#leave this boring and meaningless existence and to join me

[yourbuerokrat2]

Dark!Q song Starkiller by Bear Ghost (https://youtu.be/s9LxdEFGnr4)

Seems like a darker version of Q together with a Continuum that no longer cares about what he does, especially if you take 'Starkiller literally.

What I think shows this song is a version of Q that goes around and dragging other people to his level by bringing out the worst in them and controlling them for awhile till either he gets bored of them or they leave and Q feeling like he never meant anything, because in the end everyone and especially the people he manipulates are nothing but toys to him.

Now, this Q getting an interest in Picard would be interesting.

Because Picard does have a bit of a mean streak, can act immoral and if Q could feel a certain attraction for him and the things he offers coming from Picard he would decide to play his game aagain.

This too could end in a 'an unstoppable force meets an immovable object', because I can't really see that as soon as Picard would see what an even more immoral and sadistic version of Q tries to do that he would let himself be corrupted.

Í mean Q is not dealing with a Dr. Faustus that already secretly craves power and already is a bit rotten on the inside with only needing someone to bring it to light.

Q is also not dealing with someone relatively young or in an identity crises who he could manipulate into seeing him as a guiding hand to take their life into their own hand and do what they want.

Sure, you could take Picards crises after Locutus, but even though Picard was vulnerable, the thought of taking revenge on the Borg would be sweet but I think that his morals and his fears of becoming anything even close to Q would be too big.

Besides, Picard has a good support system and I think that Q clearly wanting to show and bring Picard to the Dark Side would be something the crew would reassure Picard they would never let happen and that he is too much of a good person.

I just think, that perhaps it would be uninteionally funny to have a dark!Q repeatadly try again and again to get Picard to join his dirty and mean games, only to get rejected again and again.

Let's say this version of Q makes up games and tests, where Picard would be forced to do something immoral to save a bunch of people.

Like dude, Picard is already forced to make decisions like that on a regular basis. He wouldn't feel good about it, but together with Troi he would be able to overcome it.

It would be even worse for Q since he would be able to feel that deep down Picard is attracted to him and that despite everything Picard tells him Picard is tempted from time to time

But even if Q would bring up Picard feeling tempted and having him admit it in front of his crew, Picard would tell him that he knows and that it is only human to have feelings of want for power and revenge and atttraction towards something forbidden.

What matter though are not the thougts and feelings, but wether or not one chooses to act on them. And Picard can reassure Q however many times he needs to hear it, that Picard never intends to act on his.

In the end Q could just snap his fingers and make Picard bad, but what Q here is after is the victory of finally getting Picard to see things his way.

Also dark!Q ending up being the one having a crisis, when he actually starts to care about Picard and ends up falling in love/obsession (depending on wether you want this to have a good or a bad ending).

Side Note: If you take away the more evil aspects, what I do find interesting is the obvious need of the singer to control the other. Which I do think is kind of canon between them and I do think that in a more unhealthy interpretaton of their relationship there would be a constant conflict of control and domination (not in a sexual sense just general).

[andy-solo1]

Take The Hint [ Grand Admiral Thrawn x Reader ]

Pairing: One Sided Reader x Grand Admiral Thrawn

Warnings: one sided love / unrequited love, light angst 

Words: 963

- - - - - - - - - 

Your life had been filled with nothing but meaningless boring nothing until you joined the empire. When they came to your homeworld you saw the light at the end of the long dark tunnel your life had been headed down. The empire saved you, and just when you thought life had hit its peak, you met Him. 

Grand Admiral Thrawn, commander of the Chimaera, and your boss. The moment you laid your eyes upon him, you knew your life would never be the same. Everything about him had you completely smitten, and you knew your life could never go back to as it had been before. 

It became the true highlight of your entire existence when you were promoted to become Thrawn’s personal assistant. It meant you worked closely with him every day, and you felt you were growing closer and closer to what your heart desired most. 

His love. 

- - - - - 

“You called for me Grand Admiral?” You asked, slipping into the chiss’ office. Your breath left you as he turned away from his latest piece in his collection, some piece from an ancient temple or something like that. You hadn’t really been listening so much as watching him, studying him, looking for any signs that he would look at you as he looks upon his arts. 

“Yes, I want you to come with me down to the planet to observe for signs of rebellion. Perhaps you will see something I will not.” Thrawn stated and you smiled. Finally, a chance to get to walk around with him without the crew watching your every move. Maybe this could finally be a chance to confess your feelings and for Thrawn to finally realise his own feelings for you.  

“Yes of course sir, happily.” You replied, still smiling cheerfully. Thrawn simply nodded and turned away, and you hovered a few moments more to watch him, ingraining the moment into your mind before leaving to get ready, your excitement building with every step and moment closer to being able to confess. 

Once you’d gotten yourself ready you met Thrawn in the hanger bay. You followed him onto the shuttle that would take you down to the surface below. You sat down next to him, your knee bumping against his and he silently moved a seat over to put space between you. You frowned a bit, heart aching, as the shuttle took off, and the space between you felt as though the whole galaxy stood between you and him, not just a single seat. 

The whole ride down, you were filled with nerves and ideas on how best to tell Thrawn about your feelings. You knew despite the space he put between you, he had to feel the same. He saw you everyday, he knew personal things about you. How could he possibly not feel the same about you?

When the shuttle landed you followed Thrawn off into the small city you’d landed near. Normally Thrawn would never do ventures like this, but the rebels he’d been closely hunting had been spotted in the area, and he wanted to weed them out for himself. Two stormtroopers followed behind you, but at enough of a distance that you quickly forgot their presence. 

“What exactly are we looking for?” You asked, attempting to begin making a conversation. 

“Rebels.” Thrawn replied in a matter of fact tone, a mild look of irritation crossing his features. It felt like a slap to the face, of course that was a stupid question of you to ask. You mentally berate yourself before looking around. It was then you noticed a small poster advertising a local wedding happening soon. 

“Oh look, a couple is getting married here soon.” You said dreamily, picturing yourself going down an aisle to find Thrawn standing there waiting for you. “Isn’t that just sweet?” You asked, looking over at the chiss. 

“Relationships are a complete waste of time. They are fascinating to study to observe the different mating habits of the different species, but from an advantageous point of view, they serve no true purpose.” Thrawn replied, walking past you and the wedding notice you’d been eying. 

“But- but doesn’t marriage and a family, and- and kids- isn’t that a good thing? Something you want? With anyone in particular?”

“No.” He replied curtly, his tone speaking for you to drop the subject. But you could hardly hear him over the sounds of your heart cracking. “Not even with me?” You asked, pleading this time as hot tears pricked the corners of your eyes. This time Thrawn did stop and turned to look at you, his gaze blank. 

“Especially not with you.” He replied. “Now, you may remain here. You are relieved of your duties.” He said, before turning and walking off again. Your tears began to flow freely now and you ran after him, hurrying in front of him and leaning up, placing your lips against his. 

You cried out when hands found your shoulders and shoved you down to the ground. The air left your lungs as you hit the ground, and looked up at him through tear filled eyes. “But- but- I love you” You sobbed. 

“Interesting. I had not seen that as an outcome. How unfortunate for you.” Thrawn replied, examining you as though you were no worse than the rebels he loathed. “Arrest them for treason against me.” He said to the troopers before walking away. 

“THRAWN PLEASE” You screamed as the troopers roughly grabbed you and dragged you to your feet. “Please..” you sobbed “I love you” 

“Take the hint, he doesn’t like you” One Trooper laughed before they began to drag you off to a ship. Your heart shattered in your chest as it felt like the light once more faded from your world.

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Desperate Measures.

Pairing: Yandere!Kaeya/Reader (Genshin Impact).

Word Count: 2.2k.

TW: Kidnapping, Emotional Manipulation, Implied Stalking, and Delusional Mindsets.

Kaeya was a man, distracted.

Distracted. Divided. Not inattentive, but pulled away from his responsibilities by a force he couldn’t name and couldn’t say he cared for, either. He wasn’t a stranger to romantic inclinations — fantasies, sudden flings, slow-burning inclinations that died the moment his attention was called elsewhere. Predictably, the few relationships he allowed himself were short-lived, at best distasterous at worst, but he didn’t have a problem with that. If anything, Kaeya appreciated it. He’d always thought of company as optional, and what little loneliness he was still capable of feeling could be drowned with a generous glass of wine. He wasn’t one to linger. He tried not to overstay his welcome. He’d been sentimental, once, too emotional for his own good, and he’d learned his lesson. He didn’t intend to change.

He didn’t want to change.

And yet, here he was.

Distracted.

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t focus. It was all he could do to look like he might’ve been trying to read the most recent document left on his desk – this one from Jean, a directive for the younger knights or legislation she needed him to review or another vague, important report that he probably would’ve dealt with weeks ago, if he’d been able to concentrate.

He made a half-hearted effort to straighten his back as the door to his office began to open, but Kaeya dropped the act quickly, abandoning it completely by the time he heard the sound of heeled boots against hollow tile, caught a glimpse of a familiar (albeit, rarely used) catalyst, searched for eyes and found the cover of a thin book, instead, your face still buried in your newest novel as you stepped through the threshold, not bothering to knock. It was you. He should’ve known it would be. Who else did he deserve?

You, Lisa’s new assistant. You, the latest addition to the Knights of Favonius. You, his current, infuriating, unshakable fixation.

You, the new recruit who hadn’t paid him so much as a passing glance since your arrival, much to Kaeya’s frustration.

You didn’t look at him. You rarely ever did, but it hurt more than it usually did, today, as you dropped another form onto his desk, letting it replace the greeting you’d forgotten to offer. “Lisa needs you to sign this,” You started, laying out your priorities clearly, a skill Kaeya was beginning to resent. “It’s just next year’s budget. If you don’t want to read it, I think I’ll be able to look the other way.”

He glanced over the rows of numbers, the messy hand-writing, the columns of meaningless gibberish that blended together into a mess of ink and digits, and took your suggestion, scrawling his name across the only blank line. It was a lost cause, especially with you in the room. Especially with your unoccupied hand resting on his desk, your fingertips idly tapping an unsteady rhythm into the wood, and all he could think about was who he’d be willing to kill to feel that hand pressed against his cheek.

He considered asking you, for a moment, giving you an order and hoping you'd absent-mindedly obey. He thought about touching you, or running his fingers through your hair, or pulling you into his lap and mumbling sweet-nothings into your ear until someone else dragged you away.

He thought about a lot of things. Then, he said, “I take it your silence comes at a price?”

“Do I seem that selfish to you?” You were selfish. You had to be selfish. If you weren’t, then surely you would’ve been kind enough to put him out of his misery months ago. “I like helping people. Just remember this when I need a favor from you.”

“I’m sure we could work something more immediate out,” He went on, but you were already starting towards the door, calling the conversation to a close before Kaeya could begin to finish. In the back of his mind, something flared, the urge to catch your wrist, to go after you, to put himself between you and the only exit and refuse to move until you looked at him, but he forced it down, swallowing the temptation before it could eclipse his common sense. He couldn’t be impulsive. He couldn’t make rash decisions. He wasn’t prepared to deal with how difficult that would make things, not now.

Not yet.

“Join me for a drink?” He tried, again, attempting to sound unbothered. Nonchalant, casual, normal. Like he wasn’t itching to burn every book you’d touched. “I know you don’t have anything better to--”

“Another night, Captain.”

And just like that, you were gone, leaving Kaeya’s muttered response to echo through his empty office.

“Of course.”

~

Kaeya was a man, desperate.

Like a starving dog. Like a traveler who hadn’t seen water in thirty days. Like a distraught, distressed, disturbed knight, wandering through a maze of a library, cursing the existence of every shelf that separated him from you. He knew where you'd be. You were a creature of habit, and he’d already had more than enough time to memorize your routine. He’d had enough time to memorize everything about you, as ashamed as he was to admit it. It was a testament to his devotion, to how much time he’d spent trying and failing to win your favor.

It was evidence of how pathetic he’d gotten, over the course of his one-sided pursuit.

You were in your usual spot – tucked into the far corner of the library, perched on the edge of a windowsill, your attention monopolized by the tattered scroll spread across your lap. You were still pouring over it by the time he reached you, slumping against the nearest wall, taking in how brilliantly the muted sunlight looked as it danced across your skin. He didn’t try to hide the way he stared, anymore. He was long past worrying that you’d care enough to notice. Your hair was unkempt, proof that’d you slept in the archives again, if you’d slept at all. Your lips were bleeding, too, the lower one chewed raw and split down the middle, but it might’ve been stranger if they weren’t. It must’ve been a nervous tick, but Kaeya found it cute. Kaeya found it endearing. Kaeya found everything about you endearing, and to the archons, he wanted to see those lips wrapped around his co--

And he hated it. He found everything about you endearing, and he hated it. That was all.

He sighed, the sound airy, exhausted. You didn’t look up, but that was fine. It would’ve only hurt him further if someone as simple as that drew out your concern. “I’m in love with you.”

There was a hum, soft and contemplative. A rather generous response, by your standards. “I’ve noticed.”

“You’re all I think about.” It was an awkward confession, one he’d already used a hundred different times. He didn’t care. He’d use it a hundred more, if he had to. “I’m a wreck. I can barely remember my own name, and some days I can’t even do that. I can’t fight, I can’t eat, I can hardly breathe. Every morning, I wonder what it would be like to wake up to your smile, and every night, I stare at my ceiling and loath myself because I’m not holding you in my arms. For fuck’s sake, just yesterday, I almost kissed Albedo because the chemicals he was working with reminded me of the way your favorite kind of flower smells, and I’m just so fucking desperate, I convinced myself that was the closest I’d ever come to kissing you.”

He was rambling, by the end, panting, yelling, but you only blinked when he was done, once, then twice. Your dull nails bit into the edges of your scroll, but you didn’t seem to mind, nor did you move to roll it up as you finally turned to face him, the confusion written clearly across your expression. “You kissed Albedo?”

“You don’t get it,” He said, and you nodded in agreement. “You don’t fucking get it.”

“I think I do,” You admitted, more earnestly. Your gaze dropped back to the ground, and instantly, Kaeya deflated. “I just… I just don’t think it’d work out, if I’m being honest. I’m still new. I still have to give everyone else a reason to trust me, and I don’t think it’s in my best interest to start a relationship with one of my superiors so early on.” You paused, laughing to yourself, and something in Kaeya’s chest tightened. It was the happiest he’d been since he met you, and he still felt like you’d pushed a sword through his heart and twisted. “But, you don’t really want a relationship, do you? You’re just bored, and you need something to fixate on. I’m the most available option, so...” You trailed off, finishing your sentence with a vague, stilted sweeping gesture. “It’ll be easier for both of us, this way. I like you, Captain, but I don’t like you enough to put myself through that.”

It was all he could do to remember how to open his mouth. Once he did, the words came stumbling out on their own.

“Of course.”

~

Kaeya was a man, determined.

Determined might’ve been the wrong word for it. Too soft, too suggestive, the impression too positive and the meaning too vague. ‘Depraved’ might’ve suited him better, but that was too harsh, too primitive, and he’d like to think he’d been as gentle as anyone could expect him to be, given your stubbornness. He’d tried to be gentle. He’d wanted to be gentle. If he was going to do this to you, he could at least do it gently. You deserved that much, at least.

Or, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t deserve any of this.

He couldn’t really make up his mind, about that.

“Lisa?”

And he was gentle, more so than he had to be. Sure, you were on the floor, bare stone already beginning to chafe at your skin, but the shackles around your wrists were padded, and he’d given you enough slack to sit down, to ball yourself up, to act like it’d never crossed your mind that he’d resort to something so… easily misinterpreted. The blindfold was, similarly, an act of mercy. You’d panic if you woke up like this, chained to a wall in someone else’s cellar, and Kaeya didn’t want that. You needed time, and he could give you that. He would give you that. Even if it pained him to stay at arm’s length.

“Amber?”

He wanted to touch you. It’d be easy, now, easier than it’d ever been before. You wouldn’t be able to push him away, and even if you tried to, he could always overpower you. Take you by the neck, pin you against the floor, leave you shaking and trembling and begging, pleading with a captor you couldn’t see. He’d find a way to make it up to you, later on. He’d find a way to lie, to smile, to make it better, even if he’d failed to time and time again, out there. But, this would be different. You wouldn’t be able to cling to your excuses, and he’d be able to show you how much he cared, how much he wanted this, how much he loved you. This would be better.

“Kaeya?”

See? You were already coming around.

Your voice was already soft, hesitant, a sliver of a whisper that was constantly on the verge of dying out completely. You were trying not to make noise, trying not to seem as terrified as you really were, but he could hear the way your breath hitched as he took a step forward, your restraints rattling as you curled into yourself. You couldn’t hide from him, but you wanted to. That much was obvious. You didn’t want this.

But, he did. More than you could ever want to run away from it.

He wanted to touch you, but he held himself back. Instead, he only kneeled in front of you, letting himself linger for a moment before he spoke. “I’m here, love.”

“Where are we?” You were afraid, too scared to put the pieces together. Not while you could still hope there was another explanation. Not while you could still deny the apparent. “My head hurts, and I can’t--”

“I know, and I’ll make it up to you.” This time, he let himself reach out, cupping your cheek and chuckling as you tried to shy away. The two of you could work on that, later on. He could live with the guilt if he let himself enjoy it, now. “Just give me a moment, alright? Just a second, then I’ll take care of you.”

You opened your mouth, then you closed it again. Kaeya wondered if you’d be bold enough to refuse if he did try to kiss you, or hold you, or go further than the fleeting touches he’d swore would keep him satisfied, at first, at least. He wondered if he’d care, when you did. “Are… are you going to hurt me?”

He wanted to reassure you. He wanted to promise he’d be patient, that he’d understand if you lashed out, that violence wasn’t an option he was willing to consider, but he couldn’t, like this, could he? He didn’t want to hurt you, but he’d never wanted to kidnap you, either, not until you made it obvious he didn’t have another choice. He didn’t want to stoop so low, he didn’t want you to hate him, but…

But, he was lying again, wasn’t he?

To tell the truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he genuinely cared whether or not you loved him back.

You stifled a scream as his hand dropped to your jaw, his grip tightening as he jerked you forward, just close enough to wrap his arm around your waist, to bury his face in the side of your neck, to get a taste of what you’d deprived him of. It wasn’t enough, he doubted it’d ever be enough, but he had you. He had you, he was close to you, and he had you. That had to be enough, for now.

“We’ll see.”

[a-purple-lizard]

When will the bloodshed end?

Dark Raiden x Fem! Reader

Basically a lot of fucking angsts about dark Raiden killing his wife and her guilt tripping the hell out of him in her final words.

A sharp shock thundered through the air, meeting a quick ripping sound. Silence overtook the atmosphere as the two lovers gazed at eachother. One was frozen, in fear or uncertainty, he did not know. The other, was still, the pure shock and astonishment forbid her to move.

Drip... drip...

Crimson droplets gracefully met the ground, creating a systematic dripping sound. It was suddenly interpreted by a loud meaty sound as s/o looked down. She wanted to scream, to beg, to do something as she watched her entrails pour onto the ground.

