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lovebecomeshim · 3 years

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hello! your zutara posting today has finally motivated me to ask this question because I came to atla very late(last year, to be specific) and I Love It Very Much but am 1000% out of the loop as far as why what remains of fandom (at least that I've seen among my friends) is so very strongly zutara. I'm not opposed to it per se I just don't really know what has driven it to apparently be such a popular ship? can you help me understand and maybe convert me a little bit?

Hey!! Your ICON! :D I can try but I’m not sure how coherent I’ll be; however I AM sure someone a lot more competent will be willing to add to this. Either way, I’m glad you asked because my plan was to drag down as many people as possible with me.

*smacks the hood of zutara* this baby can fit so much mutual love and support!

This got so long, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to put it under a cut on mobile and it already got deleted once so I’m scared to mess with it lol. Moving on.

I’m gonna start this with a disclaimer that im on mobile so formatting is tricky and I’m also really new to atla in that I only completed my first watch through in like 2019??? So some of my info is all just based on what I’ve picked up from Discourse 👀 so anyway the sparknotes version: zutara was wildly popular from the beginning. To the point where the atla crew internally disagreed on which ship should be endgame. (Ex. Bryke [showrunners] asked the writers to rewrite The Southern Raiders to make Zuko seem less ideal for Katara than Aang [which failed, depending on who you ask]; the animation team purposefully created a visual parrallel between Oma and Shu in the Cave of Two Lovers and Zuko and Katara in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se in the Crossroads of Destiny; etc.)

The ship was popular enough that Bryke actually chose to display zk fanart at a con for the sole purpose of mocking the fans, but that’s neither here nor there. The entire episode Ember Island Players, while a love letter to/parody of the whole show, was an opportunity to address zutara’s viability as a canon pairing (while, again, mocking zutaras for romanticizing that catacombs scene). Point is! It’s always been popular but with it not being endgame, there’s got to be something that’s given it staying power.

And that’s honestly got to do with three things: their dynamic, thematic cohesion, and potential.

(You know what... you know what, it’s four things. The fourth is they’re so aesthetically pleasing together and individually. Like, they’re just good looking people [specifically when they’re grown but they’re also cute kids] and that absolutely doesn’t hurt) (but it’s not the Point, it’s just nice to point out sometimes)

The dynamic is hard to get into without also looking at the canon pairings, but I think I can do that without unnecessary bashing. It’s just that part of the magic of zutara is really highlighted by what they give to each other that their other relationships don’t.

First off, it’s classic enemies to (would be) lovers. The absolute truest form of it. It’s not too different from how CS started out: a rogue antagonist with a job to do—but no personal vendetta against the future love interest—who is deeply and emotionally invested in his personal storyline (revenge/redemption) with little regard for how it effects other people after his entire life and genuine good nature are marred by suffering, and a fierce warrior girl with a strong moral compass and her own personal investment in stopping him (protect her family and save the world doing it). Obviously frustration and animosity grew between them by the nature of them being on opposing sides, but that just lends itself to the sweetness of their later reconciliation.

The thing is that while they’re wildly different on the surface (he’s a hot-headed prince of a fascist regime who is trying to capture the Avatar to please his father; she’s a nurturing daughter of the chief who is trying to protect and train the Avatar in order to topple his father’s throne) they find out that they have so much more in common both in their experiences and their personalities.

(What follows is an excessive use of the word “both” and I’m sorry about that)(I can edit it. I can do that. That IS an option............)

They both have an innate sense of justice that they are determined to see done (zuko, at the war meeting, sticking up for the Earth Kingdom kid when the guards torment his family, choosing not to steal from the pregnant couple despite his circumstances, abiding by his word to leave the SWT should Aang come willingly, etc.; katara, literally.... at any point). They both have pretty one-track minds at accomplishing certain goals once they’ve put their mind to it, regardless of a lack of support in that endeavor (it goes without saying I guess, but zuko’s entire hunt; katara’s determination to get the earth benders to fight back, her determination to absolutely destroy Pakku until he agrees to teach her, etc.). They both lost their mothers at young ages. Their worlds are war-torn and traumatizing to them both, if in different ways, but that ultimately forces them to grow up too quickly to be wholly independent individuals. They both have issues with their fathers (for WILDLY different reasons, but). They both hold extreme prejudices that they need to learn to overcome (which ties into thematic cohesion)(bit like Lizzie and Darcy in that way but magnified by a million). They’re both extremely emotional and empathetic—which can and often does result in loud outbursts. Katara’s a bit better adjusted and can temper her anger for longer than S1 Zuko can, but they both feel that anger deeply and have no compunctions expressing it (Katara is, usually, more justified, particularly in S1. Again, S1 Zuko is severely maladjusted but at the point when they could’ve feasibly become a couple, he’s so much better off with the way he carries himself). They both struggle with feelings of inferiority in their bending abilities when confronted with prodigal benders like Aang and Azula, but have the work ethic required to double down and become two of the most powerful benders in the three remaining nations. This is a little more minor but it is a parrallel that appeals to some shippers that they both have these alter egos in the Painted Lady (notably fire nation coded) and the Blue Spirit (water tribe coded) that are pretty different from who they are day-to-day and are useful in accomplishing a purpose that they as themselves cannot.

(I’m.... I just realized that this could potentially get very long. Should I have made a slide show with bullet points??????)

Anyway, similar. I know there’s more but there’s literally so much to love about zutara that I’ll drive myself a little crazy trying to compile all the ways they’re similar. (Just gonna say that at this exact moment I went back to add more similarities.... so okay then)

Once they’ve reconciled, we see how all of these things only lend themselves to a deeper intimacy together than they share with literally anyone else. There’s a steady partnership that positions them as the mom/dad of the gaang, while also providing the support necessary to allow the other to not have to carry so much responsibility. A lot of zutaras will point out how zuko is actually depicted doing the more domestic chores that are normally relegated to Katara once he joins the gaang, since the others in the group are two 12-year-olds and sokka. The one that sticks out the most is how he makes tea for the group and then serves them, while Katara is able to just relax with her friends around the fire. Fanon expands upon this a lot to Zuko helping with the laundry or the cooking or whatever else needs doing since he, as a once-refugee, is used to doing his own domestic tasks. Before Zuko joined, Katara was the one mothering everyone, sewing for them, cooking for them, etc. She’s always tending to the needs of the group, and that includes emotionally. She does the emotional labor for the gaang 99% of the time, but when she’s the one falling apart, she’s usually doing it alone and without the comfort that she normally provides for others. Until Zuko. And that’s before they’re even friends.

Which is WHY people romanticize the catacombs of Ba Sing Se so much. Katara is verbally attacking Zuko out of her own righteous anger but also her own prejudice when Zuko, surprisingly, chooses to be vulnerable with her. He’s been on a journey that’s opened his eyes a bit, but he’s never actively chosen to expose the rawest parts of his past to anyone. But for some reason he chooses to do that with Katara of all people. While she’s yelling at him. He sees her humanity, and for once can look past his prejudice and empathize with her. And this time, when she breaks down, she gets to be comforted. Katara normally talks about her mother when she’s trying to explain to someone else that she sees and understands they’re pain, as a form of comfort to them. Here, Zuko uses the exact same tactic. He sees her and he understands. And for zuko? He’s not being shut down. He’s allowed to articulate his pain regarding his mother without being ignored and made to internalize it, and he’s allowed to process how he feels about his scar out loud without being told that he deserved it. And then he lets her touch his scar, something we’ve seen him actively avoid before. He’s completely open to her and she’s completely open to him and all it took was one five minute conversation. She was about to use the little bit of Spirit water that she had, that she was saving for something Important, to heal the scar that still daily causes him pain just because they had, somehow, connected.

Plus there’s the whole parallel to the star-crossed lovers forbidden from one another, a war divides their people—

And then zuko messes up, he regresses, he gets what he wants and he HATES it. And the sense of justice he had as a child has been restored to him against his will and he can’t think of anything he wants to do more than the Right Thing, so he joins team avatar. Before he does that though, we get to see his relationship with Mai, which is where comparison really comes in. And what we see is Zuko, fresh off of his encounter with Katara in the catacombs, trying to be emotionally honest with Mai... and getting shut down and dismissed. Which is just how Mai is and it’s fine, but not for Zuko. Still, he keeps trying, and he keeps getting ignored or scoffed at or yelled at. Which is really a larger symbol for how he doesn’t fit in his old life anymore, but again that’s about thematic cohesion. He tries to articulate his anxieties about returning home, he tries to make romantic gestures, he tries to explain how morally conflicted he’s feeling—and Mai diverts to some kind of physical affection to shut him up and a parting comment that is pretty much always, in essence, “I don’t wanna talk about this.” So they don’t. On the other hand, once zuko and Katara are friends, we see him again emotionally distraught and caught up in his anxieties about facing Iroh, and it’s Katara who comes to him and listens to him and comforts and encourages him.

Similarly, we have Aang clamming up and getting uncomfortable whenever Katara shows any negative emotion, usually resulting in him making excuses or running away. Or, in the case of the Southern Raiders, lecturing her on how she needs to just let go of her anger about her mother’s murder. People have talked this episode to death and usually better than I ever could, so imma... keep it brief. There’s a serious disconnect between Aang and Katara in his ability to empathize with Katara and her needs that has her tamping down her vulnerability and amping up her anger. He tells her that he was able to forgive his people’s genocide and appa’s kidnapping (petnapping? Theft??), which is blatantly not true but also not an entirely equal parrallel to Katara’s situation, and continues making these little remarks throughout the episode. But it’s Zuko that Katara opens up to. It’s with him that she’s able to talk about the most traumatic day of her life, and it’s with him that she’s able to get the closure she needs, cementing their bond as friends and partners. This disagreement between Aang and Katara is then... never resolved. They just never bring it up and hear what the other is saying.

There’s a fic called The Portraits of Ember Island that has a line that so completely sums up the heart of the matter for why people love their dynamic. For context, zuko has woken up early to help Katara with the cooking and they spend the whole time just letting one another talk, and zuko stops to ask why she always just lets him talk. And so she stops to ask why he’s always helping, and it goes as follows:

There’s just... so much mutual support! Trust! Intimacy!! And it just continues like that from the Southern Raiders on, listening to each other, advising each other, watching each other’s backs! And then! Literally saving each other’s lives!! I will never be over the last Agni kai. Not ever. Zuko may have been willing to jump in front of lightning for anyone, but he actually did it for Katara. And in a show, that’s the thing that really matters. It’s a fulfilled trope usually exclusively applied to romantic pairings, and it ended up applying to Zuko and Katara. And then she ran out into the middle of a fight with tunnel vision just to get to him.

Also!! Also Zuko pushing Katara out of the way of the falling rocks at the Western Air Temple!! And Katara catching him as he fell from the war balloon that he fought Azula on!! Before they’re even getting along, they’re the ones reaching for each other. They come to this place of equal ground, as partners, who watch each other’s backs, call each other out but still listen attentively and understand, and provide the support that the other has been sorely lacking up until they knew each other (whether that be from lack of effort or lack of understanding from others, or an unwillingness to accept it for themselves).

Then, trailing along under the surface of this, we see the themes of the show totally embodied by Zuko and Katara as individuals and in their relationship to one another. There’s a YouTuber, sneezyreviews, who has a, like, 2-hour explanation on why she not only loves zutara but also believes that their endgame would’ve actually elevated the writing of atla to new levels particularly because of thematic cohesion and resolved character arcs. It’s the zutara dissertation I never knew I needed, and it’s funny and eloquent and effective, so I’m just going to sum up her section on thematic cohesion to the best of my abilities and then link it for whenever you have the time. And I HIGHLY recommend it, especially if you want a full understanding of what makes zutara so great and gives it such longevity.

Guru pathik has a line that goes something like this: separation is an illusion; things that seem different are just two parts of the same whole. Iroh also tells Zuko something similar: balance and strength are achieved when the different nations come together and influence one another and celebrate what makes them each unique. And this lesson is a massive central arc that both Zuko and Katara go through, moving past a black-and-white, good guys-vs-bad guys, us-vs-them mentality and into a greyer, more nuanced view of the world. Zuko sees the fire nation from an entirely new perspective and while he still loves and hopes for his nations future, he surrenders his blind loyalty to them in exchange for an unflinching loyalty to peace and love. Katara too had to come to terms with the fact that cruel people exist in the earth kingdom and water tribes, while some fire nation citizens are just regular, kind people who also need and deserve to have someone speak on their behalf. And this is honed in directly on how they view each other. They grow in their individual journeys to be open to the humanity in the other and then, once they’ve found that, they’re able to grow more in compassion for others in a beautiful feedback loop. And this is all matched in the symbolism repeatedly and intentionally associated with them in canon: sun and moon, fire and water, yin and yang, Oma and Shu who found love despite their warring nations. Their individual arcs are completed in each other and complement the themes of atla beautifully.

The canon pairs... just don’t. Which, again, is fine. But the very things that give atla longevity and popularity are anchored in zutara. Kat@ang doesn’t accomplish this. They’re... nice. Sweet. Especially when you erase a good portion of their interactions in S3. It could’ve been just a sweet love story. (Personally, the dynamic between toph and aang accomplish the same thing that zutara does, with complementary personalities that fulfill the theme of opposites blending in harmony) M@iko, on the other hand, is less sweet but I think wasn’t even supposed to last. Zuko’s relationship with Mai seems to represent his relationship with his old life as a whole. He can’t be emotionally vulnerable, he’s goaded into abusing his privileges, his agency and opinions aren’t respected. They just don’t have common ground with which to discuss anything that matters, so they don’t. As far as themes, the relationship doesn’t fit with atla. It’s zuko returning to and sticking with what is (on the surface) like him, what’s expected. Fire nation with fire nation. Fluid water bender with the flexible air bender. Like with like, separated from what is different and challenging and complementary.

And all of these things combined of course lead to the potential for the ship. I don’t know how familiar you are with the post-atla canon but... well, miss “I will never turn my back on people who need me”, miss “I don’t want to heal! I want to fight!” ends up living quietly in the SWT as a designated healer who turns a blind eye to the water tribe civil war happening right outside her front door. Which can be fine! People change! Some people just wanna stay inside. I just wanna stay inside! But the potential future for zutara is so much more satisfying, with Katara becoming the most unconventional Fire Lady the uppity old cads who are stuck on the old ways have ever seen. Fanon has her serving as a voice for the other nations within a kingdom at the point of its biggest political upheaval, as a confidante to Zuko who can actually help him while he’s trying to figure out how to move forward and make reparations. They have the opportunity, together, to accomplish what they both have set on their hearts to fight for: positive change that lends itself to harmony and balance. And the steambabies! A popular headcanon is that their firstborn daughter, the crown princess, is actually a waterbender, which causes such an uproar among the people who are adamantly clinging to the old ways. It’s just a future full of potential to be forces for good together, full of trust, intimacy, joy. The exact era of peace and love and balance that zuko announces that he intends to ring in with the start of his reign as Fire Lord is, again, magnified by the very personal zutara relationship. And we love to see it.

tl;dr zutara isn’t for everyone. Some people just don’t vibe with it. Some are nostalgic. Some love the canon they grew up with. Some have been disappointed for years. Some just see themselves in other characters and want their happiness instead. Whatever the reason, that’s fine. But for me, I love the way these two, from the moment they give each other a fair chance, are able to lower their walls and prejudices to see the other for the kindred spirits they are. They see each other’s humanity, and their response is to pour out love and support and compassion. I love that they’re a power couple in battle. I love the symbolism and, honestly, soulmatism that colors their every interaction. I love that they embody the whole storyline of atla in their relationship and how it develops, which is notably why their seasonal arcs always culminate in each finale with how they relate to one another. I love that zuko adopting a waterbending move is what actually saves his life and then katara’s. I love the chemistry! And I love the future they could’ve had, instead of the ones they were given.

So, in conclusion: I just think they’re neat and I hope you do too, at least a little bit. Even if it’s just respectfully from a disinterested distance cause you do you. And now here is the video I mentioned. I’m sorry this post got so long and then I gave you an even longer homework assignment, but I can’t recommend it enough. She says it all better than I can.

youtube

#zutara #atla #zutara rant #like really the way the canon relationships were written throughout s3 #it would’ve been more believable for zutara to happen #or at least be hinted at #all of the major issues presented in those relationship were dug up extensively and then... never resolved #and then they just slapped some kisses on a screen and said ‘there all better’#and we just kinda had to say ‘oh ok guess it’s all better then’#this got long I’m sorry #I wrote it all out and then tumblr ate 2/3 of it #which is why it took so long #and what I’ve written now doesn’t even match what I had before #because there’s too much to say about why I love zutara #and the stuff I left out the first time is what came out this time #rip to my original thoughts but this post is different #anyway that’s why this took so long #and I should’ve just made a PowerPoint...#I can do that too if you’d rather not read all of this lol #I won’t be offended #this is incoherent #Alia rambles uselessly #also hoping this doesn’t end up in any wrong tags because I don’t wanna step on toes lol #it’s not anti!! it’s just critical #in a compare/contrast way #I can pinpoint the moment when I started trying to rewrite my points from memory #because everything gets shorter and more succinct #like... I really said all that??? sounds fake and I don’t remember it anyway so here’s the condensed version #with no!! smooth!!! transitions!!!!#also why am I so lazy with proper grammar over text

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youngbloodlisk · 4 years

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Extra Practice // Eric Sohn

"You wanna watch, baby?"

word count: 1499

- sorry if the format is screwed, i'm posting from mobile

- dom eric sohn smut

- choking

- rough

- unprotected sex WRAP IT BEFORE YOU TAP IT PLZ

- best friend sunwoo :D

- poor sangyeon and sunwoo though lol

- inspired entirely by this photo thank you eric

I enter the room as quietly as possible, trying not to disturb the rehearsal.

I assumed the mirrors were going to make that more difficult, but the boys are so wrapped up in practicing that they don't seem to notice me at all.

I smile and lean against the wall. My eye fixate on the member in the center as the powerful, yet sensual choreography comes to an end: Eric.

His dance practice clothes may not be the sexiest things he's ever worn, but to me in this moment, he's the sexiest thing I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. Dark grey pants, light grey shirt, white shoes, and all.

I've always found Eric quite attractive.

He has a certain charm about him that gives even his sweetest smile the ability to ruin my underwear within seconds.

I'm forced to resist rubbing my thighs together as the boys' attention falls from their dancing and onto one of three things: laying on the floor in exhaustion, taking some of the biggest gulps of water you've ever seen, or suddenly noticing me in the room.

"Hey!" Sunwoo smiles and jogs to me with slightly shaky legs and sweat dripping off him in every way possible.

"Sunwoo, Sunwoo, Sunwoo! Slow down, chill..." I grab him a cold water bottle and a small towel from the table a few feet away.

"Thank you." His beautiful smile lights up his whole face. "How long have you been watching?"

"I only caught the last 30 seconds or so. It looks incredible, though. I'm sure deobi will love it."

Sunwoo and I continue to make small talk. However, as he's telling me in detail about the lunch they had earlier, my eyes wander away from Sunwoo and onto Eric. He's standing directly behind Sunwoo, only a few feet away. He just got up from laying on the floor, and is now taking a swig from his water bottle. In his rush for hydration, some of the water drips out of his mouth and falls around his chin, eventually dripping onto his shirt. He grabs the bottom hem of his shirt and brings it up to wipe his face off, exposing his toned torso.

Somehow, my mouth goes desert dry and ocean wet at the same time.

"Hello?" Sunwoo waves his hand in front of my spaced out face, causing me to come back to reality and realize that Eric is staring me dead in the eyes.

He saw me watching him.

"Hello?" Sunwoo says again. "Are you okay?"

"Hm? What? Y-Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, Sunny, I got distracted."

"By what-"

"Nothing, nothing, it's not important. What were you saying?"

The boys hang around for a bit longer, talking and beginning to pack up any of their stuff. They're about to leave, and so am I, when Eric subtly pulls me back.

"Hey guys, I'm gonna hang here and work on the bridge a little more. I'll see you at home." They mutter approvals and say bye, and Sangyeon notices me not moving.

"You staying too?"

"Uh-" Eric looks at me and cocks an eyebrow, his eyes quickly looking me up and down. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna stay. You know how I love watching rehearsal." I laugh a bit and smile to act as casual as possible.

"Alright. Eric, make sure she gets home safe."

"Absolutely."

Sangyeon leaves with one last nod to his youngest member.

Almost the exact moment the door closes, Eric pulls me by the arm and pushes me against the nearest wall.

"Eric-"

"I saw you looking at me while I was dancing. I saw the way you watched me when I got a drink of water and wiped my face off. Your eyes were practically taking my clothes off right there. Weren't they? You really want me to fuck you in the middle of this practice room, don't you?"

"Eric..." My face flushes red, and I turn my head to avoid his piercing gaze.

"Answer me, baby." He grabs my face and turns me to look him in the eyes.

"Yes."

"Yes to what?"

"Yes, I-..." I find it hard to respond as my body fills with both arousal and embarrassment.

"Come here." He takes my hands and brings me to stand a few feet away from the large wall of mirrors.

Eric makes me stand to face the mirror and moves behind me. His hands go under my shirt and he softly rubs the skin at my waist.

"You're so beautiful, baby... You don't know how many things I've imagined doing with you... or maybe you have an idea. You're a dirty girl, aren't you?" His hands wander up and his thumbs barely brush against my nipples, causing my body to tense and then relax into his touch. He quickly moves one of his hands to reach under my waistband. "Oh, how are you already so wet... Can you ride me, baby?"

I hum out an "mhm", aching and desperate to feel him inside me.

He sits on the floor and pulls me with him.

Eric works fast, pulling my pants off of me and pushing his down to expose his cock.

"You wanna watch, baby? You wanna watch as you fuck yourself on my cock?"

"Please..." I whine.

"Too bad." My heart sinks. "Face the door. You can make sure Sangyeon doesn't come back for the sweatshirt he left on the table." My eyes dart to the table, and sure enough... there sits Sang's favorite sweatshirt. He's sure to come back to get it. "I'm gonna be the one watching us."

Eric grabs my leg and pulls me to straddle him.

He leans back on one hand and uses the other to align himself.

"Go, baby." I lower myself onto him, holding back my reaction. He groans at the feeling of his cock stretching me out.

He stares past me and into the mirror as I slowly bounce on him, digging my nails into his skin.

I see in the corner of my eye Eric reach down to his pocket, pulling out his phone.

I keep my eyes on the door in fear of Sangyeon opening it, but I hear the click of an iPhone camera.

Did he just take a photo?

That's hot.

He throws his head back and carefully drops his phone onto the floor.

The arm holding his body up buckles for a second and he makes his other arm replace it, wrapping the previous propping hand around my neck and lightly squeezing.

I clench around him. Choking was a very good call on his part.

Within a few minutes, Eric's eyes roll back and he lets out a loud groan, shooting his cum into me.

I start to move off of him, but he fully sits up (no longer needing his hand to prop himself up) and grabs my waist, slamming me back down onto him.

"Did you think I was gonna let you go without you cumming around me?" He's in full control of my body as he moves me up and down at his desired pace.

My breathing gets erratic and soft whimpers and moans are leaving my mouth without warning.

"Eric... Eric, it feels so good... Eric, please, I'm about to-" I can't even finish my sentence before the knot in my stomach unravels and we both let out unholy moans of pleasure.

My tired body collapses onto him and he holds me close, allowing us to both catch our breath.

I suddenly realize that somewhere in the middle of all that... I stopped looking at the door.

I look up and my eyes go wide as golf balls.

"Eric. Eric!" He hums and moves to look at my face, following my gaze to the door.

Sangyeon and Sunwoo are staring at us with surprised, slightly turned on expressions.

And who knows how much they saw...

"Oh, I'm in trouble..." Eric mumbles.

The cripplingly awkward feeling in the room makes it feel almost impossible to put my pants back on with any sort of dignity, but soon Eric pulls me up off the floor, now fully clothed.

"Eric Sohn, we'll talk when we get to the dorm." Sangyeon grabs his sweatshirt and tries to give me as respectful of a smile as possible after what he just witnessed.

Sunwoo is still standing frozen.

"Sunwoo?" Sangyeon snaps in front of his face, but gets no reaction. Sangyeon rolls his eyes and grabs Sunny's hand, dragging him along as he leaves.

"Sorry, Eric..." I look down at the floor.

"Why? I'm not. Next time, I'll let you watch."

"Aren't you in trouble?"

"They'll get over it. And did you see how hard those two were? They can't be too mad at me."

I blush, realizing that he was right and they were both hard when I looked up at them.

"Come on." Eric grabs his stuff and starts to leave. Suddenly, something he said registers in my mind.

"Wait... Eric did you say next time?!"

#ciiikbwork #eric sohn smut #eric smut #the boyz smut #tbz smut #eric sohn #the boyz #tbz #idk why it took #a whole night of my friend thirsting #to get me to write something #about my own bias #but eric posts one photo #and im opening my notes app #within two minutes

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diyeoracha · 4 years

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IwaOi Fanfiction Masterlist with 90+ Works

Hello! In celebration accumulating over 290 bookmarks on my AO3 account featuring IwaOi, Haikyuu S4 part 2, and @haikyuuweek2020 (Day 7 - Free Choice), I decided to create a masterlist of all of my favorite Iwaoi fics in order to keep myself organized as well as contributing to more traffic for those works! Works are split up into genres such as alternate universe (either not childhood friends or set on Earth), angst, canon compliant (post timeskip with spoilers), canon divergent (childhood friends but divergent timeline post timeskip), high school, and university au

Formatting update: Jan 13, 2021 (spacing is wonky on the mobile app!).

