#like he would actually kill me. not because he's actually threatening but because i spontaneously combust whether he smiles or glares at me

[romance-rambles]

modern clarence | an appropriate staring distance

While at the beach, you take a moment to appreciate your handsome boyfriend while he's taking a nap—and also when he's not.

1.2k, fluff + established relationship, reader is mc, series: none

NAVY BLUE STICKS OUT TO you the moment you open your eyes.

Your aching shoulder protests your decision to stay as you are, on your side, facing a still sleeping Clarence. Like this, he looks much younger—you're reminded of the time you had to force him to take a nap. Like this, he's simply the cute guy you managed to score not one but multiple dates with, just Clarence, instead of the incredibly smart and wonderful and kind Student Council President.

You glance at the circular table set between your two beach chairs, taking note of his glasses resting primly upon its surface. With him often having to juggle two different kinds of glasses, you'd offered to put them in your bag so that he could pack lighter. Or, as light as he can.

Right now, it's awkwardly squished behind you, miraculously still on the chair only because it's too big to fall out the gap under the armrest.

Filling in the blanks comes as easily to you as the smile on your face when you get to see your boyfriend, nearly the same one on your face right now—and the expression that goes with it is so endlessly fond that you find yourself with the urge to hit something.

Simply put, your boyfriend is a handsome man—the most handsome one, of all the men your keen eyes have gazed upon. And gazed, they certainly have. But even if they didn't have to pick, then they would gaze at only Clarence for the rest of their life..

You almost giggle at the thought, but think against it at the last minute.

But pressing your lips firmly into a thin line has the opposite effect on your budding smile. You imagine you look rather strange to anyone who passes by—what with your mockery of a wide smile and the silent scream building up in your throat, paired with the quiet thumping of your feet against the legrest.

If you were in a more private space, you would resort to kicking instead.

A proper squish to your still warm cheeks as you begin to sit up helps ease up the passion swirling chaotically across your body. You exhale, then allow your hands to slide off your face. One side of it bears the consequences of your actions more than the other.

With a one last longing at the sleeping Clarence, you start to dig through your bag for the only thing in your arsenal that could substitute for a sketchbook.

There are a few miscellaneous promotion emails waiting for you on the lockscreen. A message from Cael asking about dinner tomorrow too. Somewhere between them, there's a notice about the weather, with the temperature from an almost hour ago listed uselessly.

You swipe past them all and hurriedly slip into the camera app.

The hand holding your phone steadies itself against the armrest as you swing your legs over the edge of your chair. A thumb hovers over the capture button, vigilantly awaiting your command. The fingers of your other hand, meanwhile, busy themselves with zooming in on the captivating scenery.

With each pinch, the focus grows ever narrow—until all that remains is Clarence and nothing else.

At one point, you try to zoom into the mole under his eye, but it doesn't make for a very compelling photo. After a few attempts, quite a few of which involve staring at your screen for prolonged periods of time, you reluctantly give up.

Your pout is soon covered up by your phone. When its front camera presses against your upper lip, your gaze is free to wander back to the sleeping beauty beside you once more.

A healing effect, exclusive to him, takes hold of you instantaneously.

Eyes brimming with fondness narrow slightly. You slide off your beach chair, hands on your bent knees as you take a closer look. You can make out the shadows cast by his long lashes and the drool dribbling past his chin.

He's perfect.

You're content to stay there until your knees begin to ache, reminding you insistently that this isn't a very comfortable position to be in. As a compromise of some kind, you adjust your arms atop the nearby armrest.

It really would be better if you'd brought your sketchbook along—but, you think, remembering his workaholic tendencies, would he even bother to take a nap then?

You scrunch your nose up at the thought.

In that moment, Clarence seems sense to your presence. When you look back at him, you're greeted with the sight of confusion in his now opened, but still drowsy gaze. He blinks, and it earns him an amused grin from you.

"Morning," you say, though it's well into afternoon.

That seems to wake him up. His cheeks flush a warm pink, and he hurriedly wipes away the drool on his face, as though you haven't already committed the sight to your memory.

Clearing his throat, he responds in kind, careful to sit up in such a way that he avoids looking at you.

"You don't have to be so close...I can see you just fine."

You laugh, not unkindly. "What if I'm the one who's having trouble?"

For a moment, when he turns back to look at you, he looks alarmed. Then, his shoulders relax to the tune of a sigh, his groggy mind apparently having caught onto the fact that you were joking.

Without breaking eye contact, you reach for his glasses. But as with the issue of walking into a cave without a flashlight, even if you vaguely recall where your destination is, there's no guarantee you'll actually reach it.

"Give me a second," you mutter, your annoyance making your tone a bit too sharp.

You follow your words up with an apology. His glasses held are carefully by the frames as your sheepish gaze connects with his faintly amused one. Clarence reaches out, getting as far as grasping the slanted tips of the frame before the two of you reach a mutual agreement.

"Well." His cheeks return to being a rosy hue. He coughs politely. "If you would."

Cute. Biting your lip giddily, you shake his grip off. A quick once-over of your surroundings before you stand up shows that no one seems to be paying attention to you. And unless your friends and acquaintences have come to together to unlock the secrets of invisibility, no one you know seems to be present either.

Leaning over, you line his glasses up against his face, the tips of his frame brushing against his cheek. It takes only a moment to slot them into place—and you have enough experience with doing so that they don't snag against his ears.

It takes only a moment longer to give him an innocent peck on the lips.

"There," you murmur, not entirely satisfied with the kiss.

His Adam's apple bobs. Clarence adjusts his glasses with an awkward look that suggests he has some kind of solution to your dilemma. You, of course, beat him to the punch.

"Why—" Your voice cracks a little. "—don't we go find a different spot?"

He smiles, narrowed eyes watching you fondly. "I was about to suggest the same thing."

[ozmatippetarius]

I am once again asking you to put some respect on Charles's name. He's bewilderingly under-appreciated as a character despite being really complex and well-developed. I see a crazy number of people say they hate him completely without nuance, for a novel where reading deeply and questioning everything is the entire point. Anyway, here's something you might have missed if you shotgunned the book and then have lived off of fanon ever since until you forgot what was actually in the text.

Charles is almost certainly a CSA victim

A major motif of The Secret History is the extent to which childhood trauma has shaped these characters' current actions. Henry was neglected by his father, so he latches onto Julian now. Francis has a codependent relationship with his addict mother that has obviously shaped his actions with Charles. Richard grew up in an abusive family and finds himself forced into a mediator role now; he grew up in poverty and latches onto the first wealthy group that will accept him.

For some reason a lot of readers seem to think that the twins' issues instead developed totally in a vacuum? That they just spontaneously developed an incestuous relationship in adulthood, for the drama of it?

You all know that would be bad writing, would be awful. But you refuse to examine it any closer. You say "the incest is gross" and decide you're just not going to think any more about it, because it makes you uncomfortable.

So let's see if we can ferret out a better explanation. What are some of the risk behaviors we see from Charles?

Substance Abuse - shouldn't need much of an explanation, I think pretty much everybody picked up on this.

Eating Disorder - seems to have been missed by a lot more people, but a major part of why Charles ended up in the hospital is that he simply stopped eating. When Richard and Francis take him to lunch after getting out, he refuses to eat even when they are begging him. Afterwards, we're told he's subsisting entirely off of peanuts for the rest of the novel.

Sexual Risk Behavior - his relationship with Camilla, clearly.

Trust Issues - his relationship with Richard is dripping with this. He spends the entire second half of the novel begging Richard not to betray him ("You're my friend, aren't you?" "You wouldn't go behind my back, would you?") and at the final showdown, Richard is the person he is most angry with, for breaking that trust.

Revictimization - y'all aren't going to like this, but his relationship with Francis is absolutely this.

What do all these bullets have in common? They're all common long term effects of childhood sexual assault.

Hey, remember that sequence shortly before Bunny is killed where he's antagonizing every member of the group individually by taunting them about their secrets he could expose? For Henry, obviously he's threatening to expose the farmer's death. For Richard, his lies about his wealthy background. For Camilla, her incestuous relationship. For Francis, his homosexuality. So what about Charles- what's he threatening to expose here? He wouldn't randomly leave out one of the group, right? Well, let's roll the clip.

If he treated Henry with deference, it was the rest of us who were forced to bear the wearing, day-to-day brunt of his anger. Most of the time he was simply irritating: for example, in his ill-informed and frequent tirades against the Catholic Church. Bunny’s family was Episcopalian, and my parents, as far as I knew, had no religious affiliation at all; but Henry and Francis and the twins had been reared as Catholics; and though none of them went to church much, Bunny’s ignorant, tireless stream of blasphemies enraged them. With leers and winks he told stories about lapsed nuns, sluttish Catholic girls, pederastic priests (“So then, this Father What’s-His-Name, he said to the altar boy—this kid is nine years old, mind you, he’s in my Cub Scout troop—he says to Tim Mulrooney, ‘Son, would you like to see where me and all the other fathers sleep at night?’ ”). He invented outrageous stories of the perversions of various Popes; informed them of little-known points of Catholic doctrine; raved about Vatican conspiracies, ignoring Henry’s bald refutations and Francis’s muttered asides about social-climbing Protestants. What was worse was when he chose to zero in on one person in particular. With some preternatural craftiness he always knew the right nerve to touch, at exactly the right moment, to wound and outrage most. Charles was good-natured, and slow to anger, but he was sometimes so disturbed by these anti-Catholic diatribes that his very teacup would clatter upon its saucer.

His Catholicism? Charles, the group member most morally affronted by the idea of killing and also the most affectionate towards Bunny, comes around to the idea of murder because Bunny is making fun of his Catholicism, something that hasn't been mentioned before and never will be again? Something that has been consistently shown to bother Francis and Henry more?

Connect the dots, here - Charles isn't triggered to the point of physically shaking because Bunny is making fun of Catholics, something we know that he's been doing for years. He's triggered because Bunny is taunting him with stories about adult men molesting young boys, in front of everybody.

Anyway, this isn't a defense of Charles's treatment of Camilla. Obviously "hurt people hurt people" isn't meant as an excuse or a hand-wave. But it is an explanation. Charles is, like every other character in this novel, a flawed person who does some terrible things with complex motivations, and he deserves the same amount of respect you give the other flawed characters who do terrible things with complex motivations.

[helv-ete]

Netherlands Rarepair Week day 2- Species

Fun fact about me in fall of 2022 I had a massive vampire phase because I started reading Dracula for the first time. This then inspired me to buy the vampire sims 4 pack because, another fun fact about me, I’m a sims 4 fanatic (like I spend all my money on this game it’s lowkey a problem) in which I created a save where I made the Netherlands a vampire and Germany a normal human who was his roommate and came up with a storyline I was so obsessed with that I decided to write it. I kinda ended up forgetting about it after I wrote a few chapters, but the basic plot is that germany, who has lived his whole life in Bavaria, spontaneously decides to move to Leiden for a job and ends up moving in with the Netherlands, who he doesn��t know at all and, unbeknownst to him, is a vampire. The whole joke of it was going to be that Germany was super oblivious about the whole vampire thing even though it was pretty obvious and when he does start to figure it out he totally freaks out about being murdered, which would be understandable except the Netherlands doesn’t actually do anything remotely threatening in the story. He also doesn’t want to move back home because his brothers thought moving was a stupid decision in the first place and he decides he’d rather be killed by a vampire than told “I told you so.”

[supervisormeero]

17, 22, 31 and 38 of the OTP asks!

(for Keero, of course)

Some of these got slightly NSFW. Fair warning!

17. Who's more likely to pull the other in by the waist and kiss them passionately?

...this is difficult, because it's hard to imagine Syril or Dedra initiating any form of intimacy that spontaneously, you know? I can't really see Dedra doing that because she's barely tolerant of Syril touching her, at least at the start of any hypothetical relationship. If she pulled him in for a kiss, I think it'd be in a moment where she's angry with him, needs him to stop talking, or if she's under the influence of something/her inhibitions are lowered.

Of the two of them, Syril would likely be the one who craves contact: hugs, kisses, snuggling, sex. Once he's more comfortable around her/they've settled into something haphazardly resembling a relationship, I think he'd be more likely to pull her in for a kiss — 50/50 on her shoving him away with a snarl or kissing him back hard enough to hurt, depending on her mood. And whether she thinks he deserves it.

22. What reminds each of their partner?

For Syril, just about everything. He's so utterly in love with Dedra that he sees her everywhere he goes, and when he's not with her, he's thinking about her incessantly. The three topics cycling on a loop in his brain are Cassian Andor, Dedra, and getting into the ISB. I think 99% of his thoughts are about those subjects, although the percent of them devoted to each might shift based on the day.

For Dedra, oddly enough, I think incompetence would remind her of Syril — but probably not in the way you'd think. While she wouldn't want him to rise to her level because she relishes the power she holds over him, I think whenever her co-workers aren't taking the job seriously, she's reminded of Syril's determination and sharpness. Her daily life would be quite a bit easier if everyone took their work as seriously as he does, and saw to details as meticulously.

31. Can they sit side-by-side without touching each other, or are they handsy?

There's the canon answer and then there's the answer in my heart. Canon, I don't think they'd have an issue in any situation where they'd be observed by a "higher power," because their most important and overpowering allegiance is to the Empire and they'd never do anything openly to threaten their careers. Dedra doesn't like being touched, anyway.

In my heart, I think Syril would initiate most physical contact, even casual touches. If they're sitting beside each other, he'd sit with his leg pressing against hers, or his hand just slightly brushing her own. I think I shared my (NSFW, crack!) headcanon with you that Dedra doesn't understand casual contact because she's never been in a relationship. She doesn't get why anyone would just decide to hold hands, or put an arm around their partner, or whatever. To her, that's a waste of time. The only explanation for physical contact to her is sex, so if they're sitting beside each other in private and Syril reaches for her hand, she takes it as foreplay and jumps straight to kissing him. Which... he won't protest, but it does leave him perplexed.

38. Who's more sexually experimental? Who's more vanilla?

I've never subscribed to the "Dedra is a dominatrix" theories, and part of me thinks that Syril would actually be more sexually experimental. Think about it: Dedra's never done anything, with anyone. The extent of her knowledge of intimacy is that it's something people with lesser careers and ambitions do. I'm sure she has a rudimentary understanding, but that's it — I think she'd see sex as an extension of her control over Syril, because if she looks at it any other way or involves any additional emotions, it'd kill her.

Syril, on the other hand, just wants to be close to her. He adores her. He craves her, and he arguably has from the moment he first saw her during the interrogation. I'm not claiming he'd be incredible. I think he'd probably cry after, if not during. But he'd do anything she asks of him, and without protest. Dedra wouldn't know what she wants other than total, complete control, so it'd be a mess. They'd figure it out. In a horribly toxic, imbalanced, weird way.

Send me OTP asks!

[artsycervidae]

Day 4: Dodge

My Hero Academia OC. He has Victor Frankenstein unreliable narrator vibes if you're into that. Body horror and emotional abuse ahead.

Hikaru wandered the darkness of his apartment on silent, bare feet. He occasionally lay down with the intent to sleep: eyes closed, mind cleared, and body relaxing. But then he would have a sharp image in his mind of what it would mean if he ever lowered his guard. Body tensed, mind cluttered, eyes snapped open. He would get up and stand in front of his 'study,' which had long stopped being a spare bedroom, and stare at the door. Standing and waiting wouldn't make the work go by any quicker. But it was a compulsion he couldn't fight: the need for a sentinel was greater than the need to rest.

When the sun cracked over the city skyline, he messaged his mother and made an excuse about working through the night. Then he left his phone on his bed covers. The truth was, he was completely done with this month's assignments. Sometimes something new and unexpected would slip into his email, quickly resolved by the end of the day, but all his other obligations had been finished in a frenzy over the course of a sleepless week. So long as he remembered to drip feed his employer with satisfactory, timely submissions, he could continue to devote the rest of the month entirely to his true work.

He entered the room with rapid blinking, plastic crinkling underfoot, and said "Good morning," to his test subjects. Strolling along the wall, weaving in and out of potted plants to inspect them, Hikaru began to plan the next report for his makeshift greenhouse. The only similarity this room held to an actual study was the row of three-ring binders along the wall, various pens of colors, and his work laptop and router in the corner. Blackout curtains kept anyone from asking questions about the artificial lights that stayed on all day and night, and he budgeted all other use of his electricity by charging everything at work on the rare occasion he went in. It was getting close to the monthly check-in; he was running dangerously low on battery packs. The idea put him on edge.

At least the work that mattered was all on paper, though it was always hard when carpal tunnel would threaten him. That's kind of how the overworking lie started, among other little omissions.

He knew he needed to leave the apartment eventually: he needed to go to work, and today was supposed to be the day he and his mother went shopping together. With the rise in crime lately (and the spontaneous appearances of Nomu monsters), he didn't like it when she went anywhere alone. But it took such effort for him to expose himself to the outside world. Any news update made him sweat, and a hero merely scanning the crowd was enough to weaken his knees.

If he was discovered, there was no way they would accept 'it was an accident' as an excuse. It started with my house plant-- see, I thought that if I had something that relied on me, I would stop wanting to kill myself. Not an animal, I'm not inhumane, but-- well, anyway, my house plant ended up coming out... abnormal.

Officially, Hikaru's Quirk wasn't labeled, because as far as his family knew, it was a busted one. It was assumed to be an offshoot of his mother's Empathy mostly, but it seemed he could only experience debilitating migraines, paranoia, and sorrow. She needed only touch someone to process their emotions and bodily statuses for them-- it seemed that Hikaru only needed to exist, and he would feel their suffering. The best of the worst. It was hard to find a use for that kind of thing, so he had given up with exploring it at all.

That was, until he found a tooth in his house plant. Specifically, his spider plant, rather than sprouting little white flowers, had produced a bud that opened and dropped a little calcium deposit on his kitchen floor. He had even asked a friend about it, whose own psychometric Quirk could identify small objects. 'Your puppy was probably teething,' they said with an assuring smile. 'I didn't know you had a dog!'

'It's my mom's,' he had lied, without thinking, whose old shiba had died a year prior.

He had taken on a peace lily shortly after from a neighbor's family member, them insisting Really, I have a rotten thumb. I'm so busy putting things in storage and dealing with the inheritance; I would kill it by negligence. From the pale floral cup, in place of a stamen, grew what looked like a meat-encrusted human phalange. He was too scared to show anyone, in case it happened to be the dead woman's.

Any sane person would have thrown the plants out immediately and never grown so much as a cactus. But that was the thing: the plant worked. When he was around his plants, the grating vice grip on his brain was less. It was as though there was something excessive in him, and by nurturing any plant to its anatomical result, the excess was spread between them. He began to grow another, and another. He was selling things he didn't need and making room for the plants in his study. He transferred to a different position where he could work from home. The only thing he wanted to do was grow, study, and learn. He was good at it, and it presented a puzzle in a language only he could parse.

