try and fathom what the oppressed so far away might be feeling. To make someone who always felt safe realize how it feels to live with a constant lack, to live with the normalization of transgression, you have to jar them. I do not need to be jarred. The oppressed do not need to be shocked.

It’s like the quote “Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.” The moments Radwa writes about are just red, but she made them into poetry. If someone who doesn’t know this pain only sees the poetry, they might romanticize this moment instead of seeing it for its true nature. For someone who lived here though, you need the poetry to survive. All that red? It’s my blood. It’s our blood. And if there is no escaping that it will be spilt, I can at least rest assured that it will be made in poetry. There’s no point in living otherwise, no point in withstanding this reality, but for the hope, that this is poetry in the making.

The only way out is through. Even while going to therapy, you sometimes have to relive difficult moments, have to change learned behavior, have to reach out to people despite it gnawing at your throat. You have to push yourself through this absolute discomfort and hold your quivering heart in place because what must be done, must be done. Not all pain is the same, this pain to change, to grow, to overcome is necessary. You are transformed by it, a times, you are in control of it. You choose to be in their momentary pain to reach the space beyond. Radwa’s pain is the same. It is necessary, it is beautiful, it promises a safe haven beyond it. None of her books really end well I suppose. No one gets their land back, or gets to reunite with their family, or finds someone they lost along the way. But they grow mints and rosemary under their kitchen window, they help strangers along the way, they bind wounds, and hide books. So you take refuge in those small acts that you do. She reassures you, this is enough, what you do is enough, those little acts are enough. You may not be able to do much else, and that is okay. Rest softer, for you are not alone.

#writing #radwa ashour #ocean vuong #tantouria #on earth we're briefly gorgeous #opinion

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honeybammie · 6 years ago

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raindrops › lee felix

↳ in which you find a reason to love the rain ↳ fluff ↳ continuation of downpour

Hyunjin didn’t bring Mina with him again, but I faked illness for the next couple weeks as an excuse not to see any of the guys. First, I told them my family and I had all gotten food poisoning after eating out Thursday, and the week after I came down with a cold and just wanted to lay in bed. At least the wanting to lay in bed part wasn’t a lie. For years, Felix offered to bring me soup when I was sick, but this time he left me alone. He didn’t believe me, but he’d never breathe a word of truth to the others, especially Hyunjin.

But I had been wrong before.

Hyunjin and I didn’t hang out alone together anymore. We hadn’t for years. It was one of the unwritten rules of our friendship since our short-lived relationship, so when he asked me to grab coffee with him, I knew something was amiss. My heart raced the whole drive over, berating me with possibilities. Felix told him. Felix told him I was in love and Hyunjin was about to tell me he didn’t want to be my friend anymore because he loved Mina and she meant more to him than I did and from now on nights at Felix’s house would be awkward for the rest of eternity and—

I found him by the window, and he smiled up at me from his seat and wrapped his arms around my torso. I’d love to hate him, but how could I when he had cheeks like strawberries and a smile like honey?

“I saved us a table,” he said, and I noticed there weren’t many left. Noon was a busy hour for the café. “Are you feeling alright?”

I blinked. “What?”

“You had a cold a couple days ago.”

“Oh, yeah,” I remembered, setting my purse on the tabletop and draping my coat over the chair. “It’s gone now. You want to order?”

“Of course.” His grin persisted, as did my anxiety. He had to know something. Humans didn’t break habit without reason, so it was only a matter of time before he told me I was in love with him.

It was only a matter of time before he told me he wasn’t in love with me.

He drank Americanos now, unlike when we were younger, and I watched him stir in two packs of sugar, drumming my fingertips along my own cup without taking a sip.

“So why’d you invite me here?” I eventually asked, fed up with feeling my heartbeat in the back of my throat. He might as well tell me. I already knew.

“I can’t invite one of my best and oldest friends to coffee?”

“You haven’t in years.”

He chewed on his lip, stirring his drink again. It seemed we both had our nervous habits. “I’m...sorry about that. It’s kind of hard to spend time alone with someone when you’re in love with them and they have no idea.”

My face burned, stomach performing cirque du soleil tricks. “Yeah,” I said. Was he mocking me? Or did he want me to admit the truth so he could pretend he didn’t hear it from Felix? “So that’s it? You invited me out because you’re in love with someone else now so you don’t have to worry about the thought that I don’t feel the same?”

“I just wanted to see one of my best friends. It’s been weeks since you were at Felix’s, and I’m pretty sure he’s the only one you’ve hung out with lately. Had to make sure you’re still alive.” He reached a hand across the table to squeeze mine. I held on a moment longer than I should’ve, but he was too oblivious to notice.

I really hadn’t seen any of the others since I met Mina. Felix made me come to the grocery store with him a couple times because he hated going about the chore sans moral support, but I cancelled plans with Jisung and told Jeongin I was too busy when they asked me to spend time with them. Guilt gnawed at me for the first time, and I wanted to blame Hyunjin, but it wasn’t his fault I was so madly in love and so horribly late to realizing it.

“I’m alive,” I muttered. “I’m sorry for pushing everyone away, but life has been weird lately. Felix is kind of hard to avoid since he lives so close and isn’t afraid to break down my door.”

“You’re okay.” He chuckled. “But Felix and I did have a conversation about you the other day.”

And here it was. He held his knowledge in for a solid three minutes, longer than I would’ve anticipated, and this was where our pleasant coffee date reached its conclusion.

But I played the fool regardless. “Did you?” I asked, and my fingers drum, drum, drummed against my mocha. “What about?”

“That’s...maybe something you want to ask him about.”

“Why bring it up then?” I groaned, falling back and folding my arms. “Felix and I have already talked about it, so can’t we get it over with?”

Hyunjin cocked his head, mouth parting and closing a couple times.“Three days ago he said he hadn’t told you anything.”

I paused, perplexed. “What’re you talking about?”

“What’re you talking about?” he countered. “Is there something Felix said to you that I should know?”

Quite the opposite, actually. I tried not to think of crying on Felix’s kitchen floor while Hyunjin and Mina huddled together on the couch, but before I could help it, jealousy seeped in again. “I was...upset about something. It’s nothing now. Now what did Felix say?”

“Talk about it with him!” he persisted. “I only brought it up because I think it’s important, and he’ll never tell you without a little shove.”

“You’re making me nervous. Really. Is Felix dying? Because if he only has a year to live and he told you first, I’ll kill him.”

“I think that’s the definition of counter-productive,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s not dying. Just talk to him.”

