#just because your side is the politically convenient one doesn’t make cheering for murder any better

[optimisticlucio]

I don’t think I can put into words the feeling I felt when, like a minute after leaving the a bomb shelter and hearing explosions overhead, I open tumblr and see a pro-palestine post say this:

To be clear that was right before saying any support of Israel whatsoever was genocide.

[idy-ll-ique]

Dogs.

Pairing: Chris Evans x F!Reader

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: None

Requested: Nope

Summary: Y/N and Chris meet at the garden when their dogs take a liking to each other. Can the same be said for Y/N and Chris?

Author's Note: Hiya peeps! I already posted this on my old account... which is gone (RIP) so I'm posting it again over here! Enjoy!

---

"Zeus! Zeus, honey, get back!" Y/N sighed as her cute little dog chased butterflies in the garden. She sat down on a bench, tired. Zeus would get to her soon. Zeus, if you didn't know, was a female dog. A bitch, if you will. She had just jokingly decided to name her that but Zeus liked it so much, she wouldn't answer to any other name. "Dodge! Dodger! Come back!"

Yes, celebrity sightings in this garden were a lot more common than you think. When someone sat next to her, Y/N looked at the person. Chris Evans sat next to her, drinking some water. When he noticed that his bottle was empty, he sighed. He was feeling extremely thirsty. Y/N noticed that and looked at her own water bottle which was untouched.

"Would you like some water?" she offered, holding it up.."Thank you so much!" He sent a grateful smile her way as he drank the water. After that, they sat in silence for a while. Chris stole a glance at her. "So, which one is yours?" he asked slowly. "The one playing with your dog," Y/N laughed. Chris looked at her. Y/N was smiling at the place where Zeus and Dodger were together chasing butterflies.

No, Chris, she's a stranger! he thought. But she gave you water! That's not called being a stranger, water is the most important component of your life, his conscience scolded him. "So, what's your name?" Chris asked the pretty lady sitting next to him. "I'm Y/N Y/L/N, delighted to meet you," she said, turning to give him a small smile.

The two dogs returned to their owners after successfully getting themselves tired by chasing insects.

"Dodger likes you." Dodger was happily barking as Y/N ruffled his hair. "Zeus likes you, it seems," Y/N chuckled when she saw Zeus snuggling into Chris' leg. The owners quickly tied their dogs on leash and stood up with their belongings. When they tried to take their dogs away from each other, the dogs whimpered.

"It's okay, Zeus, I'm sure we'll meet Dodger again soon," Y/N cooed at her dog. Then she looked at Chris. "Yes, of course, we will." He smiled at her. She grinned as Zeus dejectedly started following her. "Y/N wait, give me your number so we can make plans!" She turned around. They exchanged numbers and in the meantime, Zeus and Dodger exchanged goodbyes.

After that, Y/N and Chris parted ways. The reason Zeus and Dodger had bonded so much was that they were... they're dogs... male, female... figure it out. They were dogs, they didn't care about love. Breeding was more important to them, unlike humans.

After Y/N had reached home, she first kept all the stuff away and prepared food for Zeus. Zeus, meanwhile, was lying in front of the door with a sad face.

"Oh don't worry, you big baby, you'll meet Dodger soon enough," Y/N said, "Hopefully," was added under her breath. Zeus looked up. She whimpered and Y/N's heart went out to her dog. "Aw, it's okay, eat. You'll feel better," she chuckled, cuddling up to Zeus as Zeus ate.

"Dodger, cheer up, I can't see you like this," Chris sighed once he was home. Dodger, like Zeus, laid down in front of the door with a whine. Chris had the same idea as Y/N and prepared some food for Dodger. He kept his bowl in front of him and Dodger looked up. "That's my boy," Chris said fondly as Dodger started munching on the food. Both the dogs felt better after eating, but they still missed their best friend.

Chris, not bearing to see Dodger like that, called Y/N. Y/N was doing the laundry when her phone rang from the living room. Zeus barked. "Don't worry honey, it might be mom," Y/N chuckled, going to the living room to get her phone. When she saw Chris' name, she got confused. "Hi," she answered the call.

"Hey, I just wanted to ask, is Zeus doing okay?" His question didn't frighten her, nor startle her. "She wasn't but I gave her food, now she's fine. She still misses Dodger, though," Y/N chuckled.

"Good, I was just wondering if you'd come to the garden tomorrow, too," Chris asked nervously. "Of course, I take Zeus there every day, it's her favourite place," Y/N replied. "That's good, I'll be there tomorrow, whatever timing's convenient for you," he smiled, relieved. "6?" she asked him.

"Yes, that'll do. Bye, see you tomorrow!" He hung up the phone and turned to Dodger, who was watching intently.

Y/N kept her phone away and turned to Zeus, who was watching her intently. Both Chris and Y/N got smiles on their faces at the same time.

"Tomorrow you're meeting Zeus."

"Tomorrow you're meeting Dodger."

Both dogs simultaneously let out a happy bark, making their owners 1000 times more happy than they already were. Y/N went to do her laundry again and Chris went to see the TV with Dodger. As Y/N was putting her clothes in a dryer, she realized something.

"Oh, God, is this a date?" she groaned. Meanwhile, Chris had realized the same thing too. He freaked out, he had just asked her on a date! "Doing it for Dodger. Not myself," he mumbled under his breath.

"I'm doing it for Zeus, not myself," Y/N reminded herself and took out the dry clothes from the dryer. She then went to her room to iron them.

---

The next day dawned way earlier than either of them would have wanted. Y/N's biggest concern was the media seeing Chris and her together.

She didn't want hoards of angry fans at her doorstep attempting to murder her for having a goddamn date with Chris Evans. She hated the media for posting mindless things like those.

Chris' concern, meanwhile, was not that he didn't want to be seen in the media with her, it was that he didn't want the media to notice her in the first place.

Since the garden was a popular spot for celebs with pets, paparazzi and reporters were always roaming around. And they always printed the wrong sorts of news. He didn't want Y/N to be in a bad light because Hey, did you see that girl with Chris Evans? Yeah, she's such a bitch, I mean, I'm more beautiful, obviously, why doesn't he notice me?!

He had fans like that.

Y/N was obviously more beautiful than any other girl, any other celebrity he had ever seen. Kind, generous, polite, good looking, intelligent… What more could he want? She also had a dog. That was a bonus for him. She treated her dog so well, so kindly, as if it was her firstborn child. Chris could see why Dodger was attracted to Zeus.

He could say the same about himself being attracted to Y/N. She was nice, why the hell couldn't he date her? He would date her and proudly so, okay? "Come on Dodge, we're going to meet Y/N and Zeus!" Chris called out, tying his shoelaces. Dodger came running from the living room.

He waited patiently as Chris quickly tied the leash to Dodger's collar. Y/N was tying a leash to Zeus' collar while she excitedly jumped around. "Okay, baby girl, here we go," Y/N took a deep breath and wore her goggles, opening the door. As soon as the door opened, Zeus attempted to run.

Y/N somehow managed to lock the door when she lost control and Zeus ran, pulling Y/N behind her. Y/N laughed as she ran behind Zeus. They reached the park at 2 minutes to 6 o'clock. They walked in and looked around, Y/N trying to find Chris. She saw him sitting on a bench, far away.

He was checking his watch, Dodger sitting by his leg, wagging his tail. Zeus, when she saw them, ran. Y/N, naturally, ran behind her.

When Chris heard her, he looked up and nearly dropped his phone to the ground. That happy laugh on Y/N's face could make stone-hearted people smile. Y/N, once she was by Chris' side, stopped and took the leash off of Zeus. Chris did the same with Dodger and the two happy dogs took off.

Y/N collapsed on the bench next to Chris, taking deep and heavy breaths. Then, she realized she had forgotten her water bottle. She groaned. "Y/N, everything alright?" Chris asked with concern. "Zeus... made... me... run... all th... all the way up... to here," she wheezed, coughing.

"I feel like you should drink water," he said, patting her shoulder. She was wearing track pants and a loose t-shirt, same with Chris. "I... forgot... my... bottle," she coughed more, sitting up straight. She felt better, but not without water.

"Here. I brought extra, just in case." She accepted his bottle, thanking him. When she drank the water, she felt better. "Thank you so much, Chris," she said, a grateful smile on her face. "A date helps a date." When she heard those words, Y/N looked at Chris with a look of disbelief on her face.

Her eyes wide and her jaw dropped. Chris chuckled. "I realized yesterday, what a date-like situation it was. Couples always bring their dogs for a walk," he shrugged, giving her a lopsided grin. "I didn't think you'd want to acknowledge this as a date," Y/N laughed, running a hand through her shoulder-length hair. Chris was sporting his iconic Captain America beard and long hair.

If you had a chance to see them, they looked so much like a couple you would've thought they were married. They started talking about general things, like what they do, where they live, their hobbies, favourite this, favourite that, blah blah blah.