He had many experiments running simultaneously, trying to unlock the secret to his new ability. The variables ranged from soil composition, water levels, light intensity, and body fluids. Was it enough for his hands to dip into the dirt, smearing his sweat into the microscopic formula, or would blood work better? How much blood, how many ounces of skin, how much saliva, how frequently he 'fed' it, whether the seed and body combination made a difference in what grew. There was no end to the possibilities. There was no time to waste. (Although he noticed that the more often he played, the faster the things grew.)

His thought process was: if he could figure the Quirk out on his own, he could register as a hero. After all, most heroes were professionals, schooled and trained, and so he needed as much practice as he could scrounge up. Unfortunately, he had already committed several crimes for the sake of science by the time he had the bearings to consider a hero career. Was it really such a horror to use a stranger's stray hair stuck to his sweater as fertilizer? It wasn't as though he was fully cloning them (to his current knowledge), and even so, people weren't usually fond of their discarded napkins and bandages. He had to make sure-- he had to prove to himself that there was a rhyme or reason to what blossomed from his efforts. He wanted to see how precise it could be.

Thanks to all the groundwork, he had a new project and a new hypothesis. Could he be criticized for being thorough?

The doorbell snapped him out of his final evaluation, and he nearly leapt through his skin. He stumbled drunkenly out of the study, closing the door quickly as the bell rang again. "Coming!" He hollered before darting into his bedroom to snatch up his phone. Several missed texts. A couple missed calls. All from mom.

He opened the door right as her finger hovered over the bell again; she startled and smiled. "Hikaru," she sang out, "you overslept." As she was saying this, Hikaru squinted against the sunset blazing behind her shoulders. Had he truly been taking measurements and notes all day?

"Mom, what are you doing here?" He frowned. "I thought I told you to stay home."

"I know you worry about me going out." She shifted her grocery bags to one arm so that she could affectionately pat his cheek. "I thought you would also be hungry with all these overnight shifts," she went on as he automatically moved aside for her. She was always the one to fill silences between the two. He loved her for it. He never had to work hard to be understood by her... for the most part.

"I brought you some tea, too."

"Thanks, Mom."

He set the small dining room table while she warmed up the kettle. As they worked and ate, she babbled about work gossip and family news. Notably, all the updates were about her side of the family. If had been that way for as long as he could remember.

Before Hikaru had become a recluse and the massive family gatherings were mandatory, he often got the impression that his mother stretched the truth. A second-removed aunt would suggest Hikaru's father died before he was born, and then suddenly a distant cousin around his age would insist they had known of him after Hikaru's birth. It was a gas leak, someone recalled, and another would wonder if it was an explosion, and someone else would combine the theories to a gas-based explosion.

The only thing Hikaru knew for certain was that if he ever even hinted at the existence of his father, it would bring on an argument or tears or both. His mother would be overwhelmed and come apart, refusing to answer anything with any certainty. And for the longest time, because he never wanted to hurt her, Hikaru let that sleeping dog lie.

Until tonight.

Cleaning up after dinner, she had slipped into the restroom to prepare for the walk back. Hikaru was mustering up the strength to abandon his post, for the sake of escorting her safely home. The news was nothing but fear mongering and fear for the future: with All Might's retirement, the League of Villains, Nomus, and Quirk brawls in residential areas every couple months, he supposed he ought to protect what mattered to him, despite his powerlessness in the thick of chaos. The night was cold, so he had put the kettle on and filled a reusable container of extra tea to keep her warm.

If he hadn't turned to fill the container at the table, he would never have caught her in the act of reaching for the second bedroom door.

"Mom."

She jumped and spun around. Her eyes boggled out so far that a coldness washed down his spine. Had she already seen what was inside?

"I was just..." Her eyes darted back to the secret room. "I wanted to see what the room was like. Maybe you could... look for a roommate. Convert it into a bedroom again."

"I need somewhere to do my work, Mom."

"Don't you have an office for that?"

"I don't."

An awkward quiet punctuated his bluntness. His mother smoothed her dark hair down and came out with her concerns. "Are you having money problems? Is that why you're stressed?"

When had money problems come into the picture? "Mom, I live comfortably."

"Then where is your TV?" she demanded. "Did you sell it?"

"I don't watch a lot of TV," he evaded, "everyone watches the news on their phones. And it was giving me migraines anyway."

"You're not sleeping," she moped, "you don't go out with friends, you never do anything new... I'm worried. We shouldn't keep secrets from each other."

Hikaru put the kettle down, staring at the woman who raised him on her own. She hadn't seemed to hear the irony in her insistence. For the first time in a long time, he took in her details, drawing the similarities between her cuttings and himself. Their dark hair. Their olive skin. Their stunted femurs, hitchhiker thumbs, the vague shadow of a widow's peak, and severe eyes.

Her flesh garden had sprouted petal-soft cornflower irises. They scanned his face, beseeching and curious and sad. Unyielding. Her hand had stretched for the doorknob again. His dark, brown eyes narrowed and took a solid step towards the person who knew him... The person who thought she knew him better than anyone else ever could. But how could they know each other with so many secret performances they played?

"What was Dad's Quirk?"

Her breath hitched, and with a glistening in her eyes, she whispered, "Don't ask me that."

"Why can't I know?"

"It's for your own good."

"I'm grown, Mom."

This was the most he had spoken against her in his whole life. It made him feel powerless-- he knew there was no getting an answer from her, which meant he knew why he was asking now.

"Do you want to hurt me?" Her voice had taken an edge on now, defensiveness creeping into her shoulders.

He supposed he was expecting her to storm out of the apartment in a huff. Instead, she had turned for the door again. She never was used to not getting her way.

He must have sprinted down the hall to grab her by the bare wrist. She jumped, but did not scream or cry or wrench herself away. And they both knew she had felt the hand-laid mental wall he had built up against her-- whatever fears he was feeling, whatever his problems might be, she was no longer able to access them. He had categorically shut her out, compartmentalized into a 'public' personal file that only knew Hikaru to be a sleep-deprived workaholic.

She no longer knew her own son.

The walk to the station was tense and silent. The goodbyes were insincere but considerate. Hikaru had made it home after dark, which meant he had to finish scrawling his report down by his dying phone's flashlight.

According to the Quirk singularity theory, the combination of hereditary genes could combine into more complex, powerful Quirks. A lineage of autonomic Quirks, such as his mother's family, could lead to interesting combinations of healing, regeneration, or parthenogenesis. But he couldn't explain the plants. Not without confirming his father's identity, he suspected.

Hikaru looked over the variety of body parts growing in the room. Arms protruded from garden pots. A brain floated in a pond, the stem rooted like a lily. Brown-eyed Susans-- his eyes, his father's eyes-- rolled around with no particular field of vision, blinking their yellow petal eyelashes now and again.

In another universe, maybe, his mother could have trusted him. They could have talked it over together, and maybe he wouldn't have to do this. The only way he could think to trace back his Quirk to a different progenitor-- without anyone knowing anything about what he had done-- was to recreate his and his mother's and dissect the differences.

In a matter of time, Hikaru would know whether or not he could grow a Quirk.

[comikadraws]

sasuke was going to genuinely plan out a genocide and it wasn't something he said in a fit of rage, right?

Was Sasuke Uchiha genocidal?

(2k words of analysis, manga screenshots, and other resources)

To refresh everybody's memory, Sasuke's plan was to destroy Konoha and everybody in it. Not that he actually did but those were his own words.

Now we can interpret this in two ways

Sasuke is blinded by rage and would, in a hypothetical scenario, act on his words (Sasuke is genocidal)

Sasuke is being dramatic and/or would get cold feet when confronted with the scenario (Sasuke is not genocidal)

In my opinion, the first scenario is far more likely to occur and the second lacks sufficient evidence to reasonably rule out that Sasuke is genocidal.

>>Analysis under the cut<<

Let's establish a few things before we begin. But feel free to skip to the next headline.

First, I will judge attempted crime as harshly as committed crime. Since this is not real life, there is no need to reward incompetence or luck. Either way, the focus of this discussion is Sasuke's intent and resolve.

Second, fictional characters don't exist in flesh and blood but as part of a narrative. This means that a character's decisions and psychology heavily depend on the author's intent.

Third, I love Sasuke's character. Do not misunderstand this as hate. This is an analysis of Sasuke's psychology and actions. He has been wronged in horrific ways and deserved better, but that won't make me sanitize his character.

Fourth, the red links are context links, linking back to my own posts. I highly recommend reading them.

The Sincerity of Sasuke's Death Threats

As per the two options I provided in the beginning, Sasuke's declaration of "destroying Konoha" must have either been sincere or not - the latter implying that Sasuke is being dramatic and/or hasn't considered the weight of his words yet, making him want to take them back. But in my opinion, that does not align with Sasuke's character.

Sasuke rarely (if at all) jokes around or speaks from a place of uncertainty or dramatics. He says he'll kill Danzo? You bet he does. He says he'll kill Itachi? He does. He says he'll kill Naruto? He tries that as well. Granted, two of these deserved to die (from Sasuke's POV) but what matters here is that Sasuke's threats are meant to be interpreted as sincerity rather than hyperbole. At the moment that Sasuke speaks them, he also means them. He is neither a liar nor a performer.

But Sasuke does go back on his words, doesn't he? During the ending, for example (although it is arguably a character inconsistency). Or during numerous other instances. Why wouldn't it be the same this time as well?

Let's take a look at a few.

One of the few other times that Sasuke takes back a threat is when he threatens to kill everybody Kakashi ever loved (chapter 177). But it is not exactly a threat - it is a hypothetical or an implied threat at best with no actual motivation or desire to drive it. Back then, Sasuke ends up reconsidering his words - though does he really?

Chapter 416 seems to be paralleling this scene. 3-4 years have passed for Sasuke to take a deep look inside himself and judge whether or not he meant those words back then and whether he means them now. And yet, he returns to the exact same logic: I will rob you of your loved ones as punishment for disapproving of my bloodlust.

After he had so much time to reconsider and reflect, Sasuke's readiness to induce harm to innocents does not appear to be spontaneous or ill-considered.

Noticeably, while Sasuke very often actually ends up executing his threats, he generally also hesitates every now and then. Like when he ends up sparing Naruto after knocking him unconscious. Or sparing Dosu because Sakura begs Sasuke to stop. How can we explain this? Perhaps Sasuke is not as committed to his words after all.

The problem is that those moments occurred at an entirely different point in Sasuke's character arc at which he is still rapidly bouncing back and forth between cruelty and mercy. While yes, Sasuke is known for hesitating on his path, this hesitance slowly but surely disappears from his decision-making later on. The cause of this change is the decay of Sasuke's morals and ensures that pre-truth reveal Sasuke and post-truth reveal Sasuke are two different people.

The Decline of Sasuke's Morals

Sasuke acts entirely differently after the truth reveal. His morals have visibly changed for the worse. Perhaps it becomes the most apparent when comparing chapter 8 to chapter 481. Whereas Genin Sasuke would once help and support his teammates if they could not keep up on their own, a teenage Sasuke disposes of them.

This kind of development first occurs as early on as chapter 56 when Sasuke decides that growing stronger (ends) justifies carrying a curse mark (means). He is on a steady moral decline afterward, first willing to sacrifice his loyalties (Orochimaru), then uninvolved bystanders (Killer B, the other Kage, other shinobi, and samurai), and finally, a friend (Karin) all in pursuit of his goals. It is utilitarian in nature.

Also, please let's not discuss the validity of killing soldiers. We have already dealt with this question during Waves Arc and later when Itachi died. From Sasuke's and other characters' POV (and as evidenced by chapter 343), dehumanizing and discarding a person just for being a soldier on the wrong side is wrong. Understood? Good.

What happened to Sasuke over time is, of course, a character arc. A corruption arc, to be specific. Let's take a quick look at some writing mechanics.

A character arc is always initiated by some sort of trigger event. If said event lies between a version A and B of a character, chances are that their sympathy, competence, or proactivity have become incomparable to each other. This is why a 13-year-old version of Sasuke (pre-truth reveal, which is his trigger event for this specific arc) does not inform us about the workings of a 17-year-old version.

Before this triggering event, Sasuke is also in the midst of a turning point in his arc, hence the indecisiveness about killing Naruto. You can view this in parallel to the Hero's Journey's "Refusal of the Call" during which Sasuke is still hesitant about the road he is taking until the triggering event makes the decision for him.

Now, back to Sasuke's morals. Personally, I believe what stands at the helm of Sasuke's corruption arc is a decrease in self-awareness and a growing lack of empathy.

There's a certain hypocrisy to Sasuke's decision-making. Sasuke is grieving a brother but then attacks somebody else's brother. He is enraged about Konoha discarding Itachi as a tool but will then proceed to abandon his own comrades (Team Taka). He condemns the genocide committed against the Uchiha but then plans a genocide of his own. Injustice is only injustice if inflicted on Sasuke but not if inflicted by Sasuke.

This does not compare to a younger Sasuke, who uses his own trauma to understand and connect with others and to discern right from wrong. Sasuke is capable of empathizing with Naruto because he is lonely (like himself) and Sasuke finds Orochimaru "disgusting" for viewing humans as mere tools (like a genocidal Itachi). But, over the course of his arc (and after a lot of bouncing back and forth), his trauma instead turns into a weapon to distance himself from others.

The in-universe reason for this change is likely that Sasuke's mind is fully occupied with his own grief and rage. He is blinded by it, so much so that he no longer has the mental space to accommodate other people's pain and suffering.

There is also a narrative device to this, usually applied in the "darkest hour", such as "Batman Grabs a Gun". The purpose is to draw attention to the severity of the situation while also providing more depth to a character by giving them an underlying layer (their emotions/struggles/etc.) beneath their facade (their morals/reputation/etc.).

In Sasuke's case, this is used to highlight his grief for Itachi which is greater than any moral principle Sasuke has. Whatever allows or aids Sasuke in expressing his grief is fair game.

Intensity and Duration

So, Sasuke is definitely blinded by his rage. But is it a "fit"? I suppose that this is a matter of definition.

Sasuke's hatred for Konoha appears to be a constant. It doesn't change. It doesn't lessen. Not after a couple of hours and not after a couple of days.

To me personally, due to its duration, this is no longer a fit of rage but a mindset - one that Sasuke seems to wholeheartedly believe in.

Regardless of this, we have no indication that Sasuke's rage would lessen anytime soon. On the contrary, actually. Sasuke claims that his hatred has only grown since then.

The question we now have to ask is whether or not Sasuke would be able to rein in his rage in time to spare innocent lives. Alternatively, and combined with Sasuke's willingness to kill his own teammates, it is entirely possible that Sasuke's rage would power through, as it did for approximately 300 chapters in canon already.

The Attempts

Now, the most damning argument I have to offer is that Sasuke was already intending to make his genocide plans a reality (or take steps to do so) on three occasions. Twice during the Summit Arc and once during the War Arc.

On all three occasions, the reason why his plans don't come to fruition is because Sasuke gets sidetracked or stopped outright.

In addition, there are three other problems slowing him down. Right in chapter 416, Kisame explains that Sasuke is not strong enough to fight the entire village - even with Taka's help but even more so without them. This conflicts with Sasuke's belief that Taka likely won't approve of his genocide plans or should not be involved for other reasons (which is why Sasuke pretends in front of them). He both needs Taka and has to get rid of them.

Later on, Naruto declares that he will always be there to defend Konoha against Sasuke. My interpretation of this is that Sasuke not only honors his bond with Naruto but also recognizes that fighting Konoha and Naruto simultaneously is not strategically wise - hence, for all intents and purposes, he needs to defeat Naruto beforehand.

First Attempt

Sasuke takes Team Taka with him, believing them to be necessary backup. Then Obito intervenes who both threatens Sasuke and gives him the wrong impression that Konoha is "no more" - either fully eradicated or too weak to defend itself.

This might erase the need for Taka as Konoha is weakened significantly and Danzo can be targeted separately from the village.

Second Attempt

In the meantime, Sasuke kills Danzo. As explained by Kisame, a greater conflict with the entirety of Konoha is inevitable if you aim at major political leaders.

On his second attempt, he has coincidentally already managed to abandon the entirety of Team Taka, just as planned in chapter 416. But this time, before he can go to Konoha, his eyes suffer extensive damage and he instead encounters Team 7. As explained previously, Sasuke soon realizes that he cannot/doesn't want to destroy Konoha before killing Naruto. And before that, he needs to get his eyes fixed. This results in Sasuke's withdrawal from the fight.

Third Attempt

On his third try, the one in which he decides to target Naruto first, he instead gets sidetracked by the appearance of Itachi on the battlefield.

"Sidetracked" doesn't mean "giving up" or "displaying disinterest" in a different goal. Otherwise, Sasuke's training under Orochimaru for 3 years would be proof of his disinterest in killing Itachi. Sasuke is simply prioritizing urgent matters and acting strategically.

Now, all of this "getting sidetracked" might sound a little convenient. But the question is "convenient for who?"

It is of course possible that Sasuke is openly searching for excuses because he doesn't truly want to eradicate Konoha, making him a harmless villain. The other explanation is that Kishimoto was the one looking for excuses.

In a conversation, @theheirofthesharingan pointed out that Sasuke is being "saved by the narrative" ie. plot armor. Though not in the sense that he is being protected from harm but rather that he is being protected from inflicting harm, probably as an extension of Konoha's own plot armor. This also ensures that Sasuke remains "redeemable" and likable to the audience so that Naruto can fulfill his goal of bringing him back to Konoha.

Conclusion

As I said in the beginning, there is a huge mountain of evidence suggesting that Sasuke not only fantasized but would've acted on his revenge plans against Konoha. This is because

We know Sasuke to be a non-dramatic character who doesn't easily back away from his own words.

Sasuke is on a corruption arc, his morals declining far enough to kill a friend. It seems unlikely that he'd draw the line at a stranger.

From a writing point of view, continuing Sasuke's corruption arc makes more logical sense unless he experiences another trigger event. It also further highlights Sasuke's pain.

Sasuke has repeated his goal multiple times over, leading me to believe that his mood wouldn't change soon enough for Sasuke to second-guess himself.

Sasuke has taken steps towards the fulfillment of his goal. It is entirely possible that, if Konoha didn't have plot armor, Sasuke would've found the right time to destroy the village eventually.

Of course, Sasuke's morals are not entirely gone, as we can see when he refuses to join Kabuto (though potentially just because Kabuto antagonizes Itachi). It is still entirely possible that Sasuke would've gotten cold feet when physically confronted with the task of killing innocent civilians. But this possibility is hardly entertained by any of the characters and Sasuke himself doesn't seem conflicted about his plans. It seems like Kishimoto intended for Sasuke to be genocidal, most evidence pointing toward this reading of his character.

I certainly have my opinions on this matter but, like always, this is a matter of interpretation.