Fic update: Jan 7, 2021

This is incomplete as I got distracted while re-reading a lot of these and have only gone through half of my bookmarks, but feel free to check my own page here for the rest of them! I really do hope you guys enjoy reading these and leave comments and kudos! Please reblog and like so more people can enjoy

Titles marked with (♡) are my absolute favorites and there’s a chance I cried while reading them but otherwise they’re in alphabetical order

Alternate Universe

an allegory of all the things we could’ve been

Word count: 16k

Summary: “I don’t know anything about some red string,” Iwaizumi murmurs into the cracks of Oikawa’s skin, “or even about lifetimes or fate. But no matter where you are, I’ll find you. Gods or otherwise.” Reincarnation AU

And All the Prince’s Men

Word count: 65k

Summary: “Father only loves that which he owns, and I am the one thing that can never truly be his.” Royalty AU

Built a Temple in Me

Word count: 55k

Summary: Up the mossy mountain steps, past the komainu guardians and the faded red gate, and beyond the boundaries of the green shrine—that’s where the forest and the spirit world within it lies. That’s were Hajime met him, and where their story began.But intertwining of destinies can be ugly business, Hajime finds, when their first meeting begins with blood and the too-human eyes of a beast. God Oikawa AU

Quote: It fills his heart anyway, heals the hole in his chest that had been bleeding since he cut Tooru so forcibly from him.

Cotton Breathing

Word count: 13k

Summary: Long-distance and summer only but childhood friends AU

Conquering the Great King

Word count: 105k

Summary: Oikawa's lips twitched into a smirk and he brought them hovering just over Iwaizumi's, "One time thing, Two time thing, what's it matter as long as it's not a Relationship thing?"

Quote: Oikawa's eyes twitched wide for less than a second, his knee pressed in hard against Iwaizumi's thigh, "I may be gorgeous, but I'm not a doll."

dear diary, i met a boy

Word count: 15k

Summary: Iwaizumi's first impression of his upstairs neighbor involves getting woken up at two in the morning to the sound of Oikawa singing along to trashy pop music. He'd thought it would get better, but it all just goes downhill from there. Modern AU

Desperado

Word count: 82k

Summary: Clearly Iwaizumi had a checkered past. Kyoutani has never asked about it, nor has Iwaizumi ever brought it up. He knows it’s a sore spot for his mentor, just like the gorgeous Monte Carlo he keeps hidden away is, so he leaves it alone. Out on the streets, you learn a little something about when to turn a blind eye in order to survive; Kyoutani knows better than most to leave the past of men like Iwaizumi well alone. Heist AU

Even Heroes (have the right to dream)

Word count: 20k

Summary: Oikawa Tooru, ace reporter of the superhero beat of Asahi Shimbun, hates superheroes. Or maybe he just hasn’t met the knight one yet. Superhero AU

♡Infinite Risks

Word count: 8k

Summary: “It’s my fate,” Oikawa responds slowly. He’s crying. “It’s too lonely,” Iwaizumi’s heart sounded broken. “And I’m not there with you. Not really.” Edge of Tomorrow AU

In Defense of Reptiles

Word count: 9k

Summary: In their seventh year, Oikawa is chosen to be the Hogwarts champion in the Triwizard Tournament, and Iwaizumi suffers. Harry Potter AU

Quote: “You are so spoiled,” Iwaizumi tells him, but lets him shuffle down until Iwaizumi’s hand is now running through Oikawa’s hair instead of rubbing his shoulder.

In the Telling

Word count: 6k

Summary: Muggleborn Iwaizumi could not be less impressed with pureblood Oikawa Tooru. Harry Potter AU

♡Lockdown

Word count: 72k

Summary: Within the first few months of his stay, Oikawa gets caught up in a war between cellblocks, becomes a prime target, and must decide just how far he's willing to go to protect Iwaizumi Hajime. Prison AU

♡long nights, no peace

Word count: 18k

Summary: It's the steady knowledge that Iwaizumi Hajime will always be someone that he can rely on, that no matter what the world throws at the two of them, they share in a piece of each other's soul. Pacific Rim AU

Quote: Quiet settles between them softly, like the warm pressure of the blanket, or Iwaizumi's fingers curling to lightly hold the fabric of Oikawa's shirt.

The Long Light

Word count: 36k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime's seventh year at Hogwarts begins, and begins, and begins, and begins. Somehow, Oikawa Tooru is always there. Harry Potter AU

Magic Man

Word count: 12k

Summary: Oikawa is named the most desirable wizard in France. Iwaizumi is not impressed. Harry Potter AU

Quote: You keep saying partner or them. Is it rude of me to ask you to clarify?

Meet me in the grey area

Word count: 24k

Summary: Set in a hero/villain AU with Iwa as our trusty hero and Oikawa as our charming villain

Saw You at the Fish Market

Word count: 14k

Summary: In other words, Oikawa befriends hot part-time worker Iwaizumi and tries to impress him both off and on the court, in hopes of more.

♡♡ (sing with me) A Song of Conquest and Fate

Word count: 26k

Summary: When Seijou receives a missive from Aobajousai to discuss a potential peace, its emperor Oikawa Tooru could not have foreseen the series of events that would follow. Historical fantasy AU

Similar Creatures

Word count: 53k

Summary: "What's your name?" "Whatever you want it to be."(Or, Oikawa gets directions from an attractive stranger on a street corner.). Escort AU

♡Something Like Us

Word count: 28k

Summary: Friends since childhood, Oikawa and Iwaizumi now live together, both playing for the National Team. It's no secret that athletes who are bonded perform better. So if the two of them happen to bond...It'd be for the good of the team, right? A/B/O AU

Space

Word count: 44k

Summary: Tries not to think of his rooftop garden, or the apartment he used to inhabit, or Hajime’s broken expression on the night they whispered their goodbyes before Tooru’s launch, attempting to push it all to the back of his mind behind visions of this alien world terraformed. Astronaut AU

Stop the Time

Word count: 10k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime, 27, E.R. nurse at University of Tokyo Hospital. Hospital AU

♡♡The Loyalty of A Traitor

Word count: 76k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime was an undercover officer with a single objective: Infiltrate the Seijoh Syndicate of the Yakuza and tear them down from the inside out. His primary target was the boss, Oikawa Tooru. The job itself was simple enough, until Iwaizumi got in too deep and absconded not only from the mission, but from the city itself. Yakuza AU

These Flowers I Stole For You

Word count: 3k

Summary: ANBU don't cry. They tear themselves apart, bit by bit, and then they stitch themselves whole again. Naruto AU

on shipwreck shore

Word count: 8k

Summary: “I’m going to murder you in cold blood and feed you to the basilisks,” Iwaizumi says conversationally. “You can’t do that, I’m your boss,” Oikawa sings, positively sparkling. “Also we’re partners, which means,” he points at Iwaizumi and leans in, “you’re stuck with me.” Detective AU

Page 305 of 304

Word count: 53k

Summary: “…she called you ‘papa’,” iwaizumi managed. oikawa just stared for a moment longer before relaxing in a smile. “yeah. cute, right? but you can call me ‘daddy’ if you want.”

Temporary fix

Word count: 12k

Summary: “And you’ve shampooed his hair how many times now? Hmm. Yeah, that’s not technically a bromance.” A/B/O AU

Tokyo Boy

Word count: 16k

Summary: He has feelings for Iwaizumi Hajime, who probably has casual lovers just like him in every major city he visits on business. Oikawa is just his Tokyo Boy, just another pit-stop on Iwaizumi’s travels. Businessman AU

Trial by Fire

Word count: 78k

Summary: (lawyer!AU - in which Iwaizumi loves his objections, Oikawa is beautiful, and they have more chemistry than two opposing attorneys probably should.)

Watch Me

Word count: 32k

Summary: Oikawa's a cam model. It’s been a month since Iwaizumi first spoke in his chat. When they meet in person, things get complicated. Cam model AU

Angst

open when

Word count: 1k

Summary: Iwaizumi knew it was coming, but it still hurt. It still hurt when he opens one letter and drowns it in the tears he cannot keep at bay.

Chasing Paper Suns

Word count: 10k

Summary: Post-high school, Oikawa makes it to the national volleyball team but Iwaizumi doesn't. The next three years become an exercise in growing up without growing apart

Quote: “ ‘it’s just—I’m just trying so hard—’‘What, and I’m not?’

Timeless (We Have 30 Days)

Word count: 12k

Summary: Or AU where you're branded 50 days before you die. But Oikawa doesn't tell anyone so now there's only 30 days left.

the weight of water

Word count: 6k

Summary: “Again,” he says, the smallest tremor in his voice, and Oikawa blinks at him a moment before smiling, soft and sweet. “Iwa-chan,” he replies, and Iwaizumi closes his eyes. “Again.” “Iwa-chan.”

Canon Compliant

Are You Listening?

Word count: 4k

Summary: 30 times oikawa said i love you and 1 time he didn't have to

Quote: “Iwa-chan, watch out for the log—!” Oikawa looked on in horror as his best friend tripped and fell flat on his face.

Edge of the balcony

Word count: 8k

Summary: Iwaizumi looks older, he realizes. Oikawa knew he had aged as well, and so did everyone around him, but the thing was when you see people often, you don't notice the subtle changes in appearance. And Oikawa hadn't seen Iwaizumi in four years.

How can this loser ever win

Word count: 2k

Summary: everyone is in stupid love with Iwaizumi Hajime and he has no idea

♡♡♡Lost in Translation

Word count: 9k

Summary: Because misfortune come in threes, Iwaizumi Hajime starts his Thursday having a screaming fight with Shittykawa, spends his lunch break listening to the UCI women's volleyball team gossiping about how Ushijima Wakatoshi had gone public about his longtime love affair with Oikawa Tooru, and closes out the day by drunkenly dropping his phone into a sewer grate.

maybe we could be enough

Word count: 9k

Summary: iwaizumi hums in reply as the car goes silent, frank ocean crooning from the speakers. they stop at a red light when iwaizumi feels eyes at the side of his face, and turns to look at oikawa.

Most people never even get a single high school rival

Word count: 5k

Summary: Team Argentina gets to know Iwaizumi Hajime (27) Athletic Trainer.

Primavera

Word count: 8k

Summary: They say it takes twenty-six years, for certain breeds to fully bloom.

Quote: Did you know that distance is only me, growing towards you?

♡♡♡rest on your laurels

Word count: 4k

Summary: In Iwaizumi’s heart of hearts, untouched by time, they are young and alive, burning with the hearth of home and bright as winter light. Unbreakable. Invincible.

♡♡♡Something Borrowed

Word count: 16k

Summary: In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have always been a foregone conclusion to everyone else, but a massive, unanswered question to one another.

‘Til Infinity

Word count: 2k

Summary: “Hey,” he says, “that cloud looks kind of like a dick.”

Quote: “I got you ladybug”

♡♡♡ You Set Off a Dream In Me

Word count: 15k

Summary: In which Oikawa is 41 and ready to retire. He's at the top of his game and ready to find a new challenge. Turns out his new challenge is pretty familiar. It's high school, round 2.

Quote: A past with an Iwaizumi that wasn’t on the opposite side of the net, monsters on all sides, guiding a setter that had lived the dream left behind in the ruins of Tooru’s past self.

Canon Divergent

a world alone

Word count: 60k

Summary: Iwaizumi has his medical books on the musculoskeletal system. Oikawa has his research papers on parallel universes. It isn't until much, much later that they realize they have each other.

♡Almost a Stranger

Word count: 16k

Summary: Iwa-chan's leaving Kapan. Tooru's not sure he can forgive him, but he's not going to admit his long-held feelings, either. A trip to Miyajima complicates everything.

Quote: There are only two things that have ever broken Oikawa Tooru’s heart. Iwa-chan would say Tooru has no heart to break, but that’s simply untrue.

Count your blessings, it goes 1,2,3, me

Word count: 7k

Summary: He's unsettled by the undefined boundaries of their relationship so it's all his luck that he accidentally wins three wishes to be granted just for him, and all that comes to mind is Iwaizumi.

Quote: Now, as an adult, past convenience of circumstance and the haze of hormonal lust, exactly none of his feelings have worn off

♡♡♡the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle

Word count: 66k

Summary: Tooru is pretty sure he could manage the mating habits of a mosquito. It’s the mating habits of people he can’t seem to get right.

♡days fall away

Word count:17k

Summary: Except now he’s back home, so close to his old haunts and to Oikawa himself, and it's—weird.

Quote: “You and Tooru,” he begins, and then shrugs. “I was just thinking, you look at each other a lot.” And he walks away, leaving Hajime winded, and sort of aching, somewhere deep in his chest. Whatever that means.

♡here comes your man

Word count: 8k

Summary: Iwa-chan, it reads, Have a good day today! Good luck! <3 <3 <3 Suga chokes. It’s hard to imagine anyone calling the scowling and fierce Doctor Iwaizumi “Iwa-chan.” But marriage probably comes with all sorts of liberties. Doctor AU

♡♡In damp earth my body

Word count: 15k

Summary: Onscreen, the nation’s favorite setter has arranged himself so that he’s bowing, forehead pressed to the court, like he’s thanking everyone for their kindness thus far, like he’s asking for forgiveness. Hajime thinks: shit, it’s really happening

In the Business of Love

Word count: 22k

Summary: Meet Oikawa Tooru: He's a best-selling shoujo manga artist, a hardcore romantic and you won't believe where he's getting his lovey dovey fodder from...Enter Iwaizumi Hajime: He's Oikawa's best friend, a realist who also happens to be a wedding magazine writer despite not believing in romance...

Quote: A flare of pride lit in Oikawa as he watched Iwaizumi's eyes crinkle with mirth and in that yawning second, it bloomed into a warmth that bordered on a burn, forcing a bittersweet inhale.

it's been so long (nobody knows me the way you do)

Word count: 8k

Summary: Tooru hums, only half-listening. Somewhere along the way, Hajime’s palm has settled itself over the curve of Tooru’s cheek, thumb tracing over the line of his jaw.

Quote: Iwaizumi blushes even more. “That you’re here, I mean. I’m happy that you’re here. With me.”

♡♡♡Mint

Word count: 19k

Summary: It's the December after Iwaizumi’s last year in university when Tokyo welcomes him with a new ad campaign for Bright Days toothpaste, and Oikawa Tooru—fresh off a run at the 2016 Summer Olympics—has decided to grace the city with his signature grin, a flip of his wayfarer sunglasses, and the most irrepressible tag line for the signboard above.

Quote: "To be able to tell him, in the new year." This comes under Oikawa's breath, so low that Matsukawa and Hanamaki can't hear, and the game continues.

Six-Month Lover

Word count: 89k

Summary: Iwaizumi barks out a laugh. “I’m still trying to get over the fact that you made a PowerPoint presentation about why we should date.” Oikawa doesn’t tell him the file has existed for the last twelve years, constantly receives updates, and that the original copy contained almost a hundred slides before he forced himself to get a grip.

Special Relativity

Word count: 22k

Summary: Time moves differently for people in different inertial reference frames. Oikawa goes on a two-year exploratory mission in space. Iwaizumi's been waiting for a lot longer than that.

♡♡sunset towns

Word count: 33k

Summary: In the summer of 2020, Oikawa Tooru returns home from his first successful stint as captain of Japan’s national volleyball team. In one hand, he holds the undisputed weight of an Olympic medal, and in the other, his unresolved feelings for a childhood best friend.

♡♡Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad)

Word count: 19k

Summary: It’s July 10th, 2024, and Oikawa Tooru is an Olympian. His smiling face airs on an NHK promo every 45 seconds. He’s captain of the national men’s volleyball team, reigning star of the professional leagues, and he hasn't spoken to Iwaizumi Hajime in two years.

Quote: Oikawa’s grin in the last set of the morning’s game. Oikawa’s grin as they sat on their asses on a golf course. Oikawa’s grin when they were in college. When they were in high school. When they were twenty-two, seventeen, fifteen, twelve, six.

High School

Bet On It

Word count: 13k

Summary: Hajime knows exactly how shitty Oikawa's personality is, and has no scruples whatsover about betting Oikawa six thousand yen that he can't be nice for an entire week.

Quote: The whole instant-compliance thing was seriously creeping him out. Oikawa from a week ago would have made a crack about how if he'd wanted something cold, he could have just put his face on Hajime's shoulder.

Betweens

Word count: 2k

Summary: Iwaizumi is asleep in the club room. Oikawa is blindingly awake in the club room. The sun moves slowly across the sky, and Iwaizumi’s skin is gold underneath it. Oikawa watches the changing shadows on Iwaizumi’s face and thinks about nothing in particular.

Don’t think too much

Word count: 6k

Summary: In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have a confusing, drunken encounter and then deal with the (sticky) consequences.

Quote: As soon as that thought crossed his mind, though, Oikawa did what he always did: exactly the opposite of what Hajime wanted

Gates

Word count: 12k

Summary: The day after their graduation ceremony, they drive to the beach at Shirahama. Iwaizumi drives, because it’s his car, and as he has told Oikawa on multiple occasions, he’d rather die than let him touch the wheel.

Quote: ‘Yeah,’ he says, because they’re on a beach, and they’re supposed to be on a metaphorical journey, and they’re supposed to be growing up, and completing rites of passage, so it’s honesty, today - just for today, at least.

♡♡i sing the body electric

Word count: 8k

Summary: It was never part of the plan, falling in love with his best friend, but then again, most things in Iwaizumi’s life that involve Oikawa rarely unfold the way he thinks they will.

Quote: But Iwaizumi thinks about Oikawa laughing with that girl in the low light of the gym, a particular kind of quiet intimacy that Iwaizumi’s only ever read about in books hovering in the air, and all it makes him feel is small and petty and spiteful.

it’s better than words

Word count: 3k

Summary: [ or : oikawa makes iwaizumi participate in three bonding activities for new friends, and iwaizumi just wants to know why oikawa's being so weird about this]

Make sure you cross the line

Word count: 4k

Summary: With graduation just around the corner, Iwaizumi knows he has to gather the courage to really ask Oikawa out.

Quote: He’s been asking Iwaizumi to go out with him every single day this past week, increasingly panicked about getting his time and attention now that they’re nearing the end of this season of their lives.

Only the jellyfish know

Word count: 6k

Summary: Their third and final year at Aoba Jousai has come to an end, and the guys decide to go to the beach the day after graduation. That day, the ocean water is salty, the watermelon is sweet, and the people are sweeter.

static

Word count: 6k

Summary: Being snowed in with all of Seijou volleyball in his childhood home brings back a lot of memories for Iwaizumi, because it's kinda Oikawa's childhood home too.

Quote: It's fate that brought them together and choice that keeps them that way. The closest description in Hajime’s vocabulary is partners, but only because Oikawa taught him what its true definition is.

Told before and told again

Word count: 3k

Summary: This is how Hajime and Tooru fall in love, through the accounts of those around them.

Quote: When Oikawa lets out a long, heavy breath, Iwaizumi looks up at him and frowns, and flings a towel over Oikawa’s head to cover his face. Then, he tugs, once, on Oikawa’s fingers, and leads him down the hallway, Oikawa walking quietly in tow.

♡we can do better than that

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa and Iwaizumi go on a road trip during the summer after their high school graduation. It doesn't go as expected, but maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

Quote: Because Iwaizumi’s known Oikawa nearly all his life and never felt anything more than vague affection usually followed by intense irritation for him. But then suddenly at eighteen years old and nearly two weeks into a very badly planned road trip, it’s like someone flipped a switch somewhere inside Iwaizumi

♡when it starts to rain, they go inside

Word count: 33k

Summary: “Where?” starts Iwaizumi.“ My parent’s old lakehouse, silly, didn’t you hear me the first time?” OR: Oikawa takes Iwaizumi to his lakehouse for two weeks, post-graduation.

reassemble it

Word count: 15k

Summary: When Tooru was six years old, he discovered—unbeknownst to him at the time—two of the most important things in his life: volleyball and Iwaizumi Hajime. It was ironic that he had stumbled upon them hand in hand—quite literally, too.

♡things that change, things that stay the same

Word count: 8k

Summary: Oikawa realizes he's in love with his best friend; it sucks for a while. (But only a while.)

Quote: Iwaizumi’s expression right now is less terrified than it used to get back then, but he’s tight-lipped with concern, and his broad body blocks out other passengers as if their stares might be a danger to Tooru too.

University AU

An Archaeology of Affection

Word count: 23k

Summary: For Hajime, it is a riddle and simultaneously so evident. It fills his chest, surging like water, paints heat up his neck. In retrospect, it eats up his days, makes them its own until it feels like his heart has always been in his throat at the smile thrown over Oikawa’s shoulder, the stilling of his fingers on Hajime’s sleeve.

closure

Word count: 22k

Summary: In his first year of university, Oikawa builds a new friendship and upgrades an old one. Or: Ushijima is not a great wingman, but he tries his best.

Quote: “On the first day of his university career, Oikawa Tooru walks into his dorm, spots his assigned roommate, and turns one hundred and eighty degrees and walks right back out. He dials a familiar phone number - the first one he ever memorized - and starts complaining before Iwaizumi even gets the chance to say hello. “Iwa-chan,” he says, “tell me why Ushiwaka is in my dorm room.”

♡♡♡galaxies, within you

Word count: 21k

Summary: Hajime and Tooru move in together at the start of university. Too bad they’re stuck with the two gremlins that haunt their apartment.

Quote: I AM A HEADASS

Hands to yourself

Word count: 11k

Summary: He missed his parents, and he missed Takeru, and Takeru's badly behaved puppy. He missed Aoba Jousai, and he missed the volleyball team. He even missed Karasuno and Shiratorizawa, just a little.

Home, and how we made ours

Word count: 3k

Summary: “No, I like it here.” There’s a rustling as Iwaizumi shifts, inching closer. “I like it here, as in this crappy apartment—with you.”

Quote: “Do your fights end up being like—you know, about actual things and then extending into toddler days and suddenly you’re accusing Iwaizumi of kissing the girl you used to like in preschool?”

in progress to you

Word count: 6k

Summary: The eventuality of Oikawa and Iwaizumi falling toward each other is dramatically lackluster. Still, it's a process to go through.

Quote: “But what if you didn’t eat my pudding all the time?” Iwaizumi asks flatly, ignoring the way Oikawa is slapping his thigh to get out of his chokehold. “Do you think I buy them for you, huh? I buy them for me, you turd.”

Like we’re made of starlight

Word count: 6k

Summary: (a look into iwaizumi hajime’s journey of falling in love with oikawa tooru, from when they’re babies meeting for the first time to young adults moving in together.)

Ninety nine percent

Word count: 14k

Summary: more than anything, oikawa tooru wants to be with iwaizumi hajime, but he's only ninety nine percent of the way there.

Quote: Their ace was lining up for the ball, knees bent and arm pulled back, just as Tooru tosses the ball……to Hajime.

no sleep in the city

Word count: 7k

Summary: Along their journey to find Tokyo's best ramen, Iwaizumi finds himself asked again and again why Oikawa is still single.

Quote: “I was only telling Hanamaki literally yesterday that your personality isn’t as vile as before,” Iwaizumi informs, slightly stiff from the way Oikawa’s got an arm looped through his own. “Why do you make me such a liar to people I care about?”

Out of nowhere

Word count: 8k

Summary: They move in together after graduation and it's doing weird things to Iwaizumi's heart. He's a little in denial about it.

Quote: Oikawa excitedly ran up to him when Iwaizumi came home with groceries the other day. Not about the food but just to say how boring everything is when Iwaizumi's not there, eyes shining, and he couldn't meet his gaze after from blushing down to his neck. He doesn't know how much more he can take.

♡♡shiver

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa was always the brave one. Hajime just followed two paces behind.

Quote: “I’m in love with you,” Oikawa tells him three days after they graduate junior high, head in his lap and hands gently folded over his chest and completely and totally unconcerned that he’d just shattered Hajime’s world.

Terpischore

Word count: 38k

Summary: They’d ended up going to different universities, Tooru and he. The distance was good for them. The confession Hajime dropped in both their laps wasn’t. That’s how it’d ended – a lifetime of friendship crumbled to dust in the space of five minutes. (Or, a lesson in learning to move on from things you can't have, in finding old loves in new ways and in understanding that life is never truly simple... till it is.)

terrarium

Word count: 11k

Summary: At this point, is he really happy with just staying best friends forever? Will he be writing journals and collecting rocks forever (he will, he knows, but that is aside from the point)?

these foolish things (remind me of you)

Word count: 3k

Summary: Oikawa helps Iwaizumi move into his new college dorm.

Quote: He’s desperate for something to happen. It must show on his face because Iwaizumi blushes and looks away. The thing is, Oikawa always looks at him like this when Iwaizumi isn’t paying attention.

They say it rains diamonds on Jupiter

Word count: 35k

Summary: "You're in love with him. "Hajime considers denying it. "Yeah," he says instead.

Quote: “Share the weight of your feelings with me, Hajime wants to beg when he hears Tooru's first hitched breath. Let me carry some of your burdens”

to be first, to be best

Word count: 26k

Summary: Hajime is apparently something of a masochist, and as he stares down at the tie-dyed AREA51 T-shirt in his hands, he thinks “I’m totally in love with this asshole, aren't I?”

Undecipherable

Word count: 4k

Summary: "Koi no yokan," he says. "The sense one can have upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love."

Quote: Because for all the bravado, for all the flaunting Oikawa does, he wants Hajime by his side, and no one else.

♡we shine like diamonds

Word count: 26k

Summary: "You know Abe-kun from class?" they snicker, hands cupped around their mouths like they're passing along a filthy secret. "I hear his older brother is... gay."

Where you are (I’ll be)

Word count: 6k

Summary: Theirs is a love that starts out like a seed and it takes two sets of hands tending it for a shoot to appear. There are no dramatic declarations of love, only a pair of hands that find each other again and again and again.

Quote: Oikawa broke off into giggles as Hajime slowed the descent of his hand from a slap to the back of Oikawa’s head to a gentle ruffle of the taller boy’s hair

♡♡with every second that you could give

Word count: 9k

Summary: The journey of Iwaizumi and Oikawa going for gold.

Quote: He knows they’re too close. Iwaizumi knows it too, and they both decided to move in together anyway.

Your love is sunlight

Word count: 6k

Summary: It's Iwaizumi's birthday, and they have a talk about the future.

Quote: But Hajime doesn’t think any present could top this: them, kissing in a sun-dappled bathroom, Oikawa’s skin warm under his hands, and the promise of a life together stretched out before them.