After a while, as both of them got engrossed in their talks, Y/N noticed that Chris' watch said 8. They spent two hours just talking.

"Chris, it's getting late, I should go," she smiled sheepishly. "Oh, it's 8 already?! I have to head home too," he chuckled and they stood up. "Where are Dodger and Zeus?"

They looked around, panicking because they couldn't find their dogs anywhere. There were still people in the park, so they weren't worried much. "You go there, I'll go there," Chris said, pointing towards the left and right.

Y/N nodded and they left to find their dogs. Y/N was the one who found them. When she found them, she smiled broadly and took a photo. Then she called Chris. "Y/N! Did you find them?" She smiled softly. She told him where she was and once he got there, both of them smiled at their dogs. Zeus and Dodger were sitting under a tree sleeping peacefully.

They were curled up next to each other in a small bundle of fur. Chris put an arm around Y/N's shoulder and she turned to look at him. "They look so happy. You should bring Zeus over some time," he whispered, not looking at her. She nodded and looked down at Zeus and Dodger. They gently woke the doggos up and took them home, both the dogs following their owners in a sleepy stance.

At the garden gate, "I guess I'll see you later."

"See you later, Chris," Y/N replied in a soft voice. In the flow of the moment, Chris quickly leaned in, gave Y/N a kiss on her cheek and left with Dodger. Y/N kept standing in her spot, had Chris Evans just kissed her? She shook her head, sensing many more moments like those to come.

She wasn't even bothered.

She was excited.

---

A/N: Hello, I hope you liked it! Leave a like if you did :)))))))

[qqueenofhades]

“I’ll take care of you.” “It’s rotten work.” “Not to me. Not if it’s you.” Pretty please for All Souls Gabriel and Garcia?

Nantes, BrittanyOctober 25, 1440

The scaffold stands nearby, looming in the darkness, the hangman’s noose clutching a gasp of empty air where tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, it will clutch Gilles de Rais’ wretched neck. Dry kindling has been stacked, awaiting the burning, and most townsfolk have kept well away from it, only to spit and cross themselves if they must pass. Nobody wants this to be a spectacle, grievous and awful as the accused’s crimes are. He was a war hero ten years ago, the close companion of Joan of Orléans, marching against the English invaders, heroically beating them back, and now this. Ordinarily he should have been sent to Paris for trial, but the courts do not want the English getting wind of the fact of Gilles de Rais’ crimes. Some details are so heinous they have been stricken from the court record. The sorcery and sodomy and murder, the unnatural usage of children before they were killed, the torture and the occult experimentations, the dabbling in black magic. It would be too convenient.

Gabriel de Clermont stands in the shadows of the far side, regarding the courtyard, the pacing guards, the knowledge that this square will be flooded with the folk of Nantes and the surrounding countryside by sunup tomorrow, all eager to see Rais burn. He stole their children, he was the monster that they welcomed into their homes and hung with laurels, he was the one they believed in, and it began almost the moment he returned home from Joan’s campaigns, after they burned her in Rouen. Gabriel knew the Maid of Orléans only briefly. He customarily finds religious zealots unpalatable and inflexible, but he had something of a soft spot for her, this tiny nut-brown peasant girl whose rural French sounded half like Occitan, spitting furious and full of righteousness, who was questioned for days and never broke, who put on armor and did what this entire godforsaken country has failed to do itself in beating the English. Gabriel is, after all, and has been for many centuries, French himself. And yet –

We should have done more, he thinks. We could have done more. They had to step back and let Joan burn, and then for eight years, even when appeals were sent to the Knights of Lazarus as knowledge of Gilles de Rais’ crimes began to seep out across the countryside like poison, his lord father has refused to take a hand. We do not fight the humans’ wars. We are not their judge and jury. Gabriel could recite the speech in his sleep. He knows, he knows, that it’s not that Asher de Clermont does nothing. Asher has protected the mortal world from threats they have never even imagined, has fought monsters beyond all comparison, has trained his sons to do the same, and the world itself made it through the last few hundred years, beset with its human problems even as it was, because the Knights of Lazarus were there. And yet, to stand here and look at this scaffold, soaked in eight years’ worth of children’s blood, because Asher did not deem it noble enough to interfere in humans’ business –

Gabriel breaks off and starts to walk, angry, burning, restless. He knows the arguments. We are too strong for them. We cannot appoint themselves their gods, their judge and jury. We cannot let them rely on us to do what they must do for themselves. No wonder the de Clermonts’ rivals jeer that Asher is too soft and too principled and too honorable to ever make a proper leader for their kind, even if they would not dare say that to the Grandmaster’s face. The humans are weak, they have been for years. Plague, famine, war, unrest, economic and religious and political upheaval. They tear themselves apart easily, they die like flies, in their hundreds and their thousands. The creatures, witches and vampires and daemons alike, could emerge from the shadows and strike, kill all the humans easily, make this their world, and it is only Asher’s restraint and power that stops them. Gabriel loves his father, adores him and admires him beyond all words, knows that they must make sacrifices, but at the same time –

You could have let us stop Gilles de Rais, he thinks. Just this once. Just as if you could have let us save Richard, and you did not.

Gabriel comes to a halt, leans against the wall of a wattle-and-daub inn, and then almost jumps out of his skin, fangs flashing out and eyes going black as he hisses, as someone’s hand touches his shoulder from behind. It takes only an instant after that for him to land rather sheepishly. “Ah,” he says breezily, feigning his usual devil-may-care demeanor. “Hello, darling.”

Garcia eyes him, unconvinced by this bravura performance. (He is the only one, Gabriel thinks poignantly, who would even know that it is one.) “What are you doing skulking out here?” his brother asks. “It’s getting late, and – ”

“They only intend to burn one monster tomorrow, so far as I am aware.” Nonetheless, Gabriel grudgingly consents to turn away from the square and the waiting scaffold. They walk down the lane, pass a tiny church, and Garcia absently crosses himself. He is Catholic in a way Gabriel is not, born to it just as the first missionaries were reaching the pagan Slavs of Ragusa, whereas Gabriel was born before the Romans nailed that Jewish carpenter to a tree and has duly converted with the rest of the family. As they emerge on the far side, Gabriel bursts out, “We could have stopped this, you know.”

Garcia pauses, a look of pain on his face. He takes a moment to answer. Finally he says, “You know that Papa – ”

“Yes,” Gabriel snaps, “yes, I know what Papa. Eight years. Eight years of – you’ve heard what that bastard Gilles has been doing, and if it was my child – if someone had laid a hand on Christian like that, torn him to pieces and used him vilely, and there was someone who could have stopped it happening to any other son, and did nothing because of principle – ”

Too late he wonders if he should be lashing out about their father to Garcia, as Garcia fears too much that Asher might not count him his own son enough to openly criticize him, but Garcia reaches out, grips Gabriel’s arms, and holds on hard. “Shh,” he says, a little roughly. “Shh, moje srce, we’ll make it right.”

“How?” Gabriel demands, the word raw on his tongue. This whole spectacle is doing nothing for his cherished reputation of never giving a fuck about anything, but it’s too late. “Turn back time? Bring those dead boys back to life? Apologize to the mothers and fathers for being able to do something, but deciding that our father just would not stand for it, so very sorry? If they marched on Sept-Tours with pitchforks and decided to avenge it, they would be entirely – ”

“Shh,” Garcia says again, more forcefully, and this time, Gabriel is forced reluctantly to listen. “We will watch Gilles de Rais burn tomorrow. We will do what we came to do, and we will see justice done. It’s not your ill. It’s not your sin. There are other battles to fight, where we can make more of a difference, stop much greater evils. All right?”

Gabriel doesn’t answer, chewing over it, not wanting to argue, still not entirely agreeing. Finally when he still doesn’t speak, Garcia says awkwardly, “Do you – do you want to find a brothel?”

“What?” That startles a disbelieving whoop of laughter out of Gabriel, despite his dark mood. “Did you just – you hate brothels!”

“Yes, well.” Garcia shrugs defensively. Vampires can’t flush, but he’s trying anyway. “I thought it would cheer you up.”

Gabriel isn’t sure how to respond to that. He looks at Garcia, still trying so hard to pretend that this is actually how he wants to spend his evening in any remote measure, sitting stiffly while the whores flirt with him and Gabriel goes upstairs with an armful and must be turfed out the next morning. “No, darling,” Gabriel says at last, with genuine regret that he loves Garcia too much to make him endure that – at least tonight, as both of them know full well there will be many others. “Come on, let’s find supper. Though if you propose to keep my company, be warned it’s much less scintillating than usual.”

Garcia shakes his head. “Not to me,” he says. “Not if it’s you.”

So they start to run, breaking into supernatural speed away from the village, bounding across the dark countryside in pursuit of stags to catch and drain, and sit together beneath the stars, and on that night, terrible as the weight of the injustice may be, Gabriel de Clermont does not mind his own sins so much.