Debating me is fine. I like to discuss my favorite characters. But screenshotting, blocking me, and then attacking me behind my back (and without having ever interacted with me) in a new post is a no-go for obvious reasons.

[entoman-created-by-the-tallgreys]

I'm offin plotting how I can after I no longer in my body I'll come back and you know rage War that's Unholy planet.

The Reason why I'm exposing this while I'm always plotting to go to war this planet and you know just go to war with Agartha, the aliens that rules world and all the Demonic Lords

To war with the demon Beelzebub, & to war with baphomet & War with Ba'al

Because, they're shitty people the worst most disgusting scumbags rule the world as God but the reason why I'm making this post the reason why I'm making this is because, I'm actually afraid

. . .

I come to the point to realize that I might not have to reincarnate some of the planet and can make an effort to come back to the Earth and to destroy it and go to war with the assholes and defeat all them because God's fucking psychotic

I think by the time I come back to this fucking Galaxy God already destroyed it in a incinerated everybody's soul I would come back to an empty dead void and God laughing his ass off had to get hit before he already destroyed all the demons and killed all the Angels hair and limited all human souls and and turned them turn their souls into ethereal Ash and blew them away in the spirit Realm of the time I got back with a massive Army

😐

Every now and then I have a connection every now and then I have a very split moment in God's laughing his ass off has everyone sold completely on fire even the elemental beings of spiritual fire even Souls who are won the fire lose their oneness and are destroyed by this Hell is Fire that come from the spirit of God doesn't matter how devout you were doesn't matter what theme and you had on your side and then I see both in that being reduced to Ash I see Satan being destroyed I see everyone dying I see everyone coming to an end for God it's Sadistic Laughing his ass off

just throwing everyone and everything everywhere even the planet becomes Ash and Get's blown Away in The Ethereal Wind

😐 - God is Fucking, Scary.

It doesn't matter if your psychic God will end you ?

if you see what God's going to do before others do you die before everyone else for God kills them God will make them spontaneously combust or he will just kill them they will die mysteriously all of a sudden just randomly drop dead

It's Almost Screaming that they see the Darkness and God will be laughing his ass off for he will send them to hell and have them have their soul die there

. . .

God has No Mercy by the time I come back everything is Gone the Sun is Gone the Moon is Gobe the stars are gone the Galaxy is gone the place that I suffered horribly on that planet is gone the GRAY'S that brought me here are Gone.

Even hell was destroyed by the wrath of God, ? ? ?

Nothing Survived His Wrath then again nothing survives his love, just completely ripped everything apart like a flaming tornado nothing survives everything is gone the rothschilds are completely spiritually Dead all reptilians here are gone everyone's gone

Everything is Gone ? ? ?

And above all Satan is dead ?

. . .

? Wtf, Happen's . . . Wtf, Is This ?

Keep in mind that I'm not extremely religious person I'm aware of God and God extremely randomly pops up my existence to let me know if you think it's kind of like a very very short vision or a short answer connection this shit last less than 10 Second's !!!!!

He does it to let me know that he loves me and I don't like hearing those words those words are threatening as fuck trust me coming from God that's threatening as fuck it's like a form of threatening sarcasm

And he showed me everything was gone everything was dead and God was losing his mind and Sadistic Rage

🙁 . . . Wtf,

🫥

[megiesposts]

quite liked the yandere klaus mikaelson that you did but as you mentioned I would like to see it less extreme, softer and fairly whipped by the reader

Softer Klaus mikaelson!! But still yandere

- he’s protective af, has/ will kill someone for making a comment about you

- loves to be around you in any way possible, this often means you come with him everyone unless it includes his father or there is someway he isn’t certain that your safe

- Klaus is extremely cuddly, hate when anyone dares interrupt his alone time with you

- the only men that are allowed to have alone time with you is Elijah

-that’s literally it he doesn’t trust anyone else to keep you safe and not make a move on you

- he gifts you so many things from dead women he’s met over the years, he saw you looking at one of those 1500’s dresses online and he gifted you like seven

- you get so much money and expensive jewelry

- he does try to keep your family safe but won’t hesitate to threaten them if they try to stop you from seeing him

- he won’t kill them no matter how much he wants to because he knows you’ll be extremely upset

- he tries his best to keep you out of things that’ll prove dangerous to you

- when he takes Stefan without his Humanity with him, he takes you also

- Stefan is chose to protect you and watch over you because you have a tendency to walk off

-Klaus loves when you sit on his lap- it’s not even a sexual thing (for the most part) but he likes you leaning into his chest and having his arms wrapped completely around you

- he takes you on so many random spontaneous dates, including randomly to Europe and Paris and New York

- he wants so desperately for you to come with him to New Orleans that this is where he might go against your better judgment and bring you with him if your don’t want to

- he actually uses your input in his problems, both supernatural and emotional, because you think outside of the box and may figure out something that he doesn’t see

- he pushes his family to hang out with you because he wants to get married one day and he wants his family to like you

- didn’t get mad when you undaggered elijah (well he did but only for like a minute, he then got mad at elijah instead)

- paints you all the time

- he’s the only one allowed to see your body

- he likes bathing with you because I mean your naked body is pressed to his and he can take care of you

- this man loves when you take care of him

- he’s got mad mommy and daddy issues so you can so easily dominate him or take the lead in any situation with him

-wash his hair for him and he will literally never ever leave you I stg

- when he gets mad OML

- king of angry/jealous seggs

- he never gets violent with you because your human and weak and he doesn’t want to hurt you

- but he does get rough to the point where your begging him to stop because your so tired

- he constantly forgets you don’t have his stamina or pain tolerance

- he will apologize and take care you of

- your like the only person he will actually say the words “I’m sorry” to

- I feel if you start to age he will beg you to transition

- if you don’t want to, he’s still going to date you, but he would get a powerful witch maybe Freya to slow down your sheikh process for as long as possible

- if you start to slow down he’s going to beg you to transition until you cave

- but he can’t snap your neck so he has rebekah do it (she feels bad but it means your transition so she’ll do it)

- it’s klaus’s blood because he can’t stand the thought of you being sired to someone else

- he helps you through your transition by feeding you his blood

-blood sharing is a big thing for the body of you- especially him

- Klaus allows your to take so much of his blood that he almost faints

- he loved drinking your blood when you were human (especially during seggs) but now he has no limits to how much he can take

[five-rivers]

@lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks came up with this op!Danny/Marvel AU!

BTW I need help naming this newest proof that I can't keep anything to a short little one-shot.

.

Loki was not, and never had been, a good man. For that matter, whether or not he’d ever been a good boy was debatable. His mother would argue that he had, but she would very likely be the only one. Well, except for Thor, perhaps, but that was because he was an idiot who could drown in three inches of nostalgia. Like he didn’t remember every time Loki had humiliated him. Maybe he didn’t, for all that he kept falling for the same trick over and over again.

It made Loki’s late nights studying the arts of illusion, misdirection, and lying seem redundant. Almost. Not everyone was as dense as his big brother.

No. Loki had never been a good man. He had, however, been a free man.

Free to run or hide. Free to explore the nooks and crannies of Asgard, to uncover her secrets in ways few cared to do. Free to walk hidden paths between the Nine Realms and even farther flung territories, where his people did not and had never ruled, to play games, make deals, have adventures, take risks. To be. To exist as his own creature.

He had been free. He had.

But on one of those little secret excursions, he had discovered something that had made even his flippant, slippery heart clench with fear. A ravening plague, spreading across the stars. The death of half of everything on the horizon.

Loki was not a good man. What cause did he have to care for all the sundry others in the universe? There were too many. It was too much to ask.

But Asgard—His home, even though the had long ago realized the blood in his veins originated on very different soil. That was different.

Asgard, he could help. Asgard could survive.

But it had to be strong. It had to have strong allies. None of this barely-held peace, this enemy eternally at their gates. It needed strong leadership. Not his brother’s simplistic view and longing for the glory of war.

Loki was not a good man. But he was one who could get things done.

Before he knew it, he had burned all his bridges behind him. In one case, a literal bridge that was literally broken.

And he fell.

And he fell.

And he fell right into the hands of the one he had feared enough to do this. Broken enough for poison to drip into the cracks. No one knew where he was, no one could know where he was, except, perhaps, Heimdal, and Loki sincerely doubted Heimdal cared. No one was coming for him. No one was looking for him. No rescue was forthcoming.

He was alone.

Asgardians were considered gods for a reason. Their bodies and minds were much more resilient than the average mortal’s. But Thanos’s people had been titans, and there was a reason for that, too.

Thanos enjoyed breaking him.

And Loki turned his lies on himself. A skilled master of games always had one gifted opponent, even alone. Hadn’t he wanted to rule? To command? To see a world, any world, prostrate at his feet? To be given the recognition and praise of which he was so worth?

To pull something, anything, out of the fire?

(If he had spent less time learning how to spin lies and more on how to see the truth, he might not have believed it. A better, wiser, man would have. But Loki was not a good man. And he was very skilled in his craft.)

So, his new master put a weapon in his hands, and he went off to conquer a world.

.

Danny was used to rude awakenings. He was used to those rude awakenings being full body chills and ghosts, not someone knocking on his door.

Blearily, he pulled himself out from under the blankets. Quasi-military government facility or not, the beds were comfortable. Maybe Mom or Dad had gotten themselves locked out of their room? Or Jazz—No, not Jazz, she hadn’t come with them. She was at college, not being flown places by Mom and Dad’s suspiciously generous new consulting job.

At least it wasn’t the GIW.

He stood on tiptoe (curse his perpetually short body) to peer out the peephole. His parents’ buff, one-eyed, and incredibly imposing new boss stood in front of the door, hands on his hips, slightly sweeping back his long dark coat. If Danny listened carefully, he could hear two other people near the door, and… was that an alarm? Yes. Faint, but present, was a warning klaxon.

Okay. Danny would bet his right arm that something had gone horribly wrong with whatever his parents were consulting on. Didn’t explain why the boss was in front of his door.

Unless they’d gotten the rooms mixed up, somehow?

Ugh. Danny wasn’t paid enough to deal with this.

He opened the door. “What-?”

“Phantom,” intoned eyepatch guy with great solemnity.

Danny immediately tried to close the door. The guy stuck his foot in the jamb, and, sure, Danny could have crushed it, but that would be a jerk move. He didn’t think this guy was going for a pirate look, after all.

“We need your help.”

.

“I’m not sure what you think I can help you with,” yelled Danny over the beating of the helicopter blades. He’d remained stubbornly in human form. “My parents are the scientists. This sounds like a science thing. Not a punching-people thing.”

“We spoke to them earlier,” said Fury, “and we have plenty of scientists working on the theories they brought up. You’re the one with practical experience.”

“Practical experience in what?”

“Interdimensional portals,” said the woman, who had yet to introduce herself.

As if this whole thing wasn’t already giving him a bad feeling. “My parents built an interdimensional portal. Again, you should be talking to them. They’re the ones you’re paying.”

“We could pay you, too,” said Fury, “but we assumed you would want to avoid letting your parents know about this, as you’re still a minor and they have control of your bank accounts.”

Danny stared flatly. “This is blackmail.”

“We aren’t threatening you,” pointed out the woman.

“Emotional blackmail,” said Danny, glaring, daring her to challenge him on whether or not he actually knew what blackmail was.

In the meantime, the helicopter landed. Danny unbuckled and hopped out, trailing slightly awkwardly behind Fury and the woman. He didn’t want to stand out, but he suspected that, being the only kid here and being in the general vicinity of Fury, who radiated authority, that was a lost cause.

“This is Agent Coulson. Coulson, this is Phantom.”

Danny’s mouth went dry(er) at how casual the introduction was. His eyes went nervously to all the other people running around the field. With all the noise, it was unlikely anyone had heard, but still…

“Can you not? Secret identity and all? Unless you’ve told everyone herealready, which, rude.”

Fury sighed. “How bad is it?” he asked Coulson.

“We’re not sure,” said Coulson. “That’s the problem. Big fan of your work, by the way,” he added as an aside to Danny. He glanced at the woman. “Agent Hill.”

“Background?” asked Fury as he led the way into the building.

“The first energy surge was four hours ago. Dr. Selvig’s equipment picked it up – He’s the head scientist on this project.”

“Dr. Selvig isn’t authorized to test,” said Fury. “We wanted to run his plans by the Fentons.”

“He wasn’t testing. He wasn’t even in the room. He called it ‘spontaneous advancement.’”

“It turned itself on?”

“What are the energy levels?” asked Fury before Hill’s question could be answered.

“Climbing,” said Coulson.

“Mr. Fenton,” said Fury, “any comments?”

“Look, I don’t even know what this thing that you built looks like or what it’s a door to.” Danny frowned as a thought occurred to him. “You’re not expecting me to fight whatever comes out of it, are you? Because, unless you’ve got a ghost portal down there, I can’t make guarantees.”

“It’s called the Tesseract,” said Coulson. “It’s supposed to be a connection to the other side of space. A source of unlimited energy. At least,” there was a note of humor in his voice despite the evacuation taking place around them, “that’s what the scientists say.”

“A door to space?” asked Danny, firmly shoving down his excitement at the prospect. “Like, a Stargate?” It was no good, he could practically feel himself sparkling. He took a firm grip of his core and reminded himself he might need to fight before the end of the day.

“Well, no,” said Coulson. “It’s this little… cube… thing.” He made a shape with his hands.

“Oh,” said Danny, mind still whirring. “You know, if it’s really a tesseract, it isn’t a cube in just three dimensions, so bigger things could come out of it than you’d think.” He’d seen some weird portals in the Ghost Zone.

“Well, right now, we’re just getting energy.” They entered a large room with an extremely sci-fi setup. It looked like they were planning to shoot some kind of laser across the room onto a platform surrounded by strange-looking panels. There were men with guns scattered around in what was probably a well thought out formation Danny couldn’t see. There was also a dude with a bow sitting up in the rafters. He frowned down at Danny as he noticed Danny noticing him.

“Dr. Selvig!”

“Director!”

“What do we know?”

Danny allowed himself to be distracted by the centerpiece of the room, a piece of machinery built around what was indeed a little cube thing. He tilted his head and approached, trying to get a better view of it around the people in lab coats and protective gear currently swarming it. He caught mention of radiation a grimaced.

It was unlikely to kill him, but, really, everyone here should probably be wearing more PPE. You never knew what was going to come out of an interdimensional portal, after all. Except trouble. Trouble was a pretty safe bet.

It was pretty. Blue. Reminded him a little of a blue raspberry ice pop. Part of him wanted to lick it. Which was stupid. He didn’t want to wind up half what-ever-lived-on-the-other-side on top of his regular ghost nonsense.

“Mr. Fenton?”

Danny jumped and turned, refocusing on the adults, who had multiplied while he’d been daydreaming. The guy with the bow had joined them.

“Mr. Fenton? Like the Doctors Fenton I spoke to earlier?” asked Selvig.

“Yeah, it’s—”

This, of course, was when everything decided to explode. Sort of.

The blue cube shot out a beam of energy that had more than a little in common with the Fenton Bazooka’s portal setting. The beam terminated on the platform, a portal rapidly forming.

Danny slid into a fighting stance, and barely even noticed as blue energy washed over the room, throwing many less-prepared people back.

Something shaped like a man stepped through the portal.

Danny did not break his stance. Still. “An alien,” he whispered, eyes wide. If they were friendly, maybe they’d answer his questions about space. If they weren’t friendly, maybe they’d answer his questions about space after Danny beat them up.

(Danny did not go ghost. Did not even think about going ghost. There were too many people here, and the space was too open.)

Fury attempted to negotiate. Danny approved. Not everything that came through an interdimensional portal was necessarily evil.

Except this guy apparently was. Go figure. He could also deflect bullets and was very good with throwing knives, which led to Danny having to pull several of the gun guys out of their own line of fire as well as the alien’s line of knife. Who would have thought an alien’s weapon of choice would be throwing knives? The energy-blasting spear was much more in line with his expectations.

The bow guy proved to be more competent than the gun guys. This didn’t really surprise Danny. Bow guy sort of had to be competent. Otherwise, no way would they let him go around with a bow. Like, seriously. A bow.

Even so, bow guy was fighting an alien and—

“You have heart,” said the alien, raising the spear.

Danny pushed bow guy out of the way, and his mind fuzzed out.

(The human part of it, anyway.)

.

Loki didn’t know what a child was doing here, and he didn’t particularly care. The boy would do for a hostage, at least. He had a mission he had to fulfil, or else…

Or else.

“Please don’t,” he said turning with a shadow of his usual lazy affect, vaguely insulted that the human thought he could be sneaker that him, “I still need that.”

The human went on and on, apparently burdened with the delusion that he was on the same level as Loki.

Loki was burdened with other things. A glorious purpose. Glad tidings. Freedom. What could be better than freedom?

“A world free from what?” asked the human.

“From freedom,” said Loki, and wasn’t that what he believed, now? Wasn’t that what he’d been shown? “Freedom is life’s great lie.” He would know. He was an excellent liar. “Once you accept that, in your heart—” He batted away an arrow and tsked. “Shield me, boy,” he demanded. Had Thanos misrepresented the scepter’s powers? Or was the boy merely—

A dome of green surrounded him and the boy, thrumming with magic the likes of which he had only seen once, in a tome thrice forbidden.

“Oh,” said Loki, almost purring. “You are interesting. What are you?”

“Half human, half ghost,” replied the boy, tersely.

Loki had never heard of such a creature. No matter. He’d be sure to make good use of him.

“Grab the scientist,” he said, nodding at the balding man who had been with his brother when he’d fought the Destroyer in the desert.

Loki wanted the archer. He seemed interesting. Useful.

.

Fenton was under thrall. Phantom knew what that felt like. A hundred feet under red water, trying not to drown, whispers everywhere. Pulling. Pushing. Prodding.

This was different, but the principle was the same.

Neither half of him could truly ‘fight’ the other. Fenton and Phantom were a single entity. Not two in lockstep. Even so.

Fenton grabbed onto Dr. Selvig, as ordered. Phantom made sure that was all they did.

“What are you doing, boy?” snapped Loki. “Follow me! Bring the scientist.”

And so, they followed.

.

Loki breathed. Acquiring Barton had been the right choice. The boy was powerful, but, perhaps because of his unique biology, did not have Barton’s presence of mind, and couldn’t have led him to such wonderful allies.

Allies.

These weren’t truly his allies. Nor were they subjects. They were…

Loki forced himself to breathe. He just had to follow the mission. Follow the mission, let Thanos’s army through. He’d been promised this world. He would have this world.

And then he could be… His mind stuttered over the next word, and he shook his head, trying to drive out the painful buzz of Thanos’s herald and mouthpiece trying to contact him.

He looked up at the drones bustling around, all according to his will. Except the boy, who stared at him, somehow managing to be both utterly blank and challenging at the same time.

He was alone, here.

He was alone.