#haikyuuweek2020 #iwaoi #oikawa tooru #iwaizumi hajime #i spent more time on this than all of my edits combined pls appreciate this

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botwstoriesandsuch · 4 years

Text

Sidequests are part of the story so it’s still my ballpark shut up it’s time for

Read Part 1 here!

Part 2 || Part 3

If you’re on mobile, and tumblr hates this post, follow along on this google doc!

Rules/overview this rewrite in the beginning of Part 1

- - - - - - - - - -

Side quests, side quests, side quests. What are they? And what are they doing here, on an Age of Calamity rewrite? I must admit, game design is not an inherent forte of mine, and I like to think that my only “expertise” would be on writing and storytelling. So what the fuck is a fool like me doing here

Well my dear ladies, lads, and gentlefolk, if your memory does serve, I did say that the format of Age of Calamity was one that served the major plot and story beats for it’s cutscenes, and its worldbuilding and good parts of it’s character development for its gameplay and side quests. It’s actually a concept that can be seen in shows and movies too, although obviously it’s origins are in TTRPGs and videogames. Definition wise, a side quest is any deviation from the main story and plot that serves to flesh out an optional/overseen aspect of the game. So there’s out perfect outlet for worldbuilding, characters, and even a bit of humour. Side quests, by definition, can’t simply be just XP grinders, because otherwise you could…..just make an XP grinder. It’s like saying you’re getting your kids a bike, but then you get them a stationary exercise one. Sure it’s functionally the same and gives the same benefits, but it could be so much more.

Does Age of Calamity have good side quests? I’d actually argue, yes. I mean sure, it’s not exactly gonna hold a candle to Fallout or Witcher 3, but there are great memorable side quests that do serve their purposes in this game.

A fan favourite is “The So-Called Knight,” in which Link spars Mipha, Teba, Sidon, and Revali, a conflict of the Sidon’s confidence and belief in Link, with Revali’s skepticism and grudge against him. Not only is it great fandom content, but it explores the carrying POVs of several characters in a fun way. We also have Hestu’s Dance Competition, and the Miss Vai Battle Pageant. What they lack in serious character tone, they make up for in humour and world building. Even the quests that have nothing to do with the main cast of characters, like the Questionable Escort Mission, still provide funny and interesting details about the world, like how the Yiga Clan is still ever persistent in trying to take down Link with monsters and Windcleavers alike.

It’s not like those side quests were functionally useless either, all of them still provided great amounts of exp and materials. What specifically made them great and memorable was their small little stories and character/world details. Of course, that’s not to say you can’t have the occasional plotless boss rush every now and again, those are fun in their own right and it’s good to have variety. But just thinking about it...what were everyone’s least favourite sidequests? The timed Yiga Escape? The ones where you sit around defending strongholds? The one hit death Hair-Width Trials? Ah...so all the least enjoyable side quests were the ones that were difficult, with no enjoyable character or worldbuilding to back it up….interesting interesting….interesting pattern indeed.

So, let’s improve the game a bit further. I do need to pace out my future character arcs somehow. I tried to make use of the existing quests where I could, but it’s just eaaaasier to just not think about it and do it from scratch. Just shove these in place of all those quests whose only description is “monsters have been spotted here! Take Mipha and go to work!” and stuff like that. Alrighty then! Here’s my take on cool side quests for every single character thus far, along with their paired gambit attacks. Prepare for heists! Drama! Simping! And Bananas!

Link: Mastering Stasis

Ok I have no idea when this quest unlocks so just for my purposes assume this only becomes available after Link pulls the Master Sword.

Engage the hordes of monsters that have been spotted in Hyrule Field. Now is a great time to master the use of the Stasis Rune. Impa and Zelda accompany you, but it seems stasised monsters aren’t the only thing coming to a tense standstill…

This isn’t anything that special, I just want to further highlight this tension that Zelda and Link have, as it’s something touched upon in Botw, but never really mentioned or used ever in Hwaoc. Now more than ever, Zelda has an excuse to have a rocky relationship with him because she could actively see just how far he’s coming in such a short amount of time. Classic “he probably hates me so I guess I’ll hate him” thing.

You play as Link, the game gives you your little prompts on how to use Stasis, you take out a few hordes of Bokoblins and blah blah blah. I wanted to use an earlier level to establish Zelda’s relationship sooner as obviously it’s gonna be important to the story. But of course like all side quests it won’t kill you to skip out. Text dialogue can be Zelda saying science shit like “This will be a good opportunity to test out the full limits of the Stasis rune” and then Impa’s all “Yep! We got your back, Princess! We’ll clear out these monsters in no time.”Then Link the little angsty shit that he is says nothing, and as you play you clear out more and more bokoblins Zelda just says “...” and then we can toss in a Moblin or two in there for gambit voice stuff.

Gambit dialogue with Impa would be supportive, her usual spunky dialogue. I had two ideas for Gambit attacks with Link: One where Impa does that thing where she cuts a giant laser through the air, but it’s aimed towards Link and he parries it right in a monster’s FACE because I think it’s badass and also a good way to show trust and stuff. The second thing was Impa’s giant bomb barrels, but Link is the one to somehow ignite them, because he is an arsonist after all. He can even have a chaotic Sheikah blue glint in his eyes like blue flame, I can already picture it so clearly given how anime/dramatic Impa’s movements are. Impa sets bombs, Link *teleports behind Moblin* nothin personal, kid.

Also right at the end of their gambit attacks, Impa and Link should try to fist bump or something (cause the whole “cool guys don’t look at explosions” thing that Impa usually does on her own) but are interrupted by eggbot jumping up to try and join in. And then Impa can be annoyed and try to punt it or something. That’s not just self-indulgent that’s in her character she totally would and I want to make use of the fact that eggbot travels around with Link. The success of her attempts to punt him can vary.

If Link does a gambit with Zelda, her dialogue can just be her usual monotone Princess stuff, “Thanks for lending your strength,” or “There is still much more to do!” just purely professional, we’re not at a stage yet where she’s buddy buddy with Link. Their gambit attacks can still be cool though. One idea I had was Zelda using stasis, and you know how when you use it in botw everything lights up with that sonar effect? So Link stands besides Zelda, and she activates stasis, the first “sonar” light wave reveals the stasised monster, and you see it from the view of the Sheikah Slate. Then with each additional flash of sonar you just see this silhouette of Link going absolute ham on a monster. And then when the stasis “ding ding ding ding ding” is done, everything’s just dead. Can you see my inspiration from Persona 5 yet? Second idea was Zelda using cryonis and makes an ice ramp for Link to shield surf on and ram into a monster. For entertainment purposes Zelda should also be putting frogs on said slide. (Also also the reason I’m putting Link as the main focus for those gambit attacks is because I want to juxtapose it with future gambits where Zelda may or may not be more powerful…)

Anyhow anyhow, so this side quest, you beat some bokoblins, theres a moblin or two. However as you progress Zelda’s dialogue because a bit more passive aggressive, maybe Zelda can be a bit irritated at how quickly Link is defeating everything before she can even contribute. Impa can comment on this like “She hasn’t exactly been warming up to you, has she…” and then the last point of the side quest, Zelda runs off, there’s a...let’s say a big horde of blue or black Moblins. Or a horde of Wizzrobes, I’m not too picky on it. Link can save her and do a gambit or whatever, but the point of importance is that Zelda leaves with the clear mindset off, “You don’t need to keep coddling me, I can handle my own” to Link, but is “Thank you, I’m glad you’re here,” to Impa.

Now I stole was inspired to use this based on this comic by @novellanova, and you should check it out here. But basically, at the end when all the monsters are dead and the last few text boxes are rolling, Impa says something like “Gee, at this rate I might have to protect you from the princess! Hmm…. you know, maybe if you two had the opportunity to hang out more and get to know each other, she’d warm up to you! Ha! That’s it! I’ve made up my mind. Listen up Link, from now on I’m gonna let you man the wheel when it comes to protecting Zelda. So with me out of the picture you better take the opportunity to be the nicest, most helpful, and most effective body guard there is. I know you already are, but still, if I hear that one little Chuchu so much as splat in her direction I will take you down...got it?” And, that’s that.

Side quest done. Fun Link gambits with Impa and Zelda, some little character POVs on the situation, plus an explanation as to why Impa doesn’t accompany Zelda everywhere/nods to the cutscenes of Botw as to what happened to Impa. Alright, that was probably the most boring one so let’s move on to

Daruk: A Rumbling Stomach

Alright I’ll be honest...I have no idea what to do with Daruk. Especially when Yunobo’s not here, I got zip-zero to work with considering his character is non-existent. Further down the line I’ll certainly try to give him more nuances and the like, but I’m afraid the majority of my character efforts have been towards Astor, Revali, Zelda, and [REDACTED] so this is my apology ahead of time, rock fuckers.

This is my take on how to make those timed quests more fun. So basically, the premise of this stage is that Daruk was just happily hanging around trying to enjoy his rock roast, when a monster surprised him and he dropped it, and now it’s rolling down the hill. This is based on my real Breath of the Wild experience where I had to trek up that Volcano path to bring a rock roast for that shrine quest, but at the very top I dropped it and had to chase it down before it fell into the lava below.

Daruk is eager to chow down on the finest rock roasts this year has to offer! It’s too bad things go downhill when monsters start to ambush. Defeat key enemies and rescue Daruk’s tumbling meal before this year’s wait goes to waste!

So, that’s what this is. The stage opens and Daruk says “NOOooOO! My rock roast! Damn monsters!” and you have to defeat baddies and catch up to the rock roast before the timer runs out and it falls into lava. And then when you finish and get back the rock roast that’s pretty much it….except SIKE no it’s not. Because a lot of these timed quests usually have a “surprise! There’s more!” thing at the end so I’ll do that here too. So Daruk has saved his rock roast and he’s talking about how he’s going to enjoy it in all its deliciousness, when he’s cut off by a random Goron’s scream. Turns out, Daruk’s yelling at the monsters about desperation to retrieve his lost lunch has attracted monsters to some traveling civilians, and now you gotta go beat a Talus, or a couple of Moblins, or something...Again I don’t really have level set or idea when these side quests unlock so just use your imagination. Once Daruk defeats the monster(s) the Gorons can thank him, and then one of the Goron kids can be like “Ooo! Is that a super special rock roast?!?” And Daruk is all: “Ah! Well all the best Goron heroes eat plenty of rocks! This here is the gourmet stuff. You can only get it once a—” And the kid’s like “Woah! I’ve always wanted to have one, that’s why I’ve been training hard so I can explore more of the mountain. Where’d you get it??” And Daruk can sputter a bit, before finally sighing and giving into his instincts. “Ah….well, why don’t you have it? You’re probably really hungry after running around with those monsters…”

“Woah really?? Are you sure—”

“YEAH JUST TAKE IT ALREADY GO”

“Woah, thank you!” and then the Goron kid and co run off. Cue Daruk crying to himself in the background. Daruk may have an appetite, but I like to characterize him as the Goron Hero first and foremost.

I’m sure that doesn’t stop him from mourning his rock though.

Mipha: Stronger Sentiments

Mipha and Daruk talked a whole bunch about training together so that Mipha can grow stronger, and Daruk was catching on to her crush on Link and it was a nice interaction in between them except for the fact that we never see them do the damn training so that’s what this is.

I think this is as good an opportunity as any to make this a Hair-Width quest, the ones where you can’t take one hit. The difficulty of a level is one of the most effective ways to put the players in the boots of a character to experience the same struggles they do. If the player works hard, then they automatically associate that with the character working hard. So, yeah, let’s have Mipha kicking ass and working to be strong enough to protect Link.

Mipha is determined to grow stronger. Daruk and the other Gorons are helping out with an intense training session by Gut Check Rock. Prove yourself by defeating all the enemies you encounter!

So Mipha is sparring with the Gorons, you fight through them and the captains and blah blah, the final boss is fighting Daruk without getting hit.

“I promise not to hurt you more than I’m capable of reversing.”

“Ha! Give me all you’ve got, princess!”

You fight, cue the special music or whatever. I mentioned that gambit dialogue/attacks could also work to be custom for the character that you’re fighting, so I’m thinking something like this. Daruk slams the ground and rocks and magma sprout up around him like jagged pieces of glass, but Mipha is no where to be seen. Daruk’s kinda huffing and puffing, “Where’d you go Mipha…” and then FWOOSH, giant geyser right behind him. [yes I KNOW I overuse the *teleports behind you* “nothing personal, kid” thing but I think it’s COOL and you can’t stop me] So anyhow, you know that thing in Avatar where Pakku is just riding at the top of a whirlpool and destroying everything? That’s Mipha.

Daruk turns around and scratches the back of his head. “...huh….that’s not good.” Cue Mipha swooping down to deal the defeating blow.

So Mipha wins, she can mention how wonderful it was and how much stronger she feels. And she can thank Daruk, and he’s all “No problem!” but he mutters something like “And I thought Gorons hit hard...now I know how Link feels.” End side quest….SIKE it’s another surprise boss at the end. A Goron captain suddenly reports that an Igneo Talus has appeared nearby.

Mipha goes up to fight it, but wow! Link is already there. They both fight it, but it’s clear that Link didn’t need her help that much. You can defeat the Talus with a Mipha/Link gambit. It’s similar to Link’s usual “swing sword in a giant circle and become a death windmill” but Mipha kinda enhances it with water or something and it puts out the Talus. I wanted this ending with a focus on how strong Link is just to show that while Mipha is improving, she’s still not yet where she needs to be.

Daruk: “Sorry I wasn’t much help at the end there, I was busy, uh, stretching.”

Mipha: “Oh it’s quite alright, Daruk. We were both quite tired from today’s training.”

Daruk: “Well I dunno about that...seems to me you were quite lively and active as you fought beside Link. *wink*”

Mipha: “Huh!?!? W-What is that supposed to mean??”

Cue laughter from Daruk. Mipha is flustered. And Link is just...confused, as always.

Urbosa: Mighty Thunder of the Gerudo

So in the game this is just some normal outpost capturing, stronghold defending side quest, but we’re gonna spice it up just a bit.

An important excavation site is being overrun by monsters, and Urbosa has set out to engage them. Defend and capture the outposts, in order to prevent this valuable place from falling into enemy hands…

So you fight as Urbosa, defeat some enemies and blah blah. When you first arrive there, I want one of the Gerudo Captains to be like “Lady Urbosa? Where did you come—What are you doing here? Aren’t there areas of greater importance for you to be at right now?” Urbosa says something like “Nevermind that now, let us focus on achieving victory over these rotten beasts.”

As the battle goes through, it is revealed that this excavation site is where Zelda’s mother would often work and hang out with Urbosa. Urbosa says some stuff like “Her Majesty would not be happy to see all these monsters heading here!” *decapitates Moblin* and then she can say other dramatic stuff at the end like “We have fought well...for her memory” and other classic lesbian pining. Some guard at the end can say “Perhaps you should move on and help out somewhere else, Lady Urbosa. We can handle the clean up from here.”

“Sure,” Urbosa replies, “Just another moment.” And then cue reminiscing. “She always did love these machines…”

And just other sentimental stuff like that. If you’re gonna be a coward and hold out on the Champion death angst, then you best be pumping that angst and emotion from somewhere, you know?

Also yay for worldbuilding! At least in my rewrite, the Guardian excavations and stuff were overseen by the Queen. Could be a reason Zelda hangs out with Sheikah tech so much...who knows who knows... who knows what other implications this has, it’s just a side quest after all.

Revali: Anti-Ice Training [get it??? Cause in this one, Revali’s gonna break the ice with some other characters?? I’m funny I swear]

Ok so for this one, I want to pull Revali’s character away from just “the birb that doesn’t like Link” and give him some other stuff to stand on. Obviously, there would be other side quests in a fully fleshed out game that did even more to characterize him, but for my rewrite I’m only dedicated this post and one other future post to sidequests, so I gotta really bring out what I can for the few side quest stories I have time to tell

Revali sets out alone to deal with some monsters by the Hebra trail. Although intended as an isolated moment to hone his skills, he finds himself with unexpected company. Defeat key enemies.

So you play as Revali and at first you’re alone, taking out Ice Lizalfos and the like. Revali’s text dialogue can say stuff like “Hmm...not fast enough” “My current needs to be stronger” “*mutters* Can’t compete with lightning and magma with aim like that.” Just stuff that establishes that he’s working hard to really prove himself as the best, but is still a bit insecure about his position. He thinks he’s better than Link, sure, and he certainly thinks that being a princess or a chief doesn’t automatically make you the best. However by this point, Revali has battled alongside the other Champions and seen their skill in battle, and has developed some respect for them. Afterall, Champions were chosen in some part for their skills, unlike Link or Zelda who destiny just thrust greatness upon.

So Revali has this slight insecurity that compared to lightning, and magic healing, and magma, with chiefs and princesses and titles of heroes, he and his efforts will be overshadowed and forgotten, unfairly deemed the useless one. Thus, here he is, training in solitude, not wanting anyone to see the imperfections and mistakes until he is absolutely perfect.

Except for the fact that after you beat a Wizzrobe, the other three Champions show up.

Revali: Wh—Huh?? What are you all doing here?

Urbosa: Well, we all have to travel with the princess to that Tower in a few hours, so I recommended we find you and hang out until then

Mipha: And a good thing too! Look how many monsters there are

Revali: I’m actually doing very well on my own right now. Wouldn’t want you to catch a cold or something, so why don’t you head on back and let me handle this.

Daruk: Aw, it’s not that we think you can’t do this. It’s that you’re hogging all the fun! Urbosa: And that it would be more efficient if all of us went to work

Daruk: That too

Revali: Look it’s not—you all can’t just—this is not just about—AUGH, look, I’m just trying to train myself at the moment, and I don’t need you all to mess with my drills

Urbosa: Training, hm? Well how about this...you let us continue helping you with these monsters, and after, I’ll let you in on a good Gerudo training technique

Revali: Hmph. Fine, whatever gets you out of my tail feathers faster

So Revali and the Champions clear out the monsters. Revali can have gambit attacks/dialogue with each of the other Champions. This is already incredibly long so perhaps I’ll save specifics for another time, feel free to use your imagination. Urbosa teasing Revali and they make a thunderstorm, Mipha and Revali swimming in the sky and kissing—wait that’s—

When all the monsters are cleared, which honestly isn’t tooooo many, Revali speaks again.

Revali: So what’s this oh-so-holy technique you had in mind, then?

Urbosa: Ah yes, well really it’s quite simple. It’s called…

Urbosa: One-on-one combat

Now Revali fights Urbosa. It think it’d be really fun if your allies on a stage could swap to a boss, and I wish hwaoc had a bit more freedom with the interactions as a whole, but ah well, that’s what I’m here for I guess.

So when you/Revali defeat her, it’s a good accomplishment! Not only for you the player, as Urbosa would not be the easiest to beat, but also because match-up wise, Revali prevailing over Urbosa is a big feat as their styles are quite opposite, arguably with the strength in favour for Urbosa.

Revali might at first have the mindset that Urbosa is overconfident and thinks she’s got an easy win on Revali, but that mindset is quickly proven wrong when 1) the difficulty of the gameplay itself shows how they’re both doing their best and 2) Urbosa with her Gerudo qualities is probably shouting stuff like “give it your all!” and things.

And so, as you beat her...

Revali, kinda huffing and puffing, but just a bit:: ...you….held back

Urbosa: Come now, do you really think of me as someone who’d do that? I’m almost insulted.

Revali: Hmm...perhaps not then....

Mipha: Wow! What a wonderful fight from both of you.

And then insert some other dialogue from Daruk or something that shows the Champions acknowledging the training and hard work Revali must have put in to be so skilled. Perhaps it’s not so bad, when you train with others and your skill is fully appreciated by your frie—GAH. Perish the thought, they’re all just a bunch of royal fools who can’t hold a candle to the skill of a Rito Master….probably…

Revali: Well unlike you lax fools, I tend to take my job seriously. I don’t have time to longue and banter when the princess is still expecting me in an hour or two

Urbosa: Oh alright, let’s get to it then. What’s the expression? “The early bird gets the w—”

Revali: Gross. No. Don’t finish that sentence, I beg you.

Urbosa: Oh? Well why don’t you fly off to escape my dreadful tones then?

Revali: ...Heh, don’t be absurd…

Revali: Without me, you’ll all probably get lost. So, I suppose I should stick around for that sake Great Fairies: Dress to Oppress

The Great Fairies are holding a fashion competition and rating people’s outfits. Poorly judged outfits gives them the right to compensation combat. Defeat all your less than fashionable allies.

...

...yeah.

It seemed funny in my head, alright? cOme on, just imagine…

Revali, fully expecting to win: Well?

Great Fairies: Hm...I don’t know dear, all the colors are very clustered. Perhaps if you were taller—?

Revali: bWHAKT!? *other angry bird noises*

- - -

Daruk: I brought my BEST out today! :D

Great Fairies: Is that a….chain?

Daruk: TWO chains, actually. :D

Great Fairies: Oh honey…

- - -

Great Fairies: Ooo! Our little hero is about to come out! Wonder what he chose...a knight in shining armour? A handsome desert voe? Ooo!! And those Snowquill braids always made him look so cute…

Link: *comes out in the Tingle Outfit*

Great Fairies: …

Great Fairies: …………..hm…..

At the end of the side quest, after you beat everyone, the Great Fairy wins because of course they do.

Great Fairies: Oh my! What an unexpected outcome...but it really couldn’t have gone any other way. I declare the judges the winner! I mean just look at me, I’m as dazzling as a jeweled desert flower, because I am! Ohohohoho…

This side quests unlocks the Tingle Outfit

Hestu: Forest Dance Festival

Alright this quest was already pretty perfect, BUT, I just want to use this opportunity to say that all of Hestu’s gambit attacks makes his allies and enemies do special dances. Absolutely abSURD that Hestu can only make the lesser smaller enemies dance on occasion, nonononono, my guy Hestu is making everyone dance. You can’t stop this. Nothing I say will ever top the imagination, so just take my word that this is a good thing. [Reluctant Revali doing the macarena against his will in sync with Hestu and they bash someone’s head in...ah the possibilities.]

Maz Koshia: Links to the Past

Ok so before I get into this, a few things. This quest takes place well after the tower activations in Akkala. Age of Calamity leaves a whole lot of plots holes as to why a Monk is just...here, and what the point of the shrines are, and personally my first reaction to all this was just a five minute extended “huuhhhhhh???”

So here is my headcanon, explanation, thing, canon to the world of the Kip Cut story. Ones all the Sheikah Towers were activated, that officially woke up all the Shrines, because we know that the Towers and Shrines are all connected to the same system. [See Great Plateau Tower activating all the Shrines and Towers, and Creating a Champion explanation on the system] But when all the monks were in their little altars and noticed how Link hadn’t dont a single one, they were like “what the fuck.” Monk Maz Koshia, who is kinda the head honcho of the monks and probably the only one powerful enough to go out in the world anyhow, sets out to see what the deal is, and after many a teleportation and telepathic communication, he figures out that Link is just running around with the Master Sword already. This kinda confuses him, because the whole point of the Shrines was to test Link and give him the spirit orbs so that he could grow strong enough to get the Master Sword, but he somehow already has it...so hmmmm something fishy is going on in this timeline. So Link technically hasn’t proven himself at all, Maz Koshia ambushes him, they do their little combat trial, Link passes, and Maz Koshia’s like “ok cool so you’re not useless.”

So now Monk Maz Koshia has cast aside his old monk duties of waiting around for a couple hundred years, in favour of just hanging out with Link and continuing to train him combat wise. Shrines are still explored by Zelda and co because they are important areas to establish teleportation pads, and whenever they’re there, Maz Koshia forces Link to get in a shrine to get a spirit orb, which is not only useful in general for health, but since Link already has the Master Sword, the other characters can get the spirit orb too. (So all those little heart upgrades that you see on the map, those are all just in the real Botw Shrine locations, rather than just scattered around randomly. Also I’m ignoring the stuff about talking to Hylia in order to exchange for stamina or heart containers because the game never talks about her, or stamina, and I’m not about to create an entirely new custom gameplay feature for this game, fuck you.)

I like to think that Maz Koshia is very selective about the Shrines he encourages people to try out. “Oh nonono, don’t bother with Qukah’s….lazy ass, only set up one little mountain that you have to blast through with lightning and that’s the entire puzzle! Disgraceful...Here, Kaam Ya’tak has set up a wonderful Trial of Power for you. I’m sure you’ll find the level design quite thrilling. They spent a lot of time on the critical thinking aspects so have fun!”

“I should warn you that this one was made by one of the millennials...yes, those youngins who were only initiated 1000 years of age. Honestly, they lack so much experience. Ms. Agana over here was experimenting with something called ‘motion controls?’ Pretty lazy if you ask me. Traditionally I would just stick to combat and block and switch stuff...but ah well, variety I suppose.”

Right, what was I talking about? Oh right! This is a sidequest. So Monk Maz Koshia doesn’t really have...a character??? Or a personality??? So I don’t really know what to do with him other than use him as an outlet for world building. Apologies to the Monk….fuckers? Stans? Feel free to leave me a comment about how I missed all the nuances of his character or something I’m all ears.

On an expedition to mark more Shrines and establish more teleports for the Kingdom, a large horde of monsters is spotted, seemingly with the intention to destroy these Ancient relics. Link and Maz Koshia use this opportunity to sharpen their combat skills. Protect the stronghold and defeat key enemies.

And then that quest would just kinda echo the stuff I said earlier about the world. (As Maz Koshia defends a Shrine, somewhere Qukah Nata is smugly shouting “Bet you wish ALL of them were protected with a giant mountain now, do ya?)

Also Link and Maz Koshia’s gambit attack involves the Master Cycle. I don’t have the specifics, but damn if I want some call backs to Botw while also having fun.

Impa: Steal Yourself [Yiga Clan Escape]

In an act of pure hatred and malice, the Yiga Clan has snuck into Kakariko Village in the dead of night…and stolen all the Swift Carrots! Impa sets out to get them back, as well as taking something else as a form of swift revenge...Escape before the time runs out.

Ok I can explain.