(september prompt list)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 23 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

"I think this is the best date we've ever been on," Barry says.

Len, who's tugging at the blanket currently covering both their legs so as to get it into a more optimal cuddling position, pauses, blinking. That was - random.

"We're not doing anything special," he points out. "We're just going to watch some TV and eat some take-out, whenever it arrives."

"Exactly!"

Len looks at Barry, awaiting an explanation.

"It's normal," Barry explains, grinning. "Just two slobs, hanging out and planning to stuff their faces with Thai food while watching some dumb sci-fi - because someone vetoed mysteries -"

"I hate mysteries," Len says stubbornly.

"They're fun! Figuring out the puzzle out of the clues -"

"Real life doesn't have convenient clues."

"You're not wrong, but that's why we're watching TV."

Len rolls his eyes. "You agreed to watch sci-fi tonight, so stop whining. We can watch a mystery next time."

Barry beams. "See, that's why this is the best date ever. There's going to be a next time."

"I feel like there was going to be a next time as soon as we had that first date," Len says dryly. "You remember, with me talking myself into investigating you for corruption and you carefully omitting anything about being the Flash?"

Then he winces.

He still feels bad about what he did, back in Iron Heights - making the cold, rational decision to risk Barry's life and to strip his powers away if it meant defeating Wells and saving their city. Yes, both Mick and Barry have told him that he's being ridiculous - well, Barry's told him he's being ridiculous, Mick just asked where the hell he'd gotten an overdeveloped conscience from and told him to check whether they had a valid return policy - but he can't quite help it.

His decision robbed Barry of his powers. Len’s very aware that by that point, they’d already become a major part of Barry’s identity, and Len just made that decision for him.

He’s still grateful it wasn’t Barry’s life.

He’s painfully aware that he would have made the same decision even if that had been the cost – a speedster like Wells could have murdered an army and would’ve had time to slaughter civilians by the dozen before anyone even got close enough to stop him – but he’s desperately, pathetically grateful that he still has Barry here, by his side.

In his – well, couch.

"It's okay," Barry says, noticing the wince. "You know that I'd rather be sitting on a couch at regular speed with you than have both of us still be lying to each other at super-speed."

"Smooth," Len tells him fondly, "except for the way that metaphor got away from you towards the end there."

"Yeah, I wasn't sure how to bring it back from a plural to a singular. You know what I meant, though."

"You get points for effort." Len leans over and kisses him, just to make sure that message sticks.

Also because he can do that now.

He can just kiss Barry, any time he likes - well, anytime he likes as long as Barry isn't buried in one of his cases, anyway; Len's discovered, to his amusement, that Barry gets just as cranky as Len does when his train of thought is interrupted by nonsense like affection from a loved one.

It's apparently a tendency shared by all CSIs, no matter how usually cheerful - Barry's been having regular study groups with his CSI friends in his little on-site nook at the CCP, and even the perkiest among them growls like an angry terrier if Len’s decision to meander by to see if Barry is free for lunch disturbs a time-sensitive experiment.

But when Barry (or Len, for that matter) isn't busy, it's free season for stealing kisses.

Len’s a very good thief.

But it’s okay, because Barry steals just as many.

Because they're officially boyfriends now.

Len spends about half his time terrified that he's going to screw this up and the other half deliriously happy with how things are going.

They’ve had several long, in-depth conversations about telling each other the truth, several even longer discussions about various facts about their respective lives that might be useful for the other to know about, and finally, even longer than that, several make-out sessions to prove that they did, in fact, still want to go forward with this relationship.

Very important part of the truth-telling process, that.

(Really, the only downside of this is that Barry has now officially joined the group of people who can’t stand Charlie; Len has no idea what’s wrong with the way he’s explaining the guy that this keeps happening – Charlie’s harmless! Really! – but it does.)

But it’s not just their relationship that’s going well.

For what may be the first time in Len’s life, everything seems to be going well.

After all, he’s somehow managed to keep his current job, which he actually really likes, and, with Kara's much-faster-than-normal help, he's actually finished the gigantic mound of paperwork that resulted from him getting both the blame and the credit for the quelling of the Election Day Riots, as they're now being called by the local media.

The national media keeps trying to call them the Primary Day Riots. Shows what they know.

To be perfectly honest, though, Len is just relieved that he narrowly missed getting elected mayor by write-in, and that only because people didn’t have time to agree on what position they wanted him to be serving in, which – no.

Just…no.

They can’t make him take a political job.

...he thinks, anyway. Good thing he didn't win.

At any rate, Len is pretty sure that the roomful of paperwork was meant to be an informal punishment from a governor, who was also awarding him a medal of some sort in recognition of his role in helping save the city. Joke's on her; she wasn’t aware that he had superheroic help.

Though it would've been nice to have Barry's help as well...

"Cisco says they're probably coming back, you know," Barry says, observing Len's expression and correctly figuring out where his thoughts are going. "My powers, I mean. Mardon's did, remember?"

"Nah," Len says. "The fact that we're having 20 degree weather in July's totally escaped me."

"Hey, the team at Mercury Labs swears they've almost got his powers back under his control..."

"Poor guy," Len says, not without real sympathy. He likes Mardon; he liked him from the beginning, and the free grief therapy the guy is getting while sitting around Mercury Labs is only helping improve his personality. Clyde was always the more obnoxious of the two, anyway. "Weather control powers are one thing, a pretty awesome thing, but weather control powers that respond to your mood is just a curse. Not to mention the whole celibacy aspect..."

"Celibacy?" Barry asks, blinking; he’d clearly not thought about that. "Because he's being watched at all times by scientists and it’d be awkward?"

"Doubt that'd stop him," Len says dryly. According to Ramon, who watched over the prisoners in the Accelerator, it never did before. Not that Len has any sympathy – every time Ramon tries to complain, Len just reminds him that he's whining about that time he illegally imprisoned people and Ramon shuts right up. "No, I was thinking more about how the whole of Central City'd notice if his ‘cold wintery weather’ gloom gets abruptly interrupted by a sudden bout of nice weather, if you know what I mean..."

"Oooh, ouch. I hadn't thought of that. Poor guy. I hope Cisco and the others find him a fix soon."

"I'm sure they will," Len says. Rathaway and Ramon working together is exactly as terrifying as one would expect, and when you added Christine McGee to the picture...well. Len has no doubt that Mardon's powers will be under control soon.

Not least because Rathaway apparently has a vested personal interest in making sure that Mardon stops being involuntarily celibate as quickly as possible.

(Len really, really hopes Ramon’s offhand comment about there being a 10% possibility that everyone else involved in the Iron Heights battle would eventually develop powers over time turns out wrong. Ten to one are not odds he likes when it potentially comes to turning into an icicle or something irritatingly thematic like that.)

"Besides," Barry continues, "I don’t mind waiting for my powers to come back. It's not like I don't appreciate taking a few weeks off -"

"It's been nearly two months."

"- a few months off of the superhero stuff. It's like having summer vacation again. Especially since I can rest assured that Kara is keeping an eye on the city -"

"You mean Iris West is keeping an eye on the city," Len interrupts, rolling his eyes. "And Danvers is helping her enforce what she sees with her all-seeing eyes."

"And Mick," Barry adds mischievously. "Don't forget Mick."

Len rolls his eyes again, this time less at Barry than at his partner's antics.

Sure, it came as no surprise that Mick felt himself and his beloved heat gun were more suited for supporting Team (Now Licensed and Properly Supervised) Vigilante than the cops.

The surprise, such as it was, came from what he spent the rest of his time doing.

Out of all the possible outcomes Len might have foreseen with Mick waking up and accepting Len's job as police captain, Mick getting a job with the CCPN as Iris West's bodyguard-slash-photographer wasn't anywhere near the list.

Still, Mick seems happy - he likes having an opportunity to bust heads together, he likes Iris, and he apparently has a natural talent for photography, especially photography in high-stress situations. Like, say, investigating one of the few remaining Family outposts while getting shot at by the few remaining Family thugs.

(Mick is well aware that if he gets himself killed, Len will murder him. Iris has also been informed as much. Once that’d been established, though, Len gave them both his blessing to go as crazy as they liked, which both of them appreciated.)

By all accounts, Mick’s really enjoying his new work.

He's even taken up writing again!

Admittedly, he's still writing those weirdly addictive but somewhat embarrassing pulp romance novels, not journalism, but damnit, Len thought Mick was dead or dying: his joy at being forced to beta-read those novels again is inexpressible.

Especially since he's no longer Mick's only go-to proxy character. Len was getting tired of recognizing himself in both the snarky beloved sidekick and the villainous evildoer that shared a murky past with the hero, and he was even more tired of the not-so-subtle hints that said sidekick should consider getting laid because it would make him less tetchy.