But what did it matter? Bad men always wound up alone, and Loki… Loki could never be a good man.

[dreamwritesimagines]

Burn The Witch 1 - Decoy [Bucky Barnes x Reader]

A.N: Here we go my loves, the first chapter! ❤ I hope you like it, and please let me know what you think! ❤ Thank you! ❤❤❤

As always, I don’t own anything.

Word Count: 2200

Warnings: Mentions of blood, violence, death, manipulation, language.

Summary: Trouble has a way of following certain people.

Sometimes you wondered whether you would run away screaming when you were a child if you knew what kind of a person you would turn into.

It wasn’t exactly your fault though. For years and years, several people had put the blame on several different things. Eventually they would reach the same conclusion though; the psychiatrists, your superiors, the very few people you could call your family, they all agreed on one thing.

It wasn’t you, it was the abandonment.

The abandonment you went through when you were a teenager had somehow started this domino, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop this constant fall, not even you.

But as you would figure out soon, you were lucky. Instead of being consumed by your anger, you could direct it somewhere else. You were recruited and trained from a very young age, and somewhere along the way, you realized that if you wanted to survive you were going to have to sacrifice certain things.

Forgiveness was the first one to disappear. Guilt was another.

Then fear.

Then, love.

Ah well. Worse things happen in the world every day.

If anything it made your job easier.

You cracked your neck and opened the door to your apartment, the key sticking to your fingers because of the blood on your hands for a moment and you made a face as you shut the door, leaning back.

A very long shower and a bottle of wine sounded like a good idea.

You placed your gun on the table, took the dagger strapped to your thigh out of its holster and got the knives out of the heels of your shoes before flinging yourself onto your couch and turning the TV on.

“Also called Sokovia Accords 2.0 by the critics—“

“What the superheroes think about this remains a mystery—“

“The first time caused a huge rift between Captain America and Iron Man but nobody knows the new Captain America Sam Wilson’s comment on it—“

You didn’t get to change the channel again when your phone started vibrating in your pocket, making you sit up straight. You muted the TV, and checked the caller I.D before you answered.

“Hey there.”

“Hi, how’s Paris?” the cheerful voice of your best friend reached you, “Had enough croissants yet?”

A small smile pulled at your lips. After your only parental figure had left you to go God knew where, General had decided to adopt you and raise you like a daughter. His actual daughter Chloe had welcomed you with open arms, and you had been best friends since then.

Her being the top analyst of the division didn’t hurt either.

“Mm hm, because that’s all I’m doing. Eating croissants, visiting museums—”

“Killing and maiming targets...” she mused, finishing your sentence for you and you heaved a sigh.

“Somehow that last one isn’t included in the city guide,” you pointed out. “Chloe, you know this is a line for—“

“Official contact from General, yeah yeah,” she said, “In my defense, you didn’t pick up the phone an hour ago when I called you from my phone.”

“Do you know how hard it is to use touch screen when your hands are covered in blood?”

“What happened to your sniper rifle, did it fall into Seine?”

“It required close combat,” you said, “And the target swallowed the chip before I could get it, so I had to perform a spontaneous autopsy.”

“Just so you know, whenever you talk about your job I have to watch like a hundred cute videos after I hang up.”

“Happens.” you said, “How’s everything?”

“You missed us already?”

You grinned, “Maybe.”

“Good, because dad wants you back. He’ll contact you any day now.”

Your head snapped up and you stood up from the couch, “Really?”

“Duh. Have you seen how negotiations for these new Accords are going? It’s going to be a mess and we need you here.”

“The second one hasn’t passed officially.”

“Well no, but you know how my father thinks.” she said and you tilted your head.

“Are we sure it’s General who wants me there and not you?”

“Okay, that was one prank ages ago and I didn’t hear the end of it!” she protested, “Don’t you trust me at all?”

“Nope.”

“You know, I’m being the perfect friend and calling you to give you some good news but if you’re going to be like this, my news can wait until you get here.”

You pulled your brows together, “What news?”

“What do I get in return?”

“My endless gratitude,” you deadpanned, “Come on. What news?”

“You can’t tell anyone yet but I think you’re getting a promotion.”

Your breath got caught in your throat, “You’re joking.”

“Don’t forget about me when you become a handler, you hear me?” She let out a laugh, I need friends in high places.”

“Your dad runs the division Chloe. It doesn’t get any higher than that.”

“That doesn’t count!”  

You pressed a hand over your chest, “Just— what kind of a promotion are we talking about?”

“I mean I snooped around his files and casually committed treason.” she said, “But even I don’t know yet. They must be still making the adjustments.”

You opened your mouth to reply but then your phone vibrated again and you lowered it to check the message on the screen.

It was simple but again, all his texts were simple and to the point.

From: General

Time to come back. Jet leaves in 2 hours.

Here goes my shower and wine night.

“Chloe?” you said, walking to the sink to wash your hands so that you could start packing, “You want anything from here? I’m coming home.”

                                              ***

The best thing about being on the move all the time was that you could pack in minutes and the division would take care of the things you had left behind.

Apartments, belongings-

Not that you carried any belongings with you, or bought any more than necessary. It would’ve made you form a bond, which was less than ideal for any spy.

You suppressed the yawn splitting your face and made your way to General’s office. This jet-lag was going to make your life pretty difficult in the following 24 hours, and you were painfully aware of it, but it wasn’t like you could just ask for some time to rest.

That could wait. Your job was more important.

“General?” you knocked on the half open door and he raised his head to look at you before motioning you to enter the room.

“Y/N,” he said, “Close the door please. It’s good to have you back.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Take a seat,” he said and you cleared your throat, then perched on the edge of the chair.

“I’ve heard you eliminated the threat and got rid of our target quite fast,” he said, “And we have the chip now.”

You nodded silently, pushing your hair behind your ear.

“Well, that shows me you’re ready for the next step,” he said “No reason to beat around the bush, you’re getting a promotion.”

Pride burst through your system but you tried to control your expression to stop the grin threatening to pull at your lips.

“Thank you sir.”

“Here are the details for your next mission,” he said, handing you a file that was stamped as Top Secret and you flipped the page to find information about your next identity.

Alias: Shrike

“Shrike,” you murmured to yourself, turning the pages, “Like the bird?”

“Mm hm. I assume you’ve heard about the Accords issue?”

You looked up, “Only a little,” you said, “The first one was a disaster and the government had to drop it after The Blip due to the public’s reaction, resurrected people insisted that the superheroes were the ones who saved them, not the government. Then the government said they would go over the details and change it in a way that would benefit both the public and the superheroes, but I haven’t seen the new version.”

“There were some adjustments but to be honest with you, it’s the same deal. We can’t have superheroes running wild with no orders,” he said, “I need you on both fronts, one with terminating specific targets, and one with….well, you’ll see.”

You flipped the page and blinked a couple of times, your stomach dropping.

You were good, but you weren’t that good.

“You- you’re sending me after Captain America, sir?”

“Ah no,” he said, “Don’t worry. Wilson doesn’t have a past we can use against him, and trust me, we checked. The guy is an actual hero but we need a bad guy.”

You turned the page and shut your eyes for a moment.

Bucky Barnes.

Right. You should’ve known.

The government wanted and needed Captain America on their side, but Bucky Barnes could fall for all they cared.

“Sir I appreciate your trust in my abilities but not even an army could take down the Winter Soldier the last time—” you started but General shook his head.

“Y/N, you’re not going to kill him,” he said, “That’s the second front I was talking about. We need you to get close to him, to form a personal bond and gather intel we can use in the future.”

You gawked at him, “I’m sorry?”

“Barnes is the perfect candidate. He can help us with necessary information to prove to the public that superheroes need to answer to someone; us. Besides if it all goes bad, we can just say he was a threat. With that kind of past no one would think he was innocent to begin with.”

Your head was spinning. Scratch that, the whole room was spinning.

You were good at finding and terminating targets, not forming personal bonds or playing this

“When you say get close to him….” You trailed off, your voice way too weak and he smiled slightly.

“You’re an attractive woman, I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.”

That. That was your promotion.

Not an operations officer, not a handler, but a lover who also happened to kill people.

They were going to use you as a honey trap for him.

“Sir, I don’t think-“ you started, but he held up a hand.

“Before you say no,” he said, “Let me remind you that this will benefit your career greatly, and you will have your own team. Show us you can handle it, and the position you want will be within your reach, you have my word. You want to be a handler, don’t you?”

You dragged your fingernails on the file, deep in thought.

“Barnes is one of the many dangerous people we may need to stop one day, and the only way to do it is to keep him under control and learn everything he knows until we’re ready to take him in.”

“But if these new Accords don’t pass—“ you started but he shook his head.

“Even if they don’t, and that’s a big if,” he said, “He’s still a valuable asset to have. We all have to perform certain missions, Y/N. Even if we don’t particularly like them. You will thank me in the future, when your career flourishes.”

Your blinked a couple of times, a bitterness appearing in your mouth.

“Of course,” you managed to say, “You’re— you’re right sir. It’s a good plan. I accept the position.”

“Great!” he clapped his hands together, “We have a target for you for tomorrow night, there’s this gallery opening. He needs to be eliminated, I think you can handle that? Start planning how it will go with Barnes as well, we can’t lose any time.”

You pursed your lips together and closed the file, “Of course.”

“Congratulations.” he leaned in slightly, “Your dad would be so proud of you if he could see you now.”

You tried to swallow the lump in your throat, but it felt like it was getting bigger and bigger.

“I don’t need his approval,” you rasped out and walked to the door, but stopped when you heard him speak.

“Shrike,” he used your alias for the first time and you looked over your shoulder.

“Yes?”

“I don’t have to remind you that this mission is top secret. If he figures out who you are, or what you’re up to…” he clicked his tongue, “Kill him.”

You paused for a moment, then tilted your head and smiled at him.

“As you wish, sir.” you managed to say, then walked out of his office as if someone was chasing you. You made your way straight to the bathroom and slammed the file on the marble counter, then pulled out the small picture sticking out from the corner. It was an old black and white picture of him with Steve Rogers, probably taken in the 40s, both of them smiling. 

When you lowered the picture to attach it back to the paper, your eyes caught the tiny print under his aliases.

Confirmed Kills: Exact number unknown (Credited with 100+ assassinations)

You were in way, way over your head now.

“Oh, fuck.”

                                  Chapter 2

[placeinthemiddleofnowhere]

On the Run

Previous Part | Masterlist | Next Part

On the run part 24

Pairing: Bishop Losa x Female!Reader

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI, Smut, Stalker ex, Scenes of abuse, Angst, Violence, Death

A/n: I actually managed to get the next part out! Look I did it, I did the thing! Hope y'all enjoy, sorry for the big break, I've been working back in my office again, so things have been slowwwww. I will try and update again soon!

The bus was rumbling steadily on and as you grew closer and closer to your old home you could feel the bile rising in your throat. Your stomach was a mess and your legs were shaking in your seat, thighs knocking together as the tall buildings began to swallow you up. Shadows raced over your face as the edifices cast themselves against you, reminding you that you were far from Santo Padre now. Your real home.

“Next stop’s coming up,” the driver droned.

You swallowed an uneasy breath and looked around at the other passengers, watching their eyes dance as they watched the buildings go by. They looked at ease, relieved their journeys were almost over. You wished that could be you.

It had been a rough six days but you’d managed to make it back in record time. You didn’t stop to stretch your legs, didn’t waste time in motels or trying to give yourself time to think. You just carted yourself onto each bus, feeling like livestock to the slaughter as your limbs ached to walk a little and your head thrummed.

You hadn’t thought much about what your plan was. Besides coming to the conclusion that you would need to kill him, you had no idea how you would do it. Your mind was too busy dwelling on Bishop, Olivia and Danny back at Santo Padre as the messages they sent haunted your thoughts. Bishop had called several hundred times, then Danny and Olivia. The voicemails were the worst of all.

“Sweetheart where are you? What are you doing, why won’t you answer your phone, why’s all your shit gone? You’re scaring me.”

“Sophia, I just spoke to Olivia and Danny and they said you’re going away, going away where?”

“I just want to talk, why are you doing this? Why won’t you tell me what happened? I love you, I just want you to be safe, please let me know you’re safe…”

Olivia and Danny hadn’t left any thankfully. They’d messaged you instead claiming Bishop was on the warpath trying to figure out where you were. They were begging you to talk to him and calm him down, but you knew you couldn’t do that. You’d end up losing your resolve. You’d run back to him because you hated to hear that hurt in his voice, rasping out like a phantom.

Instead of giving them any answers, you opted to give yourself some peace of mind instead and switched your phone off. It lessened the anxiety that Bishop might try and use his connections to track you down as well, couldn’t track a phone that was switched off, right? You sighed, how had things gotten to this?

Now that you were actually thinking about what you’d come to do, the more ridiculous you felt. The only reason you got away with it before was because of the club, they were the ones that cleaned up your mess and had the relationship with the local PD. How were you going to replicate that here? Especially when Joe worked for such a prestigious security company, they would want to know what happened to him. What the hell were you doing?

As your heart rate quickened with panic, you took a few shallow breaths and sat stiffly in your seat. You looked at the other passengers again trying to ground yourself. You can’t break down on this bus, there’s so many people, you think, gritting your teeth, don’t do it. Tears threatened to leak, but you refused to let them. Best not to draw attention to yourself when you’ve come to do something incredibly dangerous and illegal, afterall.

What would Bishop do? He certainly wouldn’t take a spontaneous cross country bus journey only to find himself lost on a plan once he got to his destination. Bishop would’ve torn up the highway on his harley, riding to his kill knowing exactly what he was gonna do. He’d lug himself off of that bike, jaw clenched and muscles pumping, ready to destroy the bastard that wronged him. Unfortunately it wasn’t entirely realistic to expect to tackle Jospeh as easily as Bishop would. It almost made you smirk as you thought about it really, both men made violence their career and here you were caught between them. Walking the deadly knife edge.

“Approaching Gates Avenue,” the driver sounded again.

You took a breath and looked around once more. You needed to get off. You couldn’t shake the feeling that the entire bus knew what you’d come to do. You could hardly stand to be around them anymore. The feeling of tingling hairs on the back of your neck and ringing ears couldn’t be ignored any longer.

So you found yourself quickly rushing up and getting off, feeling like a pressure lifted as you ran out into the street. There was a decent amount of hustle and bustle as traffic continued to rush by steadily and a little stream of people worked their way along past you. Ok, you thought, it’s ok you haven’t done anything yet.

Yet. You shuddered as you could almost convince yourself into thinking that Joseph was there, breathing down your neck like a panting, hungry, wolf. The thought alone sprung you into action, willing you to walk down the street and really begin to think out your plan.

There was no way you could show up at his place or anywhere he’d normally frequent. It had to be on your terms if you had any shot of getting out alive. Preferably he wouldn’t see it coming either. Which was easier said than done when it came to dealing with a security expert. When it came to dealing with the same man that came home bloody almost every night, slick with a kill and merciless.

“Hey, excuse me miss-”

You screamed as you felt a hand grasp your arm, tearing you out of your thoughts. As you turned you met the shocked expression of a skinny man wrapped up in a big coat, and almost being choked up in his scarf. His eyebrows flew past the frames of his glasses and his wide honey eyes stared back at you and for a moment. You regarded each other like this until the shock wore off and you let out a puff of breath.

“Oh wow, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-”

“No, no, completely my fault, I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that,” the man laughed nervously.

“Still, probably didn’t need to scream loud enough to put you in the newspapers,” you replied nervously. “What did you want?”

The guy gave another little unsure snort and looked down into his other hand. Your earphones. You gave him another once over and felt your eyes widen again as you recognised him from the bus, he must’ve seen you leave without them. An uneasy smile tugged at your lips and you took them from him, shoving them back into your pocket. Careless.

“I was gonna get off at the next stop, but you were sitting across from me and I saw you leave without em’ so...Yeah. Do you have somewhere to be?”

“Uhh….”

You didn’t. But what were you gonna do, say you were free and go on some kinda coffee date with him? Pretend like you hadn’t just left Bishop to go off on some vigilante revenge mission on your crazy ex? Nope.

“I’m sorry I gotta go run and catch up with my friend,” You finally said.

“Oh...alright. Well, can I get your number maybe?”

You raised your eyebrows again, becoming a little suspicious now. Why would he want your number? It’s not like he knew you. That, and you had just gotten off from travelling almost a solid week. You were sure you’d started to smell from only being able to bathe in dodgy little bus station sinks, in fact the cloying smell of travel had begun to burn at your nose as soon as you stepped outside. That wasn't right.

“Um, I’m sorry I don’t give my number out to strangers,” you murmured. “Thanks for these though, appreciate it.”

You spun on your heel, not wanting to give him a chance to respond and quickly began to walk away. You barely registered your surroundings as business names and buildings became a blur, and you focused in on the pavement ahead of you. You’d managed to make it a fair way down the pavement, clearing at least a few hundred feet before you felt an uneasy feeling in the back of your mind.

You turned and expected to see skinny guy right up behind you, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found. As if he were never there at all. Then, after taking a few more cautious looks around, you shook your head and put it down to him getting embarrassed and running off in the other direction. He had basically just been shot down by a starving, smelly hermit woman so that wasn’t going to be easy to take.

So, with one problem gone, you moved yourself onto the task at hand. Getting to Joseph. You figured you would need to find a way to lure him out. It would definitely resort in bringing yourself to his level, stopping at nothing and acting in the shadows. Not that you were an expert at these things of course.

Knowing that you had less than half of the technological facilities that your crazy ex had, you came to the conclusion it would have to draw him out the old fashioned way. A letter. You walked down the street and concocted the idea in your mind, fighting the shiver that ran through your bones.

- - -

“Fuck!” You hissed sharply.

Towering shadows were taking over the streets while the wind was whipping at your back. Your head was spinning with nerves as you rushed towards the meeting point, you were fighting your knees not to give out from under you, to keep going. Am I really about to do this?

Yes. Now it was do or die, literally. You’d managed to convince a couple of kids to deliver your letter, having to promise to pay them before and after delivery just to secure them. Only with the promise they wouldn't tell anyone about your deal of course. After that it was just a case of waiting until the city turned black. Allowing you to hide its safe shadows.

Meet me at the alley. You know which one.

Let’s end this, 2am.

You’d spent so long thinking of different ways to voice your vitriol, to send him a proper message about what you wanted to do with him. Though, you realised he probably knew that already, he wasn’t worth wasting ink on. Besides, if your plan came to fruition, he wouldn’t be alive long enough to absorb them. You hoped. It felt like a jinx to write anything else at this point.

Your breath was coming in short bursts as you stormed toward the direction of the alley. There was a stinging sensation clawing its way up your palms and through your arms as your nails dug into them and for a while all you could do was hold onto that horrible, sharp sensation. This was really happening. Bishop couldn’t save you now. Oh god, what am i doing?