With a metallic clang, her weapons fall to the ground, her knees quickly joining them with a thud. She gazed up helplessly at her husband, his lighting blades still emerging from his wrist, her blood dripping off of them.

Opening her mouth, she could taste the blood gushing out if her throat, fighting for a way out. “You... you really hate me, this much?” Her eyes shone with tears. The lighting god was still. “All I wanted to do... was protect you...”

His firm voice wavered, “You stood in my way. Earthrealm is my top priority.” Despite his shaky tone, his words did not break.

“Heh, ha, ha! Ha!” She laughed out loud, choking on her own blood as she did so. S/o looked up, her gaze meting his, “It’s... funny. You claim to protect earthrealm, yet, how many earthrealmers have died fighting your meaningless wars?”

S/o coughed loudly, spraying blood onto the tiled floor in front of her, a few droplets landing on raidens boots. “You have been alive for thousands of years, yet you never once indulged yourself into earthrealms culture, it’s people, it’s flaws...” her smile faded. “You don’t care about earthrealm... you are obsessed with its existence but not it as a whole. You are doomed to spend eternity battling for an object that you hold no value to above it’s simple existence...”

A weak, sad smile spread across her face as s/o looked up to gaze at her beloved again. “But, you do find mortals amusing do you not?” She looked down onto the puddle of blood, “you found me amusing at least, that’s why you did all this right? The marriage, the promises... But I suppose that you have grown bored of me...”

The low buzzing of energy from raidens blades ceased as they disappeared, the scarlet liquid falling to the ground with a splat.

“It was a fools wish to believe that you loved me... I mean, it didn’t take much for you to lash out and dispose of me at my first act of resistance.” S/o allowed her voice to stop, taking in the cruel scents and the mocking sounds around them, she didn’t dare look up at her husbands face. “What use is a mortal who doesn’t do as you wish? Who doesn’t think as you wish?”

Raiden tilted his face down, his hat covering his eyes. His emotions were a mystery.

“At the end of the day, I was just your toy... wasn’t I? A temperal amusement that has faded and is now worthless to you.” S/o coughed once again, the pain forcing her to fall back, her imards slipping out as she did. “Perhaps if I had realized this sooner, I wouldn’t be here. After all, you didn’t want a wife who, loved you, and actively tried to protect you. You just wanted a pet.”

Closing her eyes, she awaited the release of death only to have her eyelids fly open. In front of her sat lord Raiden, on his knees, his face held an expression of pure emotional agony. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

“Please... don’t go.” He sounded so broken, the desperation in his voice casts cruel hooks into her heart, threatening to tear into the organ. His arms wrapped around her shoulders as he pulled her head into his lap.

With one last choked sob, s/o spoke one last time, “Damn you, thunder god. Damn you for loving me, damn you for making me love you. Damn you for becoming a monster. Leave me, let me die in peace, but never forget, that I will never forgive all the bloodshed you have brought upon the people you swore you loved.”

With that, she was gone, as so was the last scrap of humanity that Raiden once treasured deep down in his pitch black soul.

[ghostlywinnerengineer]

BSD DAZAI vs. YOZO

I’ve just finished reading no longer human today and I want to ramble on it. These are mostly comparisons of BSD Dazai and Yozo. So here we go... First of all it’s very interesting to me Dazai’s understanding of his suicidal tendencies has more insight than Yozo’s. Dazai sees the existential lack of meaning in life but Yozo mostly sees the cause of his suffering in his inability to live up to the standards of the society. Even when he confesses to the arbitrariness of the standards, he places the blame on the feeling of being outside but not on the standards’ meaningless existence. He is not indifferent to act of living as a whole, he is just unsatisfied and ashamed of how he lives. He is ashamed of not being similar to others and not being able to understand them. It is, his life he is opposed to. It is only at the end of the book Yozo finally concludes “everything passes”.  Whereas, Dazai is aware, from the start, it is being alive and being human that is unbearable and there is no meaning in living. An encompassing fact. He does not say my life is not worth living, life in general for everyone is worthless. Everybody dies, but continues to live until that day. They live as if they won’t going to die. And the part about not understanding people does not apply to him at all. He is capable at deducing latent and manifest meanings behind people’s actions and manipulating them for his interests. 

Life is full of suffering for both of them but Dazai is indifferent to the idea of living while Yozo strives and fails at living up to the standards of the society he perceives. Yozo is someone who is always in deep shame, he always worries about his behaviours, and he is a harsh critic of himself. Dazai does not hold any shame, he does not take life or the people around him as seriously as Yozo he has nothing to be ashamed of he is just bored with life, bored with living and the sufferings it brings. He is in apathy whereas Yozo struggles with caring too much and trying too hard. 

Drawing parallels between the Yozo in Marxist movement and Dazai after joining port mafia, it is apparent that Dazai is more serious about his involvement in illegal activities. Yozo mostly joins Marxists because he feels rightly placed in the outsider atmosphere of the movement. Dazai’s involvement in Mafia is different however because I believe he had respect towards Mori and wanted his approval at the time. The outsider, illegal character of the mafia had little significance for Dazai and the acceptance of his comrades only came second for Yozo. I headcannon that  Dazai, being the intelligent person he is, had very high standards set up to him even in his family house and his suicide attempt was influenced by these standards similar to Yozo. But unlike Yozo, Dazai had Mori, another figure who he can satisfy with his talents, another figure who can bless him with acceptance. With Mori Dazai repeats the cycle of affirmation. Mori was the one, who gave him a reason to live after he lost interest in living. (I know Chuuya played a role in it too but Chuuya was a pawn in Mori’s plan.)This acceptance was not possible for Yozo because he convinced himself his background separated him from his comrades and he run away from them. 

Yozo was the smallest children of a traditional family his morality shaped by the strict rules of that lifestyle. His own desires conflicted with that morality. It is not that he doesn’t agree with the moral standards his father hold him up to, it is precisely because he agrees that causes him to suffer. In cases when he questions the concept of morality he does it, in order to free himself from the cognitive dissonance he experiences. He is aware that the societal rules are arbitrary and it is actually the people around him who judges him, hiding behind the so called societal rules. But it still hurts him to see how people who are as degenerate as he is (or even people who are worse than him) have the higher ground when it comes to judging him. And how he is unable to protest their unfairness accepting deep down they are right about him. Dazai’s morality is shown as non-existent during his time with the mafia. It was Odasaku who points this out by saying for Dazai both sides are the same. But I think, this is not true. Dazai knows both sides are not the same in regards to morality. But it is a fact that does not interest him. He is not in the mafia because he believes what they are doing is good, beneficial, bad, evil etc. He is not interested in the consequences of his actions on the world whether be it good or bad. He is interested in acceptance and affirmation. Mori gave these to him. This is the reason Dazai was able to move the ladder of hierarchy so fast in the mafia. Of course his talents was helpful but he also had the motivation to apply his talents on the mafia missions because of Mori’s positive reinforcement. Dazai only allow morality to effect his actions when Odasaku’s life was in danger and Mori mocked Dazai for this, saying “we are the Port Mafia. We have always brought darkness, violence, and cruelty to this city. Why is that a problem now?” Mori planned Odasaku’s death knowing about their friendship, Mori knew if he let Odasuku die Dazai would feel betrayed yet he done it regardless because Dazai is not as important to him as the license he gets in return for defeating mimic. In fact Dazai leaving mafia is beneficial for Mori. Dazai had been traded by his boss, by his mentor for a piece of paper. He realized how Mori perceived him all this time, a tool and a threat to his future reign. He realized his friend is going to die because of him, because Mori wanted to use Odasaku’s death to give Dazai an excuse to leave mafia. Dazai leaving was part of the plan all along. But it was only then Dazai realized this. I’d like to add that even before Mori’s betrayal and his death Odasaku started to influence Dazai’s perspective on life. We can see this in the scene where Dazai mentions Odasaku to Akutagawa. He compares himself to Odasaku, and says “But ‘righteousness’ doesn’t take very kindly to me”. Here he considers being morally righteous as a possibility, a possibility which is unfavourable to him but regardless he evaluates his actions on a morality scale. And then there is the scene where he apologizes to Odasaku for killing the assassins and compromising his principles. He respects the moral perspective of Odasaku that is precisely why he accepts his dying will. “It was clear that those words were supported by some sort of strong basis. Whether it was past experience or someone’s advice”. Dazai believes him. On another note, I think the most important part of Odasaku’s dying speech is when he says “People live to save themselves”. He led Dazai to the path he once tried to walk on but he also led Dazai know in this path (which looks like Dazai is the one doing the good deeds, saving people, feeding orphans etc.) it is yourself who you try to save regardless. He is telling Dazai to be on the good side to save himself.

There’re a lot more I want to say while the memory of the book fresh in my mind but I realized now I’ve been writing about Dazai exclusively in the last part of the text and the comparative focus is lost so this the end for now. Thank you for reading. By the way you probably noticed that English is not my native language and I’m too lazy to upload this text to grammarly sooo… I’m sorry for any ambiguity in the text and for the grammar mistakes ://

[fanfoolishness]

five denials and a truth (The Mandalorian)

Written for @fake-starwars-fan, who suggested this idea.  Five times Din Djarin denies he is a father, and one time he doesn’t.  Canon-compliant, spoilers for seasons 1 and 2, and gets angsty as hell. I’m so sorry, Din.  Featuring Din, Grogu, Omera, the Armorer, Peli Motto, Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, and Cara Dune.  3800 words.

***

i.

The sun fell beneath the crowns of the trees, leaving them awash in blues and golds, and the insects sang their chorus in the growing shadows.  Din Djarin sat at the edge of the fire, watching the child play with the other children.  Wariness hummed in the back of his mind, long years of training deeply entrenched despite the seeming peace of Sorgan.  Still, though, it was hard to remain battle-ready here, as the children laughed and played their silly games.

Omera sat on the log beside him, waving a hand to her daughter.  The girl took off eagerly to join the others.  Pinpoint flashes of light sparkled around the children as they played, the evening lightning-beetles taking wing.

“The children love your son,” she said, turning back to Din, her eyes aglow in the firelight.  “I’ve never seen a youngling like him, but they’ve truly taken to him.  My daughter’s quite envious of his frog-catching skills.”  She chuckled, voice sweet and warm.

“He’s not my son,” said Din in polite, careful tones.  He shifted slightly on the log.

Omera tilted her head.  He found her direct eye contact discomfiting, but he did not look away.  “Because he isn’t human?”

He shook his head slightly.  “No.  That has nothing to do with it.”

“Then what?  I see the way you watch out for him.  You’re watching him now, making sure he isn’t getting into trouble,” she said lightly.  “Every parent does it.”

“There are terrible people after him,” said Din, feeling uneasy in a way he couldn’t pin down.  Imps, bounty hunters, who knew what else?  The less said about it, the better.  “I’m just trying to protect him until I can find a safe place for him, that’s all.”

She arched an eyebrow as the child toddled over to them, holding a squirming lightning-beetle in his small hands, its green-gold light pulsing between his fingertips.  “Looks like he has something to show you.”

Din bent down, reaching out to take the child’s hands.  “You, uh, you caught this?” he asked gruffly.  “Huh.”  He’d seen the other children trying to do the same and failing, the agile beetles getting the better of them.  Despite himself, he was impressed.  

“Good for you.  Just don’t  -- no!  Drop it!”  He pulled the squirming beetle out of the child’s mouth and tossed it aside, watching it flash up into the sky.  The child looked at him with big eyes, ears sinking down to his shoulders.

“Oh, they’re perfectly safe to eat,” said Omera, laughing.  “We eat them now and then if things are lean.”

“Oh,” said Din.  He felt his mouth form into a smile, a reflexive action beneath the helmet.  “Uh, sorry,” he said to the child.  “Maybe next time.”

The child took another step forward, then leaned against Din’s leg, small arms curling around his shin.  Then he was off again, toddling back to the children and the waiting lightning-beetles.

“If you aren’t his father,” asked Omera, “what’s stopping you?”  She gazed at him, her face kind, her eyes questioning.  

“I’m not what he needs,” Din said.  He turned away from her, staring off into the forest, where the bandits waited.  “That’s all.”

***

ii.

The Armorer watched Din Djarin carefully, grateful that another member of the Tribe had survived.  Of course, he and his actions were the reason so many had fallen, but the Creed was unflinchingly clear.  Death in the service of protecting another Mandalorian or a foundling was the noblest end to a warrior’s life.  The price had been paid, and paid again, and she bore him no anger for it.

She asked to see the child, to see the one whose protection had merited the fragmentation and destruction of the Tribe.  The creature stared up at her, clearly tired and frail, but its eyes held a spirit she understood.  This one had seen suffering.  It was always written in the eyes of those who did not hide their faces.

She saw, too, the way Djarin angled himself toward the child.  She had heard of how he had protected it, blaster, body and beskar, against the storm that drove him from the planet.  And she remembered the tale of the enemy that had helped him defeat the mudhorn.  She began to understand.

She explained to Djarin what he must do, what the Creed demanded.  No matter that the child was linked to the Jedi, nor that Djarin knew not where to find them.  He was a resourceful man.  She had faith that he would fulfill the Creed.

The others pressed him to leave, their urgency clear.  The Imperials were coming, as they had come upon them before in the night, and she understood their fear.  They knew not the Way of the Mandalore, the honor of a warrior’s death.

Djarin dissented.  “I’m staying.  I need to help her, and I need to heal.”

His desire to assist was welcome, but she knew that this was not his path.  His path was clear. It lay in the child’s wide eyes, in his small hands, in the way Djarin spoke of the foundling with a measured distance she knew he did not keep.  The truth could not be hidden.  A Mandalorian could fool an outsider, but she was the Armorer, and the depth of his feelings toward the child was laid bare in voice and stance.

“You must go,” she said firmly.  “A foundling is in your care.  By Creed, until it is of age or reunited with its own kind, you are as its father.”

You already are, she wished to say, but she did not.  He was not ready.  Not yet.  Denial showed plain in the set of his shoulders.

“This is the Way,” she said instead, voice brisk.  “You have earned your Signet.”  Her hands were swift and precise upon his pauldron, affixing the gleaming mudhorn to its rightful place.  

There it was, the emotion she knew lay deep within him.  “Thank you,” he said, and she saw the warrior’s heart within him gentled, humbled, made vulnerable.  “I will wear it with honor.”  

There were certain truths she had long known.  The best warriors did not harden their hearts.  Too hard, and they found their deaths too quickly, the potential glory of their sacrifice fading into a meaningless waste.  Yet those that succumbed to the pain of the world could be too soft, losing the will to fight and turning to the follies of pacifism.  

The finest warriors, the truest, walked wounded through the world.  It was their battles that burned brightest in the minds of their people, their struggles that most honored the Way of the Mandalore.  

She watched Djarin and the child leave with the others, and she waited, her hammer at the ready.  She would protect the beskar and buy time for those of her Tribe to escape.  She knew she would not fall this day.  

Beneath her helmet, she smiled.  For she believed Clan Mudhorn would earn their place in legend.

***

iii.

Din returned to Peli Motto’s shop, laden with supplies from the market.  Ammunition, food and water for himself and the kid, a few more packs of bacta patches.  Wouldn’t do to head out into the deep desert unprepared, and he wasn’t sure this mining town Peli was talking about really still existed.  He unloaded the supplies onto the ramp into the Crest, and turned to look for the kid.  He’s fine, he reminded himself, but he still hated how hard it was to leave the kid sometimes, how he always felt like something was missing when the kid wasn’t in his sight.

As expected, Peli was in her office, the kid in her lap.  She was having an animated discussion with him, judging by the way his ears quivered.  As Din drew near he picked up some of their conversation.

“So there I was, fighting an infestation of womp rats the size of banthas, and this no-good nerfherder shows up wanting to know why his ship’s not ready.  I tried telling him the droids were overrun and that I’d already busted one blaster trying to shoot the damn things, and he had the nerve to -- Mando!  Back from the market, huh?” Peli asked, looking up at him.  

The kid let out an excited squeal and reached towards him.  Reluctantly, Peli lifted him up, and Din took him into his arms.  The kid settled down in the crook of his elbow like he’d been there all his life, and Din finally relaxed.

“Not the best selection I’ve ever seen, but I got what we needed,” he said.  “Thanks for watching the kid.  He’s gotten me into trouble with more than one vendor.  Sticky fingers.”  And having the ability to move things with his mind, while impressive, wasn’t exactly a good recipe when combined with a youngling who was hungry all the time.  Din tilted his helmet down to look at the kid, his mouth tugging invisibly into a grin beneath the beskar.

“This angel?” Peli scoffed.  “I don’t believe it.”  Din simply looked at her, and she relented, “Okay, okay, he ate half my lunch when I wasn’t looking, and tried to eat a sand roach when I was.  I get your point.”

“I told you to be good for Peli,” scolded Din.  The kid let out a small, sad burble, and he sighed.  “I know, I know.  You didn’t mean it.”  He reached up, fingers cuffing gently against the kid’s cheek.

“You guys should do more business on Tatooine,” said Peli, leaning back in her chair and taking a long drink of caf.  “Always a pleasure.  It warms my sandblasted heart, seeing you two.”

Din nearly choked.  “Excuse me?”

“You know what I mean!” she said, waving her hands.  “Mos Eisley’s got some pretty nasty dealings in the back alleys.  Orphaned younglings, drunks, slavers looking for easy marks…   It’s just nice to see a dad actually taking care of his kid for once.”

Din was still.  The kid grabbed his thumb with one small hand, holding it tight, and reflexively he curled his hand closer to the little one.  He didn’t speak.

Peli raised her brows, looking concerned.  “Did I say something wrong?”

“I…”  He swallowed.  “I’m not his father.”

“Well, I don’t know what exactly you look like under that armor, but no shit, Mando,” she said.  “But dads aren’t just a blood thing.  I thought -- I mean, the way you take care of him, and all.  You’d do anything for this kid, or I don’t know a damn thing.”

“I would,” he said slowly.  “Do anything for him.”  The kid brushed his hand against his cuirass, his claws making tiny ting noises against the beskar.  

“But you’re not his dad.”

If you aren’t his father, what’s stopping you?

You are as its father.

“He’s a foundling,” said Din, and he fought to keep his voice steady.  “I would die for him.  This is the Way.”

Peli held out her hands skeptically, face shifting into clear confusion.  “And again, you’re not his dad?  I’m not getting the distinction here.”

He looked down at the kid, whose ears quivered with curiosity, his mouth slightly open as if asking a question.  

Red robes, blaster fire, the smell of smoke, the sound of screams --

Until it is reunited with its own kind --

“It’s complicated,” he said, turning away from her.  “Thanks again for watching him.  We’d better get a move on before it starts getting dark.”  

He headed back out toward the ship and the speeder, her indignant voice following him.  “It’s noon, but whatever you say, Mando!”

***

iv.

Mist lay heavy in the secluded forest, muffling the sounds of the grazing beasts in the distance, the township far away.  Din stared out at the falling darkness, his stomach twisting.  It was nearly time.  Time to fulfill his quest, to deliver the child.