Now – to convince Mick to start publishing…

Maybe under a pseudonym?

"He's doing really well," Barry says, sounding genuinely pleased on Mick's behalf, and not just for Len's sake, either. Len's really glad they like each other. "Iris says she's having to keep him from getting poached by other reporters. Well, the few that remain."

Len snorts at the reminder. When the Families put out the call on Election Day, it wasn't just cops that answered; a disturbing number of journalists were found to be involved. Some of them turned back once the amnesty was offered, but not all of them, and even the ones that did turn back are stuck on the non-political beat until they prove that their journalistic integrity can be trusted again.

In its own way, good journalism's ethical rules, however internal, are as strict as the one that govern the police...

Len scowls.

"Uh-oh," Barry laughs. "It’s the patented Leonard Snart vendetta face."

"I don't got a vendetta face," Len sniffs. "It's just..."

He trails off.

Yeah, he has no idea what he’s going to end that with.

It kind of is his vendetta face.

"Your 'no, actually, it wasn't just all about Mick-related trauma, I'm actually really just that personally offended by corruption' face?" Barry offers, his eyes crinkling with barely suppressed laughter.

"...possibly,” Len allows.

"You're already helping re-build the CCPD from the ground up, remember," Barry says, putting his head on Len's shoulder. He’s really good about signaling what he’s about to do in advance, which helps Len relax. Len’s never been great about physical contact, especially over-long contact, but he’s finding more and more that he’s able to get over that hurdle when it’s with Barry, who deeply enjoys occasional cuddling.

Len’s learned to cuddle. Will wonders never cease.

"Like, even putting aside your little purge –”

“It ain’t a purge. It’s an in-depth investigation and interrogation of every current member of the CCPD and the prosecutor’s office to find out if they have any vulnerabilities to blackmail or bribery and/or have experienced either of those recently. Totally different. We only purge ‘em if they’re still being blackmailed or bribed.”

“Yeah, yeah, but putting that aside, you’ve got the CCPD putting in place all those new mandatory ethics trainings, the lessons on improving community engagement, recruiting all those new people - some of them out of the slums, people who might not have had a chance before - even the courts are being cleaned up now that the equivalent of your position has been created to do that -"

"And yet we still have people thinking it's okay to turn a blind eye when it suits their personal prejudices," Len growls.

"This is about Wells," Barry concludes wisely.

"It's about Wells," Len agrees. He’s still pissed about that. He’s always going to be pissed about that. "Eobard Thawne or whatever. Don't get me wrong, we knew he was a serial killer -"

"Multiple murderer, Len, serial killer is a term of art and I know that you know that -"

"Whatever, he killed lots of people, sometimes in a serial aka sequential fashion -"

"I'll accept that.”

"- and I ain’t denying that it would've been hard to do it if we had to risk his powers coming back sometime, too, yeah, but damnit, the bastard still deserved a proper trial! Not to just get murdered in a cell somewhere!"

"Well," Barry says slowly. "And I know I'm biased here, being the son of one of his victims, but personally speaking I'm not all that upset that Wells got ‘accidentally’ locked into Iron Heights with a bunch of pissed-off Family members looking for revenge for the whole Election Day mess."

It was a nasty, ignominious death, stuck in a cell and forgotten about by everyone but the ones he thought he could play like pawns. A death without drama, without grandeur - without Barry, the subject of Wells’ long-running obsession.

Without the powers that made him something to be feared.

Without the Speed Force .

Len can see why Barry's main feeling on the subject is an overwhelming sense of catharsis. Not to mention that this way, Barry won’t have to go to court to testify against a man he once considered a mentor and even a father figure, and who betrayed him so thoroughly.

Still...

"I know," Len says, turning his head and kissing Barry's hair lightly. "And that's why you're going to go through the entire ethics course I've been designing with the criminal justice defenders' guild."

Barry pretends to groan, but Len knows he doesn't really mind. Barry's a good person at heart, but he's got some serious ethics relearning to do.

They all do.

Central City's getting cleaned up at last.

"It's for the best, really," Barry says with a sigh. "I went way closer to the Ralph Dibny Line of No Return than I'm really comfortable with."

Len smirks. Now that's one outcome he's not even slightly upset about.

It turned out Dibny did possess enough fellow-feeling to go assist the cops in keeping the riots down and restoring the peace, and he'd done a pretty decent job helping out. Decent enough, in fact, that Len had agreed for it to be counted in his favor during his sentencing.

"Sentencing?!" Dibny exclaimed when Len had told him as much. "What sentencing?! There was an amnesty!"

"Which applies to everything the Families manipulated or forced people into doing," Len agrees. "Funnily enough, though, according to what you told us earlier, no one was actually forcing you to blackmail the mayor..."

"That's not fair!"

"You'll have a chance to plead your case, same as everyone else," Len assured him. "If you can find a way to argue that the Family made you do it, it'd be covered by the amnesty."

"Oh. Okay. That's not so bad -"

"Of course," Len interrupted, putting on his best toothy smile, "that only applies to stuff within range of Election Day, and not, let's say, to earlier crimes. Like, say, revealing confidential intel about undercover officers..."

"Aw shit."

"You're probably not that bad a guy, Dibny," Len said thoughtfully, reveling a little in Dibny's disgusted expression. "I've seen your record. You started out - well, about as much of a misogynistic asshole as you are now, but at least you were straight. And then you weren't even that. Do the time you always should've done for what you did in the first place, framing that guy and selling me out. Take some ethics courses while you're inside, and maybe when you get out there'll be something worth keeping around."

Yes, most of that little speech had been at one Barry Allen's instigation, but Len wouldn't have said it if he didn't think there was the slightest glimmer of truth there.

"Thanks," Dibny grumbled, not particularly appeased. "Any chance we can do that without the prison time?"

"Lemme think about it - no, wait, already thought about it. Answer’s no. Go to jail, don't pass Go, don't collect two hundred dollars, and next time, don’t out undercover officers to mobsters. Officers, if you would..?"

At least there were enough cops going in at the same time that Dibny wouldn't run the risk of being shivved in his sleep by angry criminals.

Though if he didn't make an effort at improving that charming personality of his...

Yeah, that'd been fun.

Nearly as much fun as having Singh casually swinging by Len’s office to inform him, purely as a professional courtesy, that they'd finished processing one Lewis Snart. Moreover, in the process, they’d happened to find a whole bunch of open warrants, got a judge to put him on an accelerated trial schedule, and, before Len even remembered his dad was still in town, Lewis’d been sentenced and was going away for a very, very long time.

Len still can't really believe it.

(He's getting weekly text messages from the prison warden that re-confirm he's still there. Sometimes time-stamped photographic evidence is included. It hasn't stopped making him happy yet.)

"You know it's not actually called the Ralph Dibny Line of No Return, right?" Len asks, hiding his amusement.

"I'm going to call it what I like and you can't stop me," Barry declares, although the way he's now very comfortably snuggled in against Len's shoulder rather undercuts the forcefulness of it.

Len snorts. "Bearing a grudge, Barry? How un-heroic."

"I'd say something snarky in response, but I'm still awed by your hypocrisy there, Mr. 'All Cops Are Corrupt' Black Pot."

"Whatever you say, my little kettle," Len faux-coos, making Barry wrinkle his nose.

"I don't usually bear grudges -"

"Says the guy still guilt-tripping Joe West?"

"Hey, he's doing a lot better now," Barry protests. "He's talking with Francine through a mediator and going to family counseling with Iris and he's getting to know Wally - he's so proud -"

"I meant about your dad," Len says dryly. "That whole bit where West not believing you led to a good man rotting in jail for fifteen years while a mass-murderer ran around killing more people?"

"In fairness, it was a pretty unbelievable story," Barry says, managing to maintain a straight face for exactly three seconds before he cracks and grins broadly the way he does any time his dad - or his brand new acquittal - gets mentioned. "Yeah, okay, maybe a bit of teasing. For a bit longer."

Len looks at Barry skeptically.

"A bit longer...like maybe the rest of time," Barry allows, still grinning. "Okay, you're right, I'm never letting him live it down, but only because I was totally right, so there."

That's Len's Barry, in all his petty human glory.

Len still can't believe how much he loves him sometimes. It’s like getting punched in the gut every time he looks at him, a feeling that knocks the breath out of him, and yet he keeps looking over and over and over.

And best of all, Barry feels the same, so they’re both going to have many opportunities to keep looking as much as they like going forward.

"How is your dad doing?" Len asks. "That payment for his wrongful incarceration finish coming through yet?"

"Not all of it – some of it’s still tied up given how many of those payments are coming out all at once, since they don’t actually want to bankrupt the whole city – but he's got most of it by now. He's doing really great – he finally closed on that cabin in the woods not far outside Central he was looking at for so long, the one he swears used to belong to our family even though I don’t remember anything like that. He’s already in talks with lots of people to start putting his plan for the place into effect, too…he's turning the whole place into a halfway house for people who were in Iron Heights, did you know that? Anyone still suffering from the aftereffects."