You jammed your finger into the buzzer on a building close to the alley. One that you knew had a rooftop. Then, after making an excuse to the disgruntled man on the other end, the one you knew had been awake at this early hour, draped along his window smoking a joint, you ascended. Your legs were screaming by the time you finished, your heart was a mess, feeling like it might burst out of you. Though, you weren’t done yet.

Looking out over the vast expanse of the city, you stood and took a nervous breath as the ledge threatened to swallow you up. One, two…fuck it.

You took a flying leap toward the next rooftop, ignoring the fact you were ten stories up, ignoring the fact that you were carrying a heavy load in your backpack and ignoring the intrusive voices that called out just to fall on purpose. For a moment you flew through the air, embracing the wind as it carried you through the air. Though it didn't last long, not really, you cried out a strangled scream on impact, scraping your knees as you landed badly. Your eyes flew open in surprise and after huffing out a thankful breath you got to your feet.

Taking a few cautious steps forward, you peered into the abyss below, looking down into the alley. Nothing there. You left early on purpose, left yourself enough time to stow yourself in the shadows, it was a good thing he preferred punctuality to earliness. You sighed and just as you were drawing back to find a hiding place, you were taken by surprise. You bumped into a hard, solid wall of muscle that definitely hadn’t been there before.

“Ah!” You let out a blood curdling scream.

- - -

“For the last time, I have no idea!” Olivia all but shrieked.

Bishop wasn’t a tall man, but he still managed to make Olivia feel as if he were a towering giant. His face was wrought with worry and his hands were grasping the bar so hard she was convinced the wood would splinter.

Seven days since you had gone. Seven days with no explanation, no call, no confirmation you even still existed. He could have accepted it if you couldn’t handle the lifestyle he lived. He could have handled you leaving, he didn’t want to, but with enough drinking and sleepless nights he could attempt to forget you. What he couldn’t do was allow you to walk away without a word. Without knowing that you were ok, without knowing where to find you when he realised he couldn’t really accept you were gone.

“Bishop you leave that poor girl alone!” Danny Roared.

Bishop staggered back as Danny matched him broad chest for broad chest, facing him down with that scary hard eyed look of his. Even Bishop was a little wary of that look. He huffed out a breath and clenched his jaw, willing himself not to challenge the old bartender like he had only a few nights before. Willing himself not to destroy the bar you loved so much, fight the man that you claimed was like your second father.

“I just can’t believe that she’d leave us all like this,” Bishop growled. “Me and her had our shit going on, but even you and Olivia? I don’t buy for a second that she’d just skip town.”

“I think there’s something off too,” Danny said lowly, easing his glare as he thought for a minute. “I think…I think I remembered something the other night. That’s why I asked you to come, not so you could yell at Olivia.”

Bishop’s shoulders fell and he tilted his chin up, willing Danny to go on, wanting to hear what he had to say. He couldn’t spare a thought for Olivia, couldn’t face her right now. He’d stop his tirade and realise what a monster he was, distract himself from trying to get information out of Danny. What could he really know though? He’s just some old man that runs a bar and ran you and Olivia into the ground with hard, thankless work. He was just some assho-

“Do you know anything about an ex of hers? Someone from her past that would…come to hurt her?”

The words punched through Bishop as he drew himself out of his hateful thoughts and realised what Danny had said. Suddenly all the horror stories, the ones you’d told Bishop on only your most vulnerable of days, came to light in his mind. The hitting, the abuse, the emotional torture. It only made his blood boil to think he hadn’t considered it himself.

“What makes you ask that?” Bishop breathed.

“She told me that if she ever got found here, if she was caught, that she’d leave. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I just thought- well y’know i just thought we’re so outta the way here nobody finds anyone. So I didn’t put much in it till yesterday. I realised she might be gone for good, y’know,” Danny said softly, fumbling over his words as emotion ran thick through his voice.

“What’d she tell you about him?”

“Nothing…just what I told you. What did she tell you?”

“Not enough, just that he’s bad news, he used to do awful shit to her. Didn’t tell me his name or where to find him though…She was so afraid,” Bishop said, realisation dawned on him. “What if he got to her?”

Olivia listened to the two men as they drew each other further into a hysteria, eyes widening as she took in what they were saying. Her heart ached as she realised that you’d relayed similar warnings of a terrible stranger in your past. How could she have not known when you said you were leaving? How could she have not stopped you?

“Do you think the boyfriend could be somewhere in Santo Padre now?” Olivia asked, her hopeful tone almost being crushed under the weight of her worried thoughts.”Maybe she got away in time.”

“Maybe…I guess there’s no way we could tell. Maybe we’ll hear from her when the heat dies down,” Danny said, looking forlornly over to Olivia.

Bishop watched their exchange and growled. No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He hadn’t felt this helpless in a long ass while, and he knew he couldn't go through a repeat of the last time. He couldn’t lose you too. He slumped down into one of the empty booths and finally registered the emptiness of the whole place, realising that no one was there. Danny had cleared the bar for the night, predicting Bishops wild mood. He couldn’t lose more regiulars to Bishops wrath.

He raised a brow after a few worried glances around and watched as Danny heaved his shoulders into a shrug. The man was looking his age these days. Bishop supposed he must be as well, he’d let his facial hair grow out a little, it was in the beginning stages of a beard with an awkward big moustache. The last time he looked in the mirror he’d noted the dark circles under his eyes and how heavily his shoulders drooped as the weight of the world took over. It was hard to look after himself when his mind could hardly move past the idea of you.

He’d scoured Santo Padre for a week. A week he’d been ignoring calls regularly, turning up to templo only when he was really needed. Every meeting he sat in, every conversation he has he was filling the room with the ghost of you. Imagining you lingering there by his shoulders, gently rubbing his back and teasing him about his age. It kept him going on those long nights where he rode his bike around, trawling the city and surrounding areas looking for any shred of evidence you’d been there.

“Bishop, your phone,” Olivia whispered, breaking the silence.

Bishops phone was glowing brightly on the table; it had been on silent for a while. He’d been ignoring a lot of calls since you left, since he figured the calls were only giving him hope that they were you. Hope that was soon crushed when he’d check the call ID. When he would hear the voices on the end and they were never you telling him that everything was alright.

He sighed a deep breath, body rattling with heaviness and cigarette smoke and choked as he saw your name flash up on the screen. Was this some kind of vision? Had he gone full on fucking delusional? He grasped the phone tightly and unlocked in a haze, almost punching himself as he put the speaker to his ear and sat silent as he waited to hear your voice. Waited for confirmation he wasn’t seeing things.

“She’ll be back soon,” a gruff voice sounded out.

Bishop tensed at the rough masculine voice, his teeth almost cracking as he fully registered what had been said. His brows shot down and his eyes were almost black as he reread his call history. She’ll be back soon? What could that mean? Would you be back…alive?

Next Part Here

——

Tag list

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[nikkoliferous]

Phase One: Avengers (Part One)

With everything being about the LOKI series right now and me dreading it, I figured I'd distract myself by finally posting my thoughts on the Phase One: Avengers novel, which I seem to recall somehow being way worse than the Thor novel? I'm not completely convinced this thing wasn't ghostwritten by Taika Waititi; that's all I'm saying. Anyways, here we go.

(Quick note: please be aware that this overview is significantly Thor-critical. If that sort of thing bothers you, I do not recommend proceeding. You've been warned. Lol)

Let's start off with a friendly reminder that SHIELD had four hours to evacuate before Loki showed up, shall we?

Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from the Tesseract four hours ago,” Coulson was saying.

“I didn’t approve going to testing,” Fury said.

Coulson nodded. “He wasn’t testing it. He wasn’t even in the room. Spontaneous event.”

So either they're grossly incompetent or grossly negligent, but either way those deaths are on them at least as much as they're on Loki. If not more so.

“It just turned itself on?” Hill sounded skeptical. Fury, as usual, was less interested in how they’d gotten there than in what they were going to do next.

[...]

Selvig acknowledged him briefly and then returned his attention to the monitoring equipment. “Director, the Tesseract is misbehaving.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No, it’s not funny at all. The Tesseract is not only active, she’s… behaving.”

Fury didn’t comment on the doctor characterizing the Tesseract as female. He also wasn’t interested in Selvig’s notions about its personality. It didn’t have a personality. It was a cube containing energy, and all Nick Fury wanted was to know how to control that energy. “I assume you pulled the plug.”

Fury having no intellectual curiosity explains a lot, tbh. Like how he thinks Loki "kills because it's fun", even though nothing about their prior interaction indicates that. Like, at all. Loki killed only the agents who were attacking him. Because he felt threatened. If he indeed killed for the fun of it, he would have taken them all out and been done with it. Doing so would have both entertained him and made for a much smoother getaway.

“She’s an energy source. We turn off the power, she turns it back on. If she reaches peak level—”

“We prepared for this, Doctor. Harnessing energy from space.”

“We’re not ready. My calculations are far from complete. And she’s throwing off interference radiation.”

Fury watched the Tesseract in its circular containment shell. Eight separate energy sensors built into a frame supporting that shell were designed to measure and conduct that energy. Those sensors in turn rested on stainless-steel support scaffolding. The whole setup sprouted cables and conduits. These were there to supply energy to the Tesseract in a controlled fashion so Dr. Selvig could analyze its reactions. Now they were all shut down, as Dr. Selvig had said, but even so, the Tesseract glowed with a fierce blue energy. It was starting to spill onto the sensors, arcing like electricity. But it wasn’t electricity. It was something much more exotic.

I also find it curious/amusing/something that Fury later accuses Loki of "stealing a force [he] can't hope to control". YOU'RE DESCRIBING YOURSELF, NICK. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO CAN'T CONTROL IT AND HAS BEEN ARROGANTLY PRETENDING YOU CAN.

The man looked up at them and smiled as he stood. He was not a large man, not remarkable in any particular way. He had long black hair and wore black leather clothing, similar to what Fury was wearing. However, he wasn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Fury didn’t know where he had come from.

I beg to fucking differ lmao

Fury had the Tesseract in a steel carrying case and was taking a step toward the door when the stranger turned to him and said, “Please don’t. I still need that.”

Kudos to Loki for not forgetting his princely manners even while completely off his rocker. Lol

“This doesn’t have to get any messier,” Fury said. He glanced quickly around, trying to figure the fastest way out.

“Of course it does,” the stranger said. “I’ve come too far for anything else.”

TELL US WHAT YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH, LOKI. INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

“Loki?” Dr. Selvig said. He stood up from helping one of his fellow doctors, who was barely conscious. “Brother of Thor?”

“We have no quarrel with your people,” Fury said.

Loki acknowledged Selvig and then returned his attention to Fury.

By "acknowledged", the author means he rolled his eyes so hard he saw his own brain lmao

“I come with glad tidings,” Loki said. “Of a world made free.”

“Free from what?” Fury asked.

Turning back to him, Loki said simply, “Freedom. Freedom is life’s great lie. Once you accept that in your heart…” As he spoke the word “heart,” he turned and touched Selvig’s chest with the tip of his scepter, just as he had with Hawkeye. Selvig gasped, and the same change came over his face that Fury had seen in Hawkeye’s. “You will know peace.”

He's not simply deranged, you know. For Loki, this is actually true. He has never been free in his entire life, and won't be at any point after this either. Yes, there was also the torture and the mind control at play, but even underneath all that, is it any wonder he was vulnerable to the Thanos cult's brainwashing?

Hawkeye had been looking around the complex. Now he stepped up to Loki. “Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow and drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us.”

Loki looked back at Fury, who said, “Like the pharaohs of old.”

“He’s right, the portal is collapsing in on itself!” Selvig called out from the monitors. “We’ve got maybe two minutes before this goes critical.”

Friendly reminder, once again, that Loki wasn't even aware the PEGASUS facility was on the verge of collapsing—let alone the cause of it.

“Well then,” Loki said. He glanced over at Hawkeye.

Without a word, Hawkeye drew his gun and shot Nick Fury once, dead center in the chest.

Two things:

1) Every time I see this scene in gifs, all I can think of is, "Pull the lever, Kronk." 🤣

2) So how does the direct mind control of the sceptre work anyway? Because Loki never actually gives Barton a command here. So does he sometimes communicate with his minions telepathically (sort of like The Other does with him), or does Barton just intuit his intent here, or what?

Maria Hill saw Hawkeye come out of the lab into the garage with Selvig, a liaison officer, and a stranger carrying a spear. He looked more like one of the people they’d been recruiting into the Avengers Initiative than an ordinary technician or S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. “Who's that?” she asked.

*sigh* In a just MCU, this would have been foreshadowing.

She jumped into a jeep and headed after them. Other S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles followed, filled with agents. They roared along the underground access road that led up to the surface in the New Mexico desert. She was gaining on them and firing as she drove. Sooner or later, she’d be close enough to have a good shot at the stranger.

He had other ideas, though. When he saw the pursuing convoy get too close, he pointed his scepter at them. The tip of it flared bright blue, and a bolt of energy lashed out from it, striking the vehicle in front of Hill and shattering the right side of its passenger compartment. The vehicle slewed around and flipped, rolling and landing sideways across the road. They were blocked.

Interesting of Loki to go for the passenger compartment instead of the driver. Was anyone even sitting there? Just one more example in a long string of Loki being inexplicably merciful to his enemies, I guess. 🤷

They got around ahead of the truck, and Fury leaned out of the helicopter’s side door. He fired, emptying his clip. He could tell from the sparks that some of the bullets had hit, but he was too far away to see if they’d done any damage.

His real target was Loki, but he was protected by the cab of the truck. Fury couldn’t get a good shot at him.

Did Fury already forget that Loki is bulletproof, or...? I mean, I guess that's fair. Earlier, Hawkeye goes to draw his sidearm only minutes after the narration points out that the bullets already fired at Loki had bounced away harmlessly.

Leaning over the truck’s roof and keeping low, however, Loki could get a good shot at the helicopter. A blue bolt lanced out and struck the helicopter’s rotor assembly. All the control mechanisms went haywire, and the helicopter spiraled down out of the sky. The truck drove underneath them as they were about to crash, close enough that Fury could see the gloating expression on Loki’s face.

Haha, good for him.

“Coulson, you know that Stark trusts me about as far as he can throw me,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve got Stark,” Coulson said. “You’ve got the big guy.”

Oh, Natasha thought. That big guy. She said something in Russian. It wasn’t polite.

This has nothing to do with Loki. It just made me laugh.

Nick Fury had called an emergency meeting of the World Security Council. They needed to know what had happened with the Tesseract, and they needed to know what he planned to do about it. He brought up holographic images of all the WSC members, with their faces and locations hidden. He did not know who they were, but S.H.I.E.L.D. reported to them.

Well, that doesn't sound problematic at all, does it?

“The Avengers Initiative was shut down.”

“This isn’t about the Avengers.” That wasn’t strictly true, but Nick Fury was no idiot. He wasn’t going to show all his cards to the World Security Council when he didn’t even know who they were.

I'm glad he at least recognizes the stupidity of working for people he doesn't know, but uh... debatable, otherwise. Lol

“This isn’t about personality profiles anymore,” Coulson said. He wasn’t giving up, and that irritated Tony even more than the fact he’d showed up right when the celebration of Stark Tower was supposed to be starting.

*cough*DIVA*cough*

Loki watched Dr. Erik Selvig work, preparing the Tesseract for the next phase of his plan. Technicians and soldiers scurried about on various errands. Loki did not know the details and did not care. They were beneath him. He had his eye solely on the greater prize. It was time to consult with the Chitauri and begin the next phase of the preparations.

Really? You expect me to believe that Loki, the master tactician with "a cunning mind far exceeding Thor and Odin’s", couldn't be bothered to know the details of his own plan? Um, how about no?

Deep space and a field of stars surrounded this rocky world. Pale blue lights glowed where the Chitauri had built their fortress. They gleamed in a set of stairs that climbed to the topmost tower. That was where Loki had made his bargain with the Chitauri: They would be his army and he would open a path to Earth for them. Once Earth was his, and Asgard as well, he would turn the Tesseract over to them.

At least that was what he had promised.

1) Who said anything about Asgard...?

2) Indicator that Loki never planned on actually turning over the Tesseract? I don't know why you'd include this line otherwise.

“Let them gird themselves,” he said. “I will lead them in glorious battle.”

“Battle?” the Chitauri warrior snorted. “Against the meager might of Earth?”

“Glorious,” Loki repeated. “Not lengthy. If your force is as formidable as you claim.”

He had intended to anger the Chitauri, and he had succeeded.

Personally, I saw this less as intending to anger and more as "Loki has no self-preservation instinct and literally cannot help himself". What's to be gained by intentionally pissing off The Other here?

“You don’t have the Tesseract yet.” The Chitauri leader rushed at Loki and stopped just short of him, claws raised. Loki did not move.

“I don’t threaten,” he said, though he was doing exactly that.

LOL

The Chitauri leader backed down but only a step. “You will have your war, Asgardian,” he growled. Then he too decided to make a threat. “If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.”

Loki flashed back into his awareness of Earth. He took a deep breath. The Chitauri did not frighten him… but he would have been a fool if he had not possessed a healthy respect for their leader, the mad Titan known as Thanos. For it was Thanos who had given Loki the scepter, and Thanos who had rallied the Chitauri to Loki’s cause… and Thanos who wished to possess the Tesseract for his own monstrous ends. One did not bargain lightly with Thanos—and one certainly did not fail to meet the terms of such a bargain.

Love how this book just repeatedly glosses over the obvious fact that Loki was tortured. In the first chapter, it makes zero mention of his stumbling or other signs of being weakened. Here, it completely omits the pain WE ALL SAW The Other inflict on him. Fuck this narrator, seriously.

Steve had a moment to look around. The commanding officer appeared to be a woman with short dark hair reeling off orders from near the center of the bridge. “S.H.I.E.L.D. Emergency Protocol 193.6 in effect,” she was saying after a series of status orders and acknowledgments. Steve didn’t know what protocol that was. At the moment, all he knew was that he was on a flying aircraft carrier… and wasn’t that enough? Amazing.

[....]

The Helicarrier disappeared from view. From the inside, it didn’t look any different, but Steve saw monitors from satellite feeds, and on those, the Helicarrier had simply become invisible. He corrected himself: He wasn’t just on a flying aircraft carrier. He was on an invisible flying aircraft carrier. The future was pretty… cool, was the word everyone used now.

I'm not the biggest Steve fan, but I will admit to finding his childlike awe over the Helicarrier slightly adorable. Lol

Side note: is someone on this thing coordinating with Air Traffic Control? I... really hope so.

“What did it show you, Agent Barton?”

Barton turned to look at Loki. “My next target,” he said.

Loki nodded. “Tell me what you need.”

Barton took one his bows out of a case and snapped it into shape with a flick of his arm. “I need a distraction,” he said. “And a biometric ID.”