So you know how the Yiga and the Sheikah have kiiiiinda been murdering each other a bunch in Botw, going as far as to kill a deserter’s wife and threatening to murder his kids, and also people on both sides were sorta massacred for no reason? And alsoooo one of those people who literally lived during that time of the massacre is just kinda floating around now? And you knooooooooww how the Yiga Clan just kinda joins Zelda’s side later on and we’re not supposed to think about the implications of that too hard because they’re the funny banana ninjas, haha? Yeah well neither Age of Calamity or I really have time to explore the moral grey areas of an alliance between two warring factions, one of which has a leader who doesn’t really seem to remember the reason why they hate Hyrule which brings into question whether the lackeys even know their clan’s history, and brings about the moral dilemma of criminalizing the ignorant, and also there’s the whole other dilemma of depicting the side that submitted to their oppression as being “in the right” and the topic of a race of people being pitted against their own by a higher power is really brushed over sO WE’RE JUST GONNA TOSS ALL THAT OUT THE WINDOW AND MAKE THEM ACT LIKE RIVALLING HIGH SCHOOLS, OKAY? OKAY! This is fine this is fine—

So I have dubbed the High School mascot of the Sheikah, the Swift Carrot. And although there does seem to be some internal debate about whether the carrot should be replaced by the Fortified Pumpkin, the hero of Hyrule Link favours carrots so that’s that. Then of course, the mascot for the Yiga Clan is the Mighty Banana. The two sides hate each other and steal their food symbols to be petty. I’ll be covering the side quests of Kohga and the other later characters in another later post, but just know that Kohga will have his banana heist sidequest too.

So anyhow, you play as Impa. Maybe she can say a piece of dialogue or two about how she has to uphold the image of her people as she has to lead them one day. And then, this side quest is just her retrieving the carrots and running off with the Yiga’s big banana supply before she’s caught. This is based on that “Escape the Yiga Clan” quest if you couldn’t tell.

Custom gambit defeat of Impa vs Kohga: On one hand I think it would be badass to see Impa’s Sheikah skills go up against the Yiga Clan tactics. Kohga summons a giant metal ball to throw, Impa teleports behind him “nothing personal, kid” nO fuck I’m doing it again away goes to swing a blade at his face. He blocks it with his little energy shield thing, but not before an entire conga line of Impa clones start slashing at him until he’s defeated by a giant explosion. So yeah, that’d be badass and cool. But on the other hand…

Kohga, stomping his feet and having a fit: I cARROT believe you would do something this terrible! Give us back those bananas right now! D: ….please? You can keep the gross orange sticks.

Sooga: He asked nicely. You wouldn’t deny the wishes of the most polite and charming Yiga Chief there is, would you?

Impa: No can do, Yiga scum! I’m afraid this cruel action wasn’t veggie nice of you so I must exact justice! Now it’s my time to split. *Impa clones gather and throw Kohga into a giant frog’s mouth. Impa runs off with a sack of fruit [fruit (derogatory) if you will] cackling into the horizon*

Zelda: The Path She Laid For You

The King has order Zelda to head to the Temple of Time, in order to see if anything there could help awaken her powers. Zelda sets off quietly, with minimal company, as not to attract too much attention lest the Town’s folk be hit with another attack. It seems, however, that these precautions won’t be enough...Defeat key enemies

So this is a pure Zelda sidequest, with no other characters except for eggbot because I said so. Starts out normal when SURPRISE! Bunch of monsters appear and Zelda has to whip out her iphone and fight them.

Also!! Good time for the Hollows to show up, and you know, tell her what a failure she is and all that. Convince her that she's useless and gonna doom everyone. All that good stuff!! It’s just nice to catch up with the villains and see how they’re doing, you know? ‘Sup Hollow Urbosa, last I saw you were barely spitting words in the Lost Woods, and now you’re giving full hard-hitting insults to Zelda’s character and ability? Good for you, Queen, good for you.

So Zelda and a handful of guards are fighting off monsters, and Zelda has to beat the Hollows too. Her gambit dialogue when she defeats Hollows can be stuff like “You’re not the real ___” or something idk, I don’t have a lot of experience with the evil clone trope, I’ve never played Ocarina of Time. But one specific I DO want to highlight is that Zelda uses the nearby Sheikah Tech to defeat the enemies. I find it a bit weird how Zelda just knows how to use those random water canons in the Faron region in later chapters, so we’re just gonna at least set up a pattern so that it makes a bit more sense later. Plus! This is in front of the Great Plateau, AKA Gate Post Town/Garrisons AKA oh lOOK it’s that area where Link and Impa and eggbot first meet in that Impa introduction scene of my rewrite so we have already established that Sheikah Technology is being stored here and ready to use! Continuity in world building! Nice.

So Zelda uses her knowledge of Sheikah Tech to defeat the Hollows, when...dun dun dun! Astor appears. But you don’t fight him...

Astor: Have you listened to one word spoken to you today? Why are you still resisting? Let me help you.

Zelda: And what exactly is your plan? You wish to kill me, then?

Astor: Not quite. I mean, if you do die, there are ways I can manage, so if some stray Yiga blade happens to strike you I’m not completely doomed.

Astor: But no, the most optimal outcome for everyone is the one where you live yet. You must see the truth as I do, and let me fix this. I can undo this terrible knot destiny has thread for you. [and insert other fate sisters and sewing metaphors here]

Zelda: But how? What’s your game here, if you’re truly claiming to be in everyone’s best interest then why all this secrecy?

Astor: Ah...ever the one to look for the facts and logic, hmm? Can’t blame you, you get it straight from your mother.

Zelda: …!

Astor: But...I’m afraid even if I did tell you now, you’re in no state to truly grasp it. No...the only way this works is for you to truly understand the position you're in, and the stakes that hang in the path before you.

Astor: And if I have to kill every King, Champion, or knight to get you to understand…

Astor: Then so be it.

[dun dun dun]

Zelda: No! I won’t let you hurt anyone, I swear it!

Eggbot [just pretend eggbot can have dialogue boxes too]: *chirps*

Astor, suddenly noticing eggbot: ...You…you’re one thing I still don’t—

Eggbot chirps again beside Zelda, both seeming to be angry at Astor’s words. Eggbot releases a glowing flash of light. Kinda like a...flash bang? [is that the right word idk]

Astor: Ah—! *and he teleports away to escape* Astor: Until next time then...Princess

And that’s pretty much the sidequest. Zelda can question what exactly eggbot did, but he’s not exactly the most verbal in responses. Finally it ends with Zelda going home, “He was still right though...I’m still sitting in failure, with not a hint of my powers awakening. All I have is some Sheikah tech, some exhausted shoulders….and well, you, I suppose, little one.”

“Come, it’d be a waste to continue forth in this condition. Let’s go back to the castle.”

Eggbot: *happy whistles and chirps*

= = = = =

Tune in next time folks, as we dive back into the main event! Needless to say, Chapter 4 is where the shit starts to go down...

#Hwaoc: The Kip Cut #hwaoc spoilers #hwaoc #hw aoc #hw age of calamity #age of calamity #hyrule warriors age of calamity

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yandereclues · 5 years

Note

Heyyy I just saw your post about maybe doing yandere!Star Wars. If you do, could you do some headcanons or imagines (up to you) about Kylo and Poe if the reader was taken from them and injured? If you don’t want to, you don’t have to ♥️ thanks James

Note: Thank you for the suggestion! I had so much fun writing this, 😋 I hope it’s to your liking. Happy reading darling! (Also I apologize if the format is strange, I’m on mobile at the moment)

Summary: Reader was taken hostage by a band of scavengers on Tatooine for a ransom, and was injured in the process.

Feat: Yandere! Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo x geander neutral! reader and Yandere! Poe Dameron x gender neutral!reader

Warning: mentions of blood and violence

Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo:

He was livid. He told you not to go to Tatooine with him, but you insisted you would be fine. You really just wanted to watch the pod race. You had heard about them since you were a child, so the thought of seeing them in person excited you. He of course was hesitant, but he loves seeing you so excited, so he agreed. As long as you had a group of Stormtroopers with you. But of course, you somehow evaded them.

He spoke with the scavengers, opting to use words over the chance of you getting hurt. But that didn’t last long, as he soon noticed the quantities of blood, pouring from a large gash in your bicep.

He also took notice of the scrapes and bruises scattered along your exposed skin. The blaster to your head was soon whisked away, as the male scavenger holding it to your temple was lifted into the air. The other two scavengers directed their blasters at Kylo.

Their blasts were soon stopped mid-air, and directed back towards them. The scavenger, who had a blaster to your head only moments ago, was dropped, as his body went limp.

The masked man before you now turned his gaze to meet yours. Immediately rushing to you. He nothing, simply lifting you in his arms bridal style. He rushed to take you back to the cruiser, and directly to the medical bay.

He stared daggers at the medical staff tending your wounds. Occasionally asking if you were okay. But once the staff had exited the room, now finished cleaning and bandaging your wounds, he piped up.

“I told you not to go,” he snapped, “Why can’t you just listen to me?!” At this point he had raised his voice significantly. Something he never dared to do in front of you. “I keep you safe and happy, I give you everything you could ever want,” he yelled “and this is how you repay me?!” He towered over you as he stood, his voice now dripping with venom, as countless tears now blurred your vision.

“I’m sorry Ben,” you sobbed, “I just wanted to get a closer look at the podracers.” You could tell he was frustrated, as he was opening and closing fist. “That’s a lie and you know it!” His hand now met the wall with a loud thud, causing you to bury your head in your knees in fear. He knew you had tried, and failed, to escape. Your failure only due to the one of the scavengers happening to recognize you as his lover. And for that, Ben almost thanked them. But his expression softened as he looked at your tear-ridden state.

“From now on, you are not going anywhere outside of this ship without me by your side,” he said, much calmer than a moment ago. He sat next to you on the cot. Bringing what tears you had left to your eyes.

There truly is no escape now.

“Come here,” he cooed, dragging you into his lap. “I just want to keep you safe Y/N.” The embrace was warm, but it was more for him than you. “You’re mine.”

You weren’t quite sure what you were more afraid of. The fact that you nearly got your brains blasted, or the arms gently draped around your waist.

Poe Dameron:

Contrary to most Yandere’s, Poe was quite lenient with what he allowed you to do. And tended to let you off the hook more often. So he of course let you go with him to Tatooine. He thought it might be fun to get away with you for a day or two.

He had left you in the Millennium Falcon to go fetch some food, and you had decided to go for a walk about the sandy dunes surrounding you. You put a blaster on your belt, and went on your way.

The sky was beautiful, the two suns now beginning to set along the horizon. You stopped walking for a moment to sit. Your shoes were now discarded to the side, leaving your feet bare on the sand. You then heard the crunching of boots behind you. And thinking it was Poe, you spoke up.

“Hey, took you long enough,” You went to turn and face the man. But you weren’t met with Poe’s charming smile and food, but with a metal rod slamming against your temple. The sky span around for a moment, before going dark.

“Give them back,” you heard Poe demand as you rose to consciousness, suddenly very aware of the cold blade to your throat. You winced at the pounding headache you had acquired, now also aware that Poe was holding his blaster to the back of another scavenger’s head.

“Put them down or I’ll kill him,” he said. Now noticing your consciousness.

“Let him go, and maybe I’ll consider,” the female scavenger said “for a price of course,” the blade now seemed to be even closer to your throat than before. You carefully moved your hand to your hip, grasping your blaster. Quickly you shoved the blade from your throat and blasted the scavenger in the stomach.

But not before her blade dug into the soft meat of your thigh. The large tear of muscle ripped screams from your throat. You heard a shot behind you, and felt Poe pick you up and run towards the Millennium Falcon. Cursing the whole time. He swiftly wrapped a rag around your thigh, in an attempt to slow the gushing blood from tainting your soft skin further.

“Why did you go out without me,” he rambled through his apparent stress, “I told you not to go out without me Y/N. It’s dangerous without me to protect you.” He went on.

“I can protect myself,” you challenged, bringing a frown to his face.

“Well obviously you can’t. I was gone for ten minutes and you got hurt. But that’s okay. That’s why I’m here, to protect you,” he sat beside you bringing you in closer by the hip. “I’ll keep you safe baby, you just gotta promise me one thing,” he gently tilted your head up by your chin.

“You gotta promise,” he went on, “that you’ll be mine forever.” He tucked a hair behind your ear as he spoke. The only thing you could do was nod hesitantly. To which he smiled down at you.

“That’s right baby, all mine hmm,” he then pressed a soft kiss to your still aching head

#kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #yandere kylo ren x reader #yandere kylo ren #poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #yandere poe dameron #ben solo #ben solo x reader #yandere ben solo #yandere ben solo x reader #geader neutral reader

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dragonofthedepths · 3 years

Text

29/100 (29th of June 2021)

(29/100) Written/posted for the #100daysofwriting challenge by @the-wip-project

I spent several hours today filling out a survey on my fanfiction reading habits! This was not supposed to take several hours, but my inability to answer any free form question without writing multiple paragraphs dragged it out much longer than it was supposed to be! Considering that this was done around baking, having a friend over, and finishing a drawing that according to the timer on my art program took me a cumulative 22.5 hours to complete, I figured I would just copy and paste some of my more interesting answers here for today!

Here’s the link to the survey if you want to take it yourself, apparently it’s part of some kind of collage study:

https://robertgordonuniversity.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fanfiction-questionnaire

Question:

What type(s) of library/libraries do you use? What activities or purposes do you use them for?

Answer:

The local library. I go there every now and then when I’m looking for an actual book to read, I usually have what I want already in mind, but might end up picking up something new from the same section if anything particularly catches my interest. Very occasionally I grab a few reference books, usually on things like religions that are harder to find a comprehensive reference for online beneath all the sensationalism and opinions.

I almost always spend at last a couple hours there, looking through my selection and reading a chapter or two. the only reason I’ll leave without sitting down and beginning at least one book is if I’m already late for something somewhere else.

Tldr: I use my local library, I do not go very often but I take my time when I do.

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Question (fanfiction.net):

If possible, please explain your typical process for finding fanfiction to read.

Answer:

Whenever I get interested in a new show I’ll latch on to a concept or particular character interaction eg. Villain!hero, ensemble finds out secret, character A needs a hug, character A adopted by character B, character C & character D friendship & hurt/comfort. Sometimes (especially if it’s a lesser known thing/has a small fandom) I’ll be as vague as favorite character, timetravel, wingfic, or soulmate AU. Whatever it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* over any king of collection, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

From there I work my way through everything that was offered, and as I do so I eventually come across new things that capture my interest, and —in general terms— follow them.

On ff.net I’ll follow the link back to the page for whatever franchise this is, then open the filter menu, select "all ratings" and begin using the filters to look for whatever character or pair of characters (seeing as looking for idea is not really possible on ff.net) interests me most in either the family, hurt/comfort, or angst genre depending on which has the most stories, unless one of them has stories in excess of 3 or 4 hundred, in which case I’ll pick whichever has the least stories. I’ll then go through the offerings, opening any story that look is interesting in a new tab. If I make it through all of that and somehow haven’t found something better to do on Ao3, then when I’m done I’ll go back to the genre filter and pick whichever had the middling number of stories, then after that the one on the opposite end of the spectrum from most to least. If at any point I’m offered more than 1,000 stories I’ll add additional filters until the results drop below 1,000, because I am not dealing with slogging through that much ff.net at once. If there is that much written for whatever I’m looking for, then either there’s some on Ao3 and I can leave, or I’m actually looking for something more specific and was just over-estimating how vague I’d need to be to get results at all. This is very methodical probably because I do not like this site and am putting up with it only to find what I’m currently looking for, I never get new ideas prompted to me or am enticed to wander off the beaten track. I don’t use ff.net very often, though still more often then I go to the library.

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Question:

Are there any search features or filters you wish fanfiction.net had for readers and searchers?

Answer:

Fanfiction.net is not a functional website, it’s a particularly shitty ghost town that is actively crumbling to pieces around its few remaining inhabitants. I it’s a hassle to read on and I only do so because I’m a fan of rare pairs, and have to take anything I can get, and because I’m a fan of a particular kind of low-brow overpowered-hero fanfiction that tends to be more common there then on Ao3 or Tumblr.

I wish it didn’t have adds in the middle of a page, every time I hit next chapter, ect.

I wish it didn’t have pointless captchas every time I start a new session.

I wish it had a visually pleasant format for presenting the stories for you to select from. Whether they’re search bar results, the results of a filter search, stories in a collection, or stories on an author’s page. It’s the same aggressively bad format and makes it hard to tell them apart from eachother and hard to pick which one(s) I want.

I wish stories could have longer summaries. They are so short that it forces everyone to sound same-y and rushed, and if an author want to include trigger warnings they have to be even shorter.

I wish there was a way to exclude/search/mark trigger warnings.

I wish you could select more than four characters in the filters, I wish authors could TAG more than four characters.

I wish there was a way to search/mark platonic relationships instead of only romantic.

I wish there was a way to search/mark a single character in multiple separate relationships eg. [A/B] and [A/C]

I wish there was a way to search for certain tropes or cliches without relying on pure hope that either the author used part of their limited summary space to mention it, or that someone else already made a collection for that trope and managed to find at least a few (they never have all) of the fics containing it.

I wish you could copy and paste the text without having to switch to the mobile version of the website. I don’t personally know why you can’t do this on desktop but I’ve heard other people say it’s because it’s actually generated as a pdf instead of genuine text.

I wish there was a way to open the whole story in one tab instead of being forced to go through it other by chapter.

I wish there was a way for authors to include author’s notes without it being part of the chapter.

I wish there was a way for authors to respond to comments without doing so in the author’s notes.

I wish the formatting wasn’t so aggressively bad as to be actively harming the quality of the story. I have found stories that were posted on both Ao3 and ff.net and read them on both websites, no differences in text, in punctuation, in anything at all, but on Ao3 it flowed much better, was much easier to read, and I’d have given a higher estimation of the author’s skill level if asked. All because it wasn’t actively being dragged down by ff.net’s formatting.

There are probably a fair few more things that I’m just not managing to think of at the moment, but considering there’s no way ff.net will ever be fixed and is in fact very likely to completely implode and die in the near future, I think this is good enough.

Sorry for the essays every time I’m allowed to write an answer but you’re asking loaded questions.

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Question (Ao3):

If possible, please explain your typical process for finding fanfiction to read.

Answer:

From there I work my way through everything that was offered, and as I do so I eventually come across new things that capture my interest, and —in general terms— follow them.

On Ao3 I’ll head back up to the top of a fic I really enjoyed and click on the tag for whatever little bit of it I enjoyed the most, and begin browsing again from there, refining with filters and following links and tags from new stories.

I will filter out reader inserts, original characters, y/n, or notps if I keep seeing too many of them in my results, but otherwise I’ll just scroll past them. Sometimes if I’ve been reading for a specific idea for a while I’ll sort by word count and begin going through it from least to most to see if there’s anything I’ve been missing because it’s not been updated recently. And sometimes if I feel like reading fanfiction but don’t have anything particular in mind I’ll just head to the Ao3 page for the main character (more reliable then a fandom tag, if a franchise exists in multiple forms of media they’ll usually each have their own tag the fanfiction will be scattered accordingly) of one of the bigger fandoms I’m in and start trawling the page for anything that looks interesting.

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Question:

Please use the box below to write any thoughts or opinions on this questionnaire or the subjects within it that you did not get the chance to share.

Answer:

On how I find fanfiction to read on websites that are not ff.net or Ao3, copy-pasted from the original all-encompassing answer I wrote before I realized you were looking for answers only about the website you’d just been talking about:

Wattpad (which I did not select when asked what websites I search for fanfiction on because I never willingly go looking there I just end up on it sometimes to my great frustration.):

Whatever idea it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* preference over tags or other collections, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

(*If links to Wattpad make it onto the first page of results, I’ll take whatever meager scrapings I was offer from other websites, then give up the search as a lost cause and pick a new idea as a I mourn the lack of the content I want to read. Only if I am already very attached to an idea and very desperate will I follow a link to wattpad. That website is the only one I have ever encountered worse then ff.net and it is an absolute unnavigable MESS.)

Tumblr:

If I’m on tumblr (mobile, I’ve never used tumblr on the computer but I don’t think it works the same) then once I find one thing to read that I like, I’ll begin tapping my way through the suggested posts on the bottom based on whatever looks the most interesting from what little I get to see of it. Sometimes I’ll end up on a specific blog or a specific tag, and I’ll just scroll through reading anything that looks even mildly cool regardless of whether it has anything to do with what I was originally searching for or not, until I click on a specific post for some reason (usually a “read more“), and then I’m back to navigating by suggested posts again. I tend to wander through fandoms and subfandoms a lot faster here, trading one interesting idea for the next as they’re presented to me. It’s a lot of fun and I sometimes discover completely new stuff! I’ll often end up following Authors I really like so that their stuff will end up in my feed, and this is really the only site on which I do that.

Just another couple comments on my general media consumption habits that I didn’t really see anywhere else to put:

Everything I stated about my fanfiction habits when getting into a new show applied if it’s a movie or book or game too, it’s just that 90% of the time it’s a show. My favorite movies are documentaries so I’m not sure what fanfiction for them would even look like, I prefer video essays and theories for games, and I just don’t read as many books as I used to. About half of the remaining 10% of the time is actually probably musicals.

It’s not unusual for me to have seen only three or so episodes of a show, but to have read insane amounts of fanfiction for it. I have difficulty sitting down to actually watch a show, and I usually only expend the effort for my absolute favorite series, so most of my interaction with most shows ends up being fanfiction. Getting into a new show because I came across some really good fanfiction for it is not uncommon either.

#100daysofwriting #how do I tag this #scribblings from the deep #I guess #fix tags later

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avatarmerida · 4 years

Text

Pros and Cons

Set between the movie and the start of Future because you can’t convince me these kids weren’t dating the whole time and we deserve to see more schmaltz from Steven. Wrote this on mobile, so I’ll fix all spelling and formatting things later. Enjoy!

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“Connie, Steven is here!” Called Dr. Maheswaran to her daughter, who hardly needed to be told since she was already bolting down the stairs at full speed.

“Bye mom!” Called the girl as she rushed passed her out the door.

“Be back by 10!” Her mother called after in a stern voice, though small smile found its way onto her face as she slowly closed the door, happy to see Connie so happy.

“Hey Connie!” Exclaimed Steven, grinning ear to ear once she entered his sight.

“Steven!” She sang as she ran to him, leaping to tackle him with a big hug. Steven returned the embrace and the pair laughed. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever!”

It had only been a few days. “I got you something,” he said, presenting a bouquet of flowers to her. A collection a vivid blue flowers, tied together with a matching bow, everything carefully selected and presented to be picture perfect.

“Aw Steven!” She swooned, taking the flowers from him and bringing them to her nose, the smell light and sweet. “Oh, they’re so beautiful! Thank you.”

She leaned forward and placed a quick kiss on his cheek before hopping in the passenger seat. Steven blushed wildly, and ran behind the car to his seat so Connie wouldn’t see. She had been doing that a lot more lately, not that he minded. It was often enough that it didn’t catch him totally off guard but rare enough that he still wasn’t quite used to it. Pro.

He jumped in the driver’s seat and snuck a quick look at her as she continued to fawn over the flowers. She was wearing her favorite blue dress and Steven couldn’t help but thank she looked like an angel. She carefully undid the ribbon from the bouquet and used it to tie up her hair and the simple act made Steven’s heart spin. Pro.

Truthfully, that feeling was nothing new. Connie had always made him feel this way, but lately there was something different. Every time she touched him he felt light headed. He suddenly noticed they touched so much. She’d rest her head on his shoulder when they watched movies together or they’d hold hands when they took walks, but now he felt himself hesitate to do the things that were once so second nature. Yet somehow, that made him want to do then even more. Pro.

“Um Steven?” Asked Connie and his daze broke, and he realized he had been staring at her in silence.

“Oh uh, right,” he laughed awkwardly, starting the car. Connie didn’t seem to notice his nerves and started playing with the radio as they began to make their way to Beach City.

“- oh it was so hard not stopping the instructor every five minutes,” said Connie, finishing her story. “I mean, he was only focused on this solar system, he wouldn’t even listen when I tried describing Homeworld! Sure, Jupiter is cool but I think a society of gems is much cooler.”

“I think have to agree,” laughed Steven. “But other than that, space camp was fun?”

“Of course,” she said. “I wish I could’ve spent more time with you though. Next time you should come, you could probably teach the class!”

“I’ll think about it,” he sighed, fighting the urge to stare at her again, knowing he had to keep his eyes on the road. She continued talking about space camp, though most of it he had already heard on the phone, but he just enjoyed hearing her voice. Pro.

He suddenly longed for the day when they would sit on the beach and she’d read aloud to him, nothing else to do and not a care in the world. Just the two of them. But of course they both had other responsibilities now, but that only made Steven think of the future more. He was never shy when it came to telling Connie how much she meant to him, but tonight he wanted to add something more. In his jacket pocket he had a list or pros and cons which confirmed his decision to ask (even though the pros side was mostly just tiny things her loved about Connie). His dad said it was ‘taking the next step’ and Steven kind of agreed. It did feel like a big step but at the same time, a natural one. But if marathoning Camp Pining Hearts with Peridot has taught him anything, it was that big feelings required a big gesture.

Finally, they reached Temple. Steven made sure his parking job was perfect (parallel parking even though it wasn’t necessary but Connie found it impressive) and then frantically ran around the side to open Connie’s door for her.

“After you, my lady,” he said in a mock fancy tone, offering her his arm.

“Why thank you, my lord,” she responded in the same tone, taking it and the two made their way down the beach “And where shall we be dining tonight?”

“Why, only the finest eating establishment of course,” He said and then ran ahead to present the setting to her. “Ta-da!”

“Steven...” murmured Connie with wide eyes as she took in his creation. He had brought out a simple folding table and with a long tablecloth and a few lanterns, he had transformed the beach into something from a fairy tale. Around the table, four poles displayed twinkling lights and glowing bracelets, like the one that had brought them together. It was like their own personal fallen star, a tiny spotlight on a calm night. Lion sat close by, fast asleep which somehow just added to the lore.

“Oh wow this is amazing,” she whispered as she marveled at the details. “This must’ve taken you all day!”