"Yeah, I know," Len says, amused. Doc Allen - he's always going to be Doc Allen, no matter how long it's been since he was a practicing surgeon - came to Len to ask his thoughts on the subject before he started investing real time and money into the plan.

Luckily for the Doc, Mick was also there with Len when he asked, because otherwise Doc Allen might've mistaken Len's overwhelming horror at the thought of rustic rural living as disapproval of his idea, which would’ve been a mistake since Len actually thinks it’s a great idea. Mick, still a farm boy under all those criminal layers, was far more outwardly enthusiastic about the possibility of ex-cons - many of whom trusted Doc Allen after his many years of even-handed and generous provision of medical services - working out their issues and figuring out where they want to go next far away from the harsh public eye.

Len even passed on his personal recommendations for people to go there through the cardboard brigade, though he politely asked that Magpie not pass along his facial expressions at the thought of non-city life while she did so.

Based on what he's heard since, he's pretty sure she declined to grant that request, but apparently a Leonard Snart recommendation that went, "Well...if you want to leave the city...don't know why anyone in their right mind would, but if you wanted to...and you actually liked, y'know, trees and dirt and shit like that...in that case, Doc Allen’s probably the best option you’ve got." was significantly more believable than any more cleaned up version.

(Iris and Danvers and probably Mick all helped Doc Allen with his advertising posters, which is why that particular quote is now plastered verbatim on walls and lampposts all over the slums. Len has vowed to obtain vengeance at some upcoming date.)

"It's nice, you know?" Barry says, interrupting Len's drifting thoughts. "At first I was disappointed that he wasn't planning on staying closer, you know. I'd sort of imagined he'd be around all the time, be my dad again, except then someone convinced him to stick around for a week - I don't know who, other than it wasn't you -"

Len shrugs. Barry's not wrong; Len still barely understands why someone would be disappointed at having fewer father figures in their life.

Personally, Len suspects Iris. What else are best friends for?

"- and, you know, at first it was amazing but then I started to go back to work and it was weird. Like, I love him, don't get me wrong, he’s my dad! We had a few days of just catching up and it being great, but after that, well, I am just way too old to be parented 24/7 – the last time we lived in the same house, I was eleven, and oh boy can you tell – and on his side, he didn't have anything else to do during the day and...yeah. I don't know. Weird. Now we call or skype for a few minutes every night and I go visit him every other weekend and that's so much better."

"Everyone wants to see their dad at their own intervals," Len allows. Reluctantly.

Barry snorts. "Yeah, and yours can be measured in radioactive half-lives of several hundred thousand years."

Again - not wrong.

It’s kind of nice to have someone other than Mick or Danvers who can read Len that well.

It being someone he wants to kiss is really just a pleasant bonus.

"Still, it's nice," Barry says, returning to the subject. "Having all this family around is just the best. There’s Dad up at the cabin; Joe at work - don't make that face, he's gotten much better, especially now that he's dating that DA; Cisco and Caitlin working as scientific liaisons to the CCPD, technically as part of the CSI department – they hit it off fantastically well with Terri, Gila and Andre, you know, so that was awesome; Iris and Eddie moving in together and looking at houses and maybe setting a wedding date; Mick living with Danvers and making all that amazing food -"

That last one is a pretty recent development.

Mick started off living in Len's place, but there'd been a reason they usually stayed in warehouses when they’d been criminals and it wasn't because being innately compatible partners made them innately compatible roommates. They hated being parted, yes, but when living together they tended to fall back on habits developed while being cellmates in prison and that wasn't really great for anyone.

Len hadn’t wanted to trade in his comfortable apartment for a warehouse again. But on the other hand, Len hadn't wanted Mick to move out, either. He couldn't bear to lose Mick again, and it felt like he would if he let Mick out of his sight for too long.

Also not a great situation.

There was a lot of friction, to say the least.

And then Danvers found out that Mick could cook and liked to do so in very large quantities, and immediately (spontaneously) blurted out an offer to be her roommate.

Her current apartment was too small and too distant for that to work out, but with the addition of Mick's nest egg (both the legal one Len's been stockpiling for him and the slightly more illegal results of pawning his stash, which Len carefully opined on only in hypothetical terms) they were able to afford a nice two-bedroom apartment in the same building as Len - albeit on a much higher floor.

(Danvers needs the roof access, for obvious reasons.)

And now, Mick is only ever an elevator ride away.

Of course, now so is Danvers - the fact that she’d previously kept her distance is apparently the only reason he didn't figure out her powers before, because she's a great believer in the idea of "dropping in" by floating down to knock on his window anytime she had an idea or a question or Mick needs some extra eggs - but Len doesn’t really mind that.

He likes Danvers. Not just as an employee, but as a friend.

He’s still never calling her Kara, though. At this point, it’s not because he doesn’t want to get emotionally close to her – that ship’s already sailed – but rather because he’s just gotten so damn used to using ‘Danvers’ and because she thinks it’s hilariously detective noir of him.

He thinks it might be an in-joke. He’s never had in-jokes with anyone but Mick and Lisa before.

So yeah, he’s cool – pun intended – with Danvers living upstairs.

Now to make things absolutely perfect, all he needs to do is to get over himself enough to convince (or even, you know, ask) for Barry to move in...

Yeah. Len’s gotta agree with Barry: having family around is the best.

Actually, now that he thinks about it -

"Speaking of which," Len starts, "there's something -"

The doorbell rings.

"Ooh, hold that thought," Barry says, pulling away and leaving Len significantly colder. Cold puns and fondness for a nice chill aside, Len disapproves. "That must be our Thai food."

"Probably is. Someone should get it." Len gives Barry a pointed look when he doesn’t move. "Maybe someone like you, since I got up to get the blanket."

"But I'm barefoot," Barry whines. The way he’s already starting to unwind himself from the couch suggests that he’s already accepted his fate, though.

"So run," Len says mercilessly.

Barry sticks his tongue out at Len, laughs at Len's resulting expression, leans over to give him a kiss -

The doorbell rings again, somewhat more insistently this time.

Barry breaks the kiss, groaning. "I'm coming, I'm coming," he calls, climbing out of their little blanket nest on the couch while trying to expose as little of Len as possible. Sometimes (definitely not always) considerate, his Barry. "Hold your horses - yowch, this floor is freezing!"

"Run, Barry, run," Len teases.

Barry rolls his eyes at him and does.

In a flash of light and a crackle of lightning.

Well, that was unexpected.

Len's eyebrows shoot straight up, but it's not a bad surprise by any means.

"Something you forgot to tell me?" he calls out, putting on his best lazy drawl to hide his sheer glee. Barry’s powers are finally coming back!

"No," a very unexpected, very familiar, very welcome female voice drawls right back. "Something you forgot to tell me, I think."

"Lisa!" Len exclaims, beaming at her. His beloved baby sister - not so baby, of course, a fully grown woman, but his nonetheless. "I didn't think you were arriving till tomorrow."

"I got bumped onto an earlier flight," she says, coming over - holding a bag of delicious smelling Thai takeout that she must've lifted off the delivery guy - and giving him a brief kiss on the cheek.

Positively effusive, for Lisa; neither she nor Len were all that great at physical contact (Barry apparently excluded, on Len's part). She must've really missed him.

It’s been far, far too long since he’s seen her in person.

She looks as gorgeous as ever – formerly blonde hair gone brown, black leather jacket with gold trim matching black leather pants, make-up as ridiculously sharp as always…

His little baby man-killer.

Len can’t wait to inflict her on everyone he knows now.

"Sorry it took so long for me to finish things up back in Gotham," she adds insincerely.

Len snorts. "You were just waiting to hear that I got my stitches taken out for good this time."

"No lie," Lisa agrees comfortably. She’s utterly shameless when she wants to be, but she wouldn’t be his Lisa if she wasn’t. "Speaking of lies and omissions, though, something you failed to mention about the otherwise famous Barry Allen...?"

"I didn't know myself that his powers came back until just now," Len protests. "And there was no point raising your hopes by telling you about 'em if they never did come back..."

"I didn't know they were coming back either," Barry says dryly. "Or, you know, that your sister was coming to visit."

"I was planning on telling you. Just now, actually!"

"Hopeless, ain't he?" Lisa asks Barry with a smirk, which he returns with a smile. "So, all that about you being a superhero's true, huh? I thought Len'd gotten metaphorical in his old age -"

"Never. Take that back."

"Not in a million years, jerkface."

"Trainwreck."

"Cop."

"Ouch. Right where it hurts."

Barry laughs, his shoulders relaxing. Sibling bickering he knows how to deal with.

"Technically I'm a cop, too, you know," he says mildly. "I work as the on-site CSI for the CCPD, and, now that my powers are coming back, I can finally use that superhero license Len got me."