Time to say goodbye to Grogu.

His feet felt heavy, so heavy, though the distance to the little sleeping area from the hold was only a few steps away.  He stood in the doorway, watching the child sleep in the small hammock.  He’d picked up the cloth in a small market on a forgotten world.  He remembered asking the shopkeeper if it was soft enough for a youngling, remembered taking his glove off to make sure the fabric wasn’t itchy.  He remembered the kid -- Grogu -- cooing to himself that first night in the hammock, remembered how well the kid had slept.  

He remembered how he’d laid awake half the night, missing the kid curled up on his chest.

Din raised his hands.  They trembled.  

This is what I came to do.  This is for him.

“Wake up, buddy,” he said, voice breaking.  “It’s time to say goodbye.”  He reached a hand into the hammock, brushing against Grogu’s chest.  The kid made a small, sleepy sigh, a sigh he’d heard dozens, hundreds of times now, a sigh that had become as familiar and homey as the engine’s hum.  He lifted him carefully out of the hammock, but Grogu just yawned, smacking his lips, and closed his eyes again.

Din sat down, leaning against the wall with Grogu on his knee.  He looked at him.  Really looked, though his vision blurred.  I have… I have to remember.    

He drank in the sight of those long, delicate ears, soft with thin white fuzz on the edges, the inner skin shell-pink rimmed with mossy green.  He memorized the curious ridges and bumps on his forehead, between his eyes, remembering how they crinkled when the kid was happy and flattened when the kid was being obstinate.  He looked at the mouth that had eaten a horrifying number of frogs and spiders, and nearly laughed despite himself.

Grogu’s hand twitched, curling over Din’s fingertip.  Din shifted his thumb to cover the back of his small hand, and the kid blinked sleepy eyes at him.  Those eyes, so wide, so curious, so expressive.  He would never forget them.  

“You’re gonna love being a Jedi,” Din whispered.  “You’ll learn how to use your powers.  You’ll get even stronger.  You’ll see.”  You won’t need me.

Grogu’s weight on his knee was so light.  

Funny, then, that Din felt so crushed.  

He bowed over the kid, arms curling around his small body.  Grogu leaned into him, and Din held him, and he told himself that it was time.

He was never sure, looking back, how he piloted the ship safely back to the town and landed it without a hitch.  He only remembered walking down the ramp, seeing the Jedi Ahsoka waiting for them, and going cold, cold, cold.

They regarded each other for a moment.  The Jedi’s eyes were sad and distant.  She gazed down at Grogu, nestled in Din’s arms.  

“You’re like a father to him,” she said finally.  “I cannot train him.”

His legs felt fuzzy and weak.  He straightened up, forcing himself to stand firm.  He had to try again, for the kid’s sake.  “You made me a promise, and I held up my end,” he accused.

The Jedi spoke.  Part of him held onto her words, kept them safe, directions to a planet, another option to find more Jedi.  He could do this.

The other part of him was dizzy, punchdrunk, even as he held the kid safely in his arms.  You’re like a father to him echoed, and somehow the words struck deeper than they ever had before.  He ached with them, ached for them to be real -- weren’t Jedi supposed to be noble?  Weren’t they supposed to tell the truth?

But he knew he couldn’t be that lucky.  

He thanked her politely for the information, and set a course for Tython.

***    

v.      

“We’re coming up on Nevarro,” came Fett’s voice in his ear, and Din jerked awake.

It took him a moment to get his bearings.  This wasn’t the Crest.  This was Slave I.  This was Boba Fett.  Fennec Shand was down below.  And Grogu was… gone.

His head reeled. Gone.  Not safe in the arms of a Jedi, no future secured and sheltered.  He’d been stolen, been lost.  Under his watch.

“You still asleep?” Fett asked, glancing back.  His helmet rested beside him, half-cleaned of its scorch marks and scars.  Fett had been busy while he was sleeping.

“No,” said Din, trying to clear his head.  He lapsed into silence.

“It’s a fair plan,” said Fett.  “I hope it works.  For the sake of the child.”

“You didn’t have to --” Din started.  They’d been through this already, though, and he knew it would be insulting to keep up his protests.  “I’m… grateful for the help.  Thank you.”

Fett shrugged. “We tracked you for a while, you know.  Before Tython.”

Din stared straight ahead.  He didn’t care about that.  But he realized in the waiting quiet that Fett expected an answer.  “I didn’t know.”  

There; the man should take it as a compliment.  Din knew he wasn’t easy to track.

“I saw how you were with the child.”  Fett’s scarred face was thoughtful.  There was something complicated there behind the older man’s eyes, but Din couldn’t read it, unsettled and numb as he was.

“I was to return him to the Jedi,” Din forced out.  “I failed him.”

“You took care of him,” Fett pointed out.  “I saw it.  That’s not nothing.”  

“He was a foundling,” he said mechanically.  “Any Mandalorian would have done the same.  The Creed demands --”

Fett sighed.  “You can keep your Creed.”  The words still sounded so wrong -- to view the Creed as a myth, it was sacrilege.  Still, though, he’d seen the chain code, and he knew Fett’s claim was valid.

Din watched the other man cautiously, but was taken aback by the next words Fett spoke.  “You were a father to him.  That much was clear.”

Din chuckled, a brittle, awful sound.  It hurt his throat.  “People keep telling me that.”

“Are they wrong?”

He thought of Grogu taken, held captive by droids’ arms harsh and cold.  He thought of him in a cell, thought of tests and needles and experiments, thought of the little youngling toddling after him and laughing sweetly about cookies.  He thought of standing there helplessly on the rocky slopes of Tython, watching the world end.

He was grateful, not for the first time, for the helmet shielding his face.  “Does it matter?” he gritted, and Nevarro loomed before them.

***

vi.

Cara Dune caught up to him, about six months later.

He’d been half-expecting her for some time.  Knew that rumors of his doings would reach certain ears.  Knew that she’d put two and two together.  Even if he no longer wore beskar, he knew the patterns would be noticed.

She found him in a scuzzy bar on an ocean moon, where the damp seeped into everything and the cold never faded.  She sat beside him, tossing a few credits onto the bar, and was rewarded with a sea-brewed ale.  She drank about half before she finally turned to face him.

“Hey, Mando.”

He didn’t look at her.  Didn’t want to see the pity in her face.  He could hear it well enough in her voice.

“I knew I’d see you again,” he said quietly.  “Galaxy’s never as big as it seems.”

“No,” she said.  “I guess it isn’t.”

In the silence, water dripped, dripped, dripped behind the bar, a constant rhythm.

“I know it was you,” she said presently.  “The Imperial bases on Corux and Raethe.  Two cruisers downed, the troops dead long before the ships crashed.  Imps dead in the streets of a dozen backwaters.  And a lot of high-ranking officers found in pieces.”

“A lot of people hate the Empire,” he said.  He took a drink of his ale.  He hated the taste, and hated the burn more.

“Not a lot of people hate them like you do.”  Lightning-fast, she twitched aside the cloak hanging over his hip, revealing the Darksaber hanging like an anchor at his side.  He ignored her, covering it again with his cloak.  “Let’s just say you have a signature style these days.”

Din glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.  She looked different, hair a little shorter, upgraded armor, a new insignia on her shoulder.  And sympathy etched in every line of her face.  He looked away, shaken.

“So what?” he asked.  “Don’t tell me the New Republic has a problem with fewer Imps running around.”

“They don’t.  They’d probably give you a medal, if they knew who was behind it,” said Cara.  She finished her drink.  “I have a problem with it.”

He nearly snorted into his foul ale.  “Really.  You’re worried about the Imps.”

“I’m worried about you, Din Djarin.”

He froze.  She’d never used his name before.  Slowly, he turned to stare at her, fully aware that his naked face was on display.  “Stop.”

Cara flushed.  “I was on the ground at that Maelstrom-class cruiser.  I saw what you did to them.  It wasn’t…”  Her mouth twisted.  “Killing Imps doesn’t bother me.  You know that.  But that was… brutal.”

“Again,” he said defensively, “you’re worried about them?”

“About what it’s doing to you,” she said, her voice flat.  “Mandalorians… I thought you were known for noble kills --”

“I’m not a Mandalorian,” he spat.

She pounded a fist into the table, a sharp crack that left a mark on the flimsy surface.  “You’re torturing yourself about letting him go.  This isn’t you, Mando.  And I think a part of you knows it.”

The weight of the last several months loomed.  It pressed.  It shattered, a shield failing, a dam breaking.  He saw the Darksaber flaring, scorching, searing, amputating, saw his bare hands on the hilt, saw the bodies piled.  He remembered enjoying it in a way that felt sick, felt dirty, an insult to the Way of the Mandalore, but he’d already burned that bridge, hadn’t he?  Already bared his face to the child, to the Jedi, to all of them; already desecrated his beskar; already severed his clan of two into one, alone --

“I know,” he said hoarsely, ashamed.  “I know it’s wrong.  I -- I broke the Creed --”

She reached up slowly, rested her hand on his shoulder.  She waited, her eyes soft.  

He bowed his head, shaking.  “And I gave him up,” he whispered, burying his damp face in his hands.  “I lost my son.”

My son.

The truth he’d hid from so long flared white-hot, burning through him.  Denial had done nothing for him; all it had done was rob him of the chance to tell Grogu how much he loved him before it was too late.  It hadn’t saved him from this agony at all.  The pain roared, a howling void opening up within him, a darkness he could never hope to see through.

“I was his father,” he choked.  “What am I now?”

Cara’s hand was firm on his shoulder, steady, kind; but she had no answers for him.  In the end, the only sounds were his broken breathing and the drip, drip, drip behind the bar.

[emersonfreepress]

ok ok in the spirit of community, how would the ros fair in a paintball war?

(referring to this ask! like the zombie au post this ended up making me think a lot 😅)

ohh... interesting, interesting... p sure the only paintball wars i’ve really seen were the ones featured in The League, Peep Show, and Community... but let me wrack my lil head...

ok, i ended up coming at this from multiple angles like the zombie au post 😅 always so much to consider in battle environments! and in the spirit of community, I'll stick with the individual player elimination style paintball match. in the woods with other e prep seniors. last one standing wins bragging rights

Gabe

Shooting skill | 6/10 - Experience with shooting and practice with Kile ofc

Stealthiness | 8/10 - He's done a fair amount of sneaking around during his after school activities, is super observant (or just paranoid lol), and naturally light on his feet. Good luck ambushing him.

Strategy | 8/10 - Strike deals. Do favors. Form alliances. Shoot 'em in the back once they’ve outlived their usefulness. ...What? It’s just paintball.

How does he win? | Graciously. Gabe likes winning, and especially via strategic manipulation, so it puts a smile on his face. And he's in a good mood so he treats a bunch of you to ice cream or smth 👀

How does he lose? | Slumps in frustration at being outwitted or taken off-guard, sulks about it for a little while. He's not that sore of a loser but needs time to lick his wounds and stop thinking of the different choices he could have made.

Kile

Shooting | 9 - The most accurate shooter of the cast and easily one of the best shots at E Prep. Lots of practice + talent

Stealth | 10 - They're stupid good at climbing trees and 100% consider that a valid method of ambushing their classmates. People start having flashbacks to 3rd and 4th grade recess and P.E. Scanning the trees. They just start taking people out with such efficiency it quickly starts ruining the game 😂

Strategy | 0? 10?? - “...Strategy? You just stay out of sight and kill 'em all, right?” (immediately scolded by Gabe for word choice 🙄) They really do mainly stay out of sight and pick people off with max stealth, like 😆 they'd be such a terror, people would need to take them out early for anyone else to stand a chance! They spend a lot of the game staking out the most frequented paths in the area and taking out groups quickly, all at once. Then they'll get around to stalking and picking people off one by one. The real fun...

Winner type | Stoic. Likes winning combat but the stakes were non-existent, so... the win is meaningless! this just infuriates the losers more 😅 such disrespect

Loser type | Sucks their teeth and tosses their paintball gun to the ground. "Y'all suck." (they're over it five mins later tho lol)

Jack

Shooting | 3 - This is nothing like shooting light guns... ☹️

Stealth | 5 - Not just due to his size making him an easier target, but homeboy is liable to get distracted by a cute squirrel or some pretty flowers 😂 He's not great at keeping his voice down either so good conversation would make him easy to seek out. He's just out here enjoying a beautiful day 😅

Strategy | 7 - All that movie-watching (and DMing) make him a valuable creative mind for problem-solving, but he needs a cooperative team to be effective. Rescued and recruited by Rupan/Rohan early on in the game ^ ^

Winner type | Disbelief! And everyone’s content and satisfied with him winning. Except Vivian/Vincent, that jealous fool

Loser type | Doesn't mind losing at all! He just hopes he was a good teammate and was glad to have fun ☺️

Jessie

Shooting | 7 - Comes from a family of hunters, girly knows how to shoot.

Stealth | 6 - Familiar enough with woods and stalking prey to be capable of sneaking around. Having too much fun to not giggle and get overly invested in the developing plot of the game. Even more easily distracted by critters and flora than Jack 😅

Strategy | 5 - Oh, she's just here to have fun. She'll go with whatever the person she's teaming up with decides, but can adapt easily enough.

Winner type | Surprised... then elated! Bouncing and happy and it's completely contagious. No hard feelings about a single thing. Convinces Heidi to invite people to the Emerson Estate—it's a hot day and they have a nice pool

Loser type | Same as Jack! Congratulates the winner with a hug because she's sweet like that 🧁

Rain

Shooting | 2 - This... thing is so cumbersome. And ugly. At least it shoots pretty colors.

Stealth | 7 - Small and used to sneaking around different environments and seeking out hiding spots. Their height and frame makes them harder to spot too.

Strategy | 4 - Hide!!! They’re not getting assaulted with paint and pellets!! Especially not after managing to make this ugly jumpsuit look cute?? Waiting it out is perfectly legitimate. Might share snacks if you decide to join them in hiding 😆

Winner type | Falls asleep in an unexpectedly cozy hiding spot and emerges as everyone thought they’d declared the winner. I imagine R and others yelling at them to get their gun while the original winner scrambles to get theirs, just for Rain to win by pure luck of the draw. Won’t stop them bragging about it, though! (I want this spurned runner-up to be Vi bc ofc)

Loser type | "So I can stop holding this thing?" Yawn. "I'm so hungry and bored, we've been at this for hours..."

Rupan/Rohan

Shooting | 4 - Ah, shit. These don't shoot anything like light guns.

Stealth | 7 - They sneak out and around town a lot 😂 They just force themself to be careful about how loud grass and bushes are.

Strategy | 7 - They’re treating this shit like an action movie and banding together a ragtag team of misfits to take down the strongest alliances and players. Savvy enough to reject Gabe’s and Curt’s offers to join, not opposed to strategic backstabs. They're very clearly just as focused on having fun as they are on winning—and playing Predator, which honestly works with Kile runnin around. They even brought war paint and borrowed a tactical vest. Is it mostly packed with snacks and weed? Maybe. Does it prove useful for negotiations? Hell yeah.

Winner type | Raucous celebration, just pure joy and adrenaline ☺️ Celebrates with their team, brags a bit, rubs it into Vi's face, makes fun of Curt, the usual. Then invites allies out to get pizza because it's the obvious next step

Loser type | Mostly disappointed they can't keep playing. They're a little sore about being left out of the action, but soon just start chatting with other marked players about how the game went for them. Plenty entertaining on its own, they want all the details

Vivian/Vincent

Shooting | 5 - They've got a little bit of shooting experience.

Stealth | 4 - They're overly sensitive and hate being in nature. Their skin is sticky, they keep feeling bugs everywhere, they've gotten dirt all over their pants, it's so hot, they keep WALKING into SPIDERWEBS, [flails about, screaming furiously]

Strategy | 8 - They have good ideas, they're just difficult to execute alone, especially since they're getting sunburnt and getting crankier and can't stop swatting at insects 😅 they're one of the first people to figure out that someone's taking out groups from the trees, so they stay solo and try to find a single person to team up with. Really what they need is someone who's a better shot but easy to boss around. They can probably just owe them for an in-school favor...

Winner type | Barely suppressed gloating. Vi somehow finds a way to be an obnoxious winner almost entirely by the look on their face. Once they're in a smaller group, they're passionately discussing the details of the game and happily boasting about their triumphs (while glossing over all of the whining and and slip-ups lol)

Loser type | Booo, such a sore loser. (Especially in the scenario where Rain wins 🤣) If they're outsmarted or outgunned in a clear, transparent way they'll growl and stomp off, then quietly glower and sulk for way too long. If they're double-crossed or beaten in an underhanded way oh lord —they're fighting it to the end. R can't help but get involved either way, reminding them it was a damn game with literally no prize. "C'mon, Vi, chill. You want ice cream? Let's get you ice cream."

Heidi

Shooting | 6 - Some shooting experience.

Stealth | 8 - She's very aware of her surroundings and her body. Perceptive yet quiet. Tactical. All residual traits picked up from her many activities over the years.

Strategy | 9 - Most likely to outsmart everyone. The first one to figure out groups are being targeted from the trees. Goes it alone and only open to trading (unless she sees Curt with Jess in which case she puts a quick pin in her plans to rescue her 😂). She also immediately figures out it's Kile, because ofc it is. Keeps close tabs on what groups are doing, knowing that eventually Kile will come down to ground level to pick off individuals and couples. Predator becomes prey 👀

Winner type | Proud but not boasting. She doesn't need to be. Victory looks good on her, natural and fitting. Thanks everyone for a good game then takes the girls for a long ride in the Cadillac 😎 top down on a bright day, baby

Loser type | Damn. She should have won this. Maybe if she'd... She probably could have... Then she snaps out of it, roped in by the celebratory mood of congratulating the winner. She's over any feelings of frustration or regret after getting to discuss the match with the person that took her out/the winner and there's no hard feelings. If anything this was fun as hell, it should be an annual thing. ☺️

Curt

Shooting | 8 - Some shooting experience and a natural knack for it. Good reflexes.

Stealth | 8 - Curt likes to say he gets along with the woods around these parts. Sneaking around is second nature to him. Really good hearing too. He's an easy target if you manage to seduce him though, having no issue leaving himself vulnerable if it means that kind of fun 😂

Strategy | 7 - Honestly, he's most interested in seeing how long he can get away with using charm and seduction for both protection and double-crossing 😂 Eventually becomes persona non grata and gets all of his ammo stolen by a vengeful mark, barely getting away in the process. Since that jig is up, he finally starts thinking a win might be nice... and so he teams up with the only competent player who would never betray him and also inspires the least vitriol in others: Jessie. What? Is his back-up plan using her as a human shield? No! 😚 Of course not! 👉👈

Winner type | Insufferable and gloating. Rubs it in a lot of people's faces, specifically Heidi, Rupan/Rohan, and any participants who genuinely don't like him. Brags to Gabe (who is completely disinterested in gassing him up 😂), then promises he'll make things up to Jessie (who didn't mind and had fun lol). Then celebrates by asking whoever he's flirting with these days for a quick date—and a ride in the Ferrari. Makes a scene pulling out of the parking lot. Ass.