It had. “Oh, it’s no big deal,” he blushed, pulling out her chair. She sat down and continued to look astound, utterly enchanted.

“But wait! It get better!” He said as he excitedly leaned over the table to present the pizza box the gems had set out minutes before they arrived. Steven said they couldn’t watch but they wanted to be knocked anyway they could. “Ta-da!”

“Pizza, very classy,” said Connie with her fancy tone, though pizza was kind of a let down after the lighting display.

“Notice anything weird about the cheese?”

“What do you-?” Connie questioned as she looked closer, and sure enough she did. She reached inside and hidden amidst the cheese was a yellow envelope. “Steven, what is this?” She laughed.

“Why don’t you open it and find out?” He beamed.

She did and once she did her face lit up lighter than the candles on the table. She looked up at him with utter disbelief. “These aren’t-.”

He nodded, trying to keep his cool. “They are!”

“Tickets to the new Unfamiliar Familiar Movie?” She said still in shook as she read them small pieces of paper. “They sold out weeks ago! How did you get these?”

“I was the first in line to get them,” he said as if it were no big deal and he hadn’t camped outside the theater for hours. Then he admitted somewhat sheepishly. “I didn’t realize you could buy tickets online, but I knew how much it meant to you so I-.”

“Aw, you’re the best!” As she ran around the table to wrap him in a tight hug.

“Nah, you’re the best,” he blushed, luckily it was dark enough that Connie probably couldn’t see. “Lion can take us after we eat. Have any theories about how this one will be different than the books?”

“Ugh, so many!” She said as she sat back down. The two sat and ate their pizza as Connie discussed her theories. Steven, of course, was hoping they’d make sure the wedding cake was as accurate as possible which made Connie laugh which made his heart jump. Pro.

“Wow Steven, I just can’t get over how great this is,” sighed Connie, placing one of her hands on his.

“Well, you’re worth it,” he said, resting his chin on his other hand as he looked at her. “I really wanted to make sure tonight was special.”

“Why?”

“Why? Uh...” this wasn’t supposed to be when he asked, he had it mapped out so perfectly. “Because, well, with school starting back up soon you’ll be so busy studying and I just wanted to make sure that any time we spend together is extra special.”

Now it was Connie’s turn to blush. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and gave him a sweet smile. “Time with my jam bud is always special,” she said, tilting her head. “Wow, just wait until I tell the girls from camp about this. I told them all about you and Beach City and they all kept telling me how jealous they were of my magical boyfriend. If they saw this they’d-.”

His heart leapt at the word. “B-boyfriend?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, they would sometimes call you my boyfriend,” she said as her blush got bigger, trying to make the word seem like less of a big deal. “It was just teasing, no big deal. Nothing, I mean I didn’t-.”

“Did you correct them?” He asked sheepishly, hoping for a certain answer.

“Um, at first,” she admitted, averting her eyes from his. “But most of the time they called you ‘Steven’ so I didn’t need to to. I mean, it didn’t bother me when they called you my boyfriend. I mean, when you break down the components of the word-.”

“Connie it’s fine!” He cut her off with a laugh. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I mean actually...” he began to reach under the table to where the final part of the plan was carefully hidden: a box of donuts from The Big Donut in Connie’s favorite flavor with a customized design, one read “By My” and the other “Girlfriend?” Steven knew it was cliche and cheesy but Sadie assured him it was really adorable. “There’s actually something I wanted to tell you... or ask you? Okay, wait, there are two things-.”

“Steven do you feel that?”

“Well, even since-.”

“Steven, I think it’s starting to rain...”

“What? No, Garnet said...”

But sure enough, a roll of thunder cut him off and the rain came shortly after in buckets. Con.

“Oh no, all your work,” said Connie frantically, not worried about herself getting wet. “Steven, the lanterns!”

“It’s okay,” he insisted conjuring a shield to protect them from the rain. “Let’s just grab the tickets and Lion can teleport us to the theater.”

“Okay,” said Connie, reaching down to grab the, only to find they weren’t where she thought she had left them. “Wait, where are they?”

“They should be right by the centerpiece,” answered Steven as the rain came down harder. “Are they by-.” his eyes darted between the empty space on the table and Lion at the table’s edge and suddenly he realized what had happened. He dropped the shield and went to pry open Lion’s mouth. “NO!”

“What?”

“He ate them!” he exclaimed not finding anything between his teeth, confirming his fear.

“Oh no!” said Connie, though it was hard to see with the rain coming down so hard. “Well, do you still have the receipt? Maybe we can try-.”

Con. Somehow knowing he was no longer needed, Lion turned and ran away from the pair. “No, wait!” pleaded Steven, looking back and forth between where Lion was running to, Connie was standing in the rain, and then he remembered the donuts getting soggy. This was no how this evening was supposed to go at all. Steven’s mind raced for a way to fix it but nothing came to mind, everything started getting blurry but he needed to focus on Connie. He needed to-

“Connie, I’m sorry!” he exclaimed, rushing over to her and suddenly the rain was o longer dousing them. He looked up, confused, and saw that he had summoned a bubble without realizing it. Luckily they were safe from the rain now, but still soaking wet. “Ugh, Connie I’m so sorry.” he said again.

“Why? Because it rained?” she laughed, wringing her hair out. “Steven, you can’t blame yourself for the weather.”

“No, I’m sorry for this whole night; it was a disaster,” he admitted as he sat down, defeated. “I was just really nervous and excited and I wanted everything to be perfect.”

Con.

“As long as we’re together, it is,” she insisted, sitting beside him. “Remember the last time we were trapped in a bubble? We still had fun. We can still have fun now. Look, the rain’s starting to let up.”

Steven turned and saw she was right, it was no longer down pouring and had downgraded to a faint drizzle. Pro.

“Oh, the beach is so pretty at night,” Connie whispered as the moon appeared from behind the clouds, reflecting majestically on the water.

“Yeah, it is,” Steven agreed, though he wasn’t looking at the moon. “Hold on, I have an idea.” He stood up and summoned a great amount of foucused, jumped up and hit the top of the bubble. He was stuck only a moment but soon the bubble rose with him and the pair were floating up into the sky. The hovered toward the water until the had a fantastic view of the beach and the whole town.

“Wow,” said Connie breathlessly, taking in the view. “Steven this is amazing!”

He shrugged and sat back down beside her. “I mean, I guess. I just wish I hadn’t left the snacks on the beach.”

“The candles might be helpful too,” added Connie with a shiver. “For an airtight bubble, it’s pretty chilly in here.”

Con.

Of course she’s cold, Steven thought, she’s still wet from the rain! “Here,” he said as he removed his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. “Better?”

She nodded, her eyes wide at the noble gesture she had seen countless times in books and movies. He did it without hesitation or flair and her own heart spun. He sighed as he looked to the ground, still upset that things hadn’t gone according to plan. But as far as Connie was concerned, this was better than anything he could’ve planned. She couldn’t help but smile as this moments brought back memories, Steven planning things as best he could only for some magical element to derail things. Every moment, no matter how small, was an adventure. Even just sitting there taking in the view, that was something only Steven could deliver. Pro.

She rested her head on his shoulder, half to reassure him that she was fine being there and half because it was such a natural action at this point. He relaxed a little and allowed his head to rest on hers as he truly started to appreciate the view. Pro. Pro. Pro.

“It’s not as good as the movies, but I guess it’s okay,” said Steven with a laugh, his positive attitude returning.

“Steven, it’s okay,” Connie laughed gently, looking up at him. “Really, it is. We can see the movie another time, or rent it later on. And Lion’s eaten worse things than paper, he’ll be okay.”

“Ugh! Of course he ate the tickets! They were covered in cheese,” Steven sulked at the memory, burying his face in his hands. “Can’t say I blame him.”

Connie laughed. “But... why did you put them in the pizza?” She asked with a raise of her eyebrow.

“I thought it’d be... romantic,” he admitted, hiding his face in defeat.

“‘Romantic?’” Connie repeated, half surprised and half flustered at the mention of the word.

“Pretty silly right?”

“No, not at all,” she said with a small chuckle. “It... it was kind of romantic.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “But um, why did you want it to be romantic?”

“Well I was going to ask you... I mean, I was going to tell you...” he turned and saw how close her face was to his, her large eyes reflected the moonlight and the sight made his ears hot and his throat tight. He cleared his throat, trying to summon some courage and took a long, deep breath in and closed his eyes. “ConnieIwaswonderingifyoumaybewantedtobemygirlfrienditsokayifyousayno.” He said as fast as he could.

“What?” Asked a bewildered Connie. Before any further explanation could be offered, the bubble popped and the two found themselves hurting towards the ground. Steven quickly grabbed Connie’s hand and pulled her close as he controlled their descent and had them land safely.

Safe on the beach, the pair stood in a loose embrace as Steven searched his mind for what to say next. He didn’t know if should ask again, he wasn’t even sure Connie had heard him the first time. Or maybe she had? And she was looking for a way to let him down gently? Maybe she-.

“Lion, stop!” He suddenly heard her laugh as he snapped back from his dreamlike state. He looked and saw the creature licking Connie’s face, happy to see her. Steven smiled and reached out to pet him.

“Hey there buddy,” he laughed. “Where did you go? Usually you’re in bed by- oh no! Connie! What time is it?”

She pulled her phone from her pocket and gasped at what she saw. “It’s 9:57!”

“Your curfew!” Exclaimed Steven grabbing her hand. Con. “C’mon, we gotta get you home!” The pair hopped onto Lion’s back who knew exactly where to take them. They traveled through the portal and landed outside Connie’s house and instantly jumped off and headed to her front door, both panting from the mission’s urgency.

“We made it!” Breathed Steven victoriously.

“Yeah,” agreed Connie. “That was close.”

The two stood on the porch in silence for a moment, a very familar feeling in the air. “Steven, I-,” Connie began, only to once again be interrupted. This time by the opening of the door.

“9:59,” said Connie’s mom, looking at her watch. “Just in time, can’t tell if you’re pushing it or punctual. Either way, you’ve got tennis tomorrow so upstairs young lady.”

“Okay mom,” said Connie, entering the house. She offered Steven a small wave and her mother closed the store.

“Have a good night, Steven,” said Dr. Maheswaran as she gently closed the door, her voice stern but caring. “See you soon.”

“See ya soon,” Steven sighed as he looked at the closed door. He was worried he had blown his chance or if this was a sign they weren’t mean to be. So nothing changes, he thought as he walked back to Lion, so what? So we’re still friends, still jam buds, we can still be Stevonnie. She’s still in my life, that’s what matters. These were all true, but his heart still felt a twinge defeat and long list of cons.

Then, he felt his phone vibrate and the quiet air was filled with Connie’s ringtone. He couldn’t help but feel nervous as he answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“You forgot your jacket,” said Connie in a whisper.

“Where-?” He turned around and say Connie at her bedroom window, waving it like a pink flag.

“It’s fine, you can keep it for now,”

“Steven Cutiepie Quartz Universe, I gave you this jacket are you trying to regift it?” She said in a faux stern voice. “That’s very rude. I insist you come retrieve it right this instant.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure your mom is very strict about her 10 o’clock curfew, no exceptions.”

“You don’t need to go through the house, you have floating powers, silly.”

He couldn’t argue with that, so he quietly made his way to the side of the house and floated up to her open window.

“Pickup for ‘Universe’” he said, placing his elbow on the window ledge, casually. Connie laughed.

“Here’s your order sir,” she said handing him the folded jacket, but when he went to take it from her she didn’t let go. He looked up at her, expecting another joke but instead he found her face inches from his, filled with the same gentle moonlight from before.

“Yes,” was all she said.

“Y-yes?”

“Yes,” she repeated, and pulled the jacket back toward her and thereby also pulled Steven. As he went forward, she moved her face in front of his and their lips met in a kiss. At first, Steven was surprised but Connie was unmoving until he finally accepted it was real and placed his hands on her back to steady himself and hold her. He felt her smile as she moved one of her hands behind his head, the other still held the jacket, and brought him closer.

He felt like he was melting and freezing at the same time and he knew his entire face must be blushing but he didn’t care. He swore they were like this for hours but at the same time it was like no time had passed at all, like they were outside the world. When they finally parted, it was only because Steven found his body was floating upward. Connie giggled and reached up to pull him back to the window, giggling more when she saw the large, goofy grin he wore.

She attempted to stifle herself, worried her mother would hear, but her nerves combined with her giddiness made it hard. Steven was deliver to see she was also blushing and he joined her laughter.

“Don’t go floating away,” whispered Connie as she made sure he was holding on to the windowsill.

“I’ll try,” he said, feeling both shy and bold somehow. He wanted to stay right there and just stare at her, but he knew that was a pipe dream. He slipped his arms into his jacket. “I, uh, should probably get going.”

“I guess,” sighed Connie, though neither of them moved. “Text me when you get home?”

“Sure thing,” said Steven as he prepared to lower himself. Before he did, he lungded forward and gave Connie one more surprise kiss on her cheek, quick and light but it brought her blush back nevertheless. He used the ledge to kick himself backward and floated back to Lion. “I’ll text my girlfriend as soon as I get home.” He said, cherishing the word as he gave her finger guns.

“And I’ll be waiting for my boyfriend to text me,” Connie whispered back matching his giddy tone, watching him from the window. He landed safely on the ground and waved to her until Lion lifted him onto his back and teleported him home.

Once back on the beach, Lion lowered the lovesick teen to the ground and Steven later in the sand and marveled at the moon for a moment. He sighed, content, and went to get his phone from his pocket to text Connie. When he did, a piece of paper came out with it: his pros and cons list. He opened it up and saw that now the cons sign had a giant X through it and the pros signs was circled several times. Even though it was just Xs and Os, he recognized Connie’s handwriting anywhere.

#connverse #steven universe #steven universe future #su #connverse fanfic #suf #connie maheswaran

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zhydoesart · 5 years

Text

Stop Lying

Ships: Dukeceit/Demus

Warnings: sort of suicidal ideation, threats of suicide, implied suicidal thoughts

I'm posting this from mobile so formatting's crappy and I don't have my taglist with me, so I'm sorry, but I'll fix it when I get home. I haven't seen a lot of Dukeceit stuff yet, and most of it is fluff, so I wanted to try my hand at angst. Enjoy or whatever

Remus knew it would happen eventually, but he'd hoped it wouldn't be anytime soon. He and Damien often engaged in casual, playful banter that never escalated—but it had escalated, this time. It had escalated quickly, their meaningless back and forth swiftly turning into words fueled by spite, the ringing in Remus' ears growing ever louder as he yelled until…

He didn't know where any of it had come from. It had just slipped out, without his permission, and he certainly hadn't meant it. He felt his blood go cold, saw Damien's face twist, saw the tears begin to well up in his boyfriend's eyes as the terrible words he'd just screamed across the ever-growing gap of their emotions echoed in the empty space between them.

Remus saw Damien take a step back, saw him turn to leave, heard his own desperate cries of Damien's name as Damien fled out into the stormy, wet, cold night. He fell to the ground as his knees gave way. What would he do now? Damien gave him a purpose, a reason to be. Without that reason, Remus would be completely and utterly lost. Damien was his map of how to live… how to be happy.

It was almost two hours later when Remus finally stood. He stared down at his shaking hands through blurred vision, wishing he knew what to do, how to fix this.

Oh God… could he fix this?

His hands curled into fists. There was no time for this. He just had to believe that he could fix it and set out to try.

Remus stared blankly out into the rain, trying to think of where Damien could have gone. It was probably best to start with their friends.

With every call and every person who told him they hadn't talked to Damien in weeks, his worry only grew. What would he do if he couldn't find Damien? He shook his head. He would find him… he had to.

Where could he possibly be? Remus racked his brain for anything Damien had said that might give him a clue.

Wait… the roof of Damien's old apartment building, where he'd lived until they'd moved in together. "I come up here when I'm feeling down," he'd said once. "I just sit on the edge and look out over the city. It helps to remind me that even if I'm alone, I'm not really alone, you know? There are plenty of people out there and some of them probably feel the same way I do."

Remus ran to his car, turning the keys in the ignition. Almost immediately he had to deploy the windshield wipers. The rain was coming down hard and fast, not to mention it was dark out, both of which made it very difficult to see, let alone make out anything more than four feet away. He'd never been a big believer in God, but as he drove, he frantically prayed to whatever higher power might be listening.

He prayed that he'd make it, that Damien would be there, that they could talk, that everything would be alright. After all, it was the only thing he could do.

Remus pulled up outside the towering apartment building with three minutes to midnight. Mercifully, the doors weren't locked yet, and, running up to the front desk, he demanded to know if previous resident Damien Chase had shown up. The shocked secretary informed him that Damien had, in fact, run in here maybe an hour or two ago, beelining for the elevator. He hadn't gotten a good look, but it had appeared to him that Damien had been crying.

Remus yelled a panicked thank you to the secretary before sprinting over to the elevator himself. He quickly pressed the button with the highest number and the elevator began its ascent to the top floor.

Now that he was alone with his thoughts again, Remus couldn't stop the tears that threatened to spill over. Every possible bad thing that could and could have happened to them or Damien flooded his mind all at once, and he blinked back tears, willing himself to stay together, to not fall apart.

As soon as the elevator arrived on the top floor with a ding, Remus ran for the staircase. One couldn't access the roof from the elevator, but the stairs had a door.

And so Remus arrived on the roof, panting hard, heart beating in his throat. Sure enough, there was Damien—but he wasn't sitting on the edge this time, he was standing, and it looked an awful lot as though he were contemplating jumping.

"Damien!" He let his shout ring out over the sounds of the pouring rain.

Damien turned to see who'd called his name, and Remus realized with a start that those were tears rolling down his cheeks and mingling with the torrent of water raining from the heavens.

"What are you doing here?" Damien's voice was cold, and even with the rain covering every inch of his body, the sound of his voice so emotionless was what had chilled Remus to his very core.

"I came here for you!" Remus cried, attempting to control his shivering as he took a hesitant step closer.

"Are you sure you want to be with a 'backstabbing bitch' like me?" Damien remarked bitterly, and Remus stiffened at the memory of the thing he'd said that had started this whole mess.

"Please, I didn't mean it," he pleaded, hoping Damien could hear the despair in his voice.

"It's okay, I understand. You can leave. They all do." Damien had turned back to look out at the city, and Remus could no longer see his face.

"Why would I leave? I love you." He took a second step forward, but almost immediately he heard Damien's voice again.

"Don't come any closer. I'll jump." And that scared Remus, it really did. He'd almost been hit by a car, twice now in his twenty-five years of living, but even with seeing that car coming head on, that near-death experience, nothing had scared him as much as those two words. So he stayed back, no matter how badly he wanted to go to his love.

"You deserve better than me," came Damien's voice again, dull and yet somehow still dolorus.

"Stop lying!" The words were torn from Remus' throat by the strong wind now barreling across the rooftop at great speeds. He couldn't stand to hear Damien talk that way about himself, and couldn't imagine that he'd actually meant it. He'd never acted like this before, and the guilt that he hadn't noticed Damien was in pain was suddenly an incredibly heavy weight on his heart.

"Lying?" Damien laughed, a dry, poor imitation of the bright, airy sound Remus was so used to hearing.

He was reminded of how nobody else but him had, apparently, heard from Damien in weeks. "Stop pushing everyone away! They care about you too!"

"Don't make this harder than it already is." Damien dangled a foot over the edge, and Remus' heart almost stopped.

"Why are you doing this?" he begged.

"Because nobody cares about me!" And he could've sworn he heard Damien sob, from all the way out on the edge.

"I care about you!"

Damien froze, and after a moment, turned back to look at Remus. His eyes were wide, their respective green and amber colors filled with pain.

"You…?" He couldn't even bring himself to finish before another sob was ripped from his throat.

"Please. Come off the edge," he begged, holding out a hand that he hoped Damien would take.

Damien took a slow, wobbly step away from the edge, and Remus, only able to watch, was petrified that Damien would slip, and that would be it, and he'd be gone, just like that, but after a few seconds he was able to take another step, and Remus found himself approaching to meet him in the middle.

Remus only let out the breath he'd been holding when Damien was safe in his arms. He felt almost loopy with relief, and he laughed at the absurdity of it all, burying his face in Damien's hair.

"I was so scared," he admitted.

"I'm sorry," Damien replied, voice muffled by Remus' jacket.

"I love you. I didn't mean any of what I said earlier, and I'm so sorry. You know that, right?"

"I do," said Damien quietly.

"Marry me," Remus blurted. Well, that wasn't how he'd planned it, but really, what could possibly be a better time than now? They'd cheated death and came out the other side even more in love, and he'd realized just how badly he needed Damien in his life.

"What?" Damien lifted his face, astonished.

"I don't have the ring on me, but I have been planning this for a while. It just… hit me, just now, how mortal we are, how short human lives are. And I guess I wanted to make the most of what little time we do have." He'd pulled back to look his love in the eyes.

Damien was speechless for a moment, then... "Yes, yes, yes, of course," he murmured against Remus' lips. "You could ask me a million times and I'd always say yes."

They pulled away, and Remus was suddenly very aware of how sopping wet they both were. "Why don't we get out of the rain? It's unlikely that one of us won't get a cold, with how wet we both are, but it couldn't hurt, right?"

"That's probably a good idea," Damien answered, and Remus was oh so happy that a smile had replaced his previous expression. "Let's go." He interlaced his fingers with Damien's, and they went inside.

#sanders sides #sanders side fic #dukeceit #demus #ts demus #deceit sanders #ts deceit #remus sanders #ts remus #sympathetic deceit #sympathetic remus

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spideyspoods · 5 years

Text

Lost & Found

Pairing: Steve Rogers X F!Stark!Reader

A/N: Not gonna lie, I’m kind of proud of myself for this one. I wrote it a whole eight (8) days early so by the time you’re reading this, I’ll be out of town! I apologize if there’s format issues, I’m solely relying on mobile for this upload and I’ll fix it when I get back!

Warnings: Light cursing and a dash of angst.

Word Count: 2,129

Masterlist!

“I still don’t think this is a good idea, Stark.” Steve crossed his arms, jaw clenched. Y/N shrugged, “Last time I checked, it wasn’t your decision to make, Captain.” Natasha stifled a chuckle, admiring the tedious banter between the two. Y/N Stark had always been a handful, but Natasha enjoyed it. The assassin had always sensed some sort of tension between the duo, and seemed like everyone did too. Y/N was sent to return some sort of substance in its chamber. After deliberate examination from Bruce and Tony, they deemed it unsafe to keep and wanted to return it immediately. In the glass cylinder, a yellow material swirled and flowed. After their third, and hopefully final encounter with aliens, it seemed to be a source of power; one that motivated and controlled them. The substance itself was unstable, and honestly quite terrifying.

“If you’re both done with the eye fucking, we’ve got something to do.” Y/N simply rolled her eyes and slipped in the ear piece. Steve went over the details once more, earning a nod from the younger Stark. “If anything goes wrong-”

“Don’t worry. I’ve been told I’m phenomenal at improv.”

She confidently strut her way out of the aircraft and towards the bunker. Steve massaged his temples, “I thought one Stark was already enough.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Rogers.” Nat scoffed. Clint spun around in his chair to face the soldier, “It’s painfully obvious you have a thing for her. Good thing Tony isn’t here.”

“As a matter of a fact, you’re both wrong.” Natasha raised an eyebrow, without taking her eyes off of the screen. “Are you kidding me? Nat’s never been wrong.”

“How could I possibly like someone so reckless and arrogant?”

“Because you’re too stubborn to admit it, obviously.”

Clint points at Steve who had a puzzled look on his face, “Yeah! Also, who are you calling reckless and arrogant?”

“Guys!” In the middle of their squabble, Natasha noticed Y/N having some trouble and Steve pressed the button to speak into her comms, “Y/N get out of there now!”

The soft soil underneath Y/N’s feet trembled the closer she got to the checkpoint. “Relax, I’ve got it! Just give me a few more seconds.” Y/N started to lose balance, and her grip grew tighter. In the middle of the bunker stood a stone podium with etched writing. Why did aliens write in shapes? The rocks above her began to crumble. “Almost-”

She ducked her head, barely scraping past a chunk of stone. A pebble struck the glass, leaving a crack. The substance inside started to swirl violently. She frantically slammed the cylinder on top of the podium. The stone supporting it started to fall and the glass shattered, letting the yellow material loose. Y/N’s eyes widened in panic, “Oh shit-” was all she could say before the substance erupted and began to flow towards her. Quickly and painfully, it engulfed itself into her veins.

“Let’s move!” Steve yelled and ran out to help her. All of it built up in her body, and the energy coarsed through the rocks and trees in the form of an explosion. By the time he reached her, he only saw rings in the dirt and trees split in half. Around her limp body, the soil looked burnt. Her eyes were closed, and her veins were a glowing yellow. Clint looked concerned, and took a deep sigh. “So which one of us is telling Tony?”

Y/N’s body ached. Her eyes could barely open, but she felt safe in someone’s arms. “Rogers, what the hell happened to my daughter?”

“The substance. Somehow she absorbed it.” Was she in Steve’s arms? Her mind was too foggy to realize what happened around her. “Shit. Get her to the medical ward, Bruce start scanning for any changes.” She remembered being placed on a medical bed and wheeled out.

Y/N’s eyes fluttered open to see nothing but the bright fluorescent lights. “What the hell?” She noticed an IV in her arm, but felt perfectly normal. Turning her head to the right, Bruce smiled, and looked back to the data on a screen. “Y/N, how are you feeling?” She sat up in her bed, “Fine. Did something happen to me?”

“Do you not remember?”

“Was I supposed to?” Bruce tilted his head before calling for Tony. As soon as his name left his throat, her Dad burst into the room. “Hey, pumpkin.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “What are the results, doc?”

“There’s no difference in her cells. Or even DNA. It looks just like it did before. Seems like she has no recollection of yesterday.” Y/N looked concerned, and began to stand up. Worriedly, Tony ushered to her side “Woah, easy there-” only to see her walk perfectly fine. “You would think an explosion at that magnitude would leave her bedridden. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she isn’t but it doesn’t add up.”

“You’re both confusing me. What happened? What explosion?”