"He's classified as somewhere between a freelance employee and a tank," Len says proudly. That took some serious rule-smithing to get squeezed through, but the CCPD now has an officially licensed superhero division. Len pushed successfully to get it under Singh’s jurisdiction. Coincidentally, Singh’s precinct ended up being where Len decided the permanent offices of the internal affairs division would go, too. Purely coincidence, really… "Just with extra ethics courses."

Barry hadn't appreciated that very much, and neither had Danvers, but Len is adamant about it. If someone’s going to be acting as a standalone vigilante, even with city approval, then they are damn well going to know the laws of Central City inside and out, and know how to apply them in an ethical fashion to boot.

"Enough about tanks," Lisa says, waving a hand. "Allen, why don't you and I go to the kitchen to get some plates and cutlery for the take-out, and while we're there we can talk a bit more about shovels?"

"Uh. Sure? Len, should I be scared?"

"Terrified," Len cheerfully informs him.

"That's not promising," Barry says, but he follows Lisa towards the kitchen anyway. "It's not fair, you know. By the time we started dating - for real dating, I mean, after the whole blow-up - he was already friends with my best friend, a hero to my other friends, helped rescue my dad from prison and already threw my foster dad in jail once; there wasn't anyone left to give Len a proper shovel talk on my behalf-"

Len starts laughing even as Barry's voice trails off when he walks into the kitchen.

Yes.

Having your family all around you is the best.

[orange-antics]

Eddsworld miscellaneous hcs

ok there's probably like 100 of these already or something, but I thought I'd add mine anyway, because hey, it's fun and I'll probably change or add a few later. (Also this ended up waaaaaaaay longer then i meant it to be wh o ops so uh be warned its pretty damn long-)

Tom:

Shortest! (i know it's normally either edd or tord, but after seeing saloonatics, I just couldn't resist the idea of the grumpiest one being the smallest. Cute right?)

Relatively strong arms, more fat around his stomach and torso then his legs.

Occasionally works gigs at local clubs and stuff for money.

Doesn't have much social media aside from Facebook so he can occasionally stalk his old college mates.

He actually likes sports like football and tennis. (His favourite sport is seeing how many bars he can hit up in one nigh-//shot//)

His hair smells like pineapple! (And the rest of him like booze-)

He's up for pretty much anything if he's drunk enough to have fun and not remember enough to regret it

But not bowling.

N e ve r bo wl ing

He's still got a scar on his left arm from The End. :( But Matt and Edd helped him to fix it up, so it's all good!

He's actually a pretty chill and sensible guy, and despite being snarky and sarcastic whenever he can, he genuinely cares about his relationships with people, scared that one day they'll get bored of him and cast him aside. He's really just a goofball with big city dreams of becoming a rockstar.

Spends like two hours in the shower crying and listening to MCR

His favourite show is Bad Education. It's good for when he needs cheering up.

He likes snacks and foods that are crunch, and salty, spicy, and sometimes savoury. So Crisps, Pringles, Doritos, chex mix etc.

Edd:

Second shortest/third tallest

Kinda chubby tbh but he's the BEST at hugs.

His forearm game is actually pretty strong because of all the time he spends making art to pay for their bills (because hey, someone's gotta do it amirite). You don't wanna head into an arm-wrestling contest with this guy.

Makes money by selling his art and also taste-testing all the latest cola products! (Just...not the diet ones).

Aside from a devianart, redbubble and maybe even a tumblr for art commissions, he doesn't really care about social media. Or regular media. Politics who?

His favourite sport? Seeing how many cans of cola he can get through on an especially difficult project. (Cricket always looked kind of fun though)

Smells like cola and not taking a shower in days because he HAS to get the lineart perfect and edd are you ok when was the last time you slept- (jokes aside, i can see him smelling like graphite and paints and sharpies from his art supplies).

Can pull the perfect poker face like damn son having a baby face sure comes in handy when lying to your roomate about why there's broken guitar strings hanging out of Ringo's mouth again

Has a scar on the inside of his eyelid from the time Tom 'accidently' poked him in the eye with a pencil (...may or may not be based off personal experience)

Edd is pretty friendly and open with people, he likes getting to know them and joking around. He's the Ultimate Punmaster ™, and loves nothing more to poke fun. He sees the world through the eyes of a cartoonist, and will never miss a comedic opportunity.

Be warned! He's actually fairly smart, and can read people well, knowing just how to really get under someone's skin. It's a good thing he can't be bothered with any of that though.

Gets his best ideas either in the tub or when hes just about to sleep. Because of that, he keeps a water-proof and regular notebook. Nearly had a heart-attack countless times because he accidently swapped them around.

Despite his complaints about absurd plot conveniences, he actually likes Doctor Wh- i mean "Proffesor Why", there's just something about the concept of time travel...he also likes cartoons! Like, a lot. He'll watch most anything and everything if it's animated and the writing is decent.

Likes anything sour, sweet, and chewy! So Jelly Babies, Wine gums, Sour patch kids, that kind of thing

Tord:

(Most of these are heavily based upon his life as Red Leader so sorry if you were looking for more domestic Tord. Maybe I'll do seperate hcs for that one day)

Second tallest! Quite a bit taller then Tom, a bit taller then Edd, just about average height, if a bit taller. He's closer to Matt in height then Edd.

He's actually quite well-built! You wouldn't think it because of the baggy hoodie he wears but he's got pretty good muscle, and his endurance and strength is well above the others. This mostly comes from the logic that he's been training and leading the Red Army, so it just makes sense to me that he'd resemble a soldier physically, yknow? AU-wise, or before he started the whole world domination thing, he'd be a little more scrawny, but he could still kick everyone's ass (he probably tried copying numerous anime battle stances lol-)

He's pretty well off, it turns out you can get quite rich by adopting some uh...rather unconventional means of money-making. Of course you could always say he just sold his inventions.

Does having your own private network of underground intelligence-gathering units count as social media? No? Nevermind.(He has a hentaihaven account-)

He likes dodgeball, archery, and you guessed it, arcade shooter games. Anything where he can point and hit something basically.

He smells like gunpowder, dirt, oil from machine maintenance and the cold? Like if the cold had a smell, he would have that smell, does that make sense? He also probably smells like Old Spice because idfk it just reminds me of him ok.

He doesn't exactly get out to socialise much, be prefers to stay at his desk, or curled up next to the fire with a mug of hot cider when he wants to relax. Sometimes Paul and Pat will drag him outside when they think he needs a breath of fresh air, and they'll go visit the nearest marketplace for food and other supplies. He likes strategic games like Chess or Draughts, and it's a good way to show off and get practice at the same time.

Scar-wise, he probably has quite a few from his fights. Post-the end, I'm not sure what would happen to him, since I've seen people go in a lot of different directions. I DO think he'd replace him arm with the robotic one, since that seemed too heavily implied to not happen. Regarding his face, I think the burns and stuff would probably heal over time, and depending on the technology in the future, he'd either still have some heavy scarring, or maybe he'd develop some kind of treatment so that it restores him to almost fully healed. He could always go the cyborg route and end up half-man half-machine like we see with future Matt and Tom.

(About the patch on his face, I have a theory about how he he aquired that scar/injury. See, I don't think Tord founded Red Army by himself, no. I think he was introduced to it by Paul (who we see in the same classroom as them in Poweredd) who was kept back a few years cause....uh...yknow- Anyway I have a theory that Tord eventually climbed the ranks until he became second-in-command, and he then murdered Red Leader and took his title. Their fight is where he got that injury. It's not really canon-supported much, but I find it an interesting concept!)

You've probably guessed, but I kind of disgree with Tord's portrayal sometimes. I think I prefer the darker, meaner side to him. I wouldn't say he's (completely) evil, but I'm not really one for the whole "self-hating, regretful angsty Tord who just wants some love and support" and stuff. I mean, it's cute with ships amd fluff, amd ideally he does make amends and rejoin the group, but I just like the thought that he's genuinely not a nice guy yknow? Like, he's actually done some fucked up stuff, and The End is probably just one case. (Of course this is all opinion based so feel free to disagree if u wanna wheeze-)

Has the WORST sleeping schedule. Has been known to fall asleep in the bath/shower.

He prefers movies to shows. His favourite is the Kingsman series (he can relate on many different levels).

Likes bittersweet things, (just like his personality amirite-). So cake with coffee, or tarts, liquorice, hard candy, that kind of thing.

Matt:

(My favourite-)

He tol. Tallest of them all!

Someone once described him as "borderline twink" and tbh i agree. I feel like he'd have a slightly feminine figure (which is perfectly normal!) and he both rocks it, and knows he does.