Loser type | Doesn't care one bit as long as he had fun! And he always finds a way to have fun, it's why he's so carefree 😅

[retvenkos]

always waiting (just not in that tree) | r.a.b.

Harry Potter - Regulus Arcturus Black x Reader, angst, slight fluff requested by @captainshazamerica​

tw: death eaters, mild language, mentions of death, mentions of betrayal

word count: 2.2k

prompt: “where were you?” / “i’m doing the best i can—” / “no. you’re not hearing me. where were you?”

Summary: A lifetime ago, Regulus and (Y/n) made plans to leave their life behind, but when the time came, he never showed. Two years later, he survives the Drink of Despair and (Y/n) wonders what ever stopped him from leaving, in the first place.

The day was cold. The morning started with a chilling wind, the howling air sweeping across the world with a vengeance, crying out sorrowfully as though it knew what as to come; the sun didn’t shine until at least mid-day, and even as it fought against the thick clouds above, it’s warmth never made it to the ground below, just dissipated in the top layer of the atmosphere. (Y/n) had woken to the deafening sound of silence, and throughout the day, it hung around their shoulders like a shroud. They checked the clock at 11:15, then again at 11:30. At 12:00, they checked it every five minutes.

There was no sound but the moaning wind.

(Y/n) checked their bag, rooting through the seemingly endless bottom until they found the note and the cipher needed to read it. Regulus’ careful handwriting met them, with its sharp edges and careful curves. 

Noon, the day before it happens.

(Y/n) shoved all their belongings back into their bag, except for two - their wand and the note. They held onto the creased, stained parchment with a strength born from that insatiable fear that ate at them, gnawing at the pit of their stomach and sliding down their throat. He would be here - he had to be.

The wind stopped at around 3:18. The stillness was almost worse than the wind. (Y/n) held their watch in a knuckle-tight grip, their skin stretched over their bones in such a way it hurt; the pain of their dry, cracked skin pulling itself too tightly was almost enough to mask the pain that tore at their heart and plagued their mind. 

They had planned it meticulously. His parents were gone, the house-elves were en route to Malfoy Manor for a 3-minute window where the house was vacant and the wards were taken down. He couldn’t have missed it - they had practiced it too many times before...

Maybe he got lost in the woods. The trees grew so closely together it was easy to get turned around between one path and another. Perhaps he had come across some danger that was delaying him - a danger that made no sound.

(Y/n) looked at the clock face once more.

Night fell and there were no stars to guide the way. (Y/n) still sat in their meeting place, in the branches of the largest elm tree they could find, with knots all up the trunk, and a lonely Slytherin scarf hanging from one of the lower branches. 

It had been one of the first things they’d done when they planned their escape. Together, they had stolen as many scarves as they could, coming to the forest and tying them onto the branches of trees - ones that bore no resemblance to their meeting spot but could fool the untrained eye, perhaps make the marker meaningless to anyone else. Regulus had tied his own scarf to the final tree, his sad eyes more solemn than (Y/n) had ever seen, his countenance more sombre. 

(Y/n) could still see him, with his dark hair falling into his eyes, the wind turning his usual poised self reckless, his entire being pulling loose and falling at (Y/n)’s feet. They had put their hand on his shoulder and how they had wished it was something more.

(Y/n) wished, still.

A branch snapped in the cold night air. (Y/n) startled at the sound, and their heart leapt in their chest, only to freeze in dread. Their parents walked below with their hoods pulled up but their faces exposed. (Y/n) clutched their wand in their dominant hand, but their entire being shook with fear. If they were caught, there would be no chance of running ever again. Their left forearm itched, as though the cursed mark was already there, crawling up their skin and forever branding them the enemy.

(Y/n) had to run, damn the consequences. If they were killed in their escape, perhaps it would be a mercy.

(Y/n) looked down at Regulus' scarf, tied on the branch below. In another life, they would have risked everything to retrieve it; in another life, they would have waited, still.

But part of them knew they would always be waiting, just not in this tree.

"I love you, Regulus. Please, forgive me."

They apparated into the night.

✧ *:･ﾟ

For two years, (Y/n) lived in a haze. During the day, they were running and fighting, soldiering in a war was never easy, particularly when the foe was once a schoolmate and killers were once friends. At night, (Y/n) couldn't sleep; guilt was a fickle companion, never satisfied with the attention it received and apathetic about the destruction it wrought. There was always a part of (Y/n) that saw the Death Eater they almost were - the monster that almost was - and it made fighting harder. How could they go toe to toe with a Death Eater, when they were unable to reconcile with the knowledge that they were once fated to be the very thing they were to destroy? Sometimes, when in the thick of things, (Y/n) searched for Regulus in the crowd, although what they would do when they found him, they did not know. There was a fair chance that he wasn't even alive, the way he had disappeared, and yet (Y/n) searched, still.

At times they felt that part of them would always be searching for him, waiting for him to show up - just not in that tree.

(Y/n) made few allies during their time amongst the Order of the Phoenix, and even fewer friends.  Most of the members didn't trust them. There was a constant undercurrent of suspicion in the ranks, and while (Y/n) didn't judge their reluctancy, it made things more difficult. It also made them wonder, occasionally, what it would have been like, had Regulus joined them. He would have hated the judgment - they so easily trusted some, and others would never receive the same confidence. His brother would be loved, and he would be doubted. Sometimes, (Y/n) could conjecture what complaints he would have, and it would bring a nostalgic smile - sweet, but with a bitter end.

All they had was conjecture, anymore, and as (Y/n) walked into the Order of the Phoenix headquarters, taking a seat in the meeting area, they tried to fathom what Regulus might think if he could see them now.

People trickled into the room fairly slowly, talking in hushed whispers and throwing glances about the room as though there was some secret that only a select few knew. (Y/n) watched them through careful eyes, already in tune to the low level of tension in the room. At one point, Sirius Black threw a sideways glance at them, but instead of being filled with his usual fire, there was pity combined with something akin to respect. (Y/n) had looked away (what else were they supposed to do?) but they knew that something had happened. The question was... what?

When Albus Dumbledore walked in, his eyes scanned the room as usual, but this time they rested on (Y/n). It was in his gaze, too, then, a regretful sort of acceptance that gave way to poignancy - the kind of look one has after seeing an emotional piece of art and feeling something deep within them move to compassion. (Y/n) had only seen that look a few times before, and they had only ever given it to one - someone who still lay heavy on their heart.

"As always, there is good news and bad..."

(Y/n) studied their cuticles, listening to the conversation that surrounded them. Meetings like this were usually long, with many triumphs recognized alongside terrible evils - news of death interwoven with stories of victory. There was celebration and there was sorrow; (Y/n) learned rather quickly to keep their head down and their hopes stable. It was the only way to get by.

At some point through the meeting, James Potter snuck in, and he took a seat beside (Y/n), whispering their name. They turned to him, eyebrow furrowing. "Yes?"

"There's someone in the sick room you should see, he's just gained consciousness again and is asking for you. Dumbledore wanted us to wait but..."

And (Y/n) hated the way their hopes jumbled inside of them, as though it might be something grand. "Who?"

A name left James' lips.

(Y/n) gasped.

(Y/n) rushed to the hall without another word. Their mind was numb, trying to formulate some kind of response to what they had heard - something that could reconcile reality and dream - but there was so much conflicting evidence that it was at a standstill, shortcircuiting like static. But their heart cared not for the complication of the mind, and it ached in only one, increasingly profound way.

When they made it to the door that separated the makeshift sick room from the rest of the house, (Y/n) paused. Their mind ran through a thousand possibilities, replaying that day in their mind over and over until it brought tears to their eyes. (Y/n) screwed their eyes shut and started to pull their hand away when they heard a cough from within. Without a single thought, (Y/n) swung open the door.

And there he was.

For a moment that existed outside of reality, they just stared at each other.

There he was, with his dark hair falling into his eyes, the weight of the world having turned his usual poised self into something reckless, his entire being pulled loose and falling at (Y/n)'s feet. In his eyes was that same solemn melancholy, his countenance sombre and aged.

"Regulus..." and their whole life, they had been preparing for this moment, wishing they would be able to say more.

(Y/n) wished, still.

His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

(Y/n) didn't walk in, but clung to the doorway. "Where were you?"

And he took in a labored breath.

"I waited for you," (Y/n)'s words trembled with the beginnings of a sob, "Where were you?"

"I was doing the best that I could—"

"No, you're not hearing me." (Y/n) had thought they would savor the sound of his voice, but all it did was bring back a rush of memories they had been fighting for two years to keep down. They had been waiting - always waiting - for two, long years, and now they wanted answers. (Y/n) couldn't afford to fathom their own, anymore. "I didn't leave that tree until nightfall. I was almost caught by my parents, waiting for you to show. Where were you?"

As if he didn't already look pained enough, Regulus' eyes filled with a terrible kind of sorrow. "I was going to leave with you. I had my bag packed and I was waiting to apparate but then... then I saw Sirius. At Grimmauld Place. He must have also known that our parents were gone because he was there, nicking some family heirlooms - dark artifacts that he didn’t want them to be able to use in the future. (Y/n), I thought I had the time to confront him... I wasn't leaving you."

(Y/n) surged forward, tears spilling down their face as they hugged Regulus with all the force of those stolen, lonely years. He sobbed into their shoulder, his entire being quaking, spilling from every edge and breaking apart.

“I’ve relived my worst failures trying to fix things, (Y/n). The Drink of Despair.... it showed me you, waiting in our tree. I didn’t mean to leave you, (Y/n). You’re the last person I meant to hurt.”

 (Y/n) held him until his tears subsided, until his sobs were no longer quite so far and until his breathing calmed and their hearts beat as one. (Y/n) breathed in the feeling of him, and for once, they weren't waiting for anything. (Y/n) had been searching through every crowd and waiting for millennia, and now he was here.

It wasn't in their tree, but he had come.

Regulus eventually spoke, finally finishing his story, but never once did he let go. "We fought in the hallway, and I pulled my wand. I don't know what I was going to do, but he got to me first and knocked me out. I woke up the next morning, and it was too late."

"But you're here, now. You came."

"I wanted to come sooner," he breathed, and his words tickled (Y/n)'s neck. “I meant it when I said we’d leave together. You’re all I have left.” (Y/n) held onto the way he felt in their arms, alive and breathing. They hugged him with all the strength they had, and how they wished it was something more.

But there would be time for that. For now, they could just revel in the idea that Regulus was safe, and he made his way back to them. 

“Please don’t leave, again.”

And Regulus held (Y/n) a little tighter, as though he was afraid they would slip through his grasp. “I don’t plan to,” he whispered, his voice gruff and full of all the longing he had ever carried in his chest.

-- taglist: @musicallisto, @theletterhart, @locke-writes, @randomfandomimagine, @brokenandheadoverheels, @timeofmadness, @writerdream22, @lotsoffandomrecs, @neelia-thedaughtherof-athena, @coffee–writes, @lenalxvegood, @cooloaflandhero, @swanimagines, @noesapphic​, @amortensie // message me if you want to be added!

[oksana-moods]

Ghost of you - Part 5

Summary: When your answers doesn’t fill in the blanks properly, the only option is to move forward. A/N: Two in a row, ‘cause I’m nice like that. Thanks for those who left comments and likes, reblogged and gave me any kind of support. You’re amazing! I mentioned that this would be slow burn, right? Trigger Warnings: Violence, language, mentions of death… If you find others, let me know.

“And all the things that you never ever told me.”

My encounter with Fury left me felling scarred and open. I knew a name; I knew who I used to be. I knew things about me, but they felt so foreign, like they belonged to someone else. Maybe, because it did. I wasn’t Lara, but was I Ghost? Later that night, I was assaulted with the woman’s… no, Carol’s crash, Carol going away scenes once again. My head was an utterly turmoil.   It became obvious that my memory from Carol leaving, our brake-up, came after the accident and not in the sequence that Hydra played in my mind. Bastards. They led me to believe that I was useless. That all I was authorized to feel was void, emptiness. What did I feel, now? Besides this rage masquerade as fire, what was left to feel? What was permitted?

I looked at the door as soon as I heard the locks. Romanoff enters my accommodation and I get up, not too fast to not startle her. “Miss Romanoff, fancy seeing you here without bodyguards.” She glares at me. “Thought didn’t worth the effort to protect them.” She’s flashes me a tide smile. “It came to my attention that you’ve met Fury.” I nod. “So, how should I call you now?”  She takes two steps closer and leans at the table. “Lara? Or do you still prefer Ghost? I shrug “All of them makes me uneasy. None of them seem to fit.” “Hm. Maverick then.” “I never said that this one was good either.” “Well, we need to call you somehow.”  A grin is scaping her lips. “We?”  I blinked and she was looking at me from the door frame. “Come. I’m afraid that you’re starting to rust.”

Agent Romanoff didn’t want revenge, but she definitely wanted payback. And God, that woman is almost too fast for me to keep up. Almost. After being in my accommodation for so long, I was indeed a bit rusted. However, my muscles loved the exercise, and it did wonders to my brain. Fighting against such good opponent kept me focused on our spar. First time in days that I stop to think and overthink about my misery. Romanoff came with one of those Widow’s combos that I menage to dodge and block a few, but one kick reached my shoulder while her elbow found my temples.

All of a sudden, I’m standing in a bar. My mind’s eye was caught in something like a foggy screen and oh my, is this a memory? I had a drink in my hand while the other one was resting in a sling. I was feeling like shit, so much sorrow coursing through me, all I could… I feel a slap in my good shoulder. I look up to see a tall man offering me a pool cue. ‘Come, the winner gets free beers.’  I look at my drink while I say. ‘Thanks, I’m good. I’m not in the mood.’ He nudges me. What part of mood, he didn’t catch? He speaks. ‘Oh c’mon, Mav. Danvers’s accident is tragic and all, but c’mon… or are you just sad about your injured arm?’ Fire starts to spread throughout my chest. ‘Excuse me?’ He leans in the counter. ‘Look, all I’m saying is that you guys weren’t even friends, none of us were. She was too cocky. Guess Miss goody two shoes couldn’t even drive a car, let alone fly a jet.’ The fire was consuming, was bursting out of me until it reached its peak. Complete forgetting about the sling, my hand moved to the back of his head so, so fast. Next thing I knew, I was knocking his head in the counter. He looks up with his nose covered in blood. ‘Bitch!’ He charged at me. He knocked me down and my head hit the floor, but I needed to put this fire out, I wouldn’t stop now, I needed to vent my rage. I failed in protecting her from dying, but I sure won’t fail in protecting her memory from this scum. After exchanging punches and kicks, I held him in a chokehold. ‘Never, and I do mean never talk about her like this, Specht.’ I looked up to see an audience. ‘I’ll kill anyone of you who dares to speak of her.’ I let go of him and left the bar. When reality finds me again, the first thing to reach my ears is Romanoff’s voice. “Maverick, are you alright?” “Yeah, I’m good. Why?”  She scoffs. “I hit your head and then you stop fighting, kept looking nowhere, like in a trance.” “Oh. I… I’m sorry.” Her voice is softer when she speaks again. “What happened? Do you need me to call, Bruce or Dr. Cho?” “What? No, no. I’m fine. It’s just… I had a vision, I don’t know.” I rub my temples to ease the pain in my head. “I think that I saw a memory, after you hit me, in a moment I was here sparing with you and the next I was in a bar having a bar fight with a man.” “You were a fighter even before, huh?” She joked and I shrugged. “Are this visions or memories assaults a common thing?” I frown trying to make it simpler. “I’ve never had another memory except being left behind and the Crash in a loop. Guess I’m just confused. Do I need specific triggers to remember things or is this my brain fighting Hydra’s brainwashing?” She gives me a look that I can’t decipher. “I’m sorry all of this happened to you. Let us help you.” “Help? With what? Will you guys erase my memory again?” “How long will take for you to start to trust us? We won’t hurt you.” Trust? Her question caught me off guard. How can I trust, when I don’t know what trust is? “I want to believe in you but all that I know is Hydra. Guess I’m afraid of this being just smoke and mirrors.” Her brows were so furrowed that probably hurts. “It’s not. And I’m here to help.” I narrow my eyes at her “Why are you being nice to me?” I open my arms to show the sparing room “Bringing me here, offering help… I’m the enemy, Miss Romanoff.” She shakes her head. “No. You were a victim who were weaponized, yes. Nothing, but another casualty.” I’m still not convinced, and she knows. “Look, Fury trusts you and I trust Fury. Remember all those Hydra’s bases and facilities that you gave us?” I nodded. “We paid a visit to a few of them, the intel you gave us matched so far.” “Does this mean you’ll let me go?” I asked. “Do you really think that you would be safe out there?” Her green orbs are boring into mine. I sign, looking away. “Stark’s Tower is one of the safest buildings in this world.” “Then, what are we?” What am I, prisoner with benefits? A smirk makes its way to her lips. “The enemy of my enemy…”

 Surprisingly enough, Romanoff led me to the tower’s kitchen and offered me a sandwich for lunch. I’m a bit uneasy with this interaction, don’t know how to act, don’t know what to expect. I take my surroundings to mentally calculate an escape route, she knows the place, but I believe that I could fight with her if she tries to kill me with a butterknife. She doesn’t try to make small talk and I’m glad. To fight, survive and punishments are the only interactions that I’m used to. I don’t know how to function in a normal life, if that exists.

I recognize a newcomer, Captain America in all his glory. Romanoff puts a plate in front of me while speaks. “Hi, Cap. Joining us for lunch?” “What is she doing here, Natasha?” “Everything she told us matched so far, Fury trusts her. Since she’s helping us against Hydra, I’m willing to give her the benefit of doubt.” “If Black Widow is willing to trust you...” He offered his hand for me to shake. “I’m Steve Rogers. Captain America if you will.” I took his hand in mine. “It’s a pleasure, Sir. I’m… hm.” I let go of his hand, suddenly I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. “I don’t know how to introduce myself.” A humorless smile grace my lips. “Guess Hydra never taught me that part.” “I think we should call her by her call sign. Maverick.”  Widow supplies With a shrug, Rogers says. “It’s catchy. And if I called you Major, you’d outrank me.” He whispers the last part “I wouldn’t like that; Tony could use you against me.” The Redhead sitting next to me let out a heartly laugh which is soon joined by Rogers’s and I’m mesmerized. So, this is how people function in daily basis. I always wondered if being caged in a dark room waiting to be called for missions was only my reality or everyone’s. Guess that seeing them here, so relaxed having a meal in a wide kitchen with a meaningless conversation was answer enough. I’m amazed how light, how comfortable they seemed to be with each other. I wonder…

“Mav?” I’m brought out of my reverie by Romanoff’s voice. “Sorry, what?” “I said that your intel about anti-aircraft weapons were crucial to help us reach Hydra’s bases unscathed” Rogers says. “Didn’t thought they would have so many.” “As I told miss Romanoff before, everyone was paranoid. Even with all the guns, defenses, and secret locations. Nothing could ease their fear. Now I know that they were afraid of you.” I chewed a bit. “Have you guys closed all the ones I gave you, already?” “Not yet. We’re looking for something. So, we’re choosing our targets according with your intel and ours.” I looked at him. “What are you looking for?” This was a sensitive subject, if his subtle shift was any indication. He was uneasy to share this with me. Couldn’t blame him, though, I was still enemy. An acquaintance enemy, but still. “It’s a high-tech device. Extremely dangerous, especially in their hands.” I didn’t miss the way he chose the word ‘their’ indicating that I wasn’t part of ‘them’ and I appreciated the gesture. This device tough… “There is a lot of facilities build for experiments. Those were the ones always exchanging data, research, personnel…” I was deep in thought. “But there was this one in Sokovia. They were always asking for more subjects, or volunteers as they called.” I wet my lips. “I was ordered to be the stealthier that I could, my hole unit stayed there. I was the only one to come back.” I looked up to him.  “Have you guys tried that one, yet?” “Sokovia?” He repeated. “No, there’s little to none about Sokovia in our files. Isn’t an old building with ancient, abandoned equipment and vehicles?” “There’s nothing old and abandoned in Sokovia, mister Rogers.” I rest my fork in my empty plate. “On the contrary, they are the busiest. They’re just keeping an incredible low profile.” He turns to Romanoff. “Nat, contact the team. We’re going on a trip.” “Don’t forget your jacket.”