So I showed up to Felix’s on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, which wasn’t unusual in itself, but my purpose for being there was new. As far as I was concerned, Felix and I didn’t have any secrets. We might not share everything the way Hyunjin and I used to, but I didn’t mind. We grocery shopped and studied for tests and offered moral support when one of us needed to cry on the kitchen floor, and I was content enough with that.

I walked into an empty kitchen, welcoming myself inside since we stopped knocking ages ago, and I found a bag of generic-brand potato chips in the cupboard. As a penniless teenager, he was all about buying off-brand foods for the sake of saving a nickel. His parents gave him money for grocery shopping anyway, but the quality was endearing no less, and the chips tasted no different.

“Hey. I didn’t hear you come in,” Felix greeted me, emerging at the top of the basement steps to find me sitting atop his counter.

“I’m stealthy.” I crunched on a chip, crumbs falling down my sweatshirt. I wasn’t quite the epitome of grace, but my excuse was sound. The process of getting over Hyunjin was an ongoing one, complete with the idea that Mina was An Absolute Goddess, and I a Mere Peasantry Mortal, which was new for me. Mortal? Maybe, but peasantry? That was different.

“Are you okay?” He crossed the room and reached into the bag for a handful.

“Why do people keep asking? Hyunjin asked the same thing the other day.”

“Yeah, because you told everyone you were sick on Friday,” he said.

“Are you mad?” I asked, noticing his clipped tone and the way he didn’t look me in the eye. “That I haven’t shown up in a couple weeks?”

He shrugged. “Not mad that you didn’t show up, but you could say you just don’t feel like joining instead of lying to everyone. No one would’ve been offended.”

“In retrospect, maybe I should’ve been more honest, but the past couple weeks have been hard, and I barely know what to do with myself.”

“That’s why I asked if you’re okay.” He gestured for me to make room, so I shimmied to the side, making way for him to hop up onto the counter next to me. For some reason, we spent a ridiculous amount of time in his kitchen. No video games in the basement. No TV in the living room. Just the kitchen. On the counter. Come to think of it, I barely knew what the upper level of his house looked like.

“I’m...a mess,” I decided, leaning my head back onto the window and feeling the pitter patter of raindrops against the other side of the glass. “I can’t stop thinking of what would’ve happened if either of us said something months ago. There had to have been some overlap of where we both had feelings for each other, but now he’s in love with her, and she’s the most gorgeous thing in the world, right? And here I am, on a counter, in a sweater, eating chips. It’s fantastic.”

“She’s really pretty,” he agreed, “but she’s not you.”

“You’re obligated to say that. You’re my best friend.” I snorted.

“I’m your best friend? I thought Hyunjin was your best friend.”

I snorted again, this time louder, and more bitter. “Hyunjin hasn’t been my best friend in years. The other day, we hung out one-on-one for the first time since we were sixteen, so you’ve been upgraded.”

“Okay, but you’re breaking the news to Jisung. He’ll be so upset it wasn’t him,” Felix said, and I laughed for real for the first time in weeks, elbowing him in the ribs. “Hyunjin’s really happy, you know?”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said.

“But you agree that he deserves to be happy, and pining after you for three years wasn’t making him happy, right?” he asked, and I nodded. “And you’ll be happy, too, just probably not with Hyunjin, which is probably for the best.”

“Maybe it’d be nice if we had our old friendship back or something. I don’t know.”

Felix closed the bag before we finished off the entire thing, which was probably for the best since I already felt Not Great without the potato chips. “Then hang out with him more. Text him. He misses talking to you. That’s why he asked you to get coffee the other day.”

“And he told you all that?”

“Pretty much. He came over a few nights ago, and he said he was worried about not seeing you in a while, and that he was upset you drifted apart, so I might’ve suggested he ask you to hang out. As friends. Which you are.”

I sighed. At least being his friend was better than losing him, and if he loved Mina, I could probably learn to love her too. “He said you guys mentioned me, and that you told him something important I need to hear from you specifically.”

At my say so, Felix’s demeanor changed entirely, starting into a bout of nervous laughter. “He said that?” I nodded. “So much for confidentiality.”

“What can you tell Hyunjin that you can’t tell me?” I pouted. “I was upset enough that he went to you first to tell you about Mina, and now you’re telling your secrets to him first?”

“To be fair, Chan has known for almost a month now, so Hyunjin wasn’t the first. He’s just mouthier.” He deflected my questions, and I frowned. “You have enough on your plate already. I didn’t want to bother you with more.”

“I’m not leaving your house until you tell me.”

“Awesome. You can sleep on the basement couch indefinitely. I’ll let my parents know when they get home.”

I had stayed entire weekends before, so maybe the threat wasn’t my best. “What’s the big deal?”

“Namely the fact that you’re in love with Hyunjin, but he’s in love with Mina, and I know how his former feelings for you did nothing but hurt your friendship, so my feelings for you probably aren’t going to help us, either.”

His voice stretched thin toward the end. I remembered him comforting me on the floor a couple weeks back, completely silent while I wept. He must’ve been feeling all the same emotions I was, but with no one to cry to. Maybe he’d gone to Chan afterwards to blow off some steam, but I doubted the idea. He’d sooner boil in his own emotions until he burned all over.

“I’m sorry,” he added before I had the chance to speak my part. “You can pretend I didn’t say anything. I, uh, like being your best friend, too, and I know I’m not Hyunjin, so—”

“Hyunjin’s great,” I said, “but he’s not you.”

“You’re obligated to say that,” he mocked me from earlier. “You’re my best friend.”

“I can find a new one. Apparently Jisung is vying for the position,” I said, but I could tell he wasn’t any less nervous than before. “Come on.” I jumped off the counter, grabbing my jacket.

He watched me, a little far off and hesitant, but I nodded my head towards the door. “Where are you going?”

“We are going on a date.” I reached my hands out, pulling him to his feet. “Where to?” A hint of smile allowed itself to settle on his face, eyes crinkling in the process.

“We’ll figure that out when we get there.” I didn’t yet have a clue where I wanted to go, or where we would end up afterwards, but maybe that was all part of the fun. “That okay?”

“But it’s raining,” he said, still holding onto my hands and squeezing them so slightly. I don’t think he noticed, so I let him, savoring the moment. It could be the first of many.

I peeked out the window, and sure enough rain was still pouring down outside, drenching gardens and porches. Puddles formed in driveways, coaxing the neighborhood children out of their living rooms to romp around in rainboots.

“Then we get wet.”

“Right.” He laughed, finally letting my hands slip away. “Then let’s go.”

We ran down the street to my driveway, sliding into my car but not before the downpour soaked us to the bone. Felix’s hair stuck to his forehead, and his cheeks were a mingled canvas of speckled freckles and raindrops. I didn’t realize I was staring until he caught me, and I made myself all the more obvious by snapping my attention to the windshield. Both our faces were tinged in pink when I glanced back over.