He works at a nail salon every now and again, his self-confidence and bubbliness makes him get along well with customers. (Also Matt would definitely wear nail polish ok dont even try to convince me otherwise. Actually speaking of,)

He has EVERY kind of social media possible. Instagram, twitter, facebook, tumblr, facebook, snapchat, you name it! He's especially prominent on instagram. He likes to keep an ~aesthetic~

He likes gymnastics and dance, activities like that. Anything which puts him in a creative spotlight. He'd probably take up acting classes, and then insist on only being given monologues.

He'd probably have quite a pleasant and nature-y smell? Like uhh citrus-y, pine tree, a hint of flowers, that kind of thing. Although he'd DEFINITELY slap on way too much cologne on a date or something and end up smelling like he just emptied out a bottle of febreeze.

He'd probably go out quite a lot! I can see Matt being a social butterfly, his friendliness and general likeability probably mean that he's got a few friends and stuff around. I can also see him as the kind of person who'd enjoy taking walks in the park, sitting below a tree, that kind of thing. He probably runs a self-love session (that works a little TOO well). He wants to get out there and show off his beautiful face, so it doesn't take a lot to drag him outside (provided you keep a mirror on you, that is).

He doesn't really have any physical scars. I mean, i do hc him with freckles, but they don't count so. he has a mental scar. After he hit himself with the memory eraser gun, he completely erased his memories. It took a while for him to settle onto the personality he has now. His face was the one thing that he knew for certain held a sense of familiarity and stability, so that's partly why his narcissism boomed so much. He sometimes gets random flashbacks of being a zombeh leader, being less of a nicer person, and it can be quite unnerving for him. He also has other memory issues, which is why he can forget things so easily, and comes across as an idiot most of the time.

He can be quite oblivious, but I dont think hes a total idiot. He can read people fairly well, and is emotionally intelligent. He says stupid things sometimes despite knowing they'll get a reaction, just because he wants to, and thinks that life should be as fun and full of joy as possible. He's too trusting, and wants to see the good in everyone. At the end of the day, if you disrespect him (and his face), you'll see that he can be more then just the nice guy.

LUSH!! Matt is HERE for all those lush products. I'm talking bath bombs, lip scrubs, shower jellies, all that good stuff! And ofc he has like 100+ products for his hair and skincare routine, because let's face it, it's Matt. I also like to think he owns a bunch of bath toys and rubber duckies, and like the kid at heart he is, he'll sit in a bubble bath playing with them, and re-enacting all of their adventures.

He mostly prefers youtube videos over TV, so you bet he's subscribed to all the beauty gurus, vloggers, people like that. He does think children's cartoons are nice to watch though, so every once in a while he'll force Tom and Edd to sit with him and watch the latest season of My little pony.

He likes anything sweet and fun to look at! Especially if it's trending, so he can post pictures of himself eating/drinking it. So if there's another rolled ice cream/new starbucks-ccino/unicorn themed food item floating about, he'll probably be trying it.

(Ah man this turned out way longer then i thought. It went from simple headcanons to like full blown theories whoops- maybe i should make seperate posts if its too difficult to read? Anyway let me know what you think nonetheless!)

[vide0-nasties]

all As for euffie ylfa and ww 😘

Aptitude

1. what are your oc’s naturalabilities, things they’ve been doing since young?

Eustacia: Because of her mother,Una, she's been practicing glamour and cursework since she was achild, but she's had an innate talent for transmogrification magicthat Una never possessed. That lapsed as she grew into adulthood, butit was a good foundation for her chaos magic.

Ylfa: Hunting and acting. Shegrew up with only her mother for company, very isolated in thecountryside, and because of her mother's work (research into theviability of alchemy in a residential setting), she largely had tokeep not only herself entertained, but the both of them fed andclothed. On the entertainment spectrum, this meant lots and lots ofreading and pretend games, playing multiple roles to flesh out herstories. On the practicality end of things, she took up hunting smallgame after being taught by a few traders how to track and use a bow.

Wildwood: As the second youngestof eleven children, with a twin brother that required constant careand attention, Wildwood spent a lot of her time being her mother'sshadow. That meant cleaning, and chores, and laundry. But it alsomeant cooking and playing music. Her earliest and nearly onlyremaining memories of that time are being taught to cook for crowdsand playing her mother's autoharp. When that finally and blessedlywent to shit and she and her mother were rescued, her adoptivefather, Jocko, taught her to play the fiddle.

2. what activities have theyparticipated in?

Eustacia: massive militarycampaigns, guerrilla warfare, black budget operations, regionaldestabilization, “advanced interrogation,” memory retrieval andfabrication, necromancy and ransom, state-sanctioned mass murder,riot suppression, insurrection suppression, leading violentrevolution, participating in the illegal sale of banned magicks,vigilantism. Nothing very good or cheerful.

Ylfa: Court intrigue, in-depthschooling, world traveling, counter-espionage, big-ass bat stunts,giant bat care, formal dance, learning world languages, deep coverespionage, counter-terrorism operations (for lack of a better termig!), mithridatism, selective dog training, getting shoved into avery loveless arranged marriage for political convenience thatneither party wants, warrior monk training, administering religiousrites and ceremonies, being a good kept court monkey for her queenand spitting out as many prophecies as possible.

Wildwood: Her criminal record islong and varied and includes but is not limited to: hostageransoming, bank robbery, horse thievery, identity fraud, dowry fraud,murder, improper disposal of human remains, train robbery, stagecoachrobbery, attempted murder, grand larceny, prostitution, materialproperty scams, assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon,breaking and entering. On the less illegal side, she has attended twocotillions, plays concert-level violin, competed in shootingcontests, raced horses (both mounted and driven), acted as a honeypotand diversion, and uhhhh orchestrating the personal hygiene of themen in camp bc they fucking STINK.

3. what abilities do they havethat they’ve worked for?

Eustacia: Living a relativelynormal civilian life. From the time she was five, she's either been acriminal accomplice on the lam, an enslaved Black ops soldier, or aguerrilla revolutionary. Having a place that is HERS, that she comesback to everyday and has to maintain is a HELL of a lot differentthan anything she's used to. Not to mention the fact she wasadjusting to life with the better part of her humanity removed fromher body, making her incomprehensible on good days and utterlyvicious on bad ones.

Ylfa: Unlike Euffie, Ylfa had toadjust to enlisted life lol. Hey previous home lives had beenextremely casual, sedate, and private, so getting thrown to thewolves in the form of looots of resentful priestesses (who'd allbusted their ass to join the Beserkr's order, while Ylfa had beenforced in as punishment for a percieved crime) and an obscenely harshtraining regiment very nearly killed her from exhaustion if nothingelse. The loneliness and constant moving didn't help her either.

Wildwood: Sniping, bodydismemberment/disposal, empathy/sympathy. These all have to do witheach other. As a child, one of her older brothers (Atlas, he whocertainly acted like he had the world upon his fuckin' shoulders, andhe who was certainly built like it) put his hand on the back of herhead and smashed her skull against a tree. While it fucked her upphysically (broke her skull, injured her right eye, broke out herlateral incisor), it also gave her lasting brain damage. It becamevery easy for her to kill people because she didn't see them aspeople. She had to work very hard to give a shit about anyone (thatwasn't her mother or adoptive father) as an individual. Over 25+years, some of the damage has healed, and through her own work herempathy has gotten much better, but it's made killing more difficult.

4. what things are they bad at?

Eustacia: Domesticity ): my girlcannot keep a house to save her damn life. She's never stayed oneplace long enough for it to feel like home and she's always watchingthe door for her cue to leave. Her house is messy, dirty, anddisorganized and feels deeply, deeply impersonal. She simply doesn'tcare about the place she lives. Minor thingsshe's bad at: playing musical instruments, cooking food that is notbreakfast related, remembering important dates, self-restraint,healthy coping mechanisms, wearing colors that aren't black.

Ylfa: She'sabsolutely terrible at being her genuine self. She got too used totrying to be helpful or unobtrusive or sneaky, and as a result shebends her personality to best match whoever she's interacting with.It's gotten to the point that she thinks she doesn't actually have apersonality of her own--she's doesn't exist outside of whoever she'spretending to be for someone else, and she doesn't know who Ylfa issupposed to be. Minor things: consistently lies, doing laundry (hasdestroyed many sets of robes), disciplining her dog (Jokeri is aspoiled little tyrant and it's only tolerated because he's tiny),respecting books (serial spine-breaker and dog-earrer), makingfriends, respecting (or even remembering the names of) the othergods, huge blasphemer.

Wildwood: Woodputs the needs of others ahead of her own and if that isn't just asMary Sue-ish as shit. But it's ruinous and gets to the point ofself-destruction, literally forgoing basic self-care to tend to anylittle thing asked of her, leading to big, BIG fuck-ups as a resultof the neglect and wear. Most often this leads to exhaustion andfatigue, leaving her close to functionally useless when shit hits thefan. Minor things: she pinballs between booze hounding/cocainefiending and sobriety, is religiously intolerant of most Christiandenominations outside of Catholicism, says odd oblique shit ALL THETIME, double-talks, can certainly be cruel for the sake of beingcruel, gets entitled and aggressive when challenged or has factsthrown in her face.