--------------- 

Apparently, Sokovia was a huge success with a very big H, because I was invited to a party, by Tony Stark himself. Now, my dilemma was increased, if I didn’t know how to act in a simple conversation. How do they expect me to function in a party, with their friends and a lot of them knows who I am. Plus, I’ve never been in a party. This is bound to be a disaster.

Yep. I was right. There was a crazy robot giving a speech about Avengers being nothing more than killers. Then, all hell broke loose. I’m fighting killer robots in a fancy party room. Without thinking, miss Hill handled me a gun. Guess that ‘the enemy of my enemy’ is really a thing around here. In the end, my metal arm did more damage. As soon as Thor’s hammer crashed the last robot, the party was over.

[liibrii]

Chapter 1 of Stillness || yokai hunter!Suna x fem!kitsune!reader || wc: 3.3k || 🦊

Synopsis: Arrival of an unexpected visitor promises your coming days to be interesting...

Genre: supernatural!au, enemies to lovers, angst & fluff, eventual smut

Warnings: reader is a nuisance, fire, mentions of blood

a/n: I'm no expert on Japanese mythology. I did my research but also took creative liberties so please keep in mind the information on yokai in this fic is lacking. Here are some links with basic info on yokai appearing in this series. 

as always feedback is greatly appreciated and if you want to be tagged let me know!

A streak of the new highway is planned to cut through your favourite part of the forest, the one you walk through when heading east to the river kappas inhabit. First trees have already fallen. You caress the bark of the mighty maple that once touched the sky and now lays at your feet, cut and bleeding from the wounds humans inflicted. You still remember when it was a sprout pushing roots into earth and hungrily reaching for the sun rays. Half a century later you fell asleep under its shade and hid in his branches from those chasing you. Why is this how you say goodbye?

Forest spirits peek out of their hiding places, their terrified chimes fill the air. They cling to you, your clothes, your tails. Some you have to convince to leave the branches of the fallen trees, the hollows in their barks that have offered them sanctuary for so many long years. They cry in pain.

And pain has a way of turning into anger.

It's searing and all consuming, spreading through your body as bright blue flames shoot from your hands. They burn all standing in their path. Equipment of workers, their machines and their boxes of metal go up in flames. Truck standing by the fence catches on fire. You transform back into your fox form, running away as it explodes with a bang echoing through the night.

It's a lonely existence, being a kitsune. With years most of your kind have hidden in the forest, many have moved to cities living together with humans, pretending to be them. As if they could ever be. You hold a bit of pity for them but mostly you just don't understand. Why do they go where humans live? Why do they want to live as humans live? Humans are interesting and fun to observe, that much you never denied, but they are also cruel and blind and they drove so many of your kind away. Empty lairs is all they leave behind.

You water the flowers around the temple as you do every morning before heading to bed. From your pocket a forest spirit you've rescued from one of the fallen trees peeks out. Morning sun makes it blink and rattle in confusion. None of your words reassure it so you leave the matter be. It needs time. Time to breathe and time to heal. As you pull out some weeds from between the cobble stones it watches and chimes, sorrowfully.

“I can't say.“ Weeds in your hands catch aflame and whither. You lay them down on the black soil. “We will find you a nicer home. There is a beautiful cherry blossom tree growing by the entrance. Would you like that?“ It gives a soft chime. “We can have a look at it later, alright? Careful!“ you catch it on your outstretched palm. “Stay with me, I'm almost finished with my duties. Do you have a name? Ah I see,“ you nod when it chimes. “How about I call you Koda? Would you like that? Now make sure not to fall off again, alright?“ You help it climb on your shoulder.

Koda turns it's head in all directions taking in the sight. It's probably its first time seeing anything but endless sky and branches. Not that the temple is anything special. It's small, with only two wooden buildings in need of repair and pond you hold particularly dear. No ducks live near it. You brought a pair once in hopes they'd have ducklings to keep you company but sadly before a month passed they became dinner to passing yokai. Ever since the only ducks at the temple are the ones on the edges of the roof.

Surrounding trees grow closely together, casting long shadows over the roofs and the small yard. In their shade a steep staircase leads towards the entrance of the temple. Every morning and every evening you sweep the leaves from the stairs, picking up and keeping the ones you find particularly beautiful. The golden, the deep crimson, and bright green, ones sprouting first when spring arrives, are your favourite. Moss has overgrown most of the steps. Koda chimes for you to put it on it and it sits on the soft green blanket seeming calm for the first time. Its home was taken but what said it couldn't make a new one here, with you? The temple has been your home for as long as you can remember and you doubt you'll ever know any other.

Your new friend still watches in amazement (At least you think it's amazement. Even you find spirits' expressions hard to read) and when you return to check on offerings you consider waking Chochin to help you reassure it. After a short consideration you decide against the idea. The stillness of the early morning is your favourite part of the day after all and you'll hear from your possessed lantern before noon rolls around anyway. Besides Chochin would only scare already rattled Koda. You'd like to spare the spirit further shocks, at least for a while. Luckily most days the temple grounds stand deserted. With each passing year less and less humans come to pay their respect to Inari. Less and less fields are to be found in the area so it's no wonder they forget how much depends on good harvest. They take it for granted and they forget. If centuries have thought you anything is that humans are incredibly good at forgetting.

You're just about to sweep the two fox statues by the entrance when you catch the sound of approaching steps. One person. Must be an early riser. You make your tails disappear and straighten the sleeves of your hoodie before instructing Koda to hide.

A young man steps through the tori gate. He's tall and lanky, a beanpole with dark hair. Most people pant and heave for air when reaching the top. He looks like he just took a pleasant stroll in the park. He takes in his surroundings then walks over to you. “Good morning,“ he greets with a polite smile that doesn't quite reach his slanted eyes.

There's an aura surrounding him. You can tell he's the kind of man people take a second glance at when passing him by. If you asked them why they'd give you a confused look. “I, I have no idea,“ they'd answer, “There was... something.“ If you asked them an hour later they'd be even more confused because they have already forgotten about him. But he is the kind of a man who wants to be forgotten. How else would he hunt yokai in peace?

“Morning,“ you return the pleasantries. Koda in your pockets shivers.

“I'd like to pay my respects. Can I offer alone or-?“ If he's embarrassed by being unsure of how to proceed you can't tell it from his face. You show him to the temple and excuse yourself, aware of how his eyes follow you as you walk across the small courtyard. You don't want him here. But you can't deny him entry.

He doesn't scare you. He's as green as sprouting grass, too young to have any real experience. He probably only recently accepted yokai are real and not just a folktale used to scare children. You might be the first he'd ever meet. At least one that isn't harmless. Still there is something about his calm voice and bored expression that keeps you alerted.

Koda peeks out of your pocket and chimes, worriedly. “We'll see,“ you murmur in response and head over to the pond. It's so empty. Should you get some koi fish? Or would they all too soon become dinner too? Many of those yokai who remain are growing hungrier. Wilder. Hearing approaching footsteps you wonder if that is what brought Mr Witch to your humble abode.

“I've heard there's a kitsune living around here.“

You straighten and turn to face the unwelcome visitor. Was someone else in your shoes they'd act smart and deny their nature. But you can tell he isn't asking. He's just confirming what he already knows. “There is.“

Visibly taken aback he hesitates. “Is it you?“

“I am.“ You don't like his eyes. They are too fox-like.

He bows politely. “I'm Suna Rintarou.“

“Good for you.“

He ignores the poison in your voice. “News of someone destroying the construction site has reached Inarizaki Clan.“ Ah, that explains the lack of fear. If he's here with the backing of a clan naturally he'd feel secure enough to directly challenge you. “I was sent to let the ones responsible know their efforts are meaningless. The road will be built no matter what you- What they do.“

“Ask? Your kind doesn't ask.“

“This might be the one for history books then.“ His face irks you. There's no fear, no nerves showing, no twitch of his mouth or fingers to betray what he's thinking. Humans are as easy to read as open books but the young man in front of you is a blank sheet of paper.

“Leave,“ is all you answer.

To your surprise he bows and obeys. Watching him leave you think he should straighten up.

As the sun rises higher you head to bed, newcomer so heavy on your mind he haunts your dreams. The sole presence of a yokai hunter is something to be worried about. First one comes, then a second, next your kind is being chased away. The only reason you're still here is because the humans can't seem to figure out a way to chase you away for good. Not that they haven't tried. If only they knew worst things live deep in the woods.

When evening falls you sweep the stairs and leave still rattled Koda besides Chochin who disapprovingly rolls it's one eye at you.

The town is only a short run away. It's small, at least you think so since there aren't many you've visited in your relatively short life. You know every nook and cranny, you know which tombstones are nekomata's favourite, you know which of the old street cats will soon join them. They can be a handful but they're the closest thing to friends you have. You pass the old house where teenagers like to gather. Its cellar has been home to keukegen for years now. You catch a glimpse of a few leaving. No doubt the fault of that damn visitor.

The place he's staying at is easy to find. How careless of him. All you have to do is follow the magic of protective charms scattered across the town back to its source. They're sloppy. Almost as if a child made them. But some of them are particularly well made. Work of another clan member perhaps?

You hide in the bushes of the garden surrounding a small house. Mr Witch left the sliding door open. Even in the garden you smell herbs meant to ward away evil spirits. He's sitting on the floor and watching a curious looking thin screen similar to ones you've seen down at the train station. He seems disinterested. When he stands up and leaves the room you silently creep closer to peek inside. The smell of herbs is stronger here. You don't find it unpleasant though many of your yokai friends would disagree.

On the screen you see a map of the town. More maps lay on the low table. Some have scribbles you can't quite read, arrows, and question marks. You hear him returning and scurry back in the safe embrace of darkness and bushes. He sits back down to continue his work, not noticing you were in his home. You lean your head on your paws and watch.

Following Suna around becomes a daily routine. You sweep the stairs in the morning and water the flowers then run the fastest your legs can carry you to the town. Luckily for you he likes sleeping in. His days are uneventful. Boring to be honest. He eats breakfast. Goes to town. Looks at historical monuments downtown. Sits on the only bench in the park and eats ice cream. Heads to library. From time to time he visits the construction site to inquire if there have been any more incidents. There were a few but none of them were your doing. Mr Witch doesn't actually think you're the only one enraged by the new road, does he? Honestly as much as you detest it you're also a little relieved humans haven't decided to build over the northern part of the forest. That would be a lot more troublesome.

You follow on a safe distance as he inspects the surrounding trees, no doubt to chase away the remaining forest spirits. For a very long time he inspects some footprints. You carefully step closer trying to see what caught his attention. Suddenly he stands up and continues on his way. As you follow you glance at the ground. Ah, of course.

He heads back to town after that, returns home and you return to your spot in the bushes. Sun hasn't set yet,  the day is still warm so he brings a low table out on the porch and pours two glasses of dark bubbly liquid.

“Are you going to keep hiding or will you join me for a drink? I have some tofu I can fry if you want. Kitsune like it, right?“ he asks without looking in your direction.

Crap. Well, no point in trying to be sneaky anymore. You step out, head raised high and your tails gracefully swaying with each step. A silver gem radiating light balances on the middle one. Once you reach porch you shapeshift to a human and hide the gem from Suna's eyes. You don't bother hiding the tails though and you take a sit across from him, carefully eyeing and sniffing the contents of the glass.

“Only three tails?“

“Are you judging my age?“

“Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.“ That's not what his face says. “Thank you for leaving the construction site be,“ he chats on seemingly unbothered by your icy glare. “You must've noticed those footprints too, right? Have any idea where I might find the owner?“

“That sounds like your job Mr Witch.“

“It's Suna actually.“ He keeps talking like you're old acquaintances and it's making your blood boil. “Can I ask for your name? Don't want to call you Miss Kitsune.“

“Why are you here?“

Suna gulps down half of his drink before answering. “To make sure construction continues without any accidents. You seem to think yourself some kind of a yokai protector. Then I'm a protector of humans.“

You bark a laugh. “As if your kind needs protecting.“

“All the people getting sick from those keukegen would disagree.“

“Sounds like it's their fault for not staying away from infested places,“ you retort.

“Then one easy fix would be getting rid of those infested places.“

“An undertaking you have no doubt already started.“

“I'm just doing my job.“

“You can't chase them away for long you know. Your kind has tried before. They always come back.“

You've hoped your words would elicit a response from him. Anything. A trace of frustration, an arrogant grin. Suna pours himself another glass. “Do you want some ice?“

“What I would very much like is for you to leave.“

A grin flashes over his face. “Get used to my presence because I won't go away for a very long time.“

So this is how he wants to play. He isn't the tiniest bit alerted when you abruptly stand up. “We'll see.“

Your daily routine continues. The only difference is you no longer care to hide. Wherever Suna goes you're not far behind. He wants to stay, play the protector of humans, does he? Pathetic. He doesn't seem to be bothered by you following him around. Just slightly unimpressed. It makes you want to set his pants on fire. Just to get a reaction. Just to see his expression change.

“How long do you plan on following me?“

“Who says I'm following you? World doesn't revolve around you Mr Witch. Maybe I just wanted to buy myself some mochi. Have you considered that?“ You pretend to be interested in melons on the shelf. “Aren't these kind of expensive?“

Suna ignores your question. “I'm grocery shopping. There are no yokai here. And I haven't even harmed anyone.“

“Yet. Such a short word. Yet. Somebody has to keep an eye on your nasty tricks.“ You peek into his shopping cart. “Instant ramen and crab chips? Even I know humans need some you know,“ you wave your hand trying to remember what it's called but the word is buried too deep in your memory, “healthy food!“ you say instead and place the most expensive melon in the cart. “Like fruit for example.“

“Put it back.“

“It's healthy.“

“It's expensive.“

“I got money.“ You pull a bundle of bank notes from your pocket.

He puts the melon back on the shelf and grabs the cart with more force than necessary. You hum contently before putting the money in your pocket where it changes back to leaves you picked up last autumn.

The sheer number of different products on the shelves amazes you. And also makes you a little sad. All the offering humans bring to the temple are just rice and tofu and sometimes curry. Not that you don't like rice and tofu but why can't they bring one of all these colourful sweets? Or the chips Suna just put in the cart. Would he notice if one of the bags disappeared?

Walking past the vegetable stand you grab three cucumber packages and plop them down in his cart. You notice he added a bag of brown rice to it.

“Really? Three packages?“ he asks.

“They're a gift for kappas up the stream,“ you smile, innocently.

“Buy them yourself. You got money, don't you?”

“Why, would you like some? What's the matter Mr Witch, job doesn't pay well? Maybe you should consider a career that doesn't rely on destroying our lives.“

“Maybe you should live a life that doesn't harm others.“

You grin, satisfied. And so facade begins to crumble. A loud cough distracts you from throwing back another insult. An older man gives the two of you a disapproving look before returning to reading labels.

Suna grabs the cart and continues his way to the next item on the crumpled shopping list. You trail behind looking like a lost puppy peeking from behind him to see what the next item on the list is, adding new items to the cart Suna immediately puts back in their place. Even by the register you add one more package of chewing gum to the pile.

“At least take one with a fruity flavour,“ says Suna so you grab two more packages with watermelon on them. You think you see his eye twitch though it might be just your imagination. While he puts the groceries in a bag you snatch a chocolate bar from the nearest shelf, then follow him outside to take the cucumbers from the bag he's holding.

“You've been quite busy yesterday,“ you remark as you walk down the street.

“Since you followed me around the entire time I take it you weren't.“ He outstretches his hand. “Your stuff was 700 yen. Pay up.“

You give him a crumbled wrapper.

“Any particular reason you're interested in the old Nishikawa house?“ you ask, continuing to smile innocently when Suna glares at you and puts the wrapper in his pocket.

“I thought you were the local expert on all things paranormal in this town. I'll let you guess twice.“ He peels the sticker off the bananas and sticks it on your forehead. “See you around Miss Kitsune.“

Ch. 2: Red beneath the moon

tag list: @blurring-stars

[brainweird-moth]

day 6

warnings: briefly, violent intrusive thoughts

today, conquerer try distance herself from bloom and heart... not cruelly, of course - she love them and want help, but...

"won't let you destroy self for it."

those words stuck in mind - heart have way with words… or maybe just with her.

so, today, she join in on some woodcarving. hobbies still pretty new and weird to her, so why not? can only do so much beading before need something else.

it's... not too bad, really. feels nice, even if awful thoughts creep in... people around her give tips, especially patience - he seem happy someone new join in.

someone near her work on little bird, detailing feathers... another person make complicate art piece, but she - with help from others - settle on spoon. simple, but not too boring.

she feel almost in trance as work, knife glide through and shape handle - from solid block to... well, less solid block.

not perfect at all, but even so have charm... time melt away, other people's chatter become meaningless blur and everything go smooth...

everything... go smooth…? her face twist, confuse - this spot on bottom seem push back... no problem, just go harder...

...

still not enough. but she try and try and try, push harder and harder, this need work—

crack!

big chunk snap and fly off, and leave behind more cracks. she stare as realise what done - she just ruin all this hard work.

she grit teeth as anger build, and just want throw everything, maybe- maybe even what everyone else make, break theirs like just break hers! smash this table, maybe put knife through hand—

seething, she get up with slam and walk out, leaving even cane at table. out here, out here she can scream and pace and throw sticks around - sure, some people dislike this, but this stop her from do worse, so can't complain that much.

as bad leg start jolt in pain, she hiss and sit under tree. she pick up fallen leaf and start tear apart until nothing left - and then again. finally she hug knees with sigh, and just listen to breeze...

"may i?" someone ask - she look up, then away again with shrug and mumble. patience sit down and join her in listen.

"do this bring peace?" he ask.

"...i guess," she shrug, "never have view like this before. maybe some day this get old and just feel… normal," she sadly chuckle.

"i think..." he hum, "if you want still treasure, just try."

"what... you mean?"