Why the change from "eyeball", I wonder? Seems random. Lol

Inside, Loki had been mingling with the crowd, taking on the appearance of an ordinary man with a walking stick. But as the president of the museum, one Doktor Heinrich Schäfer, began his welcoming speech, Loki decided it was time to make a dramatic entrance. He tapped the walking stick on the floor and it became his scepter. Immediately, to get the crowd’s attention, he aimed it at the nearest museum security guard and fired.

This... didn't happen?? At all??

Loki strode the rest of the way down the stairs and manhandled Schäfer over to a stone altar that was one of the museum’s prized ancient Norse relics. He slammed Schäfer onto his back, forcing a machine over his face. Schäfer cried out in pain and surprise as the machine shone blinding light into his face, holding his eyes open.

On the one hand, confirmation that Loki did not actually shred this dude's eye and he's probably fine. On the other hand, the author completely made up what just happened literally two sentences ago, so their credibility is a little suspect at the moment. Lol

A police car, alerted by the commotion, raced toward him. He blasted it with his scepter, and it spun out of control and crashed.

ACAB!

The crowd froze. Slowly the crowd knelt, and Loki reveled in their submission. “There,” he said. “Is this not simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”

He's talking about himself here. We all get that, right?

An old man in the middle of the crowd stood. Loki paused in his speech to regard this individual. Around him, all the copies of himself also looked at this old man.

“Not to men like you,” the old man said.

“There are no men like me,” Loki said.

No lies detected.

But Loki was tougher than he looked. He struck back with the scepter, forcing Captain America to parry until Loki found an opening and slammed the butt of the scepter into Captain America’s midsection, knocking him down. Captain America threw the shield again, but this time Loki was ready. He knocked it aside. It fell ringing to the stones of the plaza, and Loki had the tip of the scepter against the back of Captain America’s neck before the soldier could get back to his feet.

Correction: If he'd actually been trying to win, he would have used the tip. (Narrator: he was not trying to win).

A sudden storm rose around the Quinjet. Natasha looked at the instrument panel. There’d been no warning of heavy weather. “Where’s this coming from?” she wondered out loud.

At first, she thought that Loki was responsible. But that didn’t appear to be the case. He looked more nervous than anyone else on the jet.

Loki has Thor-induced PTSD. Understandable, tbh.

Thor let Loki fall well before they got to the ground.

Because Thor is an asshole.

So hey, as long as we're here, let's review how each member of Loki's family responds to the realisation that he's survived his suicide attempt.

Thor- manhandles him, angrily demands to know where the Tesseract is

Odin- refuses to even use his name, implies he should have either slaughtered him as an infant or left him to die

Frigga- tells him not to make things worse (fucking rich coming from the woman who exacerbated his trauma immeasurably by thrusting the throne upon him when he was at his most vulnerable)

Wild, man. I wonder why Loki's convinced his family doesn't give a shit about him. They seem like such loving people to me.

“I remember a shadow,” Loki said bitterly. “Living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss. I who was and should be king!”

Because you would have destroyed Asgard, Thor thought. Just to impress our father, you would have annihilated all the Nine Realms. “So you took the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights? No. The Earth is under my protection, Loki.”

1) Actually, he was trying to save Asgard... from a war that YOU started, numbnuts. He went about it all wrong because he was having a fucking mental breakdown, but at no stage did he even really endanger Asgard, let alone come close to destroying it.

2) Um, what? Where the fuck in Loki's plan was annihilating anything other than Jötunheim? I see Thor shares his friends' impressive conclusion-jumping skills. Not surprising.

3) Thor, I mean this truly and without reservation: go fuck yourself.

Loki chuckled. “And you’re doing a marvelous job with that. The humans slaughter each other in droves while you idly fret. I mean to rule them, and why should I not?”

He... has a point.

“You think yourself above them?”

“Well, yes.”

At least Loki is honest about his condescension, Thor. You should try it sometime.

Suddenly furious, Loki raged at Thor. “I’ve seen worlds you’ve never known about! I have grown, Odinson, in my exile. I have seen the true power of the Tesseract, and when I wield it—”

“Who showed you this power?” Thor interrupted. “Who controls the would-be king?”

And he will never bring this up again. Ever.

Stepping right up to his brother, Thor shouted back. “Not here! You give up the Tesseract! You give up this poisonous dream!” Then he softened. “You come home.”

“I don’t have it,” Loki said. Furious, Thor brought Mjolnir to his hand, ready for battle.

Thor's sort of a one-solution kind of guy, huh? Somebody help me out here, because he's "changed" but his first instinct when he's not getting his way is still to react with intimidation and violence. Funny how that works.

Tony braked and skidded to a halt as the Asgardian rolled away from him, tearing up trees and brush as he went. He got to his feet and extended a warning hand. “Do not touch me again,” he said.

Oh, what's the matter, Thor? Do you not like being manhandled? That's weird because you sure do seem to enjoy doing the manhandling. 😕

“If he gives up the cube, he’s all yours. Until then…” Tony’s faceplate clamped back down. “Stay out of the way.”

He turned to walk back to a place where he could make a clean takeoff. “Tourist,” he muttered.

That was the last straw, apparently, because the next thing Tony knew, the Asgardian’s hammer had hit him about as hard as he’d ever been hit in his life. The force of the blow carried him through the trunk of a tree and laid him out flat in the dirt.

Please note that Thor was not being attacked. He once again used offensive violence against someone who hurt his feelbads. "Changed", my rear.

“Then prove it,” Cap said. “Put that hammer down.”

“Uh, no, bad call,” Iron Man said. “He loves his hammer—”

The Asgardian interrupted Tony by smashing him out of the way with a backhand swing. “You want me to put the hammer down?” he roared, and leaped high into the air, bringing his hammer down toward Captain America.

And again—not in any immediate danger, simply reacting with violence to something that made him angry.

“Oh, I’ve heard. A mindless beast. Makes play he’s still a man. How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?”

“How desperate am I?” Fury echoed. He walked slowly over the catwalk to stand in front of Loki. “You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can’t hope to control. You talk about peace, but you kill because it’s fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did.”

This is called 'projection', kids. Projection, and making up stories about your enemies so they're easier to hate. Fury needs to show his work.

Loki knew he had been heard throughout the ship. He could hear the echoes of the speakers, and even if he had not, he always knew when people were listening to him. That was part of his power, to make them listen… and to make each of them hear something just a little different. Just what he wanted them to hear.

This doesn’t mean anything, does it??

Perhaps he was in a cage right now, but he had been in cages before. Not once had one been able to hold him for long.

This... has to be a reference to his time with the Black Order, right? There's certainly no basis for such a statement pre-2011.

Or the author is just on crack. That's very possible.

Thor took a step toward Bruce. “Have a care how you speak,” he warned. “Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard… and he is my brother.”

“He killed eighty people in two days,” Natasha pointed out.

Citation needed, please.

“Well, I promise a stress-free environment. No tension, no surprises…” As he spoke, Tony walked behind Bruce and gave him a little zap with an electrical instrument.

“Ow!” Bruce said.

Tony looked closely at him. “Nothing?” He’d been testing Bruce to see how well he controlled the Hulk. The little shock hadn’t provoked any kind of unusual reaction, which Tony seemed to find a little disappointing.

Ok, but what exactly was Tony's plan if Bruce had Hulked out here? lmao

“Steve,” Bruce said, “tell me none of this smells a little funky to you.”

Cap looked back and forth between the two scientists. Bruce could tell he was struggling with something… but he also wasn’t going to share it. He was too much of a good soldier for that.

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

“Yeah. I’ll read all about it.”

“Or you’ll be suiting up with the rest of us.”

Bruce shook his head with a regretful smile. “No, see, I don’t get a suit of armor. I’m exposed. Like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”

Bruce has BPD. Lol

No, you guys don't understand. That's literally what it feels like.

Thor watched over Coulson’s shoulder as the agent showed him S.H.I.E.L.D.’s current files on Jane Foster. When he had learned that Loki had captured Erik Selvig, his first thought had been of Jane. Thor had destroyed the Bifrost to save the Nine Realms, but he had also cut himself off from her… or so he had thought. It was a terrible decision to make, sacrificing love for duty—yet Thor had done it. If necessary, he would do it again. He hoped it would not be necessary, though, and that was one reason why he had asked Coulson about Jane.

Oh my god, Thor. You spent like, three days with her, max. And people call Loki the dramatic one...

Thor looked out into the sky, gathering his thoughts. “When I first came to Earth,” he went on, “Loki’s rage followed me here, and your people paid the price. Now, again. In my youth, I courted war.”

“War hasn’t started yet,” Fury said.

1) Correction: when your daddy threw you to Earth like a sack of trash down a cosmic garbage chute. You were not here on vacation, bro.

2) No, Loki's rage followed your treasonous friends.

3) LAST YEAR. YOUR 'YOUTH' WAS LAST YEAR.

4) *committed mass murder over an insult

“You think you could make Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?”

This possibility hadn’t occurred to Thor. “I do not know,” he said. “Loki’s mind is far afield. It’s not just power he craves. It’s vengeance, upon me. There’s no pain that would pry that need from him.”

1) Opposing Thor = being crazy. Noted.

2) Not everything is about you, buddy. At the risk of repeating myself, this is the guy I'm supposed to believe learned humility? Really? Where?

3) Please note that Thor does not object to torturing Loki because it's immoral or because the thought of hurting Loki pains him. He objects because he doesn't believe it will work.

Thor held Fury’s gaze. It was not the first time he had looked at a one-eyed man who posed him a difficult question. “What are you asking me to do?” he asked, wanting Fury to be clear and to own his words.

“I’m asking what you are prepared to do,” Fury said quietly.

“Loki is a prisoner,” Thor said. He thought Fury was testing him, seeing if he would violate his ideals to find out something they all needed to know. But Thor would not.

"I'm okay with physically assaulting prisoners if they make me mad, but I suddenly draw the line at torture. Even though my 'ideals' didn't appear to be a concern two sentences ago."

If I feel like being generous to Thor, maybe he initially hoped Fury would back off if he just said torture wouldn't work, and then Thor wouldn't have to risk appearing... soft? Weak? I don't know.

“But you figured I’d come,” she said.

“After,” Loki said. “After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.” It was a typical approach. Cause misery, and then let someone appear as a friendly face. The miserable person would say anything to keep this friend. Loki had seen strong men break this way, many times.

I'm not sure why the author felt the need to depersonalize this by talking about other men. Loki knows this experience intimately. It's what he's endured his entire life at the hands of his "loving" family. The torture just wasn't physical then as far as we know.

An interesting story, Loki thought. She has much to atone for. He could hear some of her memories, from before her first encounter with Barton. Little girl, he thought, you’ve done some very bad things. And now you think you owe Clint Barton your life… but there is more to it. Loki could tell there was something in her mind that he was not quite uncovering. He pushed a little more.

Is... is this text implying that Loki can read people's minds/memories even without touching them?

“Can you?” he asked. “Can you wipe out that much red?” He listed for her some of the things he knew she had done. “Dreykov’s daughter… São Paulo… the hospital fire? Barton told me everything.” This was a lie. Barton had told Loki certain things about Romanoff, but he was also guessing some others.

He... guessed the details of these very specific incidents? What? lmao

He pushed ahead. Now that he understood her, he could break her. “Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? Pathetic. You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors, but they are part of you and they will never go away.”

He's talking about himself again. 🥺

For some reason, this book skips right over the part where Loki threatens both Barton's and Natasha's lives. Not sure why; the author clearly has no problem depicting Loki as an unhinged psychopath most of the time. Oh well, whatevs.

Loki couldn’t understand how she had gathered her composure so quickly—and then he did understand. She was a superb actress! Or not even an actress, for he could see through a conscious performance. She was something else. She had been broken down and remade so many times, with so many identities, that she could put them on and take them off at will. And Loki had gotten lost in those emotional costume changes.

He had been outwitted by a mortal. Unthinkable.

Yeah, phew, it's a good thing Natasha figured it out in time. Otherwise, something terrible might have happened—like Bruce Hulking out and rampaging through the Helicarrier. Oh, wait...

“I was wrong, Director,” Cap said. “The world hasn’t changed a bit.” He looked angry and disappointed. Captain America was a big believer in shooting straight and telling the truth. He didn’t like spies and he didn’t like lies, and now he saw he was knee-deep in both.

This novel's hero worship of Steve Rogers is going to kill me. 🙄

“I’d like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction,” Bruce finished.

“Because of him,” Fury said, pointing at Thor.

“Me?”

“Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town,” Fury said. “We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

Has anyone figured out yet how this line doesn't conflict with Captain Marvel? Is Fury lying to hide her existence for some reason? Or is this just one of those things that we're supposed to shrug and pretend wasn't retconned?

“A nuclear deterrent,” Tony said. “Because that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark,” Fury said coldly.

On the one hand, yes, good point. But on the other hand, he... stopped making them? So clearly, he no longer thinks they are a good thing?

And also, not to gloss over his past sins, but wasn't Tony born rich? Lol

“I thought humans were more evolved than this,” Thor commented.

Tony turned on Thor. “Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?”

Didn't Fury say this in the movie? Why did the author give the line to Tony instead? There are all these... weird changes in the story that are so minor I have no idea why the author made them. Very confusing.

Just like that, all of them were arguing. Cap and Tony were nose to nose, while Bruce and Natasha fired remarks back and forth. Thor stood off to the side, contempt plain on his face.

'Cause he also thinks he's superior to humans. 🙃

Tony and Cap squared off over an argument that they couldn’t even remember starting. Tony was still mad about the last thing Cap had said to him… whatever it was.

In case there was any doubt about the sceptre being the reason everyone starts losing their shit with one another.

Cap stood his ground. “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”

Tony had an answer ready for this one. “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

Hey Steve? You know he invented the suit, right? Like. The suit is literally him.

“Put on the suit,” Cap said. “Let’s go a few rounds.”

Steve putting out big Joe Biden, "listen, fat..." energy here lmao

Thor laughed. “You people are so petty… and tiny.”

Thor, my dude. You literally started a war over being emasculated in front of your friends. I don't think you get to judge other people for being petty.

Fury could see things were spiraling out of control. He started trying to get them all back on track. “Agent Romanoff,” he said, “would you escort Dr. Banner back to—”

“Where?” Bruce interrupted. “My room? You rented my room.”

Nobody had said it out loud, but they all knew the cell currently holding Loki was designed for the Hulk.

What was their plan for containing the Hulk if necessary after sticking Loki in his cage, anyway? Did they even have one?

“Dr. Banner,” Cap said. “Put down the scepter.”

Bruce looked down. He hadn’t even known he’d picked it up.

Why does that sound familiar...?

Even though he could see what was going on, the hostility in the air was still thick enough that Bruce didn’t know whether he could back everyone down… or whether he could back himself down. He could feel tension rising inside him. He could feel the monster trying to get loose.

And yet none of them so much as considers the idea that the sceptre might be having a similar effect on Loki? Ok then.

But even though he was now refocused on the mission, the others still bickered. Loki had gotten into their heads, sowing discord and setting them against each other.

lmao I'd just like to note that Loki didn't actually do anything. This was all them and the effects of just being near the sceptre. #ThanksLoki

“The Tesseract belongs to Asgard,” Thor said.

Why, though?

“I’ll go after it,” Tony said.

“No you don’t,” Cap said, stepping into his way. He wasn’t ready to forget the way Tony had insulted him.

Ok, first of all, you started it. But also, seriously, Steve, that's your number one priority right now? Earth's mightiest heroes, ladies and gentlemen... lol

I have apparently managed to hit the paragraph limit, so we'll return after this short break, I guess. 🙈

↪️ On to Part Two

[marinerainbow]

Since I'm a Reala simp and crave romance, have some Reala romance headcannons (I hope these dont come off as cringey)

I have general headcannons for him, and specific ones for if his S/O was a nightmaren, a visitor, or even a nightopian to appeal to everyone (I know that last one may sound odd considering the only nightopians we see are those pixie like nightopians, but I have made my own nightopian OC and I'm certain other people have too, so the last part could count for those kind of nightopians).

~General headcannons~

To start things off, a personal headcannon of mine is that Reala is gynosexual (or gynoromantic if the dream folk are asexual in general) meaning he's more attracted to feminine looking people, doesnt matter if the person is a guy, gal, or a nonbinary pal. Of course, these headcanons apply to just Reala in general. I just felt the urge to type this out.

Reala may be the nightmaren general, but he is a gentleman. He'd be the type to hold the door open for his S/O, offer them his arm when out and about, kiss their hand as a greeting, etc. Especially if he hasn't confessed to them yet and is trying to subtly tell them he's interested in them.

However, Reala would definitely be a protective lover. He may be well mannered, but if anyone threatened his S/O who would be stupid enough to do that to the first levels partner, I have no clue he'll definitely step in and handle the issue. How he handles it depends on how the person is bothering them and what his mental state is.

That being said, he has much more patience for his S/O compared to everyone else. Of course, there are times he will get annoyed or angry with them, he would be more calm with them the anyone else. NiGHTS is the only other person who has his extended patience.

He also takes his courting seriously. Any romantic gesture from him is never spontaneous and is perfectly planned out by him. Now later down the line, he'll relax on how much planning he does, but when he's just starting to try and win them over, he's not going to take any chances.

I personally think that deep down, he's a romantic. He would give his S/O all sorts of lovely nicknames ("My darling" "My heart's desire" etc), leave a note for them if he has to leave before they can say goodbye, and would even dedicate some of his songs and poems to them.

CUDDLES! As I stated in my general Reala headcannons post, Reala is fond of the softer things in life, and he would absolutely LOVE to be soft with his S/O. He would love cuddling with them while relaxing, having personal spa days with them, holding them from behind while they were doing something, etc. I also imagine he would treat his S/O as if they were a delicate treasure, treating them as gently as he could and ensuring that they knew everyday just how much he loves and adores them. Also, if his S/O did anything like tending to his wounds or helping him with anything, he would be forever grateful.

With how much he loves music, I'm certain he would love giving his S/O a private show with his violin, and would love dancing with them. Also, since I headcannon he writes music sheets, if his S/O could play music as well, or even sing, then he would love LOVE having music dates, just him and his S/O performing their own concert.

All these fluffy headcannons, now time for something a bit sad. Reala has abandonment issues, especially after NiGHTS left. So him doing all of these things for his S/O is not only because he wants to, but because he's afraid they'll leave him if he doesn't make himself out to be the perfect mate. But, if his S/O helps him with this issue, I'm certain he'll be able to grow out of that fear.

Alright. That's general headcannons, now for specific headcannons!

~Nightmaren S/O headcannons~

This would no doubt be the most likely scenario. Not only because he's a nightmaren, but because of how he views nightopians and visitors, especially after NiGHTS' rebellion (explained in his general headcannon list)

He would still treat them like a delicate treasure, but he also is very much aware that his S/O has experienced their own hardships and no doubt is tougher then they look. But knowing that, his proctectivness would amplify, because now he wants to ensure they dont go through any more badness then they had/would have to.