“You neglected to follow my orders, that’s what happened.” She could recognize that stern voice anywhere. Banner beckoned Tony to follow him into the lab, and gave you some space. “Just perfect, Rogers. I’m only up for a few minutes and I’m already being lectured by ‘America’s Most Righteous Man,’” sarcasm oozing from her voice. “Y/N-”

“No, go ahead. Tell me everything I did wrong starting from the very moment I was born.” He huffed and stepped closer to Y/N who looked as if she could kill him. “What you did was destructive and utterly selfish-”

“Like you wouldn’t have done the same?”

“The purpose for following orders is to keep everyone and everything safe, you understand?”

“Are you expecting an apology, because you’re not getting one from me. I did what I had to, Rogers.” She got dangerously close to him, but didn’t care and continued, “you know what I’m tired of? You treating me like a damn kid. I’m capable of making my own decisions, and I don’t need you criticizing every single move I make, got it?” Steve opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come out. She had a point, but he was still upset. Maybe he was the selfish one here. “Y/N.. I just wanted to make sure you would be safe-”

“Sure you do,” she scoffed. He couldn’t fix this, and had no other choice but to confess the feelings he had been pushing away. “Y/N I care about you, okay?” He raised his voice. For the first time, Y/N was speechless. She couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, but she didn’t know how to respond. Tony trailed along after Bruce back into her room only to see them just a few mere inches apart. “Are we doing okay in here?” the doctor questioned. Y/N looked past Steve’s shoulder, “Just peachy. I’m on my way out anyways.” She shot an icy glare towards the soldier, who looked hurt. “Y/N wait, you’re still not cleared to leave!” shouted Bruce.

“I’m fine!”

“Sweetheart, calm down.” her Father pleaded.

“Please, I need some space.” her eyes flashed yellow and the same shade coarsed its way through her veins again. Steve stepped towards her, “Y/N-”

“STOP!” she yelled, sending another blast through the room, straight towards him. He fell back on the marble floor and groaned. “Oh my god,” she muttered, looking at the uneasy rise and fall of his chest. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she ran out.

Y/N Stark had always put on a facade of being put together and constantly assured. Only people she truly trusted saw her shattered. She sat on the balcony, looking over the busy and bustling city. Her fingers fiddled with a necklace Pepper got her for her 16th birthday as she got lost in her own mind. She didn’t know what happened to her or what she could do about it. “Y/N, I heard what happened. Do you want to talk about it?” Wanda approached her friend who solemnly nodded. She took a chair and sat across from her. Ever since she joined the team, Wanda was her closest friend. She was always understanding, and not just because she could read minds. They just understood each other, and she was thankful for it. “I was arguing with Steve and I guess I got frustrated and my power went haywire. Also apparently I have some sort of power now, did I mention that?”

“What were you arguing about?” “How he keeps treating me like a kid! It’s not like he’s my Dad or anything. He’s so uptight, it’s infuriating!” The memory itself roused anger in her, veins starting to pulse. Wanda took note and grasped her hands. “Breathe, Y/N. You know he just cares about you, right? Steve’s always been-” “A dick?”

“Protective. He doesn’t want you to get hurt, he loves you.” Y/N’s eyes practically bulged out of her head, “he what now?” Her friend quickly realized she revealed his secret, “Wait did you seriously not notice?” “No, was I supposed to?” She could feel her face heat up at the thought. “Y/N, you know I can read minds right? Both of yours. You probably don’t realize it but, I guess I’ll leave that to you.” Y/N buried her head in her hands, groaning. “Great now I just feel guilty.”

“Hey, you didn’t know. Stop blaming yourself. Getting a grip on your abilities is hard, but I can help you if you want.”

“I’ll take you up on that.” As she sat back up, she heard someone call her name. Wanda turned to her with a sly smile and headed back inside, “Looks like a specific someone is looking for you. Remember what I said!” Leaving her in the dust, Steve peered around the corner to find Y/N turned away from him. “Y/N can we talk?”

“I guess so.” It was quiet, neither of them wanted to speak up first.

“Y/N, I-”

“Steve I-” Both of them spoke at the same time. Y/N gestured towards Steve for him to continue. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I know I underestimated you and I thought that being harsh on you would keep you safe and out of harm’s way. I know you’re capable, out of any of us it’d definitely be you. I know you probably don’t think so, but I truly do care about you. I just hope you can forgive me.” She didn’t want to look at him, not yet. “It’s alright, I guess I do have to apologize for butting heads with you every waking second,” she paused “and for slamming you into the floor earlier.” To her surprise, he laughed. Lifting her head, Steve gave her a soft smile. The infectious smile she had tried her best to ignore; refusing to fall for him. “No worries, I think you might have forgotten that I’m a super soldier.”

“Okay, looks like I’ll take that compliment back-” she smirked and stood up to walk back inside, but Steve pulled her back. He looked at her in a newfound light, one where he didn’t have to hide how he felt. “Don’t.” She took him into an embrace. At first, he was reluctant and didn’t want to hurt her anymore. Slowly, he melted into the hug; his heart beating rapidly. “Do you maybe want to try this whole communication thing again? Maybe over lunch?” She pulled away, wrapping her arms around his neck. Y/N thought it was cliche that she only found herself back to normal in Steve’s arms. They were completely entranced by each other’s gaze; believing that they could lose themselves in it. “Can I kiss you, Y/N?” She smiled bashfully and felt like she was in middle school all over again. “Yes, Steve.” His lips were soft and the kiss was gentle, almost as if he was trying to apologize for everything he’d ever done. She had been wandering in her own mind and felt at peace.

Natasha, Wanda, and Clint watched from the windows high fiving each other. Tony stepped out of the lab, concern all over his face. “Have you two seen Y/N?” In a panic, they all dispersed averting their gaze from the display on the balcony.

Y/N pulled away in bliss, their foreheads pressed together. “I’ve been waiting to do that for a while.” The next thing they heard was the glass door bursting open. “Y/N are you doing okay- oh my god.” Quickly stepping away from each other, the duo turned to meet a furious Tony.

“You both have a lot of explaining to do.”

Thank you for reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated, but not required! :) My requests and taglist are open!

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iwritefanficsometimes · 5 years

Note

for the ask meme! number 17 with johnlock? :00 (if not, ironstrange is g!!!)

So, I’ve never written Johnlock, but I listen to a hell of a lot of Johnlock podfics so… I can probably do this. Hope you enjoy! Both the asks I got from this ask meme were for ships I’d never written before, so this was a lot of fun. :) Johnlock pre-wedding rewrite because… I felt like it?

So, I realized after I wrote this long post, and the last post, that I think the format for these is supposed to be one of those 5 things fics, but… yeah, who cares about the rules? We’re subversive here. Also, this is kinda long, so I’m glad I’m on desktop and can add a read more.

17. things you said that i wish you hadnt

The tick of the second hand on John’s watch fills the room. The silence presses in on all sides. Sherlock had left the flat an hour ago, but John felt like he’d been sitting there for days, just waiting for him to come back.

“You need some time to cool down. I’ll go.”

John doesn’t need time to cool down.

He needs Sherlock to be there so that he can say it to his face. Say… say…

Something.. Anything.

John knows that Sherlock things the whole world is stupid, including John, but somehow John always thought that he and Sherlock were different. Sherlock was his best friend. Sherlock was his best man. Sherlock was… Sherlock.

“I’m married to the work.”

Yeah. Sure.

John doesn’t know why he’s mad. Not really. But at the same time, he does know. He knows because it’s not fair. It’s not fair for Sherlock to spring this on him three days before his wedding. It’s not fair for Sherlock to lied about being dead for two years only to come back into John’s life expecting to pick up where they’d left off. It’s not fair that John wishes that he could.

John wishes that he could.

Be he loved Mary. He cared for her. She was… She was nice, well rounded, she understood him. She understood him like no one else ever had.

No one accept for Sherlock.

John wasn’t angry. Not really. Maybe at the way that Sherlock had choosen to phrase it. Maybe at his choice to insult Mary. Maybe at his ego getting the better of him, but he wasn’t mad at Sherlock. How could he be? How could he be mad at him for this?

Love.

He doesn’t think it’s a good excuse for acting like a toddler but… it’s Sherlock. Sherlock’s expressions of emotion include spacing out, escaping into his own mind, and complete and utter avoidance until every once in a while when he blows up.

Usually the cause is frustration with boredom.

John thinks maybe unrequited love is a kind of frustration of it’s own. Maybe having Sherlock so involved in the wedding was a mistake. But he had wanted to be involved. He’d taken to the entire event swimmingly.

Now three days before the wedding John wasn’t even sure where they stood.

John hates himself for thinking it, but a part of him wishes that Sherlock hadn’t said anything. Living in oblivion would have been easier. What can he do about his best friend loving him three days before his wedding to Mary?

Nothing. Not really.

Because for all that John cares about Sherlock, he doesn’t think he can just leave Mary. Maybe if things were different. Maybe if it was before. Maybe if Sherlock hadn’t been dead for two years and John hadn’t finally forced himself to look for someone to settle down with things would be different.

But they aren’t.

Mary comes back before Sherlock, and she’s too perceptive. He doesn’t want to tell her, doesn’t want to tell anyone, doesn’t even want to think about it, but he doesn’t have a choice. He has to say something.

“Sherlock is backing out of the wedding.”

That’s not true. Not really. Sherlock didn’t say that, didn’t even imply it. He had done what he’d always done. He’d looked at the scuff of John’s shoes and the style of his hair and he’d deduced that John wasn’t entirely happy to be getting married. He’d deduced that Mary had a secret. He’d predicted that whatever was standing between them would eat them alive and spit them out again, worse for wear. He’d told John that he loved him, and that he would never keep secrets from him.

“Not again.” He’d said. Solemn, pained, regretful.

John hadn’t even gotten the chance to ask how he dared to say such things about Mary, how he’d dared to speculate like that, how he dared to try to ruin his wedding before Sherlock had been out the door.

Because it was too late for it to matter.

“I can’t believe that. Where is he? Has he left his mobile? I’m going to find him.” The scarf that she’d been hanging up went back around her neck and she picked her purse back up. “And I’m going to bring him back, and you two are going to talk this out like adults. We’re three days out, John. If he was going to back out he would have done it a lot sooner.”

Yeah. Sure.

“I’m going for a walk.” He tells her, getting up to put on his own outer clothes. He hadn’t been able to move before, paralyzed by his own thoughts, by the echo of Sherlock’s words, by the clicking of the second hand of his watch. But now he needed to move. He was full of energy, too much energy, and it was burning holes in his shoes. He needed to go. Be away. Do something.

Anything.

Mary lets him go, stays in the flat. She calls Sherlock, but it goes straight to voice mail, because he can already hear her talking to it when he reaches the door.

“Sherlock, John says you’re getting cold feet. Come ‘round when you have a chance. Don’t the two of you fight now. We’re too close.”

He doesn’t hear what else she says, if she says anything. He’s outside, the night air is not as chill as he’s dressed for, but he can’t take off any of his layers. His hands are buried in his pockets and clenched into fists. He doesn’t think taking them out is a good idea.

He wants to punch something.

He doesn’t.

He gets married to Mary, but the entire wedding everyone knows that there is tension between the three of them. If Mary knows she doesn’t say so. Sherlock’s best man speech professes his love for John in a way that makes it all seem platonic.

It isn’t.

John dances with Mary to a song Sherlock composed just for them, and if there’s something just a little bit sad about it, no one says anything, least of all John.

It’s too late.

#so I'm not putting this in the j*hnlock tag because i'm scared of being judged #because j*hnlock fans really bring it and I'm scared of being judged #lysa writes #ask meme

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thewhiskingpot · 6 years

Text

for good, and for bad

💜 bangtan (bts)

💜 hoseok (bts) x reader

💜 oneshot

💜 hoseok finds you in the middle of a depressive episode

💜 depression; self-esteem issues; slice of life; hurt/comfort; lots of metaphors; angst with a happy ending

💜 a/n: many hugs to my beta for the invaluable input in polishing this piece. to my readers, don’t worry, the angst is really not that bad. lastly, the format is wonky on mobile so please read this on desktop if possible.

You didn’t plan for it to happen this way. In fact, you didn’t plan this at all.

Hoseok was supposed to be away for a three-day dance camp, but there he was, real as can be, anxiously shaking you from the stupor that your episode had locked you in. The very same one that had you feeling spent from all that sobbing and gasping for air. Depression was a total bitch.

You never meant for him to catch you at your lowest. You made it a point to hide away whenever your episodes struck. It was easy even with the shared apartment, for Hoseok led a very busy social life. But somehow, you always seem to fuck up no matter how hard you try. You could never win.

As you watched Hoseok tenderly wipe your tear-stained blotchy cheeks and runny nose, something in you finally snapped. Even with you looking like a complete trainwreck, there was nothing but love and concern spilling out from him. Enough is enough. It was time to set the poor man free. He deserved so much more, and so much better than broken goods.

“Hobi, we need to break up,” you said, willing your voice to remain steady. “I’m breaking up with you.”

Hoseok stilled at once, his expression changing from concern to confusion to shock. “W-what?”

There was no way you were going to repeat that. Saying it twice would be akin to pouring salt on your gaping wound. You tried to shove him away, but Hoseok would not budge.

“What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?”

“We just got to. I’m your worst mistake, Hobi. You’ll come to your senses soon. You deserve better.”

“Don’t say that. You’re the best thing that happened to me, love.”

You scoffed. Best? Hoseok clearly hasn’t gotten his head around this whole thing. You were sitting in the bathtub with antidepressants spilled all over the bathroom floor, for Pete’s sake.

“Talk to me. Let me in. Please,” Hoseok pleaded, his sincerity bleeding through your fast crumbling wall.

You knew it would come to this. The moment Hoseok found you in this state, it was the end of it all. He’d ask, and you’d answer. You could never deny him of anything. He was your kryptonite.

“Fine. You want the truth? I feel fucked, 24/7. From bone to skin, mind to soul. There’s a howling storm within me that refuses to quieten down. It pulls me in every direction. It drowns me with relentless waves of hopelessness. It draws a dark veil over my sight. Everything is hazy around me. Despair is what they call it. This wretched feeling permeates every cell of my being, and I’m so tired of keeping up this front,” you spat out bitterly.

You didn’t have to look up to know Hoseok was crying. The man was an open book to you, his willingness to lay his soul bare for you always apparent, and you could sense his distress a mile away.

“You know, for the longest time before you, I was floating from one day to another. Life had no meaning other than to survive in flesh. To maintain the facade of a functional being. Everyday was a suffocating misery, but I’d become so desensitized that I grew to accept this was just how life was. And then, you happened.”

You smiled weakly, the fond memory of the first time you met Hoseok clear and vivid despite your troubled mind. He had chosen to crash his bike by swerving into a bush to avoid hitting you. The rest was history.

“You with your sunshine personality, you with your addictive warmth, you with your stupid million-dollar smile. For the first time in years, I felt hope. Being in your presence made me delusional, to think that I stood a chance to become whole again, to think that maybe, just maybe, a person shrouded in darkness like me could ever build a future with you. Thinking back now, I was simply turning my eyes away from the truth. The moon merely borrows light off the sun; it can never truly shine. Jimin once said we’re a perfect match, because opposites attract. But that can’t be right. We’re parallels in different directions, never meant to cross paths.”

You took a shaky breath. Now that you were on a roll, you found yourself unable to stop. It was liberating even, to finally confess it all. Breaking up with the love of your life sucked big time, but it had to be done. Hoseok deserved so much better.

“All you do is give, and all I do is take. I’m afraid, Hobi. Afraid that one day you’ll lose that glow, that I’ll inevitably drag you down to hell with me. I don’t want to wake up to find a zombie staring back at me. You deserve a whole person, not someone broken and jagged.”

You could see Hoseok struggling to digest and comprehend the bomb you just threw in his face. He was always easy to read.

Hoseok’s next few words came out as a faint whisper, but the harshness of his tone made you flinch in surprise. “How dare you? How fucking dare you?”

In the entirety of your relationship, Hoseok had never once swore at you. Caught off guard, you could only stare.

“You’re not me. You don’t get to decide what I want or don’t want,” Hoseok said, his voice raw and emotional. “You put me on a pedestal like I can do no wrong, but drag yourself through the mud. You don’t see how much you mean to me, how much joy and love and security you bring just by being mine. You’re so blinded to the fact that you’re priceless. I’m sad that you think so little of yourself. I’m ashamed it took me so long to realize you were in pain. I’m angry that you think so little of me.”

Hoseok reached out to cup your cheek, and you couldn’t help but lean into his touch. You were so fucking gone for him.

“Broken or not, you are perfect to me. I want you, and only you. Do you understand?”

Tears instantly sprang to your eyes. That was the most beautiful thing anyone had said to you. To want you, and only you. But that also made your point even more salient. Hoseok deserved better. So much better. You had to stand your ground. Not trusting yourself to speak just yet, you turned away from him in petulance.

Hoseok shook his head knowingly. “You can sulk all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that your reason for wanting to break up is stupid. I’m not accepting that. I am, however, calling for a time-out. We’re both angry, and it’ll do us good to be away from each other.”

You lifted your head to meet his gaze, heart accelerating in anxiety despite yourself.

“Just for a bit, love. Like thirty minutes. I’ll be back soon,” Hoseok explained. “Promise me you’ll do nothing to harm yourself in the meantime?”

You weren’t even thinking about doing anything, to be honest. You just wanted to sit here and wallow in the sad prospect of your almost-breakup. But you were feeling rebellious, so you kept your mouth shut.

Unfortunately, Hoseok was not backing down. “Love, do you promise?”

You glared, but obediently nodded once.

Why can’t you ever say no to this man?

Oh right, because you were utterly in love with him.

Hoseok seemed to have knocked you right out of your funk. You weren’t sure how much time had lapsed since he left you sitting there, but you reckoned it was enough to warrant a search. The silence was telling. Hoseok must’ve left to god knows where. With a sigh, you picked yourself up. A quick check around the apartment confirmed your theory, and your worry increased tenfold. You wanted to give him space, to think about what just transpired, but you were pretty sure Hoseok left the house without an umbrella. Not that it would do much to combat the storm outside. But still. Better one than none.

With newfound determination, you grabbed an umbrella from the supply closet and ran out the door to chase him down. He shouldn’t have left. If anything, you were the one who should leave. Out of the apartment, out of his life. He deserved so much better. Caught up in your misery, you almost missed the blurry figure in your peripheral vision until you realized it was a familiar one. Doubling back, your jaw dropped in disbelief as you took in the sight before you.

Right there in the middle of the open field, Hoseok stood with his head thrown back as the rain pelted down hard. Even from a distance, he was visibly shivering in the cold. Flinching with every roar of the thunder. Muscles tensed in apprehension. But still, he persisted.

What in the name of all things unholy was he doing?

When your brain finally caught up, you found yourself already pulling Hoseok away by the wrist. All the way home, you simmered in your anger. Somewhere between the field and the apartment, Hoseok managed to interlock his fingers with yours, holding you tight in his grasp. You ignored that, though tears pricked your eyes.

After what seemed like forever, you finally barreled through the door with Hoseok in tow. Kicking it shut, you let your anger bubble over at last.

“Jung Hoseok, you could’ve died out there!” you yelled, yanking a towel and a set of clothes from the drying rack before stomping back to your very drenched boyfriend. Manhandling him out of his wet hoodie and jeans, you started to towel him dry, all while muttering curses at his stupidity.

Hoseok was compliant, but you could sense his attention was elsewhere. He kept his silence while you fussed over him, not even stealing a single glance in your direction.

Was he still mad? That didn’t seem like it. Hoseok rarely got angry with you, and even if the current situation called for it, you were confident you were already forgiven. Just like he was your soft spot, so were you to him.

No, it was more like he was brooding. Which made you eyed him warily. A brooding Hoseok was never a good sign.

After a prolonged pause, Hoseok spoke up. “At first, I was just mad, so I left. I needed to cool down.”

“And standing in the middle of a thunderstorm was your solution?” you injected in bewilderment, making him sit so you could drape the towel over his head to work on his hair.

Men and their ridiculous antics.

Ignoring your question, Hoseok continued. “Then I remembered you said there was a storm inside you. So I thought I’d give it a try. I mean, it’s not exactly the same, but that’s a pretty nasty storm out there.”

Rolling your eyes in exasperation, you took a deep breath and enunciated every word clearly. It was important that he understood this. “That. Was. A. Metaphor. Do you not understand the concept of metaphors? Were you not taught that? In all sixteen years of formal education?”

“I know what you’re trying to do. I’m not letting you act out the stupid noble K-drama trope. Not now, not ever. I’m here to stay for good, and for bad,” Hoseok cut off your mindless rant, challenge apparent in his eyes. “I won’t push you to open up any further if you don’t want to. But I’ll find my own ways to reach you, to understand your pain better. My methods might be stupid, but I’ll keep trying until I get it right. You can’t stop me from loving you.”

That was it.

Jung Hoseok was your undoing.

How could you even deny him anymore after that? Nothing could top it. You never realized the extent of his feelings for you ran this deep. For the longest time, one of your worst fears was that Hoseok would take off the second he found out about your depression. But he obliterated that fear tonight. I’m here to stay for good, and for bad. You can’t stop me from loving you. God, you were totally going to ink those words into you permanently. Namjoon was right; honest communication really could open up one’s eyes.

“Hobi, honestly, what do you expect me to say? No?” you mumbled reluctantly, the fight in you extinguished. “Do as you wish then. But let me just say, you don’t get to blame me if you end up needing therapy for dealing with my shit.”

Rubbing his face into your stomach, Hoseok inhaled your scent. “This is not a blaming game, love. And I’m already seeing a therapist. Mental health is important.”

You froze. That was new information.

“Stop overthinking,” Hoseok ordered as he tightened his hold around your waist. “It’s just an outlet for stress management.”

Well then. Enough angst for today. That would certainly be a conversation for another day.

“I was just thinking, I’m pretty sure I didn’t agree to a polyamorous or open relationship, mister. But I can if the good doctor is hot. How hot we talkin’? Seriously, a doctor on the side? How did you even manage that?”

Chuckling, Hoseok said, “I am so in love with you, my spiritual soulmate.”

“Yoongi’s gonna be upset you said that.”

“He won’t, if you don’t tell.”

“Hobi, I’m serious about-”

“Hi Serious, I’m Hobi.”

“Dad jokes again? You’re spending too much time with Jin.”

“I’m telling Jin.”

“Whatever. You’re so fucking extra. I hate you.”

“Love you too.”

#bts fics #bts scenarios #bts angst #hoseok angst #hoseok comfort #angst with a happy ending #for good and for bad #cross-posted on ao3 #thewhiskingpot

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arteacactus · 6 years

Note

47, Roceit.

(In human AU, in which Roman is friends with Logan and Virgil and used to date Logan, and Deceit is close friends with Patton, who introduced him and Roman, though they don’t know each other all that well)

Also this is long as hell im sorry,, and will be read easier on desktop to get all the formatting correct- their are pagebreaks and blockquotes that i dont think are visible on mobile and might completely mess up the story.

047: “My ex just invited me to their wedding and I need you to be my date so it doesn’t look like I’ve spent the last few years failing to get over them.”

Roman would be lying if he said his heart didn’t ache when he got the invitation to Logan and Virgil’s wedding.

He was happy for them, truly! He was glad they found each other and they’re happy enough to get married; hell, he helped Logan plan his proposal.

But there was a bit of him that, even after years, yearned for Logan to come back to him.

This part of him craved to have his nerd back in his arms. He knew it was dumb, Logan was happy with Virgil and he was, quite frankly, very unhappy with Roman, so he shouldn’t be begging for things he won’t ever get, but he just couldn’t let go.

There was a void, and he wasn’t sure how to fill it.

Now, he was hit with a new dilemma, though.

He was definitely going to the wedding. If not to see Logan in a suit, then to support them as their friend.

But he didn’t want to show up alone.

It would be weird, wouldn’t it? He had to make it look like he was over Logan. He didn’t want it to look like he’d been trying to get over his past relationship after all this time.

So, he started going through a list of friends he could ask to be a fake, temporary date.

He thought of Logan’s brother, Emile, but that was just creepy, so he crossed him out.

Perhaps Patton’s brother, Remy? Though, Remy was a little too much sass and not enough romance. He couldn’t handle that.

Patton was out of the question. They’d be suspicious that they hadn’t heard about it before then, and Patton wouldn’t like lying to their friends.

Wait..

Lying.

Patton’s new friend Dolion.

Roman himself met the man only a few months ago, and he’s hung out with him more than once. They didn’t know each other all too well, but he knew Dolion enough to know that he had absolutely no problem with lying.

And a plus- Dolion was hot as hell.

Besides, Logan and Virgil haven’t met Dolion yet.

It was perfect!

Roman slammed the invitation on the counter and pulled his phone out, texting Dolion,

Ro: Hey, can you do me a favor?

Lio the Lyin: It’s nine in the morning.

Ro: Yeah, okay, I get it, you sleep late, but this is seriously important!

Lio the Lyin: Get on with it, then.

Ro: My ex just invited me to his wedding and I need you to be my date so it doesn’t look like I’ve spent the last few years failing to get over him.

Ro: Dolion?

Ro: Hey, you there?

Ro: Doll?

Lio the Lyin: I told you to stop calling me that.

Lio the Lyin: Do I know this ex?

Ro: Indirectly?

Ro: I mean, he’s one of Patton’s friends.

Ro: Logan?

Lio the Lyin: Oh.

Lio the Lyin: Him.

A few minutes passed, and Roman’s nails tapped against his marble counter nervously. He almost screamed out of frustration until he finally got an answer, five minutes later.

Lio the Lyin: I’ll be there in an hour, I have a plan.

Roman was, admittedly, a little concerned. Not all of Dolion’s plans held malicious intent, but enough did to cause him to feel a little careful when faced with “I have a plan”.

It was exactly an hour later when Roman heard a knock at his door, stumbling over his feet as he scrambled from the couch to the door, swinging it open to stand face-to-face with Dolion.

Dolion was unusually well-dressed, with a black button-up shirt and nice jeans on.