"never let self forget how special this all is... that we even exist."

she think on this, and nod with sigh, "guess so, huh? even just myself... if those two not find me..."

silence, briefly - nothing but wind.

"you know, i think you pretty wonderful."

"tch. just lucky, more like."

but he shake head, "no... you work hard."

she roll eyes and scowl, "and i just ruin all that."

"you think you only one?" he ask with smile.

she stop - well, really probably not, but… "who knows. maybe so."

"hey, this stuff take practise," he pat shoulder firmly, "for first go , you do really well - if this skill you want build, am happy help."

...she did really love... somehow whisk away from all thoughts and fears, at least until break... and would love be able show something else she can make...

"i should go back," he sigh and stretch as stand, "but let me know soon, OK?"

she nod with small smile.

she need try again.

[morsking]

i was told to come here for fate zero kotomine kirei questions? i was thinking about kirei in f/z and realized i don't think i actually completely understood his arc and specifically how it relates to his spirituality/belief in God? can you explain to me what happened to this strange knife-throwing man

i’d be VERY happy to, i love talking about kirei even if i don’t do it very often.

this is something that becomes a little more clear later on in heaven’s feel but the gist of it is that kirei has an inexplicably sadistic nature he does not understand where it comes from or why he has it. for the majority of fate/zero’s first part, he doesn’t even know it exists until gilgamesh slowly draws it out of him by making him deconstruct his own thought process and personal beliefs.

kirei was raised catholic and had a priest for a father, so kirei had catholic teachings of altruism and asceticism hammered into his young brain on top of risei’s, his father’s, expectations and desires for kirei to be “pure and beautiful”, just like kirei’s name suggests. 

kirei, however, secretly felt repressed by those teachings and expectations since forsaking personal happiness and helping others never brought him any joy, and because he never felt any joy in helping others, he reasoned that joy and pleasure were sinful indulgences that a believer, much less a priest, should never partake in. he therefore internalized displeasure and complete emotional detachment as a natural and righteous state of life. this, coupled with the catholic belief that selflessness in life would mean salvation in death, resulted in kirei becoming far too guilty to ever chase after pleasure because doing so would mean betraying not just the faith in his Lord, but also all the hard work and love his father had put into raising him as a pure and beautiful person. kirei respected his father’s ideal and tried his best to live up to it, but fundamentally could not understand it, and he could not love the man it belonged to. in response to these emotions, kirei resorted to grievous and deadly methods of self-harm to keep himself walking the righteous path.

nevertheless, kirei could not contain his curiosity (and unbeknownst to him, his yearning) for pleasure and travelled the world attempting to find meaning and enjoyment in different activities. he graduated top of his class, skipped grades as an exceptional student, worked diligently as an executor, and even ate some of the most exquisite delicacies known to man... and found them all tasteless and unfulfilling. kirei was a truly hopeless individual with no direction or sense of self and personhood. he had failed to find meaning in basic, and even some luxurious, delights every human being desires to experience.

in a desperate, final gambit to connect with the inner humanity he lacked his entire life, kirei attempted to fall in love with a woman called claudia ortensia. claudia was terminally ill, and was not expected to live for much longer. while she did love him, he could not bring himself to reciprocate despite his best efforts. they were together for two years and had a child, caren, out of wedlock. throughout his time with claudia kirei could only find salvation in claudia’s suffering. but claudia, an incorregible saint, was willing to suffer if it meant bringing him joy and salvation. claudia slowly died, and soon enough her time was at hand. kirei believed that as her husband it was his duty to at least say his farewells on her deathbed. as claudia lay dying, kirei relayed the simple fact to claudia that after all their time together, he did not love her. to prove him wrong and save him, she disconnected her life support machine. kirei cried at the sight of wife selflessly dying to save him, and claudia, with her fading strength, told him that those tears were proof that he did love her, and that love is proof of his humanity. 

unbeknownst to either of them, the true reason kirei cried was because he didn’t get to kill her himself.

kirei handed over his child to the church. if marriage did not save him, parenthood wouldn’t either. kirei contemplated suicide, but instead opted to return to his teachings and live as an executor, craving even the most artificial of purpose to justify his existence. 

we then reach fate/zero. kirei is at his lowest emotional point, and sensing the pit in his soul yearning for purpose, the grail bestows him with command spells. kotomine risei contacts his ally tohsaka tokiomi, and takes kirei under his wing as an apprentice in magecraft. 

kirei is a natural prodigy at magecraft, and is able to almost master every single discipline before abandoning it in frustration at his failure to find fulfillment and joy in it. (interestingly enough, he has a particularly high affinity for spiritual healing and surgery.) while kirei intends to follow tokiomi and risei’s orders to crown tokiomi as the victor of the grail war, he secretly begrudges being a bored pawn with no freedom and bears no actual loyalty to either of them.

in the world’s most bizarre boy-meets-girl scenario in the history of anime, kotomine kirei learns of emiya kiritsugu. kiritsugu is a mercenary employed by the einzberns to participate in the holy grail war. he has fought in countless battlefields, only joining the fight when combat is at its fiercest. he has killed scores upon scores of mages who deviate from the clocktower’s rules, and has been reported to have taken extreme measures in his assassinations such as bringing down an entire commercial airline just because his target was in it. kirei is mystified by kiritsugu’s lack of moral restraint, personhood, and regard for his own life. kirei immediately projects his own lack of self into kiritsugu and is desperate to understand him. he vows to meet kiritsugu in battle to finally grasp the answer to the question that is his existence.

as he attempts to meet kiritsugu throughout the story, kirei is approached by gilgamesh, the world’s most ancient hedonist. gilgamesh senses that kirei is repressing a fundamental part of himself, and that’s the true source of kirei’s unhappiness. gilgamesh attempts to make kirei realize that kirei has never lacked anything, he’s just tried to avert his gaze from the truth of his own nature. gilgamesh tells kirei that pleasure and joy aren’t things that are inherently sinful. human beings instinctively seek pleasure as and end in and of itself, and kirei is no different. because pleasure is a natural human drive, it can never be something unforgivable. to drive his point further, gilgamesh asks kirei that if he can’t see himself winning, then he should try to imagine a scenario where the war’s weakest combatant, matou kariya, does. 

kirei does try, but before he can tell kirei what he envisions, gilgamesh stops him. gilgamesh reveals that there was no point to engaging in speculation when kirei asks if there was one, but the fact kirei did anyway shows he found a meaningless notion entertaining, and therefore, fulfilling. this comes to a head when kirei decides to heal kariya’s burn wounds after his confrontation with tokiomi. kirei experiences a rush he’s never felt before. he hasn’t just helped kariya stay in the race for the grail out of his own volition, he has done it against his master’s orders and best interests. 

when risei is killed by kayneth, kirei finds his grief to be oddly forced and empty. surely, he must be devastated at the death of his father, the man who loved him, raised him, taught him, and made him who he is today. but strangely, his grief seems to be directed at something else. that’s when gilgamesh appears to him and tells him the reason why he’s sad isn’t that his father died, but that kirei didn’t get to kill him himself. this shocks kirei to his core, but he’s also forced to entertain that notion. once he realizes that gilgamesh IS right about what kirei really wanted out of his father, he’s ordered by tokiomi to leave japan and exit the war as demanded by irisviel if an alliance between the tohsakas and the einzberns against the matous is to take place. kirei secretly meets with gilgamesh, who is bored and frustrated with tokiomi, and they agree to partner up and kill tokiomi. kirei realizes that there was a satisfaction in killing tokiomi and having the last thing he ever saw be kirei betraying him and asserting his personal desire over his obligation to his teacher. 

kirei, now fully committed to discovering what he yearns for the most, tells kariya he will allow him to duel tokiomi once more in exchange for bringing him the container of the holy grail and the person closest to kiritsugu: irisviel. unbeknownst to kariya, tokiomi’s wife aoi has been summoned to the church by kirei. kariya finds tokiomi already dead, and aoi walks into kariya holding tokiomi’s corpse. aoi believes kariya has killed tokiomi, and angrily accuses kariya of never having loved anyone. kariya reaches the breaking point of his rage and suffering after being rejected by aoi, the person he was enduring torture and humiliation for, and asphyxiates her in madness. realizing what he’s done, kariya runs away from the church wailing in grief and guilt. kirei and gilgamesh had watched the whole affair, and kirei realizes that what he finds meaning and pleasure in is inflicting suffering upon others and watch them collapse under the crosses struggles they carry. while he does not understand why he is this way, he nevertheless wants to find out to feel complete and intends to use the grail for that purpose.

kirei meets with irisviel, and demands answers for his questions about emiya kiritsugu. irisviel reveals kiritsugu is not the heartless killing machine kirei believed him to be, but fundamentally an altruist who wishes to shower the world in peace and blessings and seeks the grail for that purpose. she condescends kirei by telling him kiritsugu is not like him, he is far better and that’s why kiritsugu will not lose. finally understanding the man whose nature has eluded him and finding where kirei’s karma stands in relation to him, kirei kills irisviel and vows to destroy kiritsugu’s dream with his own hands. 

when kiritsugu and kirei fight and the grail interferes by crowning kiritsugu the winner rather than reach a stalemate, kirei watches kiritsugu speaking with angra mainyu. he observes kiritsugu realizing that what he wanted all along was to live peacefully with his family even if it meant forsaking the world to a violent extinction. he is baffled at kiritsugu rejecting the cursed genocidal grail, and demands kiritsugu to hand it over if he doesn’t want it, because kirei has the need to find the defining principle of his own existence. after kiritsugu kills kirei and has saber destroy the grail, the curses that spill out of it engulf kirei’s corpse and resuscitate him. angra mainyu has declared kirei as the winner for the sake of using him as an anchor and a midwife for his eventual birth. 

upon seeing angra mainyu’s catastrophe, kirei concludes that the calamity he is standing over is what his heart has yearned for all this time. he laughs in shock, irony, and glee that despite kotomine risei’s righteous nature and teachings, kirei is simply a monstrous and heretical cur who thrives in the agony of mankind. when gilgamesh asks if the sight of angra mainyu’s birth has satisfied him, kirei replies that it doesn’t, because kirei has been shown the end result of his desire rather than the actual philosophical principle and logical process that guides to the outcome. so for the next 10 years, kirei wrestles with the fact that he still cannot abandon his teachings and his obligation to be somewhat helpful as a priest for the desire to reject and challenge god and allow angra mainyu to fully manifest in this world and engulf it completely to finally give his existence meaning and validity because he knows his impulses to be wrong and yet needs to know why he has them and whether he is still worthy of living while having them. he is willing to manipulate and kill and betray and curse and deprive and destroy the world just for that chance at redeeming his existence because not understanding himself and having denied himself joy for so long has utterly broken him as a person and this is all he has left after a lifetime of denying himself happiness, empathy, and understanding to work through his feelings. to bless angra mainyu’s birth as a man of the cloth would reconcile his religious principles and belief in a merciful all-loving god with his yearning to accept and comprehend himself, because if angra mainyu can be allowed to live and prosper in this world while being the unforgivable culmination of all sin, then maybe he can too. (this is also a powerful and intimate parallel to both shirou and sakura that deserves its own post that i may or may not write later.)

that’s pretty much his development throughout zero and his defining character struggle in fate/stay night. this is something that spring song will delve into further and it’s actually quite interesting how such a bastard of a man suddenly becomes so sympathetic towards the end of the entire game. 

grace if you ever have time for it i heavily encourage you to read through the heaven’s feel route whether through letsplayarchive or by playing realta nua yourself whilst we wait for a spring song release in the west because your perception of everyone will change drastically as you understand them at a much deeper level the movies could not show because of runtime constraints. i hope this explanation wasn’t too long or convoluted or raised more questions than delivered answers. three good friends of mine, thessaliah, kurozu501, and avicebro here on tumblr can probably elaborate further and offer more insight if you’re interested. 

[perish-the-creator]

My Brothers

POV: Ichi begins to have thoughts that bother him. TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE FOLLOWING: Mortality and reference to thoughts of s/i/ide 

My brothers

The two I have known as that now

I wonder if you also recall our life before this.

We were small

Separated 

Uncorrupted in our youth.

Born to different mothers and fathers

And littered with the warmth of loving tongues.

Brothers, do you remember our home?

Do you remember what it was like?

The moment we became brothers is fuzzy to me.

What event allowed ourselves to join the swarm of others

Who were sown together just as we.

Time is timeless to us.

You both know that just as well.

And in that timelessness what had we gained?

Brothers

Do you too fear death?

Do you also fear the nothingness that awaits us?

Does our conjoined heart

That beats for three

Also tighten at the idea of nothingness? 

I would never call you friends.

We are forced into this.

Brothers by bond and not by blood. 

We are three but we are also one.

Unified in this sickly body

Tainted with blood and chaos. 

Brothers

Do you loathe this life as I do?

How long must we go?

How long till our soul

If we have it

Grows bored and leaves us?

What use is immortality

If we must live through the nothingness that comes.

Mortality makes love

Mortality makes fear

Mortality makes meaning.

Perhaps that is why

Brothers

We lack that. 

In that moment 

San

When your mind was separated from your body

Had you grazed the void?

If so

Tell me brother if there is the other side

If there is another side for us. 

Brothers

What are we?

Tell me of our purpose and meaning.

If not eternal life then what?

Endless destruction? 

If we create nothing

Should we even fear nothing?

My brothers

Whom I have known as such for many countless eras

Was there ever any hope for another outcome?

Should we have perished with our brethren? 

Should we too have been ground to nothing, 

Instead of fused into the monstrosity we are now?

I dare beg

That one of you rid me of my brain.

Such thoughts now trouble me.

Another eye-opening in which

I was before blind to. 

For the swelling of emotions

Yet known to I

Are flooding me. 

Escaping my chambers and leaking from my eyes.

Tears.

That is what they are.

Brothers

I beg you to murder this head.

And torment my mind

Till I am a broken slate once more. 

Brothers

I would embrace death

If she comes to us. 

For this existence is pain

And meaningless. 

We are the embodiment of pointless

And nothingness

And an endless void

That swallows all

And spits out nothing. 

I’m going to be doing poetry like this for a while. Expect more. 

[hibiscusangel15]

Why Tragedy Exists

An angsty @ichirukimonth 2020 fic this time.

Summary: When you spent your whole life fighting, what was there to do when you had nothing left to fight for? What purpose did Kurosaki Ichigo even have in this world anymore?

Ichigo’s life during the seventeen months without Rukia. For Day 7 of Ichiruki Month 2020.

Rating: Teen

(Belated) Day 7 Prompt: why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief.

Also crossposted to FFN and AO3!

When you spent your whole life fighting, what was there to do when you had nothing left to fight for? What purpose did Kurosaki Ichigo even have in this world anymore?

“Hey, bleached-hair kid! I’m talkin’ to you, asshole!” Another faceless thug snagged his collar. Yet another nameless gang gathered to back up their cookie-cutter character of a leader.

He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t want to be here. But where else did he have to go?

Another meaningless scuffle. Another bruise, another scrape, more blood to be cleaned later.

Flurried fists and tiny pocket knives and screamed obscenities never seemed so dull before.

Other boys his age often picked fights with him. Had done so as far back as he could remember. All over trifling, inconsequential matters that seemed so laughable to him now. His hair, his attitude, his existence was all wrong.

Only now he had the strength to take them all on by himself. Only now did he choose to fight them for no reason at all.

Chad interfered in one of these fights once. For a moment, they were a team again. They fought side-by-side without the burden of death or the balance of the worlds looming over their heads. This was just a brawl on the street. Nothing more, nothing less.

Once Chad called an ambulance for all the knocked-out thugs, he offered to treat Ichigo out to some food.

Ichigo said nothing. Didn’t even thank him. Just spat out coppery blood on the concrete and stalked off without looking back. Chad wouldn’t chase after him or insist, he knew. Knew all too well how to take advantage of his friend’s inherent kindness.

He never felt more disgusted with himself.

Time moved on. Everyone around him recovered. They all got over the horrors they’d just barely survived. Only he remained stagnant, falling behind, grasping at something forever out of his reach.

He never thought that saving the world would be so thankless.

Tatsuki once invited him to watch her karate team practice and give them a few pointers. None of the upperclassmen were all that stoked about it, but they’d heard about Kurosaki’s reputation. One of them even challenged him to a fair match to test his skills.

He nearly refused. Until the guy went on and on about how Ichigo’s only fighting experience came from fights in the street. How a punk like him couldn’t possibly have learned the discipline or technique a real warrior possessed.

Tatsuki told this smug upperclassman off, stabbing him with reminders that he didn’t even qualify for nationals last year. The upperclassman—Ichigo was never very good at remembering names—snapped something at her, and it was only then he stood up and accepted his challenge.

Ichigo took him down in a few minutes. Then another upperclassman claimed he cheated and demanded a match with him, and another one after that. Their pride as one of the top karate teams in the nation was staked on this.

Unfortunately, these guys were all weak.

None of them would last a day being a Shinigami.

They begged and begged him to join their team despite all their injuries. Despite how afraid of him they all were. To them, to normal humans, Kurosaki Ichigo was little more than a monster.

So he refused. Such things simply didn’t hold his interest anymore.

And then they offered to pay him.

Ichigo hadn’t had much need for money before. Though his father didn’t make much running the Kurosaki Clinic, his family lived comfortably enough.

Now those bills waved in his face meant something else. Something new to latch onto.

With enough money, he could move far, far away from Karakura Town. He could leave everything behind. Go to a university where no one knew him. Start fresh. Start anew.

Ichigo could forget last year ever happened. He could finally forget her.

He took the deal, but made his own conditions as well. This much would only pay for the week. He wouldn’t ever be considered an official member of the team, so they couldn’t ask him to participate in competitions.

They were not comrades. They were not friends.

Word got out about Ichigo’s “services” to the other sports teams at Karakura High.  Soon enough, he found himself making weekly and bi-weekly contracts to help them out during practices.

It was a decent way to make money, he supposed. Looking into how much apartments cost outside the city, though, he knew it wasn’t enough.

He’d have to find another job soon.

Ichigo was out with the track team when he spotted Ishida alone in the park. No, not alone. He couldn’t sense the enemy, but the pocks in the grass and suspiciously trampled playground equipment more than spoke for itself.

He didn’t know what he was going to do when he took off. Instinct never really left much room for rationale, after all.

He leapt high over Ishida’s head, grunting in surprise when his foot connected with an intangible figure. The earth rumbled underneath as a plume of dust kicked up a few feet away.

Definitely a Hollow. A big one.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Kurosaki?” Ishida snapped. His arms were extended before him, holding a bow Ichigo couldn’t see anymore.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m helping you! The least you could do is thank me.”

Idiot! I’m not going to thank you! The echo of her voice rang so unbearably clear in his mind. He wished he could cast it aside, wished the memory of her would not linger in every little thing he did.

Ishida's eyes flickered away, and he leapt a distance much wider than any normal human would’ve been able to cover. A fist-shaped crater bloomed before him. Ichigo raised his arms to block the debris flying past, choking on the dust swirling in the air.