“Should we go?” he asked.

“I’m getting there,” I replied, flustered. My thoughts were abuzz with things he might be noticing about me for the first time, or maybe he already had me all figured out months ago. I’d have to ask later how long he’d felt this way, and why he told Chan first, and if he would’ve ever told me without the push, but for the time being I was content with his presence next to me. Hadn’t it been raining, I would’ve relinquished one of my hands for him to hold on our way.

The sky continued its assault on the ground our whole way into town, but we laughed and sang off-key to the radio anyway. My breath caught in my throat every time he leaned a little further over the console, but every time nerves crept in I settled myself by listening to the soft pattering of drops on my car.

I was Hyunjin’s first kiss, and I wouldn’t be his last, but I was Felix’s third and I’ve heard third time’s the charm. Hyunjin and I kissed in his basement because of a nonexistent obligation, but Felix and I kissed because of an entirely existent pull towards the other, and I squeezed his hand tight while we ran from the bakery to the art shop to the bookstore.

All the while, it continued to pour.

a/n: at last, part two of downpour. sorry for the long wait, but i hope it was worth it ♥

#stray kids #lee felix #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids au #stray kids fluff #stray kids oneshot #stray kids felix #kpop imagines #kpop scenarios #kpop au #kpop fluff #kpop oneshot #stray kids drabbles #kpop drabbles #felix fluff #stray kids lee felix

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imagineclaireandjamie · 6 years ago

Note

I absolutely loved the royal equerry story! I know it was just posted but any chance we could get an update soon?

You can read Part I: The Crown Equerry here.

I am so excited to continue this tale about Queen Claire!

xx. Mod Kate

Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)Part II: An Accidental Queen

It wasthe first time she had indulged herself in this habit since hercoronation. Before the coronation, whenthings were not normal but still her normal, she rode alone withsome regularity. Living here with her Uncle Lamb escaping for anevening ride had been tricky, but it had been far from impossible.

Lamb waswholly committed to looking the other way. An unspoken agreement meant the house staff did the same, making thesight of Princess Claire slipping out of the palace in riding boots well afterdark a not unfamiliar sight. Clad inriding boots well after dark, hair bound in a tight bun at the nape of her neck,she would spirit away down the rolling, manicured lawns of the palace to thestables. After dark, they were quiet andempty.

Theritual was almost a religious experience to her –– the quiet whispered greetingto her horse, saddling her, riding her, cooling her down, and getting her backinto the stable and settled for the night.

Butsince Claire’s coronation, the unspoken agreement had been more or less disregardedand she had been confined to the palace at night. Surrounded by priceless treasures of anempire caught in a permanent ebb and flow of influence and importance, thewalls of the palace and its hundreds of rooms were stifling. Though thoroughly aware of her privilege, shehad come to think of it as a gilded cage.

HRHPrincess Claire Elizabeth of York had never been the odds on favorite to becomethe Queen. She came upon her role ratheraccidentally.

HerUncle Lamb’s coronation was well before she was born and long before he hadbeen ready (he said). He had been young – barely twenty –– when his mother passed away from cancer. At the time, everyone (press, public, family) had just assumedthat the young king would someday marry. It was not for a lack of trying –– an impersonal royal matchmakingthrough diplomacy and whispered observations of “oh well she’s very pretty” met only with laughs and smirks. Andwith the assumption of marriage camethe corollary assumption that Lamb would have children. He would fulfill that which was chief among hisroyal duties: have children. Then from thatlineage would come the next king or queen.

Clairehad never bothered herself with such assumptions or the point when the failurefor him to abide by them became a talking point. To her, she was just Uncle Lamb.

He washardly a king at all in her eyes, though she knew the formalities to beobserved in the public eye. Behindclosed doors, he had just been her goofy uncle who gave generously atChristmases and birthdays, told silly jokes with bad punchlines, traveled a lotfor work, and showed up on the television periodically, looking somber andtalking about pride in country.

But thenthere was the accident that tore away nearly everything that she knew.

Claire,at six, had not known that the world could change in a moment. At least until onecold afternoon. She was asleep betweenher mother (Her Royal Highness PrincessJulia Louise, heir presumptive to the throne) and father in the back seatof a state car. Her older sister (Her Royal Highness Princess Anne Catherine)was pressed between her mother and the car door, also slumbering. And then abridge fell out from beneath their motorcade, well above a snowy creek.

Shealways found it funny that something so profoundly disruptive could exist asonly a distant, fragmented memory. Whentrying to recall it (something she rarelydid), she was bombarded with only a series of disjointed recollections ––full technicolor and visceral.

The icecold water burning her throat when she gulped for air.

Thescreams of her mother (“Henry –– thegirls… save them”) that made her eardrums ache.

The roughhands on her arms, wrenching her away from her father, out of the water, andonto grass.

Thescratch of a tartan blanket over her as she shivered violently, her teethfeeling as though they would grind themselves into dust.

Thesterile bite of hospital air and the soft, winter-chapped lips of the nurse whostood over her, whispering “you’re alive,love, you’re alive.”

Thesearing ache when she tried not to bealive any longer –– violent compressions on her narrow chest that shiftedher bones.

Thedoctor who smelled faintly of cigarettes imploring her to “breathe god dammit.”

Darkness. Cold. Emptiness.

She woketo her uncle’s broad thumb drawing small circles on her shoulder through astiff green hospital gown. Being part ofthe royal family did not save her the indignity of a tie-back hospitalgown. She was emotionless as her eyesdarted around the sterile room (tubes inher hand, Lamb’s warm touch, the hum of a fluorescent overhead light, the smellof cleaning fluid and layers of illness).

But thenthe realization hit her. Her Uncle Lambhad no reason to be here, here except….

Andalthough she was young, she knew immediately that they were gone forever.

Her mother(Julia). Her older sister (Anne). Her father (Henry).

Dead.

Thosememories, while technicolor and visceral, were not what she rememberedbest. More vivid than that tumble intothe creek was the moment when Lamb told her that her entire world had vanished.

Shemoved into Buckingham Palace and goofy Uncle Lamb awkwardly transitioned into afather-like figure. She went to boardingschool, kicking and screaming, crying every time she left to anyone who wouldlisten. It was only when she was caughtsmoking cigarettes in the girl’s lavatory that Lamb brought her back to Londonfor good. It had been Christmas. Hisdisappointed eyes glared at her over half-moon spectacles when he said, “Youneed to manage your reputation. Yourfuture rides on it.”