“Get dolled up. If we’re fake dating, we’re gonna kick it off by making it look non-suspicious that we suddenly start dating right on the day of the wedding. There’s, what, a week leading up to it? We have this week to gradually make it known we’re together, to get rid of suspicion.”

Roman was a little stunned, but he sure wasn’t complaining, because somehow, the idea of fake dating was a little fun. Or perhaps that was just his gay ass being overwhelmed at the picture of Dolion dressed nicely as opposed to his usual punk-like wear.

He invited him in, and he ran up the stairs, throwing his wardrobe doors open to be faced with an utter mess of various styles.

Oh dear.

The week passed surprisingly quickly, and Roman found that Dolion was one hell of an actor.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought that Dolion really was head-over-heels for him.

He treated him sweetly, respectfully, and never pushed things too far. He took him out to nice places, they did things that both of them liked, and he was an all-around great person to him.

Perhaps that’s why Roman felt the hole in his heart start to fix, and he felt like he was a whole new person around Dolion.

He was.. getting over Logan, finally. But falling for an entirely new person.

“Roman. You’re not going to a wedding like this.”

Roman let out a loud groan, pulling the blankets over his head as his bedroom was raided by three new humans.

“Don’t eeeuuuuughh me, mister!” Patton scolded, ripping the blanket off Roman and exposing him to the freezing room. “I’m only gonna be here long enough to get your suit on and dolled up, because then I’m handing you over to Doe and Rem so I can help Lo and Vee.”

Roman sighed heavily, letting Patton grab his arms and pull him into a sitting position, tossing a suit at his face.

“Put it on. Technically you shouldn’t wear white but we made an exception since this isn’t that big of a deal, as Virgil requested. Logan is wearing dark blue and Virgil is wearing purple.”

“Red and gold, too?”

“Yes, Ro, red and gold, too. You’re gonna match with Doe, who’s wearing black and gold.”

Dolion in a black and gold suit.

That shouldn’t have made his heart race and butterflies flutter in his stomach, but it did.

Roman grabbed the suit and sleepily stood, letting his eyesight adjust to the light as Patton ripped the curtains open. “And you’re wearing..?”

“I’m wearing light blue, Em’s wearing pink, and Rem’s wearing this weird sort of wine color. Kind of maroon, but too light.”

Roman nodded.

So they’re all gonna be their own unique colors.

That was.. honestly pretty cute.

Patton left the room as Roman showered and got dressed, his curly blond hair almost falling over his eyes in a fringe as he blow-dried it, and he decided to leave it like that- it looked nice.

He studied himself in the mirror, smiling.

He thought he looked nice!

Walking out of his bathroom, Roman rushed down the stairs, where Patton was getting ready to head out, breakfast made at the table- Dolion and Remy eating.

Roman’s breath was caught as he saw Dolion, who had slicked his dark, dirty blond hair back against his head, somehow making his cheekbones more defined, his black and gold suit bringing out his pale skin.

Barely visible freckles peppered across only one side of Dolion’s face, much to Roman’s amusement and awe. He was.. a cross between hot and adorable.

He loved it.

“Bye, Roman! I’ll see you in a couple hours!” Patton waved him goodbye, some sort of knowing grin on his face that Roman didn’t quite enjoy, and left Roman alone with the two men.

“Ro,” Dolion greeted, lifting his eyes to meet Roman’s flustered ones, lips curling in a smile.

“Doll,” Roman replied, pleasantly shocked by how steady his voice came out.

“Remy. Now c’mon, greetings over, let’s get to work.”

“Roman,”

The voice took him by surprise, despite the fact it was his own wedding.

Roman turned to face Logan, who was gazing at him in warm affection. Just a week ago, that look would have made Roman’s heart thud with longing, but now, he felt.. weirdly, nothing.

Roman’s face broke in a smile. “Logan!” He greeted, throwing his arms around Logan in a hug that took the other by surprise, almost knocking them over, but Logan managed to hold them steady.

“Pleased to see you could come,” Logan grunted, letting Roman go once the other was satisfied with his hug.

“Happy to be here!” Roman replied, and was surprised by how much he genuinely meant it. He expected to be heartbroken, somehow, but..

Bumping his hand against Dolion’s, Roman took it and interlocked their fingers.

“Dolion. Pleased to meet you, Logan. Roman’s told me much of you.” Dolion introduced, holding his free hand out for Logan to take.

Logan didn’t seem bothered by his presence, though a little curious as how close he and Roman were. “Likewise. I’m assuming you’re..?”

“Roman’s date.” Dolion finished his sentence, flashing a pretty smile, “I’m his boyfriend.”

He said it with such a prideful tone that Logan never held when talking about Roman, and it made his face heat up and butterflies flutter in his stomach, his smile stretching wider across his face, and Roman almost worried his face was going to split in half. He was falling hard for Dolion, damn it. He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad.

Logan hummed, looking at Dolion’s proud face and Roman’s red one and flustered expression, allowing a smile of his own to fall on his face.

“I’m glad Roman could find someone to love him like he deserves.”

And something about that made it final.

Roman.. held no feelings for Logan, anymore. No romantic feelings, anyway. And Logan felt the same.

He was.. free from his heart’s desires, as they now lied with someone else.

Someone he could have.

And somehow, that made him happier than he’d been in a while.

Now.. onto ending the fake-dating and making it real-dating.

He had a plan.

101 Fluffy Prompts (please don’t send anymore, unless they include Deceit)

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beelieveinfandom · 7 years

Text

Haunted and Hunted Chapter Four

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 AO3 Link

AO3 is highly advised due to Tumblr having formatting issues.

“And you’re sure this won't kill me somehow?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. Absolutely. If anything goes wrong we’ll stop at once, and even if we don’t, anything going unusually will activate this spell, instantly ending the ritual.” Renee was pointing at a ring of runes inside the arcane circle.

The circle was, outside of the killswitch addition, a very simple one. A pentacle drawn in chalk on the hard cement floor with the five symbols of banishment at each of the star’s corners. It was the simplest reliable banishment spell possible, pretty much only able to work on consenting entities or those who lacked any sort of intent of their own.

I worked pretty hard on that cancel button and I’m like, 80% sure it’ll be fine.

You’re telling me this has a 20% chance of killing me‽

I mean, maybe?

I’m pretty much pulling numbers out of my ass here, to be quite honest.

everything you say is so reassuring.

Hey, I’m the one that advocated against this from the start.

You wanted us to do nothing!

I wanted us to wait for more data. My friend will get us the original summoning circle, and reverse engineering it will be way easier and safer than just guessing at what might work.

But how long will that take? And how will your ‘friend’ even contact us, assuming they get the plans? We’re gonna be in the middle of the woods away from all electronics for a while.

That’s hardly a concern. He’ll find a way; he’s quite crafty.

Anyway.

You’re the one at risk so it’s your decision. You don’t trust my friend? Fine. Try banishing me. Just know that there is danger involved.

“Charlie?” Renee said, “are you ready for us to begin?”

“Um,” Charlie said. “Sure. Let’s… Let’s get this over with.”

“Make sure to let us know if anything feels off.”

“How am I supposed to know if something feels of if I don’t know what getting exorcised is suppose to feel like?”

“Um…” Renee said, “we’ll go slowly. Try and imagine what a normal exorcism might feel like and let us know if this feels different.”

“I’m having second thoughts. Actually, I think I’m probably on fifth or sixth thoughts by now.”

“It’s okay to back out. We don’t have to do this.”

“I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Vin said. “On the other hand, how much worse can shit actually get?”

“That’s actually a good point,” Charlie said. “I already could easily die via possession, or get captured by creepy scientists, or like, trip on a rock and die. Why not add ‘death from good intentions’ to the list? Yeah, let’s do this!”

Charlie walked into the center of the circle and sat down. Renee started chanting a simple chant in modern English. Older dialects and languages tended to be more powerful, but they were easier to fuck up and there was little need for making the ritual as powerful as possible.

“Um,” Charlie said after a minute, “is it supposed to hurt? Like a lot? Like my skin’s on fire?”

Renee stopped chanting at once. “No, it’s not supposed to hurt at all! Are you okay?”

“Define ‘okay’,” Charlie said. “If your definition includes ‘feels like I just got a really bad sunburn but it’s kinda fading’ then yeah, I’m okay. Or at least as okay as I was before, which was already pushing the definition of ‘okay’.”

“I’m sorry. It would seem that they did tie your skin into the ritual they used.” Renee sighed. “I have no idea where to go from here.”

“Well, maybe mysterious computer friend will come through,” Charlie said. “If not, well, guess I’ll die.”

“Charlie.” Renee met Charlie’s gaze. “You’re not going to die. There are still other things we can try.”

“Really?” Charlie broke away from Renee’s eye contact, shifting zir gaze to the floor. “Like what?”

“Ah...” Renee’s face passed through several expressions before settling on ‘student woken up when called upon to demonstrate a problem for the class’. “Well, we still have time to think of things we can try.”

“Or maybe the situation is just boned and there is nothing we can do,” Vin said. “Like I hate to be that guy but sometimes shit’s just irrevocably fucked.”

“Vin!”

“What? We were all thinkin’ it. Someone had to unpack that shit from the back of their mind and put it on the table to be beheld in all its awful smelly glory.” Vin shrugged. “I still got a bad feeling; I don’t think we’re going to find something that will work.”

“You still have a bad feeling even after we stopped the ritual?” Renee asked. “Are you sure it’s about Charlie at all?”

He shrugged. “What part of ‘I don’t know a thing, my guy’ do you have trouble understanding?”

“That’s not good.” Renee slithered around the chalk circle on the ground. “Maybe we should start moving.”

“Yeah,” Vin said. “Maybe.”

Cleaning the circle off the rough cement floor was easy, which was good because they were in a hurry and it was generally considered rude to leave ritual materials strewn about someone else’s place.

Getting their things together was also pretty quick as they hadn’t had any reason to unpack much the night before. It took only a few minutes to add the few items that Marcus had given them to their things.

Their footsteps echoed faintly through the otherwise silent early morning hallways as they went back through the same path that Marcus had led them through the day before. Walking through the dim corridors they saw no sign of their host, but they figured that she wouldn’t mind them disappearing without saying goodbye.

The crisp outdoor air chilled their lungs as they left the building. They headed East - Marcus had said that it was the shortest way out of the forest and Renee wanted to scout out the area outside. She wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the woods yet - they didn’t have anywhere to go and the woods were large and secluded enough to be a decent place to hide - but she at least wanted a solid idea of what was beyond.

Cliffs rose to either side of them as they walked. It made Renee nervous, but suggesting alternate paths didn’t alleviate the dark feeling that hung over Vin like a bad toupée, and this path seemed to be the easiest way East. The relative flatness and rocky nature of the ground suggested that they were in a dried out riverbed, and none of them were going to complain about having slightly less underbrush to navigate through.

Renee was being careful. Vin’s intuition was telling them something was wrong and she was not going to let whatever fate had in store catch them unawares. She was almost entirely focused on her farsight, trusting in her companions to keep an eye on the immediate surroundings.

Her first thought had been that something was happening at the facility, but when she checked she found the place utterly immersed in chaos. People were rushing out of the place, alarm lights were flashing, a small fire (normal and red/orange in appearance for once) was raging in one of the computer rooms. It seemed unlikely that they were going to be able try anything. She supposed it could be an elaborate ruse but it seemed unlikely that they would actually set their building on fire just in case she happened to check on them.

So whatever was going to happen was already in the works. And was quite possibly unavoidable, judging from Vin’s current state.

She supposed it was possible that whatever was going to happen had nothing to do with the facility at all, and that they were about to die to a supervolcano explosion or a meteor strike or something. There wasn’t really anything that they would be able to do about a natural disaster, and it would explain why no suggestions altered Vin’s intuition.

She decided to stop thinking about that. There was no point wasting her time worrying about things she couldn’t do anything about.

It was possible the small fire at the facility could rage out of control and burn the whole forest down. It was kinda dry. How dry did it even need to be to burn green wood anyway? She really should have studied more wilderness survival. Now they were all going to burn to death and she wouldn’t even know how impressed to be that the fire managed to spread.

She decided to Stop Thinking About That. She wasn’t wasting her time worrying about things she couldn’t do anything about.

She managed to go about a minute before checking back on the fire at the facility. It seemed to be smaller than it had been when she first noticed it. There were sprinklers on. They were probably going to wreck all the computer hardware in that room.

She took a few breaths and shifted her focus away from the facility. The fire wasn’t going be a problem. There was no point watching the facility anymore. Whatever threat menaced them now was already on its way.

The other day the doctor - Dana, their name had been Dana - had been adamant on getting someone involved who was qualified to deal with Tyrone. That was probably what was happening. Not a massive fire, not a supervolcano, just someone who had some way of tracking them and good enough mobility that they couldn’t be evaded with good intuition alone. Someone who would have a computer on them and wouldn’t be fooled by simple illusions.

Renee still had no idea how, exactly, she was supposed to deal with this, but combed through the woods with her farsight anyway, figuring that if she could at least see the threat she might be able to better assess the situation.

The group continued in silence for a ways. No one really felt like talking.

The silence that hung over them wasn’t a comfortable one. The sense of dread that weighed down Vin had spread to everyone, and they were all just waiting to hear the grenade’s pin drop.

And drop it most certainly did.

There was nothing unusual about the patch of thin forest they were traversing through until the trees wavered and disappeared, revealing a clearing with a single short person grinning ahead of them.

The group stopped suddenly, with Renee putting herself in front of the other two.

Looking around, she noticed people with guns pointed towards them on the cliffs to either side.

“You didn’t think you were the only one that could make illusions, did you?” the person said. Their skin was dark and their white hair reached just past the small of their back. They were dressed very formally, in well-fitting clothing that was far too clean for someone trekking through the forest to be wearing.

“Oh, you really shouldn’t look so shocked, dear.” Their voice was high pitched and sounded sort of like someone attempting to talk with a German accent after having one described secondhand to them, which happened to be exactly what a modern Australian accent sounded like.

“You didn’t actually think that a few simple illusions and a bit of luck could keep you from me, did you? Now, that’s just darling? ” they said, clapping their hands together. “Anyways, let’s get on with things, shall we?”

A magicore floated to their hands from behind them. It was a smooth orb, covered with yellow lines of light that danced around at the magi’s touch. The magi made a few sweeping gestures, strumming the magicore as their hands moved around it, and then flicked both their wrists, causing a bright yellow light to shoot away from them at Charlie.

Charlie barely had time to register the light before it hit zir, lifting zir off the ground and illuminating zir body in a blinding flash. This only lasted a moment before ze fell out of the air and consciousness.

Alcor managed to land in a manner that didn’t even vaguely resemble elegant, but at least didn’t hurt the body at all.

“So you cannot be sedated, such a shame,” they said. “I take it that now I’m dealing you and not some little child?”

“I’m amazed you still have the resources left to bother with us.”

“Oh, they paid me in advance darling; I couldn’t care less about what happens to them.”

“You might want to double check that that transfer actually went through.”

“Who cares . What matters is that this is you! Oh, how exciting this all is. I’ve been waiting for years for this moment, you know. Admittedly, this is not quite how I saw this encounter going, but you can’t let a few details get you down, am I right?”

Alcor stared at the magi.

“Let’s do introductions, shall we? Not that you need any introductions, your reputation precedes you, but I’m afraid mine does not. At least, not in your current state. Normally I imagine you have no need for introductions at all. Must make social encounters very convenient. Anyway, I’m Magi Briana Hurtzog, she/her, at your service. Well, not at your service per say, but you know what I mean.”

“Am I supposed to be pleased to meet you or something?” Alcor all but snarled. “Because I really cannot fully encapsulate how much that is not the case.”

“How could you say such a thing? This scar goes deep into my heart.” She dramatically covered her heart with a hand. “Anyways you should come with me and we can go get you out of that ridiculous body.”

“And then what?” Alcor crossed Charlie’s arms.

“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “What happens next is not exactly in your favor. But it will be a great learning opportunity for everybody involved and I think we can all agree that that is what really matters.”

“And what about the kids?” Alcor asked. “What happens to them?”

“What? Them? I don’t care about them . They can go back to prancing through the woods or whatever it is that they were doing. I’m not their babysitter.” She waved her hand absently. “That said, if you don’t come along nicely, well, I don’t care about them. Or specifically what will happen to them. What all of these armed guards will do to them. I’m going to have them killed is what I’m saying here.”

“No, I got that.”

“Oh good. One can never be sure.”

“I’m many things, but a moron isn’t one of them,” he said dryly.

“Some people have trouble with the subtext, darling.” She spread her fingers wide. “There is no shame in that.”

“Do you people have any tricks up your sleeve besides threatening children?”

“Oh!” Her face lit up. “I could also threaten you directly if you’d prefer.”

Briana’s hands spun around her magicore, tiny bolts of electricity reaching between it and her fingers.

She snapped, pointing at Alcor.

It was like being slammed into a wall. Pain - and not the interesting kind - blossomed through his very being. The world spun. He stumbled backwards, or maybe just thought he did because the body didn’t seem to actually change position.

“Not very pleasant, I hope? Just a little something I’ve been working on in my spare time. That was roughly one percent of what it’s capable of. If my calculations are correct I imagine that at full power it would be capable of rendering you incapacitated for a number of hours.”

“Why the hell didn’t you start with that?” he growled.

“Language, darling. There are children about. As for your question, I was hoping we could keep this civil and not have to resort to threats of torture.”

“So instead you open with threats of child murder.”

“Exactly, darling. Now I think we’ve wasted enough time with all of this chitter chatter. Shall we be going, or are you going to make things unnecessarily difficult?”

Renee looked around. She was not going to panic this time. There was a way out, she knew that. She just had to find it. She was smart. Clever. She could do this. Would do this.

Breathe in

Breathe out

Alcor was still talking, having taken a few steps towards the magi. It was hard to say if he had a plan or was just testing the waters. She had to assume that he didn’t have a plan. Worst case scenario, there would be redundancy. Who was she kidding, worst case scenario they were all going to BE FINE. This was Fine. She just needed a plan.

Breathe in

She was fine.

Vin was casually looking at the gunpeople periodically spaced around the cliff’s edge.

Breathe out.

Good. Now go talk to Vin.

“How are you so calm about all this?” Renee whispered, more harshly than she intended. It wasn’t what she intended to say, but upon reflection she couldn’t figure out what she meant to say outside of ‘something else’.

“What?” he replied. “It’s not like we were going to remain valuable assets forever. This was pretty inevitable.”

“Not it isn’t! We’ve gotten so far. Their building is on fire, for Pete’s sake. We just need to find a way out, it’s going to be okay. We are going to be okay.”

Breathe.

“Hey Renee?” Vin said.

“What?”

“I just wanted to say, thanks for everything. These last few days,” he laughed, “okay, these last few days have been a fucking shitshow, but it’s a shitshow that I’m really glad I got the opportunity to experience. I never would have gotten out of there on my own. If it wasn’t for you... I didn’t really have any memories from before, you know, so just having this time out here, having gotten to see and do all this shit before I die… It means a lot to me.”

“Vin, stop talking like that, we’re going to be fine -”

“This is fine,” he shrugged. “Well, it’s kinda bullshit that they are going to kill you too. I’m sorry I can’t help you there; someone as great as you really does deserve better.”

“Vin please, no one is going to die. We just need a plan.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the realistic one? We’ve seen way too much. The only reason we aren’t dead yet is they want to make sure that Tyrone’s pacified first so he doesn’t get mad enough to explode Charlie and burninate everyone.”

“But hey!” He beamed. “Look on the bright side. This is by far the coolest thing to ever happen to us, and I don’t know about you but I’ve been dying to participate in something this dramatic.”

“How can you -” She shook her head. “No. We are going to get out of this alive. We just… can’t you feel anything about the future? There has to be something.”

“Nah. I ain’t got shit right now.”

“Please! You have to have something. Anything! It just... even some little random impulse.”

“Hey, you know that I can’t control this shit.” He laughed completely mirthlessly. “And I really don’t think you want me to follow my impulses right now. Not really any need to rush it at this point, anyway.”

“Vin come on, there’s something. There has to be something. What about what they were having you do back at the lab? You had some amount of control over that, didn’t you?”

“Renee! I can’t just…”

“You haven’t even tried! You’ve said yourself that you don’t know how this works, the extents of your capabilities!”

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes and then closed them. “Look, I’m making my best constipated face while wishing really hard on -”

His eyes went wide, pupils constricted to nothing.

“Oh fuck.”

The scar along his forehead shot open, his third eye dilated to blackness.

Vin crumpled.

Collapsed.

Renee froze. Balled her hands, nails drawing blood. Reached out, grabbing, pulling him to her chest.

“I’m so sorry. Fuck I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry. Please say something. Please be okay. You have to be okay.”

She was shaking. Holding him. Tighter, probably, than was wise. Lower torso curling in on itself, pushing and flipping. Slamming against the ground. Her eyes raced around, looking for answers, a way out, something, anything . For.

The gunpeople were alarmed by something, shuffling around, taking aim. Had she made too large of a scene? She wrapped herself around Vin as much as she could. She had a lot of body mass; she could probably take a shot or two, right?

She again looked for any sort of out. For a sign. For a plan.

She could… she could probably project pain with her illusions. Pain was a sensory thing.

That would have to make aiming harder, right?

The gunpeople weren’t aiming at her and Vin. They were focused farther away.

At Charlie.

No.

At Tyrone.

He was next to the magi.

When did that happen?

He didn’t seem to notice the guns. He didn’t seem to notice the danger he was in.

That he was putting Charlie in.

The magi was weaving her arm through the air, casting some spell.

Tyrone was so close. He took the arm.

The gun people were going to-

Renee closed her eyes, keeping the location of the gunpeople in her mind.

She thought about needles. Of scalpels. Of being huddled on a bed too small for her as something ripped through her brain, through her insides.

Screams broke her concentration. The people with guns were screaming.

She was doing that. Oh god that was her she -

No.

She was doing this. This was the plan now. They were screaming and she had to do this.

The magi pulled her arm back.

“Really?” she said. “I think I can manage to handle all the might and physical prowess of an overweight child, darling.”

He was smiling. Baring teeth. Lips stretched farther than they should.

He pushed his claws into her arm. Through the thick fingers and useless nails of the body that contained him. He pushed , sinking into her arm, sinking past her skin, past her flesh, past her bones, into Her.

She realized what he was doing. All her cockiness evaporated in an instant, confidence replaced by desperate anger.

She yanked her arm back, shouting with no words but purely emotion.

Her skin, her flesh, her bones: they easily pulled out of the weak and bloody grip of the child.

His claws were still gripping her Arm, though.

And without her Arm, her skin, flesh, and bones fell limp at her shoulder.

Alcor.

Pulled.

She was screaming. She was panic. She was terror. The emotions filled Alcor, rushing through him like fire. It had been far too long since he had done anything like this. It had been far too long since he let himself do anything fun .

She was writhing in agony, her scream becoming the air he breathed. She genuinely seemed to think that somehow, with the right combination of movements and actions, she could possibly get out of this.

Watching her final sliver of hope die was hilarious.

Her soul was everything. Even the small amount he consumed through his grip was freedom from the tight compressed confinement that he hadn’t realized he’d been feeling. Energy rushed through him as a wave, giddy lightning that tingled and vibrated and pushed out all the stress and frustration and utter bullshit of the past. It was taking a beautiful, intricate mechanism and slamming it on the ground, watching it shatter into something new and even more beautiful. It was jumping on a table in a crowd and screaming . It was overturning a picnic table into a river. It was standing up and decking someone after years of silent discomfort. It was freedom, true freedom. It was the promise that this moment could be truly wonderful if you would just let it.

Who cared what these stupid mortals had been trying to do? He was Alcor! He was the single strongest entity in the whole dimension! They only existed because he permitted it, because they were entertaining. Why should he give a fuck about what ridiculous things they did to each other? About what they did on their comically absurd destiny to ensure their own destruction. Why the fuck had he let any of their petty bullshit tie him down?

He was laughing. He was hysterical. Why wouldn’t he be? What did he care if his body ran out of air? It wasn’t like he needed it.

WRONG.

He stopped, smile fading from his face. The magi reduced to a twitching pile of limbs, her soul frozen in his firm grasp.

Oh. that was right. He cared. Him with his stupid boring killjoy self.

He was Alcor. He was the twin star, the brother, the gruncle, and he was strong enough to ignore the temptation of one measly soul.

One really, really tasty soul. That was right there. Bright. Beautiful. Perfect in every way, really. Tingly and light and -

There would be other souls. Better ones.

But there was also this soul right here, and really the future wasn’t real anyway, so…

That would hurt Charlie. The body was absolutely not going to survive having that much energy going through it.

Ze was already dying, though. Would it really be worth it to waste such a wonderful opportunity if ze was just going to die anyway ? Really, who cared about this one person?

Him. He cared. He absolutely cared. He pushed the soul away from his - from Charlie’s body, a tiny spark flickering from where he rejected the energy he already absorbed from it.

He stared at the cyan flame.

Well now.

It wasn’t much of a consolation prize, but if it worked it would be absolutely hilarious.

Charlie’s face resumed its unnatural grin.

He pushed, ever so gently, on the soul. Its energy was already connected to him so it really should take no effort at all to…

The soul exploded in brilliant fire, racing through the valley with the slightest command. Up the cliffs it raced, searing through the rocks, silicon rich sediments melting into hard and rough glass. It was at the top in an instant. At the gunpeople, who were for some reason a disorganized mess, in an instant. It burned -

That would be crossing a line, wouldn’t it.

It melted their guns. And burned their clothes off. People didn’t need clothes to survive. Or hair.

The remaining energy of the soul roared around him like a maelstorm. It was screaming. The tiny bond that connected it to him was a dagger lancing through him - the real him - not the body he wore. It was wonderfully satisfying and delightfully real in a way most magic just wasn’t and -

TYRONE!

Alcor froze, confused, at the sound that echoed around his mind. Tyrone. That meant something to him, right? He looked away from the beautiful storm of fire that danced around him for a source of the interruption.

There was a person close by. The cloud of fear around them was so thick it was almost impossible to see them through it.