5. what is their most impressivetalent?

Eustacia: this bitch has created LIFE. It was ugly andan abomination and she crushed it was a book, but the little freakmistake did live for a minute, and it was a result of her chaosmagic. Making something out of the nothing that is the universe'svast untapped stores of energy.

Ylfa: Ylfa is an *astonishing* airborne mounted archer,hitting targets from a distance of half a mile while flying at topspeed in the dark. She can also tie cherry stems in knots with hertongue and can pick locks faster than anyone she knows.

Wildwood: Besides being able to dismember an grown manin ten minutes and being able to land a headshot at almost a mile,she has a drinking toast for every occasion and can cook a full-onspread for 20 people with little to no notice if called upon.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I was really struck by something I read in one of your earlier replies to an ask, which was "we’ll never know what Rachel would have done after the war ended", and I wondered if perhaps you may actually have some thought about what might have happened if she did? How WOULD Rachel, who thrived in war, adapt to the mundane life after?

Jake

After a while Rachel’s aunt and uncle get so used to her stopping by that they just make her a copy of their house key; it’s easier than answering the door all the time or leaving a window open for her, besides which they’re grateful because she’s there almost every day to bully Jake out of bed and into the world to go do something.  Most days it’s just attending Habitat for Humanity builds in the devastated areas downtown or visiting kids from the local hospital who idolize them both.  Rachel doesn’t mind dragging Jake out of his room at all, because while Tobias is good for taking random college classes or exploring new parts of the country with her, there are still plenty of stupid things that she can only talk Jake into doing.  Together they surf during hurricanes, skydive without parachutes, swim to the bottom of the ocean as orcas and throw themselves off cliffs as birds of prey.  

Rachel doesn’t pretend to understand what he’s going through, because she quite simply can’t—if she even tries to think about what it would be like if it was Jordan or Sarah she’d had to kill during that last battle, she tends to lose the ability to breathe.  But while she can’t give him empathy she can give him this: the scream of wind rushing past their bodies as they hurl toward the ground at nearly a hundred miles an hour, the incomparable thrill of the ground approaching them faster than an oncoming train, the moment of simple euphoria during that millisecond decision to once again open one’s wings and tell death not today.  He doesn’t smile much, and never laughs, but that’s always been true to some extent.  She doesn’t concern herself with making him smile, but with forcing him to gasp for air in his refusal to give up on life, to morph when not doing so would mean drowning in the cold Pacific, to swerve a second away from spattering on the ground.  Because she’s the only one who understands the power of those moments to make them forget everything in the world except the heady rush of being so goddamn alive they can barely even stand it.

Marco

It’s strange, really, how tough and showy they can be around each other most of the time… and how vulnerable they can become when no one else is around.  Rachel’s pretty sure she’s the only one who ever saw Marco cry after they all watched Eva’s body tumble hundreds of yards to its apparent death, and she knows for certain that she’s the only one to whom he says “it’s like we never really got her back at all,” the day his parents announce their divorce.  In public Rachel and Marco become even more themselves, one-upping each other to see who can come out with the most embarrassing story in round after round of interviews and bantering at lightning speed as live studio audiences laugh and cheer.  Rachel gives a hysterical, exaggerated account of Marco’s failed attempt at gatecrashing William Roger Tennant’s award banquet; Marco comes back with a heroic narrative of how his llama-self saved an entire television studio from the crocodile Rachel conveniently forgot to mention she had puked out backstage.  When talking about the time Helmacrons invaded Marco’s nose, they each manage to make the whole mess entirely into the other one’s fault.  

In private, they sit on the back porch of Marco’s primary house once a week and work their way through a bottle of triple sec they’re definitely too young to own.  It’s during those long evenings as the sun sets over the Newport Beach mansions that they air the things to each other they’ve never told a living soul before.  Marco talks about the hard bright-edged joy of watching 17,000 yeerks sucked into space and only being able to imagine their screams.  Rachel confesses to having cried herself to sleep after she and Ax dropped David on that island.  They air their sickest thoughts, lance their most pus-rotted wounds, spew poison at each other because they know that they are both strong enough (hard enough, cold enough, ruthless enough) to take it and give back in turn.

Cassie

Rachel’s honestly not sure how far Cassie would have gotten, politically, if not for her help.  Because that girl might have passion and conscience and common sense to spare, but Rachel’s not sure she’s met a more appearance-clueless person in her life.  The world of politics runs on fashion and makeup, though, especially if one happens to be a woman, and any time Cassie’s about to go tell the United Nations why they need to update the Universal Declaration of Human Rights today to include the hork-bajir and taxxons, or to scold Congress into giving the ex-hosts war reparations and not murder charges, Rachel is there in the background helping.  She shows Cassie the power of stalking into a room in a pair of towering heels, the ways to make a string of pearls or a Chanel handbag into a weapon of power.  Cassie laughs incredulously every time Rachel shows up at her house with a literal truckload of perfectly-tailored business suits and evening gowns, but over time she starts to understand just how much her reputation for being as elegant as she is fierce can work in her favor.  

Rachel, in turn, starts to put out patents for the kind of clothes Cassie would love: comfortable and practical items that can be worn for years without needing replacement.  Rachel figures that if she’s an international trendsetter already (and she is: her line of perfume makes millions every year, while black leotards are debuting on Paris runways) then she might as well have her best friend and the world of high fashion meet in the middle.  Of course Rachel doesn’t explicitly mention that her patent-leather pumps with arch support and heel padding are inspired by the experience of trying on Cassie’s Timberlands, or that her choice of size-16 models for all her advertisements comes from making dresses that would fit Cassie and sizing up or down from there.  But what’s most amazing to her is that the other dressmakers and shoe lines start to emulate her choices, emphasizing the comfort and sturdiness of everything they make even as they tout it as “cutting edge.”  If Rachel has dragged Cassie into being a fashion icon, then it turns out Cassie might just have dragged Rachel into being a social justice warrior along the way.

Ax

Ax seems somewhat dumbfounded when Rachel explains that there’s an Earth tradition that any ship’s captain can perform a marriage ceremony, and that even if there’s no law on the books about this particular power she wants him to do it anyway.  She’s not sure herself how her and Tobias’s small private ceremony (at least, that was the intention) has grown so much, but even she has to admit that somewhere between the 230-person guest list, the custom chuppah to be hand-embroidered by a team of local artists, the five-tier cake imported from a German bakery, and the dress which is personally designed by Alexander McQueen, things might have gotten slightly out of hand.  Ax takes the duties very seriously, practicing the strange mouth sounds he has to recite more than once in advance and promising solemnly that he will not eat any of the cake until Rachel and Tobias have had the chance to cut it.  

He serves as their best man as well (probably breaking with tradition, not that they care) and the speech he makes afterward is surprisingly heartfelt.  «There has been no greater honor in my life than to fight by your side,» he tells them, «and I owe you both my life many times over.  I owe you more than that, of course, for you have made this strange planet my home when I came to you lost and alone.  I am not sure what humans traditionally wish for each other with a bond such as this, so I will wish you this much: may your lives be long, may your battles be easily won, may you be loved and feared in equal measure, and may your chili always be perfectly seasoned.» 

Tobias

It’s not like they get jobs, or hold down formal obligations, or do anything more structured than attend occasional classes at UCSB or consult with the fashion agency that sends Rachel freelance checks.  So there’s really no reason they can’t continue their odd lifestyle, only in the same form at the same time for two hours at most.  At least, that’s how it is for the first several years… and then one day Rachel comes out of the bathroom, a tiny white stick in her hand, and they both realize their lives are never going to be the same again.  Tobias is terrified, of course: he’s been abandoned (voluntarily or not) by two parents, four guardians, and countless authority figures, and he’s got no reason to believe he’ll be any different.  But he knows what the first step will be in committing to raising this baby for real.  And so he morphs human for the very last time.  

In the years that follow, after their daughter eventually gets a little brother as well, Rachel and Tobias become more boring than they ever could have hoped for.  Rachel starts working full-time as a fashion designer, while Tobias finishes an advanced degree in graphic design and gets a job with the marketing branch of the same company.  They go to PTA meetings and teach their daughter softball, buy a sedan with good gas mileage and a two-story house in Mendocino County where the reporters can’t find them.  They still get restless sometimes, leaving the kids with Loren or Sarah for a week or two at a time to go white-water rafting on the Colorado River or to climb mountains in Tanzania, but they always miss the kids enough to come home before long.  They donate thousands of dollars to end world hunger every year, and they fundraise millions more.  Someday they’ll retire.  Someday after that they’ll die.  For now, however, they’re alive, and that’s enough.