At thetime she had not grasped what he meant. But then, shortly after she turned fifteen, media chatter started thatthe King was a “confirmed bachelor.” Claireguessed what it meant. Nonetheless, Lambsat her down, brushed the back of his hand over her cheeks, and explained theconcept of a euphemism (something she alreadyknew). He told her that he was notromantically interested in women (somethingelse she already knew).

Thencame the interview.

“Will we see the king marry?” thedoe-eyed reporter had asked, a finger nervously twisting at the cap on his pen.

With alaugh, Lamb’s response had been short: “Iwould not count on it.”

It wasonly then that the chatter about Claire started.She was no longer just the unfortunate child of a dead royal. The lanky, awkward little thing –– an orphan –– was not really a placeholder heir presumptive. TheKing would not have children. She was it.

And thenhe died. Quietly, unexpectedly, warm inhis bed. A heart attack took him well before his time.

Thenewspaper headlines were none too flattering when Princess Claire Elizabeth – whohad been the third in line to the throne – was thrust into her new role.

Chiefamong the headlines: The AccidentalQueen.

Photographsof her from the boarding school materialized, no doubt from the stash of anunidentified, so-called friend. Cigarette dangling from her lip and skirtrolled at the waist to be shorter, every paper published it with the label: The Party Queen.

Readingit, Claire had thrown a vase against the door and screamed. No one came to see what was the matter. After a full meltdown in the bathroom, sheexited wrapped in one of her mother’s robes to see that the face had been sweptup and the flowers put into an identical cut crystal vase.

She wassuddenly stuck on the thought that both vases (the broken and the unbroken) were hers, but neither truly belonged to her.

“We willtake care of it ma’am,” was the official line given to her as she prepared forher coronation. The newspapers becamenotably more generous in their coverage after that.

Gallingas the unflattering press had been, she threw herself into the work of a queenwith a certain abandon. Her dedication gnawed her other dreams, things she hadonly been allowed to dream as one with a laughably distant claim to the throne,clean from her bones.

The dayshe broke –– running down the hill, tear-streaked and needing a release–– had been a long and her every move choreographed by others.

She had awokento the sound of bagpipes and immediately forgotten whatever dream she had beenhaving. The only shadow of it was thewarmth of a touch on her cheek, the sensation of wide-open space, and sky asfar as the eye could see. Then that toodissolved.

Shebathed, perfumed herself, sat staring as her hair and makeup were fixed andclothes laid out for her to dress.

Then itwas on to responding to a small selection of letters from the public (adoration, condolences, the sharing of personalstruggles), the red box (telegramsand state papers for her review and approval), and a series of meetings (the identities and positions of each visitorwhispered into her ear along with a brief explanation of the meeting’s purpose).

A lunchwith the Argentine ambassador (sea bassand vegetables, a glass of wine) and then preparing for an engagement withthe Prime Minister of Canada (a tiarapinned into an updo that straightened her curls and did not move, red lips, abillowing ivory dress, and elbow-length gloves).

Andfinally, a brief telephone call with Frank–– the war hero introduced to her by Lamb and who she was to marry comeautumn. Frank was “just fine,” he said and when they hung up there was no proclamationof “I miss you” or love. “Just fine” was how she felt about thematch.

Scrubbingthe day from her skin in a too-hot shower, she was struck by the fact that shehad not made a single choice in the preceding forty-eight hours. Save how she wanted her morning eggs, she hadlittle say in much of the last week. Shehad not even applied the red lipstick smeared across her palm or mascararunning in black rivulets down her cheeks and over her neck.

Everythingin her day had been cursory. At the end of it all, she found herselfyearning for depth with an ache soacute it felt as though it would split her breastbone clean in two.

Thoroughlyexhausted, but thrumming with need for a piece of herself, Claire finished her shower, toweled off, and took off downa back stairway that she had never before taken. Clad in black clothes fit fora caper in the night and with damp, unbrushed hair, she made her way to thestables.

Andthere, like a breath of fresh air, she stood –– her beautiful girl. Long lines, sweet disposition, and aneagerness to please. It gave Claire ajolt of emotion. Through absence, she felt that she had neglected the poorcreature. However, Brimstone’s earsflattened as Claire smiled and clicked her tongue softly, leaning over thestall gate. All was forgiven.

“Thereyou are, you good girl.” She sighed asthe horse nudged her hand. “I havemissed you, my beautiful love.”

Just asshe moved to pop a hip against the gate –– the only way to get the blastedthing to open without a screwdriver –– she had been interrupted.

“Can I help ye?” the voice called to her.

“Oh fuck off,” Claire muttered, browsfurrowing. She had made it this far andto be taken from her plans by a groom. Well, the thought was enough to make her seered.

Warm,broad hands took her by the upper arm and she turned, her face contorting. He was a hulking thing of a man with broadshoulders. His collar unbuttoned and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, shecould tell that he had an immense amount of power hiding beneath the cleanlines of his work shirt. He stooddumbfounded, staring at her for more than a few moments before releasing her. He had fiery crop of hair. It looked mussed by a hand, a tick used todistract a mind deep in thought.

For amoment, she bantered with him about her stables,her horses, her desire to take Brimstone out. She still hated having staff. And then, her mind fuzzy from champagnecocktails and too little food, she had given in, said to call her “Claire,” andagreed he could follow her. She mentallykicked herself. Had she really told theman to call her by her given name? Had she really relented that easily?

With thematter of her taking the horse out settled, Colonel James Fraser set to ridebehind her at an appropriate distance, she climbed onto Brimstone, mutteringonly to herself, “You are losing it, Claire.”

Heproved himself an unobtrusive riding companion –– hanging back an intentionaldistance and allowing her to put some space between them. Her initial disappointment of not being ableto take Brimstone out alone faded incrementally and she found her mind driftingto the past, a place she had found herself dwelling quite frequently of late.

Years ofriding Brimstone.

Lamb’sinsistence that he give her the horse outside of others’ presence, his coolfingers resting lightly over her eyes as he beseeched her to “keep them closed, just a bit more then,squirt.” The feeling when she openedthem and saw the horse. Hers.

Thegilded horse-drawn carriage kept just kitty corner to where she had saddledBrimstone. An ornate monstrosity ofriches that had carried her from the palace to Westminster Abbey for hercoronation, her heart aching with the loss of her uncle and her gut churning atthe thought of her new role.

The accidental queen, indeed.

Eventuallyshe as almost able to forget that Fraser was following her.

Almost.

Theymade it a fair distance before she brought Brimstone back towards thestables. Her hands carried her throughthe routine of readying Brimstone to be put back in her stall.

Fraserinterrupted her. The damn bloody Scot.