“That’s enough,” they (Renee Iris Etheridge, ~16.853 years old, dead in - ) said.

This mortal was trying to tell him what to do.

Something was wrong. Obviously. He was going to have to teach her a lesson.

No.

Something else was wrong.

He knew the exact time and place of Renee’s death.

His omniscience was trickling in.

His omniscience was trickling through.

Charlie's dreamscape wasn’t strong enough anymore.

He had forgotten about Charlie.

A quick internal check revealed that Charlie was still around, but ze felt faint. Which was entirely his fault. He had forgotten about Charlie. He -

“That’s enough, ” Renee said, surprisingly firmly for how much fear swirled around her. “They aren’t a threat anymore. You can let that go.”

For a moment Alcor had no idea what she was talking about. Then he followed her gaze upward, at the soul that he had entrapped.

He stared at the spinning vortex of soul above him. It was screaming just like Henry had screamed. He couldn’t - wouldn’t - do that. Even if the person did deserve it. Wasn’t going to make it beg for the mercy of centuries of digestion.

He.

He let go of the soul. Watched it practically explode in order to dissipate away. Felt its screams fade.

He was going to fucking slaughter some cults when this was all over.

He let Charlie’s body relax.

Renee was curled up around Vin staring wide eyed at Alcor. She was trembling slightly, clutching Vin like a lifesaver.

Vin didn’t look well.

“What was that?” Renee asked, leaning away from Alcor, putting the bulk of herself between them. “I could feel that with senses I can’t even… What was that?”

He paused. There was definitely a wrong answer here.

“As you know, living organisms, especially those with higher levels of cognizance, produce significant amounts of magical energy from their emotions and intent. I just realized that this was an external source of power I could use without channeling it through Charlie’s body.”

“Was that her soul ?” Renee pushed herself a titch farther away from the demon.

“Yes.”

“What’s going to happen to it now?”

“It’s going to need a little time to regenerate the energy I burned,” Alcor said. “But it should reincarnate just like any other soul removed from its body.”

“You’re not a ghost, are you,” she said quietly.

“I never claimed to be one.”

“What are you?

He smiled. “I think that you are a very smart girl with a lot of evidence at her disposal and probably shouldn’t ask questions when you don’t want to know the answer.”

She kept looking at him.

“Now, do you have the first aid kit that Marcus gave us? I fucked up Charlie’s hand pretty bad back there.” Which was really putting it mildly. Charlie's right palm, where Alcor had pushed through, resembled a failed attempt to cook hamburger more than it did a hand. The skin was badly and unevenly torn, there was uneven charring all over, and it was so bloody that assessing the extent of the damage was impossible.

“Right,” she said, uncurling to get access to her bag. “Right.”

Renee shifted through the contents of her pack. She had thought that she had put things away neatly, but the inside was a mess.

“Why are you helping us?” she asked, looking up.

“Because I want to. Which is pretty much the reason I do anything, really.”

She pulled the first aid pack out of the mess. “That is not... reassuring.”

Alcor sat down and put the first aid kit in Charlie’s lap, picking though it. “It isn’t exactly new information. I’ve been pretty open about the fact that I could leave at any time so long as I didn’t mind killing Charlie.”

“I know that, but I guess I hadn’t really internalized it.” She watched as Alcor cleaned the wound. “Despite what you said, it has felt like you were stuck in the same boat as the rest of us. But you’re only here as long as you want to be. I’ll admit, it makes me nervous. That you might stop wanting to help us. That you could just get tired of all this and leave, taking Charlie’s life with you.”

“I’m not willing to kill Charlie. That isn’t likely to change.” He covered Charlie’s hand with a skin growth spray. “And I’m confident that the friend I contacted will be able to help. Not just with Charlie and my thing, but with getting all of us past this. I may not be stuck here, but I am still in the same boat as you - and we’re going to hit shore soon. Speaking of which -”

Alcor walked over to Magi Briana’s body. Body being the key word - it was not a corpse. One might assume that a body, upon having its soul violently ripped out, might die. One would be wrong. A body doesn’t need a soul to survive. A body needs a soul to be a person. From the body formerly belonging to Magi Briana’s perspective, all that had happened over the past few minutes was that a child gripped its arm with all the strength that a child doesn’t have and it suddenly found itself in the market for a new a tenant. The biohazardous blood from Charlie’s wound was closer to being a threat to the body than anything Alcor had intentionally done.

The body didn’t react to Alcor’s approach. Giving a shit about a literal demon coming towards you while looking like it wants something was the business of a person, which was no longer the body’s problem as of a minute ago.

Alcor took the headset from the body. It, unsurprisingly, did not resist. It didn’t do anything. Soulless bodies were boring .

“Are you seriously leaving Charlie’s hand like that?” Renee asked before Alcor could say anything into the microphone. “You can’t just spray skin growth formula on tissue that’s that badly damaged. You need to treat the injury first.”

“Do you know how to treat something this bad?” Alcor asked.

“When it’s this bad is when you seek medical attention.” She shook her head. “Actually, you should go to a doctor even if it’s a lot better than this. But I can at least make a dressing for it, make sure it stays moist. Let me see it.”

She carefully set Vin down next to her.

Alcor offered her the hand, which she took and started cleaning more thoroughly.

“Hey kid,” Alcor said into the microphone.

The headset was an old fashioned two way radio. It was specifically designed to only use one frequency. The computer on it was so simple that calling it a computer was like calling chihuahua an apex predator. From a logical standpoint, there should be no way it could be infected by a computer virus, as there was really nothing to infect. The Alcor Virus realized this, decided that he didn’t much care for that line of logic, and infected it anyway.

“Hey Dad,” the virus said. “Guess who has no thumbs and fucked up?”

“What happened?”

“They figured out it was me almost as soon as I started doing anything,” the virus said. “Which isn’t surprising; I think they were expecting me. Anyway the long and short of it is they destroyed the servers that had the information you need before I could get it.”

Alcor pinched the bridge of Charlie's nose with zir good hand. “I’m starting to think that they want me to kill them in the most gruesome way possible.”

“It’s not entirely lost, though: I have located a backup. Unfortunately, my ability to access it depends on the cooperation of a human person. I think I should be able to make it work, though.”

“We should plan for what happens if you can’t.”

“For sure. What chance of success do you think you’d have of fixing this on your own?”

“Fairly low.” Alcor sighed. “We’ve determined they’ve incorporated zir skin into the binding ritual but we don't know any details about what they did besides that. If we actually had the skin things might be easier, but we don’t.”

“Why don’t you go get it?”

Alcor raised Charlie’s eyebrows. “You’re suggesting we go back?”

“Why not? Thanks to me and the literal fire the place is pretty well cleared out.”

“Right. Renee mentioned that earlier. Why exactly was the place on fire?”

“They started it,” the Alcor Virus said. “Some moron wanted to be very sure I couldn’t get at those files, I guess. And they weren’t very careful about the surroundings. It’s died down by now, but the combination of that and what I was doing mean that the place is pretty empty now.”

“And you can make sure it stays that way?”

“I pretty much tripped every alarm they had. And since they have no way of knowing if I just tripped an alarm or actually broke something, releasing dangerous quantities of ionizing radiation or carbon monoxide or one of the other half dozen things they were monitoring, it’s going to take more than a day or two for them to determine if it’s safe to actually enter the place. Assuming that they can even get there, which I plan on making hard for them. Did you know that it takes about forty miles for the single road leading to the facility to connect with anything?”

Alcor smiled. “What are you planning on doing with it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I was thinking of taking control of a forklift and stacking some cars on top of each other to make a pileup. There’s also a logging company nearby so it might be easier to just pile some trees on the road, but that’s less fun.”

“Those both sound like they’d work just fine.”

“There’s also a satellite launch happening two states over in a few hours. I’m pretty sure I could hijack the rocket and crash it into the street. They specifically design them to not turn around mid air and crash into the ground, so getting it to do that with any precision would be a challenge, but where’s the fun in life without a little challenge?”

Alcor shook Charlie’s head slightly. “That sounds like it would likely generate more attention then we would want.”

“You’re probably right - but consider - I would get to hack and crash a rocket for the greater good.”

“Do whatever you think is best, and have your fun, just make sure it works. I don’t want another molasses incident here.”

“In my defense,” the Alcor Virus said, “the molasses incident was hilarious.”

“No one is questioning the hilarity of the incident,” Alcor clarified. “I’m just pointing out that it didn’t accomplish what we wanted in the slightest.”

“Which did sort of make the whole thing even more funny.”

“That may be true,” Alcor said with a smile. “But we really can’t afford that sort of mishap right now. Charlie’s life is very much on the line, and if people get through on that road, Vin and Renee are in danger as well.”

“I suppose I could find a different reason to crash a rocket…”

“Do you really need a reason?”

“It’s more funny that way.”

“Well let me know when you’ve blocked that road off, alright?” Alcor said. “I should bring Renee back into the loop.”

“Will do,” the virus said. “It will probably be a little, there’s nothing very close that I can infect.”

“I take it your friend didn’t get the ritual diagram,” Renee said, gently wrapping a bandage around Charlie’s hand.

“No,” Alcor sighed. “They destroyed the digital data before he could. He’s located a backup but will need to get someone to cooperate with him in order to get it.”

“And I’m sure he’s just great at getting people to cooperate with him.”

“It really will depend on what sort of person has backup. If it’s the same person that decided that the correct solution for a data breach was to set a server on fire, he’s going to have to be careful. If it’s a more reasonable person… well, he has a lot he can offer a reasonable person.”

“And in the meantime you’re suggesting we go back,” Renee stated.

“We need Charlie’s skin,” Alcor said. “The facility is going to be a better place to do a ritual than anywhere else in this woods. There also might be physical documentation on the ritual they used that my friend couldn’t access. The place is empty right now, and my friend is going to block the road ensuring it stays that way, so it should be safe.”

“I’m not going to say you’re wrong, but I don’t like it.” Renee hugged her arms tightly to her chest. “I never want to go back to that awful place.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Alcor pointed out. “I can probably manage on my own at this point.”

“I don’t want to abandon Charlie,” Renee said resolutely. “And if there are people still there, you’ll need my illusions.”

“I still have my fire.”

“How much more fire can you produce without further aggravating Charlie's condition?” Renee asked. “Especially after that stunt you just pulled?”

Alcor didn’t respond, thinking about how loose the bond between him and Charlie felt. Any fire at all was probably a bad idea.

“If there is anyone left, you’ll need my illusions,” she said firmly.

“I’m certainly not going to argue against help,” Alcor said. “I just don’t want you to feel pressured into doing something you don’t want to do.”

She picked up Vin again. “My anxiety will eat me alive if I stay back while you two go ahead. I’ll feel better doing something, even if it’s largely unnecessary, than I will if I do nothing. Even if that means going back.”

“Alright then,” Alcor said. “Let’s get on with it. We should see if there’s a way up the cliffs. They probably have some kind of vehicle that we could use, or at least tracks we could follow.”

They walked along the cliff face, looking for a path.

“In case I missed saying it before, thank you for earlier,” Alcor said.

“For what?”

“For stopping me.” Alcor paused before continuing. “If I had been left to my own devices… I’m not sure Charlie would have survived.”

“It was nothing,” Renee said, avoiding Alcor’s gaze.

“It was extraordinary. You were terrified, I was putting on what was likely the single greatest demonstration of destructive power you had ever seen, you had no idea how I would react, and you drew attention to yourself to call me out anyway.”

“Someone had to do something, and I didn’t think the either the dead woman or the two unconscious people were like going to seize the initiative.”

“Speaking of which, what happened to Vin anyway?”

Renee’s gaze dropped. “He’ll be fine in an hour or two. He tried to find a way out and ended up looking too far forward. It’s my fault; I shouldn’t have pushed him after he said that he didn’t have any intuition on what to do next. I knew that this is what happens when he tries to control his abilities and I told him to do it anyway. I guess I thought that if the situation was dire enough adrenaline might get him through it? Or more likely I wasn’t thinking about what the consequences would be for him at all, only about what I wanted.”

“What you wanted was for all of us to get out alive,” Alcor said gently. “You didn’t know I was capable of doing what I did. There was a chance that Vin could have been the straw to tip the scales in our favor, and you acted on that chance. If the only options you know about are to risk putting Vin through this or to die, risking this is the right choice.”

“But was it really my choice to make?” Renee asked. “I’m not the one who got hurt.”

“He was presumably also aware of what happens when he pushes himself and tried it anyway. He made just as much of a choice as you did.”

“I don’t think he was actually trying to look into the future, though.” Renee was slithering slowly. “He was being really flippant about it, and he seemed genuinely surprised when his third eye opened.”

“It is possible that he only did it because of you. That doesn’t mean you made a bad choice.”

“He seemed so content,” Renee said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so relaxed and peaceful as he was when he was sure that he was going to die.”

“Renee,” Alcor said. “Vin’s severely depressed. His relationship with death is badly skewed.”

“Is it really our place to say that it’s a bad end for him, though?” Renee said quietly. “It’s what he wants. It feel selfish to say that he has to live because I want him to.”

Alcor took a deep breath before speaking. “Look, I know you feel like a shitty person who selfishly hurt her friend, but a) you’re not and b) even if you were that doesn’t mean that you’re wrong about everything. Yes, Vin wants to die. Vin also wants to be eating chocolate at all times. If you feel comfortable denying his desire to constantly consume confectionaries you should feel fine denying his desire to die. He’s sick, and unless things worked very differently at the facility than I’m assuming they did, he’s completely untreated and spent most of his life in a triggering situation. I’m not going to say that death is never a solution - there is a reason assisted suicide is a thing - but death is a very final solution. It’s what you do when nothing else works, when you’ve expended all your options, the pain is unbearable and can’t be stopped. It’s not what you do when you haven’t even tried a single method of treatment.”

“But he’s not going to be able to get treated!” Renee cried. “We can’t even go to a farm in the middle of the night without disguising our faces; we’re not going to be able to walk into a psychiatrist’s office, assuming we could even find someone who does in-person visitations.”

“Sure you will. Remember we aren’t alone anymore; I brought someone else into it. This could go very public if we want it to. Or we could shut it down quietly and blackmail them into leaving you alone. Either way, you’re not going to spend the rest of your life hiding in the woods. Unless you want to, of course, in which case I’m not going to stop you. Live the dream.”

“You’re saying we can put this whole ordeal behind us, just like that?” Renee said.

“You don’t sound especially excited about the prospect.”

She shifted her grip on Vin. “On top of the fact that I don’t think I can say with any degree of sincerity that I believe you, it feels wrong. It’s too easy; there’s too many places for it to go astray.”

“There are probably considerably fewer moving parts than you’re assuming.” He smiled. “I can pretty much guarantee that if we get through this alive I’ll be able to clean your records.”

“At what cost?” Renee asked. “What organization would be pulling these strings and what guarantee do we have that they aren’t going to want to hold this favor over us?”

Alcor laughed. “There isn’t a nefarious organization. There’s really just the two of us, and you’re already up to your ears in my crap already.”

Renee cocked an eyebrow. “There’s just two of you and you’re confident that you can both make this go public and give us our lives back?”

“Well,” Alcor said, “it’s mostly just him, if I’m being entirely honest. But he’s pulled much bigger stunts than this before.”

Renee frowned. “Unless your friend is like the Alcor Virus or -”

“Wow,” Alcor interrupted. “That was a really good guess.”

“What?”

Alcor was grinning widely. “I didn’t think you’d figure that out until you two were talking.”

“What‽” Renee was looking around, as if she could find a more sensical universe hiding behind a tree.

“But you got it nigh instantaneously.”

She focused on him with a disbelieving stare. “Are you trying to tell me you are friends with the Alcor Virus?”

“You were the one who suggested it in the first place.”

“I was being facetious!” she cried. “Wait a minute, yesterday you said - did you program the Alcor Virus ???”

Alcor just grinned.

“Just to be clear,” she said, “we are referring to the program that took over the entire world's nuclear arsenal and threatened to use them if a series of increasingly asinine demands weren’t met?”

“Yeah,” Alcor said dreamily. “That was a good time. We managed to get global nuclear disarmament in under a day.”

“You’re telling me the goal of the Tretalelin Incident was disarmament?”

Alcor waggled Charlie’s good hand. “About eighty percent of it was about disarmament, twenty percent was just about fucking with the global powers.”

“Well, that worked out great in the long run.”

“We had a good two centuries of zero active nuclear arsenals. I would say that’s pretty decent for a day’s work.”

Renee shook her head. “So our lives are now in the metaphorical hands of one of the most infamously unpredictable and trollish entities ever. How far we’ve come.”

“Oh he won’t do anything to seriously fuck with you if I ask him not to.”

She glared. “Are you actually planning on asking him not to, though?”

Alcor put up a finger. “That’s a very good question.”

“That is not an answer.”

Alcor put Charlie’s palms up. “Where’s the fun in life if you don’t have a surprise every once in awhile?”

“I’m starting to get the feeling that we have very different ideas about what fun is.”

“I bet Vin would agree with me,” Alcor said. “He has a sense of humor.”

“Vin doesn’t take the future seriously because he doesn’t believe he’ll live to see it. Having him on your side here isn’t doing you any favors.”

“You’re just jealous that it’s two to one.”

She rolled her eyes. “I bet Charlie would be on my side.”

“Well, that’s just because Charlie’s a square.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“That’s because you’re also a square.” Alcor stopped and pointed at a bit of the cliff. “Oh, hey, this looks pretty trampled. Wanna try ascending here?”

The trampled path was at a gentler incline than the cliff around it. It was still pretty steep, certainly steeper than Renee would like to scale while carrying Vin, but it looked manageable enough.

Renee nodded.

As they climbed Renee turned to Alcor. “I can’t think of anything that can rip out the soul of a living, non-consenting person.”

“I normally wouldn’t be able to. But I’ve done practically nothing these past few days but gather my energy up. I could do a lot right now, or at least I could before I went and did the thing.”

“Just how much energy are you absorbing?” Renee asked, looking at Alcor like he was some kind of large wild carnivore. “The amount of energy it would take to do that is absurd.”

“Do you know how much energy it takes to burn through the dreamscape of something with the cognitive strength of a selkie? It’s not a small number.”

“I suppose not.”

“It’s actually sort of lucky that I ended up wrecking zir hand,” Alcor said. “It takes a lot more energy to achieve a physical effect than it does to do things in the mindscape. If I hadn’t had so much of the energy I was channeling through zir push through zir physical body... Things could have been very bad.”

“Well, that sure is something.”

They picked their way up the cliff side.

“So,” Renee said. “If I’m to believe the words of our former captors, you’ve killed enough to gain a reputation for it.”

“I’m not sure why you would trust anything those people have said, but yes, I have,” Alcor said. “What about it?”

“Do you,” she paused. “Do you feel guilty about that?”

“Sometimes.”

Alcor reached the cliff’s top and extended Charlie’s uninjured hand down to Renee.

“Sometimes?” she said, taking it.

“Sometimes,” he repeated, helping her up. “Sometimes I’m not really in a place where I can feel guilt. Sometimes I feel fully justified in my actions. Sometimes the weight of everything I’ve done is completely immobilizing.”

“Do you feel guilty about it currently?”

“Some of it,” he said. “Most of it. Some of it feels pretty justified, though.”

“Like the magi just now?”

“Yes. That was definitely an unusual occurrence, but I’m not going to lose any metaphorical sleep over killing someone who was prepared to murder kids to use me as a science project,” Alcor said. “And although the circumstance surrounding the encounter was obviously unique, and the ending was rather extraordinary, there wasn’t anything too special about her, really.

“The way my existence works…” Alcor continued. “I see the worst side of people. I see a lot of the worst side of people. And even though I also deal with perfectly decent people, when you constantly see the extent of what horrors people are capable of… It’s a fight to keep believing that people are worth grieving over. That I should feel guilty at all. And sometimes, it’s a losing battle. And sometimes, it’s too hard and I just isolate myself.”

“So why do you care, then? Why bother fighting just so you can feel bad about what you’ve done?”

“Because,” Alcor said slowly, “I like people. Admittedly, not always in a healthy way, or a way that’s good for the people involved, but I pretty much always like people. The world would be awfully boring without them. And I want to be liked back, to deserve to be liked.”

“At least, sometimes you do?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I really don’t care what anyone else thinks of me. But I kind of hate that part of me.” He laughed without any humor whatsoever. “Of course, I also hate that I hate that, hate that I feel the need to get validation from others, hate how weak and pathetic that is. And then I hate that I feel that way and... I’m a bit of a mess, honestly.”

“Have you ever considered therapy?” Renee asked. “You sound like you could really use it.”

“Hah! Yeah that would go great. ‘Yes, hello, you can call me Tyrone, I’m a hundred times your age, good with kids, and I’ve almost certainly killed more people than you’ve ever met’.” He sighed. “Actually I have tried therapy before. It didn’t go great. There’s too much that I just can’t tell someone I don’t know that well, and at the end of the day, therapy is about changing what you can and accepting what’s left and I can’t do that. I can’t change what I am. I want to - god do I want to - but it’s too much a part of me. And I don’t want to accept it - I don’t want to be okay with doing terrible things because that’s when I do even worse things.”

“Just how many people have you killed here?”

“I haven’t exactly been running a tally. It’s not a small number though, I can tell you that much.” He paused. “Most of it was an accident though, for what little that’s worth.”

“How do you accidentally kill more people than you can count? Are you secretly a politician or something?”

“No, I didn’t poison a water supply or whatever. I was a dumb angry kid and I threw a hissy fit with more collateral damage than I realized was possible. I didn’t know my own strength at that point, and a whole lot of innocent people paid the price.”

“That sounds terrible. I’m sorry,” she said, unsure how else to respond.

“It was,” Alcor said, pointedly ignoring the part of him that found it hilarious.

The silence that settled over the two was like an especially itchy blanket on a hot summer night.

Renee focused on picking her way through the underbrush. The path was well trampled, making it much easier to traverse than the path leading to the encounter had been. She kind of wished it was harder, that it would demand more of her attention. As it was, it left her with little to do mentally other than contemplate everything she just learned, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to do that just yet. She just wished she had some sort of distraction.

As if on a cue, Alcor stopped in front of her.

“Well, this isn’t what I had in mind, but it will probably do,” he said.

Renee lifted herself up a little to see over Charlie’s frame. Ahead of them, scattered around the area’s sparse trees, was a pack of parked motorcycles. They looked relatively new, despite the layer of dirt that coated them. That was about all Renee could assess from them, as she knew about as much about motorcycles as she did how to feel about Tyrone, which was an almost impressive amount of ignorance to have about a relatively common object.

Renee slithered about the area, getting a more solid idea about what was there. The motorcycles were the only things she could see that were left behind. There was nothing she could see that could practically transport something her size.

“They really weren’t planning on taking Vin and me back, were they?” she asked.

“Doesn’t look like it, no.”

“He was right,” she said. “They were planning on killing us.”

“Probably. I could have told you some very dangerous things by now.”

Alcor walked up to one of the motorcycles. It was still on: apparently they didn’t expect the encounter to last very long. Which, Alcor supposed, wasn’t technically an inaccurate assumption.

Experimentally, he got on one. It was a little large for Charlie’s body, but not unworkably so.

"Think you can get on one of these?"

"You want me to ride a motorcycle," Renee said. "What with my zero legs and four meters of torso."

"I was more wondering if you would be physically capable of mounting one. I might be able to tow you," Alcor said. "I want to get back to the facility quickly; getting me out of Charlie as soon as possible is more important than ever."

"Can you even tow a motorcycle with another motorcycle?"

"I don't see why not," Alcor said.

"You can, so long as you have a towline," the Alcor Virus said in Alcor’s ear. "There should be one in the repair kit in the storage area under the seat."

Alcor shuffled through the storage area’s contents. It seemed to be mostly standardized stuff, but there was a small jar that contained a dead dragonfly and a centipede. The repair kit was easy to find; it was a neatly labeled box that took up a majority of the space.

"Is this it?" Alcor asked, pulling a strap out of the kit.

"You realize that you left the only camera for miles with the Magi, right? You could have just pulled out an irate alpaca and I wouldn't know so long as it was very quiet."

"Right. It's a thick strap with a Y shaped fork at about one third of its length, around 5 meters long."

"That's it. You're going to want to tie each end of the Y to your footpegs, and lead it around the handlebars and have Renee hold it with her left hand. She's going to be your breaks, which is fun because she’s only going to be able to use the handbrake."

"I think I understand how this works." Alcor started to tie the towline to the footpegs."You willing to try getting on one?"

"Sure. Why not. Have the naga ride a motorcycle," Renee said. "It’s hardly the most absurd thing to happen today."

She slithered up to the nearest bike, pushed her upper torso over the seat, and wrapped her lower torso around it. Her torso drooped along the sides of the bike, with her weight resting on the fenders, pushing them close to the tires. Vin rested somewhat awkwardly between her and the handlebar. She had never been more grateful her friend was so small.

“So how are we going to take this out of park without instantly tipping over?”

“There are stabilizers for low speed maneuvering,” the Alcor Virus said. “I can easily activate them.”

Alcor relayed the virus’ message as he hooked the strap around the front of the bike and looped it around the left handlebar a couple times.

“The handle on the right is your brake,” Alcor said, handing her a helmet. “If we’re going faster than you would like, feel free to use it. You want to keep the towline taunt if possible.”

“Shouldn’t there be two breaks?”

“The other one’s a foot brake.” Alcor mounted his bike. “We’ll go slowly, though; I’m sure we’ll only need the one.”

“This is absolutely going to end with us crashing into a tree, isn’t it?”

“Eh, there’s like, ten bikes here.” Alcor put a helmet on Charlie’s head and prepared to go. “We’ll get it eventually.”

Happy TAUniversery everyone!

The next (and final!) chapter only has ~3000 words written so far, and I’m thinking it’s going to be a longer chapter, so it’ll be awhile. Hopefully not too long though.

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#Transcendence AU #Haunted Fic #My shit #My Fic #Guys I really love Magi Briana.#Like #everytime I read her section I have to stop and take a moment to just appreciate her #Also I cried twice while writing this.

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