As a habit, he reached behind him for a sword that did not exist anymore. Would not exist ever again.

Fate was once again the millstone, he the grist. It turned relentlessly, endlessly onward, further away from her and back again.

Powerlessness. Normality. Both synonymous with complacency.

Both equaled death.

“You’re only getting in the way, Kurosaki! Just back off and let me handle this for once,” Ishida yelled.

Ichigo watched him mimic pulling an arrow back, deliberate and steady. Watched Ishida fire that shot above his head. There was no fanfare, no sense of accomplishment to accompany it. He didn’t even know where the Hollow was.

“Is it...dead?” he asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

Ishida lowered his arms. “Yes.”

“I see.”

Silence weighed in the air far heavier than any reiatsu ever could.

“Hey, do you ever feel bad about the Hollows you kill?”

Ishida frowned at the question. “What do you mean?”

It was pointless to ask him this. It was pointless to continue.

“Quincies completely destroy souls with their arrows, right?” Ichigo clenched his own shirt in a fist. He had to stop talking. “Don’t you ever feel bad that any random Hollow you killed might be some lost soul in pain?”

Ishida studied him for a wary moment then shoved his glasses further up his nose. “It can’t be helped. If it comes down to saving a Hollow or an innocent soul, I’d choose the innocent one without hesitation. Surely you’d do the same, Kurosaki.”

“I could save both of them.” The words were so quiet, so riddled with hollow confidence. “I’d save them both without even thinking about it.”

“Funny, you once said to me that you knew you couldn’t protect everyone.”

His friends didn’t always have the right words to say. He couldn’t expect them to understand.

And yet….

“But I did save everyone! I saved Karakura Town. I saved the entire damn world as we know it. What makes you think I couldn’t save two souls at once the way I am now?”

His chest ached. The strain was unbearable. He was drowning.

“Are you calling me weak? Do you think I’m so incapable of protecting anyone that you’d rather cast me aside than even let me try?”

Ishida looked away. “Quit putting words in my mouth, Kurosaki. I never said any of that.”

“Oh yeah? I’m in the way? I should back off?” He trembled with directionless rage. “All of you guys think I’m some weakling that needs to be protected. That I can’t fend for myself anymore. And I’m so fucking sick of it!”

“Uh, h-hey, Kurosaki, are you okay?” the captain of the track team asked behind him.

Any idiot would know he wasn’t.

Ichigo turned away. “I’m fine.”

The captain paled at the sight of his scowling face. “Um, you can finish your conversation with your friend—”

“We’re not friends.”

Ishida sucked in a sharp breath, but said nothing. Did nothing. Again.

“Kurosaki!”

Ichigo didn’t turn back. How could he? They’d all turned their backs on him. It only seemed fitting he return the favor.

The wheel continued to turn.

Finals were a pain to deal with, especially with all those remedial classes he had to take for missing so much school before. Though difficult and boring, they weren’t entirely unmanageable.

He hadn’t really talked much to the others in a while. Better to distance himself now. Better they all learn to let him go so he’d have no further reminders of the last year. Of her.

It was stupid to think they’d ever go so quietly, though.

“Ichigo!” Tatsuki called to him on the street.

He stopped walking but refused to look back.

Several sets of footsteps scraped along the concrete behind him.

“You’ve been avoiding us for weeks now, Kurosaki,” Ishida said. “But now that Finals are over, you can’t hide from us anymore.”

“I wasn’t hiding from any of you. We’re all in the same class,” Ichigo replied, keeping his tone unaffected.

“You know that’s not what we mean, Kurosaki.”

Fate was cruel in each revolution. In each turning of the wheel, he would always be crushed under its power.

“Kurosaki-kun,” Inoue piped up, her voice wavering just a bit. “You’ve been acting very strangely since...that day Kuchiki-san left.”

Her name. The mere sound of it dragged him down when he’d tried so desperately to claw himself to the surface.

He hadn’t said her name in months. Didn’t even dare to think it.

“Ishida-kun and Sado-kun and Tatsuki-chan told me everything that’s been happening with you. And...we’re worried.” Her voice bubbled and warped, and he was drowning again. “We don’t know why you’re pushing us all away, Kurosaki-kun.”

They didn’t know? They really didn’t know why he couldn’t bear to be near them?

“I can’t stand the way you all look at me.”

Such a disgustingly petty reason. Such a terrible excuse. When even he couldn’t stand to look at himself anymore.

“Ever since I lost my powers, you’ve all been acting like I'm fragile and useless!”

Enough.

“I can’t stand it!”

Shut up.

“I don’t want your pity!”

Please stop.

“I can’t wait to get the hell out of Karakura Town so you all can finally leave me alone!”

The rain would follow him, though. That cursed rain would always follow him.

He was drowning. Why couldn’t they see?

Tatsuki was the first to speak. “You’ve always been like this.”

“...What the hell did you just say?”

Even now he refused to look at them.

“What, does being mad all the time make you deaf, too?” she snapped. “I said you’ve always been like this, Ichigo. You don’t know any other way to express your grief outside of lashing out.”

“Is that right?” Ichigo stood up straighter. “And what makes you think I’m grieving, Tatsuki?”

“Don’t you dare act like I don’t know you, Kurosaki Ichigo!” Her voice rippled through the water. “We’ve known each other for so long—we’ve been friends for this long—and you couldn’t even bother to tell me what was going on with you from the beginning. I had to learn about all this Shinigami stuff after the fact! And not from you, either! From Orihime! From Chad and Ishida! But you didn’t tell me anything! Not when you left to rescue Kuchiki-san, not when you went to save Orihime…. I know you’re grieving because this is the exact same thing you did when your mother died!”

Ichigo finally whirled on them, eyes burning with so much fury it was difficult to look at him head-on.

Ishida stepped in front of her, arm outstretched like a shield. “So you’ve become the sort of person that would attack your friends over something like this? Do you think Kuchiki-san would be happy if she knew she’d left you in this sorry state?”

They kept saying her name so freely. As if she was so commonplace. As if his heart could bear that burden.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Didn’t she tell you she’d be watching over you, Kurosaki? Do you think she’d approve of anything you’re doing now? All your fights. Your rage. And for what?”

Ichigo gritted his teeth. “I don’t need her approval! I don’t need anything! I’m happy without her! I’m happy I’m finally normal!”

Ishida’s usual calm demeanor cracked, and his face twisted into a scowl. “What you’re doing isn’t normal, Kurosaki! Constantly picking fights with strangers, ignoring all of us, butting into simple Hollow fights—”

Inoue sucked in a breath. Clearly there were some things the others hadn’t told her.

“Does it make you feel strong, Kurosaki? Does it help you forget that, just for a moment, you aren’t completely pathetic?”

Ichigo punched him square in the jaw. His glasses flew off. A sickening crunch sounded under his foot when he took a bewildered step back.

Inoue ran to him immediately. “Ishida-kun!”

Tatsuki grabbed his arm, tried to pin it behind his back and get him to submit. Ichigo wrenched his arm out of her hold and turned to shove her away.

Chad stepped in between them. There was that awful pity reflected in his eyes again.

Ichigo wanted to wipe it away.

Chad took blow after wild blow to the chest, to his stomach, each one more frustrated than the last. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, but he did not move. The pity in his eyes did not change.

Ichigo shoved Tatsuki to the ground when she tried to intervene again. There was yelling. So much yelling. None of it was enough to pierce through the rain. It wasn’t enough to save him.

His hand suddenly bounced off an invisible barrier, bruising the knuckles and his pride all in one shattering blow.

“Kurosaki-kun…” Inoue muttered, her voice cracking.

She flinched when he glared back at her. That look on her face made him hate himself all the more.

It was the same look she wore when he first protected her with his Hollow mask. It was that look every other human threw his way.

Monster.

“Please...stop this.” Tears spilled down her face. Ishida wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, and she folded into the embrace. “We’re your friends! So please….”

Ichigo couldn’t take it anymore. All his sorrow and grief and aimless rage collapsed around him and he screamed.

Chad caught him before he sank any further. “Ichigo!”

“I can’t…. I don’t….”

He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning. He was dying.

A steady hand squeezed his shoulder, another placed flat on his back. They held him above the water. They lent him their strength.

The rain still echoed around him. He still struggled to stay afloat. But maybe now he would rely on his friends to protect his heart.

A single tear crashed to the ground as bright as a falling star.

“I’m sorry.”

                                                        * * *

Quiet mornings were practically nonexistent in Karakura Town.

“Maaaaan, I can’t stand not talking about this anymore! Doesn’t it drive you insane?” Keigo screeched while walking alongside Mizuiro.

Mizuiro scrolled through social media on his phone, only half-listening. “I’m not sure what you mean, Asano-san.”

“Don’t you ‘Asano-san’ me again, Mizuiro! I’m talking about all the weird stuff Ichigo and the others did a while ago! I mean, I know Ishida and Chad and all the others said it’s better if we don’t talk about that stuff with him, but c’mon! How’re you not supposed to talk about ghosts and monsters and Shinigami after finding out they exist? It’s impossible!”

“Considering your track record, I’m surprised you managed to hold out for this long.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean? I can be sensitive to others’ feelings!” Keigo insisted. “But it’s been forever. Ichigo might be okay if I talk to him about it now.”

“Might be?”

“Don’t make me second-guess myself, Mizuiro! I’m gonna talk about this so much, even I’ll get sick of hearing about it!”

Mizuiro finally looked up. “Everything that happened to us was pretty unbelievable. Sometimes I want to believe it was all some weird nightmare I had. But...I don’t really want to talk about it. There isn’t much left to be said anyway. Not if reminding Ichigo of it all will just depress him.”

At this, Keigo’s enthusiasm deflated. “Well, yeah, I guess. But don’t you wanna know what he thinks about Rukia-chan not coming to visit all this time?”

What a tactless idiot.

Mizuiro’s smile was more polite than genuine. “I think she’s the main reason he’s been feeling down.”

“What? So you’re saying that they—”

“I’m not saying anything, Asano-san.”

His cold facade nearly fell at Keigo's childish pout. Honestly, if he wasn't able to pick up on these things after all the time he'd known Ichigo, then there really was no hope for him.

Keigo didn’t get a chance to talk to him until lunchtime.

“I wonder what Rukia-chan’s up to.”

Ichigo nearly spit out his juice. “What’s Rukia got to do with anything?”

“I’m just saying, would it kill her to pop in and say hello from time to time?” Keigo flopped about on the floor like a fish. “Don’t you think it’s cold of her to not show her face even once since then?”

Yes.

“It’s not cold,” Ichigo replied.

Liar.

“She’s not in charge of Karakura Town anymore, so it’s completely normal for her to not hang around.”

Keigo squinted up at him. “You don’t miss her?”

More than anything.

“No reason to.”

He rattled off the same bullshit excuse he always did whenever anyone brought this up. He always wanted this slow peace. He didn’t need his powers anymore.

He didn’t need her in his life.

Before today, when was the last time he’d spoken her name aloud? When did Rukia become someone who never left his mind?

Ichigo stared up at the sky. Dark clouds blurred through a once-clear blue.

A black butterfly fluttered past. His absent hand trailed after it, chased it in the hopes it would perch itself on his finger. It flew up higher, further than he could reach, and he slowly let his hand fall away.

Fate turned on relentlessly. It would not falter, would not pause even for them. He had wished, foolishly perhaps, that he could go back to the moment Rukia disappeared from his eyes. Go back just to tell her everything he could not say.

He loved her.

He loved her with every fiber of his weak human heart.

The wheel kept spinning. The butterfly grew more distant.

Rukia would not come back to him.

The wind picked up, and he finally turned away.

I wonder if I can keep up with the speed of a world you’re not in.

[himbowelsh]

18 with winnix for the kiss prompts please!

sha-la-la-la my oh my, looks like the boy’s too shy  💋 (accepting!) 18.   kisses where one person is sitting in the other’s lap

this definitely...  escalated far past where you wanted/needed it to go, and turned into more of an exploration of their post-war relationship, when winters joins nix in new jersey...   i had fun with it, but oof, did it ever kinda spiral.  there’s definitely kissing towards the end, though, so i hope you enjoy!!

To be fair, Nix never promised him an enjoyable night.

His first pitch was “a party”. Dick, who’s had enough experience with the sort of parties that go on in Nixon, New Jersey, replied that he had paperwork to catch up on. It was a good excuse because it wasn’t a lie. Nix brooded for a solid thirty seconds before popping back up, smile bright, to declare, “an evening affair, then, and you’re my date. You have to be, since I need one, and I haven’t got anyone else.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “What about that girl, the one with the — the red hair —?”

“Hah,” replied Nix, in a flat tone that suggested his redheaded girlfriend was ancient history.

“One of the lobby girls, then.”

“Hah.”

“Blanche?”

“Hah!”

“I’m sure your mother would be honored to go with you.”

Nix had to grip the edge of the table to keep from falling down, laughing.

By the time he regained his composure, Dick was pretty much resigned to accompanying him for the evening. He’s never been able to say no to Nix anyways, even during the war. Being home — Nix’s home — and seeing him in his element — for better or worse — just makes it harder. Something about Nix in the bustling atmosphere of the New Jersey social scene is beguiling, electric, and a bit haunted. Like watching a film noir, Dick can never look away.

He doesn’t expect to have a good time. Nix’s parties are not designed to be good times for people who don’t smoke, drink, or gamble. Nix was kind enough not to remark on the novel tucked into the inside pocket of Dick’s suit jacket as they strode up the walkway towards the roaring party. Loud music blared from open windows; lights and laughter twinkled from beyond the spacious French doorways. It was only nine o’clock, but Dick could feel exhaustion creeping up on him already.

“Come on,” Nix encouraged, guiding him into the townhouse with a proud hand on his elbow. “Let’s set you up on a nice sofa and find a Shirley Temple. Extra cherries, just for you.”

The one thing Dick will credit Lewis Nixon’s parties for — they’re never stingy with the cherries.

Now, three hours into the affair, he sets aside his most recent soda and scans the crowd. As the hours wind away, the raucous group has started to thin out. Either the partiers are headed somewhere else, or all have appointments to keep in the morning, because they show no signs of lingering into the early hours. Dick can be grateful for that much, at least. Those types of parties typically end with him dozing on a stranger’s sofa until he has to steer a very drunk Nix into the back of the waiting car at 3am. Dick has suffered through enough late evenings to never want to see another one again — though, time after time, he ends up coming out for Nix.

It seems like a quiet one tonight, though, thank goodness. The music has faded to a lull, someone thrumming out a thoughtful tune on the piano. The rowdiest partiers have taken leave, and all that’s left are Nix’s regular companions— the home’s owner, another Ivy League man Nix knows well, along with several of his mistresses; a few other Nixon Nitration folks Dick vaguely recognizes, and their dates; Nix’s sister Blanche, leaning languidly over the piano in a shimmering silver dress; and Nix, sprawled in a chair, top buttons of his shirt undone and hair disheveled.

He looks utterly debauched, and something about it thrills Dick. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, of course, but Nix in his sanguine element is magnetic. He’s like a panther — sleek and relaxed, dangerous under a veneer of nobility. No matter how much he’s had to drink, Nix’s dark gaze is always piercing; he always seems to know something the rest of the room doesn’t, and sometimes it plays on his lips like a hidden treasure.

He’s smirking like that now, and the smirk’s trained directly on Dick… and he can’t look away. It’s impossible. Even if he wanted to, Nix reels him in with that penetrating gaze. It’s all Dick can do to sit up straighter, pretending he is comfortable in this rakish crowd, the only one sober and the only one out of place.

“Speaking of saints,” Nix says at once — loud enough to cut in on whatever theological ramble his Yale buddy was in the middle of, “here’s one now. Sitting in front of us. Dick, come here. Show these fellows what a true Saint Augustine looks like.”

Dick would rather do anything else… but he’d cross a mountain for Lewis Nixon. Crossing the length of a trashed ballroom is only a bit more challenging. He comes to stand at Nix’s side, clearly uncomfortable, while Nix’s friends take him in as though seeing him for the first time this evening.

“You know I’m not Catholic, Lew,” he tries to quip, to break the tense mood. Nix’s hand catches his, squeezing lightly, and Dick’s own unease only grows.

“Neither am I, but we’re pretending for tonight. Gives all the sinning a bit more zest, you know?”

“Sure.” Dick’s hand comes to rest on the back of Nix’s chair, unconsciously craving something to do. One of the host’s mistresses, with bright red lips and sharp eyes, doesn’t miss it.

“Ohh,” she hums, like the word is a wave she must ride to the shore. “Don't say it, Lewis. This is your handsome date?”

Something about the way she says it has Dick’s shoulders tensing in instinctual alarm. Maybe Nix has had far too much to drink, or can read this crowd too well; he doesn’t even flinch at the implication.

“Afraid so,” he replies, a hand creeping up Dick’s sleeve. “Nice enough to hang around all night, even though he’d rather be back home pouring over...  productivity reports. Employee reviews? Staff... surveys?”

“Something like that,” Dick says.

“Something like that.” Nix’s hand runs up and down Dick’s arm, blatantly fond. It takes everything in Dick’s power not to tense up.

None of the assembled crowd seems bothered by such a display, however. Nix’s friends exchange knowing looks, smirking around lit cigarettes or crystal glasses. One woman languidly kicks her heels onto her date’s laugh, shaking her head. From the piano, Blanche runs a hand over her glossy hair, gaze sharp on her brother and his companion. “He’s out of your league, Lewis,” she chimes. Her smirk is catlike, voice like molasses dripping onto spring grass. At times, she looks dangerously like her brother, and Dick isn’t sure how to handle either of them.

Nix’s grip settles around Dick’s upper arm. “Isn’t that the truth?”

When Dick looks down, Nix is looking up. Something about his whiskey-bright gaze knocks the breath from his lungs. It’s too… soft, too tender. Too intimate for this party, to exist among strangers. Nix’s grip on his bicep is firm, and Dick has no desire to pull away. He doesn’t get the chance to question — not even a flicker of uncertainty, a breathless what's he doing — before Nix gives a tug, and Dick all but tumbles into his lap.

He regains his balance like a newborn colt, to the bubbling laughter of Nix’s audience. His cheeks flare, bright red; Nix’s touches, usually so welcome, now linger on his skin like a hot iron. He’s straddling his best friend’s knees, Nix’s arm wrapped around his to steady him, and it’s all Dick can do not to leap back to his feet to salvage whatever slim slice of dignity remains.

“Nix,” he says, voice low in warning.

“Relax, Dick,” he answers, equally softspoken. “It’s all a game. Don’t you see? None of it really matters.”

It matters to me, he wants to say...  because Nix has never held him without it mattering, has never caressed him without every sensation engraving itself permanently into Dick’s memory. Nix has never… not mattered to him. Some part of Dick, an small yet insidious murmur, wonders when he became insignificant to him.

The way Nix caresses his face is anything but meaningless, though… as is the way his dark gaze lingers on his lips, simmering for so long that Dick can feel its heat. Nix’s thumb grazes the corner of his mouth, and instinctively Dick draws back.