“Shelikes ye.” He was closer than she hadthought. Lifting Brimstone’s saddle off,she sighed at the heft of it. The back of his hand brushed over her knuckleswhen he took it from her.

Shestepped around to the front of her horse.

“Well, Iwould hope so.” Claire’s eyes driftedshut for a moment as she reveled in the soft nudge of Brimstone’s nose againsther neck. “I did all of the work withher. Did you know that?”

“I didnaknow that, ma’am.”

Fraserwas apparently wise enough to have not taken her earlier bait.

Somethingin her, though, wanted him to say her name. Just to hear it. To lend even a moment’s more normalcyto the evening before she had to tromp back up the hill and into her gildedcage.

Theyworked in tandem to finish untacking and grooming Brimstone. The silence was companionable and she smiledat him when he passed her a curry comb. The fact that he did not offer to just do the work himself struck her. And she was deeply appreciative.

Brimstonewatered, cleaned, and tucked in for the night with a handful of apple slicesand a kiss to the nose, Claire turned to leave, wiping at the sheen of sweatthat had sprung up on the back of her neck.

“Yourmajesty?” Fraser called after her, his voice firm and somehow tentative all atonce.

Sheturned on her heel and continued to walk backwards. “Yes, Colonel Fraser?”

“Ye’re afine rider.”

Sheoffered him a quick smile before turning and continuing back to thepalace. Although she was returning toher gilded cage, it somehow felt as though she had opened a door.

#Royal AU #;mod Kate #featuring: Brimstone

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bitchiago · 6 years ago

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HAUNTING GENEVIEVE / CHAPTER ONE

(full chapter under cut)

Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church does not believe that the mortal sin of suicide automatically sends the performer of said act to hell. In fact, the Catechism itself says, and I quote, that ‘we should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance.’

The internet is handy for little titbits such as this. A personal favourite that’s been gnawing at my soul recently after trolling question and answer forums the three weeks prior has been ‘one doesn't attend a funeral out of respect for the dead, but for the living.’

I’m new to the funeral scene, the mourning scene in general, actually. Hell, I haven’t even lost a grandparent. And while some of these bits of information come as absolutely knee shaking, leg buckling, hand sweating, anxiety inducing; sometimes you can find something on these sites to calm your nerves a little. Still, there’s very little online about attending the funeral of your best friend who you were knees deep in an illicit homosexual affair with, hid far from both your parents, friends and loved ones.

Point is, I’m doing as much research as I can for my first funeral since it is such an impromptu and particularly confusing one.

One thing I can say, however, that I didn’t need to find affirmation for online, is that this was the first day I didn’t wake up crying my eyes red raw, and, for a matter of fact, the first that I didn’t wake up and immediately have to rush to the bathroom to throw up, which I have been routinely doing since I found out about Molly’s death. This time I rushed and gagged till I had tears in my eyes. It’s involuntary by this point. There’s no other way for my body to cope and catch up with my mind at the same time apparently.

Each morning has been the same since the day I got the damned call. I wake up, check my phone for a text that is not there nor will it ever be, see the texts that are almost always there, then rush to the bathroom and try to make it to the toilet bowl before last night’s dinner spews up onto the hall carpet. I didn’t realise a death could affect you in such a physical way until the end of Molly.

The difference in today, or so I’ve speculated with the limited brain power I’m able to sacrifice for the cause, is that the stress seems to have completely balled up inside of me and made it impossible for me to do anything but think about the funeral. This includes effective vomiting.

I close the PDF I found of the Catechism I never once thought I would find myself searching through and return to my google tab. All the questions I could ask and yet none would explain the clusterfuck of a situation I’m in.

I saw Molly’s mum two days after she found her daughter in her bedroom unconscious. At first she thought she was asleep, then when Molly wouldn’t get up for breakfast, not even when her mother shook her shoulders and screamed her name trying to wake her up, she realised exactly what her daughter was. The empty packet of sertraline gave her enough information for her to piece together how it had happened.

I didn’t find out till the afternoon when Lillian, Molly’s best friend, called me on Molly’s parent’s behalf. (See? The best friend role is taken, what am I supposed to grieve in front of people at the funeral? The one who found out second? The second-best friend?). Ever since Lillian’s call, ever since she said the words and I froze and she asked if I was still there and I hung up, I’ve been ignoring her attempts to talk to me. Dread is not the word I’m feeling to face her again. Or Molly’s parents. Or Molly’s aunt and uncles and favourite cousins I never got the chance to meet over the short-lived school year and summer we were dating.

After typing in a few ‘do I have to cry at a funeral?’ and ‘how much crying is too much crying?’ questions into google, not having the motivation to read a single answer to them, I shut my laptop on my desk and spin round in my chair.

My phone sits perched on my bed beside my pillow, sheets sprawled out in a mess on the bed after my hasty escape to the bathroom this morning. I move to sit at the end of my bed across from my phone. I had been using it less now that I hadn’t anyone to text except for my parents. Still, I seemed to keep it close by and check it out of habit every few minutes. I don’t know what keeps me repeating this ritual knowing full well my lock screen will be the same as ever. Worst of all is whenever I catch myself looking for new texts with that familiar name at the top and I start to feel a little queasy, which is making me worse for wear considering how my mornings have been going recently. I’m thinking of getting a watch instead of a phone.

The contemplative eye contact I’ve managed to hold with my phone shatters when the thing starts ringing and vibrating its way off the pillow onto the sheets. I pick it up and switch it off. It was my second alarm, the one I set last night telling me that I had two minutes till I had to leave for the funeral, in case I ignored the first one telling me I was T minus twenty in hopes of making the event disappear from my calendar altogether. But, and I’m sad to say I’m quickly coming to this realisation, ignoring something doesn’t make it go away. Not even when you wish it with your whole being.

“Genevieve!” I hear my mum call from downstairs. T-minus 0. My alarm had tricked me.

My mum holds my hand through the whole funeral. At first I pull away, but after the third time she grabbed a hold of my sweaty palm, I try and settle into it.

We sit in the pews, deep in the middle of the congregation, on those god-awful cold hard benches, and I try with all my might to pay attention to the words being spoken by the priest. Love, peace, great tragedy – it all sounded the same. If I really needed comforting, I could google the exact transcript he was speaking from. In fact, I had been doing exactly that for the past week. Every so often I glance around the rows of faces, trying to catch an eye of someone, anyone really, to ask are you getting any of this? To find some kind of connection so I didn’t feel so lost in it all. The only one I manage to find is Jesus hanging on the back wall, right above the priest.