If they actively served Wizeman, and if they got on his bad side, Reala would take their punishments in a heartbeat. He would be scared yes, but he would still do whatever it takes to keep them safe. The ONLY reason he wouldn't take his S/O's punishments, is if he was physically AND mentally unable to. But he is a pretty tough person, so those instances would be rare.

~Visitor S/O headcannons~

This would be pretty difficult to achieve, considering his entire job revolves around making visitors' time in the night dimension miserable. I think he and his S/O would have met if they somehow weren't afraid of him and wanted to talk instead, and they happened to catch him in a mood where he complied (like @pastiel headcannons for Reala meeting visitors who couldn't feel fear)

It would take a long time for him to develop feelings for them. But when he did, he would do everything in his power to keep it a secret. Do you have any idea what Wizeman would do to him if he ever found out he fell in love with a visitor? He would be considered a traitor instantly, and would more than likely be killed. As such, his love for his S/O wouldn't be as obvious if it were with a nightmaren, and they would probably not understand what he wanted from them unless he actually said he loved them considering he wouldn't be trying to scare them or take their ideya.

Although he would definitely want to, he probably wouldn't protect his S/O from other nightmaren. What if any of them reported what he did back to Wizeman despite his class? So, unless they are taking away their ideya, he will force himself to stay back. He will of course, be there to sooth them and do whatever it took to make it up to them. If he did have to step in however, he would do everything in his power to ensure that nightmaren kept his trap shut.

~Nightopian S/O headcannons~

This one would probably be on the same level of difficulty as the visitor S/O scenario is, maybe even more so. He loves antagonizing the nightopians, so maybe he met his S/O while he was looking for some stress relief? Unless they actually fought him. Either way, they must have caught his attention and gave him a reason to spare them.

He would be so SO much more protective of a nightopian S/O. Nightopians in general are small, delicate, and are often targeted by nightmaren for any reason. So, if it weren't for the fact that he served Wizeman, he would probably choose to live with them to ensure nothing happened to his S/O.

His feelings would both confuse and enrage him at first. The way he sees it, the nightopians are responsible for taking his best friend away, so he would at first see his feelings as a betrayal to his belief's, and would take the most time coming to terms about how he felt compared to the other scenarios. But when he does, he'll try to be gentler and show that he wants them as a partner.

And those were my headcannons! Tell me what you think! Questions and constructive criticism are welcome!

[okaywitheverything]

World’s Worst Best Men: Itachi x Wife!Reader

A/n: I'm not writing a summary but I have a feeling you'll like this one. Not so much romance as usual, but it is fun and I’m proud of it. 

Pairing: Itachi x Wife!Reader, Platonic Sasuke x Reader

Word Count: 1.7K

Here’s the dress I imagine wearing. Though, your imagination is key.

                                  ♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

Uchiha weddings were nothing, if not extravagant and over the top, you should know, you have had one for yourself.

Standing beside your husband of three years, the prodigy, Itachi Uchiha, you couldn't have been happier. Sasuke was getting married and you and Itachi had the most triumphant grins on your faces, both beaming gleefully.

You and Itachi had been childhood bestfriends but didn't start dating dating until late teen years. So naturally Sasuke had been an important person in your life, an amazing boy whom you had watched grow up.

The wedding had been a blast, everyone enjoying themselves to the fullest. Asuma and Kurenai were dancing along with their son in a group with Kakashi and Gai. Kakashi drunk dancing was really a sight for sore eyes.

Genma was at the bar, really vibing with one of Sakura's distant aunts while Iruka was being paired up with one of Hinata's quiet aunts by Naruto.

Minato and Kushina were standing alongside Fugake and Mikoto drinking champagne and feeling proud.Smiles of genuine happiness were on each of their faces as they felt their life goals had been achieved.

Of course all the boys were dancing alongside the Jounins' group with Sasuke in between surrounded by a wild Naruto, drunk Kiba, flustered Lee and other friends of the like.

The girls were in their own group with the bride in between surrounded by perfectionist Ino, jovial Tenten, inebriated Temari, bewildered Hinata and likewise. Ino kept straightening the flowers in the newlywed girl's hair.

This was all you could ever ask for someone as important to you as Sasuke. You, someone who never cried, almost shed a tear when Sauske said his vows. The fact he found love in his life made you really grateful to God.

After all the guest tired themselves out by uncoordinated and off beat dancing, it was time for the best man's speech or in this case, best men.

Naruto and Itachi were the two best men as they both mean the world to Sasuke. His best friend and his elder brother.

With a champagne flute in hand, Naruto started, "Putting our rivalry aside for one day, I would go so far as to call you-, this is only a once in a lifetime privilege remember Teme," He referred to Sasuke getting off track his speech, "-my best friend. Who would have thought you would get married? Howbeit to a girl?"

Everybody laughed, silently agreeing with Naruto. The atmosphere of the wedding hall was bright, beautiful and cheery. The exuberant and buoyant gathering listened with real enthusiasm.

"I don't have anything against you marrying a guy, honestly because all of us expected you to, after you broke a lot of poor girls' hearts."

Sasuke seemed really shocked at this, even his mouth fell open with widened eyes while everyone once again silently agreed. Sasuke's shock told you that he actually had never heard about this rumor before. 

God, he was a really oblivious kid.

"I know, Dobe," Naruto said referring to Sasuke's surprised expression, "I was that shocked too, when I came to know they shipped you with me nonetheless, because that was something even I wasn't aware of." Naruto and Sauke both made disgusted faces, as if on cue. The look of terror on Sasuke’s face might have led people to believe it was the most sinister thought ever.

But they did look cute together.

"But I guess they say, you aren't really best friends if they don't confuse you as homosexuals." Naruto let out a beaming grin while Sasuke gave a crooked smile. Everyone inwardly cooed at the pure expressions.

"However, there is one female I remember you crushing on, the only one in the entirety of our lives."

Sasuke had a look of horror on this face as he shook his head 'no' immediately, trying to get Naruto to shut up, specks of red in his eyes as he threatened to activate his 'Sharingan'.

"I remember you being all flustered and look at (Y/N) with heart eyes.”

Naruto's grin widened, showing his pearly whites, clearly content with Sasuke's reaction. 

Your name caught you off-guard and you were in absolute shock. People turned around to give you a not-so-subtle glance but you didn’t care. You always thought Sasuke was a shy and quiet kid who liked to keep to himself. Mikoto let out a cheer while Fugaku smiled. Itachi let out a deep-throated chuckle from beside you which caused you to turn to him, “You knew about this?”

He silently nodded with a smile on his face and you carried on, “And never even mentioned it to me? Would it have killed you to do so?”

“It wasn’t any of my business. Also, it was pretty funny.”

You lightly hit his arm and retorted, “Oh God, I don’t even know who I got married to!”

A smile still broke out on your face as you turned to Naruto once again.

“I remember once Kiba and I were hanging out and we heard a really high pitched shriek from the forest. We ran all the way inside thinking someone was in danger but it turned out to be Sasuke squealing beacuse it was (Y/N)’s birthday and she gave him a kiss on the cheek for some gift he gave her. I swear our ears started bleeding. He was so red that we thought all the tomatoes he ate finally caught up to him.”

You blinked twice, your expression blank. Then a coy smile made its way to your face. You looked over to find Sasuke as red as a cherry, not even meeting your eyes. He was definitely praying to God that looks could kill, so that Naruto would drop dead.

“I remember that back in the academy, he never let any of us touch his hair because (Y/N) ruffled it while dropping him off. So he would sit through the lessons looking like he just woke up.”

All his classmates snickered at that, recalling the fond memory, while you were amused. It was so hilarious to see such a stoic person so flabberghasted. 

“The most interesting incident that came out of all this was, and I’m totally risking my life by telling you all this. Sasuke would kill me if I even narrate it to anyone, rather announce it on the microphone at his wedding, but your best friend gets married only once. Well hopefully. If I turn up dead by the coming of dawn, it was Sasuke Uchiha everyone.”

Everyone laughed along once again while half of the people were on the edge of their seats thinking what it could possibly be. Sasuke had a puzzled expression on his face, anticipating and fearing what Naruto had up his sleeve.

“Anyways, one when we were high........ I mean drunk, he confessed of a secret love letter he wrote to (Y/N) as a tween but never sent it.”

Your eyes widened as you let out an audible gasp while the room buzzed with chortles and sniggers. Your brother-in-law crushing on you wasn’t necessary negative news but the whole event had overwhelmed you that you could not contemplate even your reaction.

Apparently, you were the only one to be surprised as all the other guests smiled knowingly and cackled. You glanced over to find Sasuke so scarlet that you wondered if the sharingan had spread to his face given that his kekkei genkai was active now.

Itachi chuckled again seeing your reaction and put an arm around your shoulder while gently squeezing. You turned to him and finaly let out a chuckle yourself, eyes still widened in disbelief.

“Am I dreaming?” you asked and shook your head.

“Seriously though, have I been that oblivious Itachi? How could I not notice this while everyone here recalls it as some keen memory?” You held your head with one hand, leaning furthermore into itachi. Your eyes flickered to see Sasuke’s eyes, boring apologetically into your own. 

One look at his chiseled face told you of his anxiety and concern. The small frown on his face saddened your heart.

Does he think I hate him? Poor baby, NO!

You weren’t offened, flattered if anything. But the spontaneity of the situation rendered you speechless.

You gave him the best smile you could muster, wiggling your eyebrows at him and blowing him a kiss from your cherry lips, and grinning again.

He visibly relaxed, shoulders now less taut, jaw a bit slackened though his face remained painted in scarlet hues. Seeing him calm down, you winked at him and turned to Naruto again, anticipating his next words.

“My only regret tonight is that I couldn’t find that letter even inside his personal diary or his deep closet. I swear it was there the last time! No worries, hope you found this speech of mine, entertaining as it is. One last toast to Sasuke though, for his new life ahead. Cheers.” 

Sasuke cooled down with each passing word, smirking triumphantly when he realised he won’t be shred of his remaining dignity anymore.

Everyone toasted together, drinking huge mouthfuls of their wines, rejoicing in Naruto’s words for Sasuke.

Itachi kissed your temple, and left you while moving to the centre of the stage, where Naruto was.

“If I may?” He asked as Naruto passed him the microphone.

“I’d like to say how proud of my baby brother to have come this far in life, as a great shinobi, an excellent son, a marvelous friend and a terific human overall.”

Everone clapped vigourously including you, while all his classmates hollered and hooted. A faint blush adorned Sasuke’s cheeks as he visibly pouted on being call ‘baby bro’.

“And I was about to give a half an hour long speech, but my wee brother’s best friend, Naruto just stole all my content. So much for the tales.” Itachi playfully sighed, all the specatators buzzed with laughter while Sasuke deadpanned.

Well, he wont forget his wedding day ever now. Everyone is dead set on embarrassing him.

“However, I do have something Naruto didn’t have.”

Everyone stilled, waiting with anticipation of what was about to come, including you. Itachi refused to rehearse his best man speech with you because he wanted to write a speech for Sasuke on his own, heartfelt and everything.

He reached inside his tuxedo’s jacket and took out an old cramped paper, yellowing a bit and you raised your eyebrows, questioningly.

Sasuke gulped.

“I have the love letter, everyone!”

Oh Wow.

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

A/N: If you reading this, atleast you made it till the end. Thank you.

So that was that. It was some scenario I just thought about. A bit of a cliffhanger, I haven’t thought about a follow up part 2, but we’ll see if that’s what you want.

Thanks for the love you gave me on my first post, we reached 200 if you count the separate posts I made by mistake. This inspires me to write. Remember, requests are OPEN so feel free to hit my asks page. 

[that-sw-writer]

Hey, here's the idea! What if the reader is Hux's sister, she works on the steadfast or the supremacy, but gets transferred to her brother's command after Ren killed the previous person who held that position. So Hux is on edge cause he's scared Kylo will kill his sister next, while Kylo and her come to an understanding of both wanting to mess with Hux, through all sorts of shenanigans, Kylo and the Reader fall for each other? Much to Hux's dismay 😂

I love how this turned out honestly, it was such a good idea on your part!!

PART TWO

Word count: 3004

Warnings: implied sexual content, Hux getting Extra™️ stressed, borderline crack fic??

Notes: reader is Hux’s sister, but I’ve left it open to be either blood related or adopted so you can choose which you’d rather interpret it as!

Also if anyone wants a part two, drop the request in my asks because I’d be so up for writing that!

Sibling Rivalry

"You're late." Hux was impatiently tapping his foot as you arrived on the bridge of The Supremacy.

"Got lost, this place is way bigger than Steadfast." You huffed, scurrying to his side as you mockingly stood to attention.

"And the uniform?"  He simply raised an eyebrow, looking you up and down as he outwardly judged your appearance.

"This is how I always wear it."  You shrugged, not willing to change. You wore your standard First Order jacket which went down to your upper-thigh, with a belt cinched around your waist. But rather than the baggy trousers, you opted for a slightly tighter option which you felt were much more flattering, and comfortable. Not to the mention that you refused to wear the hat. Instead, you kept your hair tied back in a braid.

"Well, it's not standard issue. Tomorrow I expect to see you in the correct uniform." He hissed.

"Don't hold your breath, Armitage." You laughed, dryly, "last time I checked, wearing a different pair of trousers doesn't affect my ability to my job." You smirked as you shot him down, knowing that you were going to continue wearing what you were more comfortable in.

"Please don't be over-familiar Lieutenant Hux." He spoke to you in a pointed tone, and you rolled your eyes.

"Not embarrassed of me are you, brother dearest?" You teased him, but his expression remained solemn. Of course, this was normal for Hux, but usually when it came to you he would at least loosen up enough to take a joke.

Gently taking your arm he led you away from any prying ears, "Y/N listen to me, I didn't want you getting this promotion-" You immediately attempted to open your mouth and protest this, but he held his finger up to shush you, before continuing, "-I didn't want you to get it because Kylo Ren killed the last person to have your job, and I'd rather not have you be next."

Your mouth formed an 'o' shape, but no sound came out. Were you as afraid of Kylo Ren as everyone else? No. But you knew just how much your older brother hated the man, and you could tell that Armitage was just worrying for you.

Armitage had always been the golden child, prim and proper. You, on the other hand, you had grown up being the rebellious one, and that hadn't changed when you had followed him to the First Order. Although you were excellent at your job, you didn't much care for the strict rules, and part of you had always enjoyed winding your brother up by constantly rebelling. You didn't intend to change just because Kylo Ren had killed someone who had once been in your position.

"I get the message, Armitage." You flashed him a cheeky grin, "I'll stay out of trouble."

"Why do I fear that is simply not true." He pinched the bridge of his nose - he knew you far too well.

A week went by before you met the infamous Kylo Ren, and in that time you had prided yourself on making your brother's life more and more difficult every day. However, you kept doing your job and doing it well at that. You were popular amongst other officers, mostly because of the way you could get away with relentlessly teasing the General.

The day you met Commander Ren, he had attended a meeting which you and your brother were both apart of. Knowing that he was there and that he allegedly hated Armitage, you remained on your best behaviour. You would rather not have him hate you simply by association with your family name. However, you slipped up at the end of the meeting, unable to prevent yourself from teasing your brother when he walked himself into an easy joke.

"-and I expect to see you all training this afternoon in preparation for your upcoming missions."

"I don't think I've ever seen you step foot in the training room, General." You laughed, "how would you know if we're there or not?" A few sniggers rose from around the table, and immediately you felt Ren's eyes burning a hole in the side of your head. When you met his gaze you could read his expression with ease: curiosity. He wondered who would possibly speak to Hux that way, and who could possibly get away with it.

"Watch your tone, Leuitenant Hux." Your brother was bright red in the face, mostly because he was embarrassed that there was truth behind your words, and also because he knew that Ren was in the room.

You noticed the Commander's eyes widen slightly as he most likely put two and two together, you were just silently praying that he didn't decide to decapitate you just because you were related to his arch-nemesis.

On the contrary, however, he actually spoke and his words truly surprised you. "Perhaps the Lieutenant has a point, General. Sometimes it's best to lead by example." He had a deep voice and an undeniably attractive face... Maker, if Armitage knew that you found Kylo Ren in the least bit attractive he would probably eject himself into space. But then again, you did perhaps see it as an opportunity for some fun.

It didn't take long for your brother to adjourn the meeting after being mocked by not only you but also Kylo Ren. As you rose from your seat you moved to exit and walk by Armitage, but he grabbed your arm to hold you back for a moment.

"Y/N, I am at the end of my tether with you." He sternly told you, "why is it that you cannot simply do your job without the foolish comments? And Maker help me will I one day see you in the correct uniform?" He may as well have had steam coming from his ears. He looked as though he would spontaneously combust at any given moment, which only caused you to try and stifle a laugh which threatened to escape your lips.

"Hux, a word?" Kylo Ren's approaching voice saved you from your imminent scolding, and you both turned to face him.

"Not now Ren, I'm busy." Your brother snapped, but Ren was visibly unphased by this tone, something told you he was possibly even amused by it.

"Lieutenant Hux, not you." He nonchalantly clarified, and you furrowed your brow at him.

"Is there a problem, Sir?" You asked.

"So you'll show respect to Ren, but not me... typical." Armitage scoffed under his breath, and you simply elbowed him in response.

"Don't mind my brother, Armitage is just concerned that you'll kill me for being associated with him." You shrugged as your attention returned to Kylo.

"I'd sooner kill you than I would her, Armitage." Ren snorted, mocking the general as the two of you walked away from him. It was written all over his face that he couldn't possibly comprehend that his little sister and arch-nemesis were possibly about to gang up on him.

As you departed alongside Ren, you were both silent. Only when you left the bridge and fell into stride in the corridor did he speak.

"I didn't know Hux had a sister." He plainly said, and you exhaled a short laugh.

"Yes well, I don't do his uptight image any favours, so I think he tends to keep me a secret." You snorted, "not to mention he's convinced that you'll kill me just to get at him."

"Who's to say I won't?" Kylo Ren was clearly trying to get the measure of you, so that question was a challenge, you knew that.

"I'm still breathing, aren't I? If you were really going to kill me to get at Armitage you'd at least do it in front of him." You shrugged as if the whole threat didn't bother you in the slightest.

He hummed in response, changing the subject, "you're not much like Hux."

"I should hope not." You laughed, "I was always the fun one... much to Armitage's distaste."

"He doesn't seem to appreciate your sense of humour." He said this whilst giving a pointed look at your obviously incorrect uniform.

"Well, that's my brother for you. But correct me if I'm wrong Sir, you don't exactly strike me as the 'fun' type either." You raised an eyebrow.

"That depends on what you call 'fun.'" When he looked at you, you could have sworn you saw a mischievous smirk forming on his lips.