Something hurt flashes in Nix’s eyes. Dick cannot feel guilty. He doesn’t want this — can’t Nix understand that? Not here, not now, not putting on a show for an audience. Not when Nix is whiskey-soaked and careless, so far gone that Dick could get drunk off the taste of him. If this is a game, Dick doesn’t want to play.

“Father isn’t around for you to give a coronary, Lewis.” Blanche’s voice echoes as though from the other side of a tunnel, practically bored. “Save it for the next family dinner, at least.”

Gradually, Nix’s grip on Dick’s waist loosens. His touch pulls away from his face, finding Dick’s hand instead. He raises it to his mouth and lets it linger there — a sweet mockery of a kiss — before releasing Dick entirely. 

Dick pulls away, regaining his posture and his dignity. The eyes of the room are all on him now, as surely as they were on the jazz singer earlier in the night. He can’t take their weight, or their curiosity. Keeping his eyes fixed firmly ahead, he brushes himself down and murmurs an excuse to Nix. “Just going to get some air.”

Nix doesn’t try to stop him.

Stepping out into the cool night is like being released from prison. Dick braces himself against the stone railing of the townhouse’s balcony, gazing at the gravel drive only a few feet below. He could jump it, if he really wanted to — easier that than going back inside and leaving out the front door, wrangling Nix away from his clan. They’re not so far from home — he could walk it, in an hour or so. The fresh air would do his head good. At least in the dark, no one would be able to see him, to wonder and scrutinize…

His mind has gone to a strange place now, and is twisting itself in tangles. Recognizing his own impossible daydream, Dick sighs, slumping forward. A hand finds his hair, rumbling it. For a long moment, he only breathes, focusing on the autumn air filling his lungs and the crickets chirping in the night, to drown out the storm raging inside.

His nerves are too taut not to notice when someone comes up behind him… but the scent of perfume is familiar, so he doesn’t jump. She sidles up alongside him, inhaling softly in the night air; she blows out the same way Nix does, from deep within her chest. When Dick raises his head, Blanche is not focused on him at all, but looking ahead down the driveway.

“Planning your escape?” she asks lightly. Her mulberry lips curl upwards, without the chore of looking at him. “I don’t blame you. That was painful, in there.”

Dick arches an eyebrow. “You felt it too?”

She has a drink in her hand, but the glass is empty. As Blanche’s attention drifts to it, she seized upon the olive, still speared and languishing inside the glass. With delicate, manicured fingers, she plucks it out and scrutinizes the tiny fruit.

“You can’t let him bully you, Dick,” she says after a moment. The scent of wine may be heavy on her breath, but her words are perfectly sober. “He doesn’t mean to, but it’s instinct around these people. They all like to show off, and he’s proud of you.”

Dick’s brows furrow. He’s not some brand new car, or a gold-plated watch. “Why?”

“Because you’re nothing like them.” Blanche’s dark gaze flickers up to him; for the first time tonight, Dick feels entirely seen. Her lips purse, like she’s fighting back a smile, but something in her eyes reminds him of loneliness. “You don’t belong in this set… and that’s nothing against you, darling, only what you know as well as us. My brother prizes you so highly; he’s proud that you’re here, that you’re with him, that you give him your time and agree to accompany him to these parties, even though you’d much rather be doing anything else.”

Dick’s lips purse. Blanche waits a moment, as though expecting him to protest… but he has nothing to say.

“Rich little boys love their toys. You need to remind him that you aren’t one.” Her fingers drum against the rim of her glass; each clink-clink-clink pierces Dick’s nerves like shrapnel wounds.

“He doesn’t mean anything wrong by it,” he protests, because he knows Nix well enough to understand that. 

“Of course not. If he didn’t care about you…” Blanche’s words trail off, along with her gaze. She drifts back out to the driveway, painted lips pursing like she’s considering something far away. After another silent moment, she glances at Dick once more. “Last chance to run.”

Dick smirks. “I’m considering it.”

Blanche sighs into the night, pushing her folded arms off the railing and stepping back. Dick no longer feels inclined to stand out in the darkness, alone. As she steps back into the well-lit hallway, he follows her.

When they reenter the lounge, Nix is holding court, in the middle of an animated story Dick’s heard before. “— of course, I couldn’t have known there was a cat involved, otherwise I’d never have set foot in the apartment. So I sit down on the couch and the damned thing launches at me, yowling like a bat out of hell —“ He cuts off, mid-flail, gaze landing on his sister and companion. “Ah. Was wondering where you too made off to.”

“Nothing untoward,” Blanche drawls, slinking back towards the bar. “I offered, but Dick’s too upstanding.”

Nix locks onto Dick, and again, his gaze is painfully warm. Dick feels the same way, like a furnace is burning under his collar. Uneasily, he lowers himself onto a settee at the far edge of the room, back to the door so he won’t be tempted. So long as he’s in Nix’s sightline, his presence counts… but he doesn’t have to make himself the object of a crowd’s fascination again.

Nix understands, in that easy way of his. His lips curl up in the slightest smile, before he turns back to his audience. “As I was saying…”

His story winds on for a little while longer, before he grows bored with it. By then, the crowd has grown equally bored with its malingering, but still too languid to get up and do something about it. One of the women slips behind the piano and tries to start up a dancing tune, but no one bites. Her song devolves into something slower, more thoughtful. The host pours himself another drink from the bar, and doesn’t offer to serve anyone else; his mistresses chatter in an undertone, lipstick stained crystal glasses sitting beside them. Nix reclines back in his chair, perfectly debauched. His hair is a ruffled mess, bow-tie undone and hanging loosely around his neck. The top of his shirt is still open, carelessly displaying his collarbones and a flash of dark hair across his chest. 

You’ll catch a chill, a voice in Dick’s head that sounds too much like his mother chides. He’s seized briefly with the inexplicable, intense urge to cross the room and lean over Nix to close the shirt himself. It passes, of course, and he politely averts his gaze.

Perhaps he’s doing too good of a job not looking at him. “Dick,” Nix finally says, from right behind him. “Ready to go?”

A wave of relief washes over him. He hasn’t wanted anything so badly since his discharge papers. “Let’s go,” he replies, rising to his feet.

They pay polite goodbyes to their host; Blanche waves them off with an eyeroll for Nix and a blown kiss for Dick. Then, finally, they leave through the front door, and slip into the night.

While they drove here themselves, Nix is in no state to command the car. Dick is already prepared to take the wheel, when the valet steps up with keys in hand. “Do you require a ride home, Mr. Nixon?”

Dick’s surprised gaze swivels towards Nix, as if to ask do we? (He’s still so unused to the world of chauffeurs and butlers, and every encounter leaves a foreign, coppery taste in his mouth.) Nix dwells on the offer for a moment with lazy-eyed disinterest, before shrugging and gesturing the valet towards his car. “Why not? Roy likes to be generous. Let him do us a favor for once, huh?”

Dick, who has never personally done Nix’s friend Roy a single favor, just nods.

Nix’s car is sleek and expensive, a top of the line Plymouth Deluxe in glossy black paint and felt seating. Dick has sat in the passenger’s seat enough times that sliding into the back feels like a mistake, something to double back and correct before he manages to embarrass himself. Nix slides in right behind him, not giving him the chance. The scent of car freshener can’t disguise the stuffy air in the back of the car; there’s not much separating the back from the front, but the forward row of seats stretch up, practically creating a barrier to separate both ends of the car in half. Dick hears the driver slide in up front, but in the darkness, it’s hard to see.

“Turn on the radio, will you?” Nix requests as the car stirs to life. Obligingly, the driver turns a few knobs; what threatens to become an awkward silence immediately finds itself drowned out by a staticky love ballad.

“And when I kissed you, darling It was more than just a thrill for me It was the promise, darling Of the things that fate had willed for me…”

The timing is astonishingly poor. Dick slumps back against the seat, all but defeated. At his side, Nix chuckles.

When Dick looks over, it's impossible to catch his eye. The night is too dark, and these roads aren’t well-lit; shrouded by shadows, Nix’s eyes are two black holes, drawing all trace of light into them and holding it hostage. Dick catches a flash of something pearly, which must be the jagged cut of Nix’s smile; the silhouetted shoulders rise up and down, in what isn’t quite laughter.

After a moment, Nix goes still. Dick can’t see, but he knows he’s being watched.

“Well?” Nix finally says. “When are you going to tell me what an idiot I am?”

Dick turns his head, looking out the window nearest to him. “Never occurred to me, Nix.”

“Maybe not to say it, but you were thinking it. Come on, Dick.” A smooth-palmed hand finds his in the darkness. Dick allows it. “I knew I screwed up the moment you pulled away. Knew it as soon as I saw your face, really, but damn me if I know how to stop… come on, that’s what I bring you to these things for. To keep a leash on me.”

Dick thinks Nix’s social circle picked up on that, at least.

He doesn’t realize how tense he’s gone until Nix’s thumb strokes along the back of his knuckles; his hand, Dick realizes, has gone stiff as a corpse’s, gnarled with tension. When he looks down, he’s suddenly ashamed. He tries to pull away, but Nix holds fast.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sudden and sincere.

“You didn’t do anything,” Dick replies. “If I didn’t want to be there —“

“You don’t want to be there. You come to these awful things for me, even though you can’t stand it, and you’re a fish out of water the whole time. I’m being cruel to you. Downright uncharitable! And you know the reason why.”

Dick’s gaze is drawn back to him again. This time, as a flash of light passes through the car, he glimpses Nix’s face — eyes bright with drink, devastatingly earnest, his lips curled downwards and jaw tense. He’s handsome without trying… and cruel, too. More careless than he realizes.

Blanche’s words echo in his ears: rich little boys love their toys.

“It might be a game to you, Nix,” Dick says softly, “but it isn’t to me. Whatever show you were putting on in there… I don’t want to be part of it anymore.”

Nix is silent for a long moment. The air between them is thick as curdled cream. “I understand,” he finally says. “I… I get it, Dick, christ. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Of course he knows. Doesn’t Nix realize he doesn’t have to put on a show for anyone, just do Dick will stand by his side? Doesn’t he realize the whole reason Dick goes to these parties, time and time again, is for him? Because he’d shatter the entire world and piece it back together, fragment by microscopic fragment, just to make Lewis Nixon happy?

“It’s never been a game to me, Nix,” he says softly.

In the darkness, Nix’s hand finds his again. This time, Dick squeezes tight.

He doesn’t know exactly how they come together, what magnetism pulls them or the way their bodies fit together. His shoulder presses up against Nix’s; his fingers find the threads of Nix’s hair; Nix’s thigh is a solid weight as it drapes over his own, his skin is warm, and suddenly Nix is practically in his lap.

It felt better this way. Dick likes the cover of darkness, is painfully grateful for it, just as he is of the way his hand fits over Nix’s hip. He likes holding him so much more than he likes being held… and something in the sigh Nix breathes against his lips suggests he likes it this way too.

“It’s not a game to me either, Dick,” he murmurs. “You matter too damn much”

The distance between them closes on its own will. Nix tastes like whiskey and coffee and August twilight; his lips are smooth, gliding over Dick’s own as though he’s wet them a dozen times since their conversation began. Their embrace is tender, but the hand gripping Dick’s shoulder is desperate. When Dick sighs against Nix’s lips, he utters a soft noise, almost like a whine. Dick’s fingers run along his scalp, soothing the dissatisfaction away.

“I much prefer this,” Dick mutters. “It suits us both better… privacy.”

“If it suits you,” Nix replies, “that’s all I need to know.”

It’s not perfect, and it’s not quite laid to rest… but they make it home at a reasonable hour, and Dick holds Nix in the privacy of their own home. He couldn’t ask for anything more.

[lesbiandipperpines]

Style oneshot bc I love my boys

Stan absolutely hated school. It was the bane of his existence, he constantly had to wear a fake smile to fit in and act as if the mental battle inside him just wasn’t happening. There was so much going on in his head, so many mental scars that add weight to his day. He looked around the classroom only to see the same people as he always did. Realistically, Stan hoped that there would be something new to look at and observe but there never was. His gaze found its way to Kyle, his best friend. There was always something about him that appealed to Stan so much. Kyle was another level of human - he was smart, helpful, caring, always there for Stan and even quite cute. Sure, there were times where they had their arguments and didn’t speak for a few days but they always patched things up. It was always the case of who would break first, who could go the longest without the other. Albeit it was usually Stan who broke first, both boys had a bond unlike any other in the quiet little mountain town.

“Oi, you are aware you’re staring at the Jew boy, right?” Eric’s voice played over Stan’s thoughts, snapping him back into reality almost instantly. Stan shook his head slightly, before glaring right at Eric. If looks could kill, this one would. “Shut up, dude, I was looking out the window.” Stan knew his excuse wouldn’t be accepted by the overweight boy sitting next to him. Eric simply scoffed before turning his attention back to the lesson at hand. Stan shifted in his seat slightly, he knew that Eric knew of his secret and that probably most of South Park did. Usually, it was easy to hide his bisexuality but ever since Eric managed to hear it through the grapevine, his life has been hell. There was always an anxious feeling in Stan’s stomach that Kyle was going to find out and wouldn’t accept who he was.

The bell rang, signalling the end of class. Students filled the hallways of the High School and made it a nightmare to navigate. Stan waited inside the almost empty class room for Kyle to finish packing his stuff away. Stan was always the type to pack his pen and notebook away halfway through the lesson, or whenever he felt bored enough to stop listening. Despite this, Kyle was the type to pay attention until the very end of the lesson, and to jot down everything the teacher says to ensure that he gets the best grades. Stan was sat on his desk with his foot propped up against what would have been Eric’s desk, his other leg just swinging back and forth aimlessly and his backpack slung onto one of his shoulders.

“Dude, I really don’t know why you pay so much attention in class, Mr Garrison hardly knows what he’s teaching.” Stan said as he and Kyle walked out the room together to join the chaotic hallways. Kyle let out a small giggle, which made Stan’s heart soar. He always thought that Kyle had the best smile and the best laugh, so he made it his mission to make Kyle laugh. “You know why, I gotta get good grades or my mum grounds me. Either that or we move back to Jersey, and that’s a definite no.” It was now Stan’s turn to have a giggle. Both the boys entered the cafeteria where they saw their group of idiots sitting at one of the tables. They were all joking about and throwing meaningless insults at one another, well mostly meaningless.

Both Kyle and Stan went to get their food, which was just processed crap that the lunch staff made. It wasn’t their fault the food tasted bad and was more unhealthy than eating literal dog food. The boys went to their table, which their friends claimed, and had a seat at either side of the table. Stan just stabbed his food with his fork as he listened to Eric speak about something or another. There was little truth to any word he spoke about anything but the others listened anyways as there was nothing better to do.

“Your foods gonna get cold, you know?” Kyle pointed out to Stan, almost starting up a private conversation between the two. Stan hummed in agreeance as he lazily chewed on the food he thought was nothing more than leftovers. With a few small bites, he had had enough food and got up to throw away what was left and leave his tray on top of the bin.

Stan travelled his way through the school. Sometimes he liked to spend some of his lunch hour alone, to figure out who he was. He went to go sit outside, on the steps by the back end of the school. He could faintly hear the music the goths played. There was something about their ways that made Stan want to sit by them, not exactly interact with them but be somewhat associated. He looked at his gloves, they seemed to be a different shade of red. Or maybe they were the same, he never knew. As he looked at them, the thoughts flooded in. He began to think of a life with Kyle, not entirely romantic but a future of some sort.

With Kyle by his side, the future didn’t appear to be as dull as he once thought. A joint apartment between them both, maybe they would get a pet or something for them to look after together. It was the perfect life for Stan, but one thing stood in the way of it all...Kyle. There was no doubt he would move on to college, somewhere out of state and far away from Stan. He could almost cry at the thought of the possibility that Kyle would leave his life. Reality sunk into Stan and he was one more depressing thought away from sitting with the goth kids again. His head fell into his hands as he began to cry at the thought of not having Kyle. Maybe if he told Kyle what he felt inside, then things might go his way. Naivety said Kyle liked him too, romantically, but narcissism said it was doomed from the moment he hit puberty.

“Stan..?” A gentle voice called out, it was Kyle. Stan sniffled a few times, wiped his nose with his jacket sleeve and turned his head to see the worried boy standing in the doorway. There was a moment of silence between the two, before Kyle instinctively wrapped his arms around Stan. Carefully, he rubbed Stan’s arm out of comfort. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Kyle asked once more, he was concerned for Stan at this point. It was rare that he said nothing in response. “Kyle, there’s something I need to say to you. And it’s quite important. And I don’t even know if i can tell you but I’m going to.” Stan’s voice was shaken and broken, his sobs engulfing him. He was unsure if Kyle even understood a word he had said. Kyle just nodded, and held Stan a little tighter in support. “Whenever you’re ready, you can tell me.” Kyle spoke gently, hoping that it gave Stan some clarity. He wanted to do anything he could to help his best friend suffer less.

“Okay, okay...so,” Stan took a moment to regain himself, compose himself into being able to say what he needed to, “I’m bisexual. And I’m pretty sure I like you- wait, no, forget that, I’m in love with you dude.” Stan looked at Kyle, with sad almost puppy dog eyes. Something inside him wanted him to believe Kyle was going to say something positive back. But Kyle said nothing, he looked shocked more than anything. “Wait, really? Dude…this is a lot to take in.” Kyle’s words sounded disconnected from him, like he was processing what Stan had said to him, “You...you love me? How long have you known?” Stan looked forwards, towards the playground, “a while. Ever since 9th grade. But before then I knew I had some sort of feelings towards you. And I get that it might freak you out but please don’t leave me, I need you. We can pretend this never happened, no one needs to know this happened, it can be a bad dre-” Stan was cut off by Kyle’s lips on his. Kyle pulled away first, only to have a small laugh at Stan. “You’re this biggest idiot I know, I love you too dude.” Kyle said, “I never spoke up about it because I thought you and Wendy were a thing still.” Stan felt stupid. He had a dumbstruck look on his face, it felt as if he tried to cheat a test and still fail. Wendy helped him throughout his whole identity crisis before he settled for calling himself bi. She gave him a good piece of advice, “a label is as temporary or as permanent as you chose it to be, you are not faking it because you discover more about yourself in the future,” and Stan had always admired her advice. “No, we haven’t dated since, like, 5th grade. She was just there for me when I couldn’t speak to you about it.”

The bell rang again, signalling the end of the lunch hour. Stan looked at Kyle, his eyes still bloodshot red from crying. Kyle took his hand and helped him up, he flung his own bag on his shoulder and picked up Stan’s bag and held it in his unoccupied hand. “Do you wanna ditch and grab some decent food? Cartman would rip you to shreds if you walked in looking like the dogshit you do right now. Still extremely handsome though.” Kyle was willing to ditch class for Stan, and he had done before. “What about your grades? I think your mum would kill you if she found out.” Stan counterpointed. Kyle didn’t care what she thought, he could handle her now. “I don’t care what she thinks, I’m all about you right now.” “Okay, let’s ditch. City Wok or Red Lobster?” “Definitely Red Lobster.” “So, are you my boyfriend now?” “Yes, Stan, yes I am.”