I watch Jesus hang over him, as I do every Sunday morning, feeling strange that today is actually a Tuesday, and feel those same shudders crawl down my spine that I always feel when I look too carefully at the hanging Jesus. Gruesome, it is; I had always thought so. A dead man hanging from two planks of wood, for everyone to see – and the large crucifixes intended for hanging above the altar in churches are detailed things too, they’re created to be a spectacle. The blood dripping from Jesus’ hands are always too real a shade of red to be just paint, and if I ever looked at it for too long, it would look wet.

My eyes shoot down again to the priest, love, peace, love, peace, CRASH! The bloody crucifix could fall and crush him like a bug at any moment. I wonder if he knew. It doesn’t fall. Of course, it doesn’t – it never does. They’re sturdy spectacles, crucifixes are. Detailed bloody sturdy things.

I don’t manage a single bit of contact with any of the attendees. All of the faces remain locked on the priest. They don’t need the contact with me as much as I need it with them. I am alone, even with my mum’s hand to hold onto. Not even God himself will give me a sparing glance to lock onto. I squeeze my mum’s hand harder.

When the mass ends, I find myself standing by the exit, expertly avoiding the priest’s handshake as well as eye contact with the church goers who had done their duty by attending and were now leaving the church to go on with their lives. I fear that I’m going to be stuck in this church forever, hovering around and waiting for my mum who is near the altar, giving her condolences to Molly’s family and trying to make eye contact with me as a last chance at getting me to come over and speak with them.

Molly’s mum had already seen me earlier and smiled, which I returned, and that was about enough as I could manage. We both understood, or at least I hope we did.

I look down at my hands and start flicking my fingers off of one another. Ah, yes, the perfect distraction. Simple enough to not get convoluted and stress me out, but quiet and subtle enough for it not to draw attention from anyone and have them wisecrack something about it to get me talking to them.

As soon as my mum had wished well, we would be leaving.

I look back over to them, but something is different – different as in my mum is waving at me, beckoning me over. Not only that, but Molly’s immediate family is looking at me, too. Only me.

I drop my hands to my sides and dart my eyes to the side. Was someone calling me? Someone in the church foyer, perhaps?

I take a sharp breath and shuffle out of the church and into the foyer, making myself hidden deep into a new crowd. The same church goers – but now not seated and in perfect formation for my hideout.

I glance back through into the church and run a hand down my face.

Yes, it seems at only aged seventeen, Genevieve Walsh has ditched her first funeral and its own grieving family to save her own selfish feelings. Not even a goodbye!

A wash of relief washes over me, an emotion I wasn’t quite expecting to feel today. Then comes a tap on my shoulder.

“Genevieve?”

Oh! Wasn’t I too quick on the relief front? The voice is recognised immediately, it’s the same voice that said the words that tore my world apart just three weeks ago. The voice I had been ignoring ever since.

I stand frozen. Perhaps I didn’t feel the tap, maybe I didn’t hear my name, maybe… maybe someone was calling me in the church now too? I side eye the main church hall again, no… it was too risky. Trading one tricky emotional situation for another when I had just ran tail between my legs from the first? No thanks.

Then something hitches in my stomach – shifts in a way its not supposed to. I feel it. It’s happening. Of all the mornings, I have been training for this. I look dead up and make eye contact with the bathroom. Finally, the morning vom sesh has come to take me.

“Sorry,” I whisper back at Lillian, or I maybe don’t. I can’t be sure. All I know now is that I’m saying excuse me’s and I’m sorry’s at people as I push them out of the way and stumble to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind me.

I lift the toilet seat, kneel before it and see salvation as chunks of Weetabix come pouring out of my mouth, splashing back the holy water at my face.

For a moment, I am not scared. I have not just run from my mother and a grieving family. I am not someone who hides. I’m not connected to the pain that waits for me outside of this cubicle. I am alone, I am safe, and this old wooden door gives me the sanctuary I need to be fine.

If only for a second, I am free.

#: haunting genevieve :#writeblr #wip #my wip #my writing #I HAD SO MUCH FUN WRITING THIS ! pls enjoy !!!

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insaneasylumready · 6 years ago

Text

This....

Okay, so... I just watched something, very very moving. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhEATqXnXCI) and... No im not anorexic but I feel like I need to spread how this made me feel because Jaiden put into words the same things I felt for a long long time now.

To use Jaiden’s analogy, Mental illness of any kind is just like waves crashing over you when you try to come back up for air. Its suffocating and devastating. Like Jaiden, I go out of my way to make sure people are okay, and I don't care anymore if im okay or not as long as I can make people feel better if I can save them from the demons in their mind while my own play their fucking games with me.

To put into perspective, since some of you (im pretty sure only 7 people follow me.... I think 3 know me irl? idrk but that's beside the point.) don't know jack about my mental state. I struggle with self-harm.... mostly cutting, but other less severe forms as well. Every.Single.Time that I feel like I am getting better I fall more than before. And I hate myself for it. Even recently I went to a Psychiatrist and for the time being, I was fine, so I told him such... But, If I go back now? Id probably have to change my story a bit. Anyway, I hate myself to no ends, I wish I looked different, I wish I never knew what it felt like to corrupt my own skin. But I do. And that alone is eating me alive.

...Sometimes I call for help, and when I do no one struggles to help me, to pull me out of it... But even I can tell it's getting less and less effective. I don't want to lose myself. I don't, and maybe this itself is a call for help in a sense? Idk, as im writing this im intending it as more of a PSA, It is supposed to be an explanation that maybe someone else can use to explain their head fog?

It doesn't matter what mental illness you have, or disorder, etc. even the mildest cases probably feel the same way. Even if it is reduced. The thing about that is, if you let it consume you, you may never escape... So, and this advice goes to myself as well, In case I forget like I do sometimes. Know you're not bothering anyone by reaching out, they will worry and they will wonder what to do. But all you need to do sometimes is reach out to someone who can help you.

Truthfully, I am here for anyone, idgaf what your suffering from... Ill do my best to help you. Just don't be surprised if I need help sometimes too. Sometimes I forget who I am, what I can do. etc. etc. Sometimes I really do forget that every life is worth it, including myself. Because everyone's story has a significance to something...

It's scary sometimes too when you want to die people will often ask “why” or “who did this?” but there really isn't an answer... Even when im in a truly loving relationship that I want to be in and I want to experience for ages to come, I still have the gnawing thought that I should just die..... Even if I love them, including more than S/O, but friends, and friend like family. etc.... As much as I want to keep my life for them, it's agonizing at the same time to keep it for me.

I want to get better, I want to stop mauling my skin like some rabid animal, I want to stop hiding my cut scars, I want to stop the headaches that show up when I sleep too much or too little, I want to stop belittling myself, I want to stop feeling like I am some fucking horrible person because of who I am....I want to stop wanting to die. I want to live and be happy.