As the weeks went by, you and Ren spent more time together - rather, he seemed to spend more time around you. It was like he purposely timed his schedule to coincide with yours, and you weren't mad about that at all. The more time you spent with him, the more attractive he became, and stars you had been particularly enjoying watching him train most days.

You still spent much of your time pestering your brother, but even he had simply grown used to it by now. He made conscious efforts to sit and have an evening meal with you a few times a week, and despite all of his irksome mannerisms, you appreciated how much he cared about you.

"Phasma tells me you've been spending an awful lot of time with Ren in the training room." Trying to act nonchalant about it, Armitage casually brought his cup of caf up to his lips. You meanwhile found it amusing that he was indulging in gossip simply because it involved you and Kylo.

"Perhaps it's just a coincidence that we're there at the same time." You smirked at the mere thought of watching Ren when he's training, but you had to snap yourself out of it.

"I highly doubt that." He snorted, "I imagine he's waiting for an opportunity to strike you down."

"Are you perhaps being a bit paranoid?"  You raised an eyebrow. You found it amusing that your brother was so caught up in his feud with Kylo Ren that he hadn't for one second thought that Kylo might have been following you because he liked you.

"No, I'm telling you Y/N, he's dangerous. He has no redeeming qualities." He hissed.

"I wouldn't go that far." You shrugged, kicking your feet up onto Armitage's desk, much to his dismay, "he's hot, I'd call that a redeeming quality."

Now your boots on his desk were the least of his problems, upon hearing your words he choked on his caf, coughing and spluttering for a few moments. You were still sat calmly, smirking as you enjoyed watching his overreaction.

"You are to stay away from him Y/N, do you understand?" His face was redder than Kylo's Lightsaber at this point, and you weren't sure if he was angry at Ren for allegedly leading his sister astray, or embarrassed by your comment about Kylo being hot... perhaps a combination of the two.

"Don't hold your breath, Armitage."  You playfully winked at him before leaving his office.

"Y/N!" He called after you, "I'm serious, stay away from him!"

"Yep, I hear you." You sarcastically called to him, turning back around as you walked. Before you could straighten up again you collided with what felt like a brick wall, but when two hands took ahold of your waist to steady you, you realised who it was.

"Maker, why do I even bother?" You could hear Hux exclaim from his office, "Keep your hands off my sister Ren." He then yelled, turning tail and storming back into his office.

"Sorry, he just really hates you." You teased, "me not hating you is probably his worst nightmare."

Kylo usually showed up at random points throughout your day, but considering that this meeting with Armitage hadn't been on your schedule, it was truly surprising to see him. You were suspicious that the Force was somehow involved.

"And I assume he's asked you to stay away from me." He hummed as you walked side by side, heading towards your office where there was likely a stack of datapads for you to go through before turning in for the night. Kylo had taken to sitting in there with you and keeping you company whilst you worked. Somedays you wondered if he ever actually did any of his own work.

"You tell me, you were the one eavesdropping." You had a knowing smirk on your lips, whilst he looked like he had just been caught red-handed.

"I-uh, I didn't want to interrupt." He sheepishly said.

"Did you hear anything you liked?" There was a suggestive edge to your tone now. Whilst you found him undeniably attractive, there was also the added benefit of pissing off Armitage beyond belief by doing the polar opposite of staying away from Kylo.

He picked up on this tone and looked at you quizzically for a moment. It wasn't long before a mischievous grin appeared on his lips. "Something about my redeeming qualities maybe?" You had both stopped walking at this point, simply staring at each other to the point where you could have cut the sexual tension with a knife.

"Y'know, I just remembered that I need to go back to my quarters to pick something up." You eventually broke the silence, hoping that Ren would get the idea.

"Lead the way." He said, trying to keep his tone level as he remembered that you were both still out in the open.

Your quarters wasn't a far walk, but it felt like miles with the ever-building tension. You wanted nothing more than to finally see if Kylo Ren was as good in bed as he was in the training room. When you rounded the final corner, you pulled him through the blast doors without warning which sent him colliding into you, which you used as an opportunity to capture his lips in a steamy kiss - something you had both wanted to do for a long time.

He wasted no time in pushing you back against the nearest wall, his tongue eagerly exploring your mouth as you began to pull at his endless layers of clothing. Before you could remove too many layers, he was mumbling at you to show him where the bedroom was, and it was safe to say that you never made it to your office that evening.

After multiple rounds, Kylo spent the night, and when morning broke you decided to ditch your schedule and spend time in bed with him, just aimlessly talking.

"What is it about you?" He asked in his deep voice, "you're all I've been able to think about." He confessed.

"I noticed." You teased him, "following me around like a shadow."

"Coming from you, that's funny." He smirked. "I've been hearing your thoughts since you first got here, it's like you've been projecting them to me."

You realised just how many times you had thought about Kylo since you had first met him and on some occasions, you had definitely thought about him in less than appropriate scenarios. Although looking at your current situation, that had probably worked out in your favour.

"So what exactly is it about me then? Just that you can hear my thoughts?" You slowly began tracing your finger up and down his bare chest.

"I don't know." He mused, "I should hate you."

"What, just because of my brother?" You laughed, "you said it yourself, I'm not much like him."

"And I'd rather keep it that way." Kylo snorted, leaning in to kiss you again, but he was interrupted by a loud hammering at the door.

"Y/N you have missed three meetings this morning. So help me, you had best have a good excuse-" Armitage's angry rambling continued at the door, you and Kylo exchanging a look from your spot on the bed. With a heavy sigh, you moved to get up and dressed but Kylo placed a hand on your shoulder.

"I'll get it." He said, and you looked at him with a mischievous grin on your face.

"You're evil Kylo, you know that."

"Especially where your brother is concerned." He grunted, walking to the blast door wearing just a pair of loose trousers.

When the door swung open, Hux's jaw practically hit the floor, his face immediately turning a bright shade of red.

"Ren." He snarled, "what in the stars are you doing in my sister's quarters?"

"She needed a good excuse to avoid her meetings." He smugly looked at Armitage, clearly revelling in his sheer rage.

Slowly glancing over Kylo's shoulder, he saw you laying on the bed with the sheets pooled around your body to cover it, and if he hadn't put two and two together already, now it was staring him right in the face.

"Sorry Armitage, Commander Ren personally excused me from my meetings. Did you not get the message?"

"My sister..." He looked at Kylo, his words coming out as a low growl. "MY LITTLE SISTER?" This time he yelled, and you couldn't help but burst into laughter from your spot on the bed, burying your face in the pillow to stifle the cackles.

Kylo made a point of looking back at you, then to Armitage, then to you, then back to Armitage. "Yes, she was the last time I checked." He raised an eyebrow, enjoying your brother's blinding rage far too much.

"I swear Ren I am going to end your miserable little life in the most painful, unimaginable way possible, and even when you beg for death I will show you no mercy. I will-" Hux was jabbing his finger in Kylo's face, but he remained completely unphased.

"-ooookay Armitage, I think that's quite enough for today." Holding the sheets around your body you shuffled over and pushed your brother out of the room. Before the doors could shut you glanced at Kylo who just gave you a pointed look and small shrug, "oh, and I think I'll need the rest of the day off as well." With that you let the doors slam in Armitage's face, and fell back into Kylo's arms.

As you dropped the sheets and relaxed into the kiss, you could both hear Armitage's last yell as he stormed out of your quarters.

"Dead, Ren... DEAD!"

[imaginejamesandsirius]

hi! I can't stop sending you prompts. I hope you don't mind :") "Severus hits James with the "Sectumsempra" spell and leaves him in this state." thank you and have a nice day!

((A/N: The prompt sort of leans in a hurt/comfort direction, but I didn’t do that. This is more ‘Sirius has Anger Issues and James doesn’t like it’)) 

"What the hell happened?" Sirius asked. James looked a little fragile, so instead of squeezing his hand until it hurt, Sirius's fingers were knotted together in his lap where he was sat on the edge of the hospital bed. He'd tried to sit in the chair next to the bed, but James had rolled his eyes and told him that if he didn't get up there, then James would go to him. 

James kicked his lips before answering. "Spell accident." 

"Accident," Sirius repeated. He didn't want to think that James was lying to him, but really- an accident? 

"You know how it is with new spells. Sometimes it's exactly what you want, and sometimes they blow up in your face." 

"What the hell were you thinking trying a new spell by yourself?" 

"Well I didn't think that was going to happen. Why get back-up for something I thought couldn't possibly go wrong?" 

"You're the one that gave me that lecture! Like, a month ago. 'Don't go practising anything experimental, Sirius. You might get a hangnail and then I'll have to panic for forty minutes.' Remember that?" 

"I didn't say it like that." 

"Believe me, it was the gist. You're absolutely ridiculous." 

James stuck out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. "I'm injured! Be nice to me." 

"I'll be nice to you when you stop being an idiot." 

"That'll never happen," James whined. "I want you to be nice to me now." 

"Keep on dreaming." Besides, maybe this would remind him not to go off on his own and experiment! What kind of spell could it have been to land him in the Hospital Wing? Singed eyebrows, sure, but Madam Pomfrey hadn't even healed him and then let him go. Whatever it was that had gone wrong, it was having lasting effects. 

"Where's Moony and Wormtail?" 

"Revising. You said it was nothing, so I told them not to worry about it." The only reason James had told Sirius was because he knew better than to try and hide something like that. They both agreed to tell the other about any injury, no matter how small, and they got on a lot better for it. "If I'd known you were lying, they'd be here." 

"I didn't lie. I said I was fine, and I am." 

That was when Madam Pomfrey walked up to them with a tray of potions in hand, and she raised an eyebrow at James. "Anyone who loses that much blood is not fine. You're lucky Professor Dumbledore happened upon you when he did, or you might've bled to death right there." 

"What?" Sirius yelped, turning to James accusingly. "That's not sodding fine!" 

"I'm heartened that you agree with me, Mister Black. Perhaps he will actually listen when I say that he should stay here overnight." 

"Aww, c'mon," James said. "Nothing's going to happen to me back at the dormitory. You already said it would just be for observation." 

"No way," Sirius said immediately, shaking his head. "You're staying here so we can be sure there aren't any lingering effects." 

"There aren't." 

"You don't know that for sure." 

There was a hesitance to James's expression before he said, "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure." 

"Pretty sure isn't enough to bet your life on." He heard Madam Pomfrey move on to the next patient, leaving them alone again. "Come on," Sirius said, lowering his voice. "I wouldn't be able to get any sleep if I knew you might get hurt in the middle of the night. If you're here, at least we'll all know that you're as safe as you can be." 

"Bloody hell, you're becoming more like Mum with every passing day." 

"Your mother is a lovely woman." 

"Yeah, but she hovers," he said, wrinkling his nose. 

"You like my hovering," Sirius said. He managed to untense his fingers so that he could put one hand on the bed and lean forward to give James a quick kiss. 

"Merlin help me, I do," he whispered. 

"So you'll stay here, tonight?" 

"I will, but I still think you're overreacting. Nothing's going to happen." 

"That's what I thought this morning too, and look at where that led us." 

James rolled his eyes. 

*

Sirius thought about it more as he went back to the dormitory. He couldn't manage to think about anything else. James's answer had almost made sense, but something about how he'd said it all... It had soothed Sirius at the time, but now that he had some space, it struck him as odd. It's like James had been trying to get him not to focus on how it happened. If it had been a simple spell accident from a new one, then he would've complained about the spell itself; he would've talked about how he was so sure he'd gotten the right phrasing for it this time, and he'd worked so hard on trying to get it perfect before he ever raised his wand. 

He hadn't done any of that. 

James and Sirius didn't have to have talked about it first to know that Sirius was going to sneak in that night to visit him. Since he was actually hurt, Sirius didn't plan on staying for very long. 

He was going to get to the Hospital Wing, ask James what had actually happened, kiss him once (maybe twice, for good measure), then leave. Nice and quick. He'd be back at Gryffindor Tower in time to catch enough sleep that he wouldn't pass out at his classes tomorrow. 

It was a good plan, he thought. The only problem was that James didn't seem to know the script. 

He was awake when Sirius got there. That much, at least, they were on the same page for. Sirius cast a silencing spell around them, then carefully sat on the edge of the bed. "How do you feel?" 

"No worse than before," he said with a tired smile. It was hard to say if he was tired purely from staying up a little late or if that was an effect of being injured. "I still think you're overreacting a bit. I'm fine, and I know that nothing's going to happen." 

"How?" 

"What?" 

"How do you know that nothing worse is going to happen?" Sirius elaborated. 

"Trust me on this one, love. The initial," he waved his hand lazily, "thing happened, and I get that it scared you, but everything's fine now. It's not going to spontaneously reappear; it's not like that." 

Sirius stared at him for a long moment. If he hadn't been looking for it, he would've accepted that answer. James was not only dodging the question, but he was doing it in a way that tried to ensure Sirius wouldn't think twice about it. James was lying, and he didn't know why. "This wasn't a spell accident," Sirius said flatly. "You know exactly what went wrong, but you're not telling me. Even if you were telling the truth about it being a spell accident, I'd need a better explanation for why you're so sure it's not going to have any lingering effects. But since you're lying about that, I figure you can just tell me the whole truth right now." 

James's expression turned guilty, but no answer was forthcoming. 

"What the hell is going on?" 

He still didn't answer. 

"Fine," Sirius said, getting to his feet. "If you're not going to talk to me, I'm going to leave." 

"Wait," James said hurriedly, even though Sirius hadn't taken a step. "Don't- don't go." 

Threatening him-- even with something so small as going back to bed-- made him sick to his stomach. "Are you going to tell me what really happened?" 

James made a face. 

"What the hell is going on? Since when do you not talk to me?" 

"Since I know you'll freak out." 

"Why would I freak out?" 

"Because that's what you do when you get upset. For fuck's sake, you almost killed Snape last-" 

"You said you forgave me for that," Sirius interrupted as his heart clenched. "Wait, did he do this to you?" 

For a moment, James looked conflicted. Then he said, "Yes, but I don't think he really knew what the spell would do. He panicked when he saw all the blood." 

"He left you there? Madam Pomfrey said that Dumbledore's the one who found you, so when he panicked, he just left you like that? I swear to Merlin, I'll sodding-" 

"Stop!" James shouted. "You're not going to do anything." 

"The hell I won't." 

"This is why I didn't tell you. I hexed him first." 

"Yeah, you hexed him; you didn't cut him open and leave him to die." 

"You're not listening to me!" 

"I'm listening just fine." 

"No, you're not," James snarled, his face twisting with frustration. "You're just saying that you're going to kill him because he hurt me, and I'm telling you that that's utter shite." 

"He'd deserve it." 

In a flash, the anger was gone, replaced by shocked disbelief. "You'd really do it." 

"He nearly killed you," Sirius hissed. 

James swayed back slightly, like he couldn't handle being so close to Sirius's anger. "You told me last time that it was a mistake. One you regretted." 

Sirius grit his teeth. "It was." Then, vindictively, "I never should've dragged Moony into it when I could've done it myself." He hadn't expected for the statement to do anything but make James more disappointed with him, but he looked scared now. The reaction almost had Sirius apologising-- it's not like he would ever hurt James, but the other man didn't look too certain of that. 

"If anything happens to Snape, I'll tell Dumbledore that you're responsible." 

"You wouldn't," Sirius said, narrowing his eyes. 

"I definitely would if it'll stop you from hurting him. He made a stupid mistake, just like you'd done, and you're not going to punish him for it." James still looked scared of him. "If you hurt him again, Dumbledore will expel you. He was lenient last time, only Merlin knows why, but he won't do it again." 

Sirius turned on his heel and left, angry enough that he wanted to start flinging spells at the stone until it crumbled before him. 

He stomped back to the Tower. He wasn't careful or using the Map, but he somehow didn't get caught. That was good. He wasn't sure he would've held his tongue, even against a professor. 

*

He woke up in the morning, feeling nauseous. 

He skipped breakfast to go see James. Madam Pomfrey was releasing him when he got there, so he hovered awkwardly near the door for her to finish. 

James had seen him when he entered. His eyes chased that direction when he saw the door open, then slid back to Madam Pomfrey as she spoke. Sirius leaned against the wall, feeling almost like he hadn't slept at all for how tired he was. He didn't know if James would listen to him, or if he wanted more space before talking. Hell, he might consider last night good grounds for breaking up with him, and what made it worse was that he wouldn't be wrong. If Sirius were James, that's what he'd do. He wouldn't be able to be with someone like him. 

But when James walked to the door, he stopped at Sirius's side. "Hey," he said, subdued. 

"Clean bill of health?" Sirius asked, looking at James's shoulder because it was easier than looking him in the eye. 

"Yeah. Nothing happened during the night, so she said I should be fine. The usual lecture about being more careful in the future." 

Sirius nodded. "Breakfast?" he suggested, pointing towards the door. The last thing he wanted was to sit in the Great Hall and try to force himself to eat. 

"Sure." 

They left, walking side by side. It was a tense silence until Sirius broke. "Can we talk?" 

"Sure," James said again. 

It was easy to find an empty corridor that was far enough away from the Great Hall that they didn't have to worry about being walked in on. 

"I don't know what's wrong with me," Sirius said quietly. He didn't think of himself as overly emotional, but he started to tear up the moment he opened his mouth. "Every time I get angry, it's like I don't care about anything. I always feel like myself, and then it passes, and I just want to be sick. I used to think it was my parents, you know? That I was so buggered up from living with them that feeling murderous was just part of who I was, but now I live with you and it's-" Sirius stopped, swallowing thickly. He blinked the tears away before they could bead together and fall. "I don't know how to be better." 

James didn't say anything for a long moment. "Have you talked to anyone about this?" 

"I'm talking to you, aren't I?" 

"I meant, like, an adult. A real one. A good one, not your parents. Maybe Mum?" 

"Why would talking to your mum help?" 

"She's our mum," James corrected automatically, like he always did. "I dunno. She seems to know a lot. When I was going through some things, talking to her made me feel better. It can't hurt, right?" 

"I guess," Sirius muttered. He'd do it because James thought it was a good idea, and he couldn't trust his own council about this. He just wasn't really sure if it would be better for him, and more than that, he didn't know how willing he was to say those things to Mrs. Potter. She always looked at him fondly and said that he was family. He didn't want for that to be tossed out the window because he said too much to her, but he couldn't stay like this. If James hadn't been scared of him last night, he probably would've done it. Maybe he wouldn't have killed Snape, but he wasn't sure-- and he definitely would've hurt him. 

Sirius felt... fragile. Like he was a vase with cracks all along it. 

"I'll write to her today," Sirius said. Since they agreed, he started to turn back to the main corridor, but James stopped him. 

James stepped forward, wrapping his arms around him just like he always did. Not tighter, not less constraining. The same as always, like nothing had changed. "I'm glad you're okay," James whispered. 

Stupidly, that was the thing that made Sirius start to cry-- that James touched him and talked to him like he was the same he'd always been. Like he still loved him.