I just don't know how to...

But, Im working on it... and like I said before, I'll be here for anyone, always. Don't succumb to the demons. I know they are loud, and I know they are painful. But, Please... If you don't feed it what it wants, then eventually the monster will die. If I don't cut myself, then one day the demon won't tell me to anymore, because the demon will have died. Kill your demons, don't give them what they want.

Im here for you, Whoever you guys may be.

- InsaneAsylumReady

Thank you @jaiden-animations for your video... Truly, it moved me to tears (and this message) and trust me when I say you are so so strong and that you are absolutely beautiful. Thank you for being so amazing, You truly are.

#selfharm #depression #fighting #heart #mind #brain #mental health #mental disorder #fight it

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425599167 · 7 years ago

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Do you have any advice on writing Barriss? I got recommended you as the person to ask, because I was thinking about writing something with her.

Really? Alright, here are some guidelines for her and the other canon/legend characters I’ve included. Let me know if it helps.

Barriss:

Barriss embodies every contradiction and failing of Jedi philosophy. Pacifism when convenient, fear of the dark side despite fear being considered a path to it, all of that. Training her whole life to become a Jedi has left her mired in that mindset and she can’t see her way out, because she’s stopped wanting the thing she’s always wanted, and that would make all her efforts “pointless”.

Barriss is completely self-aware. On some level, she knows about #1. And it gnaws at her. Constantly. The reason she’s seemingly the first Jedi to have doubts about the war and act on them is because the contradictions became too much.

Barriss is resourceful. Combat-wise, she is scarily good at using the environment to her advantage, either through improvised weapons or use of terrain. This was obvious in her fight with Ashoka, hiding behind industrial machinery, creating distractions, and then the steam trick. This was also noticeable on Geonosis: it was her initial idea to use the enemy’s own tank against them. Depending on how much control the brain worm had, using shards of broken equipment may have also been her idea. Being weirdly proficient at combat is just another thing about herself that confuses and worries her.

Barriss isn’t dark-sided. Alignment in the Force is usually treated as dependent on intent, not consequence, that’s why dark sides rely on emotions like anger and hatred. Killing alone isn’t what draws on either side of the Force, motivation determine that. Barriss does not want to be what she is. She still killed those people, and has to be held responsible for it, but there wasn’t any real malevolence behind it, just fear and desperation. That’s not darkness on its own.

Barriss is highly intelligent, arguably the smartest padawan we see, probably one of the smartest people in the Jedi Order. Her memory is keen, and with adequate prep time, she can come up with detailed and extremely effective strategies. Improvisation isn’t her forte, but she can at least adapt fast enough to accomplish her goal. The only reason her plot failed, even after things started getting beyond her control, was because she let Ventress live and kept her sabers, which could charitably be interpreted as an act of self-sabotage.

Barriss is isolated. Sure, she gets along enough well with others, but Ahsoka was probably her only actual friend. Her self-image revolves around what (she thinks) Luminara thinks of her, and has no other role models. She hates being touched, but needs to be hugged.

Barriss is self-loathing. She’s a murderer and a hypocrite and she knows it. It’s important to note she considered herself those things before the bombing due to her participation in the war. She also has no idea what to do about it. No matter what opinion people have of her, in-universe or out, no one hates Barriss more than Barriss hates Barriss.

Ahsoka:

Ahsoka doesn’t like being jerked around. Attempts to manipulate or use her in any way really irritate her, especially after the events leading up to her leaving the Jedi. Any kind of foul play or indication of such will immediately tick her off.

Ahsoka doesn’t like being alone. She was raised in a communal setting, and throughout the Clone Wars, there probably wasn’t a single day that went by without her interacting with Anakin, Obi-Wan, R2, other Jedi, the clones, or Padmé, all of whom were practically family to her. Now she doesn’t have them. At best, she knows they’re alive but can’t reach them, at worst, she knows or believes they’re dead. She’s getting new people in her life and mending her relationship with Barriss, but it’s difficult.

Ahsoka won’t hesitate. Her development didn’t just teach her restraint, it was gaining experience so she knows what to do immediately when split-second decision making is required. She’s a survivor, and will kill people if they’re a threat. Killing isn’t her go-to option, but if her opponent has to die for her or her friends to live, it’s the end for them.

Ahsoka is tough. Should go without saying at this point, but she’s extremely strong and is an experienced soldier and survivalist. She can whether harsh environments, and use weapons other than her saber with a reasonable degree of skill. The destruction of the Jedi and the Republic shook her, but she kept going. She hurts, but she endures. Somehow.

Ahsoka learns from her mistakes. She has combat experience both in space and on the ground, in infiltration and direct attack, some of which nearly killed her and those around her. Every lesson about what it means to be a Jedi, or a leader, she is paying attention and learning, even if she doesn’t get it right away.

Ahsoka is much like Anakin, except better. As her master, he’s had more of an effect on her than anyone else, acting as her primary role model. And she’s better than him. She’s less arrogant, more in control of her emotions, less aggressive, more self-reflective, and isn’t possessive of the people she cares about like he is.

Thrawn:

Thrawn is a static character. That’s not a criticism of the writing behind him, Thrawn’s lack of personal development is the reason he’s a villain and the eventual cause of his death. He has immense intelligence, but never, not once at any point in his life does he commit any of it towards becoming a better person. He’s completely certain he’s thought everything out and chosen the best option. Throw whatever impassioned speech you want at him about the evils he’s committed, he won’t change. Rukh killed him because he kept the Noghri enslaved, even when he had all the power in the Empire and could’ve freed them, could’ve stopped compromising morality, could’ve stopped lying to himself, and he didn’t.

Thrawn is a master of psychological warfare and counterintelligence. He understands others easily, but that skill is completely dedicated towards finding ways to bring them down, often by feeding them information which will cause them to act in a way that furthers his plans, or simply causes groups of enemies to lose cohesion because they don’t trust each other. He doesn’t just anticipate his enemies, he makes them do what he wants. Also the art thing is over-exaggerated. If you can come up with an interesting way to include it, great, but it’s really the least interesting or menacing thing about the character.

Thrawn has just enough noble qualities to make people think the Empire is something worth fighting for. While the xenophobic higher-ups in the Empire may loathe him, one of his greatest strengths is how he’s seen by people who serve under him. He values the lives of his soldiers, and won’t waste them. Through his skill as a strategist, he gives them hope of victory. He respects their work, and they know it. And it’s not an act. Vader is feared, Thrawn is respected. Palpatine controls, Thrawn leads.

Thrawn is only as evil as necessary, but he’s still Evil. Don’t ignore that.

Thrawn is alien. While he may be closer to human than many Star Wars species, he has an uncanny-valley creepiness to him in contrast to more overtly terrifying villains like Vader. One thing I wish Rebels had kept was that his eyes don’t have pupils; I understand it was so the audience can see where he’s looking, but not being able to read him would work in the show’s favor. Don’t show his inner thoughts unless it’s absolutely necessary. Keep his exact mindset and motivations unknown to everyone, including his allies. With Ahsoka, despite being non-human she still acts and emotes like one, and her alien features correspond to human ones i.e. hair and eyebrows. The audience is intended to treat Ahsoka like a human, while they should be given reminders that Thrawn is definitely not.

Talon Karrde:

Karrde honors his deals. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it, even if he does so at a loss, and he won’t pull any exact-words bullshit to wriggle out of it. He’s a good foil for Hondo Ohnaka.

Karrde is fair. His employees are paid well, and there are significant benefits to working for him, especially in comparison to other criminals. The agreements he makes with people that are mutually beneficial, and he’s open to renegotiation. Still, that’s all it is: an agreement. Working with him doesn’t make him your friend.

Karrde came from nothing. It’s never established in Legends, but I think this guy grew up poor, and now that he has considerable funds at his disposal with more coming in, he wants the bestest, highest-quality ships and equipment and supplies. For himself, and for the people who work for him. Looking down on him for being a smuggler is one of the few things that can get under his skin. Brings back memories.

Karrde is nondescript. He’s got a lot of money, but nothing about his appearance and residence are ostentatious. It’s all part of keeping a low profile, not drawing more enemies by showing off his success.

Karrde keeps calm. Even in dire situations, the guy keeps a cool head and tries to see his way out of it. He’s in complete control of his facial expressions and body language, and gives nothing away. In Legends, he was able to keep out of Thrawn’s clutches for a while, and his abilities should reflect that.

Karrde tries to act True Neutral, but he’s actually Neutral Good. He doesn’t like people knowing this.

Oh boy, do I have thoughts on Revan:

Revan is not good or evil. In my opinion, it’s best when “Revan the Prodigal Knight” and “Darth Revan, Lord of the Sith” are only a hair’s breadth different from each other. Close enough you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which until you’ve had a very long discussion. My “light side” Revan holocron has not lost a step and is still one of the baddest (ex)meatbags in the galaxy. If they’re being written as a perfect hero or a remorseless monster, you’re missing a lot of opportunities.

Revan thinks in the long-term. The extreme long term. It wouldn’t be unusual for them to lay groundwork for objectives which are years, decades, or in the case of my Revan, centuries away. This is also a factor in how their sense of morality got warped, willing to sacrifice millions if it means the galaxy will still be populated in a thousand years. That big-picture thinking lets them shrug off the “small” stuff. Like the trail of corpses they leave.

Revan is a polymath. Much of what makes them so improbably hypercompetent is that, unlike many characters, they are not overspecialized either in skill or general knowledge. They don’t know everything, but they can be considered to have taken a 100-level course in basically any subject you want to bring up. They’ve canonically shown knowledge of strategy, tactics, politics, history, economics, sociology, linguistics, and multiple fields of engineering ranging from functional to expert, in addition to detailed understanding of the Jedi and Sith.

Revan is pretty laid back most of the time. They’re probably the least dramatic Sith… for however much that’s worth, and are pretty forgiving. While Malak was giddily prepping the stage for their climactic final duel on the top deck of the Star Forge, Revan was probably standing alone in the elevator during the long ride up the megastructure, humming their own made-up theme music or something. Among Star Wars characters, they have one of the more deliberate senses of humor, intentionally making jokes rather than incidentally doing things the audience might be amused by. Even when explaining something deeply philosophical, they speak with a casual tone and vocabulary you’d expect of an average person. They know bigger words, in several languages, but if the intent is communicating a point to people, there’s no need to act sophisticated. They’re not overly polite or sesquipedalian, and they’re not reserved about profanity.

Revan doesn’t depend on the Force. I have no love for Kreia, but this is consistent with what you might expect from her training. While stronger with it, Revan is fully capable of fighting without supernatural aid, or lightsabers for that matter. In-game, they show skill in using vibroblades, blasters, and various explosives, and the game allows the use of advanced cybernetic implants. Even after becoming a Jedi again, Revan is the one operating the gun turret and regularly shooting down whole squads of fighters. They’re also capable of talking their way out of most situations either through negotiation, bribery, lies, or threats, to the point where a high persuade skill is arguably better than the mind-trick power. For all the jokes about how most players approached the final battle with Malak with mines, to me, it’s completely in character for Revan to have been using grenades and mines both out of practicality, and to mock Malak with the fact he’s getting a taste of his own medicine by getting blown up from a distance.

Revan doesn’t care for your rules. This isn’t some juvenile “rebellious” attitude. It’s logically picking apart constraints and flawed processes, not for the sake of doing so, but because they are wrong, Revan can prove it, and they are superior to those who refuse to address their own mistakes as a result. No one and nothing is above criticism or ridicule, ever. And that includes Revan themself. They can take (useful) criticism.

Revan is a control freak. Their core flaw is immense confidence in their own superiority over everyone driving them to control everything because they can clearly do it better than anybody else can. People don’t often pick up on this because a) it’s a fun and necessary part of the game and b) Revan usually does do a better job than everybody. This behavior is obvious as a Sith, but even as a Jedi, Revan is someone who takes it upon themself to solve every single problem they encounter. Revan was the only one who could stop the Mandalorians. The only one who could save the Republic. The only one who could control the Star Forge. The only one who can beat Malak. You could make jokes about how everyone else in the galaxy is too incompetent to do anything right, or you could see various unnecessary sidequests as examples of Revan needlessly inserting themself into every situation they come across to exercise their power, benevolently motivated or otherwise. Revan didn’t need to hunt those bounties on Taris, or become swoop champion on two planets, or literally beat every professional pazaak player in the galaxy at their own game, or decide the outcome of the Sunry trial, or do every single thing possible to get prestige on Korriban when half would do, or hunt down and kill that woman’s fuckbot. That last one didn’t even have any reward, but they do it all anyway. The ultimate end of a light-sided Revan’s character development is to give up on this mindset, summed up with one really underrated line in the tomb of Naga Sadow, directed at Sith who consider themselves so much better than other people and think you should, too: “I don’t believe you. I don’t feel superior to anyone.” If Revan is dark-sided, they never learn when to quit and the entire galaxy suffers for it. Even if you’re writing them as light-sided, those are tough habits to break.

Avoiding pronouns is surprisingly easy and I recommend doing so.

#Anonymous #barriss offee #ahsoka tano #thrawn #talon karrde #revan

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